Republic Commando_ True Colors Part 21

Vau had little time for anyone else, regardless of species, but the men of the Grand Army were a different matter. It was, he realized, one of two things that stopped him and Skirata from killing each other: their mutual respect for the clone soldiers who had taken over their lives, and the fact that Mandalorians put aside their rifts when presented with a common threat from aruetiise.

"You do realize," he said to Skirata, "that if the troopers were given a choice, most would opt to stay in the army any-way?"

"I do. We all prefer the comfort of what we know best."

"They'd be as dead as volunteers as they'd be as slaves, Kal."

"But they'd have a choice, and that's what makes us free men."

"Actually, that's a load of osik. Plenty of free beings in the galaxy don't have a vote and don't get a choice about what they do each day. There's a very blurred line between slavery and economic dependence."

"Yeah, well, if you want to argue about the continuum of oppression, clones are still at the extreme end of the graph. So I'll concentrate on them rather than the downtrodden ma.s.ses, thanks."

The landscape of loyalty was shifting with each pa.s.sing day. First it had been a matter of worrying about what would happen to troopers when the war ended. Now they were discussing men who deserted while the fighting was still going on.

"Kal, would you rather fight for the Separatists?"

"Ideologically? You know I would. The Republic's a crumbling bureaucracy at best and a cesspit of corruption at Worst. But I joined for the credits and I stayed for my boys. Chat's your excuse?"

Vau couldn't claim he'd joined for the credits, although he'd often led a fairly hand-to-mouth existence since forgoing his inheritance. But he stayed for the same reason Skirata did, even if he had no intention of admitting that to him.

Mird, satisfied that takeoff was over, pulled its head out from under Vau's arm and deposited a skein of drool in his lap.

"On reflection," Vau said, groping for a cloth to wipe his pants, "I think it's the elegant lifestyle."

Teklet, Qiilura, 477 days after Geonosis Ordo knew his limitations, and learning obstetrics from a manual was a lot riskier than piloting a new ship the same way. Requisitioning a top-of-the-line med droid from a supply base en route had cost him time but would greatly improve Etain's chances of carrying her child to term.

And if the droid couldn't hack it, then... no, he'd face that if he had to, and not before. He sprinted across the snow from the landing strip with the droid struggling behind him. It was big and heavy, and not adapted for rough terrain.

"Captain, I still need to know what procedure I have to perform," it said peevishly. It was a 2-1B model, and it- he-had a professional ego on a scale with his extensive surgical expertise. "I was awaiting deployment to a more significant theater of war. Where are my nursing a.s.sistants?"

Ordo reached the door of the HQ building as indicated on his datapad chart and bypa.s.sed the security locks almost without thinking. "Don't you take some sort of oath to help the sick and injured, Too-One?"

"No. And it's Doctor."

"I'll make one up for you, then-Doctor." As the doors opened, Ordo came face-to-face with a clone commander in yellow livery. "It starts with, I pledge to keep my vocabulator offline as much as possible."

"Captain," said the commander. "I didn't know you'd be bringing a med droid."

"Specialist stuff, sir." So this was Levet: Ordo reminded himself that he was outranked here-technically. "We can't afford to lose any more Jedi. It takes longer to make them than to grow us. Where's General Tur-Mukan?"

Levet gestured upstairs. "Good luck. She seems not to realize that I know she's yaihadla."

Ordo was always surprised to find any clone outside the Special Operations ranks who knew more Mando'a than just the words to "Vode An." He was especially taken aback by one with enough fluency to know the word for "pregnant."

"Ah," Ordo said noncommittally. Levet had somehow earned the nickname of Commander Tactful, and now he knew why. Mando'a wasn't one of the languages generally programmed into med droids. "Really."

"I humored her, but she has her reasons for not discussing it, and I never argue with a general if I can help it." Levet slipped his helmet on. "The Jedi Council doesn't like fraternization within its ranks, so I imagine the poor woman is terrified."

Ordo waited for the next bombsh.e.l.l to fall, but Levet went no further in his a.n.a.lysis and seemed content to think that another Jedi was the father-to-be. Maybe he hadn't considered the possibility of a humble clone, although there was plenty of speculation about other generals and the nature of their social lives.

"I'll be diplomatic," Ordo said.

There was the small matter of making sure that the med droid kept his vocabulator shut, but that was a technical detail. Once he'd treated Etain, he'd need a full-spec memory wipe. Ordo hadn't mentioned that to him yet.

Etain was propped up on pillows, eyes closed and hands clasped in her lap, and there was no obvious sign of the shapeshifter. She looked past him at the droid, then sighed.

"h.e.l.lo, Ordo," she said quietly. "Sorry you had to be dragged all this way. I know Kal's worried about me when he sends you."

She could always tell one clone from another even without looking, just from the impression he made in the Force. Ordo knew she found him disturbing. Maybe it was the waking nightmares and the frustration that swirled around in his unguarded thoughts: he could keep a lid on it, but she knew it was there just as surely as Kal'buir did.

"And how are you, General?" It was as good a place to start as any. "Are you still bleeding?"

"I think I should be asking those questions," the droid said. He pushed past Ordo and leaned over Etain, ejecting an array of sensors and probes from his chest. She stared at him in disbelief. "Any pain? I have to examine you..."

Too-One's arm came to a sudden halt, and Ordo thought he'd malfunctioned. He seemed to be struggling to move.

Etain gave him a narrow-eyed stare. She'd apparently declined help from the other med droids, but this was the equivalent of the chief of surgery. "You better warm those appendages of yours first, tinnie ..."

"Ah. You're a Jedi. Of course." There was an ominous grinding whine from his servos and the faintest smell of overheating. "The sooner you release me, the faster I can complete the examination."

"I'm glad we understand each other." The droid's arms suddenly jerked, and he tottered slightly. Etain's use of the Force seemed to be a lot more precise these days. "I'm about ninety days' pregnant."

"I wasn't informed of that."

"Well, now you know. I've been accelerating the pregnancy with a healing trance, so I'm probably in the fifth month in terms of development."

"My data banks make no mention of Jedi being able to do that. How?"

"It's not a precise science. I just meditate, really. He's been kicking, so I'm guessing how far things have progressed."

"He. So you've been under a physician's care, had routine scans..."

"No, I'm a Jedi, and we can detect that stuff." Etain glanced at Ordo as if appealing for support. "The baby's re-acting strongly and I know he's been upset by the fighting, or at least to my reaction to it."

"Impossible," Too-One said. "Higher brain functions don't appear until twenty-six weeks, and even with acceleration..."

"Look, you'll just have to take my word for it. And I'm still losing a little blood, and having cramps."

Ordo stood back to watch the show. The droid and Etain seemed to be having a standoff, staring at each other as if she was daring him to lay manipulators on her. Then Too-One took out a scanner and pa.s.sed it over her belly.

"Oh my," he said primly. "My database suggests this is the equivalent of a six-month fetus."

"Told you so..."

Too-One hesitated and then parted the heavy cloak that Etain was still clinging to. There was a visible bulge under her tunic, but nothing that would make anyone stop and stare.

Ordo found himself suddenly fascinated in a macabre kind of way. There was no mother's heartbeat in the artificial womb of the transparisteel tanks on Kamino, and no comforting darkness. Ordo knew that he should have begun his life like the child within Etain, and why the atmosphere of silence, isolation, and unbroken light-with only his own heartbeat to cling to-had helped make him the way he was.

He remembered too much. Maybe it was a bad idea to hang around while the details were being discussed. But Kal'buir had told him to ensure Etain was safe and well, and that meant waiting.

"Ordo..."

How did we ever learn to be human at all? If bloodlines and genomes don 't matter to Mando'ade, what makes me a human?

"Ordo?" Etain gave him a meaningful look.

"What?"

"I know nothing fazes you, but... well, I'd prefer you to wait outside while the med droid completes the examination. Do I have to draw you a picture?"

Ordo took the hint and stepped outside the door, still in earshot in case something went wrong. There were times when he realized just how far adrift he was from normal humanity, and Etain's pregnancy, a universal human condition that showed how mundane and constrained by biology even a Jedi could be, simply reminded him how much of an out-sider he really was.

He didn't even have a mother.

He had a father, though, and Kal'buir made up for every-thing.

The buzz of conversation and the occasional raised voice-Etain's-suddenly stopped. The droid opened the door.

"You can come in now."

Ordo wasn't sure what he was going to see, but Etain was just sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing the crook of her arm. "Well?"

"I have problems with the placenta," she said. "And my stress hormones are sky-high, which isn't helping."

"She shouldn't be fighting a war in her condition, and she shouldn't accelerate this pregnancy any further," Too-One said, addressing Ordo as if he was somehow both responsible and her keeper. "I've given her medication to stabilize her, but she should let nature take its course and find a less stressful environment for the duration."

"Understood," Ordo said. That was clear enough. "Does she require more medication?"

"For the next seventy-two hours, yes." Too-One produced a pack of single-use sharps from his bag. "Normally I wouldn't leave an untrained being to administer these, but you've had emergency medical training, have you not?"

"Oh yes." Ordo took his collection of electrical disrupters and data slicing keys from his belt pouch. They dangled from a plastoid cord like an untidy necklace. "Battlefield first aid."

Too-One wasn't expecting it and he never saw it coming. Ordo thrust the disrupter into the droid's dataport and Too-One stopped dead, unable to process any signals or data.

"What are you doing?" Etain looked aghast. "You can't just deactivate him like that."

"Uh-huh." Ordo checked the diagnostics on the slicing key and found the time point in Too-One's memory where he was first told he was being taken to Qiilura to treat a female Jedi for unspecified gynecological problems. That was all he'd needed to know to download the appropriate data re-sources. Now he didn't need to know that at all, and he certainly didn't need to know he'd been here and treated a pregnant Jedi. "This is not data you want hanging around in the system, General."

Ordo hit the DELETE & OVERWRITE command with his thumbnail. Too-One had never been here, as far as the droid was concerned.

"He's a doctor, droid or not. Patient confidentiality is part of his programming."

"Sadly, it's not part of anyone else's, ma'am. Data stored is data that might one day be found. Your child's existence has to remain a secret. If you need more treatment-we'll start over."

"Ordo, he's self-aware, even if he's inorganic." Etain had that expression of professional piety that really annoyed Ordo when it came to most of the Jedi he'd met. Politicians had that same look sometimes. It said that they knew better and that he didn't understand. "You can't just remove a chunk of his memory against his will. It's violating him."

"No, it's like not telling him about cla.s.sified information, only retroactively. Happens to troopers every day." Ordo checked that the segments of memory were truly erased. "Are you going to mention the irony of clones mistreating droids, ma'am? Because I always find that amusing."

"It's tempting."

"Have you ever memory-rubbed an organic being? I know some Jedi can. Bard'ika told me."

"Only in training, for practice, and then only with consent, and..."

"Well, then."

"You've never forgiven me for messing around with that stop command, have you?"

"If you mean do I trust you not to misuse it again when it suits you and effectively switch me off like a droid for a fraction of a second, no. If you mean do I harbor a grudge-no, I don't."

Ordo now had to move Too-One to a plausible location to reactivate him. That was going to be hard unless the tinnie walked, because he was too heavy to lift.

"I suggest you go and hide in another room while I fire him up again and fill in the gaps."

"And afterward?"

"I'm removing you from Qiilura for the time being. Get your kit."

"Can't I just take it easy here?"

"And what are you going to do when you hear the artillery, and Levet comes back to report to you on the day's casual-ties?"

Etain looked over Too-One as if seeking inspiration, then nodded. She got to her feet and disappeared along the landing to another bedroom.

"Okay, Doctor, wakey-wakey time . . ." Ordo rebooted Too-One and stood back to watch his reaction.

"Did I malfunction?" asked the droid, clearly disoriented. "I have an unreadable sector in my memory."

"Corrupted data," Ordo said casually. It was true, from one perspective anyway. He'd definitely corrupted it, so much that it was unrecoverable. "I rebooted you. You're on Qiilura. They're a little short of medical support, so I as-signed you to Commander Levet. You might have to deal with the local militia's casualties, too."

"A patient is a patient, Captain." He pressed the diagnostic panels on his arm. "Most disturbing. I hope I haven't lost any significant data."

Too-One sounded a little humbler than he'd been prewipe. If Ordo hadn't known better, he would have said the droid was worried about his lapse of memory-scared, even. Everyone said droids couldn't feel fear.

What's fear anyway? A mechanism to save you from danger and destruction. All droids were programmed to avoid unnecessary risk to themselves, and only the level of necessity varied according to model. If that wasn't fear, Ordo didn't know what was.

He'd have to think about droids differently from now on.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't blow them to shrapnel if they got in his way.

He handed Too-One over to Levet, who was still waiting downstairs, and the commander dispatched the droid to the landing area to await incoming vessels.

"I'd like to keep the general's condition between the two of us, to spare her embarra.s.sment," Ordo said. "The droid's been wiped. You can never be too careful. Funny people, Jedi."

"Indeed they are." Levet projected the holochart above the table in the cramped room he used as an office. It still smelled too strongly of Trandoshans for Ordo's liking. "Now, what was this about the general? Sorry. I have a terrible memory."