501st: An Imperial Commando Novel Read Online Free

war, and they’d had no choice but to get on with life and carry on fighting in the very next moment.
    Grieving was dealt with slowly and privately. Eventually, you came to terms with it. But Niner had never been in love with a woman or fathered her child, and so he realized that Darman’s grief was probably something new and indescribable, bound up with shattered hopes for a future that no clone had thought he’d ever have.
    But we
can
have those lives. The little ordinary things. Fi’s got a wife. So has Atin. And Ordo. They’re living as Mandalorians, free men. I know what I can be
.
    Niner had never seen Kyrimorut, and now he had to forget that he even knew its name. At least he didn’t know where the homestead was. Nobody could beat that information out of him. He was scared to talk about anything in their new quarters, even in the locker room, in case the Emperor had installed surveillance to check on who was loyal and who had ties to the past regime.
    It might have been the same boss with a new title, but the new Empire already felt like a different world from the Republic.
    Darman attached his armor plates to his undersuit, and clung to his DC-17 rifle like a comfort blanket. The 501st had let the commandos keep those for the time being. There was probably a brutally pragmatic reason for it; they were used to the Deece, and that saved training time on new weapons, but it still felt like a kindness, a concession to ease them into the new and unsettling world of the Imperial Army. Niner kept trying to workout why it felt so different. It wasn’t the vast influx of new clones produced on Centax 2 by fast Spaarti processes. He’d met very few of those men. No, what bothered him most was simply the absence of things that had been the core of his life for thirteen years.
    People
.
    He couldn’t call Skirata. There was no General Jusik, either, or Fi, Corr, or Atin, or any of the people he knew he could count on if he needed them. There was just Darman.
    And Darman needed him, whether he knew it or not.
    Dar could have escaped with the rest of them and been with his baby son now, but he didn’t; he’d stayed with Niner. Nobody in the galaxy could buy that kind of loyalty and brotherhood, and now Niner had a debt not only of honor but of
family
.
    Darman flexed his fingers, making his new gauntlets creak. “You going to stand there scratching your
shebs
all day? Buckets on. Mustn’t keep Lord Vader waiting.”
    “I know you’re not okay,” Niner said, “so I’m not even going to ask.”
    “I’m fine. Are
you
up to this?”
    Niner had broken his spine on that awful night when Order 66 was called. Darman had refused to leave him, afraid he’d end up like Fi, on life support waiting to have the plug pulled because nobody had a use or a place for crippled clones. Niner didn’t need reminding that it was his fault Darman was stuck here and not raising Kad.
    “I’m good as new,” Niner said. He did a few twists from the hips and bent over straight-legged to put his palms flat on the floor. “See? Actually, that’s better than I used to be. I couldn’t quite do that before.”
    “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
    “Dar, whatever Vader’s got in mind for us, it’ll be business as usual.”
    “How can it be? We haven’t got a war to fight now.”
    “Oh, you think it’s all over, do you? You been watching the holonews?” News was all that Niner had to occupyhim for days after his spinal cord was repaired and he was confined to a brace. “There’s still trouble. Still places where the locals are fighting. Places that won’t accept the Empire.”
    Darman flipped his helmet over between his hands a few times. “Little border wars. They don’t need special forces for that.”
    “Okay—what do you want to see happen? No, don’t answer that.”
    Niner grabbed Darman’s arm, steering him down the corridor to the parade ground. This wasn’t Arca Barracks. He couldn’t trust anyone or