501st: An Imperial Commando Novel by Karen Traviss Page B

though—when he shut his eyes he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Etain’s body. He simply didn’t know. It wasn’t the Mandalorian way to fret about remains, but he had nothing left of her, not even a scrap of armor.
    I just want to know where she ended up. Then I might be able to cope
.
    “Spook Boy isn’t coming with us, is he?” Bry said. “That’s all we need.”
    Head direction was never any guide to what a guy in a helmet was actually looking at, let alone what he could detect with sensors. So there was no reason for Cuis to know he was being stared at, discussed, and mistrusted. The squad could chat on their private link without being heard. They always folded their arms or hooked their thumbs in their belts to avoid the temptation of automatic gestures, so a casual observer wouldn’t even know they were having a conversation.
    Niner didn’t join in. He was paranoid about bugged comlinks. Nothing would persuade him otherwise.
    “So what can the spook do that we can’t?” Ennen asked. “He’s a bit on the
plump
side.”
    “Maybe he’s a good shot,” said Bry.
    “Maybe his uncle put in a good word for him.”
    “Maybe he didn’t, and this is the punishment run.”
    Darman was more interested in observing Cuis. Something about the man bothered him beyond the usual level of healthy suspicion. Anyone in that line of work would have assumed he was the subject of speculation and gossip when he was around troops, but Cuis seemed to be
reacting
as if he was listening to the chat—subliminal, near-invisible reactions, but reactions nonetheless. He looked uncomfortable as he walked across that lonely stretch of ferrocrete. He was a man with the power to make citizens vanish, no questions asked, and yet he walked self-consciously.
    Darman was pretty sure he wasn’t going to break into a jog.
    It was hard to hide small detail from a clone. Darman lived his whole life attuned to the tiniest variations in facial expression and body language—and voice, and smell—because like all his brothers, he’d spent most of his life among men who looked almost identical. They weren’t. Every clone learned to spot the small distinguishing features and behaviors that marked each man. And that skill carried over into the observation of the entire world around them. Detail mattered. Lives depended on it.
    Darman decided that Cuis could either hear the comm circuit, or … he
felt
the tone of the conversation. Ennen and Bry were dismissive and contemptuous, not hostile. Maybe … 
    “Maybe,” Darman murmured, “he’s a Force-user. So let’s not give him anything to notice.”
    “You reckon,” Bry said. “Really.”
    I know Force-users. I know them in ways you can’t imagine. I know their reactions, the way they deal with the things that we can’t detect, the things that sometimes give them away to us ordinary folk. Because I’ve been as close to a Jedi as an ordinary guy can get
.
    “Yes,” Darman said. “I do.”
    Darman didn’t think of himself as ordinary folk, though. He’d been raised to understand he was
optimized
, the best raw material trained in the best way to be the best at his job, and now he fell back on the most important childhood lesson that Sergeant Kal had taught him. He could do anything he set his mind to; not because he started with the advantage of the genes of one of the toughest fighters in the galaxy, not even because he was fed and trained to a peak since childhood, but because he had acquired the right mental attitude. Skirata called it
ramikadyc
—in a commando state of mind. It was a soldier’s unshakable belief that he or she could do anything, endure anything, take any risk, and succeed. It was stronger than muscle. It made the body do the impossible.
    I’m not in pain. Any pain that I feel is temporary
.
Nothing can touch me. This is happening to someone else. I just observe it as I pass
.
    That mantra kept Darman going when all he wanted to do was