#ovolot qail uthan

[sorry-but-no-sorry]

3 blue themed scientists with an obsession with clones

Dr Anika (oc, Error’s tormentor) and Uthan (Republic/imperial commando) have been neutralized by clones, so Hemlock, your time is running out)

[trudemaethien]

002 - Jaing

002 Jaing

my feelings: this guy has daddy issues (times two, thx Skirata for naming him “little Jango”) AND mommy issues, nice. What an epic sense of macabre humor, he was so fucking funny for calling a kaminoan “mother” to her face. I love how clever he is and want to give him increasingly complex problems to solve like a little rat in a maze (lol in Maze huehuehue)

romantic ships: any/all of the Nulls, Maze, Bardan Jusik, Fixer, Fives/Echo

platonic OTP: Ovolot Qail Uthan

unpopular opinion: withholding info on Grievous’ whereabouts was not strategically incorrect. He just shouldn’t have let Palpatine, who he knew was double-crossing both sides of the war, control when and how that info was leaked.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: More Canon should Exist at all, but I’d have liked to see him collaborating with others as he hacked.

crossover ship

headcanon: he has touch sensitivity, so gloves are practical since he uses his hands for everything. He also likes the sensation of being tattooed, makes him feel actually anchored in his skin. He has digital fingerprints that he sometimes wipes and sometimes leaves on purpose.

[forcesung]

“It was my idea,” Jusik said, “and so she’s my responsibility. One way or another—I’ll get her out of this.”

Compassion was a burden. Uthan realized she’d avoided it for most of her life, and Jusik had made a vocation of it.

She wondered which of them was the happier.

—Imperial Commando: 501st, Karen Traviss

[captainofthetidesbreath]

Star Wars Republic Commando fancast:

Shohreh Aghdashloo as Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 8)

For once, no CWs that I can think of.

TL;DR Recap: Hokan wakes up Uthan by trashing her house in the middle of the night. Darman tries to make sense of Etain, who isn’t what he expects.

Beginning Kal Count: 12.5 Ending Kal Count: 13(.5) 

We open with a Skirata quote. Again.

I have no frame of reference for these statistics, but I am hesistant to trust Kal on anything involving psychology. That said, I think it’s the only time he comes up this chapter, so let’s hurry up and ignore him.

I just. I-

He wakes her up in the middle of the night by ordering a robot to shoot the biohazard containment. He then proceeds to try a lightsaber on the biohazard containment doors. When Uthan rightfully thinks he’s insane, he explains he’s worried about security. Eventually, after some discussion, she agrees to temporarily move her staff while leaving the virus in place. Hokan reflects again on how it can’t be clones he’s facing here because they’d be too docile.

Then we get to the part I care about, which is Darman’s pov with Etain. They’re back in the barn, still hiding, and Darman is exhausted. More than that, he’s exceedingly perplexed by Etain, who isn’t at all the Jedi Officer he was expecting.

I don’t know, I just kind of like this scene. Etain almost, but not quite touching him and worrying when she feels something wrong is in the Force. She’s still a Jedi Officer to Dar, not his crush yet, so he’s extremely polite in the way of someone whose afraid of being an inconvenience. 

Poor Darman, honestly. Etain has reasons for not meeting his expectations, but it’s a really rude awakening/flash of culture shock. Even if I wouldn’t exactly call Jedi “the civilian world”. Not GAR, no, but not civilians either.

Etain shows him the holographic plans she’s been carefully hiding this whole time, and he’s relieved, But he’s also surprised that she doesn’t know the objective, or for that matter about the GAR or the war. He has to explain to her that he’s a clone. But honestly, they’re pretty equally confused by each other:

Etain is probably the character with the most detail description of her physical appearance in this series, honestly. But I’m really glad that for once KT didn’t go for the “is the woman fuckable” route and instead just focused on how alien they both seem to one another.

Also, Etain just chronically puts her foot in her mouth, no matter how hard she tries.

Listen, this timeline still makes no sense, but at the very best this implies that Kast Fulier got a communication through the single Nemodian communications tower that none of the characters can use without being found out at any other point in the story, discovered that the Clone Wars had begun, and just decided his Padawan for whatever reason didn’t need to know that there was war and a bioweapon? 

Also, that they had been sent to Qiilura to investigate before the war broke out but Uthan, who is solely working on the bioweapon, was sent afterward, in which case why would they be there to begin with? You can’t tell me Ankkkit and Hokan posed a galactic military threat on their own, much less one that required Kast and Etain to go under cover for so long. But I will literally never get answers to this.

Etain is upset by the fact that there’s only four members of Omega squad (she’s having trouble wrapping her head around the fact that “four ten year olds [are] going to storm Uthan’s complex” which is understandable from her point of view, but makes Darman feel like shit especially because “she looked absolutely crushed, like he’d disappointed her just by showing up”. As far as first meetings go, this one’s pretty rough.

But despite Etain being in over her head and managing to saying all the wrong things, she looks at Darman and... decides he needs to be fed.

Again. foot. Mouth. She’s incredibly impatient/brusque/disbelieving in this scene, and it hurts from Darman’s pov. But I can’t say I would handle it much better.

How did Omega never once even see Rav Bralor? Or the one Isabet Reau? And if these are Mandalorians, how were the numbers that skewed? I have questions, Karen. Also, man, did the Kaminoans set the clones up for massive disappointment, 

:[

Again, Etain’s brittleness here, all her shortness with Darman, is deeply rooted in her fear that she not only can’t live up to his high expectations, but that she’s not going to be of any use to anyone at all. 

Etain points out that what the squad thinks is Uthan’s facility is actually the Separatist garrison and they need to warn Omega before they run into all the droids. But Jinart closes the chapter by interrupting them, and Darman promptly puts a gun to her head.

(I wish that meant I didn’t have to deal with her next chapter.)

[izzyovercaffa-blog]

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I’m still angry Mereel Skirata wasn’t going to be given credit for creating the cure. All those quotes in that post I threw together on a whim from just one book in the series points to his arc inevitably tied with the cure’s creation. 

But to do that would take him out of his two dimensional lady’s man swinger stereotype, so of course KT replaces him with Mij and turns ImpComm to the Mij and Uthan show.

It doesn’t even make sense. Just because someone is a physician does not make them a geneticist. Mereel teaches himself genetics over the course of True Colors, has been studying genetics since before that, if the the short that comes before the novel is any indication. Why replace him with Mij, except to conveniently pair up the “career woman who regrets never starting a family bc she was too focused on her career”?

Like, way to do a huge misogynistic disservice to Dr. Uthan. I expected her to be more combative, less friendly, less willing to assist in ImpComm. We can’t come up with any reason to turn Uthan over to their side except by romance? Romance that is specifically stated to be exploited by Kal. As in Kal’s like “that’s her weakness, we use that,” regardless of Mij’s feelings in the matter.

Is it really that hard to imagine having an unlikely friendship between Uthan and Mereel come about in those circumstances, instead? Is it really that hard to think of a motivation for a career woman to do the right thing that isn’t purely driven by a sudden, out-from-literally-nowhere regret she didn’t start a family?

For fucks’ sake.

It really grates on me.

[forcesung]

Uthan was still trying to place Gilamar in the Mandalorian scheme of things. He looked like everyone’s idea of a holovid Mandalorian—broken nose, scarred armor, grim expression, buzz-cut hair—but when he spoke, he was another stereotype entirely: a highly educated man. She found the idea of a doctor working as a mercenary and still practicing medicine almost too much to take in. But then Mandalore itself was one big contradiction, with heavy industry and shipbuilding sitting cheek by jowl with farms that hadn’t changed in centuries, sophisticated electronics and ancient metal-working skills side by side in the same suit of armor. She really wasn’t sure what a Mando was anymore. All she knew was that they weren’t quite what she expected. She hadn’t met two the same yet—not even the clones.

“No, I’m not good with needles,” she said. “You seem to be a polymath, Dr. Gilamar.”

“Got to be.” He sat down and took an assortment of vials and slides out of the bag. Some contained dark purplish blood, one seemed to be urine—clear and colorless as distilled water—and other containers held tiny globs of bloody tissue. “We’re a long way from Coruscant Medical School. Every Mando needs to be able to do half a dozen jobs.”

—Imperial Commando: 501st, Karen Traviss

[forcesung]

“We fought against them, too, but that’s the nature of the beroya’s job. You think we’d be any better off under the Jedi? Mandalore, I mean? It makes no difference to us. When it does —then we’ll get involved. One thing we won’t be doing is fighting an ideological war for aruetiise who’ll spit on us the moment we win it for them, and blame us if we don’t.”

“That’s how tyranny succeeds,” Uthan said. “When folks think it won’t affect them. Until it eventually does.”

“Thank you for the tips on glorious rebellion and liberty. Me, I like clearer definitions of glory and freedom before I start a fight over them.”

“The galaxy is entering the dark ages.”

“Actually, most of the galaxy won’t notice the difference. Some of it will even be better off. The average citizen just wants an excess of food on the table, something to watch on the holonet, and the freedom to indulge a few health-destroying habits. The individuals who’ll feel aggrieved about all this are the aristocrats and politicians who lost power and want it back, the hobby revolutionaries, and the relatively few unlucky shabuire who have something the Empire wants and plans to take.”

—Imperial Commando: 501st, Karen Traviss

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 6)

CW: Series typical sexist description, I guess. 

TL;DR Recap:  Birhan attempts to chase Etain away but is dissuaded by Jinart. Darman is puzzled by nature and also severely sleep deprived. Hokan is sexist and Uthan is introduced.

Starting Kal Count: 7. Ending Kal Count: 10.

We immediately open the chapter with another Kal quote. And not even an interesting one. But that ups the Kal Count to 8.

The scene we start with though is from Etain’s pov. Birhan our vaguely contemptuous farmer, is throwing clods of dirt at Etain and telling her to “GTFO because this is all your fault” essentially. 

(Etain plays the scape goat a lot. It’s a trend. Realistically though, he’s afraid of what Hokan will do if he’s found sheltering her, given the “militia” burned people and their livelihoods last chapter.)

Etain still has no idea who Jinart is, but Jinart tells Birhan he’s being stupid. Etain tries and fails to mind influence him with yet another quote about Etain’s lack of control over the Force when it’s most needed. Jinart shoves Birhan around a bit and tries again to persuade him by basically telling him he can either get murdered by the Republic or keep Etain as a kind of human MiracleGro:

This quote is one of the big reasons that I headcanon that Etain was never really going to be happy as a mercenary farmer’s wife living in rural Mandalore with Kal, or happy in a rural/agricultural setting, period. Her strongest associations with agricultural life are the AgriCorps and Qiilura- failure and trauma. The narrative flat out tells us “agriculture spelled failure”. 

And while that might be resolved eventually with a character arc (that she doesn’t get) ag life flat out doesn’t provide the sense of purpose that Etain is so desperate for. There’s nothing dishonorable about farming, but Etain sees it as “life on a backwater planet, talking to grain” and through out the series she strives for the opportunity to make a real difference to other people. Misguidedly at times, I’ll admit, but I don’t think she could have ever been content with what was being offered.

Anyway, Jinart steers Etain back in the direction of the barn. Etain is getting understandably paranoid, but there’s some narration in this scene I just don’t get?

I have SO MANY THOUGHTS about this scene. Enough that I’ll probably make a separate post later. I’m trying to keep my posts brief, I really am, but I pull so much from these couple of pages for Etain.

My first thought is that it’s really, really fucking weird to put Etain’s digression about Jedi values of anti-attachment here, relative to this barn...as opposed to like, idk, a reflection on her life versus the clones’ later. 

Of fucking course the barn isn’t home. It’s a place she’s been hiding from people who want to kill, torture, or rape her while behind enemy lines on a military mission and the owner of the barn just directly threatened her, if ineffectively. “No loves, no attachments” well, yeah, you’re surrounded by enemies and your teacher was just tortured to death. “At least it wouldn’t be hard to tear herself away from here.” Well, no shit. Was that ever even a realistic option?

Then we immediately get the highlighted exchange with Jinart, and again, I’m repeatedly struck by how differently Omega’s grief versus Etain’s is frame. I’m not saying that Etain’s statement is wrong, or even out of character necessarily. 

But it’s super detached, again. Granted, the clones don’t spend time weeping on screen. But their grief at losing their respective squads is brought up repeatedly. The prologue and most of the first chapter are either Darman realizing he’ll never see his squad again or Niner and Fi’s heartbreaking conversation about it. It plays into Niner’s repeated fears for Darman and his anger with Atin. It plays in to Atin’s seeming callousness towards Darman. Etain has a scene later where she asks Darman if he misses his brothers, and he goes quiet and hurt and the weight of the scene rightly falls on her like a hammer.

While Etain... I’m not saying it doesn’t affect her actions; it very visibly affects her paranoia. But it’s never handled quite like grief, if that makes sense? At least not after the initial death.

Speaking of paranoia... Jinart really has no call to be offended that Etain is suspicious, given what’s happened to Etain over the last several weeks and the fact that Jinart spends much of the rest of the novel insinuating she’s naive and useless. Etain has every right to be paranoid, all things considered. But then we get this contradictory mess of a conversation:

The soothing bit doesn’t make sense to me. But I’m biased because I dislike Jinart based on the whole scope of the series. And again Etain grieving and feeling alone and hating being alone in grief makes sense, but the framing of this quote is super weird. Especially as the farmers haven’t demonstrated and “home”-like behavior or even family loyalties on screen.

But we’re finally moving on from this huge ass rant about this scene as we open onto Darman crawling through an open field with his kit and generally being overwhelmed by the sheer openness of everything+ the physical strain when he’s already wounded and exhausted. During the course of this, it comes up that Dar is still desperately hungry, so he starts thinking about what wildlife might be edible, and then about Kal and uj cake.

Kal Count is increased to 9.

Darman is exhausted and fatigued, and most of the section, while interesting, can just be boiled down to him trying to motivate himself to keep going because he’s terrified he’ll miss the rendezvous with the rest of Omega Squad. The same kind of bird that brought down his ship in the first place eats the remote he was using to scout ahead, so he swears at it. There’s another mention of Kal teaching them to build defensive fortifications which ups the Kal Count to 10.

But there’s also a fair bit of fascination as he’s experiencing nature for the first time. He takes his helmet off to smell the breeze, soaks in the stream, and is captivated by his first view of the daywings, which makes you think he is kind of a small-details guy. 

...Dar....

anyway, he falls asleep eventually without much more of note happening in this section. We move to Ghez Hokan introducing the reader to Separatist scientist and would-be creator of the anti-clone bio weapon, Qail Ovolot Uthan. 

I appreciate Uthan a lot as a character, despite her later handling in Imperial Commando: 501st, but this particular introduction still makes me cringe.

I legitimately can’t tell if this is how Traviss thinks of this character, or if this is deliberate characterization of Hokan via his descriptions of Uthan, but ugh.

Hokan: She knows I can’t be seduced, but she still wants to seduce me!

Ugh. The man is also way caught up his own ass in terms of what he thinks other people think of him. He doesn’t want to sit in Uthan’s brocaded chair because it’s “too decadent” but does it anyway because otherwise he would be addressing her while standing like a servant. Dude, you need some therapy. What’s the Mando expression? All helmet, no head?

Anyway, I really, really like Uthan here actually. She’s super ruthless, and even if she’s not a great person, ruthless and somewhat ammoral female characters are a fun rarity. I wish that KT could have kept it up throughout the series rather than making her into “bitter lonely career woman”, but look how casually she decides her work is threatened and then which of her associates she needs to cooly dispose of to prevent that happening:

The smartest thought Hokan has had so far is the recognition that if she’ll arrange to dispose of Ankkit, she’ll do the same to him, honestly. But when Uthan sees him hesitate, she goes right for the kill and presses just the right button to utterly manipulate him. He even recognizes it, but is unable to not be convinced.

She tells him that the clones are clones of Jango Fett. And of course he goes all Death Watch and Mandalorian Honor about it.

Honestly, Hokan. And then we finish the chapter with the thing that really makes me question his intelligence:

“To make them proper men again?”

this is the third time I’ve said it.... but how the fuck do you think viruses work, Hokan?

Honestly.

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 18)

CW: Violence. “Joke” that references inebriation/ date rape (kinda sorta). 

TL;DR Recap: Niner gets worried because Darman and Atin are taking too long and might get blown up. Fi refuses to follow orders. Etain helps. Hokan makes a run for it.

Beginning Kal Count: 35 Ending Kal Count: 37

This chapter opens with a Kal quote. Fog of war and rattling sabers, etc, etc. Whatever, Kal. Kal Count is now at 36.

This chapter is incredibly short: barely 5 pages. We still manage to squeeze in some Jinart and two different Skirata quotes.

Niner calls off Majestic’s orbital bombardment and waits several minutes before moving, because you can’t stake your life on the accuracy of orbital bombardment.  Specifically, he calls off the bombardment with ... the check, check, check order that Etain will get in trouble for using on Ordo..

I already had a discussion with freckledmccree and tiender about this on the dash that you can probably find if you look for their usernames on my blog, but essentially the “check” command being used to halt an orbital bombardment as a legitimate command puts the fiasco of Etain using the same command (having heard Kal use it) in a weird place.

Triple Zero treats check as Kal’s super secret code word to drill into his trainees that they need to stop in an exercise that’s unique to him and that they’ve been trained to automatically obey, which makes it a big deal when Etain uses it on Ordo because it forces him to automatically freeze and she hasn’t earned the right/the trust to completely override him at such an instinctual level.

But that’s ...weird if Omega is using “check” to call off an orbital bombardment. What if Ordo had been on Qiilura and was engaged with the enemy when Niner had to call out a “check” on Majestic, perhaps because the orbital bombardment has gotten too close as the squad engaged targets. Him freezing from Niner’s “check” would be a very bad thing, and also makes that word just... not make sense. Tiender even looked it up and it’s part of brevity code.

So the two options that you’re left with are that Kal was incredibly stupid about his safe code or that Etain picked up on the terminology to call cease-fire as a Jedi officer, used it, and Ordo was upset because he didn’t trust Etain’s judgement and personal control over him.

As freckledmccree points out, from the narrative framing/narrative intent & KT’s long, long history of inconsistencies and plot holes, probably what happened is KT forgot herself that check was more generalized and made it into a specific word for Kal, making this an author failure. And honestly, even Kal isn’t going to do something that dumb. 

So when/if we ever get to that part of Triple Zero... insert a safeword of your choice I guess?

Moving on.

Niner still expects Kal to come out and call for endex (Kal Count 38) and he notes that Fi has a sniper rifle trained for “anything insane enough to walk out” of  Uthan’s complex, and that he doesn’t think Fi would think long enough to hesitate if they came out with raised hands.

Niner talks to Dar and Atin about their expected evac time and location (neither are good) but we get... this really terrible, out of nowhere what the fuck line:

CW: Joke that sounds like a very thinly veiled joke to date rape, or at least consent issues due to inebriation. 

Like. What the fuck.

I don’t know why Atin is setting this “joke” up, much less how Niner, of all people, is answering with ... that line, which reads a LOT like me to either “woman is so drunk she’s biddable and can be dragged out of bar for sex” or “woman has been drugged and is being dragged out of bar for sex”.

As I said earlier on this blog... my Watsonian explanation has to be that Kal is a really shitty teacher who has made a lot of really shitty jokes that Niner internalized as a young clone sergeant trying to imitate the training sergeant. (Though that doesn’t explain Atin.) My Doyalist explanation has to be that Karen Traviss is a terrible human being.

Moving on.

Darman and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day continues.

Niner’s super concerned by the amount of time that it’s going to take Darman and Atin to rendezvous with everyone, so he tries to send Fi and Etain ahead to the evac zone and singlehandedly cover Dar and Atin’s escape.

Niner isn’t going to press it and some part of him is probably glad not to be left alone, but Fi, I really don’t think you’re allowed to do that.

Etain and Jinart show up, Niner explains the situation and asks if Etain can help. Etain offers to try and part the soil with the Force if Jinart will find a shallow point and Niner will explain what’s needed so she can visualize it. 

I really, really think based on the last chapter that KT just forgot that Atin gave Etain an array blaster already, because it’s magically disappeared from the narrative. And I haven’t checked, but I don’t think Etain ever gets to use Fi’s blaster, which I have to assume is his sidearm if it’s going on her belt. The most mention it gets after this is clinking against Dar’s armor when she hugs him.

That said, please imagine tiny little Etain currently kitted out with an exotic shot gun, her lightsaber AND a commando’s pistol. Does the heart good.

We even get to switch to her POV next. 

a) Etain’s Force-sense is already Darman-attuned, which fits with the opening of Triple Zero. That happened fast, though.

b) “Are you following scent?” Etain panted. /”No, I’m listening for echoes.”/ “With your nose?”/ “Where I keep my ears is my own business.” Okay, I hate Jinart, but that line never fails to crack me up.

I don’t really have a comment, I just needed that line here.

We don’t really get detailed descriptions of the Force from Etain’s point of view super often. That I can think of, there’s this scene, there’s her describing how she perceives the troopers around her at the Dinlo extraction. To a much lesser extent, maybe a little tiny bit about the fetus that will become Kad. Otherwise it’s typically really vague- she had a feeling, or she knew, without the sensation behind it. I really love getting descriptions of how using the Force actually FEELs is what I’m saying, I guess.

This is the only time Jinart is complimentary of Etain in the entire series, I think.

Okay, so

a) ewwwwww. Dar was covered in raw sewage two chapters ago, if you’ve forgotten.

b) Still she rushes in to hug him without even noticing. She doesn’t stop because he smells bad; she stops because she’s a Jedi Padawan and an officer, neither of which should be so emotional, so she’s embarrassed. 

c) Darman “all guilt” Skirata is apparently clueless, but Atin isn’t- “are you going to stand there all night posing for the commander?”

They work out a plan to carry Uthan in shifts, Etain worries about the sedatives, and Jinart, finally, finally takes a hike.

Whatever other weirdness happened in this chapter, I feel like I won the lottery with this scene.

We briefly go back to Hokan who is working with Hurati to evacuate Uthan’s remaining staff, and decides to personally help evacuate the only remaining woman, telling her to hold on to him. Unfortunately, his plan is “kill the lights and then run real fast out the door”, which makes that line about Fi earlier ~foreshadowing~.

I, too, would take comfort in protecting my head from projectile weapons.

Anyway, that’s the official end of what’s probably the shortest chapter in the book, excepting the prologue.

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 19)

CW: Violence & blood. 

TL;DR Recap: Niner and Fi kill the scientists as they flee Uthan’s facility and Darman blows it up from underneath. Hokan realizes he now has no scientists and no virus. Etain briefly distracts Atin and he gets shot. Uthan is injured by shrapnel from his armor. Niner and Fi try to take down Hokan, but struggle against his beskar’gam. Niner decides on a trap.

Beginning Kal Count: 37 Ending Kal Count: 39

Last chapter, with the exception of the date rape joke, was actually fairly satisfying, so by the Traviss Law of Plotting, this one has to make me sigh. Here we go.

Darman and Atin are approaching the safety point where they can blow up the science facility from underneath, but Niner is observing it topside and tells them to hold off when he notices something happening.

Somewhere in the middle of that, we get this line”

Which, spoiler for Triple Zero, it absolutely is his new tic.

 Hokan has killed the lights, and when Niner’s night-vision kicks in, he hesitates to shoot at the people coming out of the building because he sees Hokan’s t-shaped visor and Niner associates with clones (and probably Kal, though mercifully that isn’t brought up for once) and his brain jumps to Atin and Dar, despite them being a ways away. After a moment, he opens fire when he realizes it’s Hokan, but it’s too late. After another second, a second group makes a break for it (Hurati and the scientists) and he and Fi successfully gun down 3/4 people. See? Foreshadowing. 

They decide to put more explosives into the facility, just to be on the safe side, so Fi and Niner throw in six anti-armor grenades to take out any remaining droids close to the surface, and also set the E-Web to overload. Then they book it, because Dar’s about to blow up the labs from underneath, and absolutely no one wants to be in that blast radius.

The things that make Fi happy.

Sadly, this is not endex. We switch to Hokan’s pov for the updated casualty report. He’s survived and so has Hurati, but all of the scientists are dead.

Niner apparently hit someone, just not Hokan. Or Hokan’s armor protected him. Or the scientist functionally turned into a shield. Hurati confirms that  he survived because he hit the ground, but that when he yelled drop, none of the scientists dropped. Hokan confirms that civilians tend to do that. Hurati adds more bad news by explaining that, given the color/temperature/position of the explosion, there’s no chance that any samples of the virus left in the facility survived. Which means Hokan has lost Uthan, the science team, and the virus work all in very short order. His only shot is to recapture Uthan, but his staff is down to him and Hurati, so chances aren’t great. He decides to try it anyway, sends Hurati hunting, and settles in to listen for the commandos.

We then switch to Etain’s POV. This is the scene that makes me sigh. But I’m just gonna ignore authorial intent and power through.

I can’t think of a great explanation for Etain being able to sense the larty and not droids/weapons/ *ahem* minefields. I really just don’t know. Best guess is what she’s feeling is less the gunship itself and more the Force rippling with the currents caused with what will happen because of the gunship/ how her life will be changed...

... but again. Triple Zero. The minefield. I don’t know.

a) “its drive chang[ed] pitch, and Darman reacted as if someone were talking to him” 

b)  everyone seems, at best, mildly perturbed the first time they see Atin be even remotely cheerful, and it’s pretty damn funny. If only it wasn’t a set up for disaster.

a) I pity that specific soldier too.

b) okay, so the “clones are appreciative of the little things & look how grateful they are compared to your average civvie” has been a MASSIVE throughline in this book (and series) but “His dreams were modest. She thought that was a fine example to set.” Actually, you know what, no, not when you look at the systemic reasons for the “modesty”. This line is just creepy.

c) (the highlighed line) Etain wants Darman’s respect. That should be your immediate red flag signal that something terrible is about to happen immediately so the narrative can show her why she doesn’t deserve it yet again.

d) (still though... she wants his respect, specifically, she wants to know what he wants to do when they finally escape this miserable place. notably, she isn’t even thinking what she’ll do, though of course having already read the book we know she doesn’t get to escape. but it’s not subtle is all I’m saying.)

Okay, so the set up the narrative is going for is clearly:

Etain wants to be liked/appreciated/respected so she decides to show off with her Force abilities ---> Professional and Competent Soldier is Distracted by Etain at the wrong moment ---> Atin gets shot and it’s Etain’s fault because she distracted herself and him with Force powers but those Force powers weren’t even good enough to see the REAL threat so what use are they actually, she’s worthless.

ahem.

As an Etain RP player... I tend to keep this as exactly how she perceives/remembers this incident. Her fault. A confirmation yet again that she isn’t worth anything to anyone, that she’s useless. The guilt stays with her, unless someone finally manages to corner her to talk about it, which no one has yet.

As someone critiquing the narrative... look, we’ve seen Omega get taken by surprise and be shot at before in this book. What it horrible, terrible timing that Atin is shot while Etain is, admittedly, showing off a bit because all three characters have relaxed after hearing the gunship? Yes. It’s terrible. But I really don’t feel like Etain deserves a much larger percentage of blame for what’s ultimately a matter of bad timing.

As for her not sensing Hurati... listen, Traviss you literally had her sense a gunship, aka machinery, not five minutes ago. Yet she can’t sense one clearly malicious/dangerous shooter nearby? Not only is that inconsistent with every pattern you have written so far, it’s an obvious authorial choice to force this exact situation despite internal coherency. Not unlike the minefield in True Colors.

I wish she’d just make a consistent thread for Etain’s abilities, but they’re always magically heightened when its necessary to resolve a plot, and otherwise diminished at any possible given moment so that we can rag on her some more.

Anyway, Darman downs Hurati and gets a look at him through the scope:

“He is now.” pffff.

Darman field medics Atin, who isn’t doing great, and prepares to carry him to the larty. Atin, per his history, tries to convince Darman to leave him behind, because, again. He’s been in this position before. Even if he weren’t critically injured, this would be pressing all his trauma buttons.

With Dar caring for/carrying Uthan, that leaves Etain to carry the partially sedated Uthan, except Etain realizes that Uthan has also been injured. She has a shard of shrapnel from Atin’s armor embedded in her ribs. This means that, if you view this incident as Etain’s fault, Etain has accidentally just endangered/ruined the entire mission. With Uthan dead, they might as well have blown up the planet from orbit and spared everyone the bleeding and the heartache. Great.

She’s got a point about trauma, but to be entirely fair to Kast, he didn’t teach her lessons that were “learned quicker by almost dying” because that’s an insane way to teach. Additionally, she’s also falling in love for the record, and just doesn’t know it yet, but I’m tired of KT’s pogoing back and forth between “jedi/not jedi” so we’re moving on.

So this is Kal Count 38, but it actually is a fair point about Fi versus Skirata, so I’m okay with this one. Fi and Niner start to talk about where they’d rather be deployed next, urban versus jungle, but it quickly devolves into an admission that Fi is not entirely detached or coping well; he just wants to be.

Fi gets the least amount of development of all of Omega Squad in this book, but it’s moments like these when you step back and remember, he also just watched all three of his original brothers die. Niner trying to reassure him is heartbreaking, as is realizing Fi is “shutting down” and trying to distance himself because it’s all happening again, and so close to the last mission, too.

Hokan cuts off this emotional moment by firing on Niner & Fi. They have difficulty because Hokan is wearing beskar’gam, which is as tough or tougher than their own armor, and he also is armed with a Verpine shattergun, which just made very quick work of Atin’s armor.

Fi and Niner realize that if they don’t hurry it up, Majestic will leave without them because now that Uthan has been captured, they’re unimportant to the mission. (They aren’t even wrong, actually; they just don’t know that Zey will end up staying on planet.) They comm Darman, who offers to leave Atin at the gunship and come back for them, but he’s got 10 minutes until he even gets to the larty, and Niner orders him to stay back. Then Hokan throws an EMP at them, and Niner & Fi lose all systems because apparently when the katarn helmets got upgraded after Geonosis they weren’t stress tested properly.

They try to throw some IEDs after Hokan, complaining about “civvies” who tested the armor the entire time, but that fails so they have to come up with another plan. Niner decides to try and trap him.

Kal Count jumps to 39, with one more chapter to go. But those last two lines never fail to break my heart.

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 14)

CW: typical violence, hint of off-screen murder to happen. pretty light in this chapter, comparatively. 

TL;DR Recap: Uthan reveals that, actually, she’s been lying to Hokan about how much danger her virus still poses to non clones, and he expresses the desire to kill her. Omega, Jinart, and Etain strategize. Hokan murders Guta-Nay.

Beginning Kal Count: 25 Ending Kal Count: 26

We open with Uthan and Hokan. Uthan is pissed because she and her staff have been moved back and forth more than once for Hokan’s ruse. Hokan is fretting while he looks at the plans for her facility and its defensive drawbacks, but convinces himself he’s fooled the enemy enough they’ll attack the villa anyway. Uthan wants to evacuate her work, but with no communications and a Republic ship in orbit, Hokan decides they’re digging in. He challenges Uthan, because she was the one who designed the facility in the first place...

which is when she finally admits it was designed to her worry about things getting out.

I mean, I really don’t know what you expect when you’re guarding a scientist who’s still in very early stages of creating a biogenic weapon. If it was more targeted than this, they would have already rolled it out. But we established already that Hokan doesn’t really have a grasp on how viruses work. Still, he doesn’t take it well.

“The fact that he was dealing with a woman was the only thing that made him hesitate” UGH. At this point I have to decide that Traviss is purposefully writing him as a sexist, if only for my own sanity. And to be fair, she has had Omega say multiple times now that they have no problems shooting old women.

I will say Uthan has some guts. She’s shaking because she’s afraid and that’s sensible, but she absolutely doesn’t back down. I like a lot of what this character could have been, had Traviss not later thrown it out a window. 

Also, Hokan is going to have to eventually find a solution to being disappointed that isn’t just shooting the nearest staff member. Manager from hell. Hokan and Uthan continue to spar verbally for a bit about the fact that they’re sitting on a metaphorical bomb and that he wants to keep her separate from her staff and the virus to spread out the chances of losing the project. Then the officer who Hokan had kill the last guy who he disliked comes in, having brought in Guta-Nay as a prisoner. It’s against orders, but Hokan decides to hear him out.

We cut to the next scene, which is from Niner’s point of view, and has lots of little Dar/Etain foreshadowing bits I like. The squad, Jinart, and Etain are planning their next move. At the moment they’re trying to decide what to do with their gear because despite bringing it all with them, it’s become more than they can carry. Atin is very insistent about his Trandoshan weapons.

Atin, love...

Niner is fretting about only having the four commandos to carry all the equipment through tight spaces and accidentally getting stuck. Etain insists she share the burden, but Niner is skeptical and privately asks Darman for an opinion over the squad’s helmet link.

They go on to talk about plans A and B, what’s possible if they can set off an explosion in a villa versus if they have to do a split attack. Etain notes that both plans sound difficult and someone tells her the odds were never good. She also is worried that she won’t be of use against the droids, which is when Atin-

This is the moment that gets us Etain and her LJ-50 (tiny general, massive rifle) for the rest of the series, and honestly, my heart. Admittedly, from what I remember of the Republic Commando game and can confirm from the Wiki, and LJ-50 concussion rifle and the Trandoshan array blaster (technically speaking a  Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun) aren’t the same. The LJ-50 is, well, a concussion rifle. The array blaster? Is a shot gun.

LJ 50, which honestly looks weird in this picture: 

Array Blaster:

BUT, we also will get this quote in Triple Zero:

So... I think maybe it’s a continuity error? But any which way, I’d forgotten that the “very competent gentleman” in this particular case was actually Atin. And you know what? Fuck it. Next time I have a chance to work a friendship between them into a fic, I’m doing it. Also... I wonder if Darman ever brings this up with Atin later, while he’s watching his girlfriend haul around a rifle that’s almost as big as she is.

Okay, okay, I promise, I’m moving on from Etain and her giant guns armaments rifles & shotguns. 

They keep talking plans, and Fi is pretty dismissive of Etain. But to be fair, he doesn’t have the context Dar does to understand the real scope of what she’s trying to offer. Meanwhile, Niner is just trying to keep him from digging a hole with his mouth. Attempt One:

And attempt two:

Niner is gonna spend the rest of these books being the responsible but aggrieved big brother desperately hoping his squad will stay out of trouble, or at least be polite and well-dressed. In this moment, he just wants Fi not to get them in trouble with the Jedi. I kind of love it.

Jinart agrees to smuggle some explosives in her pouch into the villa, so they all head that way back together up to a certain point to prep. Etain hangs close to Darman the entire way, which worries Niner.

I mean, my shipper goggles for Etain and Dar aside, it’s rational that she stick the closest to Darman and feel the friendliest to him, since they’ve spent a few days together and saved each other a few times and she only just met everyone else the night before? Also, Kal Count just increased to 26, a lot of Niner’s worries about saying the wrong thing to a Jedi are explained, and I wonder how the Kaminoans felt about Kal undermining their Jedi-are-demigods campaign. 

Niner spends most of this chapter worrying about Etain as a complication in some way, shape, or form and talking about her behind her back. I’m prickly on Etain’s behalf because I’m biased, so I don’t like the slight conditional to Dar’s defense here - “Physically, anyway”- but I acknowledge it makes sense plot wise, and that Etain hasn’t had a chance to prove herself to the rest of Omega yet. And I kind of love Dar defending her with “If she drops, it’ll be because she’s dead.” Atin is the designated stubborn one, but Etain is also ori’atin’la.

Jinart heads off with the explosives, Niner starts to break out the food and wants to ask Etain’s permission/opinion on using up all their rations now rather than saving them for a time after the mission when they’ll be too busy or dead to need them, But Darman cuts him off.

Again, Darman and Etain have gotten to know and read one another pretty quickly. Niner is, as always, a skeptic.

We cut back to Hokan.

Hokan: *is about to commit brutal murder*

Also Hokan: *is distracted wondering how lightsabers work*

Guta-Nay proceeds to feed the false intel to Hokan that the squad gave him about having two squads of commandos and a Jedi who are all targeting the villa. The Trandoshan slaver accompanying him volunteers to help so that he can go back to selling off the Qiilurans, and Hokan accepts. Hokan asks if Guta-Nay knows anything else about the commandos and isn’t expecting much, except then Guta-Nay describes the clones armor, which Hokan takes as a description of Mandalorian armor.

Hokan is not thrilled by the revelation about the clones, and starts to question some of the bullshit Uthan has fed him about them being “docile” and generally dependent and mindless. But one of his officers suggests that as there’s a Jedi with the squad, maybe the Jedi is the tactician. More importantly, the squad has just screwed their own plan.

Rather than being convinced they’ll attack the villa, Hokan decides that if they have enough forces, they’ll definitely attack the villa and the facility both. Work just got harder for Omega. Finally, as promised, Hokan kills Guta-Nay with Fulier’s lightsaber, which sets us up for Chapter 15.

I hate Chapter 15. It’s my least favorite in the book.

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 17)

CW: series typical violence. discussion of a passage where the author decided to use a common slur against transgender people as an abbreviation of “Trandoshan”, which, what the fuck. 

TL;DR Recap: Hokan freaks because he doesn’t know how the commandos got in & he can’t get through the bulkeads to where Uthan is trapped with them. Atin and Darman get into a brief, intense fight against some Separatist personnel before capturing Uthan. Hokan finally manages to get the bulkheads down, but all that’s left are some of Uthan’s staff.

Beginning Kal Count: 32 Ending Kal Count: 35

Hokan, naturally, doesn’t take well to the fact that Darman and Atin finally breached his supposedly secure facility. In fact, he still has no idea how it happened; however, with the various blast doors down, he can’t get to Uthan or her team to figure it out, much less solve the problem. It’s revealed that the bulkheads were lowered automatically when Darman and Atin cranked up the other security door; it’s a precautionary measure on the computer’s part. What that means is Atin and Darman are cornered with Uthan and the Separatist fighters, at least unless they can escape through their previous tunnel, but Hokan also can’t get it to kill them.

The man also has an ego. 

His new favorite Lt. promises to keep trying to override security to raise the doors. Hokan tries a crowbar, but the gap is only about the size of a piece of paper flimsi, so it doesn’t work and he throws it to the floor and has a momentary fit. He doesn’t have explosives, so he pulls out surprisingly he can’t immediately cut through.

I’m very interested to know what the hell that door is made of, but given the kind of work Uthan is doing, I suppose it makes sense to Jedi-proof your entrance to the best of your ability. Still, it had to be REALLY expensive.

With Hokan otherwise occupied, we cut back to Darman and Atin, who are also not having a fun time, but more because Uthan is armed with a Verpine gun and has a few Separatist officer friends hanging around and their only way out is back out the tunnel into the sewers that they just dug.

CW: Canon usage of a word that is also a slur against transgender people.

There are some great small moments here, but unfortunately this whole POV section is liberally salted with the usage of the word “Trannie” disguised used as a short-form of “Trandoshan”. I barely remember 2004 and I had literally only just turned 10, so I have no idea what kind of prevalence there was to the knowledge that this was, in fact, a slur. 

But even if I wanted to look into that, that a) assume that KT literally ever thought to look into other people’s perspectives as a writer and would have cared or b) ask me to believe that a white English woman with strong conservative isolationist tendencies who writes books with pervasive misogyny and heteronormativity wouldn’t have purposefully slid that in under the radar.

And it really doesn’t matter in the end, because ultimately you still have the book you have. I’m just going to have to settle for minimizing my screencaps for this section because I don’t feel like endlessly repeating the word without need.

Back to plot:

Dar tells Niner that they have Uthan cornered but she has a gun on her. Niner tells her, essentially, to scare her into dropping it because Verpine rifles are fragile. I have no irl knowledge of guns to compare this to. Niner says that if Darman and Atin need help capturing Uthan, that’s probably too bad, because he and Fi will have a hell of a time getting in. Majestic is the only thing currently firing on the surface, but Niner’s hesitant about using the battering ram on the front door when Dar asks. Dar consents to trying to evac Uthan out the drains first, but wants Niner and Fi busting in to be the back up plan.

Oh, Fi. But that disagreement goes nowhere as Atin hears something and he and Darman realize Uthan isn’t alone. Since the only folks on Darman’s side are with Niner, that means that these are Separatist fighters. Darman is generally pissed, and apparently I’ve missed something about a locking door somewhere or misunderstood part of the scene, because we get this line:

Okay. Door opens. No Uthan. Door has Trandoshan thugs. Dar is in close contact range with said thugs.

Darman and the and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Darman feels like he just hit a brick wall, despite his armor, and only manages to make the first Trandoshan stumble. The second Trandoshan starts to advance on him with a knife, but looks at his armor for a second “bewildered”. Fair.

Lmao. There’s actually kind of a neat fight scene that follows, but I’m not screencapping any of it because word usage. Darman body charges the Trandoshan at ramming speed and tries to stab him in the throat with the vibroknife built into his gauntlet, but the Trandoshan grabs his wrist and is trying to stab Darman at the same time. Darman chooses that moment to wonder, “Hey- are our bodysuits stab proof? I don’t remember.” So since obviously that’s not a great risk to be taking, he uses “bar-brawl tactics that Skirata made sure they all learned” (Kal Count increase to 33) and kicks the Trandoshan in the shin followed by stomping on his instep. That loosens the Trandoshan’s grip enough that Dar can stab him, which he does “over and over, not sure what he was hitting” until the Trandoshan stops screaming. He notes that “Skirata was right. Stabbing someone was a slow way to kill them.” (Kal Count 34.)

He turns around and sees Atin covered in Trandoshan blood, but otherwise okay. Darman is about to explode the door in to get to Uthan, and Atin pulls out the Trandoshan shotgun array blaster.

Darman uses explosive to blow the lock on Uthans door, tosses in some EMP grenades, and they rush in.

“He had become used to Etain’s resilience.” Okay, y’all had to know I wanted to make a note of that. It’s good to have some positives acknowledged occasionally. Darman comms Niner and Fi “whoops” loud enough to hurt his ears. Darman realizes that Atin has killed three more Trandoshans and a lab assistant. There’s some weird shit there about the lab tech not being pretty anymore and Dar wondering if she’s Uthan’s daughter, which honestly makes zero fucking sense, especially since Darman apparently didn’t see her alive. Darman tries to ask how many staff Uthan has, Uthan groggily says something about them murdering her assistant-

and weirdly, Atin seems to be having a tiny moment of doubt now, as he’s staring at the bodies. It’s subtle, since we aren’t in his POV, but I think he’s having the same kid of reaction Dar had earlier in the book:

“Almost to himself”. I don’t know, I could be reading a lot into a tiny phrase where there’s nothing, but ... in the context of discussing how the book handles various characters reacting to killing, it caught my attention. Darman, on the other hand, currently has no fucks left to give.

.... okay. 

Darman asks again about the staff, and:

You know, I could do with out the Kal Count increase (35) but at the same time, I agree with Darman. It’s very, very rich for someone working on biogenic weapons to trot out the “They’re civilians” thing. Darman comms back, gets confirmation from Niner that he doesn’t need to capture Uthan’s staff. They gag and restrain her, Darman literally throws her over his shoulder, and now they have to find their way out of the tunnels with a captive scientist in tow. Darman is worried they’ll get lost.

We cut to Hokan, whose staff is finally getting the doors from their end open, too little too late.

Hurati, again, is the lieutenant Hokan had murder the previous lieutenant because Hokan didn’t like him. But the “whether he wanted to admit it or not, he actually cared what happened to him” line is weirdly funny to me?  Hurati, admittedly, has managed to override all the doors, so all the security bulkheads AND the front door open at once, which is bound to earn him favor. But then we get:

Even the weirdest, most extreme, got-kicked-out-of-Death-Watch-because-they-couldn’t-function Mandalorians have an adoptive instinct. Or rather, that’s how I’m choosing to read this line, because it’s funny to me. 

Hokan finds the rest of Uthan’s team, but can’t confirm whether any virus samples survived, and Uthan is already gone. He seems to be finally waking up to the situation, as we end with this quote:

:)