Should have thought ahead. Stang. What can I say? She and Ordo weren’t exactly a romantic role model. They’d just had a drink in the CSF bar and then a string of awkward, embarrassed conversations when everything was implied and not much said. But the bond was strong, and so was her duty to do the right thing for his brothers. “Tell him I miss him. Ask him what his favorite meal is and tell him I’ll cook it for him when he comes back.”
“It’s roba sausage with gravy, and he’s fussy about the pepper oil.”
“Hang on.” Besany looked around for something to send him, but there was nothing in a woman’s apartment that would be of any use or amusement to a soldier. There was food, though. Clones were always peckish, all of them. She rummaged in the conservator and hauled out a family-sized cheffa cake whose top was paved with glittering candied nuts, something she’d kept just in case unexpected guests showed up, but they never did. “Have you got room for something small?”
“How small?”
She was nothing if not exact. “Okay, twenty-five-centimeter diameter.”
“I’ll warn him not to swallow it whole.” Mereel tucked the container under one arm, then reached inside his jacket. He withdrew a small blaster. “Kal’buir insisted I make you carry this. Go careful, ma’am.”
Besany took it, numb, while a voice at the back of her mind asked if she’d lost her senses. He stepped out onto the platform, and a few moments later the police speeder lifted into the evening sky, vanishing in a blur of taillights.
She locked the balcony doors and drew the blinds, the blaster still gripped in her hand. She felt observed. There was no other word for it. But that was her conscience nagging. When she looked at her fingers curled around the weapon, it seemed like someone else’s hand, and nothing to do with her at all.
So he thinks I might need to use this.
Better work out how I’m going to cover my tracks.
She was a forensic auditor. She knew how to uncover the hidden tracks of others, all the places they hid data or salted away credits or blew smoke across the audit trail. It was just a matter of reversing the process to cover her own.
The only complication was that the trail might lead to the very highest level of government.
She’d never been so scared—and alone—in her life.
She could only begin to imagine what Ordo and the rest of the commando forces faced on a daily basis.
Calna Muun, Agamar,
Outer Rim,
471 days after Geonosis
“So, Mando, you like her?”
A gently curved transparisteel bubble bobbed on the surface of the water, looking like one of those little transparent submersibles that showed tourists the wonders of the Bil Da’Gari ocean floor. But then it lifted slowly to reveal something much, much larger, and not very leisure-oriented at all.
Sergeant Kal Skirata watched the water stream off the rising hull and wondered if he’d lost his mirshe, coming all this way to buy a submersible. The price was more than he’d budgeted for. But if you hunted Kaminoans, you needed aquatic capability, however much it cost. And he was hunting an elusive one: Chief Scientist Ko Sai.
“Not to your taste?” asked the Rodian merchant.
Skirata grunted behind the impenetrable mask of his sandgold helmet. The handy thing about being a Mandalorian doing business was that you didn’t need to keep a straight face, and only the terminally stupid ever tried to dupe you. They only tried it once, too.
“’S’okay, I suppose.”
“It’s a beast,” the Rodian said, bouncing around on the quayside like a demented acrobat. Rodians always struck Skirata as looking comically harmless, totally at odds with their true nature, which was why he had an extra blade ready in his sleeve—just in case. “Every one unique and handcrafted, Mon Cal’s finest. Won’t take much work to make this a—”
“It’s a freighter. I asked for a fighter.”
“I can throw in a few extra cannons.”
“How long’s that going to take?”
“Is this for the war effort?”
Skirata could see the Rodian mentally hiking the price in the expectation that the bill would be met by one government or another. Profiteering and war went hand in hand.
“No,” said Skirata. “I’m a pacifist.”
The Rodian eyed the custom Verpine sniper rifle slung across his shoulder. “You’re a Mandalorian…”
Skirata let his three-sided knife drop from his right forearm plate, point first, and caught the hilt in his hand. “Would you start a fight with me?”
“No…”
“See? I’m a force for peace.” He spun the knife and slid it back into the housing mounted above his wrist. “What’s her maximum range, then?”
“Depth, a kilometer. Atmos speed—thousand klicks. Goes like a greased ronto.” The freighter was above the waterline now, forty-five meters of smooth dark green curves with four hemispherical drive housings protruding above her stern like a knuckle-duster. It was a Mon Calamari DeepWater-class. “Packs ninety tons of cargo, eight crew. It’s got a decent defensive cannon. Hyperdrive is—”
The Rodian stopped and looked to one side of Skirata. Ordo came ambling along the quayside and paused beside the freighter, left thumb hooked in his belt. Except for his gait—always the ARC trooper captain, back slightly arched as if he had both GAR-issue pistols holstered—he was just another Mando in battle-scarred armor. The Rodian fidgeted as Ordo inspected the drive housings from a distance and then jumped with a hollow thud from the quayside onto the casing.
“I don’t like the color,” Ordo muttered. He prodded his toecap into the manual override of the port hatch and popped the seals. “I’ll just inspect the upholstery.”
Skirata turned to the Rodian. “My boy’s a picky lad, I’m afraid. I’ve lost count of the crates we’ve looked at this week.”
“I could get you a Hydrosphere Explorer if you’re prepared to wait a few weeks.” The merchant dropped his voice. “An Ubrikkian repulsorsub. A V-Fin. A Trade Federation submarine, even.”
“Yeah, I’d really love the Trade boys to come after me when they find a bit of their navy missing.”
“You’re so suspicious, you Mandalorians.”
“You’re not wrong there. How much?”
“One hundred and fifty thousand.”
“I don’t want to buy the whole fleet, son. Just one hull.”
“Hard to find, these DeepWaters.”
“Y’know, that TradeFed idea wasn’t bad. Maybe I ought to go see their procurement people, because if I bought a real sub, direct from the manufacturer, instead of this day-tripper…”
Skirata heard Ordo’s voice in his earpiece. “Kal’buir, I think Prudii can get this cannoned up nicely…”
He didn’t want a regular submarine anyway. He needed a multipurpose vessel—like the Mon Cal tub here. The Rodian had no idea what he wanted or how badly he wanted it, or even if he could afford it. Skirata jangled his credit chips in his belt pouch, giving the alluring sound a little longer to soften up the Rodian’s resistance, walking slowly up and down the quay as if he was thinking about something else.
“Come on, ad’ika,” he said to Ordo, letting the merchant hear. “Got another five vessels to look at yet. Haven’t got all day.”
“Just checking the hull integrity…,” Ordo said.
Good things, helmets: nobody could hear what was being said on the comlink outside the buy’ce unless you let them. Ordo was using all his state-of-the-art armor sensors to check for metal fatigue, leaks, and other mechanical faults. Skirata noted the readouts being relayed to his spanking-new HUD display, a small and necessary extravagance paid for by dead terrorists. They were at their nicest when dead, he thought.
Ordo let out a long breath. “It looks a little… stained inside, but otherwise this is a sound vessel. I’d take it if I were you.”
I’ll still knock the price down. “Oh. Is the leak bad?” Skirata asked, theatrically loud.
; “What leak?” the Rodian demanded. “There’s no kriffing leak.”
“My boy says there’s water damage.” Skirata paused for effect. “Ord’ika, come up and tell him.”
Ordo emerged from the hatch and stood on the hull with his hands on his hips, head slightly to one side. “The decking and the upholstery. Water stains.”
“It’s a submarine,” the Rodian snapped. “Of course it’s got water stains. What do you want, a sail barge or something? I thought you Mandos were supposed to be hard, and here you are whining on like Neimies about water stains.”
“Now, that’s not very customer-focused,” Skirata said. He reached slowly into his belt pouch and pulled out a handful of cash credits, all big denominations with their values tantalizingly visible. Not many ship merchants could resist the lure of a ready wedge of creds, and deferred gratification didn’t look like the Rodian’s strong suit. “I think I’ll take my custom elsewhere.”
The Rodian might have been mouthy but he wasn’t mathematically challenged. His beady little eyes darted over the chips. “You’d have a problem getting one of these anywhere else. The Mon Cals aren’t selling them to the Seps.”
If the Rodian wanted to think they were working for the Separatists, that was fine. Nobody expected to see a Mandalorian working for the Republic, and the Rodian hadn’t asked. Skirata crooked his finger to beckon Ordo, and the Null strode behind, boots crunching on the sanded boards of the jetty. The trick was to walk away briskly and purposefully. They were both very good at that, even if Skirata’s leg was playing up and he was limping more than usual. There was a moment, a critical second, when one or the other side would crack. If they kept on walking, it would be the Rodian.
And Jedi thought they were the only ones who could exert a little mind influence, did they?
“One hundred and twenty,” the Rodian called after him.
Skirata didn’t break his stride. Neither did Ordo. “Eighty,” he called back.
“A hundred and ten.”
“They only cost a hundred new.”
“It’s got extras.”
“It’d need to be gold-plated to be worth that.”
They were still walking. Ordo made a little grunt, but it was hard to tell if he was annoyed or amused.
“Okay, ninety,” the Rodian called.
“Eighty, cash credits,” Skirata said, not turning around. In fact, he speeded up. He counted to ten, and got as far as eight.
“Okay,” the Rodian said at last. “I hope you’ll be happy with it.”
Skirata slowed and then turned around to amble back, casually counting out his credits. Ordo jumped onto the hull and disappeared down the open hatch.
“Oh, I’ll be back pretty fast if I’m not,” Skirata said. “That’s why I don’t need a warranty.”
The DeepWater’s drives roared into life, sending white foam churning across the harbor. The jetty trembled.
“Does he know how to drive that thing?” the Rodian asked.
“My boy knows how to do just about anything. Fast learner.”
Skirata skidded across the wet hull and sealed the hatch behind him. Ordo was already in the pilot’s position in the narrow cockpit, helmet on the console, looking as if he was talking to himself as he touched each of the controls in sequence. He had an eidetic memory, like all the Nulls: just one quick canter through the manual before they set out, and Ordo had the theory down pat. Skirata was ferociously proud of him, as he was all his boys, but he resented the damage the Kaminoans had done to them in the creation of what they were sure would be the perfect soldier. Their brilliance came at a price. They were all troubled souls, unpredictable and violent, the product of too much genetic tampering and a brutal infancy. Skirata would punch any fool who dared call them nutters, but they were a handful even for him sometimes.
But they were his life. He’d raised them as his sons. The Kaminoans had wanted to terminate them as a failed experiment, and just thinking about that still made Skirata long for revenge. All Kaminoans were sadistic vermin as far as he was concerned, and he counted their lives as cheaply as they counted the clones they bred. Ko Sai would be one of the lucky ones: he needed her alive—for a while, at least.
So my boys were surplus to requirements, were they? So will you be, sweetheart.
Ordo slid open the throttle and the DeepWater was under way, churning foam. The Rodian dwindled to a doll, then a speck on a receding jetty, and they were in open sea beyond the harbor limits.
“Let’s go catch some aiwha-bait, then.” Skirata wondered why he was worried about diving in a sub when he was perfectly happy to fly in cold hard space. He’d done enough maritime exercises on Kamino, after all. “Heard from Mereel yet?”
“Yes, he’s on his way, yes, he got Agent Wennen to do the job, and yes, he gave her the blaster.”
Agent Wennen? Come on, son. You’ve got a short enough life as it is. Go for it. “She’s a tough one. Or’atin’la.”
Ordo didn’t take the bait. “Mer’ika says she’s sent me a cheffa cake.”
Ordo was touchingly clueless about women. Skirata knew he’d failed him on the emotional education front. “You’re well in there, son. Smart, tough girl.” She was a striking leggy blonde, too, but that was farther down the list for Mandalorians, after capability and endurance. She was actually too beautiful for people to feel comfortable around her, and so Skirata counted the poor kid among his growing collection of outsiders and social rejects. “You deserve the best.”
“If only there were a manual for females, Kal’buir.”
“If there is, I never got my copy.”
Ordo turned his head and gave Skirata a look that said it was no comfort to hear that. Ordo now knew what Skirata had kept from the clones for so long: that his marriage had foundered, and his two sons had eventually declared him dar’buir, no longer a father—the divorce of a parent, possibly the greatest shame in Mandalorian society. It was the only thing he’d ever kept from the Nulls, apart from Etain Tur-Mukan’s pregnancy.
Does that worry Ordo? Does he believe me? I had to disappear. We all had to, to train our clones in secret. My kids were grown men. I left them every last credit I had, didn’t I? Shab, my clones needed me more than they did. They needed me just to stay alive.
He had a daughter, too, and her name hadn’t been on the edict. He hadn’t heard from her in years. One day… one day, he might find the courage to go and look for her. But now he had more pressing business.
“It’ll be okay, son,” Skirata said. “If it’s the last thing I do, you’ll have a full life span. Even if I have to beat that information out of Ko Sai a line at a time.”
Especially if I have to.
Ordo seemed to take a sudden and intense interest in the throttle controls. “The only reason we’re alive at all is because you stopped the gihaal from putting us down like animals.” For a moment Skirata thought he was working up to saying something else, but he changed tack. “Okay, let’s see if I can at least follow the manual for this one…”
Ordo pushed the throttle lever hard forward. The DeepWater’s nose lifted slightly, and the acceleration as she burned across the surface of the waves slapped Skirata back in the seat. In the aft view from the hull-mounted safety cam, a wake of white spray and foam churned like a blizzard. The red status bar on the console showed that the speed was moving steadily closer to the flashing blue cursor labeled OPTIMUM THRUST. The airframe vibrated, the drives screamed, and then Skirata’s gut plummeted as the DeepWater parted company with the surface of the sea.
“Oya!” Ordo grinned. The ship soared and he was suddenly as excited as a little boy. Novelty always delighted him. “Kandosii!”
Behind them, the blizzard on the monitor gave way to gray-blue sea. Skirata admitted mild relief to himself and watched Ordo laying in a course for the RV point, marveling at his instant proficiency.
“You put a lot of trust in me, Kal’buir” he said. “I’ve never piloted a hybrid like this before.”
Ordo paused, staring ahead. “Aay’han.”
“Okay… Aay’han it is.” It was a telling choice: there was no Basic translation of the word, because it was a peculiarly Mandalorian concept. Aay’han was that peaceful, perfect moment surrounded by family and friends and remembering dead loved ones, missing them to the point of pain, a state of mind that bittersweet could hardly begin to cover. It was about the intensity of love. Skirata doubted if aruetiise, non-Mandalorians, would believe that such a depth of feeling existed in a people they saw as a bunch of mercenary thugs. He swallowed to clear his throat and grant the name the respect it deserved. He found he was thinking of his adoptive father, Munin, and a teenage clone commando called Dov whose death in training was Skirata’s fault, a pain that made his aay’han especially poignant. “This ship shall be known as Aay’han, and remembered forever.”
“Gai be’bic me’sen Aay’han, meg ade partayli darasuum,” Ordo repeated.
“Oya manda.”
I’m sorry, Dov. There’d better be a manda for you, some kind of immortality, or there won’t be enough revenge in the galaxy for me.
Skirata turned his attention to the living again. This wasn’t a bad ship at all, and she only had to complete one mission—the most critical one, to find Ko Sai and seize her technology to halt the clones’ accelerated aging. He went aft through the double doors into the crew lounge to check out the cosmetic detail. A smell of cleaning fluid, stale food, and mold hit him.
The refreshers and medbay were on the starboard side, stores and galley to port, and the galley lockers were completely empty. He made a note of supplies they’d need to lay in at the first stopover, scribbling reminders on his forearm plate with a stylus. It really didn’t matter what the accommodation was like as long as Aay’han flew—or dived—in one piece, but he checked the cabins anyway: same gray-and-yellow trim as the rest of the interior, and not much cosmetic water damage. Not bad, not bad at all.
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