He prodded the mattresses on the bunks, calculating. Eighty thousand creds—but we’ve got four million from scamming the terrorists, and nobody will ever miss it. Sixteen berths, then, and if they needed it there was plenty of cargo space that could be used for crew, maybe enough for thirty people. So if we need to bang out in a hurry, that’s ample room for my boys, Corr, Omega Squad, and any of the ladies, with places to spare. And then there were all the other Republic commando squads he’d trained, still more than eighty men out there in the field, his boys and his responsibility every bit as much as Omega, and he was neglecting them. They needed a refuge when this war was over, too, maybe even before then.
Did I do enough?
I can make the difference now, lads. Shab Tsad Droten—curse the Republic.
Skirata was still refitting Aay’han in his mind’s eye when Ordo loomed in the hatchway.
“I think we need to change course,” he said.
“Go ahead, then, son.”
“I mean we need to divert to do an extraction.”
Skirata sighed. Okay, they were on Republic time, and he was on Republic pay even if the clones weren’t. It had better be our lads. I hate every second I spend on civilians. He trusted Ordo’s assessment of necessity, and turned to go back to the cockpit. Ordo simply held out a crackling comlink.
“It’s Delta,” Ordo said. “They had to bang out of Mygeeto in a hurry, and Vau got left behind.”
Skirata grabbed the comlink, all the bad blood between him and Vau forgotten. He motioned Ordo back to the cockpit, mouthing do it at him.
“RC one-one-three-eight here, Sergeant.” It was Boss. “Apologies for the interruption.”
Skirata slid into the copilot’s seat, trying not to imagine how badly things had gone if Vau had been stranded behind enemy lines. He was an escape artist. “Where are you?”
“We rejoined the fleet on station. We wanted to retrieve him, but General Jusik says—”
“—we’re on our way. Sitrep?”
“About twenty kilometers from Jygat. We were leaving the Dressian Kiolsh bank when we met some resistance and he fell down a crevasse.”
“Bank?” They’d been there to locate communications nodes for the Marines. “Run out of creds, did he? Needed some small change?”
“It’s a long story, Sergeant, and that’s why General Jusik thought you’d be… a wiser choice.”
“Than who?”
“Than telling General Zey.”
“I won’t waste time asking what the shab you were doing in a bank.” Jusik: he was a smart lad, Bard’ika. Whatever it was, the Jedi had decided that the extraction needed to be kept quiet. “Is Vau alive?”
“Unconfirmed. We lost his signal. He had kit with him that General Jusik felt you would want to recover.”
“What kit?”
“He cleaned out a bank vault. Credits, jewelry, bonds, the works. Two bags.”
Vau robbed a bank? Skirata was taken aback. The miserable old di’kut was game for breaking any law, but plain theft—never. This was Skirata’s style, not Vau’s. “Last known position?”
“Sending you the coordinates now, with our last good ground radar scan of the terrain.”
“The strill’s still with him, of course.”
“Yes. We didn’t see it fall.”
That was something. Skirata would never trust the animal, but it would lead them to Vau, if it hadn’t already located his body and hauled him out. If he found the strill, he found Vau.
“Tell General Jusik we’ll sort it out, Delta,” he said, and closed the link.
Ordo looked totally unmoved, hand hovering over the hyperspace drive controls. “No point asking Commander Bacara to steer clear of us, is there?”
No, there wasn’t. The fewer people who knew they were coming, the better. It would be hard to explain why two men in Mandalorian armor were blundering around a Separatist planet on the Republic’s tab without authorization, but the fewer the records of conversations, the easier it was to make events vanish. And Bacara wasn’t the kind to ask for ID first. Skirata didn’t want his useless Jedi general Ki-Adi-Mundi in the loop, either. Jedi hypocrites. It’s okay for Conehead to have a family, but they’ll bust Etain down to the Agricorps for it. Skirata would take his chances.
“No, just save Walon’s shebs and get out of there,” Skirata said. If he’s still alive. “Jump.”
Aay’han lurched into star-streaked space. She was holding together just fine.
Gaftikar, Outer Rim,
rebel base,
471 days after Geonosis
Darman decided that Null sergeant A’den was a man after his own heart.
“Can’t think straight on an empty stomach.” A’den fired his blaster into a nest of twig shavings to get the campfire going. The sun was coming up—they’d lost a night’s sleep, then—and the lizard-like Gaftikari were still trotting back and forth in neat lines ferrying the weapons they’d collected from the drop. “Got some stew left over from last night. Don’t ask what’s in it, ’cos I didn’t.”
Omega Squad sat cross-legged around the fire in their black undersuits, armor plates stacked to one side. Atin held Darman’s jet pack on his lap and bent the wing hinge assembly back into shape with a pair of blunt-nosed grips. He hated letting mechanical things get the better of him. “So what happened to the ARC?”
“MIA,” A’den said. His tone was totally neutral, and his expression blank: it wasn’t his usual demeanor, either, because Darman could see the white lines in the deeply tanned skin around his eyes and mouth. A’den usually smiled a lot, but he wasn’t smiling now. “So I’ve done a recce of Eyat and I’ve put together as complete a plan of the government buildings as I can.”
“Sep force strength?” Niner asked.
“Apart from the locals, minimal.”
“I thought this was a hotbed of Sep activity that had to be neutralized pronto.”
“Oh dear, ner vod, you’ve been taking intel at face value again, haven’t you?” A’den built the fire with meticulous care, stacking branches and dry grasses on the mound and watching the flames grow. “We better cure you of that.”
Fi peered into the pot of stew. “It’s okay, I’ve been teaching him sarcasm. He’ll be ready for comic exaggeration soon.”
“Looks quite a nice peaceful place,” Atin said. “Not exactly strategic.”
“Eyat?” A’den stirred the pot with a stick. It really did smell good. “Lovely city. Clean, pretty buildings, lots of harmless fun to enjoy. And of no military use to us whatsoever.”
Darman kept an eye on the Gaftikari. Now that the sun was coming up, he could see that their light beige scales were slightly iridescent. They had sharp muzzles and small black eyes with disturbing red slit-like pupils. And he’d never seen so many varied weapons strung on one belt: they were more tooled up than Sergeant Kal in a bad mood. Their blades, blasters, and metal bars jingled like wind chimes. One tall lizard provided his own musical accompaniment as he walked, swinging his tail to balance under a load of E-Web parts.
“I see you taught them all about stealth, then,” Atin said.
A’den stared at him. “Prudii warned me that you were an awkward customer.”
“Funny, Ordo warned Prudii I was argumentative.”
“Your reputation precedes you, then,” said A’den. “They’re good fighters. Trust me.”
“I hear a but coming,” said Niner. “We’re specially trained to hear that coming at a hundred klicks.”
“But.” A’den slopped the stew into their waiting mess tins. When Darman was this hungry, he’d eat flimsi packing cases. “Yes, the but is that this is going to end in tears. Eyat—human city. All the cities are human settlements. But… scruffy little villages—lizard land.”
“So who are the Gaftikari?”
“They all are. Neither species is native. The human colonists brought in the lizard lads to build the place, and now the lizards want to run the show, on account of their numbers.
Actually, the lizards are Marits.”
“Why are the Seps supporting the humans, then?”
“Because the Republic wants the kelerium and norax deposits here, or at least Shenio Mining does, and the humans are happier without Shenio moving in.”
“I’m lost,” said Niner.
“The Seps have offered to save Gaftikar from us.”
“So we’re going to give them something to object to?”
“I don’t make the policy. I just train guerrillas and slot bad guys.”
They lapsed into silence and ate the stew, which was actually remarkably tasty. The rebels—the Marits—had started assembling an E-Web without the manual, and the way a group of them clustered around the heavy blaster and handled the components gave Darman the impression that they swarmed over their enemies. There was something about the rapid and coordinated movements that reminded him of insects and unnerved him.
“Why are you a sergeant and the rest of the Nulls are officers?” Fi asked. “Didn’t you pass your promotion board?”
A’den didn’t seem offended. It was hard to tell what would provoke a Null; sometimes it took nothing at all. “I preferred to be an NCO. If it’s good enough for Kal’buir, it’s good enough for me.”
Fi seemed satisfied with the explanation. Atin was concentrating on his stew, and Niner was watching the Marits getting to grips with the large artillery piece.
“They’re good at assembling things,” A’den said. “Good visuospatial ability.”
It was the first time any of them had met A’den, and Darman was always keen to get the measure of another of Skirata’s Nulls. How had he managed to keep them apart from the commandos during training for so many years? The young Nulls terrified the Kaminoans by running wild around Tipoca City, and that was about the only time the commando squads saw them: stealing equipment, sabotaging systems, and—Darman had never forgotten this—even scaling the supports of the huge domed ceilings, swinging around hundreds of meters above the floor and placing blasterfire to within centimeters of the Kaminoan technicians. The Nulls never cared, never seemed afraid: even then, they answered only to Kal Skirata, and the Kaminoans wouldn’t dare cross Kal’buir.
Kal’buir said the Kaminoans had messed up the Nulls, and so they deserved what they got. If the Kaminoans complained, he said, he’d sort them. Skirata used sort as a euphemism for any form of violence, his specialist subject.
A Marit trotted over and peered into the stew, head jerking slightly like a droid. “You like it?”
Atin, kneeling down to help himself to another portion, looked up innocently. The scar across his face—the one that Vau had given him—was a thin white line now. “It’s very tasty.”
“My great-grandmother!” the Marit beamed. It was weird to watch a lizard smile like a human. They seemed to have a double row of small triangular teeth. “She’ll be happy.”
Darman noticed A’den slide forward a little and try to interrupt the exchange. “Atin—”
But Atin was off, being polite to the locals and taking his hearts-and-minds role seriously. “Is it her recipe, then?”
“Atin—”
“It’s her,” said the Marit, and wandered off.
Atin stared into the bowl. There was a moment of complete silence, and A’den sighed. Fi put his knuckles to his mouth to stifle nervous laughter, but it didn’t work. Niner chewed to a halt. Darman tried to be culturally sensitive and all that, but he was hungry, and the Marit seemed pleased they were enjoying the meal.
“Oh fierfek…” Atin put his mess tin down on the ground and sat back on his heels. He screwed his eyes shut tight, and judging by the way his lips compressed he was in serious digestive crisis, as Ordo called it. Then he rocked back on his heels, stood up, and bolted for the nearest bushes.
“He’s throwing up,” Niner said, and went on eating. The faint sound of retching confirmed his diagnosis.
A’den shrugged. “It’s not like they killed her to eat her. It’s how they dispose of their dead. They like to think they do their families some good after they’re gone. It’s rude not to tuck in.”
“Cultural diversity’s a wonderful thing,” Fi observed, but he looked quite pale. “What do they do for desserts?”
Niner fished out a chunk of lean meat and gazed at it, then popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Darman didn’t know he could be so daring. “I never thought I’d resort to cannibalism.”
“It’s not cannibalism for us, Niner,” A’den said. “Just for them.”
“That’s the Grand Army for you.” Fi’s face seemed back to its normal color again. “See the galaxy, meet fascinating new species, and snack on them.”
“Well, we wouldn’t be alone.” A’den looked up, all concern, as Atin walked back unsteadily from the bushes, wiping his mouth. “You okay?”
“You did that deliberately. You could have told me before I started eating.”
“I said don’t ask, and I said I hadn’t.”
Atin—quiet, methodical Atin—had been one of Vau’s training company, not Skirata’s. It showed. A’den stared at Atin, and Atin stared back. Niner rolled his eyes as if he was shaping up to separate them, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that Atin needed hauling out of a confrontation. There was something about the way Vau trained his men that gave them a core of wildness, a complete inability to see sense and back down when pushed too far.
A’den almost broke into a grin. “You tried to vibroblade Vau, didn’t you? We all heard about that.”
Atin gave him the silent routine. Darman waited for A’den to run out of patience and give Atin a good slap, as Fi liked to call it, but he just shrugged and rummaged in his pockets.
“Okay,” said A’den. He found what he was looking for and tossed a ration bar across to Atin, who caught it. “First, you can grow a shabla beard. Because you’re going to have to infiltrate Eyat, and they’re not used to seeing quads. Mix yourselves up a bit and choose who gets to stay looking normal.”
Fi perked up immediately. “I’ll dress up as a lizard if I can have a trip into town.”
“Done,” A’den said. “But scrub the scaly look, because Marits don’t go into the cities now, except to shoot the locals. That’s why a human’s best suited to do assassinations. Once you’ve got your bearings, I want two of you to recce Eyat again and get a few spycams planted. The Marits can’t go in unnoticed, and whatever intel Sull put together went with him.”
“Sull?” said Fi.
“Alpha-Thirty,” A’den said. “That was his name. Sull.”
Darman finished his stew and watched A’den. He wasn’t pleased, that much was obvious. Maybe it was having to follow up on an Alpha ARC when he thought he had more important business. Maybe it was just normal irritation at being tasked to carry out a mission that looked pointless and wasn’t resourced. He worked alone, and that had to take its toll on any man’s will.
Niner scraped out his mess tin and rinsed it clean with water from his bottle. “I think we should be concentrating our forces on kicking the osik out of the main Sep home-worlds,” he said suddenly. “Because if we keep this up, we’ll be down to one clone per planet, showing the locals a field manual on how to throw stones.”
A’den turned his head slowly and parted his lips as if to speak. He paused. He seemed to be measuring his words.
“You’re in good company,” he said. “Lots of us do, including General Zey. But the Chancellor wants to avoid too much collateral damage. No pounding, no surging, no offending the civvies.”
“No resources.”
“Enough resources not to lose, but not enough to win,” A’den said. “He’s just feeding a stalemate, the moron.”
Darman thought it was time they got on with making friends with the Marits. He stood up and ambled over to the lizards, wondering if there might be anything in Eyat that he could acquire for Etain. It was hard to think of anything that a Jedi might want. They avoided possessions.
“You know wha
t’s been bothering me?” Fi’s voice drifted across the center of the camp. The Marits had finished calibrating the artillery piece and were admiring it. “What if the war had broken out when we were five years into our training instead of eight, nine… ten?”
“What?” A’den asked.
“Nobody knows when a war’s going to start, not years ahead, anyway. It’s not like you can book one in advance. So there we are, fully trained, and then it all kicks off. Very lucky. What if it had all gone to poodoo years before? What if we’d been half trained, still just kids?”
“Then we’d have been fighting in diapers,” Atin muttered. “Because the Republic didn’t have any other army worth a mott’s backside.”
Fi raised an eyebrow. “Shabla lucky, if you ask me.”
“Time to move it,” A’den said sharply, and Darman suspected he was breaking up the speculation for a reason. Judging by the expression on Fi’s face, he felt that, too. “I’ll bring you up to speed with the local situation, and you can spend the rest of the day getting to know our allies.”
The longer the war went on, the less sense it made to Darman. After years of clear certainty in training—knowing what he had to do, and why he would have to do it, because there had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind that they would one day be deployed—the reality of the war didn’t match any of it. Shambolic organization, indecisive leadership from the top, and… too many gray areas. The more places he was sent, the more things Darman saw that made him ask why they didn’t just let planets cede from the Republic. Life would go on.
Fi’s thinking was getting to him. Every thought now started with a why.
Stay busy. There was nothing he could about it now except get on with his job. He smiled at the Marits. “I’m Darman,” he said, holding out his hand for shaking. “Want me to show you how to make shrapnel out of a droid?”
Chapter Three
No, General Zey—finding Chief Scientist Ko Sai is as much a priority as locating General Grievous. Our survival depends on a strong army, and that means the highest-quality clones—conscription of ordinary citizens is a poor second and would be politically unacceptable. Find her, if only to deny the Separatists her expertise. You have the best intelligence assets the Republic has ever known. So I’ll accept no excuses.
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