“Okay. Can do.”
“And I want it by the time I finish the modifications to our ship.”
“Aww, hang on—” said Gaib.
“Forty-eight hours.” Mereel stood the remaining fifty-thousand-credit piece on one end and flicked it over with his forefinger. Gaib grabbed it with impressive speed. “Back here. Pilot’s name and location.”
“Don’t listen to him, we’ll do it,” Gaib said, checking the chip with a counterfeit scanner and batting away TK-0’s extended manipulator arm. “Trust us.”
“I do.” Mereel patted TK-0’s durasteel casing with slow emphasis, making him sound like a gong. “I’m very trusting.”
Ordo switched back to internal comlinks. “Quit while you’re ahead, ner vod…”
The two tech hunters got up to leave. All Ordo could think of was that time was wasting, and more interested parties seemed to have a reason for hunting down Ko Sai every day.
But who’s she working for? Who’s bankrolling her?
If the Tipoca hatcheries found they couldn’t replace the critical tech, and the Republic hadn’t paid the next installment, there were several contractors waiting to fill that gap.
“Wow!” TK-0 said, spinning his cranial section 180 degrees to train his photoreceptors on the doors. “More of you? Did someone just open a new box of Mandalorians?”
Ordo looked up just as Mereel did. Skirata was walking across the cantina with someone dressed in his father Munin’s armor.
“Yeah, it’s Bard’ika,” said Mereel. “I couldn’t stop him from coming.”
Jedi General Bardan Jusik hadn’t just shown understanding and compassion to his special forces troops; he’d gone native. He wore the Mandalorian armor that Skirata had loaned him to masquerade as his nephew during an elaborate sting operation with a Jabiimi terror cell. Ordo knew it was smarter than swaggering into the cantina in his full Jedi rig, but it was no secret now that Jusik liked it.
“Vode,” Jusik said, taking off his helmet. He extended his arm, and Mereel clasped it in that hand-to-elbow grip that was a common Mando greeting. Jusik’s untidy blond hair still needed cutting, but at least he’d trimmed his beard. “We really have to talk.”
Eyat, Gaftikar,
473 days after Geonosis
The rain had stopped and the sun had come out, which was a problem. Darman and Atin could no longer rely on their hoods for disguise as they tailed ARC trooper A-30—Sull—through the city.
The ARC was walking briskly, heading north. Twice he paused to buy food from a street stall and slipped the wrapped packages inside his coat. Then he walked into the huge transparisteel foyer of the unirail terminal, forcing them to follow.
“How far are we going to take this?” Darman whispered.
“I thought we’d just follow him and see where he goes.”
“Remember Sergeant Kal giving Sev and Fi an earful for doing an unplanned tail on a suspect and nearly screwing the whole operation?”
“Skirata’s light-years away.”
Darman wondered why he’d ever thought Atin was the quiet, thoughtful one. “That won’t stop him. He hasn’t just got eyes in his backside—he’s got hyperspace transceivers.”
“Okay, what’s the alternative? Spot a vod who’s MIA, say Well, who’d have thought it? and carry on chatting?”
Darman wasn’t sure where prudent improvisation ended and winging it began; special operations were a blend of tediously boring planning and moments of what he could only think of as insanity on the brink of death. But Atin was right—MIA was MIA, and Sull was neither M nor IA right then, and he had intel that they needed.
The terminal had a high domed roof that reminded Darman of Tipoca City. Sull grabbed a ticket token with the casual, unconscious ease of someone who did this journey frequently, then sat down on a bench at a distance from the ticket barriers, staring at the ever-changing timetable board as he unwrapped one of the small packages he’d bought on his walk and began eating the contents. It looked like fritters of some kind. Darman and Atin wandered around the small storefronts on the terminal concourse after they grabbed their tickets, window-shopping as far as other travelers were concerned.
“He’s got five unirail lines to choose from,” said Atin. “You think he’s spotted us?”
“Either he’s better at surveillance than we are, and he has, or he delays committing himself to a direction out of habit.” It was the kind of thing an ARC would have been trained to do: to move around without drawing attention to himself or giving a pursuer any notice of a last-minute change of direction. Darman began speculating about what Sull had been doing in the last couple of months. Fierfek, the man looked as if he lived here. The very phrase made Darman uneasy in a way he found hard to pin down, until he realized it was a bewildered envy of a world that had more options than he knew how to handle. “So is this all part of the deep cover? That even the rebels can’t find him, and don’t know what he’s doing, so they can’t compromise him if they’re caught?”
“Or if they’re traitors…”
“This is crazy. Zey would know. Zey would oversee his tasking.”
“Dar, I think there’s loads of things Zey’s never told. Maybe Sull gets his instructions directly from Palpatine.”
“How can anyone run a war that way?”
Atin didn’t answer. The war was messy, dirty, and chaotic, they’d learned, but this was the first time Darman had faced the possibility that brother soldiers might be doing things that cut across his own mission.
The two commandos killed a little more time standing at a store window speculating on why anyone might want a vivid purple business case, watching Sull reflected in the transparisteel window: then there was a faint clacking sound as the departures board changed, and the ARC made a move for a departure point.
“What are you carrying?” Darman asked, following Sull’s path.
“Vibroblade, blaster, and garrote wire.” Atin boarded the railcar and sat down several rows behind Sull. “Maybe I should have brought the E-Web…”
“ARCs aren’t invincible. Anyway, what makes you think he’s going to get violent?”
“If we’ve crashed into a covert op of his, he’ll use us for target practice.”
Darman recalled Mereel saying he’d never really trusted ARCs, because they’d been ready to kill clone kids during the Battle of Kamino rather than let them fall into Sep hands. Removing two commandos who got in his way wouldn’t make Sull miss a beat, then.
The railcar was half full, and Eyat wasn’t Coruscant. The population was a tiny fraction of Galactic City. This was no anonymous sea of strangers who didn’t take any notice of blue skin, tusks, or any of the other distinguishing features of a vast range of resident species bustling everywhere. The people here noticed, all right. Darman and Atin got the occasional glance because—he assumed—there were small details that marked them out as not local.
Or maybe some thought they’d just passed another man who looked exactly like Darman.
Sull, sitting with his back to them, took out a holozine. Darman read all the ads on the unirail cab’s walls and made a note of a couple of speeder rental agencies and a used-speeder emporium. Outside the railcar, Eyat streaked past; well-maintained apartment buildings, vessels landing at the spaceport, rolling hills in the distance. Darman followed the unirail route on his datapad and tried to think of this city as a target he was setting up for an assault. He couldn’t think of another mission he’d been on where that prospect disturbed him. This was somewhere he might… live, but the Marits who’d take over weren’t like him at all.
He’d never considered if he had a side to be on beyond his brothers’. All that stuff about the Republic and freedom was just words that he hadn’t started to fully understand until recently. The last thing he thought about under fire was the Republic; it was always the brother right next to him, and the hope that both of them would still be alive tomorrow.
The railcar slowed as it approached another pic
kup point, and Sull appeared to still be reading. But as soon as it came to a halt he jumped to his feet and shot out the nearest exit. Atin and Darman scrambled to reach the doors before the railcar moved off again.
“Yeah, he does this for a living, all right,” Atin said.
“Talking of which, how does he eat?”
“I’ll stop speculating and just ask him.”
“Yeah, maybe he’ll make us a cup of caf and tell us about Eyat’s places of interest.”
Sull’s exit point brought them out in a less well-heeled neighborhood than the city center, but it was still clean and orderly. It wasn’t the lower levels by a long shot. They followed the ARC to a low-rise apartment building fronted by a neat lawn, where he climbed the external stairs, walked along an access balcony, and went into a second-story apartment.
Darman and Atin walked past slowly, feigning conversation, and circled the block to check for rear exits. This was where they were at their most vulnerable. There was nowhere to hide to stake out the apartment, and this wasn’t a commercial center where they could hang around with nobody asking why. Darman reached into his tunic and pulled out a sensor. Then he opened the link to Niner.
“Got our coordinates, Sarge? Transmitting now…”
Niner responded instantly. Darman could imagine him waiting, pacing up and down and giving Fi a hard time while he fretted. “Copy that, Dar.”
“Apartment seven.”
“What are you planning?”
Darman glanced at Atin. “We’ll walk up to the door. We’ll run a sweep to see if he’s got company. If we like the odds, we’ll knock. If we don’t, we walk away, set a spycam opposite the building, and return to rethink and monitor. Is that okay, Sarge?”
“I’d say that’s not what we came to do, Dar, but an ARC on the loose without explanation could throw the whole mission, so we might as well clear it up.”
Darman had a nagging thought. He had to get it off his chest. “Ask A’den why he didn’t stroll into Eyat and check it out.”
The Null had only been in-theater a few days. Even if he’d done a recce, there was nothing to say that he’d have seen Sull at all. Darman regretted the question immediately and hoped A’den hadn’t heard.
“Will do,” said Niner. “Leave your comlink open, okay?”
Darman and Atin ambled across the road and made their way to the apartment. Darman held the sensor as inconspicuously as he could, clasping his hands in front of him as if waiting for Sull to answer the door, and swept it slowly side to side.
He kept his voice at subauditory level, letting the sensors on his throat transmit on the comlink. “I’m only picking up one body in there, At’ika.”
“Shame you’re not a Jedi.”
“Yeah… maybe they should have created Force-sensitive clones, and then we could have ditched half the kit.”
“Okay. Knock-knock time…”
Darman stood to one side of the doors, hand discreetly on his blaster, and Atin pressed the bell.
Silence.
They waited. The sensor showed someone moving to one side of the door, but there was no noise. Sull was a careful man: an ARC trooper couldn’t be anything else. Then the doors parted.
Sull obviously didn’t have a security holocam installed. For a split second he stood side-on to the entrance, his face all wide-eyed shock, then his arm came up and Darman spun away instinctively as a blaster bolt shaved his cheek. Atin cannoned past him with a sickening thwack of bone. Sull fell back with Atin on top of him and Darman hit the door controls. For the next few moments they grappled, trying to get Sull onto his stomach to pin his arms, but the ARC lived up to his reputation, bringing his knee up hard in Atin’s groin and landing a fist in Darman’s face. Eventually they got him facedown and Darman tried the old restraining trick of hooking two fingers into Sull’s nostrils and jerking back hard. It must have hurt him plenty, but not half as much as he hurt Darman when the commando loosened his grip and Sull sank his teeth hard into his hand.
Demoralizing, painful, and causes serious infection. That was what Skirata said about human bites. Darman roared with pain and brought his fist down on the back of the ARC’s head. Atin pounced again and got him in a headlock with his knee in his back.
“Right,” Atin panted. He had the tip of his vibroblade pressed into the hollow at the base of Sull’s skull. “Unless you want this right through your spinal cord, ner vod, pack it in and listen.”
“Do it, then,” Sull said. “I’d rather die. They sent you to kill me, didn’t they? Go on. Finish me off, if you’ve got the guts.”
Darman, blood welling from his bite marks, got a plastoid tie around Sull’s wrists and knelt back to nurse his throbbing hand. Bacta. Clean the wound. What was he going on about, they sent you to kill me?
“We’re definitely going to have to get a speeder to move him, Dar, rent one or something,” Atin said. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Niner’s voice cut in on the comlink. “Sitrep, Omega…”
“What do you mean, Sull?” Darman asked. “What do you mean, they sent us? Who’s they?”
“Who are you?”
“RC one-one-three-six, Darman, Omega Squad. We thought you were MIA. You are Alpha-Thirty, right?”
“Get knotted,” Sull said. “Just get it over with.”
Atin tied the ARC’s ankles with plastoid tape and got to his feet. “Well, I think you need a chat with a colleague of ours…”
Darman held out his datapad. “Speeder rental, At’ika. I made a note. You get the transport, I stay here.”
“Okay, you can keep Captain Charisma quiet for a while.”
“Omega…” Niner sounded at the limit of his patience. “What the shab happened?”
“Alpha-Thirty thinks we’re going to kill him, Sarge. We’re bringing him back to base until we get this sorted.”
“Moron.” Sull sounded as defiant as ever. “You’ve got no idea, have you?”
“What?”
“You’re dead men.”
He didn’t say it like a threat. Sull said it like Skirata did.
That was what Skirata used to call them back in training: his dead men. It was all part of his unconvincing veneer of abuse, because the whole company knew Sergeant Kal would give them his last drop of blood, but the words now made Darman shudder.
“We all are, sooner or later,” he said.
It was sooner for clones than most.
Chapter Five
Order 4: In the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being incapacitated, overall GAR command shall fall to the vice chair of the Senate until a successor is appointed or alternative authority identified as outlined in Section 6 (iv).
Order 5: In the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being declared unfit to issue orders, as defined in Section 6 (ii), the chief of the defense staff shall assume GAR command and form a strategic cell of senior officers (see page 1173, para 4) until a successor is appointed or alternative authority identified.
—From Contingency Orders for the Grand Army of the Republic: Order Initiation, Orders 1 Through 150, GAR document CO(CL) 56–95
GAR landing strip,
Teklet, Qiilura,
473 days after Geonosis
Etain stood on the deserted landing strip by the troop transporter, up to her ankles in a fresh fall of snow.
The only footprints were hers and the ridged soles of army boots, whose impressions were so much larger than hers that for a moment she felt like an insignificant child.
The farmers weren’t going to show. She hadn’t expected them to; now her duty was unavoidable. She’d given them two extra hours, kidding herself that they might have had difficulty passing blizzard-blocked roads, but the deadline had passed and Levet was walking toward her from the HQ building, datapad in one gloved hand. She turned and walked back to save him the journey.
“One last try, Commander,” she said. “I’m heading into Imbraani to give them the now-or-never speech.�
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Levet handed her his datapad. “Orders just in, ma’am. Direct from Zey. The Gurlanins just gave him a little demonstration of intent.”
Etain swallowed to compose herself before reading.
Zey had a terse message style. She could have spoken to him by comlink, even had a virtual face-to-face meeting, but he’d sent Levet a message—stark, to the point, and leaving no opportunity for discussion or argument.
GURLANINS CLAIMED RESPONSIBILITY FOR CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ON TROOP MOVEMENTS AND READINESS STATUS RELEASED TODAY TO CIS COMMANDERS. LEAK HAS RESULTED IN 10,653 CASUALTIES: FLEET AUXILIARY CORE GUARDIAN DESTROYED WITH ALL HANDS WHILE DEFENSIVE CANNON WAS OFFLINE DURING UNSCHEDULED MAINTENANCE. REMOVE QIILURA CONTINGENT IMMEDIATELY. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES ACCEPTABLE IF COLONISTS USE LETHAL FORCE.
Etain handed the datapad back to Levet and saw ten thousand dead troopers in her mind’s eye before she saw farmers, dead or otherwise. It hit her hard. Her imagination blanked out and was replaced by a cold hard focus on the next steps to remove the remaining farmers.
“He’s not a happy camper, ma’am.”
“They warned they could be anywhere and pass as anyone.” Etain carried on walking. Why didn’t I feel them dying in the Force? Am I that out of touch? “So there’s a little reminder of the damage they can do whenever they want. It’ll escalate. Let’s get this over with.”
“You could have prevented the deaths,” said a voice behind her.
Jinart appeared out of nowhere, loping like an arc of black oil. She could have been a mound of snow, a piece of machinery, or even one of the leafless trees on the strip perimeter before she metamorphosed into her true form. She darted a little ahead Etain and Levet, leaving featureless round paw prints behind her. Gurlanins could leave false tracks, making them impossible to hunt down. They were, as so many had said, perfect spies and saboteurs—as long as they were on your side. If they were the enemy then they seemed very different indeed.
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