But, for now at least, there was a truce. It felt uncomfortable, like borrowing someone else’s clothing. Skirata was trying be polite and grateful, and neither man seemed to know how to handle that. Their stilted conversation had suddenly given way to very focused and intense discussion in voices that Ordo couldn’t quite hear.
He tapped Mereel on the knee. His brother’s legs protruded from the open access duct as he tested power couplings. Aay’han was going to pack a lot more punch when Mereel was finished.
“Mind the actuator housing, vod’ika.” Ordo laid the metal plate on the deck. “I need to check on Kal’buir. Something’s going on.”
“Call me if you need to break them up…”
Vau and Skirata were sitting facing each other on the square of sofas, and they were both talking on their comlinks. They also appeared to be listening to each other in a bizarre jigsaw of a four-way conversation.
“You’re a good lad, Bard’ika, and I appreciate the risk you’re taking.”
“What do you mean, no med droid?”
“So where are they now?”
“Levet should have cleaned them out by now. They’re only farmers.”
“Shot at? Who knew they were even there?”
“Kal’s going to have another meltdown.”
Skirata paused and stared hard at Vau. “Bard’ika, can you hold on for a moment?” Vau held out his hand and they swapped comlinks. “So, Jinart, what exactly am I going to be angry about?”
Skirata listened, head down, and then shut his eyes. Ordo glanced at Vau, who shook his head. “Delta,” he mouthed, and gestured with Skirata’s comlink. “They followed Ko Sai as far as Napdu and then they ran into some competition. No further contact.”
Napdu was one stage behind them in the hunt; events were getting out of hand. Ordo stood by Vau’s seat and tried to follow both conversations, which was suddenly much harder now that he knew some of the facts and his brain was trying to fill in too many gaps. His mind wasn’t on Delta’s safety, and he felt guilty about that. Somehow getting hold of Ko Sai seemed much more important. There were millions of lives hanging on her, after all.
“We need to get a move on,” he said. He glanced at his chrono; TK-0 and Gaib had a few more hours to come up with the pilot who transported Ko Sai to Dorumaa, but he needed that information now. If Delta were that close—they were physically closer to Dorumaa than Aay’han was, in fact—then they stood a chance of getting there first, provided they made the connection. “I’m not throwing away this lead.”
The lead would be… a pilot. It was hard to move Kaminoans around and find them accommodation without somebody noticing, even if they didn’t recognize the species.
Skirata seemed to be getting increasingly upset rather than angry. He had one hand shielding his eyes as if to ignore distractions; all that Ordo could hear was occasional grunts and sighs as if Jinart was telling him bad news in extreme detail. Eventually he spoke.
“Okay, I’m sending Ordo… no, don’t let her move a muscle, Levet’s perfectly capable of doing the job without her… he’ll probably be happier with her out of the way, in fact. I’ll call in later.”
Skirata handed the comlink back to Vau, who resumed his conversation with Jusik. Mereel wandered up and stood beside Ordo.
“Where am I going?” Ordo knew perfectly well where he was going, but he didn’t want to go, not with Ko Sai within reach. He wanted to be in at the end of the hunt. “Buir? I heard Jinart, so I assume it’s Qiilura.”
Skirata stood up and gave both Nulls a playful but halfhearted shove in the chest. “Ad’ike,” he said, “I need Etain out of there fast. She’s bleeding where she shouldn’t be, and the farmers have settled in for a fight. They’re having to pick them off one at a time, asking them to surrender very politely each time.”
“No wonder we’re not winning, if that’s how Jedi fight wars,” Mereel said.
“Rules of engagement, son… last resort.”
Ordo had never understood it, either. He could recite any statute or regulation, including all 150 Contingency Orders for the Grand Army—which all clone officers had to know by heart—with all the ease granted by his eidetic memory. But making sense of rules was another matter. Why start a killing war if you were going to slam on the brakes and declare one way of killing someone morally preferable to another?
“They’ll end up killing them all anyway,” Ordo said. He would never disobey his father, and he loved him too much to allow him to be even slightly disappointed, but he had to at least ask. “Kal’buir, are you certain you want me in Qiilura? I can be more use to you finding Ko Sai.”
Father. Yes, he’d always felt like Skirata’s son, but now… he actually was.
“Etain’s used to you, Ord’ika.” Skirata had promised he would never lie to his men, but he’d admitted not telling Ordo everything. Perhaps he wasn’t leveling with him now. “She might get gedin’la if Mereel or Vau show up. You know how cranky women are when they’re pregnant.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, they are. Hormones. And Etain’s cranky enough to start with.”
Vau looked up and put his comlink back in his belt pouch. “I got on very well with the young woman when we last worked together, actually.”
Skirata gave Vau the long stare, the one that said he didn’t think the comment added anything useful to the sum of the galaxy’s knowledge. Vau shrugged and got up to wander around calling for Mird, who’d gone exploring, leaving only his pungent aroma to keep the sofa warm.
“Come on, Mer’ika,” Skirata said. “Let’s contact your tinnie friend and find that pilot. Time is of the essence.”
Ordo couldn’t disobey. Kal’buir had his plans, and this was where Ordo fitted in. He didn’t have to be happy about it, though. He was being handed a soft job, a nursemaid job, the kind he always did when his brothers were racing around the galaxy carrying out anything from assassinations to elaborate financial frauds.
Do they resent me? Maybe they pity me.
“Yes, Kal’buir,” Ordo said. “I’ll treat it as a medical emergency.”
Mereel tossed him an identichip, the kind that opened security locks. “Take the shuttle I used to get here. I left it next to the cantina.”
They lived that kind of life. Credits, transport, supplies, the cost was no object: if the Republic didn’t bankroll it, they stole it, directly or indirectly. Ordo didn’t have any more personal desire for wealth than his brothers. He was used to finding all his needs met, but his needs seemed nowhere near as rich and varied as those of the beings around him. All he wanted right then was a piece of the cheffa cake that Besany had sent him, so he took half from the galley, slicing it in two pieces with his vibroblade, and left the rest for the others—even Mird, if strills ate such things. Then he went in search of the shuttle, just another mercenary wandering around on a lawless planet, and sat in the cockpit chewing the cake for a few minutes.
It was dry and spicy against his tongue, like licking scented velvet. The comfort effect was immediate and from another time and place.
Sometimes Ordo felt just as he did when he was a small child and Skirata first towered above him: part of him was competent far beyond his years, and the rest was hollow terror because the kaminiise were going to kill him, but Skirata had snatched him and his brothers to safety and fed them all on uj’alayi, a sticky-sweet Mandalorian cake. It was a powerful act of salvation, one that had defined Ordo. He felt it as freshly now as he had then. It was the cake. That was it. The cake had brought it all back. He felt safe again.
And this was from Besany Wennen. She was saving him too, in her way.
Ordo folded the remains of the cake in a piece of cleaning rag, slipped it into the pocket on the thigh of his flight suit, and fired up the shuttle’s drives to head for Qiilura. He had no idea—yet—what to do with a pregnant Jedi who was showing signs of miscarriage on a backworld planet a long way from competent gynecological help, but he’d find out.
&n
bsp; He was Ordo. Nothing was beyond him.
Hutt space,
476 days after Geonosis
“He can’t shoot straight,” Boss said. “But he’s spoiled my paint job.”
The TIV jinked again to avoid cannon fire from the pursuing ship. Sev checked via the external holocams and there it was: a Crusher-class fighter. It harried the TIV, closing up and then falling back several times, loosing cannon rounds to one side then the other.
“You could have creamed it by now, Boss.” Sev wasn’t sure what his sergeant was playing at. “Or maybe just hyper-jumped out of here. Forgotten what the Big Red Button’s for?”
“Curiosity is the sign of intelligence, Sev.” Scorch had a tight grip on the restraining belt. “I’m not that curious.”
“Think about it.” Boss rolled the TIV as if he was enjoying it. “If this guy hasn’t killed us, either he can’t, or he wants us in one piece because we’ve got something he wants. I want to know who he is.”
“Sometimes it’s better to leave a little mystery in a relationship,” said Scorch.
Sev felt the steady beat of his heart, nothing else. He’d passed the point of fear, and his body was on autopilot; he’d strapped himself in for a rough reentry somewhere almost without thinking about it. “So land and see if he follows.”
“You get there eventually, don’t you?”
Nar Shaddaa was the next planetfall, unless they landed on Da Soocha, and nobody ever landed there, not even the Hutts who named it. That was going to be cozy. The planet was all ocean except for a couple of small islands that broke the surface. But Delta had done their job and transmitted the data already, so if anything went wrong another squad could pick up where they left off.
Did I secure my locker back at the barracks? I’ve got the code key here. Fierfek, they’ll have to force the door open if I get killed…
Sev had no idea why he was thinking about death or focused on such a trivial worry. Death hadn’t crossed his mind that often before, not in a concrete way. Besides… it wasn’t as if Boss couldn’t handle a skirmish with a tourist, was it? Anyone who wasn’t Grand Army was a tourist, by definition—an amateur.
The Crusher was chancing it, getting too close. If he tried that tailgating maneuver again, one of them would end up with a hull breach.
Scorch seemed intrigued by the idea. “What if he thinks we really are a courier shuttle and he’s planning a robbery?”
Fixer came to life. “In a fighter?”
“He could have stolen the fighter, too.”
“Oh yeah. I bet that happens all the time…”
“We do it.”
“We’re special forces.”
“Okay. Time’s up.” Boss banked to starboard, and the array of lights on the navigations display tilted to show a course for the nearest planet—the third moon. “Let’s find out.”
Scorch went through the ritual of checking his suit’s seal integrity again. “You got charts for that place, Boss?”
“Nobody has. Let’s make some.”
The third moon of Da Soocha had landmasses. Sev could see them as the TIV neared the atmosphere. If the pursuing Crusher really thought his quarry was a courier shuttle, heading for this deserted lump of rock would have tipped him off that it wasn’t; but he was still on their tail. Sev closed his eyes and clenched his fists on reentry—it always bothered him to see the hull temperature climbing on the console display—and thought that it was good of Scorch not to rib him about his phobias. He never had.
“It’s going to be fun when we land.” Scorch was going through the motions of hitting the release catch on his restraints and swapping firing modes on his Deece, over and over, like it was all an Ooriffi meditation ritual. “He who disembarks first, wins.”
“Nah,” Fixer said. He was almost chatty today. “He who disembarks first is a nice target.”
Boss brought the TIV down into a bumpy landing on grassland, skidding fifty meters through driving rain and slewing sideways before coming to a halt. Sev, concentrating on the charge level on his Deece, saw the Crusher’s jets almost fill the front viewport as it dropped down in front of them and came about to land with its nose facing them. There was an awkward pause.
“He’s charging cannons—” The TIV shook. Boss swore, and for a moment Sev didn’t know if the vessel had been hit or if Boss had fired. Either way, the Crusher clearly hadn’t been expecting the TIV to be anything other than a lightly armed vessel, because there was suddenly a cloud of steam building beneath it as it powered its drives again. Then its port wing shattered into fragments, sending a ball of fire into the damp air. “Go go go!”
Sev was first out as the starboard hatch swung open, dropping into grass that came up to his shoulders and smeared his visor plate with water. The ground squelched under his boots. He ran with his head lowered, shielded by the grasses, and Delta went into a sequence they’d drilled for a hundred times: storming an enemy vessel. Once they were close in to the fighter, there was little it could do, and with one wing missing it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Scorch fired a rappel line to hook onto the superstructure, then hauled himself up to slap a strip of flexible charge around the hatch.
“I’d knock,” Scorch said, dropping down again and diving for cover, “but I think they’ll be upset about the wing…”
Bang.
The hatch blew out, flinging twisted metal into the air, and Sev dodged a chunk that whistled past his helmet. His legs moved before his brain engaged and he leaned partway through the hatch, suddenly face-to-face with a human female pilot who had an impressive blaster. The shot knocked him backward, but blasterfire wasn’t enough to penetrate Katarn armor, and he simply shook himself and raised his Deece again, finding his mind completely blank except for the single purpose of returning fire.
Sev fired. There was no such thing as winging someone or shooting them in the leg, whatever the holovids depicted, and he did what he was trained to do. The cockpit was full of smoke, the pilot draped at an awkward angle across the seat. It was only when the smoke began clearing that Sev realized there was a copilot, a man, and he was dead, too.
“Shab,” Sev said. “Maybe I could have done that better.”
Scorch peered into the cockpit. “Let’s try that again without the dead bit, shall we?”
“I wanted a chat with them…,” Boss said. He hauled Sev back by his shoulder and rapped him in the chest plate. “Now how am I going to work out who they are?”
“Leave it to me.” Fixer pushed past them and scrambled into the cockpit, hauling the bodies out of the way and pushing them out onto the grass with a wet thud. “At least I can interrogate the onboard computer and tell you where they came from.”
Boss and Scorch contemplated the bodies in the grass, turning them over and rifling through their flight suits. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing, Sev felt a mix of vague dread flood him just as it had when he’d screwed up in training. There was no Sergeant Vau around to give him a good hiding for his incompetence, but it was as bad now as it ever was. Next time he saw Vau, he knew that his old sergeant would see the failure on his face and give him grief for it. There was no good enough. There was only perfect. Sev had no excuse for not being perfect, because he’d been designed from the genome up to be the galaxy’s best. Anything he got wrong was down to laziness.
There were no excuses. Vau said so.
It was like waiting for the blow to hurt.
“Well,” Fixer said. “Interesting.” He jumped out of the Crusher and brandished his datapad. “They passed through Kamino. And they transmitted data back. I’ll unscramble that later.”
Scorch sucked his teeth noisily. “Tipoca’s not exactly the crossroads of the Outer Rim…”
So the Kaminoans had sent someone after them—after Ko Sai, in fact. Nobody popped into Tipoca City uninvited or stopped to refuel. You only went there if you had business with the Kaminoans.
“Bounty hunters?” Sev asked.
Boss examined a handfu
l of chips and flimsi. “We can crack the identichips later. The important thing is that we know we’re not the only ones who’ve tracked Ko Sai this far, and the aiwha-bait will know all about Da Soocha by now.”
Sev was starting to feel anxious. They were definitely going up against the Kaminoans and the Seps now. It was going to be a race. Tipoca would send someone else as soon as they knew the Crusher was missing, if they didn’t already.
“Better get a move on,” said Scorch. “No telling who else we’ll have to elbow out of the way.”
Sev trailed the others back to the TIV, still uneasy and angry with himself for not taking the Crusher’s crew alive.
“No,” he said. “Could be anybody.”
Chapter Eight
Soldiers of the Grand Army, in honor of your courage and service in the fight against oppression, you shall want for nothing, and become instructors of the next generation of young men to defend the Republic.
—Chancellor Palpatine, in a message to all ARC troopers, commanders, and GAR commando units on Republic Day
Gaftikar,
477 days after Geonosis
Darman was making sure the Marits knew how to lay charges for rapid entry—they did, all too well—when the woman walked into the camp.
He couldn’t tell it was a woman at first because she was wearing a freighter pilot’s rig, multipocketed gray coveralls that engulfed her, and a heavy pair of durasteel-capped safety boots. But when she turned down the collar that was shielding the lower half of her face from the wind, he could see it was a female human about Skirata’s age, with short, light brown hair and a gaunt face that gave him the feeling she checked out the latest in blasters rather than fashion.
She didn’t walk like any of the women he knew, but maybe that was the boots. He’d grabbed his Deece before it dawned on him that A’den wouldn’t be such a slacker on security as to allow just anyone to approach.
True Colors Page 19