True Colors

by Karen Traviss

  “I know,” said Darman, pitching loose soil back into the grave.

  And how many more names by the time this war is over? It wasn’t going to be hard to remember them. It was going to be much, much harder to forget.

  Ore terminal

  Kerif City, Bogg V,

  478 days after Geonosis

  Twi’leks were much heavier than they looked. Maybe it was the lekku, because that tissue had to be pretty dense; or maybe they were all muscle. Either way, it took a little more effort than Sev expected to restrain one.

  “My, my,” he said, grabbing Leb Chura in a headlock and slamming him into the warehouse wall. “You get around, don’t you, delivery boy?”

  The Twi’lek hit the permacrete slabs with a loud wet grunt, and Sev was sure he had a good grip on him until the pilot struggled free and made a run for it across the pitch-black landing strip.

  It was always a challenge when you couldn’t immobilize targets the quick way. But Delta needed this one alive and talking. Sev tracked him in his night-vision visor, a speed-blurred green figure with head-tails flapping as he ran.

  “Coming your way, Fixer…”

  Leb ran full-tilt toward his ship on the freight pad, and Sev raced after him. One downside of Katarn armor was that it was heavy—okay for short panicky sprints, but over any distance it slowed a man down—and Leb was opening the gap between them.

  No problem. Fixer and Scorch were waiting.

  The Twi’lek cannoned into a solid wall of commando, plastoid, and Deece as the two men intercepted him the hard way. Sev heard the ooof of air expelled from his lungs. Leb was knocked flat on his back before being hauled upright and pinned between Fixer and Scorch.

  “I know Sev’s weird, pal, but it’s rude to run away when he tries to be sociable.” Scorch could put a charmingly menacing leer into his voice that Sev couldn’t emulate. His gloved fingers tightened slowly on the Twi’lek’s neck. “He doesn’t mean to bite. He’s just being playful.”

  “What do you want?” Leb gasped, getting his breath back. “I’ve done nothing. I’m all legit. Who are you, anyway? Mandalorians? ’Cos I’ve—”

  Boss ambled across the landing strip. “Don’t break anything. General on deck.” He tilted his head to indicate that Sev should look behind him. “Bard’ika on your six… very anxious to do some interrogating.”

  “Leb, now’s the time to enjoy the hospitality of the Republic,” Scorch said, hauling the Twi’lek bodily toward Delta’s traffic interdiction vessel. “We just want to ask you a few harmless questions about your itinerary.”

  “Yeah, the questions might be harmless, but you’re not…” Leb now looked past Scorch and spotted Jusik jogging across the permacrete, Jedi robes flapping. “Oh yeah, now the Jedi’s going to zap me with his Force powers, isn’t he? Shove a lightsaber in—”

  Jusik caught up with them. He always looked as if a strong breeze would knock him over. “No lightsaber necessary, my friend. You haven’t got any reason to withhold information, have you?”

  When Jusik used that especially quiet, reasonable tone—and he never raised his voice anyway—Sev wasn’t sure if he was using Jedi mind influence or not. There was always something disturbing about Jedi, even the approachable ones like Jusik. Sergeant Vau said it was a good idea never to turn your back on one. They weren’t like regular folks.

  Would I know if he was using that mind stuff on me?

  Sev thought about that more and more lately. He still liked Jusik, though.

  It was a tight fit in the TIV crew compartment now—four armored commandos, a scared Twi’lek, and General Jusik—and Leb seemed not to realize it was hard to give a prisoner a good hiding in such a confined space. His eyes went from visor to visor. He really didn’t have a clue who they were. But then very few beings ever got to see a Republic commando close up, and the helmet always seemed to bother them when they did. Eye contact was everything for most humanoid species. Without it, they couldn’t gauge how much trouble they were in.

  “So you’ve been delivering specialist equipment shipped in from Arkania,” Boss said. “And you don’t have a permit for it.”

  “I don’t need one. Do I?”

  “You’re from Ryloth, so you’re a Republic citizen, and that makes trading in cloning equipment illegal.”

  “I’m not trading in anything, and I don’t look in the crates—”

  “Arkania. They don’t export fruit, do they?”

  “I’m a delivery boy, like you said.”

  “Your name showed up in a list we happen to have.”

  “Okay, arrest me, then.”

  Boss turned his head slowly to Sev, his silent cue to play the heavy. Jusik just watched, impassive.

  “We don’t do arrests,” Sev said. “We get answers. Give us one and we’ll go away.”

  “Or…?”

  “Or I’ll be very upset.” Sev could make his knuckles crack alarmingly just by closing his fist. “Tell me where you took the consignment.”

  Leb’s gaze wandered to the hatch as if he was calculating what he’d have to do to escape. Maybe it was just a reflex. His lekku were moving slightly in some wordless reaction. “Why’s everyone so interested in this stuff? Is it really glitterstim or something? The Mandalorians asked me the same thing—where I took it. I thought it was just vats and permacrete and stuff.”

  “What Mandalorians?”

  “Three of them. One young, two older, judging by the voices—’cos they have helmets like you, don’t they?—and they were wearing—”

  Jusik cut in, suddenly very intent on the question. “Green armor. They wore dark green armor, didn’t they?”

  Leb blinked. “Yeah.” He defocused for a moment as if he was trying to visualize something. “Yeah, they wore dark green. How did you know?”

  “A hunch,” Jusik said. Sev was almost pushed aside now. Whatever Jusik had on his mind, whatever intel he had, he hadn’t shared it with them. He’d busted a gut to get here, though. “I can work out who they are. Now tell me where you took the equipment.”

  “Dorumaa.”

  Jusik leaned back as if he had his answer, as if the identity of whoever else had shaken down Leb mattered more to him than the delivery destination—Ko Sai’s likely location. Sev was distracted by that, trying to construct a scenario in which that information mattered more.

  “You want to pin that down?” Boss asked, and indicated Sev. “Or do I let my colleague ask you?”

  “Tropix island resort.” Leb sounded fluent, as if he’d rehearsed it, or at least given the same answers before. “You want the coordinates? Here they are.” He put his hand inside his tunic and froze. “Hey, it’s just a datapad… take it easy…”

  Sev realized he must have looked as if he was going to hit him. He wondered how he managed to give the impression of being more violent than his brothers, because any armored commando with a Deece looked like bad news. He wasn’t trying to act like a psycho, whatever buildup Boss gave him, but folks didn’t feel comfortable sharing a space with him, and whatever he intended didn’t seem to affect that.

  “I’ll take the data,” Jusik said quietly. He held his hand out for Leb’s datapad, tapped the controls, and keyed something into his own device. Then he handed it back.

  “Hey!” Leb stared at his datapad in horror. “You erased it!”

  “I’m so clumsy,” Jusik said. “Come on. Let’s see you safely on your way, shall we?”

  “But my data—”

  Jusik crooked his finger at Sev to accompany him, and they bundled Leb out of the TIV so fast that he almost fell out of the hatch. The two of them held on to an arm each and steered him toward his freighter.

  “Don’t I get some creds for my trouble?” Leb said.

  Jusik slapped something into his palm. “Not just that, citizen, I’ll make the problem disappear, too.” He stared into the Twi’lek’s face and put his hand flat on his chest for a moment. “In a few minutes, things will be back to normal for you. Now
off you go.”

  Leb stood at the foot of the ladder up to his cockpit and seemed to be contemplating the contents of his palm as Jusik and Sev jogged back to the TIV. There was a small anonymous-looking shuttle a little distance from it, one that Sev had seen Jusik use before.

  “What did you give him, sir?” Sev asked.

  “A few hundred creds and a spot of amnesia.”

  “What?”

  “I mind-rubbed him.”

  “Oh, you can do that, too, can you?”

  “No point deleting the records on his datapad if he remembers them and remembers us.”

  There was a low rumble behind them. Sev turned to see Leb’s ship powering up, driving clouds of dust and grit into the air with the downdraft of its thrusters.

  “But whoever’s after Ko Sai can still find him, except he won’t be able to give them an answer this time, so how does that solve his problem?”

  “I didn’t say it would solve his,” Jusik said. “But it certainly solves some of ours.”

  It wasn’t very Jedi of him, but then maybe Sev didn’t fully understand their beliefs. “What about those Mandalorians? You sounded like you knew something.”

  Jusik shrugged and opened the hatch on his shuttle with a gesture of his hand. It might have been some Force trick or simply a remote control. “Let’s just say Ko Sai’s in demand.”

  “But who are they?”

  “Competition. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Sev accepted need-to-know even if it annoyed him. He watched Jusik disappear into the shuttle and rejoined Delta in the TIV, trying to work out what he felt about Mandalorians, and whether they were all like him.

  “The general’s scrambled the Twi’lek’s brains,” he said, slumping into a seat and fastening his restraining belt for takeoff. “So he isn’t going to be discussing his travel arrangements with anyone else, at least.”

  Boss tutted in annoyance. “We should have asked him for a bit more detail about where he did the drop. But Jusik seemed really keen to get rid of him.”

  “Well, he knows something we don’t.”

  Nobody said it, but Sev knew they were thinking it. Mandalorians. It was always sobering to run into them—or the mention of them—and find they were on the Separatists’ side, or on no side at all, but not the Republic’s allies. Like most of the commandos, Delta Squad had been raised and trained by Mandalorian sergeants; men like Walon Vau had done what generations of Mando fathers had done, raising their sons to be self-sufficient warriors, passing on a Mandalorian culture that made strong, tight-knit armies.

  Yeah, but there’s Mando, and there’s Mando. Is that me? Is that who I really am? And how do real Mandos see us?

  Omega were very Mando now. All Skirata’s squads were; he was a real hard-liner, old Kal, all tradition, emotional sentimentality, and—if anyone got in his way—complete no-holds-barred violence. Sometimes Sev preferred Vau’s cold distance, because it was for their own good. But there were times he envied Omega; Vau said Skirata was too soft and made weak soldiers, but all Sev saw was someone he didn’t have to be afraid of and who would let him make mistakes.

  Too late to think about that now.

  “Okay, Dorumaa it is,” said Boss. “Hope you packed the swimwear, Fixer…”

  Tropix island resort,

  Dorumaa, Cularin system,

  478 days after Geonosis

  Tropix was a manufactured paradise with every facility a sun-seeking visitor might want, and as far from Skirata’s idea of bliss as he could imagine.

  It was all bright colors, noise, and heat. Lulari trees imported from Hikil tinkled like wind chimes in the breeze, and their heady scent was pungent enough to give him the start of a headache. Mird bolted along the shell-paved beachfront path ahead of Vau, whipping its tail and whimpering with excitement as it picked up strange new scents.

  It was a Separatist planet, at least as far as the Cularin system was Sep-loyal. Skirata felt everywhere was enemy territory regardless of whether it was red, blue, or yellow on the charts, and didn’t let the stereotyped idyll weaken his guard.

  “Well, this is classy,” he said. Beings of various species lounged on a white sand beach lapped by a turquoise sea so vividly blue that it could have been dyed. Twi’lek waitresses whose skin almost matched it wandered among the vacationers with trays of drinks. Droids trundled between, raking sand and somehow managing to leave no tracks behind them. “Imagine being stuck here for two weeks. What do you reckon, Mer’ika?”

  Mereel shrugged. Out of armor, in a plain white shirt and beige pants, he suddenly looked so ordinary—so civilian—that Skirata could only think of all the routine things he was denied.

  “I could probably find something to occupy me,” Mereel said. “Do you two realize how much you look like glitterstim dealers?”

  Vau looked back over his shoulder, a rather splendid pearl-inlaid blaster shimmering in his holster. “I’m going for the casual but menacing look. Glad I pulled it off…”

  “It’s the Arakyd special, Walon. Says more about you than credits ever can.” The gangster look was less conspicuous here than full Mandalorian armor. The idea was to look like they’d come for sportfishing so that submerging Aay’han offshore didn’t attract the wrong sort of interest. “Looks rather expensive.”

  “Another bauble from the Vau deposit box. My great-grandfather is said to have shot a servant with it for serving his caf too hot.”

  Skirata almost went for the bait. “You’re just saying that to make me mad, aren’t you?”

  Vau’s expression was unreadable. “You know I’d never do such a thing.”

  Mereel put a restraining hand on Skirata’s shoulder as he overtook him. The terrible thing about Vau and his family was that it was perfectly possible. Instead, Skirata tried to concentrate on the inexplicably generous Vau, the man who’d just given him millions for the frankly sentimental and unselfish purpose of rescuing clones, rather than the sadistic martinet who’d nearly killed Atin to toughen him up.

  “Udesii,” Mereel muttered. “Take it easy, Kal’buir.”

  Skirata did his best. He took a deep breath as he walked into the lobby of the resort’s huge hotel complex and focused on being a glitterstim baron on a short break. He was a nondescript, short, gray-haired, middle-aged man who could pass unnoticed as a vagrant in the right clothes, or bring a room to a halt simply by walking with the right degree of swagger.

  Today he could play a prince. He had a fortune in the safe on board Aay’han, so thinking like the idle and disreputable rich was easy. He was both.

  A tall female Rek looked down at him. Skirata had seen them working as bounty hunters—their ultrathin whip-like bodies came in handy for accessing awkward locations—but it was a surprise to come across one in the hospitality business.

  This one didn’t appear to have a sense of humor. He decided to skip the diet jokes.

  “Do we need a permit for angling here, ma’am?” Skirata asked innocently. “We’ve come for the rifi fishing.”

  “Yes,” she said, not exactly personifying hospitable. She fixed him with a disturbing purple eye. “Are you guests?”

  “No, we have a marine vessel moored here.”

  “Well, there’ll be a fee for berthing. Do you wish to hire tackle, too?”

  “Oh, we’ve come very well prepared, thanks…”

  “And you’ll have to sign a waiver, because Tropix Resorts cannot be held responsible for any death, injury, damage, or other untoward incident caused by, or relating to, hunting, fishing, or exploration in any area more than ten meters offshore, or beyond a depth of fifty meters—”

  Skirata smiled indulgently, waste of time though it was, and took out a stylus. “We’re used to taking risks, ma’am. Where do I sign?”

  “How long will this permit need to cover?”

  How long to find the hiding hole that Ko Sai had created for herself? Maybe hours. Maybe days. If they were unlucky, weeks, and when they found it there was alwa
ys a chance that the aiwha-bait would have moved on again.

  “Give me a week’s pass,” Skirata said, slapping his credit chip on the desk. “If we find we have… more time to kill, I’ll extend it.”

  The Rek checked the chip in her scanner. “Thank you, Master Nessin.” Skirata flinched at the bogus ID. “I must advise caution if you fish beyond the five-hundred-meter limits. We do have people go missing from time to time when they ignore the warnings. But that’s part of the appeal for many anglers and divers who come here.”

  Vau did his icy I-know-something-you-don’t smile. “Sport-fishing isn’t sport unless you run the risk of being caught yourself, is it?”

  “There’s always relaxing on the beach,” said the Rek. “Or a pleasant walk around the harbor.”

  She seemed to have classed them as two old guys trying to rediscover their youth through destructive machismo, maybe with Mereel as the fit young minder who could haul them out of trouble. It was perfect: whoever Ko Sai had as a contact here—and she’d need one, if only to get hold of supplies—wouldn’t be tipped off to the fact that Mandalorian bounty hunters were in town.

  Aay’han didn’t look too conspicuous on one of the pontoons that stretched out into the azure water. Most of the vessels alongside showed no signs of ever having slipped their moorings, but there were a few more rugged craft that were clearly from offworld. Skirata took out his datapad and aimed the scanner discreetly in their direction to check the passive transponders, just in case. He found no registrations that worried him.

  “You have to hand it to the investment group here,” he said as they tried to look casual. “They take a disaster and turn it into a USP.”

  “You’re so crass,” Vau muttered.

  “What’s a USP?” Mereel asked.

  “Unique selling point, son. As in, they made a complete shu’shuk when they terraformed the place, not knowing just what kind of wildlife was in the ice when they thawed the planet. There are some real nasties lurking underwater, but instead of saying, Ooh, that’s too dangerous, let’s scrub the resort idea, the tourist board touts it as an opportunity for wild adventure. I have to respect that kind of resilience in business.”