True Colors

by Karen Traviss

  “But the Mando navy will take any old osik, right?”

  “Have we ever had a seagoing navy?”

  “Our own, or one we borrowed? Why, do you want to buy one?”

  “Just curious. Making small talk before I tell you that I managed to slice into the Dorumaa utilities mainframe, and the supply grid shows a rather extravagant amount of power being piped to a location that would, were I to map it onto a chart, line up pretty well with the area around the cave entrance.”

  Mereel chuckled. “Maybe the dianoga watches a lot of HoloNet.”

  Skirata smiled. “Lady needs a lot of lighting, refrigeration, autoclave, and computing power for cloning research, I’d say… is there any other large facility on the surface at that point?”

  “Just the bolo-ball field, and that isn’t eating a lot of power. Not like pumps… lighting… refrigeration… you get the picture.”

  “Oya!” Seasick or not, Skirata’s hunt had now acquired a celebratory atmosphere, and he hoped this wasn’t overconfidence.

  Oya. Let’s hunt.

  It was such a small word, but it was embedded in the Mandalorian psyche as everything positive in life: from let’s go to good luck to well done to… it’s the best news I’ve had in ages.

  The Wavechaser had no built-in sonar or external holocams, so once they were in position they navigated by chart and Mark One Eyeball, as he liked to call it. The vessel—now nicknamed Gi’ka, Little Fish—slipped into the shadow of the rock overhang and lined up with the slot-like tunnel.

  “Did you check how deep this thing can go?” Skirata asked, noting the occasional creak from the hull.

  “Crush depth?”

  “That’s such a depressing term, son.”

  “Two hundred meters. No problem. Udesii.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hand me the sensor.”

  It was easier said than done. Skirata squeezed it past the gap between Mereel’s shoulder and the bulkhead so he could grab it. Skirata was still mentally rehearsing the drill for getting his helmet off and inserting the aquata breather if the hull was breached, accepting that water bothered him a lot.

  Mereel aimed the sensor, a small sonar gun, and an icon of the readout appeared in Skirata’s HUD. Worth every cred. I should have had this upgrade years ago. When he magnified the image, it looked like a dead end deep inside the shaft, unnaturally smooth, and if the calibration was right, then it was nearly a hundred meters long.

  “My bet,” Mereel said, “is that this is a sump, as in cave exploration, but designed as a barrier.” He took a deep breath: so Mer’ika wasn’t as confident as he looked. “Oya.”

  Gi’ka crept forward into the mouth of the shaft, silent except for the slight burbling sounds of her drive, and now they were in total darkness with only the sonar gun to tell them where the next hard surface was.

  Slowly, slowly…

  Vau’s voice was a whisper in the helmet comlinks. “All clear this end. Ordo’s ETA is fifty minutes, Jusik’s two hours.”

  “What’s Delta’s?”

  “Five, maybe six.”

  On a mission like this, with so many unknowns, that lead might evaporate.

  “Might lose our signal, Walon. The abort point is—”

  “I don’t do aborts, Kal. I’ll wait here until the oxygen runs out. That’s two months… at least.”

  “I hope you brought a holozine to read, then…”

  “Oh, I won’t be bored. I’ll be counting your proceeds from the robbery.”

  Vau always knew how to wind him up, but making it obvious was as close as the man could ever come to being friendly. Skirata could feel the sweat beading on his upper lip, the sort that cooling inside the shabla bucket could never prevent. He thought the water was getting lighter. But it was his imagination.

  If there were any alarms they’d tripped without knowing it…

  No, the water was getting lighter. He could see a definite green glow to it now. “Mer’ika, what’s that?”

  “If it’s a sump,” Mereel said, “there’ll be a vertical shaft leading up into a dry zone.”

  “You’re a smart lad.”

  “I know how kaminiise think. Remember the older section of Tipoca? How they first built the stilt-cities when the planet flooded?”

  “I didn’t explore as widely as you kids did. In fact, I still don’t know all the places you managed to access.”

  The Kaminoans loathed the Nulls. Uncommandable, Orun Wa said. Deviant. Disturbed. Ko Sai even sent Jango Fett an apology for how inadequate her product had turned out, promising to put it right in the Alpha batch after they’d “reconditioned” the failures.

  It would be good to see her again, and show her just how her “product” had grown up.

  Now the vessel was in hazy water, meters from what looked like a break in the ceiling of the tunnel, and finally they edged forward into a pool of light. Mereel craned his neck.

  “There you go, Kal’buir.”

  Above the transparisteel cockpit canopy was a water-filled shaft, and it was clear enough to make out the surface. It didn’t look like fifty meters, though. Thirty, maybe. A dark shape sat motionless at the top: a hull.

  “So that’s going to eat some pumping power,” Skirata said.

  “Yeah, I think that’s below sea level. Might be limited by the geology, which I doubt, given the terraforming. Might be designed to flood the inner chamber in an emergency.”

  “Let’s just crack it,” Skirata said.

  “This is where it gets interesting, then.”

  Skirata checked his blaster and blade again and felt his stomach churn then settle, the way it always did when he was ready to fight. “Take us up, Mer’ika.”

  It was hard to tell if anyone was up there waiting for them, or if there were any traps. But there was no dianoga, just brilliant pink-orange growths on the stone, and when Gi’ka broke the surface and the water ran off the canopy in rivulets, Skirata could see that they were in an empty chamber like a swimming pool with tiled edges and a bank of lighting in the ceiling. A dull gray ship a little bigger than the Wavechaser sat in the water, secured by a line and bobbing slightly as Gi’ka made waves.

  Mereel took out his blaster, Kal prepared to jump out behind him, and the canopy popped open.

  Gi’ka wasn’t stable on the surface. She threatened to roll like a canoe until Mereel hit something on the console and she stabilized. He brought her alongside the jetty and looped his fibercord line around a large cleat set on the permacrete rim. If they’d needed to make a fast exit from the craft, they’d have been out of luck. Skirata extracted himself from the hull and fell onto the jetty. There were times when the age difference weighed heavily.

  “I think we go in here…” Mereel indicated a single large bulkhead hatch set in one wall, and looked around for controls, which turned out to be set behind a watertight plate. He pried it open while Skirata stood ready to take on whatever might lie on the other side.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready, son.”

  “Knock, knock…”

  Mereel pushed a circuit disruptor into the control panel. The hatch opened, lifting from the lower edge and receding into a recess at the top. Skirata, one weapon in each hand, cycled through the range of visor options from infrared to EM and found he was staring straight ahead into another tunnel, but one whose walls were lined with pipes; at the end, it looked like a T-junction, with a passage off to either side. He moved along it with Mereel, each covering the other as they reached the end and checked either side.

  The left-hand fork looked much more promising. The smooth floor looked a little less shiny, as if it got a lot more foot traffic, and there were conventional doors at one end. They’d just passed through what seemed to be a flood barrier, and now they were entering the complex proper.

  “I bet the Dorumaa Fire Department doesn’t have schematics of this,” Skirata said.

  Mereel grunted. “At times like this, you realize just how handy Bard’ik
a is. He’d have worked out the layout and Force-opened the hatches.”

  “I never said Jedi didn’t come in handy.” Skirata edged up toward the doors, shoving his Verpine in his belt. “Got an EMP grenade ready?”

  “If this place is all electronic fail-safes, I’d rather try brute force on any tinnies first. Might fry the doors locked…”

  “Okay.”

  “Must be tough to have half the worst enemies in the galaxy after you.”

  Skirata couldn’t hear the faint crackle on the comlink any longer: Vau was out of range. He flicked through the frequencies with a series of blinks, listening for anything down here that he might pick up.

  “Open the doors, son.”

  Mereel flourished his disruptor. “If we’ve got the wrong house, we just say sorry and run for it, right?”

  “Got the roads mixed up, yeah…”

  “Ankle okay?”

  “Been worse.”

  “In three, then… two… one.”

  The brilliant light and glossy white walls that dazzled them as the doors snapped apart were familiar; they didn’t have the wrong address. This was Tipoca chic, plain white only to beings without the Kaminoans’ heptachromatic vision. Bulkheads slammed down to the floor somewhere behind them, and the corridor ahead echoed with a distant chiming that didn’t sound urgent enough for an alarm.

  Then there was a silence that didn’t sound… silent. Skirata could sense someone nearby, an animal sense that made his nape prickle. He almost didn’t need his HUD sensor’s grainy image to tell him there were figures on the other side of the archway, just six meters away, two pressed against the left-hand wall and one to the right, rifle-shapes raised, their arcs of fire overlapping.

  Shab.

  If both of them died here where they stood, Vau was waiting and Ordo was on the way, so there was still no way out for Ko Sai. Skirata’s mouth was dry. He steadied his Verp one-handed and felt for a laser dissipating aerosol grenade. In this tight space, an instant fog of LDA would reduce blaster fire to a painful slap—even on durasteel armor.

  And we’ve got Verps, projectiles. Nothing LDA can do to stop that…

  In this confined space it was going to be a close-quarters melee—personal, dirty, and desperate. Mereel nodded in the direction of the bottleneck and took out a detonite grenade. “Might need to cook off, too…” he said on the helmet comlink. He meant detonating the grenade before it hit the ground. “Hold on to your buy’ce, Kal’buir…”

  Skirata resigned himself to more than a few bruises when the thing detonated. “It’s only pain.” Cooking off was risky, but he and Mereel had beskar plates, so they’d take their chances with percussive injury. The Null darted to the opposite wall. This was damage limitation, and the least damaged guys survived. “In three. One, two…”

  Skirata lobbed the LDA canister. It snapped to life with a loud crack, fogging the air right at the moment that blue beams sliced through the mist at crisscrossed angles. Dissipated blaster bolts hit Skirata in the chest but only knocked him back a pace, like a drunk in a cantina who couldn’t land a punch; he returned fire to cover Mereel for a few extra seconds, hearing the Verpine’s slugs shatter the wall tiles.

  They’ll have to close the gap. They’ll have to come forward now—

  “Cover!” Mereel lunged forward and tossed the det into the cloud. “Down!”

  Skirata fell more than ducked, feeling a cold searing sensation in his knee and tasting blood in his mouth, but he was on his feet again somehow, crashing against Mereel’s armor as they stormed into the LDA fog. He tripped over something solid on the floor—a body, a man down—but kept his Verp level. Then the image filled his visor at the same time his HUD-slaved targeting showed him the outline of a—

  T-slit visor. Shab, they’re Mandos like us.

  His body did the thinking and he fired at close range. Mereel cannoned into a figure that was just an outline in Skirata’s HUD; Skirata heard the pa-dack-pa-dack of two slugs smacking into metal but the Mandalorian blocking his way—fierfek, they’re vode; they’re our own—just reeled as if punched and came back at Skirata with a spiked gauntlet. Their plates clashed chest to chest. Beskar had a sound like no other metal, all heavy dull solidity, no high tinny frequencies like durasteel when hit. Skirata took a punch under the jaw that filled his sinuses with what felt like molten metal. His knife dropped from its housing into his hand and he brought it up hard under the only really vulnerable place in a suit of beskar’gam, the toughened fabric seal between the gorget and the chin.

  The struggle moved in quiet slow motion, and there was no scream—just the start of a yelp and then choking—and blood everywhere, but he knew it wasn’t his and for that moment it was all he cared about. The man clutched at Skirata’s grip on the hilt as he aimed the Verp one-handed into the gap and fired point-blank.

  Skirata didn’t think he’d ever forget the sound, not a ballistic crack but a wet sheet slapping in a gale. The man dropped. Skirata struggled to free his knife, wondering why he could still hear gurgling and panting in his audio feed, then silence punctuated by a dull thud.

  “Kal’buir! You okay?” Mereel sounded breathless. “Three down. All clear.”

  The blaster sounds had stopped but Skirata could still hear them like a muffled echo. Mereel came out of the dispersing fog condensing on the floor and walls, and caught him by one shoulder.

  “Shab,” Skirata said. The few seconds of relief at not being the one who was dead gave way to a vague anger. He adjusted his HUD sensors. Nothing moved. “That’s the lot, then.”

  There were three bodies in Mandalorian armor on the floor. One kill was his, one was Mereel’s, and the third must have been killed by the blast. Where was Ko Sai?

  We shouldn’t be killing each other. This is insane.

  Mereel backed along the wall, rifle raised, checking visually. “I’m not picking up any more activity.”

  “Okay, door by door now, Mer’ika.” Skirata put his self-disgust aside. “She’s here.”

  “I bet the place locks down when the alarm kicks in,” Mereel said, trying the first door. He took out a sensor and scanned for security circuits while Skirata listened for signs of life.

  Maybe he should have yelled for Ko Sai to come out and face them. She must have known they were there. A firefight among Mando’ade wasn’t the kind of thing you missed because you were making a pot of caf.

  And it was definitely a laboratory.

  It reminded Skirata of Tipoca City, all clinical white surfaces and sterile areas, doors with hermetic seals, a temple to order and perfection and disregard for life. He couldn’t smell it with his helmet on, but he knew that if he took it off, he’d feel that slight tingling in his nostrils and smell the sterilizing fluid.

  “The doors are on two circuits, Kal’buir,” Mereel said. “I’ll fry one set at a time. That means all the doors open at once.”

  “Then she can make a run for it,” Skirata said. “Or wait for us to drag her out.”

  There was nowhere for her to go. Skirata thought that this might have been a decoy, and that the right-hand fork near the entrance was where they should have been, but Mereel beckoned to him and indicated a security panel. It was the kind that had an outline of the floor plan with small lights indicating the status of each compartment or room.

  “Emergency generator,” Mereel said, tapping his fingertip against the panel. “That’s the plant room on the right-hand side. This is the only accommodation.”

  “She hasn’t got an army down here, then.”

  “Probably just enough bodyguards to cover three shifts. The more folks down here, the more supplies she has to bring in. But we can check the rooms.”

  “You reckon the next shift will be along soon?”

  “Make sure you reload.”

  “Let’s just find the shabuir and drag her out.”

  “I need to strip the data out of her systems, too.”

  Snatching someone off the street was basic work for
any jobbing bounty hunter, fast if risky. Kidnapping a scientist and stealing all her research—all of it, nothing left to fall into the wrong hands—was a much bigger task if you were in a hurry.

  Bard’ika, let’s see you persuade Delta to stop for dinner, and maybe take in a holovid, too. “Ten doors each side, Kal’buir”

  The whole place was one giant waterproofed tank with interior partitions, so unless he’d got this badly wrong, there was only one way out, and that was past him.

  Skirata took his helmet off one-handed for a moment and inhaled deeply. He always claimed he could smell Kaminoans, but what hit the back of his palate galvanized him almost as much: the place did smell like the labs in Tipoca City. The reminder brought back more resentment and loathing than even he could recall. The adrenaline flooded him again, and he found his second wind.

  “Lucky dip, Mer’ika. Fry ’em.”

  Mereel stabbed the disruptor into the panel. The lights flickered, and ten pairs of doors sighed open. Skirata had never seen a Kaminoan with a blaster, but he didn’t dismiss Ko Sai’s capacity to use one. He edged up to the side of each door and darted inside, blaster ready. There were banks of conservators, sealed transparisteel boxes with remote handling apparatus, empty tanks—he didn’t know how he would have reacted had there been something alive in them—and one room full of what looked like computer storage, rack upon rack of it. Genetics took a lot of data crunching.

  “I know you’re in here, you sadistic shabuir,” Skirata yelled. He’d risked leaving his helmet off. He wanted her to see his face, his loathing, his promised vengeance come to pass. “You going to come out? Or can I have the pleasure of dragging you out? Because I’m not a nice man, and age isn’t mellowing me.”

  Mereel opened a pouch on his belt with one hand, taking out data blanks, ready to strip the information out of Ko Sai’s lab right down to the last spreadsheet and shopping list. “Say the word, Kal’buir.”

  “Open the hatches.”

  The last ten doors made a chunking noise as the locks withdrew. Skirata slipped the set of knuckle-dusters over his left gauntlet and flexed his fingers. Then he walked slowly down the run of rooms, blaster held out level with his shoulder, confident he could fire before she could. He killed for a living.