True Colors

by Karen Traviss

  “I left to prevent my research from being exploited by inferior species.”

  “Oh, you mean the ones that keep your economy afloat by buying slave armies from you?”

  Mereel tutted, now fully engrossed in transferring the files. Indicator lights danced and shivered, adding a welcome rainbow of colors to the sterile white décor. “Kal’buir, just hit her, will you? You can’t have a meaningful ethical debate with the thing.”

  Ko Sai seemed genuinely outraged. Even sitting down, she could draw herself up to an impressive height. Skirata wondered where to land a punch on something that skinny.

  “Your Chancellor wanted me to use my research into aging to prolong his own life indefinitely. I told him it was a massive waste of my skills to do that for such a corrupted and diseased species.”

  That was interesting. No, it was more than interesting: it was bizarre. “I bet that went down really well. You need to work on the bedside manner, Prof.”

  “He’s a most disturbing man.”

  “Yeah, he’s a politician.” And she was weapons-grade professional vanity through and through. It was worth a shot. “Could you even do it?”

  Ko Sai’s head swayed like a snake as she glanced at Mereel’s back. Maybe she thought he couldn’t bypass her encryption. She seemed to have no idea that he’d done it on Tipoca, too.

  “Do you think I’d tell you?” Her attention was fixed on Mereel, and she was looking as worried as a Kaminoan ever could. “You’re going to corrupt that data, clone.”

  “I’m not your clone,” he said, an edge in his voice. “I have a name.”

  “I spent my life collating that. It’s unique. You might destroy the most advanced body of genetic research in the galaxy. There are no copies of it.”

  Mereel burst out laughing. “Now, that’s funny. No copies of cloning data?” He looked over his shoulder at her and gave her that harmless smile again. “But that’s why we came to see you, Mama. Actually, I meant to ask you something. We’re somatic cell clones, right? So where did the original enucleated eggs come from? Did you manufacture those somehow? Or was there a prime donor? No, don’t tell me. I’d hate to think you found a way to use kaminii eggs.”

  Skirata watched with fascinated horror as Mereel managed to press every button on Ko Sai’s eugenicist board. Kaminoan emotion was so subtle as to be invisible to most humans, but living among them for those years had taught Skirata plenty. She was offended.

  “That is repellent,” she said. The words didn’t match that gentle voice. “We would never pollute Kaminoan tissue that way.”

  “Good,” Mereel said. “Just checking.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand fine.”

  “The only reason we survived the environmental catastrophe on our planet was that we found the courage to weed out every characteristic that didn’t make us stronger. Are you Mandalorians so different? How much do you know about your own genomes? You breed selectively for qualities, too, whether you know it or not. You even adopt to add those genes to your pool.”

  “But we didn’t put down the defectives,” Skirata said. “We didn’t kill innocent kids.”

  Skirata stared into her face. He’d felt sorry for only one Kaminoan in his entire life: a female who’d produced a child with green eyes. He’d found her hiding in the clone training area, sneaking out to find food during the downtime hours. Green eyes weren’t allowed. Gray, yellow, blue—that was the hierarchy that told Kaminoans where they stood and stayed in the scheme of things, whether they were genetically perfect for administration, skilled work, or menial labor. There was no room for any other color. It betrayed intolerable genetic difference.

  The aiwha-bait found her, of course, but they only killed the kid. The mother’s blue eyes meant that she could live.

  “I fail to understand how you can judge us for being selective,” Ko Sai said, “when you allowed the clones you claimed to love as sons to be killed.”

  It wasn’t just Mereel who knew how to hit the raw nerves, then. For once Skirata managed to ignore the bait.

  “Let me offer you a deal, Ko Sai.” He shouldn’t have done this on the fly, but he had no choice: it was next to impossible to make use of her data unless someone with her expertise could put it into action. It wasn’t like following a recipe for uj’alayi. “We’ve got your data anyway. Nothing you can do about it. But I’d like your expertise, too.”

  “Not until you tell me who you’re working for.”

  She wasn’t a closed door, then. “I’m not working for anybody. This is for my boys. I want to stop the accelerated aging so they can live out normal life spans.”

  Mereel didn’t turn around. He just pulled out full datachips and inserted new ones. “Yes, let’s talk about gene switching. Boy, you’ve got a lot of data in here. More than the Tipoca mainframe. You took a lot with you when you bolted.”

  Ko Sai didn’t answer. Skirata checked the chrono and tested the signal to Aay’han. It was working again.

  “Walon?”

  “I wondered when you’d remember me.”

  “Tatsushi to go, soon.”

  “Ahhhh. Give the good lady my regards. Private suite waiting for her.”

  “Any news from Ordo?” Skirata asked.

  “Not yet. But you need to get moving.”

  “Understood.”

  Ko Sai was getting rattled now. Kal could see it. “How we doing, Mer’ika?”

  “Another ten minutes, even with this fast transfer. Then I’ve got to erase all the layers just in case. When this is gone, it’s gone.”

  Skirata turned back to Ko Sai and took a set of restraints out of his belt pouch. “Either I’m more deaf than usual, or you didn’t answer me.”

  “You can’t make me work for you.”

  “I don’t think you can do it.”

  “And you can’t manipulate my self-esteem, either.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave that to the Chancellor, because one of his personally tasked commando squads is coming for you in a few hours, but my boys’ need is greater than his, whatever it is.” Skirata could see from the head movement that Palpatine had really disturbed her. “Maybe he wants you to front up his secret clone production on Coruscant.” No response: did she even know about it? “Whatever made Tipoca agree to exporting the technology?”

  “A grave mistake.”

  “Must need Republic creds pretty badly.”

  “Using second-generation cloning, the Republic might as well hire Arkanian Micro—”

  Mereel cut in. “Yes, they’d have to, with Jango dead. Hasn’t been quite as successful. Has it?”

  “No doubt you divined that from the Tipoca database, too,” Ko Sai said. “But I can’t think of anything you could you offer me that would persuade me to cooperate with you.”

  “What’s it to you if clones live or die?” Skirata decided to let the Nulls exorcise their demons on her if she proved useless in the end. “You might even learn something from stopping the process.”

  Her head stopped that slow swaying. He had her attention for a moment, which suggested it was a challenge that might lure her.

  “I don’t have to beat it out of you, of course,” Skirata said slowly. “Plenty of folks around who can extract information by pharmaceutical methods.”

  “And if they were expert enough to understand Kaminoan biochemistry, you wouldn’t need me to unlock the aging sequence.”

  “Let’s see.” Skirata gestured with the restraints. “Now be a good girl and let me slap these on you, and don’t tempt me to make you wear them.”

  She paused for a few moments, then offered her wrists with the grace of a dancer. It wasn’t the time to negotiate with her; there was a mountain of data to assess before he could be certain he needed her at all, and if she was driven to do this research without wanting to make a profit on it, then the prospect of being able to carry on with it might prove to be enough.

  But he could test that.

  �
��You done now, Mer’ika?”

  Mereel had a small pile of datachips in one hand, jingling them like creds while he waited. “Just waiting for this erase program to run through the whole system. I don’t think anyone’s going to recover the data after we’ve trashed the place, but no point being careless.”

  It had always been part of the vague plan—asset denial—but Skirata wasn’t sure if Mereel was playing the psychological game. It was as good a time as any, though. Skirata took a couple of thermal dets out of his belt and examined them, adjusting the controls with his thumbnail.

  “Twenty minutes should be enough time to get clear.”

  Mereel shook his head. “Make it half an hour. We don’t want to still be on the planet when this blows. It’s going to attract attention.”

  “Good point.”

  Ko Sai watched them like lab specimens. “You’re bluffing.”

  Skirata set the dets for remote detonation, then placed one in the center of the floor and the other by the exit. Ko Sai wouldn’t know the difference between a timing device and a remote trigger. Mereel watched him with faint amusement, then put his helmet back on. “Fierfek, no. I can’t afford to leave anything that Delta could recover. Come on.”

  Skirata hauled Ko Sai to her feet—she was more than two meters tall, so it wasn’t an elegant maneuver—and shoved her out ahead of him, blaster in her back. If she reacted now, fine. If she didn’t—they were out of here.

  And now he had to pass the bodies of three Mandalorians. Somehow he’d put that out of his mind while shaking down Ko Sai. Now he had to look at them, wonder who they might be, and work out how he would inform their next of kin.

  “Hang on to her, Mer’ika,” he said. “I have to do something.”

  He squatted down and eased off the helmets, possibly one of the most unpleasant and distressing tasks he’d ever had. No, he didn’t know any of them; and one was a very young woman. That finished something in him. Females were expected to fight, and it was often hard to tell from the armor alone if the wearer was male or female, but it left him feeling hollow. He couldn’t even recall if he’d been the one who killed her. A search of their pockets turned up little, so he took the helmets to trace them via their clan sigils later, and to give their families something for remembrance.

  Mandalorians ended up killing one another for all kinds of reasons, personal and incidental. It still didn’t make it right. The covert ops troopers sent after Sull, now these strangers—the thought of nek dogs came back to him, dog set on dog for sport, or just a killing machine to do the master’s bidding. Skirata felt it was time Mando’ade stopped being everyone’s nek.

  Mereel patted him on the back. “Us or them, Buir.”

  “They’re still our own.”

  Skirata stacked the helmets and carried them with his own. It was going to be a tight fit even with two vessels to make the short journey back down the tunnel.

  Ko Sai stopped dead. “Wait.”

  “Dets are counting down. That’s not a good idea.”

  “This is a foolish game.” Ko Sai turned around. “I have to go back.”

  “Why?”

  “I have materials I need to remove.”

  “Terrific,” said Skirata. “You could have mentioned that earlier.”

  But Mereel pushed her along. “If it doesn’t help me reach a ripe old age, then it can stay here.”

  “But—”

  “Move it.”

  “No! I insist we retrieve it.”

  Skirata walked ahead to the jetty area. “Too late.”

  “It’s biological material.”

  He paused. “Alive?”

  “Cells in cryostasis.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds to do better than that.”

  “It’s a template for a new army, better than—”

  Skirata waved Mereel on. He didn’t even want to know whose cells they were.

  “No, you can’t destroy it, you must—”

  “This is where it stops, Ko Sai.” He thought of telling her that he’d named all twelve Null ARCs, even the six who’d died before they were recognizable as embryos, but this creature wouldn’t understand why, and she wasn’t worth the explanation. He kicked the mooring line of her runabout submersible with his toecap. “Mer’ika, open this crate for me, will you? Shove her in and I’ll drive. I can manage to follow Gi’ka.”

  She was still berating him as the two submersibles emerged from the tunnel into sunlit water, and Skirata wondered how he’d ever stood an ocean planet for years. Ko Sai’s vessel was too big to dock in Aay’han, so they surfaced and did a hurried transfer through the top hatches.

  Vau smiled silently at Ko Sai, pointed to one of the cabins, and ushered her in.

  “Mird,” he said, “keep her there. Understood?” He indicated the imaginary line that separated the cabin from the rest of the deck. “If she crosses it—” He snapped his fingers, and it seemed to be a code between them, because Mird got very excited and bounced up and down, whining like a pup. “Got it? Clever Mird!”

  Mird remembered her, that was clear. Vau locked the hatch shut anyway.

  “If you’re going to make a habit of abduction, Kal, we really need to invest in a jail.”

  “I’d probably throw away the keys.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “She can’t ever forget what she knows,” Skirata said. “And I can’t keep her around forever. What do you think?”

  Vau shrugged. “Just checking.”

  Skirata followed Mereel into the cockpit and settled into the seat with a sense of partial closure. He refused to believe Ko Sai was the only geneticist who could ever manipulate aging, and he could never be sure that any solution she offered wasn’t a biological booby trap. Once someone who knew what they were doing had sifted through all the data, he’d decide whether he needed her at all.

  Aay’han passed the tethered headless skeleton as she surfaced, and Skirata felt purged of all guilt where Ko Sai was concerned.

  In the end it was simply a matter of when, and where.

  “I’m glad we don’t have to file a cargo manifest, Mer’ika.” The breakwater was in sight now, and beyond it a white beach dappled with the shade of gaudy parasols and scented, chiming trees. He hoped there’d be at least one day’s respite here for his motley clan—if they had any idea what to do with it. “Millions of credits in stolen goods, and a kidnapped scientist.”

  “And stolen industrial data.”

  “Oh yeah…”

  “Better not get pulled over by the cops.”

  Aay’han came alongside the pontoon between two pleasure boats. Skirata felt bad about Ordo racing across the galaxy to be here and then having to turn around again, but at least he’d have the satisfaction of the look on Ko Sai’s face, and a brightly colored drink in a tacky theme cantina like any normal lad. Maybe it didn’t matter where they took Ko Sai in the end, because everyone wanted a piece of her.

  “Here.” Skirata handed Mereel the remote for the thermal dets. If the signal didn’t work from here he’d have to go back and blow the tunnel entrance, because he wasn’t about to walk back on a live det. “You ought to do it. Very cathartic.”

  “My pleasure. I declare this facility… closed.” Mereel closed his fingers around the small cylinder and rested his thumb on the button. “But it’s not over yet.” He squeezed slowly. “Oya manda.”

  The button clicked, and then there was a moment of silence before a sound like an instant, distant storm disturbed the tranquility of the beach. A couple of tourists stopped to look around as if expecting to see some spectacle. And then it was over: Ko Sai’s legacy had vanished in flame and tumbling rock, unseen, and the only archive of her life’s work was a pile of data chips in Mereel’s belt pouches.

  “That felt better than I expected,” he said. “Thanks, Kal’buir.”

  Sometimes, just sometimes, even the most pragmatic and rational of men needed to lay their ghosts with a little symbolic ges
ture.

  Mereel’s smile—harmless, charming, and no guide to his state of mind—still didn’t waver.

  Eyat City, Gaftikar,

  478 days after Geonosis

  “Medic!” Darman yelled, but there was no response, and he knew he was stupid to expect one.

  He popped the seal on Fi’s helmet and pulled it off. The built-in armor diagnostics said his brother had a pulse and was breathing, but he wasn’t responding. There wasn’t a mark on him—no sign of penetrating injury, and no bleeding from mouth, nose, or ears—but Darman couldn’t tell about the rest of his body. Katarn armor was sealed against vacuum, and that meant it was also good protection against lethal pressure waves. Darman could recall the whole grisly lecture during training.

  “Vod’ika, talk to me.” Darman pushed back Fi’s eyelids: one of his pupils reacted a lot more than the other. That wasn’t good, he knew. Then Fi lifted his arms and batted Darman’s hand away.

  “Oww,” he said. “I’m okay… I’m okay.”

  “Can you feel your legs?” Darman asked. Fi could obviously move his arms, so at least that part of his spine was intact. “Come on.” He pulled off Fi’s greaves and tapped his shinbone. “Feel that?”

  “Oww. I’m fine.” Fi drew up his knees and tried to roll over to get up. “Just—did I fall? What happened?”

  “I don’t know if it was a booby trap or what. The whole wall’s gone. Come on, let’s get you out before anything else collapses.”

  “Might be worse outside.”

  Astonishingly, Fi stood up with minimal help from Darman and managed to put his helmet on. He stumbled a few times trying to pick his way over the rubble, but he was moving under his own steam. Darman knew that didn’t mean much when it came to blast injury, but Fi had once tested the Mark III armor the hard way by throwing himself on a grenade, so it was going to take a lot to kill him.

  He’s okay. He’s okay.

  “Where’s Niner?” Fires raged outside but it was eerily quiet, the noise of blasterfire and explosions muffled by distance. Darman found the front of the building gone, and remembered Atin had been on the roof. “At’ika? Atin, it’s Dar. You there?”