Niner pulled the bay shutters across to give Fi some privacy, and the three men crowded in as best they could, shoulder plates scraping one another. They had no idea what to do with Fi, either, except lay him in a coma position, make sure his saline line was clear—Sergeant Gilamar’s combat medic course back in Tipoca was ingrained in them—and get on the comlink to someone who’d be able to sweep aside the bureaucracy and osik back on Coruscant: Kal Skirata.
Chapter Fifteen
The difficulty is knowing not who to trust—nobody, absolutely nobody—but who can be allowed to know how much about a given situation. It’s no secret that we hold Dr. Uthan in a Republic jail, and the assumption is that we need her expertise to prevent the Separatists from creating another anti-clone virus like hers, or even force her to create a countermeasure. But I prefer to think of her as my insurance policy. Should I ever need to remove the Grand Army—if the clones are not as loyal as the Kaminoans claim, and we all know the claims merchants make—then I have my means.
—Chancellor Palpatine, private memoirs, on the uses of enemy scientists
Special Operations Brigade HQ,
Coruscant,
482 days after Geonosis
“So it was a big pile of rock,” said General Zey.
“Yes sir.” Jusik could do calm like nobody else, and it seemed to be getting to his boss. “I estimate a few tons.”
Jusik sat completely composed, fingers meshed as his hands rested on Zey’s lovely blue desk. Sev, in I’ll-wait-to-be-spoken-to mode like the rest of Delta Squad, sat to his right, helmet on lap, staring straight ahead, managing to feel that the conversation didn’t involve him or his brothers at all. It was, Vau said, probably like a Jedi being in a state of meditation: aware, but not distracted. It was handy to be able to do that when your CO was getting a subtle roasting from his boss right in front of you.
“But we don’t have any confirmation that there was a facility under that island,” Zey said, staring out the window with his back to them. “Or that Ko Sai used it. And even if she did, we don’t know if she was at home when Master Disaster came to call, do we?”
“We don’t, sir.”
If Zey leaned on Sev, he wouldn’t be able to tell him anything different from Jusik even if he wanted to. That was exactly how it had happened, a very unsatisfactory outcome, and they were now back to square one and casting around for new leads—if Ko Sai had ever left Dorumaa, that was.
No—they were back to minus one. Before Dorumaa, they’d at least known for sure that the aiwha-bait was still alive.
It was funny how that phrase stuck. Aiwha-bait. All the Mandalorian Cuy’val Dar used it in the end. Even some of the non-Mando training sergeants did. Kaminoans weren’t lovable when you got to know them.
“So if the facility was blown up, to use the technical phrase, did someone else get to her before we did, or did she do it to throw us off her trail?” Zey asked. “Because I’m getting a very hard time from the Chancellor, in that charmingly polite way of his, and if it’s not him on my back then it’s Master Windu, and I don’t know which is giving me more pain.”
“We just don’t know, sir. All we know is that she had one pair of bounty hunters after her, who were almost certainly tasked by the Kaminoan government, and that a lot of equipment that could be used for cloning was shipped to Dorumaa—”
“—or that could have been used to pickle vegetables.”
“—and that we found a body with signs of Mandalorian activity right next to a very recent explosion.”
“Anyone can learn to tie a Mandalorian knot if they want to leave a message for the trusting saying, It’s okay, she’s dead, the Mandalorians got her… can’t they?”
Jusik looked unmoved except for a slight twitch in his jaw muscles. Sev was at the right angle to see it.
“They could, sir,” Jusik said at last. “But we do derive some certainty from the Force, do we not?”
“We do, but Chancellor Palpatine doesn’t deal in Force certainty, or in the Force at all. He wants her, preferably alive, but he’ll settle—reluctantly, although I shall no doubt feel his reluctance—for definitive proof of death. And I don’t mean some half-wit Twi’lek saying he was pretty sure he dumped her body but he can’t remember where.” Sev felt the Force that time, all right, and it was probably a largely spent shock wave compared with the one that Zey had to be getting from above. Jusik’s calm almost deserted him, and he blinked a few times. “Find me something solid.”
“It means excavating.”
“Then excavate.”
“But if she surfaces again, she’ll show her hand when she starts re-equipping a laboratory. She can’t work with a datapad and a stylus alone.”
“Unless she goes to work illegally for Arkanian Micro or any of the other clonemasters. Does she have any research that Tipoca City isn’t privy to, do you think?”
“I have no idea.”
Zey turned to Boss. “Three-Eight, do you regard the corpse you found as significant?”
“Just the nature of the knot, sir. Especially as it was a long shot that we would find the location based on what the Twi’lek told us. If anyone signposted it, they were subtle.”
“They might have known you weren’t stupid.” Wow, the old man was in a real mood today. “No option but to go back to the last good contact and start over. Although I don’t like the idea of digging holes under sports fields deep in enemy territory on the off chance there might be a squashed Kaminoan under the rubble, that’s all we’ve got. Perhaps I should have brought Skirata into the loop on this after all.”
It didn’t matter why he said it: he might have meant it benignly, or sincerely, or spitefully. But the end result was the same. It was a slap across the face for all of them. Jusik might have taken that as part of the learning curve of being a baby general, but Delta didn’t fail. Dread crept through Sev like the onset of a strained muscle. At least they weren’t yet at the stage where Vau had to find out that they couldn’t cut it.
No. That I couldn’t cut it.
“Leave it with us, sir.” Jusik gave every impression of being okay about the dressing-down—Jedi never shouted or swore, although they did have a savage line in humiliating understatement—but he had to be bruised now. He’d already told them more than once that he was never going to make the Jedi Council. He didn’t strike Sev as the type of man who wanted that kind of position anyway. “Is there a deadline on this?”
“Yesterday, at the latest,” said Zey. “I can repeat the explanation from the top if you like.”
“No need, sir. Resources?”
“You learned your trade from Skirata, young man. Whatever it takes.” He paused. “If you really feel you’re not getting anywhere, I might countenance investigating the Mandalorian angle via him or Vau.”
Jusik managed to return some verbal fire. “They won’t like finding out that they weren’t trusted to know about this to start with, sir.”
Zey just raised an eyebrow.
“Do it now,” he said. “I want to be able to tell Palpatine that you’re still out there on the case, and not lie. I haven’t even told him where you were. Just in case he gets other ideas.”
“Yes sir.”
Jusik dismissed himself and beckoned to the squad to follow. They trooped after him in silence.
“We let you down, sir,” Boss said. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry, Boss, it’s not your fault.” Jusik’s comlink bleeped for attention and he looked down at the display, pausing for a moment as if it was either baffling or important. “General Zey was just expressing his frustration. It’s a job best suited to Intel, and he knows it. They should do the tracking and call you in when they need some serious soldiering done. Look, can you give me half an hour? I have to take care of something before we go.”
It sounded like Jusik was saying they were only good for the brute-force end of the job. But maybe he’d just picked up on the fact that the squad wanted to be out on the fr
ont line.
“We’ll have the TIV ready on the landing pad in thirty standard minutes, sir.” Boss knew how to give Jusik a deadline in the kindest way. “And an appropriate wardrobe.”
Jusik seemed agitated, turning his comlink over and over in his hands. “Excellent.” He paused. “By mentioning that he might bring in Skirata and Vau, has General Zey given me a nod and a wink to do that in a deniable manner?”
“Not a question we’re qualified to answer, General,” Boss said. “Although if anyone can find out what a bunch of Mandalorians are doing, it’d be them. Or the Nulls.”
“You talk as if Mandalorians are foreign to you, Boss.”
“Well, they are. Some of them, anyway.”
“Sorry, I didn’t put that very well. I meant—do you think of yourself as Mandalorian in any way?”
“Probably as much as you think of yourself as a Jedi, sir. Raised that way, more or less, but the enthusiasm depends on whether your own kind are putting you in the line of fire or not.”
Ouch. Sev winced, waiting for the reaction. None came. Jusik nodded as if that meant something, and shot off at a run toward the administration area.
Jusik was taking this whole Mando thing too far; the kid had no sense of danger. He’d dress up in that beskar’gam and end up with his throat cut, Jedi or not, because even if Skirata liked him and treated him like one of the family, the average Mando would take him for the Jedi spy he would certainly be.
“What’s got into him?” Fixer asked as they made the final checks on the TIV.
“Hard to tell with a Jedi,” Scorch said. “I get the feeling there’s something going on, and Zey knows Jusik isn’t leveling with him, but it’s all happening on some higher plane while grunts like us just watch the outward show of business-as-usual. You can never tell what they’re picking up in the Force while they’re smiling politely.”
That was it. Never knowing what Jedi could see and you couldn’t really got to Sev, and it went beyond the different skill set, as Jusik insisted on calling it. The word powers annoyed the general, but powers they were. The squad carried on the conversation in hushed tones, as if Jusik might have some Force method for eavesdropping on them.
Scorch just confirmed Sev’s bad feeling. “He’s going to get himself killed. Skirata and Vau can play these games, but they’ve been around a long, long time.”
“We’re all going to get ourselves killed.” Sev knew what he meant, though. “It’s in the job description. The line that says don’t take out any long-term loans.”
“You think he’d rather be Bard’ika or General Jusik?” Scorch asked.
“Are you asking if I think he’s loyal?”
“I suppose so.”
Sev didn’t enjoy the thought. “He’s loyal to us.”
“They’re great to have on your side, Jedi.”
Fixer heaved a crate of supplies into the TIV’s cramped cargo area. “I liked it better when we just blew stuff up and splattered Geonosians. All this thinking is bound to end in tears.”
“Yeah, but not yours,” Scorch said, taking out his datapad. “I’m going to work out how much thermal plastoid it’d take to launch ActionWorld into orbit.”
“Or excavate a hole.”
“You enjoy your hobby, Fixer, and let me enjoy mine.”
Sev sat down on one of the crates and calibrated his Deece again, something that he’d begun to see as a nervous habit. Zey, he thought, was being way too hard on Jusik. He couldn’t give a brand-new officer that kind of latitude without support and still expect him not to screw up. Okay, everyone was thinly stretched lately, and every time Sev looked at the deployment chart and worked out where all the Jedi were in theater, they really were getting more and more scattered, more physically separated from one another. But that was no excuse for not picking up a comlink and giving Jusik a how-are-you chat. Skirata called all his squads, all ninety men or however many it was right now, at least once a month just to see what they needed. He knew what they were doing operationally anyway. He said it wasn’t enough to have an open door: if he checked on them regularly, they didn’t have to worry if he’d think they were weak or whiny for raising a concern. And sometimes they just needed to know that someone still cared if they lived or died.
That was probably why Jusik gravitated to Skirata. Zey only had himself to blame if the kid liked playing Mando now. That subtle difference in handling soldiers was why Mandalorians made better armies.
Jusik’s going to get in over his head one day, and if Zey hasn’t got the time to keep an eye on him when Skirata’s not around, then we’ll have to do it. And if he does something dumb—well, Zey let him go off and do it.
Yes, it would be down to Zey. Before you handed someone power, you had to ask yourself if you’d be happy with the worst possible thing they could ever do with it.
Galactic City, Coruscant,
482 days after Geonosis
It might have been someone at the door, or the chrono alarm, or even a warning from the environment controls, but the beeping woke Besany. Then she realized it was the comlink on her bedside table making a sound she seldom heard.
She’d set it to make a different sound when calls came in from any of her secure codes—meaning Ordo, mainly. She didn’t want to miss him if he tried to contact her. Fi’s situation made her realize more than ever that she had to make more of what time she had with Ordo. But when she fumbled for the device and answered, it was Skirata.
“I forgot the time on Coruscant,” he said. “Sorry. I woke you, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay. Just getting an early night.” She sat up and shook herself to try to clear her head. “What is it?”
“Fi. Don’t worry, he’s still in one piece. But I need you to do me a favor.”
It didn’t even occur to her to hesitate. “Let me get my datapad.” She felt around on the table for it and sent a glass of water tumbling over the carpet. “Ready.”
“We’re having a little trouble over his care, and if you could keep an eye on him, it’d be appreciated.”
“Of course. Anything.” The alarm bell that went off now was real but silent, deep in her head: she probably knew more about the absence of medical support than Skirata did.
“Where is he?”
“Jusik managed to get him admitted to the main neuro unit at Republic Central Medcenter by making a few calls, but now there’s some argument about keeping him there, and you’re the nearest one to the medcenter to smooth it out. I wouldn’t dump this on you if I could get one of my boys there faster, Bes’ika.”
You’re very good at making me feel like one of the family. How well you know me. “I’d do it anyway, Kal, even without the psy ops. Consider me co-opted by reason of vulnerability, the general desire to do what’s right, and the fact that I fell for your son.”
There was a pause. Maybe she’d been too frank.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Skirata sounded frayed; things were probably worse than he was letting on. “Sorry. I don’t even know I’m doing it half the time. But if I didn’t trust you to do what I’d do myself if I was there right now, I wouldn’t ask. It’s just a bureaucratic thing.”
“I’ll make sure Fi is getting the best medical care, whatever it takes. I’m good at bureaucracy…”
“Ordo updated you, then.”
“I know he’s in a coma, that’s all. What level?”
“Niner said zero response to stimuli last time.” It had all slipped into the unemotional world of medical jargon. “No brain activity, but still breathing unaided. I’m sending you the patient ID details now so you can get past the receptionist droid.”
“I’ll get over there right away.”
“Thank you, Bes’ika. Everything hit us at once this time, or else—”
“Anytime. No need to apologize.”
“You go careful with the other stuff, okay?” He meant her investigation of the cloning activity. “You got us some solidgold intel, but it’s not worth getting
killed for.”
“Isn’t that the risk you all take?”
Another pause. “Even a manipulative old chakaar like me feels guilty sometimes. Whatever it costs, you know I can pay.”
Or General Zey can. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve resolved it,” she said. It was Treasury-speak, but she’d flipped into that persona now. “Whatever it takes. It’s nothing a budget code can’t resolve.”
It could have been worse, she told herself, automatically putting on her work suit. It could have been three in the morning, when she’d be too sleep-befuddled to be any use. She tied her hair back in a severe tail because loose blond hair got her instant attention, grabbed her bag—and blaster, because Skirata wasn’t joking—and called an air taxi.
RCM was a small city of a medcenter with its own traffic system, and it took several passes around the internal skylanes for the pilot to find the entrance to the neurology unit. Besany didn’t like medcenters, and the moment she walked into all that bright-lit, antiseptic state-of-the-artness, she felt agitated. It was where her father had died. That was all it would ever be to her, and no amount of exquisite fresh flowers in the lobbies could change that. Skirata probably knew he’d plugged some gap in her life, but he couldn’t know how well.
“New admissions,” she said to the orientation droid, holding her anonymized datapad up to its port. There was a lot to be said for knowing how to cover your tracks. “Here’s the patient ID.”
The droid digested the code and when she withdrew the datapad, the text SKIRATA, FI: LEVEL 96, WARD 5, BAY A/4 appeared on the screen. So Fi wasn’t a number any longer, but a man with an inevitable surname. The sensor system took over from the droid, and Besany followed a flow of instructions, from a reminder from the turbolift to ALIGHT HERE to the sensors in the corridors directing her left and right via the datapad. A city-planet of a trillion beings needed medcenters on an industrial scale, but there was something soul crushing about a complex so vast, it needed its own global positioning system. It was no place to be when you were sick, scared, or dying.
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