“To the second. Look, which of your people was on surveillance in the Bank of the Core Plaza?”
There was a long, sleepy, irritable pause. “What, today? None of my people, I guarantee it.”
“Organized Crime Unit?”
“I could ask, but they play these things close to their chests … getting to be an epidemic, this secrecy, isn't it?”
“Tell you what,” Skirata said, dropping his voice. “Pay your OCU buddies a visit and tell them that anyone we see in our scopes who isn't us gets slotted as a matter of course, okay? You think they'll understand that?”
“I can but try.”
“Try hard, then. I don't want them crashing in like the di'kutla Treasury did tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. An audit officer was sent in to monitor GAR staff siphoning off supplies. But that isn't my biggest problem right now.” Don't mention the shapeshifter yet. “Okay, here's my offer. I now have forty-three individual locations that we believe the Separatists are using or visiting in Galactic City. We have to concentrate on the high-value targets, and you really don't want to know what we'll be doing there, so what if we give you a list of the others to pick off as you see fit?”
“When?”
“When we've recce'd the high-value ones and have an op order planned out—you know, precise timings. That way we don't fall over each other.”
Obrim had gone rather quiet. “I can authorize that. But I've got no control over the OCU.”
“Then find someone who does. I mean it, Jailer. We're not playing by rules of evidence.”
“You've really gone bandit, haven't you?”
“Do you really want to hear the answer to that?”
“Fierfek … my eyesight problem has now affected my hearing, too.”
“I thought it might. I'm waiting on a meeting right now and after that, I'll have a list for you, a reliable one. Just remember that if there's any talk of explosives sales being of interest to CSF, tell them to steer clear until further notice?”
“I'll just say military intelligence and leave it at that.”
“Good.”
“You go careful, friend. And those rather hasty boys of yours. Especially Fi.”
Skirata closed the link and went back into the main room. The Gurlanin was breathing more steadily, although its eyes were still closed and the two Jedi were still leaning over it. It was just as well they could stop the bleeding. There wasn't a medic on Coruscant who knew a thing about the physiology of a shapeshifter like this one.
And Wennen was watching the whole scene suspiciously. Okay, so she had a Treasury identichip. Skirata didn't trust anybody, because this leak of information was still very much an inside job. Until he knew otherwise, everyone except his assortment of clone soldiers—and the two Jedi, he conceded—was a potential risk.
“Ma'am,” he said. “I hear you don't approve of the war.” Civilians did odd things in the name of peace. “How much don't you approve of it? And why?”
Wennen chewed over the question visibly, and both Jusik and Etain flinched at something Skirata couldn't see. Wennen's expression changed to anguish. She stood up with some difficulty, and Skirata noted that Ordo's hand went unconsciously to his blaster.
“This,” she said quietly, “is why I don't like the war.” She went up to Corr, who was still conscientiously collating data and writing it on the flimsi with an expression of intense frowning concentration. “Corr, show me your hands. Please?”
The trooper put his stylus aside and held them out, metallic palms up. Corr placed her hands underneath so that his rested on hers for a moment and looked him straight in the eye. Single prosthetic hands—efficient, unnoticeable—were common; but to lose both hands seemed to pass beyond a threshold of what was flesh and blood.
“It's not right,” she said. “It's not right that Corr and men like him should end up like this. I'm wondering what kind of government I'm working for. One with a slave army, that's what. You know how that makes me feel? Disgusted. Betrayed. Angry.”
Skirata knew that feeling only too well. He just hadn't expected to hear it from someone who did an office job and could switch off HNE with its heroic and sanitized images of the war anytime she liked. Jusik caught his eye and nodded discreetly: She really means it, she's upset.
Skirata acknowledged Jusik with a slow blink. “You said it, ma'am.” Got her. We have an ally. She'll come in useful one day. “Believe me when I say that what we're doing here is aimed at stopping things like that happening to more lads like Corr.”
Wennen seemed satisfied, if someone that upset could reach that state of mind. She made her way back to the chair and handed Skirata her datapad. “Go on.”
“What?”
“I don't know what data might be of use to you, and you're not going to discuss detail with me. So take the datapad and copy what you like.”
“You're very trusting. You're sure we're who we say we are?”
Wennen laughed and stopped abruptly. That had to hurt her ribs. “Look, I know what I'm seeing. Now, if I'm out of contact for more than forty-eight hours, the Treasury will notice. So think about what you're going to do with me.”
Skirata hefted the little 'pad in his hands. Treasury data, codes, encryption algorithms. Oh, my Null boys will love slicing this. “And who else is going to notice you're gone?”
“Nobody. Absolutely nobody.”
Skirata pondered on that revelation for a while as he watched the unconscious Gurlanin. Jusik and Etain knelt back on their heels and looked as if they'd run a very tiring race.
“It'll be regaining consciousness soon,” Etain said. “And I still have no idea how you restrain a shapeshifter.”
Ordo picked up one of the Verpine rifles, checked the charge level, and stood over the inert black body.
“This does the job,” he said.
Recce team observation point, residential area, business zone 6, 0110 hours, 385 days after Geonosis
“I wish I hadn't eaten that hot sauce,” Sev said.
“Told you so.” Fi held out his hand for the infrared scope. “My turn.”
They had found a spot to hide between two top-floor apartments facing the building they were watching, a six-floor tower of a house with closed blinds at every window. A climate-conditioning access space nearly at the top of their vantage point gave them an uninterrupted view below of a very quiet, very private group of homes away from the sky-lanes in a dead end.
The upper floors arched into a fashionable overhang only seven meters from the facing building. No passing traffic could enter from the front to bother them here, not even a taxi, and the rear access was nonexistent, which left only the roof for access by a small green speeder. It was private and a good place to defend—or get trapped. Fi rather liked the idea of the latter.
The access space felt like being in a drawer. They could just about crawl through it on all fours. Fi knew he wouldn't have enjoyed serving in a tank company at all.
“Roll on your back for a while,” Fi said helpfully.
Sev hesitated then surrendered to the suggestion with a groan. “How many?”
Fi tracked from right to left with the scope. “Well, I think we've got ten bodies in there, judging by the GPR image, and they've been in there for an hour now, and they're not moving around much. I call that an operational base. Agreed?”
“Okay. Let's set up the remote holocam and get out of here.”
“Given the layout of that place, it's going to be a bit busy slotting them all when we go in.”
“I like busy,” Sev said.
“Have Scorch and Fixer reported in yet?”
Sev held his datapad level with his eyes. “Now, that sounds like fun.”
“What does?”
“Scorch says they've confirmed the third cluster is a small commercial docking area. CoruFresh fruit and vegetable distributors. Loads of spacegoing vessels of all sizes.”
“Yes, that's my idea of fun, too.”
“If we could get them all to meet up for a nice ride …”
“Dream on. But we could certainly stop them from leaving in a hurry.”
Fi backed out of the space, pushing himself on his elbows with his DC-17 crooked in both arms, collecting more dust and dead insects on his bodysuit. He turned sideways on to a narrow shaft that opened into the building's plant maintenance room and dropped his left leg into the gap, searching for a foothold with his boot before finding the ledge and scrambling down to the floor. Sev simply rolled off and landed with a thud beside him.
“Okay, where next?”
Fi cocked his head. “Want to wander over and take a closer look at the roof? Evaluate it for rapid entry?”
“You know how to engage my enthusiasm.”
Fi projected the fire safety holoplans of the building, which had proved to be Ordo's best illicit data slice of the mission. There was no point asking the fire department to provide them; it just invited awkward questions about why lads in white armor wanted detailed floor plans of most of the planet's buildings. “I hope they update these. Okay, go left along the passage; the roof access is the set of doors at the end.”
“I love the fire department.”
“They're so helpful. Nice uniforms, too.”
They crawled across the flat roof along the side of the climate-conditioning machinery room, over lengths of durasteel ladder laid flat on the waterproofing. Some buildings still had them to provide access to maintenance spaces. There were also the remains of a barbecue. They flattened themselves behind the parapet to peer through the breaks in the punched durasteel at the roof opposite.
“Ooh, a Flash speeder,' Fi whispered.
“Don't even think about it.”
“I meant that we could bolt on a few surprises, not wander off with it.”
“Look, what does the word recce mean, ner vod?”
“It almost sounds like wreck.”
“You scare me,” Sev said. “And that's saying something.”
“It's an opportunity we might not get again.”
“So you fly, do you? Going to do a Jango?”
“You've got no style.” Fi genuinely wanted to place a thermal detonator on the speeder. It could be set off remotely, giving them a relatively easy extra option for striking at the Seps that they might need soon. But he was also itching to smack Sev down a little. The man thought he was the galaxy's gift to adventure. So if he wanted adventure, Fi would show it to him, Omega-style.
It also just happened to be the safest way to cross the six-meter gap to the other roof—safer than asking the Seps across the way if they minded two commandos taking a look at their roof, anyway.
Fi edged backward and began placing the sections of ladder end-to-end. They slotted together neatly. Then he crawled back to the parapet and gave the chasm an appraising glance.
He peered across, then down six floors. “That'll reach.”
“I reckon.” Sev leaned over next to him. “So you're going to crawl across.”
Fi took the end of the ladder and began to move it carefully to avoid loud scraping sounds. Sev took the other end and they balanced it lengthways on the parapet.
“No, I'm going to run.”
“Fi, they say someone spiked my vat. But I reckon someone really spiked yours.”
“Lost your nerve?”
“Di'kut.”
“If I plummet heroically to my doom, then you can crawl across. Deal?”
“I hate it when you try to provoke me into showing you how it's done.”
“Like this?”
Fi had seconds. They needed to be across the gap and gone before anyone spotted them. He leaned down hard on one end of the ladder, lifting it enough to swing it out horizontally and drop the other end on the facing parapet.
Thirty meters below, death waited. And if it wasn't death, it was paralysis.
He stepped up on the parapet, tested the first rung with his boot, and then focused straight ahead on the other side.
Then he sprinted.
He still had no idea how his body calculated the gaps but he hit every rung and landed on the far side, dropping flat. When he knelt upright, Sev was staring at him.
Fi beckoned. Come on.
Sev ran for it. Fi broke his landing as he jumped off the parapet. He noted Sev's clenched jaw with satisfaction.
“Easy,” Fi mouthed.
Sev gave him a hand signal, one of his especially eloquent gestures of disapproval.
The roof had a few steps down to doors that the holoplans showed as access to the top floor of the living area and the turbolift shaft. They didn't look that substantial in the flesh, but the plans appeared to be accurate: they didn't always get updated after renovations. A quick application of thermal tape on the doors and it would be easy to lob a few grenades down the hole to soften up the residents before going in. Fi gave Sev a thumbs-up and took a magnetic det out of his belt. It slid into place in the speeder's air intake with a faint thack.
Back, Fi gestured.
He teetered on the parapet and then ran across the durasteel rungs again, feeling them flex and spring back under his boots. When he looked back, Sev was lining up for the sprint, too. Fi beckoned encouragingly. Sev went for it.
He was two-thirds of the way across when he slipped. He grabbed for a rung and hung motionless from his right hand. Fi's gut somersaulted.
If anyone looks up here now—
Most people screamed when they fell. Sev, to his credit, was utterly silent. But his eyes were wide and scared. He tried to reach up with his left arm but for some reason didn't seem able to do it. Fi scrambled across the ladder on his belly and reached down to grab Sev's arm and haul him up. It was a potentially lethal maneuver on a narrow ladder, but Fi managed to get a grip on Sev's belt and pull him across the ladder crosswise.
Sev was using his right arm. It was only when Fi gripped his left shoulder to pull him in line with the ladder that he heard his sharp gasp and understood why he wasn't using that arm, and why he hadn't been able to lunge up to get a grip with his other hand. He'd hurt himself badly.
“Udesii ... ,” Fi whispered. “Take it easy.”
There was pain, and there was whatever had happened to Sev. Fi dragged him back across the ladder a few centimeters at a time and rolled him onto the safety of the roof before hauling the ladder back in. When he dropped flat again, Sev was kneeling in a ball, clutching his left shoulder.
Fierfek, this is my fault for goading him. “Can you walk?” Fi whispered.
“ 'Course I can walk, you di'kut. It's my arm.”
“I'll let you drop next time, you ungrateful chakaar” Fi hauled him upright and decided to risk taking the service turbolift down to the ground level. By the time they reached the end of the walkway it was clear that Sev had dislocated his shoulder and had to hold the arm against his chest to tolerate the pain at all. He said nothing but it had made his eyes water. Fi had long used that phrase to indicate extreme pain but it was the first time he'd seen it up close, and it wasn't funny.
“If I miss this mission, I'm going to show you a really interesting trick with a vibroblade.”
“Sev, take it easy.” Fi always kept his medpac on his belt. He fumbled for the single-use sharp of painkiller and stabbed it into Sev's triceps. “We'll slap some bacta on it back at base.”
“Yeah, and maybe that'll work when I rip your head off, too.”
“It was an accident.”
“It was a stupid stunt. I never had accidents with Delta.”
“Well, you're just Vau's perfect little soldier boys, then, aren't you? We screw up. And then we get up and go on.”
“I have to complete this mission?”
“Not if you're a liability you don't. Look, injuries happen. Stay at base and monitor the comlinks.”
“You don't understand.”
“Really?” Fi racked his brains for first-aid training. “Funny, I thought we did the same job. Look, get in here and let me ha
ve a look.”
They slipped into the sheltered lobby of an office block and hid behind a pillar. Fi detached Sev's bodysuit sleeve from the shoulder seam and took a look in the dim security lights.
The line of the shoulder looked unnaturally square where the ball of the humerus had shifted out of the socket and was pushing the deltoid muscle up and out of shape. This was going to hurt.
“Okay, on the count of four,” Fi said. He took Sev's wrist in his right hand, stretching out the arm, and braced his left hand against the man's chest. Then he paused and looked him in the eye in his most reassuring I-know-what-I'm-doing way. “See, when you get a dislocation like this, you have to do what they call reducing it by—four'
Sev yelped. The joint made a wet shhhlick sound as it slipped back into the socket.
“Sorry, ner vod.” Fi folded Sev's arm back against his chest and held it there while he struggled to get the sleeve section reattached. He could almost feel the torn ligaments and muscle fibers screaming. Sev's face was white, his lips compressed. “Nothing worse than bracing for it, though.”
“For a moron, you're not a bad medic!”
“Kal said that if we could take a body apart, we ought to learn a bit more about putting it back together again if we needed to.”
“Fi, I have to be fit to fight.”
“Okay, okay. Bacta and ice packs. Right as rain in no time.”
“Vau'll kill me.”
“Look, what is this thing with Vau?” Fi pulled Sev out into the walkway again, and they jogged back to the speeder they'd left a block away. “I know he had a reputation for beating the stuffing out of trainees, but why are you ready to gut Atin?”
“Atin's sworn he'll kill Vau.”
Fi almost stopped dead. “Atin? Old don't-interrupt-me-I'm-working-on-a-really-interesting-circuit? Our At'ika?”
“Seriously?” Sev asked.
“Yeah, sometimes I get serious. It happens?”
“Okay. Atin's pod was the only one that ever lost men!”
“Geonosis. Ruined Vau's clean record?”
“It's not that simple. Atin was doing that survivor guilt thing when he got back, and Vau just focused him a bit.”
Star Wars: Republic Commando: Triple Zero rc-3 Page 28