“We’ve both known each other long enough to realize what the stakes are.”
Mird seemed to approve of the subterranean berthing arrangements. It walked up to a handwheel set low in the wall and sprayed its territorial scent with abandon.
“Mird, when we bang out, you can do that all over Zey’s office,” Skirata said, trying to find something to laugh about. “It’ll take irradiation to clean it off.”
Aay’han was almost ready. She’d had a full refit, one discreet piece at a time, her supply lockers and tanks were full and cryosealed, and she looked a lot tidier down below than she had when he’d haggled her out from under that Rodian. She wasn’t just a multitask submersible. She was a lifeboat for everything he loved and cared about.
Tied up alongside her in the water was Gi’ka, the tiny shark-shaped sports submarine they’d used to infiltrate Ko Sai’s hideaway on Dorumaa. Mereel loved that thing. He came down here to pilot it occasionally when he was back at base, just letting off steam like a normal lad of his age. He’ll love thrashing that up and down the lake at Kyrimorut. In the throes of plans crumbling to dust, there were still good things to look forward to.
No, Zey. I’ve not come this far to lose my nerve now. We’re nearly there. You want to stop me? Then you’re going to have to kill me.
Mird sprayed copiously into the water. Vau managed a rueful smile. “With Mird’s contribution and Aay’han’s anti-fouling coating… remind me not to drink Coruscant water again, will you?”
“Good reason for leaving. Come on. Back to base.”
Waiting for everyone to assemble at Laseema’s apartment was taking longer than Skirata liked. Even with Kad on his lap, precious time he usually cherished, he still had that feeling of needing to get everything sorted and stowed, to be ready to run. Kad and Mird seemed to have developed an understanding; Kad babbled happily at the strill, which rumbled and even squeaked for a few moments, then disappeared for a while. It returned dragging the covers from Jusik’s bed and it proceeded to build a nest from them on the floor. It was a ruthless predator, but it was also a devoted parent. Strills were almost the archetypal Mandalorian spirit.
Jaing arrived with Ordo and Besany just after midnight. Laseema put Kad to bed again, and within the hour all six Nulls—some in uniform armor, some in beskar’gam—and Gilamar had arrived. There was no sign of Jusik or Etain. Skirata waited a little longer, then decided they could catch up. He played the recording of Vau’s conversation with Zey and waited for comments.
“How do you lie to a Jedi Master?” Laseema asked. “Without him sensing it, that is?”
“I didn’t,” said Vau. “I said I’d tell him if I found Kal doing anything to help the enemy. The minute that this little shabuir opens a comlink to any former Death Watch personnel, I shall gladly turn him in.”
Skirata paused for a moment, then managed to laugh. “Do I know any?”
“No, but they’re the only group I’d really call my enemy. So I didn’t lie, and I was genuinely emotional enough for him to believe what his Force senses told him he wanted to believe.”
Laseema applauded politely. “That’s a very clever technique.”
“Thank you, my dear. Mando’ade are trained to acquire certain states of mind for battle, so it’s an easy switch.”
“I’m sorry.” Besany, perched on a chair next to Kom’rk, looked exhausted. “This is all my fault. The Gurlanin told me I was crashing around when I was doing my digging.”
“Shab, no,” Skirata said. “Ordo saw the file on you, remember? They haven’t traced it back to you. You got good intel, ad’ika. You made the difference. We know about the second stream of clones, we know about the extra fleets, and we have a rough idea of when it’s all rolling out. We might not know all the details, but we’ve got enough to save our shebse when the time comes. That’s all down to you.”
“Maybe I was too cocky,” Jaing said quietly. “I’m the one who took the risk of introducing a program into the Treasury network to crawl through every linked Republic computer system to mine data. I should have stuck to short-lived programs that self-erased. Grabbed snapshots.”
“Is that what it actually did?” Vau asked.
“You should see the quantity of data it transmitted back. Most of it useless, but… snapshots rely on you looking in the right place at the right time, so I thought it was worth the risk.”
“You really are a clever lad.”
“Well, they still don’t seem to know what it did, only that it’s been in the system and vanished,” Besany said. “Unless, of course, they really do know I’m involved, and even the tech droid is instructed to lie to me.”
Jaing shook his head. “They can’t trace the entry point to your terminal, Besany. I sent the program via the main comlink, so if they can even find the route it entered by, it’s not traceable to any individual user.”
Skirata realized how much faith they all put in one another. He was no fool, but he really had no idea of the sophisticated technical skills that Jaing used as easily as Skirata drew his blade. He took it on faith—ironically, faith in the enhancements that the Kaminoans engineered into the Nulls—that they all knew what they were doing. Even Besany—no, he had no idea of the fine detail of her expertise, either. He was proud of his kids. He included Besany in that now; she was his daughter, because Mandos didn’t draw the distinction of in-laws.
“I think we’ve got two issues,” she said, with the earnest air of someone used to conducting meetings and commanding attention. “One, what happens when we start this investigation? Do we treat it as real, that they think we have nothing to do with the problem, or do we assume it’s a shakedown? Zey’s chat with Walon makes me think the latter. Either way, we have to find another way of monitoring activity in our areas of interest, and that’s issue two. Follow the supply chain, not purchasing, from now on in. All we need is to keep tabs on the firms we know will supply the kit. KDY, Rothana specifically. Then there’s Aurodiseal, big supplier to Spaarti Creations before the Cartao plant was trashed, and the data I pulled off the CSX and ISE company information service shows no fall-off in production or profits since cloning was banned. They say they’re making water purification equipment now. Seeing as they lost their biggest customer overnight, I find it hard to believe they’ve found enough new business to fill that gap so fast… so we just need some way of getting an overview of their outputs and shipping activity. Check what they’re shipping, when they’re shipping it, and where it goes.”
“Anyone got a contact in KDY?” Mereel asked, looking around his brothers. “If not, we’ll have to get in there.”
My father worked for KDY.
Skirata tried to honor the memory of his birth parents, but it had been more than fifty years, and it was getting harder than ever to summon up the scraps of the past. The apartment on Kuat was reduced to one view of a wall; but memory was also kind, because he could no longer recall the full detail of the scene he came back to after his home on Surcaris was bombed.
“I know a very reliable freight pilot,” A’den said. “She helped our ARC deserter vanish, so she’ll be good for a few trips to KDY.”
“How do we get into Aurodiseal?” Skirata asked.
“Leave that to me,” said Vau.
Skirata started to feel that things were coming back under control again. All it took was a task list and common sense. “Okay, now on to wet assets. We’ve got Uthan still in the secure mental unit, and my daughter Ruu in a POW camp. Ideally, we snatch them both within the same time window to minimize holding time here, and get them offplanet fast. Bard’ika’s keeping tabs on the secure unit, and I’ll look after Ruu.”
He said it as naturally as if he’d seen her last week. He didn’t even know what she looked like as an adult until he got hold of her ID hologram. He searched her features for Ilippi’s face, but found mainly his own; Ruu was brown-haired and pugnacious looking. Now he was practicing not seeing her as a stranger. None of the Nulls had said a word about
it, but he could sense that they were standing by to intervene if things didn’t go as planned.
He’d spring her from prison. Then it was her choice what she did next.
“Okay, what have we got left?” Skirata asked.
“Medical update and finances,” Prudii said. “Mij’ika?”
“Nenilin came up with some interesting insights but no solutions, and I paid him off, with the reminder that if he opens his mouth, tenure won’t save him from the weight of my disappointment.” Gilamar didn’t go into detail. Skirata could guess. “But there’s excellent data from the embryologist, who’s confirmed there are no manufactured genes in the sample, just manipulated naturally occurring ones. The aiwha-bait stuck to the basic blueprint. That’s narrowed the range to what Mereel first suspected—that they just concentrated on rapid maturation, and on making sure the genes that influenced bonding and social compliance were fully expressed—to make clones as loyal and disciplined as possible.”
“They learned their lesson with us,” Mereel said. “Maturation is the bit we’re interested in, which is, unfortunately, the most complex.”
“Databases?” Skirata asked.
Mereel tapped his ’pad meaningfully. “We’ve ripped most of the data on cloning and genetics now, public sector and commercial. Uthan’s going to have everything she needs. Shab, Arkanian Micro would kill to grab what we’ve extracted.”
Rarely—very rarely—Skirata stepped outside himself for a second and saw what he did, plain and unvarnished. Extortion; blackmail; industrial espionage; theft; fraud; kidnapping; violence; even good old-fashioned spying on the state. He—they—did the lot. This was a crime syndicate.
My syndicate.
He never saw himself like some Hutt chakaar or other gangster. He didn’t see himself as a paragon, either. But he could sleep at night for the most part, and he worked out that he could live with himself because—other than in war, which was another matter—everyone he’d hurt had been asking for it. There was collateral damage; the families of scumbags he shot, and they might well not have been scum, but they were unseen strangers. Thieving—he faced up to the fact that it was never victimless. And still he slept. The same or worse had been done to him and those he loved.
But he squirmed now. What had stabbed suddenly at his conscience was the awareness that he wasn’t all that different from Zey. The Jedi seemed like a nice enough man. He treated Maze with courtesy. But when push came to shove, he did immoral things, and sent clones to die, because he could justify it. Collateral damage. They both had their rules of engagement.
Why am I not Zey? Why don’t I think I’m as bad as a Jedi? Because I don’t drone on about compassion and respect for life. Because I don’t exploit slaves while polishing my principles. Because… it’s personal. When I kill, I mean it. Even when it’s just killing them before they kill me.
Skirata found that he was watching Ordo watching Besany, a strange act of observation that summed it all up. This was his son, not a throwaway organic droid made to order, but a man with powerful feelings, a man who was loved and who could love in return, and this random civilian, whose most remarkable quality wasn’t her pretty face or her razorsharp mind, was a woman who looked at Ordo purely as a man like any other, and loved him.
Jedi weren’t allowed to love.
If you were forbidden to love a person you could see and touch, how could you ever learn enough compassion to treat strangers right? Jedi never truly learned to love anything beyond an idea, and that was the gulf that Skirata saw between himself and Zey.
He wasn’t even trying to work out if he was standing on higher moral ground than Zey and his kind. He just needed to work out if he was, on balance, doing more harm than good if he carried on like this.
“Kal’buir, are you feeling okay?” Prudii put his hand on Skirata’s cheek. “Talk to me, Buir. What’s wrong?”
Skirata was jerked out of his thoughts so hard that the touch startled him and his heart hammered out of control. “Sorry, son.” Embarrassed, he looked around at worried expressions and tried to joke his way out. “Trying to process too many thoughts with one brain cell. You smart lads don’t know how hard it is.”
“You need to get some sleep,” A’den said. “We thought you’d had a stroke for a moment. You’re no use to us dead, Buir.”
It was an old Mando joke, the kind of thing that beroyase said to the bounties they’d hunted down and cornered, a hint to surrender quietly.
“Finance,” Jaing said. “Want to hear the update? Might help you sleep.”
Jusik was late. So was Etain. Skirata would get a few hours’ sleep and then go find them. “Okay. Last item on the agenda.”
Jaing had an oddly satisfied look on his face. Skirata waited for the punch line.
“Our current assets stand at one point three six trillion credits, rounded down.”
There was a pause of such profound silence that Skirata heard Mird’s stomach gurgle. He took a breath. His hearing was shot to haran from too many loud detonations too close, and he lived with that, but he hadn’t thought he was that deaf.
“Say again, son?”
Gilamar seemed to think he’d misheard, too. “Meh’shab?”
“Just over a trillion creds, Kal’buir. You want me to count out the zeros?”
“Wayii!” Mereel started applauding. Ordo joined in, then Laseema and the others. “Oya manda! Ori’kandosii, vod’ika! You actually pulled it off!”
“I thought I was wasted being just a gorgeous hunk,” Jaing said, grinning. He smoothed the fine gray leather gloves tucked into his belt. Skirata hoped Etain never asked too many questions about those. “I felt like being creative for a change.”
The Nulls were extreme risk takers. Skirata now feared Jaing had gone too far; his spy program had been detected, and now he’d ripped off enough creds from the Republic to get attention. Oh, shab…
Skirata got up and walked over to him. “Just tell me how, son.”
“You look worried, Kal’buir.”
“It’s a big hole to leave.”
“Not from several trillion bank accounts…”
The Nulls laughed like Skirata had never seen them laugh before. They really did think it was hilarious. They were giggling like kids.
“Spell it out for an old chakaar,” he said.
Vau nodded. “And me.”
“You know roughly what my programs do.” Mird wandered over to Jaing and put its head in his lap as if to join in the adulation. Jaing didn’t seemed bothered by the drool, but he moved his gloves to higher ground, to the clip on his shoulder plate. “They wander through computer networks, copying data and sending it back to me. So I created a version that wanders around bank networks skimming a credit or half a credit off each account it finds, and depositing it in another account. Well, this program did a lot more exploring than I counted on, thanks to the central clearing system Republic banks use. That let it into every bank on the grid. Trillions of accounts… and who misses half a cred on their balance statement? Who’d argue with their bank about it? Which bank would spend time investigating such a small dispute anyway? Next thing we know… thank you for choosing the Clone Savings Bank, citizen, you’ve invested wisely.”
Skirata nearly wept. He was tired, so his guard was down, and he was prone to emotion anyway, but this was shock and joy. Besany just put her head in her hands, maybe amused, but probably hyperventilating in horror. The poor kid was an auditor. She was supposed to hunt men like Jaing.
“Look, it’s not like I left any widows destitute,” Jaing said defensively. He must have misunderstood Skirata’s expression. “Shab, I didn’t even leave any rich Hutt starving. And I only hit Republic banks. It’s social taxation.”
“You’re… you’re… a genius,” Skirata managed at last.
“Thank you for noticing, Kal’buir.” Jaing looked up as Vau leaned over and shook his hand. “The really clever stuff is making it stealthy enough to defeat security programs.”
/> “And it’s been laundered?” Vau asked.
“Laundered, pressed, starched, new fastenings sewn on, and now it’s being reinvested. You want to know how much interest it’s earning per day, Kal’buir?”
“I’ll live with my current level of shock, thanks.”
“We now have a war chest.”
“I think I’ll join you in that suspected transient ischemia, Kal,” Gilamar said. He looked as ashen as Skirata felt. “Those numbers cut off the blood supply to my brain.”
They could now buy anyone or anything, and buy a lot of clones a new life if they wanted one. If those sorts of resources couldn’t also buy a solution to the genetic aging puzzle, nothing could.
Skirata would have slept well in what remained of the night, if only Darman and Etain had walked through those doors having made up and forgiven. He slept in a chair anyway, as he always did, and waited, dozing fitfully and watching.
The doors stayed closed.
Chapter Nine
Main computer control room, Treasury offices,
Coruscant,
0845 hours, 998 days ABG
Someone knows. I feel it. And I know someone single-minded is looking for information about the new clone army.—It’s not a secret I could have hidden, not an operation that big, but I didn’t need to. Beings believe what you tell them. They never check, they never ask, they never think. Tell them the state is menaced by quadrillions of battle droids, and they will not count. Tell them you can save them, and they will never ask—from what, from whom? Just say tyranny, oppression, vague bogeymen that require no analysis. Never specify. Then they look the other way when reality is right in front of them. It’s a conjuring trick. The key is distraction, getting them to watch your other hand. Only single-minded beings don’t join in the shared illusion, and keep watching you too closely. Single-minded beings are dangerous. And they either work for me, or they don’t work at all.
—Chancellor Palpatine, talking to his personal Republic Intel agents—known as his Hands