True Colors

  Vau pulled out the flamethrower, eased himself into a kneeling position, and opened the valve. Mird cocked its head, eyes fixed on the weapon.

  “Where’d you get that, Sarge?” Scorch asked.

  “Borrowed it from a flame trooper.”

  “Does he know?”

  “He won’t mind.”

  “That thing could melt droids.”

  “I was saving the fuel for a tight spot.” There was still no movement; Vau estimated that the patrol was still in the canyon, maybe looking for a way around behind them. The Muun who’d been injured was now silent—unconscious, or dead. “Like this. I should have a full minute’s fuel, so once I start—run. You too, Mird.” He gestured Mird toward the snowspeeder and pointed to the flamethrower. “Go, Mird. Follow Boss.”

  It was just a case of taking a blind run at it. I’m not as fast as I used to be. And I’m carrying too much. But a wall of flame was a blunt and terrifying instrument against almost any life-form. Vau struggled to his feet and ignited the flame.

  The roaring jet spat ahead of him as he drew level with the small pass where the Muun patrol was holed up; then the sheet of flame blinded him to what lay beyond it. He only heard the screams and saw the flash on icons across his HUD as Delta Squad sprinted for the idling snowspeeder. Vau backed away, counting down the seconds left of his fuel supply, ready to switch to his blaster when it ran out.

  Nobody was expecting a flamethrower on an ice patrol. Surprise was half the battle.

  Vau turned and ran, gasping for breath. Not a bad turn of speed for his age, not bad at all on ice and so heavily laden, and there was Mird ahead of him, having listened for once, and the speeder was coming about—

  And the ice opened up beneath him.

  It took him a moment to realize he was falling down a sloping tunnel and not just sinking into unexpected soft snow. Fixer called out, but even though the sound filled Vau’s helmet he didn’t catch what was said. The two bags of booty took him down.

  “Get clear!” Vau yelled, even though he had no need to with a helmet comlink. “That’s an order—”

  “Sarge, we can’t.”

  “Shut up. Go. If you come back for me—if anyone comes back—I’ll shoot you on sight.”

  “Sarge! We could—”

  “I raised you to survive. Don’t humiliate me by going soft.”

  I can’t believe I said that.

  Delta didn’t argue again. Vau was in semidarkness now, his HUD scrolling with the icons of Delta’s view of the ice field beneath the speeder as it lifted clear.

  “… party…” said a voice in his helmet, but he lost the rest of the sentence, and the link faded into raw static.

  The last thing I’ll ever say to them is—shut up. Noble exit, Vau.

  Mortal danger was a funny thing. He was sure he was going to die but he wasn’t terrified, and he wasn’t worried about more patrols. He was more preoccupied by what he’d fallen into: a vague memory came back to him. As he slid down a few more meters, trying to stop his fall with his heels more out of instinct than intent, a detached sense of curiosity prevailed: so this was what dying was actually like. Then he remembered.

  Mygeeto’s ice was honeycombed by tunnels—tunnels made by giant carnivorous worms. He came to rest with a thud on what felt like a ledge.

  “Osik,” he said. Well, if he wasn’t dead, he soon would be. “Mird? Mird! Where are you, verd’ika?”

  There was no answer but the crunching and groaning of shifting ice. But he still had the proceeds of the robbery strapped to him, both his goal and his fate.

  Vau wasn’t planning on dying just yet. He was now too rich to let go of life.

  Chapter Two

  Clone subjects in the study showed a more marked variation in biological age and genetic mutation than seen in naturally occurring zygotic twins. In the group of 100 cloned men aged 24 chronological years, and who could reasonably be expected to present as the equivalent of a 48-year-old uncloned human, key biomarkers showed a range from 34 to 65 years with a median of 53 years. Further research is needed, but exposure to battlefield contaminants and high levels of sustained stress appear to accelerate normal genetic mutation in men already designed to age at twice the normal rate. By the time Kamino clones reach the equivalent of their mid-40s, those mutations are very apparent and—like natural zygotics—they grow apart.

  —Dr. Bura Veujarij, Imperial Institute of Military Medicine, “Aging and Tissue Degeneration in Kaminoan-cloned Troops,” Imperial Medical Review 1675

  Republic Administration Block, Senate District,

  Coruscant,

  470 days after Geonosis

  “Can’t the cops shift them?” said the security guard on the main doors of the Republic Treasury offices. He stared past Treasury agent Besany Wennen—not something that many males managed—with an expression on his face that said he felt the protesters were messing up his nice tidy forecourt. “I mean, they’re Sep sympathizers, aren’t they? And the cops are just standing there, doing nothing.”

  Besany hadn’t missed the protesters. She’d taken a keen but discreet interest in them, in fact, because the war with the Separatists had become an intensely personal one for her. These were expatriate Krantians, protesting about the pounding that their neutral planet had taken in a recent battle.

  They’d taken up a position opposite what they saw as one of the centers of the war effort, the Defense Department administration building, where they seemed to think they might have some impact. Several government offices ringed the pedestrian concourse. Office workers had appeared at the windows to watch for a while, then returned to their desks because it wasn’t their war, not yet. They had an army to protect them.

  “They’re neutrals, actually,” Besany said. “So how would they protest to the Separatists?”

  The guard looked at her, visibly puzzled. Holoscreens dotted the wall behind him, giving him a view of every floor and corridor in the building. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re here because they’re allowed to be. Where would they go if they wanted to lobby the CIS?”

  The question seemed to have stumped the guard. He shrugged. “Want me to see you safely past them, ma’am?”

  “I don’t think they’re a threat, but thanks.” Besany wondered how she was going to spend the evening, but she knew what would occupy her: worrying about a Null ARC trooper captain called Ordo, a man she was too scared to contact because she had no idea if he was on a mission at any given moment, and if a message on his comlink would compromise his safety. “I’ll risk it.”

  She stepped out into Coruscant’s temperate, climate-controlled early-evening air and gave the small protest a wide berth. A couple of CSF officers in dark blue fatigues were watching the protest from a doorway; one acknowledged her with a nod. She couldn’t recognize him because the white riot helmet obscured too much of his face, but she’d had occasional contact with the Coruscant Security Force during investigations and they obviously found it easy to recognize her. She nodded back and clasped her bag more firmly under one arm.

  Life went on in Coruscant despite the war. The protest here was a small rock in a river of normality, and the current of office workers and shoppers parted around it on the concourse and merged again downstream as if nothing had ever interrupted their routine. Besany wondered if they would flow around her in the same oblivious way; she was another isolated outcrop of the war. Eighty-three days ago—she was an audit officer, and exact detail was her job—a Jedi general had shot her with a nonlethal round, and she’d been plunged into a small, close-knit community of special forces troops. It was a window on a world of war without rules, of anonymous heroism, and an extraordinary and totally unexpected affection.

  And it was her secret. Not even the Treasury knew about it.

  She’d done things that her Treasury bosses wouldn’t have taken at all well. Like giving critical data—passcodes, Treasury security overrides—to a commando sergeant; like falsifying her repor
ts to cover the fact that she’d let special forces move in on her investigation.

  It’s too late to worry about that now.

  Besany worried anyway. She walked briskly, anxious to get home and close the apartment doors behind her, another day when she hadn’t been arrested that she could check off on the calendar.

  It’s not like me at all. Taking a flier on trust.

  She wasn’t even aware of someone walking behind her. But a hand touched her shoulder, and she gasped. Guilt made her spin around to find she was staring into the reflective riot visor of one of the CSF cops.

  Her stomach churned. Oh no no no—

  “Agent Wennen,” he said. The accent was familiar. “Long time no see.”

  But she didn’t know him, she was sure.

  “You have the advantage, Officer.” Men hit on her a lot less than most people imagined. She knew she was striking, but she also knew that she was a daunting prospect because of it. Even Ordo—hugely confident, recklessly unafraid—treated her warily. Her good looks were a curse most of the time. “What can I do for you?”

  The cop stood with his fists on his hips. He didn’t look like he was going to draw his weapon. “Well, I know I’m not quite as unforgettable as my brother, but I thought you’d at least say, Hi, Mereel, how are things?”

  “Oh. Oh.” Mereel: one of Ordo’s five Null ARC brothers, Lieutenant Mereel. Besany’s gut lurched in a different way, and she didn’t bother to hide her relief. “I’m sorry, Mereel. Out of context…”

  “So you didn’t recognize me with my clothes on, then?” A couple of passersby turned to stare. He chuckled to himself. “I mean, the armor. Makes a guy look different. Anyway, what kind of covert operator would I be if I was that easy to spot? Come on, can’t stand here getting funny looks all night. Walk this way and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Okay.” And there she was again, just dropping everything and wandering off to do the bidding of a black ops unit. This wasn’t how the Treasury investigation team worked. She had rules. “Can I ask—”

  “Ordo’s fine and sends his best wishes. He’s doing a little job with Kal’buir at the moment.” Mereel might have been a clone, but he was as individual as any man. He didn’t walk like Ordo, and he didn’t talk like him. “I’ll try to teach him some social graces when he gets back. He’s got no idea how to treat a lady.”

  Besany strode along beside him, working on the basis that looking as if this was routine was the best way to avoid attracting attention. “I just want to know he’s safe.”

  “We’re soldiers. We’re never safe.”

  “Mereel…”

  “Look at it this way.” He headed for a CSF patrol speeder sitting on the public landing platform overlooking the sky-lane. “The other side’s in a lot more danger than we are.”

  Besany slid into the passenger’s seat and didn’t ask how he’d acquired the speeder and the uniform. CSF liked the Special Operations clones. Their anti-terrorism chief, Jaller Obrim, was very chummy with Sergeant Skirata, Kal’buir—Papa Kal. Favors were done and questions weren’t asked. Besany envied them that wonderful conspiratorial closeness. Kal’buir seemed to get away with murder.

  “Are you allowed to tell me how everyone is?” she asked.

  “You really do worry about us, don’t you?” Mereel steered the speeder toward her apartment block. She didn’t recall telling him where she lived. “Okay, Omega’s been deployed to the Outer Rim where someone needs a hand with regime change. Delta are helping out the Marines. Did I miss anyone?”

  Besany felt a pang of guilt. She had to ask about the first clone she’d ever met, the patient bomb disposal trooper who’d ended up with a temporary desk job after losing both hands. “How’s Trooper Corr coping with life as a commando?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s learning a few saucy tricks from my brother Kom’rk. Good man, Corr.”

  “And the two Jedi officers?”

  “Etain’s evacuating colonists from Qiilura, and Bard’ika—sorry, General Jusik is due back this week.” There were huge gaps in Mereel’s explanation: places and times vanished. He seemed to edit the sensitive detail smoothly as he went along. “Want to know about Vau? He’s with Delta. Nobody dead. Baffled, fed up, tired, lonely, bored, hungry, scared witless, even having fun, but not dead. Which is a plus.” The speeder climbed and darted between skylanes to veer around the front of her apartment block. Yes, Mereel definitely knew exactly where she lived: he set the speeder down on the right platform, on her balcony, and opened the hatches. “So, are you still up for doing us a few favors? Without your bosses finding out?”

  Mereel was the front line of a war that most Coruscanti never saw and weren’t fighting. Besany asked herself, as she had on that first night, whether her tidy little rules mattered more than a man’s life. Mereel slipped his helmet off and sat looking at her expectantly—Ordo, and yet not Ordo, and Corr, too. Corr’s existence—she had no other word for it, and it summed up so many aspects of a clone’s life—had upended her, left her feeling upset, angry, betrayed, and, yes, guilty. Her government might have let her down as a citizen and an employee, but it had totally betrayed this slave army.

  I’m letting emotion get in the way. But isn’t emotion the way we can tell what’s really right and wrong?

  “Let’s talk,” she said.

  Mereel walked around her apartment with a comm scan, checking for surveillance devices. “Can’t be too careful. But then you know all about this game, being a Treasury spook.”

  “You’d be amazed how seriously people try to avoid financial regulation.”

  “I would.” He hesitated by her sofa as if he might sit down, but stayed standing as if he remembered he wasn’t allowed on the furniture. He looked her over. “And you’re still not armed. You need to do something about that.”

  “Well—”

  “Simple question. Are you willing to do some investigation for us?”

  “What kind of investigation?”

  “Defense expenditure and budget forecasts.”

  It couldn’t be that simple. “Those are public documents anyway.”

  “I don’t think all the details I need are in them.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s very sensitive stuff. Might involve the Chancellor’s office.”

  Besany felt her scalp tighten as adrenaline flooded her bloodstream. She didn’t feel she could sit down, either, not now. “Can you narrow down what I might be looking for? Procurement fraud? Bribes?”

  “You might well find that,” said Mereel, “but I’m more interested in transactions involving Kamino, and the payment schedules.”

  Besany couldn’t imagine anything that would turn up except fraud—or maybe the Republic was arming someone it claimed it wasn’t. The investigator in her told her to ask more questions, but the public servant within asked if she really needed or wanted to know more this time.

  “I can drill right down to the individual credit transfers,” she said at last. “Which might give you so much information that it takes you nowhere.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m good at collation.”

  She took a breath. She was in it up to her neck now. A few more centimeters wouldn’t make much difference. “Why are you trusting me with this?”

  “Well, for a start, I know where you live.” Mereel smiled with genuine humor, but she’d also seen how fast earnest, polite Ordo could snap into being an assassin without a second thought. “And we don’t take prisoners. But our lives could depend on that information, which is what really makes the difference to you. Isn’t it?”

  It was an ethical choice between rules or lives, and rules didn’t always translate into what was right. “You know it is.”

  “Then we’d be especially interested in any evidence of planned payments to Kamino for more clones beyond, say, the end of the next financial year. Or not.”

  Besany guessed that this was the point at which she ought to have decided she had no need to know more. “O
kay. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Mereel shrugged. “That I took a big risk getting the information that led me to ask you for more information.”

  “What’s Kal’s view on this?” She didn’t even have to ask if Kal Skirata knew. The Nulls didn’t seem to take a breath without asking him first. Their allegiance was to him, not the Republic; but while she could understand the power of his aggressive charisma, she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. “And what happens if I get caught?”

  “One—he trusts you,” Mereel said, deadpan. “Two? They’ll probably shoot you.”

  He wasn’t joking now. She knew it.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll make a start in the morning. How do I contact you?”

  “Comlink.” He held out his hand, and she dropped her comlink into his palm. Then he cracked open the case, frowned at the device’s entrails, and took out a tiny tool kit that looked like a toy in his palm. “Once I’ve made it secure… dear oh dear… ma’am, tell me you haven’t called Ordo on this.”

  “No, I haven’t.” She felt useless and naïve. “I thought it might compromise his safety.”

  Mereel looked up for a moment, eyebrows raised. “Right answer. That’s why we trust you.” He prodded and poked inside the comlink for a while and then snapped the case shut again. “Totally secure now, at least once you use the prefix I’m going to give you. You can even call Ordo.”

  “He might be defusing a bomb or something when I call.” Besany always thought things through in meticulous sequence, which made her all the more horrified to see how easily she took this dangerous leap of faith. “I’ll wait for him to call me, thanks.”

  “See? Kal’buir said you had the right stuff.”

  “Common sense.”

  “Got a sister?”

  “No.”

  “Shame.” He replaced his helmet and suddenly became just another Galactic City cop. “Anyway, got to go. Any message for Ordo?”