Triple Zero

  “I’ll try not to let you down,” she said.

  “You mean me?” said Skirata.

  And you, she thought.

  Safe house, Brewery zone,

  Coruscant Quadrant J-47,

  1000 hours, 371 days after Geonosis

  Skirata had been expecting the safe house to be in another seedy part of the city where unusual activity was part of the landscape.

  But Enacca had surpassed herself this time. The property was a small apartment in a refurbished quarter known as the Brewery; the construction droids were still working on some of the buildings, facing them with tasteful durasteel wrought-work. Zey was going to have a fit when he saw the bill for this one land on his desk.

  “I think that’s what our brothers might call kandosii,” Ordo said, bringing the speeder up to the landing platform. It had a discreet awning to shield it from view, although Coruscant was so traffic-packed that enemy surveillance from tall buildings—Skirata’s dread—was less of a threat than usual here. Lines of sight were frequently obscured. “I’ll be back later. Errands to run, Kal’buir.”

  When the lobby doors closed behind them, the constant throb and hum of Coruscant was completely silenced. Ah. Top-range soundproofing. Enacca was a very smart Wookiee. Vau’s job could be noisy. There was no point upsetting the neighbors in cheaper parts of town that had less efficient soundproofing.

  And it was the last place Orjul’s colleagues would come looking for him.

  Etain had her arms folded tightly across her chest, her light brown wavy hair scraped back in a braid except for the wiry bits that had escaped and sprung into coils. Even her new civilian clothes already looked as if she had slept in them. She had a veil of freckles and an awkward gait; just a schoolgirl armed with a lightsaber, nothing more.

  “You up to this, ad’ika?” Little one: Skirata slipped accidentally into being the reassuring father. But he reserved judgment. Like him, she might just have made a point of looking a lot less trouble than she actually was. “If not, walk away now.” And if she did, what would he have to do? She already knew dangerous numbers of people and places.

  “No. I’m not backing out now.”

  He thought she might suddenly reveal a powerful charisma or sweetness that would explain why this scrap of skin, bone, and unkempt hair had so riveted Darman. But she was just a kid, a Jedi kid with a lot of responsibility that showed in her young face and old eyes.

  Skirata pressed on the entry buzzer into the main apartment, and after a moment the doors whispered apart. The strong smell that hit him on the moist air reminded him of walking into a barn full of frightened animals. It was so distinctive that he almost didn’t notice the scent of the strill. But Mird was nowhere to be seen.

  Vau, sitting at the table, looked tired. He still seemed like a professor who wasn’t very happy with his class, but the physical effort showed in deeper lines from nose to mouth and the way he was drumming his fingers on the table in front of him. It was his trick for staying awake.

  The man who had his head resting on the same table in front of him didn’t look awake at all. Vau leaned forward and lifted the man’s head by his hair, peered into his face, and set him down carefully again.

  “You’re the relief watch, then, Jedi?” Vau got up and stretched extravagantly, joints clicking, and indicated the empty chair. “All yours.”

  Etain looked surprised. Skirata had expected her to register horror at the blood spatter on the otherwise pristine cream walls, but she just looked at Vau as if she was expecting to see someone else.

  “Where are the other two?” Skirata asked.

  “Nikto number one is M’truli, and he’s secured in the small bedroom.” Vau was perfectly polite: this was just business after all, and even Skirata felt too centered on the task at hand to resume their feud where it had left off. “Nikto number two is Gysk, and he’s in the study.”

  “Your tunic could do with a wash.”

  “It’s the little horns. You can’t punch a Nikto. Had to use something else.”

  Etain sat down in Vau’s seat and placed her hands flat on the table, still looking puzzled. Skirata leaned against the wall. Vau wandered into the ’fresher: water tinkled into a basin.

  “You want to tell me what you know,” Etain said soothingly. “You want to give me the names of the people you operate with.”

  Orjul twitched. He raised his head from the table with some difficulty and stared into her face for a second.

  Then he spat in it.

  Etain jerked back, visibly shocked, and wiped away the pink-stained spittle with one hand. Then she composed herself again.

  “Keep your stinking mind tricks to yourself, Jedi,” Orjul hissed.

  Skirata didn’t expect her to break at that point. And she didn’t: she simply sat there, although he knew it wasn’t blank inactivity. She had been trained from childhood just like the clone army, except the first weapon she seized would be her control of the Force and her ability to read it like clamoring comlink signals.

  Darman had told him. She could tell us apart right away by how we felt and thought, Sarge. Wouldn’t that be a handy trick to have?

  “Can I see the Nikto?” she asked suddenly.

  Vau came out of the ’fresher, wiping his face on a fluffy white towel. “Help yourself.” He gave Skirata a you-know-best look and unlocked the doors for her. “They’re securely trussed. You know we keep them from talking to each other, don’t you?”

  “I worked that out,” Etain said.

  She disappeared into one room for a minute and then came out and went into the other. When she emerged again, she walked up to Skirata and Vau and lowered her head.

  “I’m pretty sure those Nikto have no information, and know they don’t have it,” she said quietly.

  “People have useful information all the time and don’t know it,” Skirata said. “We piece the apparently useless stuff together and come up with connections.”

  “What I mean is that they have this distinct sense that they’re just afraid of dying.”

  Vau shrugged. “So much for Nikto grit, eh?”

  “Every creature avoids death. The difference is that Orjul is afraid of breaking. It feels different to me. It’s not animal dread. It’s not as deep in the Force.” Etain had her fingers meshed in that Jedi way that made her look as if she were wringing her hands. “I might as well concentrate on him. He has information he’s afraid to reveal.”

  They watched her walk the few meters back to the main room and settle down at the table opposite Orjul again and stare at him.

  Vau shrugged. “Oh well. At least I can have a nap while she’s minding the shop. Then I can get back to work with more tangible methods.”

  There was a sharp gasp from Orjul and Vau looked around. Whatever Etain was doing, she wasn’t even touching him. Just staring.

  “Kal, those people scare me more than Orjul does,” Vau said. “I’m just going to get my head down for a couple of hours. Wake me if she gets anywhere—or kills him, of course.”

  It was about 1030 in the morning, when people were going about mundane business in the city. It felt like an odd time of day to be conducting an interrogation. Skirata somehow felt they were always carried out in some permanent night.

  And Etain showed every sign of being up to the task.

  From time to time, she would lower her head as if to try to get a better view of Orjul’s expression while he sat facedown at the table, fingers knotted in his pale hair as if he had a blinding headache. Skirata wanted to ask her what she was doing to him but he was worried it would break her concentration.

  And she was fixed completely on the task in hand. Her blink rate had slowed so much that she appeared to be frozen, except for the pulse in her throat. Orjul would occasionally pant and squeal, writhing as if he were attempting to crawl into the very surface of the table.

  Skirata walked away and went to stare at the Nikto for a while. When he came back into the room, Orjul was making littl
e hiccuping sobs. Etain, face level with his, was talking quietly to him.

  “Can you see it, Orjul? Can you see what happens?”

  Skirata watched.

  “Orjul…”

  The man whined exactly like a strill, a thin animal noise. “I can’t…”

  “Fear of being wrong is worse than pain, isn’t it? It just eats you and you can’t shut it off. Are you right? Or are you as bad as the Republic you hate? Are we really the enemy, or are you? Look at the helpless pawns you kill.”

  So that was what she was doing. Skirata had wondered if she was using her Force powers to cause real physical pain. But she had cut to the chase and re-created the stuff that pain did to you anyway: it made you fear for your sanity long before your life.

  He had to hand it to her. It was nonlethal and not that far beyond the usual mind influence. Maybe she was struggling to find an ethical limit in her own mind. Maybe it was her own nightmare, the worst thing she could conceive.

  She kept it up for an hour. He had no idea whether she was suggesting terrible images and consequences in his mind, or if she was simply flooding him with adrenaline against his wishes, but whatever it was it was exhausting him and her with it. Eventually Orjul broke down sobbing, and Etain shuddered and looked disoriented as if coming out of a trance.

  Skirata grabbed Vau’s shoulder and shook him awake. “Get in there. She’s broken him down enough for you to finish the job.”

  Vau looked at his chrono. “Not bad. What’s up? Don’t want to let her face the real consequences?” “Just do it, will you?”

  Vau swung his legs off the bed and stalked into the main room to usher Etain from the chair and steer her and Skirata toward the doors. “Go and have some fizzade, Jedi.” He turned to Orjul, who was staring after Etain with wide-set eyes. “She’s just stepping out for some refreshment. She’ll be back later.”

  Skirata caught Etain’s elbow. He wasn’t used to grabbing small people: his lads were solid muscle, bigger and stronger than Etain. He felt as if he were clutching a kid’s arm. He sat her down on the little bench at the back of the landing platform and took out his comlink to call for transport.

  “No, I’m going back in,” said Etain.

  “Only if Vau calls us back.”

  “Kal…”

  “Only if he really needs you. Okay?”

  They were still waiting for Ordo to collect them when Etain flinched and then looked back at the lobby doors.

  They opened and Vau wandered out, rubbing his eyes. There was a distinctive tang of ozone clinging to him, like a discharged blaster.

  “Retail zone, Quadrant B-Eighty-five,” said Vau simply. He held out his datapad with coordinates. “But he hasn’t given me a date, if he knows one. He was supposed to drop the explosives off in the warehouse, and someone would be along to collect it. He never knew who.”

  Skirata sniffed the ozonic scent again and switched to Mando’a, although he was sure Etain had flinched because she had sensed what had happened.

  “Gar ru kyramu kaysh, di’kut: tion’meh kaysh ru jehaati?” You killed him, you moron: what if he was lying?

  Vau made an irritated pfft sound. “Ni ru kyramu Niktose. Meh Orjul jehaati, kaysh kar’tayli me’ni ven kyramu kaysh.” I killed the Nikto. If Orjul’s lying, he knows I’ll kill him.

  Orjul would be dead sooner or later anyway. No prisoners: not on this run. It was amazing how many people overlooked the inevitable while hoping for a way out.

  Etain said nothing. She almost bolted for the speeder when Ordo settled it down on the platform. Skirata settled beside her. She simply seemed subdued.

  “Result?” Ordo said calmly, helmet on the seat beside him, eyes straight ahead.

  “Potential drop-off location,” said Skirata. “Someone might be expecting to collect a stash of explosives. So we’d better have something ready for them to collect.”

  “Intel doesn’t suggest they’ve noticed the loss of the consignment yet.”

  “Well, if the cells are as isolated for security reasons as we think, then there’s nobody to notice for a while, is there?”

  “There’s the small matter of getting hold of a cache of explosives, but we could make this work for us.”

  “I can hear the cogs working, son.” Skirata patted Etain’s hand. “And you did fine, ad’ika.” Ordo glanced over his shoulder and then appeared to realize that Skirata meant Etain, not him, this time. There was no gender in Mando’a. “It’s never easy.”

  She accepted his touch without reaction, and then seized to his hand so tightly that he thought she was going to burst into tears or protest. But she maintained the façade of calm, except for that desperate grip on his hand. He had always been a soft touch for a desperate child’s grasp.

  “Sowing doubt is a very corrosive thing when you’re dealing with people who believe in causes,” said Etain.

  Skirata decided he’d have no trouble treating her as his daughter. He forgot his real, estranged daughter all too often. He’d enjoyed returning to little Ruusaan’s excited welcome, but each time he came home from a war, wherever home happened to be, she was unrecognizably older and less excited to see him, as if she didn’t know him at all.

  But I have sons.

  “That’s why I stick to causes nobody can take from me,” Skirata said.

  A Mandalorian’s identity and soul depended only on what lived within him. And he relied only on his brother warriors—or his sons.

  Chapter Ten

  Clone troopers are well disciplined. Even the Alpha-batch ARC troopers—surly though they are—are predictable, in the sense that Fett gave them precise orders that they continue to obey. But the commando batches are almost as unpredictable as the Nulls, and the Nulls are as good as being Skirata’s private army. That’s the problem with having intelligent clones trained by a ragbag of undisciplined thugs—they’ve turned out at best idiosyncratic, at worst disobedient. But they’ll probably win the war for us. Tolerate them.

  —Assessment of Republic Commando cadre by Director of Special Forces general Arligan Zey, explaining discrepancies in stores and armory inventory to General Iri Camas

  Qibbu’s Hut, entertainment sector

  —strike team operational house—

  early evening, 371 days after Geonosis

  “This is plain unnatural,” Boss said. He stood in front of the mirror. “I can’t help noticing what this body armor doesn’t cover.”

  “It covers your torso and thighs, and that’s where your major blood vessels and organs are.” Atin tugged at his tunic. They had all defaulted to GAR-issue fatigues, the standard red tunic and pants. Outside the barracks, the casual rig made Fi feel ludicrously naked. “That’s all you need. See? Doesn’t show under fabric.”

  “You can live without an arm,” Fi said. “They can always bolt on a new one.”

  “What about my head?”

  “Like I said, they can always replace nonessential parts.”

  Boss didn’t even look up from the inspection of his tunic. “I love this guy. He’ll make such great target practice.”

  He had a point: they were fighting without helmets. That was going to be tough. Everyone from clone trooper to ARC captain lived by his bucket. The buy’ce was a command and control center in itself.

  Fi picked up a coil of razor-sharp wire and stretched it out between his hands. Skirata had taught him to use this: a garrote, flicked around the neck—if your target had a neck—and pulled tight to slice or choke. There were all kinds of interesting devices and techniques that Skirata recommended. Other instructors had their own favorites, according to their commando training batches, but Kal’s were clearly close-range, personal ones. What was it he used to say? You need to be able to fight if you’re cornered in just your underpants, son. Nature gave you teeth and fists.

  Sergeant Kal sounded as if he knew exactly how that felt. He certainly knew his techniques.

  The main room at the top of the seedy hotel—hastily soundproofed wi
th a micro-anechoic coating over the walls and windows—was filling with jostling bodies. Jusik bounced in, clearly pleased with himself, and laid out a row of small beads and devices on the scratched black duraplast table. Atin wandered over and peered at the haul.

  “Where’d you get all that, Bardan?”

  Jusik trapped one of the beads on his fingertip and held it out to Atin. Fi moved in. Whatever it was, he wanted one, too. “ARC trooper aural stand-alone comlink. One each. No need for your buy’cese or anything too obvious—just stick it in your ear. Plus…” The Jedi took out a small transparent sac of what looked like powdered permaglass. “Tracking marker.”

  “Never seen it before.”

  “Brand new from the labs. It’s called Dust. Microscopic transmitters. Scattered on a battlefield for pretty much invisible monitoring. You never know when you might need it.”

  “You liberated all that from stores?” asked Fi.

  “And Procurement Development. It all ended up in my pockets somehow.”

  “Captain Maze is going to go spare.”

  “That’s okay. Ordo can explain the necessity to him later. He listens to Ordo.”

  “Where’s Skirata?” Sev asked. “Maybe they’re having trouble cracking the prisoners.”

  “Not Vau.” Fixer pocketed a comlink bead.

  “Why did he need Etain, then?”

  “Maybe to show her how it’s done.”

  Fi watched Darman bristle. He waited for his brother to say something, but Dar swallowed whatever retort was forming and went on fussing with the fit of the armor plates under his tunic. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he had a soft spot for Etain, but nobody teased him about it, either. It was one of those aspects of life that Skirata had taught them about, but that none of them entertained much hope of pursuing.

  It was easy back on Kamino, where the real world had never intruded—not beyond the risk of getting killed in training, of course. But the last nine months’ exposure to people outside the tight fraternity had made ordinary life feel much more dangerous than combat itself.