“Bard’ika, if you ever want a father, then you have one in me,” Skirata said.
It was the highest compliment he could pay him: he was fit to be his son. Jusik might not have fully understood Mandalorian culture yet, but he certainly grasped the sentiment if his embarrassed glance down at the floor and the broad grin were any guide.
Boss gave Skirata a cautious glance. “Does that mean we get to use your Verp rifles?”
“You’re such a pushover for fancy kit,” Skirata said.
“They’re the business, Sarge… kandosii!”
“But you bend them, and I’ll bend you. They cost me a fortune, and they do not bounce.”
“How you going to get the caliber of those marker pellets right, though, Bardan?” Sev said.
“Multicaliber magazine and bore,” Skirata said. “You could load these Verps with stones if you needed to. That’s what cost the money. That and the full-spectrum range of filters, variable velocity, and anti-reflective device.”
“Kandosii,” Sev said, almost sighing. “Shame you didn’t pay a bit extra to make them more robust.”
“Cheeky di’kut… okay, I reckon you’re good enough to use them. Take a look.”
Skirata went to the cupboard and slid out one of the precious rifles, disassembled into three discrete parts: thirty-centimeter barrels, matte drab green, silent, horribly accurate, and Jaing’s weapon of choice for going hiking with extreme prejudice, as he described it. Sheer ballistic beauty. An assassin’s tool: a craftsman’s tool.
He hadn’t seen Jaing in months. He missed him. He missed all the Nulls badly when they were on long, distant missions.
Boss and Sev fondled the rifles and beamed. Even Fixer looked happy. The Delta boys didn’t respond to food treats and pats on the head, then, but they loved new toys and praise. Skirata noted that.
“I need accurate ranges from your recce,” Jusik said. “I’ve got to pack the Dust into a medium that’ll stay together until it’s right at the target, or the stuff will disperse too soon. This has to splatter them close to the face so they inhale it, or it’ll just sit on their clothing. If they dump their jackets, we’ll lose them.”
“Fun,” Sev said, and obviously meant it.
Vau got up and wandered out toward the landing platform, no doubt to fuss over Lord Mirdalan before the slobbering thing did a real job for once in its life. When he was out of earshot, Boss turned to Skirata.
“Sargeant Vau loves that animal. Don’t let anything happen to it. Please.”
“I won’t. It knows I carry a knife.”
Corr, who had been the subject of much fussing and attention since Jusik had brought him back to Qibbu’s, watched cautiously. Skirata ruffled his hair. He flinched. “Sorry about all this, son. Learning a lot?”
“Yes, Sargeant.”
“Want to be useful? I mean even more useful than you are now?”
“Yes. Please.”
Poor little di’kut. Skirata fought the urge to collect another damaged young boy, another stray in need of belonging, and lost immediately. He had been that orphan, and a soldier had rescued him.
“Dar, give him a crash course in using a DC-17, will you?”
Boss and Sev slid the discreet body armor plates under their tunics and checked their hand blasters. “Just off for a recce of the location, then,” Boss said. “Back in two hours, and then I suggest we insert as soon as possible so we’re there before the bad guys.”
“What makes you think they won’t be doing the same right now?” Etain said.
“Because it looks like a very hard location to lay up in for any length of time, and we’re pros, and they’re not,” said Boss. “So they’ll probably go in closer to the rendezvous time.”
Skirata made a point of looking around the group so that he could see the reaction of the two Jedi. Both of them were very capable warriors but assassination—killing someone who was not about to kill you—was psychologically very different from using a lightsaber or blaster in combat.
The silent excitement that had gripped the room was palpable.
“Gentlemen—ma’am—this is a shoot-to-kill operation,” he said. “Not arrest. We want as many hut’uune identified, located, and dead by any means possible at the end of this deployment. Nothing else. We’re cutting out a big chunk of this network in one slice. Are we all clear that’s what we’re doing?”
“Yes Sarge!”
It was one voice. And Jusik and Etain were part of it.
That was good. Anyone who hesitated would get the rest of the strike team killed, or worse.
“Okay, recce team, move out,” Skirata said. “And don’t you dare drop my Verps.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mandalorians are surprisingly unconcerned with biological lineage. Their definition of offspring or parent is more by relationship than birth: adoption is extremely common, and it’s not unusual for soldiers to take war orphans as their sons or daughters if they impress them with their aggression and tenacity. They also seem tolerant of marital infidelity during long separations, as long as any child resulting from it is raised by them. Mandalorians define themselves by culture and behavior alone. It is an affinity with key expressions of this culture—loyalty, strong self-identity, emphasis on physical endurance and discipline—that causes some ethnic groups such as those of Concord Dawn in particular to gravitate toward Mandalorian communities, thereby reinforcing a common set of genes derived from a wide range of populations. The instinct to be a protective parent is especially dominant.
They have accidentally bred a family-oriented warrior population, and continue to reinforce it by absorbing like-minded individuals and groups.
—Mandalorians: Identity and Its Influence on Genome, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology
Logistics center,
Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ,
0815 hours, 384 days after Geonosis
This was no place for a fighting man to be when his brothers were out in the field, but Ordo reasoned that the faster he identified and neutralized the informant, the sooner he could leave this office job.
“Clone,” the Nimbanel voice said. The creature was riding him today. It was a bad idea—normally. “Clone! Have you input the overnight batch of data yet?”
I know at least ten ways to kill you without a weapon, lizard. I’d like to try them all.
“Yes, Guris,” Ordo said, being nice, compliant Corr. “I have.”
“Then you should have told me immediately.”
Ordo heard Skirata’s constant admonishment in his head and kept his temper: Udesii, udesii, ad’ika—easy, easy, son. This clerk wasn’t fit to clean Corr’s boots. He certainly wasn’t fit to clean his.
“My apologies,” Ordo said, acting the calm man that he definitely wasn’t right then. “It won’t happen again.”
Besany Wennen raised her head from her screen very slowly. She was distressingly pretty. The symmetry of her features made him uncomfortable because he wanted to stare, and his male instinct said pursue, but his brain said suspect.
“Guris, if you have a concern about data management, may I suggest you raise it with me first?” The warmth in her voice had disappeared completely. The frequency dropped as her lips compressed. Ordo could see her in his peripheral vision: she had a way of switching off that vivid smile and just freezing for a few moments. This was someone used to obedience in those around her. “Trooper Corr is doing what I asked of him.”
Ordo had no idea if that was true or if she was saving him embarrassment. He managed a placatory smile anyway. Watching Corr last night had honed his act a little more.
As he worked, inputting vessel pennant codes and supply routes into the program that fed the wall display, he pondered on the one solid piece of information he had. The advance schedule for movements of men and matériel was stripped out to provide confirmation messages. One internal stream went to GAR logistics battalions and Fleet Ops, and one external stream was
relayed to the thousands of civilian contractors who provided supplies and transport. The two sets of data were different.
So this had to be the data that was left on a chip at the drop point within the complex—the one that Vinna Jiss had helpfully described to Vau whether she wanted to or not. The bomb attacks had been spread throughout the contractor and military supply networks; whoever executed the attacks had both sets of data.
And copying data showed no audit trail. Relaying data from the system did. And that was what routine security watched. Old tech beat state-of-the-art with depressing frequency.
All Ordo had to do now was watch the surveillance images of the drop point at the female ’freshers. So far it had picked up nothing. He had no idea how frequently the Separatist contact—and he had to assume it was one—checked the locker, but nobody had shown up. Maybe they hadn’t missed Jiss yet.
It was nearly noon when Supervisor Wennen got up and left the operations room. On a whim, Ordo laid his helmet on its side on the desk next to him at an angle where he could discreetly view the feed from the ’freshers playing out on his HUD.
Wennen was not the kind of woman who belonged here. Some uneasiness told him so. Kal’buir had told him that a strong hunch was usually based on subconscious observation of hard facts, and was to be treated with respect.
The grainy blue image showed Wennen entering the ’freshers. She didn’t glance around. She paused at the lockers, scanned along them with her head moving visibly, tucked a strand of pale hair behind one ear, and bent to open several unlocked doors until she appeared to tire of it and left again. She reappeared in the ops room a minute later and gave him a regretful smile that appeared utterly sincere.
Something had irked her.
Ah, Ordo thought, disappointed.
Then he wondered why he felt that disappointment, and realized it was due to impulses unconnected to the business in hand. And business, of course, had just taken a turn for the better.
His shift finished when hers did, at 1600.
He would spend the next few hours working out exactly how to remove her without alerting any other Separatist contacts that might be in her cell. He wanted them all.
1100 hours, 384 days after Geonosis,
commercial zone, Quadrant N-09:
agreed meeting point to open negotiations with interested parties
“Lazy chakaare,” Fi said, glancing at his chrono. “What time do they call this?”
“Well, if they got here before us and we can’t see ’em… we’re probably dead meat.”
Darman was somewhere on the opposite side of the Bank of the Core Plaza, three floors above the pedestrian area in a storeroom he had infiltrated. Fi couldn’t see him, but his voice was clearly audible in his head: the bead comlink was so sensitive that it picked up subvocalization via the eustachian tube.
They’d been here since 2330 last night. They had observed and noted every cleaning droid, automated walkway sweeper, late worker, early-morning commuter, shopper, drunk, CSF foot patrol, delivery repulsor, unlicensed caf vendor, and truant schoolkid that had passed in and out of the plaza from any direction. They had also swept the cliff walls of office buildings and—to Fi’s great interest—noted that some employees did not catch up with the filing after hours if they had colleagues of the opposite sex with them.
And every couple of hours, Etain Tur-Mukan had walked briskly across the plaza as if she had business somewhere, sweeping the area with whatever extra sense Jedi had that enabled them to detect concealed people. Etain was said to be good at that. She could place the squad to within a meter. Each time she passed, Fi heard Darman move or swallow, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he could see her or because she was reaching out to him in the Force.
Fi suddenly wanted the uncomplicated focus of a totally military life on Kamino.
You’re getting distracted. Think of the job in hand. Maybe they’d let him keep the bead comlink after this op. They’d never miss a few back at HQ. Surely.
“I want my HUD back,” Darman said. “I want my enhanced view.”
“But you get to wear face camo instead. Makes you feel wild and dangerous.”
“I’m wild,” Sev’s voice said. Sev was behind a roof balustrade under a pile of discarded plastoid sheeting. “And then I get dangerous. Shut up.”
“Copy that,” Fi said cheerfully, and clicked his back teeth twice to exit Sev’s open comlink channel. It was far too noisy an environment for their quiet conversation to be heard anyway. “Miserable di’kut.”
“Don’t mind him.” Scorch was at walkway level about fifty meters west of the meeting point, lying prone in a disused horizontal access shaft. “He’ll be fine once he’s killed something.”
Darman had a Verpine rifle with live rounds, as did Sev. Fi and Scorch had the nonlethal tracking projectiles, twelve rounds each. The Verp was truly lovely. Fi had always wondered just how many credits Sergeant Kal had made over the years. His growing collection of expensive, exotic weapons and the modest extravagance of his bantha jacket were the only visible signs that it might have been a lot.
“Dar—”
“Possible contact, first walkway level, my left of the bank entrance…”
Fi adjusted his scope and tracked right. It was a boy he’d seen before: human, very short scrubby light hair, gangly. He was still hanging around the plaza. If he was a Sep, he was a disgracefully amateurish one. They watched for a few minutes, and then a young girl in a bright yellow tunic raced up to the boy and flung her arms around him. They kissed enthusiastically, drawing glances from passersby.
“I think he knows her,” Fi said. He felt his face burn. It bothered him and he looked away.
“Well, that’s just you and Niner left on the shelf now that your brothers are spoken for,” Scorch said.
There was a pause. Darman cut in. “You got a point to make, ner vod?”
“I think it’s kind of encouraging.” Scorch chuckled. “Atin gets a cute Twi’lek, Dar gets his very own general—”
“—and Scorch gets a thick ear if he doesn’t shut it right now.”
The comlink was suddenly silent except for the occasional sound of swallowing. Darman wasn’t in a joking mood when it came to Etain. He never had been, not even on Qiilura, when there hadn’t been anything going on between them.
Why is this hurting so much? Why do I feel I’ve been cheated?
Kal’buir, why didn’t you prepare me for this?
It was too distracting. Fi shut his eyes for a few moments and went into the sequence he had learned to center himself when the battlefield pressed in on him: controlled breathing, concentrating on nothing except the next inhalation, ignoring everything that wasn’t of the next moment. It took a while. He shut out the world.
Then he found that he had his eyes open without even realizing and he was simply following movement on the plaza below through the breathtakingly accurate scope of the Verpine rifle.
“Now, do we get the best kit or what?” he said, becoming the confident man he wanted to be again. “Name me another army where you get handcrafted Verps to play with.”
“The Verpine army,” Scorch said.
“Do they have an army?”
“Do they need one?”
Silence descended again. At 1150 Sev cut into the comlink circuit. “Stand by. Kal’s moving into position.”
Skirata wandered into the plaza from the direction of the Senate with Jusik one on side and an excited Lord Mirdalan straining on a leash on the other. He was doing a credible job of looking as if the strill were his constant companion. The animal seemed remarkably content with him, given the number of times Skirata had driven it off or thrown his knife at it over the years. Maybe the riot of strange new scents had thrilled the strill enough that it didn’t much care that the man who usually shouted at it was holding the leash. Fi watched as they took up a position near the door, sitting down on an ornate durasteel seat shaped like a bow.
Skirata’s voice came
over the comlink circuit.
“How’s my boys?”
“Cramp, Sarge,” Darman said. “And Fi’s dribbling over your Verpine.”
“He can clean it, then. Ready?”
“Ready.”
At 1159 a human male in his forties—green casual tunic, brown pants, collar-length brown hair, beard, tall, lean build—walked toward Skirata and Jusik in a purposeful line. Fi tracked him.
“Got him, Fi,” Darman said. If anything went wrong, the man would be dead in a fraction of a second from a silent high-kinetic round in his back.
“Escort,” Sev said. “Looks like three… no, four. Three male, one female, all human… one male twenty meters south of Darman. Spread out but all moving toward Skirata.”
“Got him.”
“Got the female,” Scorch said.
“You sure they’re with the Beard?”
“Yeah, check their eyeline, Fi. They’re watching him, nothing else. They’re pretty cool about it but they’re obviously not professionals. They shouldn’t even be looking his way.”
Etain’s voice cut in. “There’s another female approaching slowly on the Senate side of the bench. I’m moving in behind her so you can spot her.”
Sev cut in. “Any more?”
“I can only sense four others plus the man approaching Kal.”
“Aww, look. They’ve taken up positions to block the main pedestrian routes off the plaza. Thank you! I love a target that identifies itself.”
“I hope this doesn’t turn into a shooting match,” Scorch said. “Too many civvies.”
“I can get a clear shot,” Sev said. “And I can take at least three out from here. Relax. You just worry about tagging ’em.”
Tagging. Would they feel it?
Fi dropped in an EM filter with a touch on the optics housing. He focused the scope on the woman now standing almost under Darman’s position by the walkway heading toward Quadrant N-10: shoulder-length red hair, blue business suit, tan leather document bag. The filter detected electromagnetic emissions, which made it not only handy for locating someone operating a comlink but also just perfect for seeing if Dust had hit its target. It cast a pinkish brown tinge across the image.