Triple Zero

“I swear I’ll never do it again.”

  “Ordo will never trust you now.”

  “But it only stopped him for a—”

  “—a fraction of a second that could get him killed. You just used him. Like all the aruetiise do.”

  Skirata was furious: even in the dim light on the platform she could see that the skin of his neck was flushed, that telltale sign of strong reaction. In the last few weeks Etain sometimes felt that he saw her as the personification of the Republic, using his men for their own agenda, and that she was a handy target on which to vent his spleen. He didn’t seem to view Jusik the same way, though.

  Exploitation was a raw nerve in Skirata. Etain desperately wanted him to like her and make her feel like family, the way he did everyone else.

  “I’ll apologize to Ordo.”

  “Yeah, it really is him you need to make your peace with.”

  She wondered why she hadn’t realized that to start with. Do I really see them as men? Do I regret angering Ordo, or do I just want to be Skirata’s little girl? She turned on her heel and decided to confront it.

  Ordo was having a tense conversation via his bead comlink, forefinger pressed to his ear. Jusik fiddled with some piece of circuitry, glancing up at him from time to time. The side of the conversation that Etain could hear suggested that someone on Zey’s staff wasn’t moving as fast as Ordo wished.

  Jusik mouthed Captain Maze at her.

  She waited. Ordo grunted. “I’ll stand by.” He shook his head and turned to her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Ordo, I owe you an apology. I was wrong to use the check command and you’re right to be angry with me.”

  He just nodded. It still surprised her that a man who was physically identical to Darman could somehow look so different.

  “I realize you had a bad deal, Ordo.”

  “On Kamino?”

  “Even now, I think.”

  Ordo blinked a couple of times as if she wasn’t making sense. She had no idea where his mind ranged in those split seconds other than that he felt like a flurry of activity in the Force.

  “I didn’t have a mother or a father, but a stranger willingly chose me to be his son. You had a mother and father, and they let strangers take you. No, General, don’t pity me. You’re the one who’s had the worse deal.”

  It was shocking and it was true. The extraordinary clarity of his assessment hit her so hard that she almost gasped. It told her things she didn’t want to know about herself. None of them changed her intentions. But she knew her motives better now, uncomfortable as they were.

  She wondered if her real parents ever thought of her.

  She would never know.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Withdraw from Qiilura? If that’s what it takes to keep the Gurlanins from turning on us, it’s a price we were going to pay anyway. We’re too thinly stretched to maintain the garrison, and the Senate has no interest on continuing to support a mere two hundred thousand farmers on a backworld. Let me talk to Jinart and reassure her.

  The damage her people can do is enormous—far beyond the scope of one anti-terror operation.

  And we need them on our side.

  —General Arligan Zey, to General Iri Camas and the chair of the Senate Committee on Refugees

  The Kragget all-day restaurant,

  lower levels, Coruscant,

  0755 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

  Jinart the Gurlanin had kept her word and provided the information she had promised—and no more. Zey appeared to have kept his. The sleek black predator had slipped out into the Coruscant night and vanished.

  But Skirata would always feel that she was standing right next to him in some guise or another. Like the Jedi, her hypernatural abilities—especially telepathy—made him wary and suspicious.

  But she could only sense the thoughts of her own kind, they said. Like that’s some kind of comfort.

  Skirata finished his eggs, rubbed his hand across his chin, and realized he needed to shave again. But things that had seemed crushingly impossible in the early hours of the morning looked a lot more encouraging on a full stomach in broad daylight.

  “Gurlanins on the loose?” Jaller Obrim’s voice was almost a groan. “That’s all we need.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be one of the best-kept secrets of the war, I reckon.”

  “You believe them?”

  “That they might be everywhere? You have to, Jaller. And I can’t lose any sleep over a few Qiiluran farmers.”

  They sat side by side, looking out toward the walkway through the Kragget’s grimy transparisteel front. Neither of them were men who wanted to sit with their backs to any door. Obrim leaned in a little toward him.

  “So do you want us to pick up the suspects the Gurlanin identified?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Is this where my eyesight and hearing fail again?”

  “Right now, you can’t even see me, let alone hear me,” said Skirata.

  “Okay. Organized Crime Unit isn’t happy, but they understand the words armed special forces really well.”

  “It was OCU in the plaza, then?”

  “I gather so.”

  “How did they end up there?”

  “Your friend Qibbu uses well-worn channels of communications in the scum strata of society. OCU isn’t stupid and it isn’t deaf.”

  “Ah.” There is no monopoly of information. Skirata’s happily full stomach chilled a little. Obrim showed no signs of being smug. But he was almost certainly aware that Skirata was planning a sting operation involving explosives. “So they knew who the Seps were and didn’t bother to—”

  “No. That wasn’t the route.”

  “What, then?”

  “They were carrying out surveillance on a known criminal and that criminal happened to meet up with one of the group that you were watching. Message boy, one chance encounter.” Obrim picked a chunk of smoked nerf from Skirata’s plate and crunched on it thoughtfully. “You just be careful. I hate finding friends on the slab in the morgue.”

  Apart from Jusik, Obrim was one of the few nonclones Skirata felt he might be able to trust completely one day. He was still undecided on Etain. While he didn’t doubt her sincerity, she had an emotional, impulsive streak of the kind that got people killed.

  Like you. You’re a fine one to talk.

  “Your boys okay?”

  “Tired, edgy, but giving it all they’ve got. One of ’em has sworn to gut Vau, another is having a love affair with a woman he shouldn’t even look at, I’m collecting waifs and strays like an animal shelter, and we nearly killed a Treasury agent. But if I told you the really bad stuff, you’d think I had problems.”

  Obrim laughed raucously. “And people think they’re good little droids…”

  “Discipline apart, they’re still lads.”

  The Twi’lek waitress topped up their caf and smiled alluringly. “Where’s your son today?”

  “At the office, sweetheart,” Skirata said. “Won’t I do instead?”

  Her lekku coiled ever so slightly but he didn’t have a clue what it meant. She glided away, glancing back to smile again. Obrim sniggered. “I see Ordo made an impression.”

  “They all have this naïve streak about them. It’s fatally charming, apparently. Youth, muscle, heavy weapons, and a trusting expression. Maybe I should try it.”

  “Forty years too late.”

  “Yeah.”

  And then Skirata’s communicator chirped. He lifted his wrist as close to his mouth as he could. Even in a restaurant full of police officers, he took few chances.

  “We like what we see,” said a voice with a Jabiimi accent.

  It was interesting how accents were more noticeable over a comlink. Skirata, still looking toward the walkway, scanned his field of view without moving his head. He was sure he hadn’t been followed—but this was a bad place to be spotted if he had. “It’s not noon yet.”

  “I know, Kal. We’re keen.”

  “What ne
xt?”

  “Can you get to the bank plaza again in half an hour? I can’t locate your comlink signal. But then I can understand why you’re a very cautious man.”

  Too right, you chakaar. Bard’ika went to a lot of trouble to make me invisible. Skirata was ten minutes by speeder bike from the plaza. “I can just about make it if I hurry.”

  “This is just for a conversation. Be there, and don’t bring anyone else.”

  The comlink went dead. Obrim chewed, silent, but his look said it all.

  Skirata reached in his pocket and put some credits on the table to cover the bill. “You’re deaf and blind, remember?”

  Obrim pushed the credits back at him. “You pick up the tab next time.”

  It was his good-luck ritual. Obrim seemed to hope that by saying it, he’d ensure there was a next time.

  Skirata had every intention of making sure there would be.

  Lower level, skylane 348,

  0820 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

  Skirata kept the speeder at a steady pace and looped back on himself a couple of times. There was no reason to expect anyone to be following him, but he assumed it anyway. The maneuver also padded out the ten-minute journey to a credible half hour.

  No point being too early.

  His ankle was agony today.

  “Bard’ika, how are you doing?”

  Jusik’s voice came over the comlink. “We’ve tracked a target moving to the plaza from the house that Fi and Sev recce’d. I think that confirms it’s Perrive.”

  “But he won’t come alone.”

  “So that means he’ll probably have minders nearby that we haven’t tagged. New ones.”

  “Fine.”

  “Vau’s on his way,” Jusik said. “They won’t recognize him.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m already there.”

  “Fierfek. He knows you. Wait for orders—”

  “Trust me, he won’t see me at all.”

  “Stand down. Get out of there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it. And I’m going off the comlink now, unless I hit real problems.”

  He shut the link, exasperated. But it was his own fault. You couldn’t delegate that much to a kid and then expect him to read your mind and work out when he was supposed to wait for specific orders again.

  And he was a Jedi, after all. He could take care of himself.

  Skirata pushed a bead comlink into his ear and brought the speeder down in the public parking area. Enacca said she was fed up collecting abandoned speeders from around the city, and wanted to know why they couldn’t bring their vessels and vehicles back with them every time. The logistics of operations like this depended on a lot of grim drudgery. He’d have to sweeten her up somehow when all this was over.

  Out in the plaza, by the bench where he had awaited the Separatists the day before, stood Perrive.

  He was busy looking like an executive waiting for a colleague: suit, document case, polished shoes. Skirata walked up to the man as briskly as he could with a complaining ankle.

  “Okay, what’s the deal?” Skirata said. He tried to focus on Perrive and not look over his shoulder for possible threats or—to be precise—Walon Vau. “I can get you the dets in twenty-four hours.”

  “Let’s discuss this somewhere less crowded.”

  Those were often the worst words to hear at times like this. “Where?”

  “Follow me.”

  Fierfek. He hoped Vau was watching him or Jusik was monitoring the conversation carefully. If Perrive moved too far out of the comlink’s limited mike range, he’d have to make stupidly obvious comments to clue them in. Perrive didn’t strike him as quite that naïve, even if his surveillance team was some way short of professional.

  If Vau was here, Skirata couldn’t see him.

  But that was the point, and Vau was a very skilled operator.

  Skirata followed Perrive across the plaza and back to the speeder parking area, a few moments that made him glad that he had a limp. It gave Vau, he hoped, a little more time to work out what was happening. Perrive stood looking around, and a shiny new green speeder with a closed cabin rose from below the level of the parking platform and maneuvered sideways to set down.

  Ah well, Skirata thought. I’d have done the same. But Perrive’s lungs are coated with marker Dust, and Jusik can track this crate all the way.

  “Off you go,” Perrive said.

  “You’re not coming, too?” Oh no, no, no. Why didn’t I dose myself with some of that di’kutla Dust? “Forgive me if I get nervous about the quality of your associates’ driving.”

  “Don’t worry. All they’ll do is blindfold you. Keep whatever weapons I’m sure you’re carrying. I’ll see you at our destination.”

  Skirata had no choice but to get in. Two human males—both about thirty, one shaven-headed, one with thin blond hair scraped back in a tail, neither of them the hired help they had tagged yesterday—sat in the front seat, and the bald one leaned over to place a black fabric bag over his head in total silence. Skirata folded his arms to feel the comfort of his assorted hardware in his sleeve, holster, and belt.

  “Well, this is fun,” he said, hoping for a display of verbal stupidity that might help Jusik locate him.

  But neither man responded. He didn’t expect them to.

  Concentrate on the movement. Work out the direction.

  Skirata tried to count the number of times they seemed to swing right or left to get some idea of the route. They were in an automated skylane, so he could count the seconds and try to calculate the distance between turns, but it was a massive task. Ordo, with his faultless memory, would have had the skylane network memorized and calculated the times and distances at the same time. But Skirata was not a Null ARC trooper, just a smart and experienced soldier whose natural intelligence had been sharpened by having to cope with six hyperintelligent small boys.

  He had no idea where he was. The speeder continued toward either a nerve-racking deal that would take them a step closer to striking at the heart of this Separatist network, or a lonely death.

  Service tunnel beneath skylane 348,

  0855 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

  “Bard’ika, you’ll never need to shave again when Kal catches you,” Fi said.

  “You seriously think I’m not going to follow him?” Jusik raced Ordo’s Aratech speeder bike along the service tunnel that ran parallel to the skylane serving the southern edge of the plaza. Fi decided that Ordo had no sense of danger if he was happy to ride pillion with the Jedi at speeds approaching five hundred kph. But then the man was nuts anyway. Fi held on to the handgrip behind him for grim death. “Vau, can you still hear me?”

  The comlink was breaking up, but audible. “I’m a few vehicles behind Perrive. He’s transmitting like a Fleet beacon.”

  “Where’s he heading?”

  “Looks like Quadrant N-Oh-Nine.”

  “What’s there besides offices and residential?”

  “That’s about it. Stand by.”

  Jusik made an irritated grunt that he seemed to have picked up from Sev and accelerated. At times like this Fi had passed beyond the first flush of adrenaline and into a cold and rational world where everything made sense to his body if not to his brain. He found an instinctive sense of effortless balance as Jusik wove through the ducts, clearing some of the transverse durasteel joists by a breath. Speed no longer felt like conscious fun, as it had in training, but he was beyond fear for himself at that moment.

  All he could think of was Sergeant Kal.

  “He can take care of himself,” Jusik said. “He’s packing more weapons than the Galactic Marines.”

  “Are you telepathic?” The thought disturbed Fi, because his mind was the only private retreat he had. “I was just—”

  “If you’re not as worried for him as I am, then I’ve read you all wrong, my friend.”

  “Bard’ika…”

  “Yes? Too fast? Look—”


  “Even if you didn’t have your Force powers, you’d still be a terrific soldier. And a good man.”

  Fi couldn’t see the Jedi’s expression. For once, Jusik didn’t scare the living daylights out of Fi and look back over his shoulder with a silly grin when they were hurtling toward a wall, only to bank sharply at the last moment. Jusik dropped his head for a second and then raised it again. His slip-streamed hair slapped Fi in the face.

  “I’ll try to live up to that.”

  “Yeah, but you still need to get your shabla hair cut.”

  Jusik didn’t laugh. Fi wasn’t sure if he was moved or offended. And it seemed impossible to offend Jusik.

  “Hang on.”

  Whatever element of the Force was guiding the Jedi, it was completely instinctive. He could find Skirata.

  The speeder swung hard left and Fi feared for the Verpine rifle under his jacket, its folded stock wedged in his armpit. He was used to wearing the scruffy assortment of dull civilian clothing that Enacca had sent over with Vau. He wondered how he’d cope with his all-encompassing Katarn armor after being out of it for two weeks.

  Jusik’s head jerked around as if someone had summoned him. “He’s heading for business zone six.”

  “Been there. Recce’d that place last night. Stuck a remote holocam opposite the house, in fact.”

  “Maybe the Force is giving us a break.”

  “That’s got to be their hub.”

  “Let’s try that.” Jusik banked right to shoot up a vertical channel. Fi decided zero-g had its appeal. “At least we’ll be able to see Kal if that’s where they’re heading. I bet that’s reassuring.”

  “It would be.”

  “But?”

  “But if they’re using the speeder that was parked in their roof space last night, I clamped a remote thermal detonator in its air intake.”

  “Just remote? Not timed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s okay then.”

  If—when—they got Skirata back in one piece, Fi would tell him. He had a sense of humor.

  “There’s somebody following him,” Jusik said.