They waited. It was a long thirty seconds.
“Thank you… yes, that would be kind. Do transfer her. May I have your transport identity, please, for the security gate?” Vau rolled his eyes, his voice unchanged. “Got that. Thank you.”
Ordo kicked the speeder into life and shot off at top speed toward the RDS landing platform. It was secured, but they could hang around and wait for the RDS transport to emerge.
Vau tapped the transponder code into the onboard sensors so that they could identify the right vessel. They were never marked. “Shab.” He sighed, laying a fearsome sawn-off Verpine slugthrower across his lap. “I hate it when they’re conscientious. Why can’t they be lazy di’kute like every other government department, and get us to do the work?”
Tay’haai, a few blocks away, sounded as if he was tightening all his speeder restraints. On the comlink, metal chinked and fabric rustled. “Can we synchronize holocharts, please?”
Ordo concentrated on the anxious chill in his gut and used it to keep him sharp, just as Skirata had shown him. It was almost the first lesson he’d ever taught Ordo and his brothers: to use their fear. It was their alarm system, he said. They had to heed it, and realize the adrenaline was getting them ready to run faster, fight harder, and notice only the things they needed to stay alive.
Ordo slowed the speeder and brought it to a standing hover at the end of the spur skylane leading to the main route. Government vehicles could bypass the automated nav system that controlled skylane traffic, just like taxis. They could take any route. But in broad daylight, they had limited options for intercepting another vessel without getting a prime-time slot on HNE.
“So where’s the best place to take them out?” Vau asked, flashing the sector skylane holochart onto the inside of the viewscreen like a HUD. “Got that, Wad’e?”
“I’m synced in. Thanks. If they take the direct route, I’ll try to force a stop at the underpass between the spaceport and Core Plaza. That way we don’t get picked up by surveillance sats.”
CSF ran the sat system, which was simply a crime prevention tool, and all awkward things could be made to vanish if CSF was approached the right way. The archive was only stored for ten days anyway. Ordo checked the underpass layout. There were service bays to allow delivery repulsortrucks and maintenance vessels to pull in. That looked like the best option.
“Now, what if they don’t take that route?” Ordo asked.
“Usual ploy,” Tay’haai said. “Force ’em down the levels, the lower the better. But jam their comms first, before they know they’re being hijacked. We don’t want a full-scale fleet battle in front of the good citizens.”
“This is why I prefer the lower levels,” Vau said. “You can have a decent shoot-out and an armed misunderstanding down there, and nobody pokes their nose in. Very civilized.”
Ordo watched the RDS entrance. After a few minutes, the gates parted and a nondescript white windowless speeder edged out, looking exactly like a million other service vessels cruising the skylanes at that moment, with no livery indicating prison duties. The sensor blipped; it recognized the transponder code. A red pulsing light appeared on the head-up holochart.
“Got it,” Tay’haai said. “Watch my trace, please. Running parallel to you.”
“Good luck, gentlemen.” Vau seemed to love these operations. He came alive. He and Mird responded to the same stimuli: the chase. “Oya! Let’s hunt.”
Ordo kept a sensible five vessels’ distance behind the prison transport. The pilot didn’t seem to like crowded skylanes and diverted to a side route, probably wanting to spend as little time in transit as possible to minimize the risks. He looked as if he wasn’t going to take the spaceport route.
“Okay, I’m looking for service bays.” Vau followed the holochart, leaning forward a little and adjusting the display to a larger scale. “I’ll call them as we come within a quarter klick of them.”
“Left,” Ordo said.
The holochart traces shifted, and Tay’haai pulled a block ahead of them in readiness. He was running on a chrono-counter that would time his intercept run to cut across the prison speeder’s path at precisely the right moment to slow it, stop it, or force it to divert. The idea was to avoid a crash. It didn’t always work out that way.
“He’s moving down to the repulsortruck lane,” Ordo said. “Naughty. That’s freight only.”
“Rep Intel don’t heed transit regs…”
“Wad’e, if he carries on that course, can you take him at the intersection with the Gimmut sewage tunnel?”
“At, not in? Please, Ordo?”
“At.”
“Lots of service bays there,” Vau said happily. “Droid drivers. Nice and quiet.”
The Gimmut was just a huge enclosed tunnel that shunted sewage from millions of buildings into the main waste processing plant that was known to Mandalorians on Coruscant as Osik Ocean. Every species here had a similar name for it. The Gimmut betrayed no external signs of its unsavory traffic except for methane-consuming fungi that clustered around the gas vents and small cracks, but folks were still keen to avoid living within five klicks of it. It plied a lonely trade.
“I think it’s now or never,” Vau said. “Big service bay, under cover, half a klick.”
“Got it,” said Tay’haai. “Step on it, Ordo. I’m coming in from the right.”
Ordo closed the gap. If the pilot didn’t check his six now and wonder why a shiny black speeder was tailing him down here, he never would. Ordo hit the jamming device and made sure the guy never shared his concerns with his control room. It must have produced a failure signal in the cockpit; the prison speeder accelerated suddenly, streaking ahead. Ordo matched its speed. From then on, he was flying by instinct.
Jusik would have done this better. Ordo had to admit that.
The prison speeder veered left, with no exit in sight, as if it was slowing to try an evasive U-turn. Ordo nearly rammed its tail. Tay’haai’s intercept speeder appeared out of nowhere and flashed across its nose, pulling up hard right and just above it to block it in. It lost control, and Ordo sideswiped it into the permacrete walls of the freight lane, more by accident than design. It could have lifted free, but he pinned it, and the two speeders screamed along the wall, locked in a shower of sparks, sending ’trucks swerving past them sounding their klaxons. When the service bay suddenly appeared on the left like an open mouth, Ordo forced the prison speeder left while Tay’haai blocked it from lifting. It skidded across the floor of the bay and came to rest against the far wall.
Vau was hanging out of the speeder before Ordo even landed, and jumped down to race across to the battered white vessel. He didn’t stop to take names; he fired horizontally point-blank into the cab through the side viewscreen. Whether he was shooting to kill or to keep the pilot from getting out, Ordo had no time to check. He ran to the rear hatch of the vehicle and blew the hinges out with close-range blasterfire, pulled it open, and reached in to grab Jilka.
“Stay down, stay down!” he yelled. “Don’t move.” Vau kept firing. Ordo had to climb inside before he realized Jilka was strapped into a seat. He shot out the restraint anchors and hauled her bodily out of vessel, then bundled her into his speeder. Vau backed away from the prison vessel, still firing sporadic shots while Tay’haai covered the exit, and then jumped into the pilot’s seat. Ordo shut the hatch behind him, hammering his fist on the bulkhead to signal Vau to bang out. The speeder rocketed out of the service bay at a sharp angle, into the traffic and away.
“Are you hurt?” Ordo asked. He took off his helmet and tried to stay upright while Vau drove like a Weequay after a heavy drinking session. “Did you hit your head?”
Jilka looked up at him. He hoped it was Jilka, anyway: if they’d snatched the wrong prisoner somehow, he didn’t like the idea of what he might have to do next, but he could always dump her in the lower levels with a big credit chip. All prisoners wanted out.
“Are you going to kill me now?” she asked. Her
voice was shaky. “Or just maim me a bit?”
“No, I’m Ordo.”
Her face—sharp-featured, fresh bruises, scared eyes—changed instantly. “Do you always pick up women this way?”
“No, I shot Besany.”
“He’s not very good with pickup lines,” Vau chimed in from the front. “Actually, Etain shot her, Jilka. Ordo almost slotted her. Things were a little chaotic that day.”
“You can take the macho thing too far, Captain,” Jilka said, fixing Ordo with a baleful stare. “Try flowers next time. Maybe dinner and a show.”
She shuffled along the bulkhead and sat up on the curve of the repulsor housing. She wasn’t exactly screaming in terror. But then Besany had said she was a tax investigator, and she was used to Hutt levels of violent objection to her carrying out her duties. It would have taken more than a hijack to really rattle her.
“Tell me this is a rescue,” she said.
Ordo nodded. So she’d worked out the other possibility, then. “It is.”
“My life’s screwed forever now, right?”
“’Fraid so. But it beats whatever Rep Intel or the RDS would have done to you.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Vau seemed very pleased with himself. “It’s okay, my dear,” he said. “You can join our little bandit gang as a tax avoidance consultant. The hours are terrible, but you get to see the galaxy on expenses.”
That was about her only choice now. Everything dug her—and them—in deeper. She held out her hands to indicate that she wanted the cuffs removed, but Ordo decided she could wait until they got to the safe house before he uncuffed her. There was no point taking chances.
Her eyes narrowed a little. “And you’re not Separatists…”
“We’re not on anyone’s side but our own,” Ordo said. “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the Republic and the Seps anyway.”
As soon as he said it, it struck him as being more profound than he intended. Maybe there was no difference at all; the Republic now had as much reason to treat him as a hostile as the Separatists did. The speeder vanished into the lower levels via a flood conduit, plunging the cabin into darkness lit only by the faint green glow from the cockpit panel.
“Good point.” Jilka’s disembodied voice was weary. “I can’t see the difference, either.”
Chapter Twelve
Arca Barracks, Coruscant,
one month later
You worry too much, Clonemaster. I only require your clones to be fit for purpose, and that means they have no need to meet the same exacting standards as the army bred on Kamino. The Grand Army has to be the very best in the galaxy for one single special operation ahead of them. This is the culmination of my strategy—two armies with two quite separate tasks.
—Chancellor Palpatine, to the Spaarti lead clonemaster supervising the production of a new army on Centax 2
Etain had teetered on the brink of following Jusik into the state of limbo outside the Jedi Order, yet the final leap still proved too hard.
Zey tried to press the right buttons. But she couldn’t resent him for it.
“I want you on Kashyyyk with Delta,” he said. “You did fine work on Qiilura organizing the local population to resist the Separatists. The same job needs doing there.”
Zey knew exactly how things had been on Qiilura. He’d been there with her, keeping the insurrection going; in the days before he became chained to a command desk, he was a fighting man, a good Jedi, a good officer. It wasn’t that she didn’t respect him now. It was just that they were too far down different paths, and unable to step off.
“I’m happy to go, Master Zey,” she lied, wanting a few more days with Kad and Darman. “But we’re talking about Wookiees and Delta here. Neither need my feeble handholding. However, if I can make a difference…”
“Kashyyyk is going to be critical in the war.”
“Then I’ll give it my best shot, as ever.”
“I know what you do, Etain.”
She didn’t sense any accusation or disapproval in him. Her first thought, though, was that he knew her secret. “What do I do?”
“You treat your men as equals.”
“Well, they are. At the very least.”
“I meant that I approved. As soon as I can get this discussed by the Council, I intend to improve our command style with our troops—I know we’re sadly lacking in too many areas. A little respect and kindness go a very long way.”
Well, you’re a little late to the party, General. But she had never seen Zey treat any clone as less than fully human. He’d been Jusik’s Master; the two would never have lasted in that relationship as long as they did if there had been a fundamental difference in their outlooks.
“Better late than never, General,” she said.
Captain Maze walked in with a pile of datapads for Zey to check. It seemed a waste of a highly trained ARC trooper to have him in a post like this with a staff officer—there were fewer than a hundred of these men left—but that was the way the Chancellor wanted it: a senior clone trooper for every key Jedi, expert military advice on hand as well as close personal protection. Etain thought Maze was probably frustrated by the role, knowing ARCs as she now did.
“Would you like a cup of caf, Captain?” Zey asked absently. He got up and poured from the jug on the side table. “It’s fresh this time.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir. Thank you.”
Maze took his cup and left. Zey stared at the closed doors for a few seconds afterward.
“What do you think is going to happen to a man like that after the war ends?” he asked.
“Will happen, or should happen?”
“Either.”
Was Zey working up to confronting her, or did he know—or feel—that she had a better insight into the psychology of clone troops than most Jedi?
“They’ll be more alienated the longer this goes on,” she said. There was no point pulling her punches now. “We’re storing up trouble for the future. You can’t take an optimized human being—very intelligent, very resourceful, very dedicated—and then restrict his life. It’s not just morally wrong—it’s dangerous for all concerned. Once they see their full potential, they won’t forget it, or go back quietly to their barracks. We must plan to give them full lives, General. Freedom, in other words. Choice.”
Zey was silent for a long time. Etain didn’t feel inclined to interrupt his thoughts. She could see him standing up at the Jedi Council to make that point, and she didn’t want to imagine their reaction. It was one depressing thought too many.
“It’s so easy to become accustomed to the abnormal and unacceptable simply by being exposed to it for too long,” he said. “We get used to doing terrible things. That’s why I need the Skiratas of this world. He lives his compassion, even if he has no idea what it is philosophically. But so many of us cherish it as a theory, without application.”
Etain took that as a confession. She wondered how Skirata would take it.
“Well, let’s both apply it now, shall we, sir?” she said. “I’ll see you on my return.”
As she felt the whisper of air from the doors closing behind her, Etain had the feeling that she was abandoning Zey in the throes of a quiet crisis, and that he might have needed to talk to her for much longer. But Darman and Kad needed her more. She packed her small bag in her cabin at the barracks—she hadn’t stayed at the Temple in a very long time—and took an air taxi to the Kragget, to say her good-byes at Laseema’s apartment.
She was getting practiced at it now. It still hurt every time, but the more she left, the more she knew she would come back. The Force had made her certain about Kad and his destiny—that he would affect many lives—and now it made her sure she would come home, and that the war was in its final days.
Darman was already at the apartment, playing with Kad. He sat on the floor with the baby, letting him explore the workings of his helmet. Every time the tactical spot-lamp activated or the HUD flashe
d icons, Kad squealed in delight and giggled. Darman seemed utterly at ease with his son.
“I hope you’ve deactivated the uplink,” Etain said, kneeling down beside them. “Or else he’s just committed five battalions to attack Corellia.”
Darman laughed. “So you got us shipped to Fostin Nine to twiddle our thumbs.”
“There’s work to do there…,” she said. Kad plucked a wire connector from the helmet and offered it to her, grinning. “Why, thank you, sweetie! I think Da-da needs that to talk to his boss. Shall we put it back?”
“Not much,” Darman said. “It’s a recce job.”
“Commandos do recces. It’s in your job description. Besides, my son’s father has to come home safe, and there must still be five females in the Outer Rim that Corr hasn’t dated yet. I don’t want to stop him short of the galactic record.”
Kad had now found a marker stylus in Darman’s belt pouch, the type he used to mark an unconscious Atin’s forehead when he’d given him medication on the battlefield. Oh, Qiilura. That was horrible. I’d never have survived if Darman hadn’t shown up. The baby scrawled on the lining of the helmet’s chin section, and Darman admired his efforts.
“Now I’ll have something to remind me of you when I’m away, Kad’ika.” He lowered his voice and gave Etain a dubious look. “Can we have another kid one day?”
This was what she wanted to hear. This made her feel solid. They were a family, no mistake about it. Things were going to be all right. “I’d love that. With more painkillers, though.”
“I really want out of the army, Et’ika. Not long to go.”
“You feel that?”
“Kal’buir still thinks all the logistics add up to a big push soon, and he wants us out. It’s just a matter of waiting for him to call endex.”
Etain knew all this; she knew Skirata’s plans, and she was part of them. But the end was now acquiring a solidity of its own, becoming a separate entity that wouldn’t tolerate any prevarication or delay on her part.
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