Then they charged.
Wookiees really did dismember enemies. Ripping off arms wasn’t a cantina joke after all.
Scorch paused for a moment, almost disbelieving, as a Wookiee patriarch nearly three meters tall grabbed a Trando one-handed and tore him limb from limb, then simply plucked a Geonosian from the air and dismantled it like a mechanical toy he’d grown bored with. Even Sev froze.
“Uh,” he said. “Uh…”
The Wookiees were defending their homes, and that made them doubly lethal. They were berserk with rage. Scorch wasn’t about to offer them tips on house clearance techniques. The sheer shocking brutality had an instant impact on the will of the Seps to fight. Trandos ran, apparently forgetting they could keep their nerve and fire into the Wookiee ranks, some just diving off the tree platforms to an uncertain death beneath, some just running blindly. One or two did hold the line and keep firing, but dropping big, enraged attackers that were maybe three times a Trando’s weight took more stopping power, and the Trandos didn’t have it. The Sep defense fragmented. Wookiees poured out of the higher branches, and Delta fell in with them, joining a fast-moving torrent of brown fur and granite-hard muscle. Scorch collided with one, just a glancing blow, and even in his Katarn armor he felt its sheer power and mass. Wookiees were sentient and smart, yes, but the primal warrior in them took little unleashing.
The Seps were falling back.
Sev, being Sev, managed to run through the Wookiees, stopping every few meters to pick off Geonosians. He’d said he was going for 4,982 kills, one for every commando lost at Geonosis, and he wasn’t joking. He never was. He never said “five thousand,” either, and even Skirata rounded up the figure. No, Sev was exact about it. War was personal for him.
Scorch kept an eye on him. Stone-cold, my shebs.
It was the spider droid that told them they were getting near the bridge. It scuttled down a walkway, cannon aimed, but it wasn’t best suited for a close-quarters battle like this one. Scorch leapt on its back and fired a whole clip into it with his DC-17’s muzzle rammed into the weak point of a weld. The Wookiees were roaring now, gesturing below, and the big male—the really big one—started ripping apart the branches to get a clear line of sight with the target.
“There’s the bridge,” Fixer called. “Check your HUDs, people.”
Metal bridges were a lot easier to pick out with sensors than living plant material against a background of the same. Only the density variation gave its position away. Scorch didn’t need to see it.
“Can I borrow this, ma’am?” He wrestled a grenade launcher from a female Wookiee near him. She obviously wasn’t trying too hard to hang on to it. “Won’t be long.”
The big male Wookiee had opened up a window for Scorch. The bridge ten meters beneath was now a sitting target, big and juicy, and laden with moving Sep transports. Scorch decided to play it safe and aim for the span itself, not the narrow living cables that supported it, and just fired round after round, blowing apart the close-woven roots and branches until there was more daylight than bridge. The structure could no longer hold either its own weight or the traffic on it. The span creaked and tore into two dangling sections, sending bodies, repulsors, and small transports crashing into the green abyss beneath.
Kachirho was no longer open for Sep traffic. The Wookiees roared in triumph, shaking their fists and weapons at the canopy above.
“Scorch,” said Etain’s voice in his helmet. “Enacca says you’re doing okay for a short, pink, hairless creature.”
It was impossible to get a big picture of any battle, and even working out if you’d won or not was, Vau said, something the historians had to decide many years later. But Scorch felt the destruction of the bridge was a turning point, and Delta Squad were still alive, so whatever history decided in the end—he’d won.
They’d won. This time, anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
Lower levels, Coruscant,
1,080 days ABG
I just thought you needed to know, Chancellor. I understand how strategically important the Kamino clone facility is to the Republic’s survival, and as a patriot, I thought it was my duty to hand over this material, which is clearly from that source. It’s limited, and it may be of no importance, but these Mandalorians acquired it, and I doubt they came by it by honest scientific means. I have my reputation for integrity to consider, too. I would not like the tainted origin of this data to compromise any nomination for the Republic Science Accolade.
—Last-known message sent by Dr. Reye Nenilin from his office before his disappearance, contacting Chancellor Palpatine to hand over data given to him by a Mandalorian known only as Falin
Skirata should have known that something had gone badly wrong when he arrived at the Kragget.
“Hi, handsome,” Soronna said, balancing plates in both hands. “You haven’t seen Laseema, have you? She never showed for her shift.”
His stomach filled with ice. Laseema was punctual to a fault; she had Kad to look after, and she ran that schedule better than the GAR.
“I’ll go check,” he said, striding for the kitchen exit.
“I tried the apartment,” Soronna called after him. “No answer.”
Skirata broke into a fast walk and then sprinted through the connecting alley; sixty or not, he could cover a hundred meters almost as fast as one of his young commandos when adrenaline was fueling him. He got to the apartment doors, drew his blaster, and readied his knife. When he keyed the doors open, the apartment was more than deserted. It looked as if it had been stripped.
Skirata wasn’t a panicking man, but he was now minus both Laseema and his grandson. He ran from room to room, somehow managing to remember clearance procedure in case someone from his past had come back to settle a grudge, close to vomiting with fear for his family. The apartment was definitely empty. Everything personal had been stripped from it. There were no clothes, none of Jusik’s paraphernalia, no toys, no crib, nothing. He didn’t own much himself, but all that was gone, too—a holdall with a few changes of clothes, his bantha-hide jacket, and some of his weapons, including two of his very expensive custom Verpine sniper rifles.
He would have thought of plain burglary if he hadn’t known how well he’d concealed this place, and if Laseema and Kad hadn’t been missing, too.
And he’d received no messages. All this had happened in the time it had taken him to leave Arca Barracks, get the shoroni sapphires converted to cash credits, and visit the bank—two hours, tops. If it had been earlier, someone would have commed him.
“Shab,” he spat. “Shab, shab, shab.”
He secured the place again, planning to come back to sweep for evidence. But first he had to check where everyone was, and his natural reaction, honed by decades of running for his life or chasing someone with the intent of ending theirs, was to assume no comlinks were now secure. He slipped out the emergency exit and onto the roof, where his green speeder—now kitted out as a taxi to bypass the automated skylane controls—was parked under cover. The Aratech speeder bike was too exposed if anyone was coming after him, heavy beskar armor or not. He lifted clear to head for the Aay’han RV point. If the osik really hit the fan, and all comms were down, that was the emergency plan.
He got as far as the next intersection when he heard a police klaxon. A CSF patrol vessel dipped in front of him, flashing at him to pull over to the nearest landing platform. CSF were as good as family; he had no reason not to comply.
He set down the speeder, and the patrol vessel settled in front. The lower levels weren’t somewhere you waited on a platform for a taxi, not if you valued your life, so it was deserted. Skirata had his knife and blaster ready just in case.
But it was Jaller Obrim who jumped down from the crew bay. Even when the man’s face was obscured by a uniform helmet, Skirata recognized his build and his walk.
He gestured at Skirata to open the side viewplate, flipping up his visor.
“They’re safe,” Obrim said, not givin
g Skirata a chance to draw breath. He didn’t even have to explain who he meant. “But you’re a dead man. Follow me. No comms, okay?”
Well, it was wasn’t the first time Skirata had been dead. The wild fear for Laseema and Kad was replaced instantly by a dull ache in his guts that told him he’d pushed his luck too far yet again.
And it was going relatively well. It really was.
Whatever he’d done, his priority was to get his boys out. If he died doing it, that was fine by him.
And he had nine million credits on him, cash creds at that. It was just as well that Obrim was the kind of cop who knew what his real priorities were, and would never search him.
The patrol vessel slipped into a grimy alley, gun turrets almost shaving the walls, and came to rest on a rubble-strewn patch of permacrete where a building had been demolished. Two borrats, one a buck with impressive tusks, the other a smaller doe, lifted their heads from a small, anonymous carcass and watched the proceedings as still as statues, noses twitching. Skirata got out of the speeder, keeping one eye on them, and swung himself up into the open crew bay of the patrol ship.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve blown it, haven’t I?”
Obrim took off his helmet. “Yes, my friend.”
He held out his datapad for Skirata to read. It was a warrant for Skirata’s arrest, dead or alive. It was only the authorization seal that made him more concerned than usual.
“If I count the fact that this is from the Chancellor, then it’s a first for me,” Skirata said. “But I’ve still got death warrants out on me on five or six planets. Maybe seven. I forget.”
“I know,” Obrim said. “I’ve intercepted this at the CSF end, and I can only sit on it for a little longer before I have to distribute it, but other agencies have it, and you have to get out, Kal. All my boys will somehow draw a complete and inexplicable blank in finding you, you know that. But I can’t speak for the other enforcement agencies.”
“Any special reason I’ve ticked off Palpatine?”
“My source says some scientist called Nenilin turned in some Kaminoan cloning data.”
Nenilin would be doing some research into how to breathe without a windpipe, but that would have to wait. And Skirata could be a patient man. “How did the Chancellor connect it to me? Only GAR spec ops knew about Ko Sai.”
“You’d know better than me who’s your weak link there.”
“Yeah. Now, where’s my grandson, and Laseema?”
“I took them and cleared out the apartment, just in case, because I know the kid’s a bit special. Let me know where and when you want them moved, and I’ll do it.”
“I owe you, Jaller.”
“No, I’m your friend. You’d do the same for me.”
Yes, Skirata knew that he would. The two men looked at each other in silence, and Skirata knew this was the end of the line for them.
“I don’t think I’m going to see you for a long while, Kal,” Obrim said. “But whatever I can do, I’ll do it.”
Skirata grabbed his hand. “You’re a hero and a gentleman, Jaller. If things go bad for you here, ever, there’s a safe haven for you and the family. It’s—”
“Don’t tell me where. You know why.”
Skirata scribbled a code on the flimsi pad on his forearm plate. “Okay, but take this. It’s a go-between. If you ever need anything, anything at all, comm this code and they’ll find me.”
Skirata hated good-byes. He embraced Obrim in silence, and then walked back to the speeder without a backward glance. Even when he lifted off, he didn’t look down.
Now he was back where he’d been so many times in his life: in a stolen vessel, with just the armor he stood up in and enough weapons to make a stand. But he had nine million creds on him, too, and he was far from finished.
So comms might be compromised. He wasn’t going to lead anyone to Aay’han by accident. He fell back on the kind of technology that had always left the aruetiise flat-footed, and disappeared into an ancient storm-water conduit that had been built and abandoned long before Coruscant had climate management. He switched to an unencrypted GAR channel in his helmet comm, and simply transmitted static.
It was a special kind of static, of course; long and short bursts, carefully interspersed in sequences. To a casual listener, it was just random noise and interference, but to a Mandalorian trained in an ancient message code called dadita, it spelled out words. It could even transmit code.
There weren’t that many in the GAR with even that basic knowledge; only the Nulls, the commandos, and the last of the Cuy’val Dar.
Skirata kept transmitting a coded message, waiting for someone to sift it from the white noise.
Republic Detention Center,
Pols Anaxes
“It’s handy being a clone,” Fi said. “Your uniform always fits.”
“I haven’t worn this meat-can for years.” Spar adjusted his belly plate again. “I’d forgotten about all the interesting places it pinches.”
The three clones—Spar, Sull, and Fi—marched into RDC PolAx, as it was called in GAR signals, looking exactly like every other trooper on duty at the prisoner-of-war camp. Jusik played detainee. Fi made sure he held on to Jusik as if keeping a firm grip on him, to disguise the fact that his gait wasn’t the paragon of military precision that it had once been.
The camp was chaotic. Fi had expected something grim and desperate, but it was just crowded. There were gun turrets on the walls that obviously meant business, but once they passed through the security gate with their counterfeit armor tallies and prisoner transfer authorizations, they found themselves in something that resembled a migrants’ transit camp, a ragbag of species, uniforms, and lots of prisoners waiting in lines for one thing or another.
“Why take prisoners?” Spar asked. “Why not just shoot them?”
Jusik could hear the conversation going on inside the helmets because he had a concealed comlink bead deep in his ear, but he couldn’t reply. He just cleared his throat meaningfully.
“I mean it,” Spar said. “They tie up resources. What use are they? Let them go, or slot them.”
“I think you must have missed the lecture on rules of engagement and lawful orders,” Fi said. “It was probably after you went AWOL.”
Jusik stifled a grin. Fi saw his lips twitch.
“You’re back,” he said, barely audible.
Fi was still more conscious of what he couldn’t do than what he could, but his verbal skills were definitely on the mend. If he had to choose, he thought, he would trade marksmanship for fluent speech.
Jusik looked a lot older than he’d been at the start of the healing process eighteen months ago. Fi decided he’d rely on his own recovery efforts from now on. The effect on his brother—he saw Jusik as true kin now—was visible. It was draining the life out of him.
“Okay, Jedi,” Sull said. “Here comes the nice camp commander. Look sullen and recalcitrant.”
“Call me Jedi again,” Jusik said quietly, “and I’ll show you my Force kick in the backside.”
“How very serene,” Sull said.
Fi couldn’t let it pass unchallenged. “Sull, why don’t you shut it?”
“Just getting Bardan in character… mean, moody Sep rabble.”
The camp commander was a lieutenant from the 55th Mechanized Brigade, which struck Fi as a waste of skills until he realized how stiffly the man was walking. He’d clearly been wounded. Fi fought down the urge to ask him what had happened and how he’d recovered. He was proof of a soldiering life after injury. There was hope.
“Permission to interview one of your detainees, sir,” Sull said, shoving a GAR-issue datapad at him.
The lieutenant looked at the ’pad and nodded. “This is for ID purposes, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” Sull was actually pretty good at sounding like an ordinary trooper, but then ARCs were trained to be resourceful. “This prisoner claims he can identify a female human we’re looking for. She might be using the alias Ruus
aan Skirata. If it’s the right woman, this is our authorization to transfer her to Coruscant for questioning.”
“Oh, her,” said the lieutenant wearily. “Very aggressive female, detained on Khemerion. She’s in confinement. Not for her own safety—for the rest of the prisoners’ welfare.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, sir. We’ll exercise caution.”
“Hut Eight Bravo,” the lieutenant said, gesturing to his left. “Show your ID to the droid.”
Fi had heard no mention of Skirata’s daughter having the slightest interest in her father’s culture. Maybe his sons didn’t know. Fi shared Ordo’s mistrust of their motives; if they found out their dad was sitting on a trillion-credit fortune that was growing rapidly just by being in the bank, they’d probably want to readopt him. Fi hoped his daughter was more grateful for the effort her father had gone to. If she wasn’t, he’d dump her out the nearest air lock.
“I think poor old Skirata was under the impression that his little girl was banged up in some disease-ridden death camp,” Spar said. “This actually looks quite civilized. Look at that smashball court—they’ve got better sports facilities than we ever had.”
“This used to belong to the old naval training branch,” Jusik said.
“Stay in character, Jedi…”
The guard droid whirred into their path at the entrance to Hut Eight Bravo to check codes and authorizations, then led them down a long passage flanked by cells. The place looked like a mobile medcenter.
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