“Stay there,” the droid said, placing a manipulator arm on the door. “I must check that the prisoner is secure first.”
Fi switched to helmet-only audio. “Ready, Bard’ika? Remember, when you recognize her—she’s betrayed your people, you want to rip her head off, she stole your lunch creds, and so on.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then she protests she’s never seen you before in her life, and we haul her away.” Spar’s shoulders looked braced. “By the time they work out she never reached the Coruscant facility, she’ll be light-years away. And if she thinks she really recognizes you—we’ll just wing it.”
Fi was still worried. “We can’t keep using the trooper armor as a cover. Someone’s going to work out it’s an inside job.”
“Fi, do you know how much white plastoid’s been scavenged from battlefields in the last few years?” Sull asked. “We ended up fighting Seps who had more armor than we did. That’s why we have to keep changing the comlink and data protocols.”
A stream of abuse interrupted them, a woman’s voice; the droid reversed out of the cell at high speed.
“You may speak to the prisoner while I observe,” it said. “Exercise caution.”
It wasn’t joking.
Ruu Skirata—no armor, just prison fatigues—was pacing the cell, or as much of it as she could in the tiny space available to her. A restraining bulkhead, a sheet of durasteel mesh that could be moved back and forth to pin the prisoner, had cornered her. It reminded Fi of the kind of cage veterinarians used to subdue an animal so they could administer a hypospray without getting ripped to shreds. It created a small open space inside the cell door. Fi hauled Jusik into it to confront Ruu.
Osik, she was so much like Kal’buir that it was scary. It wasn’t just the piercing pale blue stare and the prominent cheekbones that told Fi this was the genuine fruit of his adopted father’s loins; it was the look of a rabid schutta about to run up his leg and sink its teeth in his throat.
“Is this the woman?” Fi said.
He had to hand it to Bard’ika. The guy could act. Jusik fixed Ruu with a look that changed from scrutiny to dawning realization to utter hatred.
“Traitor…” His voice was a low rumble. It rose to a convincing crescendo. “Traitor! You got us killed! And now I’m going to kill you!”
Fi grabbed him in a restraining hold, equally convincing.
“Who the stang are you?” Ruu demanded. Fi hoped the droid couldn’t analyze human biosigns well enough to tell that the woman was genuinely taken aback. Her angry-schutta expression gave way to blank bemusement for a moment. “I’ve never seen you before, because if I had, I’d have punched your face in.”
“Liar! Traitor!”
Fi jerked Jusik back by the neck. “You’re being transferred to Coruscant, Skirata,” he said to Ruu. “Come quietly, and we won’t need to use force.”
“Look, chum, I’m a prisoner of war and I’ve got rights. I demand legal representation. You can’t just take me without due process.”
Spar reached past Fi to flash the datapad at her. “Here’s your due process. Personally, I’d rather use force, so carry on as you are, ma’am, and give me a good excuse to smack you one.”
It was now or never. “Guard, lift the bulkhead,” Sull said.
Schutta was an even better description than Fi had imagined. She fought like a maniac, and Sull and Spar had a job on their hands restraining her without breaking anything. As they hauled her down the corridor, she was spitting abuse that made Kal’buir’s cussing sound like a Jedi Master’s learned discourse.
There was a crowd of inmates gathering outside now. Fi could see them clustering around the door, and his fear was that this would spark a riot. It was supposed to be a low-key extraction. As things were panning out, it was turning into a circus, and that wasn’t good.
“You can’t do this to me, you carbon-flush,” Ruu bellowed. “I know what happens on Coruscant to—”
Spar tightened his grip on her collar and got a good kick in the ankle, which probably still hurt even in armor. It was a weak point. He diverted to his internal audio link. “We really need to shut her up…”
Jusik coughed and pressed Fi’s arm. Leave it to me.
“Spar, leave her to Bard’ika,” Fi said, loosening his grip.
Fi had no idea what was coming next, but he trusted Jusik to pull off something timely. Jusik pulled free from Fi, yelled “Scumbag!” and threw a punch. Fi could have sworn it didn’t land—there was no sickening crack of bone, no connecting recoil—but Ruu Skirata slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Spar and Sull scooped her up between them with an audible sigh of irritation. Fi seized Jusik and bundled him toward the main gates.
The crowd of inmates were making restless noises, milling around. Droid guards moved in with a couple of clone troopers to break it up.
“They don’t know how to run a prison,” Sull said. They were nearly out now. Fi could see the comm masts of the GAR high-speed gunship they’d borrowed for the occasion. There was a lot to be said for a military bureaucracy that kept poor tabs on its assets. “Crowd control. You can’t allow inmates out to mass like that. You can’t—”
“If they were good at it,” Spar interrupted, “we’d have had to fight our way in and out. Be grateful.”
The security gates closed behind them. Fi maintained a grip on Jusik until they were out of range of the detention center; Ruu was already coming out of her daze.
“I’m going to kill you…,” she mumbled.
“No you’re not,” Fi said. “Because we’re the good guys.”
He helped Sull cuff and shackle her anyway, having calculated the damage she might do before they managed to convince her. Fi and Jusik sat watching her in the small cargo bay while Sull prepared for takeoff. It wasn’t until the sky beyond the small viewport was densely black and speckled with white-hot stars that Fi felt relaxed. Actually, he felt exhausted.
He definitely wasn’t as fit as he’d been. He’d have to start a serious training regime again.
“You did great, Fi,” Jusik said. “If I hadn’t known what had happened to you, I’d have had a hard job spotting there was anything wrong.”
“I can get by the way I am now.” As soon as Fi heard himself say it, he knew he’d passed a watershed. “Any more improvement is a bonus.”
“Good man.” Jusik patted him on the back. “Let’s see what our guest has to say for herself.”
“That was fascinating, Bard’ika,” Spar said, removing his helmet. “Some… punch.”
Jusik was sixty kilos wringing wet, if that. He smiled to himself, miming a quick right hook. “I’ve got the weight and reach,” he said. “Could have turned professional.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Force stun.”
“Yeah… of course…” Spar still seemed wary of Jusik. “I thought you’d given up all that spooky stuff.”
“Not in an emergency.”
Ruu’s eyes were fully open, and the bravado had ebbed: she was scared now. She looked from face to face, then settled on Jusik.
“My jaw ought to hurt,” she said. “But it doesn’t. And I really don’t know who you are. What do you want? I’m nobody worth kidnapping.”
“Your father sent us to get you out, Ruus’ika.”
“Father?” She squirmed to sit up. “Father?”
Fi braced for a stream of invective about abandonment, all kinds of osik that he wasn’t going to let her say about Kal’buir. Instead, she just blinked a few times.
“You mean Kal Skirata?” she said.
“You got another one?” Spar asked.
“Yes, Mama remarried.”
Fi decided it was probably safe to untie her. The mention of her father had subdued her better than any whack on the head. “And that makes me your stepbrother, Ruu. My name’s Fi.”
“How kriffing heartwarming,” Spar said, exasperated.
“There won’t be a dry eye in the house.”
“Well, we did, because he’s a bit busy at the moment.” Fi savored the bizarre moment of epiphany; he had a sister, of sorts. And he had a wife, too, and a father, a legal one, and he had brothers. He was like any other man. The out-of-reach normal life that had tormented him was now fully his. It was wonderful, even if very few beings had a family as strife-prone, heavily armed, and bizarre as this. “But he never forgets his kids.”
“I always knew he’d come back. I knew it. How did he find me?”
“Your brothers got in touch… eventually.”
“Has he forgiven me?”
“For what?”
“Never contacting him.”
It was hard to know what to say. Fi glanced at Jusik, who gave him a look that said to leave it for later. Spar rolled his eyes and slipped into the cockpit to join Sull, probably driven back by the threat of a tidal wave of sentimentality.
“You’re back now,” Fi said. “And that’s all he’ll care about.”
Chances were, Fi thought, that Kal’buir was busy running for his life. They’d all had the message from Ordo: Buir now had a warrant on his head.
But Ruu didn’t need to know that yet.
Coruscant underground emergency reservoir
“Nearly there,” Skirata said. “Nearly there.” He loaded his belt pouch with ammo clips from Aay’han’s armory and shoved an extra blaster in each boot. “Can’t lose our nerve now.”
Ordo had come to find Skirata hoping that his father would stay put, wait for the rest of the team to come to them, and then bang out in Aay’han. But he was Skirata, and sitting on his shebs wasn’t how he did things.
“As soon as Jusik’s back and Ruusaan’s secure here, I suggest we grab Uthan and get it over with, Kal’buir.”
“Omega’s not due back for a week,” Skirata said. “I can’t leave without them.”
“They might have to RV with us elsewhere.”
“Son, I know they can hijack anything with an ion drive or a bantha hauling it, but I don’t want to rely on that. The more stragglers you have, the more routes you have to secure.”
“And assembling in one place can make us more vulnerable.”
“On balance, it’s still safer. Minimize time and distance spent separated. Regroup.”
“Then I’ll retrieve them. But all the intel I’m getting is of a big fleet buildup, and we can’t delay.”
“Actually, we could. We could have left anytime before. We can leave anytime now.”
“Buir, from the shipyard end, you can’t hide it. And Centax shipping movements are ten times what they’ve been before now. Something’s going down, and soon.”
“Isn’t anyone asking where all this extra activity is going?”
“Nobody’s checking in that direction, Kal’buir. Only us. I can’t find any overlap—there’s no comm traffic between Centax Two and GAR command, and nothing that indicates any tasking of the second wave of vessels.”
It seemed staggering. But then nobody had spotted the Grand Army in preparation for ten years, and even if Kamino was cloistered and off the charts, Kuat was not. Ordo marveled at the fact that a vast war machine—a whole fleet, weapons, and equipment for millions of troops—had been manufactured and stored without anyone leaking information or wondering what Rothana or its parent company KDY was doing.
He’d thought that it was just because three million was a small army in galactic terms. And then he realized that it was actually because most beings weren’t very good at putting pieces of a puzzle together and seeing the bigger picture. Palpatine could hide anything that way. He hid his secret in plain sight, mixed into the sheer mundane business of the galaxy.
“I’ve got to get back to HQ,” Ordo said. “Kal’buir, please don’t take risks, okay?”
It was a feeble thing to say to a mercenary, and Ordo knew it. “I’m going to retrieve Kad’ika and the ladies, and then we grab Uthan,” Skirata said. “Can you find a way to recall Omega?”
“Have they said they’re willing to desert?”
“Not in so many words. Sometimes you have to give folks a nudge to save themselves.”
Skirata had learned nothing about giving others choices. He’d kicked straight back into father-knows-best mode, despite the fight with Darman; but that blind reflex had saved Ordo and his brothers, and it was impossible to condemn it. When it went right, it was salvation.
“Where are you going?” Ordo asked.
“As soon as Jusik’s back, I’ll go with him and spring Uthan.”
“And you’ve got a plan.”
“We will have, by the time we get there.”
“You taught me planning was everything, Kal’buir.”
“I also taught you that you have to seize opportunities.”
Ordo held up an admonishing finger. “You will not put yourself at risk. Your luck’s run out. Take a rest. Or you’ll never live to see another grandchild.”
Skirata paused. “You telling me something, son? Is Besany…?”
“No. No, not at all.” Ordo was taken aback to think Kal’buir might have believed he planned things so haphazardly. “I’m just increasingly worried by the risks you take.”
“Big risks for big gains.” Skirata went back to loading himself with weapons. Ordo could have sworn the adrenaline had taken ten years off him. It was fascinating to see what crushed him and what put him back on his feet again. “Don’t worry, I’ve got too much to live for.”
“I’d better report in to Zey,” Ordo said, “and give him the illusion that he commands me. Stay in contact, but don’t take any risks on comms.”
“Yes, son.” Skirata grinned. “And I promise I won’t stay out after midnight.”
Ordo slipped through the deserted tunnels and automated pumping rooms that controlled the underwater lake’s levels, then made his way back to HQ, reversing his security measures: change out of civilian clothing, then into overalls, then stop again to change into his armor and collect his speeder bike. An ARC captain in his showy scarlet pauldron and red-trimmed kama was conspicuous even on Coruscant, where wild variety was the wardrobe order of the day.
Or at least he thought he would still stand out from the crowd. Now there seemed to be a lot more clone troopers on the walkways, regular security patrols, red or blue markings on their white armor. He’d watched the numbers grow discreetly over the last few weeks.
The ones with blue markings were 501st Legion, just one more designation in a complex army that preferred numbers to names. He decided to seize the moment, and swooped onto a convenient landing platform to speak to them. He looked like any other ARC captain; they couldn’t even tell he was a Null ARC by scanning him, unless he chose to present his real number, N-11, on his armor’s electronic tally.
“Sergeant,” he said, approaching one of them. “How long will you be on patrol here?”
“Until twenty hundred, Captain.”
Ordo listened for the subtleties of the accent, and knew this man hadn’t been trained on Kamino. There were overtones of Coruscanti accent that few would spot, but Ordo did. And he’d watched the 501st, and the other troopers in the red livery, the shock troopers, noting their level of precise discipline.
“Very good, Sergeant,” Ordo said. “Carry on.”
These weren’t the economy-model clones from Centax 2. These had to be the direct Fett clones from the Coruscant facility that the Nulls hadn’t yet located. It hadn’t seemed as urgent a task as finding what had to be a huge production line on Centax 2.
The few Centax clones that had been detected—well, no wonder they didn’t know what Kamino was like. Ordo had no doubt they’d been told Centax was Kamino, so that they didn’t make any gaffes about their origin and expose the army-in-waiting. In a closed world, you had no reason or way to disbelieve what you were told.
They’d passed the test—most of the time.
Ordo landed the Aratech outside Arc
a Barracks’ main entrance in the row of dispatch speeder bikes and went in search of Zey, mainly to report to him now that Skirata was officially suspended. Maze passed him in the corridor, helmeted; that was unusual these days. It meant he was engrossed in a lot of comm traffic.
“How’s Skirata?” Maze asked.
“I have no idea,” Ordo said to his retreating back. “He’s vanished, as the general is fully aware.”
“Of course he has,” said Maze, walking into the refreshers.
Ordo was working out what stunt he could stage to get Omega recalled when the alarm klaxon sounded. It stopped him in his tracks; he’d only ever heard it tested for routine maintenance, and he’d never really expected to hear it used for real.
It was the incoming attack alert.
Air assault. Invasion.
Ordo paused to check the nearest building control panel, expecting to see a red flashing light indicating a short, and that the alarm was a false one.
The panel was operating normally. An incongruously serene droid voice drifted over the open comm system. “This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. Inbound enemy ships have been detected. Report to muster stations. Execute emergency procedures.”
There were suddenly droids, civilian staff, and even the occasional trooper issuing from every doorway. The insistent two-tone noise was so deafening that the audio buffers in Ordo’s helmet kicked in. Maze came running back down the corridor at full tilt, adjusting his armor.
“It’s a whole stanging fleet,” he snapped, tapping his helmet to indicate he was patched into the tactical display. “Great timing.”
Ordo agreed, but he meant it, and for wholly different reasons. Opportunity, Kal’buir said: opportunities were also threats. It just depended on how you handled them. “You get Zey to the command bunker, and I’ll start locking down the system.”
An ARC trooper’s role on the ground if Coruscant was compromised was protecting the command center and strategic targets if the enemy managed to land. If the enemy got a foothold, then his task was sabotage, assassination, and eventually organizing the populace to wage total guerrilla war. Maze sprinted in search of Zey. Ordo decided that if he had to trash Zey’s personal data to protect it, he’d take a fast download of it first.
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