Triple Zero

by Karen Traviss

  Ordo took a handful of candied nuts and stepped outside with Skirata. The two men stood in the corridor, giving the squads a chance to chat now that Delta had been suitably unnerved. And maybe they thought he couldn’t hear them, but Skirata wasn’t as hard of hearing as they imagined, years of exposure to deafening fire or not.

  And it wasn’t what he expected to hear.

  “Fierfek, I remember thinking he was just bent over breathless, but he was actually crying and throwing up. And it wasn’t the nerf guts.”

  “He never liked knocking us around.”

  “And he always apologized and made sure we were okay afterward.”

  “Top man.” That was Niner talking. “Jatne’buir.”

  The best father. Well, that was a joke. His own kids had formally disowned him and declared him dar’buir instead—no longer a father. It was a very rare and shameful thing for a Mando father to be formally shunned by his sons.

  But he couldn’t have left Kamino, or even told them where he was and that he hadn’t completely abandoned them. Not even Ordo knew about the declaration of dar’buir.

  You put your clones first, before your own flesh and blood, didn’t you?

  “Are you all right?”

  And I don’t regret doing that, not a second of it.

  “I’m fine, Ord’ika. Vau must be losing his touch, then. Nothing useful from our friends?”

  “There might be nothing to get out of them, of course. But it’s not a quick process, interrogating experienced suspects without killing them.”

  “What about getting one of our jetiise to help out? They’re good at persuasion.”

  “Possibly too squeamish. Jusik is always anxious to please, though.”

  “He’s much more use in the field. Brave lad, handy with tech, and a good pilot. But the girl’s got an edge to her. Let’s see if she’ll put pragmatism above principle.”

  “Do you dislike them, Kal’buir?”

  “It’s not a matter of liking them or not. It’s whether they’re reliable. Look, Zey will waste you and every last clone—and me—if he thinks it’ll win the war and save civilians. But Jusik hero-worships you. And I don’t know which of those two extremes is the more dangerous.”

  “This is your opportunity to help them become the soldiers you made of us, then.”

  Ouch. “Why do I always get the feeling that you were more of a man at four years old than I would ever be?”

  Ordo gave him a playful shove. He was clearly in a good mood today. “Let me ask General Tur-Mukan to interrogate the prisoners. If she finds that morally unacceptable, then her view of you won’t be tainted by it.”

  Skirata had to bite his lip. Ordo often shamed him with unexpected compassion and diplomacy. “Yeah, I reckon she’ll find it easier to do the heroic infantry stuff than get dirty along with us. But leave her to me.”

  “Very well,” Ordo said. “Have you decided where we need to base the operation?”

  “I’ve got a few people who owe me favors. Where would you hide soldiers?”

  “Hide hide or conceal hide?”

  “Not-taking-much-notice-of-activity hide.”

  “Somewhere with a bar. Somewhere you’d get a lot of off-duty traffic.”

  “You don’t drink. Never seen a clone drink much at all.” Skirata was suddenly ambushed again by Ordo’s agile brain. For a man who knew little of life beyond warfare, his ability to learn and extrapolate from the smallest scrap of information was breathtaking. “And you never get off duty.”

  “You said, Kal’buir, that you might disguise the presence of some hulking big boys in armor by having a lot more of them around. You were going to see Mar Rugeyan about a smokescreen.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Remember Mar Rugeyan? The man who can talk out of all three corners of his mouth at the same time? The man you grabbed by the—”

  Kal remembered, all right. “Yeah, if I’d known then that I’d need him I’d have been a little more careful.”

  “I think I can propose an idea he might find attractive.”

  “Would that involve leaving bruises?”

  “I wasn’t planning to injure him. Just point out that if troopers were actually allowed leave in considerable numbers, it would reassure the public, too. Eventually we become invisible.” Ordo pondered, that telltale little frown creasing his brow. Sometimes his staggering intellect and perfect recall didn’t help him process the real world one bit, at least not where Skirata was concerned. “Let me try, Kal’buir. I promise I’ll be more diplomatic.”

  “It was a joke, Ord’ika. I think you’d probably stand as much chance of charming him as I would right now.”

  “Have I ever let you down?”

  It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Skirata was mortified. It was all too easy to swagger out of the meeting full of aggressive confidence and forget that Ordo—muscular, lethal, the ultimate soldier—was vulnerable to the approval of one person alone: him. It was as if Ordo became that literal, trusting child again, the one who had decided that the only person in the galaxy who would ever look out for him and his brothers was a down-on-his-luck mercenary who didn’t much like Kaminoans.

  “I didn’t mean it literally.” Skirata reached up and ruffled his hair just like he’d done when Ordo was a scared little kid, terrified by the lightning on Kamino, except he hadn’t had to reach quite so far in those days. “You’re my pride and joy. You couldn’t be smarter or better or braver, any of you.”

  Ordo looked blank for a moment and then managed a smile, but it was the placatory gesture of a child under threat. “I know I have gaps in my knowledge.”

  “Oh, son… I’m going to change that. For all of you.”

  “I know, Kal’buir.” His trust was transparent and absolute. “You’re our protector and we’ll always serve you.”

  Skirata winced. Faith was devastating if you weren’t up to being a god.

  But I don’t regret it. No, not a second of it.

  Logistics center,

  Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ,

  370 days after Geonosis

  “You’re not on the authorized personnel list for this center,” said the security droid at the doors.

  Ordo reached past it and tapped a memorized code into the door panel. The sentry was a solid block with four arms, a head shorter than he was. “Well done. You’re right to challenge me.”

  “Sir—”

  Ordo reached into his belt and took out a stylus probe. The droid was fast, but not fast enough to avoid the probe Ordo slipped silently into the command port in its chest. There was a chack-chack-chack of memory drives and motors stalling for a moment, and then the droid seemed placated.

  “You appear to be on the authorized personnel list,” it said. “You have access to all areas including those restricted to staff officers, without on-site security tracking.”

  “Excellent,” Ordo said, walking through the doors into the polished white marble lobby. “I’m a very private person.”

  And it was easy to be private when you were in armor. Nobody took much notice of a clone inside the GAR complex, not even one wearing an ARC trooper captain’s livery.

  It was simply a matter of looking as if you had every right to be going about your business. And the Null squad’s proper business was anything Kal Skirata deemed it to be. Right now that meant identifying a method of inserting covert surveillance into Logistics, the most likely place for a mole who could relay very precise information on transport and contractor movements to the Separatists.

  Ordo took out his datapad and consulted it frequently as if he were here for a routine visit. Without the possibility of eye contact, none of the civilian staff seemed even to register his presence. The white armor here was usually clone troopers who were physically unfit for front-line service, Engineer Corps, or ARC troopers carrying out occasional inspections for their generals.

  After striding into a few offices, startling the droids and getting an occas
ional glance from civilian technicians, Ordo walked into the operations room at the heart of the logistics wing, and struck gold.

  It was a large circular room with walls that were covered in live holocharts of troop and materiel movements. It danced with brilliant light and color, a HUD on a grand scale. At the room’s heart was a large multistation desk staffed by two droids, four humans, six Sullustans, three Nimbanese, and…

  …one clone trooper, minus his helmet.

  “Excellent,” Ordo said aloud.

  The clone trooper jumped to his feet and saluted, even though it was technically a poor example of protocol to do so without his helmet in place. Ordo returned the salute anyway.

  “Problem with your helmet, trooper?”

  The man lowered his voice. “It makes the civilians edgy, sir. They prefer to see my eyes.”

  Ordo bristled. He would never defer to civilians’ whims. “I’m carrying out a routine survey for General Camas.” He didn’t give the man his designation. Alpha ARCs rarely bothered to identify themselves to the lower ranks. He glanced at the civilians: one of the Nimbanese and a human female looked up at him. The pale reptilian Nimbanel was interesting as a detail, but the human female was enough to make him stop, stare, and note her as suspicious. She smiled at him. He still had his helmet on, but she smiled at him, and she was shockingly beautiful; both those facts were worrying in an administrative department. She looked down at her data console, lost in her work again, and flicked long pale blond hair over one shoulder.

  “Trooper,” Ordo said. He beckoned the man to him. “I’d like you to brief me on the operation of this unit.”

  They walked outside the main doors, and Ordo removed his helmet to look a brother in the eye and give him due respect. His glove’s tally scanner told him the man was CT-5108/8843, an EOD operative: a bomb disposal expert, the kind of man who disarmed booby traps and UXBs so that other troopers could advance, the kind of man who could do work that even droids could not.

  The explosives connection wasn’t lost on Ordo for one moment.

  “What’s your name?”

  The trooper hesitated. “Corr, sir,” he said quietly.

  “And what brings you here?”

  Corr paused and then pulled off his gauntlets.

  He had no hands.

  They had been replaced by two simple prosthetics, so basic that they didn’t have a synthflesh coating, just the bare durasteel mechanism. Ordo didn’t even have to ask how he had acquired them. Somehow losing both hands was shocking in a way that losing one was not. Hands defined humanity.

  “There’s a parts shortage, sir, what with there being so many men injured and needing prosthetics,” Corr said apologetically. “And these aren’t good enough for me to do my job in the front line. As soon as the parts come through, I’ll be back, though.”

  Ordo knew what Kal’buir would have said then, and he was moved to do the same, but this wasn’t the time or the place. He held back. “Do they treat you properly here?”

  Corr shrugged. “Fine. Actually, sir, the civilians tend not to speak to me that much, except for Supervisor Wennen. She’s very kind to me indeed.”

  Ordo could see it coming. “Wennen would be the blond woman, yes?”

  Corr nodded, his expression noticeably softened. “Besany Wennen. She doesn’t approve of the fighting, sir, but she doesn’t let it affect her work and she’s looking after me very well.”

  Poor naïve trooper. “How well?”

  “We have lunch together and she’s taken me to visit the Galactic Museum.”

  Fascinating. Ordo had learned the wisdom of mistrust at a very early age. Glamorous woman, EOD expert, logistics hub: he could work it out. Not starting his observation here would have been stupid, but there was little to be gained from crashing in yet.

  “How many shifts?”

  “Three per daily roster, sir.”

  “I might need to ask you to do something for me, Corr.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “But when I do, it will be classified and you’re to discuss it with nobody, not even your supervisor. It will be part of a routine fraud audit, that’s all, and that’s why I need your silence.” Did it matter if he told him his name? Only the special forces inner circle knew who he was anyway. “My name is… Ordo. Mention that to nobody.”

  “Yes sir. Understood.”

  Ordo wanted to tell him that he understood his loneliness among strangers and his need to be back with his brothers at the front, doing real work. But he could tell him nothing. He ushered him back into the operations room, noted the lovely and apparently genuine smile that Supervisor Wennen gave him, and paused on his way out to break into the automated comlink relay and place a monitoring device.

  Poor Corr. Ordo patted the sentry droid on the head and strode to his parked speeder.

  Chapter Eight

  Yes, I know how the Kaminoans did it. They used our genes against us, the ones that make us bond with our brothers, make us loyal, make us respect and obey our fathers—that’s what they manipulated to make us more likely to obey orders. They had to remove what made Jango a selfish loner, because that makes a bad infantry soldier, and you can tell from the Alpha ARCs that the Kaminoans weren’t wrong. But there’s one thing I don’t know yet—and that’s how they controlled the aging process. That’s the key. They robbed us of a full life span. But we will not be defeated by time, ner vod.

  —ARC Trooper Lieutenant N-7—Mereel—in an encrypted transmission to N-11, Ordo

  Republic Administration,

  Senate Head of Public Affairs Office, floor 391,

  Support Services Center,

  370 days after Geonosis

  Mar Rugeyan’s office was very near the top floor of the administration building and had a view that some Senators would have killed for. Ordo wondered how Rugeyan did his killing—metaphorically, anyway—because he had the air of a man who would terminate anyone in his way without a second thought.

  It was a long way down. Ordo tucked his helmet under his arm and admired the steady stream of speeders in the skylanes below.

  “It’s been a while,” Rugeyan said, perfectly pleasant. “I never imagined I might be in a position to be any help to you.”

  The subtle threat wasn’t lost on Skirata, at least if his blink rate was anything to go by. “I appreciated your assistance during the siege. You remember my captain, don’t you? Captain Ordo? Sir, can Mr. Rugeyan offer you anything to drink?”

  “A glass of juice would be very welcome, thank you.” Skirata was indeed inferior in rank, but it always made Ordo uncomfortable to hear Kal’buir call him sir. “We were wondering if you might be able to advise us.”

  Rugeyan betrayed no discomfort whatsoever at talking to a clone. “Happy to help, Captain.” He tapped something on his desk. “Refreshments, please, Jayl. Juice and some cakes.” He smiled. “But what could I advise you upon? You seem to have your public image pretty well honed. Smart, efficient, and noble. You can’t buy an image like that.”

  “We feel that our troops should have a little more comfort in life and we’re aware how much weight your advice carries with key members of the Defense Department,” said Ordo.

  “Ah.” Rugeyan’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Quite right, too. What do you want out of this, then?”

  “Leave.”

  “More of it?”

  “Any of it. They don’t get leave. Any downtime is spent in barracks or in training.”

  “Oh.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “No, frankly, I didn’t. I never asked.” Rugeyan actually seemed surprised, or at least he was feigning it very well. “But that’s a command decision. They won’t bend easily to public servants like me.”

  Ordo took a glass of brilliant emerald juice handed to him by Rugeyan’s young female assistant, who simply stared, eyes scanning him. Kal’buir was right: Civilians never saw clone soldiers face-to-face.

  It almost threw him off tra
ck. “In strategic terms, the temporary withdrawal of a few thousand troops from the front line makes very little difference,” he said. “But I’m sure you know that warfare isn’t all about big bangs. There’s another front, and that’s here.” Ordo tapped his temple. “Visible troops around Coruscant. Good for public confidence right now, with the constant threat of terror attacks. And good for our men.”

  Rugeyan toyed with a cake studded with chunks of glistening red and purple fruit. “I admit that the Senate would like some positive results on the terror attacks. It’s making the administration look helpless. Much as I respect our colleagues in the CSF, they’re not making much progress, are they?”

  Skirata cut in. “But if they did, it would be very timely, wouldn’t it? And I’m sure that you’d be told about it right away.”

  This was the interesting thing about Skirata. He could speak around corners. He was an articulate self-educated man, and that always came as a surprise to outsiders. Jusik fell for the rough-diamond act all too often, but Vau wasn’t the only Mando with a razor-sharp mind and a fine line in rhetoric. Skirata could switch from Mando hard man to politician without a visible change of gear.

  Ordo found every conversation an education.

  “I always appreciate information,” Rugeyan said. “Especially when I know it’ll serve some real purpose.”

  “So,” Ordo said, and drained his glass. The assistant popped in again as if she’d been staking out the office and refilled it. “We have two battalions of the Forty-first Elite back in barracks and an assault ship’s crew waiting on a refit. If someone could come up with the idea of an extended leave with the men allowed and encouraged to go off base, I think everyone would benefit. And maybe some credits to spend, because they don’t get paid. A nice feelgood story for the media.”

  Rugeyan’s expression flickered briefly from professional neutrality to surprise and then back again. “Never even thought of that, you know. So is this going to involve your men? The RCs?”