This was breaking all the rules.
But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn’t be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more.
“I never stopped thinking about you, either,” said Darman. “Not for a moment.”
“So… how long does it take two squads to finish their meals in the bar?”
“Long enough, I think,” said Darman.
Chapter Eleven
I’d rather have little Jedi like Bardan and Etain working with us than the likes of Zey. They’re sharp, no preconceptions, no agenda. And they’re more concerned with pulling their weight in the team than all this philosophical osik about the dark side. Zey might be a seasoned man, but he seems to want respect from me just because he can open jars of caf with his mind.
—Kal Skirata, having a quiet drink with Captain Jaller Obrim, well away from prying eyes
Retail sector,
Quadrant B-85, nine days later,
observation vehicle in position overlooking warehouse space,
1145 hours, 380 days after Geonosis
Jusik was enjoying himself.
“So,” he said, and let the trendy dark visor slide down his nose so he could look over the top. “Do I look like a low-life taxi pilot?”
“Pretty convincing,” Fi said. He wondered if Jusik ever had the sense to be scared. “Do I look like a fare?”
Sev, sitting beside Jusik in the taxi’s front seat, had a detached DC-17 scope balanced on the vessel’s console and patched into a datapad by a thin yellow wire. He was pinging, as Skirata called it. Each time a delivery transport or other craft passed through the dead-end canyon of warehouses that lay beneath the retail levels above, Sev checked the registration transponder against CSF’s database. He also checked the cargo with the scope’s sensor scan.
Fi was impressed by the ease with which Fixer and Atin had set up the remote link without CSF spotting it. They hadn’t even had to call in Ordo to sort it out. Ordo had melted into the city again two days ago, no mean feat for an ARC trooper captain.
Fi tried not to wonder where he might be. It was bad enough thinking about Sicko.
“Okay, that one was routine. Garment delivery.” Sev made a low rumble in his throat, almost like an animal. “What do we look like from the outside now?”
“At the moment, one Rodian taxi driver reading a holozine while he’s parked and waiting.”
Fi could see out, but nobody could see in—or at least they could see something that wasn’t actually in the taxi, thanks to the thin film of photoactive micro-emitters coating the interior. “Clever stuff, this gauze.”
“Thank you,” Jusik said. “It took me a long time to work out how to program moving images into it.”
“Are you bored?” Sev said, looking around at Fi. He still seemed wary of directing any of his comments at Jedi, even if all rank had been swept aside. “’Cos I’m not. And your constant yakking is getting to me somewhat, ner vod.”
Jusik cut in. “Sorry, Sev. My fault.”
Sev looked embarrassed for a moment. “If you’re interested, fifty-one of the seventy crates I’ve clocked on this watch show up on the CSF database tagged as criminal. Theft is a bigger industry than legit business here.”
Jusik raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the sort of thing Obrim’s people might like to know?”
“Isn’t it the sort of stuff that would bring the boys in blue crashing in here and blowing our op?”
“Point taken.”
“No offense… Bardan.”
Delta hadn’t worked with Jedi much, at least not the junior ones. Fi savored a moment of delight at seeing Sev’s stone-cold pretense reduced to embarrassed deference. All Jedi were supposed to be humble, but Jusik actually was. He seemed to see himself as nothing special, just a man with some accidental skills that didn’t make him any more important than the next person, only different.
So they waited.
And that was a lot harder than it looked.
“Whoa,” Sev said. “Look at this one…” Fi and Jusik followed the angle of Sev’s scope. “CSF database has this tagged as RESTRICTED.”
“Could mean it’s of interest to us, or could mean organized crime.”
Jusik’s visor had slipped to the end of his nose. “Or both.”
It was a medium-sized delivery transport with dull green livery caked with dust. The identity transponder was evidently fake, because when the crate aligned itself with the platform at the doors to Warehouse 58, and the hatches sprang open, there were just a few boxes inside. The warehouse doors eased open far enough to let a repulsor cart edge out, and two droids began loading the small containers onto the repulsor’s flatbed.
“Small but heavy load by the look of it,” Fi said.
“And we’ve got company.” Sev realigned the scope, and the datapad hummed into recording mode. “Second transport backing up to it.”
Another delivery vehicle hovered, edging astern until it was level with the other side of the landing platform. The boxes were transferred to it. They didn’t go into the warehouse at all.
“That’s irregular,” Sev said. “And we don’t like irregular, do we? ID transponder says a legit rental vessel.”
A female human in coveralls—white skin, wavy ginger hair to the shoulders, medium build, short—stepped out of the green transport onto the platform to be met by a male Falleen who’d jumped out of the rental. He was young, as far as Fi could tell, with light green skin, and his mundane pilot’s rig was a little too long in the leg for him. All details were worth noting.
The two turned their backs to the skylane and appeared to be talking.
“Well, that’s a rare sight, and I bet he’s not on the CSF database,” Sev said, checking the ’pad. Images flicked across the screen at a blinding speed while the system sought a match from the image the scope had grabbed. After a few moments the screen read: NO MATCH. “Falleen don’t venture offworld very often, and he certainly isn’t here to check out the tourist sights. Let’s try the woman.”
Fi watched. There was a match indeed, and one that came up rapidly.
“Fierfek,” Sev said. “Her name’s Vinna Jiss. And she’s a government employee.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Not when you hear she works in GAR logistics, no.”
“Chakaar,” Fi said. “She could be on legit business, of course, but then I’m such a trusting soul.”
“Falleen male and GAR clerk? Hello? Do I have to draw you a picture?” Sev sighed to himself. “They certainly put those Falleen pheromones to good use. I bet she’d do him any favor he asked. Getting security information out of her would be even easier.”
The two transports closed their hatches, leaving the woman and the Falleen on the platform, and lifted back into the skylane. It looked like any other delivery—except that it was a transfer of cargo, which was not usual, and the two waiting on the platform oozed bad guys from every pore and scale.
The two targets looked at their datapads just like warehouse staff checking a consignment. Then the Falleen turned and began walking up a pedestrian ramp to the retail level, and Vinna Jiss hung around.
“I’m naturally curious,” Sev said. “Fi, you up for a discreet trail of those two?”
Fi’s heart was pounding. Training and instinct took over. He was back on Kamino again, stalking an armed target in the simulated urban training terrain in Tipoca City. It was just the town that was simulated: the ammunition was real, deadly real. “Ready.”
“Bardan, back up behind that pillar, will you?”
“We can’t abandon this position until the next watch arrives, Sev. Let me call for backup. What if they’ve pinged us and it’s a decoy?”
“Okay, you let us out on foot, and call in Niner and Scorch to relieve you. Then you stand by via the comlink just in case.”
“That’s not standard o
perating procedure.”
“This isn’t standard operating terrain, either.” Sev almost said sir. Fi heard the beginning of a hissed s. Delta’s self-appointed hard man poked his finger hard in his right ear as if he was afraid the bead-sized link would fall out. “There goes Jiss. Up the ramp, too. Come on, Fi. Move it.”
They slipped out of the taxi’s twin hatches and activated Fi’s holochart of the sector to check where the ramp led and where the exits were. They stared at the meshed blue and red lines on the holochart, courtesy of the fire department’s database. Fi hoped it was up to date.
“That takes them straight up to the retail plaza.”
Fi’s immediate thoughts were of civilians, obstructed arcs of fire, and his own limited senses being a poor substitute for his Katarn helmet’s gadgetry. But I’m more than my armor. Sergeant Kal said so.
He edged along the wall, staying out of sight. Can’t deploy tracking remotes, not here, not in public. “I might do a little shopping myself.”
“Just keep that dumb-grunt expression on your face, Mongrel Boy. It suits you.”
Sev took out his datapad and switched the screen to reflective mode, turning his back and holding the device a little out to his right. “She’s just going over the top of the ramp… yeah, she’s peeled off on the first level. She’s following Lounge Lizard so far. Come on. Let’s go around the bridge route and pick them up here.”
“You have as bad an attitude toward ethnic diversity as you have toward the regular army,” Fi said quietly, relaxing his shoulders with every intention of just being a soldier on leave in his dark red fatigues—with a blaster on his belt, like any sensible Coruscanti.
The next hour was unplanned, unexpected, but not untrained for.
Fi hoped he’d make it through alive.
Coruscant Security Force Staff and Social Club,
1300 hours,
private booth, senior officers’ bar
Kal Skirata had his peripheral vision and half an ear trained on the general murmur at the bar. He felt bad about applying caution to these men: they had much the same thankless task as his boys. But there was a possibility that the leak was within their ranks. He couldn’t let comradeship cloud his judgment.
He hoped Obrim wasn’t offended by the distortion field he’d set up. The little emitter sat discreetly on the table between the glasses like a rolled-up pellet of flimsi, ready to bounce any bugging signals.
“If it’s one of mine, I’ll personally put a round through him,” Obrim said.
Skirata didn’t doubt it. “You could put a fake lure in the system and see who goes for it.”
“But even if it’s one of us, then they’d still need data from the GAR to complete the loop. It’s one thing having the holocam images of military targets and movements. It’s another knowing where they’ll be to start with.”
“Okay, then. I have to put someone inside GAR logistics.” There was only one choice: Ordo. “If we find a link to your people, though, I have to cut you loose. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not exactly being kept in the loop on all this anyway, am I?”
“If I told you where my squads were operating, and they happened to get into a bit of trouble that attracted the attention of your people, you might have to call them off. Then everyone would know we had a strike team deployed.”
“I know. I’m just worried that your personnel will attract the attention of some of my overzealous colleagues, and one of us will be sending wreaths to next of kin.”
“My boys don’t have next of kin. Only me.”
“Kal…”
“I can’t. I just can’t. This has to be deniable.” He liked Obrim. He was a kindred spirit, a pragmatic man who didn’t trust easily. “But if something looks like it’s going to get out of hand, and I can warn you off, I will.”
Obrim swirled the dregs of his ale in the glass. “Okay. Sure you don’t want one of these?”
“I only have one at night to help me sleep. Habit from Kamino. Sleep got pretty hard to come by.”
“You’ll have to tell me about that one day. I bet they didn’t have any crime in Tipoca City.”
“Oh, there was crime, all right.” The worst kind: if he ever met another Kaminoan, he knew what he’d do. “Nothing you could have arrested anyone for, though.”
“When’s your boy Fi going to stop by for a drink? We owe him one from the siege. Brave kid.”
“Yeah. He throws himself instinctively on a grenade, and he’s a hero. If he fires instinctively and slots a civilian, though, he’s a monster.”
“And don’t we know it, pal. Happens to us, too.”
“Anyway, Fi’s on a routine patrol at the moment.” Skirata checked his chrono. Green Watch was due to relieve Red in two hours. “I’ll bring him down here, don’t worry. He’s probably bored out of his skull at the moment. Anti-terror ops can be tedious.”
“Sitting around, more sitting around, even more sitting around, then scramble, sheer panic, and bang.”
“Yeah, I think that sums it up.” Skirata drained his glass of juice. “I just hope we get to the bang part in time.”
Level 4 retail plaza,
Quadrant B-85, Coruscant,
1310 hours;
Red Watch observing targets on foot
They should have called it in and let one of the other teams pick it up. But sometimes you had to run with it.
Fi was now on autopilot, reacting to training he hadn’t realized he’d absorbed so thoroughly, and Sev was matching him pace for pace.
The shopping plaza was a mass of color, random people, and even more bewildering smells and sounds. This was life in the field without a helmet, and Fi didn’t like it. Just ahead, Vinna Jiss wandered casually, moving along one diagonal line then another, and then pausing to stare into transparisteel windows full of things Fi had no idea that people bought—or wore.
Sev glanced at him. He didn’t even have to say it.
She looks in an awful lot of shop windows. She doesn’t follow a straight path. She thinks she knows how to avoid a tail, but she’s learned it from the holovids. Amateur. Weak link.
“Bardan…,” Sev said quietly.
The Jedi’s voice was a whisper in Fi’s ear. “I know where you are. Don’t worry.”
“Not worried.” Sev glanced away from the target and Fi turned around casually toward her, looking past her but keeping her in his peripheral vision. “Can’t see the Falleen now…”
“Moving on,” Fi said.
They let Jiss walk on until she was almost lost in the crowd, and then started moving again. A well-planned surveillance operation would have positioned mobile and fixed teams in the area to simply watch and hand off the target to the next team along the route. But they were on their own. And they had never planned to follow a suspect.
“This is what Kal said we should never do,” said Fi.
“You got a better idea?”
“Reckon she’s seen us?”
“If she has, she hasn’t reacted.”
“Why would she? If she’s what we think she is, then we’re just targets to her.”
The plaza was busy. There was a restaurant on the left-hand side with tables and chairs in the open air. Jiss sat down. Sev and Fi walked on past her, and if Fi looked like an overwhelmed clone who’d spent his life cloistered in military environments, then he wasn’t acting. Even Qibbu’s Hut felt more familiar than this.
It wasn’t the urban environment. It was the sheer mass of civilians.
They had no choice. They walked on farther.
“Fierfek,” Sev said. “She’ll have doubled back or disappeared by the time we can turn around safely.”
Fi was looking straight ahead. He could see splashes of dark red between the multicolored shoulders of the dozens of species strolling around the plaza.
“Here comes the Forty-first,” he said. “You can always rely on the infantry…”
A dozen or so brothers were ambling along, gazing around them and b
eing gazed at by shoppers who had clearly never seen clones before. No matter how many times Fi saw that reaction, he always found himself wondering what they found so strange about it, and then had to see his own world as the rest of the galaxy saw it.
The Forty-first were level with them now.
Fi smiled fraternally and got a bewildered nod or two in return. They don’t recognize me! That felt strange. All his commando brothers knew him. And he could tell infantry from ship’s crew by the way they walked. He walked between the men of the Forty-first with Sev like a marching band merging, and spun around at the back of the group to walk back toward the target.
She was still sitting there. But she was looking the other way.
She was staring at another group of clone troopers heading toward her from the other direction.
“I love being a familiar face,” Fi said. His anxiety gave way to a sense of heightened awareness, the thrill of the hunt. The woman’s spine straightened as if she was going to jump up, but she sat tense for a few seconds until the clones drew level with her and met the group coming from the other direction. They stopped to chat. Fi and Sev melted into the group at the rear.
“I’m heading around the back of the plaza,” said Jusik’s voice in their ears. “Niner’s on station now. I’ll give you some aerial recon.”
“Gotcha,” Fi said quietly.
It’s bad personal security to cluster like this. But that didn’t matter right then. The woman dithered, trying not to look at the group and failing miserably: Fi, like any clone, was exceptionally attuned to small gestures. Then she got up to walk briskly into the nearest shop.
“Maybe she owed Jango credits.” Fi shrugged and noted with a sinking heart that the shop looked to be exclusively for females. The garments on display were truly bizarre. “Or we’re just not her type.”
“So, smart-mouth, you going to follow her in there?”
Triple Zero Page 20
