Omega Squad: Targets rc-4

by Karen Traviss

  He wanted her critical research on controlling the ageing process i in humans. It might work both ways, they said. That meant it was worth a fortune. She would try to sell it.

  The tree of files appeared in his HUD, a field of flickering amber and blue symbols like a garish fabric. What looked like a plain white wall to humans on Kamino was actually a riot of colour beyond their visual range. Only in the Kaminoans' digital systems did Mereel ever get a glimpse of the way their heptachromatic vision saw the world.

  Lots of blue and orange and purple. Tacky. Tasteless.

  If he copied just the files he knew he needed, it would take seconds.

  You might never get a chance to come back again.

  The mainframe held 10 petabytes of data. It would take minutes.

  Boots clattered past him. Mereel concentrated on looking like a regular trooper maintaining his armour's systems, but it was hard to stretch a 30-second procedure. He could hear his breath rasping in his helmet. So could Skirata and his brother Ordo, waiting in orbit to extract him.

  “You okay, son?”

  “Fine, Kal'buir.”

  “No heroics,” said Ordo's voice. “Get out now.”

  Mereel looked at his HUD icon: still amber, still downloading. He was pushing it, all right. But he'd pushed his luck a lot more for the Republic, and a bunch of strangers and jetiise didn't mean half as much to him as the welfare of his brothers. The amber icon flashed. More boots clattered past the end of the passage.

  Come on… Come on…

  It was taking too long.

  His peripheral vision, enhanced by his helmet's systems, saw the Kaminoan pause and turn to walk towards him. Fierfek. That's all we need.

  It was a crested male. It stood in front of him, feigning concern. He knew it only sawhim as a commodity.

  “You have been downloading longer than average, trooper.”

  “Just checking, sir.” Mereel heard a faint click on his audio feed: Skirata was edgy. “Slow data response times on my HUD.”

  “Then please proceed to Procurement and have them run diagnostics.”

  “Yes, sir!” Don't bank on it, aiwha-bait. The icon in his HUD changed to green. “Right away, sir!”

  Mereel withdrew the docking pin and walked back down the passage in the general direction of Procurement. The moment the Kaminoan was out of sight, he dropped back into the ocean of whitearmoured bodies and worked his way down the wide corridors and walkways to the maze of service passages that led to lesser-known landing platforms.

  Mereel knew every metre of the complex. Skirata had encouraged the Nulls to run wild as kids, much to the disgust of the Kaminoans. He looked into the cloud-locked sky and rain hammered his visor like shrapnel.

  “Ready, Kal'buir,” he said. “Get me out of this dar'yaim.”

  place and time: republic special-ops freighter tiv z766/2. cato neimoidia portal. hydian – 461 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

  “This wasn't in the op order,” said Atin. “We were supposed to sabotage the factory and return to base.”

  Prudii had ordered the traffic interdiction vessel to Neimoidian space. The pilot didn't seem worried. TIV pilots never did.

  “I know,” said Prudii. “But this is all about presentation.”

  “Even this TIV can't take on an armoured transport.”

  “You sound scared, ner vod. Look at me. No helmet. Would I take a risk without my suit sealed?”

  Atin considered showing Prudii where he could dock his character assessment the hard way. “But it's not unreasonable to ask why you're presenting a target to the Seps just to get a few thousand droids that are probably from a spiked batch anyway.” He paused for a breath. “Lieutenant.”

  “No need to stand on ceremony with me, vod'ika.” Prudii shrugged. “We're all brothers. Even those unimaginative Alpha planks, Force bless 'em. Why am I doing this? Emphasis, ner vod. Emphasis.”

  A small, bright spot grew larger in the view plate and resolved into a yellow and gray transport with horizontal spars picked out in scarlet. Prudii let it draw a thousand metres behind the TIV.

  “Ready torpedoes,” he said.

  The pilot tapped the console. “Torps ready.”

  “Steady…”

  The transport was accelerating slowly towards the jump point.

  “On my mark…”

  He was calculating blast range. Atin could see it.

  “Take take take.”

  “Torps away.”

  A spread of six proton torpedoes streaked from the concealed tubes in the ship's underslung drive. The TIV shuddered. Atin reminded himself that his Katarn armour and bodysuit was space-tight for 20 minutes, and then realised help would be a lot more than 20 minutes away if anything went wrong. It always was – why did they bother? But Prudii didn't have his helmet on. Either he was confident or he was mad, and being a Null meant he was probably both.

  The first and second warheads punched one-two into the transport's starboard flank in a blaze of gold light. Atin didn't see the rest strike because the TIV accelerated from standstill to way too fast in a matter of seconds, heading for the jump point. It was definitely emphatic.

  Stars stretched and streaked before them as the TIV went to hyperspace and left the stricken transport far behind. Prudii wasn't even waiting to confirm a kill. He smiled as the acceleration levelled out and the TIV settled steady again. The pilot yawned. Atin said nothing.

  “You're going to tell me what an or'dinii I am for pulling that stunt, aren't you, ner vod?” asked Prudii.

  “Pointless bravado.” If he took offence, Atin was ready to swing at him. “Reckless, even.”

  “But it's what the GAR would do if it came across a droid transport and didn't know a lot of tinnies were already as good as useless, isn't it?” Prudii sounded as if he regarded the Grand Army as something separate and external. “I didn't bust my shebs around half the galaxy this past year so the Seps could work out that their tinnies were already sabotaged. So it's worth the risk to make it all look real. If we don't take a pop at them whenever we get the chance, they'll wonder why.”

  Atin dealt in the measurable and the solid, things he could deconstruct to find out how they worked, and things that he could build. He was trained in camouflage and feint attacks. But the world that the Nulls moved in, the arena of black ops, was a nebulous haze of bluff and counter-bluff. Just when he thought he had the hang of it, they'd do something that was obvious in hindsight but that hadn't occurred to him at the time.

  “You think they're that smart?”

  “I never underestimate the enemy,” said Prudii. “Especially when I'm not sure who the enemy is.” He tapped the pilot's shoulder. “Drall RV point, my good man, and make it snappy.”

  “You Null boys are my favourite fares,” said the pilot, and yawned again. “Never a dull moment.”

  place and time: republic special-ops shuttle. uncoded. en route from kamino to drall RV point corellian space – 461 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

  Mereel swung through the hatch into the crew bay, and Skirata gave him a playful tap on the ear with the flat of his hand.

  “Don't do that again,” said Skirata. “If those gray freaks had caught you, they'd have reconditioned you.”

  “They might have tried.” Mereel caught Ordo narrowing his eyes in disapproval: Kal'buir was not to be distressed, ever. “Anyway, this could well be worth it.”

  Safe from detection even by the Republic, they sat in the crew cabin of the unmarked shuttle and pored over the data from Mereel's haul while they waited for Atin and Prudii to rendezvous. They watched the files play out on Ordo's datapad like the latest holovids while the Treasury software from oh-so-helpful Agent Wennen flagged the most heavily encrypted files and those that had been subject to secure erasure.

  Mereel was almost joking when he keyed in the search parameter “Palpatine.” It was always worth seeing if there was data about key politicians in any files he sliced, just in case
, but he didn't expect to find anything.

  But he got it.

  “Osik,” he cursed.

  “Problem?” Ordo nudged him.

  “Maybe.” Mereel stared at a triple-encrypted file that yielded to the Treasury software. But it wasn't a message or a data file; it was a copy of a holotransmission.

  He hit the key. It was a frozen holo of Lama Su. Fierfek, it was the Kaminoan Prime Minister, and he appeared to be talking to Chancellor Palpatine.

  Skirata swallowed audibly. “Now this is where life gets a bit dangerous.”

  But they watched, transfixed, as the shimmering blue image of Lama Su sprang to life from the datapad emitter.

  “If you require more clones beyond the current order, then you must authorize us to begin further production immediately. An initial payment of one billion credits….”

  There was a crackling pause: Palpatine's response wasn't recorded, but it was clear he had interrupted. Lama Su's head bobbed in annoyance.

  “We must make it clear that the current Kamino contracts terminate in two years. Apart from the special facilities you ask us to set up on Coruscant, Chancellor, you will have no further clone production beyond the current three million unless you commission more now…”

  There was nothing more. It appeared to be all that Lama Su had filed, probably as some kind of personal insurance. If the date was correct, the conversation had taken place some months before.

  “Shab,” Skirata hissed. “What are they playing at?”

  Ordo slowly raised his hand to his mouth. Mereel, who thought he'd seen it all, revised his grasp of political subterfuge on the spot.

  “So is the Republic going bust and not paying its bills?” asked Ordo. “Or are we seeing something else?”

  “Cloning facilities on Coruscant? General Zey never mentioned that.”

  “Maybe he doesn't know. There's a lot Zey doesn't know, after all… lots about us, for a start.”

  “How's the Chancellor going to pull that off?”

  Skirata interrupted. “See what else you can find.” He'd started chewing ruik root again and Mereel gauged his anxiety by the speed of his jaw. He was going like a machine now. “I don't like this at all.”

  “If this is all the army we've got for the foreseeable future,” said Ordo, “then we'll be overrun in two years.”

  “Unless Prudii's patent droid remover saves the day,” said Mereel, stomach churning.

  Why didn't I pick this up earlier?

  All Nulls were adept spies, used to knowing more about the Republic's inner workings than the Senate itself. Mereel could even find out the smallest and most private details if he needed to, maybe even how many times Palpatine used the 'freshers each day. He'd thought that no information escaped him. So being surprised by totally unexpected information left him uneasy and ashamed.

  “How did I miss this, Kal'buir?” he said, feeling he had let him down.

  “You didn't, son,” said Skirata. “You found it.”

  place and time: RV point. drall space. corellia sector – 462 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

  Prudii obviously hadn't seen Skirata in a long time. Atin watched, fascinated, as he turned instantly from glib cynic to adoring son, hugging Skirata with a clash of armour plates. He stood back, and Skirata patted his cheek, an indulgent grin spreading across his face.

  “I have some interesting data for you, Kal'buir.” The two ships hung linked together by a docking tube, a long way from Republic scrutiny as well as the Separatists. They gathered in the crew bay of the smaller TIV. It was a tight fit. “We're still not finding droid numbers like Intel claimed. We have to reassess the nature of the Sep threat.”

  Atin thought Prudii just meant numbers. It was now obvious that the droid numbers were flawed to say the least. Atin would have been happy to just write that off as Republic Intelligence being di'kute – nobody with any sense expected intel to be accurate anyway – but it seemed to bother all three Nulls a great deal. Ordo and Mereel, their helmets stacked side by side on the deck like two decapitated heads, wore matching frowns of concern.

  “Come on, this is supposed to be good news,” said Atin.

  Ordo shrugged. “Depends where the original estimate came from.”

  “But what if it turns out to be right?”

  Mereel looked mildly exasperated. “If they had even one quadrillion droids, or a tenth of that, we'd know all about it – because they'd use them, and they'd invade Coruscant.” He glanced at Skirata, as though waiting for permission to go on. Skirata shook his head. “Anyway, a factory processing more droids than that needs a lotofdurasteeland parts, and we'd notice the traffic. We're not seeing quadrillion-ton shipments of ore, metal or components.”

  “Then it's just Sep propaganda. Everyone talks up their troop strengths.”

  Atin simply couldn't see why it mattered. They had a better handle on the Sep droid numbers now, and a good strategy, for the time being, for making sure that the millions didn't count for anything like that number on the battlefield. He settled back into an alcove in the port bulkhead and inserted his test probes into the wafer's terminals. He just wanted to see the data for himself, or as much as he understood of it.

  “We're fighting small fires all the time, all over the place,” said Skirata. “Zey might think these numbers are good news, but it's like saying we're drowning in three metres of water instead of a hundred.”

  Atin hadn't been raised by Skirata like the rest of Omega Squad, but he knew the man well enough now to read his reactions. He was completely transparent with clones; he didn't seem to be able to deceive them, or even want to. “There's something you're not telling me, Sarge.”

  Skirata put his comlink on standby. “Yes, son, there is.”

  “So it is Grievous, then? Because if it is…”

  “It's messy politics.” Skirata – a contract killer, an accomplished thief, a man who diverted Republic resources whenever he felt like it – would never lie to his boys. He promised them that. “If you know about it, it might endangeryou.”

  Atin wondered what might be more dangerous than being a Republic commando. It wasn't exactly a steady desk job. But he trusted Skirata completely, even if his curiosity was devouring him. “Okay, Sarge. Orders?”

  “Get back to HQ with the TIV pilot and do a bit of skills transfer. Teach the rest of the lads how to make nice crumbly droids.”

  Ordo cut in. “And thank Besany Wennen for me, will you?”

  Atin worked out that Prudii wasn't going back with him. “You're telling me to get lost, aren't you?”

  “For your own good,” said Skirata.

  It had to be Grievous. Fora moment Atin wondered if they didn't think he was good enough to go after the Separatist general with them, and then he started worrying for Skirata. Even with a bunch of Nulls, the old di'kut would be insane to try to tackle him. And Atin had no intention of walking away if that was on the agenda.

  “Straight question, Sarge.”

  “Don't put me on the spot, At'ika.”

  “Are you going after Grievous? 'Cos if you are, I'm not leaving.”

  “No, we're not going after Grievous.”

  Atin scrutinized his face. “Okay, Sarge. Be careful, anyway. Whatever it is.”

  He climbed back through the hatch to rejoin the TIV pilot. Most of the time, he really didn't need or even want to know what the Nulls got up to. Or Skirata, for that matter. He just didn't want to lose any more brothers.

  And even if he worked out what was going on, it wouldn't change his job one bit.

  place and time: rv point. drall space – 462 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

  “Okay, what's your assessment?” Skirata prepped the secure link to General Zey back at headquarters. “What are we going to tell him?”

  Ordo shrugged. “Nothing about the holorecording – yet.”

  “We'd be failing in our duty if we didn't advise him to change tactics, though,” said Mereel. “Again.”<
br />
  “You know it's not his decision.”

  “But it's still our duty.”

  Skirata frowned and opened the secure link. The Jedi general seemed to have been caught on the hop – the holoimage showed him in his undershirt, hair disheveled.

  “Another confirmation of droid production numbers, General,” said Skirata. “Same as before. Worst scenario, maybe a few hundred million right now.”

  “That's better than we thought. I needed some good news.

  Successfully neutralized?”

  “My lads are completely reliable.”

  “I know.”

  “We think… look, it's pretty clear from what we're seeing that we're facing small-scale conflicts in waves. If we concentrated all our forces on completely overwhelming them a sector at a time, instead of scattering our troops across a thousand fronts, we could break the Seps a lot faster.”

  Zey chewed his lip. “I hear what you say.”

  “A big push. Consolidate our forces and hit 'em hard, then move on when they're crushed and hit the next sector. This piecemeal approach is just damping down fires temporarily.”

  Mereel waited for Zey's reaction. The Jedi looked tired. It was hard to find anyone in the Grand Army who didn't look in need of a week's sleep.

  Zey dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “I agree, militarily. General Windu reminds the Chancellor of this proposal whenever he can. The answer's always the same. Palpatine thinks it'll be seen as excessive force and might alienate the neutral worlds.”

  Mereel had no patience with politics. “Tell him we're feeling pretty alienated right now, too.”

  “I understand your frustration, Lieutenant.”

  “What does he say about the droid numbers, then?”