Republic Commando: Triple Zero

11

I’d rather have little Jedi like Barden 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 Jailer 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 operating 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 holo-cam 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 being 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?”

“I could.”

“What, tell them you're looking for a present for your girlfriend?”

“Don't push your luck. Is there a back way out?”

Sev stepped into a doorway and shielded Fi while he took a quick look at the holochart and snapped off the image quickly.

“No, but there's a landing platform for deliveries.”

Sev dropped to a whisper. “Bardan, you with us yet?”

Jusik's voice was almost a chuckle. “Fascinating,” he said. “I'm waiting at the delivery platform. A taxi is just what she needs right now.” Sev and Fi looked at each other. They could hear Jusik, but the taxi wasn't visible even when they stood back and glanced up discreetly at the roofline. Then they heard his voice, utterly level, utterly calm—utterly worrying. “Yeah? Yeah, I am, lady … where d'you want to go? I've got a booking, but …”

“Sev, tell me he isn't doing what I think he is.”

“He's doing it.”

“He's nuts.”

Sev lowered his voice to a whisper in the comlink. “Bardan, if we lift her now, we'll blow this op. Don't overplay it.”

“Okay, lady, but the spaceport isn't my regular run, so that'll be extra.”

There was the sound of someone getting into the taxi and a woman's voice. “Yes, just drop me off at the domestic terminal, please.”

Fi wondered for a moment if ordinary people had shared thoughts like the one he knew Sev was sharing with him. They'd been trained to think the same way, the soldier's way. Where was Jusik going with this? If he dropped her off like a normal taxi, they'd lose her in the terminal anyway. He couldn't follow her in there and check where she went without blowing his cover. And if he didn't drop her off …

Sev was staring past Fi. “Lizard on your six,” he said quietly.

Fi turned very, very slowly and stopped when he caught the Falleen male in his peripheral vision at the point where the plaza funneled into a spiral ramp down to another level. He was searching. So the woman hadn't caught up with him when he expected, and he was looking for her. And that meant she had no comlink, or she'd have used it.

“Now he's going to be bad news. He's carrying some serious cannon. Look at the line of his jacket.”

Jusik's voice was a quiet descant to Fi's pulse pounding in his head. “Oh, fierfek. That's great. Being rerouted again … this is going to cost, lady … another detour …”

“He's way too smart for his own good.” Sev looked exasperated. “Bardan, are you doing what I think you're doing? Are you heading back our way?”

“I pay good license money not to have to use automated lanes,” said Jusik's voice in their ears. He really didn't sound at all like a nice Jedi Temple boy now. And then I still get diverted. What do we pay our taxes for?”

“I'll take that as a yes.”

The Falleen moved off, pausing occasionally to look around, and ambled slowly down the ramp. Fi and Sev leaned on the edge of the parapet like any tourist might to take in the view below.

Fi dropped his voice. “He's calling someone.” The Falleen had the back of his hand raised to his mouth. Oh, for a helmet comlink. Fi might have been able to pick up the frequency. “Is it her? Or backup?”

“We could call this in and get Niner and Scorch to pick him up.”

“And then we drag another team off station. No, let's see this through.”

Sev sat down on a bench, looking suitably disoriented. “Bardan, where are you?”

“Let me try this shortcut, lady … hey, who you calling? You making a complaint about fares already?”

“I bet she's calling Lounge Lizard. Great.”

“Yeah, and now that our driver's got a very dodgy passenger, has he thought what we're going to do with her?”

“Same as we did with Orjul and the Nikto,” Sev said, getting up to walk across to the taxi platform at the end of the plaza. They had to get in fast when Jusik appeared and opened that hatch. Fi had visions of the potential grief that would be unleashed if a passenger was screaming her head off when the taxi hatch opened in a very public place.

“Land at ninety degrees, Bardan. Sev will access via the port hatch and I'll go in the other, and we'll pin her down.”

“Yeah, I think Fi can manage to subdue a civilian,” Sev said.

“Remind me to show you my unfunny side later, ner vod.”

“Skirata's going to kill us for this—”

“Better get it right then,” Fi said.

“Here he comes …”

“Steady, Bardan.”

“Too fast.”

“He's a Jedi. There's no such thing as too fast.”

The battered taxi, its anti-surveillance gauze now showing a human driver that wasn't Jusik, dropped onto the platform scattering dust and grit. The two commandos ran to their respective sides.

Jusik's voice filled their heads now. “Hatches in three … two … one!”

They threw themselves in. The hatches snapped shut so fast that Fi felt his pant leg snag in the seal but he was flat on top of a squealing, struggling woman and then she went quiet because Sev clamped his hand over her mouth.

“You waiting for a tip?” said Fi.

The taxi lifted in a straight vertical and nearly shaved the paintwork off another cab trying to drop off passengers. It was just as well that Enacca had done something creative about the identity transponder.

“Fi, I don't suppose you brought any restraints?”

“No, but this usually works.” Fi freed his right arm and put his blaster to Jiss's head. “Ma'am, shut up and stop struggling. I have no problem shooting women.”

No, he didn't. Enemies were enemies. Females were soldiers, too.

Jusik took the taxi high into what appeared to be a commuter lane and shot off in a complex loop that first took them away from Qibbu's and relative safety, and then dropped down between lanes where the layers of traffic overhead gave some protection against visual surveillance.

“We've been tagged,” Jusik said. He shut his eyes, far too long for Fi's comfort. It was the first time he'd seen the Jedi fly with his eyes closed, and the fact that the good ones could do that didn't reassure the simple animal part of him that said it shouldn't be possible. “Yes, we're being followed.”

Fi wanted to ask how he knew but Jiss had no reason to know Jusik was a Jedi, and the less she knew, the easier it would be to process her, as Skirata put it.

“You can evade them, right?”

“About as well as anyone can.”

“Any idea who they are?”

“None, other than they're very persistent, and if it's CSF, it's an unmarked vessel.”

“You can sense all that information?”

He opened his eyes again. “Yes, because they're only two or three speeders behind us and I can see them in the mirror.”

Sev looked at Fi with the unspoken count of one, two, three. Sev released his grip on Jiss as Fi clamped his arm tight around her neck, blaster pressed so hard into her temple that the muzzle was ringed with a little patch of white bloodless skin. He could feel her heart pounding through her back against his chest even through the thin sheet of body armor under his tunic. He wondered for a moment if it was his own frantic heartbeat.

Sev reached under the rear seat for his DC-17 and took out the grenade attachment. “Okay, it lacks finesse, but we're late for lunch. And if they track us, we're finished.”

“Here? In daylight, in traffic?” Jusik said.

“Not yet.” Sev tried to aim his Deece and snapped on the grenade launcher. “Open the rear screen a crack. Can you hold steady?”

“You wanted me to outrun them—”

“Can't. We've got to drop them.”

Jusik looked in the rearview. “In a skylane? You haven't got a clear shot and the debris will—”

“Me sniper, you pilot. Understand the difference?”

Jusik's grip on the steering vane tightened. “Too many vessels and too much debris. Let's head for somewhere less crowded.”

“Maybe Qiilura?” Fi said.

“Hold on tight.”

Jusik dropped the taxi like a stone and plummeted ten, then fifteen, then twenty levels to the lower skylanes, slipping in between two transports and then jumping between horizontal lanes.

“Still there,” said Sev. “Three vehicles behind.”

“Have they alerted anyone?”

“I can't sense anything.” Jusik kept shaking his head as if trying to clear it. “They might not want to risk using comlinks.”

“Who the fierfek are they?”

“I don't know! I'm not a mind-reader and if you'd just shut up because I'm trying to concentrate on flying and listening and—” His voice trailed off. “Just aim.”

Fi pressed his blaster harder into the woman's head. She flinched and shut her eyes tight. He could feel no emotion whatsoever, just the cold clarity of his life and his comrades' against her existence, and it seemed an easy equation.

“Move and you're dead, ma'am, okay?” Move? Even Fi wasn't sure he could make an escape from a speeder moving this fast and this erratically—and not at this height, either. “Start thinking of all the helpful information you're going to give us.”

Jusik broke from the automated lane and fell another five levels like a stone, drawing screaming protests of klaxons as he skimmed other vessels. But the speeder dropped with them, delayed only by a few seconds. Then he banked right into a service vessel tunnel, and Fi had no idea where they were. It was enclosed. And that was bad. Fi wasn't a pilot but flying fast down a tube struck him as suicide.

“Look, I know where I'm heading,” Jusik said, as if he were suddenly telepathic. Fi wondered if he had protested aloud and hadn't realized. “I know. And they can't get a signal through down here.”

And then he fell silent. And this was where it became very, very frightening to have a Jedi on the squad, because Jusik had shifted from a skill that Fi could see to something beyond his comprehension.

Jusik was now skimming a meter above the surface of a conduit lit at regular intervals by a dim green light. Sev was struggling to get a steady shot through the narrow opening in the rear screen. All Fi could do was watch one madman or the other while he held a gun to a woman's head, and Fi didn't enjoy not being in control of his environment. He thought of Sicko again and the moment when he and Omega were helpless and utterly dependent on that pilot's skill. Poor Sicko.

“Sev, he's twenty meters behind us, right?” said Jusik.

“Spot on.”

“Are you going to be ready when I say fire?”

“Try me.”

“Only on my mark.”

“Get on with it, sir.”

Fi felt his left arm going numb around the woman's neck, and he struggled to keep the blaster hard against her head. The taxi was veering from side to side. “I just hope they're not CSF.”

“They're not ours … ,” Sev said. “And they're in pursuit. So they're a target.”

Fi dug the blaster into the woman's skin. “Are they your people, ma'am?”

“I don't know! I don't know!”

“If they are, it's too bad,” Sev said. “We can't let them track us back.”

Jusik speeded up. “Stand by.”

Fi noticed that he had his eyes shut again.

“Fierfek.”

“Fire!” Jusik said, and the taxi suddenly flipped up ninety degrees and climbed in an agonizing vertical. Fi braced for impact.

They had to be dead.

But the taxi was still climbing.

They were in a vertical shaft and a ball of blue-white flame roared beneath them. Fi was thrown against Sev but he locked his arm tight around the woman's neck, and all three of them hit the partly open rear screen as the sound of ricocheting debris faded behind them in the service duct.

The light dimmed fast beneath them and suddenly disappeared as Jusik slammed the taxi into another right angle and they were flying horizontally along a channel again.

“Target down.” Sev shut his eyes.

“That better not be CSF,” Fi said. “That's going to be very messy.”

Suddenly they were bathed in hazy sunlight. Jusik brought them out into passenger traffic and slipped into the automated lanes of private speeders again.

“What do we look like from the outside now?” Sev asked.

Jusik wiped his forehead with his palm and looked as breathless and battered as he ever had after performing the Dha Werda. Fi could have sworn he looked just as elated, too.

“Family of Garqian tourists with a Gran driver,” the Jedi said. “Now let's try to explain this to you-know-who without getting our heads ripped off.” He opened his comlink. “Returning with a prisoner, Kal.”

Sev grumbled in his throat. “Never use real names.”

“Least of our worries now,” Fi said.

So Jusik was scared of Skirata, too. It was supposed to be a quiet ohs job, as he'd put it, observation duty; it had turned into kidnapping and blowing up unidentified vessels. Scared wasn't the right word, though.

He'll be disappointed with us. We let him down.

Fi, like anyone who came into Skirata's circle, desperately wanted Kal'buir to be proud of him. It was more effective motivation than fear any day.

“Remember he even shoves Wookiees around,” said Fi. He adjusted his grip on the woman's neck to stop the tingling in his fingers. “And they take it.”

The taxi was silent except for the occasional whimpering gulp from Jiss and the rumble of the vessel's hard-pressed drive. Eventually Jusik came to a shuddering halt on the platform at the top level of Qibbu's Hut. Sev called on his comlink for a hand with the woman, and Atin came running out with Fixer.

“What have you been playing at? Skirata's going nuts in there.” Atin slid into the taxi and put cuffs on Jiss. “Get out and we'll take her to the safe house. You've got some explaining to do.”

Safe house for them, maybe. Safe for her? No. But then she had picked the wrong side. She wasn't a helpless victim.

So much for whining that we never get to see the enemy.

The taxi lifted off, leaving Fi, Sev, and Jusik standing on the platform, exhausted by adrenaline.

“Thank you for flying Jedi Air.” Jusik grinned, and shook their hands. “Have a nice afternoon.”

“You're all insane,” said Sev, and stalked off.