Republic Commando: Triple Zero

16

Mhi solus tome

Mhi solus dar'totne

Mhi me dinui an

Mhi bajuri verde

We are one when together.

We are one when parted.

We will share all.

We will raise warriors.

–Traditional Mandalorian marriage contract and ceremony, in its entirety

Logistics center, Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ, 2340 hours, 384 days after Geonosis

There was a lot to be said for having a matte-black army-issue bodysuit.

It provided a reasonable amount of protection against blaster and projectile weapons, and it was low visibility at night, unlike ARC trooper armor. Ordo felt in the pockets of the knee-length dark gray jacket that Vau had lent him and felt compelled to inhale the unfamiliar scent of its wearer: antiseptic soap, weapon-lubricating oil, and a maleness that was not his. But it disguised the skintight suit. That was all it had to do.

It also disguised the Verpine shatter gun in his holster.

“What makes you think she's going to stick to her shift hours?” Etain said, looking slightly past him, head almost touching his. They sat in the closed cockpit of a speeder parked a hundred meters from the logistics center, where they could watch the doors. To anyone watching, they were just a young couple in a parked speeder late at night, like a thousand others at that moment.

“The fact she bothered to return to work at all. That means she wants her pattern to appear normal again.”

Etain just nodded. She seemed to be finding it hard to keep up a conversation. Ordo could smell Darman on her, which fascinated him: Darman seemed able to step beyond the community of brothers and not feel adrift, just as his Null brothers could. But Ordo found it distressing, and Fi seemed to as well.

Ordo wasn't sure if he would ever trust a female, not after Chief Scientist Ko Sai first towered above him, gray and cold and unfeeling. He wondered if having a human mother would have made it easier.

Etain shut her eyes again. She shuddered.

“It's not cold,” Ordo said.

“Are there Jedi working here?”

“Of course. Jedi make great clerks.”

“I'll take that as a no.”

“It's a definite no. Why do you ask?”

“I felt someone in the Force, very faintly.”

Fierfek. Zey? Jusik being helpful? “Close?”

“Gone now.”

She went back to silent contemplation of something beyond him.

“Is your PEP laser fully charged?”

“Yes, Ordo.”

“Very noisy and visible. Last resort.”

“As is a Verpine round.”

“I have the chamber loaded two and one,” Ordo said.

“What?”

“Two marker projectiles between each live round, and one live round already up the spout, as Kal'buir so aptly puts it.”

“And you can—”

“Count? I do believe so.”

“I seem to offend you without meaning to. I realize you have an astonishing intellect.”

It wasn't that his mind was so remarkable that seemed worth comment, but that hers and others' were not. He felt the need to explain.

“In an emergency, it's better that I'm able to fire a killing shot without needing to discharge two nonlethal rounds first.” He stared into her eyes: they were light green, flecked with amber. Except for Skirata's, the only eyes so unlike his own that he had ever studied at that range were alien, and shortly before he killed their owner. “Anyway, I can execute a triple tap with a Verpine. So it's academic.”

“Triple tap? I've heard Dar talk about double—”

“Three rounds in quick succession. Some species need a little more stopping power.”

“Oh.”

“The PEP laser will stun most humanoids.”

“And if it doesn't?”

Ordo simply tapped the Verpine under his jacket.

They waited. Maybe they really did look like a couple having a private moment. Randomly created people did strange things.

Staff in groups, ones, and twos began entering the building for the night shift.

Soon …

Movement behind the transparisteel doors made him focus and check his chrono: 1155. Staff sloping off early. “Stand by,” he said quietly.

Etain turned very slowly away from him in her seat, ready to open the speeder's hatch and slide out.

Ten or eleven workers emerged. Ordo and Etain slipped from the speeder and feigned ambling around in conversation. There was still frequent pedestrian traffic around the center.

By 0005 the trickle of staff in and out had slowed, and there was still no sign of Vinna Jiss.

“She has to come out that entrance.”

“You're sure—oh, okay, Ordo.”

They waited. He wondered how long the two of them would look inconspicuous.

And then he spotted the ginger wavy hair and the beige tunic he'd seen earlier. Jiss. He watched her turn along the path and walk down the ramp toward the walkways that connected the complex to the business district around it; then he made his move.

Etain walked briskly at his side and grabbed his hand. “For goodness' sake, Ordo, try to look like a couple.”

Ordo didn't much like that, but the mission came first.

They kept twenty meters behind Jiss, hampered by the lack of crowds of office workers to hide among at this time of night. Maybe they should have waited until daylight. But nobody knew how much time they might have to act. It was a case of now.

Etain did that side-to-side head movement as if she was straining to hear something. “Okay … people behind us, but they seem to have their minds on matters other than us …”

“How do you know that?”

“No feeling of focus on me, or you.”

“Handy,” Ordo said, but he hitched back his jacket and hooked his thumb in his belt to be ready to grab the Verp.

They had followed Jiss for about half a klick along the shrub-lined office walkways when the few pedestrians became none and they had no cover between her and them. Jiss turned right into a side alley and Ordo picked up speed, drawing his weapon and holding it as discreetly as he could against his chest.

“Where's she gone?”

“The alley,” Ordo hissed. “Are you blind?”

“No, I mean she's gone. Gone. I can't feel anybody there.”

Ordo cocked the Verp and checked the status indicator. He might need that live round after all. He slowed at the corner and froze for a second before stepping into the opening with the gun raised, two-handed.

He was looking at a man's back about fifty meters ahead. No sign of Jiss. Maybe that really is a Clawdite.

“Oh my … ,” Etain said.

Ordo was about to discharge the lethal round into the containers of shrubbery and try for a tag pellet but the man appeared to crouch into a low run. There was a reflection, a split-second gleam that said metal, alloy—weapon.

He fired instinctively.

The silent shot hit something with a wet sssputt and whoever or whatever he had hit rolled, stumbled, and raced off to the left down another passage. Ordo broke into a sprint, Etain pounding after him. He reached the point of impact and saw fluid—dark, oily—before discharging both tag pellets into the shrubs and lining up the next lethal round. This had gone wrong. He had got it wrong. But he couldn't turn back now: this had to be resolved. He swung left and there was someone lying on the paving, writhing, and he aimed the Verpine.

“Check!” Etain yelled. “Check!”

And in the fraction of a second that he froze on the safety command she had heard Skirata use, a shock wave of air and heat flared past him and hit the figure on the ground in a blinding, deafening flash. Without his visor he was stunned for a second, too. But he dropped on the body, holding the Verp clear, and grabbed an arm.

Its limb melted away in his grip.

That second became endless, a layered image.

I'm going to throttle that Jedi.

What the fierfek have I grabbed?

It's a Clawdite.

He looked up at Etain but she raised her blaster again and spun around. There was a second deafening, blinding crack of a PEP laser discharging.

Ordo had a tight grip of something very heavy and black and sleekly furred that had stopped moving. And that was an odd thing for a wounded Clawdite—a humanoid when not shapeshifting—to become.

A few meters from Etain, a human female lay crumpled on the paving, gasping for breath. It was Supervisor Wennen, not Jiss. Ordo defaulted to training and opened his comlink.

“Bard'ika? We need extraction urgently. Two prisoners, both injured. Now!”

His instinct told him to find some cover fast. The PEP laser would bring someone running before long. He dragged whatever creature he had shot into an alcove and motioned furiously at Etain to do the same with Wennen. It was amazing how heavy a weight a little Jedi could haul.

But he wanted to hit her, and hard.

“You di'kut,” he hissed. “I could have been killed. Never use that command. Do you hear me? Never! If you try that again, I'll shoot you.”

Etain's wide-eyed stare was either fury or shock. He didn't care.

“I thought you were going to finish it off!” She knelt over the black creature at his side and put her hands on it. “It's alive. I have to keep it alive. You shouldn't have fired.”

“That's my call to make.”

“You shot a Gurlanin—”

There aren't any Gurlanins currently on Coruscant, so Zey says. “Spare me your hindsight lecture.” Gurlanin. Shape-shifter. Qiiluran. Spy. Never seen one before. “Jusik, can you hear me? Can Vau handle shapeshifter first aid?”

Jusik's voice was breathless. “With you in ten minutes, Ordo, hang on. Where's your speeder?”

“Not here. Just move it, please.”

Etain had her fingers spread on the creature's black coat, her eyes shut tight. “I can use the Force to control the bleeding.”

“Okay, you do that, Jedi.” He squatted over Wennen and checked her breathing with the Verp held to her head. “So, Supervisor, why were you following us?”

Wennen looked in bad shape. Her eyes were streaming and she curled up into a ball, clutching her chest. Etain had fired the PEP laser at close range. “Republic … Audit … you shoot me, chum … and you're in big trouble …”

“What?”

“Treasury officer?”

“Show me, or you're the one in trouble, ma'am.”

She let out an anguished gasp and fumbled for her pocket. Ordo decided to play safe and extract the contents for her. Yes, it was an identichip: Republic Treasury Audit Division.

“You've nearly fouled up a GAR operation,” he said.

“I was following Jiss.”

“Why?”

“Supplies going missing. So did she. Who are you?” She pulled back her head a little to focus on his bare hand gripping the Verp. “Well, that tells me you're not Trooper Corr.”

“Obviously.”

“Are you the captain who came in the other day? Because you certainly recognize me.”

So much for deniability: this would be all over the Treasury in hours if he let her get up and walk away—not that she seemed able to. “We need to have a little chat.”

“And what's that?” Wennen tilted her head to look at the Gurlanin, lying inert while Etain struggled to stabilize its wound.

Etain opened her eyes a little.

“This,” she said, “used to be one of our allies.”

Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 0045 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Skirata assembled a makeshift deployment tote board from three large sheets of flimsi and stuck them to the wall.

It was old technology, real words on real flimsi, not shifting lights and code. He needed its solid reassurance right now. Things were turning osikla.

Corr—assigned to the team on Skirata's whim—stood beside him, dutifully listing target locations by numbers of visits and tagged suspects on one sheet while Skirata kept a tally of which commando was deployed, and where they all were for the next twelve standard hours. Without his armor and bodysuit, Corr was just a very young man with durasteel mechanisms where he should have had real hands, and it broke Skirata's heart.

Droid. They're making you into what they always thought you were, son.

Skirata shook himself out of it and concentrated on the flimsi. He hated holocharts. He liked solid things that he could grab hold of, even if they had their limitations. It also kept his hands occupied when he was reaching the limits of his confidence. He had to stand firm. His men needed to see him in control, reassuring, believing in them.

Believing in them was easy. He had doubts about himself. He glanced over his shoulder. “Is that thing dead yet?”

“Kal'buir, I'm sorry I got this wrong,” Ordo said. Somewhere, no matter how much reassurance Skirata gave him, he still seemed to fear that not being good enough meant a death sentence. Skirata hated Kaminoans with renewed passion. “I should have known what the creature was. I knew they existed.”

“Son, none of us knew any of them were on Coruscant.”

But they were. And that changed everything.

Etain and Jusik were kneeling on either side of the Gurlanin, hands flat on its flanks in some kind of Jedi healing process. Vau watched with interest. He was the anatomy expert, although he was more skilled at taking bodies apart than repairing them. Darman and Niner seemed unwilling to go back to sleep and joined the audience.

They'd become close to a Gurlanin on Qiilura. It must have been very hard to think of them now as possible agents for the Separatists.

It was a black-furred carnivore about a meter high at the shoulder, with long legs, four double-tipped fangs, and hard, unforgiving orange eyes. It now looked exactly what it was: a shapeshifting predator.

“It's recovering,” Jusik said.

“Good,” Vau said. “Because we want a chat with it.”

Etain looked up with that pinched expression she tended to adopt when she was angry in her rather righteous kind of way. “I lived alongside them. We promised we'd give them back their planet and so far all we've done is move in a garrison and train the human colonists to look after themselves.”

Vau stared slightly past her, straight-faced. “I believe that was you personally, General. You and Zey. And you were only following orders. That's it, isn't it? Following orders.”

“Knock it off,” Skirata said. He didn't want Darman pitching in to defend Etain. Everyone's nerves were raw: tired, stressed people were dangerous, and they needed to be dangerous to the enemy, not each other. “Ordo, what are we going to do with Supervisor Wennen?”

Besany Wennen was propped in a chair, arms folded gingerly across what must have been a very painful bruise to her whole chest. She was lucky that Etain's close-range PEP round hadn't killed her, but now the woman was just an extra complication they didn't need. Ordo was looking her over as if she was a new species.

And she was. There was a comfortable zone of attractiveness in females, and then there was a point beyond which it became too much. The very beautiful were intimidating and unwelcome. Wennen had passed that threshold, and Skirata was ambushed by his own unexpected hostility toward her.

“You've probably guessed what we're doing, ma'am,” Ordo said.

“Anti-terrorist operations?”

“Correct.”

“I'm sorry. I had no idea.” But there was no screaming outrage or threats that her boss would rip the guts out of their boss, the usual response of bureaucrats. She just indicated the unconscious Gurlanin with a shaky hand. “Where does the Gurlanin fit into all this?”

“Other than mimicking Jiss, we have no idea.”

Wennen seemed to be taking refuge in investigation, continuing to do her job even though she knew she was in a serious situation. Skirata respected that. “So if you two are Jedi, why didn't you spot the creature?”

“Gurlanins can hide in the Force and shut us out,” Etain said. “When I first encountered them I even thought they were Jedi. They're telepathic, we can't detect them, we don’t know how many there are, and they appear to be able to mimic any species up to tall humanoid size.”

“Perfect spies,” Jusik said. “And perfect predators.”

“And we didn't honor our pledge to help them, so I suspect they've run out of patience.”

“Look, no disrespect to our Treasury colleague, boys and girls, but can we refrain from discussing classified intelligence in front of Agent Wennen?” Skirata said. “I need to talk to CSF. Corr, you call up the recce teams and see how far they've got on the main locations.”

Skirata wandered out onto the landing platform and breathed in cool night air. The strill was curled up under the bench where, true to his word, Vau had slept each night. He probably thought it proved the point that he was a hard case, but there was no doubt that he worshiped that stinking animal and it loved him.

Atin's going to take a knife to him when this is over. I know it. Well, worry about that when it happens…

He raised his wrist comlink to his lips. “Jailer?”

There was a pause and the sound of a woman grumbling and sheets rustling. Of course: Obrim had a wife and kids. Skirata often forgot that other people had lives beyond their jobs. “You know what time it is, Kal?”

“To the second. Look, which of your people was on surveillance in the Bank of the Core Plaza?”

There was a long, sleepy, irritable pause. “What, today? None of my people, I guarantee it.”

“Organized Crime Unit?”

“I could ask, but they play these things close to their chests … getting to be an epidemic, this secrecy, isn't it?”

“Tell you what,” Skirata said, dropping his voice. “Pay your OCU buddies a visit and tell them that anyone we see in our scopes who isn't us gets slotted as a matter of course, okay? You think they'll understand that?”

“I can but try.”

“Try hard, then. I don't want them crashing in like the di'kutla Treasury did tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. An audit officer was sent in to monitor GAR staff siphoning off supplies. But that isn't my biggest problem right now.” Don't mention the shapeshifter yet. “Okay, here's my offer. I now have forty-three individual locations that we believe the Separatists are using or visiting in Galactic City. We have to concentrate on the high-value targets, and you really don't want to know what we'll be doing there, so what if we give you a list of the others to pick off as you see fit?”

“When?”

“When we've recce'd the high-value ones and have an op order planned out—you know, precise timings. That way we don't fall over each other.”

Obrim had gone rather quiet. “I can authorize that. But I've got no control over the OCU.”

“Then find someone who does. I mean it, Jailer. We're not playing by rules of evidence.”

“You've really gone bandit, haven't you?”

“Do you really want to hear the answer to that?”

“Fierfek … my eyesight problem has now affected my hearing, too.”

“I thought it might. I'm waiting on a meeting right now and after that, I'll have a list for you, a reliable one. Just remember that if there's any talk of explosives sales being of interest to CSF, tell them to steer clear until further notice?”

“I'll just say military intelligence and leave it at that.”

“Good.”

“You go careful, friend. And those rather hasty boys of yours. Especially Fi.”

Skirata closed the link and went back into the main room. The Gurlanin was breathing more steadily, although its eyes were still closed and the two Jedi were still leaning over it. It was just as well they could stop the bleeding. There wasn't a medic on Coruscant who knew a thing about the physiology of a shapeshifter like this one.

And Wennen was watching the whole scene suspiciously. Okay, so she had a Treasury identichip. Skirata didn't trust anybody, because this leak of information was still very much an inside job. Until he knew otherwise, everyone except his assortment of clone soldiers—and the two Jedi, he conceded—was a potential risk.

“Ma'am,” he said. “I hear you don't approve of the war.” Civilians did odd things in the name of peace. “How much don't you approve of it? And why?”

Wennen chewed over the question visibly, and both Jusik and Etain flinched at something Skirata couldn't see. Wennen's expression changed to anguish. She stood up with some difficulty, and Skirata noted that Ordo's hand went unconsciously to his blaster.

“This,” she said quietly, “is why I don't like the war.” She went up to Corr, who was still conscientiously collating data and writing it on the flimsi with an expression of intense frowning concentration. “Corr, show me your hands. Please?”

The trooper put his stylus aside and held them out, metallic palms up. Corr placed her hands underneath so that his rested on hers for a moment and looked him straight in the eye. Single prosthetic hands—efficient, unnoticeable—were common; but to lose both hands seemed to pass beyond a threshold of what was flesh and blood.

“It's not right,” she said. “It's not right that Corr and men like him should end up like this. I'm wondering what kind of government I'm working for. One with a slave army, that's what. You know how that makes me feel? Disgusted. Betrayed. Angry.”

Skirata knew that feeling only too well. He just hadn't expected to hear it from someone who did an office job and could switch off HNE with its heroic and sanitized images of the war anytime she liked. Jusik caught his eye and nodded discreetly: She really means it, she's upset.

Skirata acknowledged Jusik with a slow blink. “You said it, ma'am.” Got her. We have an ally. She'll come in useful one day. “Believe me when I say that what we're doing here is aimed at stopping things like that happening to more lads like Corr.”

Wennen seemed satisfied, if someone that upset could reach that state of mind. She made her way back to the chair and handed Skirata her datapad. “Go on.”

“What?”

“I don't know what data might be of use to you, and you're not going to discuss detail with me. So take the datapad and copy what you like.”

“You're very trusting. You're sure we're who we say we are?”

Wennen laughed and stopped abruptly. That had to hurt her ribs. “Look, I know what I'm seeing. Now, if I'm out of contact for more than forty-eight hours, the Treasury will notice. So think about what you're going to do with me.”

Skirata hefted the little 'pad in his hands. Treasury data, codes, encryption algorithms. Oh, my Null boys will love slicing this. “And who else is going to notice you're gone?”

“Nobody. Absolutely nobody.”

Skirata pondered on that revelation for a while as he watched the unconscious Gurlanin. Jusik and Etain knelt back on their heels and looked as if they'd run a very tiring race.

“It'll be regaining consciousness soon,” Etain said. “And I still have no idea how you restrain a shapeshifter.”

Ordo picked up one of the Verpine rifles, checked the charge level, and stood over the inert black body.

“This does the job,” he said.

Recce team observation point, residential area, business zone 6, 0110 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

“I wish I hadn't eaten that hot sauce,” Sev said.

“Told you so.” Fi held out his hand for the infrared scope. “My turn.”

They had found a spot to hide between two top-floor apartments facing the building they were watching, a six-floor tower of a house with closed blinds at every window. A climate-conditioning access space nearly at the top of their vantage point gave them an uninterrupted view below of a very quiet, very private group of homes away from the sky-lanes in a dead end.

The upper floors arched into a fashionable overhang only seven meters from the facing building. No passing traffic could enter from the front to bother them here, not even a taxi, and the rear access was nonexistent, which left only the roof for access by a small green speeder. It was private and a good place to defend—or get trapped. Fi rather liked the idea of the latter.

The access space felt like being in a drawer. They could just about crawl through it on all fours. Fi knew he wouldn't have enjoyed serving in a tank company at all.

“Roll on your back for a while,” Fi said helpfully.

Sev hesitated then surrendered to the suggestion with a groan. “How many?”

Fi tracked from right to left with the scope. “Well, I think we've got ten bodies in there, judging by the GPR image, and they've been in there for an hour now, and they're not moving around much. I call that an operational base. Agreed?”

“Okay. Let's set up the remote holocam and get out of here.”

“Given the layout of that place, it's going to be a bit busy slotting them all when we go in.”

“I like busy,” Sev said.

“Have Scorch and Fixer reported in yet?”

Sev held his datapad level with his eyes. “Now, that sounds like fun.”

“What does?”

“Scorch says they've confirmed the third cluster is a small commercial docking area. CoruFresh fruit and vegetable distributors. Loads of spacegoing vessels of all sizes.”

“Yes, that's my idea of fun, too.”

“If we could get them all to meet up for a nice ride …”

“Dream on. But we could certainly stop them from leaving in a hurry.”

Fi backed out of the space, pushing himself on his elbows with his DC-17 crooked in both arms, collecting more dust and dead insects on his bodysuit. He turned sideways on to a narrow shaft that opened into the building's plant maintenance room and dropped his left leg into the gap, searching for a foothold with his boot before finding the ledge and scrambling down to the floor. Sev simply rolled off and landed with a thud beside him.

“Okay, where next?”

Fi cocked his head. “Want to wander over and take a closer look at the roof? Evaluate it for rapid entry?”

“You know how to engage my enthusiasm.”

Fi projected the fire safety holoplans of the building, which had proved to be Ordo's best illicit data slice of the mission. There was no point asking the fire department to provide them; it just invited awkward questions about why lads in white armor wanted detailed floor plans of most of the planet's buildings. “I hope they update these. Okay, go left along the passage; the roof access is the set of doors at the end.”

“I love the fire department.”

“They're so helpful. Nice uniforms, too.”

They crawled across the flat roof along the side of the climate-conditioning machinery room, over lengths of durasteel ladder laid flat on the waterproofing. Some buildings still had them to provide access to maintenance spaces. There were also the remains of a barbecue. They flattened themselves behind the parapet to peer through the breaks in the punched durasteel at the roof opposite.

“Ooh, a Flash speeder,' Fi whispered.

“Don't even think about it.”

“I meant that we could bolt on a few surprises, not wander off with it.”

“Look, what does the word recce mean, ner vod?”

“It almost sounds like wreck.”

“You scare me,” Sev said. “And that's saying something.”

“It's an opportunity we might not get again.”

“So you fly, do you? Going to do a Jango?”

“You've got no style.” Fi genuinely wanted to place a thermal detonator on the speeder. It could be set off remotely, giving them a relatively easy extra option for striking at the Seps that they might need soon. But he was also itching to smack Sev down a little. The man thought he was the galaxy's gift to adventure. So if he wanted adventure, Fi would show it to him, Omega-style.

It also just happened to be the safest way to cross the six-meter gap to the other roof—safer than asking the Seps across the way if they minded two commandos taking a look at their roof, anyway.

Fi edged backward and began placing the sections of ladder end-to-end. They slotted together neatly. Then he crawled back to the parapet and gave the chasm an appraising glance.

He peered across, then down six floors. “That'll reach.”

“I reckon.” Sev leaned over next to him. “So you're going to crawl across.”

Fi took the end of the ladder and began to move it carefully to avoid loud scraping sounds. Sev took the other end and they balanced it lengthways on the parapet.

“No, I'm going to run.”

“Fi, they say someone spiked my vat. But I reckon someone really spiked yours.”

“Lost your nerve?”

“Di'kut.”

“If I plummet heroically to my doom, then you can crawl across. Deal?”

“I hate it when you try to provoke me into showing you how it's done.”

“Like this?”

Fi had seconds. They needed to be across the gap and gone before anyone spotted them. He leaned down hard on one end of the ladder, lifting it enough to swing it out horizontally and drop the other end on the facing parapet.

Thirty meters below, death waited. And if it wasn't death, it was paralysis.

He stepped up on the parapet, tested the first rung with his boot, and then focused straight ahead on the other side.

Then he sprinted.

He still had no idea how his body calculated the gaps but he hit every rung and landed on the far side, dropping flat. When he knelt upright, Sev was staring at him.

Fi beckoned. Come on.

Sev ran for it. Fi broke his landing as he jumped off the parapet. He noted Sev's clenched jaw with satisfaction.

“Easy,” Fi mouthed.

Sev gave him a hand signal, one of his especially eloquent gestures of disapproval.

The roof had a few steps down to doors that the holoplans showed as access to the top floor of the living area and the turbolift shaft. They didn't look that substantial in the flesh, but the plans appeared to be accurate: they didn't always get updated after renovations. A quick application of thermal tape on the doors and it would be easy to lob a few grenades down the hole to soften up the residents before going in. Fi gave Sev a thumbs-up and took a magnetic det out of his belt. It slid into place in the speeder's air intake with a faint thack.

Back, Fi gestured.

He teetered on the parapet and then ran across the durasteel rungs again, feeling them flex and spring back under his boots. When he looked back, Sev was lining up for the sprint, too. Fi beckoned encouragingly. Sev went for it.

He was two-thirds of the way across when he slipped. He grabbed for a rung and hung motionless from his right hand. Fi's gut somersaulted.

If anyone looks up here now—

Most people screamed when they fell. Sev, to his credit, was utterly silent. But his eyes were wide and scared. He tried to reach up with his left arm but for some reason didn't seem able to do it. Fi scrambled across the ladder on his belly and reached down to grab Sev's arm and haul him up. It was a potentially lethal maneuver on a narrow ladder, but Fi managed to get a grip on Sev's belt and pull him across the ladder crosswise.

Sev was using his right arm. It was only when Fi gripped his left shoulder to pull him in line with the ladder that he heard his sharp gasp and understood why he wasn't using that arm, and why he hadn't been able to lunge up to get a grip with his other hand. He'd hurt himself badly.

“Udesii ... ,” Fi whispered. “Take it easy.”

There was pain, and there was whatever had happened to Sev. Fi dragged him back across the ladder a few centimeters at a time and rolled him onto the safety of the roof before hauling the ladder back in. When he dropped flat again, Sev was kneeling in a ball, clutching his left shoulder.

Fierfek, this is my fault for goading him. “Can you walk?” Fi whispered.

“ 'Course I can walk, you di'kut. It's my arm.”

“I'll let you drop next time, you ungrateful chakaar” Fi hauled him upright and decided to risk taking the service turbolift down to the ground level. By the time they reached the end of the walkway it was clear that Sev had dislocated his shoulder and had to hold the arm against his chest to tolerate the pain at all. He said nothing but it had made his eyes water. Fi had long used that phrase to indicate extreme pain but it was the first time he'd seen it up close, and it wasn't funny.

“If I miss this mission, I'm going to show you a really interesting trick with a vibroblade.”

“Sev, take it easy.” Fi always kept his medpac on his belt. He fumbled for the single-use sharp of painkiller and stabbed it into Sev's triceps. “We'll slap some bacta on it back at base.”

“Yeah, and maybe that'll work when I rip your head off, too.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was a stupid stunt. I never had accidents with Delta.”

“Well, you're just Vau's perfect little soldier boys, then, aren't you? We screw up. And then we get up and go on.”

“I have to complete this mission?”

“Not if you're a liability you don't. Look, injuries happen. Stay at base and monitor the comlinks.”

“You don't understand.”

“Really?” Fi racked his brains for first-aid training. “Funny, I thought we did the same job. Look, get in here and let me have a look.”

They slipped into the sheltered lobby of an office block and hid behind a pillar. Fi detached Sev's bodysuit sleeve from the shoulder seam and took a look in the dim security lights.

The line of the shoulder looked unnaturally square where the ball of the humerus had shifted out of the socket and was pushing the deltoid muscle up and out of shape. This was going to hurt.

“Okay, on the count of four,” Fi said. He took Sev's wrist in his right hand, stretching out the arm, and braced his left hand against the man's chest. Then he paused and looked him in the eye in his most reassuring I-know-what-I'm-doing way. “See, when you get a dislocation like this, you have to do what they call reducing it by—four'

Sev yelped. The joint made a wet shhhlick sound as it slipped back into the socket.

“Sorry, ner vod.” Fi folded Sev's arm back against his chest and held it there while he struggled to get the sleeve section reattached. He could almost feel the torn ligaments and muscle fibers screaming. Sev's face was white, his lips compressed. “Nothing worse than bracing for it, though.”

“For a moron, you're not a bad medic!”

“Kal said that if we could take a body apart, we ought to learn a bit more about putting it back together again if we needed to.”

“Fi, I have to be fit to fight.”

“Okay, okay. Bacta and ice packs. Right as rain in no time.”

“Vau'll kill me.”

“Look, what is this thing with Vau?” Fi pulled Sev out into the walkway again, and they jogged back to the speeder they'd left a block away. “I know he had a reputation for beating the stuffing out of trainees, but why are you ready to gut Atin?”

“Atin's sworn he'll kill Vau.”

Fi almost stopped dead. “Atin? Old don't-interrupt-me-I'm-working-on-a-really-interesting-circuit? Our At'ika?”

“Seriously?” Sev asked.

“Yeah, sometimes I get serious. It happens?”

“Okay. Atin's pod was the only one that ever lost men!”

“Geonosis. Ruined Vau's clean record?”

“It's not that simple. Atin was doing that survivor guilt thing when he got back, and Vau just focused him a bit.”

Odd: Skirata hadn't been around when Fi returned from Geonosis. But he'd worry about that later. “That explains the scar on his face.”

“You got it.”

“Doesn't explain the rest of the scars he was showing you.”

“You ask him about that.”

Sev was as near to scared as Fi had seen him. He couldn't imagine being afraid of Skirata. The man might have sworn himself to a standstill when he was angry, but nobody in Skirata's company ever felt they had to fear him. He was Kal'buir: he lavished ferocious care on his commandos to the exclusion of all else.

But Sev didn't want Vau to know that he'd injured himself doing something reckless. Whatever the reason, Fi owed his brother some support.

“Okay, we don't mention the shoulder?” Fi started up the speeder. “We'll get it sorted ourselves. Bard'ika can do that Force healing if the bacta doesn't do the trick. But Vau needn't know.”

For the first time since he'd met the man, Sev softened visibly.

“Thanks, ner vod,” he said. “I owe you.”