Republic Commando: Triple Zero

18

Withdraw from Qiilura? If that's what it takes to keep the Gurlanins from turning on us, it's a price we were going to pay anyway. We're too thinly stretched to maintain the garrison, and the Senate has no interest on continuing to support a mere two hundred thousand farmers on a backworld. Let me talk to Jinart and reassure her. The damage her people can do is enormous– far beyond the scope of one anti-terror operation. And we need them on our side.

–General Arligan Zey, to General Iri Camas and the chair of the Senate Committee on Refugees

The Kragget all-day restaurant, lower levels, Coruscant, 0755 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Jinartthe Gurlanin had kept her word and provided the information she had promised—and no more. Zey appeared to have kept his. The sleek black predator had slipped out into the Coruscant night and vanished.

But Skirata would always feel that she was standing right next to him in some guise or another. Like the Jedi, her hypernatural abilities—especially telepathy—made him wary and suspicious.

But she could only sense the thoughts of her own kind, they said. Like that's some kind of comfort.

Skirata finished his eggs, rubbed his hand across his chin, and realized he needed to shave again. But things that had seemed crushingly impossible in the early hours of the morning looked a lot more encouraging on a full stomach in broad daylight.

“Gurlanins on the loose?” Jailer Obrim's voice was almost a groan. “That's all we need.”

“Yeah, that'll be one of the best-kept secrets of the war, I reckon.”

“You believe them?”

“That they might be everywhere? You have to, Jailer. And I can't lose any sleep over a few Qiiluran farmers.”

They sat side by side, looking out toward the walkway through the Kragget's grimy transparisteel front. Neither of them were men who wanted to sit with their backs to any door. Obrim leaned in a little toward him.

“So do you want us to pick up the suspects the Gurlanin identified?”

“No thanks.”

“Is this where my eyesight and hearing fail again?”

“Right now, you can't even see me, let alone hear me,” said Skirata.

“Okay. Organized Crime Unit isn't happy, but they understand the words armed special forces really well.”

“It was OCU in the plaza, then?”

“I gather so.”

“How did they end up there?”

“Your friend Qibbu uses well-worn channels of communications in the scum strata of society. OCU isn't stupid and it isn't deaf.”

“Ah.” There is no monopoly of information. Skirata's happily full stomach chilled a little. Obrim showed no signs of being smug. But he was almost certainly aware that Skirata was planning a sting operation involving explosives. “So they knew who the Seps were and didn't bother to—”

“No. That wasn't the route.”

“What, then?”

“They were carrying out surveillance on a known criminal and that criminal happened to meet up with one of the group that you were watching. Message boy, one chance encounter.” Obrim picked a chunk of smoked nerf from Skirata's plate and crunched on it thoughtfully “You just be careful. I hate finding friends on the slab in the morgue.”

Apart from Jusik, Obrim was one of the few nonclones Skirata felt he might be able to trust completely one day. He was still undecided on Etain. While he didn't doubt her sincerity, she had an emotional, impulsive streak of the kind that got people killed.

Like you. You're a fine one to talk.

“Your boys okay?”

“Tired, edgy, but giving it all they've got. One of 'em has sworn to gut Vau, another is having a love affair with a woman he shouldn't even look at, I'm collecting waifs and strays like an animal shelter, and we nearly killed a Treasury agent. But if I told you the really bad stuff, you'd think I had problems.”

Obrim laughed raucously. “And people think they're good little droids ...“

“Discipline apart, they're still lads.”

The Twi'lek waitress topped up their caf and smiled alluringly. “Where's your son today?”

“At the office, sweetheart,” Skirata said. “Won't I do instead?”

Her lekku coiled ever so slightly but he didn't have a clue what it meant. She glided away, glancing back to smile again. Obrim sniggered. “I see Ordo made an impression.”

“They all have this naive streak about them. It's fatally charming, apparently. Youth, muscle, heavy weapons, and a trusting expression. Maybe I should try it.”

“Forty years too late.”

“Yeah.”

And then Skirata's communicator chirped. He lifted his wrist as close to his mouth as he could. Even in a restaurant full of police officers, he took few chances.

“We like what we see,” said a voice with a Jabiimi accent.

It was interesting how accents were more noticeable over a comlink. Skirata, still looking toward the walkway, scanned his field of view without moving his head. He was sure he hadn't been followed—but this was a bad place to be spotted if he had. “It's not noon yet.”

“I know, Kal. We're keen.”

“What next?”

“Can you get to the bank plaza again in half an hour? I can't locate your comlink signal. But then I can understand why you're a very cautious man.”

Too right, you chakaar. Bard'ika went to a lot of trouble to make me invisible. Skirata was ten minutes by speeder bike from the plaza. “I can just about make it if I hurry.”

“This is just for a conversation. Be there, and don't bring anyone else.”

The comlink went dead. Obrim chewed, silent, but his look said it all.

Skirata reached in his pocket and put some credits on the table to cover the bill. “You're deaf and blind, remember?”

Obrim pushed the credits back at him. “You pick up the tab next time.”

It was his good-luck ritual. Obrim seemed to hope that by saying it, he'd ensure there was a next time.

Skirata had every intention of making sure there would be.

Lower level, skylane 348, 0820 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Skirata kept the speeder at a steady pace and looped back on himself a couple of times. There was no reason to expect anyone to be following him, but he assumed it anyway. The maneuver also padded out the ten-minute journey to a credible half hour.

No point being too early.

His ankle was agony today.

“Bard'ika, how are you doing?”

Jusik's voice came over the comlink. “We've tracked a target moving to the plaza from the house that Fi and Sev recced. I think that confirms it's Perrive.”

“But he won't come alone.”

“So that means he'll probably have minders nearby that we haven't tagged. New ones.”

“Fine.”

“Vau's on his way,” Jusik said. “They won't recognize him.”

“And you?”

“I'm already there.”

“Fierfek. He knows you. Wait for orders—”

“Trust me, he won't see me at all.”

“Stand down. Get out of there.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. And I'm going off the comlink now, unless I hit real problems.”

He shut the link, exasperated. But it was his own fault. You couldn't delegate that much to a kid and then expect him to read your mind and work out when he was supposed to wait for specific orders again.

And he was a Jedi, after all. He could take care of himself.

Skirata pushed a bead comlink into his ear and brought the speeder down in the public parking area. Enacca said she was fed up collecting abandoned speeders from around the city, and wanted to know why they couldn't bring their vessels and vehicles back with them every time. The logistics of operations like this depended on a lot of grim drudgery. He'd have to sweeten her up somehow when all this was over.

Out in the plaza, by the bench where he had awaited the Separatists the day before, stood Perrive.

He was busy looking like an executive waiting for a colleague: suit, document case, polished shoes. Skirata walked up to the man as briskly as he could with a complaining ankle.

“Okay, what's the deal?” Skirata said. He tried to focus on Perrive and not look over his shoulder for possible threats or—to be precise—Walon Vau. “I can get you the dets in twenty-four hours.”

“Let's discuss this somewhere less crowded.”

Those were often the worst words to hear at times like this. “Where?”

“Follow me.”

Fierfek. He hoped Vau was watching him or Jusik was monitoring the conversation carefully. If Perrive moved too far out of the comlink's limited mike range, he'd have to make stupidly obvious comments to clue them in. Perrive didn't strike him as quite that naive, even if his surveillance team was some way short of professional.

If Vau was here, Skirata couldn't see him.

But that was the point, and Vau was a very skilled operator.

Skirata followed Perrive across the plaza and back to the speeder parking area, a few moments that made him glad that he had a limp. It gave Vau, he hoped, a little more time to work out what was happening. Perrive stood looking around, and a shiny new green speeder with a closed cabin rose from below the level of the parking platform and maneuvered sideways to set down.

Ah well, Skirata thought. I’d have done the same. But Perrives lungs are coated with marker Dust, and Jusik can track this crate all the way.

“Off you go,” Perrive said.

“You're not coming, too?” Oh no, no, no. Why didn't I dose myself with some of that di'kutla Dust? “Forgive me if I get nervous about the quality of your associates' driving.”

“Don't worry. All they'll do is blindfold you. Keep whatever weapons I'm sure you're carrying. I'll see you at our destination.”

Skirata had no choice but to get in. Two human males—both about thirty, one shaven-headed, one with thin blond hair scraped back in a tail, neither of them the hired help they had tagged yesterday—sat in the front seat, and the bald one leaned over to place a black fabric bag over his head in total silence. Skirata folded his arms to feel the comfort of his assorted hardware in his sleeve, holster, and belt.

“Well, this is fun,” he said, hoping for a display of verbal stupidity that might help Jusik locate him.

But neither man responded. He didn't expect them to.

Concentrate on the movement. Work out the direction.

Skirata tried to count the number of times they seemed to swing right or left to get some idea of the route. They were in an automated skylane, so he could count the seconds and try to calculate the distance between turns, but it was a massive task. Ordo, with his faultless memory, would have had the skylane network memorized and calculated the times and distances at the same time. But Skirata was not a Null ARC trooper, just a smart and experienced soldier whose natural intelligence had been sharpened by having to cope with six hyperintelligent small boys.

He had no idea where he was. The speeder continued toward either a nerve-racking deal that would take them a step closer to striking at the heart of this Separatist network, or a lonely death.

Service tunnel beneath skylane 348, 0855 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

“Bard'ika, you'll never need to shave again when Kal catches you,” Fi said.

“You seriously think I'm not going to follow him?” Jusik raced Ordo's Aratech speeder bike along the service tunnel that ran parallel to the skylane serving the southern edge of the plaza. Fi decided that Ordo had no sense of danger if he was happy to ride pillion with the Jedi at speeds approaching five hundred kph. But then the man was nuts anyway. Fi held on to the handgrip behind him for grim death. “Vau, can you still hear me?”

The comlink was breaking up, but audible. “I'm a few vehicles behind Perrive. He's transmitting like a Fleet beacon.”

“Where's he heading?”

“Looks like Quadrant N-Oh-Nine.”

“What's there besides offices and residential?”

“That's about it. Stand by.”

Jusik made an irritated grunt that he seemed to have picked up from Sev and accelerated. At times like this Fi had passed beyond the first flush of adrenaline and into a cold and rational world where everything made sense to his body if not to his brain. He found an instinctive sense of effortless balance as Jusik wove through the ducts, clearing some of the transverse durasteel joists by a breath. Speed no longer felt like conscious fun, as it had in training, but he was beyond fear for himself at that moment.

All he could think of was Sergeant Kal.

“He can take care of himself,” Jusik said. “He's packing more weapons than the Galactic Marines.”

“Are you telepathic?” The thought disturbed Fi, because his mind was the only private retreat he had. “I was just—”

“If you're not as worried for him as I am, then I've read you all wrong, my friend.”

“Bard'ika.”

“Yes? Too fast? Look—”

“Even if you didn't have your Force powers, you'd still be a terrific soldier. And a good man.”

Fi couldn't see the Jedi's expression. For once, Jusik didn't scare the living daylights out of Fi and look back over his shoulder with a silly grin when they were hurtling toward a wall, only to bank sharply at the last moment. Jusik dropped his head for a second and then raised it again. His slipstreamed hair slapped Fi in the face.

“I'll try to live up to that.”

“Yeah, but you still need to get your shabla hair cut.” Jusik didn't laugh. Fi wasn't sure if he was moved or offended. And it seemed impossible to offend Jusik.

“Hang on.”

Whatever element of the Force was guiding the Jedi, it was completely instinctive. He could find Skirata.

The speeder swung hard left and Fi feared for the Verpine rifle under his jacket, its folded stock wedged in his armpit. He was used to wearing the scruffy assortment of dull civilian clothing that Enacca had sent over with Vau. He wondered how he'd cope with his all-encompassing Katarn armor after being out of it for two weeks.

Jusik's head jerked around as if someone had summoned him. “He's heading for business zone six.”

“Been there. Recce'd that place last night. Stuck a remote holocam opposite the house, in fact.”

“Maybe the Force is giving us a break.”

“That's got to be their hub.”

“Let's try that.” Jusik banked right to shoot up a vertical channel. Fi decided zero-g had its appeal. “At least we'll be able to see Kal if that's where they're heading. I bet that's reassuring.”

“It would be.”

“But?”

“But if they're using the speeder that was parked in their roof space last night, I clamped a remote thermal detonator in its air intake.”

“Just remote? Not timed?”

“Yeah.”

“That's okay then.”

If—when—they got Skirata back in one piece, Fi would tell him. He had a sense of humor.

“There's somebody following him,” Jusik said.

“Yeah. You, me, Vau.”

“No, not us.”

“Escort for the speeder?”

“No, nothing like that at all. Someone else. I don't get any sense of malice. But it's not the strike team.”

“What's that feel like?”

“Like someone standing behind me.” He took one hand off the steering and tapped the back of his head behind his ear. The speeder swerved. “Right there.”

“Both hands, Bard'ika …”

“Sorry. Whoever it is, they're focused on Kal.”

“Should we be worried?”

“No.”

Jusik twisted the handlebars and the speeder accelerated as if it had been fired from a Verpine. Fi bit his lip and couldn't stop his knees from pressing harder into the speeder bike's fuselage.

If he dropped the precious sniper rifle, Skirata would be heartbroken.

“That's all right, then,” Fi said. “I won't worry at all.”

Residential area, business zone 6, 0930 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

The airspeeder settled, hot alloy clicking as its drive cooled, and someone pulled the black hood off Skirata's head.

“This way,” said the shaven-headed man. “Mind the steps!”

Skirata walked down from a rooftop parking area through doors to a tastefully decorated room with a large, grainless pale wood table and thick deep gray carpet. They weren't short of credits, then. Some terrorism was the war of the dispossessed, and some was the handiwork of the rich who felt secondhand outrage. Either way, it was an expensive sport.

He was a mercenary. He knew the price of everything.

He sat down in the chair offered, elbows braced on the table, and tried to take in as much useful detail of his surroundings as he could. Two visible escape mutes: back out those doors, or down the turbolift. After ten minutes, a middle-aged human male entered with a woman of similar age: there was nothing remarkable about either of them. They simply nodded to Skirata and sat down facing him. Four more men followed, one of them about Jusik's age, and Skirata found himself surrounded at the table by six people.

Then Perrive walked in.

“You'll excuse us for not introducing ourselves, Kal,” he said. “I know you and you know me, and that's probably all you need to know?”

“Apart from the bank details, yes.”

Perrive stood by the chair opposite Skirata and glanced pointedly at the man sitting in it, who then moved to another chair. You're definitely the boss, then. And the others around the table—who were obviously assessing him as a supplier didn't look like junior minions. This was either the terror cabinet or a rare gathering of cell leaders. It had to be. Perrive handed the man next to him the small sample pack that Skirata had supplied the day before, and he examined it carefully before passing it around the table.

Yes, they’ll be the ones distributing this. I should blow this place now. But that's not sensible. Just satisfying.

“We'd like all hundred kilos of your goods and four thousand detonators?”

Skirata did a quick calculation. About twenty-five grams of five-hundred-grade thermal per device, then: a Bravo Eight Depot incident took the equivalent of two of those. Enough bomb-making kit for that level of carnage every day for five years, or a lower body count and mutilation for more than ten. A very economical war.

“How much?”

“Two million credits?”

Skirata didn't even pause to think. “Five.”

“Two.”

“Five.”

“Three.”

“Five, or I need to go and talk to my other customers.”

“You don't have any others who want this kind of explosive.”

“If you think that, then you're new in this galaxy, son.”

“Three million credits. Take it or leave it.”

Skirata got up and really did intend to walk. He had to look as if he meant it. He skirted the table as far as Perrive and then the man turned and put his hand on Skirata's right arm. Skirata jerked it back, and he wasn't acting the jumpy mercenary. It was his knife arm. Perrive noticed, eyebrows raised for a fraction of a second.

“Four million,” Perrive said.

Skirata paused and chewed the inside of his cheek. “Four, credits to be deposited and confirmed as being in my account before I release the goods, and I want the deal done in the next forty-eight hours.”

“That requires trust.”

“If I don't have any other customers, then why would I want a hundred kilos of explosives hanging around my premises until Mustafar freezes over?”

Perrive paused and then almost smiled. “Agreed.”

Skirata reached in his pocket and handed him a datachip, stripped of all information except a numbered account that would exist only from noon for forty-eight hours. He had a constant stream of accounts like that. All the Nulls could slice like top pros, but Jaing was an artist among data deceivers. My clever lad. “Time and place, then.”

“All in one delivery.”

“Okay. But it stays wrapped in quarter-kilo packs bagged in tens, because I'm not going to unwrap every di'kutla bar and get covered in forensic evidence.” He paused, trying to look as if he was thinking of another reason. “And that's two and a half kilos a bag, which is going to be easier for you to move.”

“What makes you think we're going to move it?”

Smart, eh? “If you're keeping that all in one place, you're insane. I'm used to handling the stuff and even I don't like it around me. You do know what five-hundred-grade does, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” Perrive said. “It's my business. Let's say midnight tomorrow. Here.”

“If I knew where here was, I might agree.”

“We'll let you walk out and then you'll see.”

“I can land speeders on your roof, can I?”

“Up to Metrocab size.”

“I'll probably bring two small speeders. I'll call you half an hour before.”

“I haven't given you my number.”

“Better do that, then, or you won't get your goods. I don't want any further contact until then—and I don't want anyone following me when I leave here. Okay?”

Perrive nodded. “Agreed.”

And it was that simple. It never ceased to amaze Skirata how much simpler it was to buy and sell death than it was to pay taxes. “Show me to the front door, then.”

Shaven-Head took him down in the polished durasteel turbolift—it always reminded him of Kamino, that brutally clinical finish—and walked him through a ground floor that was just one square room with no rear exit and one door at the front.

Easier to defend—if you were confident you could escape via the roof.

The doors parted. Kal Skirata stepped out onto a secluded walkway and found himself in affluent Coruscanti suburbia. He checked the position of the sun and began walking in the direction of the main skylanes. If he kept walking east, he'd come to the office sector sooner or later. Besides, the holo-cam that Fi and Sev placed a few hours earlier was watching him right now from the building opposite.

There were a lot of pedestrians about.

Skirata clicked his back teeth and opened the comlink channel. He didn't like the bead comlink any better than he liked wearing a hearing enhancer.

“Listen up, ad'ike,” he said as quietly as he could. “Game on. Game on!”

Logistics center, Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ, 0940 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

“Do I look as if I've been flattened by a … PIP laser?” Besany Wennen asked.

“PEP laser.” Ordo, posing as Corr again, helmet tucked under his left arm, let her pass through the logistics center's doors ahead of him as Kal'buir had told him. It was the polite thing to do. “And no. You just look tired.”

“I can't say it's been a typical day's duty for me.”

“I respect your willingness to accept this without wanting to complain to your superiors.”

“If I did, I'd compromise your mission, wouldn't I?”

“Possibly.”

“Then it's just a bad bruise and an interesting evening. No more.”

She was as tall as he was and looked him straight in the eye: her dark eyes made her light blond hair seem exotic in contrast. She's different. She's special. He made a conscious effort to concentrate.

“I'll make sure you have acceptable records for your bosses to show that the investigation was completed,” Ordo said.

“And that the suspects … let's say that I learned they were of interest to military intelligence, so I withdrew from further involvement?”

“Well, I can guarantee they won't be troubling you any longer.”

Ordo was still waiting for her to ask exactly what Vau had done to the real Vinna Jiss, and what Ordo was going to do to the employees leaking information—Jinart had identified two—and a thousand other questions. He would have wanted to know everything, but Wennen just stuck to what she needed to know to close down her part of the surveillance. He didn't understand that reaction at all.

“What happens to you now?” he asked.

“I go back to my own department in the morning and pick up the next file. Probably corporate tax evasion.” She slowed him down with a careful hand on his arm. He let that touch thrill him now. He was still uneasy, but he was less disturbed by the attraction. “What about you?”

“Reducing payroll numbers. Fi suggested we call it staff turnover, in the spirit of military euphemism.”

It seemed to take her a couple of moments to work out what he meant. She frowned slightly. “Won't whoever they're reporting to notice they're missing?”

“Jinart says they only call in every four or five days. That gives us a time window to work within.”

“Aren't you ever afraid?”

“When the shooting starts, frequently.” It struck him that she probably found the idea of assassination uncomfortable, but she didn't say so. “But not as afraid as I would be if I were operating without weapons. Your superiors really should arm you.”

They reached the doors to the operations room. She stopped dead.

“I know this has nothing to do with me any longer, but will you do something for me?”

“If I can.”

“I want to know when you make it through this.” She seemed to lose some composure. “And your brothers, and your ferocious little sergeant, of course. I rather like him. Will you call me? I don't need details. Just a word to let me know that it went okay, whatever it is.”

“I think we can manage that,” Ordo said.

This was where he turned left to go to Accounts, to find Hela Madiry, a woman clerk nearing retirement age—just an ordinary woman who happened to have distant cousins on Jabiim. Then he would pay a visit to Transport Maintenance, and look up a young man who had no family allegiance or ideology in this war but who liked the credits that the Separatists paid him. Their motives made no difference: they would both die very soon.

“Be careful … Trooper Corr,” Besany said.

Ordo touched gloved fingers to his forehead in an informal salute.

“You too, ma'am. You too.”

Business zone 6, walkway 10 at the junction of skylane 348, 0950 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Fi braced for a verbal barrage as Jusik brought the speeder to a stop at the end of the walkway and settled it on the edge of the taxi platform. Skirata walked up to them straight-faced through the scattering of pedestrians and stood with his hands thrust in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“You're leading Fi astray, Bard'ika.”

“I'm sorry, but you told me that you should never enter an enemy stronghold without backup if you could help it.”

“I hate it when people take notice of me. Fi, what's wrong?”

Fi was still looking around, trying to cover three dimensions that might conceal a threat. Jusik had said that whoever was following Skirata had no malicious intention, but Fi reasoned that not everyone who was going to kill you had a sense of malice. He'd killed plenty of people without any ill feeling whatsoever. While the Force was fascinating, Fi liked to see things through the scope of his Deece, preferably with the red target acquisition icon pulsing.

He put his hand under his jacket to slide the rifle from under his arm. This was when the unusually short barrel and folding stock came into their own. You could still use the weapon at short range. “Bard'ika thinks there's someone following you.”

“I normally notice!”

“But you're deaf.”

“Partially, you cheeky dilcut.” Skirata resorted to his reflex of straightening his right arm to have his knife ready. “Well, maybe we'd better move on before they catch up?”

“Nobody with ill intent,” Jusik said. He slid his hand to the opening of his jacket, suddenly edgy. Fi took his cue and swung off the speeder to stand in front of Skirata. “And they're very, very close.”

“Steady, son. Public place, people around. No lightsaber, okay?”

“Very close.” Jusik looked past Skirata.

A young man with short white-blond hair was striding toward them through the sparse crowd, arms held a little away from his sides, a large bag over one shoulder. His knee-length dark blue coat was wide open. But that didn't mean he wasn't carrying an armory under there somewhere. Fi unfolded the Verp's stock one-handed under his jacket and prepared to draw it and fire.

The man then held both hands up at shoulder level and grinned.

“Fierfek,” Skirata breathed. “Udesii, lads. It's okay.”

The blond man—Fi's height, very athletic—walked straight up to Skirata and crushed him in an enthusiastic hug. “Su'cuy, Buir!”

Father. Fi knew the voice.

“Suc'uy, ad'ika. Tion vaii gar ru'cuyi?”

“N'oya'kari gihaal, Buir” The man looked almost tearful: his pale blue eyes were brimming. He wiped them with the heel of his hand. “If I'm not careful I'll wash out this iris dye.”

“That hair doesn't suit you, either.”

“I can change that, too. I've got lots of different colors. Did you like what I added to the five-hundred-grade thermal?”

“Ah. I did wonder.”

“I'm still a better chemist than Ord'ika, Kal'buir”

Fi finally saw the face in front of him as a negative image, and suddenly imagined dark hair and eyes, and realized why the man was familiar. He wasn't one of Skirata's own sons. He was a clone, just like Fi: or, to be precise, just like Ordo. It was astonishing how much difference pigmentation alone made to someone's appearance: a simple but effective disguise, for casual use anyway.

Skirata beamed at him with evident pride. “Lads, this is ARC Trooper Lieutenant N-7,” he said. “My boy Mereel.”

So this was Mereel. And even though Fi's Mando'a wasn't perfect, he understood that Skirata had asked him where he'd been, and that the ARC trooper had said that he'd been hunting fish-meal.

Fi was fascinated. But he kept his fascination to himself.