"A'den could have mentioned it."
"We overflew the area. We should have thought of it."
"It'll be easier next time, once we've got a vehicle."
"Hire or buy?"
"I thought of liberating a crate, but it's a small city, and they probably take speeder theft more seriously than on Triple Zero."
"Dar, you actually like thieving stuff, don't you?"
"It's not stolen," Darman said. "It's differently procured."
He didn't own anything; no clone did, because everything the Kaminoans thought they needed had been provided for them. What he knew about property was learned from Sergeant Kal, and then the world of possession exploded on him when he was let loose in a galaxy where beings didn't just own things, they wanted lots of things, more than they could ever possibly use, and their entire existence was about acquiring more by any means they could.
It was one thing to understand the theory and another to feel it. Darman was happy to have the best kit he could get, comfortable quarters, and as much food as he could eat, but nothing else material made him want to risk his life to get it.
"Do you ever wonder what happened to the four million creds that Sergeant Kal scammed out of the terrorists?" Atin asked. They were at the limits of the woods now. Eyat had a skirt of open land around it: they were ready for the lizards. "Do you think he handed it over to General Zey?"
"No," Darman said. "I don't wonder."
They finally broke cover and sauntered like a couple of ordinary, overconfident young men toward the main route into the city. The defenses mentioned in the intel reports were now visible, watchtowers with laser cannon emplacements. The Marits had no air assets apart from speeders. Eyat was set up to repel simple infantry assault.
It wasn't expecting the Grand Army of the Republic. If it was, evidence of its Separatist allies was nowhere to be seen.
They'd been walking in the open for a matter of minutes when a repulsor truck looped off course and drew up along-side them. The driver leaned out of the cab: male human, middle-aged, dark, bearded.
"Are you nuts?" he yelled. "You can't walk outside the city-how did you get here?"
Darman fell into the role effortlessly and shrugged. "Had to dump the speeder bike kilometers back."
"Get in." He gestured to the rear of the truck. "I'll drop you off inside the boundary. You're not local, are you?"
"No. Looking for work."
The driver opened the hatches and Atin scrambled in, giving Darman a hand up. Almost as soon as they'd found some-where to sit among the crates of food-board, the truck lurched to a halt. A fist banged on the bulkhead. Darman leaned out of the hatch and found they were inside Eyat, at an intersection with a speeder bus station on one corner of the quadrant.
"Off you go, and make sure you get transport back home, wherever that is," said the driver, and shook his head. "Dumbest thing I ever saw..."
"Thanks." Darman waved. The vehicle lifted off and dis-appeared across the intersection. "At'ika, this is just a test run. Let's see how far we get today."
Atin consulted his datapad. The good thing about the rebels was that they'd built Eyat, and so they still had the plans-drainage and service channels as well as the surface infrastructure. "Speeder bus to the city center."
"And pick up a city-registered airspeeder on the way out. Easier to get back in next time."
It was, as Darman had decided from the bay of the Core Conveyor, an ordinary place where people got on with their lives. It was a small town by comparison with Coruscant, all low-rise buildings and modest houses: he could grasp the scale. It didn't overwhelm him. He watched from the view-port of the speeder bus, head resting on the transparisteel, and saw human beings like himself.
And I'm fighting for a different species-for lizards- against humans. Sergeant Kal says species doesn't matter to Mandalorians. Why doesn't the fact that I'm human matter to human beings on Coruscant?
Darman knew of only one community where he felt at home, and that was with his brothers and the few nonclones who had thrown in their lot with them. The rest of the galaxy was alien, regardless of species.
Now he finally understood the concept of aruetiise.
"Look sharp, Dar." Atin nudged him in the ribs. "This is our stop." He slipped his datapad back into his pocket. "So far, so good. Nothing's changed as far as the layout goes."
"Well, their builders haven't shown up for a while, have they? No wonder nothing's changed."
According to the plans, the government building-the Assembly House-had a public gallery. Darman and Atin stood in front of the portico, admired the colonnade with appropriate out-of-town awe, and sheltered from the rain while they read the notice next to the huge pairs of doors.
"Sessions start at fourteen hundred, then, Dar."
"It's ten forty."
"Time to kill."
It wasn't time wasted. They had time to wander around the block, plant a few bead-sized surveillance holocams outside the Assembly House, and assess the point of entry for politicians attending parliamentary sessions. They took up position in a tapcaf opposite the building and settled in to eat them-selves to a standstill while watching the comings and goings of delivery vessels and official-looking speeders. Darman sat side-on to the window; Atin faced outward to the road.
"I'm never eating meat again," Atin mumbled, staring at the trickle of traffic. "Ever."
"What's that in your hand, then?"
"Fish patty. Fish doesn't count."
"Reptile meat is a lot like fish."
Atin looked down at the patty, sighed, put it back on the plate, and turned to summon a server droid. He seemed a lot happier when a pile of sweet pastries turned up.
Two hours to go.
Darman tapped a few observations on exit routes into his datapad, chewing happily on a tube of pastry packed with minced roba and spices, and wondering when he might get a comlink window to contact Etain. Skirata was right: focusing on the people you loved could keep you sane in a war or dis-tract you, and he thought he'd found the balance point. He had something to look forward to, to live for, even if he had no idea what would happen to the army when they won the war.
"We have to get Fi sorted out, At'ika"
"Get him a date, you mean?"
"Hasn't Laseema got a friend or something? I hate seeing him like this."
"Maybe Agent.. ."
Darman waited, distracted by his datapad, but Atin didn't finish. "Agent what?"
Atin was staring at the traffic again, lips slightly parted. "Don't look out the window. Just turn away slowly."
"Okay . . ." Darman shifted position. He was starting to hate plainclothes ops; he longed for his helmet sensors yet again. "What is it?"
Atin's lips barely moved. Darman strained to hear him over the noise in the tapcaf. "I thought I was looking at my own reflection for a second until I remembered I'm in dis-guise ... and I have scars."
It took Darman a moment to work it out.
Atin had seen another clone, up close. He'd have recognized Fi, Niner, or A'den, and there weren't supposed to be any other troops here-except A-30, Sull.
"Sure it's not a Null?"
"Only ones I haven't met are Jaing and Kom'rk, and they're still after Grievous."
"Says Kal..."
"Whatever. That's not one of them. He was a meter from me. He's moving away now."
Darman held his position for a little longer. Atin put his food down and made for the doors, Darman following. It wasn't what they'd come to Eyat to do, but an ARC who'd gone AWOL was-impossible. Jango Fett had raised and trained them personally, with an emphasis on absolute loyalty to the Republic. Sergeant Kal said that Jango was an unhinged shabuir, but he always stuck to his contract, and that contract had included creating a loyal, totally reliable army.
Darman had heard rumors to the contrary, and the Nulls were living crazy proof that a clone soldier could be as eccentric and wayward as any random human, but nothing had ever been confirmed.
"See him, At'ika?"
A broad back in a black leather coat vanished into a crowd of pedestrians, but a moment later the ARC's ultrashort black crop bobbed up a little above the heads of the crowd. Atin touched his finger to his ear, activating the miniature comlink nestled deep inside; sensors under his chin and on each side of the thyroid cartilage picked up the nerve impulses from his brain and converted silent subvocalization to audible speech. It took a little practice to think in words and not speak aloud, but Darman now found it was just like talking to himself.
"Miner, change of plan ...," Atin said. "Just eyeballed our MIA."
Darman picked up Niner's voice on his earpiece. "I've got your coordinates. Need backup?"
"Let's see where he goes."
Darman cut in. "Check with Jusik. See if there's some-thing we haven't been briefed on."
"Zey said MIA," Niner said. "Unless this is a front for an-other mission."
A'den's voice interrupted with that gravelly indignance that marked him out. "If it is, then I don't know about it, either." Darman didn't like the sound of that. There was need-to-know, and there was denying information, and not knowing where other special forces were placed struck Darman as being the latter. And the Nulls always seemed to hear about everything, whether they were intended to or not. "This would be easier on Triple Zero," Atin said. "He's an ARC. It wouldn't be easy anywhere." Sull, not missing and seemingly at ease in Eyat, swaggered down a tree-lined promenade and dipped down a flight of steps. The two commandos quickened their pace.
It was one thing tailing an ARC trooper. It was another thing entirely working out what to do once you caught up with him.
Rendezvous Point: Mong'tar Cantina and Brasserie, Bogg V, Bogden system, 473 days after Geonosis "You're late," said Mereel.
"We had to pick up groceries." Ordo straddled the chair and rested his folded arms on the back. "And Vau had to stop off at the bank to get some creds."
"Next round's on him, then." Mereel lounged in the seat, legs stretched out in front of him. It was a noisy, seedy cantina of the type that Mereel seemed to enjoy. A droid and a young human male were at the table, too, concentrating on their datapads. Nobody blinked at the presence of Mandalorians in a place like this, but the two strangers were in a world of their own anyway. "So Old Psycho's okay now? Where is he? Where's Kal'buir?"
"Securing the sho'sen." Ordo didn't want to spell out sub-marine in front of strangers. Mando 'a was almost unknown among aruetiise so it was a discreet code to use. "Vau and Mird are standing guard."
"Don't get agitated, but Bard'ika is planning to join us later."
Ordo reserved the right to a little anxiety about General Jusik, who could swing in moments from a Jedi with ageless wisdom to a daredevil lunatic like Mereel. "Why?"
"Something major he wants to discuss that he doesn't want to commit to voice traffic."
"He's as crazy as you. Zey's going to catch him one day." Ordo wondered for a moment if it was news of Etain and her pregnancy, but there were ways of passing that on discreetly without the need to meet face-to-face. He indicated the droid with a jab of his thumb. "Thought you'd seen enough tinnies for one lifetime."
"Just having a fascinating discourse about the expansion in the leisure economy with my colleagues here, who are ..."
"Teekay-zero," said the droid sitting to Mereel's left. He looked like a taller, armored version of an R2 astromech. "And my esteemed mechanic and agent, Gaib."
"Always a pleasure," said Gaib, not looking up from his datapad. "But remember that without me, he's just fancy scrap."
Ordo switched over to his helmet comlink. Life was so much easier with a buy'ce. The apparent silence that fol-lowed for outsiders looked like two Mandos waiting for a comrade to show and, in their uncommunicative Mandalorian way, not having much to discuss by way of art and philosophy. The unheard reality on the private comlink was something else entirely.
"Okay, Mer'ika, why move the RV point to here, and what are you playing at with the tourists?"
Mereel turned his head as if he was staring at the bar and ignoring his brother. "The tinnie and his sidekick specialize in stolen industrial data and kit. High-tech bounty hunters. They were asked to source ... I love that word, don't you? ... source ... like procure ... so flexible . .. anyway, they were asked to find someone who'd supply untraceable laboratory equipment to beat the cloning ban. Dry-lining supplies, vats, clean room systems, plus specialist droids to fit it all, paid in cash credits and no records."
"Ko Sai?"
"I reckon."
"Where?"
"Dorumaa, tropical pleasure palace of the Mid Rim." Ordo consulted his planetary database as it scrolled down his HUD. "Water. Water, everywhere ..."
"Oceans, almost all of which are pretty well unexplored. And likely to stay that way for some time, because of the lovable marine life that was revived from,the ice sheet when they terraformed the place. Tropical vacations. No other industry. But that's where the illegal lab stuff was heading."
"She's setting up a new research center. Who's funding it?"
"Don't know yet. Okay, let's work through it. Battle of Kamino-Separatist forces spring her. She's already stripped her critical data off the Tipoca mainframe, some of which I could reconstruct from the copy I took the other week, so she was expecting to leave. Seps then take her to Neimoidia- she stiffs them, does a runner, and ends up on Vaynai.'' Mereel folded his arms and looked the other way, doing a good mime of exasperated boredom. "From Vaynai, she loops back into Sep space, last place they'd expect her to run, and heads for the Cularin system, specifically Dorumaa."
"Evidence?"
"My tinnie chum got the stuff delivered to the freight port here. Tinnie, being fond of a little insurance just in case the client skips without paying, checks out the flight plan and, with a couple of transfers en route, it all ends up on Dorumaa."
"So why is he telling you?"
"He was sourcing items for me. Extra firepower and go-faster stripes for the submersible."
"You've got a dozen or more lowlifes you could ask for hardware."
Mereel was smiling. Ordo could hear it in his voice. "Not ones that also show up doing business with Arkania."
Ordo had to admire Mereel's ability to sift data. The risk-taking genes had expressed themselves even more in him than the rest of them, but he had a surprising patient tenacity once he'd latched on to the scent. He could give Mird a run for its money.
"So we need to beat a location out of someone."
"Once I find the pilot who delivered the consignments. Nobody's talking. I don't care how tight-lipped folks are, somebody always talks, sooner or later. One detail, one word-something always slips."
Sooner or later was the problem, as always. Time was the enemy on every level. Ko Sai wouldn't have just the Separatists hunting her. The Kaminoans had to know she'd skipped with their data because if Mereel could see it was missing, they'd have worked that out a year ago. But they wouldn't dare tell their main customer-the Republic-that they were in trouble. They'd want to get her back quietly and without fuss. They'd have engaged bounty hunters, too, if they had any sense. Their economy depended on it.
And the Arkanians, Kamino's closest rival, knew she was missing. Everyone who mattered did; gossip in the industry was hard to control. Cloning had gone underground to beat the ban, and there were plenty of companies that'd want the top aiwha-bait on their staff, so the Nulls might be elbowing a dozen pursuers out of the way to get to her if they didn't stay ahead of the pack.
"She's on the run from at least three interested parties, then," Ordo said. "This is getting crazy. Do you think Lama Su is using the excuse about the end of the current cloning contract to cover the fact that he's lost her data and now it's crunch time? How critical is it to production?"