"What's keeping them?"
"Officer commanding-some nonclone captain called Pellaeon-says it's brinkmanship."
"Back in ten ..."
"We're digging in. Surveillance sat shows Eyat's bringing in fighters from outside."
"How many?"
"Six. And that might not be a problem for an assault ship but it's bad news for us, so get back here."
That, at least, answered Darman's question about what use Gaftikar was to anyone. Apart from the mining corporation's interests, it was just another handy place for a fight.
And they were sending in the mongrels now, nonclones, some of the service personnel from the fleet. Pellaeon. Who the shab was he? Darman wondered who the 35th's Jedi general might be, because it wasn't Etain.
She said they'd finished on Qiilura.
Whatever it was, wherever they were sending her, she could tell him, couldn't she? Maybe she didn't want to worry him. Of course I'm worried. I'm always worried. Ordo . . . yeah, he'd ask Ordo. Ordo always obliged, always got the messages and letters through somehow.
The rebel camp had taken on a different air by the time Darman got back, and he'd only been gone thirty minutes. The Marits had thinned out, and E-Webs and cannon stood concealed under camo netting. He sprinted for the main building, realizing even as he made for the doors that it was so flimsy he was better off outside.
"Sarge?" Darman clicked through the frequencies on his helmet link. "Sarge?"
"Ops room," Niner barked.
Darman entered, pulled off his helmet, and stood over the ops table, trying to get a better look at the holochart that A'den had projected onto it. It showed the whole central region, with the scattered Marit villages and the occasional Gaftikari town, like small planets around suns. When he magnified Eyat and superimposed the latest aerial reconnaissance images on it, the sudden preparations became clear.
"That's as of fifteen minutes ago," A'den said.
Eyat's boundaries were ringed with vehicles and vessels, and there was no steady procession of civilians out of the city as was usual when attacks were expected. There was nowhere else for the Gaftikari to go. They were marooned on islands in an ocean of enemies. All they could do was dig in.
"You reckon they really know what's coming?" Atin asked. "I mean, really know?"
A'den, fully armored, tilted his head as if listening to a separate helmet comlink. "No. Not a clue."
"This is them reacting to the Seps reacting to our inbound ships, yes?"
"That's their only source of surveillance," said A'den. "I'm not sure who they're more worried about, us or the Marits. But they know we're coming, so I'm not prepared to risk a squad in there to prep the battlefield if we've got two battalions, a squadron of Torrents, and Captain Pellaeon's nice big cannons arriving within a day. Unless Eyat's got some hidden superweapon we failed to spot, the place is just one big target."
Darman still couldn't work out why the two task forces couldn't simply engage in space and leave the planet alone. But taking Eyat without a bit of muscle and cannons behind them meant very messy fighting if there was no air cover to make the point. He wasn't sure which was the worse out-come for the civilians.
"We're not really the main game in town now, are we?" Niner said. "Are we going forward with the Thirty-fifth?"
A'den must have switched his audio feed from Leveler to the general circuit, because Darman's helmet was suddenly full of the voice traffic between vessels. They seemed more concerned with keeping an eye on the Separatist flotilla, waiting for it to power up to hyperjump. A'den cut the link again and sat in silence, as if he was staring at the holochart lost in thought. He was waiting for instructions.
"Who's the Jedi in command?" Darman asked.
A'den looked up. "General Mas Missur. Did you want to stay on the circuit?"
"No ..."
"It's that woman of yours, isn't it?"
"She wouldn't tell me where she was but she's been with Levet for some months, so yes-I want to know if she's with that flotilla and not telling me."
Personal business didn't matter on the brink of a battle, but nobody argued with him. A'den switched to another channel, head barely moving. Darman heard the slight pop as he switched, and he guessed the Null was on a secure link to someone, either finding out or asking why he'd been saddled with a commando who couldn't save his private life for off-duty hours.
"Levet says she's not with the Thirty-fifth and she's not in a combat zone," A'den said, unusually kindly. "So stop fussing."
Darman could have called her. He had a secure link: it wasn't as if he was going to give away a position to the enemy. He dithered, trying to decide whether to slip into the refreshers and comm her discreetly, just to be sure she wasn't somewhere even worse. He just wanted to tell her ...
Niner, as ever, seemed to read his mind. He shoved Dar-man with his shoulder plate. "Go on," he said quietly. "Be quick about it, though."
Darman stepped out into the corridor, opened his helmet link with a couple of blinks, and voice-activated Etain's code. The display in his helmet told him what he could hear: NO RESPONSE. He carried on paging the system for a couple of minutes, telling himself she might have been taking a shower or even asleep, and then he left a message. It was hard to say the words to cold dead air instead of to her standing in front of him.
"It's me, Et'ika," he said. "I never told you I love you."
When he closed the link he felt embarrassed, but he'd done it, however inelegantly. If anything happened to him, at least she knew.
A'den and Niner walked out of the ops room, heads moving in a conversation that couldn't be heard outside their helmets. Fi and Atin followed. Darman's audio circuit popped again.
"Change of plan, Dar," Niner's voice said in his ear. "The general wants us to play forward air control. As soon as it gets dark, we'll move up to the outskirts and recce the positions of their mobile triple-A. Levet says Leveler will be on station a couple of hours before dawn."
"Lovely," said Fi. "It'll all be over in time for breakfast."
The squad spent the next hour or so stripping out the rental speeder to make room for a couple of E-Webs. Atin re-moved its ID transponder and poked an assortment of probes into it to scramble the registration details.
"Just in case we need to go right inside the city." He held up a small rectangle of plastoid. "We're going to have a hard job walking in dressed like this."
"I still think I should go in and blow the main power station," Darman said. "If only to give us the cover of complete darkness."
A'den wandered over to them, obviously eavesdropping on their circuit. "I'll be going .n to place a few EMP charges in sensitive spots around their communications centers, be-cause we don't want them chatting to the Seps once this kicks off. All you have to do is call in the air strikes. Okay? Once we've neutralized the big targets like their triple-A, and Leveled made a few holes in the infrastructure, then the Torrent squadron can provide air support for the Marits to go in. I don't want any of you deviating from that plan."
"Yeah, where are the lizards?" Fi asked, straightening up-"I thought this was their big night."
"Oh, they're all here ..."
It was almost dark now, and when Darman looked toward Eyat, he couldn't see the city. In the last few nights, he'd got used to the glow from its street lighting, all the more notice-able for being set in the middle of an unlit rural location. But it was in darkness tonight. He flicked his visor through its magnification and night-vision settings and still couldn't see much. Even in infrared, it was just a faint green flattened dome of heat.
"They've switched off the lighting," he said. "They're expecting air raids."
"Shame that they're going to get creamed," Fi said. "It looked like such a nice place."
Nobody said it, but Darman thought it: there was no reason to fight here, beyond the fact that the Republic had staked a claim by way of supporting the Marits, and so the Separatists felt they had to front up, too. Darman wondered if it was treason to think that way, or just a difference of opinion on strategy.
"I wonder where Sull is now," he said, but nobody answered. He glanced over his shoulder at the scrubby wood-land to one side of the camp, night-vision visor still in place, and thought it was malfunctioning until he realized the points of light-thousands of them, as if the display had massive interference-were actually eyes.
It was the Marits. Suddenly, they were an army, silent and motionless, waiting for the signal to kill.
Seven kilometers south of Tropix island, 478 days after Geonosis Mereel stepped out of the drained-down air lock in his briefs and pulled the aquata breather from his mouth. Then he shook himself like Mird, showering water across the cargo bay, and slapped a cold wet skull into Vau's hands.
"If we're going to run DNA tests," he said, "this seems to have teeth in it." Skirata handed him a towel, and he rubbed himself down. "Not a shred of meat or clothing on the thing. Whoever it was, I'm guessing that they were stripped of any identification and tied to an anchor so that the body wouldn't float to the surface and so the local wildlife could remove soft tissue and everything else that identified him. It's a him. by the way. Had a look at the pelvis."
"Killed first?" Vau turned the skull over in his hands while Mird watched. It might have mattered; a disposal was a different crime and motivation than weighting someone down to drown. Not all humanoids drowned fast, either. "Or punishment?"
Skirata shrugged. "I don't think he died of old age, so it's probably irrelevant."
Mereel looked anxious for a moment, as if he'd let Skirata down simply by being unable to give him an answer. "I can't tell, Kal 'buir. No obvious fractures or marks on the bones."
"It's okay, son. Get dressed, 'cos we need to carry on looking."
Mereel padded off, hitting the heel of his hand against his ear to shake out the last of the water. They needed proper diving suits if they were going to work outside the hull for any lengthy period. Vau put it on his list of things to acquire.
"I'm going to guess," he said, "and you know I don't do that very often, but I bet we'll find this is the last person to see Ko Sai."
"What makes you say that?"
"The Twi'lek. He delivered the equipment to whoever was piloting the barge, and if that had been a Kaminoan, he'd have noticed. Someone had to hand the stuff over, which meant seeing her or the location. Not someone a crafty piece of work like Ko Sai would have wanted around to blow her cover."
Skirata swabbed down the water on the deck. "When we go ashore again, I'll see if any staff went missing. I can't see Ko Sai having a human sidekick."
"Well, maybe she didn't-not for long, anyway." Vau listened carefully and caught a faint beeping. "Is that the cock-pit alarm?"
Skirata paused and straightened up, frowning. His hearing had taken a pounding from standing too close to artillery over the years, even though he managed to hide the fact.
"Unless you know it isn't, why are you standing around asking the question?"
They made for the cockpit, but Mereel was already leaning across the pilot's seat, talking to a familiar voice on the other end of the open comm. Vau caught the word Delta just as he squeezed into the compartment.
"It's General Jusik," Mereel said. "Delta are on their way here. Want to talk to him, Kal'buir?"
"Osik." Skirata raked his fingers through his hair. "What happened, Bard'ika?"
"They caught up with the Twi'lek pilot. Not much I could do, but at least I stopped him from giving them too much detail."
"What did you do, shoot him before he could talk?"
"Bit of the old Jedi magic. He got as far as saying he'd told some Mandalorians about Dorumaa, so I suggested they'd been wearing green armor. If he'd said gold, and black, and... well, Delta know your armor, Kal."
Skirata closed his eyes. "Thanks."
"And I made sure he didn't get as far as giving them coordinates for the drop. But they know it's Dorumaa, and they've had to divert to pick up some scuba armor. I estimate you've got ten to twelve hours, but I'm going to be there in six."
Vau cut in. "To do what, exactly? Not that we don't appreciate your assistance, but-"
"You haven't found Ko Sai yet, have you?"
"We're close," Skirata said.
"Well, if you haven't found her in six hours, I'll help you."
Vau nudged Skirata in the ribs. "And if we haven't found her by the time Delta get here, you keep them busy. How are they planning to insert, anyway?"
"Land during the night and just pose as sport divers if they have to."
"Thanks, Bard'ika."
They couldn't have expected Delta to be far behind. The Problem with hunting for someone was that the hunt itself tended to bring debris to the surface, and even if Delta didn't quite have the Nulls' remarkable access to information, they'd been trained in the same techniques. Vau felt a little flush of pride that his squad hadn't done so badly compared with Skirata's precious boys and all their genetic enhancements, but he decided not to rub it in.
"Come on," Skirata said wearily. "More caves to ping." He settled down in the copilot's seat.
Whatever differences Vau had with him, the man had an extraordinary tenacity; the size of the task ahead was so huge, the chances so flimsy, that any sane individual would never have bothered to start. It wasn't just a matter of finding one Kaminoan who didn't want to be found. Vau wondered if she was even capable of doing what Skirata wanted.
If this is all a wasted effort . . . how's the little chakaar going to take it?
The quest-oh yes, it was a quest, a sacred calling for Skirata now-seemed to sustain him. It was as powerful as religion. He was so fixed on his boys' welfare that he seemed to have no plans for himself, and his definition of who qualified as his boys was now so all-encompassing that it seemed in danger of sucking him dry. It was more than the Nulls, who had been his sons in fact if not in name from the day he met them. His obsession had then spread to the commandos, and now to any stray trooper who came into his orbit, like Corr. It was as if Skirata was desperate to avoid any thought of himself, to erase himself in every waking moment.
Maybe his memories were unhappier than Vau knew; he seemed to be reinventing himself a day at a time, and he rarely talked about his past now, not even his father.
He never talks about his mother. And apart from the knife-does he recall anything of his birth parents?
Toxic things though they were, Vau still found families interesting. The best thing he'd ever done was to run away from his own. As if on cue, Mird appeared at his side and clambered onto his lap, the only family he had, and maybe the best kind.
"Did you ever think of asking Arkanian Micro to take a look at some clone tissue?" Vau asked. "Just in case."
"I did." Skirata was staring straight ahead at the shifting three-dimensional display of the sonar mapping scanner, reflected onto the transparisteel viewport. "But it'll be my very last resort. Once they have a genome to play with... well, I don't want to see any more lads bred to die."
"What if they hadn't been Jango's clones?"
"What?"
"Mando'ade don't care about bloodlines. What if they'd been from a Corellian donor, or a Kuati? Would it still tear you up to see them used?"
Mereel seemed to be making a point of staying out of the conversation. Skirata sucked his teeth thoughtfully.
"If I'd met them as little kids about to be exterminated, I think I'd have done the same." He looked distracted by the idea, as if he hadn't ever considered it. "Being Jango's blood just made it more relevant. But Jango or not, they'd still have needed a sense of belonging, wouldn't they? And it would still have been my duty to give it to them. And that would have made them Mando'ade."
"Interesting formations ahead," Mereel said. Vau thought he might be trying to change the subject, but maybe not. "Going in for a closer look."
Vau looked at Mereel in profile and tried to see Jango in him, but it was surprisingly hard. Odd as that might have sounded to an outsider, it was true: the clones usually didn't remind him of Jango Fett at all. Part of that was living among them for years, and becoming blind to the superficiality of appearance, but there were many ways in which they didn't even look like their progenitor. Jango-born of parents who lived hand-to-mouth, undernourished as a youngster-hadn't been much taller than Skirata, but the Kaminoans had man-aged the clones' nutrition carefully from the day the egg was fertilized, and they'd turned out tall and muscular. In a hundred and more ways, they weren't exact replicas of Fett.
Nor was his son, Boba. Poor kid: it was a terrible age to lose a father, and the boy had nobody else in his life. He was worse off than any trooper. If he managed to survive, Vau predicted he'd turn into the hardest, most bitter, most messed-up shabuir this side of Keldabe.
Even I had a second father to adopt me ... too late, maybe, but better than never...
"What's that?" Skirata said suddenly. He pointed forward. "Lots of debris."