"Terrific," said Skirata. "You could have mentioned that earlier."
But Mereel pushed her along. "If it doesn't help me reach a ripe old age, then it can stay here."
"But..."
"Move it."
"No! I insist we retrieve it."
Skirata walked ahead to the jetty area. "Too late."
"It's biological material." He paused. "Alive?"
"Cells in cryostasis."
"You've got ten seconds to do better than that."
"It's a template for a new army, better than..."
Skirata waved Mereel on. He didn't even want to know whose cells they were.
"No, you can't destroy it, you must..."
"This is where it stops, Ko Sai." He thought of telling her that he'd named all twelve Null ARCs, even the six who'd died before they were recognizable as embryos, but this creature wouldn't understand why, and she wasn't worth the explanation. He kicked the mooring line of her runabout submersible with his toecap. "Mer'ika, open this crate for me, will you? Shove her in and I'll drive. I can manage to fol-low Gi'ka."
She was still berating him as the two submersibles emerged from the tunnel into sunlit water, and Skirata wondered how he'd ever stood an ocean planet for years. Ko Sai's vessel was too big to dock in Aay'han, so they surfaced and did a hurried transfer through the top hatches.
Vau smiled silently at Ko Sai, pointed to one of the cabins, and ushered her in.
"Mird," he said, "keep her there. Understood?" He indicated the imaginary line that separated the cabin from the rest of the deck. "If she crosses it..." He snapped his fingers, and it seemed to be a code between them, because Mird got very excited and bounced up and down, whining like a pup. "Got it? Clever Mird!"
Mird remembered her, that was clear. Vau locked the hatch shut anyway.
"If you're going to make a habit of abduction, Kal, we really need to invest in a jail."
"I'd probably throw away the keys."
"What are you going to do with her?"
"She can't ever forget what she knows," Skirata said. "And I can't keep her around forever. What do you think?"
Vau shrugged. "Just checking."
Skirata followed Mereel into the cockpit and settled into the seat with a sense of partial closure. He refused to believe Ko Sai was the only geneticist who could ever manipulate aging, and he could never be sure that any solution she offered wasn't a biological booby trap. Once someone who knew what they were doing had sifted through all the data, he'd decide whether he needed her at all.
Aay'han passed the tethered headless skeleton as she surfaced, and Skirata felt purged of all guilt where Ko Sai was concerned.
In the end it was simply a matter of when, and where. "I'm glad we don't have to file a cargo manifest, Mer'ika." The breakwater was in sight now, and beyond it a white beach dappled with the shade of gaudy parasols and scented, chiming trees. He hoped there'd be at least one day's respite here for his motley clan-if they had any idea what to do with it. "Millions of credits in stolen goods, and a kidnapped scientist."
"And stolen industrial data."
"Oh yeah . . ."
"Better not get pulled over by the cops." Aay'han came alongside the pontoon between two plea-sure boats. Skirata felt bad about Ordo racing across the galaxy to be here and then having to turn around again, but at least he'd have the satisfaction of the look on Ko Sai's face, and a brightly colored drink in a tacky theme cantina like any normal lad. Maybe it didn't matter where they took Ko Sai in the end, because everyone wanted a piece of her.
"Here." Skirata handed Mereel the remote for the thermal dets. If the signal didn't work from here he'd have to go back and blow the tunnel entrance, because he wasn't about to walk back on a live det. "You ought to do it. Very cathartic."
"My pleasure. I declare this facility . . . closed." Mereel closed his fingers around the small cylinder and rested his thumb on the button. "But it's not over yet." He squeezed slowly. "Oya manda."
The button clicked, and then there was a moment of silence before a sound like an instant, distant storm disturbed the tranquility of the beach. A couple of tourists stopped to look around as if expecting to see some spectacle. And then it was over: Ko Sai's legacy had vanished in flame and tumbling rock, unseen, and the only archive of her life's work was a pile of data chips in Mereel's belt pouches.
"That felt better than I expected," he said. "Thanks. Kal'buir."
Sometimes, just sometimes, even the most pragmatic and rational of men needed to lay their ghosts with a little symbolic gesture.
Meree's smile-harmless, charming, and no guide to his state of mind-still didn't waver.
Eyat City, Caftikar, 478 days after Geonosis "Medic!" Darman yelled, but there was no response, and he knew he was stupid to expect one.
He popped the seal on Fi's helmet and pulled it off. The built-in armor diagnostics said his brother had a pulse and was breathing, but he wasn't responding. There wasn't a mark on him-no sign of penetrating injury, and no bleeding from mouth, nose, or ears-but Darman couldn't tell about the rest of his body. Katarn armor was sealed against vacuum, and that meant it was also good protection against lethal pressure waves. Darman could recall the whole grisly lecture during training.
"Vod'ika, talk to me." Darman pushed back Fi's eyelids: one of his pupils reacted a lot more than the other. That wasn't good, he knew. Then Fi lifted his arms and batted Darman's hand away.
"Oww," he said. "I'm okay .. . I'm okay."
"Can you feel your legs?" Darman asked. Fi could obvi-ously move his arms, so at least that part of his spine was intact. "Come on." He pulled off Fi's greaves and tapped his shin-bone. "Feel that?"
"Oww. I'm fine." Fi drew up his knees and tried to roll over to get up. "Just-did I fall? What happened?"
"I don't know if it was a booby trap or what. The whole wall's gone. Come on, let's get you out before anything else collapses."
"Might be worse outside."
Astonishingly, Fi stood up with minimal help from Dar-man and managed to put his helmet on. He stumbled a few times trying to pick his way over the rubble, but he was moving under his own steam. Darman knew that didn't mean much when it came to blast injury, but Fi had once tested the Mark III armor the hard way by throwing himself on a grenade, so it was going to take a lot to kill him. He s okay. He s okay.
"Where's Miner?" Fires raged outside but it was eerily quiet, the noise of blasterfire and explosions muffled by distance. Darman found the front of the building gone, and re-membered Atin had been on the roof. "At'ika? Atin, it's Dar. You there?"
Atin's voice crackled over the comlink. "I think I've bro-ken my shabla ankle. I can see Niner. He's giving first aid." They were all accounted for, then. Darman could spare a thought for the 35th Infantry now that he knew his brothers were alive. The larty had come back to extract them; it touched down in the middle of the road, the port-side hatch of the troop bay closed and blocking the line of sight be-tween the ruined holostation and the buildings opposite. Troopers struggled forward carrying comrades between them, but one trooper was still flat on his back while Niner struggled to place a hemostatic dressing on his chest wound. "I should be doing that," Fi mumbled. "I'll do that. I'm the squad medic ..."
Atin appeared, limping badly. "Well, we stopped enemy broadcasts just fine. I think that was incoming."
"Ours or theirs?" Darman asked. Atin took hold of Fi's arm, but he stumbled and Darman had to catch him. "Hey, you okay?"
Fi swayed a little. "Just dizzy."
"You should get that checked out. Sounds like concussion. You're the squad medic, Fi, you should know that."
"That's what I said, didn't I?"
"Fi?"
"Okay."
"What's wrong, Fi?"
"I'm going to throw up."
Darman started to get scared at that point. This wasn't Fi. He'd seen Fi under stress, in pain, and at every other extreme, but nothing like this. Fi managed to get to within five meters of the larty and then stopped to tear off his helmet, throw it aside, and brace his hands on his knees to vomit. That was as far as he got on his own. Darman and Atin man-aged to haul him into the crew bay, and Niner was briefly for-gotten as they propped Fi on the narrow bench seat along the aft bulkhead and tried to keep him talking.
Sergeant Tel was yelling at Niner to get the chest injury case inboard. Whatever else was happening in Eyat and the surrounding area, Omega Squad's stay on Gaftikar was over. Darman tried to comm A'den to update him, but didn't get a response.
He's probably busy, not dead. Worry about Fi. Fi's the one in trouble.
Both blast hatches dropped down to seal the crew bay and it was a full casevac to Leveler now, only minutes from liftoff to docking, always minutes too long. Darman relived the extraction from Qiilura, Omega's first mission as a re-formed squad, which had nearly ended in Atin getting killed. Atin made it. Fi will, too. That's what happens, isn't it? We all lost our squads the first time around, and it can't happen again.
"Come on, Fi." Atin tapped his cheek to keep him conscious. "Keep talking. I've never had to ask you to do that before." Fi was barely coherent now, mumbling about some-thing he'd left behind in the camp and complaining that everything was blurred. Against the opposite bulkhead, the onboard IM-6 droid was busy with the chest injury. Niner couldn't move across the deck because of the number of wounded, and stood hanging on to a safety strap.
They'd all done the basic training; they knew what was wrong. Almost nothing penetrated Katarn armor, but it was a sealed box, nothing more, and being shaken around in a box hard enough was still going to cause brain injury. That fitted the uneven pupils and the puking. Darman looked on the positive side. At least he now knew that he had to make the triage team treat Fi as a priority.
The helmet comlink clicked. "Dar, I don't care who I have to kick out of the way," Niner said, "but he gets seen first, soon as we dock."
"You got it."
But it wasn't like that at all. When the larty disgorged its wounded, the hangar deck was almost empty, because they weren't taking heavy casualties on Gaftikar. Leveler had already crippled a Sep assault ship and taken minimal damage. The battle on the ground seemed completely artificial, divorced from the size of the engagement or the importance of the planet below. It was a pathetic, pointless skirmish for Fi to get injured in. It felt more like senseless bad luck.
Niner and Dar pounced on the med droid at once. "Head trauma," they chorused. "Loss of balance, headache, vomiting, gradual loss of speech and coherence." Fi, unmarked and looking like he was simply settling down again after thrashing around in a nightmare, lay on the repulsor as the droid mapped his skull with a small scanner. Atin tried to limp across to join them, then gave up and hopped the rest of distance.
"Correct," the droid said. "Intracranial pressure is increasing. We'll chill him down and insert a shunt to drain the fluid before we put him in the bacta tank. That'll reduce swelling in the brain."
Darman felt instantly deflated, faced with cooperation when he was pumped with adrenaline and fear, primed to fight. The repulsor moved off to medbay and Darman kept up with it, telling Fi it was going to be fine, even if he couldn't hear him now, until the twin doors closed in his face and left him helpless. Niner put a hand on his shoulder plate and steered him back to the hangar.
"Don't worry," he said. "Accurate diagnosis and quick treatment. He'll make it. Now let's look after At'ika. And get yourself checked out, too."
"Yes, Sarge."
"Nothing more we can do right now." There was one more thing, but Darman didn't want to call Skirata and get him worried when he only had half a story to tell him. Ordo, though, would kill him if he wasn't kept in-formed; he'd taken a shine to Fi in that blindly devoted Null sort of way, and he'd want to know. He was also the right man to judge when Sergeant Kal should be told.
Darman went reluctantly to the med droid when the last man from the 35th had been assessed, and wondered who would take Fi's place in the squad until he recovered. It would have be Trooper Corr, an accidental recruit to the commando ranks who'd settled into the special forces way of life with remarkable ease.
And it would be temporary.
It had to be.
Tropix island, Dorumaa, 478 days after Geonosis Etain felt something scared and abandoned rippling through the Force, like someone running after her and calling her name, but who was never there when she turned around.
It's not Dar. It can't be, not now. I have to see him again.
She tried to identify its meaning as she walked along the bleached planks of the marina toward the berth where Skirata's ship was moored. Whatever it was, it was unhappy and it would be coming her way, so she slowed down, concentrating to make absolutely sure nothing had happened to Dar-man.
"Ordo," she said, "something's really wrong."
He seemed to have learned a lot of restraint very fast. The vague warning didn't spark a diatribe on why she needed to narrow the range and work on making the Force a little more specific. "Here, or elsewhere?"
"I'm not sensing immediate danger."
"I'll put in a status check to everyone, just to be certain." He checked his comlink. "I've had one troubling message today, and I doubt it'll be the last."
Moored at the farthest end of the pontoon was a stream-lined dark green vessel with a curving transparisteel dome, about forty-five meters long, rising and falling on the swell.
From the position-closest to the mouth of the harbor-Etain got the idea that Skirata was always ready for a fast getaway. Ordo approached it as if he was walking into a fight, leaving a wake of anger, unhappiness, and more fear than she'd ever detected in him before.
"I'm not looking forward to seeing her, either, Ordo."
"I didn't mean Ko Sai. But I can think of better ways to occupy my time than begging her for help. She had the power of life and death over us once, and I'm not handing it back to her now."
"This is the first time I've met a Kaminoan," Etain said. Barman mentioned them very rarely, and usually in terms of keeping out of their way, like a grumpy Master at the Jedi academy. "But I can probably tell you if she's lying. Her only use to you is if she knows how to stop the accelerated aging, isn't it? Because you already have all her research. You could hire someone else to crunch the gene sequences."
"Oh, she knows that, too."
It really was a beautiful late afternoon. The sun was low on the horizon, with just enough gilded clouds to add a little punctuation to the sky. There was something about seeing beauty while struggling with dark thoughts that was uniquely upsetting, like being shut out from the world. Etain couldn't stop worrying about the disturbance in the Force that was close to Darman. She'd have to contact him or go crazy worrying, but in the meantime she made do with reaching out to him, hoping he wasn't too preoccupied to feel it.
As she followed Ordo down onto the pontoon that stretched out into the harbor, she could see faint cockpit lights on the ship.
"What does Aay'han mean, Ordo?"
"It's a state of mind. An emotion." He walked a little way ahead of her now, not a clone captain at all, just a young man in plain blue pants, sport shirt, and sun visor who could have been one of the professional slingball coaches at the resort. With most of his features obscured, even Zey might not have recognized him except by that very upright walk. "Enjoying time with loved ones but suddenly recalling those who've passed to the manda, and still feeling the pain, but embracing it."
The concept hit Etain hard enough to elicit a kick from the baby. She wasn't sure whether aay'han upset her or if she craved that emotional intensity, but it seemed the polar opposite of the Jedi avoidance of attachment, and gave her an in-sight into why the ancient mistrust between Jedi and Mandalorian never healed. The two communities seemed only to have areas where they were identical, and areas where they were diametrically opposed, with no regions of neutrality or apathy. It made for uncomfortable relations.
Ordo jumped onto the flat section of Aay'han's casing and reached into an open hatch. Someone she couldn't see passed him a long strip of durasteel sheet, and he hooked the curved end over the hatch coaming to form a brow onto the pontoon.
"Up you come," he said, gesturing to take her hand. "Can't have you leaping onto decks at the moment."
Etain could easily have Force-jumped across the whole pontoon and landed safely, pregnant or not, but it was such a touching gesture that she accepted it graciously and walked onto the hull. Ordo had his moments. On the other side of the cockpit dome, Mereel and Skirata sat with legs outstretched, leaning back against the transparisteel and passing a carton of some drink back and forth between them. Both men were staring out to sea, lost in thought.
It wasn't quite how Etain expected to find them, given what Ordo had told her was waiting below.
And this was the first time she'd seen Skirata since their blazing row when she told him she'd let herself conceive without Darman knowing, and he'd exiled her to Qiilura. She felt stupid and selfish now, looking back on how she ex-pected him to be the instantly doting grandfather, but one thing remained certain: the Force showed her she was right to have this child.
She braced for either a frosty reception or a renewed rant on her shortcomings, one of which was being a Jedi. Skirata looked up.
"Ad'ika!" he said, not a hint that they'd ever argued. "How are you, girl?"
Oh. "I'm .. . okay, Kal, all things considered."