Boss and Fixer surfaced after an hour and Sev and Scorch flopped over the gunwale into the crystal-clear water. Sev had done the compulsory diving course as part of his basic training-and why call it compulsory, he wondered, when everything was compulsory for a clone?-but just because he could do it didn't mean he liked it. He didn't. Scorch did. "Wow, this is amazing. Look at that!"
"It's a fish, Scorch. You'll get over it. So will the fish."
"Come on, how many folks get to do this? Savor the privilege, man."
"I will, next time I'm getting my shebs shot off." Sev wanted to say a lot more right then: a terrible unguarded moment ambushed him, and he wanted to blurt out that he was fed up with hearing that voice within telling him he wasn't good enough when he was almost bleeding from the effort, and that he wanted ... fierfek, he didn't know what he wanted, but he knew he didn't have it.
That was when he realized why Fi wound him up so much, because Fi asked the questions that he couldn't face. And Fi had a sergeant who was a father, who thought he was terrific whatever he did or however much he screwed up.
So the jewel-like fish and luminous coral around him had a long way to go to make up for that gnawing void in his chest. He ignored them, and swam without jet assistance to avoid churning up silt, scrutinizing the seabed of the island shelf and the rock formations around him for signs of recent activity.
Up ahead, there was a sloping pile of rocks extending from the cliff that wasn't on the chart. As Sev swam over it, he couldn't see anything growing there; no plants, encrustations, or any of the life that was quick to colonize every surface. How do I know that? I've never dived anywhere like this. It's all from databases in my helmet systems. Flash-learned stuff. Things I've been trained to trust, unseen. The rock face opposite was equally scoured, as if this pile had been the large chunk that had shattered and fallen away from it.
"General Jusik, sir," Scorch said, "is any of this showing up on your disturbance-in-the-Force meter?"
"I see it."
Sev picked up some of the smaller fragments and moved them, checking for any debris that wasn't part of what nature intended. This would take forever: he let the rock drop and swam away from the cliff to get an overall perspective, maybe even see some channel open to the sea. It was just as he was backing away that he brushed against something and turned, thinking he'd snagged weed fronds, and found him-self looking at something white and vaguely familiar.
It didn't have a head, but the rest of it was a humanoid skeleton.
"Fierfek..."
"Sev?"
"It's okay, Scorch." But they could all detect that his pulse rate had shot up, because armor always had a sneaky little system for monitoring life signs. "Looks like the speeder buses run really late here, judging by how long this guy's been waiting..."
Scorch swam across to him, rocks and big bangs forgotten for the moment.
"What is it?" Jusik asked. "I can't see."
Scorch adjusted the unfamiliar helmet cam controls that linked his POV to the comm system. "See it?"
"Ah." Jusik sighed. "Any sign of what killed him Scorch?"
"Let's ask Sev. He's a dead-body-ologist."
Sev, feeling embarrassed by his reaction, examined the bones. The left arm came off in his hand. "Yep, he's dead all right."
Scorch sucked his teeth noisily. It was extra-amplified in the scuba trooper helmets. "Sure you don't want a second opinion, Doc?"
"Nah, I'm prepared to go out on a limb." Sev dipped down and retrieved the arm from the weed around it. He followed the length of orange fibercord to its origin, which turned out to be a nonslipping Keldabe anchoring bend tied on a mooring ring of some kind. "But I can tell you who made sure he didn't float, more or less. Can you see this, sir?"
"It's a knot," Jusik said.
"A special one. Mandalorian. Used only by Mandos and folks trained by Mandos."
Sev's first thought was the Twi'lek pilot, Leb, saying that he'd told some Mandalorians about his delivery route. There was a connection here, and it would have been a lot easier to make it if Jusik hadn't scrubbed the pilot's memory a little too soon for Sev's liking.
"Retrieve the arm," Jusik said. "We can at least try to ID the owner. Get what penetrating scans you can of the rock face and we'll examine it later."
Sev and Scorch looked back at the cliff face in silence. From here, the volume of rock brought down was apparent, and it was more than two or even five men could shift in the hope of finding anything behind it.
If Ko Sai had built a hidden research lab back there, and she'd been home when the explosion happened, then she wasn't going anywhere, ever. If someone else had found her before they trashed the facility-like the mystery Mando'ade-they probably hadn't offered to relocate her to a nice unit in the Keldabe business park.
It wouldn't be good news for Palpatine. But then Sev wasn't the one who had to break the news to him.
Chapter 14.
Let me see . . . by your logic, it's acceptable to use these clones and spend their lives, because they were only created for war, and wouldn 't have existed otherwise. The problem I have with that. Lieutenant, is that they do exist, so they know how sweet life is-even from their limited experience-and therefore their lives are worth as much to them as ours are to us. So I 'm sure you won't object to accompanying the men on the next ground assault-and I mean on the ground. Will you?
-Captain Gilad Pellaeon, commanding officer of Leveler, discussing clone troopers with a junior lieutenant * * *
Republic assault ship Leveler, Outer Rim, 480 days after Geonosis Darman was used to going where he pleased on board a ship, so the med droid's attempt to stop him from entering the medbay came as a surprise.
"Unauthorized personnel," it said. "You're an infection risk."
"I want to see my brother," Darman said. "RC-eight-oh-one-five, Fi. Head injury."
The droid docked one of its probes into the console at the nursing station, checking the central database. "Admission record shows he's still in bacta and hasn't regained consciousness yet. Bay Eight."
"I know he isn't going to be sitting up in bed and wise-cracking, but I want to see him. And if he's in a tank, how can I infect him?"
"It's not him I'm concerned for," the droid said. "It's the other casualties."
"Okay." Darman took his own probe out of his belt and docked it in the console. "Priority override five-five-alpha." The droid stood back to let him pass. "And I promise I won't go near any other patient, okay?"
Special forces weren't supposed to use the override access command except in emergencies, but this counted as one in Darman's eyes. There was no point being special forces personnel if you had to fill out forms asking permission to visit the refreshers. He went in search of Bay 8, past what were now packed wards. He paused to stare for a moment, surprised by the numbers.
The droid had followed him. "He's not in there. Move along."
"Where did they all come from? Not Gaftikar. That was a stroll in the park." But not for Fi: that was galling, and Dar-man still didn't know if it had been a booby trap or a cannon round, hostile or friendly fire. For some reason, it mattered a lot, even though he knew no good would come of knowing the answer. "Shouldn't they be shipped out to Rimsoos?"
"No, very few casualties were sustained on Gaftikar," said the droid. "These men are from a number of engagements in this quadrant. The Mobile Surgical Units can't handle any more at the moment, so they're sending them to vessels with spare medbay capacity."
So the Republic could order a top-notch army and all its kit, but they didn't get around to providing the medical sup-port. Darman wanted to go and slap some sense into the Re-public, but didn't know who to start with even if he could. "Show me Bay Eight," he said.
Darman tried not to look to either side of him, but he did and in one of the emergency bays med droids were working on a trooper. He couldn't see the type of wound because the man was lying flat and the droids were obscuring his view. but he could see the deck of the bay, and it was covered in blood. A small cleaning droid was mopping it clean, working its way around the equipment unnoticed.
For some reason, the scene stopped Darman in his tracks. A mop. They were using a domestic mop to wipe up the blood. Somehow it summed up how routine this was, how much a part of the daily round, how mundane, that men bled out their lives and the cleaning droids carried on keeping the ship spick-and-span. Where was HNE and its holocams now? This scene never intruded on the holonews bulletins. All Darman's vague resentment and fears suddenly found a sharp focus, and he was angry in a way that he hadn't been before.
"Bay Eight, tank one-one-three," the med droid beside him said sharply. "I have patients waiting."
At least Fi had been first in line for a bacta tank. The droid left Darman in a forest of blue-lit transparent tubes full of men, and for the first time since he'd known Fi, Darman had the panicky sensation of not being able to recognize him; the fluid distorted like a lens, and the men inside were sedated, so there was no way to recognize him by facial expression or scars. But he had the tank number.
Fi's injuries were all internal. Darman wished he could have said the same for some of the troopers he passed: bacta could heal a lot, but regenerating limbs wasn't one of its properties.
In tank 113, Fi hung suspended in a surgical harness, breather mask held in place by filaments looped behind his ears, a very regular trail of bubbles rising slowly to the surface of the bacta; he was on assisted breathing, then. He looked peaceful. But Darman didn't like that because he'd seen more than enough dead men with that same look of ab-sent serenity.
"Hey, Fi," he said quietly. He put his hand flat on the transparisteel. They said coma patients often heard what was going on around them, so Darman treated Fi as conscious. "You're going to be okay, ner vod. Better hurry back, be-cause Corr's taking your place, and you don't want him to get all the girls, do you?"
Darman watched Fi for a while, drumming gently on the glass with his fingers. They'd all started life in a tank a lot like this. Darman was determined Fi wouldn't end it in one. Now that he could stand outside all this, he could see it for the loveless, isolated, sterile excuse for life that it was.
Someone walked up behind him, very carefully. He knew Niner's gait anywhere.
"The med droid's getting annoyed with us trooping in here," Niner whispered, draping his arm over Darman's shoulder. "Fi's stable. They say they've stopped the swelling in the brain, so they'll drain him down and take him off the sedation in a couple of days and do scans. Then they'll know what shape he's in. We're going back to Triple Zero anyway even if Leveler isn't-we have to meet up with Corr and get a new squad in shape."
"Why do they need to sedate him when he's in a coma?"
"In case he wakes up in that thing and starts thrashing around."
"Ah."
"He'll be okay."
"What happens if he isn't? What if he's still in a coma? What happens then?"
This was where it got difficult. Men were wounded all the time, and some died, and some survived and were sent back to their units. It was the first time Darman had wondered why it was all so tidy.
"I don't know," said Niner. "I'll ask Sergeant Kal." Darman knew why he hadn't asked the question before. though. The answer was brutally pragmatic. If it took too much effort to save a man, he wasn't a priority. He died.
Darman thought of the surgical expertise available to the Republic and just how much was medically possible these days-as long as you weren't a meat-can like them.
I thought we were expensive assets. You'd think we'd be worth a little more spent on repairs.
"Come on, Dar." Niner pulled him away, hooking his fin-gers into the back of his belt. "We'll come back later." Dar-man, reluctant to leave Fi in this cold and lonely place, put his hand on the tank again. "I'm not abandoning you, vod'ika. You didn't abandon me on Qiilura, and I won't leave you. Okay? I'm coming back. I promise."
Fi didn't react, but then Darman knew he wouldn't. The point was that he'd said it, and that meant he'd do it. Reluctantly, he followed Niner back to the mess deck, and found a quiet corner to pour his heart out in a message to Etain.
He could have unburdened himself on his brothers, but they all knew what he was thinking anyway.
Kyrimorut, northern Mandalore, 480 days after Geonosis Etain stepped out of Aay'han's cargo hatch and looked upon a wilderness of ancient trees huddling together for warmth against a biting wind that swept off the plain. The palette of sunset colors was remarkably like the tropical is-land she'd just left, all intense violets and ambers, but the temperature difference was thirty degrees.
Despite what Skirata had said, it wasn't unattractive. It was just dauntingly isolated.
"Okay, it's not Coruscant," Mereel said, offering her a hand down. "You can't comm the local tapcaf for a banquet-to-your-door delivery. But in the warmer months, it's beautiful. It really is."
Etain tried to believe him. It didn't matter, anyway: she'd be out of here in three months, maximum. For some reason, freezing her shebs off here-that was the right word, shebs, she knew that now-was a lot better than being exposed to the same temperatures on Qiilura. She had a connection with this place, however tenuous it was. There was something right about having the baby here. She understood all about bloodline and geography counting for little with Mandalorians, but it mattered to her because this was, technically, her son's home.
But she couldn't see any houses. There wasn't a light or a road out there, just the wild landscape.
"They have tree houses here, don't they?" she said, realization slowly dawning. Accessibility was an issue for a woman with a rapidly expanding waistline. "Like Wookiees."
Mereel laughed. For a man whose crazy brother had just junked his chance at a normal life span, he didn't seem too crushed. "Only in some places. Here, you need something a little more substantial in the winter. Think of it as your private retreat by the lake. Fishing, bracing country walks for a few hundred klicks . . ."
Skirata stuck his head out of the hatch. He had his comlink in one hand and seemed to be talking to someone who had dumped more bad news on him. He paused, oblivious that he was blocking the exit, and rubbed his forehead, eyes closed. He was back in his gold armor now, a regular Mando on home turf.
Enemy territory. Remember that. These people fight for the Seps.
Etain heard the word Fi a few times. He's not dead. I'd know if he was. Then Skirata closed the link and keyed in an-other code, stepping out and wandering around the landing area with his free hand deep in his pocket, left leg dragging a little.
"Ah," said Mereel, holding up a forefinger and cocking his head toward the sound of an approaching speeder. "Our gracious enabler."
"Has Kal got a home here?" she asked. "Not until now," Mereel answered. "I don't understand."
"He's looking at retirement properties, let's say. In the meantime, Rav Bralor's looking after his interests." That meant absolutely nothing to her. "Who's he?"
"She. Another Cuy'val Dar."
Skirata only trusted his own. Etain couldn't blame him: it was a dangerous galaxy, and Skirata was playing a very risky game indeed, even here. She wondered how he bankrolled all this, and suspected General Zey was going to get a heart-stopping shock one day when the auditors went through the SO Brigade accounts.
But Skirata had Besany Wennen on the team now, which was ... convenient. A Treasury agent always came in handy. And I think Kal's taking risks? I'm a pregnant Jedi general, and here I am in enemy territory, paying a social visit, looking to them for safe haven. Force preserve us . . .
A mud-spattered speeder drew up alongside them, and a figure in beskar'gam, the traditional Mandalorian armor, jumped out of the hatch.
"Rav'ika," said Skirata. They hugged with a metallic clack. "I owe you."
"Too right you do, you old shabuir." Bralor pulled off her helmet, revealing thick, gray-streaked chestnut braids and a surprisingly unlined skin, and looked Etain over with a practiced eye. "So this is the little mother, hah? Shab, kid, you need to put some meat on your bones fast. Your baby needs it." She walked up to Mereel and patted his cheek. "You're looking fit, ad'ika. Good to see you again."
"Mereel," he prompted.
"Been awhile. I could always tell you apart back then." Bralor was everything Skirata had said Mando women should be. If she'd had kids, Etain had no doubt that she'd endured a five-day labor in stoic silence, handed the newborn a blaster, and then zapped Trandoshans with the infant clutched under one arm. She looked frighteningly fit. Venku, is this where you want to be? "Thank you for your hospitality," Etain said, having no idea if Bralor knew who the father was. "I realize this can't be easy for you."
"It's okay, kid." Bralor had vibroblade housings on her gauntlets, both of them. "I know what you are. Kal and I go back way before Kamino. No problem. When you join this team, nobody cares where you came from. Only what you do from now on in."
That didn't answer the question, but Etain made a mental note to check with Kal about who knew what. It was impossible to keep track now.
"Okay," Bralor said, "follow me. Five minutes, tops."
"There's something else," Skirata said.
"There always is, Kal'ika..."
"This."
Ordo emerged from the hatch with a handcuffed Ko Sai. Bralor's expression was a picture. She didn't quite gape, but she parted her lips as if to speak and then just laughed her head off.
"Wayii! Bringing meat for the barbecue?" She held her helmet hugged against her chest, an oddly girlish pose for a veteran commando. "This is something of a comedown for you, Chief Scientist, isn't it? Slumming it with the cannon fodder. Well, well."
Skirata looked suddenly exhausted, as if he'd been worried about Bralor's reaction and could now relax. "Ko Sai was a little reluctant to accompany us."