She'd done things that her Treasury bosses wouldn't have taken at all well. Like giving critical data-passcodes, Treasury security overrides-to a commando sergeant; like falsifying her reports to cover the fact that she'd let special forces move in on her investigation.
It s too late to worry about that now.
Besany worried anyway. She walked briskly, anxious to get home and close the apartment doors behind her, another day when she hadn't been arrested that she could check off on the calendar.
It s not like me at all. Taking a flier on trust.
She wasn't even aware of someone walking behind her. But a hand touched her shoulder, and she gasped. Guilt made her spin around to find she was staring into the reflective riot visor of one of the CSF cops.
Her stomach churned. Oh no no no...
"Agent Wennen," he said. The accent was familiar. "Long time no see."
But she didn't know him, she was sure.
"You have the advantage, Officer." Men hit on her a lot less than most people imagined. She knew she was striking, but she also knew that she was a daunting prospect because of it. Even Ordo-hugely confident, recklessly unafraid-treated her warily. Her good looks were a curse most of the time. "What can I do for you?"
The cop stood with his fists on his hips. He didn't look like he was going to draw his weapon. "Well, I know I'm not quite as unforgettable as my brother, but I thought you'd at least say, Hi, Mereel, how are things?"
"Oh. Oh." Mereel: one of Ordo's five Null ARC brothers, Lieutenant Mereel. Besany's gut lurched in a different way, and she didn't bother to hide her relief. "I'm sorry, Mereel. Out of context..."
"So you didn't recognize me with my clothes on, then?" A couple of passersby turned to stare. He chuckled to himself. "I mean, the armor. Makes a guy look different. Anyway, what kind of covert operator would I be if I was that easy to spot? Come on, can't stand here getting funny looks all night. Walk this way and I'll make it worth your while."
"Okay." And there she was again, just dropping everything and wandering off to do the bidding of a black ops unit. This wasn't how the Treasury investigation team worked. She had rules. "Can I ask..."
"Ordo's fine and sends his best wishes. He's doing a little job with Kal'buir at the moment." Mereel might have been a clone, but he was as individual as any man. He didn't walk like Ordo, and he didn't talk like him. "I'll try to teach him some social graces when he gets back. He's got no idea how to treat a lady."
Besany strode along beside him, working on the basis that looking as if this was routine was the best way to avoid attracting attention. "I just want to know he's safe."
"We're soldiers. We're never safe."
"Mereel..."
"Look at it this way." He headed for a CSF patrol speeder sitting on the public landing platform overlooking the sky-lane. "The other side's in a lot more danger than we are."
Besany slid into the passenger's seat and didn't ask how he'd acquired the speeder and the uniform. CSF liked the Special Operations clones. Their anti-terrorism chief, Jailer Obrim, was very chummy with Sergeant Skirata, Kal'buir- Papa Kal. Favors were done and questions weren't asked. Besany envied them that wonderful conspiratorial closeness. Kal'buir seemed to get away with murder.
"Are you allowed to tell me how everyone is?" she asked.
"You really do worry about us, don't you?" Mereel steered the speeder toward her apartment block. She didn't recall telling him where she lived. "Okay, Omega's been deployed to the Outer Rim where someone needs a hand with regime change. Delta are helping put the Marines. Did I miss any-one?"
Besany felt a pang of guilt. She had to ask about the first clone she'd ever met, the patient bomb disposal trooper who'd ended up with a temporary desk job after losing both hands. "How's Trooper Corr coping with life as a commando?"
"Oh, he's fine. He's learning a few saucy tricks from my brother Kom'rk. Good man, Corr."
"And the two Jedi officers?"
"Etain's evacuating colonists from Qiilura, and Bard'ika- sorry, General Jusik is due back this week." There were huge gaps in Mereel's explanation: places and times vanished. He seemed to edit the sensitive detail smoothly as he went along. "Want to know about Vau? He's with Delta. Nobody dead. Baffled, fed up, tired, lonely, bored, hungry, scared wit-less, even having fun, but not dead. Which is a plus." The speeder climbed and darted between skylanes to veer around the front of her apartment block. Yes, Mereel definitely knew exactly where she lived: he set the speeder down on the right platform, on her balcony, and opened the hatches. "So, are you still up for doing us a few favors? Without your bosses finding out?"
Mereel was the front line of a war that most Coruscanti never saw and weren't fighting. Besany asked herself, as she had on that first night, whether her tidy little rules mattered more than a man's life. Mereel slipped his helmet off and sat looking at her expectantly-Ordo, and yet not Ordo, and Corr, too. Corr's existence-she had no other word for it, and it summed up so many aspects of a clone's life-had up-ended her, left her feeling upset, angry, betrayed, and, yes, guilty. Her government might have let her down as a citizen and an employee, but it had totally betrayed this slave army.
I'm letting emotion get in the way. But isn't emotion the way we can tell what s really right and wrong?
"Let's talk," she said.
Mereel walked around her apartment with a comm scan, checking for surveillance devices. "Can't be too careful. But then you know all about this game, being a Treasury spook."
"You'd be amazed how seriously people try to avoid financial regulation."
"I would." He hesitated by her sofa as if he might sit down, but stayed standing as if he remembered he wasn't allowed on the' furniture. He looked her over. "And you're still not armed. You need to do something about that."
"Well..."
"Simple question. Are you willing to do some investigation for us?"
"What kind of investigation?"
"Defense expenditure and budget forecasts."
It couldn't be that simple. "Those are public documents anyway."
"I don't think all the details I need are in them."
"Ah."
"It's very sensitive stuff. Might involve the Chancellor's office."
Besany felt her scalp tighten as adrenaline flooded her bloodstream. She didn't feel she could sit down, either, not now. "Can you narrow down what I might be looking for?" Procurement fraud? Bribes?"
"You might well find that," said Mereel, "but I'm more interested in transactions involving Kamino, and the payment schedules."
Besany couldn't imagine anything that would turn up except fraud-or maybe the Republic was arming someone it claimed it wasn't. The investigator in her told her to ask more questions, but the public servant within asked if she really needed or wanted to know more this time.
"I can drill right down to the individual credit transfers," she said at last. "Which might give you so much information that it takes you nowhere."
"Don't worry. I'm good at collation."
She took a breath. She was in it up to her neck now. A few more centimeters wouldn't make much difference. "Why are you trusting me with this?"
"Well, for a start, I know where you live." Mereel smiled with genuine humor, but she'd also seen how fast earnest, polite Ordo could snap into being an assassin without a second thought. "And we don't take prisoners. But our lives could depend on that information, which is what really makes the difference to you. Isn't it?"
It was an ethical choice between rules or lives, and rules didn't always translate into what was right. "You know it is."
"Then we'd be especially interested in any evidence of planned payments to Kamino for more clones beyond, say, the end of the next financial year. Or not."
Besany guessed that this was the point at which she ought to have decided she had no need to know more. "Okay. What aren't you telling me?"
Mereel shrugged. "That I took a big risk getting the information that led me to ask you for more information."
"What's Kal's view on this?" She didn't even have to ask if Kal Skirata knew. The Nulls didn't seem to take a breath without asking him first. Their allegiance was to him, not the Republic; but while she could understand the power of his aggressive charisma, she wasn't sure if it was a good idea. "And what happens if I get caught?"
"One-he trusts you," Mereel said, deadpan. "Two? They'll probably shoot you."
He wasn't joking now. She knew it.
"Okay," she said. "I'll make a start in the morning. How do I contact you?"
"Comlink." He held out his hand, and she dropped her com-link into his palm. Then he cracked open the case, frowned at the device's entrails, and took out a tiny tool kit that looked like a toy in his palm. "Once I've made it secure... dear oh dear . . . ma'am, tell me you haven't called Ordo on this."
"No, I haven't." She felt useless and naive. "I thought it might compromise his safety."
Mereel looked up for a moment, eyebrows raised. "Right answer. That's why we trust you." He prodded and poked in-side the comlink for a while and then snapped the case shut again. "Totally secure now, at least once you use the prefix I'm going to give you. You can even call Ordo."
"He might be defusing a bomb or something when I call." Besany always thought things through in meticulous sequence, which made her all the more horrified to see how easily she took this dangerous leap of faith. "I'll wait for him to call me, thanks."
"See? Kal'buir said you had the right stuff."
"Common sense."
"Got a sister?"
"No."
"Shame." He replaced his helmet and suddenly became just another Galactic City cop. "Anyway, got to go. Any mes-sage for Ordo?"
Should have thought ahead. Stang. What can I say? She and Ordo weren't exactly a romantic role model. They'd just had a drink in the CSF bar and then a string of awkward, embarrassed conversations when everything was implied and not much said. But the bond was strong, and so was her duty to do the right thing for his brothers. "Tell him I miss him. Ask him what his favorite meal is and tell him I'll cook it for him when he comes back."
"It's roba sausage with gravy, and he's fussy about the pepper oil."
"Hang on." Besany looked around for something to send him, but there was nothing in a woman's apartment that would be of any use or amusement to a soldier. There was food, though. Clones were always peckish, all of them. She rummaged in the conservator and hauled out a family-sized cheffa cake whose top was paved with glittering candied nuts, something she'd kept just in case unexpected guests showed up, but they never did. "Have you got room for something small?"
"How small?"
She was nothing if not exact. "Okay, twenty-five-centimeter diameter."
"I'll warn him not to swallow it whole." Mereel tucked the container under one arm, then reached inside his jacket. He withdrew a small blaster. "Kal'buir insisted I make you carry this. Go careful, ma'am."
Besany took it, numb, while a voice at the back of her mind asked if she'd lost her senses. He stepped out onto the platform, and a few moments later the police speeder lifted into the evening sky, vanishing in a blur of taillights.
She locked the balcony doors and drew the blinds, the blaster still gripped in her hand. She felt observed. There was no other word for it. But that was her conscience nagging. When she looked at her fingers curled around the weapon, it seemed like someone else's hand, and nothing to do with her at all.
So he thinks I might need to use this.
Better work out how I'm going to cover my tracks.
She was a forensic auditor. She knew how to uncover the hidden tracks of others, all the places they hid data or salted away credits or blew smoke across the audit trail. It was just a matter of reversing the process to cover her own.
The only complication was that the trail might lead to the very highest level of government.
She'd never been so scared-and alone-in her life.
She could only begin to imagine what Ordo and the rest of the commando forces faced on a daily basis.
Calna Muun, Agamar, Outer Rim, 471 days after Geonosis "So, Mando, you like her?"
A gently curved transparisteel bubble bobbed on the surface of the water, looking like one of those little transparent submersibles that showed tourists the wonders of the Bil Da'Gari ocean floor. But then it lifted slowly to reveal some-thing much, much larger, and not very leisure-oriented at all.
Sergeant Kal Skirata watched the water stream off the rising hull and wondered if he'd lost his mirshe, coming all this way to buy a submersible. The price was more than he'd budgeted for. But if you hunted Kaminoans, you needed aquatic capability, however much it cost. And he was hunting an elusive one: Chief Scientist Ko Sai.
"Not to your taste?" asked the Rodian merchant.
Skirata grunted behind the impenetrable mask of his sand-gold helmet. The handy thing about being a Mandalorian doing business was that you didn't need to keep a straight face, and only the terminally stupid ever tried to dupe you. They only tried it once, too.
" 'S'okay, I suppose."
"It's a beast," the Rodian said, bouncing around on the quayside like a demented acrobat. Rodians always struck Skirata as looking comically harmless, totally at odds with their true nature, which was why he had an extra blade ready in his sleeve-just in case. "Every one unique and hand-crafted, Mon Cal's finest. Won't take much work to make this a-"
"It's a freighter. I asked for a fighter."
"I can throw in a few extra cannons."
"How long's that going to take?"
"Is this for the war effort?"
Skirata could see the Rodian mentally hiking the price in the expectation that the bill would be met by one government or another. Profiteering and war went hand in hand.
"No," said Skirata. "I'm a pacifist."
The Rodian eyed the custom Verpine sniper rifle slung across his shoulder. "You're a Mandalorian..."
Skirata let his three-sided knife drop from his right fore-arm plate, point first, and caught the hilt in his hand. "Would you start a fight with me?"
"No..."
"See? I'm a force for peace." He spun the knife and slid it back into the housing mounted above his wrist. "What's her maximum range, then?"
"Depth, a kilometer. Atmos speed-thousand klicks. Goes like a greased ronto." The freighter was above the waterline now, forty-five meters of smooth dark green curves with four hemispherical drive housings protruding above her stern like a knuckle-duster. It was a Mon Calamari DeepWater-class. "Packs ninety tons of cargo, eight crew. It's got a decent defensive cannon. Hyperdrive is..."
The Rodian stopped and looked to one side of Skirata. Ordo came ambling along the quayside and paused beside the freighter, left thumb hooked in his belt. Except for his gait-always the ARC trooper captain, back slightly arched as if he had both GAR-issue pistols holstered-he was just another Mando in battle-scarred armor. The Rodian fidgeted as Ordo inspected the drive housings from a distance and then jumped with a hollow thud from the quayside onto the casing.
"I don't like the color," Ordo muttered. He prodded his toecap into the manual override of the port hatch and popped the seals. "I'll just inspect the upholstery."
Skirata turned to the Rodian. "My boy's a picky lad, I'm afraid. I've lost count of the crates we've looked at this week."
"I could get you a Hydrosphere Explorer if you're prepared to wait a few weeks." The merchant dropped his voice. "An Ubrikkian repulsorsub. A V-Fin. A Trade Federation submarine, even."