"Sep force strength?" Niner asked.
"Apart from the locals, minimal."
"I thought this was a hotbed of Sep activity that had to be neutralized pronto."
"Oh dear, ner vod, you've been taking intel at face value again, haven't you?" A'den built the fire with meticulous care, stacking branches and dry grasses on the mound and watching the flames grow. "We better cure you of that."
Fi peered into the pot of stew. "It's okay, I've been teaching him sarcasm. He'll be ready for comic exaggeration soon."
"Looks quite a nice peaceful place," Atin said. "Not exactly strategic."
"Eyat?" A'den stirred the pot with a stick. It really did smell good. "Lovely city. Clean, pretty buildings, lots of harmless fun to enjoy. And of no military use to us whatsoever."
Darman kept an eye on the Gaftikari. Now that the sun was coming up, he could see that their light beige scales were slightly iridescent. They had sharp muzzles and small black eyes with disturbing red slit-like pupils. And he'd never seen so many varied weapons strung on one belt: they were more tooled up than Sergeant Kal in a bad mood. Their blades, blasters, and metal bars jingled like wind chimes. One tall lizard provided his own musical accompaniment as he walked, swinging his tail to balance under a load of E-Web parts.
"I see you taught them all about stealth, then," Atin said.
A'den stared at him. "Prudii warned me that you were an awkward customer."
"Funny, Ordo warned Prudii I was argumentative."
"Your reputation precedes you, then," said A'den. "They're good fighters. Trust me."
"I hear a but coming," said Niner. "We're specially trained to hear that coming at a hundred klicks."
"But." A'den slopped the stew into their waiting mess tins. When Darman was this hungry, he'd eat flimsi packing cases. "Yes, the but is that this is going to end in tears. Eyat-human city. All the cities are human settlements. But... scruffy little villages-lizard land."
"So who are the Gaftikari?"
"They all are. Neither species is native. The human colonists brought in the lizard lads to build the place, and now the lizards want to run the show, on account of their numbers. Actually, the lizards are Marits."
"Why are the Seps supporting the humans, then?"
"Because the Republic wants the kelerium and norax deposits here, or at least Shenio Mining does, and the humans are happier without Shenio moving in."
"I'm lost," said Niner.
"The Seps have offered to save Gaftikar from us."
"So we're going to give them something to object to?"
"I don't make the policy. I just train guerrillas and slot bad guys."
They lapsed into silence and ate the stew, which was actually remarkably tasty. The rebels-the Marits-had started assembling an E-Web without the manual, and the way a group of them clustered around the heavy blaster and handled the components gave Darman the impression that they swarmed over their enemies. There was something about the rapid and coordinated movements that reminded him of in-sects and unnerved him.
"Why are you a sergeant and the rest of the Nulls are officers?" Fi asked. "Didn't you pass your promotion board?"
A'den didn't seem offended. It was hard to tell what would provoke a Null; sometimes it took nothing at all. "I preferred to be an NCO. If it's good enough for Kal'buir, it's good enough for me."
Fi seemed satisfied with the explanation. Atin was concentrating on his stew, and Niner was watching the Marits getting to grips with the large artillery piece.
"They're good at assembling things," A'den said. "Good visuospatial ability."
It was the first time any of them had met A'den, and Dar-man was always keen to get the measure of another of Skirata's Nulls. How had he managed to keep them apart from the commandos during training for so many years? The young Nulls terrified the Kaminoans by running wild around Tipoca City, and that was about the only time the commando squads saw them: stealing equipment, sabotaging systems, and-Darman had never forgotten this-even scaling the supports of the huge domed ceilings, swinging around hundreds of meters above the floor and placing blasterfire to within centimeters of the Kaminoan technicians. The Nulls never cared, never seemed afraid: even then, they answered only to Kal Skirata, and the Kaminoans wouldn't dare cross Kal'buir.
Kal'buir said the Kaminoans had messed up the Nulls, and so they deserved what they got. If the Kaminoans com-plained, he said, he'd sort them. Skirata used sort as a euphemism for any form of violence, his specialist subject.
A Marit trotted over and peered into the stew, head jerking slightly like a droid. "You like it?"
Atin, kneeling down to help himself to another portion, looked up innocently. The scar across his face-the one that Vau had given him-was a thin white line now. "It's very tasty."
"My great-grandmother!" the Marit beamed. It was weird to watch a lizard smile like a human. They seemed to have a double row of small triangular teeth. "She'll be happy."
Darman noticed A'den slide forward a little and try to interrupt the exchange. "Atin..."
But Atin was off, being polite to the locals and taking his hearts-and-minds role seriously. "Is it her recipe, then?"
"Atin..."
"It's her," said the Marit, and wandered off. Atin stared into the bowl. There was a moment of complete silence, and A'den sighed. Fi put his knuckles to his mouth to stifle nervous laughter, but it didn't work. Niner chewed to a halt. Darman tried to be culturally sensitive and all that, but he was hungry, and the Marit seemed pleased they were enjoying the meal.
"Oh fierfek..." Atin put his mess tin down on the ground and sat back on his heels. He screwed his eyes shut tight, and judging by the way his lips compressed he was in serious digestive crisis, as Ordo called it. Then he rocked back on his heels, stood up, and bolted for the nearest bushes.
"He's throwing up," Niner said, and went on eating. The faint sound of retching confirmed his diagnosis.
A'den shrugged. "It's not like they killed her to eat her. It's how they dispose of their dead. They like to think they do their families some good after they're gone. It's rude not to tuck in."
"Cultural diversity's a wonderful thing," Fi observed, but he looked quite pale. "What do they do for desserts?"
Niner fished out a chunk of lean meat and gazed at it, then popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Darman didn't know he could be so daring. "I never thought I'd resort to cannibalism."
"It's not cannibalism for us, Niner," A'den said. "Just for them."
"That's the Grand Army for you." Fi's face seemed back to its normal color again. "See the galaxy, meet fascinating new species, and snack on them."
"Well, we wouldn't be alone." A'den looked up, all concern, as Atin walked back unsteadily from the bushes, wiping his mouth. "You okay?"
"You did that deliberately. You could have told me before I started eating."
"I said don't ask, and I said I hadn't." Atin-quiet, methodical Atin-had been one of Vau's training company, not Skirata's. It showed. A'den stared at Atin, and Atin stared back. Niner rolled his eyes as if he was shaping up to separate them, and it wouldn't have been the first time that Atin needed hauling out of a confrontation. There was something about the way Vau trained his men that gave them a core of wildness, a complete inability to see sense and back down when pushed too far.
A'den almost broke into a grin. "You tried to vibroblade Vau, didn't you? We all heard about that."
Atin gave him the silent routine. Darman waited for A'den to run out of patience and give Atin a good slap, as Fi liked to call it, but he just shrugged and rummaged in his pockets. "Okay," said A'den. He found what he was looking for and tossed a ration bar across to Atin, who caught it. "First, you can grow a shabla beard. Because you're going to have to in-filtrate Eyat, and they're not used to seeing quads. Mix your-selves up a bit and choose who gets to stay looking normal."
Fi perked up immediately. "I'll dress up as a lizard if I can have a trip into town."
"Done," A'den said. "But scrub the scaly look, because Mar-its don't go into the cities now, except to shoot the locals. That's why a human's best suited to do assassinations. Once you've got your bearings, I want two of you to recce Eyat again and get a few spycams planted. The Marits can't go in unnoticed, and whatever intel Sull put together went with him."
"Sull?" said Fi.
"Alpha-Thirty," A'den said. "That was his name. Sull."
Darman finished his stew and watched A'den. He wasn't pleased, that much was obvious. Maybe it was having to fol-low up on an Alpha ARC when he thought he had more important business. Maybe it was just normal irritation at being tasked to carry out a mission that looked pointless and wasn't resourced. He worked alone, and that had to take its toll on any man's will.
Niner scraped out his mess tin and rinsed it clean with water from his bottle. "I think we should be concentrating our forces on kicking the osik out of the main Sep home-worlds," he said suddenly. "Because if we keep this up, we'll be down to one clone per planet, showing the locals a field manual on how to throw stones."
A'den turned his head slowly and parted his lips as if to speak. He paused. He seemed to be measuring his words.
"You're in good company," he said. "Lots of us do, including General Zey. But the Chancellor wants to avoid too much collateral damage. No pounding, no surging, no offending the civvies."
"No resources."
"Enough resources not to lose, but not enough to win," A'den said. "He's just feeding a stalemate, the moron."
Darman thought it was time they got on with making friends with the Marits. He stood up and ambled over to the lizards, wondering if there might be anything in Eyat that he could acquire for Etain. It was hard to think of anything that a Jedi might want. They avoided possessions.
"You know what's been bothering me?" Fi's voice drifted across the center of the camp. The Marits had finished calibrating the artillery piece and were admiring it. "What if the war had broken out when we were five years into our training instead of eight, nine ... ten?"
"What?" A'den asked.
"Nobody knows when a war's going to start, not years ahead, anyway. It's not like you can book one in advance. So there we are, fully trained, and then it all kicks off. Very lucky. What if it had all gone to poodoo years before? What if we'd been half trained, still just kids?"
"Then we'd have been fighting in diapers," Atin muttered. "Because the Republic didn't have any other army worth a mott's backside."
Fi raised an eyebrow. "Shabla lucky, if you ask me."
"Time to move it," A'den said sharply, and Darman suspected he was breaking up the speculation for a reason. Judging by the expression on Fi's face, he felt that, too. "I'll bring you up to speed with the local situation, and you can spend the rest of the day getting to know our allies."
The longer the war went on, the less sense it made to Dar-man. After years of clear certainty in training-knowing what he had to do, and why he would have to do it, because there had never been any doubt in anyone's mind that they would one day be deployed-the reality of the war didn't match any of it. Shambolic organization, indecisive leader-ship from the top, and... too many gray areas. The more places he was sent, the more things Darman saw that made him ask why they didn't just let planets cede from the Re-public. Life would go on.
Fi's thinking was getting to him. Every thought now started with a why.
Stay busy. There was nothing he could about it now except get on with his job. He smiled at the Marits. "I'm Darman," he said, holding out his hand for shaking. "Want me to show you how to make shrapnel out of a droid?"
Chapter 3.
No, General Zey-finding Chief Scientist Ko Sai is as much a priority as locating General Grievous. Our survival depends on a strong army, and that means the highest-quality clones-conscription of ordinary citizens is a poor second and would be politically unacceptable. Find her, if only to deny the Separatists her expertise. You have the best intelligence assets the Republic has ever known. So I'll accept no excuses.
-Chancellor Palpatine, to Jedi general Arligan Zey, Director of Special Forces, Grand Army of the Republic * * *
DeepWater-class ship Aay'han, Mygeeto space, 471 days after Geonosis Fierfek." Skirata sighed, watching the transponders mapped on the cockpit holochart. The picket of ships around Mygeeto made it look as if it were ringed by its own constellation. "I know Bacara's keeping them busy down there, but that's still quite a gauntlet to run."
"And we're a forty-five-meter cargo ship," Ordo said. "Just a laser cannon by way of armament. Mandalorian crew in full beskar'gam. Definitely not a Republic vessel."
"What d'you think, just walk in?"
"Could do. Nothing links us to the Republic. And I always carry a range of current transponder codes, so that's an easy fix."
"Well, we won't win a battle with a warship, so that's our choice made for us."
"Of course, a submersible's sensors are perfect for getting an accurate three-dimensional scan of the site."
"In we go, then, Ord'ika."
Ordo studied the long-range orbital scan of the landing site. It was a vast glacier in a landscape of sheet ice and crystal rock. The penetrating scan showed few crevasses, but the sheet was honeycombed with irregular tunnels that meandered around one another like tangled yarn and occasionally crossed. The straight, uniform outlines of the ventilation shafts were easy to identify by contrast. Around the warm shafts, underground lakes of melted water had formed, capped by thinner ice sheets. Ordo copied the section of holochart to his datapad and didn't even have to do the calculations to realize that searching each tunnel in the site that Delta had pinpointed would take days.
Too long.
An idea formed immediately in his mind, as well as a theory on what had happened to Vau. He might have fallen into the warren of tunnels-or through the ice into the liquid water beneath.
It wasn't good either way.
"Crystal-worm runnels," Ordo said. "It's fascinating how life-forms survive even in the most extreme places."
"If Vau's out in those temperatures," said Skirata, "he won't be one of them. It's been hours. Even in his beskar'gam, the seals won't keep out that kind of cold indefinitely."
Ordo slid his electronic tool case out of his sleeve and took out an overwrite probe. He selected a randomly generated transponder code with a Mandalore prefix, and Aay'han ceased to register as licensed on Mon Calamari.
"Okay, Kal'buir, now or never."
He maneuvered Aay'han into a landing trajectory and wondered whether to brazen it out by pinging Mygeeto Traffic Control and requesting permission to land. No water on board, a civilian vessel that anyone could scan to confirm its configuration-he'd sort that the moment they got out of here-and a couple of wandering meres at the helm: even with a battle going on, he might get away with it.
He opened the traffic frequency. "Mygeeto TC, this is Mandalorian cargo vessel Aay'han. Request permission to set down for replenishment."
The pause was longer than he expected. "Aay'han, this is Mygeeto TC. For Mandalorians, you're remarkably slow to notice we have hostilities ongoing."
"Mygeeto, scan our tanks for water."
The next pause was even longer. "Aay'han, we note your tanks are zeroed. Unfortunately, our city facilities are closed. Remember the hostilities?"
If he was turned away now, he'd blown it. They'd drawn Mygeeto's attention to them. "Mygeeto, there appears to be water just under the surface west of the hostilities, and Mandalore does give assistance to the CIS. We'll refill at our own risk."
"Aay'han, okay, go ahead, and don't try to sue us if you sustain damage or injury. Make sure you're off the planet in two standard hours."
Ordo felt his shoulder muscles relax. He hadn't realized he'd tensed them. "Mygeeto, understood."
He closed the link. Skirata winked at him and grinned. Kal'buir was proud of him, and it made him feel as safe and confident now as it had when he was a small child.
"It's amazing how rarely you need to use force," he said, relieved.
Without the coordinates from Delta, Ordo knew he wouldn't have known where to start the search for Vau. Mygeeto's surface was a windswept icescape, dazzlingly pretty for a few minutes and then fatally disorienting. Ordo set Aay'han down between cliffs on the edge of the underground lake and sealed his armor, and as he opened the hatch the wind shrieked and howled. He slid off the hull, and Skirata dropped down beside him.