“Too right,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Ruu. “Can I come in?”
“Of course you can, ad’ika.” Skirata made room for her on the bench. “We must be bored. We’re arguing about politics.”
“I’m not arguing,” Gilamar said. “Just making it clear that if I run into Dred and he starts on that bring-back-the-good-old-days garbage, I’ll gut him. And his crazy girlfriend.”
“No reason to run into him,” Ordo said. “Unless you’re in Keldabe.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we started fighting for our own interests?” Ruu took the mug out of her father’s hand and peered into it as if checking up on him. “I’m not saying this guy’s right, but being at every aruetii’s beck and call and doing the dying for them doesn’t sound smart to me. Look at this world. It’s dirt-poor. That’s not much to show for the lives we’ve spent on shoring up other governments.”
“Good point,” Vau said. “You’re definitely a Skirata.”
That was an odd thing for Vau to say, seeing as no Mando cared much about biological parentage. It was a culture of adoption and blurred lines between offspring and in-laws.
He just means she says the same things as Kal’buir. That’s all.
Ordo scrutinized Ruu, still not sure how he felt about her. She’d fallen instantly into the role of dutiful Mando daughter, even though she hadn’t seen her father since she was five. As far as Ordo was concerned she was Corellian like her aruetyc mother. Yes, he knew that wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t the way Mandos did things. She had as much right to leave her past behind as Jusik, to walk on cin vhetin, the virgin snow of a new life, judged only on what she did from the moment she threw her lot in as a Mando’ad. She hadn’t even asked to be rescued.
But Ordo had fought alongside Jusik. Bard’ika had put his life on the line for the clones time after time. He was as much a brother as Mereel.
Am I jealous? Is that it? I’m an adult. I’m a married man. I’m too old to be jealous of new siblings.
Ordo was thirteen in calendar years, going on twenty-seven biologically. He knew he’d grown up too fast to get some things out of his system or even experience them to begin with. Sometimes the small stuff hurt a lot more than he knew it ought to.
Skirata could sense Ordo’s mood as well as any Force-user. He got up and walked across the room to sit next to Ordo and ruffle his hair.
“You okay, son?”
“Fine, Buir.”
“I know things are a mess at the moment, but it’s going to work out. I promise.”
It was a lie, because Ordo knew they’d probably spend the rest of their lives on the run with bounties on their heads, never able to drop their guard. Kal’buir had lost count of the number of death warrants out on him. Now they all had one. But a lot of Mandalorians—and others—lived their lives that way, and seemed happy enough. Ordo decided he would be happy with it, too.
“What are we going to do about the Jedi when Uthan’s finished with Kina Ha?” Ordo asked. “We’re going to have to deal with that sooner or later.”
Skirata put on his don’t-worry face that said anything but.
“I’ll think of something, son,” he said. “I always do.”
Whatever he thought of, it wasn’t going to be easy—or without a price. Ordo was going to make sure that nobody here would be the one to pay it.
Chelpori, Celen, Mid Rim
Chelpori was a nothing town on a nondescript planet, the worst place to hide as far as Niner was concerned.
The easiest place to vanish without a trace was a big city. That was where Niner would have gone to ground, anyway. A fugitive could merge into the mass of anonymous faces, and the more urban it was, the more shifting the population, so nobody really knew their neighbors. It was perfect.
And what am I planning to do? Hide in the middle of nowhere, or wherever Kyrimorut is. Nowhere, Mandalore.
The CR-20 set down in an empty landing pad on the outskirts of Chelpori, just a sprinkling of streetlights and a couple of illuminated cantina signs in the darkness. It wasn’t going to take long to cover it, even if they had to search every building. Niner handed out the PEP attachments, a deuterium fluoride laser bolt-on for the Deece that came in handy if you didn’t want a lethal outcome. It still hurt something fierce to be brought down by one.
“So do we have to ask him to come nicely?” Ennen said.
Niner checked that his PEP attachment was charged. The indicator light glowed bright red. “Cleaner and faster than clubbing him senseless.”
“This intel better be reliable,” Darman said. “It’s all come from their civvie police force, by the look of it.”
Niner almost reminded Dar that Jaller Obrim was a civvie cop, and he hadn’t done so badly. But mentioning Obrim would open a door onto that terrible night at Shinarcan Bridge. He let it go. Bry began walking to the rendezvous point with Ennen. The squad was definitely split into two pairs, not a four-man team like Omega at all. Niner wondered if he was going to hang around long enough to need to worry about that.
“The Antarian’s just a civvie cop, too,” Bry said. “It’s not like he’s going to outclass them.”
Niner trailed after the others, listening in on the local police comm net. Eventually, the patrol speeder came into view, parked on the dirt road into town. Nobody got out to talk to them, so Bry went up and knocked on the side screen. He jerked back a step, then laughed to himself.
“You didn’t see us coming, then … ,” he said as the screen opened.
An enforcement officer got out of the speeder, mopping his tunic and pants. The light from inside the speeder showed a big dark patch on his uniform as if he’d dropped something wet in his lap.
“No, we didn’t,” he said sourly. “Which is how come I spilled my caf. You scared the living daylights out of us.”
The officer’s buddy opened the other door and slid out. “Very stealthy. You going to sneak up on Kester like that?”
“If you’ve found him,” Niner said.
“We’ve been keeping tabs on a guy who fits the broad description. Well, up to a few days ago.”
“How broad?”
“Hair’s different, and he’s got a beard now. Hard to tell from his ID chip, ’cos it was a little out of date. Solid guy with scruffy white hair.”
“Look,” Niner said, “a few weeks ago, this man was still a serving Ranger. Are you telling me that’s the best personnel ID that law enforcement agencies keep on record?”
“I’m not in charge of workforce resources, buddy.” The cop shook one leg carefully, looking increasingly uncomfortable in his wet pants. “Anyway, he’s rented a house, and we’ve picked up bursts of transmissions from comm equipment, but the frequency changes every few seconds.”
“And?”
“What?”
“Transmissions.” Country yokels. We’re on our own here. “Want to share?”
“It didn’t make much sense.”
“Share anyway. We’re good at making sense of big words.”
The cop gave him a look of thin-lipped disapproval. The name tab on his jacket said NELIS P, and he had lieutenant’s insignia on his helmet. “Something about kids. Moving youngsters to the well, whatever that means.”
The cop was right; it didn’t make sense. It sounded like some crude code. The target could have been a smuggler or some stim dealer, of course. But there were no rich pickings in illegal trade to be had here. There was nothing much to do on this kind of planet except hide.
Niner had his orders, and he was going ahead with them. “Okay, let’s pull him in.”
“We’ve got the place surrounded.” Lieutenant Nelis took out his datapad and flashed up a street plan. Niner had seen bigger floor layouts for Galactic City shopping malls. “I’ve got six teams on surveillance outside. Kester hasn’t left the place since yesterday morning.”
Oh boy. If Kester hadn’t noticed that he had an audience, then he must have been in a coma. “You sure of that?”
<
br /> “This isn’t the big city, soldier. We’d notice.”
When they got to the house, an anonymous-looking permacrete cube on the outskirts of a small industrial zone, Niner could see the police speeders parked behind dense bushes. They were pretty easy to pick out with his helmet optics; he could even see the fading heat of the drives as a dim splash of amber in his infrared filter. He wondered if Antarian Rangers had night-vision goggles or other fancy kit, because if they did, the squad had already lost the element of surprise with Kester.
Niner assumed the worst. The house was in darkness, and it was too early in the evening for the guy to be asleep. “What’s the layout of the building? Is it the same as the data we were sent?”
“From what we know—central staircase, four rooms upstairs, three on the ground, front and back doors.” Nelis drew an imaginary rectangle in the air, miming the long narrow shape of the windows. “And eight windows, although he’ll have a tough job exiting through those.”
Darman didn’t seem to be listening. His POV icon, offset to one side of Niner’s HUD display, showed a fixed scene of the town, as if Dar was staring absently at the lights in the distance. Maybe he wasn’t up to the job today. They’d all find out soon enough. But it was only an arrest, not full enemy contact, and the worst that could happen was if Kester got in a lucky blaster shot. Even this new armor could withstand that.
No, the worst is if we end up killing him. We answer to Vader now, not good old Zey. Vader won’t just sigh in exasperation. He’ll do that Force thing, grab our throats, and—
“Alive,” Niner said, motioning the squad forward with a gesture. “We need him alive, Lieutenant, so even if he opens fire—leave it to us. Just duck. Now, let’s all stay on the same comm channel, shall we?”
“What’s that?” Darman pointed in the direction of what looked like a gasholder a couple of hundred meters behind the house. “Tibanna gas? It’s not on our local map.”
“That’s because it’s a new one.” Nelis, pants now dried out, braced both elbows on the roof of his speeder to steady his electrobinoculars. “It’s local bio-gas—produced from waste to power houses and generating stations. We farm here, see. Want me to draw you a diagram? Nerfs and banthas eat grass, and then they digest it, and—”
“We get it,” Bry said. “Thanks.”
“What are the adjacent buildings?” Niner asked. One side of the house nestled against a row of single-story buildings. “Industrial?”
Nelis fiddled with his helmet comm receiver as if it was playing up. “Accommodation for construction workers. They’re building a new gas pipeline out to Orinar. They come and go—not local folks, normally.”
“And they haven’t noticed your patrol speeders hanging around.”
“If they have, they haven’t knocked on Kester’s door to tell him.”
Everyone waited. Niner wasn’t sure why a few more minutes or hours would make any difference, but the cops were still trying to intercept transmissions. He worked through the frequencies in his helmet comm, trying to pick up something, but he could only hear sporadic voice traffic on the police network and the sound of Bry letting out an occasional sigh.
Eventually a voice cut in. “Lieutenant, he hasn’t transmitted anything for hours. We’re picking up movement at the back door, though.”
“Visual?” Nelis asked.
“GPR scan.”
“Is he still alone?”
“Haven’t seen anyone else go in or out since we tracked him here. Days.”
“Stand by.” Nelis looked at Niner as if he was waiting for instructions. “It’s as good a time as any.”
“Okay. And minimum damage. We want his equipment and anything we can extract information from.”
Nelis seemed satisfied and moved his headset mike closer to his mouth. “Okay, stand by—riot guns only, lads.”
Niner wasn’t leaving anything to chance. “Bry, Ennen—take the rear exit.” He signaled the squad to split. “I’ll go in the front with Dar. Okay?”
If Kester didn’t surrender with four Deeces shoved in his face, then he’d feel the persuasive force of the PEP laser. Niner suspected the man might decide he’d have been happier dead once Imperial Intelligence got its hands on him.
Bry and Ennen vanished into the darkness. Niner waited until the police were in position, then worked his way along the row of gas workers’ homes with Darman. They took up position, one on either side of the front door.
Niner switched to the commandos’ secure comlink. “Bry, can you get a strip-cam under the door? See what’s going on inside.”
“Keep your bucket on. Just placing the frame charge.” Bry sounded breathless. He was sticking detonite on the back door to blow it. Like the front entrance, it was a single hinged door. “Okay, wait one …”
A small image flickered into life in the margin on Niner’s HUD. The image-enhancing holocam, reduced to the thickness of a sheet of flimsi, transmitted an image of an untidy house with crates stacked everywhere, as if Kester was in the process of packing to leave. Niner couldn’t see movement yet, and he couldn’t hear anything. Strip-cam audio was pretty limited.
It was at times like this that he really needed a Jedi to sense what was going on and who was where. Darman pressed a strip of explosive down the hinge side of the door, top to bottom, wired the detonator, and gave Niner the thumbs-up. They flattened themselves against the wall. Debris would fly out in a straight line for fifty meters or more, lethal as projectile rounds.
Niner took a breath. “Okay, on my mark.”
“I don’t like the look of those crates,” Ennen said. They could all see the same image relayed to the HUDs. “They’re like an obstacle course. And—hey, I think I saw movement. I think he’s gone into the room adjoining the party wall.”
“Stand by.” Niner’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t a dangerous mission, not compared with the last three years, but he couldn’t shake the adrenaline reflex every time he stacked to enter a building. “In three. Three, two—go!”
Darman pressed the det.
A split second of white light, smoke, and raw noise reduced Niner’s attention to whatever he could see right in front of him. He wasn’t aware of the rear-door charge going off, or what the POV icons were relaying from everyone else’s HUD. He rushed through the gaping hole where the door had been, jumping over shattered wood, while Darman covered the room on the left.
“Rear hall clear,” Ennen yelled. Niner heard ragged breathing as Ennen raced up the stairs—a straight flight to the landing, no ambush-friendly turns—while Bry covered him. There was a pause. “Upstairs—front room left, clear—back room left—clear.”
“ ’Fresher, right back—clear.” That was Bry. “Room, right front—clear.”
Kester couldn’t have missed the fact that his house was being stormed. He was holed up in one of the downstairs rooms. It would have been so much easier if Vader had wanted Kester dead. Dead would have taken seconds.
“Dar?” Niner smashed open the interior door to his left, Deece raised, and swept the tactical lamp’s beam around. Nothing. He turned; Bry and Ennen were back in the downstairs passage that ran from front to back. “Two rooms to the right.”
“Kitchen at the rear,” Bry said. “The boiler vent’s on the rear wall.”
“Okay, either he’s a very heavy sleeper or he’s open to suggestions.” Or sitting in one of these two rooms with a heavy blaster trained on the door. Niner gestured Bry to the kitchen, stood to one side of the door to the front room, and switched his audio to external so Kester could hear him. “Kester? There’s no way out. Why don’t you surrender, and then we can all go home.”
Silence. Ennen brandished the strip-cam to indicate to Niner that he was going to take a look. It wasn’t without its risks, seeing as Kester would have been staring hard at the door if he was in there. Niner moved to let Ennen slide the device under the gap.
“If he’s in there,” Ennen said, “he’s hiding behind more crates. Not
sure what he’s moving out of here.”
Antarians were cops. Cops throughout the galaxy had a healthy attitude when it came to risking their necks, and they tended to know when to call it a day. Niner cut to the chase.
“Kester, the Jedi never thought of you Rangers as anything more than latrine cleaners. It’s not worth getting fried for them now.” Niner realized he actually believed what he was saying. Yes, he did. He had no illusions about the Empire, but he didn’t have any left about the Republic, either. “Take it from fellow cannon fodder, buddy.”
Still silence, apart from the tinkle of broken transparisteel as if one of the cops was treading on debris from the shattered windows. Ennen edged back toward the kitchen and eased the strip-cam under the door a millimeter at a time. The kitchen looked as chaotic.
Niner switched back to helmet comm. “Let’s check the front room, just in case.”
He leaned on the door, then kicked it wide open. A quick scan showed the room was just full of empty crates. That was weird. Niner couldn’t imagine Jedi and their sympathizers needing all that storage.
Weapons? Are they shipping arms?
He’d let someone else worry about that when he was debriefed. He was only tasked to bring back Kester for interrogation. With nearly twenty cops outside and a heavily armed commando squad inside, storming the house had suddenly plummeted to an anticlimax. Kester hadn’t even opened fire.
Neither had the commandos, of course. But explosions at both doors should have provoked some reaction. Niner’s big fear was that Kester would blow his own brains out rather than be taken alive.
Because that’s what I’d do. I’d end it.
“Let’s get this over with,” Darman said, flicking the control on his PEP laser. “Let me drop him. This is overkill for one lousy Ranger.”
Niner counted down with a hand gesture. Five, four, three …