He checked for indications of wind speed. The woman’s hair was moving slightly in the breeze: a flimsi cup discarded near the caf vendor rolled a little way along the paving. Fi adjusted his scope and checked the air temperature, which had crept up a fraction in the last twenty minutes. He adjusted the Verp’s settings again and settled the weapon on his forearm.
Relax. Power coil set to medium. Don’t want her to feel the projectile hit her. Don’t want to spray the Dust over the whole plaza, either…
The crosshairs settled.
“So that’s a strill.” The man’s voice was a little fuzzy but Fi could hear the accent, even if he didn’t recognize it.
“Charming. Call me Perrive.”
“And you can call me Kal.”
Fi closed his eyes for a second and slowed his breathing. When he opened them, the aim was still dead center of the woman’s chest.
“So let’s see the goods.”
Fi exhaled slowly and held his breath.
“Here. Take it and have it tested.”
Fi’s finger tightened on the end of the trigger. The Verp was so finely constructed that all he felt was a sudden lack of resistance under his finger and the rifle fired—silent and without recoil.
“How much stuff in all?”
“Hundred kilos. More if you need it.”
A smoke-like white puff billowed in Fi’s filter. The projectile had burst on contact, showering the woman with microscopic tracking powder, each tiny fragment capable of relaying its location back to the base receiver at Qibbu’s—or even to a HUD. She glanced down as if an insect had landed on her and then simply brushed the end of her nose as if she’d inhaled pollen.
“Five hundred grade?”
“All of it,” said Kal.
“Dets?”
“How many?”
“Three or four thousand.”
“Five-hundred-grade—I have it. Dets—just a matter of acquiring them discreetly. A day maybe.”
“Confirm—female target in blue, marked.” Fi tracked the rifle ninety degrees to his left. “Targeting the male farthest from Kal. Black jacket.”
Breathe easy. Relax. He aimed and adjusted the scope again, held his breath at the comfortable point of exhalation, and fired for a second time. Again, the man reacted and looked for something on his chest, then carried on watching Skirata as if nothing had happened.
“Male, black jacket—target marked. So they can feel it strike, then.”
“Don’t hog them all,” Scorch said. “I want a go.”
“All yours, ner vod.”
“Targeting the male right of Skirata, gray robe…”
Fi lined up his EM scope on Scorch’s target to observe. Scorch’s breathing paused, and then Fi saw a puff of white smoke bloom on the gray robe. He didn’t react at all.
“Now the other male, red vest, left of Skirata by the caf vendor… no, keep still, you di’kut… that’s better.” Scorch was silent again. Fi watched through the EM filter. The projectile burst neatly on the man’s shoulder and he brushed his nose without noticing, just like the first woman. Maybe it was a combination of seeing absolutely nothing as the pellet’s binding agent vaporized, and being hyped up on adrenaline during a mission. They weren’t tuned in to much beyond seeing and not being seen.
“Okay, who’s taking Beard Guy? Perrive.”
“Me,” Fi said. “If I make it three for three, do I get to keep him? Y’know, stuffed and mounted?”
“He’d make a nice stand for your Hokan armor.”
Perrive—Beard Guy—stood at a slight angle, moving a little as he spoke to Skirata. He held the small pack of thermal plastoid in his hand, about a hundred grams of it, and was squeezing it between his fingers while glancing at the wrapping. It looked for all the world like a spice deal, and Fi wondered for a moment if they were all blind to how obvious that might appear.
Worry about that later. Tag him.
“Turn around, chakaar. I don’t want to hit your back.”
Fi had settled into a rhythm now. He watched through the scope as Perrive slipped the plastoid into his pocket and stood with one hand on his belt, turning idly back and forth, presenting a good expanse of back and then a narrow angle of shoulder.
Fi relaxed, aimed and went for the shoulder, anticipating the turn.
Whuff.
The tracker projectile struck home and got no reaction.
“Okay, we’ll take a look at this and get back to you tomorrow at noon,” Perrive said. “If we like it, we meet somewhere private. If we don’t, you never hear from me again.”
“Suits me,” said Skirata.
“What about the second woman?” Fi said. “Etain, where are you?”
“About three meters to her left.”
“Can you edge her clear of the civvies?”
“Okay…”
Fi listened. Skirata could hear all this on his comlink bead, too. It took some skill to carry on talking with someone having a five-way conversation in your ear.
“Excuse me,” Etain said. “I’m hopelessly lost. Can you show me how I get to Quadrant N-Ten?”
Fi watched as the woman simply paused, looked at Etain with surprise, and then began pointing out the connecting walkway. Etain moved. The woman stepped out farther, pointing again.
“Thank you,” Etain said, and walked on.
Whuff. The projectile plumed light on the woman’s shoulder. And she brushed her nose.
“All six tagged,” Fi said. He changed channels with an exaggerated click of his molars. “Niner, you receiving?”
“Got ’em all,” said Niner’s voice, several quadrants away in Qibbu’s. “Nice vivid traces on the holochart.”
“Okay.” Fi let his head drop to ease his neck muscles. “You can wind up now, Sarge.”
“The old di’kut’s good at it, isn’t he?” Scorch betrayed a grudging fondness. Skirata could hear the conversation and Scorch knew it. “I’d love to know where he learned to do all that.”
Skirata’s face didn’t even twitch. Nor did Jusik’s. Jusik was just looking around as a gangster’s errand boy was supposed to, appearing alert but not too bright.
“My intermediary says you have lots of army friends,” Perrive said.
“Contacts,” Skirata said. “Not friends.”
“Don’t like our army, then?”
“Just useful. Just clones.”
“Not worried what happens to them?”
“You’re not some di’kutla liberal, trying to recruit me, are you, son? No, I don’t give a mott’s backside about clones. I’m in this for me and my family.”
“Just curious. We’ll be in touch, if we like the goods.”
Skirata simply sat with his hands thrust into his pockets, apparently watching the strill, which had stretched out in an ungainly pile of loose skin with its head under the bench, trailing drool. Jusik chewed vacantly, also staring ahead. Fi and the sniper team watched Perrive and the five targets disperse into walkways and down-ramps.
They waited.
“Anyone else spot a Jabiimi accent there?” Jusik asked.
Skirata leaned over and appeared to be about to pat Mird. “I reckon so.” Fi waited for it to sink its teeth in him, but he stopped short of touching it and the animal simply rolled over to watch his hand with malevolently curious eyes.
Fi remembered the strill from Kamino. It seemed smaller now that he was a grown man. Once, it was bigger than he was.
Eventually there was a long sigh of relief. “I sense they’re all gone,” Jusik said. “Niner, are they clear of the plaza area?”
Niner grunted. “Confirmed. You can move now.”
“Stand down, lads,” Skirata said at last. “Well done.”
“Nice job, Etain,” said Darman’s voice.
“Yeah, okay, well done the Mystic Mob, too.” Skirata tugged on Mird’s leash; the pile of fur scrambled onto all six legs and shook itself. “Let’s thin out carefully, and don’t forget to wipe off the face camo bef
ore you move. We’ll RV back at Qibbu’s by thirteen-fifteen. Then get some rest.”
“Sounds good,” Fi said. It was only when the tension had passed that he realized how stiff his joints felt and how much parts of him hurt from twelve hours and more lying prone on the makeshift padding of his jacket. “Hot bath, hot meal, and sleep.”
Skirata cut in. “You know I didn’t mean that, don’t you?”
“What?”
“About clones. Qibbu obviously mentioned you to his scum associates.”
“Of course we know, Sarge,” Scorch said. “You said you were in this for your family, didn’t you?”
Logistics center,
Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ,
1615 hours, 384 days after Geonosis
Ordo listened to his concealed comlink with a practiced expression of blank disinterest while he keyed in traffic movements. The holochart that covered every centimeter of wall space shifted and pulsed as consignments turned from red to green—now laden, cross-checked, and en route—and requests for replenishment stacked up in a panel of blue horizontal bars.
The holochart gave no numbers of troops, but a little common sense would have told anyone who wanted to spend the time thinking through the obvious that they were thinly stretched. There were, Ordo knew, at least a million troops now in the field spread over hundreds of worlds: small forces on some, multiple battalions on others. It meant long supply chains, and those were inherently vulnerable. So… why didn’t the Separatist terror networks target them offworld? No ability. No suitable vessels or skills. Or… maybe the point was to intimidate the seat of galactic government after all.
Motive mattered. Motive gave you the capacity to think like the enemy, want what they wanted, and then snatch it from them.
And killing clone troopers—mainly troopers, if you didn’t count the unfortunate civilians who were also in the way—made the point that the Seps could come and go as they pleased.
Ordo took it personally. He drew on the memory of sharp, cold fear and focused hatred that he had learned on Kamino before a total stranger had stepped in front of him and saved his life.
We can trust nobody but our brothers and Kal’buir.
Over the comlink, he could still hear Niner’s exclamations of satisfaction. The six men and women tagged by Fi and Sev were dispersing all over Galactic City, leaving routes and stopping points that Niner and Boss were logging on a holochart that showed every skylane, quadrant, and building on Coruscant. Judging by their occasional descent into the rich Mandalorian invective that Kal’buir considered an important part of their continuing education, they were learning more than anyone had bargained for.
Ordo would evaluate it all when he returned, but the number of locations that the tagging had registered had now reached twenty; it was growing into something larger than a fourteen-man team might be able to handle.
Ordo wanted to tell them to concentrate on the clusters, the areas of most traffic, but it would have to wait. The strip cam had yielded nothing, except the fact that females of all species employed in the center seemed to spend a lot of time in the ’freshers rearranging their appearance. Whoever had been used to collecting the data probably knew Vinna Jiss was gone now and was no doubt trying another route. He kept a careful eye on Supervisor Wennen because she seemed to be getting increasingly agitated as the day wore on. He could hear it in her voice. She didn’t like Guris. She was checking something: when he went to the ’freshers, she was still on the same screen when he returned, scrolling up and down an inventory.
She was checking rifle shipments going back two or three months. If it’s you, Wennen, what is your motive?
He didn’t have to stop to read the screen over her shoulder. He could simply glance at it, focus, and walk back to his workstation to close his eyes discreetly and recall what he had seen.
Whatever errors the Kaminoans had made in their attempt to improve Jango Fett’s genome, the efforts had not been wasted.
Wennen looked up toward the doors. Her fine-boned face, while still aesthetically pleasing, suddenly froze into genuine anger and lost its prettiness.
“Jiss,” she said sourly. “You’d better have a good excuse this time.”
Ordo fought every instinct to jerk around and stare. He simply turned his head casually to focus on a sheet of flimsi to his right, and there she was: Vinna Jiss.
You’re dead.
“I’ve been unwell, Supervisor.”
But you’re dead. So who are you?
“Heard of comlinks? I even had your landlord calling me, complaining you’d skipped without paying rent.”
I know you’re dead because you fell a few thousand meters from a balcony after a chat with Walon Vau.
“Sorry, Supervisor.”
Wennen was all acid, lips compressed. “See me first thing in the morning. I’m off shift now.”
She shut down her workstation, grabbed her jacket, and made a move toward the doors. Then she paused and turned to Ordo.
“Corr, it’s sixteen-thirty,” she said. “Come on. Time to go. Nobody will thank you for sitting there all night. Want me to drop you off at the barracks?”
Jiss, either you’re dead or you’re an imposter. So who did Vau kill?
“Thank you, Supervisor.” Ordo logged off and replaced his helmet, suddenly glad of the chance to hide behind an anonymous white plastoid visor and stare horrified at the face of a dead woman who seemed to be doing pretty well for a corpse. “I’m… I’m going to meet some comrades from the Forty-first. Could you drop me off at the first taxi platform in the entertainment sector, please?”
“I’m glad you’re taking the opportunity to relax, Corr.” She seemed genuinely pleased. “You deserve it.”
Ordo took one last look at the woman who appeared to be Jiss, memorizing every pore and line, and followed Wennen outside to the speeder bays. He slid into the passenger’s seat with a hundred questions that had, for once in his life, yielded no fast answers.
Wennen powered up her speeder and sat still for a moment, staring at the console.
“Honestly,” she snorted, all exasperation. “That’s the most unreliable employee I have ever known. Sometimes I could just kill that woman.”
Operational house, Qibbu’s Hut,
1630 hours, 384 days after Geonosis
“There they go…,” Niner said.
Beads of red light were now dotted throughout the blue holochart of grids and lines that had expanded to fill a space a meter high and two meters long. The tracking Dust was transmitting the movements of the six Separatists they had tagged a few hours earlier.
Etain walked around the 3-D chart, studying tracks that were strung like necklaces with occasional solitary beads placed at intervals. The virtual representation of a section of Galactic City spanned the table. Some of the threads crossed and merged. Niner and Boss were still taking data from it and listing each location while Vau watched with Jusik.
“They do get around,” Vau said. “Jusik, my boy, has anyone ever told you you’re a genius?”
Jusik shrugged. “And my friends are excellent shots. Good team, aren’t we?”
Friends was an unusual way for a Jedi to describe clone troops who were technically his to command and use as he thought fit. But Jusik simply didn’t see the world that way. Etain found it deeply touching.
“Yes, excellent team,” Vau said. Boss glanced up, evidently pleased. “It’s wonderful to watch a job done well.”
That wasn’t quite the Walon Vau that Etain had sensed and found to be sheer passionless brutality. He was no less complex and contradictory than Skirata. Atin, reading from his datapad, ignored him completely; Vau sometimes glanced at his former trainee but got no reaction.
Atin loathes him. He wants revenge of some kind. Etain found it hard to reconcile that with the methodical, considerate, and courageous man she knew, the one who had felt he had no right to survive Geonosis when his brothers had died.
While th
e locations were collated, another frustrating hiatus had forced the squads into rest and recovery. They seemed to need to be busy fighting, especially Delta. Etain could taste their collective impatience. Maybe it was youth; but maybe it was that they didn’t enjoy having time to think.
Fi, Sev, Fixer, and Scorch had gone down to the restaurant to eat with Corr, but Darman was asleep in his room. Etain went to check on him and watched him for a while. He lay on his stomach, head turned to one side, cheek resting on folded arms, and twitched occasionally as if dreaming.
They grabbed every small moment together that they could find. And it wasn’t enough. Etain kissed his temple and left him to sleep. Skirata, wandering around with his hands deep in his pockets, gave her a conspiratorial wink.
“Looks like we’ve got three clusters in residential areas,” Boss said. “And now about twenty-five other places they’ve at least stopped for a while, including shops.”
Skirata stood looking at the mesh of colored light. “We can’t cover them all,” he said. “The clusters are the priority.”
“Probably their safe houses or bomb factories.” Boss indicated a static point of red light that hadn’t moved in an hour. “I think that’s our marked pack of thermal plastoid.”
“Could well be. Got a list now?”
“It gets longer by the hour. How long did you say that Dust can transmit?”
Jusik cocked his head, calculating. “Four, perhaps five weeks.”
“Well, I say we recce the cluster points for a day or so, confirm the activity, and then decide which are the priority targets and leave the rest to CSF.” Niner jabbed his finger into the holochart again to indicate another thread growing as the tagged suspect moved to a new location. “This target is trailing the other. No idea why. Maybe providing tail cover.”
“Okay, you draw up a surveillance roster for the next twenty-four hours and be prepared to pull people off it if I get the call from Perrive, or whatever his real name is.”
“Okay, Sarge.”