“We all sell out in the end,” she said.
“Even me,” said Etain.
“The father of your child is one of the clone units, isn’t he?”
Etain had never heard them called units before. But Darman—all of them—were just organic machines built to order as far as the Kaminoans were concerned: product, merchandise, units. “Yes. Imagine it. One genome you know intimately, combined with one you’ve never been able to get your hands on.”
Ko Sai’s face didn’t exactly light up, but Etain sensed a slight lifting of her dark mood.
“How can I trust you?”
“I’ll give you a cryosuspended sample of my blood now.” Etain wasn’t sure where she might get a cryocontainer out here, but Rav Bralor would know. It was the kind of kit that even veterinarians kept for sending livestock samples for testing, so the next farm might have some. “You give me a list of some of the genes you regulated to achieve rapid aging, and how they’re switched to reverse the process. I’m not even asking for them all at this stage. Just a demonstration that we understand we both have something to lose and gain in this.”
“And what after that?”
“When the baby’s born? Multipotent stem cells, maybe, from the umbilical cord.”
Ko Sai did seem taken aback by that. “You’ve done your homework, Jedi.”
Well, Mereel had, but Etain was reassured that she could still act convincingly. “Do we have a deal? Is it really worth holding out just to remind a few clones that you had that power over their life span, when you could move into a whole new area of research?”
Ko Sai went very quiet and made that odd weaving movement of her head, back and forth, very snake-like. It struck Etain as the equivalent of a human drumming her fingers on the table while thinking hard.
“Very well,” she said. “There are many things I can cite from memory, even without the research from Tipoca.”
Etain sat down and tried not to look triumphant. The heartburn helped a lot. Ko Sai marked screen after screen on her datapad, and then handed it to Etain.
“Those are the first sequences that can be switched back with zinc and methylation,” she said. “Mereel should be able to check that those are valid.”
“Thank you.” Etain still wondered if the scientist actually knew the whole solution yet, but even if she didn’t, they now had an extra something they didn’t have before. “I’ll get the blood container, and you can keep the sample with you. It need never leave your sight. Can I get you anything else?”
Ko Sai swayed her head. “Without my datapad connection to the HoloNet, I have little to read. Could you obtain the latest edition of the Republic Institute Journal of Endocrinology for me?”
“I’m sure I can.”
Etain closed the doors behind her and breathed again.
Sorry, Venku, but she’s never going to be able to put it to use, is she? When she walked into the main room, which she’d come to think of as a cross between a kitchen and a salon, Mereel was finishing off the nerf. She wondered if slowing down the aging process would reduce the clones’ prodigious appetites.
“Here,” she said, laying the datapad in front of him. “All you have to do is offer her your firstborn and she’s as good as gold.”
Mereel stopped chewing and swallowed hard. He stared at the data.
“Et’ika,” he said, “you’re not just good for opening doors, are you?”
“We’re taking it a step at a time.”
“What did you offer her? Seriously?”
“First payment? A cryosample of my blood, and a holozine—the Journal of Endocrinology.”
“Maybe she misses the jokes page.”
“Let’s keep her as sweet as we can keep a Kaminoan, shall we?”
“Seriously—well done, Etain.”
“Jedi stuff.” She was starting to feel good again, useful and competent. “And I’ve found that most beings can’t look away from a pregnant female. Psyched her out a little, especially given her life’s work.”
It was a job well done, for the time being. Mereel made her a pot of shig—a tisane made from a plant called behot—before getting on with examining the data.
“I’ll have to get this checked,” he said, “and that means farming it out in sections so they don’t know what it is I’m working on, but it’s a hopeful start.”
Etain sipped. The shig was citrus-flavored and kinder to her stomach than caf. “It’s just such a shame that all that other data was… lost.”
It felt too cruel to say blown to pieces by your crazy brother.
“Yeah,” Mereel said, and squatted down next to her seat. He put his finger to his lips for silence and opened one of his belt pouches. Then he drew out a container, the kind that datachips were stored in, took her hand, and laid it on the little box. “Indeed.”
“Mereel…”
“Don’t you always do a backup, Etain? Tut tut…”
“Don’t joke about this, Mereel.” She was starting to get annoyed with him. Skirata had been mortified by it. “Is that what I think it is?”
“We might have behavioral problems, but we’re not stupid. It is. All intact. Ordo meant what he said, but he didn’t use the real set of chips.”
Etain’s ecstatic relief was instantly slapped down by recalling Skirata’s face. “How could you do this to Kal? What if he’d had a seizure or something? He was devastated.”
Mereel replaced the datachips and stood up. “I know, I know. Ordo and I argued over it, but it was the only way I could get Kal’buir to act like it was real. He’s usually a great little actor, our buir, but he isn’t always good at grief. Ko Sai would probably have spotted it.”
“Poor man.”
“I’ll comm Ordo and let him know he can tell Kal’buir.”
“Kal’s going to be furious. He blames himself.”
“Oh, Ord’ika can get away with murder. He’s the number one son.” Mereel went back to the datapad, and smiled again. “And it broke Ko Sai, didn’t it?”
It did. But it had very nearly broken Skirata, too, and Etain could see it.
And I just lied and used my unborn son to do a deal that I know won’t be honored, so where does that leave me?
They were living in desperate times. Whether it meant that the rules no longer applied, or that the times they lived in were down to ordinary people abandoning those rules to start with, Etain wasn’t sure.
Chapter Sixteen
I don’t know why they’re keeping me here. They haven’t demanded information from me or tried to force me to create an antidote to the nanovirus. I’m bored with no work to do, but nobody ever died of boredom. Sometimes I wonder if the man in the cloak—the one who commissioned my research—has been trying to reach me, but they’ve taken away my holoreceiver.
—Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan, bioengineer and geneticist, creator of the Fett-genome-targeted nanovirus FG36, currently held in a Republic maximum-security prison somewhere on Coruscant
Republic Central Medcenter neurology unit,
Coruscant,
483 days after Geonosis
“I said move it, didn’t I? You deaf or something? Clear the corridor! Armed police!”
Boots clattered outside and Besany heard the sound of doors opening and closing, shouts of “Clear!” and the familiar barked orders of a man who’d once entertained her royally in the CSF Staff and Social Club.
Captain Jaller Obrim—former Senate Guard—loved his work on secondment to the ATU so much that he’d stayed. The doors burst open, and she was staring down the barrel of a police-issue blaster with a red targeting laser blinding her. Ordo said the laser was theatrics to scare targets, and no serious sniper would give away his position with one. It certainly scared her. But she wanted to be sure who was taking her surrender before she laid down her blaster.
“Captain Obrim?”
“Agent Wennen, put the blaster down, will you?” He didn’t lower his weapon, and it struck her that he thought she might open fi
re on him. “Come on, it’s me. Jaller. Kal called.”
She trusted him. If she was wrong—no, she had to trust him, and Skirata, too. She lowered the blaster, flicked the safety catch on, and put it in her jacket again.
“That’s better,” Obrim said. He held his blaster up in the safety position and leaned out of the doorway. “Clear, boys. Stand down. Prepare to transport a detainee. Paramedics—in here.”
“I’m sorry about this, Captain.” Besany could feel her legs shaking as the adrenaline finished its job. She almost sat down on the edge of Fi’s bed to recover, but matters seemed too urgent now. “I had no idea what else to do.”
Obrim looked over Fi and gripped his hand tightly. “Fierfek, they want to just finish him off? I’ve had officers recover from head wounds when they shouldn’t have, and ones who died when they shouldn’t have, so while I can see him breathing—I want a second opinion. Even a third. As many as it takes.” He straightened up. “Where’s that gurney?”
“Where are we going to take him?” Besany asked. “I appear to be stealing government property. He can stay in my guest room, but I’ve got to find someone to—”
“I’ve got a secure location, don’t you worry. And care laid on.” The CSF paramedics moved in and began detaching Fi from the sensors and wrapping him in blankets. “If they want to play this game, fine. I can play it bigger.”
Obrim was upset and angry. She’d only seen the world-weary side of him, never fazed by anything, but this was very personal for him and it showed. He and Skirata were a matched pair. He might have been the only aruetyc friend that Skirata had. They certainly saw the galaxy the same way.
“I’d better call my boss and let him know he’s going to have an unpleasant message from Coruscant Health,” Besany said. “Need any clerks at CSF? Because I’m going to be fired in the morning.”
Obrim moved in to tuck a stray corner of blanket under Fi’s body as the gurney was steered away. “Don’t worry. He’ll never hear about it.”
“Kind of hard to ignore, one of his senior investigators storming into a medcenter and holding patients hostage.”
“I’ll make it go away,” Obrim said. “I’m CSF. I can make all kinds of things go away when I need to.”
Outside, the medical staff had begun to swarm back, some droid and some organics, and CSF officers cleared a path for the gurney to get to the turbolift. Obrim seemed to have mobilized half a shift to extract Fi from the unit. One med droid, whose identi-tab showed it was the duty administrator, hovered into Obrim’s path.
“I insist you return the patient to our care,” it said. “Once we’ve admitted someone, we have to be able to account for them and show they were discharged properly.”
“Make up your mind,” Obrim said, steering Besany past the droid. “One minute he’s a patient and the next he’s government property.”
“You can’t take him. We’re responsible for him.”
“Until you shoot him full of latheniol, yeah. He discharged himself.”
“He’s incapable of doing that.”
“Okay, I’m ATU. I’ve arrested him for looking at me funny. Now move it, or I’ll book you for obstructing me.”
“Then arrest that woman for threatening my staff, too.”
“Unless you want your rivets felt, tinnie boy, step out of my way.”
“This is an outrage. There’ll be a formal complaint to your superiors.”
Obrim leaned over slightly to make his point to the droid. He had weight and gravitas on his side. “Before you do that,” he said quietly, “ask your chief executive about his interest in Twi’lek artistic pursuits on every fourth of the month, and if he’d like me to give police surveillance holovids of the visits to the cultural center to his lovely wife. Your call.”
The droid paused, then backed off and hovered away. “We’ll see,” it said.
Besany slumped back against the wall of the turbolift, heart pounding again. She would never get her life back, she knew it. She wasn’t sure that it mattered. “Where are we going, Captain? Who’s going to look after him? I’ll do whatever I can.”
“First things first, my dear. Let’s get him settled. We can worry about the rest later.”
“You didn’t answer. Where are we going?”
“Home,” said Obrim.
He wasn’t joking. At the speeder bay, an unmarked CSF transport was waiting with its rear hatch open. The paramedics loaded Fi on board and got in beside him. Obrim followed in his own speeder with Besany.
“It’s amazing what you can rent,” he said, as if none of the drama had taken place only minutes earlier. “You can rent med droids to look after Granny at home. So I’ve rented one for Fi. I mean, I’d look after him myself, but I don’t know how to get feeding tubes and saline in him.”
“What’s your wife going to say?”
“I don’t know. I just said I was bringing someone home she had to keep quiet about. She’s pretty used to some of the irregularities in this job.”
“Thanks, Captain. Thank you so much.”
“It’s Jaller. I think we know each other well enough now, don’t we?”
“Yes. I think so.”
The first hurdle was cleared. She’d managed to get Fi to safety, thanks largely to the conscience of a bunch of cops who were taking a risk themselves, whatever Obrim said. But the real struggle lay ahead, and it might have no ending for a long, long time.
Fi was still in a deep coma, and as far as medicine was concerned, he was dead.
But he was still breathing. Besany was getting used to seeing the impossible happen. It could happen again.
Arca Barracks,
SO Brigade HQ, Coruscant,
483 days after Geonosis
Corr had the air of a guilty man, and Darman remembered that feeling from when he’d first walked into Omega Squad, after the commando brigades took massive losses in the first weeks of the war and squads were re-formed as men died.
But Corr was RC-5108/8843 now, a member of Omega Squad proper, and not just attached to them. He walked into the barracks recreation room in his new armor—Fi’s rig, helmet under one arm—but didn’t seem comfortable in it.
The whole neat designation system had gone down the tubes with Corr, too. He wasn’t just one of the many troopers now cross-trained in commando skills; he was a shiny boy, a real Republic commando, and Skirata insisted that he have the code to match even if his numbers didn’t fit.
Darman was determined to make him welcome. “’Cuy, vod’ika.” He slapped the seat next to him. “Park your shebs there. We’d pour you some of the GAR-issue caf but we like you too much for that. We’re waiting for Sergeant Kal.”
Corr sat down as ordered, and Niner and Atin leaned across to clasp his arm.
“You can slip into something more comfortable,” Niner said, indicating their bodysuits. “That plastoid can crimp the important places after a while.”
Corr started removing plates as if they were burning him. “Any news on Fi?” he asked.
“Waiting to hear what happened at the medcenter.” Niner passed him a carton of warra nut cookies, which was unconditional acceptance as far as Omega were concerned. Darman noted that Corr wasn’t wearing the synthflesh coating on his prosthetic hands, so he had some point he needed to make. “Last we heard, Sergeant Kal had sent in the heavy mob.”
“Ordo?”
“Agent Wennen and Captain Obrim.”
“Ah.”
Darman winced. Corr had been the object of Besany’s interest until Ordo took his place—literally. If the former trooper felt that the Null captain had muscled in on his girl, he showed no sign of it. She’d been very kind to him while he was recovering on desk duties, he’d said. That was all.
It’d take a lot more than Besany’s kindness to put Fi back on his feet.
Corr was uneasy. It was inevitable. “I just wanted to say something before we go any further.”
“Get it off your chest, ner vod,” said Atin.
/> “I won’t be trying to replace Fi.” Corr blurted it out as if he’d been thinking about it for a long time and now wanted to get it over with. “I might wear the armor but I’m not the man, and I’m not going to compete with him. When he’s fit, I’m out again, okay?”
Maybe he was being diplomatic, or he might not have realized how bad things were. Darman didn’t explain.
“It’s okay,” said Atin. “I was one of Vau’s trainees. Joining this bunch was a bit rough.”
“Was not,” Niner muttered. He’d never been one for a good laugh, but he tried hard—painfully hard—because morale was the squad sergeant’s job as far as he was concerned. “It was Daruvvian champagne all the way.”
Darman tried to join in the determined jollity, but Corr still had the dent on his chest plate where Fi had had a disagreement with a grenade, and there was no shared joke to be had about it. It was going to be very hard without Fi.
“So you’ve enjoyed a rich social education with Mereel and Kom’rk, have you?” Darman never felt he could talk about that in front of Fi, because Fi so desperately wanted a nice girl, as he put it, and any talk of relationships got to him. Now he’d never get the chance. “I saw Kom’rk once, but he doesn’t seem as…”
And that was as far as Darman got. Grief ambushed him. He found that all he could do was sit forward with his elbows braced on his knees, both hands to his mouth to stop the searing ache in his throat and eyes from turning into uncontrollable sobbing. He froze, scared to move in case that started him off. Eventually Corr ruffled his hair hard, just like Skirata did, and Darman got his breath under control enough to speak.
“That’s what really gets to me,” he said. “He didn’t get what he really wanted, someone to love him, and now he never will, and I’m angry.”
“Okay, Dar.” Atin joined in the hair ruffling. “Udesii. You can’t do anything about it now.”