“So when are your people going to get off their shebse and tell us how the device got in here?” Skirata said.
“Soon,” Obrim said. “The security holocam was taken out in the blast. We're waiting on a backup image from the satellite. Won't be as clear, but at least we have it.”
“Sorry, Jailer,” Skirata said, still chewing, eyes fixed on the rubble. “No offense.”
“I know, comrade. None taken.”
It was another reason why Ordo adored his sergeant: he was the archetypal Mando'ad. A Mandalorian man's ideal was to be the firm but loving father, the respectful son learning from every hard experience, the warrior loyal to constant personal principles rather than ever-changing governments and flags.
He also knew when to apologize.
And he looked exhausted. Ordo wondered when he would understand that nobody expected him to keep up with young soldiers. “You could leave this to me.”
“You're a good lad, Ord'ika, but I have to do this.”
Ordo put one hand square on Skirata's back and one on Obrim's to steer them both a little farther from the scene of destruction, anxious not to make it obvious in front of the aruetiise—the non-Mandalorians, the foreigners, sometimes even the traitors—that his sergeant needed comforting. Waiting was the worst thing for Kal'buir's mood.
Obrim's comlink chirped. “Here we go,” he said. “They're relaying the image. Let's play it out to Ordo's link.”
The images emerged as a grainy blue aerial holo rising from the palm of Ordo's gauntlet, and they replayed it a few times. A delivery transport came up to the barrier and was waved in to land on the strip. Then the scene erupted in a ball of light followed by billows of smoke and raining debris.
The explosion blew out the transparisteel-and-granite walls of the Bravo Eight supply depot fifteen times before Ordo had seen enough.
“Looks like the device came in on that delivery transport,” Obrim said. Some of the recognizable debris scattered around the blast site confirmed that there had been a transport caught up in the explosion. “Nobody running away. So the pilot was inside, and …” He stopped to look down at data loading into his own 'pad. “I'm getting confirmation that it was a routine delivery and the pilot was a regular civilian driver. Nothing to suggest that it was a suicide mission, though. Just a routine run with some extra unwanted supplies.”
“Can we go back over the recordings from previous days?” Ordo said. “Just to see if anyone was doing a recce of vessels and movements in the run-up to this?”
“Archived for ten days. Won't be any better in terms of angle and clarity than this.”
“I'll still take it.”
Ordo looked to Skirata, who was silent and visibly angry, but clearly thinking hard. Ordo knew that calculating defocus all too well.
“Okay, the best lead we have right now is to track back the other way down the line—from confirmed explosives supply chains,” Kal said.
“Omega's on a TIOPS run checking that right now,” Ordo said. “They might come back with some suspects for Vau to work on.”
“I'm turning a blind eye to that, right?” said Obrim, a man who left the impression he would have given a lot to be back in the front line instead-of supervising others. “Because suspects are my part of ship to deal with. But I do have this annoying eyesight problem lately.”
“Long-term condition?” Skirata asked, moving Ordo out of his way with a gentle pat on the forearm.
“As permanent as you want it to be, Kal.”
“Make it incurable for the time being, then.”
Skirata picked his way past the forensics team, who were still setting marker holotags at various points in the rubble: red holos for body parts, blue for inorganic evidence. Ordo wondered if the civilians who'd been gawking from behind the barrier would see anything about that on the HNE bulletin.
Skirata paused and leaned over a Sullustan technician who was sensor-scanning the rubble on hands and knees. “Can I have the armor tallies when you find them?”
“Tallies?” The Sullustan sat back on her heels and looked up at him with round black liquid eyes. “Explain.”
“The little sensor tags that identify the soldier. On the chest plates.” Skirata held finger and thumb a little apart to indicate the size. “There'll be fifteen around here somewhere.”
“We can sort the admin for you, Kal,” Obrim said. “Don't worry about all that.”
“No, it's not to account for them. I want a piece of their armor. To pay our respects, the Mando way.”
Ordo noted Obrim's puzzled expression. “Bodies are irrelevant to us. Which is just as well, really.”
Obrim nodded gravely and ushered them behind another plastoid screen where the SOCO team was assembling and logging fragments of alloy and other barely identifiable materials on a trestle table. “You can take over all this if you want.”
Skirata motioned Ordo across to the trestle. “It's Ordo's area, but I'm happy for your people to process it. I've got faith in Sullustan diligence.”
Maybe it was just Skirata indulging in harmless hearts and-minds work. But it seemed to do the job for the SOCO personnel.
One of them looked up. “It's good to know that military intelligence respects CSF.”
“I've never been called military intelligence before,” Skirata said, as if he hadn't realized that was what he had been doing every waking moment since five days after Geonosis.
Ordo held out one hand to the nearest scenes-of-crime officer and crooked a finger to gesture for their datapad. “You'll need this,” he said, and linked it to his own 'pad. “Here's our latest IED data.”
Yes, the CSF's anti-terrorism unit and Skirata's tight-knit team had become very close indeed in the last year. Going through official Republic security clearance channels just wasted time, and there was always the chance its civil servants would behave like petty fools across the galaxy and mark data as top secret for their own dreary little career reasons. Ordo didn't have time for that.
He was checking that the data had transferred cleanly when the hololink on the inner side of his forearm plate activated again and his hand was filled with a small scene of blue chaos.
For a split second he thought it was an image in his HUD, but it was external, and it was Omega Squad.
“Omega—Red Zero, Red Zero, Red Zero, over.”
The holoimage showed the four commandos pressed against a bulkhead with an occasional fragment of debris floating into view. They were all alive, anyway.
Skirata whipped around at the sound of Niner's voice and the code they all dreaded: Red Zero, request for immediate extraction.
Ordo switched instantly and without conscious thought into emergency procedure, capturing coordinates from the message and holding up his datapad so that Skirata could see the numbers and open a comlink to Fleet. Their language changed: their voices became monotone and quiet, and they slipped into minimal, direct speech. The SOCO team froze to watch.
“Sitrep, Omega.”
“Target's boarded. Unplanned decompression, and our pilot and the TIV are missing. No power, but no squad casualties.”
“Fleet, Skirata here, we have a Red Zero. Fast extraction please—on these coordinates. Pilot down, too, no firm location.”
“Stand by, Omega. We're scrambling Fleet assistance now. Time to critical?”
“Ten minutes if we don't get the hatch on this side of us open, maybe three hours if we do.”
Skirata stopped, comlink still held to his mouth. Obrim was staring at the little blue hologrammic figures with the expression of a man realizing something terrible.