“How many staff do you have here, ma’am?” He took his helmet off and rolled her over so they were face-to-face. “How many?”
Uthan seemed to be regaining her composure. “You murdered my assistant.”
“She had a blaster,” Atin said, almost to himself.
Darman shook her. “Ma’am, I’m going to detonate an awful lot of ordnance under this building very soon, and your staff, if you have any, will be dead anyway.”
She was staring up into his face, seeming totally distracted by him. “Are you really a clone?”
“I’d like to say the one and only, but you know I’m not.”
“Amazing,” she said.
“Staff?”
“Four more. They’re just scientists. They’re civilians.”
Darman opened his mouth, and Kal Skirata’s voice emerged unbidden again. “Not all soldiers wear uniforms, ma’am. High time those scientists took responsibility for their role in the war effort.”
Yes, it was personal. War didn’t get much more personal than a virus aimed specifically at you and your brothers. “Darman here. Sarge, Uthan’s staff members are somewhere in the building, too. What do you want to do? Retrieve them as well?”
“I’ll check with Majestic. Wait one.” Niner’s link went dead for a few moments and then crackled into life again. “No, not required. Get her clear and let us know when you’re going to detonate.”
“They were just following orders,” Uthan said.
“So am I,” Darman said, and trussed, gagged, and hooded her with salvaged parasail cord and a section of sheeting. He replaced his helmet and heaved her over his shoulder. It was going to be a tough job getting her down those tunnels. Atin followed.
They slipped back down the drain. Darman hoped that they could find their way back to the surface without Jinart as their guide.
Hokan could feel the sweat stinging his eyes. He withdrew the lightsaber and examined the substantial dent in the bulkhead.
It wasn’t deep enough or fast enough, and he knew it. This was displacement activity. He was little help to Hurati, so he vented his frustration on the alloy and all he seemed to succeed in was making the stale atmosphere even hotter and more suffocating.
Then he heard a hiss of air, and he wondered if it was the seal breaching: but it wasn’t.
It was Hurati.
Hokan ran the few steps along the corridor to the office. He feared that the young captain had electrocuted himself, and whether he wanted to admit it or not, he actually cared what happened to him. But Hurati was intact. He was leaning over the desk, both hands braced on the surface, head down, shoulders shaking. Then he looked up, and his face was a big, sweaty grin. A bead of perspiration ran down his nose and hung there for a moment before he batted it away with his finger.
“Check the status board, sir.”
Hokan swung around and looked for the board. The unchanging pattern of red lights had now become a pattern of red and green.
“Bulkheads two, six, and nine, sir,” he said. “Now I can clear the rest. I had to try every sequence. That’s a lot of permutations.” He shook his head and went back to carefully prodding a piece of circuit board with the tip of his knife. “They’ll be jammed open, though.”
“Better than jammed shut.”
As Hokan watched, the lights changed from red to green, one by one, and a cool draft hit his face.
The front doors had opened.
Hokan expected a missile or blaster volley to punch through them, but all that entered was the silent, refreshing, fire-scented night air.
“Hurati,” Hokan said, “Right now, I couldn’t love you more if you were my own son. Remind me I said that one day.” He drew his blaster and raced down the corridor, past droids, stumbling over shattered metal plates and the body of an Umbaran, and into the room where he had left Uthan with her Trandoshan guards.
He had half expected to see her lying dead on the floor with them. In a way he had hoped for it, because it would mean the Republic hadn’t stolen her expertise. But she was gone. He picked up the Verpine and tested it for charge: it made a faint whir and then ticked. Either Uthan hadn’t managed to get a shot off or they’d used an EMP grenade.
Hokan worked his way down the passage to the biohazard chamber, pausing on the way to check inside prep rooms and storage cupboards, wary of booby traps. As he opened one door, he heard whimpering in the darkness. He switched on the light.
The remaining four members of Uthan’s research team—three young men and an older woman—were huddled in the corner. One of the men held a blaster, but its muzzle was pointed at the floor. They blinked at Hokan, frozen.
“Stay here,” he said. “You might be all that’s left of the virus program. Don’t move.” There seemed little chance that they would.
When Hokan reached the central chamber, the only sign that anything untoward had taken place was that the concealed drain in the center of the floor was now a charred, gaping space.
He looked around the walls, shelves, and cupboards. A mistake. He’d made a mistake, a terrible oversight. He hadn’t taken the time to check what the virus containers looked like, or how many there had been. He could see gaps on shelves through the transparent doors; he pulled on the handles, but they were still locked.
He ran back up the corridor and grabbed one of the young men from Uthan’s team. “Do you know what the nanovirus looks like?”
The boy blinked. “It has a structure based on—”
“Idiot.” Hokan jabbed fiercely toward his own eye, indicating look. “What does the container look like? How many? Come on. Think.”
He hauled the scientist to his feet and dragged him down the corridor to the biohazard chamber.
“Show me.”
The boy pointed to a plain-fronted cabinet. “Fourteen alloy vials in there, inside their own vacuum-sealed case.”
“Open it and check.”
“I can’t. Uthan has all the security codes and keys.”
“Is it conceivable that the enemy could have opened it and simply shut it again?”
“Normally I’d say that was impossible, but I also remember thinking that it was impossible for anyone to breach this building.”
The hole where the drain had been was now a jagged fringe of scorched, broken tiling and twisted metal frame. Hokan looked down into the void and saw debris.
For a moment he wondered if he was actually dealing with human beings and not some bizarre, unknown life-form. He knew where they’d gone. Now he had to hunt them down and stop them from taking Uthan off the planet with whatever was left of the nanovirus project.
If this was what a handful of clone soldiers could achieve, he was almost afraid to think what millions might do.
18
You never have perfect knowledge in combat, gentlemen. It’s what we call the fog of war. You can either sit around worrying what’s real and what’s not, or you can realize the enemy hasn’t got a clue either and fire off a few rounds of psychology. A truly great army is one that only has to rattle its saber to win a war.
–Sergeant Kal Skirata
“Omega to Majestic. Check check check. Cease firing.”
Niner waited several minutes before moving. There had been trees to the northwest of the facility that weren’t there anymore. You couldn’t stake your life on the accuracy of gunnery support. He edged forward on his stomach and propped himself on his elbows to check the area, first with his binoc visor and then through the scope of the DC-17.
Nothing was moving, although nothing with any sense would present itself in a bright-lit doorway anyway.
The facility was now stripped completely of its wooden farmhouse shell, and its alloy doors were wide open. For a few seconds, Niner almost expected to see Darman and Atin walk out into the yard, and for Kal Skirata to shout Endex, endex, endex–end of exercise. But there were no more exercises, and this night wasn’t over, not by a long shot.