Mar Rugeyan's office was very near the top floor of the administration building and had a view that some Senators would have killed for. Ordo wondered how Rugeyan did his killing—metaphorically, anyway—because he had the air of a man who would terminate anyone in his way without a second thought.
It was a long way down. Ordo tucked his helmet under his arm and admired the steady stream of speeders in the sky-lanes below.
“It's been a while,” Rugeyan said, perfectly pleasant. “I never imagined I might be in a position to be any help to you.”
The subtle threat wasn't lost on Skirata, at least if his blink rate was anything to go by. “I appreciated your assistance during the siege. You remember my captain, don't you? Captain Ordo? Sir, can Mr. Rugeyan offer you anything to drink?”
“A glass of juice would be very welcome, thank you.” Skirata was indeed inferior in rank, but it always made Ordo uncomfortable to hear Kal'buir call him sir. “We were wondering if you might be able to advise us.”
Rugeyan betrayed no discomfort whatsoever at talking to a clone. “Happy to help, Captain.” He tapped something on his desk. “Refreshments, please, Jayl. Juice and some cakes.” He smiled. “But what could I advise you upon? You seem to have your public image pretty well honed. Smart, efficient, and noble. You can't buy an image like that.”
“We feel that our troops should have a little more comfort in life and we're aware how much weight your advice carries with key members of the Defense Department,” said Ordo.
“Ah.” Rugeyan's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Quite right, too. What do you want out of this, then?”
“Leave.”
“More of it?”
“Any of it. They don't get leave. Any downtime is spent in barracks or in training.”
“Oh.”
“You didn't know that?”
“No, frankly, I didn't. I never asked.” Rugeyan actually seemed surprised, or at least he was feigning it very well. “But that's a command decision. They won't bend easily to public servants like me.”
Ordo took a glass of brilliant emerald juice handed to him by Rugeyan's young female assistant, who simply stared, eyes scanning him. Kal'buir was right: Civilians never saw clone soldiers face-to-face.
It almost threw him off track. “In strategic terms, the temporary withdrawal of a few thousand troops from the front line makes very little difference,” he said. “But I'm sure you know that warfare isn't all about big bangs. There's another front, and that's here.” Ordo tapped his temple. “Visible troops around Coruscant. Good for public confidence right now, with the constant threat of terror attacks. And good for our men.”
Rugeyan toyed with a cake studded with chunks of glistening red and purple fruit. “I admit that the Senate would like some positive results on the terror attacks. It's making the administration look helpless. Much as I respect our colleagues in the CSF, they're not making much progress, are they?”
Skirata cut in. “But if they did, it would be very timely, wouldn't it? And I'm sure that you'd be told about it right away.”
This was the interesting thing about Skirata. He could speak around corners. He was an articulate self-educated man, and that always came as a surprise to outsiders. Jusik fell for the rough-diamond act all too often, but Vau wasn't the only Mando with a razor-sharp mind and a fine line in rhetoric. Skirata could switch from Mando hard man to politician without a visible change of gear.
Ordo found every conversation an education.
“I always appreciate information,” Rugeyan said. “Especially when I know it'll serve some real purpose.”
“So,” Ordo said, and drained his glass. The assistant popped in again as if she'd been staking out the office and refilled it. “We have two battalions of the Forty-first Elite back in barracks and an assault ship's crew waiting on a refit. If someone could come up with the idea of an extended leave with the men allowed and encouraged to go off base, I think everyone would benefit. And maybe some credits to spend, because they don't get paid. A nice feel good story for the media.”
Rugeyan's expression flickered briefly from professional neutrality to surprise and then back again. “Never even thought of that, you know. So is this going to involve your men? The RCs?”
Rugeyan pronounced it Arr-Sees, like a soldier would. It was internal jargon and not for outsiders. Skirata blinked for a second, and then shifted down a gear into Mando mercenary again, albeit it one in a better mood than usual.
“They're not RCs. Arr-See sounds like a droid to the public. My boys are men. So please refer to them as Republic Commandos, not just commandos, and the other forces as troopers, or by their rank.” He slurped his caf enthusiastically. “Words like RCs, cannon fodder, grunts, gropos, squad-dies, pongoes, meat cans, white jobs, or even shiny boys create the wrong impression. Terminology is everything, I find.”
Rugeyan was actually making notes on a sheet of flimsi. He took no offense at all, not visibly anyway.
“Very useful,” he said. “Leave this to me.”
“And I'm sure Captain Obrim has your comlink code at the very top of his list, should there be any good news for you.”
Skirata smiled and looked as if he meant it. Ordo nursed his glass, leaving a little juice at the bottom to fend off more instant attention from Rugeyan's assistant.
“An inevitable fact of life is that some of us are doomed to do the dirty thankless work in the shadows while someone else gets the headlines,” Rugeyan said.
“Headlines can be overrated,” said Skirata. “The captain has another meeting to attend, but thank you for your time.”
It was all very civilized: another coded conversation where the unspeakable had somehow been spoken.
And it was all a far cry from the sweaty, anxious hours at the Galactic City spaceport a few months before, when Rugeyan had been no more than a severe irritant and Skirata had taken a rather physical dislike to him. Now the man seemed to have a clear and almost uncanny grasp of exactly what he was being asked to do, and although he must have had questions, he never asked them. It almost made him a soldier.
The descent in the turbolift felt like a rapid insert via gunship as they plunged down a hundred levels.
Skirata began laughing quietly and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut. “I wish I'd realized that Rugeyan would respond to a simple request. Then I'd never have—well, you know.”
“If you hadn't captured his attention in such an assertive way at the siege, perhaps he wouldn't have been so accommodating today. That man might even make a useful member of an intelligence bureau one day.”
“He just needed me to show some understanding of his own position. Sometimes I think people want more from me than they actually do. So where does this leave us, Ord'ika?”
Ordo counted off on the fingers of his glove. “Smokescreen in progress. Team on standby, split into watches. Observation points and potential operational houses collated and identified. Armory and logistics in place. Confirmed link between devices and prisoners.”
“But?”
“All dressed up and nowhere to go. Still a large gap in the intel.”
“What did the droid crack out of the download from Atin?” Skirata asked.
“A lot of data that needs combing by hand when we have other intel to put alongside it. It's just lists of businesses like any transport company would keep. Nothing leaps out. Sometimes I wish we had to deal with Weequays. They'd label things TOP SECRET and give us a clue.”
“Why is this proving so hard? Fierfek, son, Kom'rk and Jaing can track a flitnat across the galaxy and we can't find a gang in our own backyard.”
“I'm sorry, Kal'buir.” I should be able to crack this. I'm letting him down. “This is a double line of surveillance, I'm afraid—the terror network itself and whoever is providing their recce intelligence—and that could be inside our own organization, or in the CSF, and the latter is going to be harder to identify.”