“Does it usually take this long to get anywhere?”
Skirata laughed. “Long? Son, it normally takes years to shut down a network. This is lightning speed. It might still take years, and it's just a fraction of the trouble out there.”
“Makes you wonder why we bother.”
“Because we can't not bother,” Skirata said. “And because it's for us.” He sat back in the chair in the corner and put his boots up on the low table, shutting his eyes and folding his arms on his chest. “Vau's calling in shortly. If I don't hear the comlink, somebody wake me up.”
Ordo had rarely known Skirata to sleep before his men did. And he had seldom seen him use a bed. He always slept in a chair if he had the choice, and while it might have been a mercenary's need to be ready to wake and fight immediately, Ordo suspected it had a lot to do with that first night on Kamino. His normal life had ceased, and would remain suspended until that elusive normality had been achieved for his troops. He always seemed to be waiting for the Kaminoans to come through the door.
His breathing changed to the shallow, slow rhythm of a man asleep.
Scorch started whistling, distracted by his task. Ordo walked up behind him and clamped his hand hard over his mouth. Quiet. Quiet for Kal'buir.
Scorch took the hint.
Ordo waited, memorizing Mereel's download from his datapad with a single glance at each screen.
Then Skirata's wrist comlink chirped. He opened his eyes and lifted his hand nearer his mouth.
“Walon …”
“Try Jailer,” a weary voice said.
Skirata sat bolt upright. Delta Squad froze.
“Where are you?” said Skirata.
“Sweeping up a pile of dead guys with colleagues from the Organized Crime Unit.”
“Sorry?”
“I think your boys just kicked off a gang war. Can I borrow a Jedi, please?”
13
Ten members of a criminal gang have been killed in what's thought to be a gang feud in the lower levels. Sources close Coruscant Security Force suggest the crimelords' battle broke out in a row over gun-running territories.
–HNE late bulletin
Forensics Unit morgue, CSF Divisional HQ, Quadrant A-89, 2345 hours, 380 days after Geonosis
“There's your lizard,” Obrim said, pulling back the sheet. “Paxaz Izhiq.”
Fi and Skirata looked at the elegant green-scaled face, or at least the half that was still intact. Blasterfire was cleaner than ballistic damage but it still did nothing for your looks.
“Not very attractive to the ladies now, is he?” said Fi.
The morgue was cool and quiet. Fi had never seen one before and he was both fascinated and disturbed, not because it was full of dead things but because he now wondered what would happen to his own body.
Left on a battlefield. Does it matter? Mandalorians don't care about remains. We have our soul. My brothers can retrieve some of my armor, and that'll be enough.
The pale green room with its polished durasteel doors also had an antiseptic smell that reminded him of Kamino. He wasn't comfortable here.
“You okay?” Obrim said.
“Just interested.” Fi stared. “Yes, that's him. You can match him with the images Sev grabbed, too. Is he important?”
“Not on our files, but Falleen don't visit Coruscant to get nice jobs in the clerical service. Best guess is Black Sun or an offshoot.”
“So,” Skirata said. “Purely hypothetically, if we picked up a woman friend of his who had access to GAR weapons shipments …”
“Purely hypothetically, because you don't exist … imagine she's diverting a few weapons for his business, but you snatch her and so he refuses to complete the deal because he thinks you're the customer trying to intimidate him.” Fi listened, riveted. Obrim's mental gymnastics were hard to follow. “But the real customer thinks the Falleen just made an excuse to run out on their agreement. So they come after you, thinking you're his foot soldiers. And you waste them. So their buddies come back to settle a few scores with young Scale-Face's colleagues.” Obrim took one final look at the Falleen's face and covered it up again. “And if they were all waiting on a shipment of explosives anyway—the one you intercepted—then you have a very jumpy assortment of bad guys around town.”
“You're going to have to spell out why this is good news,” Skirata said.
“Well, we're minus some criminal scum, and we've found more we didn't even know about. Plus we now have some good forensics. The SOCO team has been all over his apartment like a rash.”
“And?”
“Solid gold for the Organized Crime Unit.”
“Whoopee for them, but was he or was he not handling explosives?” Skirata was getting agitated, chewing that ruik root again. “I'm not interested in gangsters stealing Republic weapons for their own purposes. Is his gang supplying explosives to anyone?”
“Yes, we found traces everywhere. Your Jedi colleagues seem to be finding the disturbance in the Force useful—whatever that means.”
“Does this mean that your Organized Crime Unit is going to be getting in our way now?”
“Share operational details with me and they won't.”
“You know the rules of this game.”
“Kal, your boys are coming awfully close to being targeted by CSF themselves. It could easily have been you and them in a shooting match. I don't want any friendly-fire incidents if we can avoid them.”
Fi watched Kal’s jaw muscles working as he chewed. This wasn't warfare. It had crossed over into armed politics. Skirata and Obrim seemed to be conducting a private war by their own rules, and Fi didn't envy them.
“You know that we're not taking prisoners,” Skirata said. “And I can't see your people turning a blind eye to that once they know what we're up to.”
“But I've got something you need,” Obrim said.
Skirata switched instantly from lovable rogue to a creature of pure ice. “Don't ever, ever try to bargain with me about this.”
“Are we on the same side or not?”
Skirata was ashen. “We'll go it alone then.” Fi had rarely seen him truly angry, but when he had been pushed too far he went white and quiet and dangerous. “Come on, son. We've got work to do.”
He took Fi's elbow and steered him to the doors. It didn't bode well. Fi looked back over his shoulder at Obrim—a man equally white, equally tense—and the captain shook his head.
“Okay, Kal, I'll give it to you anyway, but may the Force save your sorry backside if this goes wrong.”
Skirata turned. He seemed genuinely surprised: he hadn't been bluffing. He really had been storming off and cutting Obrim out of the loop. “What happens if it does go wrong, Jailer? You get into trouble with your bosses. But my boys die.”
“Yeah, and so might mine if they get in the way by accident.”
“Then don't get in the way.”
“Okay, what time did your people grab the woman?” Obrim asked.
“Midafternoon.”
“Well, there was someone trying to get hold of our irresistible friend here via a government comlink shortly before CSF went to his home an hour ago.”
“You mean there's someone else in the GAR working with him?”
“Yes, and if we could pin down the transmission source, I'd have given it to you.”
Skirata's shoulders sagged. “Thank you, my friend.”
“Don't mention it. Just try to give me a warning before you start another war here, okay?”
“That was a nice smokescreen line to the media, by the way. Gang war indeed.”
“It's very nearly true. But thank your oily friend Mar Rugeyan for that. You'll owe him one, I'm sure.”
Skirata rolled his eyes. Fi continued to be surprised by the machinations of political life in Coruscant. He was grateful—and not for the first time—that all he had to do was shoot or be shot. There was no time to worry or plan: either you did a better, faster job than the enemy at that particular moment or you died.