“Suits me,” said Skirata.
“What about the second woman?” Fi said. “Etain, where are you?”
“About three meters to her left.”
“Can you edge her clear of the civvies?”
“Okay …”
Fi listened. Skirata could hear all this on his comlink bead, too. It took some skill to carry on talking with someone having a five-way conversation in your ear.
“Excuse me,” Etain said. “I'm hopelessly lost. Can you show me how I get to Quadrant N-Ten?”
Fi watched as the woman simply paused, looked at Etain with surprise, and then began pointing out the connecting walkway. Etain moved. The woman stepped out farther, pointing again.
“Thank you,” Etain said, and walked on.
Whuff. The projectile plumed light on the woman's shoulder. And she brushed her nose.
“All six tagged,” Fi said. He changed channels with an exaggerated click of his molars. “Niner, you receiving?”
“Got 'em all,” said Niner's voice, several quadrants away in Qibbu's. “Nice vivid traces on the holochart.”
“Okay.” Fi let his head drop to ease his neck muscles. “You can wind up now, Sarge.”
“The old di'kut's good at it, isn't he?” Scorch betrayed a grudging fondness. Skirata could hear the conversation and Scorch knew it. “I'd love to know where he learned to do all that.”
Skirata's face didn't even twitch. Nor did Jusik's. Jusik was just looking around as a gangster's errand boy was supposed to, appearing alert but not too bright.
“My intermediary says you have lots of army friends,” Perrive said.
“Contacts,” Skirata said. “Not friends.”
“Don't like our army, then?”
“Just useful. Just clones.”
“Not worried what happens to them?”
“You're not some di'kutla liberal, trying to recruit me, are you, son? No, I don't give a mott's backside about clones. I'm in this for me and my family.”
“Just curious. We'll be in touch, if we like the goods.”
Skirata simply sat with his hands thrust into his pockets, apparently watching the strill, which had stretched out in an ungainly pile of loose skin with its head under the bench, trailing drool. Jusik chewed vacantly, also staring ahead. Fi and the sniper team watched Perrive and the five targets disperse into walkways and down-ramps.
They waited.
“Anyone else spot a Jabiimi accent there?” Jusik asked.
Skirata leaned over and appeared to be about to pat Mird. “I reckon so.” Fi waited for it to sink its teeth in him, but he stopped short of touching it and the animal simply rolled over to watch his hand with malevolently curious eyes.
Fi remembered the strill from Kamino. It seemed smaller now that he was a grown man. Once, it was bigger than he was.
Eventually there was a long sigh of relief. “I sense they're all gone,” Jusik said. “Niner, are they clear of the plaza area?”
Niner grunted. “Confirmed. You can move now.”
“Stand down, lads,” Skirata said at last. “Well done.”
“Nice job, Etain,” said Darman's voice.
“Yeah, okay, well done the Mystic Mob, too.” Skirata tugged on Mird's leash; the pile of fur scrambled onto all six legs and shook itself. “Let's thin out carefully, and don't forget to wipe off the face camo before you move. We'll RV back at Qibbu's by thirteen-fifteen. Then get some rest.”
“Sounds good,” Fi said. It was only when the tension had passed that he realized how stiff his joints felt and how much parts of him hurt from twelve hours and more lying prone on the makeshift padding of his jacket. “Hot bath, hot meal, and sleep,”
Skirata cut in. “You know I didn't mean that, don't you?”
“What?”
“About clones. Qibbu obviously mentioned you to his scum associates.”
“Of course we know, Sarge,” Scorch said. “You said you were in this for your family, didn't you?”
Logistics center, Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ, 1615 hours, 384 days after Geonosis
Ordo listened to his concealed comlink with a practiced expression of blank disinterest while he keyed in traffic movements. The holochart that covered every centimeter of wall space shifted and pulsed as consignments turned from red to green—now laden, cross-checked, and en route—and requests for replenishment stacked up in a panel of blue horizontal bars.
The holochart gave no numbers of troops, but a little common sense would have told anyone who wanted to spend the time thinking through the obvious that they were thinly stretched. There were, Ordo knew, at least a million troops now in the field spread over hundreds of worlds: small forces on some, multiple battalions on others. It meant long supply chains, and those were inherently vulnerable. So … why didn't the Separatist terror networks target them offworld? No ability. No suitable vessels or skills. Or … maybe the point was to intimidate the seat of galactic government after all.
Motive mattered. Motive gave you the capacity to think like the enemy, want what they wanted, and then snatch it from them.
And killing clone troopers—mainly troopers, if you didn't count the unfortunate civilians who were also in the way—made the point that the Seps could come and go as they pleased.
Ordo took it personally. He drew on the memory of sharp, cold fear and focused hatred that he had learned on Kamino before a total stranger had stepped in front of him and saved his life.
We can trust nobody but our brothers and Kal'buir.
Over the comlink, he could still hear Niner's exclamations of satisfaction. The six men and women tagged by Fi and Sev were dispersing all over Galactic City, leaving routes and stopping points that Niner and Boss were logging on a holo-chart that showed every skylane, quadrant, and building on Coruscant. Judging by their occasional descent into the rich Mandalorian invective that Kal'buir considered an important part of their continuing education, they were learning more than anyone had bargained for.
Ordo would evaluate it all when he returned, but the number of locations that the tagging had registered had now reached twenty; it was growing into something larger than a fourteen-man team might be able to handle.
Ordo wanted to tell them to concentrate on the clusters, the areas of most traffic, but it would have to wait. The strip cam had yielded nothing, except the fact that females of all species employed in the center seemed to spend a lot of time in the 'freshers rearranging their appearance. Whoever had been used to collecting the data probably knew Vinna Jiss was gone now and was no doubt trying another route. He kept a careful eye on Supervisor Wennen because she seemed to be getting increasingly agitated as the day wore on. He could hear it in her voice. She didn't like Guris. She was checking something: when he went to the 'freshers, she was still on the same screen when he returned, scrolling up and down an inventory.
She was checking rifle shipments going back two or three months. If it's you, Wennen, what is your motive?
He didn't have to stop to read the screen over her shoulder. He could simply glance at it, focus, and walk back to his workstation to close his eyes discreetly and recall what he had seen.
Whatever errors the Kaminoans had made in their attempt to improve Jango Fett's genome, the efforts had not been wasted.
Wennen looked up toward the doors. Her fine-boned face, while still aesthetically pleasing, suddenly froze into genuine anger and lost its prettiness.
“Jiss,” she said sourly. “You'd better have a good excuse this time.”
Ordo fought every instinct to jerk around and stare. He simply turned his head casually to focus on a sheet of flimsi to his right, and there she was: Vinna Jiss.
You're dead.
“I've been unwell, Supervisor.”