Skirata was bent deep in conversation with a CSF officer, their heads almost touching, talking in low and agitated voices. He swung around as Ordo approached. His face was gray with suppressed anger.

“Fifteen dead.” Skirata clearly didn't care about civilian casualties, traffic disruption, or structural damage. He gestured toward a large fragment of white leg armor in the rubble of what had been a security post. “I'm going to rip some chakaar's guts out for this.”

“When we find them, I'll make sure you're first in line,” Obrim said.

There wasn't a lot any of them could do at that moment except to allow the largely Sullustan scenes-of-crime team to do their work. Skirata, chewing vigorously on that bittersweet ruik root that he'd recently taken a liking to, stood with his fists in his jacket pockets, watching Jusik stepping delicately between chunks of debris. The Jedi occasionally stopped to close his eyes and stand completely motionless.

Skirata's expression was one of cold appraisal. “He's a good kid.”

Ordo nodded. “Do you want me to look after him?”

“Yes, but not at the expense of your own safety.”

After a few minutes Jusik made his way back to the cordon, arms folded.

“You didn't pick up anything?” Skirata said, 'as if he expected Jusik to bay like a hunting strill latching on to a scent.

“A great deal.” Jusik shut his eyes for a second. “I can still feel the disturbance in the Force. I can sense the destruction and pain and fear. Like a battlefield, in fact.”

“So?”

“It's what I can't sense that bothers me.”

“Which is?”

“Malevolence. The enemy is absent. The enemy was never here, in fact.”

* * *

Republic Fleet Protection Group traffic inderdiction vessel (TIV) Z590/1, standing off Corellian–Perlemian hyperspace intersection, 367 days after Geonosis

Fi really didn't like zero-g ops.

He took off his helmet with slow care and put one hand on the webbing restraints that stopped him from drifting away from the bulkhead of the anonymous utility vessel that had been customized for armed boarding parties. If he moved a little too quickly, he drifted.

Drifting made him … queasy.

Darman, Niner, and Atin didn't seem bothered by it at all; neither did the pilot, who, for reasons Fi hadn't yet worked out, was called Sicko.

Sicko had shut down the drives. The unmilitary, unmarked, apparently unimpressive little TIV—a “plain wrapper,” as the pilots tagged it—hung with drives idling near an exit point of the hyperspace route, cockpit panels flickering with a dozen weapons displays.

Externally, it looked like a battered utility shuttle. Under the rust, though, it was a compact assault platform that could muscle its way onto any vessel. Fi thought that traffic interdiction operations was a lovely euphemism for “heavy-duty military hijack.”

“I do like a noncompliant boarding to start the day,” Sicko said. “You okay, Fi?”

“I'm sorted,” Fi lied.

“You're not going to throw up, are you? I just cleaned this crate.”

“If I can keep field rations down, I can handle anything.”

“Tell you what, chum, put your bucket back on and keep it to yourself.”

“I can aim straight.”

Fi had learned the skills of maneuvering in zero-g late in life—just before he turned eight and sixteen, not all that long before Geonosis—and it didn't come as naturally to him as those troopers trained specifically for deep-space duties. He wondered why the others had come through the same training with more tolerance of it.

Niner, apparently impervious to every hardship except seeing his squad improperly dressed, stared at the palm of his glove as if willing the wrist-mounted hololink from HQ to activate.

The squad now wore the matte-black stealth version of the Katarn armor that made them even more visibly different from the rest of the Republic Commando squads. Niner said it was “sensible” even if it made them pretty conspicuous targets on snow-covered Fest. Fi suspected he liked it better because it also made them look seriously menacing. Droids didn't care, but it certainly put the wind up wets—organic targets—when they saw it.

If they saw it, of course. They usually didn't get the chance.

An occasional click of his teeth indicated Niner was annoyed. It was Skirata's habit, too.

“Ordo's always on time,” Fi said, trying to take his mind off his churning stomach. “Don't fret, Sarge.”

“Your buddy … ,” Darman teased.

“Rather have him for a friend than an enemy.”

“Ooh, he likes you. Hobnobbing with ARC officers from the Bonkers Squad, eh?”

“We have an understanding,” Fi said. “I don't laugh at his skirt, and he doesn't rip my head off.”

Yes, Ordo had taken a shine to him. Fi hadn't fully understood it until Skirata had taken him to one side and explained just what had happened to Ordo and his batch on Kamino as kids. So when Fi had thrown himself on a grenade during an anti-terrorist op to smother the detonation, Ordo had marked him out as someone who'd take an awfully big risk to save comrades. Null ARCs were psychotic—bonkers, as Skirata put it—but they were unshakably loyal when the mood struck them.

And when the mood failed to strike them, they were instant death on legs.

Fi suspected that Ordo was bored out of his brain, stuck in HQ on Coruscant for most of the last year with nothing to kill except time.

So Fi stared at Niner's glove, too, willing his stomach to stay put. At precisely 0900 hours Triple Zero time, right on cue, Niner's palm burst into blue light.

“RC-one-three-zero-nine receiving, sir,” Niner said.

The encrypted link was crystal clear. Ordo shimmered in a blue holoimage, apparently sitting in the cockpit of a police vessel, helmet beside him on the adjoining seat. But he didn't look bored. He was clenching and unclenching one fist.

“Su'cuy, Omega. How's it going?”

“Ready to roll, sir.”

“Sergeant, latest intel we have is that the suspect vessel left Cularin bound for Denon and is headed for your position. The bad news is that it appears to be traveling with a couple of legit vessels as a smokescreen. Commercial freight is getting very edgy about piracy so they're forming up into convoys now.”

“We can weed out the target,” said Niner.

“It would be very awkward if you decompressed a civilian freighter at the moment. It'll be the Gizer L-six.”

“Understood.”

“And we need the di'kute alive. No slotting, no disintegration, no accidents.”

“Not even a good slap?” asked Fi.

“Use the PEP laser and keep it nonlethal if you can. Somebody's very keen to have a frank chat with them.” Ordo paused, head tilted down for a second. “Vau's back.”

Fi couldn't stop himself from glancing at Atin and noted that Darman had done the same. Atin had his chin tucked into the padded rim of his chest plate and was idly scratching the scar that ran from just under his right eye and across his mouth to the left side of his jaw. It was a thin white line now, a faint memory of the raw red welt it had been when Fi first saw him: and Fi suddenly realized something he hadn't worked out before.

I think I know how he got that.

Atin was from Sergeant Walon Vau's training company, not Skirata's. And over the months, as casualties mounted and more partial squads were regrouped with men from other companies, they all swapped stories. The Vau stories didn't get a laugh at all.

“You okay, ner vod?”

“Fine,” Atin said. He looked up, jaw set. “So how many bandits are we going to not slot, disintegrate, or speak harshly to, then, Captain?”

“Five, best intel says,” said Ordo.