Fi was fascinated. But he kept his fascination to himself.

19

I had no mother and no father. I was four years old when they first put a weapon in my hands. I was taught to suppress my feelings, and to respect and obey my Masters. I was encouraged to be obsessive about perfection. It wasn't the life I would have chosen, but the one ordained becauseof my genes—just like the men I'm expected to command. But now I have something wonderful, something I have chosen. And I will never let anyone take the child I'm carrying.

–General Etain Tur-Mukan, private journal

GAR logistics center, 1230 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

It was lunchtime.

The biggest decision most people made at that time of day in the logistics center was whether to eat in the cafeteria or find a spot in the public courtyard nearby to enjoy an open-air snack.

Ordo's decision was whether to use the Verpine, or walk up to the traitor Hela Madiry, maneuver her into a shadowy alcove, and then garrote her or cut her throat.

Verpine. Best choice. Fast and silent, as long as the projectile didn't pass through her and hit something that made a noise.

Madiry sat in the shadow of a planter filled with vivid yellow shrubs, eating a mealbread stick and reading a holozine, oblivious to her life expectancy. Ordo sat in the shade of a manicured tree with his datapad on his lap, calculating her remaining life in minutes.

There was nobody within ten meters of her, but there was a security holocam.

A man sat down on the bench beside him. “Well, our young friend in Transport Maintenance just had an unfortunate accident with a repulsorlift platform. Thanks for the use of your security codes.”

“And he didn't turn into a Gurlanin, I hope.”

Mereel looked utterly alien with light hair and eyes. Even his skin was tinted two shades paler. It didn't suit him. “No, vod'ika, he turned into a dead human. Skulls and repulsorlifts don't mix. Trust me.”

“Just checking.”

“You haven't told Kal'huir about Ko Sai yet, have you?” Mereel asked.

“I thought he might be less distracted if we wait until this mission is completed.”

“He's a true verd, a warrior. He's never distracted when the shooting starts.”

“There's no rush,” Ordo said.

Mereel shrugged. Out of armor and kama, he slouched in a convincingly civilian manner. “So, shall I wander off?”

Ordo was watching the security holocam that covered the area between the woman and the public refreshers twenty meters beyond. “Can you disrupt that holocam circuit for me on my mark?”

Mereel felt in his coat for something and pulled out a slim stylus. It was an EMP disruptor. “I can do it without leaving my seat, ner vod.”

“Okay, I'll give you a reminder to kill the cam when I'm five meters from her.”

Mereel tapped his ear. “Comlink on.”

Ordo took a few slows breaths. He had removed the folding stock from the Verpine rifle; it was now short enough to conceal under a document holder. He looked like any other anonymous, helmeted, convalescing clone trooper playing office boy and carting archived flimsi around.

“Go,” Ordo said, and stood up.

He walked toward the refreshers, which took him on a path past the Madiry woman.

“Mereel, kill the cam.”

He had a few moments now before a security console spotted the outtage and tried to fix it. He took five fast strides and bent over Madiry as if to ask her a question.

She looked up as if an old friend had startled her. “Hello, trooper.”

“Hello, aruetii,” Ordo said. He drew the Verp and put two rounds point-blank through her forehead and a third down at an angle through her upper chest. One round thudded through into the planter of soil behind her. Ordo had no idea where the other two went, but the informant was now dead and she simply slumped, head down as if still reading, a pool of her bright blood on the holozine's screen.

Ordo slipped the Verp back under the document folder and walked away. It had taken less than ten seconds from cuing Mereel to walking away.

Nobody even looked at him as he strode calmly toward the GAR complex, passed it, and met Mereel on the other side of the speeder parking bays. They disappeared into the sea of vehicles and mounted the Aratech speeder bike to head back to base.

Kal'buir had always told the Nulls they were instant death on legs. Ordo liked to live up to that assessment. His thoughts were on Besany Wennen as he rode off, and how it was good that he hadn't had to kill her, too.

Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 1330 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

The more the tagged targets moved around Coruscant, the clearer the strike team's task became.

“That,” Fi said admiringly, “gets better every time I look at it, Bard'ika.”

Jusik stared at the Coruscant holochart with a big grin and basked in the approval. The telltale red traces of the marked terrorists as they moved around the city were forming a pattern that firsthand surveillance would have struggled to build up.

“It was obvious, really,” he said. “You'd have come up with it yourselves sooner or later.”

Vau put down a bowl of milk in front of the strill. It lapped noisily, showering droplets across the carpet. “I vote that Dust-tagging becomes standard surveillance procedure. It's a matter for your sergeant, of course.”

The police interloper's trace had been removed. Jailer Obrim had given her a painless and unnoticeable EMP sweep to kill transmissions from the marker powder she had inhaled. Now just five marked targets moved around the grids of blue light, building an accurate picture of where they went and where they stayed. The division between the two was now very much easier to see. Four locations—the house in banking sector 9, the landing strip used by the fresh farm produce importers, and two apartments in the retail sector—were clearly the most visited.

“But we probably only tagged Perrive's hired help,” Fi said. “We want the bigger guys.”

“The bigger guys,” Vau said, “need the hired help by their side. All this activity is connected to the fact that they're about to receive explosives they badly need. Now, we know they used dead letter drops, for want of a better phrase, to avoid direct contact between the various terror cells in the network. It's how they ensure there's no way of tracing them back. So what does this tell you?”

Fi studied the hypnotic blue and red light in front of him. “They're moving back and forth between locations over and over.”

“And therefore?”

“Therefore … they're either one cell … or they're several cells who have abandoned security precautions and are making direct contact with each other.”

“Well done, Fi.”

Fi didn't care for Vau but he enjoyed praise. He savored the moment. “So what do you think we've got here?”

“Given that this centered on the explosives, I think we're looking at the manufacturing cell—the people who make the bombs. Possibly also the ones who place them. Setting a complex device in a location or on a vessel can be a fiddly business, and I reckon this lot would do it themselves. They need to be mobile to get to different target locations, too, hence the need for a busy landing strip—nobody notices more traffic movement there. Now, Fi, that's a group of people worth taking out. Those are hard skills to replace in a hurry.”

Jusik gave Fi a playful punch on the shoulder, elated. “Result!” He seemed to see it as a big puzzle to be taken apart. If Fi hadn't seen Jusik use a lightsaber, he would have taken him for a boy who just liked playing with complicated kit. “Time to make their eyes water, eh, Fi?”