[Republic Commando] - 02(102)

“Not here. Just move it, please.”

Etain had her fingers spread on the creature’s black coat, her eyes shut tight. “I can use the Force to control the bleeding.”

“Okay, you do that, Jedi.” He squatted over Wennen and checked her breathing with the Verp held to her head. “So, Supervisor, why were you following us?”

Wennen looked in bad shape. Her eyes were streaming and she curled up into a ball, clutching her chest. Etain had fired the PEP laser at close range. “Republic … Audit … you shoot me, chum … and you’re in big trouble …”

“What?”

“Treasury officer?’

“Show me, or you’re the one in trouble, ma’am.”

She let out an anguished gasp and fumbled for her pocket. Ordo decided to play safe and extract the contents for her. Yes, it was an identichip: Republic Treasury Audit Division.

“You’ve nearly fouled up a GAR operation,” he said.

“I was following Jiss.”

“Why?”

“Supplies going missing. So did she. Who are you?” She pulled back her head a little to focus on his bare hand gripping the Verp. “Well, that tells me you’re not Trooper Corr.”

“Obviously.”

“Are you the captain who came in the other day? Because you certainly recognize me .

So much for deniability: this would be all over the Treasury in hours if he let her get up and walk away-not that she seemed able to. “We need to have a little chat.”

“And what’s that?” Wennen tilted her head to look at the Gurlanin, lying inert while Etain struggled to stabilize its wound.

Etain opened her eyes a little.

“This,” she said, “used to be one of our allies.”

Operational house, Qibbu’s Hut, 0045 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Skirata assembled a makeshift deployment tote board from three large sheets of flimsi and stuck them to the wall.

It was old technology, real words on real flimsi, not shifting lights and code. He needed its solid reassurance right now. Things were turning osikla.

Corr-assigned to the team on Skirata’s whim-stood beside him, dutifully listing target locations by numbers of visits and tagged suspects on one sheet while Skirata kept a tally of which commando was deployed, and where they all were for the next twelve standard hours. Without his armor and bodysuit, Corr was just a very young man with durasteel mechanisms where he should have had real hands, and it broke Skirata’s heart.

Droid. They’re making you into what they always thought you were, son.

Skirata shook himself out of it and concentrated on the flimsi. He hated holocharts. He liked solid things that he could grab hold of, even if they had their limitations. It also kept his hands occupied when he was reaching the limits of his confidence. He had to stand firm. His men needed to see him in control, reassuring, believing in them.

Believing in them was easy. He had doubts about himself. He glanced over his shoulder. “Is that thing dead yet?”

“Kal’buir, I’m sorry I got this wrong,” Ordo said. Somewhere, no matter how much reassurance Skirata gave him, he still seemed to fear that not being good enough meant a death sentence. Skirata hated Kaminoans with renewed passion. “I should have known what the creature was. I knew they existed.”

“Son, none of us knew any of them were on Coruscant.” But they were. And that changed everything.

Etain and Jusik were kneeling on either side of the Gurlanin, hands flat on its flanks in some kind of Jedi healing process. Vau watched with interest. He was the anatomy expert, although he was more skilled at taking bodies apart than repairing them. Darman and Niner seemed unwilling to go back to sleep and joined the audience.

They’d become close to a Gurlanin on Qiilura. It must have been very hard to think of them now as possible agents for the Separatists.

It was a black-furred carnivore about a meter high at the shoulder, with long legs, four double-tipped fangs, and hard, unforgiving orange eyes. It now looked exactly what it was: a shapeshifting predator.

“It’s recovering,” Jusik said.

“Good,” Vau said. “Because we want a chat with it.”

Etain looked up with that pinched expression she tended to adopt when she was angry in her rather righteous kind of way. “I lived alongside them. We promised we’d give them back their planet and so far all we’ve done is move in a garrison and train the human colonists to look after themselves.”

Vau stared slightly past her, straight-faced. “I believe that was you personally, General. You and Zey. And you were only following orders. That’s it, isn’t it? Following orders.”