Ordo took out his datapad and consulted it frequently as if he were here for a routine visit. Without the possibility of eye contact, none of the civilian staff seemed even to register his presence. The white armor here was usually clone troopers who were physically unfit for front-line service, Engineer Corps, or ARC troopers carrying out occasional inspections for their generals.
After striding into a few offices, startling the droids and getting an occasional glance from civilian technicians, Ordo walked into the operations room at the heart of the logistics wing, and struck gold.
It was a large circular room with walls that were covered in live holocharts of troop and materiel movements. It danced with brilliant light and color, a HUD on a grand scale. At the room’s heart was a large multistation desk staffed by two droids, four humans, six Sullustans, three Nimbanese, and …
… one clone trooper, minus his helmet.
“Excellent,” Ordo said aloud.
The clone trooper jumped to his feet and saluted, even though it was technically a poor example of protocol to do so without his helmet in place. Ordo returned the salute anyway.
“Problem with your helmet, trooper?”
The man lowered his voice. “It makes the civilians edgy, sir. They prefer to see my eyes.”
Ordo bristled. He would never defer to civilians’ whims. “I’m carrying out a routine survey for General Camas.” He didn’t give the man his designation. Alpha ARCs rarely bothered to identify themselves to the lower ranks. He glanced at the civilians: one of the Nimbanese and a human female looked up at him. The pale reptilian Nimbanel was interesting as a detail, but the human female was enough to make him stop, stare, and note her as suspicious. She smiled at him. He still had his helmet on, but she smiled at him, and she was shockingly beautiful; both those facts were, worry ing in an administrative department. She looked down at her data console, lost in her work again, and flicked long pale blond hair over one shoulder.
“Trooper,” Ordo said. He beckoned the man to him. “I’d like you to brief me on the operation of this unit.”
They walked outside the main doors, and Ordo removed his helmet to look a brother in the eye and give him due respect. His glove’s tally scanner told him the man was CT-5108/8843, an EOD operative: a bomb disposal expert, the kind of man who disarmed booby traps and UXBs so that other troopers could advance, the kind of man who could do work that even droids could not.
The explosives connection wasn’t lost on Ordo for one moment.
“What’s your name?”
The trooper hesitated. “Corr, sir,” he said quietly. “And what brings you here?”
Corr paused and then pulled off his gauntlets.
He had no hands.
They had been replaced by two simple prosthetics, so basic that they didn’t have a synthflesh coating, just the bare durasteel mechanism. Ordo didn’t even have to ask how he had acquired them. Somehow losing both hands was shocking in a way that losing one was not. Hands defined humanity.
“There’s a parts shortage, sir, what with there being so many men injured and needing prosthetics,” Corr said apologetically. “And these aren’t good enough for me to do my job in the front line. As soon as the parts come through, I’ll be back, though.”
Ordo knew what Kaibuir would have said then, and he was moved to do the same, but this wasn’t the time or the place. He held back. “Do they treat you properly here?”
Corr shrugged. “Fine. Actually, sir, the civilians tend not to speak to me that much, except for Supervisor Wennen. She’s very kind to me indeed.”
Ordo could see it coming. “Wennen would be the blond woman, yes?”
Corr nodded, his expression noticeably softened. “Besany Wennen. She doesn’t approve of the fighting, sir, but she doesn’t let it affect her work and she’s looking after me very well.”
Poor naŻve trooper. “How well?”
“We have lunch together and she’s taken me to visit the Galactic Museum.”
Fascinating. Ordo had learned the wisdom of mistrust at a very early age. Glamorous woman, EOD expert, logistics hub: he could work it out. Not starting his observation here would have been stupid, but there was little to be gained from crashing in yet.
“How many shifts?”
“Three per daily roster, sir.”
“I might need to ask you to do something for me, Corr.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“But when I do, it will be classified and you’re to discuss it with nobody, not even your supervisor. It will be part of a routine fraud audit, that’s all, and that’s why I need your silence.” Did it matter if he told him his name? Only the special forces inner circle knew who he was anyway. “My name is … Ordo. Mention that to nobody.”