“Poor Atin,” she said, looking smitten. “I’ll bring your meal over in a moment.”
He forced a smile as Kal’buir had taught him, picked up his glass, and went to join Omega’s table.
“What d’you reckon this is, Ordo?” Darman said. He held his fork so that Ordo could inspect the object skewered on it. “A tube of some sort.”
“That’s what we were afraid of.”
“It’s all protein.” Ordo stared at Atin. “Laseema has taken a fancy to you, ner vod.”
There was no jeering or barracking as Ordo had seen ordinary males do at the mention of females. The squad simply sat in silence for a moment and then resumed their debate on the anatomical content of Qibbu’s dish of the day. Skirata got up and moved along the bench to sit next to him.
“Successful shopping trip?”
“I have everything on the list now. Sorry for the delay. And I have a few extras.”
“How extra?”
“Surprising extras. Very noisy, too.”
Laseema glided up to the table and placed a dish in front of Ordo. She smiled at Atin before making her way back to the bar. Ordo picked up his fork to eat, and the squad studied his plate intently.
“But that’s all vegetables,” Niner said accusingly.
“Of course it is,” Ordo said. “My intelligence score is at least thirty-five percent higher than yours.”
It happened to be true. Skirata laughed. Ordo cleared his plate as fast as he could and then indicated the turbolift. Skirata followed him up to their rooms, where Delta Squad sat cleaning their DC-17s.
“Just dusting,” Fixer said, subtle as a bantha.
“Dust away,” Skirata said. “They’ll see action soon enough. So, Ordo, what did you get?”
“A hundred kilos of thermal plastoid plus five thousand detonators.”
Even Scorch looked up from his dismantled rifle at the mention of that. “That’s a lot of ordnance to make disappear without anyone noticing, let alone store it.”
“I liberated it in stages from different sources.”
Skirata tapped him on the arm. “Now explain the extra surprise.”
“The delay was because I enriched it all-minus a pack or two.”
“How?”
“A little chemical refinement that’ll make it unstable if anyone attempts to use it in devices.”
“How unstable, exactly?” Skirata asked.
“If they don’t work a stabilizer compound into the plastoid, it’ll blow their workshop into orbit as soon as they attach a det to it.”
Scorch sniggered appreciatively.
“Just a precaution,” Ordo said. “If we end up using it for a sting operation and by some chance it goes wrong, then we’ll at least remove a few huruune in the process.”
“And half of Galactic City.” Sev grunted to himself and peered through his scope to calibrate it against the view from the window. “You spook boys overdo it sometimes.”
Skirata patted Ordo’s arm. “Nice job, son. Now tell me where you’ve stored it.”
“Half at the safe house and half under Fixer’s bed.” Scorch guffawed. Boss smacked his ear but it didn’t stop him from laughing. “I’m sharing Fixer’s room, di’kut.”
“Well, you won’t even wake up if that blows.”
Ordo accepted it was a risk, but risks were relative. And Skirata hadn’t expressed interest at his advanced ordnance skills, so he could still keep Mereel’s return as a surprise.
He was going to be pleased with Mereel’s news on Ko Sai, too.
“So all we have to do now is work out how we get them to take the bait,” said Skirata. “Maybe Vau is getting somewhere with our GAR colleague.”
Boss looked up. “You more interested in using the stuff to kill them, track them, or make them think everything’s going fine on the terror front?”
“I’ll take all three.”
“Does it usually take this long to get anywhere?”
Skirata laughed. “Long? Son, it normally takes years to shut down a network. This is lightning speed. It might still take years, and it’s just a fraction of the trouble out there.”
“Makes you wonder why we bother.”
“Because we can’t not bother,” Skirata said. “And because it’s for us.” He sat back in the chair in the corner and put his boots up on the low table, shutting his eyes and folding his arms on his chest. “Vau’s calling in shortly. If I don’t hear the comlink, somebody wake me up.”
Ordo had rarely known Skirata to sleep before his men did. And he had seldom seen him use a bed. He always slept in a chair if he had the choice, and while it might have been a mercenary’s need to be ready to wake and fight immediately, Ordo suspected it had a lot to do with that first night on Kamino. His normal life had ceased, and would remain suspended until that elusive normality had been achieved for his troops. He always seemed to be waiting for the Kaminoans to come through the door.