[Republic Commando] - 03(11)
As Vau tipped the first likely-looking box into the makeshift container-cash credits and bonds, which would do very nicely indeed-the whiff of oily musk announced the arrival of his strill, Lord Mirdalan. Fixer stepped back to let the animal pass.
“Mird, I told you to wait by the exit,” said Vau. All strills were intelligent, but Mird was especially smart. The animal padded down the narrow passage in velvet silence and looked up expectantly, somehow managing not to drool of the floor for once. It fixed Vau with an intense, knowing gold stare, making any anger impossible: who couldn’t love a face like that? That strill had stood by him since boyhood-and anyone who didn’t see its miraculous spirit had no common decency or heart. They said strills stank, but Vau didn’t care. A little natural musk never hurt anyone. “You want to help, Mird’ika? Here.” He slipped his flamethrower off his webbing. “Carry this. Good Mird!”
The strill took the barrel of the weapon in its massive jaws and sat back on its haunches. Drool ran down to the trigger guard and pooled on the floor.
“Cute,” Sev muttered.
“And clever.” Vau signaled to Mird to watch the door, and slid the drawers of the Vau deposit box from their runners. “Anyone who doesn’t like my friend Mird can slana’pi.”
“Sarge, it’s the ugliest thing in the galaxy,” Scorch said. “And we’ve seen plenty of ugly.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a mirror,” said Sev.
“Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen.” Vau began sorting through his disputed inheritance. “Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light.” The first thing that caught his eye in the family box was his mother’s flawless square-cut shoroni sapphire, the size of a human thumbprint, set on a pin and flanked by two smaller matching stones. In some kinds of light, they were a vibrant cobalt blue, while in others they turned forest green. Beautiful: but real forests had been destroyed to find them, and slaves died mining them. “The only reality is action.”
Sev grunted deep in his throat. He didn’t like wasting time and wasn’t good at hiding it. His HUD icon showed he was watching Mird carefully. “Whatever you say, Sergeant.”
The strongroom held a treasure trove of portable, easily hidden, and untraceable things that could be converted to credits anywhere in the galaxy. Vau stumbled on only one deposit box whose contents were inexplicably worthless: a bundle of love letters tied with green ribbon. He read the opening line of the first three and threw them back. Apart from that one box, the rest were a rich man’s emergency belt, the equivalent of the soldier’s survival kit of a fishing line, blade, and a dozen compact essentials for staying alive be-hind enemy lines.
Vau’s hundred-liter backpack had room enough for a few extras. Everything-gems, wads of flimsi bonds, cash credits, metal coins, small lacquered jewel boxes he didn’t pause to open-was tipped in unceremoniously. Delta stood around fidgeting, unused to idleness while the chrono was counting down.
“I told you to leave me here.” Vau could still manage the voice of menace. “Don’t disobey me. You know what happens.”
Boss hung manfully to his end of the plastoid sheet, but his voice was shaky. “You can’t give us an order, Citizen Vau.”
They were the best special forces troops in the galaxy, and here Vau was, still unable to manage the thank you or well done that they deserved. But much as he wanted to, the cold black heart of his father, his true legacy, choked off all attempts to express it. Nothing was ever good enough for his father, especially him. Maybe the old man just couldn’t bring himself to say it, and he meant to all along.
No, he didn’t. Don’t make excuses for him. But my boys know me. I don’t have to spell it out for them.
“I ought to shoot you,” Vau said. “You’re getting sloppy.”
Vau checked the chrono on his forearm plate. Anytime now, Bacara’s Galactic Marines would start pounding the city of Jygat with glacier-busters. He was sure he’d feel it like a seismic shock.
“Looking for anything in particular?” Sev asked. “No. Random opportunism.” Vau didn’t need to cover his tracks: his father didn’t know or care if he was alive or dead. Your disappointment of a son came back, Papa. You didn’t even know I disappeared to Kamino for ten years, did you? There was nothing the senile hut’uun could do about it any-way. Vau was the one better able to swing a crippling punch these days. “Just a smokescreen. And make it worth the trip.” He knew what their next question would have been, if they’d asked it. They never asked what they knew they didn’t need to be told. What was he going to do with it all?