The struggle moved in quiet slow motion, and there was no scream-just the start of a yelp and then choking-and blood everywhere, but he knew it wasn’t his and for that moment it was all he cared about. The man clutched at Skirata’s grip on the hilt as he aimed the Verp one-handed into the gap and fired point-blank.
Skirata didn’t think he’d ever forget the sound, not a ballistic crack but a wet sheet slapping in a gale. The man dropped. Skirata struggled to free his knife, wondering why he could still hear gurgling and panting in his audio feed, then silence punctuated by a dull thud.
“Kal’buir! You okay?” Mereel sounded breathless. “Three down. All clear.”
The blaster sounds had stopped but Skirata could still hear them like a muffled echo. Mereel came out of the dispersing fog condensing on the floor and walls, and caught him by one shoulder.
“Shab,” Skirata said. The few seconds of relief at not being the one who was dead gave way to a vague anger. He adjusted his HUD sensors. Nothing moved. “That’s the lot, then.”
There were three bodies in Mandalorian armor on the floor. One kill was his, one was Mereel’s, and the third must have been killed by the blast. Where was Ko Sai?
We shouldn’t be killing each other. This is insane.
Mereel backed along the wall, rifle raised, checking visually. “I’m not picking up any more activity.”
“Okay, door by door now, Mer’ika.” Skirata put his self-disgust aside. “She’s here.”
“I bet the place locks down when the alarm kicks in,” Mereel said, trying the first door. He took out a sensor and scanned for security circuits while Skirata listened for signs of life.
Maybe he should have yelled for Ko Sai to come out and face them. She must have known they were there. A firefight among Mando’ade wasn’t the kind of thing you missed because you were making a pot of caf.
And it was definitely a laboratory.
It reminded Skirata of Tipoca City, all clinical white surfaces and sterile areas, doors with hermetic seals, a temple to order and perfection and disregard for life. He couldn’t smell it with his helmet on, but he knew that if he took it off, he’d feel that slight tingling in his nostrils and smell the sterilizing fluid.
“The doors are on two circuits, Kal’buir,” Mereel said. “I’ll fry one set at a time. That means all the doors open at once.”
“Then she can make a run for it,” Skirata said. “Or wait for us to drag her out.”
There was nowhere for her to go. Skirata thought that this might have been a decoy, and that the right-hand fork near the entrance was where they should have been, but Mereel beckoned to him and indicated a security panel. It was the kind that had an outline of the floor plan with small lights indicating the status of each compartment or room.
“Emergency generator,” Mereel said, tapping his fingertip against the panel. “That’s the plant room on the right-hand side. This is the only accommodation.”
“She hasn’t got an army down here, then.”
“Probably just enough bodyguards to cover three shifts. The more folks down here, the more supplies she has to bring in. But we can check the rooms.”
“You reckon the next shift will be along soon?”
“Make sure you reload.”
“Let’s just find the shabuir and drag her out.”
“I need to strip the data out of her systems, too.”
Snatching someone off the street was basic work for any jobbing bounty hunter, fast if risky. Kidnapping a scientist and stealing all her research-all of it, nothing left to fall into the wrong hands-was a much bigger task if you were in a hurry.
Bard’ika, let’s see you persuade Delta to stop for dinner, and maybe take in a holovid, too.
“Ten doors each side, Kal’buir”
The whole place was one giant waterproofed tank with interior partitions, so unless he’d got this badly wrong, there was only one way out, and that was past him.
Skirata took his helmet off one-handed for a moment and inhaled deeply. He always claimed he could smell Kaminoans, but what hit the back of his palate galvanized him almost as much: the place did smell like the labs in Tipoca City. The reminder brought back more resentment and loathing than even he could recall. The adrenaline flooded him again, and he found his second wind.
“Lucky dip, Mer’ika. Fry ‘em.”
Mereel stabbed the disruptor into the panel. The lights flickered, and ten pairs of doors sighed open. Skirata had never seen a Kaminoan with a blaster, but he didn’t dismiss Ko Sai’s capacity to use one. He edged up to the side of each door and darted inside, blaster ready. There were banks of conservators, sealed transparisteel boxes with remote handling apparatus, empty tanks-he didn’t know how he would have reacted had there been something alive in them-and one room full of what looked like computer storage, rack upon rack of it. Genetics took a lot of data crunching.