“Get clear!” Vau yelled, even though he had no need to with a helmet comlink. “That’s an order…”
“Sarge, we can’t.”
“Shut up. Go. If you come back for me-if anyone comes back-I’ll shoot you on sight.”
“Sarge! We could…”
“I raised you to survive. Don’t humiliate me by going soft.”
I can’t believe I said that.
Delta didn’t argue again. Vau was in semidarkness now, his HUD scrolling with the icons of Delta’s view of the ice field beneath the speeder as it lifted clear.
“… party …” said a voice in his helmet, but he lost the rest of the sentence, and the link faded into raw static.
The last thing I’ll ever say to them is-shut up. Noble exit. Vau..
Mortal danger was a funny thing. He was sure he was going to die but he wasn’t terrified, and he wasn’t worried about more patrols. He was more preoccupied by what he’d fallen into: a vague memory came back to him. As he slid down a few more meters, trying to stop his fall with his heels more out of instinct than intent, a detached sense of curiosity prevailed: so this was what dying was actually like. Then he remembered.
Mygeeto’s ice was honeycombed by tunnels-tunnels made by giant carnivorous worms. He came to rest with a thud on what felt like a ledge.
“Osik,” he said. Well, if he wasn’t dead, he soon would be. “Mird? Mird! Where are you, verd’ika?”
There was no answer but the crunching and groaning o’ shifting ice. But he still had the proceeds of the robbery strapped to him, both his goal and his fate.
Vau wasn’t planning on dying just yet. He was now too rich to let go of life.
Chapter 2
Clone subjects in the study showed a more marked variation in biological age and genetic mutation than seen in naturally occurring zygotic twins. In the group of 100 cloned men aged 24 chronological years, and who could reasonably be expected to present as the equivalent of a 48-year-old uncloned human, key biomarkers showed a range from 34 to 65 years with a median of 53 years. Further research is needed, but exposure’ to battlefield contaminants and high levels of sustained stress appear to accelerate normal genetic mutation in men already designed to age at twice the normal rate. By the time Kamino clones reach the equivalent of their mid-40s, those mutations are very apparent and-like natural zygotics-they grow apart.
-Dr. Bura Veujarij, Imperial Institute of Military
Medicine, “Aging and Tissue Degeneration in Kaminoan-cloned Troops,” Imperial Medical Review 1675
Republic Administration Block, Senate District, Coruscant, 470 days after Geonosis
Can’t the cops shift them?” said the security guard on the main doors of the Republic Treasury offices. He stared past Treasury agent Besany Wennen-not something that many males managed-with an expression on his face that said he felt the protesters were messing up his nice tidy forecourt. “I mean, they’re Sep sympathizers, aren’t they? And the cops are just standing there, doing nothing.”
Besany hadn’t missed the protesters. She’d taken a keen but discreet interest in them, in fact, because the war with the Separatists had become an intensely personal one for her. These were expatriate Krantians, protesting about the pounding that their neutral planet had taken in a recent battle.
They’d taken up a position opposite what they saw as one of the centers of the war effort, the Defense Department administration building, where they seemed to think they might have some impact. Several government offices ringed the pedestrian concourse. Office workers had appeared at the windows to watch for a while, then returned to their desks because it wasn’t their war, not yet. They had an army to protect them.
“They’re neutrals, actually,” Besany said. “So how would they protest to the Separatists?”
The guard looked at her, visibly puzzled. Holoscreens dotted the wall behind him, giving him a view of every floor and corridor in the building. “What do you mean?”
“They’re here because they’re allowed to be. Where would they go if they wanted to lobby the CIS?”
The question seemed to have stumped the guard. He shrugged. “Want me to see you safely past them, ma’am?”
“I don’t think they’re a threat, but thanks.” Besany wondered how she was going to spend the evening, but she knew what would occupy her: worrying about a Null ARC trooper captain called Ordo, a man she was too scared to contact because she had no idea if he was on a mission at any given moment, and if a message on his comlink would compromise his safety. “I’ll risk it.”