[Republic Commando] - 03(17)

“Are you allowed to tell me how everyone is?” she asked.

“You really do worry about us, don’t you?” Mereel steered the speeder toward her apartment block. She didn’t recall telling him where she lived. “Okay, Omega’s been deployed to the Outer Rim where someone needs a hand with regime change. Delta are helping put the Marines. Did I miss any-one?”

Besany felt a pang of guilt. She had to ask about the first clone she’d ever met, the patient bomb disposal trooper who’d ended up with a temporary desk job after losing both hands. “How’s Trooper Corr coping with life as a commando?”

“Oh, he’s fine. He’s learning a few saucy tricks from my brother Kom’rk. Good man, Corr.”

“And the two Jedi officers?”

“Etain’s evacuating colonists from Qiilura, and Bard’ika-sorry, General Jusik is due back this week.” There were huge gaps in Mereel’s explanation: places and times vanished. He seemed to edit the sensitive detail smoothly as he went along. “Want to know about Vau? He’s with Delta. Nobody dead. Baffled, fed up, tired, lonely, bored, hungry, scared witless, even having fun, but not dead. Which is a plus.” The speeder climbed and darted between skylanes to veer around the front of her apartment block. Yes, Mereel definitely knew exactly where she lived: he set the speeder down on the right platform, on her balcony, and opened the hatches. “So, are you still up for doing us a few favors? Without your bosses finding out?”

Mereel was the front line of a war that most Coruscanti never saw and weren’t fighting. Besany asked herself, as she had on that first night, whether her tidy little rules mattered more than a man’s life. Mereel slipped his helmet off and sat looking at her expectantly-Ordo, and yet not Ordo, and Corr, too. Corr’s existence-she had no other word for it, and it summed up so many aspects of a clone’s life-had up-ended her, left her feeling upset, angry, betrayed, and, yes, guilty. Her government might have let her down as a citizen and an employee, but it had totally betrayed this slave army.

I’m letting emotion get in the way. But isn’t emotion the way we can tell what s really right and wrong?

“Let’s talk,” she said.

Mereel walked around her apartment with a comm scan, checking for surveillance devices. “Can’t be too careful. But then you know all about this game, being a Treasury spook.”

“You’d be amazed how seriously people try to avoid financial regulation.”

“I would.” He hesitated by her sofa as if he might sit down, but stayed standing as if he remembered he wasn’t allowed on the’ furniture. He looked her over. “And you’re still not armed. You need to do something about that.”

“Well…”

“Simple question. Are you willing to do some investigation for us?”

“What kind of investigation?”

“Defense expenditure and budget forecasts.”

It couldn’t be that simple. “Those are public documents anyway.”

“I don’t think all the details I need are in them.”

“Ah.”

“It’s very sensitive stuff. Might involve the Chancellor’s office.”

Besany felt her scalp tighten as adrenaline flooded her bloodstream. She didn’t feel she could sit down, either, not now. “Can you narrow down what I might be looking for?” Procurement fraud? Bribes?”

“You might well find that,” said Mereel, “but I’m more interested in transactions involving Kamino, and the payment schedules.”

Besany couldn’t imagine anything that would turn up except fraud-or maybe the Republic was arming someone it claimed it wasn’t. The investigator in her told her to ask more questions, but the public servant within asked if she really needed or wanted to know more this time.

“I can drill right down to the individual credit transfers,” she said at last. “Which might give you so much information that it takes you nowhere.”

“Don’t worry. I’m good at collation.”

She took a breath. She was in it up to her neck now. A few more centimeters wouldn’t make much difference. “Why are you trusting me with this?”

“Well, for a start, I know where you live.” Mereel smiled with genuine humor, but she’d also seen how fast earnest, polite Ordo could snap into being an assassin without a second thought. “And we don’t take prisoners. But our lives could depend on that information, which is what really makes the difference to you. Isn’t it?”

It was an ethical choice between rules or lives, and rules didn’t always translate into what was right. “You know it is.”