“… and this stays within this room, gentlemen, because this is the Chancellor’s pet peeve.” Zey’s tone jerked Sev back to the present. “Nobody else in Special Operations knows about this, and I really don’t want Skirata to know, because … fine man though he might be, he does have an issue with Kaminoans. Any man who refers to them as tatsushi and actually boasts of recipes is probably best kept out of the loop. Dismissed.”
Scorch chuckled approvingly as they clunked their way down the corridor toward the mess with Maze at their heels. “You think Skirata would really eat a Kaminoan?”
Fixer managed a sentence, which was good going for him. “Only if he had hot sauce.”
“What do you think they serve us? That isn’t rollerfish on the menu.” Scorch half turned as he walked, trying to drag Sev into the conversation. “You okay, Sev?”
“Terrific.” They couldn’t mention Vau in front of Maze. As far as Zey was concerned, Vau had done the Mygeeto recce and banged out. He certainly hadn’t robbed a bank and plunged down some ice hole to freeze to death, if he hadn’t already broken his neck. “Never better.”
The sound of boots walking briskly down the corridor be-hind them broke into a clatter. Jusik caught up, looking flushed and almost pleased with himself. “I’ll keep this lot in line, Captain,” he said to Maze. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than make them finish their greens.”
Maze turned on his heel immediately and began walking back to the command center. “Whatever it is you’re doing,” he said, “thank you for not involving me in it-sir.”
Maze wasn’t stupid. He didn’t want to stand between two Jedi generals playing a game. Nobody in their right mind would. Boss stood back to let Jusik enter the mess first.
“Well, General?”
“I feel that Vau is alive.”
“And we left him behind,” Sev said. “We don’t do that.”
Jusik took Sev’s arm discreetly and applied a little pressure. “And you were out of options, Private. If he’d wanted extracting, he’d have asked.”
Scorch grabbed a plate of seedbreads and slapped them on a table to mark his territory. Few of the other commandos sat near Delta at mealtimes because they were one of the last complete squads who’d been decanted together in Tipoca City and stayed together this far. Heavy casualties in the early days of the war-Sev hated himself for believing all that guff about Jedi being invincible military geniuses-meant that most commando squads had been re-formed at least once and just didn’t have that extra cohesion that Delta did, Sev was sure. All but one of Vau’s squads had stayed in one piece; he might have been a savage instructor, but it was all for their own good. He said so. It was true.
“So what now, sir?” Boss asked. “How do we make this disappear? The voice traffic with Skirata?”
“Don’t kid yourself that Zey doesn’t know something went on.” Jusik could switch from being a goofy kid to a hard man in an instant. He seemed to be learning a lot from Skirata. “He has to at least pretend to stick to the rules. Leave it to me. Those comlink records will vanish before anyone knows they exist.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You made the right call to pass the problem to me instead of Zey,” Jusik said. “You might feel disloyal, but what he doesn’t officially know can’t get him in trouble.”
“Will you let us know when they find him?”
” ‘Course I will. If anyone can extract him, Kal’buir and Ord’ika can.” Jusik grabbed a seedbread from Scorch’s plate and got up to leave. “The Force tells me things will work out.”
Sev watched him go. If the Force was that chatty, it should have been telling the Jedi about useful strategic stuff, not vague fortune-telling.
“Kal’buir,” Fixer mocked.
Boss didn’t seem too upset about Vau to eat. “Wow, he’s got it bad, little Jusik, hasn’t he?”
“Regular little Mando ‘ad…”
“Hey, our sarge is missing.” Sev clenched his teeth to keep his voice as low as he could. “Vau could be dead, and you can eat and joke? We abandoned him. We left him to die. We never leave a man behind, guys.”
The other three stared at him like he was telling them something they didn’t know. “Take it easy, Sev. We’re all worried.”
“Best thing we can do,” Scorch said, “is do our job and let everyone else do theirs.”
“You get that gem of wisdom off a ration pack label?” Sev snapped.