[Republic Commando] - 03(42)

“Wow!” TK-0 said, spinning his cranial section 180 degrees to train his photoreceptors on the doors. “More of you? Did someone just open a new box of Mandalorians?”

Ordo looked up just as Mereel did. Skirata was walking across the cantina with someone dressed in his father Munin’s armor.

“Yeah, it’s Bard’ika” said Mereel. “I couldn’t stop him from coming.”

Jedi General Bardan Jusik hadn’t just shown understanding and compassion to his special forces troops; he’d gone native. He wore the Mandalorian armor that Skirata had loaned him to masquerade as his nephew during an elaborate sting operation with a Jabiimi terror cell. Ordo knew it was smarter than swaggering into the cantina in his full Jedi rig, but it was no secret now that Jusik liked it.

“Vode,” Jusik said, taking off his helmet. He extended his arm, and Mereel clasped it in that hand-to-elbow grip that was a common Manila greeting. Jusik’s untidy blond hair still needed cutting, but at least he’d trimmed his beard. “We really have to talk.”



Eyat, Caftikar, 473 days after Geonosis

The rain had stopped and the sun had come out, which was a problem. Darman and Atin could no longer rely on their hoods for disguise as they tailed ARC trooper A-30- Sull-through the city.

The ARC was walking briskly, heading north. Twice he paused to buy food from a street stall and slipped the wrapped packages inside his coat. Then he walked into the huge transparisteel foyer of the unirail terminal, forcing them to follow.

“How far are we going to take this-?” Darman whispered.

“I thought we’d just follow him and see where he goes.”

“Remember Sergeant Kal giving Sev and Fi an earful for doing an unplanned tail on a suspect and nearly screwing the whole operation?”

“Skirata’s light-years away.”

Darman wondered why he’d ever thought Atin was the quiet, thoughtful one. “That won’t stop him. He hasn’t just got eyes in his backside-he’s got hyperspace transceivers.”

“Okay, what’s the alternative? Spot a vod who’s MIA, say Well, who’d have thought it? and carry on chatting?”

Darman wasn’t sure where prudent improvisation ended and winging it began; special operations were a blend of tediously boring planning and moments of what he could only think of as insanity on the brink of death. But Atin was right-MIA was MIA, and Sull was neither M nor IA right then, and he had intel that they needed.

The terminal had a high domed roof that reminded Dar-man of Tipoca City. Sull grabbed a ticket token with the casual, unconscious ease of someone who did this journey frequently, then sat down on a bench at a distance from the ticket barriers, staring at the ever-changing timetable board as he unwrapped one of the small packages he’d bought on his walk and began eating the contents. It looked like fritters of some kind. Darman and Atin wandered around the small storefronts on the terminal concourse after they grabbed their tickets, window-shopping as far as other travelers were concerned.

“He’s got five unirail lines to choose from,” said Atin. “You think he’s spotted us?”

“Either he’s better at surveillance than we are, and he has, or he delays committing himself to a direction out of habit.” It was the kind of thing an ARC would have been trained to do: to move around without drawing attention to himself or giving a pursuer any notice of a last-minute change of direction. Darman began speculating about what Sull had been doing in the last couple of months. Fierfek, the man looked as if he lived here. The very phrase made Darman uneasy in a way he found hard to pin down, until he realized it was a bewildered envy of a world that had more options than he knew how to handle. “So is this all part of the deep cover? That even the rebels can’t find him, and don’t know what he’s doing, so they can’t compromise him if they’re caught?”

“Or if they’re traitors …”

“This is crazy. Zey would know. Zey would oversee his tasking.”

“Dar, I think there’s loads of things Zey’s never told. Maybe Sull gets his instructions directly from Palpatine.”

“How can anyone run a war that way?” Atin didn’t answer. The war was messy, dirty, and chaotic, they’d learned, but this was the first time Darman had faced the possibility that brother soldiers might be doing things that cut across his own mission.

The two commandos killed a little more time standing at a store window speculating on why anyone might want a vivid purple business case, watching Sull reflected in the transparisteel window: then there was a faint clacking sound as the departures board changed, and the ARC made a move for a departure point.