“Okay, mir’sheb, you got a better idea?”
Vau blinked a few times. “No, I don’t think any answer is the right one here, other than hindsight.”
“She wanted to give him a son, some kind of future. And smart move or not, I’m doing the same, so maybe it’s my fault for putting ideas in her head.”
Jusik got up. “I’d better go. Got to look legit by catching up with Vevut Squad.” He gave Skirata a pat on the back.
“Zey’s talking about bringing Rav Bralor back to train more troopers in commando skills-if he can find her. You stayed in touch with your Cuy’val Dar colleagues, didn’t you?”
“Some.” Skirata followed Jusik to the hatch, not wanting to be seen to rush him, but they had a lot to do now. “If Zey thinks I’m trouble, he’ll have a nasty shock if he gets Rav back. You know what Mando females are like.”
“I don’t, actually, but I can guess …”
“What training does he want done?”
“Covert ops.”
“Try Wad’e Tay’haai or Mij Gilamar, then. They’d be a bit more tolerant of the osik from the top. Not much, but at least Zey won’t get a vibroblade in a sensitive spot if he uses the wrong fork at dinner.”
“Can you contact them?”
Skirata had already sought some assistance from Mandalore, including from some of those who’d vanished from the face of the galaxy at Jango Fett’s behest to train the clone army in secret. Cuy’val Dar: those who no longer exist. It was ironic that those who no longer existed were now helping those who didn’t exist for the Republic, not as men at least.
“Leave it with me,” said Skirata.
Jusik closed the hatch behind him. Mereel gave Ordo a wary look. “So maybe I shouldn’t tell you what Agent Wennen dug up, seeing as I can’t be trusted to know we have a done-impregnated Jedi…”
“Knock it off, Mer’ika,” Skirata said. “It’s my fault, not Ordo’s. So what did Besany turn up?”
“Something confirming that Palpatine is building alternative cloning facilities. Lama Su’s message mentioned Coruscant, but she’s found evidence that there’s something happening on Centax Two as well. Lots of equipment, she thinks, and Arkanian Micro have had a lot of exemption licenses for ‘medical’ cloning.”
“Palpatine wants direct control of clone production, and so he wants his own scientists like Ko Sai. He’s edging, the Kaminoans out of the picture.”
“And if he doesn’t pay for the next Tipoca contract, clone production will have to switch to a new source at that time.”
Ordo had been very quiet up to then. Skirata chalked it up to some emotional issue in the conversation with Besany that he wasn’t prepared for.
“So what happens to the clones on Kamino at the moment? The ones who aren’t yet mature? And where’s the Coruscant facility?” No, Ordo had been war-gaming in his head. Besany seemed to have been forgotten as soon as he handed back the comlink. “Is he getting the equipment from Kamino? No, because the gihaal would know he was getting ready to leave them high and dry. Is he having incompletely matured clones moved to Coruscant, or is he starting from scratch again? If so, he has a ten-year lead time to worry about. At the current rate of loss, he won’t have an army left in five years, let alone ten.”
“Unless he’s not going to use Kamino technology,” said Mereel. Mird made an exceptionally loud noise of escaping wind, and he stared at the creature. Vau didn’t seem bothered. “You have no class, Mird, you know that?”
Vau looked at Skirata and muttered, “Microtech.”
It was the one obvious alternative: Arkanian Microtech. Kaminoans did it best, but they did it slow. Arkanian cloning technology was very much faster-a year or two, maybe-though the results were nowhere near as good.
“So there should be clones reaching deployment maturity each year, but we’re not seeing those numbers going into the ranks,” Skirata said. “So what’s the Republic planning to do with them?”
Vau shrugged. “Maybe there’s a problem with the quality. They ran out of fresh Jango.”
“Kamino certainly doesn’t like the results of second-generation cloning,” Mereel said. “I found that when I sliced their research the first time.”
“Well, maybe the Republic is in financial trouble, and it’s happy with second-rate troopers,” said Skirata. He knew this was critical information, and that the men produced would be exploited slaves as deserving of help as his own boys. But he was impatient, imagining Delta already on Ko Sai’s trail. First things first. “Maybe Palps will have a new military strategy then. Numbers over quality. Either way, we don’t want to be around when it happens.”