“I wanted a chat with them…,” Boss said. He hauled Sev back by his shoulder and rapped him in the chest plate. “Now how am I going to work out who they are?”
“Leave it to me.” Fixer pushed past them and scrambled into the cockpit, hauling the bodies out of the way and push-ing them out onto the grass with a wet thud. “At least I can interrogate the onboard computer and tell you where they came from.”
Boss and Scorch contemplated the bodies in the grass, turning them over and rifling through their flight suits. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing, Sev felt a mix of vague dread flood him just as it had when he’d screwed up in training. There was no Sergeant Vau around to give him a good hiding for his incompetence, but it was as bad now as it ever was. Next time he saw Vau, he knew that his old sergeant would see the failure on his face and give him grief for it. There was no good enough. There was only perfect. Sev had no excuse for not being perfect, because he’d been designed from the genome up to be the galaxy’s best. Anything he got wrong was down to laziness.
There were no excuses. Vau said so.
It was like waiting for the blow to hurt.
“Well,” Fixer said. “Interesting.” He jumped out of the Crusher and brandished his datapad. “They passed through
Kamino. And they transmitted data back. I’ll unscramble that later.”
Scorch sucked his teeth noisily. “Tipoca’s not exactly the crossroads of the Outer Rim…”
So the Kaminoans had sent someone after them-after Ko Sai, in fact. Nobody popped into Tipoca City uninvited or stopped to refuel. You only went there if you had business with the Kaminoans.
“Bounty hunters?” Sev asked.
Boss examined a handful of chips and flimsi. “We can crack the identichips later. The important thing is that we know we’re not the only ones who’ve tracked Ko Sai this far, and the aiwha-bait will know all about Da Soocha by now.”
Sev was starting to feel anxious. They were definitely going up against the Kaminoans and the Seps now. It was going to be a race. Tipoca would send someone else as soon as they knew the Crusher was missing, if they didn’t already.
“Better get a move on,” said Scorch. “No telling who else we’ll have to elbow out of the way.”
Sev trailed the others back to the TIV, still uneasy and angry with himself for not taking the Crusher’s crew alive.
“No,” he said. “Could be anybody.”
Chapter 8
Soldiers of the Grand Army, in honor of your courage and service in the fight against oppression, you shall want for nothing, and become instructors of the next generation of young men to defend the Republic.
-Chancellor Palpatine, in a message to all ARC troopers, commanders, and GAR commando units on Republic Day
Caftikar, 477 days after Geonosis
Darman was making sure the Marits knew how to lay charges for rapid entry-they did, all too well-when the woman walked into the camp.
He couldn’t tell it was a woman at first because she was wearing a freighter pilot’s rig, multipocketed gray coveralls that engulfed her, and a heavy pair of durasteel-capped safety boots. But when she turned down the collar that was shielding the lower half of her face from the wind, he could see it was a female human about Skirata’s age, with short, light brown hair and a gaunt face that gave him the feeling she checked out the latest in blasters rather than fashion.
She didn’t walk like any of the women he knew, but maybe that was the boots. He’d grabbed his Deece before it dawned on him that A’den wouldn’t be such a slacker on security as to allow just anyone to approach.
Even so, Darman checked the charge on his Deece and stood by just in case. If an Alpha ARC could be caught off his guard, there was always the chance that the Nulls weren’t as omnipotent as everyone thought, either. A’den strode toward her, Sull ambling behind him in the same drab working clothes.
Fi and Atin wandered out from the main building to watch. Fi held Sull’s gray leather kama in one hand with half the blue lieutenant’s edging removed. He’d insisted on having it. With the blue bits unpicked, he said, it went with the red-and-gray armor he’d salvaged from Ghez Hokan. Fi liked order in his wardrobe.
“Who’s she?” Atin asked.
“K’uur!” Darman strained to listen. “I can’t hear with you yapping.”
A’den obviously knew her. He shook her hand, indicated Sull with a jerk of his head, and handed something to her, which she waved away, but A’den shoved it into her top pocket. All Darman heard of her response was, “… rather have news of…”
The wind took the rest. There was a storm coming. At least Darman had the speeder to take him to Eyat to clear out Sull’s apartment rather than trudging through the rain again. Sull seemed to be listening intently to the exchange between A’den and the woman, and then they both turned to him and A’den slapped him on the back. Sull’s expression was set on what Darman now thought of as ARC default: deliberately blank, with one eyebrow slightly raised as if in disdain for the rest of the galaxy. That probably summed up ARCs pretty well.