Republic Commando_ True Colors Part 13

The Grand Army had appeared literally overnight. Some details of secret defense projects had to be hidden from public eyes, she accepted that. But not the funding. Somewhere, someone had to get approval to buy a whole army off the shelf. and that took a lot longer than the year of wrangling about the Military Creation Act before Geonosis. There was nothing in committee records before that date even to hint at it.

It was driving her crazy.

Health. Medcenters, specialist med droids, training. The Republic had never had an instant army, nor one on quite this scale in living memory. It would have-should have-sought advice on forming a medical corps and dealing with the triage, treatment, and aftercare of large numbers of casualties. Some-one might have left that detail in the system, and then she might have a name, a date, or some other hard data to track.

Besany checked through her index for the Coruscant Health Administration and identified the policy planning office. She hadn't intended to talk to anyone else while she rifled through the records on an illicit investigation-call it what it is, spying, why don't you?-because it added one more cross-reference for someone who might be checking up on her. But talking to public servants across departments every day was routine, and thousands of staff did it.

"What do you mean, did we make provision for medical support for the Grand Army?" said the Nimbanel in policy planning. "Had we been asked, we would have. I've worked here for thirty years. I recall nothing like that."

Besany shouldn't have been surprised. If the procurement of an army had been hidden that well, so would its attendant services. She decided to start from the other end-the present day. "So what does the CHA actually provide for the army now?"

"Nothing."

"So what happens if a soldier is s.h.i.+pped back to Coruscant for treatment?"

"CHA doesn't deal with them. Civilians only. If they're treated anywhere, it'll be by GAR medical units."

Besany wound up the conversation and went back into the Treasury records she'd already combed on the last investigation. She could track all the routine supply and procurement transactions since Geonosis-armaments, victualing, leases on merchant vessels, maintenance contracts, refueling-but still there was nothing to point her at transactions with Kamino.

Her stomach rumbled and reminded her she'd been at this for hours. It was well past her usual lunch break. Just one more trawl, then I'll break. Come back with a fresh eye. Do a little real work to cover my lack of output today. She'd try an-other route: the Customs Bureau. There might have been duty payable on something, export licenses, anything that would give her an audit trail between Tipoca City and Galactic City.

But you got Mereel 's answer already. There's nothing in the budget estimates to pay for more clones for next year or the year after. There's no indication if or how the Kaminoans are being paid at all.

That was odd in itself. The only reason she could think of was that the costs were far more than anyone imagined. It was a very good reason indeed to make the budget disappear.

"Lunch. Bez?"

Besany jumped. Jilka Zan Zentis-Corporate Tax Enforcement, no stranger to taxpayers who wanted to cut their liability via a blaster-stuck her head around Besany's door-way. Shutting the doors looked suspicious, but n.o.body seemed to want to know what you were working on if they could walk in and peer over your shoulder.

"Busy . . . monitoring reports to do . . ."

"Are you okay?"

Besany tried to memorize where she was on the balance sheet. "You keep asking me that lately."

"You haven't been yourself for a while."

Just get lost. I need to drill down into this budget. It's the only thing I can do that's useful right now.

"My . . . boyfriend's serving in the Grand Army," Besany said. There: she'd said the B word to herself, and now to Jilka. If she called Ordo anything else, she would have proved to herself that she was ashamed of what he was, making him less than human. "And I spend my days waiting to hear that he isn't dead. Okay?"

Jilka straightened up as if Besany had slapped her. "I'm sorry-I didn't realize. We don't have that many citizens serving, do we?"

Besany's common sense grappled with her conscience. No, I won 't deny him. "Clones don't get citizens.h.i.+p."

The two women stared at each other for a moment, and Jilka looked away first. It was a terrible moment: and maybe Besany had said too much, revealing that she had far too much contact with the Grand Army.

"Wow," said Jilka, ducking back out of the doorway. "You must have had more fun doing that investigation at the logistics center than I thought."

Besany waited for the sound of Jilka's shoes clattering down the corridor to fade to silence, and rested her chin on her hands. That would get around the building like wildfire.

So what? I 'in not ashamed.

She'd lost her appet.i.te now. She went back to the public accounts menu on the Treasury system and started working through the Customs section, keying in KAMINO, TIPOCA, and CLONING. And it threw up a lot more doc.u.ments than she'd expected, mostly the trade ban on the supply of cloning apparatus and services under Decree E49D139.41. Kamino didn't feature a great deal, but Arkania did.

Arkanian Micro must be working all kinds of dodges to get around this. Big chunk of their exports, gone in a single amendment.

There was a big, dull section marked MEDICAL EXEMPTION LICENSES. Her natural tidy curiosity told her she should see what items did manage to bypa.s.s the cloning ban, and when she did, she couldn't help but notice the sheer volume of the transactions: trillions of credits. That was a lot of organs and skin grafts. Or...

Or...

Besany checked the codes. It was always possible that the codes were wrong or falsified, but they appeared to be licenses for imports to Coruscant itself with a destination code for Centax II-especially Centax II. It was just one of Coruscant's moons: a sterile sphere used for military staging and fleet maintenance. For a moment Besany made a mental connection and wondered if there was an army medical center there, and that was why the Coruscant Health Authority took no military patients: maybe the GAR had its own acute care facility on Centax II, and the cloned tissues were destined for that.

Okay, the government doesn't want the public to see how many troops are brought back too seriously hurt even for the Mobile Surgical Units and medcenter s.h.i.+ps to treat. Bad for citizens' morale. Keep it all offworld.

But Kamino didn't need licenses, did it? And if anyone wanted cloned organs to restore troopers to fighting health, Kamino was the obvious source. It was what the Kaminoans did. The Republic was now their only customer thanks to the decree.

A little bell started ringing at the back of Besany's mind. She knew the sound of it: it was the finely tuned instinct familiar to anyone who'd spent time uncovering that which others wanted kept covered. She had no doubt that Captain Obrim and his CSF colleagues knew that bell only too well.

What was going on here?

Besany transferred the data to her own device, far more sections than she actually needed to disguise which information she was interested in, just in case data movement was being monitored. She needed to talk to Mereel, but this wasn't the place.

She pocketed her datapad and took a late lunch far from the Treasury building.

Landing area 76B, Bogg V, Bogden system, 473 days after Geonosis Aay'han sat on her dampers, looking scruffy. She'd been left in the water too long at one stage in her life: there was still a definite tide mark of encrusted growth even after a few searing atmospheric reentries. Mereel laughed and slapped his gauntlet against his thigh plate. Jusik just stood and stared.

"It's a hybrid submarine, General." Skirata took a piece of ruik root from his belt pouch and chewed it thoughtfully. He didn't enjoy the perfumed taste, but the texture was soothing. "I didn't charge her to the brigade budget, if that's what's worrying Zey."

"It's when you call me General that I worry, Sergeant..."

Jusik really didn't look like a Jedi right then. Whatever it was about the Force that gave him an air of illuminated serenity had taken a walk. He looked grimly mundane.

"Bard'ika." Skirata offered the kid a piece of root, but he waved it aside. "You've come an awful long way for just a chat, son."

Jusik took a deep breath and trudged forward as if he knew how to get into a Deep Water. "Things are getting out of hand. I had to do something that's . . . been a difficult decision."

Skirata was a magnet for waifs and strays; if someone was looking for a sense of belonging, Skirata could make them feel they belonged like n.o.body else. It was the necessary skill of a sergeant, someone who could bond troops with the intensity of a family, but it was also the authority of a father, and he often couldn't tell where one began and the other ended. He wasn't sure that it mattered. Jusik-clever, lonely, and increasingly at odds with Jedi policy-radiated a need for acceptance: the result was inevitable. Skirata struggled to find the line between taking advantage of the Jedi's vulnerability and getting the best deal for his clones.

Kal followed Jusik. "You can only do what you think is right, ad'ika."

"Then I need you to level with me."

"Be sure you want to be burdened with the answer, then."

The port-side cargo hatch edged open, and Skirata ushered Jusik inside. Mereel tutted at an interruption from his comlink and paused to answer it.

In the crew lounge, Vau sat rubbing Mird's head as it lay across his lap, and looked a much healthier color than he'd been hours earlier. He nodded gravely. The proceeds of the robbery were nowhere to be seen. Skirata sat down on one of the low tables, and Ordo and Mereel planted themselves to either side of Jusik on one of the couches. Jusik-Skirata's height, a head shorter than any clone-was swamped by Munin Skirata's green armor. Green for duty, black for justice, gold for vengeance: Mereel had opted for dark blue and Ordo for dark red, simply a matter of taste, but when they decided they had a specific cause then they might change the livery and add sigils. The word uniform didn't have much meaning to Mandalorians.

Mereel was deep in conversation with his comlink pressed to his ear, and all Skirata heard was, ". . . that's useful any-way . . . don't worry . . . yes, whatever you get. . ." Then he handed the comlink to Ordo. From the way the lad's face lit up, it was clear that Mereel had been talking to Besany Wennen. Skirata caught his eye and gestured to him that he was excused and he could take the call elsewhere. Ordo got up to stand by the aft engineering hatch, looking uncharacteristically embarra.s.sed.

Skirata dragged the attention back to the conversation. "Ask away, Bard'ika"

Jusik's face was all reluctance. "I can't keep covering for you unless I know what you're up to, Kal. And I know you're not telling me things."

"You mean like you didn't tell Zey about the little mishap on Mygeeto."

"There's not telling people because you don't want to compromise them, and not telling them because you don't trust them."

"I trust you to be a good, decent man," Skirata said softly. "But I don't trust events, and once you know something, it shapes everything you do even if you never breathe a word. That's hard on you at best, dangerous at worst. Fierfek. Walon doesn't know half the osik I get up to, and vice versa. Eh, Walon?"

Vau nodded. Mird yawned ma.s.sively, looking like a miniature sarlacc pit. "And I prefer it that way."

"I told Zey I was doing a morale visit to some of Bralor's squads in the field," Jusik said. "Which is partly true."

"So what bit isn't?"

Jusik was a general, and he had his own issues back at HQ. Skirata had to remind himself of that occasionally. He wasn't always off the chart and doing as he pleased; he commanded five companies, a whole commando group, five hundred men who operated in the field without him but who still had to be given objectives, briefings, and support. There was plenty Jusik knew that he didn't share. There was just too much of it.

"That I'm going to disobey an order and give you information you shouldn't have."

"Are you certain you want to tell me, son?"

"Yes." Even so, Jusik dithered for a moment, staring down at his hands. "The Chancellor's ordered Zey to find Ko Sai, top priority."

Skirata"s stomach knotted. There was always the outside chance that someone might get to her first, and he could never let that happen. "Everyone's been looking for Ko Sai since she went missing at the Battle of Kamino. So?"

"He's sending Delta to do it. They picked up a sighting at Vaynai." Jusik held out his datapad. "Read for yourself. That's all the voice traffic and messages between Zey and Palpatine, and Delta's briefing. Zey specifically didn't want you to know."

Skirata s stomach sank. Zey wasn't a fool, and he had a good idea what a Mandalorian with a personal grudge might do to his quarry. "You're taking a risk showing me that, Bard'ika."

Sometimes Jusik had the look of an old, weary man. He was in his early twenties, all of him except his eyes. "I know. You'd never forgive me if I didn't, and I wouldn't have for-given myself, either."

Jusik had shown his true colors, then. Skirata marveled again that most of the Republic's citizens saw clones as high-spec droids, conveniently on hand to save their shebse, and yet others would put everything on the line to help them. Skirata got up to take the datapad, read it without comment, and pa.s.sed it to Mereel.

"Thanks, Bard'ika." Skirata ruffled Jusik's hair. He wasn't sure how he would have felt if the kid had divulged his critical information to Zey, though. "So you and the boss think I'm going after Ko Sai, too."

"I know you are. You said more than once that if you could, you'd grab a Kaminoan and force them to engineer normal life spans for the clones."

"You left out by its skinny gray neck, I think."

"Well?"

"Yes. I intend to find her."

"Is that what you're doing now? With a submersible? And why the urgency?"

Skirata didn't blink. How could he expect Jusik not to work it out? They'd all fought together: they could think like each other with surprising ease. And-fierfek, Jusik was a Jedi. He could sense things.

Skirata decided to concede. Jusik would know he was holding back, and the mutual trust would corrode. "Okay, Bard'ika, I bought a hybrid because I intend to find Ko Sai and beat the osik out of her until she hands over the biotech that'll stop my boys from aging fast. Being a useless arrogant piece of aiwha-bait, Ko Sai may well bolt to a maritime environment like home sweet home. Hence the sho'sen. Which I will be refitting shortly with military-grade sensors and weapons systems, at my own expense, although I might well make it available for Republic business as a gesture of good-will. Does that answer your question?"

Jusik looked slightly pained. "I just didn't know how ... imminent this hunt was."

Skirata had told n.o.body about the message from Lama Su to Palpatine that Mereel had sliced on Kamino. It was strictly between him and the Nulls, and-inevitably-Besany Wennen, who was smart enough to work things out if she stumbled across any cutoff point for clone funding.

"I'm cracking on with it," Skirata said at last, "because my boys run out of time twice as fast as you or me."

"I don't want you running into Delta and having problems, that's all."

Vau looked up. "I'd rather like to avoid that, too."

Ordo seemed to have finished his conversation. He handed back Mereel's comlink and sat down again with a glazed expression, this time on a separate seat. His thoughts were else-where. Skirata wondered whether to bring Jusik up to date with the hunt for Ko Sai but decided to hang on. It really would place a burden on him, and he'd radiate guilt when-ever Zey came near him. Better that he didn't know yet.

"So tell me what the robbery was all about." Jusik seemed to want to change the subject. "It's not like either of you to put your men at risk for personal gain."

"Well, that's a question for me," Vau said. "I reclaimed something that was due to me, but the bulk of the haul is for our men when they leave the army. You might have noticed the Republic hasn't made pension provisions for them."

"It hasn't made provision for them to retire, either," Jusik said. "I think I understand."

"Vau's handed the stash over to me, Bard'ika." Skirata was going to have to tell Vau about the apparent end of the Kamino contract, too. He had commandos in the field who were due their chance at life as much as anyone. The more Skirata's plan took detailed shape, the more people there'd be who needed to know things, and that always sat uncomfortably with him. "What you don't know can't burden you, son. If it all goes shu'shuk, you can at least look Zey in the eye and say you had no idea what I was up to."

Jusik leaned back in his seat. "Tell me where you're going to be, and I'll try to stop Delta from falling over you."

"I can monitor Delta, Bard'ika," Skirata said. "If I see them on a collision bearing, I'll ping you. Okay?"

Jusik looked wounded. The idea that Skirata didn't trust him after all they'd been through on Coruscant must have hurt. "I was useful once . . ."

Skirata ruffled his hair again. "You're one of my boys, Bard'ika. I said you had a father in me if you ever wanted one, and I mean it."

Jusik stared at him for a while, and Skirata couldn't work out if he was hurt or just worried. "I think I can guess any-way," he said. "Etain... you know, if there's anything you need me to do..."

Ordo stared straight ahead, but Mereel's stare was searing a hole in the side of his face. Vau looked up, too, and Mird lifted its head in response to its master's interest.

"What about Etain?" Vau asked.

"I know, Kal," Jusik said. He looked embarra.s.sed. "I can sense these things. Don't worry about the Jedi Council. They don't know."

"It's not them I'm worried about," Skirata said. Shab. Maybe he should have told all the Nulls that Etain was carrying Darman's baby, not just Ordo. "It's the Kaminoans."

"Fascinating." Vau sighed. "Who doesn't know what you know, or what Kal knows, and that I don't know, but the Kaminoans don't know, either, but if they did know, then Kal knows they'd be a problem?"

"It's not funny, Walon," Skirata said. Mereel was going to get huffy when he realized Ordo had kept something of so much importance from him. "We have a personnel issue we have to factor in to all this."

"I wish I'd never taught you all those big words."

"Okay-Etain's pregnant. Short enough for you?"