It was the most aggressive way a Mandalorian could ask someone if they understood and if the question ever required an answer, yes was the best one. It was an order to back off. But Delta was tasked by Etain, and she was very much on Skirata's team. It put them in an awkward spot.

"Sarge," Boss said "where does this leave General Tur-Mukan?"

Vau dropped his chin and gave Scorch that benign but I'm-not-joking warning look. "Like you stay out of Cuy'val Dar affairs, I keep clear of internal Jedi politics. Until you receive an explicit order to disregard her in the chain of command she's still your CO."

Scorch liked to be clear. They all did. Sometimes he envied the white jobs for the clean lack of politics in their working lives.

"Well, shab," Sev said watching Vau walk back into the gym again. "I'm going to start a sweepstakes. Place your bets, vode-who's going to be left still standing in Kal's happy little gang this time next year?"

Galactic City Utilities Department standby underground reservoir, Coruscant, late evening "So when was he going to tell me that my girl's a prisoner of war?"

Skirata sat on Aay'han's casing, so besieged by his torrent of problems that he'd overloaded and reached the relatively comfortable stage of simply picking them off as they floated to the surface. Do what you can. It's all you can ever do. Vau paced the edge of the permacrete quay as if he was measuring it for a carpet, head down, hands clasped behind his back.

"Try to look surprised when he finally does, Kal."

Skirata opened his palm and stared at the data crystal from Vau's concealed audio recorder. No Mando with two brain cells ever went into a contentious meeting without an electronic witness hidden somewhere. Vau always had one on him, in his collar or belt, even in his underclothes, ret'lini-just in case. It was a Mando mind-set. You never knew what was coming around the corner to ruin your entire day.

"Don't worry, I'll win an award for dramatic presentation," Skirata said. "Thanks, Walon. So-is he going to use Ruu to shake me down, or has he told you just to see if you'd come running to warn me?"

"Well, we know it's true-she's on the POW list. I checked. Better assume every malign motive until proven benevolent, though. But Zey's not a holo-chess player. He's just drowning in the war like everyone else, grabbing what flotsam he can to stay afloat."

"You're in full Imperial Irmenu Navy mode today, I see."

"It's the water. Brings out my inner sailor."

The underground lake, stored as an emergency supply for homes across Coruscant, cast rippling reflections onto a vaulted permacrete roof that stretched far out of sight into darkness. Aay'han was moored down here, courtesy of yet more folks who owed Jailer Obrim a favor and so turned blind eyes when asked. She could have been laid up on the surface easily enough, ready to bang out at a moment's notice; but this was a forgotten place, perfect for hiding a submersible starship. The exit, when the day finally came, was via the sluice bulkheads at the far end of the reservoir.

Ordo said the distance was enough to reach takeoff speed before the ship slipped through the narrow opening into the daylight and clear air. Aay'han was going to give someone a massive surprise when she punched out of the side of a utilities plant. No rehearsal was possible. Ordo had to get it right the first time, but he was Ordo, and so he would.

"My alarm bells went off when Zey said he wanted Mereel, Jaing, and Besany to investigate the virus," Skirata said. "It's the get all the suspects in one room approach. Like a Corellian holodrama."

"If I were laying bets, I'd say that's unhappy coincidence, but we plan for the worst. What's the state of play with Etain?"

"Well, the news gutted Dar and he's not talking to her at the moment." Skirata checked the chrono on his forearm plate. He preferred to work in full armor; it was as much tool kit as protective clothing. "They're due back at barracks from Nerrif in a couple of hours. With any luck, Bard'ika will make it by then, too. J think we have to treat this as the last big planning meeting."

"You're going to come completely clean with Omega?" "Despite what happened with Dar ... oh, I think I need to keep them away from any fallout from my mess until we're literally ready to move. So, not yet."

For a moment, Skirata's natural suspicion tugged at his sleeve and said: Yeah, good idea, get all the gang in one place, and warn Vau so he can tip off Zey. Not knowing now who he could and could not trust got to Skirata in a way few things ever could. But that was their aruetyc game-divide and rule, sow distrust, set Mando against Mando by adding a little poisonous doubt to the mix.

If Vau's set me up, and this is some clever double-double game, then I'm going to take my time killing him.

The trouble with war-gaming double-cross scenarios like this was that there was no logical point at which to stop. It was layer upon layer, ft could drive you crazy. Skirata knew Vau all too well after being cooped up on a Force-forsaken stilt city on Kamino for years; if he was the double-crossing kind, it would be a first time for him. But... Skirata shook it off as best he could.

Mandalorians needed to learn to stick together, to look after one another and let the rest of the galaxy find its own fall guys to do the fighting and dying in their place.

"If you don't feel comfortable having me at this meeting, Kal, just say so." Vau squatted down to pet Mird who had finished inspecting the makeshift dock and trotted back to report with a series of grumbles and whines. "Just because I'm good at this slippery two-faced stuff doesn't mean I enjoy it, and if there's another unfortunate coincidence, I wouldn't want to be seen as the leak."

Skirata wasn't sure if he felt ashamed or amused at hearing his very thoughts laid bare, but the comment made his gut flip for an irrational moment either way. "How long have you been the only telepathic Mando, then?"

"Long practice, overfamiliarity, convergent thoughts..." "We've both known each other long enough to realize what the stakes are."

Mird seemed to approve of the subterranean berthing arrangements. It walked up to a handwheel set low in the wall and sprayed its territorial scent with abandon.

"Mird when we bang out, you can do that all over Zey's office," Skirata said trying to find something to laugh about. "It'll take irradiation to clean it off."

Aay'han was almost ready. She'd had a full refit, one discreet piece at a time, her supply lockers and tanks were full and cryosealed, and she looked a lot tidier down below than she had when he'd haggled her out from under that Rodian. She wasn't just a multitask submersible. She was a lifeboat for everything he loved and cared about.

Tied up alongside her in the water was Gi'ka, the tiny shark-shaped sports submarine they'd used to infiltrate Ko Sai's hideaway on Dorumaa. Mereel loved that thing. He came down here to pilot it occasionally when he was back at base, just letting off steam like a normal lad of his age. He'll love thrashing that up and down the lake at Kyrimorut. In the throes of plans crumbling to dust, there were still good things to look forward to.

No, Zey. I've not come this far to lose my nerve now. We're nearly there. You want to stop me? Then you're going to have to kill me.

Mird sprayed copiously into the water. Vau managed a rueful smile. "With Mird's contribution arid Aay'han's antifouling coating . . . remind me not to drink Coruscant water again, will you?"

"Good reason for leaving. Come on. Back to base."

Waiting for everyone to assemble at Laseema's apartment was taking longer than Skirata liked. Even with Kad on his lap, precious time he usually cherished he still had that feeling of needing to get everything sorted and stowed to be ready to run. Kad and Mird seemed to have developed an understanding; Kad babbled happily at the strill, which rumbled and even squeaked for a few moments, then disappeared for a while. It returned dragging the covers from Jusik's bed and it proceeded to build a nest from them on the floor. It was a ruthless predator, but it was also a devoted parent. Strills were almost the archetypal Mandalorian spirit.

Jaing arrived with Ordo and Besany just after midnight. Laseema put Kad to bed again, and within the hour all six Nulls-some in uniform armor, some in beskar'gam-and Gilamar had arrived. There was no sign of Jusik or Etain. Skirata waited a little longer, then decided they could catch up. He played the recording of Vau's conversation with Zey and waited for comments.

"How do you lie to a Jedi Master?" Laseema asked. "Without him sensing it, that is?"

"I didn't," said Vau. "I said I'd tell him if I found Kal doing anything to help the enemy. The minute that this little shabuire opens a comlink to any former Death Watch personnel, I shall gladly turn him in."

Skirata paused for a moment, then managed to laugh. "Do I know any?"

"No, but they're the only group I'd really call my enemy. So I didn't lie, and I was genuinely emotional enough for him to believe what his Force senses told him he wanted to believe."

Laseema applauded politely. "That's a very clever technique."

"Thank you, my dear. Mando'ade are trained to acquire certain states of mind for battle, so it's an easy switch."

"I'm sorry." Besany, perched on a chair next to Kom'rk, looked exhausted. "This is all my fault. The Gurlanin told me I was crashing around when I was doing my digging."

"Shab, no," Skirata said. "Ordo saw the file on you, remember? They haven't traced it back to you. You got good intel, ad'ika. You made the difference. We know about the second stream of clones, we know about the extra fleets, and we have a rough idea of when it's all rolling out. We might not know all the details, but we've got enough to save our shebse when the time comes. That's all down to you."

"Maybe I was too cocky," Jaing said quietly. "I'm the one who took the risk of introducing a program into the Treasury network to crawl through every linked Republic computer system to mine data. I should have stuck to short-lived programs that self-erased. Grabbed snapshots."

"Is that what it actually did?" Vau asked.

"You should see the quantity of data it transmitted back. Most of it useless, but. . . snapshots rely on you looking in the right place at the right time, so I thought it was worth the risk."

"You really are a clever lad."

"Well, they still don't seem to know what it did only that it's been in the system and vanished" Besany said. "Unless, of course, they really do know I'm involved, and even the tech droid is instructed to lie to me."

Jaing shook his head. "They can't trace the entry point to your terminal, Besany. I sent the program via the main comlink, so if they can even find the route it entered by, it's not traceable to any individual user."

Skirata realized how much faith they all put in one another. He was no fool, but he really had no idea of the sophisticated technical skills that Jaing used as easily as Skirata drew his blade. He took it on faith-ironically, faith in the enhancements that the Kaminoans engineered into the Nulls-that they all knew what they were doing. Even Besany-no, he had no idea of the fine detail of her expertise, either. He was proud of his kids. He included Besany in that now; she was his daughter, because Mandos didn't draw the distinction of in-laws.

"I think we've got two issues," she said, with the earnest air of someone used to conducting meetings and commanding attention. "One, what happens when we start this investigation? Do we treat it as real, that they think we have nothing to do with the problem, or do we assume it's a shakedown? Zey's chat with Walon makes me think the latter. Either way, we have to find another way of monitoring activity in our areas of interest, and that's issue two. Follow the supply chain, not purchasing, from now on in. All we need is to keep tabs on the firms we know will supply the kit. KDY, Rothana specifically. Then there's Aurodiseal, big supplier to Spaarti Creations before the Cartao plant was trashed, and the data I pulled off the CSX and ISE company information service shows no fall-off in production or profits since cloning was banned. They say they're making water purification equipment now. Seeing as they lost their biggest customer overnight, I find it hard to believe they've found enough new business to (ill that gap so fast... so we just need some way of getting an overview of their outputs and shipping activity. Check what they're shipping, when they're shipping it, and where it goes."

"Anyone got a contact in KDY?" Mereel asked, looking around his brothers. "If not, we'll have to get in there."

My father worked for KDY.

Skirata tried to honor the memory of his birth parents, but it had been more than fifty years, and it was getting harder than ever to summon up the scraps of the past. The apartment on Kuat was reduced to one view of a wall; but memory was also kind, because he could no longer recall the full detail of the scene he came back to after his home on Surcaris was bombed.

"I know a very reliable freight pilot," A'den said. "She helped our ARC deserter vanish, so she'll be good for a few trips to KDY."

"How do we get into Aurodiseal?" Skirata asked.

"Leave that to me," said Vau.

Skirata started to feel that things were coming back under control again. All it took was a task list and common sense. "Okay, now on to wet assets. We've got Uthan still in the secure mental unit, and my daughter Ruu in a POW camp. Ideally, we snatch them both within the same time window to minimize holding time here, and get them offplanet fast. Bard'ika's keeping tabs on the secure unit, and I'll look after Ruu."

He said it as naturally as if he'd seen her last week. He didn't even know what she looked like as an adult until he got hold of her ID hologram. He searched her features for Ilippi's face, but found mainly his own; Ruu was brown-haired and pugnacious looking. Now he was practicing not seeing her as a stranger. None of the Nulls had said a word about it, but he could sense that they were standing by to intervene if things didn't go as planned.

He'd spring her from prison. Then it was her choice what she did next.

"Okay, what have we got left?" Skirata asked.

"Medical update and finances," Prudii said. "Mij'ika?"

"Nenilin came up with some interesting insights but no solutions, and I paid him off, with the reminder that if he opens his mouth, tenure won't save him from the weight of my disappointment." Gilamar didn't go into detail. Skirata could guess. "But there's excellent data from the embryologist, who's confirmed there are no manufactured genes in the sample, just manipulated naturally occurring ones. The aiwha-bait stuck to the basic blueprint. That's narrowed the range to what Mereel first suspected-that they just concentrated on rapid maturation, and on making sure the genes that influenced bonding and social compliance were fully expressed-to make clones as loyal and disciplined as possible."

"They learned their lesson with us," Mereel said. "Maturation is the bit we're interested in, which is, unfortunately, the most complex."

"Databases?" Skirata asked.

Mereel tapped his 'pad meaningfully. "We've ripped most of the data on cloning and genetics now, public sector and commercial. Uthan's going to have everything she needs. Shah, Arkanian Micro would kill to grab what we've extracted."

Rarely-very rarely-Skirata stepped outside himself for a second and saw what he did plain and unvarnished. Extortion; blackmail; industrial espionage; theft; fraud; kidnapping; violence; even good old-fashioned spying on the state. He-they-did the lot. This was a crime syndicate.

My syndicate.

He never saw himself like some Hutt chakaar or other gangster. He didn't see himself as a paragon, either. But he could sleep at night for the most part, and he worked out that he could live with himself because-other than in war, which was another matter-everyone he'd hurt had been asking for it. There was collateral damage; the families of scumbags he shot, and they might well not have been scum, but they were unseen strangers. Thieving-he faced up to the fact that it was never victimless. And still he slept. The same or worse had been done to him and those he loved.

But he squirmed now. What had stabbed suddenly at his conscience was the awareness that he wasn't all that different from Zey. The Jedi seemed like a nice enough man. He treated Maze with courtesy. But when push came to shove, he did immoral things, and sent clones to die, because he could justify it. Collateral damage. They both had their rules of engagement.

Why am I not Zey? Why don't I think I'm as had as a Jedi? Because I don't drone on about compassion and respect for life. Because I don't exploit slaves while polishing my principles. Because . . . it's personal. When I kill, I mean it. Even when it's just killing them before they kill me.

Skirata found that he was watching Ordo watching Besany, a strange act of observation that summed it all up. This was his son, not a throwaway organic droid made to order, but a man with powerful feelings, a man who was loved and who could love in return, and this random civilian, whose most remarkable quality wasn't her pretty face or her razor-sharp mind, was a woman who looked at Ordo purely as a man like any other, and loved him.

Jedi weren't allowed to love.

If you were forbidden to love a person you could see and touch, how could you ever learn enough compassion to treat strangers right? Jedi never truly learned to love anything beyond an idea, and that was the gulf that Skirata saw between himself and Zey.

He wasn't even trying to work out if he was standing on higher moral ground than Zey and his kind. He just needed to work out if he was, on balance, doing more harm than good if he carried on like this.

"Kal'buir, are you feeling okay?" Prudii put his hand on Skirata's check. "Talk to me, Buir. What's wrong?"

Skirata was jerked out of his thoughts so hard that the touch startled him and his heart hammered out of control. "Sorry, son." Embarrassed he looked around at worried expressions and tried to joke his way out. "Trying to process too many thoughts with one brain cell. You smart lads don't know how hard it is."

"You need to get some sleep," A'den said. "We thought you'd had a stroke for a moment. You're no use to us dead Buir."

It was an old Mando joke, the kind of thing that beroyase said to the bounties they'd hunted down and cornered a hint to surrender quietly.

"Finance," Jaing said. "Want to hear the update? Might help you sleep."

Jusik was late. So was Etain. Skirata would get a few hours' sleep and then go find them. "Okay. Last item on the agenda."

Jaing had an oddly satisfied look on his face. Skirata waited for the punch line.

"Our current assets stand at one point three six trillion credits, rounded down."

There was a pause of such profound silence that Skirata heard Mird's stomach gurgle. He took a breath. His hearing was shot to haran from too many loud detonations too close, and he lived with that, but he hadn't thought he was that deaf.

"Say again, son?"

Gilamar seemed to think he'd misheard too. "Meh'shab?"

"Just over a trillion creds, Kal'buir. You want me to count out the zeros?"

"Wayii!" Mereel started applauding. Ordo joined in, then Laseema and the others. "Oya manda! Ori'kandosii, vod'ika! You actually pulled it off!"

"I thought I was wasted being just a gorgeous hunk," Jaing said grinning. He smoothed the fine gray leather gloves tucked into his belt. Skirata hoped Etain never asked too many questions about those. "I felt like being creative for a change."

The Nulls were extreme risk takers. Skirata now feared Jaing had gone too far; his spy program had been detected and now he'd ripped off enough creds from the Republic to get attention. Oh, shab...

Skirata got up and walked over to him. "Just tell me how, son."

"You look worried Kal'buir." "It's a big hole to leave."

"Not from several trillion bank accounts . . ."

The Nulls laughed like Skirata had never seen them laugh before. They really did think it was hilarious. They were giggling like kids.

"Spell it out for an old chakaar" he said.

Vau nodded. "And me."

"You know roughly what my programs do." Mird wandered over to Jaing and put its head in his lap as if to join in the adulation. Jaing didn't seemed bothered by the drool, but he moved his gloves to higher ground, to the clip on his shoulder plate. "They wander through computer networks, copying data and sending it back to me. So I created a version that wanders around bank networks skimming a credit or half a credit off each account it finds, and depositing it in another account. Well, this program did a lot more exploring than I counted on, thanks to the central clearing system Republic banks use. That let it into every bank on the grid. Trillions of accounts .

. . and who misses half a cred on their balance statement? Who'd argue with their bank about it? Which bank would spend time investigating such a small dispute anyway? Next thing we know . . . thank you for choosing the Clone Savings Bank, citizen, you've invested wisely."

Skirata nearly wept. He was tired, so his guard was down, and he was prone to emotion anyway, but this was shock and joy. Besany just put her head in her hands, maybe amused, but probably hyperventilating in horror. The poor kid was an auditor. She was supposed to hunt men like Jaing.

"Look, it's not like I left any widows destitute," Jaing said defensively. He must have misunderstood Skirata's expression. "Shab, I didn't even leave any rich Hutt starving. And I only hit Republic banks. It's social taxation."