Skirata's choices had narrowed to one. "We're just discussing how to extract Jilka."

Vau raised one eyebrow. The others said nothing.

"We can't extract her from the RDS facility by force, because it'll get all kinds of unfortunate attention too early in the game." Ordo took out his datapad. "We get them to take her out of the cell, and snatch her in transit."

"You've got a plan," Gilamar said.

"Of course. I've got access to Republic Intel codes. If we time this right, then I simply generate a bogus request for a rendition to the Rep Intel detention facilities. Then we hit the transport en route."

Skirata gestured at Vau. "Yes, but Brain of Galactic City here has already told Zey we're going to extract her."

"Double-bluff," Vau said. "When he hears it happened, he won't wonder if we're involved for some dubious reason and start digging. He thinks I'm spying on you anyway. He'll nod and say, 'Oh, that's Vau doing the decent thing for me, and thwarting those Intel and RDS jokers.' Won't he?"

Skirata just raked his fingers through his hair. "Well, what's done's done, and now we just have to clean up as best we can."

"Okay, let's triple-bluff," Ordo said. "Sergeant Vau, you. and I will intercept the transport."

"If they buy the request."

"Get changed. We'll do it within the hour. Try to look Separatist."

Vau's face didn't move a muscle. "I'll put on my best Jabiimi accent."

Besany looked numb now. She seemed to be acclimatizing to a permanent high level of insane risk. Given another month, Skirata thought, she'd be as bad as the rest of them.

"Come on, daughter" he said, taking the bag from her hands with as reassuring a smile as he could manage. "Let's get you settled in. Is this everything?"

She nodded. "Yes. I can't think what to do with the apartment at the moment-"

"Leave things as they are," he said. "If you vanish completely, then it just draws attention. Might be a good idea if you resigned from your job, though."

That seemed to hurt. A little frown creased the corners of her eyes for a fleeting moment. "I'll cite personal problems with my partner," she said taking it like a trouper. "They don't tend to want to pry into domestic stuff, and it's been noticed that I'm not exactly the woman I was."

Skirata wasn't sure how to take that. When Besany opened her bag and laid the contents on the cabinet in the room kept for Ordo, it told Skirata what really mattered to her. Her subconscious had told her what she couldn't live without, and it wasn't trinkets and comforts she'd crammed into the holdall with a few changes of clothes, but images, information, and her blaster.

She set the holoimage projector on the side table.

"It pays to travel light," Skirata said.

"Well, I understand Mandalorians a great deal better after today." She opened the projector and activated it. "If you can't carry it, it's a burden, and if it can be easily replaced it's not worth regret."

"You married a Mandalorian. What do you think that makes you?"

At least it made her laugh, and that lit up her face. "I've got to wear armor, haven't I?"

"Nothing but top-grade beskar, too. Only the very best for my girls."

Some cultures preserved images on sheets of flimsi, static and silent. Skirata once thought that was a poor substitute for the walking, talking, three-dimensional holoimages, but he found them easier to deal with on the bad days. A static picture was firmly anchored in the past, making the subject untouchable, announcing clearly that those days, those moments, were long gone. But a holoimage brought a special kind of pain; it was the presence of people as they really had been, as if they would answer if spoken to or respond to a touch. It was a cruel illusion. Static two-dimensional images reminded you clearly that it was all over. Holoimages just dragged the untouchable past into the present and tormented you with it.

"Want to sec my father?" she asked. "My first one?"

"I'm honored to be the second," Skirata said. "Yes, I'd love to see your dad."

Her father, Norlin Wennen, lived again in the moving holoimage for a few moments. "Are you coming, Bes?" The figure smiled and beckoned, as if he had something wonderful he wanted to show her. "You've never seen anything like this, I'll bet..."

Besany smiled, distracted. "It was the jewel-caves of Birsingrial, and we were on vacation," she said to Skirata. "I was ten, I think."

And she could answer her father a hundred times, but he'd never hear, never reply. She watched her ten-year-old self run after him, giggling with excitement as she vanished into the shafts of ruby and emerald light.

"I do that, too," Skirata said softly.

"That was our last trip together before my mother left."

"Did she have a reason?"

"Yes, but I can't recall his name."

Skirata didn't comment. "Want to see mine?" He handed her the small projector he kept in his belt at all times and flicked the controls. A grid of small images hovered in the air for her to select and enlarge. He pointed out detail. "The guy in green armor-Jusik's armor-is my adopted father, Munin. And here's all my vode from previous missions. My kids-all of them, clone and nonclone-and Kamino. Walon recorded a lot of this. He reckoned I'd need evidence for the defense if I ever filleted another Kaminoan." He gestured at the images of himself surrounded by a group of six grim-faced identical little boys while he stripped down a large blaster rifle on a table in front of them. "I only ever had to show them once. And here's some of my commandos in training . . . yeah, that's Theta, Dar's first squad. Poor little shabuire-all dead now, bar him."

"Why does Ordo always sleep with the covers over his head?" Besany asked.

Skirata stared in slight defocus at the holoimages, then put the projector on the cabinet. "Live ordnance tests. To see how little kids coped with the noise and shock. He couldn't stand the night storms on Kamino after that, and he always buried his head under the covers. Funny, none of his brothers did."

She gave him a long look that he couldn't quite read, and for a moment he wondered if she thought he was reminding her that her own woes were nothing compared with those that Ordo and his brothers endured. Then again, she might just have been trying to imagine the closed world of Kamino, a small group of marginal Mandalorians cooped up together for years whether they liked one another or not, re-creating a small but distorted outpost of their society a long way from home, just to stay sane.

Who saved who? Who needed the leaching of the Mandalorian ethic more-our boys, or us?

Besany's fine-boned face broke into a sad smile again. "Don't let him get himself killed."

"He's Ordo," Skirata said. "He decided he was never going to let that happen to him when he was two years old."

Yes, the Nulls-and all his clones-had come a long way. And they had a lot farther still to go.

Sector L-32, Galactic City, an hour later Ordo had to hand it to Vau: he looked utterly convincing.

With a ferociously short haircut, as near to shaven as he could get without a shine on his scalp, and a lightly tinted mini HUD visor of the kind favored by the security community, he looked like the real deal. The severe black business tunic set it all off. It said do not mess with me. He looked like a Republic enforcer of the most dreaded kind, quiet and implacable.

"Fortunately, my hair grows back fast." Vau sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked black official speeder and passed his palm discreetly across the top of his scalp as if feeling naked. "This is not my style."

The speeder wasn't actually one they'd liberated from the GAR command pool, but Enacca's contacts seemed to be able to summon up a facsimile of anything on a drive and repulsors. Ordo contented himself with the ubiquitous helmet and visor common to most enforcement and rescue agencies across the planet. Mereel might have enjoyed disguising himself by altering his hair and eye color, but Ordo wanted to keep it simple.

He checked his chrono. Five minutes until the shift changeover at both the Rep Intel facility and the RDS; it would then be another eight hours until anyone checked the custody sheets again at either end. But Ordo and Vau wouldn't be waiting that long.

"I hope Mird is okay," Vau said, staring out of the tinted viewscreen at the flicker of passing vessels zipping by in the skylane at the end of the alley.

"Is a strill safe around a small child?"

"Being hermaphroditic, all strills have a maternal streak, Ordo. Hence the endless nest building when it sees the baby."

"If it takes my clothing to make nests one more time, I shall be very displeased."

Vau snorted. "Come on. It's charming."

Ordo could recall the time he was terrified of Mird and pulled a blaster on it; the animal seemed bigger than him at that age, a savage thing. Now it had become a comrade in this war. It even played with babies. All things were possible.

The chrono showed 1400.

"Okay, let's do it," he said opening his comlink. "Wad'e, are you ready for nerf herding?"

Tay'haai grunted. "I hurt my neck last time I did this. Let's try to avoid collisions."

Vau opened his comlink, transmitting a false origin code to appear on the RDS system as Republic Intel. Ordo readied the bogus authority codes, slicing into the Intel system to generate a handover request from a genuine Intel officer who happened to be on a lunch break. It was just a matter of looking down a list of terminals grouped by the appropriate department, and finding those machines that were on standby. It would take hours to show up as an anomaly.

"RDS Custody Desk, please..." Vau had a rich, resonant, upper-class voice that he could polish or roughen at will. It oozed authority. He was hard to disbelieve. "Hello . . . yes, this is Republic Intelligence . . . We're requesting a prisoner transfer. We require a female human, Zan Zentis, initial J ... Would you like me to spell that? No? Very well. Apologies for the short notice, but it's to minimize the risk of a rescue attempt. We have reason to believe that her associates might attempt to extract her. Now, we can collect her, or you can transfer her to our secure unit, but we'd like this done immediately for the reasons I've given."

Vau stared ahead as if in a trance, listening. Ordo both dreaded these gambles and relished the adrenaline rush of taking them. If the RDS bought the story and opted to ship her over, then it would be a physical intervention. If they were lazy, and said to come and get her, it would be a tidy taxi job.

"Yes, I do have authorization ... stand by ... transmitting now."

They waited. It was a long thirty seconds.

"Thank you . . . yes, that would be kind. Do transfer her. May I have your transport identity, please, for the security gate?" Vau rolled his eyes, his voice unchanged. "Got that. Thank you."

Ordo kicked the speeder into life and shot off at top speed toward the RDS landing platform. It was secured but they could hang around and wait for the RDS transport to emerge.

Vau tapped the transponder code into the onboard sensors so that they could identify the right vessel. They were never marked. "Shab." He sighed laying a fearsome sawn-off Verpine slugthrower across his lap. "I hate it when they're conscientious. Why can't they be lazy di'kute like every other government department, and get us to do the work?"

Tay'haai, a few blocks away, sounded as if he was tightening all his speeder restraints. On the comlink, metal chinked and fabric rustled. "Can we synchronize holocharts, please?"

Ordo concentrated on the anxious chill in his gut and used it to keep him sharp, just as Skirata had shown him. It was almost the first lesson he'd ever taught Ordo and his brothers: to use their fear. It was their alarm system, he said. They had to heed it, and realize the adrenaline was getting them ready to run faster, fight harder, and notice only the things they needed to stay alive.

Ordo slowed the speeder and brought it to a standing hover at the end of the spur skylane leading to the main route. Government vehicles could bypass the automated nav system that controlled skylane traffic, just like taxis. They could take any route. But in broad daylight, they had limited options for intercepting another vessel without getting a prime-time slot on HNE.

"So where's the best place to take them out?" Vau asked flashing the sector skylane holochart onto the inside of the viewscreen like a HUD. "Got that, Wad'e?"

"I'm synced in. Thanks. If they take the direct route, I'll try to force a stop at the underpass between the spaceport and Core Plaza. That way we don't get picked up by surveillance sats."

CSF ran the sat system, which was simply a crime prevention tool, and all awkward things could be made to vanish if CSF was approached the right way. The archive was only stored for ten days anyway. Ordo checked the underpass layout. There were service bays to allow delivery repulsortrucks and maintenance vessels to pull in. That looked like the best option.

"Now, what if they don't take that route?" Ordo asked.

"Usual ploy," Tay'haai said. "Force 'em down the levels, the lower the better. But jam their comms first, before they know they're being hijacked. We don't want a full-scale fleet battle in front of the good citizens."

"This is why I prefer the lower levels," Vau said. "You can have a decent shoot-out and an armed misunderstanding down there, and nobody pokes their nose in. Very civilized."

Ordo watched the RDS entrance. After a few minutes, the gates parted and a nondescript white windowless speeder edged out, looking exactly like a million other service vessels cruising the skylanes at that moment, with no livery indicating prison duties. The sensor blipped; it recognized the transponder code. A red pulsing light appeared on the head-up holochart.

"Got it," Tay'haai said. "Watch my trace, please. Running parallel to you."

"Good luck, gentlemen." Vau seemed to love these operations. He came alive. He and Mird responded to the same stimuli: the chase. "Oya! Let's hunt."

Ordo kept a sensible five vessels' distance behind the prison transport. The pilot didn't seem to like crowded sky-lanes and diverted to a side route, probably wanting to spend as little time in transit as possible to minimize the risks. He looked as if he wasn't going to take the spaceport route.

"Okay, I'm looking for service bays." Vau followed the holochart, leaning forward a little and adjusting the display to a larger scale. "I'll call them as we come within a quarter klick of them." "Left," Ordo said.

The holochart traces shifted and Tay'haai pulled a block ahead of them in readiness. He was running on a chronocounter that would time his intercept run to cut across the prison speeder's path at precisely the right moment to slow it, stop it, or force it to divert. The idea was to avoid a crash. It didn't always work out that way.

"He's moving down to the repulsortruck lane," Ordo said. "Naughty. That's freight only."

"Rep Intel don't heed transit regs . . ."

"Wad'e, if he carries on that course, can you take him at the intersection with the Gimmut sewage tunnel?"

"At, not in? Please, Ordo?"

"At."

"Lots of service bays there," Vau said happily. "Droid drivers. Nice and quiet."

The Gimmut was just a huge enclosed tunnel that shunted sewage from millions of buildings into the main waste processing plant that was known to Mandalorians on Coruscant as Osik Ocean. Every species here had a similar name for it. The Gimmut betrayed no external signs of its unsavory traffic except for methane-consuming fungi that clustered around the gas vents and small cracks, but folks were still keen to avoid living within five klicks of it. It plied a lonely trade.

"I think it's now or never," Vau said. "Big service bay, under cover, half a klick."

"Got it," said Tay'haai. "Step on it, Ordo. I'm coming in from the right."

Ordo closed the gap. If the pilot didn't check his six now and wonder why a shiny black speeder was tailing him down here, he never would. Ordo hit the jamming device and made sure the guy never shared his concerns with his control room. It must have produced a failure signal in the cockpit; the prison speeder accelerated suddenly, streaking ahead. Ordo matched its speed. From then on, he was flying by instinct.

Jusik would have done this better. Ordo had to admit that.

The prison speeder veered left, with no exit in sight, as if it was slowing to try an evasive U-turn. Ordo nearly rammed its tail. Tay'haai's intercept speeder appeared out of nowhere and flashed across its nose, pulling up hard right and just above it to block it in. It lost control, and Ordo sideswiped it into the permacrete walls of the freight lane, more by accident than design. It could have lifted free, but he pinned it, and the two speeders screamed along the wall, locked in a shower of sparks, sending 'trucks swerving past them sounding their klaxons. When the service bay suddenly appeared on the left like an open mouth, Ordo forced the prison speeder left while Tay'haai blocked it from lifting. It skidded across the floor of the bay and came to rest against the far wall.

Vau was hanging out of the speeder before Ordo even landed, and jumped down to race across to the battered white vessel. He didn't stop to take names; he fired horizontally point-blank into the cab through the side viewscreen. Whether he was shooting to kill or to keep the pilot from getting out, Ordo had no time to check. He ran to the rear hatch of the vehicle and blew the hinges out with close-range blasterfire, pulled it open, and reached in to grab Jilka.

"Stay down, stay down!" he yelled. "Don't move." Vau kept firing. Ordo had to climb inside before he realized Jilka was strapped into a seat. He shot out the restraint anchors and hauled her bodily out of vessel, then bundled her into his speeder. Vau backed away from the prison vessel, still firing sporadic shots while Tay'haai covered the exit, and then jumped into the pilot's seat. Ordo shut the hatch behind him, hammering his fist on the bulkhead to signal Vau to bang out. The speeder rocketed out of the service bay at a sharp angle, into the traffic and away.

"Are you hurt?" Ordo asked. He took off his helmet and tried to stay upright while Vau drove like a Weequay after a heavy drinking session. "Did you hit your head?"

Jilka looked up at him. He hoped it was Jilka, anyway: if they'd snatched the wrong prisoner somehow, he didn't like the idea of what he might have to do next, but he could always dump her in the lower levels with a big credit chip. All prisoners wanted out.

"Are you going to kill me now?" she asked. Her voice was shaky. "Or just maim me a bit?"

"No, I'm Ordo."

Her face-sharp-featured fresh bruises, scared eyes-changed instantly. "Do you always pick up women this way?"

"No, I shot Besany."

"He's not very good with pickup lines," Vau chimed in from the front. "Actually, Etain shot her, Jilka. Ordo almost slotted her. Things were a little chaotic that day."