Skirata cut in. "Son, no clone ever has to ask for what's his by right. I keep telling you that. You don't have to bargain for it. You sure you want in on this mission? You're not obliged."

Spar seemed taken aback. "No, I am obliged. And Sull. Him, too."

Sull nodded. "I'm in."

"I'll take all the aberrants I can get," Skirata said. "Good lads."

The Kaminoans were proud of their low rate of aberrance. They had a behavioral norm for clones, and any clone who didn't fit it-any clone who didn't have the sense or self-control to keep his opinions to himself-was classed as deviant, and reconditioned. They were full of euphemisms, the Kaminoans; it was the language of purity and cleansing. But it was destruction-of will, of hope, and even of life. Clones who survived reconditioning were a psychological mess, Skirata knew, but they met the Kaminoans' standards of not talking back, and that was all they wanted.

Skirata had never worked out if the aiwha-bait genuinely believed that clones who didn't toe the line were defective, or if they were just cynically callous, the handful of prison camp guards holding down millions simply by terror, wielding the fear of who would disappear next and never return, making terrible examples of a few to deter the rest.

The prison camp analogy bothered him more now in his quiet moments.

We had enough clone troops and arms on Kamino to revolt and wipe out every Kaminoan. Hard men. Best troops the galaxy's ever seen. And yet we stuck to the rules, pretty much. If I'd been half a man, I'd have organized them, led them, overthrown the regime. Force knows I had the years to do it, but I didn't.

Nobody did. Seventy-five out of the hundred Cuy'val Dar were Mandalorians, experienced special forces troops, more than enough to take down Kamino and turn it into a wasteland. From the inside? A stroll. Why didn't they rise up? Kamino swallowed them, and Skirata now hated himself for being swallowed. They got used to the prison rules a slice at a time, still Mando, still freethinking, but as prey to institutionalization as anyone. They slid into making a difference on the margins, looking after their boys, and never saw the bigger picture or the doors they could simply kick open.

Never again. Never.

"Okay," Skirata said. "I need a hand springing a couple of people. One's a scientist called Uthan. She might be your passport to a ripe old age. The other's my daughter, who's banged up in a POW camp for getting caught in Sep colors."

"Your real daughter?" Fi asked.

"What does that make you, my unreal son? My biological daughter, yes."

Fi didn't ask awkward questions, but Skirata could see them forming in his eyes already. "I go where sent, Kal'buir."

They sat down to resume the sabacc game in hushed tones so that they didn't wake Kad. Skirata had never been much of a player, more a drinking observer at the table, and Fi seemed much more interested in talking to Besany. He hadn't seen her-or at least he couldn't recall seeing her-since he'd been in various stages of coma, and now that he was back on Coruscant, he kept patting her hand as if he really wanted to give her a big hug but was afraid to. Skirata found it unbearably touching. He hadn't stopped thanking her since the day he landed.

"You saved my life," Fi told her. "You saved me."

Besany helped him play his hand. Skirata hadn't realized that she was pretty sharp at cards. "Fi, you were just too good to throw away," she said at last, eliciting a big grin. "I believe in never wasting a good man."

The holoplans of the detention center on Pols Anaxes were projected onto the wall while they chatted and speculated on the quickest way in and out. The best options were always those that required no shooting and heroics, just a cool head. And Enacca wasn't around to sweep up the transport situation-it now fell to Tay'haai. They were still debating the merits of bogus ID-slipping into predictable methods of entry made them vulnerable-versus infiltration via the drainage system when Jaing arrived with a guest.

Sull looked up. "Well, I never. You again."

The woman was short, graying, and swamped by her pilot's overalls. She looked like Skirata felt: wrung out and despairing of the galaxy, but still ready to give it a kick where it hurt most. She met his gaze. He saw a kindred spirit in her eyes that he could do business with.

"Sull, you bad boy," she said, grabbing the ARC in a playful headlock. "I bust my butt getting you out of the Republic's clutches, and you come straight back. Did they get you from the dumb box of clones, or what?"

Sull actually laughed, submitting to the mock attack. That told Skirata a lot.

"This is Ny Vollen," Jaing said. "One of A'den's buddies. And when she's not helping us with removals, she flies freight. Ny, this is Kal Skirata. My father. Sergeant Skirata."

"Us short folk got to stick together." She studied Skirata unself-consciously and held out her hand for shaking. "Want to look at my schedule? I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Is it worth seeing?" Skirata asked feeling unaccountably bashful.

"It'll hold your interest, Mando boy. Kuat's nice this time of year." Ny held out her datapad. "Can't seem to stay away from the place."

"I was born on Kuat." Skirata was no longer in control of this conversation, and not even of his own mouth. Why did I ever volunteer that information? Ny Vollen unsettled him. "My, you do visit the old place a lot."

Skirata didn't have Ordo's ability to do a quick visual scan of a document and analyze it immediately, but he knew a lot of components in transit when he saw them. It was enough for thousands of vessels.

"Shipyards are extra-busy, then," he said.

"Working-up busy." Ny seemed to be testing him. She probably had a good idea that he wasn't exactly the Chancellor's trusted adviser on procurement issues. "This is all replacement parts for battleships, not small stuff, so they're either delivering a lot of combat-ready hulls or anticipating a big need for replacement parts all at once."

"You ever worked in shipbuilding?"

"No, but I know how to hang around in cantinas waiting for my cargo, listening to folks who do."

"And?"

"Lots of new vessels and transports rolling out now-hundreds a week-and some big panic to be ready in a few weeks' time."

Skirata looked at Jaing for confirmation. The Null had access to the KDY system. He nodded.

"I'm grateful," Skirata said. He pulled a ten-thousand-credit chip from his belt and put it on the table beside her. Placing it in her hand seemed an act of charity, like giving a child spending money. Ny looked at the chip, then tossed it back in his lap.

"I've been getting treble pay and on-time bonuses, thanks. I'm just trading information. It's tax-free."

"So what do you want from us, Ny?"

"A'den's got that sorted. My old man's ship was lost a couple of years ago, and I know he isn't going to be alive, but I want to know the how and the where. That's all."

That shut Skirata up. "Sorry to hear that."

"I'll let you know when I find out more, okay?"

"We're grateful, Ny, we really are."

"And you better hang on to those creds, Mando boy. You look in need of it."

"I'm a trillionaire," Skirata said deadpan.

"If you're worth that much, you can afford some better armor. Look at the state of you. All scrapes."

"We Mando boys like to show we've been in action. Anyway, this is top-grade beskar-full density, two percent ciridium, no fancy lamination or carbon-alloy."

"Does all that mean it's heavy?"

"Yeah. Very heavy. Heavy is best."

"Explains why you're so short, then."

He watched her go, dumbfounded.

Jaing gave him a prod in the shoulder. "I think she likes you."

"I think she's just trying to joke her way out of being in limbo about her husband," Skirata said and found himself hoping Jaing was right, then scolding himself because he didn't have time for that foolishness. "Okay, date set. We bang out on . . ." He calculated. "One thousand and ninety days ABG."

"Copy that," Sull said mimicking the regular troopers. He had a sense of humor after all. He was going to need it.

Sep-controlled area near Kachirho, Kashyyyk, one month later, 1,070 days after Geonosis "You sure you saw Grievous leave?"

Scorch aimed an anti-armor round at the wall of battle droids, ducking as dagger-like chunks of tree and fizzing metal shrapnel hammered on his armor. "You saw, Fixer, so what else do you think that was?"

"Why, though? Is it a retreat?"

Blasterfire poured down on them from the Trandoshan positions. Every time Scorch raised his head he was looking at another wave of Trandos and battle droids. "Does this look like a retreat to you?"

Scorch couldn't have given a mott's hairy backside about the bigger picture at that moment. It was the first time he thought they might have been in real danger of getting overrun and slaughtered. The Sep presence was putting up a bigger fight than he'd expected.

"Incoming!" Boss smacked his head down again, and his field of vision was full of the crawling debris on the floor. Scorch could hear the drives of a ship. When he knelt up to look again, a supply vessel was dropping down onto the landing pad in the clearing. Trandos rushed to unload it; Sev popped up from the cover of a pile of SB droids and began hosing the pad with blasterfire.

"Can you put an anti-armor round or two in there, Boss?"

"Just getting the range now ..."

Boss fired once, twice, three times. It was hard to see how accurate his shot was, just a split-second wake of vapor and turbulent hot air, and then everything was one vast sheet of burning gold with a white-hot heart. The explosion shook the ground under Scorch's knees. The blinding light gave way instantly to roiling black smoke, and as the wind parted it Scorch saw nothing left on the pad except burning, twisted wreckage.

"I think he was hauling detonite," Sev said. "I wish they all blew like that."

"We've got to stop them moving around this kriffing forest so easily." Boss looked around waiting for the next wave of droids, then crouched down in the lee of the barricade, getting his breath. "Okay, the Wookiees can keep picking 'em off, but we need a bigger hydrospanner to sling in their works or this is going to be a running battle for the next five years." He clicked his helmet comlink. "General, can we shortcut this?"

Etain took a few seconds to respond. Scorch could hear the blasterfire in the background, and the roars and barks of furious Wookiees. "How hard do you want that shortcut to be?"

"We'll take a ten, ma'am. We're feeling lucky."

"Enacca says if you can take the bridge at Kachirho, or sever it, you'll cut off their supply line completely." Etain paused as if listening to a running commentary. "It'll cut ours off, too, but Wookiees can rebuild smaller bridges around it in days. Seps can't."

"I like the odds," Boss said. "Let's go, Delta."

Etain's voice was breaking up on the link. "And we've got Geonosians swarming everywhere here-you'll need to be way up in the trees to take Kachirho."

"Bugs!" Sev said cheerfully. "Save a few for me, ma'am. I love their pretty wings, especially when I shoot them off."

Boss reoriented their HUD positioning, and the squad worked its way through the forest, too pumped on adrenaline to worry about what predators might be waiting. Then a hairy arm waved from overhanging branches: Wookiees. They were showing them a route higher up into the trees, a fast track to Kachirho. Scorch shot a rappel line into the branches and winched himself up, then ran up a section of tree trunk that made him feel Jawa-sized to emerge in a tree-house village on a huge mat of branches and vines. It took him a second to spot the Wookiees; he saw the Trandos first. The Wookiees were emptying bowcasters at them with apparently slow, leisurely, but lethal accuracy, seeming oblivious to the incoming Trando fire.

Then they charged.

Wookiees really did dismember enemies. Ripping off arms wasn't a cantina joke after all.

Scorch paused for a moment, almost disbelieving, as a Wookiee patriarch nearly three meters tall grabbed a Trando one-handed and tore him limb from limb, then simply plucked a Geonosian from the air and dismantled it like a mechanical toy he'd grown bored with. Even Sev froze.

"Uh," he said. "Uh . . ."

The Wookiees were defending their homes, and that made them doubly lethal. They were berserk with rage. Scorch wasn't about to offer them tips on house clearance techniques. The sheer shocking brutality had an instant impact on the will of the Seps to fight. Trandos ran, apparently forgetting they could keep their nerve and fire into the Wookiee ranks, some just diving off the tree platforms to an uncertain death beneath, some just running blindly. One or two did hold the line and keep firing, but dropping big, enraged attackers that were maybe three times a Trando's weight took more stopping power, and the Trandos didn't have it. The Sep defense fragmented. Wookiees poured out of the higher branches, and Delta fell in with them, joining a fast-moving torrent of brown fur and granite-hard muscle. Scorch collided with one, just a glancing blow, and even in his Katarn armor he felt its sheer power and mass. Wookiees were sentient and smart, yes, but the primal warrior in them took little unleashing.

The Seps were falling back.

Sev, being Sev, managed to run through the Wookiees, stopping every few meters to pick off Geonosians. He'd said he was going for 4,982 kills, one for every commando lost at Geonosis, and he wasn't joking. He never was. He never said "five thousand," either, and even Skirata rounded up the figure. No, Sev was exact about it. War was personal for him.

Scorch kept an eye on him. Stone-cold, my shebs.

It was the spider droid that told them they were getting near the bridge. It scuttled down a walkway, cannon aimed, but it wasn't best suited for a close-quarters battle like this one. Scorch leapt on its back and fired a whole clip into it with his DC-17's muzzle rammed into the weak point of a weld. The Wookiees were roaring now, gesturing below, and the big male-the really big one-started ripping apart the branches to get a clear line of sight with the target.

"There's the bridge," Fixer called. "Check your HUDs, people."

Metal bridges were a lot easier to pick out with sensors than living plant material against a background of the same. Only the density variation gave its position away. Scorch didn't need to see it.

"Can I borrow this, ma'am?" He wrestled a grenade launcher from a female Wookiee near him. She obviously wasn't trying too hard to hang on to it. "Won't be long."

The big male Wookiee had opened up a window for Scorch. The bridge ten meters beneath was now a sitting target, big and juicy, and laden with moving Sep transports. Scorch decided to play it safe and aim for the span itself, not the narrow living cables that supported it, and just fired round after round blowing apart the close-woven roots and branches until there was more daylight than bridge. The structure could no longer hold either its own weight or the traffic on it. The span creaked and tore into two dangling sections, sending bodies, repulsors, and small transports crashing into the green abyss beneath.

Kachirho was no longer open for Sep traffic. The Wookiees roared in triumph, shaking their fists and weapons at the canopy above.

"Scorch," said Etain's voice in his helmet. "Enacca says you're doing okay for a short, pink, hairless creature."

It was impossible to get a big picture of any battle, and even working out if you'd won or not was, Vau said, something the historians had to decide many years later. But Scorch felt the destruction of the bridge was a turning point, and Delta Squad were still alive, so whatever history decided in the end-he'd won.

They'd won. This time, anyway.

Chapter 13.

I just thought you needed to know, Chancellor. I understand how strategically important the Kamino clone facility is to the Republic's survival, and as a patriot, I thought it was my duty to hand over this material, which is clearly from that source. It's limited, and it may be of no importance, but these Mandalorians acquired it, and I doubt they came by it by honest scientific means. I have my reputation for integrity to consider, too. I would not like the tainted origin of this data to compromise any nomination for the Republic Science Accolade.

-Last-known message sent by Dr. Reye Nenilin from his office before his disappearance, contacting Chancellor Palpatine to hand over data given to him by a Mandalorian known only as Falin Lower levels, Coruscant, 1,080 days ABC Skirata should have known that something had gone badly wrong when he arrived at the Kragget.

"Hi, handsome," Soronna said, balancing plates in both hands. "You haven't seen Laseema, have you? She never showed for her shift."

His stomach filled with ice. Laseema was punctual to a fault; she had Kad to look after, and she ran that schedule better than the GAR.

"I'll go check," he said, striding for the kitchen exit.

"I tried the apartment," Soronna called after him. "No answer."

Skirata broke into a fast walk and then sprinted through the connecting alley; sixty or not, he could cover a hundred meters almost as fast as one of his young commandos when adrenaline was fueling him. He got to the apartment doors, drew his blaster, and readied his knife. When he keyed the doors open, the apartment was more than deserted. It looked as if it had been stripped.

Skirata wasn't a panicking man, but he was now minus both Laseema and his grandson. He ran from room to room, somehow managing to remember clearance procedure in case someone from his past had come back to settle a grudge, close to vomiting with fear for his family. The apartment was definitely empty. Everything personal had been stripped from it. There were no clothes, none of Jusik's paraphernalia, no toys, no crib, nothing. He didn't own much himself, but all that was gone, too-a holdall with a few changes of clothes, his bantha-hide jacket, and some of his weapons, including two of his very expensive custom Verpine sniper rifles.