He would have thought of plain burglary if he hadn't known how well he'd concealed this place, and if Laseema and Kad hadn't been missing, too.

And he'd received no messages. All this had happened in the time it had taken him to leave Arca Barracks, get the shoroni sapphires converted to cash credits, and visit the bank-two hours, tops. If it had been earlier, someone would have commed him.

"Shab," he spat. "Shab, shab, shab."

He secured the place again, planning to come back to sweep for evidence. But first he had to check where everyone was, and his natural reaction, honed by decades of running for his life or chasing someone with the intent of ending theirs, was to assume no comlinks were now secure. He slipped out the emergency exit and onto the roof, where his green speeder-now kitted out as a taxi to bypass the automated skylane controls-was parked under cover. The Aratech speeder bike was too exposed if anyone was coming after him, heavy beskar armor or not. He lifted clear to head for the Aay'han RV point. If the osik really hit the fan, and all comms were down, that was the emergency plan.

He got as far as the next intersection when he heard a police klaxon. A CSF patrol vessel dipped in front of him, flashing at him to pull over to the nearest landing platform. CSF were as good as family; he had no reason not to comply.

He set down the speeder, and the patrol vessel settled in front. The lower levels weren't somewhere you waited on a platform for a taxi, not if you valued your life, so it was deserted. Skirata had his knife and blaster ready just in case.

But it was Jailer Obrim who jumped down from the crew bay. Even when the man's face was obscured by a uniform helmet, Skirata recognized his build and his walk.

He gestured at Skirata to open the side viewplate, flipping up his visor.

"They're safe," Obrim said not giving Skirata a chance to draw breath. He didn't even have to explain who he meant. "But you're a dead man. Follow me. No comms, okay?"

Well, it was wasn't the first time Skirata had been dead. The wild fear for Laseema and Kad was replaced instantly by a dull ache in his guts that told him he'd pushed his luck too far yet again.

And it was going relatively well. It really was.

Whatever he'd done, his priority was to get his boys out. If he died doing it, that was fine by him.

And he had nine million credits on him, cash creds at that. It was just as well that Obrim was the kind of cop who knew what his real priorities were, and would never search him.

The patrol vessel slipped into a grimy alley, gun turrets almost shaving the walls, and came to rest on a rubble-strewn patch of permacrete where a building had been demolished. Two borrats, one a buck with impressive tusks, the other a smaller doe, lifted their heads from a small, anonymous carcass and watched the proceedings as still as statues, noses twitching. Skirata got out of the speeder, keeping one eye on them, and swung himself up into the open crew bay of the patrol ship.

"Okay," he said. "I've blown it, haven't I?"

Obrim took off his helmet. "Yes, my friend."

He held out his datapad for Skirata to read. It was a warrant for Skirata's arrest, dead or alive. It was only the authorization seal that made him more concerned than usual.

"If I count the fact that this is from the Chancellor, then it's a first for me," Skirata said. "But I've still got death warrants out on me on five or six planets. Maybe seven. I forget."

"I know," Obrim said. "I've intercepted this at the CSF end and I can only sit on it for a little longer before I have to distribute it, but other agencies have it, and you have to get out, Kal. All my boys will somehow draw a complete and inexplicable blank in finding you, you know that. But I can't speak for the other enforcement agencies."

"Any special reason I've ticked off Palpatine?"

"My source says some scientist called Nenilin turned in some Kaminoan cloning data."

Nenilin would be doing some research into how to breathe without a windpipe, but that would have to wait. And Skirata could be a patient man. "How did the Chancellor connect it to me? Only GAR spec ops knew about Ko Sai."

"You'd know better than me who's your weak link there."

"Yeah. Now, where's my grandson, and Laseema?"

"I took them and cleared out the apartment, just in case, because I know the kid's a bit special. Let me know where and when you want them moved and I'll do it."

"I owe you, Jailer."

"No, I'm your friend. You'd do the same for me."

Yes, Skirata knew that he would. The two men looked at each other in silence, and Skirata knew this was the end of the line for them.

"I don't think I'm going to see you for a long while, Kal," Obrim said. "But whatever I can do, I'll do it."

Skirata grabbed his hand. "You're a hero and a gentleman, Jailer. If things go bad for you here, ever, there's a safe haven for you and the family. It's-"

"Don't tell me where. You know why."

Skirata scribbled a code on the flimsi pad on his forearm plate. "Okay, but take this. It's a go-between. If you ever need anything, anything at all, comm this code and they'll find me."

Skirata hated good-byes. He embraced Obrim in silence, and then walked back to the speeder without a backward glance. Even when he lifted off, he didn't look down.

Now he was back where he'd been so many times in his life: in a stolen vessel, with just the armor he stood up in and enough weapons to make a stand. But he had nine million creds on him, too, and he was far from finished.

So comms might be compromised. He wasn't going to lead anyone to Aay'han by accident. He fell back on the kind of technology that had always left the aruetiise flat-footed, and disappeared into an ancient storm-water conduit that had been built and abandoned long before Coruscant had climate management. He switched to an unencrypted GAR channel in his helmet comm, and simply transmitted static.

It was a special kind of static, of course; long and short bursts, carefully interspersed in sequences. To a casual listener, it was just random noise and interference, but to a Mandalorian trained in an ancient message code called dadita, it spelled out words. It could even transmit code.

There weren't that many in the GAR with even that basic knowledge; only the Nulls, the commandos, and the last of the Cuy'val Dar.

Skirata kept transmitting a coded message, waiting for someone to sift it from the white noise.

Republic Detention Center, Pols Anaxes "It's handy being a clone," Fi said. "Your uniform always fits."

"I haven't worn this meat-can for years." Spar adjusted his belly plate again. "I'd forgotten about all the interesting places it pinches."

The three clones-Spar, Sull, and Fi-marched into RDC PolAx, as it was called in GAR signals, looking exactly like every other trooper on duty at the prisoner-of-war camp. Jusik played detainee. Fi made sure he held on to Jusik as if keeping a firm grip on him, to disguise the fact that his gait wasn't the paragon of military precision that it had once been.

The camp was chaotic. Fi had expected something grim and desperate, but it was just crowded. There were gun turrets on the walls that obviously meant business, but once they passed through the security gate with their counterfeit armor tallies and prisoner transfer authorizations, they found themselves in something that resembled a migrants' transit camp, a ragbag of species, uniforms, and lots of prisoners waiting in lines for one thing or another.

"Why take prisoners?" Spar asked. "Why not just shoot them?"

Jusik could hear the conversation going on inside the helmets because he had a concealed comlink bead deep in his ear, but he couldn't reply. He just cleared his throat meaningfully.

"I mean it," Spar said. "They tie up resources. What use are they? Let them go, or slot them."

"I think you must have missed the lecture on rules of engagement and lawful orders," Fi said. "It was probably after you went AWOL."

Jusik stifled a grin. Fi saw his lips twitch.

"You're back," he said barely audible.

Fi was still more conscious of what he couldn't do than what he could but his verbal skills were definitely on the mend. If he had to choose, he thought, he would trade marksmanship for fluent speech.

Jusik looked a lot older than he'd been at the start of the healing process eighteen months ago. Fi decided he'd rely on his own recovery efforts from now on. The effect on his brother-he saw Jusik as true kin now-was visible. It was draining the life out of him.

"Okay, Jedi," Sull said. "Here comes the nice camp commander. Look sullen and recalcitrant."

"Call me Jedi again," Jusik said quietly, "and I'll show you my Force kick in the backside."

"How very serene," Sull said.

Fi couldn't let it pass unchallenged. "Sull, why don't you shut it?"

"Just getting Bardan in character . . . mean, moody Sep rabble."

The camp commander was a lieutenant from the 55th Mechanized Brigade, which struck Fi as a waste of skills until he realized how stiffly the man was walking. He'd clearly been wounded. Fi fought down the urge to ask him what had happened and how he'd recovered. He was proof of a soldiering life after injury. There was hope.

"Permission to interview one of your detainees, sir," Sull said shoving a GAR-issue datapad at him.

The lieutenant looked at the 'pad and nodded. "This is for ID purposes, is it?"

"Yes, sir." Sull was actually pretty good at sounding like an ordinary trooper, but then ARCs were trained to be resourceful. "This prisoner claims he can identify a female human we're looking for. She might be using the alias Ruusaan Skirata. If it's the right woman, this is our authorization to transfer her to Coruscant for questioning."

"Oh, her," said the lieutenant wearily. "Very aggressive female, detained on Khemerion. She's in confinement. Not for her own safety-for the rest of the prisoners' welfare."

"Thanks for the heads-up, sir. We'll exercise caution."

"Hut Eight Bravo," the lieutenant said gesturing to his left. "Show your ID to the droid."

Fi had heard no mention of Skirata's daughter having the slightest interest in her father's culture. Maybe his sons didn't know. Fi shared Ordo's mistrust of their motives; if they found out their dad was sitting on a trillion-credit fortune that was growing rapidly just by being in the bank, they'd probably want to readopt him. Fi hoped his daughter was more grateful for the effort her father had gone to. If she wasn't, he'd dump her out the nearest air lock.

"I think poor old Skirata was under the impression that his little girl was banged up in some disease-ridden death camp," Spar said. "This actually looks quite civilized. Look at that smashball court-they've got better sports facilities than we ever had."

"This used to belong to the old naval training branch," Jusik said.

"Stay in character, Jedi..."

The guard droid whirred into their path at the entrance to Hut Eight Bravo to check codes and authorizations, then led them down a long passage flanked by cells. The place looked like a mobile medcenter.

"Stay there," the droid said placing a manipulator arm on the door. "I must check that the prisoner is secure first."

Fi switched to helmet-only audio. "Ready, Bard'ika? Remember, when you recognize her-she's betrayed your people, you want to rip her head off, she stole your lunch creds, and so on."

"Uh-huh."

"Then she protests she's never seen you before in her life, and we haul her away." Spar's shoulders looked braced. "By the time they work out she never reached the Coruscant facility, she'll be light-years away. And if she thinks she really recognizes you-we'll just wing it."

Fi was still worried. "We can't keep using the trooper armor as a cover. Someone's going to work out it's an inside job."

"Fi, do you know how much white plastoid's been scavenged from battlefields in the last few years?" Sull asked. "We ended up fighting Seps who had more armor than we did. That's why we have to keep changing the comlink and data protocols."

A stream of abuse interrupted them, a woman's voice; the droid reversed out of the cell at high speed.

"You may speak to the prisoner while I observe," it said. "Exercise caution."

It wasn't joking.

Ruu Skirata-no armor, just prison fatigues-was pacing the cell, or as much of it as she could in the tiny space available to her. A restraining bulkhead a sheet of durasteel mesh that could be moved back and forth to pin the prisoner, had cornered her. It reminded Fi of the kind of cage veterinarians used to subdue an animal so they could administer a hypospray without getting ripped to shreds. It created a small open space inside the cell door. Fi hauled Jusik into it to confront Ruu.

Osik, she was so much like Kal 'buir that it was scary. It wasn't just the piercing pale blue stare and the prominent cheekbones that told Fi this was the genuine fruit of his adopted father's loins; it was the look of a rabid schutta about to run up his leg and sink its teeth in his throat. "Is this the woman?" Fi said.

He had to hand it to Bard'ika. The guy could act. Jusik fixed Ruu with a look that changed from scrutiny to dawning realization to utter hatred.

"Traitor..." His voice was a low rumble. It rose to a convincing crescendo. "Traitor! You got us killed! And now I'm going to kill you!"

Fi grabbed him in a restraining hold equally convincing.

"Who the stang are you?" Ruu demanded. Fi hoped the droid couldn't analyze human biosigns well enough to tell that the woman was genuinely taken aback. Her angry-schutta expression gave way to blank bemusement for a moment. "I've never seen you before, because if I had I'd have punched your face in."

"Liar! Traitor!"

Fi jerked Jusik back by the neck. "You're being transferred to Coruscant, Skirata," he said to Ruu. "Come quietly, and we won't need to use force."

"Look, chum, I'm a prisoner of war and I've got rights. I demand legal representation. You can't just take me without due process."

Spar reached past Fi to flash the datapad at her. "Here's your due process. Personally, I'd rather use force, so carry on as you are, ma'am, and give me a good excuse to smack you one."

It was now or never. "Guard, lift the bulkhead" Sull said.

Schutta was an even better description than Fi had imagined. She fought like a maniac, and Sull and Spar had a job on their hands restraining her without breaking anything. As they hauled her down the corridor, she was spitting abuse that made Kal'buir's cussing sound like a Jedi Master's learned discourse.

There was a crowd of inmates gathering outside now. Fi could see them clustering around the door, and his fear was that this would spark a riot. It was supposed to be a low-key extraction. As things were panning out, it was turning into a circus, and that wasn't good.

"You can't do this to me, you carbon-flush," Ruu bellowed. "I know what happens on Coruscant to-"

Spar tightened his grip on her collar and got a good kick in the ankle, which probably still hurt even in armor. It was a weak point. He diverted to his internal audio link. "We really need to shut her up ..."

Jusik coughed and pressed Fi's arm. Leave it to me.

"Spar, leave her to Bard'ika," Fi said loosening his grip.

Fi had no idea what was coming next, but he trusted Jusik to pull off something timely. Jusik pulled free from Fi, yelled "Scumbag!" and threw a punch. Fi could have sworn it didn't land-there was no sickening crack of bone, no connecting recoil - but Ruu Skirata slumped to the ground unconscious, and Spar and Sull scooped her up between them with an audible sigh of irritation. Fi seized Jusik and bundled him toward the main gates.

The crowd of inmates were making restless noises, milling around. Droid guards moved in with a couple of clone troopers to break it up.

"They don't know how to run a prison," Sull said. They were nearly out now. Fi could see the comm masts of the GAR high-speed gunship they'd borrowed for the occasion. There was a lot to be said for a military bureaucracy that kept poor tabs on its assets. "Crowd control. You can't allow inmates out to mass like that. You can't-"

"If they were good at it," Spar interrupted, "we'd have had to fight our way in and out. Be grateful."

The security gates closed behind them. Fi maintained a grip on Jusik until they were out of range of the detention center; Ruu was already coming out of her daze.

"I'm going to kill you ...," she mumbled.

"No you're not," Fi said. "Because we're the good guys."