He helped Sull cuff and shackle her anyway, having calculated the damage she might do before they managed to convince her. Fi and Jusik sat watching her in the small cargo bay while Sull prepared for takeoff. It wasn't until the sky beyond the small viewport was densely black and speckled with white-hot stars that Fi felt relaxed. Actually, he felt exhausted. He definitely wasn't as fit as he'd been. He'd have to start a serious training regime again.

"You did great, Fi," Jusik said. "If I hadn't known what had happened to you, I'd have had a hard job spotting there was anything wrong."

"I can get by the way I am now." As soon as Fi heard himself say it, he knew he'd passed a watershed. "Any more improvement is a bonus."

"Good man." Jusik patted him on the back. "Let's see what our guest has to say for herself."

"That was fascinating, Bard'ika," Spar said removing his helmet. "Some ...punch."

Jusik was sixty kilos wringing wet, if that. He smiled to himself, miming a quick right hook. "I've got the weight and reach," he said. "Could have turned professional."

"How'd you do it?"

"Force stun."

"Yeah ... of course . . ." Spar still seemed wary of Jusik. "I thought you'd given up all that spooky stuff." "Not in an emergency."

Ruu's eyes were fully open, and the bravado had ebbed: she was scared now. She looked from face to face, then settled on Jusik.

"My jaw ought to hurt," she said. "But it doesn't. And I really don't know who you are. What do you want? I'm nobody worth kidnapping."

"Your father sent us to get you out, Ruus'ika."

"Father?" She squirmed to sit up. "Father?"

Fi braced for a stream of invective about abandonment, all kinds of osik that he wasn't going to let her say about Kal'buir. Instead she just blinked a few times.

"You mean Kal Skirata?" she said.

"You got another one?" Spar asked.

"Yes, Mama remarried."

Fi decided it was probably safe to untie her. The mention of her father had subdued her better than any whack on the head. "And that makes me your stepbrother, Ruu. My name's Fi."

"How kriffing heartwarming," Spar said exasperated. "There won't be a dry eye in the house."

"Dad came for me." Her face was pure stunned joy. "He really did."

"Well, we did because he's a bit busy at the moment." Fi savored the bizarre moment of epiphany; he had a sister, of sorts. And he had a wife, too, and a father, a legal one, and he had brothers. He was like any other man. The out-of-reach normal life that had tormented him was now fully his. It was wonderful, even if very few beings had a family as strife-prone, heavily armed, and bizarre as this. "But he never forgets his kids."

"I always knew he'd come back. I knew it. How did he find me?"

"Your brothers got in touch ... eventually." "Has he forgiven me?" "For what?"

"Never contacting him."

It was hard to know what to say. Fi glanced at Jusik, who gave him a look that said to leave it for later. Spar rolled his eyes and slipped into the cockpit to join Sull, probably driven back by the threat of a tidal wave of sentimentality.

"You're back now," Fi said. "And that's all he'll care about."

Chances were, Fi thought, that Kal 'buir was busy running for his life. They'd all had the message from Ordo: Buir now had a warrant on his head.

But Ruu didn't need to know that yet.

Coruscant underground emergency reservoir "Nearly there," Skirata said. "Nearly there." He loaded his belt pouch with ammo clips from Aay'han's armory and shoved an extra blaster in each boot. "Can't lose our nerve now."

Ordo had come to find Skirata hoping that his father would stay put, wait for the rest of the team to come to them, and then bang out in Aay'han. But he was Skirata, and sitting on his shebs wasn't how he did things.

"As soon as Jusik's back and Ruusaan's secure here, I suggest we grab Uthan and get it over with, Kal'buir."

"Omega's not due back for a week," Skirata said. "I can't leave without them."

"They might have to RV with us elsewhere."

"Son, I know they can hijack anything with an ion drive or a bantha hauling it, but I don't want to rely on that. The more stragglers you have, the more routes you have to secure."

"And assembling in one place can make us more vulnerable."

"On balance, it's still safer. Minimize time and distance spent separated. Regroup."

"Then I'll retrieve them. But all the intel I'm getting is of a big fleet buildup, and we can't delay."

"Actually, we could. We could have left anytime before. We can leave anytime now."

"Buir, from the shipyard end, you can't hide it. And Centax shipping movements are ten times what they've been before now. Something's going down, and soon."

"Isn't anyone asking where all this extra activity is going?"

"Nobody's checking in that direction, Kal'buir. Only us. I can't find any overlap-there's no comm traffic between Centax Two and GAR command, and nothing that indicates any tasking of the second wave of vessels."

It seemed staggering. But then nobody had spotted the Grand Army in preparation for ten years, and even if Kamino was cloistered and off the charts, Kuat was not. Ordo marveled at the fact that a vast war machine-a whole fleet, weapons, and equipment for millions of troops-had been manufactured and stored without anyone leaking information or wondering what Rothana or its parent company KDY was doing.

He'd thought that it was just because three million was a small army in galactic terms. And then he realized that it was actually because most beings weren't very good at putting pieces of a puzzle together and seeing the bigger picture. Palpatine could hide anything that way. He hid his secret in plain sight, mixed into the sheer mundane business of the galaxy.

"I've got to get back to HQ," Ordo said. "Kal'buir, please don't take risks, okay?"

It was a feeble thing to say to a mercenary, and Ordo knew it. "I'm going to retrieve Kad'ika and the ladies, and then we grab Uthan," Skirata said. "Can you find a way to recall Omega?"

"Have they said they're willing to desert?"

"Not in so many words. Sometimes you have to give folks a nudge to save themselves."

Skirata had learned nothing about giving others choices. He'd kicked straight back into father-knows-best mode, despite the fight with Darman; but that blind reflex had saved Ordo and his brothers, and it was impossible to condemn it. When it went right, it was salvation.

"Where are you going?" Ordo asked.

"As soon as Jusik's back, I'll go with him and spring Uthan."

"And you've got a plan."

"We will have, by the time we get there."

"You taught me planning was everything, Kal'buir."

"I also taught you that you have to seize opportunities."

Ordo held up an admonishing finger. "You will not put yourself at risk. Your luck's run out. Take a rest. Or you'll never live to see another grandchild."

Skirata paused. "You telling me something, son? Is Besany ...?"

"No. No, not at all." Ordo was taken aback to think Kal'buir might have believed he planned things so haphazardly. "I'm just increasingly worried by the risks you take."

"Big risks for big gains." Skirata went back to loading himself with weapons. Ordo could have sworn the adrenaline had taken ten years off him. It was fascinating to see what crushed him and what put him back on his feet again. "Don't worry, I've got too much to live for."

"I'd better report in to Zey," Ordo said "and give him the illusion that he commands me. Stay in contact, but don't take any risks on comms."

"Yes, son." Skirata grinned. "And I promise I won't stay out after midnight."

Ordo slipped through the deserted tunnels and automated pumping rooms that controlled the underwater lake's levels, then made his way back to HQ, reversing his security measures: change out of civilian clothing, then into overalls, then stop again to change into his armor and collect his speeder bike. An ARC captain in his showy scarlet pauldron and redtrimmed kama was conspicuous even on Coruscant, where wild variety was the wardrobe order of the day.

Or at least he thought he would still stand out from the crowd. Now there seemed to be a lot more clone troopers on the walkways, regular security patrols, red or blue markings on their white armor. He'd watched the numbers grow discreetly over the last few weeks.

The ones with blue markings were 501st Legion, just one more designation in a complex army that preferred numbers to names. He decided to seize the moment, and swooped onto a convenient landing platform to speak to them. He looked like any other ARC captain; they couldn't even tell he was a Null ARC by scanning him, unless he chose to present his real number, N-11, on his armor's electronic tally.

"Sergeant," he said, approaching one of them. "How long will you be on patrol here?"

"Until twenty hundred, Captain."

Ordo listened for the subtleties of the accent, and knew this man hadn't been trained on Kamino. There were overtones of Coruscanti accent that few would spot, but Ordo did. And he'd watched the 501st, and the other troopers in the red livery, the shock troopers, noting their level of precise discipline.

"Very good, Sergeant," Ordo said. "Carry on."

These weren't the economy-model clones from Centax 2. These had to be the direct Fett clones from the Coruscant facility that the Nulls hadn't yet located. It hadn't seemed as urgent a task as finding what had to be a huge production line on Centax 2.

The few Centax clones that had been detected-well, no wonder they didn't know what Kamino was like. Ordo had no doubt they'd been told Centax was Kamino, so that they didn't make any gaffes about their origin and expose the army-in-waiting. In a closed world, you had no reason or way to disbelieve what you were told.

They'd passed the test-most of the time.

Ordo landed the Aratech outside Area Barracks' main entrance in the row of dispatch speeder bikes and went in search of Zey, mainly to report to him now that Skirata was officially suspended. Maze passed him in the corridor, helmeted; that was unusual these days. It meant he was engrossed in a lot of comm traffic.

"How's Skirata?" Maze asked.

"I have no idea," Ordo said to his retreating back. "He's vanished, as the general is fully aware."

"Of course he has," said Maze, walking into the refreshers.

Ordo was working out what stunt he could stage to get Omega recalled when the alarm klaxon sounded. It stopped him in his tracks; he'd only ever heard it tested for routine maintenance, and he'd never really expected to hear it used for real.

It was the incoming attack alert. Air assault. Invasion.

Ordo paused to check the nearest building control panel, expecting to see a red flashing light indicating a short, and that the alarm was a false one.

The panel was operating normally. An incongruously serene droid voice drifted over the open comm system. "This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. Inbound enemy ships have been detected. Report to muster stations. Execute emergency procedures."

There were suddenly droids, civilian staff, and even the occasional trooper issuing from every doorway. The insistent two-tone noise was so deafening that the audio buffers in Ordo's helmet kicked in. Maze came running back down the corridor at full tilt, adjusting his armor.

"It's a whole stanging fleet," he snapped tapping his helmet to indicate he was patched into the tactical display. "Great timing."

Ordo agreed but he meant it, and for wholly different reasons. Opportunity, Kal'buir said: opportunities were also threats. It just depended on how you handled them. "You get Zey to the command bunker, and I'll start locking down the system."

An ARC trooper's role on the ground if Coruscant was compromised was protecting the command center and strategic targets if the enemy managed to land. If the enemy got a foothold then his task was sabotage, assassination, and eventually organizing the populace to wage total guerrilla war. Maze sprinted in search of Zey. Ordo decided that if he had to trash Zey's personal data to protect it, he'd take a fast download of it first.

"Sir!" A commando from Yayax Squad jogged up to him, still fastening his belt. He was one of Bralor's-Cov, if memory served. "I'm rounding up the new intake. They might as well learn on the job. Orders?"

Ordo didn't have enough intel yet to know where to concentrate his men, and that was Zey's role anyway. He had his own ideas in the meantime. He defaulted to the main contingency plan. "Get everyone as tooled up as you can -strip the armory if need be, and get as many vessels as possible in the air." The commandos weren't pilots, but they could fly well enough to shift a LAAT/i or any transports hanging around. "Then deploy to HNE headquarters. Keep them on air to transmit emergency public broadcasts-GAR artillery is supposed to take up position there. Give them support."

"Yes, sir. And Sergeant Vau's on his way-I just saw him."

Ordo did a quick mental check of who was where before he took another step. Fi, Jusik, Spar, and Sull were inbound; Mereel and A'den were still in the city. Jaing and Kom'rk were on their way back to Utapau, and Prudii-if he was on schedule-was causing a reactor on Sep-controlled Birix to go critical about now. Why hadn't anyone seen this fleet coming? It wasn't as if they hadn't been keeping tabs on General Grievous.

Someone knew he was coming, though.

It was all very convenient timing. Was this all part of some elaborate ambush by the Republic, luring the Seps to a relatively sparsely defended capital only to smash them with a hidden army? If that was Palpatine's plan all along, Ordo felt he owed him an apology, grudging as it was.

Clever boy, Chancellor. Maybe I misjudged you.

Ordo slipped into the nearest control room to activate its holochart projector, then keyed in the code to display the real-time battle chart being generated from the main GAR HQ three kilometers away. It was the first time he'd felt on the margins of events. He wasn't in control of this. He could only react, or take orders. This wasn't how he liked to fight.

ARC-170s were already airborne and streaming out to meet the Separatist starfighters that were sweeping ahead of the main fleet. Switching to the ground chart, he could see armored units being moved into skylanes and surrounding key buildings. Now the planetary defense shield had been activated-why so late, what took so long?-and hundreds of enemy vessels, including capital ships, had now been caught within it.

Like being locked up with a rancor. It's going to get messy.

The GAR's overstretch was now painfully visible. Too many assets were spread elsewhere in the galaxy. They'd have to recall units immediately.

But it was not his decision to make.

He was watching a fragment of the war, like any other soldier, and even a better idea of the bigger picture didn't help.

Boots and claws clattered down the corridor. Vau skidded into the office, Mird at his side.

"Palpatine knew this was coming," Ordo said. "Is he going to get that shiny new fleet here in time?"

"Maybe. Get your beskar on, Ord'ika." Vau placed his black helmet over his head with an almost ceremonial air. It transformed him instantly into a faceless warrior, age and species and gender indeterminate. He was an archetype of war. "We're going to end up fighting droids on the ground and not for the shabla Republic, either. And we need to grab Uthan. There's no better time. Perfect cover to move-everyone's too busy to worry about us."

"No time to pick up my armor," Ordo said. "I'll fight in this rig. It's served me well so far."

Mird frantic but silent, thrashed its tail and darted around occasionally letting a tightly suppressed whine of excitement escape. Ordo sprinted for the entrance, abandoning the dadita code to talk to Skirata on the comlink while he ran. Nobody was going to worry about hunting him now that the planet was being invaded.