The Sull.u.s.tan sensor technician climbed out of the shuttle c.o.c.kpit. "Done," he said, and stared at the cl.u.s.ter of Jedi. It was hard to read expressions on Sull.u.s.tan faces, but his meaning was clear. "Don't put me out of work, will you?"

Benb. His security badge said Benb. Pellaeon tried for an inspirational tone. He needed these workers, and they certainly hadn't signed up for combat duties. "I'll see you get a bonus," he said. Even if I have to pay it myself. "I consider your commitment a personal favor."

It worked every time. He also meant it. Benb shrugged. "Better start on the concussion missile targeting, then ..."

Rex's sergeant and the six new troopers piled into the shuttle, followed by the Jedi. Altis was a lot more agile than his white hair suggested. He leapt up into the crew bay.

I hope I'm still that active when I'm his age. I don't think retirement's ever going to suit me, either.

"Come on, Ahsoka." Callista ushered the Togruta ahead of her. "Let's you and me have a girl-to-girl chat."

Rex leaned out of the hatch again. "Look out for General Skywalker, won't you? He's tracking my secure link."

The hatch closed. Pellaeon opened his comlink to the bridge.

"Take us into shuttle range of JanFathal, Number One. Maintain stealth procedures as long as you can."

A silent ship on minimal power was still going to be spotted sooner or later. But the Seps weren't expecting any company, and one thing he'd learned about them in the last few months was that they let confidence get out of hand.

Chances were that they wouldn't see Leveler at their backs until it was too late.

Chapter Six.

Make the most of this opportunity. The Republic changes its encryption irregularly, so there's no way of knowing when the transmissions will be unintelligible to us again. I want to know everything there is to know about the ship's new capabilities- and if you can seize the ship, so much the better.

Pacifying JanFathal can wait a little longer.

-Trade Federation commander, to CIS captain standing off Fath, after breaking current Republic Fleet codes REPLENISHMENT SHUTTLE, INBOUND TO ATHAR.

Rex hung on to the cargo restraints in the shuttle's bay and told himself that at least they weren't trying to take a heavily defended mesa from the ground up this time.

This was only half as insane.

"You sure she's still alive?" he said.

Altis had his eyes closed as if he was dozing, as did Callista and Geith. Ahsoka seemed to be keeping a wary eye on them, as if she was looking for something. Rex, who'd never given much thought to the fact that there might be differences of belief within the Jedi ranks, found himself fascinated and wanting an explanation, but it definitely didn't seem like a good idea.

Coric kept glancing over his shoulder from the pilot's seat at the motley squad as they waited for a Sep ship a few klicks away to disgorge its landing craft.

"Yes, alive, and she's still in Athar," Altis said at last, eyes still shut.

Coric switched to the squad's internal helmet comm circuit. "Captain, are you going to sort out Ahsoka before we land? Re-mind her that she needs to keep her eyes on the Seps, not Altis. We need to be firing on all Jedi."

Rex wondered if Skywalker would have taken her to one side for a little pep talk, but he hadn't a clue what to say-he didn't know much about the attachment argument, but he knew enough to know it was a minefield to skirt around. The ARC troopers seemed to have no problem giving the Jedi a piece of their minds; Rex preferred to do things more diplomatically. He couldn't just bark orders, not when they weren't in life-or-death situations, anyway.

"Ahsoka," he said. Mustn't call her little'un in front of the others. "You okay?"

She seemed to take the hint, and looked toward him. "Fine, Rex."

"Just checking." He nodded at Altis. "If I might usurp your status here, sir."

"No, Captain, this is your show." Altis nodded back, extending his hand in a polite after-you gesture. "Remember, I'm not a soldier. I just help them out when they're busy."

"We 're sorry if we've put you in an awkward position, Captain," Callista said kindly. She struck Rex as sensible, a greatly underrated quality. While she spoke, she tinkered with her corn-link. "Jedi politics. We're not like other Jedi, as you might have noticed. Some of the things we practice are what most Jedi have been warned to shun as the path to the dark side. We tend to keep ourselves to ourselves, so we can be a little distracting when we show up."

Ah, this isn't going to end well. . .

"Cognitive dissonance," said Altis, eyes closed again.

"Is it contagious?" Ince asked. "I've not had my shots."

"And we allow a Master to have as many Padawans as he or she feels is appropriate," Callista went on, visibly suppressing a grin. "Not just one."

"Sounds expensive," Rex said, deadpan. A joke defused a situation, usually. "But tax deductible."

Altis chuckled. "I'm learning a great deal from you, young man."

Ahsoka drew herself up, lips fixed in a thin line, and turned to Rex. He felt instantly guilty. "Try to imagine what you would feel if you went into battle and found n.o.body following the operating procedures or proper drill you were taught from child-hood," she said. "You'd be curious, at the very least. Yes?"

It was all too weird for Rex. Time to call a halt. He knew what the problem was, but there was nothing he could do to solve it; all he could do was suspend it for the duration of the mission.

"Okay," he said. "I know you can all set aside your ideological differences to get the job done. Coric, how are we doing?"

"I'm picking up movement on the pa.s.sive sensors, sir. Stand by."

There was a communal click as all the clones switched to their private circuit at the same time.

"Are they always like that, sir?" Boro asked.

Ross sighed. "In training, they always told us the Jedi were sorted."

"Skywalker's fine," Rex said. Poor lads: straight out of Kamino, no contact with any command yet except him and the Awkward Squad here. If anyone was getting hit by the shrapnel from expectations colliding with reality, it was them. "I think these other guys are fine, too. And Ahsoka's still a kid, so don't worry. She's coped before."

Vere checked the charge on his DC-15. "Right you are, sir."

Coric just cleared his throat meaningfully. Rex took the comments less as criticism than the healthy griping of the fighting man, one of those rituals of bonding. It was when they weren't griping that he was worried.

n.o.body outside their ranks realized that they griped at all, of course. The Kaminoans were unforgiving of aberrance. A clone knew how to keep his mouth shut outside his own immediate circle.

"Okay, people, here we go," Coric said.

The shuttle accelerated. Without viewports, Rex couldn't tell where they were, and there was no real sensation of speed or change of direction. All he had was Coric's point-of-view icon displayed in his own HUD, and that gave him a very restricted view of the battles.p.a.ce in front of him.

The crew bay fell silent. All he could hear was the clicking of jaws and steady breathing on his comm circuit. The POV icons in his HUD showed him that the troopers were staring down their rifles or straight ahead at the opposite bulkhead.

They might have had their eyes shut, of course. He had no way of knowing that. The miniature helmet cams picked up only what was potentially visible to the trooper, not what was actually hitting his retina.

"I'm right up this guy's tailpipe," Coric said. "If he picks up any sensor blips, he'll think it's some glitch."

Rex gave in and resized the feed from Coric's HUD with a couple of quick blinks. He always found it disconcerting, like being in the pilot's seat with no controls to grasp. Coric wasn't joking. He was just outside the safe range of the Sep landing craft's exhaust vents. To the margins of the image, Rex could just about see points of reflected light as the star at the heart of the Fath system reflected off other vessels in the squadron while they headed for the terminator of JanFathal, the ever-moving line between night and day. It wasn't easy to spot small objects in s.p.a.ce without a high-contrast background. And that worked both ways.

Now you see us . . . now you don't.

"Stand by for a quick break from formation when I need to peel off for Athar," Coric said.

Rex minimized Coric's HUD icon again. "They're probably all going our way."

"Yes, sir, but I plan to drop out early and come in low over the coastal plain. Through the suburbs."

"How low?" Geith asked.

"Low enough to pick up a holozine or two on the way ..."

"Good man."

"Anytime now . . . hitting the atmosphere . . . owww!"

Coric was gone before the Seps even knew he'd been there, and the descent was every bit as rough as Rex had expected. The restraints only just held him; he hadn't secured them tightly enough. Coric's HUD icon showed the brilliant flame of a red-hot reentry for a moment before his protective filter cut in to shield his eyes. It seemed to take a long time for the shuttle to level out and the shuddering to stop. It was only minutes.

"We're over the sea," Coric said. "Master Altis, you're the navigator now."

"You want me to sit up front," Altis asked, "or do a little steering from here?"

"Don't scare me, sir. I'm only a lad."

Altis edged up behind Coric's seat. "Let us all focus on Agent Devis," he said, as if the Jedi were doing some mystic signal enhancement. "My, this is an unhappy world."

Rex was more worried that it might be an unhappy world with more ground-to-air defenses than Republic Intel had told them, but nothing seemed to be showing on the warning systems. As he shifted position to look ahead through the c.o.c.kpit viewport, he saw a coastline of ugly docks and decaying buildings rushing at him. The sun slanting between storm clouds did little to improve its looks, but something brilliantly golden bounced searing reflected sunlight back at him.

"Regent's palace," Coric said. "Or one of them, anyway. I bet he's loved by his people ..."

Coric changed course frequently to avoid anyone getting a fix. But Athar didn't seem to be set up to defend itself. The shuttle streaked over factories and square pools of liquid that could have been anything from water treatment plants to fish farms.

"I think it's going to rain again," Coric said casually. "Look at the water lying everywhere. It must have been bucketing down all night."

Rex was at the wrong angle to spot people or vehicles on the streets, but he could see palls of thick black smoke in the dis-tance, and occasional puffs of fresh smoke and flame blooming in the sky above the city, as if someone on the ground had anti-air weapons.

Altis kept a hand on Coric's shoulder, muttering directions in his ear, and the shuttle dropped to such a low alt.i.tude that Rex was convinced Coric was going to have a head-on collision with some ground transport.

"We're close," Altis said. "Very close."

"You want to risk overflying the target, sir?" Coric asked, jerking his head in Rex's direction. "We get to see broad layout, but they might spot us."

"No, let's find a laying-up point and get this crate out of sight somehow." There weren't any convenient empty hangars likely to be around, but a shuttle like this could probably get away with nestling on an airstrip parking ap.r.o.n or something. It was just another transport vessel when seen from the outside. "Then we can send up a remote to recce the building."

"Okay." Coric cut his speed. "Holochart says disused repul-sortruck factory the other side of that ca.n.a.l. Let's see if there's a parking s.p.a.ce."

The site was such a wreck that a cratering run wouldn't have made it look any worse. Huge potholes in the staging area had filled with water. Coric landed the shuttle in the lee of a crumbling brick wall, and Boro and Joc jumped out to take up defen-sive positions around it while the others ran for the cover of an outbuilding.

It's their first real op. That's the first time they've done this for real.

Rex had to remind himself of that.

Like every other city where he'd inserted, the absence of people was unnerving. There had to be a population in hiding, or driven out to safer parts. It was hard to tell. There was simply a sense of suspension. Life wasn't going on as normal.

"Ahsoka?" he called quietly. "All clear in there?"

She pointed to the building, shook her head, and gave him a thumbs-up. Once inside, Ross primed a remote. The roof had leaked; they were squatting in puddles.

"Where are we sending this, sir?"

"Can I see what it records?" Altis asked.

"Yes. The images get fed to our HUDs."

The Jedi Master held out his hand. "May I borrow your helmet for a moment, then? I can direct the device using the Force."

"Okay. The bucket takes some getting used to, but..."

"Just set it to run the image full-frame and let Master Altis take a look," Rex said. "He doesn't need to change any settings."

"Thank you, young man." Altis placed the helmet gingerly over his head like he'd just won a beauty pageant and was awed by the honor. "Oh my . . ."

Geith chuckled. Rex savored the incongruous sight of a scruffy Jedi Master with the head of a clone trooper. Ross rolled the remote outside onto the shattered permacrete for it to take flight and go wherever Altis steered it. It left a little wake in the surface water for a few moments.

"Ahhh . . .," Altis said, voice m.u.f.fled by a thick layer of plastoid and electronics. "Ahhh!"

ONE BLOCK FROM HALLENA DEVIS'S LOCATION, SOUTH ATHAR.

Callista clipped the comlink to her collar and listened to the welter of voice traffic, trying to pick out the messages she needed to hear.

In the process of bypa.s.sing the Separatist encryption, she'd opened up all their comm channels, and too much was almost as bad as nothing at all; she tried to think how she might separate them, straining to filter layer upon layer of sound purely by ear. There was definitely some transmission taking place between the building Altis had identified as Agent Devis's temporary prison and a Sep relay.

Ahsoka crouched down beside her in the shelter of a doorway, lightsaber in hand. There were a few people in the buildings around them, but she could sense their fear, and they weren't taking the risk of venturing out while they could still hear fighting from the city center. To the north, smoke hung in the air; the steady heartbeat of artillery fire thumped the ground beneath them. The remote was still circling the area high above the buildings. Rex darted across the street to hunker down with them, then sighted up with his rifle.

"The Seps have crossed the river," he said. "They've just rolled over the state guards on the bridge and they're heading this way. The local rebels seem to have moved on elsewhere. We've got maybe ten, fifteen minutes."

Callista concentrated on the tapestry of voices, trying to find one loose thread to unpick. "So what's the plan now?"

"Secure the exit from the building, put a team on the roof to clear the block from the top, and do a standard hostage extrac-tion."

Ahsoka scanned the skyline. "I'll take the roof."