501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (17 page)

The view from the wraparound windows wasn’t all that great, unless you liked staring at the headquarters of the Capital Reclamation and Sanitation Company. Niner turned to his left, following the signs on the wall, and pressed the entry button on yet another key-coded security door. It slid open and he stepped inside, Darman right behind him.

“My, don’t
you
two look spiffy,” said a familiar voice from somewhere behind a server rack.

Darman spun around, looking for the source. Niner peered around the rack.

“Captain?”

“No rest for the wicked, Niner.” Jaller Obrim held out his hand with a sad smile. “Good to see you again, son. And you, Darman.”

There was no reason to be surprised to see Obrim here, but he was a face from the recent and dangerous past. Niner’s first thought was to pray that he could keep his mouth shut.

It was a crazy thought. Obrim had as much to lose as they did—maybe more. The man had bent every rule in the book for Skirata, and probably a few that weren’t in the book at all. Obrim had turned more blind eyes than an Alderaanian argus, leaked classified information, gone selectively deaf, made inconvenient bodies disappear, and generally supported Skirata in whatever scam he had going. He’d diverted CSF resources to spring Fi from the medcenter, and sheltered him while Skirata arranged to get him off Coruscant. That was probably only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the stunts he’d pulled to cover Skirata’s backside.

The two veterans were best buddies, and CSF—the old CSF, at least—had been so close to Skirata and the Nulls that it had been hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Yes, Obrim had a lot to lose. Niner was surprised that he hadn’t disappeared in the Purge. He definitely didn’t have the right stuff to be one of Palpatine’s men, that was certain, but then maybe Palpatine still thought of him as the good old reliable Captain Obrim of the Senate Guard. He didn’t realize just how much Obrim enjoyed being a cop.

Niner took Obrim’s outstretched hand and shook it. His knuckles turned white from the pressure. “You don’t fancy the new red armor, then?”

“I’d look a complete idiot in it.” Obrim patted his gut, which was straining a little under a plain tan tunic. “No, the Imperial Guard can do without me. I’d never fit in the suit now. Besides, the Emperor wants fit and dedicated young stormtroopers to do the job, and I’m an old street cop at heart. How about you?”

There was so much unsaid at that moment, so much tension in the air, all born of shared guilt and a lot of memories that ranged from the best times ever to pure abject grief. Niner glanced at Darman to see if meeting Obrim again had rubbed on that ever-raw nerve.

Obrim was there when Etain died. Is he going to mention it? How can we
not?

“We’re called Squad Forty now,” Darman said. “Dull, isn’t it?”

Obrim looked as if he’d had a reprieve, but only a temporary one. “Great for picking lottery numbers.” He gestured at them to follow. “Let me show you what the tech boys can do with that datachip you rescued.”

There was no mention of Skirata, no questions about Fi, and not even a mention of Niner’s paralyzing spinal injury, none of the friendly routine chat that might have been expected if Obrim hadn’t known what had really gone on in the latter months of the war. And he’d almost
certainly seen the death warrant list, but he didn’t mention that, either.

The techs—who might have been droids for all Darman knew—weren’t around when Obrim opened the inner lab door, and it definitely wasn’t caf break time. He punched in another security code and led Niner and Darman into a room full of test benches with chip readers, scopes, meters, and probes at every workstation. He sat down at one of them and tapped the controls. The screen filled with prompts to insert a new chip.

“Now,” Obrim said. “I’m not good with this kind of thing, but the techies tell me
proper
erasure can take hours, even a whole day if it’s a big-capacity chip. Can’t just hit the delete button like they do in the holovids.”

“I couldn’t find any visible files on it,” Niner said. “But then we don’t usually carry forensic devices.”

“Well, maybe your Jedi managed to erase everything, or maybe he didn’t, but even if he did—there are
mechanical
ways of reconstructing data on files. Stuff that software can’t even do.”

Darman’s eyes flickered between the screen and Obrim’s face. Niner watched them both struggling to ignore the unsaid thing on their minds. He also saw Obrim reach casually into a drawer and pull out a stack of new datachips in a flimsiplast wrapper. The captain opened it like a packet of candy and threw the balled wrapper into the bin under the desk.

“Well, Camas wiped it, all right,” Obrim said. Niner leaned over his shoulder; the screen looked a lot like his chip reader—empty. “Why don’t you grab a cup of caf, lads? I’m going to be a while. Now, do I remember Camas? Don’t think I ever met him …”

Obrim gestured to a seating area in the far corner of the lab. There was a caf dispenser there, and the second most seductive lure in the galaxy for any clone—a plate of cookies, cakes, and nut bars. Darman seemed distracted by the promise of sugar-laden calories and drifted in their direction. Obrim crooked his finger at Niner.

“Is he okay?” Obrim’s whisper was barely a breath. Niner strained to hear even this close. “He doesn’t look it.”

“No, he’s not himself.”

“Okay. I talk to
you
, then. Got it?”

Niner had to think about that for a couple of seconds. Then he got the idea. This was, after all,
Kal’buir
’s confidant and occasional quartermaster. Deals were done under tables.

Niner went to claim his free snacks, but kept an eye on Obrim. He could just about see his screen from the seating area if he leaned at the right angle. He caught a glimpse of something suddenly scrolling down the screen that looked like a list of files. It could have been diagnostics, of course. Niner wasn’t Jaing. This was a magician’s trick to him.

“I never knew Obrim was all technical,” Darman said, topping up his cup.

“Neither did I.”

“He wants to ask, doesn’t he?”

“What?”

“He wants to ask me how I am. To say how sorry he is. But he’s too embarrassed.”

So Dar was having a lucid moment, admitting to his grief. “I think he doesn’t want to upset you,
ner vod
. Or talk about things that might be overheard.”

“You and your surveillance conspiracy theories,” Darman said, but his tone sounded as if he thought it was a reasonable doubt to have.

Niner’s eyes never left Obrim. He could only see the top half of the screen, not the surface of the desk, and he tried to guess what was going on that he couldn’t see. Eventually Obrim stood up and nodded to him.

“Dar, stock up on the freebies, will you?” Niner pointed at the pile of delicacies, not the kind of treats the Empire laid on for clones. They were worth filching. “I’m sure IS won’t mind feeding the starving of the Five-oh-first.”

“On it,” Darman said, and began slipping food into his belt pouches.

That would keep him distracted for a couple of minutes. Niner had shared every thought and fear with Darman since their first mission on Qiilura, but right now he felt, just as Obrim seemed to, that Dar was safer not knowing something.

What, exactly
?

Skirata trusted Obrim with his life—with everyone’s life. So Niner would, too. He leaned over Obrim and listened. On the desktop, datachips lay fanned out with some sheets of flimsi. Obrim fidgeted with them, frowning at the display.

“He managed to wipe nearly everything except the operating system, and then he had a try at trashing that.” Obrim showed Niner a list of confusing file names that could have been anything. “He’s really mangled it.”

“Useful?”

Obrim had that look, a hint of a twinkle in his eye that Niner had seen before when he was up to something. “I was hoping it would have information on a rebel escape network, maybe like the Whiplash underground. It could have led us to all kinds of folks trying to evade the Empire. Jedi … civvie pilots … mercenaries … their arms deals, their finance routes …” Obrim sighed and rattled the datachips in his cupped palms like he was at a casino. “But Camas erased it completely. They say a Vorandi scanning microscope can detect deleted data in the actual chip structure and recover it, but I think that’s complete
osik
, personally.”

Obrim had picked up the odd
Mando’a
profanity from Skirata. Niner took another second to catch on again, and realized he had to stop being literal. This was
Jaller Obrim
, for goodness’ sake. He’d defied Palpatine to get Skirata off Coruscant, and he was still here to tell the tale. And he was still watching Skirata’s back, even now.

Jedi, civvie pilots, deserters, mercenaries
.

Yes, I get it, Captain
.

Niner had no idea what was accidentally hidden on that chip—maybe not accidentally at all—but he knew that whatever was coming next, he needed to contact Jaing at any cost.

“Sounds like a myth to me,” Niner said. “Vorandi, you say.”

“Yeah. And you’d need a
phenomenally
gifted techie to make anything of it, even if it could be done. I don’t think we’ve got anyone like that, even in Imperial City.”

“Shame,” Niner said, gut churning. “Nothing else you can do with the chip now, then?”

He got the fact that this was a message. The trouble was that he didn’t know what it said or how to transmit it. Then Obrim shrugged, pulled the chip from the docking port, and stared at it.

“Not much,” he said. And he palmed it. He palmed it so skillfully that it vanished for a moment among the other identical chips he was fiddling with on the desktop. “But I’ll log it as evidence anyway. Chain of custody and all that.”

Obrim shook Niner’s hand again—with both hands—and nodded a few times. Niner felt something rigid press against the palm of his glove. Instinctively, he closed his fingers around it as he withdrew his hand, and folded his arms.

“You did well to even salvage this.” Obrim put the datachip—no,
a
datachip—back in the docking port and tapped the screen. “See? Just part of the operating system left. I’m really sorry about your buddy. But please, Niner, don’t feel his sacrifice was wasted. Something positive can come out of this.”

That wasn’t Obrim, not at all. He was a man who could silence a room just by walking into it. He didn’t get sentimental with people. He was a hard-nosed cop, even by CSF standards, a man with nerve. Niner adjusted his gauntlets, slipping the chip inside the right one with his left thumb as he did so.

“Thanks, Captain,” he said. “We’re looking forward to working with you again.”

Obrim slapped his shoulder. “Me, too, lad. You know you can count on us. Anything for our boys.”

“Dar’s nicked all your cakes, Captain …”

“Like I say,
anything
.”

Darman gave Niner an odd look as the turbolift shot down to ground level. Niner was busting to tell him what had gone on, how he now had some vital data that he needed to get to Jaing if only he could find him, but his gut reminded him that the safest thing for everyone was to keep it to himself until the last minute.

“I’ll give Ennen some of the stash.” Darman opened one of his pouches and checked his haul of goodies. “Not the warra nut slices, though. I call dibs on those. You reckon they’ve got hidden surveillance cams up there?”

“We’ll find out if they raid the barracks tonight and confiscate your warra nuts.”

Obrim must have assumed there was constant surveillance as well, or at least the serious risk of it, if he’d gone through this charade so carefully. It made Niner feel a lot better.

He wasn’t paranoid, not in a crazy way. The Empire really
was
out to get him.

Besany held the sheet of
haarshun
dough up to the light with both hands.

“Ny, is that thin enough?”

Ny peered up at it. Besany was as tall as Ordo, a head taller than Ny and Scout. “Can you see through it? Rav says you have to be able to see your betrothal ring through it.”

“Sort of.”

“Well, it looks okay to me.”

“If it’s supposed to bake hard, then how do they use it
as dry rations?” Besany held up the sheet of dough between her fingertips like laundry. “They couldn’t get that in a backpack.”

“You roll it up before you cook it,” Ruu said. “Then you soak it in water to make it soft again.”

“Wow. Fascinating.”

They were making unfamiliar food to mark the start of the thaw. It wasn’t a festival as Ny understood one, just an impromptu meal taken outside because the weather was no longer cold enough to weld skin to metal. It still felt freezing to her. But she could definitely sense what Skirata and the others could smell on the air: spring.

Besany plowed on making more
haarshun
bread. She wasn’t one of nature’s chefs, but she tried so hard that it hurt. Ny felt sorry for her. She was a clever, strikingly beautiful girl from the city who didn’t really fit in this frontier kind of life, but she was determined to be the perfect Mando wife for Ordo. She threw herself into the culture. She was learning to cook the food, wear the armor, and even fight.

Either the culture attracted those who needed identity, or it was so overwhelming that it swallowed those it touched. Ny wondered how long it would be before she, too, was dragged in by its gravity. It might have been partly down to Skirata, of course. He had a talent for gathering people around him—even the most unlikely beings—and making them feel like family.

While Besany wrestled with dough, and Scout and Ruu sliced the haunch of shatual that Mird and Vau had hunted, Ny made igatli from scratch, following a recipe on a datapad propped on the kitchen table. The coin-sized crumbly cookies weren’t a Mandalorian recipe; they were Kuati, fiddly and insubstantial, nothing like the practical and filling cuisine here. Skirata came from Kuat. She knew that. He’d mentioned it just once, and that had intrigued her, because she hadn’t realized just what a mixed bag Mandalorians were. Until they took off their helmets, they all looked the same to her.