501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (23 page)

“Yes,” he said. “Much happier.”

“That’s good. Now, is there any use I can be on this mission?”

“Not unless you can look like a clone.”

“I think I fail on all points there.”

A’den, the nearest the Nulls had to a diplomat, held up a finger.

Ordo cut him off at the pass. “And you’re not coming,
ner vod
, because if you have to take your helmet off, they’ll see you’re a little weather-beaten. I doubt that the ordinary meat-cans are going to look like that.”

“I prefer
bronzed,”
A’den said. “And maybe you should do something about your gray hairs, then. Anyway, I was going to say that Ruu might be able to help Arla. She knows what it’s like to have your past crash-land
on you. Poor
Arl’ika
doesn’t know what happened to her brother yet.”

“Does anyone?” Ruu asked.

“Vau knows more than
Kal’buir
, I think.”

Ruu had a wary look so like her father’s—slightly narrowed rabid-schutta eyes, head turned away just a fraction—that nobody was ever going to ask for a paternity test, even if Mandos cared about that sort of thing, which they didn’t. “I’ll do what I can.”

Ruu left, taking her plate with her, and Kom’rk raised an eyebrow at Ordo.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,
ner vod
, but you lack sensitivity. Poor woman didn’t go looking for
Kal’buir
. We
abducted
her.”

“She knows the score.”

“So you’re happy now.”

“Less tense, let’s say.”

Jaing laid his datapad on the table. “Oh
good,”
he said. “I thought we were going to have a spat about Number One Son losing his place in the pecking order. Okay, what floor plans do we need?”

It had always been a joke, but Ordo wasn’t sure it was so funny now. He’d been the informal alpha male of the brothers since infancy, and Skirata treated him as such. Mereel had always fallen into the sidekick role. In a family of six sons, it was inevitable that there’d be alliances and harmless rivalries. Now Ordo was starting to worry that they really did see him differently. The last thing he wanted was advantages that his brothers didn’t have.

“Do you think I’m jealous?” he asked.

“More scared,” Jaing said. “She’s got to
prove
she’s loyal and not a
chakaar
like her brothers.” As he scrolled through schematics on the small screen, Ordo could see the flickering light on his hands. “Now remember that second virus I fed into the Republic mainframe?”

Mereel got up and stood behind him, hands on his shoulders. “You mean the incredibly risky and cocky
demonstration of your programming skills that you performed under the nose of Republic Audit?”

“Yep. That’ll be the one.”

“I do recall. Has it been busy?”

“Well, now your pet tinnie and his minder have set up a comm portal, I can retrieve the data it’s mined. What do you want—building plans, budgets, procurement contracts, Imperial canteen menus?”

Ordo cut in. “Plans and layouts. Keep it simple. We’re not going to sabotage the Empire. We’re extracting our brothers.
Nothing else
. Understand?”

“Oops,” Mereel said. “Old habits …”

As long as the Empire left them alone, they’d give it a wide berth. That was
Kal’buir
’s plan, and Ordo was going to make sure everyone stuck to it.

This was a time to pick their battles carefully. Now they had a choice about who and where they fought—and why.

The
aruetiise
could fight their own wars for a change. It’d do them the power of good.

N
y Vollen’s freighter dropped out of hyperspace just as she realized there was something in her coveralls that she hadn’t put there.

Her pant-leg pocket bulged open. She didn’t notice it until she reached for the controls and the fabric caught on the armrest of her seat. When she looked at what had snagged it, she found all the cash creds she’d shoved back into Skirata’s hand before she left Mandalore, a stack of five-hundred and thousand denomination chips.

I do
not
need your creds, Shortie. I don’t care how much you’re worth. Nobody’
s
going to accuse me of sponging off a rich man
. Any
man, in fact
.

“You stubborn old barve,” she muttered, staring at the plastoid chips. She hadn’t even felt him put them there. The man would have made a superb pickpocket, and probably had been one in his past. “Guess where I’m going to ram
these
.”

Mereel laughed. “Perfect. When can I start calling you Mama?”

“When the Kaminoans tweaked your genes, they definitely removed the one for subtlety, didn’t they?”

Ordo didn’t laugh, but Prudii, Jaing, and Mereel did. Four Nulls was about the most Ny could handle at one time. All six of them together—that was a
pack
. Not unruly, not undisciplined, just … 
primed
. She felt that raw power and complete focus in them, like hunting animals waiting to be let loose. Even Mird didn’t make her feel like that.

“We mean well,” Jaing said. “But
Buir
doesn’t meet many folks he likes and trusts, especially
female
ones his own age.”

“The diplomacy gene’s gone missing, too, I see.”

“It’s all about time, Ny. We’ve all got less left than we ought to have.”

Jaing had a rare talent for getting to the point, not as bluntly gauche as Ordo but equally capable of saying the things other folks kept to themselves. Yes, they were all on borrowed time, and there was every chance she’d still outlive them. And so might their father.

“Things aren’t always that simple,” she said.

Mereel put on his I’m-just-an-innocent-kid face, which pressed all Ny’s buttons even though she knew perfectly well that he was nothing of the kind.

“We like having you around,” he said. “And
Buir
’s been alone for years—long before Kamino. We know he likes you because he says things to you that he’d never normally tell anyone.”

“What, like he’s got a trillion kriffing creds?”

“He told you he came from Kuat,” Jaing said. “And he
did
admit he was a trillionaire. The night you first met him. Remember?”

Ny recalled that just fine. Yes, he had. And the Nulls never forgot anything, not with those eidetic memories the Kaminoans gave them. “I thought he was joking.”

Ordo, hunched in the copilot’s seat, looked up from the navigation display. “Mereel, shut up, will you?”

“Well,
Buir
doesn’t have my natural charm with the ladies, so he’s never going to raise the—”

“I said
shut up.”
Ordo turned and reached behind him to put a worryingly firm grip on Mereel’s shoulder. “Ny’s lost her husband. She might not be ready for all this. She might not like
Buir
in that way. Just get off her back.”

Ny had never seen clones lose their tempers with one another. For some reason, she thought they’d be perfectly attuned in some kind of mystic twin-like harmony, but she was wrong. They were like any other family with their spats and fallings-out. She felt awful for being the cause of this one.

“Hey, Ordo, it’s all right.” His intervention sounded like something Besany had said to him, a lesson he’d absorbed, but maybe he really did think that. “I’m not offended. Mereel’s just … oh, c’mon, you two, truce. Okay?”

“Don’t make her come back here,” Prudii said.

Ny understood why Skirata indulged his sons so shamelessly. She’d give in to just about anything they asked of her.

“There’s matchmaking,” she said carefully, “and then there’s forced marriage.”

Jaing grinned. “Yes, but where’s a pensioner like you going to meet another eccentric trillionaire at your time of life?”

“I haven’t
got
a kriffing pension.” She clenched her back teeth. If she laughed, it only encouraged them. “Just give me some thinking time. And don’t bug your dad about it, either.”

“See? She’s got the mother thing down pat.” Mereel wasn’t deterred by Ordo’s temper. “Next stage is
just wait until I tell your father.
”

Ny knew the only way Mereel could have learned that was from holovids. These clones had a devoted father, but they’d never known a mother or anything resembling one. The constant joking about it made her wonder if it troubled them at some subconscious level, or if it was just that they loved their dad, saw their brothers settling down happily, and wanted the same for Skirata because they thought there was some universal remedy for a broken heart.

Ny wasn’t immune to that. The prospect of filling the void in her life was all too easy to grab without thinking. Why else had she flung herself into this, when she could have lived out her widowed years quietly and never needed to worry about the Empire kicking down her door?

Jaing inserted a probe into the navigation console and consulted the readout on his datapad. “There you go—bogus tachometer readings all sorted. We’ve just come from Phindar. Did we all have a good time there?”

“Can’t wait to do it again.” Prudii yawned. “Wherever it is.”

Ordo didn’t join in. He was the serious brother, constantly on duty and checking every detail. Besany was very much like him. Ny suspected that their children were going to be beautiful but unsmiling perfectionists who had to have jokes explained to them.

Cornucopia
headed for the RV point with Mereel’s contacts, just one more commercial vessel inbound for a freighter way station, nothing special, nothing dangerous. Ny wondered where to dock to take on supplies on the way back. Ordo followed the transponder traces on the monitor, audio headset held to one ear.

“Mereel, can you confirm this is Teekay? Hyperdrive service vessel showing as registered to the
HealthiDrive
franchise division, showing eight-zero-five.”

“That’s it. Send him the code.”

“Receiving confirmation.” Ordo nodded a few times, eyes fixed on the screen. Whatever was happening, Ny
couldn’t hear the conversation. “Okay, Ny, dock at pier nine-delta and they’ll come alongside there.”

It was just routine, she told herself. She’d stopped here a dozen times before over the years, a handy station for emergency repairs or to break a journey if she was flying the two main routes between the Core to the Tingel Arm—usually the Hydian, sometimes the Perlemian. All she had to do was behave as she had on every trip for the last forty years. If she was boarded, she was just another pilot with four Mandalorians as paying passengers, nothing out of the ordinary at all. She let the computer take over the final approach and marveled that even after four decades of hauling freight and surrendering her ship to automated systems, she still hated taking her hands off the steering yoke.

Cornucopia
settled onto the platform. Locking clamps moved to secure the freighter’s landing gear with an alarming
thunk
, an almost-forgettable routine that now felt unpleasantly like being handcuffed.

Mereel put on his helmet to seal his suit, then checked his blaster. “Okay, just let Teekay dock for a repair, and I’ll handle the air lock transfer,” he said. “And I just want to remind you
shabuire
that I’ve played meat-cans before.”

“Were you good at it?” Ny asked.

“Fooled the aiwha-bait, and they know clones better than anybody. Ordo’s done it, too.” Mereel disappeared down the aft bridge hatch, boots clanging on the ladder. “We’ve done it a
lot.
”

“He’s not expecting trouble, is he?” Ny asked, making a blaster shape with an extended thumb and forefinger.

“Habit,” Ordo said. “We’re opening the door in a rough neighborhood.”

“It’s just a freighter stop.”

“
Any
neighborhood is rough when we show up.”

Prudii chuckled to himself. “You’ll be
ori’mando
one day, Ny …”

The transfer only took minutes, but it felt a lot longer. Ny wandered down to the side doors of the cargo bay
and watched as a droid and a young human male in
HealthiDrive
franchise coveralls steered a heavily laden repulsor through the inner air lock. It looked as if they’d cleared out an Imperial quartermaster’s store.

“Anyone call for a fuel injector gasket?” Gaib asked.

“Good. Nice to see you in character.” Mereel nodded at the dull gray plastoid crates as the repulsor came to a halt in front of him. He opened a lid.
“Four
suits, Gaib. Did you get matching sets in all the latest spring colors or something?”

“Ten suits.” TK-0 glided in between his human associate and Mereel. “We know how you like to go in mob-handed. So we thought—why not score a few more than required? Easier than going back for extras.”

“You think of everything,” Mereel said.

“You can do that with a positronic brain.” The droid plunged his manipulators into the boxes and began extracting white plastoid armor plates. “Did you know an organic’s brain is
sixty percent fat
? Disgusting. How can you bear to keep all that
mush
in your head?”

Mereel held an armor plate against his chest for size. “This is the new design? Not bad. Not as stylish as a
kama
and pauldron, but needs must.”

Jaing and Prudii clattered down the ladder and pounced on the helmets. They had to strip out the Imperial comms and interface components and replace them with their own secure systems. And they looked completely delighted to be doing it. Ny found it hard not to think of them as kids—heavily armed, battle-hardened, and lethal, but still kids. They had an endearingly child-like capacity for enjoying things.