501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (9 page)

Uthan wondered if Gilamar had been in contact with Hokan during those few days of crisis on Qiilura. He was right. At that time, she hadn’t been able to stop the virus attacking all human genomes and make it single out Fett clones. There just weren’t enough genetic differences between humans to exploit—bar one. Hokan had been furious, thinking he was guarding a failed experiment.

“You’re an analytical man, Gilamar.”

“Call me Mij.” He smiled. “You don’t have to be a hotshot geneticist to work through the logic. Of course … if your magic potion
does
work, and really
is
that selective, then it has two possible methods—either the whole-genome approach, which sounds a bit too complex and would be totally borked by routine mutation anyway, or it would have to zero in on something that the average clone has, but the average random human hasn’t … the gene sequence that controls their accelerated aging. Did I get the right answer, Dr. Uthan? Am I a clever boy?”

Gilamar was right. No, he didn’t need to be a geneticist to work that out, but he needed to be smarter than the idiots who’d held her captive, and he was. Yes, she’d been working on a highly selective virus, all right. She wanted to identify the aging markers as badly as Skirata
had, but for wholly different reasons. She couldn’t unleash a virus that might wipe out the whole humanoid population of a planet. She had her ethical limits, however much of a monster others might have believed her to be.

And I’ll still catch some nonclones who just happen to have that same genetic quirk—but perhaps one in ten million. Safe enough, I think. A reasonable margin of error
.

She leaned back a little and finished her eggs. It took more than a table covered in Kaminoan tissue samples to dent her appetite.

The galaxy’s different now. The war’s over, but there’s still an army full of Fett clones out there. So what happens next
?

She only knew that she couldn’t trust the Empire not to kill her, and that the best deal she’d been offered so far had been from a gang of Mandalorian criminals.

Or maybe
not
criminals. Patriots? Amoral opportunists? Rebels? Terrorists? Depends who’s doing the defining
.

“That’s what I get,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, “for thinking Mandalorians are all mindless thugs.”

“Stereotypes,” Gilamar said. “Don’t you just
hate
it when that happens? You Gibadans are all the same.”

Uthan fought back a smile. Gilamar stared at her for a long time, not remotely aggressive, but all the more worrying for that. Then he grinned.

“Why do you suppose Palpatine wanted me to keep working on the FG thirty-six virus instead of destroying it?” she asked, wishing she weren’t enjoying the discussion. “It wasn’t asset denial. If he wanted the CIS to be deprived of my expertise, he could have killed me anytime.”

“Oh, I think you know the answer.”

“It did dawn on me, eventually. Insurance.”

Gilmar nodded. “Can’t blame the old despot, really. If the clones decided to turn against Palps for any reason,
one of the Grand Army’s contingency orders was to relieve him of office the hard way. Order number five, if I recall. There was an order for every eventuality, from the old
chakaar
himself to whacking the Jedi.” He stood up and stretched. “Just tell me something. What
did
you leave Palps with? A working targeted nanovirus, or the one that kills most humans it infects?”

“What would
you
leave him with?”

“One that wouldn’t even kill bugs. It’s a dangerous toy for a man like that.”

“The strain I was working on when you removed me from the Valorum Center wasn’t actually … finished. I had to have my own insurance, remember. He wouldn’t have needed me alive once I delivered it.”

“So Palpatine’s got a less choosy version of your doomsday bug? The one that might affect
everyone
?”

“I believe so.”

She hadn’t planned it that way, not at all. She just hadn’t known that she’d be plucked from Republic custody without warning. But if the fool used it, he’d wipe out most of Coruscant, his own power base.

That’ll teach him … 

“Wayii …”
Gilamar blew out a long breath, eyebrows raised. Uthan rather liked him. It was a pleasant change to have intelligent and challenging conversation, especially with someone who didn’t think she was clinically insane. Three years in solitary with only a substandard psychiatrist for occasional company had nearly made her genuinely crazy. “Does the
shabuir
know what he’s got?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “His scientists are mediocre at best. But if he does, then he’d better be too smart to use it carelessly.”

“What’s an Empire if you lose most of your subjects? No fun lording it over a few Hutts, two banthas, and a Weequay, after all.”

“Well … a Weequay might not be resistant to the virus, either.”

Gilamar laughed. He could afford to, perhaps; Mandalore
was a long way from Coruscant. “So you know all about the rapid aging sequence. Well, well.”

“I identified it. Not the same thing.”

“The next thing I really want to hear you say is that you can switch it off.”

Uthan was still waiting for the real game to emerge. Nobody would go to all this trouble and amass so much commercial data for sentimental reasons. It was worth billions. Cloning companies would pay that simply to stop their customers being able to bypass built-in senescence in the clones they’d bought.

“What’s Skirata really going to do with it?” she asked. “This whole operation, the planning, the risks—that’s not just for the welfare of a few clones.”

Gilamar’s expression changed. His facial muscles slackened, and for a moment he actually looked as if he pitied her. For some reason, this cynical man—he was too intelligent to be otherwise—seemed not to be expecting that question.

“Have you never loved anyone so much that you’d do anything to save them?” Gilamar looked down at his armor for a moment. Uthan still wondered why it was that same dull sandy gold as Skirata’s. It might have been regimental, but Mandos didn’t seem the uniform kind. “Do you understand how much Kal loves those boys? Because if you don’t, then you won’t understand just how far he’ll go to get what he wants for them.”

“But this is worth
billions … 
Mij.”

“Is that why
you
do it? Material gain?”

“No.” Credits had one purpose for her; to enable her to enjoy her life, and what gave her pleasure and purpose was her science. “I’m sorry. I assumed mercenaries would want to maximize income.”

“Well, even mercs have other motives. Besides … Kal’s already worth a lot more than a few billion creds. Think again, Doctor. This is about obsession, and consider me obsessed, too.”

“Call me Qail,” she said. She didn’t believe Skirata was a billionaire, but Kyrimorut had to be costing
a lot of creds, and he seemed able to afford any number of weapons and vessels. Nothing flash, nothing conspicuous—but enough to equip a strike force. “We can’t keep calling each other Doctor, because that’ll get tedious.”

“Okay,
Qail
. And now I know the genes have been identified, I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

Uthan loved a challenge. She was certain she could switch off the accelerated aging. She wasn’t sure that she’d still be alive after she did it, but there came a point where she couldn’t stall any longer, and she knew she’d reached it. Gilamar had her pegged. The Kaminoan tissue samples removed her last excuses. If she could understand the techniques that the Kaminoans used to engineer extended life, then she’d have most of the missing pieces of the puzzle.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” she said. “If only I had some control samples of ordinary Kaminoan tissue.”

Gilamar laughed. “I think we can manage that. Just don’t ask me how.”

Uthan recalled what Skirata had said about Ko Sai, and thought of Jaing’s elegant gray gloves.

And Jaing seemed such a charming young man, too. The more she knew of Mandalorians, the less she understood them.

“S
pook,” said Bry. “Definitely a spook.”

Bry nodded in the vague direction of the Imperial agent walking toward the shuttle. The man’s name—if it was his real one, which Darman doubted—was Sa Cuis, and he didn’t look much like a holovid action hero.

They never did. That was what made them dangerous.

Darman watched him carefully, something he could do easily in a helmet with wraparound vision.

“There’s no reason to brief us on the launch pad,” Ennen said. “We’re not short of time, and we’re definitely not short of troops now. So all this last-minute briefing means they don’t trust us not to leak stuff.”

“Why, when we’ve been specially selected for this?” Niner stood with one boot on the ramp, looking impatient
to leave. “The rest of the old commando brigade is on routine duties.”

“Maybe,” Bry muttered, “we’ve been picked because Palps thinks we’re soft on Jedi and he wants to weed us out. Or that we know where they are. Because we got on well with some of the Padawans.”

Darman didn’t want to talk about relationships with Jedi. “Why don’t you zip it and wait for the briefing?” he snapped. “Things leak and we know it. Jedi escaped. They had sympathizers. And anyway, there are guys in the unit who didn’t much like Jedi.”

The two newcomers—Darman definitely saw them as outsiders coming into
his
squad—went quiet for a moment.

“Just saying, that’s all.” Ennen sounded peeved. “What’s your problem, pal?”

“I’m not used to serving with
shabuire.
”

“Oh, yeah, you’re one of the Mando boys, aren’t you? All mouth. Knuckle-dragging savages.”

Not all the commandos had been trained by Mandalorians. Jango’s handpicked sergeants included some
aruetiise
. Darman braced his shoulders for a fight, but Niner stepped between them.

“Udesii
, Dar … take it easy.”

“Yeah, he was trained by a Corellian. No wonder he sat the war out, painting his nails.”

“
Whoa
. We never had divisions before, and we’re not going to have them now. Okay? Cool it, both of you—and you, too, Bry, ’cos I can hear you making
dissenting
noises.”

Very little escaped the scrutiny of the helmet audio systems. Niner had always tried to be Sergeant Kal to his squad, and he slid right into the role now, smacking them back into line for their own good. Darman felt lost. He was torn between needing that solid sense of family and security that he got from being Mandalorian, and trying to forget what else went with it: a dead wife and a son he couldn’t be with.

But that wasn’t happening to
him
. It had happened to
some other Darman. He hung on to that detachment to get through the day. At night, though—when he shut his eyes he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Etain’s body. He simply didn’t know. It wasn’t the Mandalorian way to fret about remains, but he had nothing left of her, not even a scrap of armor.

I just want to know where she ended up. Then I might be able to cope
.

“Spook Boy isn’t coming with us, is he?” Bry said. “That’s all we need.”

Head direction was never any guide to what a guy in a helmet was actually looking at, let alone what he could detect with sensors. So there was no reason for Cuis to know he was being stared at, discussed, and mistrusted. The squad could chat on their private link without being heard. They always folded their arms or hooked their thumbs in their belts to avoid the temptation of automatic gestures, so a casual observer wouldn’t even know they were having a conversation.

Niner didn’t join in. He was paranoid about bugged comlinks. Nothing would persuade him otherwise.

“So what can the spook do that we can’t?” Ennen asked. “He’s a bit on the
plump
side.”

“Maybe he’s a good shot,” said Bry.

“Maybe his uncle put in a good word for him.”

“Maybe he didn’t, and this is the punishment run.”

Darman was more interested in observing Cuis. Something about the man bothered him beyond the usual level of healthy suspicion. Anyone in that line of work would have assumed he was the subject of speculation and gossip when he was around troops, but Cuis seemed to be
reacting
as if he was listening to the chat—subliminal, near-invisible reactions, but reactions nonetheless. He looked uncomfortable as he walked across that lonely stretch of ferrocrete. He was a man with the power to make citizens vanish, no questions asked, and yet he walked self-consciously.

Darman was pretty sure he wasn’t going to break into a jog.

It was hard to hide small detail from a clone. Darman lived his whole life attuned to the tiniest variations in facial expression and body language—and voice, and smell—because like all his brothers, he’d spent most of his life among men who looked almost identical. They weren’t. Every clone learned to spot the small distinguishing features and behaviors that marked each man. And that skill carried over into the observation of the entire world around them. Detail mattered. Lives depended on it.

Darman decided that Cuis could either hear the comm circuit, or … he
felt
the tone of the conversation. Ennen and Bry were dismissive and contemptuous, not hostile. Maybe … 

“Maybe,” Darman murmured, “he’s a Force-user. So let’s not give him anything to notice.”

“You reckon,” Bry said. “Really.”

I know Force-users. I know them in ways you can’t imagine. I know their reactions, the way they deal with the things that we can’t detect, the things that sometimes give them away to us ordinary folk. Because I’ve been as close to a Jedi as an ordinary guy can get
.