"I'm not convinced that Intel is free of Force-users. They think we mundane folk don't notice, but I can usually spot them. So...sometimes I'm going to have to task you without their knowledge, because they can never be on the side of the average citizen. They're trying to recruit more of their own Force-using kind. Or at least that's how I've interpreted their request to bring the Z-list Jedi and other small fry back alive." Melusar oozed contempt. "Personally, I'd rather spend the security budget on more akk hounds."

Business as usual. Omega and the Nulls had spent the whole war keeping things from Intel, and from the senior command, too. And it wasn't because they were Force-users. Omega and the Nulls had spent the whole war keeping things from Intel, and from the senior command, too. And it wasn't because they were Force-users.

But Melusar really had it in for everyone with Force powers. Niner wondered what had happened to him to make him so unusually rabid. His arguments made perfect sense, but he meant meant that distrust and dislike with every cell in his body. It oozed from him. that distrust and dislike with every cell in his body. It oozed from him.

"Are you comfortable with that?" Melusar asked quietly.

"We understand perfectly, sir," Darman said, before Niner could respond.

"Excellent." Melusar seemed genuinely relieved. "Pity that we don't have the principled General Jusik on staff. A Force-user who doesn't want power would be very useful."

Niner hoped Ordo picked that up. The comment could have meant anything. It might have been an oblique offer to Jusik, which-of course- Bard'ika Bard'ika would have the sense not to accept. It might have been a setup. Niner was beginning to resent everything about this world for making him doubt and question every single word said to him. He wanted to live in a society where hello just meant would have the sense not to accept. It might have been a setup. Niner was beginning to resent everything about this world for making him doubt and question every single word said to him. He wanted to live in a society where hello just meant hello hello.

But he needed to seize his chance. Now seemed a good time. "Sir," he said, "during the war, our commanders let us go into town when we were off duty. Do you mind if we do that? It's not even mentioned in the regs, so..."

Melusar slapped Niner's shoulder as if his conscience had been pricked. "Of course, Sergeant. A man's got to relax and have an ale from time to time. Good for the soul.

Maybe take Rede with you. I worry for these youngsters."

Niner had to get out, right now, before he dug himself in too deep. "Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed. And don't worry so much. You're still the soldiers you were, and everyone respects that."

Darman matched Niner's hasty escape down the corridor, striding as fast as he could without breaking into a run.

"He's really down on Force-users," Darman said.

"Do you blame him?"

"No." Dar seemed to be chewing something over as he walked. He stared at a point a few meters ahead. "But they're all the same, aren't they? Jedi, Sith-doesn't matter who's in charge as far as most folks are concerned. The Force-users run the show, at least behind the scenes, and never us."

"You think the Jedi ran the Republic?"

"You said a Sith did. The Jedi were the enforcers-even before Palps."

"It doesn't matter now."

"No, I suppose not."

"Are you okay?"

"No, I'm scared stiff. This galaxy's falling apart." Dar dropped his voice as they turned into the mess lobby. "My kid. What's going to happen to my kid? You heard what Holy Roly said. He can't even trust Intel now. We've swapped one rotten regime for another."

"Welcome to the real world," Niner said. "But there's always a door marked EXIT."

They didn't need to take anything with them. They didn't have anything of value, anyway. Niner had to keep his helmet on to maintain comms to the ship.

Rede was busy cleaning his boots when they walked into the squad room. He looked up, wide-eyed. No, science couldn't possibly cram enough into these Spaarti clones in a year. Poor kid-they were walking out on him when he needed them most. Ennen wasn't around.

"Are you going to show me some vibroblade techniques, Sarge?" Rede asked. "I'm a fast learner."

"Tomorrow," Niner said. He felt awful. Now he had to lie completely, "We're just going for a recce around town. Old buddies to check up on. We'll be back before lights-out."

Rede frowned slightly, but went on cleaning. The truly weird thing was that he seemed to be changing before Niner's eyes. He really was learning by the minute. In the space of a day, he'd picked up habits and gestures. Whatever medical science tried to do to human beings to speed up their development, they still had to go through that process of learning from adults around them and then fitting in with the tribe. Rede was just doing it faster than a Kamino clone.

And we did it faster than mongrels.

"See you later," Darman said. He was pretty convincing.

Niner put his helmet back on as they walked through the main doors and headed for the perimeter gate. Beyond that lay what had been Galactic City, now Imperial City, and Niner could probably have counted the number of times he'd walked out into that civilian world on one hand.

He opened the secure comlink. "Ordo? You receiving? We're on our way."

"Nice excuse, by the way." Ordo sounded relaxed. "We picked up most of that cozy chat. What an affable affable fellow Holy Roly is." fellow Holy Roly is."

"He's crazy," Niner said. "He's going to be running his own private army."

Jaing interrupted. "I'm shocked, I tell you. Who'd abuse their command privileges so shamelessly? And guess what-his family's from Dromund Kaas. You won't find that that in your database, in your database, ner vod ner vod, because it wasn't even on Republic charts. The place is run by dark side weirdos called the Prophets. They make sure their prophecies of doom and dark destruction come true. Now, I'm no psychologist, but between the saber-jockeys and the mad monks, I think I can guess what shaped your boss's bad attitude to our paranormally gifted friends."

"Pity he's on the wrong side," Ordo said. " Kal'buir Kal'buir would like him." would like him."

" Kal'buir Kal'buir's never going to get the chance." Niner picked up speed as they passed through the security gates. "We're coming home, vode vode."

" Oya manda Oya manda," Mereel said approvingly. "I hope you two don't mind hiding in a water tank while we exfil."

They were going to Mandalore. Niner could rarely recall being excited, but this was like nothing else he'd ever known. It was a leap into a new life, one he couldn't begin to imagine, and just not knowing was a thrill in itself. He thought that was odd for a man whose nickname was Worry-Guts.

He'd try farming. Fishing. Bounty hunting, if he got bored with the rural life. And he'd find a nice girl, just like Fi had.

Fi. He hadn't seen his brother in nearly two years. He hadn't seen his brother in nearly two years.

And Darman-Niner didn't ask, because he didn't need to. Dar was going to be reunited with his son.

"What did Ordo have to say?" Darman asked. He was shut out of the secure link, but he could guess Niner was talking to the Nulls. "Everything okay?"

"It's all going fine," Niner said, regretting that he'd never get to ask Holy Roly what had happened back home to make him bitter enough to defy Force-using Intel agents.

"Soon be home."

CHAPTER TEN.

There's something unusual about that clone Darman. I can't quite place it, but he feels...different. I get an unusual sense of Force-users woven into his being, and he feels...different. I get an unusual sense of Force-users woven into his being, and he reacts to me as if he senses what I am, which is impossible. He may be dangerous; keep a reacts to me as if he senses what I am, which is impossible. He may be dangerous; keep a close eye on him. close eye on him.

Sa Cuis, Emperor's Hand, shortly before his death on a mission to test the new Lord Vader's resolve Kyrimorut, Mandalore Kyrimorut, Mandalore "Have you been here all night?" Gilamar asked.

Uthan looked up from her notes, elbows on the lab bench, head propped on her hands.

In front of her, she had the rough sketch of the level-10 containment unit she'd need to safely recreate the virus that had been unleashed on Gibad.

"More or less," she said.

"How's it going?" He pulled up a stool and sat down next to her, laying his hand on hers with the kind of firm grip he probably reserved for his drinking buddies rather than women. It was still comforting to have someone hold your hand when your world-in every sense-was in tatters. She hadn't pegged him as the hand-holding type. "I wasn't expecting you to be working on this. But...yes, it helps. After Tani was killed, I think I read every paper on pituitary tumors in the Republic Institute."

"I'm working on justice," Uthan said. "And I don't mean the clones' problem. Palpatine wants to play dirty? Fine."

Gilamar glanced at the diagram. "You going to explain?"

He was a Mandalorian. He'd understand. He wouldn't spout some high-minded piety and tell her that brutal vengeance just brought her down to her enemy's level. He'd want to eliminate future threats.

She liked him a lot.

"I'm working out the fastest way to recreate and manufacture the phase-one FG thirty-six virus," she said. "And then I'm going to let it loose on Coruscant."

"Understood," he said, nodding.

"Of course, once I've got a few canisters, I'll need transport to the Core. It's a very economical virus. You can accelerate its spread by airborne distribution, or just seed a few carriers and let it progress at its own pace. Incubation period six days or so in humans, infectious for six weeks, designed to work through an entire population and defeat normal quarantine measures. Go on, tell me how clever I am for building such a stealthy pathogen."

She waited for him to explain why she should just stay home and bide her time, all comforting and sensible. But he just nodded again.

"I'd do the same, I think, except with something that made a lot more noise and flame." He picked up the datapad and looked as if he was calculating what materials were needed. "It's a really simple process, then. What did you base the virus on?"

"It's a modified version of nebellia."

"That just causes minor respiratory tract problems and diarrhea. It's not fatal."

"It is after I've done a little nip and tuck on its DNA..."

"Clever girl."

"All I need is a sample of nebellia and the cell culture to host the virus-preferably Gespelides ectilis Gespelides ectilis-and I can grow industrial quantities of the strain within weeks. Great value, bioweapons-expensive on the R and D side, of course, but dirt cheap on production."

"You could just propagate monnen spores; of course," Gilamar said. "Naturally occurring, and patent-free."

"You know, Mij, I'm not sure if you're encouraging me, mocking me, or humoring me."

"I'm just seeing the downside of this, but also wanting you to avenge your world and kick Palps so hard up his shebs shebs that his eyeballs rattle." Gilamar shut his eyes for a moment. "There's only so many times I can say how sorry I am. You don't need to be told how bad it is. I think you're the kind of woman who needs to get even." that his eyeballs rattle." Gilamar shut his eyes for a moment. "There's only so many times I can say how sorry I am. You don't need to be told how bad it is. I think you're the kind of woman who needs to get even."

Uthan liked that honesty. She felt she could say whatever was on her mind in return, and he'd never take offense. "It'd be a great deterrent for Mandalore to hold."

"You know what? I think we'd rather have an antiviral first. Because Palps knows his toy really works now. He might want to play with it again."

Uthan had worked out that Mandos regarded biological and chemical weapons as beneath contempt, a coward's tactic deployed from the safety of an armchair. But they were too pragmatic a people to have any warrior-ethic objection to doing things the easy way.

"Would Mandalore use use a biological weapon?" she asked. a biological weapon?" she asked.

"We prefer sharp things. Pointed things. And noisy things that we can see from about twenty klicks away, preferably resulting in a big ball of flame." Gilamar looked utterly dejected despite his chirpy tone. She found it odd to have a relative stranger mourning with her. "Trouble with the invisible stuff is that you don't actually know where it is, or what it's doing. Or what happens after you let it loose."

"If I'd had any sense, I'd have made the immunogen at the same time as I developed the virus. But even if I had-I had no way of getting it to Gibad. Fi and his friends captured me long before then."

Gilamar ignored the irony. "I think that antiviral is pretty urgent now."

"Agreed."

"What do you need to produce it?" He was a kind man, but he wasn't letting her off the hook. He was right, of course. "Ironically, developing a vaccine is the most dangerous and rebellious thing you can do to the Empire now."

"I just manipulated two genes in a naturally occurring nanoscale virus." Uthan turned her datapad back the right way up and calculated a few more dimensions. "We still need to hold a live virus, so we'd need some extra safety precautions. But FG thirty-six latches on to a single protein in human DNA, and the protein can be made resistant by one gene mutation. I can induce that gene mutation in a population with an engineered virus."

"Based on...?"

"Something easily transmissible and low-grade, like rhinacyrian fever. Very few humanoids have resistance to it. A day or two of a runny nose and itchy eyes, which is far preferable to dying of internal hemorrhaging and involuntary muscle paralysis."

"How fast?"

"Weeks."

"How easy to treat the population?"

"Vaccination's best, if you can herd four million Mandos. It would probably be simpler to let it loose and rely on human carriers to spread it. Or do what Palpatine did-disperse it in the air. But that requires a lot of equipment and someone will notice."

"Okay, give me your shopping list," he said. "I'll get the stuff as soon as I can."

"And then how about wiping out Coruscant?"

"First things first."

There was a timid knock on the door. Uthan looked up to see Scout in the doorway, and hoped the girl hadn't heard the conversation. It felt indecent to discuss plans for mass murder in front of a Jedi. Uthan wasn't sure why she reacted that way, seeing as she had little respect for the Jedi Order playing enforcer for the Republic, but Scout was a scared child, and that defused Uthan at an instinctive level.

"I wondered if you wanted breakfast," Scout said. "I'll bring it here, if you like. Peace and quiet. You, too, Mij?"

"Thanks, ad'ika ad'ika," Gilamar said. "You've got a good heart."

Uthan listened until the sound of Scout's boots faded. Then she looked at Gilamar.

"What a strange little group we are, clinging together. All loss and loneliness."

"Everyone's lonely until they find kindred spirits. I think this is a community of folks who've had enough and can't run anymore."

"I'm truly grateful for your kindness, Mij. It's as if everyone's conveniently forgotten what I actually do for a living."

Gilamar shrugged. "Most folks here have taken another being's life. I think that includes the Force-users, too."

"How's Arla doing?"