"Do you consider yourself to be a sentient organic, like a human?" Jos asked abruptly.

"Only when I'm particularly depressed," the droid replied.

Jos made a wry face. Before he could reply I-Five con-tinued, "Knowing what I do of organics, however, and of humans in particular, I must a.s.sume that your ques-tion is sincere, Captain Vondar. I can only answer that, due to a cognitive module superior to most droids of my category, as well as the lack of a creativity damper, I am more sentient than most of my colleagues. Does this mean that I qualify as a 'living' being? I suppose that depends on one's point of view. But most philosophers take the position that to be able to ask the question is to have already answered it."

Den saw a quick glance pa.s.s between the captain and the minder, saw the latter smile slightly. Something sub-surface was definitely going on there.

"In the twelve years that I have ricocheted around this galaxy like the legendary Roon Comet," I-Five contin-ued, "I have encountered a great many interesting per-sonalities.

Some of them have been droids. I still have gaps in my memory that seem to be connected to some kind of trauma occurring not long after my leaving Cor-uscant. My self-repair systems are processing these gaps, a.s.sembling the missing data from interior holo-grammics, but my internal logic circuits won't allow synaptic linkage to proceed with less than seventy-five percent certainty."

Den glanced at Jos. It was his hand, but the surgeon seemed deep in thought, unaware of his turn.

"Jos," Barriss said gently after a moment.

Jos looked up. "I call," he said.

Everyone showed their hands. Den chuckled as he put down a full twenty-three. "Pure sabacc," he said, grin-ning and reaching for the two pots. "Scan 'em and sob, ladies and-"

Jos laid down his cards. Den and the other players stared in disbelief. It was an idiot's array: the face card plus a two of sabers and a three of flasks.

"Nice play," Tolk said.

"Thanks," Jos said as he gathered in the credits. But Den, watching the surgeon's expression, had the dis-tinct feeling that right now, Captain Vondar could not have cared less about winning.

21.

The night was, of course, warm. Wingstingers, fire gnats, and other hapless insects flew past and hurled themselves against zappers, adding little blue flickers to the camp lights and what little wan star gleam managed to penetrate the mostly cloudy skies. Drongar's two moons weren't even big enough to show disks, so, were it not for the Rimsoo lights, the swamp would be ex-ceedingly dark now. As would the entire night half of the planet. On a rainy evening, the only light was from swamp rot, lightning flashes, and the intermittent glow of the fire gnats.

An unpleasant place in every aspect. Well, no, be hon-est-the enemy personnel were actually fairly decent beings.

There was a tendency, the spy knew, to identify with the people you found yourself among when you were working. There could come a time when you'd forget your original purpose, and start to think of those whom you were detailed to watch, or to damage, as real friends. It was called "going native. " Many agents and spies had done it, in war and in peace. It was all too easy. Enemies were not faceless automata, or amoral monsters who got up every morning with a burning de-sire to rage forth and do evil. No, most of them were just like anybody else-they had hopes, fears, families, and they believed they were doing the right things for the right reasons.

It was hard to demonize such people.

To be sure, you could present it as such to a bunch of young troopers. You could indoctrinate them, visu-alizing the enemy soldiers as maniacal fiends who wanted nothing more than to slaughter innocent younglings, burn down your prime mother's house, and violate your drove father's grave. Modern soldiers rarely saw the enemy face to face at any event. Firing a missile at somebody ten thousand meters away was bloodless and uninvolving. But even a brief encounter at close range on the field was sometimes enough to ruin months of training: the first time one of your re-cruits saw a young being who looked a lot like him or her or it, sitting on a battlefield holding in his guts with his hands and crying for a drink of water-well, it was a shock. Your newly battle-trained conscript might suddenly realize that the dying young soldier had hopes and fears not all that different from his own-and maybe that all he, too, wanted to do was just serve his tour and go home. That realization was like an upended flask of liquid nitrogen, chilling to the core.

Thinking along those lines was not a good idea for a soldier. It might make him hesitate next time; might even get him killed. Best to try and ignore it.

But when you were a sub-rosa agent, you couldn't do that. You couldn't harbor illusions that your enemies were evil; not when you ate with them, drank with them, worked with them. You sometimes grew very at-tached to them. In a place like this, people lived in each other's pockets. You learned to know the one sitting across from you at the chow hall table, almost as well as you did your own reflection.

The staff at this Rimsoo were good people, almost all of them. The spy knew this-judging beings was a big part of an agent's business. If this war hadn't begun, any of them could have been potential friends. There wasn't a demon among them.

That made the tasks harder. When you weren't hurt-ing some monster by setting events in motion, but in-stead were harming people who considered you their friend-it hurt. You got up every morning and your life among them was almost totally a lie. Everything you said or did had to remain hidden behind a thick shroud, kept secret for your own survival. Spies, after all, were not well treated in times of war. You were seldom traded when caught; generally, a quick military court would be convened and you would be extinguished like a switched-off glow stick, quietly and quickly, as soon as they extracted whatever intelligence they could from your soon-to-be-dead brain. Dead on some faraway planet, unmourned in a shallow grave, detested by those who thought they'd known you.

And even if you were successful-even if you com-pleted your mission and returned safely-there was no glory, no medals, no parades at home. If you were very lucky, you got to live a quiet, low-key life without hav-ing extensive parts of your memory sponged away by "your" side.

Spying was not a job for one with pale courage. You had to be made of something stronger than the strongest steelcrete to withstand the stress of being an undercover agent, no matter which side you worked for, no matter how strong and valid your reasons for doing the job.

Valid? Oh, yes, the spy's reasons were certainly that. The reasons were old and far away, but undiminished nonetheless. Even so, it was impossible to smile at these people and not mean it, because they were good people. None of them had partic.i.p.ated in the atrocity that had made all this necessary-all of them, in fact, would have been horrified at the event.

Decent beings on any side of any war would be. But it wasn't the decent be-ings who caused such things. And it was the indecent ones who had to pay for their crimes. You had to resolve early on that the innocent might have to suffer, and you had to strive to make them suffer as little as possible, but suffering was unavoidable. People died in war, just as the spy's people had died, and there was little to be done about it, save to make it happen as cleanly and quickly as possible.

Some of them were attractive, bright, skilled... all the things the spy sought in friends and lovers. And yet they would die. That resolve had to remain steadfast. War was a cold business. The tears would have to come much later...

It was time for bed. Tomorrow would bring whatever it would bring, and rest, if allowed by happenstance, was always necessary.

At least once a month, Admiral Bleyd did a tour of the Rimsoos. It was a cursory inspection, to wave the flag and pretend he cared about the troops and medics toiling on this tropical mudball he had come to so thor-oughly detest. When the next Black Sun agent ap-peared, it was not Bleyd's intent that there be anything unusual in his own routine.

The inspection tour was scheduled and, without compelling reason to call it off, would proceed as normal. Business as usual.

It was largely a waste of everybody's time. They knew when he was coming, had had plenty of time to polish and prepare. He would not see anything amiss unless it happened by accident, and right in front of him.

He couldn't even take time off to go hunting-but then, there was nothing worthy of his skill on this sod-den world.

Bleyd always used his personal lighter for the flight to the surface, a small craft traditionally called that be-cause its namesake's original purpose had been to "lighten"

vessels on planetary seas by moving cargo ash.o.r.e. His craft, a modified Surronian Conqueror as-sault ship, was not the standard vessel for an admiral of the fleet. The vessel was small, less than thirty meters in length, and its cargo-carrying capacity was limited-it wouldn't lighten any ship of size to any noticeable de-gree, which was normal enough. It ran, however, a clus-ter of eight Surronian ion engines, four A2s and four A2.50s, and was the fastest thing in the atmosphere on this planet by far. Enemy guns set to track ordinary transport and starfighters would be shooting at empty air far behind the ship when Bleyd cranked it up. Expo-sure to the spores was also more limited than in other craft. On a good flight, with no local storms to slow him down, he could leave the flight deck and land at ground stations in half the time any other transport available could manage. The hyperdrive was a Cla.s.s One Corellian Engineering Corporation HI.5, suffi-cient to carry a pa.s.senger back to the realm of civilized worlds. Bleyd had heard about the vessel after it had been captured from some pirate or other during a mili-tary engagement just before he was posted here, and with a bit of clever bargaining had managed to obtain it as his personal transport.

Aside from its other virtues, the ship had a pleasing aerodynamic shape, a kind of elongated figure eight. There was, after all, no reason an admiral's transport couldn't look as good as it flew.

This jaunt was a piece of dream cake. As he lanced through the atmosphere toward the surface, he was pondering his other problem: credits, and how best to ama.s.s as many as possible as quickly as possible with-out risk of detection.

"Please identify yourself," came the request from the main Republic ground battery control.

Bleyd smiled. They had to ask, but they certainly knew who he was. The sensor profile of his lighter was unique-there was nothing in twenty pa.r.s.ecs that looked even remotely like it.

"Admiral Bleyd here," he responded, his voice crisp. "On inspection tour from MedStar Nineteen." He rat-tled off the current identification code, which was changed daily on his order.

There was brief pause while the officer in charge pre-tended to check to make sure his commander wasn't some Separatist spy coming to bomb a poor Rimsoo unit squatting in a swamp. Then: "All fine, sir. Proceed to designated landing quadrant, and welcome, Admiral."

Bleyd shut off the comm without responding.

It was not the money per se, though that certainly had its appeal on some level. No, it was the recovery of honor, the prestige, the righting of wrongs-that was what a bank full of credits represented. He had already managed to build himself a nice sum, enough so that, if managed correctly, it would keep him fed and clothed and reasonably comfortable for the rest of his life. But the goal was not merely to retire in comfort; no, the goal was much more important than that. The goal was honor.

Mixed in with this was, of course, a degree of vengeance. There were beings who needed to be dealt with, old grudges settled, and a dynasty to begin. He had to find a mate, marry, produce heirs, and make cer-tain that his sons and daughters would be sufficiently wealthy so as to guarantee their rightful places in the galaxy. This war would be over eventually.

The Repub-lic would prevail-he didn't doubt that, inconceivable that it would not-and life would go on much as it had before. A peaceful galaxy, with ample opportunity for the landed and wealthy to prosper even more-these were things to be taken for granted. No sane being wanted war, save that it served his own ends. There were fortunes to be made in times of conflict, power to be gathered, and when this one was done Bleyd and his descendants would be among the rich and powerful. Of that, there was no doubt.

The doing of it was not so easy, but he was both clever and resourceful. Small amounts of the bota could con-tinue to be diverted and stored. His dealings with Black Sun would have to cease-a major theft was out of the question-but he could hide a lot of the valuable adap-togen on a ship the size of a MedStar, stack it in blocks of carbonite disguised as something else, and take it back to civilization himself, bold as you please. The ma-terial would never show up on a manifest, n.o.body would know it existed, and it would only become more valuable as time went by. A thousand kilos of pharma-ceutical-grade bota stashed in some warehouse would eventually be worth millions all by itself.

But there were other things a smart admiral could do to enhance his fortune. A medical system necessary for a Rimsoo could be ordered in duplicate, and one of them could find its way elsewhere, perhaps to some world in desperate need of such a facility, and bartered for something of equal value but more portable. Pre-cious metal or rare gems, say. And a couple of first-cla.s.s medical droids misdirected to some frontier planet where doctors were in short supply would also be worth their weight in credits. Even a copy of a propri-etary computer program, such as the one that ran the MedStar's operational systems, was a valuable com-modity-if presented to the right customer. How many one-starship worlds would love to have one of those for its hospitals, with no questions asked, for the right price?

The ship's hull began to warm as it arrowed its way into the atmosphere. The sensors noted this and ad-justed the environmental control systems. He was only a few minutes away from the ground medical HQ, tra-ditionally called Rimsoo One. There didn't seem to be any fighting in this quadrant today, so he didn't expect any real trouble. Now and then, some pilot from the Confederacy would try a suicide run, braving the spores in order to get a chance to attack a Republic vessel out-side his operational range. He had never been attacked himself, and the lighter was equipped with a pair of fire-linked ion cannons, as well as laser cannons he could use from the c.o.c.kpit. He sometimes wished one of the Separatist fighters would try him so that he could demonstrate he was no rear-guard admiral, but such an opportunity had never presented itself. Too bad.

"This is Landing Control. We are a.s.suming com-mand of your vessel in thirty seconds, sir."

Bleyd nodded to himself. "Acknowledged, Landing Control." He would prefer to bring the lighter in himself on manual, but this was not standard procedure, and Tarnese Bleyd would not risk his future on pure ego-driven matters of such small consequence. Let them land the ship. He had bigger game to slay...

22.

Bleyd liked to vary his inspections. Sometimes he would stick to one planetary sector; other times he would travel across an entire region. On one trip he might visit Rimsoos in numerical order; another time he'd hit only the even - or odd-numbered ones. There were a dozen of the emergency medical bases, one for practically every major battlefront, spread far and wide over Tanla.s.so. There was no way he could see them all in a single visit, unless he was willing to stay on the ground for a month of constant travel. Republic Mobile Surgical Units were technically able to pick up and move quickly, either to avoid danger or to follow the advance or retreat of the front lines. Once established, however, the units tended to stay put for weeks or months, and some of them were still in the same spot where they'd been initially dropped. There wasn't a lot of variation among them, since they all had the same primary purpose: the repair and maintenance of the clone trooper army and what-ever other casualties might occur.

Not that it made any difference how he conducted his inspections; whichever manner he chose, the word would be there long before he arrived. Some leaders liked to drop in unannounced, but for him, surprise was not part of the process. He wasn't looking for something unpleasant to have to deal with. As long as n.o.body fouled up, he didn't worry about the day-to-day operations.

As the landspeeder ferrying him from the area's tem-porary hub s.p.a.ceport approached the current location of Rimsoo Seven, Bleyd watched faint speckles of red-dish spore dust glitter over the vehicle's transparisteel canopy. Even though the spores were much less danger-ous at ground level most of the time, zipping along in a speeder with the top down was hardly a good idea.

The unit was just ahead; they'd covered the two hundred or so kilometers of marshland and bayous separating it from his landing pad quickly. His driver was a young, four-armed Myneyrsh male, which was something of a surprise. Most Myneyrshi had an aver-sion to technology, and Bleyd a.s.sumed that this ap-plied to powered ground-effect craft such as this one. The driver also had an issue blaster on the seat beside him, though if attacked, Bleyd was fairly sure the trooper would reach first for the big garral-tooth knife he wore in a sheath strapped to his translucent blue leg. There was a Myneyrsh saying: "A knife never runs out of ammunition." Bleyd understood that well enough.

"Rimsoo Seven, Admiral, sir," the driver said.

Bleyd nodded. He had been here before, though it had been several months, at least. The place looked like all the others; only the location and the local graffiti marked it as different.

Well, that and the fact that his partner in crime, Filba the Hutt, was based here...

They approached the perimeter, were challenged by the guard, and admitted through the energy shield. The military-grade power shield kept certain things out, notably fast-moving missiles and high-energy spectra such as gamma and X- rays, while letting in radio waves and visible light. Unfortunately, heat, rain, spores, and insects were slow enough to some degree to pa.s.s through the osmotic shield as well.

Bleyd met Colonel D'Arc Vaetes, the commander, and each offered up the usual ordained and meaningless compliments and comments. Going through the mo-tions, Bleyd was paying somewhat less than half his at-tention to the tour. Vaetes ran a tight ship, he knew, and the admiral would have been surprised to see anything really amiss.

As they pa.s.sed the dining hall and cantina on their way to look at the main surgical theater, Bleyd saw a man leaning against a poptree twenty meters away, smiling.

A chill touched Bleyd's spine, for there was a distinct sense of danger emanating from the smiling human. There was nothing overt about it, nothing that might be seen as a gesture of disrespect, but the feeling was un-mistakable. Here was a warrior-not just a soldier. A smiling killer who knew what he was and gloried in the knowledge.

Bleyd stopped. "Who is that?"

Vaetes glanced over and said, "Phow Ji, the Bunduki close-combat instructor. His workouts keep me in bet-ter shape than I'd like."

"Ah." That explained it. Bleyd knew about Ji. Like any good hunter, he always marked predators in his ter-ritory. Ji had had a reputation before he arrived here; his datafile had been flagged. And since he had arrived, he had done several things to add to that reputation. There was a rumor that a holo existed of Ji going up against a trio of mercs, and being the only one to walk away. Bleyd was very interested in seeing that.

To Vaetes, he said, "Let's go over and say h.e.l.lo." As they turned and headed toward Ji, the admiral was amused to see the fighter's nostrils flare a little, and his relaxed pose become just a bit more tense. He smiled. It could have just been his rank, but Bleyd didn't think so. His file stated that Phow Ji had little respect for author-ity. No, Bleyd figured that Ji recognized in him the same thing that he had immediately seen in the Bunduki: a potentially dangerous opponent. Ji came to attention, albeit somewhat slowly.

"At ease, Lieutenant Ji."

"By your command, Admiral." The fighter relaxed, bent his knees slightly, and shook his shoulders almost imperceptibly.

Getting ready to move, Bleyd thought. Excellent1. This man could take on twenty Black Sun thugs like the one Bleyd had bested orbitside without breaking a sweat.

"You know me?" Ji asked.

"Of course. I have heard that you are... an adept fighter."

His tone, and the pause, were just enough to give his comment an archness that might or might not be sar-castic. So close that it could have been nothing-or a calculated insult.

Impossible to tell.

The two looked at each other for a second, each gaze cool and measuring.

Ji said, "Adept enough for anyone on this planet. Sir."

Bleyd held a grin in check, though he wanted to show his teeth. The Bunduki was insolent.

The comment was plainly a challenge. There had been a time, when he had been much younger, when Bleyd would have stripped off his skin-shirt at such a remark, and they would have danced right then and there. He wanted to do it now-and he could tell that Ji knew this, and was ready to go at it, too.

Three things stopped Bleyd from physically attacking the Bunduki who was standing there and inviting just that. First, he was an admiral of the fleet, and it was be-neath him to be seen brawling in public. Such a match would have to take place behind closed doors and un-witnessed, were it to happen at all.

Second, Bleyd's plans to redeem his family's honor were still paramount, and a physical squabble with an-other officer, for whatever reasons, would draw un-wanted attention from uplevels. He did not want to risk that.

Third-and this reason came hard, but he could not deny it-he wasn't at all sure he could beat Phow Ji in a fair match. There was no doubt that he was stronger and faster, but the human was a combat champion, and his skills had been honed in dozens of matches, some of which had been to the death. Size and strength and speed all mattered, of course, but an opponent with enough skill could level that field. When two fully grown saber-fangs fought, the winner and the loser both came away b.l.o.o.d.y, and which was the victor was some-times difficult to tell. Bleyd was a predator, and as such was willing to risk death, but smart killers did so only when the reward was worth the risk. Bragging rights for beating a combat champion did not fall into that category-at least, not on this day, and not in this place.

What if, he wondered briefly, he were to turn Ji loose in the rain forest and make it a hunt? That would give Bleyd the advantage, but even so, it might not end with him victorious. Such risk would definitely spice the game, but it was not, unfortunately, going to happen now.

"I would like to see you in action someday," Bleyd said.

Ji nodded without breaking eye contact. Bleyd could see that he understood that the admiral was not backing down, but only postponing a possible confrontation. "I'd like that as well, Admiral. Sir."

The two stood there for a few seconds, neither of them blinking. Finally, Bleyd turned to Vaetes. "You were going to show me the operating theater, Comman-der. And I expect that the field commanders will want to display their troops, who will no doubt be getting warm in this weather."

Vaetes, who had kept a respectful distance from and a noncommittal expression about what must have seemed to him a very strange interlude, nodded. "Right this way, Admiral."

Bleyd could feel Ji's gaze on his back as he walked away. A pity, but it was true that a hunter without pa-tience usually went hungry. There would be another time. Already, though, Bleyd felt better about his tour. There was nothing like a dangerous animal stalking you to get the blood circulating.

His enthusiasm dampened a bit as he remembered that there was other business to which he must attend at this particular Rimsoo, distasteful as it was. No rest for the being in charge...

It was time.

With the Rimsoo admiral planetside for his tour, there would not be a better opportunity, Den knew, to spring his trap for Filba. To see the larcenous Hutt's many crimes finally brought to light-the embezzle-ment and usury and countless other illegal appropria-tions that Den had diligently discovered over the past several weeks, both through the HoloNet and by skillful interviews with the staff, all revealed right under Admi-ral Bleyd's nose-what could be more fitting? Or more satisfying?

It hadn't been easy. The data trail had been as serpen-tine as the Hutt's own slime track after a ma.s.sive can-tina bender. The most incriminating indictment had come from one of the medical staff who had an uncle on the supply side. The uncle had in his possession en-crypted data that implicated Filba in the rerouting of five hundred hectoliters of Anticeptin-D into the cargo hold of a black marketeer's freighter two months ago. It wasn't strong enough evidence by itself, and Filba had at least been smart enough not to bleed the same source twice, but coupled with the other infractions Den had discovered, it would be more than enough to take him down.

Den leaned back on his formcot and smiled. Payback would be sweet.

Over the hypersound speakers came the martial strains of the Republic Anthem's first stanza-the mu-sic traditionally played whenever a ranking officer or visiting dignitary was present. Of course, Den was a noncom, so he was not technically obligated to turn out with the others. Still, no harm in showing a little courtesy.

He'd only spoken to the Sakiyan officer once, and that briefly, before he'd made the drop to Drongar. But from what he'd heard around the base, Admiral Bleyd was held in reasonably high regard. He ran a tight operation, and there seemed to be little question of his personal courage, pride, and honor. Den didn't know that much about Sakiyan culture, but he did know that the society was structured around complex family-political units, and that honor, dignity, and re-spect played a big part-so much so that there were a mult.i.tude of subtle, yet distinct, permutations, each with its own name and rules.

He emerged from the tent, blinking and, as always, slightly astonished at the stifling, sodden heat, and saw the officers, enlistees, and medical personnel lined up for inspection. The clone cohort was separate, their gleaming black-and-white-armored forms, all exactly the same height and body type, standing at attention in rows that, if not perfect, couldn't have been off by more than a millimeter at best.