Part 13 (1/2)

The Grand Army had appeared literally overnight. Some details of secret defense projects had to be hidden from public eyes, she accepted that. But not the funding. Somewhere, someone had to get approval to buy a whole army off the shelf. and that took a lot longer than the year of wrangling about the Military Creation Act before Geonosis. There was nothing in committee records before that date even to hint at it.

It was driving her crazy.

Health. Medcenters, specialist med droids, training. The Republic had never had an instant army, nor one on quite this scale in living memory. It would have-should have-sought advice on forming a medical corps and dealing with the triage, treatment, and aftercare of large numbers of casualties. Some-one might have left that detail in the system, and then she might have a name, a date, or some other hard data to track.

Besany checked through her index for the Coruscant Health Administration and identified the policy planning office. She hadn't intended to talk to anyone else while she rifled through the records on an illicit investigation-call it what it is, spying, why don't you?-because it added one more cross-reference for someone who might be checking up on her. But talking to public servants across departments every day was routine, and thousands of staff did it.

”What do you mean, did we make provision for medical support for the Grand Army?” said the Nimbanel in policy planning. ”Had we been asked, we would have. I've worked here for thirty years. I recall nothing like that.”

Besany shouldn't have been surprised. If the procurement of an army had been hidden that well, so would its attendant services. She decided to start from the other end-the present day. ”So what does the CHA actually provide for the army now?”

”Nothing.”

”So what happens if a soldier is s.h.i.+pped back to Coruscant for treatment?”

”CHA doesn't deal with them. Civilians only. If they're treated anywhere, it'll be by GAR medical units.”

Besany wound up the conversation and went back into the Treasury records she'd already combed on the last investigation. She could track all the routine supply and procurement transactions since Geonosis-armaments, victualing, leases on merchant vessels, maintenance contracts, refueling-but still there was nothing to point her at transactions with Kamino.

Her stomach rumbled and reminded her she'd been at this for hours. It was well past her usual lunch break. Just one more trawl, then I'll break. Come back with a fresh eye. Do a little real work to cover my lack of output today. She'd try an-other route: the Customs Bureau. There might have been duty payable on something, export licenses, anything that would give her an audit trail between Tipoca City and Galactic City.

But you got Mereel 's answer already. There's nothing in the budget estimates to pay for more clones for next year or the year after. There's no indication if or how the Kaminoans are being paid at all.

That was odd in itself. The only reason she could think of was that the costs were far more than anyone imagined. It was a very good reason indeed to make the budget disappear.

”Lunch. Bez?”

Besany jumped. Jilka Zan Zentis-Corporate Tax Enforcement, no stranger to taxpayers who wanted to cut their liability via a blaster-stuck her head around Besany's door-way. Shutting the doors looked suspicious, but n.o.body seemed to want to know what you were working on if they could walk in and peer over your shoulder.

”Busy . . . monitoring reports to do . . .”

”Are you okay?”

Besany tried to memorize where she was on the balance sheet. ”You keep asking me that lately.”

”You haven't been yourself for a while.”

Just get lost. I need to drill down into this budget. It's the only thing I can do that's useful right now.

”My . . . boyfriend's serving in the Grand Army,” Besany said. There: she'd said the B word to herself, and now to Jilka. If she called Ordo anything else, she would have proved to herself that she was ashamed of what he was, making him less than human. ”And I spend my days waiting to hear that he isn't dead. Okay?”

Jilka straightened up as if Besany had slapped her. ”I'm sorry-I didn't realize. We don't have that many citizens serving, do we?”

Besany's common sense grappled with her conscience. No, I won 't deny him. ”Clones don't get citizens.h.i.+p.”

The two women stared at each other for a moment, and Jilka looked away first. It was a terrible moment: and maybe Besany had said too much, revealing that she had far too much contact with the Grand Army.

”Wow,” said Jilka, ducking back out of the doorway. ”You must have had more fun doing that investigation at the logistics center than I thought.”

Besany waited for the sound of Jilka's shoes clattering down the corridor to fade to silence, and rested her chin on her hands. That would get around the building like wildfire.

So what? I 'in not ashamed.

She'd lost her appet.i.te now. She went back to the public accounts menu on the Treasury system and started working through the Customs section, keying in KAMINO, TIPOCA, and CLONING. And it threw up a lot more doc.u.ments than she'd expected, mostly the trade ban on the supply of cloning apparatus and services under Decree E49D139.41. Kamino didn't feature a great deal, but Arkania did.

Arkanian Micro must be working all kinds of dodges to get around this. Big chunk of their exports, gone in a single amendment.

There was a big, dull section marked MEDICAL EXEMPTION LICENSES. Her natural tidy curiosity told her she should see what items did manage to bypa.s.s the cloning ban, and when she did, she couldn't help but notice the sheer volume of the transactions: trillions of credits. That was a lot of organs and skin grafts. Or...

Or...

Besany checked the codes. It was always possible that the codes were wrong or falsified, but they appeared to be licenses for imports to Coruscant itself with a destination code for Centax II-especially Centax II. It was just one of Coruscant's moons: a sterile sphere used for military staging and fleet maintenance. For a moment Besany made a mental connection and wondered if there was an army medical center there, and that was why the Coruscant Health Authority took no military patients: maybe the GAR had its own acute care facility on Centax II, and the cloned tissues were destined for that.

Okay, the government doesn't want the public to see how many troops are brought back too seriously hurt even for the Mobile Surgical Units and medcenter s.h.i.+ps to treat. Bad for citizens' morale. Keep it all offworld.

But Kamino didn't need licenses, did it? And if anyone wanted cloned organs to restore troopers to fighting health, Kamino was the obvious source. It was what the Kaminoans did. The Republic was now their only customer thanks to the decree.

A little bell started ringing at the back of Besany's mind. She knew the sound of it: it was the finely tuned instinct familiar to anyone who'd spent time uncovering that which others wanted kept covered. She had no doubt that Captain Obrim and his CSF colleagues knew that bell only too well.

What was going on here?

Besany transferred the data to her own device, far more sections than she actually needed to disguise which information she was interested in, just in case data movement was being monitored. She needed to talk to Mereel, but this wasn't the place.

She pocketed her datapad and took a late lunch far from the Treasury building.

Landing area 76B, Bogg V, Bogden system, 473 days after Geonosis Aay'han sat on her dampers, looking scruffy. She'd been left in the water too long at one stage in her life: there was still a definite tide mark of encrusted growth even after a few searing atmospheric reentries. Mereel laughed and slapped his gauntlet against his thigh plate. Jusik just stood and stared.

”It's a hybrid submarine, General.” Skirata took a piece of ruik root from his belt pouch and chewed it thoughtfully. He didn't enjoy the perfumed taste, but the texture was soothing. ”I didn't charge her to the brigade budget, if that's what's worrying Zey.”

”It's when you call me General that I worry, Sergeant...”

Jusik really didn't look like a Jedi right then. Whatever it was about the Force that gave him an air of illuminated serenity had taken a walk. He looked grimly mundane.

”Bard'ika.” Skirata offered the kid a piece of root, but he waved it aside. ”You've come an awful long way for just a chat, son.”

Jusik took a deep breath and trudged forward as if he knew how to get into a Deep Water. ”Things are getting out of hand. I had to do something that's . . . been a difficult decision.”

Skirata was a magnet for waifs and strays; if someone was looking for a sense of belonging, Skirata could make them feel they belonged like n.o.body else. It was the necessary skill of a sergeant, someone who could bond troops with the intensity of a family, but it was also the authority of a father, and he often couldn't tell where one began and the other ended. He wasn't sure that it mattered. Jusik-clever, lonely, and increasingly at odds with Jedi policy-radiated a need for acceptance: the result was inevitable. Skirata struggled to find the line between taking advantage of the Jedi's vulnerability and getting the best deal for his clones.

Kal followed Jusik. ”You can only do what you think is right, ad'ika.”

”Then I need you to level with me.”

”Be sure you want to be burdened with the answer, then.”

The port-side cargo hatch edged open, and Skirata ushered Jusik inside. Mereel tutted at an interruption from his comlink and paused to answer it.

In the crew lounge, Vau sat rubbing Mird's head as it lay across his lap, and looked a much healthier color than he'd been hours earlier. He nodded gravely. The proceeds of the robbery were nowhere to be seen. Skirata sat down on one of the low tables, and Ordo and Mereel planted themselves to either side of Jusik on one of the couches. Jusik-Skirata's height, a head shorter than any clone-was swamped by Munin Skirata's green armor. Green for duty, black for justice, gold for vengeance: Mereel had opted for dark blue and Ordo for dark red, simply a matter of taste, but when they decided they had a specific cause then they might change the livery and add sigils. The word uniform didn't have much meaning to Mandalorians.