Part 20 (1/2)
Skirata didn't look up. His head was tilted down as if his focus was fixed on the blade, although it was always hard to tell where a helmeted man was looking. Eventually, after a dozen more intensely irritating sc.r.a.pes of the knife, he sheathed it in the housing on his right forearm plate and paced along the bridge, then back again.
Mereel was late, and he hadn't commed Skirata.
”He'll be here,” said Vau.
”I know.”
”Even if he doesn't get the pilot, you've got the planet.”
”He'll get the pilot”
Maybe it didn't matter if Mereel didn't find him. Dorumaa was 85 percent ocean except for the artificial resort islands, so any landing was easy to track. There was nowhere that Ko Sai could hide a laboratory on the surface, either; she'd have to go underwater.
It explained the equipment being freighted around. Ko Sai was looking to build a hermetically sealed lab, and maybe not just because she wanted it to be hyperclean.
Skirata flipped open his datapad and thrust it under Vau's nose. ”There's the hydrographic charts, anyway.”
Vau tried to make sense of the three-dimensional maze of colored contours. ”Remember it only goes down to fifty meters. The developers were too scared to risk surveying any deeper.”
”Then the same goes for her. And she'd have to pick a natural rock formation to hide in, or she'd need to import a lot of heavy engineering to excavate something.”
”You better hope it's within the fifty-meter depth, then ...”
”Kaminiise aren't a deep-sea species.” Skirata held out his hand for the datapad. ”If they were completely aquatic or could cope with depths, they wouldn't have been nearly wiped out when the planet flooded. They just like to be near water, preferably without too much suns.h.i.+ne. So ... what better place to hide than a nice sunny pleasure resort? Who's going to look for her there?”
Vau snorted. ”Delta Squad . .. the Seps ... us .. .”
”I didn't say she had any common sense. Typical scientist. All theory. No idea how bounty hunters work.”
”Well, she's evaded you for well over a year.”
”Yeah? And now she's run out of road.”
Vau hadn't actually disliked Tipoca in the eight years he'd been cooped up there. Inside the pristine stilt-city, it could have been any urban environment; he didn't miss shopping and entertainment, so it was largely indistinguishable from Coruscant, although the lack of hunting troubled Mird. The strill stalked Kaminoans instead. It even caught one once, but its prey was just the blue-eyed variety, the lowest genetic caste of Kamino, and the gray-eyed elite seemed only annoyed at the loss of a menial.
Yes, that was probably the day Vau's ambivalence toward Kaminoans evaporated, and he joined Skirata in thinking of them as aiwha-bait.
”And what are you going to do when you get hold of her?”
”Take her research.”
”And?”
”And what?”
”You think she'll have a file marked SECRET FORMULA FOR STOPPING THE AGING PROCESS IN CLONES----DO NOT COPY?”.
Skirata clicked his teeth, impatient. ”She'll need to be persuaded”
”No, you'll need to get her to work for you. That means no choppy-choppy slicey-slicey.”
”Or get another geneticist on the case.”
”Of course. They're ten a credit. They queue up at employment centers.”
”Look, Walon, I'm not stupid. I know there'll be a gap to fill between getting hold of the research and making it into something my boys can use.”
”Just reality-checking.”
Skirata's voice had the tinge of a smirk in it. ”And I can get my hands on a geneticist who knows her way around a Fett genome.”
Vau kept his gaze on the riverside path, distracted slightly by a loud glop as something leapt from the river beneath and s.n.a.t.c.hed a low-flying creature that might have been avian or insectoid. Either way, it was lunch now.
”Tell me you're not thinking what I think you're thinking,” he said slowly.
Skirata ejected his knife from his forearm plate again and resumed sharpening. ”Atin nearly got killed hauling her shebs back from Qiilura. Might as well make it worth the journey.”
”Oh, you are thinking it. You're insane. Dr. Uthan's kept under tight Republic security. Chancellor's office level.”
Skirata just laughed. Vau suspected he had no idea what his limits were, and that he'd get killed finding out the hard way. The fool should have grown out of it at his age.
”Last I heard,” Skirata said, ”was that she was bored out of her skull and reduced to trying to interbreed soka flies in her cell to stay sane. They don't care who they work for, these folks. No ideology. They just want to play with their toys. If she can develop a clone-specific pathogen for the Seps, she can apply Ko Sai's research-if you can take it apart, you can rebuild it, right?”
Vau had to hand it to Skirata. He always thought outside the box. ”I'll consider that an incentive for getting Ko Sai to do the work.”
Skirata sheathed his knife again, and the two of them leaned on the bridge rail to contemplate the twin evils of pol-luted waterways and having to wait so long at their time of life. Mird wandered around, rubbing its jowls on the bridge bal.u.s.ters to mark its territory.
”Here he comes,” said Vau.
Mereel had acquired yet another form of transport. He had a great fondness for speeder bikes, and he seemed to be riding a different one every time Vau saw him. He had no idea whether Mereel came by them legally or not, but the Null trooper had a pillion pa.s.senger this time, and as the speeder drew closer it was clear that the being sitting behind him was a very scared green Twi'lek male. Vau could tell from the way his lekku looked rigid. It was the Twi'lek equivalent of white knuckles.
”He's very persuasive, is Mer'ika.” Skirata ambled off the bridge and stood blocking the path, hands on hips. ”So you stopped for caf and cake somewhere, son?”
”Had to take a call from A'den, Kal'buir” Mereel gestured to the Twi'lek to dismount. ”But I thought you'd want a face-to-face chat with our esteemed colleague here.” He slid off the speeder and nudged the Twi'lek. ”Okay, Leb, tell Kal 'buir about your job on Dorumaa.”
”It was legal,” the Twi'lek said. ”I didn't do anything wrong.”
” 'Course you didn't.” Skirata always sounded at his most menacing when he was doing his paternal-reason act. ”Just tell me about it.”
”I delivered a consignment of six construction droids and dry-lining materials to a barge half a klick off the coast of Tropix Island Resort.”
Vau tilted his head at Mird, and the strill went into its softening-up routine, padding around the Twi'lek, brus.h.i.+ng against his legs, and occasionally stopping to gaze up at him and display a yawning mouthful of teeth. It was a sobering spectacle. It sobered the Twi'lek right away.
”Can you show me on this chart?”
Leb the Twi'lek grabbed Skirata's proffered datapad and tapped frantically on the small screen, lekku quivering. ”There,” he said. ”I checked the coordinates. The barge was there. Moored out to sea.”
Skirata held the shaking datapad steady for him. ”Did you collect anything later?”
”No. Nothing. One-way journey.”