Part 25 (2/2)
But they had something she wanted, too, and it wasn't just Ordo. She wanted a share of their closeness, that belonging and camaraderie, and an end to feeling she was on the out-side of life.
She thought suddenly of Fi, and how-so Ordo said-he knew there was a complete element missing from his existence, and he resented it. She at least knew what hers was, and where she might get it.
But there was also the lure of a wrong to be righted, and she knew she wasn't alone in that. Senator Skeenah from Chandrila was getting very vocal about the Grand Army's conditions and clone rights. He might prove to be a handy excuse for investigating further.
Her private comlink stared back at her from the palm of her hand, daring her to choose between calling Ordo and contacting the Senator. Still scared that she might call while Ordo was gambling whether to cut a red wire or a blue one as a detonator counted down, she sent him a delayed message instead. He could choose when and if he wanted to read it.
I hope you enjoyed the cake. What else could she say? She had no idea who else might see it, secure link or not. You have to try my home cooking when you get back. She could imagine Ordo reading it with a frown, taking it at face value, while Mereel-who seemed to be leading a totally different life, and relis.h.i.+ng it-would have given her a knowing grin.
Besany sent the message with a click of her thumbnail on the keys, then tapped in the-code for the Senate switchboard.
No point leaving an audit trail on the office link, just in case. He's a known antiwar activist. They'll be watching him-whoever they might be.
Senator Skeenah's administrative droid made an appointment for her to meet him later that day, which indicated just how few lobbyists were courting a man who opposed the war, and asked if she preferred ”off site.”
”I'm at the Treasury building,” she said. Visiting the Sen-ate was routine for a government employee; it would draw less attention than a meeting in a tapcaf or restaurant. She'd be picked up on any of a dozen security holocams as she moved around Galactic City, and even by the surveillance satellites that kept watch over Coruscant. ”I'll come to his office.”
On the way to the meeting, sitting in the back of an air taxi, she felt that the small blaster in her pocket was visible to the whole planet. She didn't even know what type it was. It was a smart dark blue with a stubby green-gray barrel and a little red light that showed it was charged, quite a pretty object. When she peered at the engraved plate on the b.u.t.t-she was sure the end of the grip was called that-she could see the words MERRSONN.
”Lady, you're making me nervous,” said the taxi driver. ”You going to a.s.sa.s.sinate someone?”
Besany hadn't realized he could see that far over the back of the seat, but there was a lot she didn't know about the visual field of a Rodian's faceted eyes. She slid the blaster off her lap and back into her pocket.
”I mix with unsavory characters,” she said.
Taxi drivers had an opinion on everything. ”Senate's full of them... they're called politicians.”
She thought that way, too, but then realized she'd never actually met one socially. Where did she get that idea? From the holonews? From the courts? The power of stereotypes was astonis.h.i.+ng. She wondered how she could ever gain any headway in making Coruscanti see the anonymous troopers fighting the war for them as living, breathing men.
She couldn't even say they were all someone's son or husband or father or brother. They were utterly outside of society. The size of the task almost crushed her.
One step at a time, girl. Do what you can.
Senator Skeenah met her in one of the cell-like private interview rooms kept for Senators to meet members of the public. He was much more ordinary than she'd imagined, not terribly well dressed, but he had an earnest pa.s.sion that hit her like a tidal wave. Another stereotype crashed and burned.
”Of course I'm concerned about what happens to these men,” he said. ”Whatever other member planets might do, Coruscant hasn't tolerated slavery in millennia. It's intolerable that we adopt it now simply because it's expedient. But I'm a lone voice.”
Besany took it carefully. ”I'm having some difficulty identifying medical provision for the Grand Army, Senator. I can identify expenditure on what I think are medcenter facilities, but it's not... let's say the audit trail isn't transparent.”
That careful comment meant a great deal in political code if the listener wanted to interpret it. Skeenah seemed to. ”Yes, I've asked repeatedly about casualties-the medical field units are woefully inadequate, and I can't find out what happens to those killed in action. To the best of my knowledge, the bodies aren't recovered. There's no heroes' return for these poor men. So if you see large sums allocated to clone welfare, I can a.s.sure you there's no sign of it being used to that end.”
Besany had a sensation of dread like cold water spilling in her lap. It was something she could have found out easily enough from Ordo; he'd know what they did with bodies, but it was one of a long list of things she'd never thought to ask. The inference was that troopers were simply discarded like waste, and that stoked her anger. She hovered on the edge of asking Skeenah if he knew anything about facilities on Cen-tax II, and decided that it was too dangerous to have that kind of discussion with a man she didn't know.
”I audit some of the Grand Army accounts,” she said. That much was true, and hardly a secret if news of her meeting got back to her bosses. She slipped a plastoid contact card from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. ”If there's ever any-thing you think I should look at-discreetly, of course, be-cause I'd be investigating other public servants-do let me know.”
”Ah, you're the internal police ...”
”I look after the taxpayers' credits.”
”And here was I thinking you might be concerned about the welfare of our army.”
Besany bit her tongue out of habit but it was too painful a comment to let pa.s.s. ”Oh, but I am,” she said. ”They're not just theoretical charity cases to me. I'm dating a trooper.”
Skeenah looked taken aback for a moment, and she wasn't sure if he was reacting to her cutting comment or the unsolicited personal detail.
”Well,” he said, ”there's no point my haranguing you about the fact that they're all human men like any other, is there?”
It was time for a little humility. ”I know a lot of clones, by most people's standards, and yes, I care what happens to them.”
”You might know, then, what happens to them.”
”In what sense?”
”When they're wounded but can't return to active duty You see, I can find out what happens on the Rimsoo medical stations-or at least I get some limited answers from the Defense staff-but I'm getting no answers about the men who can't be patched up and sent back.”
Besany thought of Corr, temporarily a.s.signed desk duties after a device he was defusing blew up and took his hands with it. He was awaiting the arrival of specialist prosthetics, and if Skirata hadn't grabbed him for commando training, he'd have gone back to ordnance disposal.
”I would imagine they die,” Besany said. ”The army seems to go to a lot of trouble to send them back.”
”Ah, but life isn't that tidy,” Skeenah said. He lowered his voice, even though the doors were shut. ”There'll be injuries that a man can survive, but that means he'll never be fit for service again. I can't seriously believe something like that hasn't happened in more than a year of this war. And yet there are no homes for these men, who must surely exist, and we know they don't end up being cared for by family- because they have none. So where do they go?”
Besany didn't even want to think about it, but she had to. The only answer she could think of right then was that the most badly injured who might otherwise have been saved were left to die.
But some mobile surgical units had Jedi advisers. No Jedi would let such a thing happen ... would they?
She had to talk to Jusik. He'd tell her.
”I'm going to see if I can find out,” Besany said.
”And I'm going to carry on pressing for proper long-term care facilities.” Skeenah looked troubled. ”Meanwhile, I'm also going to help raise funds for charitable care. There are some citizens out there who want to help, you know.”
”I'll keep you posted,” Besany promised.
She took the long walk back to the Treasury building, pausing for a caf on the way, and found that the Senator's question was now eating away at her. Yes, it could only mean that clone troopers lived, or died, and there was no middle way or disability provision. The war hadn't reached the eighteen-month mark yet. Governments were always poor at thinking things through, especially when wars caught them on the hop.
Maybe this was what Dhannut Logistics was doing, then: care facilities out of the public eye to hide the signs that the war might not be going as well or as cleanly as the civilian citizens imagined, just as she'd first thought. She decided to check out their other projects when she got back to her desk, but while she sipped her caf, she checked them out via her datapad simply to get a street address from the directory.
And that was where things started to get interesting.
There was no entry in the public database for Dhannut. It could have been a subsidiary of another company, of course, or even one that wasn't based on Coruscant; but either way, it would have to be registered to tender for government con-tracts, and it would have had to register for corporate taxation even if it was offworld, and so it would require a tax exemption number.
Jilka could come in useful now. She was the tax officer; she was an expert in finding companies that earned revenue and didn't pay their taxes in full.
Besany Wennen, who'd played things by the book all her life until she fell in with a crowd of misfits and men who didn't exist, put on her best liar's face and prepared to spin a plausible story to Jilka, crossing the line from merely accessing records for unauthorized reasons to entering a world of deception-with consequences she knew she could never imagine.
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