Part 30 (1/2)
It's a miracle they 're this normal. But I'll be ready to step in if he loses it with her.
The Wavechaser's two seats were set one behind the other, as in a guns.h.i.+p c.o.c.kpit, and there was a small cargo compartment abaft-around four cubic meters-for small items like food and diving equipment. It was just a sport vessel. Transferring Ko Sai to a suitable location for a nice friendly chat was going to be a logistics challenge, but the whole craft was under two meters wide, and that meant it could pa.s.s through the air lock with its hydroplanes folded. Shab, if it came to it, he'd stun the aiwha-bait with the b.u.t.t of his blaster, shove an aquata breather in her mouth, and haul her underwater if he had to.
One way or another, Ko Sai wasn't walking out of here.
Vau followed at a discreet distance in Aay'han. Skirata only knew where he was because the blip showed on his HUD display, and Vau was on the comlink circuit. There was no turning around in this cramped c.o.c.kpit to take a look.
The chakaar seemed to be making a pretty good job of pi-loting her, too.
”Don't damage that boat, Walon,” Skirata said.
”Ah, you're learning.” Vau seemed horribly cheerful today. Maybe he disliked Ko Sai more than Skirata knew. ”It is indeed a boat in this mode. Not a s.h.i.+p.”
”When did you get to be such a stickler for naval terminology?”
”My father was an admiral in the Imperial Irmenu Navy.” Vau had a special contemptuous drawl that he reserved for references to his original family, a way of dragging the air over his larynx and swirling the sound around his sinuses so that it emerged like metal sc.r.a.ping across brickwork. It always put Skirata's teeth on edge. Hatred had its own sound. ”Did I ever mention that? Ceremonial uniform like the drapes in a Hutt bordello and a vibroblade five centuries old. I wanted to join up, you know. He said I wasn't good enough.”
”But the Mando navy will take any old osik, right?”
”Have we ever had a seagoing navy?”
”Our own, or one we borrowed? Why, do you want to buy one?”
”Just curious. Making small talk before I tell you that I managed to slice into the Dorumaa utilities mainframe, and the supply grid shows a rather extravagant amount of power being piped to a location that would, were I to map it onto a chart, line up pretty well with the area around the cave en-trance.”
Mereel chuckled. ”Maybe the dianoga watches a lot of HoloNet.”
Skirata smiled. ”Lady needs a lot of lighting, refrigeration, autoclave, and computing power for cloning research. I'd say ... is there any other large facility on the surface at that point?”
”Just the bolo-ball field, and that isn't eating a lot of power. Not like pumps . . . lighting . . . refrigeration . . . you get the picture.”
”Oya!” Seasick or not, Skirata's hunt had now acquired a celebratory atmosphere, and he hoped this wasn't overconfidence.
Oya. Let s hunt.
It was such a small word, but it was embedded in the Mandalorian psyche as everything positive in life: from let's go to good luck to well done to ... it's the best news I've had in ages.
The Wavechaser had no built-in sonar or external holocams, so once they were in position they navigated by chart and Mark One Eyeball, as he liked to call it. The vessel- now nicknamed Gi'ka, Little Fish-slipped into the shadow of the rock overhang and lined up with the slot-like tunnel.
”Did you check how deep this thing can go?” Skirata asked, noting the occasional creak from the hull.
”Crush depth?”
”That's such a depressing term, son.”
”Two hundred meters. No problem. Udesii.”
”Okay.”
”Hand me the sensor.”
It was easier said than done. Skirata squeezed it past the gap between Mereel's shoulder and the bulkhead so he could grab it. Skirata was still mentally rehearsing the drill for get-ting his helmet off and inserting the aquata breather if the hull was breached, accepting that water bothered him a lot.
Mereel aimed the sensor, a small sonar gun, and an icon of the readout appeared in Skirata's HUD. Worth every cred. I should have had this upgrade years ago. When he magnified the image, it looked like a dead end deep inside the shaft, unnaturally smooth, and if the calibration was right, then it was nearly a hundred meters long.
”My bet,” Mereel said, ”is that this is a sump, as in cave exploration, but designed as a barrier.” He took a deep breath: so Mer'ika wasn't as confident as he looked. ”Oya.”
Gi'ka crept forward into the mouth of the shaft, silent except for the slight burbling sounds of her drive, and now they were in total darkness with only the sonar gun to tell them where the next hard surface was.
Slowly, slowly . . .
Vau's voice was a whisper in the helmet comlinks. ”All clear this end. Ordo's ETA is fifty minutes, Jusik's two hours.”
”What's Delta's?”
”Five, maybe six.”
On a mission like this, with so many unknowns, that lead might evaporate.
”Might lose our signal, Walon. The abort point is...”
”I don't do aborts, Kal. I'll wait here until the oxygen runs out. That's two months ... at least.”
”I hope you brought a holozine to read, then....”
”Oh, I won't be bored. I'll be counting your proceeds from the robbery.”
Vau always knew how to wind him up, but making it obvious was as close as the man could ever come to being friendly. Skirata could feel the sweat beading on his upper lip, the sort that cooling inside the shabla bucket could never prevent. He thought the water was getting lighter. But it was his imagination.
If there were any alarms they'd tripped without knowing it...
No, the water was getting lighter. He could see a definite green glow to it now. ”Mer'ika, what's that?”
”If it's a sump,” Mereel said, ”there'll be a vertical shaft leading up into a dry zone.”
”You're a smart lad.”
”I know how kaminiise think. Remember the older section of Tipoca? How they first built the stilt-cities when the planet flooded?”
”I didn't explore as widely as you kids did. In fact, I still don't know all the places you managed to access.”
The Kaminoans loathed the Nulls. Uncommandable, Orun Wa said. Deviant. Disturbed. Ko Sai even sent Jango Fett an apology for how inadequate her product had turned out, promising to put it right in the Alpha batch after they'd ”re-conditioned” the failures.
It would be good to see her again, and show her just how her ”product” had grown up.
Now the vessel was in hazy water, meters from what looked like a break in the ceiling of the tunnel, and finally they edged forward into a pool of light. Mereel craned his neck.
”There you go, Kal'buir.”
Above the transparisteel c.o.c.kpit canopy was a water-filled shaft, and it was clear enough to make out the surface. It didn't look like fifty meters, though. Thirty, maybe. A dark shape sat motionless at the top: a hull.