Part 36 (2/2)
”I meant the lounging-around-in-the-sun bit.”
”Overrated.” Fixer speared a sc.r.a.p of flimsi wrapping with a special sharpened pole designed for doing just that, although Sev could think of much better uses for it. It was the first enemy contact Fixer had had for a while. Sev considered requesting a transfer to the infantry, where they seemed to be getting more droid action. ”Ruins your skin. Gives you blisters. You have to coat yourself in slimy sun filter to stop it from killing you in the end.”
Scorch stood back and let him kill another sc.r.a.p of litter. ”So how long have you been promoting the benefits of a vacation on Tropix?”
”Look, any job would be better than mine, because right now I feel I'm wasting my time.” Fixer shoved his finger hard in his ear, adjusting the hidden comlink bead. ”This is boring. Even the police comlink channel is tedious. Drunks, lost valuables, and collisions between rental speeders.”
Jusik had finally let them loose on the island itself. Fixer and Boss weren't happy about the delay, but the Jedi had a point: it was hard to blend in here in a suit of Katarn armor, and they didn't have what he called Omega Squad's social skills. Scorch had helped him liberate a few maintenance crew uniforms overnight, a task so easy it was almost an insult to their skills at getting into places they shouldn't have been. As for the locks-he could have busted them open just by scowling at them. It was pathetic. It was a b.u.mmer about Fi, though. Sev didn't like the thought of being in a coma, just in case it was one of those conscious ones where you knew what was going on around you but you couldn't respond. Whatever happened to him, he decided, would be fast and final; no hanging around. At one point he thought of talking it through with the rest of the squad, but they'd noted Fi's state and then shut it out of conversation, so Sev knew they were as scared as he was.
”I know that Jedi sense stuff,” Boss said carefully, ”and that generals are privy to intel we don't get, but I get the feeling Bard'ika isn't leveling with us.”
”Maybe he's too embarra.s.sed to tell us he brought us all this way to buy us a Neuvian ice sundae,” said Scorch. ”Part of this new management drive to make us feel valued.”
”Does Zey know he's having an ident.i.ty crisis?” Boss asked.
”Who says he is?”
”Aw, c'mon ... the durasteel-undenvear syndrome?”
”So he likes Mandalorian stuff,” Scorch said. ”Maybe it's comforting for guys who aren't allowed to have violent feelings. He can act out a bit.”
”He's got a lightsaber. He acts out violence just fine with that.”
Sev didn't have a Jedi's Force radar but he certainly had a trooper's sixth sense for an officer approaching. Just as he looked up from the blinding white sand, feeling uneasy, he saw Jusik striding down the boardwalk in what Sev thought of as his ”half Jedi,” the anonymous white tunic and pants that they all wore under the layers of robes.
”Why don't you put your theory to him, then, Dr. Scorch?” said Sev. ”Go on, ask him.”
”Yeah, I always wondered where he keeps his lightsaber when he dresses like that.”
”Result,” Fixer muttered.
Sev prodded him with the litter pole. ”What?”
”Police channel chat.” This was as near as Fixer ever got to excited. ”Folk were calling in saying they'd heard a mystery explosion, but no location. Now they've had a report of a sports field subsiding on the next island.”
”As in underground explosion?”
”Maybe. Rescue Service is going over to check it out.”
Jusik caught up with them. ”I've rented a fis.h.i.+ng vessel so we can move our ops away from prying eyes. How's the maintenance business?”
”Explosive,” said Scorch. ”Fixer says the locals reported a big bang followed by a hole in the ground not far from here. And as this isn't a big-bang kind of planet, we might as well check out the lead.”
”Good idea,” said Jusik.
”Sir, are you okay?”
”My apologies, Scorch. My mind's not wholly on the job. If anyone would like an update on Fi's condition, let me know.” He looked around him, almost as if he'd heard some-thing and was trying to work out where it was coming from, but it was just one of his mannerisms. ”No? Okay, let's take a look at this hole in the ground.”
Fixer was still eavesdropping on the police comlink frequencies. ”What cover are we going to use?”
”No need. Overfly it in the TIV, get a few coordinates out of it, then work out a way of a.s.sessing the point of the explosion.”
”Might not be anything to do with Ko Sai, of course.”
”Want to skip it?”
”No sir. But maybe the Twi'lek was decoying us.” Jusik picked up a sc.r.a.p of litter, examined it, and dropped it in the collecting sack that Fixer was carrying. ”What makes you say that? He ran for his life pretty convincingly.” Boss cut in. ”Because we've turned up nothing, sir, except the traffic manager here who remembers someone hiring a utility barge for a delivery offsh.o.r.e, and then it was found drifting minus the employee.”
”And n.o.body went looking for him.”
”When they say don't go beyond the safety limits, they mean it. They have no idea what's lurking under the surface, and they're not too keen to find out.”
Jusik shrugged. ”Just as well we're made of sterner stuff. What a shabby att.i.tude toward employee welfare.”
Sev had seen Jusik hunting targets before, and he behaved like a man with a mission: single-minded, resourceful, and tenacious. On Coruscant, he'd even worried Sev with his wildly risky tactics. Now he was behaving differently. The fire had gone out of him. It was as if he didn't care if he found Ko Sai or not.
It could have been that he didn't want to find her, and that worried Sev for all kinds of different reasons. But maybe it was, as he said, because he was preoccupied by Fi. That was worrying in its own way, because an officer who was distracted when one man out of his commando group of five hundred was wounded really didn't have what it took. ”Yes sir,” Sev said.
The aerial view of the island sports resort to the south of Tropix-Action World, a name Sev found hilarious given its extensive array of visitor safety measures-was educational. Yes, it was an instant lake all right, minus the water. From the TIV, he could see how the ground had collapsed beneath the gra.s.s without breaking up much of the surface. Something underneath had caved in.
”Not too low, Boss,” Jusik said. ”What's our transponder telling their flight control?”
”Delivering ice desserts, sir,” Scorch said, checking the charge on his Deece. ”Yeah, put some syrup and crushed nuts on this.”
Folks didn't use their eyes any longer. They believed everything their gadgets told them. Sev studied the chart on his database, mapped in the position of the subsidence, and compared it with the divers' hydrographic chart.
”The hole might not be directly above whatever blew up,” he said, ”but it's a fair a.s.sumption. That gives us a search area underwater.”
”You're gagging to wear that scuba trooper's rig, aren't you?” said Scorch.
Sev didn't answer. He was starting to wonder what he'd say to Ko Sai when he found her. She was still a figure of dread, a name that even the Kaminoans used to mention in hushed tones, and not just because of her expertise; she had the power of life and death, the authority to say who came up to scratch and who didn't. Now that Tipoca City was far be-hind him, he was starting to realize why that wasn't such a great idea.
It was turning into a long, slow day. Transferring the kit from the TIV to the diving vessel without being spotted ate a couple of hours, and then they had to work out a search pattern without even knowing what they were looking for- except maybe a lot of rock.
And those scuba suits just processed oxygen from the surrounding water. There was no excuse for coming back to the surface because they were running out of air.
Fixer and Boss took the first s.h.i.+ft, transmitting optical and sensor images back to the vessel. Sev, Scorch, and Jusik sat on the bridge, watching the output screens.
”Come on, Sev, cheer up.” Scorch nudged him. He was suited up, slapping his flippers on the deck in a rhythm that annoyed Sev more with each thwack. ”This is better than most of the stuff they show on HNE. It's really interesting rock. Great weeds, too.”
If they didn't find Ko Sai, Vau would have something to say about it. Okay, he didn't know they were on the case, but he'd find out sooner or later if they failed.
Somehow that mattered to him more than coming up empty for Chancellor Palpatine.
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