Part 38 (1/2)
Bralor grinned. ”You kidnapped her?”
”Yeah. I suppose you could call it that.”
”Oya! n.o.body can say you haven't got gett'se, Kal. You know what the bounty is on this aiwha-bait?”
”Oh yes,” Skirata said. ”But I liked her so much I decided to keep her.”
”So how long do I have to hide her?”
”Until she tells me what I want to know.”
”No problem, Kal'ika. I'll take good care of her while you're gone. I'm sure we can find lots of girly stuff to talk about from the Tipoca days.” Bralor put her helmet back on. ”You do still talk, don't you, Ko Sai? I used to enjoy our chats.”
The Kaminoan still seemed stunned. Etain almost pitied her: at the top of her profession, second in terms of power only to her Prime Minister, and then on the run, hunted and humiliated and finally reduced to a hostage without even a change of clothes. But Skirata and Bralor obviously didn't see it that way. Bralor was relis.h.i.+ng it.
”The only thing I can say,” said Ko Sai at last, ”is that you're ignorant savages, and I wasn't as adept a geneticist as I thought, because I failed to breed that out of your kind.”
”I take that as a compliment,” said Bralor. She pointed to the speeder. ”Follow me.”
Bralor's homestead was fringed by trees, seemingly in total darkness until they set Aay'han down in a field of stubble at the back of the house. The building itself was circular, partly submerged in the ground with a strange gra.s.sed roof that camouflaged it from the air, but flickering lights were visible through slit-like windows as she approached the main doors.
It was a bastion. Etain reminded herself this was a warrior culture, and knew that sooner or later she'd find out why it was embedded in the ground and not on a high vantage point.
The house was deserted, smelled of wood smoke just like Qiilura, and looked partly derelict. It seemed to be in the process of restoration. Bralor took them to the main room in the center of the building and gave them a rapid orientation. Rooms were set around the main room like a rim around the hub of a wheel.
”I don't expect you'll have trouble,” she said, ”but if you do, the exit's here.” She pointed down at a point on the floor covered by rope-like matting. Ah, tunnels. It made sense now. ”And the best lockable place to put her is the armory. Plenty of headroom.”
Ordo was wandering around the place, making notes on his datapad for reasons best known to himself. Ko Sai's head drooped. Either she was utterly demoralized or she was taking a sneaky look at the tunnel exit. Etain decided to keep an eye on her.
Bralor seemed to be keeping one eye on her, too, but then she'd been stuck on Kamino for eight years just like Skirata and Vau, and she probably had her reasons. ”So what information are you going to beat out of her, Kal?”
”How to switch off the accelerated aging in clones.”
Bralor snorted. ”If she could do that, she'd have tried it out by now. You know how this demagolka loved her experiments.” She patted Skirata's shoulder. ”I know you talked about it, but I never thought you'd actually do it. Kandosii, ner vod.”
”You'd be amazed,” Skirata said quietly. ”Come on, ad'ike. It's been a long day. Let's eat and then get some rest.'' Ko Sai looked back at Etain as Bralor led her away. ”The genome of your child will be fascinating.”
So she'd worked it out. Skirata was right. Kaminoans had few facial expressions that Etain could recognize, but she knew avarice when she felt it. Ko Sai could think of nothing but a new puzzle to solve and rebuild. Then the fire of that new enthusiasm waned in the Force, and Etain suspected she'd remembered that her personal research was now melted plastoid fragments in the silt of an idyllic crystal harbor on the other side of the Core.
Etain drew her lightsaber out of her pocket and simply let Ko Sai see the hilt.
”Come anywhere near me or my child,” she said, ”and you'll find out just how little I've embraced the peace and serenity they tried to teach me at the academy.” Skirata winked at her. ”Mandokarla ...” Mereel sat Etain down on a wide, deeply upholstered bench against the wall and shoved a few cus.h.i.+ons behind her back. ”He says you've got the right stuff.”
So she was back on Skirata's good side, for the time being anyway. The meal turned out to be an a.s.sortment of dumplings, grains, and noodles smothered in various spicy sauces, preserved meats, and a pot of small red fruits swim-ming in what looked like syrup-the only thing she didn't try. Bralor seemed to have raided the contents of her store cupboard to feed her guests. Etain devoured it in the full knowledge that her stomach would rebel later.
The meal was taken in grim silence, which could have been exhaustion, but Etain sensed that Skirata was more crushed than tired. He drained a little syrup out of the pot into a small gla.s.s and gulped it down.
”Rav still makes good tihaar” he said hoa.r.s.ely, and then started coughing. It was the throat-searing, colorless fruit alcohol that he had a taste for. ”Best painkiller there is.”
”You haven't been taking your daily dose, Kal'buir.” Ordo sounded a little strained, as if the realization of what he'd done to Ko Sai's research was now catching up with him.
”I found I could sleep without it.” Skirata wiped his plate clean with a chunk of dumpling speared on a fork and chewed as if it hurt him. ”Anyway, time for a sitrep. Work out what we do next. We've got Fi in bacta, we've got to go back through the Tipoca research stuff and see where we can pick up, and we've got confirmation that the Republic's got its own clone program without Kamino's involvement. And I've got to persuade Jinart to keep up the pretense that Etain's helping the Gurlanins get back on their feet now that the farmers have gone.”
”She'll do that,” Etain said. ”She really thinks you'd maneuver Zey into tras.h.i.+ng the planet if she doesn't cooperate.”
Skirata finished his last dumpling. ”Oh, I really would.”
”Leave the research to me,” Mereel said. ”I think I know where to start shaking down Ko Sai. I'll go through the Tipoca data with her and see what sets her off. She's devastated about losing her own material. It's really broken her.”
”Can't you just compare the trooper genome with Jango's and see what's different?” Etain asked.
”That only tells us which genes have been added, mutated, or removed,” said Mereel. ”It doesn't tell us what's been turned on or off. You can even turn them down, and make them work just a little. It's about expression-how the ma-chine gets built from a blueprint-and that's messy, because if you tinker with one gene, it can have an effect on another set that's got nothing to do with the area you're working on. And then there's identifying what aging really is, because it's not just one factor. Am I boring you yet?”
”No,” Etain said, but wasn't sure that she wanted to be de-pressed any further by the size of the task. It would have been daunting enough even before Ordo destroyed the data-chips. ”But I suppose if it was easy, Arkanian Micro would be doing this, too, and Kamino wouldn't be able to charge top price.”
”She can't be the only one in the galaxy who can do this kind of work,” Skirata said. ”There have to be others.”
”Best bet is to look for a gerontologist and an embryologist with an interest in genetics. But it'll cost.”
Skirata shrugged. ”If I invest the fund right, we'll be able to buy as many scientists as we need.”
The word fund worried Etain. ”Zey's going to spot the black hole in the budget sooner or later, Kal.”
”It's not from the GAR budget, ad'ika.” He gave her a knowing smile. ”Okay, it's sabacc-on-the-table time. I have a slush fund. Creds from my Cuy'val Dar payoff, invested sen-sibly. Creds the Jabiimi terror cell paid me in that explosives sting. And now upward of forty million from a little expedition of Vau's, which I need to convert to cash creds and launder fast so it can earn interest and get invested again.”
Etain wasn't an accountant, but it didn't sound like a lot of credits compared with the many trillions needed to run an army. The word launder registered on her but failed to shock any longer. ”Is that going to be enough?”
”To establish a safehouse here and an escape route? Yes. To develop a gene therapy to counter the aging? I don't know. Possibly not. So I'll build up as much in the coffers as I can.”
Etain had to admire his determination. She'd had no idea that he'd moved from anger and I-wish to calculation and action. The Force hadn't shown her the entirety of the man, just his headlines.
Venku kicked again, and she put her hand on her belly. ”You okay?” Skirata asked, all instant concern. ”He's kicking,” she said.
”Ah, he'll be a limmie player. Meshgeroya. The beautiful game.”
”I think he's permanently angry that I'm putting him through so much, actually.”
She thought of the way Ko Sai looked at her, that clinical curiosity, and understood Skirata's initial anger. It scared her, too.
Ordo and Mereel took turns to pat Skirata on the shoulder before returning to Aay'han for the night-maybe because it was more comfortable, or they might have been guarding his valuables-and Skirata settled down in one of the chairs with his weapons laid out on a small table right beside him. He didn't use a bed, Etain had found, not since his first days on Kamino. It couldn't have been good for him. No wonder his ankle played up so much.
”I'm going to wander around the place,” Etain said, regret-ting wolfing down so much food on an increasingly cramped stomach. ”Give my meal time to settle.”
”You should be doing plenty more of that now. Eating and resting.” He opened one eye. ”Give the baby the best chance.”
She decided to risk it. ”I just wanted to say that I'm learn-ing a lot from you about being a parent. You're so patient with Ordo.”
”He's my boy. I love him, even those times when he turns into a stranger. You'll understand when you hold yours for the first time.”