“But you get to wear face camo instead. Makes you feel wild and dangerous.”

“I'm wild,” Sev's voice said. Sev was behind a roof balustrade under a pile of discarded plastoid sheeting. “And then I get dangerous. Shut up.”

“Copy that,” Fi said cheerfully, and clicked his back teeth twice to exit Sev's open comlink channel. It was far too noisy an environment for their quiet conversation to be heard anyway. “Miserable di'kut.”

“Don't mind him.” Scorch was at walkway level about fifty meters west of the meeting point, lying prone in a disused horizontal access shaft. “He'll be fine once he's killed something.”

Darman had a Verpine rifle with live rounds, as did Sev. Fi and Scorch had the nonlethal tracking projectiles, twelve rounds each. The Verp was truly lovely. Fi had always wondered just how many credits Sergeant Kal had made over the years. His growing collection of expensive, exotic weapons and the modest extravagance of his bantha jacket were the only visible signs that it might have been a lot.

“Dar—”

“Possible contact, first walkway level, my left of the bank entrance …”

Fi adjusted his scope and tracked right. It was a boy he'd seen before: human, very short scrubby light hair, gangly. He was still hanging around the plaza. If he was a Sep, he was a disgracefully amateurish one. They watched for a few minutes, and then a young girl in a bright yellow tunic raced up to the boy and flung her arms around him. They kissed enthusiastically, drawing glances from passersby.

“I think he knows her,” Fi said. He felt his face burn. It bothered him and he looked away.

“Well, that's just you and Niner left on the shelf now that your brothers are spoken for,” Scorch said.

There was a pause. Darman cut in. “You got a point to make, ner vod?”

“I think it's kind of encouraging.” Scorch chuckled. “Atin gets a cute Twi'lek, Dar gets his very own general—”

“—and Scorch gets a thick ear if he doesn't shut it right now”

The comlink was suddenly silent except for the occasional sound of swallowing. Darman wasn't in a joking mood when it came to Etain. He never had been, not even on Qiilura, when there hadn't been anything going on between them.

Why is this hurting so much? Why do I feel I've been cheated?

Kal'buir, why didn't you prepare me for this?

It was too distracting. Fi shut his eyes for a few moments and went into the sequence he had learned to center himself when the battlefield pressed in on him: controlled breathing, concentrating on nothing except the next inhalation, ignoring everything that wasn't of the next moment. It took a while. He shut out the world.

Then he found that he had his eyes open without even realizing and he was simply following movement on the plaza below through the breathtakingly accurate scope of the Verpine rifle.

“Now, do we get the best kit or what?” he said, becoming the confident man he wanted to be again. “Name me another army where you get handcrafted Verps to play with.”

“The Verpine army,” Scorch said.

“Do they have an army?”

“Do they need one?”

Silence descended again. At 1150 Sev cut into the comlink circuit. “Stand by. Kal's moving into position.”

Skirata wandered into the plaza from the direction of the Senate with Jusik one on side and an excited Lord Mirdalan straining on a leash on the other. He was doing a credible job of looking as if the strill were his constant companion. The animal seemed remarkably content with him, given the number of times Skirata had driven it off or thrown his knife at it over the years. Maybe the riot of strange new scents had thrilled the strill enough that it didn't much care that the man who usually shouted at it was holding the leash. Fi watched as they took up a position near the door, sitting down on an ornate durasteel seat shaped like a bow.

Skirata's voice came over the comlink circuit.

“How's my boys?”

“Cramp, Sarge,” Darman said. “And Fi's dribbling over your Verpine.”

“He can clean it, then. Ready?”

“Ready.”

At 1159 a human male in his forties—green casual tunic, brown pants, collar-length brown hair, beard, tall, lean build—walked toward Skirata and Jusik in a purposeful line. Fi tracked him.

“Got him, Fi,” Darman said. If anything went wrong, the man would be dead in a fraction of a second from a silent high-kinetic round in his back.

“Escort,” Sev said. “Looks like three … no, four. Three male, one female, all human … one male twenty meters south of Darman. Spread out but all moving toward Skirata.”

“Got him.”

“Got the female,” Scorch said.

“You sure they're with the Beard?”

“Yeah, check their eyeline, Fi. They're watching him, nothing else. They're pretty cool about it but they're obviously not professionals. They shouldn't even be looking his way.”

Etain's voice cut in. “There's another female approaching slowly on the Senate side of the bench. I'm moving in behind her so you can spot her.”

Sev cut in. “Any more?”

“I can only sense four others plus the man approaching Kal.”

“Aww, look. They've taken up positions to block the main pedestrian routes off the plaza. Thank you! I love a target that identifies itself.”

“I hope this doesn't turn into a shooting match,” Scorch said. “Too many civvies.”

“I can get a clear shot,” Sev said. “And I can take at least three out from here. Relax. You just worry about tagging 'em.”

Tagging. Would they feel it?

Fi dropped in an EM filter with a touch on the optics housing. He focused the scope on the woman now standing almost under Darman's position by the walkway heading toward Quadrant N-10: shoulder-length red hair, blue business suit, tan leather document bag. The filter detected electromagnetic emissions, which made it not only handy for locating someone operating a comlink but also just perfect for seeing if Dust had hit its target. It cast a pinkish brown tinge across the image.

He checked for indications of wind speed. The woman's hair was moving slightly in the breeze: a flimsi cup discarded near the caf vendor rolled a little way along the paving. Fi adjusted his scope and checked the air temperature, which had crept up a fraction in the last twenty minutes. He adjusted the Verp's settings again and settled the weapon on his forearm.

Relax. Power coil set to medium. Don't want her to feel the projectile hit her. Don't want to spray the Dust over the whole plaza, either …

The crosshairs settled.

“So that's a strill.” The man's voice was a little fuzzy but Fi could hear the accent, even if he didn't recognize it. “Charming. Call me Perrive.”

“And you can call me Kal.”

Fi closed his eyes for a second and slowed his breathing. When he opened them, the aim was still dead center of the woman's chest.

“So let's see the goods.”

Fi exhaled slowly and held his breath.

“Here. Take it and have it tested.”

Fi's finger tightened on the end of the trigger. The Verp was so finely constructed that all he felt was a sudden lack of resistance under his finger and the rifle fired—silent and without recoil.

“How much stuff in all?”

“Hundred kilos. More if you need it.”

A smoke-like white puff billowed in Fi's filter. The projectile had burst on contact, showering the woman with microscopic tracking powder, each tiny fragment capable of relaying its location back to the base receiver at Qibbu's—or even to a HUD. She glanced down as if an insect had landed on her and then simply brushed the end of her nose as if she'd inhaled pollen.

“Five hundred grade?”

“All of it,” said Kal.

“Dets?”

“How many?”

“Three or four thousand.”

“Five-hundred-grade—I have it. Dets—just a matter of acquiring them discreetly. A day maybe.”