“Okay, where next?”

Fi cocked his head. “Want to wander over and take a closer look at the roof? Evaluate it for rapid entry?”

“You know how to engage my enthusiasm.”

Fi projected the fire safety holoplans of the building, which had proved to be Ordo's best illicit data slice of the mission. There was no point asking the fire department to provide them; it just invited awkward questions about why lads in white armor wanted detailed floor plans of most of the planet's buildings. “I hope they update these. Okay, go left along the passage; the roof access is the set of doors at the end.”

“I love the fire department.”

“They're so helpful. Nice uniforms, too.”

They crawled across the flat roof along the side of the climate-conditioning machinery room, over lengths of durasteel ladder laid flat on the waterproofing. Some buildings still had them to provide access to maintenance spaces. There were also the remains of a barbecue. They flattened themselves behind the parapet to peer through the breaks in the punched durasteel at the roof opposite.

“Ooh, a Flash speeder,' Fi whispered.

“Don't even think about it.”

“I meant that we could bolt on a few surprises, not wander off with it.”

“Look, what does the word recce mean, ner vod?”

“It almost sounds like wreck.”

“You scare me,” Sev said. “And that's saying something.”

“It's an opportunity we might not get again.”

“So you fly, do you? Going to do a Jango?”

“You've got no style.” Fi genuinely wanted to place a thermal detonator on the speeder. It could be set off remotely, giving them a relatively easy extra option for striking at the Seps that they might need soon. But he was also itching to smack Sev down a little. The man thought he was the galaxy's gift to adventure. So if he wanted adventure, Fi would show it to him, Omega-style.

It also just happened to be the safest way to cross the six-meter gap to the other roof—safer than asking the Seps across the way if they minded two commandos taking a look at their roof, anyway.

Fi edged backward and began placing the sections of ladder end-to-end. They slotted together neatly. Then he crawled back to the parapet and gave the chasm an appraising glance.

He peered across, then down six floors. “That'll reach.”

“I reckon.” Sev leaned over next to him. “So you're going to crawl across.”

Fi took the end of the ladder and began to move it carefully to avoid loud scraping sounds. Sev took the other end and they balanced it lengthways on the parapet.

“No, I'm going to run.”

“Fi, they say someone spiked my vat. But I reckon someone really spiked yours.”

“Lost your nerve?”

“Di'kut.”

“If I plummet heroically to my doom, then you can crawl across. Deal?”

“I hate it when you try to provoke me into showing you how it's done.”

“Like this?”

Fi had seconds. They needed to be across the gap and gone before anyone spotted them. He leaned down hard on one end of the ladder, lifting it enough to swing it out horizontally and drop the other end on the facing parapet.

Thirty meters below, death waited. And if it wasn't death, it was paralysis.

He stepped up on the parapet, tested the first rung with his boot, and then focused straight ahead on the other side.

Then he sprinted.

He still had no idea how his body calculated the gaps but he hit every rung and landed on the far side, dropping flat. When he knelt upright, Sev was staring at him.

Fi beckoned. Come on.

Sev ran for it. Fi broke his landing as he jumped off the parapet. He noted Sev's clenched jaw with satisfaction.

“Easy,” Fi mouthed.

Sev gave him a hand signal, one of his especially eloquent gestures of disapproval.

The roof had a few steps down to doors that the holoplans showed as access to the top floor of the living area and the turbolift shaft. They didn't look that substantial in the flesh, but the plans appeared to be accurate: they didn't always get updated after renovations. A quick application of thermal tape on the doors and it would be easy to lob a few grenades down the hole to soften up the residents before going in. Fi gave Sev a thumbs-up and took a magnetic det out of his belt. It slid into place in the speeder's air intake with a faint thack.

Back, Fi gestured.

He teetered on the parapet and then ran across the durasteel rungs again, feeling them flex and spring back under his boots. When he looked back, Sev was lining up for the sprint, too. Fi beckoned encouragingly. Sev went for it.

He was two-thirds of the way across when he slipped. He grabbed for a rung and hung motionless from his right hand. Fi's gut somersaulted.

If anyone looks up here now—

Most people screamed when they fell. Sev, to his credit, was utterly silent. But his eyes were wide and scared. He tried to reach up with his left arm but for some reason didn't seem able to do it. Fi scrambled across the ladder on his belly and reached down to grab Sev's arm and haul him up. It was a potentially lethal maneuver on a narrow ladder, but Fi managed to get a grip on Sev's belt and pull him across the ladder crosswise.

Sev was using his right arm. It was only when Fi gripped his left shoulder to pull him in line with the ladder that he heard his sharp gasp and understood why he wasn't using that arm, and why he hadn't been able to lunge up to get a grip with his other hand. He'd hurt himself badly.

“Udesii ... ,” Fi whispered. “Take it easy.”

There was pain, and there was whatever had happened to Sev. Fi dragged him back across the ladder a few centimeters at a time and rolled him onto the safety of the roof before hauling the ladder back in. When he dropped flat again, Sev was kneeling in a ball, clutching his left shoulder.

Fierfek, this is my fault for goading him. “Can you walk?” Fi whispered.

“ 'Course I can walk, you di'kut. It's my arm.”

“I'll let you drop next time, you ungrateful chakaar” Fi hauled him upright and decided to risk taking the service turbolift down to the ground level. By the time they reached the end of the walkway it was clear that Sev had dislocated his shoulder and had to hold the arm against his chest to tolerate the pain at all. He said nothing but it had made his eyes water. Fi had long used that phrase to indicate extreme pain but it was the first time he'd seen it up close, and it wasn't funny.

“If I miss this mission, I'm going to show you a really interesting trick with a vibroblade.”

“Sev, take it easy.” Fi always kept his medpac on his belt. He fumbled for the single-use sharp of painkiller and stabbed it into Sev's triceps. “We'll slap some bacta on it back at base.”

“Yeah, and maybe that'll work when I rip your head off, too.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was a stupid stunt. I never had accidents with Delta.”

“Well, you're just Vau's perfect little soldier boys, then, aren't you? We screw up. And then we get up and go on.”

“I have to complete this mission?”

“Not if you're a liability you don't. Look, injuries happen. Stay at base and monitor the comlinks.”

“You don't understand.”

“Really?” Fi racked his brains for first-aid training. “Funny, I thought we did the same job. Look, get in here and let me have a look.”

They slipped into the sheltered lobby of an office block and hid behind a pillar. Fi detached Sev's bodysuit sleeve from the shoulder seam and took a look in the dim security lights.

The line of the shoulder looked unnaturally square where the ball of the humerus had shifted out of the socket and was pushing the deltoid muscle up and out of shape. This was going to hurt.

“Okay, on the count of four,” Fi said. He took Sev's wrist in his right hand, stretching out the arm, and braced his left hand against the man's chest. Then he paused and looked him in the eye in his most reassuring I-know-what-I'm-doing way. “See, when you get a dislocation like this, you have to do what they call reducing it by—four'