“All tooled up?” Ordo shouldered two Plex missile launchers against his pauldron, one on each side.

“Yes sir.”

“Shoulder okay?”

“Fi has a big mouth.”

“Fi knows that I need to know if any of my team is compromised by injury.”

“I'm fine, sir.”

Ordo nudged him. “Oya, ner vod.”

Ordo led the way across the conduit, checking Sev's progress in his HUD. A man who'd nearly fallen to his death could get a little nervous at heights like this. But Sev advanced as if he were on solid ground, and they slipped into the cover of crates and containers at the rear wall of the warehouse.

“Omega, are you in position?”

Niner's voice crackled slightly in Ordo's comlink. “We're one hundred fifty meters from the perimeter, sir. Southeast of the strip at the waste, processing depot.”

“Any activity in the vessels parked on the eastern edge of the strip?”

“All quiet except for maintenance droids. Dar sent up a surveillance remote and all the wets are clustered at the warehouse entrance moving boxes. They've backed up two of the trucks against the loading bay.”

“We're going to position ourselves on the roof, then.”

The warehouse was a single-story building with an unforgiving flat roof that meant anyone in the two repulsor trucks on the far side of the landing area would notice troops moving around. It was the only high vantage point overlooking the floodlit landing area to direct fire as well as pick off a few targets for themselves. Ordo had decided it was asking for trouble to take up a position in the residential towers nearly a thousand meters away. If they wound up on the receiving end of returned fire, there would be a lot of dead civilians to explain.

“Up you go,” said Ordo.

Sev fired his rappelling line over the roof and tugged on it to ensure it was secure. The small winch in his belt took most of his weight but he pushed off with his boots, looking almost as if he were walking up the vertical surface. Ordo waited as Sev rolled flat over the edge of the roof, Verpine rifle in his right hand.

“Roof clear, sir.”

Ordo fired his own line and let the winch lift him until he could reach the roof with his hand. He handed Sev the Plex launchers and hauled himself over the top to crawl flat on elbows and knees until he was near the front edge of the roof.

They both flipped down the scopes in their visors at the same time. Ordo saw the same image repeated in Sev's viewpoint icon on the margin of his HUD.

“In an ideal world, we could have left a timed charge on that utility conduit and paralyzed this whole sector before we went in,” Sev said.

“And that just advertises the fact that the Grand Army was here. We don't exist, remember? We've gone bandit.”

“Just fantasizing.”

The textbook approach was to knock out the two illumigrids and then move in. But timing was critical. Skirata and Jusik needed to make the delivery of explosives and then get clear before the party started.

“Omega, we're in position.”

“Copy that.” This time it was Mereel's voice.

“On my mark, we'll knock out both lights and then provide covering fire while you advance from the south side. Delta, what's your location?”

“Boss here, sir. We'll be in position behind the warehouse in two minutes. Atin and Fixer will enter from the front. Scorch and I will cover the north side of the strip.”

Atin seemed to have slipped easily into the temporary gap left by Sev. There wasn't the slightest hint in their voices that their former brother wasn't welcome. Ordo supposed that once you were one of Vau's trainees, you could merge back into the batch without comment when there was a job to be done.

“Okay, vode. Now we watch and wait.”

Mereel, Fi, Niner, Darman, and Corr crouched in the cover of a conveyor belt of bins outside the waste depot, where droids collected the contents for compaction and disposal.

Fi sniffed dubiously. There was the distinct sulfurous tang of rotting vegetables: harmless, or his helmet's filter would never have let the aroma through, but nauseating nonetheless. On Niner's signal, they sprinted from the bins and dropped down by a pillar at the end of the walkway that led across to the CoruFresh depot.

“You're very shiny, you two,” Niner said, jerking his thumb at Corr and Mereel, who were almost glowing in the light from the red flashing sign of a seedy caf bar. “Why don't you just write SHOOT ME HERE on that di'kutla white armor?”

“You rely on that black stuff way too much,” Mereel said. “It's all about a stealthy approach, you see,” He heaved a massive Merr-Sonn Reciprocating Quad Blaster onto his hip and powered up the microrepulsorlift to take some of its weight. Four huge double-barreled blaster muzzles loomed from the weapon's body. It was close on eighty centimeters long and looked more like a cruiser's close-in defense cannon. “Stealth, and a nice big Cip-Quad, of course.”

Fi patted Corr's conspicuously white shoulder. “His men will follow him anywhere, ner vod. But only out of curiosty.”

“Okay, get curious, then.” Mereel indicated the direction of the landing strip. “They've moved some of the vessels, so we're going to have to cover a little extra open ground. At least most of the cockpits are facing the same way so we might have a blind spot to take advantage of.”

Darman, Verpine rifle slung across his back, was still examining the other impressive item of Merr-Sonn firepower excess that was balanced across his thighs, the Z-6 Rotary Blaster. It was almost as big as the Cip-Quad. He looked wary of it and passed it to Corr. “We really did say no prisoners, didn't we, sir?”

“Not exactly a sniper weapon, I know.”

“Etain would like that,” Fi said. “Bit classier than her Trannie LJ-50.”

Mereel snorted. “The general can get her own rotary. That's my baby.”

“Beats a bunch of flowers, Dar …”

“Has she called in yet, by the way?”

Ordo's voice cut in. There was no privacy on this frequency. “She and Vau followed Perrive's trace to an apartment in zone three, Quadrant A-Four. They're watching him now.”

“Isn't that a diplomatic quarter?” asked Mereel, whose capacity for memorizing data seemed as unlimited as his brother's.

“ 'Fraid so,” said Ordo. “That could get interesting. If we go in there, we're into a whole new level of deniability.”

Fi watched Darman's head drop for a moment, but there wasn't so much as a breath or a click of teeth. He snapped back to his alert position. Fi wasn't sure if he was afraid for Etain's safety or of what she might do, and he didn't plan to ask. “Vau doesn't need that strill when he's got a Jedi with him.”

“He takes Mird everywhere,”, Mereel said. “Like Mando fathers take their sons into battle.”

“If I didn't know Old Psycho was a head case, I'd say that was cute. What is it going to do?”

“You've never seen a strill hunt, have you?”

Mereel didn't say another word. He signaled advance to Niner with a sweep of his hand and the squad sprinted for the perimeter of the landing strip.

Diplomatic sector, Quadrant A-4, 2145 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

Etain stood on the ledge of a soaring office tower facing the elegant apartment block and realized exactly what black ops truly meant.

Vau stood beside her. The ledge was about 150 centimeters wide, and the breeze at this height was noticeable even on climate-controlled Coruscant.

“What's the matter?” Vau said, his parade-ground voice slightly softened by his Mando helmet. “Didn't know how dirty politics could be? That diplomats aren't all nice honest people? That they keep unpleasant company?”