He needed to pass through Tipoca City and grab some data without being noticed. The Kaminoan moved on. Mereel savoured the knowledge that he knew more about chief scientist Ko Sai's whereabouts than the Kaminoans did, and they'd searched for her very, very hard.

You're going to give us back our lives, gihaal, me and all my brothers. Mereel included the Republic commandos, the poor cannon fodder meat-cans around him, and even the Alpha ARCs, who'd been ready to kill clone kids to stop the Seps from using them. An vode. They're all my brothers. Even the Alphas.

As the troopers fell out, he slipped in at the rear of a line of men to cover his progress toward the administration core of the building. One glanced at him, the slightest head movement betraying what was happening under his helmet. The man was probably well aware Mereel was a stranger from the minute telltale differences in gait or bearing, but he said nothing. No clone could possibly be a security risk.

I'm just borrowing some information, ner vod. I'm not even going to sabotage this cesspit of a city. Take no notice of me.

As the line passed a corridor leading off at 90 degrees, Mereel wheeled left and walked calmly down to the end of the passage. The heads-up display in his helmet scrolled floor plans and data before his eyes. He looked both at it and through it to focus on the systems terminal set in the wall. Since the Separatist attack on Tipoca just over a standard year ago, security had been tightened, but that was just for Seps and their droids. Amateurs and tinnies. Nobody could keep out a determined Null ARC.

“Mer'ika,” said the voice in his helmet. It was quiet and concerned: Skirata rarely raised his voice to them. “Don't push your luck. I want you back in one piece.”

“I hear you, Kal'buir.” Mereel slipped the docking pin of his forearm plate into one of the terminal's ports. A couple of troopers looked his way from the end of the passage, but he remained unhurried. I'm just calibrating my suit. “We might not get another chance to come back here. I'm grabbing everything I can.”

Along with the legitimate outgoing code that requested data from the Tipoca mainframe, a second hidden layer hitched a ride to access the root of the entire system undetected. Mereel now had Republic Treasury encryption and de-erasure keys, courtesy of an obliging Treasury agent called Besany Wennen, and they were the most advanced available. Now he could read not only Treasury data, but also find encrypted files between Tipoca and the Republic that had been hidden from his previous probes. He might also be able to recover the data that Ko Sai had stolen and deleted.

He wanted her critical research on controlling the ageing process i in humans. It might work both ways, they said. That meant it was worth a fortune. She would try to sell it.

The tree of files appeared in his HUD, a field of flickering amber and blue symbols like a garish fabric. What looked like a plain white wall to humans on Kamino was actually a riot of colour beyond their visual range. Only in the Kaminoans' digital systems did Mereel ever get a glimpse of the way their heptachromatic vision saw the world.

Lots of blue and orange and purple. Tacky. Tasteless.

If he copied just the files he knew he needed, it would take seconds.

You might never get a chance to come back again.

The mainframe held 10 petabytes of data. It would take minutes.

Boots clattered past him. Mereel concentrated on looking like a regular trooper maintaining his armour's systems, but it was hard to stretch a 30-second procedure. He could hear his breath rasping in his helmet. So could Skirata and his brother Ordo, waiting in orbit to extract him.

“You okay, son?”

“Fine, Kal'buir.”

“No heroics,” said Ordo's voice. “Get out now.”

Mereel looked at his HUD icon: still amber, still downloading. He was pushing it, all right. But he'd pushed his luck a lot more for the Republic, and a bunch of strangers and jetiise didn't mean half as much to him as the welfare of his brothers. The amber icon flashed. More boots clattered past the end of the passage.

Come on… Come on…

It was taking too long.

His peripheral vision, enhanced by his helmet's systems, saw the Kaminoan pause and turn to walk towards him. Fierfek. That's all we need.

It was a crested male. It stood in front of him, feigning concern. He knew it only sawhim as a commodity.

“You have been downloading longer than average, trooper.”

“Just checking, sir.” Mereel heard a faint click on his audio feed: Skirata was edgy. “Slow data response times on my HUD.”

“Then please proceed to Procurement and have them run diagnostics.”

“Yes, sir!” Don't bank on it, aiwha-bait. The icon in his HUD changed to green. “Right away, sir!”

Mereel withdrew the docking pin and walked back down the passage in the general direction of Procurement. The moment the Kaminoan was out of sight, he dropped back into the ocean of whitearmoured bodies and worked his way down the wide corridors and walkways to the maze of service passages that led to lesser-known landing platforms.

Mereel knew every metre of the complex. Skirata had encouraged the Nulls to run wild as kids, much to the disgust of the Kaminoans. He looked into the cloud-locked sky and rain hammered his visor like shrapnel.

“Ready, Kal'buir,” he said. “Get me out of this dar'yaim.”

place and time: republic special-ops freighter tiv z766/2. cato neimoidia portal. hydian – 461 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

“This wasn't in the op order,” said Atin. “We were supposed to sabotage the factory and return to base.”

Prudii had ordered the traffic interdiction vessel to Neimoidian space. The pilot didn't seem worried. TIV pilots never did.

“I know,” said Prudii. “But this is all about presentation.”

“Even this TIV can't take on an armoured transport.”

“You sound scared, ner vod. Look at me. No helmet. Would I take a risk without my suit sealed?”

Atin considered showing Prudii where he could dock his character assessment the hard way. “But it's not unreasonable to ask why you're presenting a target to the Seps just to get a few thousand droids that are probably from a spiked batch anyway.” He paused for a breath. “Lieutenant.”

“No need to stand on ceremony with me, vod'ika.” Prudii shrugged. “We're all brothers. Even those unimaginative Alpha planks, Force bless 'em. Why am I doing this? Emphasis, ner vod. Emphasis.”

A small, bright spot grew larger in the view plate and resolved into a yellow and gray transport with horizontal spars picked out in scarlet. Prudii let it draw a thousand metres behind the TIV.

“Ready torpedoes,” he said.

The pilot tapped the console. “Torps ready.”

“Steady…”

The transport was accelerating slowly towards the jump point.

“On my mark…”

He was calculating blast range. Atin could see it.

“Take take take.”

“Torps away.”

A spread of six proton torpedoes streaked from the concealed tubes in the ship's underslung drive. The TIV shuddered. Atin reminded himself that his Katarn armour and bodysuit was space-tight for 20 minutes, and then realised help would be a lot more than 20 minutes away if anything went wrong. It always was – why did they bother? But Prudii didn't have his helmet on. Either he was confident or he was mad, and being a Null meant he was probably both.

The first and second warheads punched one-two into the transport's starboard flank in a blaze of gold light. Atin didn't see the rest strike because the TIV accelerated from standstill to way too fast in a matter of seconds, heading for the jump point. It was definitely emphatic.

Stars stretched and streaked before them as the TIV went to hyperspace and left the stricken transport far behind. Prudii wasn't even waiting to confirm a kill. He smiled as the acceleration levelled out and the TIV settled steady again. The pilot yawned. Atin said nothing.