“You're going to tell me what an or'dinii I am for pulling that stunt, aren't you, ner vod?” asked Prudii.

“Pointless bravado.” If he took offence, Atin was ready to swing at him. “Reckless, even.”

“But it's what the GAR would do if it came across a droid transport and didn't know a lot of tinnies were already as good as useless, isn't it?” Prudii sounded as if he regarded the Grand Army as something separate and external. “I didn't bust my shebs around half the galaxy this past year so the Seps could work out that their tinnies were already sabotaged. So it's worth the risk to make it all look real. If we don't take a pop at them whenever we get the chance, they'll wonder why.”

Atin dealt in the measurable and the solid, things he could deconstruct to find out how they worked, and things that he could build. He was trained in camouflage and feint attacks. But the world that the Nulls moved in, the arena of black ops, was a nebulous haze of bluff and counter-bluff. Just when he thought he had the hang of it, they'd do something that was obvious in hindsight but that hadn't occurred to him at the time.

“You think they're that smart?”

“I never underestimate the enemy,” said Prudii. “Especially when I'm not sure who the enemy is.” He tapped the pilot's shoulder. “Drall RV point, my good man, and make it snappy.”

“You Null boys are my favourite fares,” said the pilot, and yawned again. “Never a dull moment.”

place and time: republic special-ops shuttle. uncoded. en route from kamino to drall RV point corellian space – 461 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

Mereel swung through the hatch into the crew bay, and Skirata gave him a playful tap on the ear with the flat of his hand.

“Don't do that again,” said Skirata. “If those gray freaks had caught you, they'd have reconditioned you.”

“They might have tried.” Mereel caught Ordo narrowing his eyes in disapproval: Kal'buir was not to be distressed, ever. “Anyway, this could well be worth it.”

Safe from detection even by the Republic, they sat in the crew cabin of the unmarked shuttle and pored over the data from Mereel's haul while they waited for Atin and Prudii to rendezvous. They watched the files play out on Ordo's datapad like the latest holovids while the Treasury software from oh-so-helpful Agent Wennen flagged the most heavily encrypted files and those that had been subject to secure erasure.

Mereel was almost joking when he keyed in the search parameter “Palpatine.” It was always worth seeing if there was data about key politicians in any files he sliced, just in case, but he didn't expect to find anything.

But he got it.

“Osik,” he cursed.

“Problem?” Ordo nudged him.

“Maybe.” Mereel stared at a triple-encrypted file that yielded to the Treasury software. But it wasn't a message or a data file; it was a copy of a holotransmission.

He hit the key. It was a frozen holo of Lama Su. Fierfek, it was the Kaminoan Prime Minister, and he appeared to be talking to Chancellor Palpatine.

Skirata swallowed audibly. “Now this is where life gets a bit dangerous.”

But they watched, transfixed, as the shimmering blue image of Lama Su sprang to life from the datapad emitter.

“If you require more clones beyond the current order, then you must authorize us to begin further production immediately. An initial payment of one billion credits….”

There was a crackling pause: Palpatine's response wasn't recorded, but it was clear he had interrupted. Lama Su's head bobbed in annoyance.

“We must make it clear that the current Kamino contracts terminate in two years. Apart from the special facilities you ask us to set up on Coruscant, Chancellor, you will have no further clone production beyond the current three million unless you commission more now…”

There was nothing more. It appeared to be all that Lama Su had filed, probably as some kind of personal insurance. If the date was correct, the conversation had taken place some months before.

“Shab,” Skirata hissed. “What are they playing at?”

Ordo slowly raised his hand to his mouth. Mereel, who thought he'd seen it all, revised his grasp of political subterfuge on the spot.

“So is the Republic going bust and not paying its bills?” asked Ordo. “Or are we seeing something else?”

“Cloning facilities on Coruscant? General Zey never mentioned that.”

“Maybe he doesn't know. There's a lot Zey doesn't know, after all… lots about us, for a start.”

“How's the Chancellor going to pull that off?”

Skirata interrupted. “See what else you can find.” He'd started chewing ruik root again and Mereel gauged his anxiety by the speed of his jaw. He was going like a machine now. “I don't like this at all.”

“If this is all the army we've got for the foreseeable future,” said Ordo, “then we'll be overrun in two years.”

“Unless Prudii's patent droid remover saves the day,” said Mereel, stomach churning.

Why didn't I pick this up earlier?

All Nulls were adept spies, used to knowing more about the Republic's inner workings than the Senate itself. Mereel could even find out the smallest and most private details if he needed to, maybe even how many times Palpatine used the 'freshers each day. He'd thought that no information escaped him. So being surprised by totally unexpected information left him uneasy and ashamed.

“How did I miss this, Kal'buir?” he said, feeling he had let him down.

“You didn't, son,” said Skirata. “You found it.”

place and time: RV point. drall space. corellia sector – 462 standard days after the battle of geonosis.

Prudii obviously hadn't seen Skirata in a long time. Atin watched, fascinated, as he turned instantly from glib cynic to adoring son, hugging Skirata with a clash of armour plates. He stood back, and Skirata patted his cheek, an indulgent grin spreading across his face.

“I have some interesting data for you, Kal'buir.” The two ships hung linked together by a docking tube, a long way from Republic scrutiny as well as the Separatists. They gathered in the crew bay of the smaller TIV. It was a tight fit. “We're still not finding droid numbers like Intel claimed. We have to reassess the nature of the Sep threat.”

Atin thought Prudii just meant numbers. It was now obvious that the droid numbers were flawed to say the least. Atin would have been happy to just write that off as Republic Intelligence being di'kute – nobody with any sense expected intel to be accurate anyway – but it seemed to bother all three Nulls a great deal. Ordo and Mereel, their helmets stacked side by side on the deck like two decapitated heads, wore matching frowns of concern.

“Come on, this is supposed to be good news,” said Atin.

Ordo shrugged. “Depends where the original estimate came from.”

“But what if it turns out to be right?”

Mereel looked mildly exasperated. “If they had even one quadrillion droids, or a tenth of that, we'd know all about it – because they'd use them, and they'd invade Coruscant.” He glanced at Skirata, as though waiting for permission to go on. Skirata shook his head. “Anyway, a factory processing more droids than that needs a lotofdurasteeland parts, and we'd notice the traffic. We're not seeing quadrillion-ton shipments of ore, metal or components.”

“Then it's just Sep propaganda. Everyone talks up their troop strengths.”

Atin simply couldn't see why it mattered. They had a better handle on the Sep droid numbers now, and a good strategy, for the time being, for making sure that the millions didn't count for anything like that number on the battlefield. He settled back into an alcove in the port bulkhead and inserted his test probes into the wafer's terminals. He just wanted to see the data for himself, or as much as he understood of it.