Cuvin was right about the strills, though. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to deal with his dissent, but finding the Re­public troops wouldn’t be easy.

“How many do you estimate now, Hurati?” he asked.

Hurati flicked a holochart into life and a fly-through image shimmered in the dark. “Vessel downed here, confirmed Re­public R5 military droid.” He pointed. “Remains of two Weequay militia found here, here, and here—but gdans had dismembered and dragged the cadavers over a five-klick range, so the exact location of the kill is estimated. The air-speeder was brought down here. The speeder circuitry was found dismantled here, but as it was at the entrance to gdan burrows, there’s no telling where they might have found it to start with. The engagement with the droid patrol was here, because we deployed the patrol based on that finding.”

“That’s pretty much all in a five-klick corridor spanning forty klicks. Looks obvious to me that they’re heading for Teklet, probably to take the port before targeting the facility.”

“It would look that way, sir.”

“Numbers?”

“I would have said no more than ten, sir. We have reports from farmers who’ve found evidence of movement across their land. They’re very protective of their crops, so they no­tice these subtle signs—unlike droids, sir.”

“And what does that suggest, then?”

“Multiple tracks crossing an area forty klicks by thirty klicks, sir. Expertly done, too—the locals thought it might be wildlife, but these tracks are not random. I’d say we’re being decoyed.”

Ten troops. Ten—pathfinders, special forces, saboteurs? Were they preparing the ground for more troops, or were they tasked to complete the mission on their own? Hokan wished he had a few Mandalorian mercenaries, not droids and career officers. He kept his concern well hidden behind his full-face helmet. He also wished he had more airspeed­ers; he’d never needed more than one to police farms, and it would take days to have any shipped to Qiilura. “Farmers can be pretty cooperative, can’t they?”

“Remarkably so, ever since that one found the circuitry, sir.”

Hokan turned and started walking back toward the re­search facility that was now empty but lavishly and conspicuously guarded. He beckoned Hurati to follow him. Cuvin started to follow, too, but Hokan held up his hand to motion him to stay put.

“Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Any sign of my former em­ployee, Guta-Nay?”

“Not yet, sir. Patrols have been briefed.”

“Good, and keep an eye on Cuvin for me, won’t you? I don’t think he’s going to make captain.”

Hurati paused, but briefly. “Understood, sir.”

It was amazing what the unspoken promise of an extra rank insignia could do. Hokan wondered what had happened to the code of conduct.

So there were perhaps ten commandos operating in the region. Hunting them down would be enormously time-consuming. Barring luck, Hokan would never catch them, not with droids and these young academy theorists. Sooner or later, the enemy would need to resupply; sooner or later, they would show themselves.

The Republic was playing decoy games with him, and he with them. It was looking better all the time. They didn’t ap­pear to be adopting their usual tactic of landing infantry in force. It was a game of wits, and if need arose he could sit tight and force the Republic to come to him.

If he wanted to bring the Republic close enough to shoot, then he might need an even more compelling bait.

Dr. Uthan would understand. She was a pragmatic woman.

Fi was getting edgy. It wasn’t like him. Niner had only known him a matter of days, but you made quick judgments on small detail if you were a clone commando, especially among your own.

He didn’t sleep when Niner relieved him on watch, and after fifteen minutes Fi came forward to the observation po­sition and settled down beside him. The fires seemed to have stopped; the glow was still visible, but it was static. It had probably reached one of the streams and was burning itself out.

“They know we’re here anyway,” Fi said. Niner needed no telepathy to know he was worrying about Darman. “We could try the comlink at longer range.”

“They’d get a fix on positions.”

“They’d have to get lucky.”

“And we only have to be unlucky once.”

“Okay. Sorry, Sarge.”

He lapsed back into silence. Niner adjusted his infrared filter to remove the distracting light of the fire. Suddenly, it was abnormally silent, and that meant the gdans had stopped their incessant prowling, which was not good.

Niner looked down his rifle scope one-handed to get a nar­rower focus on the bushes in front of him. As he panned across 180 degrees, he caught sight of little paired reflec­tions, the alert eyes of gdans huddled in uncharacteristic stillness to avoid something.

Movement. His scope flashed blue in one quadrant, warning him. Maybe whatever it was could see infrared. He killed the targeting, switching to image intensification and the Mark One Ear’ole, as Skirata called it. You got eyes and ears, son, good ones. Don’t rely on the tech too much. Something was coming, something slow, stealthy, smaller than a man, more sly than a droid.

Niner put his hand on Fi’s shoulder—Stay down–not daring to speak, even on comlink.

It was ten meters away, coming straight at them, making no attempt to stalk. Maybe it didn’t know what they were. It was going to get a surprise, then.

Niner flicked on his tactical spot-lamp, and the blinding beam caught a shining black shape. He cut the beam imme­diately, muscles relaxing. The creature was so flat to the ground now that it looked as if it were flowing water. It was only when it was right in front of them that it sat up and became Valaqil.

“I thought I’d let you see me coming, given your arma­ments,” said a voice that wasn’t Valaqil’s but was equally liq­uid and hypnotic. “I make it a rule never to startle a humanoid with a rifle.”

“Just as well that we’ve seen a Gurlanin before,” Fi said, and touched his glove to his helmet politely.

“I didn’t seem to surprise your colleague, either. I’ve come to brief you. I’m Jinart. Please don’t call me ma’am every two seconds like Darman does.”

Niner wanted to ask a hundred questions about Darman, but the Gurlanin had used the present tense and so he was alive. Niner was glad he had his helmet in place. Displays of emotion weren’t professional, not to outsiders, anyway.

“You’re heading for the wrong target,” Jinart said. “You’re on a course for the Separatist base. Normally you’d be knocking on the door of a barracks with a hundred droids in­side, but they’ve moved half of them to defend the research facility and patrol the area. Neither Uthan nor her nanovirus is at the actual facility any longer.”

“So it’s all going just great,” Fi said cheerfully.

“Your targets are at a villa just outside Imbraani, despite what evidence you might see of the facility being defended. It’s a trap.”

“What’s Darman doing?” Niner asked.

“He has your special ordnance and detailed plans of your targets. I’ve sent him into hiding with the Jedi.”

“General Fulier? We thought—”

“You thought right. He’s dead. The Jedi is his Padawan, Tur-Mukan. Don’t get your hopes up. She isn’t commander material—not yet, perhaps never. For the time being, this is still your war.”

“We weren’t planning on a frontal assault, not without in­fantry,” Niner said. “Now that we’ve lost the advantage of surprise, we’re going to have to get it back again.”

“You do have one element—Ghez Hokan has no accurate idea how few of you there are. I’ve made sure there are many, many obvious signs of movement through the woods and fields.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“I can do a good impersonation of a small army, or at least its movement.” Jinart glanced at Atin and Fi as if checking them. Maybe she was working out how she would mimic the form of a commando. “Not thinking of shooting and eating any merlies, are you?”