Uthan was staring at his face, not at the chart. It was as if she didn’t recognize him. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the chart.

“Come on, Doctor. Pay attention.”

“That’s—that’s the biohazard containment area. Impreg­nable, for obvious reasons. I was thinking we might retreat in there for the time being.”

“I would prefer to keep you and the biomaterial separate. In fact, I would prefer also to keep you separate from your staff. I dislike having all my eggs in one box—if the enemy ever breaches this facility, then they won’t be able to destroy the project in one action. If they eliminate one part, we can still salvage the other components, be they personnel or ma­terials.”

“These rooms aren’t as secure in biohazard terms.”

“But they are relatively secure in terms of stopping some­one from getting at them. The hazardous materials can stay in the central biohazard chamber.”

“Yes,” she said. “I concede that.”

“Then get your people moving.”

“You think it’ll come to that? To a battle?”

“No, not here. But if it does, this gives me the best chance of succeeding.”

“You’re prepared to fight while sitting on a bomb, effec­tively.”

“Yes. Your bomb. And if we’re both sitting on it, it’ll moti­vate us to prevent its detonation, won’t it?”

“I think you’re a dangerous and foolhardy man.”

“And I think you’re a woman who’s lucky that she has relative immunity through her value to the Separatist cause.” Hokan straightened up. Maybe she wanted an apology. He saw no reason to give one. A scientist, expecting half the relevant facts to be acceptable in the solution of a problem? It was sloppy, unforgivably sloppy. “I’ll have a droid help you if you like.”

“We’ll do it ourselves. I know how careful they are with fragile objects.”

Hokan closed the holochart and walked out into the corri­dor.

Outside, a droid approached him. “Captain Hurati is bringing a prisoner and a visitor,” he said. “He says he dis­obeyed your orders on both.”

Maybe promoting the man hadn’t been such a good idea. But Hurati was smart. He’d taken them alive when he should have taken them dead, and that was significant. The young officer wasn’t squeamish.

Hokan decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. When the droids at the entrance parted to let him pass, Hurati was waiting, and he had two others with him.

One was a Trandoshan mercenary. He carried his distinc­tive tool of the trade, an APC repeating blaster.

The other was no stranger at all. It was Guta-Nay, his for­mer Weequay lieutenant.

“I got information,” the Weequay said, cowering.

“You better have,” Hokan said.

With one pair of shoulders missing, Niner had some hard choices to make about what equipment they could take with them. He stared down at the various weapons and piles of ordnance laid out on the ground, astonished by what they had managed to carry as well as in consideration of what they couldn’t take into battle.

“We could always cache some stuff near the target,” Fi said.

“Two trips—double the risk.”

Atin picked up one of the LJ-50 concussion rifles. He had been most insistent on saving those. “Well, I’m taking this conk rifle and the APC array blaster if I’m going into that fa­cility.”

“Don’t trust Republic procurement, then?” Fi said.

“No point being a snob about gear,” Atin said.

“Don’t get stuck in any confined spaces.”

It was a fair point: with a backpack, Deece, rifle attach­ments, and sections of cannon, there wasn’t a lot of room left to load much else. Niner didn’t want to say it aloud, but they were trying to do two squads’ work. Something had to give.

“Come on, you know I can carry equipment,” Etain said.

She didn’t look like she could even carry a tune: battered, di­sheveled, and ashen, she seemed about to drop. “Ask Dar­man.”

“That right, Dar?” Niner said on the helmet link.

Darman glanced down from his observation point in the tree. “Like a bantha, Sarge. Load her up.”

They could split the E-Web across five of them. That meant an extra piece and a decent supply of extra power cells and ordnance.

“Okay, plan A,” Niner said. He projected a holochart from his datapad. “The nearest suitable laying-up point is just under one kilometer from the facility in this coppice here. We tab down there now and deploy two surveillance remotes to give us a good view of both the facility and the villa. De­pending on the situation, we can try to come back for the spare gear during the day. It’s two klicks each way. Not a lot, but it’s daylight, and if Guta-Nay did the business, we’ll have a lot of attention.”

“I’m up for it,” Atin said. “We’re going to need it.”

“Go on with plan A,” Etain said.

“As we agreed—get a remote loaded with ribbon charge into the villa and do what damage we can, while Fi lays down fire at the rear of the facility, Darman blows the main doors, and I go in with Atin. If we can’t get the remote into the villa, then we have to tie the droids down with a split attack—plan B.”

Etain chewed her lower lip. “That sounds almost impossi­ble.”

“I never said we had good odds.”

“And I’m not that much use against droids.”

“You would be if you had one of these,” Atin said, and of­fered her the Trandoshan array blaster. “Lightsabers are all very well, but we don’t want to get too intimate with the enemy, do we? It’s got a good close-range spread so you don’t even have to be an expert marksman to use it.” He made a gesture with his hands. “Bang. Serious bang.”

She took the weapon and examined it carefully, then shouldered it like a pro. “Never used one of these. I’ll get the hang of it fast.”

“That’s the spirit, ma’am.”

“You should also know that I can move things, too. Not just carry them.”

“Move?”

“With the Force.”

“Handy,” Fi said.

Niner slapped a clip of plasma bolt rounds in Fi’s hand to shut him up. “We might need you to keep Doctor Uthan co­operative, too. Worse comes to worst, we’ve got sedation for her, but I’d really rather have her walking than as a dead­weight.”

“Is there a plan C?”

“The nice thing about the alphabet, ma’am, is that it gives you plenty of plans to choose from,” Fi said.

“Shut up, Fi,” Niner said.

“He has a point,” Etain said. She spun around to face the undergrowth. “Jinart?”

The Gurlanin slipped out of the bushes and wandered among the selection of weapons, a glossy black predator again, picking her way between the equipment with careful paws. She sniffed at it.

“Show me what I need to carry,” she said.

“Can you manage three remotes?” Atin asked.

“All bombs?”

“No, two holo-cams, one bomb.”

“Very well. You can explain to me what you want done with them when we reach your…”

“Laying-up point,” Niner prompted. “LUP.”

“You enjoy not being understood, don’t you?”

“Part of our mystique and charm,” Fi said, and strapped more webbing onto his armor.

They followed the line of the woods, a route that took them a couple of kilometers out of their way, but offered the shortest distance over open terrain. Etain—Niner still strug­gled with first-name familiarity, even in his muni—kept close to Darman. She seemed to like him. She was polite and sympathetic to the rest of them, but she certainly liked Dar­man. Niner could see it on her face. She exuded concern. He heard snatches of conversation.

“How did you ever carry all the E-Web sections alone?”

“No idea. Just did, I suppose.”

She was a Jedi. Skirata said they were fine people, but they didn’t—and couldn’t—care about anyone. But you got close very quickly under fire. He wasn’t going to ask Darman what he was playing at. Not yet.

They reached the edge of the woodland and came into a hundred-meter stretch of waist-high grass. Fi went forward as point man. Sprinting and dropping was now beyond them, but there appeared to be nothing around to spot their gray armor anyway, so they walked at a crouch. Niner’s back was screaming for a rest. It didn’t matter how fit you were when you pushed yourself this hard: it hurt.