Free 501st: An Imperial Commando Novel by Karen Traviss Page A

leaned against the door frame, rattling a flimsi bag that sounded as if it was full of glass. “And Hokan was never a member, just a hard-liner, so never believe intel or gossip.” He held up the flimsi bag again as if he was tempting Uthan with a gift. “I took some samples from Kina Ha, Doctor, seeing as I’m the qualified scab-lifter. You’re not a physician, are you?”
    “Oh dear, you’re going to use big confusing words,” Fi said. He filched a couple of extra rolls and stuffed them in his pocket. “I’m off.”
    Uthan was still trying to place Gilamar in the Mandalorian scheme of things. He looked like everyone’s idea of a holovid Mandalorian—broken nose, scarred armor, grim expression, buzz-cut hair—but when he spoke, he was another stereotype entirely: a highly educated man. She found the idea of a doctor working as a mercenary and still practicing medicine almost too much to take in. But then Mandalore itself was one big contradiction, with heavy industry and shipbuilding sitting cheek by jowl with farms that hadn’t changed in centuries, sophisticated electronics and ancient metal-working skills side by side in the same suit of armor. She really wasn’t sure what a Mando was anymore. All she knew was that they weren’t quite what she expected. She hadn’t met two the same yet—not even the clones.
    “No, I’m not good with needles,” she said. “You seem to be a polymath, Dr. Gilamar.”
    “Got to be.” He sat down and took an assortment of vials and slides out of the bag. Some contained dark purplish blood, one seemed to be urine—clear and colorless as distilled water—and other containers held tiny globs of bloody tissue. “We’re a long way from Coruscant Medical School. Every Mando needs to be able to do half a dozen jobs.”
    Uthan picked up one of the sample vials. “Biopsies? You know your way around Kaminoan anatomy, then.”
    “I spent more than eight years in Tipoca City with them. I know how those things are built. Now, how doyou want to play this? I’ll run the analyses for you if you like.”
    “Is she really a thousand years old?”
    “No reason to doubt it. I’ve never seen a Kaminoan like her, and I’ve seen plenty.”
    “Extraordinary.”
    “You’re looking for switching techniques rather than actual genes, right?”
    “Most life in the galaxy has some genes in common, so perhaps not.”
    “We thought the maturation control was linked to silencing genes H-seven-eight-B and H-eighty-eight, but we didn’t get anywhere with that. No artificial or nonhuman genes in the mix, either. I can assure you we menaced and leaned on some of the best scientists in the field.”
    Uthan smiled. She liked keeping things up her sleeve. She’d had to, just to stay alive these last few years. How could these strangers think she would trust them? Everyone used her.
    “Do you know how my engineered pathogen targeted clones?” she asked.
    Gilamar smiled back. “I think targeted bioweapons are a load of old
osik
, actually. Against humans, anyway.”
    “And why would you say that?”
    “Because, unless you have some way of identifying a complete genome—not just a few genes, not even
ninety-nine percent
of the genome—there just aren’t convenient Corellian genes or Mandalorian genes or whatever for a pathogen to hook up to. Not even if you call it a nanovirus, which I also think is
osik
, by the way. You’d have to find a way for the virus to identify the whole genome, or nothing.”
    Gilamar didn’t sound as if he was gloating. He must have known the virus wasn’t quite what she’d told Palpatine’s minions it. He leaned forward across the table and smiled. Once, Ghez Hokan had lost his temper with her and hauled her across her desk by her collar, and fora moment she thought Gilamar would do the same. These were, after all, men who lived by violence.
    But he just picked up the vial of urine and shook it carefully as if he were mixing a leisurely cocktail. “Am I