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

right, Doctor? Either your virus has to find the intact Fett clone genome, or else it’s useless. Which means it won’t affect the Nulls, because their genome was altered from the basic trooper template, and it won’t touch
Kad’ika
, because he’s got half his mother’s genes. Or maybe it goes to the other extreme, and kills most humans indiscriminately. Because the differences between human genomes across the galaxy are so
tiny
and populations
so mixed up
that your killer cocktail
can’t tell the difference
. Can it?”
    Uthan wondered if Gilamar had been in contact with Hokan during those few days of crisis on Qiilura. He was right. At that time, she hadn’t been able to stop the virus attacking all human genomes and make it single out Fett clones. There just weren’t enough genetic differences between humans to exploit—bar one. Hokan had been furious, thinking he was guarding a failed experiment.
    “You’re an analytical man, Gilamar.”
    “Call me Mij.” He smiled. “You don’t have to be a hotshot geneticist to work through the logic. Of course … if your magic potion
does
work, and really
is
that selective, then it has two possible methods—either the whole-genome approach, which sounds a bit too complex and would be totally borked by routine mutation anyway, or it would have to zero in on something that the average clone has, but the average random human hasn’t … the gene sequence that controls their accelerated aging. Did I get the right answer, Dr. Uthan? Am I a clever boy?”
    Gilamar was right. No, he didn’t need to be a geneticist to work that out, but he needed to be smarter than the idiots who’d held her captive, and he was. Yes, she’d been working on a highly selective virus, all right. She wanted to identify the aging markers as badly as Skiratahad, but for wholly different reasons. She couldn’t unleash a virus that might wipe out the whole humanoid population of a planet. She had her ethical limits, however much of a monster others might have believed her to be.
    And I’ll still catch some nonclones who just happen to have that same genetic quirk—but perhaps one in ten million. Safe enough, I think. A reasonable margin of error
.
    She leaned back a little and finished her eggs. It took more than a table covered in Kaminoan tissue samples to dent her appetite.
    The galaxy’s different now. The war’s over, but there’s still an army full of Fett clones out there. So what happens next
?
    She only knew that she couldn’t trust the Empire not to kill her, and that the best deal she’d been offered so far had been from a gang of Mandalorian criminals.
    Or maybe
not
criminals. Patriots? Amoral opportunists? Rebels? Terrorists? Depends who’s doing the defining
.
    “That’s what I get,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, “for thinking Mandalorians are all mindless thugs.”
    “Stereotypes,” Gilamar said. “Don’t you just
hate
it when that happens? You Gibadans are all the same.”
    Uthan fought back a smile. Gilamar stared at her for a long time, not remotely aggressive, but all the more worrying for that. Then he grinned.
    “Why do you suppose Palpatine wanted me to keep working on the FG thirty-six virus instead of destroying it?” she asked, wishing she weren’t enjoying the discussion. “It wasn’t asset denial. If he wanted the CIS to be deprived of my expertise, he could have killed me anytime.”
    “Oh, I think you know the answer.”
    “It did dawn on me, eventually. Insurance.”
    Gilmar nodded. “Can’t blame the old despot, really. If the clones decided to turn against Palps for any reason,one of the Grand Army’s contingency orders was to relieve him of office the hard way. Order number five, if I recall. There was an order for every eventuality, from the old
chakaar
himself to whacking the Jedi.” He stood up and stretched. “Just tell me something. What
did
you leave Palps with? A working targeted nanovirus, or the one