Omega Squad: Targets

by Karen Traviss

  Omega Squad: Targets

  By Karen Traviss

  Republic Commando - Interlude

  Republic Commando

  01 - Hard Contact

  Omega Squad: Targets

  02 - Triple Zero

  Odds

  03 - True Colors

  04 - Order 66

  Imperial Commando

  01 - 501st

  Headquarters, Special Operations, Coruscant

  Arca Company Barracks

  “Go on,” said Fi. “Shoot me. Do your worst.”

  He held his arms away from his sides, presenting a clear shot to his comrade. Atin raised the Verpine shatter gun and aimed two-handed, left hand steadying the grip.

  “You’re all mouth, Fi,” he said.

  Atin squeezed the trigger. Fi’s armored breastplate puffed a cloud of coating with a loud crack, and he fell back against the wall of their quarters. Verps were silent except for the impact and the screaming that sometimes followed the blasts. Fi wasn’t screaming. But behind his visor, he had his mouth open in a silent oh of pain.

  Atin stood over Fi and checked both the breastplate and the Verp’s chamber before hauling him back to his feet. They took off their helmets and looked around for the spent projectile. Fi picked up a flattened disc of metal whose edges were split and curled back like a flower, and tossed it in the air for Atin to catch.

  “Okay, the upgrade worked,” said Atin. “But you can’t blame me for checking. I spent a month in the bacta tank thanks to one of these.”

  Fi didn’t trust Procurement any more than Atin did, not when there were more than ten thousand sets of costly equipment to upgrade. They’d griped about the expense, but now everything—from their armor systems to their DC-17 rifles—was hardened against EMP and Verps, the two weaknesses that had almost got them killed on Qiilura.

  Fi slipped his helmet back on and rapped his knuckle plate on it. “Well, nothing short of sustained laser cannon is going to give us a headache now.”

  The door whispered open. Niner, all grim responsibility, stood in the doorway in his black bodysuit. Darman was behind him, armored up, helmet tucked under one arm.

  “What was that noise?” Niner said.

  “Testing the new armor, Sarge.”

  “Testing my patience more like.” He made an irritated click with his teeth, just like Kal Skirata used to; Fi could see more of their old training sergeant’s habits in Niner with every passing day. He glanced around the room. “You fired a weapon in here?”

  “It’s okay, Sarge, we were wearing helmets.” Atin stood his ground. Sensible precautions often placated Niner. “You can’t trust Procurement.”

  “Well, game over. We’ve got trade. Armed siege at the GC spaceport.”

  “Don’t they have civil police for that sort of stuff?” Fi asked. “We’ll be directing traffic next.”

  “Not when there are hostages and one is a Senator.” Niner held out his hand to Atin for the Verpine, studied it, and then handed it back. “They’ve never dealt with anything like this before and they heard we were the boys for the job.”

  Fi lifted his backpack from its locker. “I didn’t have anything special planned for this evening anyway.” Atin was right: He was all mouth. He became two men again, as he always did when it was time to roll—the commando who was eager to put his hard-won skills to the test and the scared kid who wasn’t sure he’d be alive tomorrow. He found himself worrying whether he’d signed out the Verpine from the armory. How much trouble could an armed siege be, anyway? He had his Katarn armor and he—and his mates—could take on a small army.

  They all knew what the final score would be, more or less.

  Atin gave him a shove and tucked the Verpine in his belt. “After you.”

  Maybe Atin was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Holonews Update, 1530:

  Senator Meena Tills is believed to be among six hostages seized by an armed gang at Galactic City spaceport. Police have sealed off the area and all city traffic and interplanetary flights are being diverted. Expect long delays. More later.

  Galactic City, Coruscant, was amazing.

  Fi leaned out of the police assault ship’s bay with his DC-17 clunking against his breastplate at every swerve and lurch of the vessel. Wind whipped into the hold, flattening his hair and peppering grit against his armor and his face. He’d never seen so many brilliantly colored lights: the walkways and skylanes stretched as far above him as they did below. No wonder they called this place the Abyss.

  “Get your head back in,” yelled the pilot. “What are you, a tourist or something?”

  Fi leaned a little further out, trusting the safety harness. “But don’t you think it’s amazing?”

  “Yeah, every rotten stinking shift,” said the pilot wearily. “Get him back inboard, will you?”

  Niner jerked on the line. “Fi, don’t frighten the civvies,” he said. “It’s not nice. And put your helmet on.”

  Cloud cars filled the airspace. The Coruscant Security Force pilot was trying to edge the custom VAAT/e between crammed civilian traffic packed solid in three directions, cursing under his breath. The pulsing wail of the emergency klaxon and flashing lights were enough to make the dead clear a path. But nothing moved in the gridlock. Speeders almost scraping the bodywork tried to escape into gaps that weren’t there; 25 meters of assault ship didn’t fit well into the tight skylanes.

  All that Fi had ever seen of Coruscant was barracks and a compound bounded by security walls. None of the commandos had ever been on a run ashore, a social adventure that Skirata had said they should experience at least once in their lives. From the crew bay he could see crowds of every species pressed up against barriers, brightly-lit shops and bars and apartments, exotic and unimaginable places that beckoned. Yes, he’d have that run ashore someday.

  Omega Squad chatted on the privacy of their helmet comlink, audible only to each other. Fi dragged his gaze from the outside world and settled into the bittersweet cocoon of his helmet, at once both reassuring and confining.

  “Receive schematics, people,” said Niner. “And real-time view.”

  A display of lines and fly-through images filled Fi’s HUD. The image that Niner had transmitted from his datapad was the plan of the spaceport building; long walkways led off vaulted halls and service areas, cubes of offices lined corridors, and power conduits wove through the image in green light. Superimposed on top of the overview, a real-time image of the main spaceport arrivals area showed knots of blue-armored Senate Guards and CSF squads in yellow vests crouched behind security barricades, some engaged in animated conversation.

  A blue hologram figure of a thickset man in uniform shimmered into life in the hold, a little paunchy but still looking like he could give as good as he got. “Commander Obrim here, Senate Guard. Can you see this, Omega?”

  Niner spoke for them. “Got it.”

  “They’re holed up in a customs clearance corridor and they’ve threatened to detonate explosives. Two sets of doors, and we’ve left them control of one to stop them panicking and doing something stupid.”

  “How many confirmed?”

  “Six passengers, and we’re trying to get pictures of them.” Obrim might not have played this game before but he had some common sense. “Witnesses report four perpetrators armed with blasters and carrying something in backpacks, which we have to assume are explosives. No ID on them yet, but they were all on the same flight.”

  “Any contact with the targets?”

  A pause. “If you mean the gang, they’ve issued demands and we have a secure comlink established with them.”

  “And you have primacy?” Are you running the show? Fi could hear the doubt in Niner’s voice. “I thought the ci
ty came under CSF jurisdiction.”

  “Not as long as I have a Senator and his aide in danger,” said Obrim. The hologram began to waver again. “Obrim out.”

  The CSF pilot brought the assault ship to a sudden halt. The understated black-and-white marble facade of the spaceport terminal shimmered with ruby under flashing police lights. The front of the building was a crush of speeders and other emergency craft, none of them making a good job of keeping an access corridor open.

  “Can’t get in any closer,” said the pilot. “You’ll have to rope it down the rest of the way.”

  “Don’t wait for a tip,” said Fi and wondered where he’d picked up the phrase.

  We are citizens of Haruun Kal. The Republic has fueled the civil war on our world and now brings a fresh war to us. Remove your presence from our planet now or your Senator and the passengers die. Now you know we can reach into the heart of the Republic. (Message sent to RHN newsroom by Nuriin-Ar, leader of the group claiming responsibility for the hostage incident.)

  Fi braced his legs, placing both boots on the outside rail of the ship’s troop hold. He gave the rappel line one last tug to check it was secure before dropping fifteen meters to the walkway, DC-17 ready in one hand, a sea of openmouthed faces staring up at him from behind the police cordon.

  A sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him raise the rifle. A hovercam with an RHN logo was sitting motionless 5 meters to his right, too far inside the cordon, outlined against the clean, white facade of the port. There was no point being covert ops if you were on the news and your target might be watching. The rest of the squad could see Fi’s field of vision via an icon in their helmet links.

  “I don’t think that cam’s seen a Deece before,” said Darman’s voice.

  Fi’s boots hit the walkway and he aimed. The hovercam darted left then right in his scope, fast but not fast enough. “It has now.”

  A shout of “Hey!” followed the thwack of exploding hovercam. The rest of Omega Squad hit the ground and jogged toward the terminal entrance. “You shot my cam!” yelled a woman from the watching crowd. She was wearing a bright yellow tabard emblazoned with the word MEDIA in large letters. “You shot it!”

  Fi touched his glove to his helmet in apology, just as he’d been taught, but he still thought it was a pretty good shot. “Oops. Beg your pardon, ma’am.”

  He jogged after the others, conscious of the staring crowd. Fi saw his armor as safe and welcoming. But the expressions on a couple of faces made him realize that ordinary people were scared by it.

  And it wasn’t just the civilians who found Omega Squad a riveting spectacle. The CSF and Senate Guard officers at the forward control point stared, too. Obrim stopped a head-to-head discussion with a CSF lieutenant and stepped back from the defensive barricade of baggage repulsors and portable blast shields erected 10 meters around the customs hall.

  “I see you’re tooled up,” Obrim said, eyeing the DC-17s with a distinct air of alarm. He almost slid his modest police-issued blaster behind his back. “They’re not driving Trade Federation tanks, you know.”

  Fi decided that the police had a lot to learn about sieges. You could do anything with a Deece: A turn of the wrist, and it was a sniper rifle, grenade launcher or a regular blaster. You could even club someone with it if you had to, although Fi hadn’t tried that yet. He checked the vibroblade in his gauntlet out of habit, and the shunk-shunk sound as it extended and retracted made Obrim flinch.

  Niner made that annoyed click. Fi took the hint.

  “Let’s get a cam in there first so we can see what’s going on,” said Niner. He beckoned Darman and Atin forward. “Pictures, Commander? We need to know who to shoot.”

  “You’re a bit keen.”

  “If you’re not a hostage, you’re a hostage taker, and that means you’re dead a few seconds after we go in. We hate to make mistakes.”

  “What do you mean by go in, exactly?” The CSF lieutenant stepped between them. A name tab on his vest said DOVEL. “I’m incident commander. I say how and when anyone goes in. We’ve got a Jedi coming down to negotiate with the leader.”

  Darman took his pack off his back and began pulling out coils of high-yield charges and detonators. He was staring at the security doors as if calculating. “We’ll still get the charges in place, just in case.”

  “No, that’s not how we do it,” said Dovel. “We don’t want the hostages char-grilled. No storming, no heroics. Not yet.”

  Obrim interrupted. “Senate Security Committee wants this ended fast to show Haruun Kal we’re in control. They can’t just walk in here, grab a Senator, and hold the Republic’s finest at bay.”

  “Maybe the Republic’s finest, or you to be exact, should have concentrated on ensuring secure transportation for the Senators,” said Dovel. “What about those other hostages? You want to tell their families that they got fried because you called in the heavy mob to save a politician?”

  Niner waited, all mild, deceptive patience. Fi had decided on first meeting him that he was a misery-guts, but now he found him solid and reassuring, just the way a sergeant ought to be. “Let’s be clear what we’re trained to do, gentlemen. We go in and extract hostages by any means necessary. We don’t ask for ID. We don’t take targets alive. We don’t avoid damaging the furniture. When you send us in, there is no happy ending.” He paused as if waiting to see if the reality of the request had sunk in. “So we’ll just wander around and rig the interrupts to the power and light, and you call us when you’re ready to roll.”

  Atin took a couple of strip-cams from his backpack, each no bulkier than a sheet of flimsi. Fi switched to the internal helmet comlink. “You think they’re real terrorists or Haruun Kal government agents upping the ante?”

  Atin shrugged. “I don’t care as long as they fall over when we shoot them.”

  A commando’s life was all clarity. Fi was glad he wasn’t Obrim—or Dovel.

  Holonews Update, 1700:

  The family of an elderly couple held hostage with Senator Tills have made an emotional plea for their safe release. Joz and Cira Larutur from Garqi were on their way to see their first grandchild when they were seized.

  Other hostages have been named as customs officer Berin B’naian and Senatorial aide Vun Merett Jai, but the identity of the sixth hostage remains unknown.

  Obrim was talking on the comlink to Nuriin-Ar in carefully restrained tones while Omega listened in. Fi was concentrating on the sounds in the background with the intensity learned from growing up where everyone looked and sounded the same, distinguished only by minute variations in tone and expression.

  He could hear the old woman’s voice saying, “Oh Joz… oh Joz…,” over and over very quietly. From time to time, he heard an equally quiet reply from the old man: “Don’t you worry.”

  It made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure why.

  Obrim let out a breath. “The Jedi’s here.”

  Fi’s stomach churned when he saw the distinctive red-trimmed visor of an ARC trooper captain through the grimy, white helmets of the CSF line. The line melted away for the ARC: Behind him trailed a human male in a very well-cut business suit, a young Twi’lek Jedi, and…

  …a scruffy, wiry little man who looked old enough to be everyone’s father, a man with a face as wrinkled as his clothes, buzz-cut gray hair, and a limp that didn’t stop him covering the ground like a racing odupiendo.

  “Sarge!” said Fi.

  Niner’s head jerked up. “It is!”

  Kal Skirata reached them a stride ahead of the ARC captain. He grinned up at Fi as if he recognized him, but that was impossible. He’d had a hundred identical young commandos in his batch. He couldn’t possibly remember. He couldn’t possibly see past the visor, either.

  “Who let that vagrant in?” demanded Obrim.

  “That,” said Fi, “is the man who taught us all we know.”

  Obrim sighed. “We’re screwed, then.”

  Fi touched his fingers to his helmet an
yway, even if Skirata was out of uniform. “Sarge, what are you doing here?”

  “Where there’s trouble, Fi, there’s always a job for me. Special security adviser now.” Oh, he knew. How? How? “Nice new armor. Going on a date? And who’s he?”

  Fi followed Skirata’s gaze. “That’s Atin. Hang on, how do you—”

  “Lads, this is Master Kaim and the Senate Head of Public Affairs, Mar Rugeyan.” Fi heard Obrim sigh again. “And ARC N-11. We all want the same outcome—hostages out, scumbags dead, traffic flowing again. Let’s get to it.”

  Kaim looked like a youngster aged early by responsibility. He stared at the door behind the barricades and closed his eyes for a moment, lekku moving ever so slightly, hands clasped in front of him.

  “I’m going to ask them to let me in to talk,” Kaim said. “When I have their attention, I will help them decide to release the hostages and to talk to me, which will not be easy with Korunnai.” He took his lightsaber from his cloak and handed it to the ARC. “I have to show goodwill and enter unarmed.”

  “You’re nuts, sir,” said Obrim. “You’re giving them another hostage.”

  “One with a choice,” said Kaim. “Captain, if I get inside, you have command here.”

  The captain just nodded once. Atin took the strip-cams and held one out to Kaim. “If you get a chance, sir, try to leave this inside. Anywhere. Even if we can’t get an image, we can pick up audio.”

  Kaim examined the strip and tucked it in his sleeve, then took out his comlink. “Nuriin-Ar, can you hear me? Will you let me in so we can speak?”

  The simultaneous chunk and uuiirrrrr of 20 service-issue blasters powering up made Fi turn and aim in time to see the doors of the customs hall begin to part. For a moment, the commandos were a single wall of rifles with the two police forces. Slowly, the blade-thin gap opened wide enough for Fi to see a few huddled shapes inside.

  Kaim went in.