Hard Contact

by Karen Traviss

  “Not more acronyms.”

  “Improvised explosive devices. Be sure you make them look neat. Dar’s fussy about his devices.”

  It was a relatively simple but fiddly task: Etain was a quick learner. They sat in silent concentration, making bombs as casually as if they were shelling qana beans. This is how it happens, she thought. This is how you slide from peacekeeper to soldier to assassin.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” Atin said, not looking up from the bomb in progress.

  “Of course.”

  “May I look at your lightsaber?”

  Etain smiled. “Well, you’ve shown me yours, so it’s only fair I should show you mine.” She took out the hilt and held it up to him. He wiped his palms on his bodysuit and took the saber carefully. “That’s the dangerous end, and this is the control.”

  He showed no inclination to activate it. He seemed absorbed by the hilt and its markings.

  “Go on,” Etain said.

  The lightsaber flared into blue light with a vzzmmm. Atin didn’t even flinch. He simply stared down the length of the blade and seemed to be checking it for true.

  “It doesn’t feel like a weapon,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

  “I made it.”

  That changed his expression. She had struck a chord with him, one builder of gadgets to another. “Now that is impressive.”

  Etain enjoyed the respect. Being treated with deference as an officer made her squirm, but this felt good. So I think I’m pretty good at something. And someone else thinks I’m good at it, too. It was a boost that she sorely needed.

  Atin thumbed off the blade and handed the hilt back to her with suitable reverence. “I’d still rather have plenty of distance between me and the enemy,” he said. “This is a close-in weapon.”

  “Maybe I need to practice my more remote skills,” Etain said. “You never know when telekinesis might come in handy.”

  They went on bundling explosives with ribbon charges and stacking the packages in a heap. She heard and felt Darman relieve Niner on watch: their respective presences ebbed and flowed, merging at one point as they crossed paths.

  Through the night Etain alternated between dozing and checking on Guta-Nay. She was careful not to give him the idea that she was watching him, and instead concentrated on sensing whether he was still there, sitting in the lee of a tree with his knees drawn up to his chest. Sometimes he slept; she could feel the absence of mental activity, almost like sensing a plant. Other times he woke and felt more vivid and chaotic, like a predator.

  It was getting light again. It had been a long and restless night.

  And still Guta-Nay sat there. He’d made no attempt to escape.

  Of course he won’t. Etain felt her stomach knotting. He’s terrified of Hokan. He wants to stay with us. We’re the good guys, the civilized guys.

  Once again she was horrified by her ruthless and almost involuntary calculation of benefit against evil. She wandered past the shelter made of leaves, tarpaulin, and a camouflage net that seemed to be handmade. Niner, now clearly asleep, still wearing full armor, was curled up on his side, one arm folded under his head. Atin was reading his datapad; Fi was finishing the cold remains of the merlie stew. He glanced up at her and held out the mess tin.

  “I’ll pass, thanks.” Fat had congealed in unappetizing yellow globules on the surface. It seemed soldiers could sleep anywhere and eat anything.

  This couldn’t be a moral dilemma. It was obvious. These men had become her responsibility, both as an individual and as a Jedi: she owed it to them to see that they survived. She liked them. She cared what happened to them, and she wanted to see Atin live long enough to overcome his demons.

  And she could do something that even they couldn’t.

  “Guta-Nay,” she said, putting her hand on the Weequay’s shoulder. He opened his eyes. “Guta-Nay, you’re not afraid. You want to go to Ghez Hokan and tell him what you know. You want to offer him information about the Republic forces in exchange for your life. You want to tell him that they plan to attack the villa because they think the forces at the facility are a decoy.”

  Guta-Nay stared past her for a moment, and then stood up. He picked his way through the bushes and headed east toward Imbraani.

  Etain knew she had now taken a second life.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes screwed shut, and wondered what had happened to her, what Master Fulier would have thought had he been alive. Then she was aware of someone watching her.

  She looked up. Darman, perched in the same fork of branches as Niner had been, stared down.

  “It’s hard to send someone to their death,” she said, answering his silent question.

  His expression was hidden behind the visor of his helmet. She didn’t need to call on any of her abilities as a Jedi to know what he was thinking: one day she would do the same to men like him. The realization caught her unawares.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

  She doubted it.

  14

  There is nothing wrong with fear. You need never be ashamed of it, as long as it doesn’t stop you functioning. Fear is your natural warning system; it keeps you alive so that you can fight. Show me a man who isn’t afraid, and I’ll show you a fool who is a danger to his entire ship. And I do not tolerate fools in my navy.

  —Admiral Adar Tallon, addressing the new intake at a Republic academy

  Hokan stood on the veranda of Ankkit’s villa and stared out at a bright autumnal morning. There were still too many leaves on the trees for his liking.

  They were out there somewhere. Republic forces. A handful.

  But they were not an army.

  He walked to Uthan’s laboratory complex, a comfortable fifteen-minute stroll. It occurred to him that he was a good target for a sniper, if a sniper had been able to penetrate Mandalorian armor. Even so, he decided to divert via a coppice. His path took him along a dry-stone wall to the rear of the installation, and he made a complete circle of the farm building before walking up to the single entrance at the front.

  As a lure, this was a good one. The line of droids across the entrance was spectacular. Hokan made a point of inspecting them at a leisurely pace and then engaged them in conversation about their cannons. If anyone was observing—soldier, spy, or talkative farmer—they would get the message.

  Inside, though, Dr. Uthan was losing her glamorous cool.

  “Is this the last time you’re going to move me?” she said, tapping her nails against the polished metal of her desk. Her files and equipment were still in packing crates. “My staff members are finding this extremely stressful, as am I.”

  Hokan took out his datapad and projected a holochart of the installation above the surface of the desk. The place was a cube within a cube: below ground level, the accommodations, storage, and offices lay in a ring around a central core. The core contained a square of eight small laboratories with one more—the secure room—nestled in the center. The rest of the complex had bulkheads that could be brought down and sealed to isolate a biohazard escape. It could be defended.

  But it wouldn’t come to that. He’d laid a careful trail to Ankkit’s villa and a greeting from fifty droids, along with cannons and powerful explosives.

  He wanted to get it over with.

  “Yes, Doctor, this is the last time I’ll move you,” he said. “Try to understand why I’ve done this, Doctor. I believe I’m facing a small commando force. Rather than chase them, which could be diversionary, I’ve decided to bring them to me. This means they’ll be facing a conventional infantry and artillery battle that I don’t think they’re equipped to fight. Those are battles of numbers.”

  “I’m not sure if I do see your point, actually.”

  “We can defend this installation. I have the numbers and the firepower. Sooner or later, they’ll take casualties.”

  “You’re certain about this?”

  “Not certain, but everything I see suggests they have landed
a minimal amount of troops—for example, no evidence of large-scale transport. They hijacked explosives from a quarry to destroy the Teklet ground station. If they had the matériel, they wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “And then again, maybe that’s a diversionary tactic, too.”

  Hokan looked up from the holochart. “Nobody has perfect knowledge in battle. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Yes, I’m making an educated guess, as every commander in history has had to do.”

  Uthan considered him with cold black eyes. “You should have evacuated my project from the planet.”

  Hokan folded his arms. “When you move, you’re vulnerable. You’re vulnerable crossing the countryside between here and the spaceport. You’re even more vulnerable attempting to leave Qiilura with a Republic assault ship on station. And now we have no communications beyond runners, and a bunch of droids relaying messages. No, we sit tight.”

  Uthan indicated the warren of rooms behind her with one hand. “If this comes to a pitched battle, what about my project? What about my staff? Those five scientists represent the best microbiologists and geneticists in the CIS. In many ways, they’re more important than the biomaterial we hold. We can start again, even if the work so far is lost.”

  “It’s as dangerous for them to leave as it is for you.”

  “I see.”

  “You specified a very secure layout when you had this facility built. You must know it’s defensible.”

  Uthan seemed suddenly fixed on the holochart in front of her. It showed hydraulic emergency bulkheads and chambers within chambers. It showed ventilation systems with triple filters. It could be sealed as tightly as a bottle.

  “It’s not secure enough to stop anything getting in,” she said carefully. “It’s to stop anything getting out.”

  “You said the nanovirus was only lethal for clone troops.”

  There was a pause, the sort of pause Hokan didn’t like. He waited. He stared at her, and he was disappointed to see for the first time that she was nervous. He waited for her to continue. He would wait all day if necessary.

  “It will be,” she said at last.

  “You said that it might make other organisms merely—what was the word—unwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “How unwell, then, if you go to all this trouble to contain it?”

  “Very unwell.”

  “Dead unwell?”

  “Possibly. Depending on whether the exposed subject has certain sets of genes …”

  Hokan experienced a rare moment of uncertainty. It wasn’t because he was closer to a dangerous virus than he supposed. It was because someone had lied to him, and his instinctive way to deal with that was a violent one. The fact that he was dealing with a woman was the only thing that made him hesitate.

  But it was only hesitation. He leaned forward, seized her by her elegant designer collar, and heaved her sharply out of her seat across the desk.

  “Never lie to me,” he said.

  They were eye-to-eye. She was shaking, but she didn’t blink. “Get your hands off me.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing. You didn’t need to know the details of the project.”

  “This is your final chance to tell me if there’s anything else I should know.”

  She shook her head. “No, there isn’t. We’re having some problems isolating the parts of the virus that will attack only clones. They’re human. All human races share the majority of genes. Even you.”

  He held her for a few more seconds and then let go, and she fell back into her chair. He really should have shot her. He knew it. It would have made her staff more compliant. But she was a significant part of the asset. He hadn’t gone soft because she was a woman, he was certain of that.

  “Understand this,” he said, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable. “This means we’re sitting on a weapon that might destroy us as easily as it will destroy the enemy. It places constraints on how we fight.” He went back to the holochart and indicated various features of the installation with his forefinger. “You’re sure it can’t escape into the environment?”

  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.”