Hard Contact

by Karen Traviss

  He could smell it now. He fought down nausea.

  “Fierfek,” Atin said. “That’s turned me off my dinner for a start.”

  “We’re near the facility,” Jinart said.

  “How near?” Darman said.

  “That odor is seepage from the drainage system. The pipe work is local unglazed clay.”

  “Is that all we can smell?” said Darman.

  “Oh, I imagine it’s also the gdans. Or rather their recent kills—they have chambers where they amass their surplus. Yes, it’s an unpleasant stench if you’re not accustomed to it.” She stopped unexpectedly, and Darman bumped into her backside. She felt surprisingly heavy for her size. “That’s good news, because it means we’re near a much larger chamber.”

  Darman almost felt relief that it was simply rotting meat, although that was bad enough. It wasn’t his meat. He crawled farther, encouraged by the promise of a bigger space ahead, and then his glove sank into something soft.

  He didn’t need to ask what it was. He looked down despite himself. In the way of men exposed to memory triggers, he was immediately back in training, crawling through a ditch filled with nerf entrails, Skirata running alongside and yelling at him to keep going because this was nothing, nothing compared to what you’ll have to do for real, son.

  They called it the Sickener. They weren’t wrong.

  Fatigue made nausea inevitable. He almost vomited, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do in a sealed suit. He fought it, panting, eyes shut. He bit the inside of his lip as hard as he could, and tasted blood.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  Atin’s breathing was ragged. He had to be feeling it, too. They were physiologically identical.

  “You can straighten up now,” Jinart said.

  Darman flicked on his spot-lamp to find himself in a chamber that wasn’t just larger; it was big enough to stand up in. The walls were lined with what looked like tiny terraces spiraling up around the chamber from the floor. There were scores of twenty-centimeter tunnels leading off them.

  “This is where the gdans retreat if rain floods the warren,” Jinart said. “They’re not foolish.”

  “I’ll thank them one day,” Atin said. “How close are we to the drain? Can you locate it?”

  Jinart put a paw against the wall where there were no tiny escape tunnels. “The gdans know there’s a solid structure behind this.” She paused. “Yes, there’s water trickling back there. The soil feels a meter thick, perhaps a little more.”

  Darman would have removed his helmet, but thought better of it, and settled for letting his pack drop off his shoulders. He took out his entrenching tool and made an exploratory stab at the chamber wall. It was about the consistency of chalk.

  “Okay, I do five minutes, then you do five,” he said to Atin.

  “And me,” Jinart said, but Darman held up his hand to stop her.

  “No ma’am. You’d better go back to Niner. We’re on our own now, and if this all goes wrong he’ll need your assistance even more.”

  Jinart hesitated for a moment, then raced back up the tunnel without a backward glance. Darman wondered if he should have said good-bye, but good-bye was too final. He planned on coming out that front door with Atin and Uthan.

  He scraped out a guide circle with the tip of the tool and hacked into the hard-packed soil. It felt like slow going and he was surprised when Atin tapped him on the shoulder and took over. A man-sized hole began to emerge.

  “Should we shore this up?” Darman said, wondering what he might have to sacrifice as a pit prop.

  “We should only be going through it once. If it collapses after that, it’s too bad.”

  “If we have to blast our way in, it might collapse. Alternative exit?”

  “You want to be pursued through those tunnels? They’d fry us. One flamethrower volley and we’d be charcoal.”

  Atin was slowing. Darman took the other side of the opening and they worked together, removing progressively damper and darker soil, flattening out the sides of the excavation so that they had access to drill through without having to lean through a short tunnel. It was weakening the integrity of the soil wall: Darman willed it to hold together until they were through.

  Maybe he should have brought Etain. She could have held the wall with that Jedi power of hers. Suddenly he realized that he missed her. It was amazing how fast you could form a bond with someone when you were under fire.

  Atin’s tool hit something that made a distinctive chink noise.

  “Drain,” he said. “Drill time.”

  A few quick rounds from the Deece would have blown a good-sized hole in the thickest clay pipe. It would also have brought down the chamber roof, Darman suspected, and summoned a lot of droids. It was time for the slow, quiet route. A hand drill was part of their basic rapid entry kit, and they each took half the rough circle, drilling at five-centimeter intervals around the circumference, starting from the top. It wasn’t until they got down to the bottom that the ooze started appearing from the holes.

  It had taken them an hour to excavate and drill. Darman couldn’t stand the sweat trickling down his face any longer and took off his helmet. The stench really was worse than ever. He shut his mind to it.

  Atin took a swig from his water bottle and held it out to Darman. “Hydration,” he said. “Five percent fluid loss stops you thinking straight.”

  “Yeah, I know. And above fifteen percent kills you.” Darman drank half the bottle, wiped the sweat away, and scratched his scalp vigorously. “Another thing to tell Rothana’s geeks when we get back—up the temperature conditioning in these suits.”

  He lifted the ram and took a side-on stance to the disc of clay pipe visible through the soil. He gripped hard, fingers tight around each handle. He had to swing carefully this time or he might collapse the pipe. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  One, two—

  “Three,” Darman grunted. The ram hit with a couple of metric tons of force and the perforated section fell inward as a waterfall of stinking dark slime shot out and splashed across Darman’s legs and boots.

  “Oh, that’s just great,” he sighed. “Definitely matte black next time, okay?”

  Atin took his helmet off and Darman realized he was struggling not to laugh. Now that the drain was open to the air, it was a perfect conduit for sound to the building above. Atin put his hand to his mouth, bent over slightly, and appeared to be biting down hard on the knuckle plate. He was actually shaking. When he straightened up, tears were streaming down his face. He wiped them away and gulped, then bent over again.

  Darman had never even seen the man smile. Now he was in hysterics because Darman was spattered with the accumulated waste of total strangers. It wasn’t funny.

  Yes, it was, actually. It was hilarious. Darman felt his stomach begin to shake in a completely involuntary reflex. Then he wasn’t certain that it was funny, but he still couldn’t stop. He shook in painfully silent laughter until his abdominal muscles ached. Eventually, it subsided. He straightened up, inexplicably exhausted.

  “Shall I let Niner know we’re through?” he said, and they both managed to stay completely calm for a count of three before the hysteria overtook them again.

  Once you knew what laughter really was, and what primitive reflex triggered it, it wasn’t funny at all. It was the relief of danger passed. It was a primeval all-clear signal.

  And that wasn’t the reality of their situation at all. The real danger was just starting.

  Darman, suddenly his usual self again, replaced his helmet and opened the comlink.

  “Sarge, Darman here,” he said quietly. “We’re into the drain. Ready when you are.”

  Niner and Fi set up the E-Web repeating blaster half a kilometer from the front of the facility. That was pretty close. If anyone had spotted them, they weren’t reacting.

  “Copy that, Dar.” Niner checked the chrono on the forearm of his left gauntlet. “Can you see the drainage
cover yet?”

  The comlink crackled. Niner was yet again faintly pleased with himself that he’d decided to take that trip to Teklet. They’d never have stood a chance of pulling this off in comm silence. There were too many unknowns to do it by op order and chronosynch.

  “I just followed the trail of crud and there it was,” Darman said. “Want a look?”

  Niner’s HUD flashed up a grainy green image of huge dripping tubes that could have been a klick wide or just a centimeter. Come to that, it could have been an endoscopic view of someone’s guts. It didn’t look like fun, either way.

  “What’s above you?”

  “Dirty square plate and it’s not a drain. The water’s feeding down here from other pipes.” The image jerked as Darman’s head lowered to look at his datapad. It threw up eerie ghost images of the building. “If they stuck to the blueprints, then this is a hazmat filter and the maximum containment chambers are above it.” There was a scraping noise. “Yeah, the serial numbers match the schematic. If they had to hose down after a mishap in there, this is where the screened water or solvent would come out.”

  “Are you going to need to blow it?”

  “Well, it doesn’t look as if I can unscrew it with a hairpin. It’s permacreted in place. It’s not the sort of thing you want coming loose, I suppose.”

  “Good timing for a spot of pyro at the villa, then. Let’s sync that up.”

  “Okay. Give me a couple of minutes to set the charges.”

  Two minutes was a long time. Niner counted it down in seconds. He was aware of Etain pacing up and down behind him—but you didn’t tell a commander to pack it in and stop fidgeting. He focused on Fi, who was kneeling behind the E-Web tripod, checking the sights, utterly relaxed. Niner envied him that ability. His own stomach was churning. It always did on exercise: it was much worse now. His pulse was pounding in his ears and distracting him.

  Darman responded eleven seconds late. “All done. I’ll count you down. We’re moving back out of the drain now. If we bring the outer chamber down, then we might take a little time to work our way back in.”

  “What’s a little time in your book?”

  “Maybe forever. It might kill us.”

  “Let’s avoid, that, shall we?”

  “Let’s.”

  Etain was hovering at Niner’s shoulder. He glanced at her, hoping she’d take the hint.

  “You’ve never worked as a complete team before, have you?” she said unhelpfully.

  “No,” Niner hissed, and withheld the ma’am.

  “You’re going to do fine,” she said. “You’re the best-trained, most competent troops in the galaxy and you’re confident of success.”

  Niner was close to responding with a few words of pithy Huttese, but he suddenly saw her point. His stomach settled into a peaceful equilibrium again. He could hear Darman clearly. His drumming pulse had faded. He was perfectly content not to think how she had achieved that reassurance.

  “In ten,” Darman said. He still had his forward helmet cam patched through to Niner’s HUD. He was scrambling through a tunnel. Niner had a sensation of rushing down a flume and half expected to splash into a deep pool at the other end.

  “Five …” It went dark. Darman had his head tucked into his chest. “Three …” Niner felt for the remote detonator. “Two … go go go.”

  Niner squeezed the remote.

  For a fraction of a second the landscape was picked out in brilliant, gold, silent light. Niner’s antiblast visor kicked in. Then the ground shook, and even at two klicks the roar was deafening. It seemed to go on for several seconds. Then he realized he was hearing two blasts—one at the villa and one below the facility.

  As the fire blazed and clouds of amber-lit smoke roiled into the air, the droids on watch outside the facility started reacting.

  “Hold, Fi.” Niner swallowed to clear his ears. “Dar, Atin, respond.”

  “Was that us or you?”

  “Both. You okay, Dar?”

  “Teeth are a bit loose, but we’re fine.”

  “Nice job with the custom ordnance, you two. I think the villa’s got a new indoor swimming pool.”

  “The chamber’s holding down here, just about. Going in.”

  Silence had fallen on the countryside. It was as if everyone was waiting for the next move. Fi moved the five-pack of energy cell clips a little closer to him. Niner aimed his Deece to get a better view of the front of the villa, and saw droids milling around and an Umbaran officer with binocs scanning left to right across the fields.

  “Ready, Sarge.”

  “Wait one.”

  A few more droids came out of the farmhouse door. If Niner hadn’t seen the plans, he would never have believed what was concealed inside and beneath the convincingly shabby wooden siding. Etain stood to one side of him.

  “Ma’am, you might want to duck and cover.”

  “I’m all right,” she said. She looked longingly at the Trandoshan concussion rifle. “Let me know when I’m needed.”

  Darman’s voice cut in on the comlink. “We’re about to enter the drain cover,” he said. “Time for distraction, Sarge.”

  “Got it.” He knelt beside Fi and touched him on the shoulder. “Put a couple down a little short of that barn. Just to say hello. Then fire at will.”

  Fi hardly moved. The characteristic whoomp of the energy cell was followed by a ball of fire and a fountain of splintered wood. The barn rained back down, burning as it fell.

  “Oops,” Fi said.

  It got the droids’ attention, all right. Six formed a line and began marching down the field.

  Fi opened up. Niner could feel the roar of noise in his chest as droid shrapnel rained down on them and incoming fire whisked over their heads. A large chunk of metal flew in an arc: Niner heard it fizzing in the air as it cooled while it fell. He didn’t see where it landed, but it was close. His night vision saw the sprays of shrapnel as brilliant white irregular raindrops. A few tinnies were getting through. Niner picked off two with the grenades.

  The next rank of droids advanced. Fi was firing in short bursts; Niner picked off whatever was still standing. Hot metal shrapnel continued to rain down on them. At the E-Web’s rate of fire he was going to run out if he simply hosed them, and they were only minutes into the engagement. They’d dropped around twenty droids. That meant twenty more inside the facility, at least. Then the tinnies stopped coming.

  The field fell silent, and it rang in Niner’s ears as loudly as the cacophony of battle.

  “I hate it when they work out what’s happening,” Fi said. He was panting from the effort.

  “They’ll sit tight.”

  “If it’s just twenty or so in there, I say we go in now.”

  “Let’s make sure we haven’t got guests arriving.” Niner opened the long-range comlink. “Majestic, Omega here, over. Majestic—”

  “Receiving you, Omega. That was some fireworks display. Got trade for us?”

  “Majestic, extra target for you. Have you got a visual between targets Greenwood and Boffin?”

  “If you’ve got a remote you can patch us into.”

  Niner slipped off his pack and took out a remote, releasing it into the air. “Droids, estimated strength no more than fifty. If they’re heading toward us, do me a favor and spoil their day, will you?”

  “Copy that, Omega. Sitrep?”

  “We’ve breached the facility and we’ve got twenty or thirty droids and an unknown number of wets holed up in there.”

  “Say again?”

  “Two of our squad are inside. Ingress via the drainage system.”

  “You guys are off your repulsors.”

  “The thought did cross our minds.”

  “Okay, some fireworks coming your way, Omega. Be advised we still have a Techno Union vessel standing off, and we’re expecting a response when we train the lasers.”

  “Watch how you go,” Niner said. “Omega out.”

  Apart from the ticking of cooli
ng metal, it was silent. Even the chatter and whistling of Qiilura’s nocturnal species had stopped. Smoke was billowing across the field from the wrecked barn.

  “You okay, ma’am?” Fi said.

  Niner glanced around and expected to see Etain in some state of distress, but she wasn’t. She was kneeling in the grass, alert, as if listening to something. Then another huge explosion shook the ground to their north.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Ma’am?”

  She gave a little shake of her head as if loosening stiff neck muscles.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It just took more out of me than I imagined.”

  “What did?”

  “Diverting all this debris. Droids make a terrible mess when they explode.”

  Niner hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. It was only when he turned around that he saw the meter-long jagged sheet of metal right behind him. It had almost given him an unwanted haircut. Etain managed a grin.

  “Can you open doors as well, ma’am?” Niner asked.

  Darman and Atin looked around the plastoid-lined chamber and decided not to remove their helmets.

  “This is one way to find out if a nanovirus can breach our filtration masks,” Atin said.

  Darman checked the cupboards, looking for booby traps and other surprises. “I don’t feel dead yet. Anyway, they don’t leave this stuff lying around. It’ll probably be sealed in something.”

  He checked the room. It was exactly like a medic’s station on Kamino, except it was completely constructed from plastoid ceramic. Some of the cupboards had transparent fronts; he could see racks of vials in them. In the middle of the room there was a separate sealed booth, running floor-to-ceiling, with a glove box in it. It was empty. There was also a refrigerated cabinet full of flasks and small boxes. He had no idea what might be live virus and what might be the lab technician’s lunch, and he wasn’t going to open everything to find out. This was another case of using P for plenty.