Niner edged forward on his elbows and knees, Deece crooked in his arms. He’d moved about ten meters when the air above him made a frying noise and a blaster bolt took the seed heads off the grass above him.
If it hadn’t been for that Verpine, things would have been a lot simpler.
Majestic wouldn’t wait much longer. The stims had worn off fully now, and Niner was feeling the impact of days of hard tabbing, little sleep, and too much noise. He made himself a promise there and then. If he and Fi weren’t getting off Qiilura, then neither was Ghez Hokan.
But Mandalorian or not, Hokan was just one man, and he was facing two men who were at least his match. Niner didn’t underestimate him, but the end result was almost certain: sooner or later he would deplete the power cells. Still, time wasn’t on their side right then.
“Not good at all,” Niner said. “Darman, Niner here. What’s your position?”
He sounded out of breath. “Slow going, Sarge. About ten minutes from the EP.”
“Ask them if they’ll keep the meter running, will you? Just saying good-bye to Ghez Hokan.”
“I’ll drop Atin off and—”
“Negative, Dar. We can handle this once we crack his armor. Stand by.”
Fi was edging forward looking for a clear shot. Niner, running out of patience, looked about for some cover he could use to get a position to the side of Hokan. The flash of a weapon discharge caught his eye but he didn’t hear anything except Fi beginning to say something over the comlink and then a very brief searing peak of high-pitched noise.
Then everything went silent and black.
For a moment Niner thought he’d been hit. He couldn’t hear Fi and he couldn’t see the data from his HUD. There was no green image of the field and the trees behind it in his night-vision visor. But he could feel his elbows squarely braced in the soil and he could feel his Deece still in his hands. No pain—but if you were hurt badly enough you sometimes didn’t feel a thing.
It took him several slow seconds to realize his helmet’s systems were totally dead. His face felt hot. He wasn’t getting air.
He pulled off the helmet and squinted through the scope of his DC-17. The night-vision scope picked up his image; Fi had taken his helmet off, too, and had his hand inside it, pressing controls frantically.
EMP grenade, Niner thought. Hokan’s droided us.
You used electromagnetic pulse charges against droids. But they were equally effective against delicate electronics attached to wets. The enhanced Katarn helmets, three times the price of an ordinary trooper’s version, were packed with sophisticated prototype systems, vulnerable systems.
Niner crawled slowly and carefully toward Fi. A couple of blaster bolts went wide. He lay flat, head-to-head with him.
“He’s fried our helmets,” Fi whispered. “Don’t they test these things properly?”
“I bet some civvy thought nobody would use EMPs against wets.”
“Yeah, I might look him up when we get back.”
“They should reset.”
“How long?”
“No idea. Deece still works, though.”
“As long as he puts his head up.”
“I could do with one of Dar’s flash-bangs.”
“Doesn’t fit the Deece anyway.”
“Can you see him at all?”
“No … no, wait. There he is.”
Niner had to track back and forth a couple of times before he spotted Hokan through the scope. “Got any of the IEDs in easy reach?”
“Six.”
“How far can you throw?”
“Far enough.”
“Wide as you can. Scatter them across him.”
Niner laid down suppressing fire while Fi bounced up and down, lobbing the little makeshift bombs and dropping flat again. Niner took the detonator control.
“When I hit this, you go wide that way and try to get side-on to him.”
Fi rolled slightly to one side, bracing on his right arm for a quick start. Niner hit the det. Fi bobbed up.
Nothing happened. A blaster round seared the grass between them, and Fi threw himself down again.
“We really must talk to procurement about hardening our electronics,” Fi said mildly.
“I fear we might be back to old-fashioned soldiering.”
“I’m fresh out of bayonets.”
“Sergeant Kal would have an idea.”
“You got his number on you?”
“I’m going to scream.”
“What?”
“Don’t laugh. This man’s a nut. If he thinks I’m down and badly injured, he won’t be able to resist coming over and slitting my throat.”
“And then I give him a surprise party?”
“Anything that resolves this fast.”
“Okay, kid. Off you go.”
Niner suddenly realized he didn’t actually know how to scream. But he’d heard enough terribly wounded men to make a fair stab at it.
He threw back his head and let go.
20
I don’t know who the good guys are anymore. But I do know what the enemy is. It’s the compromise of principles. You lose the war when you lose your principles. And the first principle is to look out for your comrades.
—Kal Skirata
The gunship was the most beautiful craft Darman had ever seen.
It came into view as he staggered through the line of bushes and into the newly plowed field. Its cockpit bubbles gleamed like a holo of Cloud City, and its cannon turrets had the symmetry of the finest Naboo architecture. He even loved its rust and the dents in its wings.
“Look at that, Atin,” he said. “Sheer art … Atin?”
“… yeah.”
“Nearly there.”
“… uh.”
White trooper armor came running toward him with a Gran in a medic’s uniform just behind them. Atin’s weight lifted from his back, and he struggled to pull his arms free of the webbing. He followed the stretcher, trying to talk to the medic.
“Verpine projectile, right side of his chest,” he said. “Painkiller, five ccs of—”
“I can see,” the Gran said. “Neat job, Private. Now get in that ship.”
When he looked around, troopers had taken Uthan from Etain and she was walking toward the gunship, stopping to look over her shoulder every few steps. General Arligan Zey stepped down from the troop cabin and bowed his head very slightly in her direction. She slowed down and stopped to return it.
It struck Darman as a remarkably formal greeting under the circumstances. Behind this tableau of Jedi etiquette was a scene from a nightmare, with medics working on both Atin and Uthan, removing armor, cutting garments, hooking up transfusion lines, calling for more dressings. It was like watching two parallel worlds, each wholly oblivious to the other.
Zey didn’t look at Darman at all, but the ARC trooper who jumped down beside the general took off his helmet and simply stared at him in silence. Something black moved in the shadows of the ship and then emerged slowly to sniff the air with a long glossy snout.
It was Valaqil. He had come home. Darman could hardly say that he recognized the Gurlanin, because this one looked indistinguishable from Jinart. But he could guess.
“Private Atin is still collecting scars, I see,” Valaqil said. “And my consort is impatient and waiting for me. I have to go.”
“Jinart?” Darman shrugged, embarrassed. “She’s been an extraordinary help to us, sir. A fifth—a sixth member of the squad, in fact.”
“I’m sure she will tell me all the details of what has made her so very excited for the past few days.”
And then he was gone, loping across the field and into the bushes. Darman hoped the Republic wouldn’t disappoint the Gurlanins. They’d served as well as any soldier.
“You’ve done remarkably well, Padawan,” Zey said. “Especially without the guidance of a Master. Quite exceptional, in fact. I think that this may hasten your progress toward your trials as far as the Council is c
oncerned. With the supervision of a Master, of course.”
Darman expected delight or embarrassment or something equally positive to soften Etain’s expression. He knew she believed she was unfit to be a Jedi Knight, or even a Padawan at times. He knew it was the one thing she lived for.
But the elevation didn’t appear to move her at all. She didn’t even appear to hear what Zey had said.
“Master, where are Niner and Fi?” Etain asked.
Zey looked bemused. “Who?”
“Sorry, Master. The two other men from Omega Squad.”
Darman felt the scrutiny of the ARC even more keenly now. He’d only seen ARCs a couple of times before, and they came as close to scaring him as anyone supposedly on his side ever could. Zey shook his head. “You’re the first to make it here.”
“They’ll be here, sir,” Darman said. He flicked open his helmet-to-helmet comlink. If the ARC was listening in, it was too bad. “Sarge? Fi? Time to get a move on.”
There was no sound at all in his ear, not even static. He switched to the alternative frequency, and still there was nothing. “Niner, Fi, are you receiving?” He checked the diagnostics mode of his HUD: his helmet was fully functional. He could see the crevasse on Geonosis again, standing behind the cooling, ticking E-Web, trying to raise Taler, Vin, and Jay. He couldn’t see the biometric data from their suits on his HUD.
No, not again. Not again, please …
“Ma’am, I’m not getting any response.”
“What does that mean?”
He could hardly bear to say it. “Their helmets are offline. I don’t think they made it.”
“They’re dead?” Zey asked.
“They’re not dead,” Etain said firmly.
“Ma’am, I can’t raise them at all.”
“No, I don’t care, they’re alive. I know they are.”
“You have to go,” Zey said. “If you don’t go now, you could be flying straight into a battle with Trade Federation vessels. We’ve attracted a lot of attention.” The general turned back to the two medics working on Uthan. “Is she going to survive?”
“She’s in a very bad way, sir. We need to move her.”
“Keep her alive any way you can. Prepare to lift off. Etain—”
“Master, there are two men still out there.”
“They’re dead.”
“No, I can feel them. I know them, sir, I know where they are. They’re not even hurt. We must wait for them.”
“We must also save Uthan and get you two out of here.”
“They’ve destroyed the virus. Isn’t that what matters? You can’t abandon them now.”
Darman could see she was at that point where she would either collapse or do something extreme. Her face was drawn tight, and her pupils were dilated. It was an expression that scared him. He’d seen it a few times in the last few days.
The gunship’s drives were throbbing now. Etain still had one boot on the platform and the other firmly on Qiiluran soil.
Etain swallowed hard. Oh, Darman thought. Just bite your tongue, ma’am. Don’t react. But he felt what she was feeling. All that sweat and terror and pain for nothing. All that, when they could have bombed the facility and gone home. All that—and Atin fighting for his life, and Niner and Fi either dead or marooned here.
“I will not leave without them,” Etain said. “I regret disobeying you, Master, but I must.”
Zey registered visible annoyance. “You will do as I order,” he said quietly. “You’re compromising the mission.”
“We need these men. They are not expendable.”
“We are all expendable.”
“Then, sir, I’m expendable, too.” She lowered her head slightly, looking up at Zey, more challenging than coy. “An officer’s duty is the welfare of her men.”
“I see that Master Fulier taught you little about obedience but a great deal about sentimentality—”
Darman dared to interrupt. He couldn’t stand seeing Jedi Masters arguing. It was painfully embarrassing. “Look, I’ll stay, ma’am,” he said. “Go with Atin. See he’s okay.”
Despite Skirata’s frequent assurances that their lives had meaning, Darman had accepted the hierarchy of expendability: it was not only natural in the Grand Army, but also necessary and inevitable. His life was a more valuable defense asset than a clone trooper’s; the ARC’s life was more valuable than his. But the mirror that Etain’s loyalty and care held up in front of him had made him see himself as a man. Yes, Niner and Fi deserved better. They all did.
Zey ignored Darman. “You must go. More Separatist vessels are heading this way, and I know how this pains you, but—”
Etain bounced off her back heel into the troop cabin in one move. For a moment Darman thought she had changed her mind, but that wasn’t Etain at all. She took out her lightsaber and held the glowing shaft a handspan away from the power conduit running along the spine of the airframe. She could ground them with one move. Zey’s jaw was set. Nobody else moved except for the Gran medic working on Atin, who seemed oblivious to the drama, a quality Darman suspected was honed by working under fire.
“Master,” Etain said, “either all of Omega Squad leaves Qiilura or nobody does.”
“This is a foolish act, Etain.” His tone was very calm. “You must see the necessity of this.”
“No, Master. I don’t.”
He’s going to do some of that Jedi stuff on her, Darman thought. No, no, please … He couldn’t see the ARC’s expression but he could guess it was one of astonishment.
“Etain, this is precisely why you must resist attachment.”
Oh, he doesn’t know her at all, Darman thought. If only he’d—
Her lightsaber was still ready to slice through the conduit. “As Jedi we say we revere all life. Are we prepared to live that belief? Are these soldiers’ lives worth any less than ours because we had them created? Because we can buy more of them if these are destroyed?”
“They are soldiers, Etain. Soldiers die.”
“No, Master, they’re men. And they’ve fought well, and they’re my responsibility, and I would rather die than live with the knowledge that I abandoned them.”
It was so silent that time seemed to have frozen. Zey and Etain were locked in a wordless argument. Then Zey shut his eyes.
“I feel your certainty has its roots in the Force,” he said. There was a sigh in his voice. “What’s your name—Darman? So you have names, do you? Darman, go where she directs you. She values your lives more than she values becoming a Jedi Knight.”
Etain made as if to follow him. “You stay, ma’am. Please.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t leave you, any of you.” She was holding her lightsaber as if she were part of it now, not like something she feared would bite her. “I realize this is gross disobedience, Master Zey, but I really don’t think I’m ready to become a Jedi Knight yet.”
“You’re completely right,” Zey said calmly. “And we do need these men.”
Darman followed her, looking back for a second at the general.
He looked as if he was smiling. Darman could have sworn he seemed almost proud.
Ghez Hokan had expended almost every round he had. He was down to his vibroblade, the lightsaber, and the last two projectiles in his Verpine now. He pressed his glove hard into his thigh and checked again to see if the wound was weeping fluid.
He couldn’t feel any pain. His glove came away wet: the blaster burn had gone deep through skin, nerves, and fat, cauterizing blood vessels but exposing raw tissue that wept plasma.
He wondered what kind of injury was making the commando scream like that, a high-pitched, incoherent, sobbing scream that trailed off and then started up again.
Hokan couldn’t see the man’s comrade. He knew he had one because he had been hit from two separate positions. Maybe the other was dead. He listened a little longer. He’d heard many men die. Whatever their species, whatever their age, they almost always screamed for their mothers.
<
br /> Clone soldiers didn’t have mothers as far as he knew. So this one was screaming for his sergeant. The sergeant was called Kal or something like it. It was hard to tell.
For some reason that made it unbearable. For once, Hokan could not despise weakness. Whatever he thought of the Republic and the loathsome, sanctimonious Jedi, this was a Mandalorian warrior out there, used and discarded.
He would finish him. It was the decent thing to do. A wounded man could also return fire, so he wasn’t going soft, not at all. He was simply ending the battle.
Hokan knelt and looked around. It was clear. Even so, he struggled to crawl with his head down toward the direction of the screams.
They were quieter now, a series of gulping sobs.
“Sarge … don’t leave me … Sargeant Kal! Sarge! Uhhh it hurts it hurts it hurts …”
How dare the Republic use Jango Fett to create this abomination. How had Fett let this happen? Hokan edged closer. He could see a body in the grass now. He could see light-colored, dirt-caked metallic armor very similar in design to his own, but bulkier and more complex.
And now he was close enough to see the face with the mouth wide open. The man had his arms folded tight across his chest. He was sobbing.
It was Jango Fett, many years before.
Hokan drew himself up on his knees and knelt a couple of meters from the wounded commando, absolutely astonished.
“I’m sorry, my brother,” he said. The lightsaber would have been fast, but it was a disgrace to use a Jedi weapon to kill a Mandalorian man. It was too much like reenacting Jango’s fate at Geonosis. Hokan drew his vibroblade instead. “It’s not your fault. They made you like this.”
The commando opened his eyes and focused at a point just past him, as Hokan had seen many dying men do. They all seemed to see ghosts at the final moment.
It was only then that Hokan heard the sound of a lightsaber. And it was too late.
* * *
“You cut that fine,” Niner said.
It was the only time Darman had ever seen him look shocked. He wiped his face with the palm of his glove.
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