“Udesii, boys, udesii.” Niner raised his Deece. “Push comes to shove, we only need one of them alive, so next one to look like a safety risk isn't going home. Okay?”
The small Neimoidian assault vessel now filled their field of vision as it came to nestle partly across the freighter's viewscreen. Fi watched, mesmerized. A hatch opened and something distressingly reminiscent of a wide mouthed worm emerged and sucked against the transparisteel. A familiar blue light loomed from the darkness of its maw. Through the plate, Fi saw a helmet very like his and an exaggerated thumbs-up gesture.
“Stand back and watch a pro at work,” said a disembodied voice on the comlink.
For a second Fi thought Scorch was attaching a frame charge. Yeah, that's. clever, I don't think. But the large ring of alloy pipe sat snugly on the plate and began to glow white-hot. Scorch's thumbs-up became a jerked move away gesture.
“Scorch, sooner rather than later, okay?” Boss's voice said.
“One minute, tops.”
“We haven't got a minute—”
“What d'you want me to do, chew through it?”
The transparisteel plate was distorting as the hot frame burned through from the outside. Niner gathered up the hololink and snapped it back on his forearm plate. Atin shoved datapads and tools in his belt.
“Tell you what, shall we just float here and panic incoherently while we're waiting?” Fi said.
“Good idea,” Scorch said, unmoved.
“Very good idea, panicking,” Boss said. “Guess what I just eyeballed from the port-side screen.
RAS Fearless, ops room, ETA to target: two minutes
The assault ship had to decelerate to drop from hyperspace and open fire. It cost critical time. Etain watched while Tenn made rapid calculations to see if they could find that single critical firing solution that balanced losing speed with firing missiles and would not only make up those seconds, but also take out the Sep ship before it had a chance to target Omega.
The ops room was crowded with white armor and yet utterly silent as Fearless's crew watched the tracking screen repeater on the bulkhead. It mirrored what Tenn, Gett, and Etain could see in smaller format at the PWO's station.
Tenn didn't seem to have blinked in the last three minutes.
“Firing solution, General.” His hand rested on the firing key, his gaze welded to the screen. “Target acquired. Best solution we're going to get and our window is ten seconds or we'll take out Omega and Delta, too. Now, General?”
Etain glanced at Gett, her mind partly sensing the ripples in the Force. And the Force agreed with Tenn, to the very second.
“Take it, Tenn.”
“Yes, ma'am.” The key made a small snipping noise as he depressed it. “Fire one, fire two. Missiles away—”
Two huge trails of savage energy sped away from the decelerating assault ship and into the void. Etain could feel too much imminent disaster in the Force: she didn't want to watch it as well. She cupped her hands over her nose and shut her eyes for a second, and then made herself look back at the screen.
The tracking screen followed the missiles as steady white lines. They looked as if they had overlapped the pulsing red point of light that was the Separatist fighter. All the traces winked out of existence at the same time.
“Splash one,” said a trooper at another station. “Visual confirmation. Target destroyed.”
“And who else?” Commander Gett asked.
“Whoaaaa … !”
Fi wasn't certain if it was his own cry of shock or Scorch's voice in his comlink, but he saw the ball of white-and-gold flame expanding toward them, silhouetting the section of Neimie ship that partly obscured the shield, and he ducked instinctively.
A hailstorm of debris rained on the screen. Something large and metallic skidded along the casing of the freighter with a long dull screech. Fi straightened up as the hammering faded to the occasional rattle, like stones being tossed onto a roof. Then it stopped completely.
“Fierfek,” Scorch said. “Now, if they'd only added a spot of maranium to the warhead, it would have burned a really pretty purple.”
“Fearless Fearless Fearless calling Delta. Are you clear, repeat, are you clear, respond.”
A large rectangle of hot softened glass peeled slowly away from the screen, helped by Scorch's fist, and drifted off serenely into a silent, slow-motion collision with the headrest of the pilot's seat.
“Delta here, Fearless. Just extracting Omega and cargo now.”
Fi fought to stop himself from sounding breathless and shaky. It would let the squad down. “I'm glad the navy's here,” he said. “Because if it had been down to you, Greased Lightning, we'd be an asteroid belt by now.”
Scorch's visor poked through the aperture at last, followed by his arm, and he made an unmistakable gesture of displeasure.
Fi felt his mouth take over, fueled by shock. “My hero! You finally made it!”
“You want to walk back to base?”
Niner lifted the plastifoil-wrapped Orjul with one hand and lined him up with the opening. “Fi's going to give his mouth a nice rest now and help me cross-deck the garbage.”
“Gift-wrapped? Aww, you shouldn't have.” Scorch hauled himself a little farther down the access tube and hung motionless at 135 degrees, assessing the three bound prisoners. “Feet first, please. Then if the di'kut tries to kick out I can break his legs. Don't want this tubing breached.”
It proved harder than expected. But by the time the second Nikto had been rammed up into the connecting tube like a torpedo, the warm air from the hijacked Neimoidian vessel had worked its way into the freighter cockpit and made Fi feel a lot more comfortable. He stood back to let Atin then Darman make their way up the tube.
Scorch hauled Darman inboard by his webbing. Fi waited for his boots to disappear and then rolled to peer up the aperture into a circle of dim light.
“Next!”
Fi lined up and then pushed off with one boot. As he passed through the open hatch at the other end, he felt artificial gravity seize him, and he rolled onto the deck with a clatter of armor plates. It took him a few seconds to get to his feet. Niner collided with him from behind. It wasn't a very big ship.
Boss—his armor daubed with chipped and peeling orange paint—slammed the hatch behind Niner and sealed it. Niner stared at him as if he wasn't sure what should happen next and then the two men simply shook hands and slapped each other on the back.
“Like what we've done with the place?” Boss said, taking off his helmet. The flight deck looked as if someone had been dismantling it the hard way: panels had been ripped out, wires hung from the deckhead, and there were empty slots in the console where units had either been removed or not installed in the first place. “Okay, perhaps it's a little basic, but we call it home.”
“You nicked this?”
“No, they let us take it on a test drive.” Boss gestured at the rest of his brightly painted squad. “Fixer, Sev, and you already know Scorch. Say hello to the boys in boring black.”
“Thanks, vode,” Fi said. He wondered why Atin wasn't joining in; he had turned away and seemed to be taking a technical interest in a run of conduit. “Any word on Sicko?”
“If that's your pilot, Majestic's been diverted now. They picked up his beacon and that's all we know.” Boss looked down at the three prisoners, lined up on the deck like corpses. He gave each of them a nudge with his boot. “You'd better be worth everyone's effort.”
Fi eased off his helmet and inhaled almost fresh air. Except for Scorch, they had all taken off their helmets. Delta was one of fewer than a dozen squads that had survived intact since decanting, a true pod as the Kaminoans had called it, and they seemed to think that made them an elite within an elite. They had been raised and trained together, and they had never fought with anyone but their brothers. It was a luxury few squads now enjoyed.
Fi suspected it meant they didn't play well with others. He remembered only too well how ferociously competi
tive and inward looking his own pod had been, and how badly his confidence had been dented when he lost his brothers at Geonosis and was then dumped in Niner's care.
“You do okay for a mongrel squad,” Sev said, and Fi chose not to react. He knew he was on autopilot now and that he should shut up. Niner's glance helped him decide. “I don't suppose you did a rummage on that ship, did you?”
“Not with a rapid decompression on our hands, no,” said Niner. “Word was that it was carrying explosives.”
“Okay, we're going to be coated in Seps anytime now, so let's get this crate into Fearless's hangar and then they can blow the freighter. If there's anything useful in it, at least the Seps don't get it.”
Darman slid down a bulkhead onto the deck, and Niner sat down beside him. They were nearly back aboard Fearless, and that meant they were nearly home, and home meant Arca Company Barracks and—at last—a good night's sleep after two months on patrol. Fi never got enough. None of them ever did. And fatigue could make you dangerously careless.
“So, Atin … ,” Sev said. He wandered up behind Atin and stood close enough to be annoying. Atin didn't turn around. “Sargent Vau asked to see you again, vod'ika.”
“I'm not your little brother,” Atin said quietly. He kept his back to Sev. “I just work with you.”
Ah, so there was some history between those two. Fi bristled: he rallied to his adopted brother. He could see that the prospect of actually meeting Vau again was stoking something inside that wasn't typically Atin.
Sev didn't let up. “I don't forget, you know.”
This time Atin did wheel around, face-to-face with Sev, so close that Fi thought his placid brother was actually going to lose it for once. He prepared to intervene.
“It's my business,” Atin said. “Stay out of it.”
Sev stared into his face. “And disagreements stay inside the company.”
Atin hooked his fingers in the neck of his bodysuit and yanked it down to the left as far as the edge of the armor, exposing his collarbone. He had a lot of raised white scars. Nobody took much notice of them because injuries in training and combat were so common that they rarely drew comment. “You got worse than that, did you? You spent a week in bacta, did you?”
Atin looked about to snap, and Fi stepped forward to intervene. Then Niner was across the cabin in three strides and slammed in between the two men. He had to break them up by putting his arms between them and knocking them apart with his arm plates. But Sev's unblinking gaze was still fixed on Atin as if Niner weren't there.
“I think we all need to reach a comradely understanding,” Niner said, blocking Sev with his body. “Back at the barracks, if that's okay with you, ner vod.”
Sev looked murderous. His eyes were still fixed on Atin's. “Anytime, vod'ika.”
“Okay, you two can shut it now. And you, Fi. Stand down. We've all had a bad day, so let's throttle back on the testosterone and play nicely.”
Sev held his hands away from his sides in a gesture of reluctant submission and went to sit beside Scorch in the cockpit. Boss didn't say a word, but Niner grabbed Fi and Atin by their shoulders and shoved them farther away.
“You're going to tell me what that's all about.”
“No, I'm not, Sarge. It's personal.”
“There's no personal where this squad is concerned. Later, okay? I'm not having you brawling like a pair of civvies. If there's a needle match between you two, we all sort it together. Got it?”
“Yes, Sarge.”
Niner emphasized his warning with a prod in Atin's chest and moved back to stand with Boss while Scorch brought the vessel alongside Fearless and began negotiating with the flight deck controller on how they might make space in the hangar for it. Fi waited with Atin in case he decided to resume his little chat with Sev. He had never seen Atin flare up even under the most extreme pressure, but he seemed ready to swing at anyone now. And even a brain-dead Weequay could have spotted that it had something to do with Vau.
“At'ika, you want to tell me about it sometime?”
“Not really.” Atin patted Fi on the shoulder. “I have to deal with it myself sooner or later.”
Fi glanced at Sev and got a blank stare that wasn't even hostility, just an absence of anything comradely. It wasn't going to be a bundle of laughs if they ever had to work together again.
Fi hadn't thought he would get on with Niner on first meeting, either. But there had never been anything about Niner that had made Fi want to punch him in the face and get it over with, just to save time.
It was going to happen, sooner or later. Fi knew it.
He'd never had a disagreement, let alone a fight, with a brother before. It made him uneasy. He distracted himself with dreams of a hot shower, hot food, and the luxury of five hours' unbroken sleep.
5
To: Officer Commanding SO BCE, HQ Coruscant: CO Fleet Protection Group.
From: CO Majestic, off Kelarea: 367 days after Geonosis.
I regret to inform you that we have recovered the wreckage of TIV Z590/1 and the body of pilot CT-1127/549. Perlemian Traffic Control reports that Republic civilian freighter Nova Crystal logged that it fired on a vessel it described as a “pirate” attacking its convoy to dislodge it from the hull. I also regret that due to security restrictions, I am unable to tell PTC that-the freighter killed a special forces pilot on active service, and so PTC regard Nova Crystal's skipper to be something of a hero.
Fleet Ops HQ, Coruscant, 0600, 368 days after Geonosis: the first anniversary of the battle
Skirata walked out of the Fleet Ops lobby and into a cool, moist morning that he wasn't expecting to welcome.
It was over, for the time being. Omega had survived, and they were coming home. They needed a break from continuous deployment in the badlands and he was certain they were needed here. CSF couldn't handle a big terror operation in the capital system, not even with Obrim around.
The question was how to work that past Arligan Zey. The Jedi was reluctant to commit men to what he saw as security work at a time like this.
But it was what Ordo and the Nulls were ideally suited for—if they had a few commandos to deploy as well.
Skirata stood on the steps for a few minutes inhaling fresh air, eyes stinging from fatigue, and raked his fingers through his crew cut. He could sleep now. Omega was safe; Ordo was here with him; and his five brothers were accounted for, safe and well.
Mereel was on Kamino. If Zey was heard to mutter that the Nulls were Skirata's private army, he wasn't entirely wrong.
There were still ninety of the men Skirata had trained from small boys on active service, and he worried about them, too. But Omega had become as much his closest family now as the Null ARCs. He would move the galaxy for them if he had to.
The gold-veined marble fountain in the center of the plaza beckoned to him. He stopped as he walked past it and simply leaned over and plunged his head in the icy water, holding it there for a few painfully refreshing moments before jerking upright and shaking the water off like a mott.
A couple of early-morning pedestrians stared at him and he returned the stare until they looked away. It was rare for anyone to even notice him: he made a habit of being inconspicuous. But today he didn't care. Did they have any idea what was going on around the galaxy on hundreds of battlefields? He resisted the urge to grab them, shake them, and make them listen to what was happening in their name.
It was the first anniversary of Geonosis. Nobody seemed to be marking that.
Ordo walked up behind him. “You should get some rest, Kal'buir”
“I'll sleep when you sleep.”
“I have more good news.”
“I could do with that.”
“Darman's explosives profile. The reading from the prisoners matches up with the manufacturing characteristics of at least a quarter of the devices detonated so far. We got a break.”
“Good work. And good old Dar.” He smiled at Ordo, reminded again of how well his boys had turned o
ut. “Tell you what, Ord'ika, fancy some breakfast while the system gets on with unpacking that data? They do a disgustingly greasy fry-up in the Kragget. It's not the Skysitter, but it sets you up for the day.”
Ordo shrugged and tilted his head in a conspicuously self-conscious glance down at his spotless white armor. “I don't think we're the Skysitter's type of clientele, anyway.”
Skirata couldn't see the expression behind the visor, but he knew Ordo was amused. It was good that a man who'd had an unimaginable nightmare of a childhood could find anything funny. “They have napkins. And I'll try not to splash sauce over you. Deal? Just to celebrate the fact that we're both still here a year on.”
Ordo started walking. “What were you doing a year ago today?”
“Wondering where all my boys had gone.”
“Sorry, Kal'buir. It was a very rapid deployment. I should have woken you.”
“You did fine. I should have shaped up and realized you had a job to do.”
“We certainly accounted for a number of enemy positions,” Ordo said.
“I never said good-bye to the lads who didn't come back, that's all. I lost nine out of my batch.”
“But the last time you saw them, you left them feeling confident, respected, and loved. That's enough for any buir to achieve.”
“Thanks, son.” How did he ever grow up this normal? “Let's enjoy ourselves for a change, shall we?”
For a few brief hours Skirata and Ordo did what normal civilians did and took an Easy Ride to the city's lower levels to have a dangerously unhealthy but comforting breakfast.
Skirata had never used public transport with Ordo in tow before, and the reactions of other passengers fascinated him. They sneaked sideways glances. Ordo's custom holster with its twin blasters probably focused them somewhat. The ARC trooper armor was spectacular even in a city jaded by the everyday presence of a thousand exotic species.
Skirata regularly forgot how few of the capital's civilians had ever seen a clone soldier face-to-face. Apart from the heavily publicized display of massed GAR battalions boarding assault ships at the military staging area a year ago, the vast majority of Coruscanti had no contact with them whatsoever.
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