Star Wars: Republic Commando: Triple Zero rc-3

by Karen Traviss

  Skirata reacted instantly, without thinking, charging at him and smashing into his face with an armored elbow, then bringing his knife up hard under his ribs before he could even fall backward. It was only when he aimed the Verp in his next breath and concentrated on the face in his HUD for a second, that he realized it was the woman who had called him a Mandalorian thug. He fired the gun before he had even thought of a suitable retort. War was like that. You rarely thought of something satisfying to say until days later, if you had anything to say at all.

  “Ten on the infrared,” Niner said.

  Infrared told you who was still warm. Infrared couldn't tell you who was alive. Skirata preferred to track movement alone.

  “Grenade! Cover!” Atin yelled.

  The shock wave lifted Skirata and left his ears ringing. He was sure he was outside the doors but he was now inside, and Jusik hauled him cleanly to his feet with one arm. He couldn't hear the comlink clearly now.

  The rapid hammering of a rotary blaster started up and then stopped abruptly. For a man trained in the delicate art of bomb disposal, Corr had seized on the crude technique of spraying six barrels with some enthusiasm.

  “Grenade—”

  Another explosion shook the warehouse. “Man down!”

  Someone was cursing—Sev? Scorch?—and Ordo yelled, “Pull back! Clear the building!”

  Skirata sprinted after Jusik, following the green glow of his lightsaber. As they cleared the doors, a massive whooomp punched Skirata simultaneously under the soles of his feet and in his back. He almost lost his balance.

  Silence descended. Skirata strained to listen.

  “Lots of scattered patches of infrared.” That sounded like Niner. “And no idea what's alive and what's just … warm.”

  “Scorch, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Really. Just shook me up.”

  “That's it,” Jusik said. “I'm coming back in, Ordo.” He spun around and ran back into the warehouse. Skirata followed him. “I can find the live ones. Leave it to me.”

  The warehouse was now almost in darkness and silent except for the ticking, creaking, and crumbling sounds of settling debris and cooling alloy. The air stank of ozone from discharged blasters and from the animal scent of shattered bodies. Nothing moved.

  This was taking hours, Skirata was sure. No, this was minutes. His brain had slipped into the unreal time frame of combat.

  Jusik's green lightsaber left an eerie trail. He didn't seem afraid of drawing fire: he'd just bat it away like an annoying insect, Skirata was sure. “I can feel three lives.”

  Well, they’ll know the Jedi are on the case now.

  Skirata imagined lying on that floor in the dark silent chaos, probably deafened, certainly injured, catching glimpses of movement as soldiers stalked the room. The commandos had killed their visor lights, and Fi, Atin, and Darman were nearly invisible in their black armor even to him.

  It must have been terrifying. He'd hidden from soldiers, six years old and scared enough to wet his pants.

  Now you know what it's like, hut'uune.

  Someone made a sound, a little half word, and it sounded like please. Skirata swung his Verpine in the direction of the noise. He saw a man kneeling with hands raised: fierfek, he didn't want to take prisoners. That was the last thing they needed. He heard Jusik swallow hard.

  “Get over by the wall,” Jusik hissed. He was gesturing at the person who seemed to be surrendering. Could the hut'uun even see the Jedi? “Get over by the wall!”

  Then Darman's voice cut in. “Sarge! Down! Flame—”

  Skirata swung around and dropped to his knees just as Jusik ducked a sheet of white-hot, roaring liquid flame that lit up the shattered warehouse and overwhelmed his night vision for a split second. It pumped out in shallow arcs and Darman took it full on. Commandos and troopers leaped back instinctively and Skirata felt the heat even through a layer of ancient Mandalorian iron. Darman was illuminated like a jet black statue, rifle still raised, enveloped in blazing liquid. He didn't even scream.

  “Dar!” Skirata found his body responding without intervention from his brain as he pumped Verpine rounds in the direction of the flamethrower. Someone fell. The stream of fire stopped. The thunk of a power cell being slapped onto a blaster diverted him from the terrible spectacle of Darman burning like a torch as someone—Fi? Niner?—rushed to roll their brother on the ground in a bid to smother the flames. Skirata caught the faint light of a charge indicator in his peripheral vision and swung the Verpine in its direction, but Jusik waded in instantly, swinging his lightsaber in a blur of light. Skirata could now see that the kneeling man—the apparently surrendering man—had drawn a blaster. It was still clutched in his limp hand. For some reason that feint angered Skirata more than anything.

  “All clear!” Jusik yelled. “Dar!” He looked up at the ceiling. “Hang on, Dar.”

  Katarn armor could withstand high temperatures but the burning chemical had coated Darman's plates. It was resisting attempts by Niner and Sev to smother it with bundles of sacking they had grabbed. Skirata went to throw his jacket over him. Suddenly a fine sticky rain filled the air.

  The fire control system had kicked in.

  “I'm glad that worked,” Jusik muttered.

  A white cloud of hissing gas enveloped Darman and the warehouse plunged back into darkness. The blaze was out; fire retardant rained from the ceiling.

  Skirata squatted over Darman, edging Niner and Ordo out of the way. His armor was still radiating heat.

  “Son! Are you okay?”

  “Sarge—”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not really … made me blink a bit, though. That liquid's nasty stuff.” Darman's plates were hissing audibly as they cooled. His voice was shaky. “Thanks.”

  “Is this your handiwork, Bard'ika?” Skirata helped Darman to his feet. His plates were hot to the touch. “Did you activate the fire system?”

  “I'm not just good for blowing stuff up.” Jusik picked his way through the rubble and shattered durasteel, boots crunching, then stopped dead. “That's it,” he said quietly. “Definitely nobody left alive.”

  The kid seemed remarkably calm about it, or at least his voice was under control. Darman dusted himself down and Ordo handed him his Deece. Eight helmet spotlamps flared into life and swept the interior, highlighting a scene of smoking wallboard and things Skirata had seen far too much of on too many battlefields. One beam jerked up toward the roof.

  “We blew the shabla roof half off,” Boss said.

  “Last time I rely on infrared …”

  “Kandosii, Bard'ika! He's better than a scope any day.”

  “Is this it?” That was Fixer's voice. “All that, and still we don't get to see them? At least you can see droids. They come at you. These scum—”

  “You want to look, ner vod?”

  “They're just so … ordinary.”

  “And now they're so dead,” said Sev.

  Ordo cut in. “We're done here, vode. Time to go.” He put his gloved hand on Skirata's shoulder. “Nine minutes, Kal'buir. Could have been faster, but it's done. Let's go.”

  Skirata caught Darman's arm and followed Jusik. I can still fight: I'm still pretty good. But he wasn't as good as young men at the peak of their abilities, and he needed to do something about that if he wasn't going to be a liability to them one day.

  He'd worry about that later, like his ankle. Now they had to wait on Vati and Etain, who were still out hunting.

  Quadrant F-76, somewhere north of the CoruFresh depot, 2305 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

  The strill was a little bright light of pure joy as it raced along the walkway ahead of Etain and Vau. There were still a few pedestrians around, leaving factories and workshops for the night, and Vau had taken off his helmet. A dull black armored chest plate didn't attract attention, it seemed, but this wasn't a neighborhood where a distinctive Mandalorian visor would pass unnoticed.

  The strill had the man's scent. He ha
d a head start on them but Mird was not to be shaken off, and Etain could follow the trail of panic and fear almost as well as the animal could. She could locate the area: Mird could track by scent once she had narrowed down a search zone for it.

  This is a strange thing for a pregnant woman to be doing. Can my son sense whats happening around him yet? I hope not.

  Vau kept close behind her, jogging at a steady pace.

  “I'm very impressed,” he panted. “You and the strill work very well together. I do wish Kal could see this.”

  Etain imagined this was how Vau hunted with Mird, silent and persistent, covering the ground hour after hour until they had cornered their prey or run it down. The man who had managed to flee the attack on the landing strip had led them into a maze of run-down apartment towers on the edge of the industrial zone.

  After a while Etain caught up with Mird and found it crouched impatiently by a set of doors leading into a shabby residential building. A couple of unpleasant-looking youths lounging on the corner of the walkway began ambling toward her, leering, but then Mird opened its huge maw and let out a warning rumble. Vau appeared around the corner, the Verpine rifle raised in one hand.

  The youths fled.

  “And they say young people today have no intelligence,” Vau said. He took a hand disrupter out of his belt and thrust it into the door panel. The doors parted. “In you go.”

  Mird raced ahead and skidded to a halt at the turbolift, turning its head to gaze pleadingly at its master. Vau put a finger to his lips and pointed up. They got in the turbolift and the strill pressed its nose to the small gap between the doors as the car ascended. As they passed the 134th and 135th floors, it grew frantic and its tail thrashed the floor, but it didn't make a sound. Vau stopped the lift at the 136th floor and they got out. There was an emergency staircase between floors. Etain broke the seal with a Force-assisted push and started down the stairs.

  “Oya, Mird! Hunt!”

  Mird shot past her. She could feel the disturbance in the Force, and their respective instincts took them both to the 134th floor. Mird snuffled along the passage and came to a halt outside an apartment door, settled on its haunches, and stared intently at the door panel.

  Vau put a restraining hand on her arm. “I know a Mandalorian regards a female warrior as his equal, my dear, but I feel I should offer to do this job myself.”

  “I'll do it,” she said. She had to.

  Vau disrupted the lock. The strill ran into the hallway, almost flat to the floor, and Etain followed it, drawing both lightsabers.

  It occurred to her that she might have stumbled upon a family here, and then been presented with a dilemma: a Jedi with two drawn lightsabers, a room full of witnesses, and a cowering terrorist. What would I do? What will I do? But she sensed that would not be the case. It was just another fear of how far she might be prepared to go.

  She burst open each door with the Force, moving at a slight crouch, looking inside.

  A stream of blasterfire spat out of one door and caught the strill on its quarters. Etain heard Vau gasp. Mird shrieked and spun around, one leg dragging, and then made to go in after its assailant, but she held out one arm and it stopped dead.

  “Leave, Mird!” she whispered.

  Etain took a breath then stepped into the room to meet another hail of blasterfire. She crossed the blue blades of energy and batted the bolts aside with a parting motion of her arms. I didn't know I could do that. It was pure instinct, drawn from deep within her and many years in the past.

  She lunged forward for the kill. As always, she saw little and felt nothing tangible, no shock up her arms, no resistance as she swept the blades, but she felt the Force change. A brief light blazed and died.

  She thumbed off Master Fuller's lightsaber and slid it into her tunic one-handed while keeping her own drawn just in case. She sensed nobody else. Mird limped into the room after her and she knew it was looking up into her face even though there was only the scattered light through the window from a city that was never completely dark.

  “Oya,” she whispered, not knowing quite what the command might mean in this case.

  But Mird rumbled quietly and sprang onto the body of the man she had killed. She shut down her lightsaber and walked out of the apartment, and Mird limped out a few moments later, crunching happily. She didn't look too closely at what it had in its jaws. It swallowed noisily.

  “Poor Mird.” Vau sighed. “Here, baby, come here.” He scooped the strill up in both arms and carried it to the turbo-lift. One of its legs had been seared raw by the blaster.

  Etain opened her comlink. “Kal, everyone is accounted for.”

  “Good work,” Kars voice said. He sounded tired. “See you at the RV point.”

  Mird let Etain place her hands on its leg to heal it as the lift made its way down to the ground floor. Vau carried it all the way back to the speeder. It was a big, heavy animal, but he refused to let it walk. Etain took it on her lap and eased its pain as Vau started the speeder and they headed for the RV point.

  There seemed to be nothing Vau wouldn't do for Mird. He loved that animal.

  RV point, two kilometers from CoruFresh depot, 2320 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

  The strike team rendezvoused at a droid-operated construction site to the north of the depot. The droids needed no light to work by and the presence of a few strangely dressed humanoids in the near darkness would draw no attention.

  Skirata counted the six speeders back in, gut churning until the last of the speeders arrived with Mereel and Corr astride. Corr was clutching the rotary blaster like a long-lost friend.

  Good lad. I'll shift Coruscant and all its rotten moons to hang on to him, Zey. We can always train more troopers as commandos. Just watch me.

  “All thermal plastoid accounted for?”

  “Yes, Sarge.” Boss leaned against the bodywork of a speeder. “Want to check?”

  “I trust you to count. Ordo can slip that back into stores tomorrow after it's been neutralized.”

  “What's the final score?” Fi said.

  Niner eased off his helmet. Even with the environment control inside his sealed suit, he looked as if he'd sweated out an ocean. He rubbed his face slowly with the palm of his glove. “Er … I think we took out twenty-six bad guys.”

  “Twenty-four at the site,” Mereel said. “We swept the site and did a tally. It was a bit hard to tell in some places but we logged the blasters that had been fired by their EM traces. So I say twenty-four.”

  “Plus Perrive and our friend in the apartment block,” Etain said.

  “Definitely twenty-six.” Jusik was subdued. “I felt them.”

  “Okay, Shiny Boys twenty-six, Hut'uune nil,” Corr said. He was picking up Mando' a fast. “I call that a home win.”

  Jusik stood staring into the inside of his helmet as he held it in his hands. “No witnesses left standing. Just a nasty argument between crime gangs.”

  “You'll never get any public praise for this,” Skirata said. “But let me tell you now that every last one of you made me a proud man.” He looked down at the strill, limping on one of its six legs as it circled Vau, grumbling deep in its throat. “Even you, Mird, you stinking heap of drool.”

  The strill looked up at Etain and made a musical warbling sound. She'd wrapped one arm around Darman's waist, head resting on his chest plate with her eyes closed, but she opened them and watched Mird.

  “Mird likes you,” Vau said. “You took care of it and let it have its kill.”

  Fi gave Darman a weary slap on the back. “She has a way with dumb animals, ner vod.”

  An exhausted silence settled on the team. The droids labored around them, carrying girders, stacking duraplast sheets, oblivious. If anyone thought wild celebrations followed operations like this, they were wrong. The instant elation of seeing a vessel go up in flames or an enemy drop from a well-placed shot was very short-lived. The hyperalertness of adrenaline lingered for a while, and then was swallowed up qu
ickly by fatigue and a sense of … of void, of odd purposelessness, of looking for the next task.

  The adrenaline had to drain away. They'd be back to normal after some rest. Skirata was determined they'd get some.

  “Let's get back to base,” he said. “We can clear out of Qibbu's in the morning.”

  He got no response.

  “Anyone hungry? Maybe an ale or two?”

  “ 'Freshers,” Niner said. “Shower.”

  “Who's on watch roster tonight?”

  “Me,” Vau said before Skirata could open his mouth. “Go on, Bardan. You head back with Etain and Mird. I'll take Kal.”

  Skirata hauled himself onto Vau's speeder. The painkiller was wearing off and the ache had started gnawing his ankle again. He opened his comlink and called Jailer Obrim.

  “Kal here. How's it going?”

  Obrim sounded as if he was in the middle of a riot. There was a lot of shouting in the background and then a loud muffled whump. Commandos weren't the only ones who laid charges for a spot of rapid entry, then.

  “Busy,” said the CSF captain. “We've pulled in around sixty suspects so far. Pretty low on the food chain, but they lead to all kinds of other people CSF has an interest in, and they're off the streets for a while.” He paused as another loud whuntp interrupted. “I don't know where we're going to put them all, though. The lockup is filling fast.”

  “Never had that problem. Our targets don't get out on parole, either.”

  “I'll bet. You all okay?”

  “No serious injury. Everyone's walking. Quite a mess for you to clear up, though.”

  “My pleasure. CSF Staff and Social Club, all of you. End of the week. I will not take no for an answer and neither will CSF. Be there.”

  “Count on it.”

  Skirata closed the link and let his head drop so that his chin rested on his chest plate.

  Vau squeezed into the seat in front of him and powered up the speeder. He reached behind him and passed Skirata a datapad. “Perrive's pad. Enjoy its contents at your leisure, ner vod. So, a drink or a fight? What's it to be?”