Jedi Trial

by David Sherman

  Anakin’s commanders stood in full battle gear. Their troops had been assembled for the attack some time before and were waiting for their orders. He turned to the ARC captain in charge of his clone commandos. “You will depart immediately, Captain, and go in first. I want you to penetrate the enemy position and raise havoc up there. As soon as you’re in, we’ll follow. Remember, all of this starts ten minutes after General Halcyon commences his attack on the center of the enemy’s positions. Everything we do must be coordinated to the second.

  “That’s it. You’ve all been assigned your sectors and objectives. Return to your units and brief your subordinates. We jump off in thirty minutes.”

  “Sir,” one of the two brigade commanders said, “who will be battlefield tactical commander?”

  “I will,” Anakin replied. At the surprised silence that met his words, he straightened his shoulders and silently reminded himself to relax and remember Grudo’s lessons. “First of all, I don’t believe in ordering someone else to anything I’m not willing to do myself. Second, if any mistakes are made this morning, I’m responsible whether or not I’m there with you, so I may as well be there. And finally, you can’t lead from behind. All right, let’s get going. Dismissed.”

  “Sir, may I speak with you for a moment?” It was the ARC captain.

  “Make it quick, Captain.”

  “Yessir. We lost six troopers on the reconnaissance, so we know nothing about what the enemy intends to do in his main positions.”

  “Well, Captain, I’m sure you lost your troopers because that part of the enemy line was impenetrable. That must mean that General Halcyon’s decision to take the hills is the correct one. You heard Sergeant L’Loxx’s report.”

  “Yessir. Why did the second barrage open before we knew if the men had made it back?”

  Anakin hadn’t expected that question. Was this clone questioning his commander’s orders? He knew ARC troopers were several cuts above the ordinary clone trooper, but this line of questioning was getting very close to insubordination. “General Halcyon had to make a decision, Captain: leave L’Loxx out there until your troopers reported in, take a chance on losing all the recon men, or bring at least some of them in to make a report. In the event, he made the correct decision.”

  “But one did give the signal. Too late.”

  “Yes, yes,” Anakin answered quickly, “I’m sorry about that. Captain, you do realize that this entire attack depends on you and your troopers, don’t you? What do you say we get moving now?”

  The captain saluted, made an about-face, and left the command post. Anakin stood there thinking for a moment. He had not expected a clone trooper— even an ARC—to question orders. When Anakin had craved a command of his own, he had not really thought about the responsibility that entailed: responsibility for the lives of individual sentient beings who would die on his orders, regardless of whether their loyalty had been bought by the Republic, as was the case with the clone army, or whether, like Khamar’s and Slayke’s soldiers, they fought because they thought it was their duty to oppose tyranny.

  “A credit for your thoughts, Jedi.”

  Anakin whirled to see Slayke standing there, a big grin on his face. “I was just thinking—”

  “Thinking is dangerous for a commander.” Slayke laughed. “See where it’s gotten me?” He paused. “You are going to lead the attack personally, I hear.”

  “Yessir. I can’t just send soldiers in there while I sit safely back at headquarters. Besides, if anything goes wrong, I want to be on the spot to correct it.”

  Slayke nodded and held out his hand. “You’ll do just fine. I wish I could go with you, but we’re being held in reserve. I’ve had a talk with your Third Brigade commander and we have an understanding. I’ll hand it all back to you when this is over. I’ll be hanging around here during the attack, keeping an eye on Halcyon. Don’t worry,” he added, with a good-natured laugh, “I won’t let him goof things up. Well, good luck, Com-mander.” They shook hands, and then Slayke took two steps back, came to attention, and saluted Anakin.

  As Anakin walked to his command post, he noted a spring in his step and couldn’t help smiling. That brief conversation with Slayke had invigorated him. The old soldier, the rebel, the iconoclast, had actually taken the time to seek him out and wish him success. And had expressed his confidence in his leadership ability. That was a high compliment, and his spirits soared. Maybe Slayke wasn’t such a bad character after all.

  “Driver,” Anakin shouted as he hoisted himself through a hatch, “crank this thing up. Time to move!”

  * * *

  Chapter 23

  Admiral Pors Tonith kicked the body gingerly with one foot and cast a wary eye at the armor that had been stripped from the corpse and piled off to the side. He was very nervous, being exposed like this in the open, but he’d been called out of his bunker to witness this grisly discovery and he realized it was important. It was still full dark and dawn was an hour away, but he was anxious to get back under cover again. “It’s a clone commando,” he said.

  “We’ve found one more complete body and parts of others, possibly as many as five altogether,” the officer said. “Evidently they were killed by their own artillery last night.”

  “Evidently,” Tonith replied. “Evidently they made it all the way inside our lines without being detected. Evidently”—his voice rose an octave in anger—“they now know a lot about how my army is disposed. These weren’t the only ones sent up here, you can be sure of that.”

  “We must strengthen our lines, sir,” the officer said. Tonith nodded in agreement. “That hill is the key to our position. Did you move the troops and guns as I ordered last night?”

  The officer shifted his weight nervously before he answered. “Some. We’ve experienced mechanical difficulties and—”

  Tonith whirled on him. “You mean my orders weren’t carried out?” he asked, his voice rising again.

  “We are carrying them out, sir, but—”

  “No buts.” He was calmer now. “Here is what you will do. I want that hilltop reinforced. Right now. Shorten this line. Move troops from the right to the center; take some from the center to that hilltop. If they take that hilltop, our entire position will be exposed to their fire, and it’s all over. If the coming assault threatens to turn our right wing, I want the army to fall back to a line about there—” He pointed to a spot some distance behind them, closer to the communications center. “They will take the enemy under fire as he advances across the plain below us, but if he makes it to the mesa, the right flank will swing backward like a door closing. That will shorten the line and consolidate our forces. Once he’s on the mesa it’ll force him to come at us over another stretch of open ground, where we shall cut him to pieces.”

  Tonith grinned, exposing his stained teeth. “And we have a little surprise for him down on the plain, don’t we? Get artillery up on that hill right now. Also, warn all commanders to expect infiltration by ARC troopers. They will send them up here to penetrate our lines and weaken them in concert with a ground assault. They’ll come at our center in full force, but the real ob-jective of their attack will be right there.” He gestured in the dark toward the hills again. “Now get to it and report to me in my command post when these dispositions have been made.” He spun on his heel and stalked off to his command bunker, where it was safe and warm and where a simmering pot of tea waited for him. Where, he asked himself, were those reinforcements he’d been promised?

  Anakin’s assault force hugged the far bank of the dry riverbed, stretched out for nearly half a kilometer along the ancient stream. First light would be at precisely 0603, Praesitlyn time. It was now 0600. He sat at the communications console in his command transport. “This is Unit Six,” he said. “Mark the time, three minutes and counting,” he advised his commanders, all of whose eyes were glued to their chronos. He turned and grinned at the transport’s commander, a clone sergeant. “Nervous?”

  “Nossir,” th
e tank droid commander answered automatically.

  “Well, I am, and I hereby authorize you to be nervous, too.”

  He may as well not have said anything, for all the reaction he got.

  “We have two minutes, Sergeant. As soon as the transport column goes over the top of the bank onto the plain, I want you to swing around on the flank, climb the bank, and park there so I can supervise the movements of my units.” They’d been over this simple maneuver numerous times during the last hour, but just talking about it—about anything—had a calming effect on the troopers, and on Anakin, too.

  “Yessir,” the sergeant answered. The five sat silently, each thinking his own thoughts, each checking his chrono constantly, watching the seconds flash by.

  “The worst part is to come,” Anakin said. “We have to wait a full ten minutes after the attack—” He cocked his head. “There it goes,” he whispered as Halcyon’s preparatory artillery fires commenced. Within seconds, concussions from the dozens of guns of all types reached them inside the armor of the tank droid. They could feel the pressure of the firing in their eardrums. Last night the barrages ordered to cover the reconnaissance had been spectacular displays, but this morning the soldiers were right underneath the guns’ trajectories and the noise was tremendous, especially when the enemy’s own artillery opened fire on Halcyon’s advancing troops.

  “They’re really catching it up there,” one of the gunners commented. His voice showed no more emotion than did his blank-featured helmet. Over the command net they listened with rising anxiety to the cacophony of commanders’ voices as Halcyon’s troops dashed across the plain under the enemy’s devastating fire. Someone in a transport screamed.

  “Switch to the tactical net,” Anakin ordered. They’d hear enough of their own troopers screaming soon enough—they didn’t need any of that now.

  And then he realized something important. These were clone troopers sitting around him now—bred to war, bred to discipline, bred to obey without question the orders of the powers that paid for their services. But though their faceplates were expressionless, minute perturbations in the Force told Anakin that these five were reacting to the impending attack like regular troopers, troopers who sweat, were afraid, who could imagine their own deaths. In his attitude toward the clones, had he himself prejudged them? They didn’t act here, inside this transport that might soon be their funeral pyre, like they did in ranks. He wondered if Jango Fett had had a sense of humor.

  The minutes dragged by. At precisely 0613, the vehicle battalion commander’s vehicle roared over the bank, followed by scores of Republic transports.

  “Get me up there right now!” Anakin ordered his driver, and the tank droid shot forward. The first dozen or so transports over the bank succeeded in cutting a deep furrow in the soil, and the rut deepened as more followed. This was planned for and would give the following troop transports cover as they negotiated the bank as well as an easy path to follow. But Anakin’s vehicle surged over a bit to one side of the beaten path, and the going was very rough for the clones inside.

  “Stop here!” Anakin ordered. He climbed into the commander’s cupola.

  “Sir,” the sergeant protested, “you’re exposed.”

  Anakin toggled his throat mike. “Better to see from up here.”

  “We should keep moving, sir. We’re too good a target stopped like this!”

  “Don’t worry. The law of averages is with us. This is a target-rich environment.” The sight that greeted Anakin’s eyes would never leave him: the entire plain was full of moving vehicles, huge clouds of dust and smoke, and burning fires. As he watched, a transport about a kilometer away suddenly blossomed into a ball of fire. He could see one of Halcyon’s transports dimly through the drifting smoke and dust. It had suffered a direct hit from a blaster cannon. Burning clones poured out of the vehicle and whirled and twisted awkwardly in their armor, like living torches, before collapsing; the transport exploded in an enormous flash, and then, mercifully, battlesmoke closed over the scene.

  Ahead, his own transports were making good headway so far. The battalion commander had positioned several machines along the route of attack, and they were already taking the distant hilltop under fire with their guns. The others were firing as they moved. “Get ready,” Anakin told the transport commander waiting patiently in the riverbed for the signal to start advancing. Suddenly a dozen or more enemy tank droids surged forward out of a depression in the ground, guns blazing. Two of Anakin’s vehicles were hit immediately. One was the battalion commander’s vehicle. It started burning. No one tried to get out.

  “Unit Six is taking over!” Anakin announced on the command net. “Concentrate your fire on those tank droids!”

  Blaster cannon bolts flashed overhead from the enemy vehicles, bouncing off the ground and into the air over them, making sizzling noises as they passed. Anakin smiled. The Separatists had begun their counterattack too soon.

  “Get me over on that firing line right now!” he ordered his driver. “Gunner, open fire when ready!”

  Calmly Anakin’s gunner announced the range— “Twenty-one hundred meters”—and fired his blaster cannon. The transport bounced and swerved as it moved forward, but the stabilized blaster-control system was unaffected by the motion and the second bolt hit one of the enemy machines squarely on its front armor. That bolt bounced harmlessly off the machine, but the second bolt disabled its right tread and it began to turn helplessly in a circle before several other gunners destroyed it with their own cannons.

  “Sir, I suggest you get down from there before you’re hit,” the sergeant advised.

  “If I’m hit, you take charge, Sergeant.” Anakin reached down impatiently and tapped the driver on his helmet. “Come on, come on, get us over there!”

  Odie and Erk sat in the aid station, listening to the thunder of the guns supporting Halcyon’s attack. The assault had been going on for ten or fifteen minutes before the chief surgeon accosted them.

  “You can walk now, Lieutenant, so shove off,” he told Erk. “I’ll need all the space I can get in this station in the next few minutes.”

  Odie, who’d been keeping Erk company while he was in the aid station, helped him to his feet. “Doctor, when will you be able to see him again?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the surgeon replied. “Not for a while. He may have to go into a bacta tank to regenerate the skin. We’ll have to send him up to the Respite for that. In the meantime, he needs to keep that burn clean. If infection sets in, he could be in real trouble. Here.” He grabbed a medpac and shoved it at Odie. “You don’t seem to have anything better to do—take care of him for the next couple of days. Everything you need is in there, including painkillers. Hear those blasters? I want you out of the way before the casualties start streaming in here. Now go!”

  “We need to hunker in a bunker, Odie,” Erk said, then corrected himself quickly: “No—no more bunkers for us. Let’s head over to the command post. Maybe we can be of some help there.”

  But before they could get out of the aid station, casualties from the ongoing assault started coming in and all the pair could do was step aside and wait for the flow of injured to stop. It didn’t, and what they saw on the litters bearing the wounded was horrible. Odie gasped and put her hands to her mouth; Erk blanched at the sight of the mangled bodies. Never had either of them seen so much destruction of living beings. Erk had done all his killing at high speed in the soundless reaches of space or far above the ground in atmosphere environments. It had been a clean bloodletting, more like playing a hologame than actually killing anyone. Now he was seeing what weapons technology could do to living bodies up close, where he could smell the blood and burned flesh.

  The surgeons established a triage. One had the job of examining each litter case as it came in and, deoend-ing on whether he thought the victim could be saved or not, determining where to put the soldier; these decisions were made in a matter of seconds. The unsaved far outnumbered the saved
.

  The worst were the burn cases, clones stripped of their armor, so badly incinerated that their limbs had been reduced to charred sticks, their faces to blackened skulls, uniform fragments fused to their flesh. Yet somehow they lived. None of these were put into the saved category. Others lay in pools of their own blood, limbs missing, internal organs exposed. Still others had obviously died before they were brought to the field hospital. They lay still on their litters, bodies bouncing as the litter bearers jounced them along. Over all was a dreadful silence; hardly any of the wounded screamed or moaned—they were all in shock, an orderly informed Erk as he brushed by.

  Odie picked up two one-liter bottles of water from a nearby supply and shouldered her way to the unsaved. She knelt, lifted a badly wounded clone’s head, and put the bottle to his lips. It was then that she noticed a huge gash on his back that went all the way from his shoulder down to his hips. She could see his spine and ribs. “Thank you,” he sighed after he had drunk. When she put his head back on the litter her hand was covered in blood. She wiped it on her tunic and moved to another litter. When the bottles were empty she knelt on the floor in a state of nervous exhaustion and cried.

  “Let’s go,” Erk said, kneeling beside her. “They’ve stopped coming in for now. Come on, we can’t do any more here.” He helped her to her feet using his good arm.

  “They’re clones, Erk,” she whispered, “but they’re still living beings—a-and they’re put together exactly like us. They bleed, they hurt, they die, just like we do…”

  “Come on, Odie, let’s get out of here,” Erk repeated. Outside, he stumbled, and Odie rushed to support him. He didn’t get anything on her when he vomited.

  The attack wasn’t going as planned. As the first wave of the assault breached the mesa, the enemy troops had pulled back to prepared positions; the attackers were exposed to raking fire as they tried to close the gap. Nervously, Halcyon paced back and forth in the command post. Slayke sat unperturbed a few steps away, eyes glued to the battlefield monitors, listening intently to the reports coming in from the attacking units.