by James Luceno
He took dried fruit and something that looked like cured leathery meat, making a mental note to test all of it with the toxin strip in his medpac. It was too kind of the locals to leave all this. There was, of course, every chance they had fled in terror from the same violence that he had witnessed looking down from his observation point just after he landed.
Etain was filling a couple of water bottles from a pump outside.
“I’ve got a filter for that,” Darman said.
“Are you sure you weren’t trained by Neimoidians?”
“You’re in enemy territory.”
She smiled sadly. “Not all soldiers wear uniforms.”
She’d catch on. She had to. The thought that a Jedi might be unable to offer the leadership he had been promised was almost unbearable. His emotions didn’t have names. But they were feelings that had memories embedded in them—finishing a fifty-kilometer run thirty-two seconds outside the permitted time, and being made to run it again; seeing a clone trooper fall on a beachhead landing exercise, weighed down by his pack and drowning, while no directing staff paused to help; a commando whose sniping score was only 95 percent, and whose whole batch disappeared from training and were never seen again.
They were all things that made his stomach sink. And each time it did, it never quite regained the same level as before.
“Are you all right?” Etain asked. “Is it your leg?”
“My leg’s fine now, thank you,” he said.
Darman wanted his trust back, and soon.
They resumed their path along the dirt track that was gradually liquefying into mud, the rain at their backs. By the time they got to the next farm the rain seemed to have set in for the day. Darman thought of his squad making their way through sodden countryside, perfectly dry in their sealed suits, and he smiled. At least this made it harder for anyone to track them.
A woman with a pinched expression like a gdan stared at them from the front step of the farmhouse. It was a grander building than the last one: not by much, but the walls were stone and there was a lean-to shelter along one side. Etain walked up to her. Darman waited, looking, aware of an outdoor refresher to the right that might contain a threat, keeping half an eye on a group of youngsters tinkering with a large machine on rollers.
They all looked so different. Everyone was so different.
After some conversation, Etain beckoned him and indicated the lean-to. So far, so good. Darman still didn’t plan on relinquishing his ordnance. He reached into the barq for his helmet and detached the comlink, just in case Niner tried to contact him.
“Are you coming?” Etain asked.
“Just a moment.” Darman took out a string of AP micromines and trailed them around the front of the house as far as the cable would stretch. He set them to run off a remote signal and tucked the transmitter section of the detonator in his belt. Etain watched him with an unspoken question, perfectly clear from her expression. “In case anyone gets any ideas,” Darman said.
“You’ve played this game before,” Etain said.
He certainly had. The first thing he checked when he entered the farmhouse, one hand against his rifle, was where the best observation point might be. It was a perforated air-brick that gave him a good view of the road. There was a large window in the far wall with a brown sacking sheet tied across it. Reassured—but only slightly—he sat down at the table that dominated the front room.
The family that took them in consisted of the thin gdan-faced woman, her sister, her even thinner husband, and six youngsters ranging from a small boy clutching a piece of grubby blanket to the nearly full-grown men working outside. They wouldn’t give their names. They didn’t want a visit, they said, as if a visit was much more than it seemed.
Darman was riveted. These people were humans like him; yet they were all different. But still they had features that looked similar—not the same, but similar—to others in the group. They were different sizes and different ages, too.
He had seen diversity in training manuals. He knew what different species looked like. But the images always came to mind with data about weapons carried and where to aim a shot for maximum stopping power. This was the first time in his life that he had been in close contact with diverse humans who were in the majority.
To them, perhaps, he also looked unique.
They sat around the rough wooden table. Darman tried not to speculate on what the stains in the wood might be, because they looked like blood. Etain nudged him. “They cut up the merlie carcasses here,” she whispered, and he wondered if she could read his mind.
He tested the bread and soup placed in front of him for toxins. Satisfied that it was safe, he dug in. After a while he was aware that the woman and the small boy were staring at him. When he looked up, the child fled.
“He doesn’t like soldiers much,” the woman said. “Is the Republic coming to help us?”
“I can’t answer that, ma’am,” Darman said. He meant that he would never discuss operational matters; it was an automatic response under interrogation. Never just say yes, never just say no, and give no information except your ID number. Etain answered for him, which was her prerogative as a commander.
“Do you want the Republic’s help?” she asked.
“You any better than the Neimies?”
“I’d like to think so.”
The table fell silent again. Darman finished the soup. Politics was nothing to do with him; he was more interested in filling up on something that had flavor and texture. If all went according to plan, in a few weeks he’d be far from here and on another mission, and if it didn’t, he’d be dead. The future of Qiilura was genuinely of no relevance to him.
The woman kept refilling his bowl with soup until he slowed up and eventually couldn’t manage any more. It was the first hot food he’d had in days, and he felt good; little perks like that boosted morale. Etain didn’t seem so enthusiastic about it. She was moving each chunk cautiously around with her spoon, as if the liquid contained mines.
“You need to keep your strength up,” he said.
“I know.”
“You can have my bread.”
“Thanks.”
It was so quiet in the room that Darman could hear the individual rhythm of everyone’s chewing, and the faint scrape of utensils against bowls. He could hear the distant, muffled sound of merlies nearby, an intermittent gargling noise. But he didn’t hear something that Etain suddenly did.
She sat bolt upright and turned her head to one side, eyes unfocused.
“Someone’s coming, and it’s not Jinart,” she hissed.
Darman flung off his cloak and pulled his rifle. The woman and her relatives jumped up from the table so fast that it tipped despite its weight, sending bowls tumbling to the floor. Etain drew her lightsaber, and it shimmered into life. They both watched the entrance; the family scrambled through the back door, the woman pausing to grab a large metal bowl and a bag of meal from a sideboard.
Darman doused the lamps and peered out through a hole in the air-brick. Without his visor, he was completely dependent on his Deece for long-distance vision. He couldn’t see anything. He held his breath and listened hard.
Etain moved toward him, gesturing at the far wall, indicating seven—a whole hand then two fingers.
“Where?” he whispered.
She was marking something on the dirt floor. He watched her finger draw an outline of the four walls and then stab a number of dots outside them, most around the one she’d been pointing to, and one dot near the front door.
She put her lips so close to his ear it made him jump. “Six there, one here.” It was a breath, barely audible.
Darman indicated the far wall and pointed to himself. Etain gestured to the door: Me? He nodded. He gestured one, two, three quickly with his fingers and gave her a thumbs-up: I’ll count to three. She nodded.
Whoever was outside hadn’t knocked. It didn’t bode well.
He clipped the grenade attachment to his r
ifle and aimed at the far side. Etain stood at the door, lightsaber held above her head for a downward stroke.
Darman hoped her aggression would triumph over her self-doubt.
He gestured with his left hand, rifle balanced in his right. One, two—
Three. He fired one grenade. It smashed through the sack-covered window and blew a hole in the wall just as he was firing the second. The blast kicked him backward, and the front door burst open as Etain brought her lightsaber down in a brilliant blue arc.
Darman switched his rifle to blast setting and swung his sight on the figure, but it was an Umbaran and it was dead, sliced through from clavicle to sternum.
“Two,” Etain said, indicating the window, or at least where it had been seconds earlier. Darman sprang forward across the room, dodging the table and firing as he came to the hole smashed in the wall. When he stumbled through the gap there were two Trandoshans coming toward him with blasters, faces that seemed all scales and lumps, wet mouths gaping. He opened fire; one return shot seared his left shoulder. Then there was nothing but numb silence for a few moments, followed by the gradual awareness that someone was screaming in agony outside.
But it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t Etain. That was all that mattered. He picked his way across the room, conscious of the growing pain in his shoulder. It would have to wait.
“It’s all clear,” Etain said. Her voice was shaking. “Except for that man …”
“Forget him,” Darman said. He couldn’t, of course: the soldier was making too much noise. The screams would attract attention. “Load up. We’re going.”
Despite Etain’s assurance that there were no more waiting outside, Darman edged out the door and kept his back to the wall all the way around the exterior of the farmhouse. The wounded soldier was an Umbaran. Darman didn’t even check how badly hurt he might be before he shot him cleanly in the head. There was nothing else he could do, and the mission came first.
He wondered if Jedi could sense droids as well. He’d have to ask Etain later. He’d been told Jedi could do extraordinary things, but it was one thing to know it, and another entirely to see it in action. It had probably saved their lives.
“What was that?” she asked when he returned to the lean-to. She already had the extra pack slung on her back, and he realized she’d actually moved the micromines even though they were still live. Darman, swallowing anxiety, disabled the detonator and added it to the list of things he needed to teach her.
“Finishing the job,” he said, and pulled on his bodysuit section by section. She looked away.
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
“He was lying wounded?”
“I’m not a medic.”
“Oh, Darman …”
“Ma’am, this is a war. People try to kill you. You try to kill them first. There are no second chances. Everything else you need to know about warfare is an amplification of that.” She was horrified, and he really wished he hadn’t upset her. Had they given her a lethal lightsaber and not taught her what it really meant to draw one? “I’m sorry. He was in a bad way, anyway.”
Death seemed to shock her. “I killed that Umbaran.”
“That’s the idea, ma’am. Nicely done, too.”
She didn’t say anything else. She watched him attach the armor plates, and when he finally replaced his helmet he knew he didn’t care how conspicuous he looked in it, because he wasn’t going to take it off again in a hurry. He needed that edge.
“No more safe houses,” Darman said. “There’s no such thing.”
Etain followed him into the woodland at the back of the house, but she was preoccupied. “I’ve never killed anyone before,” she said.
“You did fine,” Darman told her. His shoulder was throbbing, gnawing into his concentration. “A clean job.”
“It’s still not something I would care to repeat.”
“Jedi are trained to fight, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but we never killed anyone in training.”
Darman shrugged and it hurt. “We did.”
He hoped she got over it fast. No, it wasn’t enjoyable, killing: but it had to be done. And killing with lightsaber or blaster was relatively clean. He wondered how she’d handle having to stick a blade in someone and see what ran out. She was a Jedi, and with any luck she’d never have to.
“Them or us,” he said.
“You’re in pain.”
“Nothing major. I’ll use the bacta when we reach the RV.”
“I suppose they turned us in.”
“The farmers? Yeah, that’s civilians for you.”
Etain made a noncommittal grunt and followed silently behind him. They moved deeper into the woods, and Darman calculated how many rounds he’d expended. If he kept engaging targets at this rate, he’d be down to his sidearm by nightfall.
“It’s amazing how you can sense people,” Darman said. “Can you detect droids, too?”
“Not especially,” she said. “Usually just living beings. Maybe I can—”
A faint whine made Darman turn in time to see a blue bolt of light streaking toward him from behind. It struck a tree a few meters ahead, splitting it like kindling in a puff of vapor.
“Obviously not,” Etain said.
It was going to be another long, hard day.
A warning siren sounded: three long blasts, repeated twice. Then the peaceful fields northwest of Imbraani shook with a massive explosion, and terrified merlies bolted for the cover of the hedgerows.
“Blasting today, then,” Fi said. “Lovely day for it.”
Niner couldn’t see anything but droids—industrial droids—moving around the quarry. He ran his glove across his visor to clear the droplets of rain and tried several binoc magnifications, flicking between settings with eye movements. But if there were organic workers around, he couldn’t see any.
The quarry was a massive and startling gouge in the landscape, an amphitheater with stepped sides that allowed droid excavators to dig out rock for processing. The depression sloped gently at one side; it was a towering cliff on the other. A small site office with alloy-plated walls and no windows sat beside a wide track at the top of the slope. Apart from the steady procession of droids laden with raw rock for the screening plant, the area was deserted. But someone—something—was controlling the detonations. They had to be in the building. And structures with solid alloy walls like that tended to have interesting contents.
The all-clear siren sounded. The droids moved in to scoop up the loose rock, sending spray and mud flying as they rumbled up the slopes.
“Okay, let’s see what we can liberate from the hut,” Niner said. “Atin, with me. Fi, stay here and cover.”
They darted out of the trees and across a hundred meters of open land to the edge of the quarry, dodging between giant droids that took no notice of them. One droid, its wheels as high as Niner was tall, swung its bucket scoop unexpectedly and struck his shoulder plate a glancing blow. He stumbled and Atin caught his arm, steadying him. They paused, waiting for the next droid to return up the slope, then jogged alongside it until level with the site building.
They were now exposed, pressed close to the front wall. The building was only ten meters wide. Atin knelt at the door and studied the single lock.
“Pretty insubstantial if this is where they store the explosives,” he said.
“Let’s take a look.”
Atin stood up slowly and placed a scope on the door to listen for movement. He shook his head at Niner. Then he slid a flimsi-thin flat endoscope around the jamb, working it back and forth, slowly and carefully. “Now that’s a tight fit,” he said. “Can’t get it in.”
“We could always just walk in there.”
“Remember, we’re probably heading into a store full of explosives. If I could get a probe through it could at least get a sniff of the air and test for chemicals.”
“Okay, let’s walk in carefully, then.”
There was no handle. Nin
er stood to the hinge side, Deece in one hand, and pressed silently on the single plate that made up the door. It didn’t yield.
Atin nodded. He took out the handheld ram, ten kilos that had seemed like dead, useless weight in their packs until now. He squared it up to the lock.
Niner raised one finger. “Three … two …”
It applied a force of two metric tons.
“Go.”
The door fell open, and they both leapt back as a stream of blasterfire shot out. It stopped suddenly. They squatted on either side of the entrance. Usually this was simple: if someone inside didn’t want to leave, a grenade coaxed them out, one way or another. But with a high chance of explosives being inside, that method was a little too emphatic. Niner shook his head.
Atin moved the endoscope carefully, getting a glimpse of the building’s interior. Then he edged the probe into the doorway, drawing another stream of blasterfire.
“Two moving around,” he said. “Light’s out. But the probe got a sniff of explosives.”
“Spot-lamp and rush them, then?”
Atin shook his head. He took out a grenade and locked it in the safety position. “How nervous would you be if you were sitting on enough stuff to put this quarry into orbit?”
“Drink-spilling nervous, I’d say.”
“Yeah.” Atin hefted the grenade a few times. “That’s what I thought.”
He bowled the disabled grenade into the doorway and jerked back. Three seconds later, two Weequays rushed out. Niner and Atin fired simultaneously; one Weequay dropped instantly, and the other’s momentum carried him on a few meters farther, until he fell in the path at the top of the ramp. The quarry droids trundled on, oblivious. If the shot hadn’t killed him, the advancing droid did.
“Sarge, you need some help down there?”
Niner motioned Atin inside. “No, Fi, we’re set here. Keep an eye out in case we get company.”
The building reeked of cooking and unwashed Weequay. A small droid, lights blinking on standby and caked in dried mud, stood by a console. The rest of the space—three rooms—was taken up by explosives, detonators, and various spare parts and stenciled crates.