by James Luceno
“How did you ever carry all the E-Web sections alone?”
“No idea. Just did, I suppose.”
She was a Jedi. Skirata said they were fine people, but they didn’t—and couldn’t—care about anyone. But you got close very quickly under fire. He wasn’t going to ask Darman what he was playing at. Not yet.
They reached the edge of the woodland and came into a hundred-meter stretch of waist-high grass. Fi went forward as point man. Sprinting and dropping was now beyond them, but there appeared to be nothing around to spot their gray armor anyway, so they walked at a crouch. Niner’s back was screaming for a rest. It didn’t matter how fit you were when you pushed yourself this hard: it hurt.
When they reached the coppice, it was painkiller time. Niner stripped off his arm plate and peeled back a section of suit. He didn’t bother finding a vein. He stabbed the needle into muscle.
“Know the feeling,” Darman said. He dropped his pack and sat down, legs outstretched. “Anyone taken any stims so far?”
“Not yet,” Niner said. “I reckon we should all dose up one hour before moving, just to make sure we’re a hundred percent.” He glanced at Etain, wondering how she might appear after a week of normal meals, unbroken sleep, and clean clothing. She looked worryingly frail now, even though she was doing a valiant job of keeping up. “You, too. Especially you. Can Jedi take stimulants?”
“What exactly do they do?”
“The equivalent of ten hours’ good, solid sleep and four square meals. Until they wear off.”
“I ought to draw on the Force to sustain my stamina,” she said. “But the Force could do with a bit of help right now. Count me in.”
She sat down and rested her head on her folded arms. Maybe she was meditating. Niner switched to helmet comms.
“Dar, she’s not going to collapse on us, is she? We can’t carry anything else.”
“If she drops, it’ll be because she’s dead,” he said. “Trust me, she’s tougher than she looks. Physically, anyway.”
“She’d better be. Let’s get those remotes deployed.”
Jinart had identified a couple of high points to place the cam remotes. One was on the gutter of a farm building overlooking the entrance to the facility; the other was a tree whose canopy gave a good 270-degree view of the villa. The third remote—the one loaded with ribbon charge—needed more careful placement. She sat up on her hind legs and a pouch formed on her stomach like a cook’s apron.
“Normally I would carry my young around in this,” she said. She placed the three spheres in the pouch, giving the impression that she’d swallowed some particularly lumpy prey. “But if I don’t help you, my chances of raising another litter are remote. So I consider it an appropriate act.”
Niner was as fascinated as ever by the Gurlanin. The more he saw of the creatures, the less he knew about them. He hoped he might have the chance to find out more one day.
In an hour it would be midday. Atin took out his ration pack and mess tin, a flat sheet that snapped into shape. He placed his remaining ration cubes in it and held it out. “How much have we got among us?”
“I’m down to half a day’s worth,” Fi said.
“Me, too,” Niner said.
Darman reached into his pack and pulled out a carefully wrapped brick-sized bag. “A day’s worth of cubes and this dried kuvara and jerky. Let’s pool this and have two meals before we go in. If we pull this off, we’ll be running too fast to have lunch. If we don’t, it’d be a shame to die hungry.”
“Gets my vote,” Atin said.
Niner was going to ask Etain, but she was sitting cross-legged with her eyes shut and her hands in her lap. Darman put a finger to his lips and shook his head.
“Meditating,” he mouthed silently.
Niner hoped she emerged from it transformed. He was still one squad short of an adequate force for this job.
* * *
“You have ten seconds to live,” Ghez Hokan said. He took out Fulier’s lightsaber, and the blue shaft of energy buzzed into life. He wondered what made the blade a consistent, finite length each time. “Speak.”
Guta-Nay, looking more bemused than he recalled, ignored the lightsaber. “I been captured by soldiers. I get away.”
“Republic troops? Human?”
“Yes. They catch me, they make me carry stuff.”
Hokan sheathed the blade. “They obviously spotted your talents. How did you get away?”
“They were sleeping. They not care. I go.”
“How many soldiers?”
“Four. And girlie.”
“Girlie?”
Guta-Nay pointed at the lightsaber. “She got one like that.”
So the woman with them was a Jedi. “Just four?”
“They got another lot.” He pursed his lips, grappling with a new word. “Squad.”
“Very well, so we have two squads. Eight men. That would fit.” Hokan turned to Hurati. “And our Trandoshan friend?”
“He says he’s highly irritated about his business being interrupted, sir, and he offers himself and three colleagues to help you deal with the inconvenience.”
“Thank him and accept his offer.” Hokan turned back to Guta-Nay. “I want you to think very hard. Did they say what they were going to do? Where they were going?”
“The villa.”
How predictable people were. The locals would tell you anything for money, sell you their daughters, inform on their neighbors. Hokan had half expected the ruse to be almost too obvious. “You’re doing well. Tell me what equipment they have.”
“Blasters. Explosives.” The Weequay made an indication of great width with his hands. “Big gun. They got armor with knives in gloves.”
“Describe.”
“Like yours.”
“What do you mean, like mine?”
Guta-Nay indicated his head and made a T-shape with his fingers. “Your helmet.”
It was difficult to take in. Guta-Nay was an inarticulate brute, but there was no ambiguity in his description. “Are you saying they were wearing Mandalorian armor?”
“Yeah. That it.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“Sure.”
“Anything else?” Hokan wondered how he expected this creature to be able to assess intelligence. “Anything else unusual?”
Guta-Nay concentrated on the question as if his life depended on it, which it did not; Hokan would kill him anyway. “They all look the same.”
“They were wearing uniforms?”
“No, the men. Same faces.”
Children could be unerringly accurate in their observation of detail, and so could stupid adults. Guta-Nay was describing something that Dr. Uthan had told him about: soldiers, identical soldiers, mindlessly obedient soldiers—clone soldiers.
Hokan couldn’t believe that clone troopers could operate like this. And the one weapon that would work against them was denied him, because in its present state it would kill everyone, Uthan and her team included.
But there were probably only eight of them. He had nearly a hundred droids. He had weapons.
“Hurati? Hurati!”
The young captain came running and saluted. “Sir?”
“I think we face a two-pronged attack. There are two squads, and I find it unlikely to imagine that they would not have one squad attack the villa, while the other made an attempt on the most obvious target. Divide the droid platoons between the locations.”
“That’s what you would do with two squads, sir? Not concentrate your forces?”
“Yes, if I weren’t sure my objectives were consolidated in one place. They can’t know who and what is in which building. And they’ll attack at night, because while they’re bold, they’re not stupid.” He shook his head, suddenly interrupted by his own preoccupation. “Who would have thought clones could carry out this sort of operation? Uthan said they were no more than cannon fodder.”
“Commanded by Jedi, sir. Perhaps our tactician is the woman
.”
It was an interesting idea. Hokan considered it for a moment, then realized that Guta-Nay was waiting expectantly, oddly upright and apparently unafraid.
“Well?” Hokan said.
“I tell you stuff. You let me live?”
Hokan activated the lightsaber again and held it out to his side, just above the level of his right shoulder.
“Of course not,” he said, and swung the blade. “It would be bad for morale.”
15
So how do we justify what we are doing now? Breeding men without choice, and without freedom, to fight and die for us? When do the means cease to justify the end? Where is our society heading? Where are our ideals, and what are we without them? If we give in to expedience in this way, where do we draw the line between ourselves and those we find unacceptably evil? I have no answer, Masters. Do you?
—Jedi Padawan Bardan Jusik, addressing the Jedi Council
Etain jerked involuntarily, as if falling in a dream. She opened her eyes and stared straight ahead.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Who is?” Darman had been watching her meditate, worrying what might happen to her in the coming battle, afraid both for her and because of her. She could be either a liability or an unimaginable asset. “What’s wrong, Etain?”
Niner caught his eye with a look that suggested he thought Darman was being too familiar with an officer, whatever she had ordered. Then he went back to checking his datapad.
“Guta-Nay.” She rubbed her forehead and looked defeated. “I felt it in the Force.”
Fi looked about to say something, and Atin silenced him with a frown. Darman gave both of them a shut-up look. There was a way of saying unpalatable things to people, and Darman thought it would be better coming from him than from his comrades.
“Hokan would have found him sooner or later,” he said. “If the Weequay’s managed to mislead him about our true target, he’s at least redeemed himself a little.”
“Dar,” she said. It was shockingly familiar, the squad nickname for him. “I killed him as surely as if I’d cut him down.”
“You told us yourself that he was a rapist,” Fi said, sounding irritated. “The world won’t miss him.”
“Shut up, Fi.” Darman tried again. “It’ll save lives in the end.”
“Yeah, ours,” Fi said.
Darman twisted around, angry. “I said shut up, didn’t I?”
Niner stepped in. “You can both shut it,” he said. “We’re all tired and we’re all testy. Save it for the enemy.”
Darman swallowed a sudden and unexpected desire to tell Fi to lay off Etain, and in no uncertain terms. Fi knew nothing about her, nothing. Darman was ambushed by a split second of protectiveness and was immediately embarrassed by it.
He turned back to her. “He’s right. It’s one life for many.”
“Means justify the end, right?” Etain stood up from her cross-legged position in one movement. “And what about you? What happens if I send you or Fi or any of you into a situation where you’re going to die?”
She was genuinely upset. He could see it in her face, and in the way she held one thin, scratched, bony hand clenched tightly into a fist. He stood up as well, walking after her as she headed for the edge of the coppice.
“We were all made for this,” Darman said. It was true, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t exist at all if it hadn’t been that someone needed soldiers, utterly reliable soldiers. But it didn’t feel that way right then. Her reaction told him he was wrong, and suddenly he saw Kal Skirata, in tears, a drink in his hand. You poor boys. What sort of life is this? “Etain, we all do what we have to. One day you really will have to give an order that’s going to get some of us killed.”
“Us?”
“Soldiers, troopers. Whatever.”
“Perhaps, but the day I can accept that without being diminished by it is the day I’m not fit to be a Jedi.”
“Okay,” he said. “I understand that.”
“How do you feel when you kill?”
“I never had time to think about it. On Geonosis, they killed my brothers and they were trying to kill me. They weren’t like us.”
“So what if it was someone you knew?”
“But you didn’t know Guta-Nay, and he isn’t like you. Or me, come to that.” Darman hadn’t a clue what she was going on about. She was new to killing. It was inevitable that she’d have a few problems dealing with it. “Etain, this squad needs you to be sorted and alert. Think about that.”
He turned and walked back to where Niner and the others were sitting. It seemed too obvious to replace their helmets and discuss privately whether the commander was going flaky on them. She wasn’t giving orders anyway. But a simple glance could convey a great deal. Darman hoped Fi understood that his fixed stare meant Lay off.
Apparently, he did. Fi made a quick palms-out movement with his hands as if in submission. The subject was dropped.
Niner was right. They were all frayed by the last few days, hovering on short fuses. They busied themselves checking and rechecking weapons.
We’ve never fought as a squad before.
They were probably all thinking the same thing. Darman took the hydraulic ram apart and reassembled it, then checked the hand pump for pressure. It came with an assortment of claws, and at least having the original plans and specs of both buildings meant he knew which ones to leave behind. It could exert eight metric tons, so if the charges didn’t get them through the door, the ram would. The hand-operated ram was lighter to carry, but packed less than half the punch.
He’d have liked cutting equipment, too, but he’d opened steel blast doors on Geonosis with thermal tape charges, and the ribbon version was even more powerful. Explosive moved at eight thousand meters a second, enough to slice through steel: rapid entry didn’t get much more rapid than that.
This wasn’t a silent job. It was an application of force against an enemy who knew they were coming.
“Whoa, receiving,” Niner said. He shoved his helmet back on his head in a hurry. Darman could hear the blip of the alarm from where he was sitting. “Jinart’s got the remote cams in place.” He was looking at something only he could see, and judging by his quick head movements, it was interesting. Darman and the others followed suit.
“What are they doing?” A platoon of tinnies was marching down the track from the villa and into the facility. There appeared to be some urgency in their pace. “It looks like they’re going back to the laboratory.”
The remote was looking down on the scatter of small structures around the former farmhouse. It didn’t have a complete view of all the approaches to the building, but it did look out on both the front path and the land to the rear. It had no view of the rear slope of the roof or the land immediately at the back.
There was a man in armor very similar to their own, standing with a familiar helmet tucked under one arm. He was middle-aged and his hard face and confident attitude said clearly that he was a Mandalorian. It had to be Ghez Hokan.
Darman heard the collective holding of breath in his helmet comlink. Hokan was talking to a Trandoshan mercenary, making short stabbing gestures with a finger pointed at nothing in particular. He was agitated but in control. He was marshaling troops.
“Yeah, Dar, I think that’s exactly what they’re doing. Looks like he’s making some last-minute changes.”
“Why would they be doing that?” Darman said, but he had an unpleasant feeling that he knew.
“Because we’ve been too clever by half,” Niner said. “Fierfek. Guta-Nay did his job, all right. Too well. What would you do if you thought you were really facing two squads?”
“Assume two separate attacks were really possible.”
Atin made a noise that sounded like a controlled exhalation. “Oh well. We were going to meet the whole tinnie family sooner or later. Plan C, anyone?”
They waited, standing in an awkward group. Within half an hour they would know if Jinart had managed to get a rem
ote cam close to the Neimoidian villa as well.
Darman felt a hard rap on his back plate and jerked around to see Etain standing with her hands on her hips, looking anxious. “What’s got everyone upset?” she asked. “Come on, I felt it. What’s gone wrong?”
Darman took off his helmet. “Guta-Nay did a pretty good job of convincing Hokan we were targeting the villa. But we overplayed our hand by hinting that we had another squad.”
“Why?”
“It looks as if Hokan thinks one squad will be going after each target. So our chances of getting most of the droids in one location have taken a bit of a tumble.”
Etain raked her fingers through her hair and shut her eyes. “Time for a rethink, then.”
Darman replaced his helmet to watch the feed from the remote. Then the second cam came online. There was a shaky but clear view of the Neimoidian villa and its outbuildings, seen from the branches of a swaying tree. A wide path stretched away out of shot from the front of the house.
At least they could now see the size of the problem facing them. If Hokan tried to move Uthan, they had a high chance of spotting her.
But whichever remote view Darman switched to, there were an awful lot of droids.
“Okay,” Niner said. “Fi, you take the first watch on the remotes. I’m going to see if we can get some backup. Majestic should be on station by now.”
“We were ordered to keep comm silence until we needed extraction,” Darman said, looking at Etain.
“Commander?” Niner said. “We’ve taken out the comm station. They can’t intercept our signal.”
Etain didn’t even pause. “Sergeant, you go right ahead and call up Majestic,” she said. “Ask for whatever help you think we need.”
Fi held up one hand. “Hey, we might have a break here. Check out the remote at the villa.”
Darman switched channels with a double blink. The display in his HUD showed him a shot of a young boy in a scruffy smock walking around to a side door at the villa, a fruit-laden basket clutched in both arms. He knocked, and the door was opened by a droid. The youngster went in. There was something familiar about him, even though Darman had never seen him before.