Republic Commando_ Hard Contact Part 13

He was the only person in many years who had shown any degree of confidence in her, and the first since Master Fulier who had shown her real kindness.

"Very well," she said. "This is your overriding order. Whatever happens, you are to intervene if anything I do or say compromises your mission. No, don't look at me like that." She held up her hand to stifle the protest she could see forming on his lips. "Think of me as a commander in training. You must train me. That might mean showing me the correct way to do things, or even saving me from my own lack of... experience." She could hardly bring herself to say it. "And... and that's an order."

He almost smiled. "This is why I have confidence in obeying a Jedi commander. Your wisdom is unequaled."

Etain had to think about that for a few seconds. If Jinart had said it, she would have seethed. Darman meant it. And perhaps he meant it in a number of ways.

Yes, he was intelligent and subtle, not a droid at all. How did a ten-year-old get that way? Disturbed, she concentrated on the comfort of believing that he had seen things that she never had, and so knew best. "Go on," she said. "You had a plan."

RV Gamma, laying-up point, nightfall "How do you feel now?" Niner asked.

Atin moved his arms, bent at the elbow in a swimming motion, testing his pectoral muscles. "Nearly good as new. No breathing problems, either. No, just a hard smack on the plate."

Fi's disembodied voice spoke up in their helmet comlinks. He was tucked under a bush on the edge of the ridge, keeping watch on the track below. "I'm such a good field medic. Wait till you see me do a tracheotomy."

"I'll pa.s.s if that's all right with you," Atin said, easing off his helmet. "Dinner?"

"What do you prefer," Niner asked. "Dry rats, dry rats, or maybe dry rats?"

"Let's go with the dry rats for a change." Yes, Atin was definitely feeling better, and not just physically. "Who used to say that, then?"

"Uh?"

"The dry rations thing."

"Oh. Skirata. Our old instructor sergeant."

Atin took a bite out of the white cube and washed it down with a gulp of water from his bottle. "He never trained us. Heard a lot about him."

"Trained Fi and Darman, too. Our squads were all in the same battalion."

"We had Walon Vau."

"That explains where you get your cheery outlook."

"Sergeant Vau taught us the importance of planning for the worst scenario," Atin said, all loyalty. "And maximizing your tech. Being hard is good, being hard with superior tech is better."

"I'll bet."

"I'd heard everyone loved Skirata, though. Even if he was a bad-tempered drunk."

Niner had never been drunk and he didn't even know what alcohol tasted like. "He cared what happened to us. He was one of us, pretty much. Not just there because he couldn't cope with not being in the army anymore, or had to disappear. No, he was a good man." Niner would have given a great deal to have seen Skirata come limping through the trees right then, demanding to know what they were doing lounging around like a bunch of Kaminoan nahra artists. "No idea where he is now, not since we left Kamino. Best covert ops and sabotage man ever."

"You'd know, of course."

"We'll all know soon. I'm relying on what he taught us to get this mission completed."

Niner ate the perfectly balanced, sensibly designed, and utterly tasteless cube, and sat silently, still waiting for Darman. They couldn't even trap something and cook it: the smell of roasting meat and the light of the fire would betray their position.

With Fi on watch, he could shut his eyes and sleep for a couple of hours. He put his helmet back on, partly to be ready to move fast if they had enemy contact, and partly to keep the temperature up in his suit. It was getting chilly. He allowed himself one comfort that he didn't really need, for morale.

You scare me. You just absorb everything I tell you. Don't you ever forget?

"No, Sarge," Niner said.

He had no idea how long he'd been asleep. He woke with a start at the sound of Fi's voice.

"Possible contact, due east, range forty klicks. Looks like it's centered on Imbraani."

Even through the visor, it wasn't clear exactly what Fi had spotted, but Niner could see it now, too. A glow marked the horizon like a false sunrise. It was constant, the gentlest graduation from amber to deep red: it wasn't an explosion.

Niner switched between visor modes, main spectrum to infrared to full spectrum, and then back again. The glow was hot, too. The infrared long-range picked it up.

"I reckon that's one big fire coming," Fi said.

They waited, watching: Niner could hear Atin a few meters away, gathering up equipment and a.s.sembling it, ready to pull out. With the binocs on full distance, they could see that the fire was being eclipsed in places by billows of smoke. Eventually, Atin joined them, and all three observed the distant blaze in silence.

"They're not burning crop stubble at night," Fi said. "They haven't even finished harvesting that stinking barq stuff yet. They've found something."

"I know."

"Either they've found Darman, and they're teaching the locals not to shelter the enemy, or they haven't found Darman and they're trying to flush him out."

Niner thought it was relatively good news. "But it means he made the landing," he said. "So we wait here right up to the last second, and maybe a little longer just to be sure."

Atin laid the gear down again. He was too professional and disciplined to slam it on the ground, but Niner picked up on the slight sag of his shoulders. "And if he doesn't show by then?" he asked, with a level tone that suggested he didn't want to show dissent any longer. "Next plan?"

"We take another look at the whole area from Teklet to Imbraani," Niner said. "We start from scratch."

"This isn't to scale," Darman said. He sc.r.a.ped marks in the loose soil on the exposed dirt floor of the barn and placed pieces of stale bread carefully on the crude chart. "This is the river. These three crusts are RVs Alpha, Beta, and Gamma." He snapped the wood into more pieces and placed them. "This is the droid base ... and this is Uthan's lab."

Etain held out her cupped hand. He dropped two chunks of wood into it. "This is Lik Ankkit's residence," she said. "He's the Neimoidian overlord, for want of a better word. He runs the agricultural produce export business, and that near enough makes him an emperor here."

"Okay. What else have we got?"

Etain crumbled her remaining lump of wood into smaller pieces and scattered them carefully in patches. "Imbraani itself, and Teklet, which is the s.p.a.ceport, and its storage and distribution depot."

"And this was the last known position for my squad."

Etain stared at the worm-eaten wood and the moldy crusts that might help them save the Grand Army from destruction. "Why are we sc.r.a.ping maps in the dirt when we've got perfectly good holocharts?"

"That's what Sergeant Skirata used to do," Darman said. "He didn't like holos. Too transparent. He also thought that feeling the texture of dirt focused your mind."

"And you don't need any technology to do it."

"He was a great believer in intuition."

Darman drew his blaster and turned suddenly. The barn door opened. He relaxed and dropped his arm to his side. Jinart held more drab fabric bundled in her arms. "You have to go," she said breathlessly. "Take a look out there to the east. They're burning the fields to flush you out and deny you cover. There's somewhere you can lie low, but you have to pa.s.s for farmers-that's not going to be easy for you, lad. You're too big and well fed."

Etain didn't rise to the bait. She knew she'd fit in fine with the undernourished, shabby locals.

"I have to take my gear," Darman said. "I can lay up somewhere with it if I have to."

"Can't you leave any of it?"

"Not if we're going to blow up that facility. I've got all the implosion ordnance to deal with the nanovirus, as well as the E-Web cannon. We need it."

"Then take a cart. There's a curfew on powered vehicles." Jinart tossed one of the bundles to Darman. "And get out of that armor. You couldn't be more conspicuous if you were wearing a wedding gown."

"We can try to make RV Gamma."

"No, go to the first safe house you can find. I'll reach your squad and let them know, then I'll return to you."

There was an a.s.sortment of barrows and handcarts stored in the barn, all in various states of disrepair. They'd attract no attention: the network of dirt roads was well traveled by people trying to get their quota of barq and other crops to Teklet on foot or with merlie-carts.

Loading the sections of the blaster cannon on the st.u.r.diest barrow they could find made Etain realize just how heavy a burden Darman had carried. When she tried to heave one of the gray packs into the cart, it nearly wrenched her shoulder from the socket, so she decided to enlist a little a.s.sistance from the Force. She hadn't expected it to be so heavy. She wasn't the only one with deceptive physical strength.

"This is all weapons?" she asked.

"Pretty much."

"Not enough to take a hundred droids, though."

"Depends how you use it," Darman said.

Etain wondered if he looked more conspicuous out of his sinister gray armor than in it. The armor had made him look much bigger, but even without it he was so solidly built that it was obvious he'd spent his life training for strength, eating adequate protein. Subsistence farmers didn't have that distinctive slope from neck to shoulder formed by overdeveloped trapezius muscles. Even the youngsters bore the marks of constant exposure to the elements; Darman simply looked strikingly healthy and unburned by the sun. He didn't even have callused hands.

And then there was that ramrod parade-ground posture. He looked exactly like the elite soldier he was. He would never pa.s.s for a local. Etain hoped the farmers would be more terrified of him than they were of Hokan.

The night horizon was amber like the urban skies of Coruscant, but it was flame, not the light of a million lamps, that caused the reflection from the clouds. It looked like rain might follow; they could cover the cart with a tarpaulin and not cause any curiosity. Layers of barq stalk, sacks of barq grain, and strips of dried kushayan buried Darman's "gear," as he kept calling it. His language swung from slang and generality to highly educated subbtlety, from gear-his catchall noun for any artifact-to DC-17s and DC-15s and a whole slew of numbers and acronyms that left Etain befuddled.

"Look at that," Darman said, a.s.sessing the skyline. "That flame front must be four klicks, at least."

"That's a million or more credits' worth of barq going up in smoke. The farmers are going to be furious. The Neimoidians are going to be even angrier."

"So will Birhan," Jinart said. "That's a fair whack of his barq you're using for camouflage, girl. Get going." The Gurlanin took Darman's datapad and inserted a mem-stick. "These are all the relatively safe homes I could chart. Don't advertise your ident.i.ty, either of you. Even if the master of the house you call on knows who you are, do him the favor of not compromising him by admitting it."

Etain had covered her distinctive Jedi cloak with an Imbraani ankle-length tunic. Jinart indicated her hair. "And that," she said.

"The braid, too?"

"Unless you want to advertise what you are."

Etain hesitated. She had once heard someone say they could never remove their betrothal ring, not until they died. Her Padawan's braid felt equally permanent, as if her soul was woven in with it, and that removing it after so long-even temporarily-would rend the fabric of the universe and underscore her belief that she was not Jedi material. But it had to be done. She unfastened the single thin braid and combed the strands of wavy hair loose with her fingers.

She felt less like a Jedi than ever, and not even remotely close to a commander.

"I imagine you never thought a Jedi commander would run away from a fight," she said to Darman as they made their carefully unhurried way up the track.

"Not running away," Darman said. "This is E and E. Escape and evasion."

"Sounds like running to me."

"Tactical withdrawal to regroup."

"You're a very positive man." The child was almost completely absent now. She could mainly sense focus and purpose. He shamed her without intention. "I'm sorry that I lost my composure earlier."

"Only in private. Not under fire, Commander."

"I said not to call me that."

"Where we can be overheard, I'll obey your order." He paused. "Everyone loses it now and then."

"I'm not supposed to."

"If you don't crack sometimes, how do you know how far you can go?"

It was a good point. For some reason he was far more rea.s.suring than Master Fulier had ever been. Fulier, when not getting caught up in putting the galaxy right, was all effortless brilliance. Darman was expert at his craft, too, but there was a sense of hard-won skill, and there was no randomness or mystery to that.

She liked him for being so pragmatic. It crossed her mind that she might be saving clone soldiers from death by biological agent so they could die from blaster and cannon round. It was a horrible thought.

She didn't like having to kill, not even by another's actions. It was going to make life as a commander exceptionally hard.

The droids advanced along the edge of the wood with flamethrowers borrowed from the same farmer whose fields they were burning. Ghez Hokan and his lieutenants Cuvin and Hurati stood in the path of the blaze, staring back at it from three hundred meters.

"We'll have to burn a great deal of land to deny all cover to the enemy, sir," Cuvin said.

"That isn't the point," Hurati said. "This is as much to create the impression of protecting the facility as it is to flush out troops."

"Correct," Hokan said. "There's no point alienating the natives, and I can't afford to compensate them all for lost production. This is sufficient. We'll use droids on the remaining boundaries."

Cuvin seemed undeterred. "May I suggest we use hunting strills? We could bring in a pack with their handlers in two days. The Trade Federation won't welcome the disruption to the barq harvest, and a shortage of the delicacy will be noticed by some very influential people."

"I don't care," Hokan said. "The same influential people will be even more inconvenienced by the arrival of millions of Republic clones on their homeworlds."

Hokan was in full Mandalorian battle armor now, not so much for protection as to convey a message to his officers. Sometimes he had to indulge in a little theater. He knew that the glow of the flames illuminating his traditional warrior's armor made a fine spectacle, calculated to impress and overawe. He was at war. He didn't have to prost.i.tute his martial skills as an a.s.sa.s.sin or bodyguard for weak and wealthy cowards any longer.

Cuvin was right about the strills, though. It didn't mean he wouldn't have to deal with his dissent, but finding the Republic troops wouldn't be easy.

"How many do you estimate now, Hurati?" he asked.

Hurati flicked a holochart into life and a fly-through image s.h.i.+mmered in the dark. "Vessel downed here, confirmed Republic R5 military droid." He pointed. "Remains of two Weequay militia found here, here, and here-but gdans had dismembered and dragged the cadavers over a five-klick range, so the exact location of the kill is estimated. The air-speeder was brought down here. The speeder circuitry was found dismantled here, but as it was at the entrance to gdan burrows, there's no telling where they might have found it to start with. The engagement with the droid patrol was here, because we deployed the patrol based on that finding."

"That's pretty much all in a five-klick corridor spanning forty klicks. Looks obvious to me that they're heading for Teklet, probably to take the port before targeting the facility."

"It would look that way, sir."

"Numbers?"