Republic Commando_ Hard Contact Part 23

"Then get your people moving."

"You think it'll come to that? To a battle?"

"No, not here. But if it does, this gives me the best chance of succeeding."

"You're prepared to fight while sitting on a bomb, effectively."

"Yes. Your bomb. And if we're both sitting on it, it'll motivate us to prevent its detonation, won't it?"

"I think you're a dangerous and foolhardy man."

"And I think you're a woman who's lucky that she has relative immunity through her value to the Separatist cause." Hokan straightened up. Maybe she wanted an apology. He saw no reason to give one. A scientist, expecting half the relevant facts to be acceptable in the solution of a problem? It was sloppy, unforgivably sloppy. "I'll have a droid help you if you like."

"We'll do it ourselves. I know how careful they are with fragile objects."

Hokan closed the holochart and walked out into the corridor.

Outside, a droid approached him. "Captain Hurati is bringing a prisoner and a visitor," he said. "He says he disobeyed your orders on both."

Maybe promoting the man hadn't been such a good idea. But Hurati was smart. He'd taken them alive when he should have taken them dead, and that was significant. The young officer wasn't squeamish.

Hokan decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. When the droids at the entrance parted to let him pa.s.s, Hurati was waiting, and he had two others with him.

One was a Trandoshan mercenary. He carried his distinctive tool of the trade, an APC repeating blaster.

The other was no stranger at all. It was Guta-Nay, his former Weequay lieutenant.

"I got information," the Weequay said, cowering.

"You better have," Hokan said.

With one pair of shoulders missing, Niner had some hard choices to make about what equipment they could take with them. He stared down at the various weapons and piles of ordnance laid out on the ground, astonished by what they had managed to carry as well as in consideration of what they couldn't take into battle.

"We could always cache some stuff near the target," Fi said.

"Two trips-double the risk."

Atin picked up one of the LJ-50 concussion rifles. He had been most insistent on saving those. "Well, I'm taking this conk rifle and the APC array blaster if I'm going into that facility."

"Don't trust Republic procurement, then?" Fi said.

"No point being a sn.o.b about gear," Atin said.

"Don't get stuck in any confined s.p.a.ces."

It was a fair point: with a backpack, Deece, rifle attachments, and sections of cannon, there wasn't a lot of room left to load much else. Niner didn't want to say it aloud, but they were trying to do two squads' work. Something had to give.

"Come on, you know I can carry equipment," Etain said.

She didn't look like she could even carry a tune: battered, disheveled, and ashen, she seemed about to drop. "Ask Darman."

"That right, Dar?" Niner said on the helmet link.

Darman glanced down from his observation point in the tree. "Like a bantha, Sarge. Load her up."

They could split the E-Web across five of them. That meant an extra piece and a decent supply of extra power cells and ordnance.

"Okay, plan A," Niner said. He projected a holochart from his datapad. "The nearest suitable laying-up point is just under one kilometer from the facility in this coppice here. We tab down there now and deploy two surveillance remotes to give us a good view of both the facility and the villa. Depending on the situation, we can try to come back for the spare gear during the day. It's two klicks each way. Not a lot, but it's daylight, and if Guta-Nay did the business, we'll have a lot of attention."

"I'm up for it," Atin said. "We're going to need it."

"Go on with plan A," Etain said.

"As we agreed-get a remote loaded with ribbon charge into the villa and do what damage we can, while Fi lays down fire at the rear of the facility, Darman blows the main doors, and I go in with Atin. If we can't get the remote into the villa, then we have to tie the droids down with a split attack-plan B."

Etain chewed her lower lip. "That sounds almost impossible."

"I never said we had good odds."

"And I'm not that much use against droids."

"You would be if you had one of these," Atin said, and offered her the Trandoshan array blaster. "Lightsabers are all very well, but we don't want to get too intimate with the enemy, do we? It's got a good close-range spread so you don't even have to be an expert marksman to use it." He made a gesture with his hands. "Bang. Serious bang."

She took the weapon and examined it carefully, then shouldered it like a pro. "Never used one of these. I'll get the hang of it fast."

"That's the spirit, ma'am."

"You should also know that I can move things, too. Not just carry them."

"Move?"

"With the Force."

"Handy," Fi said.

Niner slapped a clip of plasma bolt rounds in Fi's hand to shut him up. "We might need you to keep Doctor Uthan cooperative, too. Worse comes to worst, we've got sedation for her, but I'd really rather have her walking than as a deadweight."

"Is there a plan C?"

"The nice thing about the alphabet, ma'am, is that it gives you plenty of plans to choose from," Fi said.

"Shut up, Fi," Niner said.

"He has a point," Etain said. She spun around to face the undergrowth. "Jinart?"

The Gurlanin slipped out of the bushes and wandered among the selection of weapons, a glossy black predator again, picking her way between the equipment with careful paws. She sniffed at it.

"Show me what I need to carry," she said.

"Can you manage three remotes?" Atin asked.

"All bombs?"

"No, two holo-cams, one bomb."

"Very well. You can explain to me what you want done with them when we reach your..."

"Laying-up point," Niner prompted. "LUP."

"You enjoy not being understood, don't you?"

"Part of our mystique and charm," Fi said, and strapped more webbing onto his armor.

They followed the line of the woods, a route that took them a couple of kilometers out of their way, but offered the shortest distance over open terrain. Etain-Niner still struggled with first-name familiarity, even in his muni-kept close to Darman. She seemed to like him. She was polite and sympathetic to the rest of them, but she certainly liked Darman. Niner could see it on her face. She exuded concern. He heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation.

"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 gra.s.s. 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 ap.r.o.n.

"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."