Hard Contact

  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 reassuring 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 prostitute his martial skills as an assassin 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 shimmered 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 airspeeder 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?”

  “I would have said no more than ten, sir. We have reports from farmers who’ve found evidence of movement across their land. They’re very protective of their crops, so they notice these subtle signs—unlike droids, sir.”

  “And what does that suggest, then?”

  “Multiple tracks crossing an area forty klicks by thirty klicks, sir. Expertly done, too—the locals thought it might be wildlife, but these tracks are not random. I’d say we’re being decoyed.”

  Ten troops. Ten—pathfinders, special forces, saboteurs? Were they preparing the ground for more troops, or were they tasked to complete the mission on their own? Hokan wished he had a few Mandalorian mercenaries, not droids and career officers. He kept his concern well hidden behind his full-face helmet. He also wished he had more airspeeders; he’d never needed more than one to police farms, and it would take days to have any shipped to Qiilura. “Farmers can be pretty cooperative, can’t they?”

  “Remarkably so, ever since that one found the circuitry, sir.”

  Hokan turned and started walking back toward the research facility that was now empty but lavishly and conspicuously guarded. He beckoned Hurati to follow him. Cuvin started to follow, too, but Hokan held up his hand to motion him to stay put.

  “Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Any sign of my former employee, Guta-Nay?”

  “Not yet, sir. Patrols have been briefed.”

  “Good, and keep an eye on Cuvin for me, won’t you? I don’t think he’s going to make captain.”

  Hurati paused, but briefly. “Understood, sir.”

  It was amazing what the unspoken promise of an extra rank insignia could do. Hokan wondered what had happened to the code of conduct.

  So there were perhaps ten commandos operating in the region. Hunting them down would be enormously time-consuming. Barring luck, Hokan would never catch them, not with droids and these young academy theorists. Sooner or later, the enemy would need to resupply; sooner or later, they would show themselves.

  The Republic was playing decoy games with him, and he with them. It was looking better all the time. They didn’t appear to be adopting their usual tactic of landing infantry in force. It was a game of wits, and if need arose he could sit tight and force the Republic to come to him.

  If he wanted to bring the Republic close enough to shoot, then he might need an even more compelling bait.

  Dr. Uthan would understand. She was a pragmatic woman.

  Fi was getting edgy. It wasn’t like him. Niner had only known him a matter of days, but you made quick judgments on small detail if you were a clone commando, especially among your own.

  He didn’t sleep when Niner relieved him on watch, and after fifteen minutes Fi came forward to the observation position and settled down beside him. The fires seemed to have stopped; the glow was still visible, but it was static. It had probably reached one of the streams and was burning itself out.

  “They know we’re here anyway,” Fi said. Niner needed no telepathy to know he was worrying about Darman. “We could try the comlink at longer range.”

  “They’d get a fix
on positions.”

  “They’d have to get lucky.”

  “And we only have to be unlucky once.”

  “Okay. Sorry, Sarge.”

  He lapsed back into silence. Niner adjusted his infrared filter to remove the distracting light of the fire. Suddenly, it was abnormally silent, and that meant the gdans had stopped their incessant prowling, which was not good.

  Niner looked down his rifle scope one-handed to get a narrower focus on the bushes in front of him. As he panned across 180 degrees, he caught sight of little paired reflections, the alert eyes of gdans huddled in uncharacteristic stillness to avoid something.

  Movement. His scope flashed blue in one quadrant, warning him. Maybe whatever it was could see infrared. He killed the targeting, switching to image intensification and the Mark One Ear’ole, as Skirata called it. You got eyes and ears, son, good ones. Don’t rely on the tech too much. Something was coming, something slow, stealthy, smaller than a man, more sly than a droid.

  Niner put his hand on Fi’s shoulder—Stay down—not daring to speak, even on comlink.

  It was ten meters away, coming straight at them, making no attempt to stalk. Maybe it didn’t know what they were. It was going to get a surprise, then.

  Niner flicked on his tactical spot-lamp, and the blinding beam caught a shining black shape. He cut the beam immediately, muscles relaxing. The creature was so flat to the ground now that it looked as if it were flowing water. It was only when it was right in front of them that it sat up and became Valaqil.

  “I thought I’d let you see me coming, given your armaments,” said a voice that wasn’t Valaqil’s but was equally liquid and hypnotic. “I make it a rule never to startle a humanoid with a rifle.”

  “Just as well that we’ve seen a Gurlanin before,” Fi said, and touched his glove to his helmet politely.

  “I didn’t seem to surprise your colleague, either. I’ve come to brief you. I’m Jinart. Please don’t call me ma’am every two seconds like Darman does.”

  Niner wanted to ask a hundred questions about Darman, but the Gurlanin had used the present tense and so he was alive. Niner was glad he had his helmet in place. Displays of emotion weren’t professional, not to outsiders, anyway.

  “You’re heading for the wrong target,” Jinart said. “You’re on a course for the Separatist base. Normally you’d be knocking on the door of a barracks with a hundred droids inside, but they’ve moved half of them to defend the research facility and patrol the area. Neither Uthan nor her nanovirus is at the actual facility any longer.”

  “So it’s all going just great,” Fi said cheerfully.

  “Your targets are at a villa just outside Imbraani, despite what evidence you might see of the facility being defended. It’s a trap.”

  “What’s Darman doing?” Niner asked.

  “He has your special ordnance and detailed plans of your targets. I’ve sent him into hiding with the Jedi.”

  “General Fulier? We thought—”

  “You thought right. He’s dead. The Jedi is his Padawan, Tur-Mukan. Don’t get your hopes up. She isn’t commander material—not yet, perhaps never. For the time being, this is still your war.”

  “We weren’t planning on a frontal assault, not without infantry,” Niner said. “Now that we’ve lost the advantage of surprise, we’re going to have to get it back again.”

  “You do have one element—Ghez Hokan has no accurate idea how few of you there are. I’ve made sure there are many, many obvious signs of movement through the woods and fields.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “I can do a good impersonation of a small army, or at least its movement.” Jinart glanced at Atin and Fi as if checking them. Maybe she was working out how she would mimic the form of a commando. “Not thinking of shooting and eating any merlies, are you?”

  “Why?”

  “That armor isn’t looking such a tight fit on you as it should.”

  Fi nodded. “She’s right. Expending about thirty percent more calories than planned, Sarge. They didn’t calculate for us carrying gear overland.”

  “You’ll exhaust your rations soon,” Jinart said. “Merlies are delicious. Just never shoot one, please. If necessary, I could hunt them and leave them for you.”

  “Why?”

  “The one you shoot might be me.”

  It was one more angle they hadn’t covered on exercises. Not even Kal Skirata had dealt with Gurlanins, it seemed, or if he had he hadn’t mentioned it. Niner liked them. He wondered what world they came from. It was bound to be a fascinating one.

  “Where will you head now?” Jinart asked. “I need to let Darman know where you are.”

  “I’d have said RV Gamma, but that’s going the wrong way, from what you’ve told us.”

  “I can give you the location of a suitable area nearer Imbraani, and when I return to Darman I will give him the same coordinates.”

  Atin cut in. “They mine gems here, right?”

  “Zeka quartz and various green silicates, mainly, yes.”

  “Picks and shovels or mechanized?”

  “Mechanized.”

  “They’ll have explosives for blasting, then. And remote detonators with nice, safe, long-range settings.”

  Gurlanins chuckled just like a human. She might have been amused. On the other hand, she might have been thinking Atin was a madman. But Niner liked the direction that Atin’s inventive mind was taking.

  “Get your holocharts,” Jinart said. “Let me give you a virtual guide to the gem industry of the Imbraani region.”

  10

  NOTICE TO QIILURAN CITIZENS

  Anyone found with Republic personnel on their land will have that property confiscated and will forfeit their freedom. They, their family, and anyone employed by them in any capacity will be delivered to the Trandoshan representative at Teklet for enslavement. Anyone actively aiding or sheltering Republic personnel will face the death penalty.

  A reward is offered for anyone providing information leading to the capture of Republic personnel or deserters from the former militia or the Separatist armed forces, in particular Lieutenant Guta-Nay or Lieutentant Pir Cuvin.

  —By order of Major Ghez Hokan, commanding officer, Teklet Garrison

  A thin, cold drizzle started falling almost as soon as the sun came up. It felt like Kamino; it felt like home, and that was at once both reassuring and unpleasant.

  The moisture beaded on Darman’s cloak, and he shook it off. Merlie wool was full of natural oils that made it feel unpleasantly clammy next to the skin. He longed to get back into the black bodysuit, and not only because of its ballistic properties.

  Etain was pushing the rear of the cart. Darman was pulling it, walking between its twin shafts. There were times on the rutted track when she had the worst of it, but—as she kept telling him—Jedi could summon the Force.

  “I could help,” he said.

  “I can manage.” Her voice sounded like she was straining it through her teeth. “If this is lightweight gear, I’d rather not see the regular variety.”

  “I meant I could help with martial skills. If you want to train with your lightsaber.”

  “I’d probably end up slicing off something you’d miss later.”

  No, she wasn’t what he was expecting at all. They walked on, trying hard to look downtrodden and rural, which wasn’t so much of a challenge when you were hungry, wet, and tired. The dirt road was deserted: at this time of year there should have been visible activity at first light. Ahead of them was the first safe house, a single-story hut topped by a mixture of straw thatch and rusting metal plates.

  “I’ll knock,” Etain said. “They’ll probably run for their lives if they see you first.”

  Darman took it as a sensible observation rather than an insult. He pulled his cloak up across his mouth and pushed the cart out of sight behind the hut, looking around slowly and carefully as if he were casually taking in the countryside. There were no windows at the rear, just
a simple door and a well-worn path in the grass leading to a pit with an interesting aroma and a plank across it. It wasn’t an ideal location for an ambush, but he wasn’t taking chances. Stopping in the open like this made you vulnerable.

  He didn’t like it at all. He wished he could feign invisibility like Sergeant Skirata, a short, wiry, nondescript little man who could pass completely unnoticed, until he decided to stop and fight. And Skirata could fight in a lot of ways that weren’t in the training manual. Darman recalled all of them.

  He pressed his elbow into his side to reassure himself that his rifle was within easy reach. Then he slipped his hand under his cloak and felt for one of the probes in his belt.

  When he reached the front again, Etain was still rapping on the doorpost. There was no response. She stood back and seemed to be looking at the door as if willing it to open.

  “They’re gone,” she said. “I can’t sense anyone.”

  Darman straightened up and walked casually toward the rear of the house. “Let me check the regular way.”

  He beckoned her to follow. Once around the back, he took a probe and slid the flat sensor strip carefully under the gap beneath the back door. The readout on the section that he was holding said there were no traces of explosive or pathogen. If the place was booby-trapped, it would be very low tech. It was time for a hands-on check. He pressed on the door with his left hand, rifle in his right.

  “It’s empty,” Etain whispered.

  “Can you sense a tripwire that’ll send a row of metal spikes swinging into you?” he asked.

  “Point taken.”

  The door swung slowly open. Nothing. Darman took a remote from his belt and sent it inside, picking up low-light images from the interior. There was no movement. The room appeared clear. He let the door swing back, recalled the remote, and stood with his back to the entrance for one final check around him.

  “I go in, look again, then you follow me if you hear me say in, in, in, okay?” he said, almost under his breath. He didn’t meet her eyes. “Lightsaber ready, too.”

  As soon as he was inside, he pulled his rifle, stood hard up in the corner, and scanned the room. Clear. So clear, in fact, that last night’s meal was still half eaten on the table. There was a single door that didn’t appear to open to the exterior. A cupboard, a closet—maybe a threat. He trained his rifle on it.