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.
“There’s your demolitions man,” Atin said, tapping the droid on its head, and retrieved his grenade. He wiped it with his glove and put it back in his belt pack.
“I’d rather have Darman,” Niner said. He studied the inert droid, which seemed to be waiting for the dislodged rock to be cleared. It jerked suddenly into life, made its way toward a crate of explosives, opened the safety lid, and took out several tubes. Then it turned toward the room where the detonators were kept. Niner reached out and opened its control panel to deactivate it. “Take some time off, friend,” he said. “Blasting’s over for the day.”
It didn’t appear that the Weequay had been employed here. The droid sorted all the charges and oversaw the blasting. On an upturned crate were the remains of a meal, eaten off makeshift plates fashioned from box lids. It looked like the Weequays had been hiding out here, and Niner was pretty sure he knew who they had been avoiding.
Atin checked the various charges and detonators, selecting what appeared to take his fancy and piling it in a clear space on the muddy floor. He was a connoisseur of technology, especially things with complex circuitry. “Lovely,” he said, with genuine satisfaction. “Some dets here that you can set off from fifty klicks. That’s what we need. A bit of a pyrotechnics show.”
“Can we carry as much as we need?”
“Oh, there’s some beauties here. Darman would think they were pretty basic, but they’re going to work fine as a diversion. Absolute beauts.” Atin held up spheres about the size of a scoopball. “Now this baby—”
Crash.
Something fell to the floor in one of the rooms off the main one. Atin held his rifle on the doorway and Niner drew his sidearm. He was edging toward the door when a sudden voice almost made him squeeze the trigger.
“Ap-xmai keepuna!” The voice was shaking, and judging by the accent it probably belonged to a Weequay. “Don’t kill! I help you!”
“Out. Now.” Projected from his helmet, Atin’s voice was intimidating enough without a rifle to back it up. A Weequay stumbled out from behind a stack of crates and sank to his knees, hands held up. Atin pushed him down flat with his boot, Deece aimed at his head. “Arms behind your back and don’t even breathe. Got it?”
The Weequay appeared to have got it very quickly. He froze and let Niner cuff his wrists with a length of wire. Niner did a sweep of the rooms again, worried that if they’d missed one target they might have missed more. But it was clear. He walked back and squatted down by the Weequay’s head.
“We don’t need a prisoner slowing us down,” he said. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
“Please, I know Hokan.”
“I’ll bet you know him pretty well if you were hiding out here. What’s your name?”
“Guta-Nay. I were right-hand man.”
“Not anymore, though, eh?”
“I know places.”
“Yeah, we know places, too.”
“I got key codes.”
“We’ve got ordnance.”
“I got codes to Teklet ground station.”
“You wouldn’t be messing around, would you, Guta-Nay? I don’t have time for that.”
“Hokan kill me. You take me with you? You Republic guys nice, you gentlemen.”
“Steady, Guta-Nay. All those syllables might burn you out.”
Niner looked at Atin. He shrugged.
“He’ll slow us down, Sarge.”
“Then we either leave him here or kill him.”
The conversation wasn’t designed to scare Guta-Nay, but it had that effect anyway. It was a genuine problem: Niner was reluctant to drag a prisoner around with them, and there was no guarantee the Weequay wouldn’t try to buy back favor from Hokan with intelligence on their strength and movements. He was an unwelcome dilemma. Atin clicked his Deece, and it started to power up.
“I get you Neimie boss, too!”
“We definitely don’t need him.”
“Neimie’s really mad at Hokan. He put droids in his nice shiny villa. Floors messed up.”
Guta-Nay’s breathing rasped in the silence of the room. Niner weighed the extra baggage against the prospect of some edge in gaining access to Uthan.
“Where’s Uthan now?”
“Still in villa. Nowhere else to hide.”
“You know a lot about Hokan, don’t you?”
“Everything.” Guta-Nay was all submission. “Too much.”
“Okay,” Niner said. “You got a reprieve.”
Atin waited a couple of seconds before powering down his rifle. He seemed doubtful. Niner couldn’t see his expression, but he heard the characteristic slight exhalation that was Atin’s silent oh-terrific.
“He’ll leave a trail a worrt could follow.”
“Ideas?”
“Yeah.” Atin leaned over Guta-Nay, and the Weequay turned his head slightly, eyes wide with terror. He seemed more terrified by the helmet than the gun. “Where do the droids take the raw rock?”
“Big place south of Teklet.”
“How far south?”
“Five klick maybe.”
Atin straightened up and indicated with a pointed finger that he was going outside. “Technical solution. Wait one.”
His predilection for gadgets was becoming a blessing. Niner was tempted to take back the unkind thoughts he’d had about the man’s training sergeant. He followed him outside. Atin jogged alongside one of the excavation droids, matching its pace before jumping up scrambling onto its flatbed. The machine rumbled inexorably up the slope as if nothing was going to divert it from its progress to the screening plant. Then it stopped and swung around, narrowly missing the droid bringing up its rear. It paused a couple of meters from Niner; Atin, kneeling on the flatbed, held up two cables.
“You can’t get it to do tricks,” he said. “But you can start, steer, and stop it now.”
“Brain bypass, eh?”
“I’ve seen a few people with those …”
“So we ride it into town?”
“How else are we going to move all this explosive?”
They couldn’t pass up the chance. Niner had plans for the charges, places to lay them all around the Imbraani countryside. They also had a temptingly neat window of opportunity to take out the ground station at Teklet, and rendering Hokan’s troops deaf to what was happening around them would double their chances of pulling off the mission. It meant they could use their own long-range comlinks at last.
“Tell you what,” Niner said. “I’ll take this one to Teklet. You hotwire another and take Fi and our friend as far
back down the road to Imbraani as you can get with as much as you can carry.” He took out his datapad and checked the chart. “Lay up here where Jinart suggested, with the droid if you can, without it if you can’t.”
A bulldozer droid on a steady path to the screening plant would attract no attention. It just had to overshoot by a few kilometers. It would be dusk soon, and darkness was their best asset when it came to moving around.
Niner hauled Guta-Nay out of the building. “Is the ground station defended in any way?”
Guta-Nay had his head lowered, looking up from under his brows as if blows to the head normally accompanied questions. “Just fence to stop merlies and thieving. Only farmers around, and they scared anyway.”
“If you’re lying to me, I’ll see that you get back to Ghez Hokan alive. Okay?”
“Okay. Truth, I swear.”
Niner summoned Fi from his cover position, and they loaded two droids. One carried enough explosives to reduce the ground station to powder several times over, and the other took everything they could lay their hands on, except for some detonators and explosives to keep the blasting droid busy for a few more hours. There was no point letting the quarry’s silence advertise the fact that they had liberated some ordnance. It would spoil the whole surprise.
They loaded Guta-Nay last, bundling him into the huge bucket scoop with his arms still bound. He protested at being stuck on top of spheres of explosive.
“Don’t worry,” Atin said dismissively. “I’ve got all the dets here.” He bounced a few detonators up and down in his palm; Guta-Nay flinched. “You’ll be fine.”
“Jinart’s quite an asset,” Fi said. He took off his helmet to drink from his bottle, and Guta-Nay made an incoherent noise.
“She could be right behind us now and we’d never know. I hope they stay on our side.” Niner removed his helmet, too, and they shared the bottle before handing it to Atin for a last swig. “What’s that Weequay whining about now?”
“Dunno,” Atin said, and took his helmet off as well. He paused, bottle in hand, and they all stood and stared at Guta-Nay, loaded in the scoop of the droid like cargo.
His mouth was slightly open and his eyes were darting from one commando to the next. He was making a slight uh-uh-uh sound, as if he was trying to scream but couldn’t.
“It’s Atin’s face,” Fi said. “Don’t stand there being so ugly, man. You’re scaring him.”
Niner gave the Weequay a quick prod with his glove to shut him up.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever seen commandos before?”
They were here.
The break that Ghez Hokan had been waiting for had come: a farmer had rushed to notify the authorities that Republic soldiers—one man, one woman, both very young—were at a house on the Imbraani–Teklet road.
Hokan studied the dripping foliage at the side of the farmhouse. The maze of footsteps in the mud and the crushed stalks were no different from those on any farm, and they were disappearing fast in the rain. Behind the ramshackle collection of sheds and stone walls, the land sloped away to the Braan River.
“It’s a mess in there, sir,” Hurati said. “One wall nearly blown out. All dead. And that was just two enemy commandos.”
“One,” Hokan said.
“One?”
“Only male clones in the front line. The other had to be a Jedi.” He turned over the body of an Umbaran with his boot and shook his head. “That wound was made by a lightsaber. I know what a lightsaber wound looks like. Two people. I wouldn’t even have that information if it hadn’t been for informants. Do I have to rely on dung-caked farmers for intelligence? Do I? Do I?”
He regretted having to shout. But it seemed necessary. “Why can’t anyone manage to call it in when they make an enemy contact? Think! Use your di’kutla heads, or I’ll show you how to recognize a lightsaber wound the hard way.” Two droids began lifting the Umbaran’s body onto a speeder. “Leave that thing where it is. Get after your comrades and find me some enemy.”
Hurati put his hand to the side of his head. “Droids have found something else in a house up the road, sir.” His expression fell blank as he listened to his comlink. “Oh. Oh.” He turned to Hokan. “I think you should see this for yourself, sir.”
Hurati didn’t strike him as an officer that would waste his time. They mounted the speeder and worked their way back up the road to another small, dilapidated hovel set among the trees. Hokan followed Hurati into the farmhouse, where a couple of droids had illuminated the rooms with spot-lamps.
For some reason he would never fathom, the first aspect of the chaos that caught his eye was the soup tureen lying on its side on the filthy floor. It was only when he turned his head that he saw the bodies.
“Ah,” Hokan said.
Soldiers used blasters. In a pinch, they would use knives or blunt objects. But he had never known anyone in uniform, not even his ragtag militia, who used teeth. The three adults were ripped and torn as if a large carnivore had attacked them. All had crush injuries to what was left of their throats. One woman had so little intact tissue in her neck that the head was bent over at almost ninety degrees. Hokan found himself staring.
“There are others outside in the shed,” Hurati said.
Hokan had never considered himself easily disturbed, but this worried him. It was an act by something he didn’t recognize and couldn’t comprehend, beyond the scope of a sentient creature’s simple revenge. It might have been coincidence, an animal attack on someone who happened to be an informer—but he couldn’t think of any species on Qiilura that could or would bring down humans.
Hurati studied the bodies. “I didn’t think killing civilians was the Republic’s style.”
“It’s not,” Hokan said. “And commandos wouldn’t waste time on work that wouldn’t aid their effort.”
“Well, whoever killed them wasn’t motivated by robbery.” Hurati picked up a large metal bowl from the floor, dusted it with his glove, and set it on a shelf. “This is probably our informer. I wouldn’t count on much assistance from now on. Word will get around fast.”
“You’re certain there are no blaster wounds?” It might have been simple predation. He knew in his gut that it wasn’t. But what had done this?
“None,” Hurati said.
Hokan didn’t like it at all. He beckoned Hurati to follow him and walked out briskly to summon two droids. “I want a ring around Imbraani. Pull all the droids back. I’d rather lose Teklet than risk Uthan’s project.”
“We could arrange for Doctor Uthan to be evacuated.”
“Moving her and her entourage is going to be slow and conspicuous. We’re better off defending a position than moving. I want half the droids blatantly visible at the facility and the other half around the villa—but discreetly, understand?”
There was a rattle of metal in the distance, and Hokan spun around to see droids swarming toward the riverbank.
“Have they found anything?”
Hurati pressed his hand to his head, listening to the comlink. “Two enemy sighted five klicks west of here, sir. The droids have engaged them.”
“That’s more like it,” Hokan said. “I’d like at least one alive, preferably both if the girl’s a Jedi.”
He swung onto the speeder bike and motioned Hurati to sit up front and drive. The speeder zipped down the track heading west as Hurati confirmed coordinates with the droid patrol.
Hokan hoped the droids could manage an instruction like take them alive. He needed real troops for this, actual soldiers who could get into awkward places and see subtle things. He now had just thirty organic officers remaining and slightly under a hundred droids: ideal for a small set-piece battle, but next to useless for countering a commando force spread over terrain with plenty of cover.
They’d definitely have to come to him. Just this once, though, he’d humor them and join the pursuit.
11
Owing to shortages, we regret to inform you that we have b
een forced to increase the price of the new season’s barq. Shortages are due to local difficulties at source. We will of course be giving preference to our most favored regular customers.
—Trade Federation notice to wholesalers
Darman had taken down quite a few tinnies on Geonosis, and one thing he’d learned was that they were built for conventional infantry combat on nice, flat ground.
They weren’t so clever on treacherous terrain—or without an organic officer calling the shots.
He could see a group of trees a hundred meters away that appeared to be skylined against nothing, and he hoped that meant there might be an escarpment on the other side. “Down there,” he yelled to Etain, pointing. “Come on, and get ready to jump.”
He’d almost forgotten the pain in his shoulder. He clutched his rifle tight to his chest and sprinted for the tree line. It took him ten seconds. The land sloped away below, all thorn bushes and muddy soil right down to the river, broken only by a natural back-sloping terrace that formed a small gully. When he looked back, Etain was right behind him—and he wasn’t expecting her to be.
“Keep going!” she panted. “Don’t keep looking back.”
The blasterfire of the advancing droids was hitting branches far too close for comfort. When they got to the edge he simply shoved her. She tried to right herself for a second before falling and rolling down the slope. He launched himself and rolled after her.
Darman had the protection of Katarn armor, but she didn’t. When they came to a halt at the bottom of the gully, Etain was minus her outer cloak and plus a lot of scrapes. But she still had two sections of the E-Web cannon strapped to her share of the pack. She was clinging to them with grim determination.
“Next time, let me jump, will you?” she hissed. “I’m not completely helpless.”
“Sorry.” He checked his grenades. “I’m going to run short of ammo soon. I’m going to have to sacrifice some demolition ordnance.”