Jusik heard Skirata let out a long breath that he seemed to have been holding for months.
“I’m dying to hear the explanation,” Uthan said as the hatch closed. She looked around at the helmeted Mandalorians, troopers, and Ruu, and edged away a little from Mird, who sniffed her leg enthusiastically. Arla cowered in a recess by the weapons locker at the sight of the armor, and would not be coaxed out. “But thank you, gentlemen. Where to now?”
“We’ll wait somewhere safe until the fighting dies down,” Skirata said.
The LAAT/i lifted. Vau indicated Arla with a gracious gesture.
“Did we plan this, Kal?” he asked. “Why do we have an extra passenger?”
Skirata rubbed his face wearily with both hands. “I think I agree with Bard’ika that we couldn’t leave her behind.”
“But what was she in there for? It’s important, Kal, given the business the Valorum Center is in…”
“She murders people,” Skirata said mildly. “Like that makes her not good enough for us?”
“Oh, shab…”
Ordo said nothing, but Jusik could see Fi’s shoulders shaking slightly, and knew that even in this terrible, bizarre, potentially deadly situation, he was laughing uncontrollably.
“I thought I was a chancer,” Skirata said, “but Bard’ika, you make me look like a Neimoidian accountant. You know who that is, don’t you? If she is who she thinks she is, anyway. Because she’s supposed to be dead.”
“Oh, I know,” Jusik said. In the last few years, he’d absorbed all he could about Mandalore and its people, both from Mando’ade themselves and from aruetiise who knew them all too well—like certain Jedi. “And that’s why she deserves our help.”
“So who is it?” Vau asked, plainly irritated. Mird watched the woman with head cocked, tail slapping. “We’d better have a good reason for taking a psychotic killer with us tonight.”
“We have,” said Jusik. “That’s Arla Fett—Jango’s missing sister.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kashyyyk,
three days into the Battle of Coruscant, 1,083 days ABG
I didn’t realize they had names. What do they think about? They don’t know what life is really like, and all they know is war, so they’re probably perfectly happy. I’m glad they don’t suffer.
—Jedi Padawan Simi Noor, discussing clone troopers
Sev sat with one hand to the side of his helmet as if he was having trouble hearing his comlink. Fifty meters beneath the thick cables of living vine that formed the walkways from tree to tree, Scorch could see the beaten track of crushed vegetation. Battle droids couldn’t climb trees.
“What’s happening?” Scorch whispered, even though he knew sound couldn’t be heard outside his helmet. “Have they Code-Fived us yet?”
Sev shook his head. “Inner Rim only. Anyway, aren’t we busy enough? Listen for yourself. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“I’m eavesdropping on the Sep comm band.”
“Well, Corrie’s taking a pounding.”
“Shab. Have they landed ground forces yet?”
“Yeah, it’s hotting up down there. But that’s okay, because we have a nice big fleet now.”
“Allies? How kind of them to remember us.”
“Ours. Looks like Palps kept his spare war machine down the back of the sofa for a rainy day.”
Scorch didn’t take his eyes off the route below as he switched channels to pick up the command frequencies at HQ. He knew the battle droid patrol was coming, and Boss was keeping visual observation from the ground. It wasn’t as if Delta didn’t have a job to do here, but the sheer helplessness of hearing the comm traffic—he switched out of the pilots’ circuit because it was actually distressing him—was painful. They were light-years away. There was nothing he could do. Even with the massively reinforced fleet outside the shield, it was a desperate battle to stave off the destruction beneath it.
And he was waiting to ruin a Sep patrol’s entire day himself. It was a rare moment of quiet; the Wookiees were reestablishing a bridge network higher in the trees to replace the one at Kachirho, much narrower and more fragile spans that wouldn’t take enemy traffic. If the Seps wanted to use these borrat-runs of aerial pathways, they’d have to be on foot.
“Fixer, this is Scorch—you receiving?”
“I’m ready.” The vine walkway vibrated under Scorch’s boots as Fixer emerged from a mass of foliage and padded along the aerial pathway. Scorch thought it was a lot of vibration for an eighty-five-kilo man to generate until he saw Enacca ambling behind him. Skirata’s Wookiee buddy usually fixed his transport and safe houses for him, and Scorch wondered how he was coping without her. “Enacca says the Seps have been moving triple-A parts. They’re reinforcing the battery position west of here.”
Enacca rumbled in her throat and gestured with a long, hairy arm.
“Good idea, we’ll go recce that battery first,” Sev said. “Let’s see what the general has to say, though. Is she wearing her earpiece?”
“She is,” said a voice on the channel, but Etain didn’t sound annoyed. If anything, she sounded as if she’d had a disagreement with Command. “I listen to the experts, which in this case is the Wookiees—and you.”
“Flattered, ma’am,” Sev said. “But do I get a droid to play with later? I like to see how they come apart.”
“Do you think they’re sentient, Sev? Droids, I mean?”
It was a weird question to ask when they were getting ready to destroy yet more enemy personnel, a bit too philosophical for the mood of the moment. Sev was still hyped up despite few hours’ sleep. It was killing Geonosians, not droids, that had become a focus for him. Scorch knew he was itching to get at some more. He kept his head tilted up as if waiting for the bugs to come back, and from the shared HUD icon, Scorch could see he still kept a tally of Geonosian kills. His sensors were set to detect their specific flight pattern.
“Yeah,” Sev said casually, which didn’t match what Scorch could see happening in his HUD. “Tinnies think, act, and they don’t want to be destroyed. And they’re smarter than a lot of wets we meet.”
“Just asking because of the way wets don’t think of you as being real beings.”
Scorch made a winding gesture to the side of his helmet. Humor her, Sev. But Sev carried on.
“I don’t kill ’em because I think they’re inferior to me, ma’am,” he said. “I kill ’em because they’re trying to kill us.”
“We’d all be best buddies,” Fixer said. “It’s just our wicked masters who set us against each other. Otherwise we’d be having an ale together.”
Etain went quiet. Scorch wondered if she was feeling the pressure, too. He had an understanding with her now. She didn’t tell him to get a grip or buck his ideas up when he lost control. She just made him feel better—not that he was any more comfortable about the Jedi mind trick, but she’d asked his permission first—and let him know he wasn’t crazy; it was the situation he was forced into that was insane and wrong.
Jedi or not, she had to be feeling it as well. “You okay, General?” he asked.
There was a crackle in the circuit as if she’d switched off her audio for a moment.
“I’m worried about Coruscant,” she said. “I have friends and… family there.”
Well, at least she was honest enough to admit she had a bit of a thing going with Darman, in not so many words. Scorch found he could shut the doors on feelings like that. Getting that close to anyone caused pain; Vau had told them so, when they were wide-eyed kids drinking in his wisdom and he was the most important figure in their limited world. Letting anyone get under your skin, trusting anyone who said they loved you, was a recipe for being hurt and betrayed. So they had to protect themselves by keeping the world at arm’s length. It was good advice for the life they led.
“Darman will be fine.” Scorch took the risk of acknowledging her open secret. “He’s a survivor, like all the Omegas. Shab, they couldn’t even kill Fi permanently,
and he was dead.”
“Yeah, nobody could shut Fi’s mouth for good,” Sev said. “It’s a force of nature in its own right.”
That was another cover story nobody bought but that everyone accepted. Etain swallowed loudly. Boy, was she in a weird mood today…
“I have a child,” she said.
Scorch really didn’t have a comeback for that. It even shut Sev up. Nobody said a word, except Enacca, but it was very soft; and they didn’t understand every word of Shyriiwook.
“That’s kriffing awkward for you, ma’am,” Boss said at last. They knew the Jedi rules, although they also knew there was now some weird Jedi sect that had shown up to fight alongside the Temple boys, and they were okay about having families. “We didn’t even hear you tell us that. We know nothing.”
“Thank you, Boss,” Etain said. “Now let’s see what our Sep friends are up to.”
Scorch had no idea where Etain was until she swung onto an almost horizontal branch above them that was thicker than she was tall. She dropped down and hardly made the vine walkway shiver.
“If only we’d known Grievous was on his way to Coruscant from here,” she said.
“Not much we could have done about it, except warn Zey.” Scorch was trying not to dwell on the idea that Darman was the father of Etain’s kid. It was another thing Delta knew that they would never discuss outside the squad, if they discussed it at all. “And the new fleet caught them in the end.”
That wasn’t much comfort if your child was on Coruscant. Scorch switched off the distracting thoughts and concentrated on what he could control and understand best.
“Let’s go,” Boss said.
Scorch topped up his impromptu camouflage by smearing handfuls of gritty moss across the bright yellow and white flashes on his armor, and decided that there really were times when stealth did matter. Those camo-coatings that the 41st Elite wore had their place.
Enacca let out a very low rumble, right on the threshold of Scorch’s hearing. It showed up on his HUD sensors as a jagged and short-lived trace on the ’scope. A patrol was approaching. He lay flat, looking down on the forest floor below. Sev and Fixer followed suit.
A familiar sound grew louder: the chunk-chunk-chunk of battle droids. Their gait was slower and less regular than usual. They were negotiating uneven ground, branches, vegetation.
Crash.
And pits. Wookiees were good at digging deep, deep pits.
Scorch heard loud metallic crashing and the creaking of green wood. The droids clattered to re-form, leaving two behind to retrieve their fallen—very fallen—comrade.
“Mind your step, clanker,” Sev said.
They weren’t making fast progress. Delta, Etain, and Enacca moved along the network of vine paths above the patrol, unseen and unheard through the dense foliage and chattering wildlife. Eventually, they ran out of path, and the droids clanked off to the right deeper into the trees. Scorch swung his rappel line—firing it would produce a sound clearly not of the forest—and hooked the next tree, swinging across to the nearest branch like the locals. Sev and Fixer followed him. Boss and the others were somewhere behind now, out of sight in the sun-dappled branches.
Enacca growled.
“She says that if you were a meter taller and covered in hair, Scorch, she might think you were attractive,” Boss said. “You swing like a Wookiee.”
Sev snorted. “That’s the best offer he’s had all year.”
“Any idea when the Council plans to take a crack at Kashyyyk, General?” Fixer asked.
“As soon as Master Vos finishes up at Boz Pity,” Etain said. “Which could be anytime now.”
“I’m so going to enjoy serving alongside him…”
“If I run into him, I promise I’ll give him a quick lesson in courtesy.”
“Good for you, ma’am, it’s—” Scorch stopped dead. His HUD sensor picked it up first, an abrupt change in density and a shift from organic to metallic compounds, but then he saw it; it was like a warehouse that had been airlifted and dumped in the heart of the forest. “My, the Seps have been busy bad boys.”
They’d built structures that soared into the tree canopy, soaring charcoal-gray metal insults to the landscape. Scorch had to check his sensors again.
“Turbolaser battery,” said Boss. “Decisions, decisions. Take it now, or come back with a few hairy reinforcements?”
“Come back later, after I’ve rigged some of my special-recipe ordnance,” Scorch said. “And I’ll take it offline the loud, enjoyable way.”
“You get all the fun.” Sev studied the structure as if he was going to bite a chunk out of it to test it. “Can I pick off the Trandos as they run away screaming?”
“Knock yourself out,” said Boss. “It’ll give you a treat to look forward to.”
They lingered for another quarter hour, carrying out passive scans of the tower to get a better idea of the layout, and then made their way back to the aerial walkway. Scorch was already calculating blast radii and optimum placement in his head when Enacca stopped dead and waved them down. The vine path was still shivering as if there was traffic coming the other way.
Droids couldn’t climb trees. But Trandoshans could.
There were two of them walking gingerly down the vine path, looking as if they had just discovered the route and were scoping it out.
“Mine,” Sev said. “All mine.” He stepped off the path into the branches, slung his rifle, and hauled himself farther up into the tree canopy. Scorch and the others melted into the side branches.
Nobody needed to speak. Scorch wondered if he should explain the procedure to Etain, but from the way she moved, she’d done this kind of ambush before. He realized now exactly how dirty things had become on Qiilura when she was organizing the resistance there with Zey, back in the days before they ended up doing more desk work than either of them wanted. It seemed so long ago.
It wasn’t even three years. But when you were coming up thirteen and twenty-six years old at the same time, that was a big chunk of your life.
I hope you find that cure for us, Kal.
They waited. The Trandoshans edged forward, not as confident up in the trees now since they’d encountered Wookiee hand-to-hand, limb-from-limb fighting. Scorch would never get that image out of his mind, however much he wanted to.
They were right under Sev now. He dropped like a silent stone onto one of them, forcing an oof from the Trando’s lungs and slapping a gauntlet over the barve’s mouth before he could draw a breath to yell. Etain knocked the other Trando flat without laying a finger on him. Sev’s vibroblade silenced the first Trando; Fixer pounced on his comrade, seized his head, and snapped his neck with a sharp twist. Enacca picked up both bodies by the belts like groceries, strode along until she found the two-meter gullet-like bloom of a carnivorous plant within throwing distance, and lobbed them in. The bloom shuddered with the impact. The last thing Scorch saw was four legs vanishing slowly, boots in the air, as if sinking into quicksand.
“Pays to keep the houseplants fed.” Scorch watched Etain’s reaction, reminding himself that he should have been surprised that Jedi could kill and maim so easily. “Potassium encourages flowering. So they say.”
Etain studied the carnivorous plant before moving on, as if she was considering its merits for a flower arrangement. “Do you ever look at the enemy and wonder just what the difference is between us?”
“Only after I’ve slotted them.”
“But you don’t hate Trandoshans. We don’t even know them.”
“No,” said Scorch, “but I’m human, and the only way you psych yourself up to killing something that’s similar to yourself is to be scared of it, or to pretend it’s not a person like you are.”
“But I hate Geonosians,” Sev said sourly. “And we do know plenty about them. Only three thousand, four hundred and twenty to kill, and we’ll be even. Then I’ll start on the rest.”
Sev overtook Scorch, scraping plates as he edged around him. A gray wor
m-like creature longer than Scorch’s arm extended itself from the bark of a tree as Sev passed and tried to grab his wrist. Sev yanked it out of its lair in an indignant fist. He held its head up to his visor in a one-handed, strangling grip.
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled, and dropped it over the side into the leaves below.
Enacca, who’d been listening patiently to the debate, yowled softly. Etain might not have hated Trandoshans, she said, but they looked very different to a Wookiee. No slaver or slave owner could ever be likable, she said, even if they tried to be nice, which Trandos didn’t. That was why they got their arms ripped out of their sockets. All slave owners deserved their fate.
Scorch waited for Etain to continue the debate. But she just glanced at her comlink, tapped it impatiently, and put it back in her pocket.
Yeah, Wookiees were very eloquent, if you knew how to listen.
HNE HQ, Galactic City,
day four of the Battle of Coruscant, 1,084 days ABG
The ARC trooper stood on top of the pile of rubble looking down at Darman.
“Are we keeping you awake, Shiny Boy?” He had twin blasters, just like Ordo’s, but he was a lieutenant; Lieutenant Aven. “Look sharp. The tinnies are going to be back again.” He jumped down from the vantage point and strode among the commandos who were the last line of defense for the HNE building—Omega and Yayax squads. “Got to keep the voice of freedom and democracy on the air.”
Darman had now been awake for the better part of forty-eight hours, snatching a few minutes’ sleep between waves of battle droid attacks. He was hungry; not the usual peckishness of a clone fueling a fast metabolism, but a gnawing sick hunger that demanded satisfaction.
“Yeah…” His head buzzed with fatigue. It took conscious effort to move his muscles. As he reloaded his Deece with another clip, his arms felt like they belonged to someone else, directed by strings he was holding. “We blew up one on Gaftikar. Or it blew us up. One or the other.”