Order 66

  “What?”

  “Holonews station. Where’s At’ika?”

  “You’re rambling, lad. Take a stim. Got to stay alert.”

  “Here, Dar.” Atin ran at a crouch toward him with something in a large flimsi bag. “Been on a replenishment run.” He opened the wrapping and revealed a treasure trove of round, sugar-crusted cakes, wafers filled with something brown and gooey, and containers of an unnaturally bright red liquid. “Guess what? From the news grunts in the HNE building.”

  Darman had to take his helmet off to eat. He popped the seal; at that moment, he didn’t care if some tinnie blew his head off. He had to eat and drink. Atin reached into his belt pouches and rummaged, pulling out a stim-sharp. Darman didn’t even have the energy to flinch as Atin jabbed it into his neck. Every fiber of his body was dedicated to getting one of those cakes in his mouth, and when he finally bit down—it was exquisite. He grabbed a container of the red stuff to wash the cake down.

  It was intensely sweet—calorie-laden, nutritional junk, but pure instant energy. Bliss. He felt it flood his muscles with renewed life. “I’m never going to shoot an HNE hover-cam on a job again,” he said hoarsely. “This is really nice of them.”

  Corr’s helmet popped up out of nowhere. He grabbed a cake. “Well, seeing as we’re getting our shebse shot off so they can keep broadcasting, sharing their skraan is the least they can do for us.”

  Niner was curled in a ball on a slab of permacrete, grabbing some sleep. It really was possible to sleep anywhere if you were exhausted enough.

  Cov, Yayax’s sergeant, redistributed ammo—plasma rounds and grenades—among the eight men. “Where’s their food supply, then?”

  Corr rolled over on his back and pointed up at the tower. There was a big hole in it, about three-quarters of the way up its height. “The other side of that.”

  “They’re crawling along a girder to transfer the supplies out of the office canteen,” Atin said. “I have to admire folks who care about their stomachs just as much as we do. They’ve got this weird siege mind-set going. I swear they’re enjoying it.”

  “Well, if they like it that much, they can grab a rifle and come down here and enjoy it with us.” Cov took a swig from the bottle of red-whatever-it-was. “Still, we need ’em talking to the citizens now, so…”

  “Have they got that mobile transmitter ready to roll yet?” Aven didn’t help himself to the food. “Sooner we get that out of the building and move it somewhere secure, the better.” He was already thinking in terms of encouraging resistance and setting up a guerrilla network if the worst happened. Darman wondered how many Coruscanti would fight to overthrow a Separatist occupation. “Cov, take one of your boys. Haul it down with service droids if the turbolift is shot on those floors.”

  Cov jogged away. Yayax all wore gray-and-brown dazzle-pattern camo armor, and they merged remarkably well with the debris of permacrete and transparisteel. Aven looked up suddenly.

  “Here come the tinnies,” he said. “Okay, my lads, time to make shrapnel.”

  Buoyed up on a wave of sugar, Darman now felt fine. Omega and two Yayax men, Dev and Jind, took up positions.

  Tinnies were predictable; they just kept coming in dumb waves, so it was largely a matter of who ran out of bodies first. One thing was for sure, though—there might have been a lot of them, a torrent, but there weren’t quadrillions or anything close. Skirata was right: if the Seps really had those numbers, they’d have poured them all into Triple Zero by now, and the war would have been over. But they hadn’t, and it wasn’t.

  It only took one tinnie to ruin your entire day, though. Darman wasn’t going to celebrate yet.

  He edged over the makeshift parapet of permacrete and sighted up. A quick hello from an anti-armor grenade would bring down the front rank, and the second as well if you pitched it right, and then their own debris would slow them down enough to let you hose them with everything else you had.

  The tidy, synchronized ranks marched toward them down an avenue that the sapper droids had swept clear of chunks of ships and buildings. The Seps definitely wanted the heart of the Republic’s broadcasting capacity in one piece; they could have reduced it to rubble by now. Darman noted that the line of droids was wider this time, requiring more fire along its length to drop them. That was how they overran positions. They encircled them by sheer force of numbers.

  “Fire!” Aven barked.

  Once Darman squeezed the trigger, things somehow fell into a natural rhythm. It was almost as if he didn’t have to think, like singing a song and hearing his own voice before even thinking what note came next. Droids dropped, metal fragments fizzed and hissed as their shrapnel rained down, and flying debris took out their comrades as surely as a GAR-issue grenade; but the others still advanced.

  Niner and Atin took a section of the line each, bringing down a dozen tinnies, and in the rank behind, six droids literally shattered like crystal without a direct hit, smashed by the overpressure alone.

  “Well done, Prudii,” Atin said. “Nobbled at the factory…”

  The super battle droids behind them weren’t from the same sabotaged batch of durasteel, though. They started running, weapon arms held out straight in front of them, and even though Corr and Jind were laying into them with an E-Web repeater, the SBDs kept coming. Now they were meters away. They were so close that Darman’s rounds threw shrapnel back at his visor. The next thing he knew, one of the things was nearly on top of him.

  Fine; that was the way to kill them.

  It was pure reflex. Darman ran into its arms, inside the range of its weapon, and brought his vibroblade up into its left armpit where the material was flexible and thinner, slicing through the servos. Its arm fell limp. All it had now, as long as he clung to it, was its weight, and Katarn armor was crush-resistant even under that bulk. The SBD flailed wildly, unable to target its blaster arm or dislodge him. He hung on for grim death while he pulled a micro-sized thermal det from his belt and crammed it into the gaping hole in the SBD’s casing. Then he let it throw him clear in its wild attempt to shake him off. He landed meters away as the blast—directed down inside its casing—blew out its chest plate.

  Events were, as always, in a distorted time frame. Darman, flat on the ground and trying to get up, saw a ragged disc of metal just miss the E-Web. Corr flung himself sideways. Dev leapt on the SBD coming up behind it while Aven rammed both muzzles of his twin blasters up under its arm joints, and fired.

  SBDs were vulnerable if you engaged them very, very close.

  Nothing came over that rubble ridge for a few more seconds.

  Darman got back on his feet. All he could hear was his own gasping breath and his heart pounding. He didn’t hear the noise of drives until after Aven yelled “Air support incoming!” and the rapid clunk-clunk-clunk of droid feet at a run began again.

  Darman ducked as the shadow of two LAAT/i gunships blotted out the sun. Staccato plumes of pulverized ferrocrete fountained into the air high above the parapet line as the larties opened fire on the droid ranks.

  “Pull back!” Aven grabbed Darman’s shoulder and half dragged him until he got his balance back and ran for the cover of HNE’s colonnaded entrance. “Get down!”

  The oddest things got your attention in combat. Darman found himself looking up at a sky that was full of dark clouds—not natural ones, but the smoke and windborne debris of the aerial battle that still raged overhead, joined by the rising smoke from a burning, bombed city. He wondered how he would have reacted if the dots in the sky suddenly enlarged and resolved into Mandalorian troops with jetpacks.

  Weird. Stims, fatigue, and too many food additives.

  “You’re a psycho, Dar,” Atin said, patting his shoulder. “Classy.”

  Niner, Corr, Jind, and Dev flopped down next to them in a clatter of armor plates. “Just heard on the comm,” Niner said. “Another thousand ships have joined the fleet.”

  “Whoopee,” Atin said. “Can they pop down here and give us a
hand?”

  One larty landed in front of their position nose-forward, and a couple of troopers jumped down from the open hatch. The droids had withdrawn again. Darman twisted to look over his shoulder, and saw Cov, a civilian, and the remaining member of Yayax Squad—Yover—hauling three crates on a repulsor trolley from the side door of the building.

  It was the equipment they needed to broadcast on HNE bandwidth from anywhere on the planet. Whatever happened to the network’s headquarters, Coruscant and the Republic would not be silenced now. Darman watched the equipment being loaded into the larty, followed by a dozen HNE staff—humans and two Twi’leks—and then the gunship lifted clear and vanished.

  Aven lowered his head as if receiving a message in his helmet comlink. Then he ambled back over to the exhausted pile of commandos.

  “Two-hour watches, okay? Move into the foyer and get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”

  It was late afternoon again, judging by the sun. Darman was losing count of the days. “Sir,” he said, “do you know if comms to Kashyyyk are operational yet?”

  “I’ve heard it’s patchy. Why—waiting for a call from a Wookiee?”

  Darman shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “They’ve bypassed Sep blocking, but the system must have overloaded by now. The fleet’s grown by thousands of ships almost overnight. Knowing those useless barves in Procurement, they probably didn’t add enough extra nodes to the network. Another thing they forgot to tell us about.”

  Aven squatted down a few meters from them in silence, cleaning his blasters in the lull.

  It was now or maybe never. Darman risked opening his comlink. Etain was probably worrying her guts out. She didn’t answer the comm, of course; he tried again, but there was no telling what she was doing, and he decided to send via the uplink while he still could. The message would at least sit there and wait for her to reconnect. The comms’ routers could go down at any time, and he might not—

  No. I’m staying alive. I refuse to die now.

  He scribbled with his stylus. He hated tapping out long messages.

  MHI SOLUS TOME, MHI SOLUS DAR’TOME, MHI ME’DINUI AN, MHI BA’JURI VERDE. TRANSLATE AND RESPOND. RC-1136.

  Darman was still coming down off the adrenal high of fighting, but those words gave him a delicious feeling of contentment that made him smile. Etain knew enough Mando’a to understand what it meant. All she had to do was resend the words to him. A pledge was a pledge, a deal was a deal, a vow was a vow; you didn’t have to be in the same room to accept a marriage contract. Once she replied, it was legal for Mandalore.

  And he didn’t care about Coruscant law now.

  “I can hear you smiling,” Atin said. “What’s so funny?”

  “Not funny,” said Darman. The slight click of teeth and the faintest of breaths was enough for Atin to gauge his brother’s reaction behind the helmet. “Just my half of the marriage contract, while I still can. No point hanging about now.”

  “Don’t be so morbid,” Niner snapped. “We’ll all be fine.”

  “I meant losing comms…”

  “Awwww…,” Corr murmured. Darman wasn’t sure if he was teasing to take the edge off Niner’s seriousness. The guy could get very tense. “You next, At’ika. Me, I’m keeping my options open out of generosity to all the lovely females who haven’t had a chance to meet me yet. It’s only fair.”

  Atin made a huffing noise. Darman heard the click of his teeth and a slight rustle as he switched to another comm circuit. He was comming Laseema privately, Darman was sure of it. He watched Atin’s shoulders tense and then relax, and his head nodded a little, as if he was talking. After a few moments, he leaned back and punched one fist into his palm in mute triumph.

  Corr nudged him. “She said yes, then…”

  “There’s no privacy in this shabla squad.” But Atin sounded happy. “And she said Kad’s babbling ‘Da-da’ all the time. Just thought you needed to know that.”

  Darman did. In the debris-strewn, deserted foyer of the HNE building, with the prospect of enemy droids swarming back at any time, he now felt he could handle anything again.

  He dozed despite the stims, leaning against Atin. It was the faint blipping noise of a message arriving in his HUD that woke him rather than the barrage going on outside. It wasn’t Etain, though; it was Ordo.

  SO YOU’RE STILL ALIVE, OMEGA. REPORT IN WHEN YOU CAN.

  That was how Mandalorians greeted each other—Su’cuy gar, You’re still alive—but it was also quite funny for Ordo, who wasn’t exactly a comedian. Skirata was obviously fretting.

  One day, Darman would have fine stories to tell Kad about the days when he wrestled with battle droids. He shut his eyes and resumed a brief and precious sleep.

  Safe house,

  lower levels, Coruscant,

  day five, 1,085 days ABG

  In the bowels of Galactic City, the desperate battle was a distant thunderstorm that raged day and night.

  Skirata thought it was probably the first time in millennia that it was safer to walk the streets of Triple Zero’s sleazy underbelly than it was to venture out in the respectable skylanes and walkways up above. He stared at the door to Uthan’s room and rehearsed how he was going to tell her that she was now a prisoner again. He didn’t want to sound triumphant and depress the woman. He needed her cooperation, although he didn’t think she was the suicidal kind.

  I didn’t think Ko Sai would hang herself, either…

  “Okay.” Vau put his finger behind the blind and eased it away from the grimy window to check the walkway outside. It was surprisingly busy. Plenty of people from the upper levels had fled down here. The pickpockets were having a field day. “Let’s take stock. We’re in the middle of a Separatist invasion. We’re holding a death-dealing Sep scientist who doesn’t realize she’s been kidnapped, your stroppy long-lost daughter, a tax inspector whose life we’ve managed to trash, and Jango Fett’s lunatic homicidal sister. Have you warned Rav that this happy crew is heading her way, provided we don’t all die horribly in the current unpleasantness?”

  Skirata felt his heart skipping beats, making him want to thump his own chest to stop it. Rav Bralor was twice the man that most men were, which was quite something for a good-looking woman. She’d take it all in stride. “I think we need to start transferring people to Aay’han.”

  “Kal, we have a total of twenty-one personnel, for want of a better word. Plus the baby. Etain, Kom’rk, Jaing, and Prudii are offworld, and we’ll have to arrange another RV point for them—they can’t come back here now. Aay’han has sixteen berths, plus the cargo space, which would take another fifteen bunks if we hadn’t filled half of that with emergency supplies and Mereel’s shabla toy.”

  Skirata had a trillion credits. They could leave the Gi’ka behind and Mereel could buy another dozen of the things when they got out of here. “Bard’ika’s got the Aggressor laid up, and that can accommodate eight plus a pilot,” he said. “It’s got a secure hold—it’s a bounty vessel. I say we get Ruu, Fett’s sister, and Uthan out in that first, with Sull, Spar, and Mereel. Then we follow in Aay’han.”

  “Well, when a few thousand warships have finished pounding ten shades of osik out of each other, and the planetary shields are lifted.”

  “Walon, it was always going to be a case of winging it.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “If you want out—”

  “Shab, no, Kal. I’ve come this far.”

  “Look,” Skirata said. “That’s the easy bit. The hard bit is getting Omega out now. And Etain. The Nulls can come and go because Zey and his cronies are used to that, but the others are pretty visible. Have you spoken to Delta?”

  “No. They’ll get to hear, and then they can make their own choice. What about your other squads? I know Omega’s your pride and joy, but when are you going to put the word out that there’s a haven for the others, too?”

  “When we’re sure Kyrimorut is secure and everyone’s settled.”
/>
  “Okay.”

  “Walon, I know I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. But I had to try. And I think we’re as close to pulling it off as ever.”

  Vau sighed. “Okay.” He slapped his thigh plate. “Mird? Mird’ika, come on. Let’s go round up the stray nerfs.”

  At least everyone was on the lower levels, except Kad, Laseema, and Besany. The Seps were after the strategic targets: government buildings, the spaceports, military installations, and infrastructure. It didn’t make it any easier if yours was the district that lost its power supply, and the misery from above was slowly trickling down in the form of refugees, but at least it was possible to move around the streets and skylanes down here without getting killed by stray ordnance.

  Skirata decided to collect the ladies and his grandson sooner rather than later. Aay’han wasn’t so bad as temporary accommodation, and it was in as safe a location as any on Coruscant now. He threaded his way across the city along the lowest skylane he could navigate in the speeder, then climbed to the upper levels almost vertically when he reached Obrim’s neighborhood, Rampart Town. It was a modest, quiet part of Galactic City; Obrim had made dangerous enemies, as cops did, and he preferred to keep a low profile in a sprawling multilevel apartment that looked unremarkable from the outside. Only the elaborate security precautions revealed how difficult his job could get.

  It was a ghost town. There was nowhere to run on a crowded planet, so anyone with a grain of sense had battened down the hatches and waited. Telti Obrim took a full five minutes to open the doors.

  “Jaller’s still stuck at HQ,” she said. “Haven’t seen him for two days, but that’s normal for Jaller. Is everyone okay?”

  “Fine,” Skirata said. “It’s weird how I can move around some parts of the city and not others. Look, I know I’m putting Jaller at risk by calling, but I need to move the ladies.” He took the nine million creds out of his belt; it seemed such a small stack of chips for a huge sum. The figures he dealt with these days had just numbed him now. “I want you to do something for me, Telti. Take this. You and Jaller deduct what you need to stay safe, and if there’s anything left, give it to that crazy Senator Skeenah to fund his care home for clone troopers.”