by Various
They were close enough now to the man that Tinian could drop her tone. “Yes, your guy is. . .” She consulted her datapad, unnecessarily. “Edbit Teeks. This one, Varpo Prabb, admits to being his main connection among native Tarhassians.”
“Good, good.” The officer gestured for them to follow, then led them down the corridor. “Teeks. Fine work. Come into my office.”
Joram and Tinian followed, Joram taking a fast an impression as he could of the office. He saw a semi-opaque viewport for privacy, chairs that seemed skeletal compared to all the others he’d encountered here, a desk heaped with stacks of reports, datachips, odd-shaped knickknacks.
For the moment, they were out of sight of anyone in the hallway, Tinian drew her blaster—Renkel’s blaster. “Don’t move.”
The officer froze. Joram could see him calculating—was it worth it to shout and warn his fellows when it might mean death? Was there any chance this woman would hesitate, not fire at all?
Joram kneed the officer in the groin, putting all his mass into it. The officer folded forward. His groan was loud enough to carry, but the noise from the hallway was also loud. Joram twisted his wrists out of the bonds loosely wrapped around them and tapped the wall button; the door slid shut with a whoosh. Then he took a metal model of a PlanSec corvette from the desktop and brought it down on the back of the man’s head. It took three blows, but the officer finally fell unconscious.
“Joram, I’m not sure I’m fit to do this,” Tinian said. Her voice was shaky. She looked at the blaster in her hand as if puzzling out what to do with it next. “I’m not a killer like you and Mapper.”
“We’re not killers like us, either.” Joram weighed matters. Compartmentalizing information was usually a good idea, but not when it caused distrust among allies one depended on for survival. “The Renkel woman is still alive.”
“What?”
“She is. Cherek and Livintius don’t know. Listen, you’re doing fine. Get this man’s restraints from his belt clip and bind him. Then gag him.” Joram reached down to pull the man’s datapad from his belt pouch. “Let’s find Teeks.”
At this hour, the second-floor cell and interrogation area were lightly guarded and trafficked. Tinian, again working her prisoner-delivery story, put Joram in front of an outer-perimeter guard, then an inner-perimeter guard. Each time, while pretending to hand the guard her datapad with the documents on her prisoner, she lured the guard into reaching through the bars for it. Joram grabbed each man in turn, dragged him into the bars, and held him there while Tinian stunned him with Renkel’s blaster. Then the identity disk of the officer they’d captured downstairs gave them access into the detention area beyond.
Finally, they stood outside the cell marked with the number that corresponded to Teeks. Joram could see through the transparisteel panel in the door; a middle-aged man of medium build, a light and unkempt beard on his face, dressed in prisoner pastel violet, was asleep on the cell’s bunk. On the far wall, a high viewport admitted exterior light. Joram waved the officer’s identity disk in front of the door sensor, but its readout remained resolutely red.
Joram keyed his comlink. “Grimtaash-Five to One, come in.”
“This is Grimtaash-Four.” It was Mapper’s voice,
“Four, where’s One?”
“Asleep.”
Joram grinned. “How’d that happen?”
“I didn’t make him any promises, Five. He bumped his head,”
“Right. We’re just outside the pickup point. We’re going to need a distraction as soon as possible. A big, loud one. Do that, then exit. We’ll be coming out on the north face, too. Three, are you ready to stand by?”
“Moving into position.” Livintius’s voice was unnaturally high. “What do you mean, he’s sleeping?”
“Well, he’s waking up. Still a bit groggy. And he’s going to be mad. I’ll be ready with your distraction in thirty seconds.”
“Set it off, don’t wait for further instructions.” Joram pocketed his comlink, then began setting up his explosive charge on the cell door.
Moments later, there was a muffled boom from below. It seemed to have little effect. There was a faint vibration in the floor, but there were no shrieks, no rattling of ceilings and walls, no cascades of duracrete dust from above.
Then the sirens started. They were shrill whooping noises, a constant cycle of auditory pain. The comlink Joram had stolen from the unconscious officer blared with its own message: “Intruders, basement level. We’ve had an explosion event. Repeat, an explosion event.”
Suddenly there was a face on the other side of the viewport: Teeks, awake but sleepy, confused. Joram keyed the comlink on the door. “Teeks, get against the far wall, cover yourself with your mattress.”
Teeks nodded and disappeared.
Joram set the timer on his charge, then he and Tinian withdrew along the corridor and around the first corner. Faces now filled most of the cell viewports. Some of these men and women were hammering, others talking, some pleading with nothing but their expressions. Joram ignored them.
He and Tinian were barely in place when the charge blew, hurling metal fragments all along the corridor. They rushed back into the cell.
Teeks rose from behind his improvised barrier. ‘Tell me this is a rescue.”
“This is a rescue,” Joram said. “I’m Joram. This is Tinian.” He slapped his other explosive charge on the exterior wall just beside Teeks’ knees. He set the timer for thirty seconds. “Tinian, cover the hallway.”
Teeks moved away from the new explosive. He took his mattress with him. “Do you know anything about my girlfriend? Is she under suspicion? Under arrest?”
“No, she’s not. She’s safe.” Joram moved away from the explosive, watched its timer count down, and something clicked into place for him. Renkel should be under suspicion. The fact that she’s not suggests that PlanSec’s certain that she’s innocent. Which they shouldn’t. Unless they have inside information about Teeks’ personal life and knew she wasn’t part of his team. But how would they know that and yet not know to pickup contacts like Tharb?
An agent would include personal details in his reports, but keep information about his resources, his contacts, secret.
So PlanSec has access to information from Teeks’ reports to his Intelligence superior. Maybe to the reports themselves.
Tinian said,
“Five.”
“What?”
“Four,” she said.
“Oh.” Joram joined her and Teeks behind the mattress.
“Three. Two. One,”
The wall blew out, this explosion sending duracrete dust into the air—mostly outward. Before the echoes had faded, Joram ran forward and peered out through the hole.
Below, the walkway and landspeeder lane were littered with chunks of duracrete, Cherek’s rented airspeeder was parked twenty meters off to the right, directly in front of the basement doorway access. Mapper and Cherek, the latter staggering slightly, were already emerging from the stairwell.
“Are you fit for a one-story drop?” Joram asked. He had to shout, his hearing wasn’t what it should be, and be assumed that the hearing of his companions was similarly affected.
“Rather too late to ask,” Teeks shouted. “But yes.”
“After you,” Tinian shouted.
Joram slid feet-first through the hole, its broken edges scraping across his back, and dropped. He landed on the unyielding walkway and continued his motion into a forward roll, a little clumsy—his back would be bruised tomorrow. But it was better than having a broken ankle or twisted knee. He stood.
Teeks hit the walkway behind him, rolled nimbly to his feet, and gestured up for Tinian to follow.
Ahead, Mapper, on the street side of the airspeeder, and Cherek, on the walkway side, had its doors open.
Then a uniformed PlanSec officer, a young man with dark hair, leaped as if catapulted up from the basement stairway and planted his blaster in Cherek’s side. Even with his diminish
ed hearing, Joram could hear the man’s shout of: “Do not move!”
Joram grimaced. It was amateur against amateur. No well-trained guardsman with a blaster would get that close to a perpetrator. And Cherek didn’t have the sense to—
Cherek raised his hands as if to surrender, then made a move to knock the blaster aside.
The guardsman fired. Cherek, his chest smoking, a surprised look on his face, fell. The guardsman adjusted his aim toward Mapper and Livintius.
Tinian’s blaster shot struck him across the neck and shoulders. The man jerked and fell.
Mapper had Cherek in the back seat before Joram and the others reached the airspeeder. Livintius had the airspeeder in motion before they’d dogged the doors closed.
And they had a kilometer between them and the PlanSec building before the first security speeder left the building.
Mapper straightened from beside Cherek’s bed. They were back in the dubious and temporary security of Cherek’s chambers. “I think he’ll live,” Mapper said.
But Cherek did not respond to the hopeful pronouncement, his chest bandaged, his eyes closed, he remained in the sleep of the badly injured.
Teeks rose from the room’s puffy chair. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but you’d better get off-world before they have enough information to catch you.”
“We can’t leave him,” Livintius said. He continued to eye Joram with suspicion, as if Joram had shot Cherek by remote control.
“Yes, you can,” Teeks said. “Get him into the speeder and I’ll take him to a safe house. I have safe houses, cover identities, money accounts all over.”
Livintius shook his head. “They’re found to be compromised. By your dead lover.”
“Zazana doesn’t know anything about my work.” Teeks shrugged, “I expect to tell her about it when I propose to her.”
Livintius pointed an accusing finger at Joram. “You didn’t tell him. . .”
Joram put a finger to his lips to hush the academic.
Joram didn’t begin to relax until he could see Tarhassan shrinking in the holocam view on the screen in the transport’s main cabin. In minutes, they’d be jumping to hyper space, headed for a planet that remained neutral as war flared up all around it. From there, they could make their way back to Coruscant. Meanwhile, he’d privately warned Teeks against communicating with Republic Intelligence or accessing accounts he’d mentioned in his reports—at least, not until Joram could form an impression of how Teeks had been exposed.
The sound of tapping distracted him from the screen. He looked over to see Tinian working on her datapad. “What’s this?”
She gave him a smile.
“My report.”
“What?” He looked down at its diminutive screen. “It’s not in proper outline format. Nor do I see any contributions from Livintius.”
“He can file his own report. In the meantime, mine will become the official truth of the mission to Tarhassan.”
“What is the official truth? So my truth matches your truth, that is.”
“Cherek planned, Livintius and I researched, you and Mapper executed, all until the big show at the end. Then we all executed and Cherek got shot playing hero. I also mention that Livintius, Cherek, and I could use more training, some mentoring by senior agents. In any case, everybody did good.”
“Did well,” Joram corrected, absently. “You learn fast.”
“I suspect I’m going to need to.”
He reached over to shake her band.
“Welcome to Intelligence.”
EQUIPMENT
A Personal Account of the Sub-orbital
Action at Haruun Kal, as reported by Auxiliary
Heavy-Weapons Specialist CT-6/774.
By Matthew Stover
We popped out of hyperspace above the plane of the ecliptic. Al’har’s light was brilliant yellow. Haruun Kal was a bright blue-green crescent. Two asteroid belts sparkled yellow among the black-and-white starfield: one beyond Haruun Kal’s orbit, vast and old, spreading toward the gas giants that swung through the outer system, and a smaller, younger belt in orbit around the planet itself: remnants of what once had been the planet’s moon.
I snugged my helmet and checked my armor’s life-support parameters, then dogged the transparisteel hatch of the bubble turret.
My helmet’s speakers crackled softly. “Comm check,” Lieutenant Four-One said.
The Lieutenant’s our pilot. The 2nd Lou, CL-33/890, handles nav. He checked in with a “Nav is go.” I reported my turret as go, and my port-side partner, CT-014/783, did the same from his.
The Halleck swung down out of interstellar space and inserted into planetary orbit almost halfway out to the moon-belt, more than ten thousand klicks from the surface. Intel had reported a rumor that Haruun Kal might have a small number of planetary-defense ion cannons, and a medium cruiser is a very large target.
Just before we lit engines and lifted out of the Halleck’s ship bay, I clicked my comm over to the dedicated turret-freq. “Take care of the equipment. Eight-Three.”
My partner answered the way he always does: “And the equipment will take care of us, Seven-Four.”
That’s how we wish each other luck.
The mag-screen de-powered. The ship bay’s atmosphere gusted out toward the star in a billow of glittering ice crystals.
Blue-white pinpoints fanned out before us: ion drives of our starfighter escort. The transparisteel of my bubble-turret hummed with sympathetic resonance as one of the Jadthu-class landers undocked and followed them, then it was our turn.
Our flight leader took point. We sucked ions on left wing. Five gunships left the Halleck.
None would come back.
* * *
Take care of your equipment, and your equipment will take care of you.
That’s one of the first things they teach us in the creche-schools on Kamino. Even before we’re awake. By the time we are brought to consciousness for skills-development, the knowledge pumps have drilled “Take care of your equipment” so deeply into our minds that it’s more than instinct. It’s practically natural law. We live or die by our equipment.
I am a clone trooper in the Grand Army of the Republic.
My designation is CT-6/774. I serve on a Republic close-assault gunship. I am the starboard bubble-turret gunner.
I love my job. We all do; we’re created for it.
But my job is special. Because my partner—CT-014/783, the port bubble-turret gunner—and I are the ones who take care of the equipment.
Our weapons platform, the RHE LAAT/i, is an infantry-support weapon. We soften up and harass the enemy; our targets are bunkers, armored vehicles, mobile artillery, and enemy footsoldiers. When our infantry brothers need to get to the enemy, we’re the ones who blast down the door.
The LAAT/i is designed for dropping troops into a hot fire-zone. We’re not fast, but we can go anywhere. Our assault weapons are controlled through nav; the navigator runs all three antipersonnel turrets, the main missile launcher and two of the four main cannons. Our laser cannons can punch holes through medium armor, and the missile launchers take care of the heavy stuff; they’re mass-driver launchers, so our loads can be customized for the mission. We carry HE (high explosive), HEAP (high explosive armor-piercing) and APF (anti-personnel fragmentation) missiles; we stay away from baradium weapons—too unstable—but detonite and proton-core warheads can handle everything we’re likely to come up against.
Our job—me and Eight-Three, the bubble-turret gunners—is to handle everything that comes up against us. Each turret is a sphere of transparisteel that tracks along with our cannons; my partner and I also each control a launcher loaded with four short-range air-to-air rockets. If anything comes at us, we shoot it down.
That’s what I mean about taking care of the equipment.
Let’s say we’re cracking a hardened bunker on a desert planet. We come in low over the dunes, pumping missiles and cannonfire against the target emplacement. Le
t’s say you’re operating an anti-aircraft cannon half a klick away, and you open fire on us. The pilot and the navigator don’t even have to look up. Because I’m there.
Go ahead and take your shot. You won’t get two.
Fire a missile at us. I’ll blast it to scrap. Launch a proton grenade. I’ll blow your head off. Make an attack run riding a speeder bike. But make out your will, first. Because if you attack us, I will take you out.
That’s what I do.
I love my job, and I am very, very good at it.
I have to be: because sometimes my gunship has to do things it’s not designed for. That’s how it goes when you’re fighting a war.
Like at Haruun Kal.
We were assigned to the Republic medium cruiser Halleck, on station in the Ventran system. A regiment of heavy infantry, twenty Jadthu-class landers, an escort of six starfighters.
And us: five RHE LAAT/i-S.
We weren’t supposed to know why we were there, naturally; just as naturally, we knew anyway. It was clear this would be a VIP extraction on a hostile planet.
It wasn’t hard to figure. Those Jadthu-class landers are basically just flying bunkers. They go in fast, land, then stand there and take a pounding until it’s time to take off again. Nothing but armor, engines, two heavy laser turrets and an Arkayd Caltrop-5 chaff gun. They’re plenty fast in a straight line, but they are the opposite of nimble. There is no evasive action in a Jadthu.
The Halleck had twenty of them: that meant the landing-zone would be hot. Maybe very hot. Maybe nova-class. The starfighters were for orbital cover. Suborbital and atmospheric cover was our job.
Ventran is on the Gevarno Loop, one of half a dozen systems linked by hyperspace lanes that run through Al’har. Haruun Kal is the only habitable planet in the Al’har system.
Haruun Kal is Separatist.
General Windu—that’s Jedi Master Mace Windu, General of the Grand Army of the Republic and Senior Member of the Jedi Council—had gone dirtside on Haruun Kal, alone and undercover, tracking a rogue Jedi. Why had a General gone in personally? We didn’t know. Why had he gone in alone? We didn’t ask.
