by Various
To restore them to some sense of unity, all he had to do was join them. But just as soon as the raid began, Confederacy aerial support was likely to converge on Tur Lorkin. If he didn’t take off before then, he’d be trapped here. Captured or killed.
“I’m with you,” Joram said. He tried to keep sudden fear out of his voice. “But I’m not in charge. I seem to be back to being a civilian. This is Tooth’s mission to lead.” He turned away, hoping they hadn’t seen his own expression change. . . for he was sure he now looked as uncertain and mournful as they had a moment ago.
* * *
The door at the back of the main hangar—not an obvious door, just an anonymous section of wall—slid aside, revealing two men and their repulsorlift dolly, once more loaded with missile containers. Beyond them, a dimly lit corridor stretched onward and downward.
Joram didn’t wait. Now wearing the jumpsuit of one of the captured men, with a billed cap pulled low over his features, Joram pushed his way past the cargo wranglers, ignoring them.
“Hey!” The men turned after him. “Are you coming on duty?”
Then there were thuds, painful-sounding impacts of rifle butts on flesh. Joram heard the men fall. He looked back and waited.
The troopers didn’t take long. On top of the stack of missile containers in place on the dolly, they added the container they’d already opened. Wires ran from one of the missiles into Wrench’s helmet, which he held in his hands and peered into. The hasty bypass Wrench had accomplished seemed to have done the job; he had already reported that these prototype missiles had very simple control interfaces, a choice of targeting criteria, multiple detonation options. . . and no security, not too strange for weapons that were intended to be test-fired rather than used in the field.
Tooth’s voice sounded in the Joram’s headset. “Let’s move out.”
Joram nodded and continued down the corridor. He shoved his hands into his pockets, was slightly reassured by the grips of the blaster pistols, taken from the first two men they’d captured. He couldn’t hear them, but he knew that Hash and Spade would be moving along several meters behind him, and then the rest, with Spots shoving the dolly as Wrench rode atop it, at the rear.
The corridor-tunnel sloped down gently. Joram put one hand against its wall. It was rough to the touch, and it vibrated, a sign that somewhere, not too close, heavy machinery was in use.
Ahead, he saw a familiar-looking device attached to the corridor ceiling. “Holocam,” he whispered. The surveillance device was aimed his direction, and would be showing him now; soon enough, the first of the clone troopers would be in its range of vision.
“Get past it and disable it,” came the whispered reply. “Everyone else, hold here. Joram, report when it’s done.”
Now he was Joram instead of Lieutenant. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or miffed. He decided to be pleased. The troopers had developed enough initiative to rebel against an authority figure when their goals—still military goals, goals in the interest of the Republic—demanded. Now they were men, rather than pre-programmed drones. . . slaves.
A happy ending. Unless it got them killed. Got him killed.
He halted directly beneath the holocam, out of its range of vision. Disable it? How? He was not technically proficient like Wrench.
He pulled out one of his blaster pistols and smashed the holocam with three blows of its butt. “Disabled,” he said. “Continuing onward.”
In some security room somewhere, a holocam monitor would have gone dark. That was bad, something that would cause an alert security team to raise some sort of alarm, but it was still more innocuous than a half-squad of clone troopers materializing within the holocam’s view.
A few steps more, and he could see that the corridor ahead became level and better lit. As Joram descended, he saw where the corridor ended. There were blast doors at the end, and something standing beside them—
He felt his insides freeze. It was a droid, taller than a man, glossy brown, with curved, massive limbs and components. Its two pairs of arm-blasters were aimed forward, toward Joram.
He’d seen holos of these things, one of the most dangerous varieties of battle droids manufactured. None of the troopers’ blasters would be of any use against the thing. He managed to whisper, “Destroyer.”
“How many?”
“One. N-n-n-no living security.” The destroyer was not moving, not adjusting its aim as Joram approached. . . not yet.
“Slow your approach,” the trooper said. Joram had a sudden presentment that it wasn’t Tooth talking to him, but one of the others. “As slow as you can, but don’t look suspicious. Tell us when you’re 30 meters from it. Wrench, prep one, infrared targeting, heat signature of a combat droid instead of a human.”
Gulping against sudden fear-nausea, Joram slowed his walk. He pulled his stolen identicard from a pocket, fiddled with it, turning it over and over, as if trying to remember which edge to present to the security slot he assumed would be in the door.
Still the destroyer didn’t react.
“Ready,” said one trooper. He wasn’t sure who it was.
“Destroyer sighted,” said another—or perhaps the same one.
The destroyer became active, crouching, probably to give its sensory platform a better angle on what was happening further down the corridor, behind Joram.
“Joram, fall down,” a trooper said.
Joram fell, as fast as he could compel his knees to give way, and it almost wasn’t fast enough. There was a roar behind him, directly over him as he hit the duracrete floor. He saw the air around the destroyer shimmer as it activated its own defensive shields—
Then there was a brilliant flash, a howl of noise as though a moon-sized beast had just been gut-shot. Joram felt heat wash over him. A wall his dazzled eyes couldn’t see hammered him, sent him skidding backward.
He lay there unmoving, his brain somehow not translating the orders of “Get up! Get away!” to his limbs, and then someone was swatting his back and legs.
“Hold on there, sir.” The voice was a trooper’s, dim and distant. “You’re kind of on fire. It’s almost out.”
“Very kind of you,” Joram managed. He managed to push himself upright and look down the corridor. As his dazzled sight recovered, he could see the corridor’s end—walls, ceiling, and floor scorched and blown away in chunks, filled with fiery remains of what had been a destroyer, the blast doors knocked off their rails.
There was a ringing in his ears that diminished when he pressed his headset tighter over his ears.
He was surrounded by clone troopers now, Hash and Spade ahead with blasters at the ready, Digger helping Joram to his feet, Wrench back on the dolly preparing another missile, Spots ready to shove the dolly forward. Wrench’s armor was blackened all across the front surfaces, but the darkening seemed to be from smoke and soot rather than burn.
“That’s an alarm,” Digger said. “I think the stealth phase of our mission is at an end.”
“Where’s Tooth?”
Digger shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“What?”
“Move out. On the double.” Digger gestured, and Hash and Spade headed forward at a trot. Joram stumbled along behind. Points on his arms and legs felt raw. He decided not to look at the burns.
Past the twisted wreckage of the blast doors was more corridor, but this had sliding doors at intervals. It was long enough to be indistinct at the far end. Joram could see figures rushing toward them from the far end. Closer, doors slid open. People stepped out, saw the clone troopers, and jumped back out of sight again. “Where to?” Digger asked.
“Final assembly area,” Joram said. “Plants have different areas where the different components are made or stored, and then an area where the subassemblies are all put together. That’s the most crucial part of the facility.”
Digger stepped up. “But where’s that going to be?”
“Somewhere that dolly can get to.”
/> Someone in the distance opened fire with what sounded like a blaster pistol. Joram maneuvered to stand directly behind Hash and crouched there. He continued, “That means down this corridor or through that doorway there—” He pointed to a doublewide access about 20 meters down the corridor. “Those are the only two places the dolly can fit through.”
“Forward,” Digger said.
Hash and Spade, returning fire against the distant defenders, moved up to the wide doorway, Joram close behind Hash. Digger marched resolutely in front of the missile dolly, protecting its explosive cargo from incoming fire. Joram saw the trooper’s chest armor blacken where it took a glancing hit, saw Digger stagger from the impact.
The door had turbolift controls to the side. Joram slapped the summon button. The doors didn’t open immediately. “We may have to run a bypass—”
The doors opened. The cylindrical turbolift beyond had just one occupant, a man of slight build and graying hair—and, as soon as he glimpsed the clone troopers, a frightened expression.
Joram grabbed him by the collar of his blue jumpsuit and drove him to the back of the lift tube, slamming him into the wall there. He jammed a blaster pistol into the man’s gut. “Do you want to take us to the final assembly area, or do you want to die here?”
The man choked a moment, then said, “Two levels down. Card access only—”
“Does your identicard give you access?”
The man nodded and held the card up. A trooper extended an arm over Joram’s shoulder and took the card. A moment later, the troopers were all in the turblift, and it began its descent.
“Not bad, Joram,” Digger said, obviously stifling a laugh. “Where’d you learn that, trooper training?”
“Oh, shut up.”
A moment later, the lift tube doors opened. Blaster fire poured into the lift like sideways rain, tearing into Hash. Joram shoved himself and his prisoner aside as Digger, Spade, and Spots returned fire. Hash crashed to the lift floor and steam rose from the holes in his torso armor.
The clone troopers continued to fire. The incoming blasts trailed off and ceased. Digger spared a look at Hash, who was unmoving. “Spade, give him a look. Everyone else, move out.”
They emerged into a large fabrication area—Joram saw conveyor belts, mechanical hoists on ceiling tracks, huddled groups of jumpsuited workers, the remains of security agents and combat droids.
Wrench pointed toward a set of gleaming blue shelves on which were mechanical assemblies that looked like truncated cones. “Those are the same warheads as in the missiles.”
Joram said, “The door beside it will be the access to the warhead storage or assembly area.”
Digger nodded. “That’s where we drop our second toy.” He turned to the prisoner. “Are there stairwells or ramps out of here? Anything other than this turbolift?”
The man nodded.
“Use them to get out of here. Take these people. Everything’s about to blow up.” Digger gave the man a shove. “You have 60 seconds.”
The man ran.
“Hash’s dead, Digger.”
“Thanks, Spade. Wrench—”
“I know what to do.”
* * *
They brought the turbolift up to the level by which they’d entered, but didn’t let the doors open.
Ten second later, the explosions began. The lift tube floor hammered at Joram’s heels and a shudder ran through the lift.
Joram hit the open button. Smoke and heat poured in, and almost instantly Joram was blind and choking.
Someone grabbed his wrist and hauled. He was coughing, tripping over people, sometimes stumbling, sometimes being dragged. He heard blaster fire, the ringing noise it made when it hit metal doors, the thudding impacts it made against trooper armor, the hissing wail it made when it hit flesh and superheated organic tissues to the boiling point.
Then he was running and being dragged up a slope—they had to be on the inclined corridor out of the complex. More explosions sounded behind them. As his vision cleared, he could see more people around him, jumpsuited workers who stayed clear of the clone troopers.
Back in the big hangar bay, as factory workers streamed around them, hands half-raised as if to say “Don’t shoot,” their expressions fearful, Joram was able to suppress his coughing and take stock. Digger, Wrench, and Spots were still with him. “Hash and Spade?” he asked, his voice rough.
Digger shook his head. He handed Joram one of the fallen troopers’ blaster rifles. “Ready to finish it?”
Joram checked the rifle’s charge and held it at the ready. “I guess so.”
* * *
Digger led the charge to the exit from the bay building. “Stand back!” he shouted. “Troopers coming through!”
Workers leaped away from them. There was fear on some of their faces, loathing on others. Oddly, Joram felt proud of that.
The exterior door, Joram saw, was open. He and the troopers positioned themselves beside it. “They’re going to be waiting,” Joram said. The floor trembled as another set of distant explosions began, and a thick black layer of smoke poured out of the bay along the ceiling of the antechamber.
“You bet they are,” Digger said. “Emerging in three, two, one, zero—”
Digger turned into the open doorway. Joram expected him to be riddled with blaster fire as Hash had been, and there was the sudden roar of blaster weaponry—but no laser blasts flashed in through the door.
Joram followed the clone troopers out at a dead run. The buildings around the bay were pocked with smoking blaster impact and a unit of battle droids, to the left, was mostly in pieces; those who remained functional were turning and firing in the wake of a clone trooper roaring off in that direction on a STAP. The trooper’s rear end rested against an improvised webbing of cable, which kept him from falling off, and his leg was splinted, immobile.
Digger, Wrench, Spots, and Joram poured fire into the battle droids, finishing those that Mapper had not already destroyed. “This way,” Digger said, and charged off around the curved wall of the hangar.
Incoming fire, from men or droids shooting from concealed position, grazed Spots and knocked Wrench down. Joram and Spots got Wrench on his feet and they continued forward at a stumbling pace while Digger returned fire. Ahead, the doorway into a smaller bay came into view—and then exploded as someone approaching from the opposite direction fired on it with heavier ordnance.
Digger kept them moving forward. Seconds later, Mapper, on his STAP, flew through the ruined doorway. Joram and the other troopers were moments behind him.
The interior doorway from antechamber into hangar bay was already open, and beyond were the sleek, silvery lines of the yacht Joram had already prepped. “You know how to fly this, right?” Digger asked.
“It’s a little late to be asking.” Joram helped Mapper unhook the STAP’s cable sling and slid into position under the trooper’s arm. He helped the trooper to the yacht’s open access hatch. “And, yes, I do.”
* * *
Joram’s hands didn’t stop shaking until they cleared orbit. Starfield filled the yacht’s forward viewports, a scene that Joram usually found lovely, beckoning. Now he was too tired to appreciate it. He began calculating and keying in their first hyperspace jump.
There had been no pursuit. “Why weren’t we followed?” he asked Digger, who sat in the co-pilot’s seat.
Digger, his helmet off, rubbed at tired-looking eyes. “The pursuit was drawn off.”
“By what?”
“By Tooth. His job to take the other transport out and lead the starfighter support away from Tur Lorkin.”
“Will he—will he be joining us?”
Digger gave him a sympathetic look, but shook his head. “He was transmitting during his part of the mission. I heard him go down.”
Joram sighed. He turned his attention back to the navigation computer. “He knew, didn’t he? That his part of it would be a suicide mission.”
“He knew.”
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry.” A question occurred to Joram. He wrestled with it for a moment before daring to ask it. “What’s it like for you? To lose someone you’ve known all your life, someone who, in so many ways, is you?”
“It’s like being shot. Feeling the burn, not being able to breathe easily.” Digger fixed him with his gaze. “What’s it like for you? Losing someone you’ve worked with so closely, someone you’ve come to rely on?”
“I’ve never been shot. But I think it’s the same.”
They were silent for long moments, while Joram finished his astronavigational task. The yacht’s hyperdrive warmed up for its first jump. Then Digger said, “There’s something you ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re not normal. My platoon. We were made to be, how’d they put it, a little more self-reliant than the others. To be capable of more initiative. There are some more out there like us. In case they need troopers for more specialized missions.”
Joram thought about that. “So I was supposed to evaluate you, and assume you were the norm, and offer up a glowing report of the clone troopers’ military value. To help persuade the powers that be that all troopers perform like elites.”
“I guess so.”
“I might as well do just that. It’s never a good idea to foul up a cover-up until know what it’s there for. But why did you tell me?”
“Because you deserved to know. Because you’re one of us.”
The words hung there, as they though they’d been fixed in the air by a holoprojector instead of spoken, until Joram activated the hyperdrive.
