“What about the body?” Etain said, still stunned. “Are we just leaving it here? On an office window ledge?”
“It'll give CSF's forensics team a fascinating project to keep them occupied,” Vau said. “And we didn't even have to enter a diplomatic compound, did we?”
Etain, now used to death and assassination, couldn't help herself. She reached over and rubbed the still's head, too, although it stank and could probably kill her in a single vast bite. It was still miraculous.
“Clever Mird!” she said. “Clever!”
Somewhere near CoruFresh Farm Produce distribution division, Quadrant F-76, 2150 hours, 385 days after Geonosis
“That armor suits you, Bard'ika.”
Skirata sat astride the speeder's pillion seat, datapad and chrono at the ready. The operation was under way. Perrive was dead. Now it was time for Skirata to check that the credit transfer had been made.
He watched the screen that showed the status of the temporary bank account that would vanish without trace or audit trail in just over a day.
“I suspect the Jedi Council wouldn't agree.” Jusik adjusted the bags on the bike's cargo straps. “Not even if General Kenobi himself wears armor.”
“You don't worry much about that,” said Skirata.
“I haven't thought that far ahead.”
“A Mando mercenary has to plan for the future these days, son, even if there turns out to be no future at all. And so should you.”
Jusik laughed. “I thought you Mando'ade lived only for the day. You even have trouble using anything but the present tense.”
Skirata's eyes never left the datapad's screen. Then it reloaded, and suddenly an anonymous numbered account in a bank on Aargau was four million credits in the black. Skirata hit VERIFY and the credits were there.
Yes, this was real. He had the credits.
He felt one tension evaporate from his chest and another—familiar, comfortable, an old friend—take its place. He was ready to fight. He opened the comlink to the whole strike team.
“Stand by, vode, stand by. The credits have cleared. We're moving in to make the drop now.”
“Ordo here, copy that.”
“Delta here, copy that.”
“Mereel here, copy that.”
“Do we get ten percent?” Fi muttered.
Jusik powered up the speeder bike. “You'd be amazed what you might get out of this, Fi.” The speeder shot up into the air and spun ninety degrees before Jusik aimed it at the CoruFresh depot. “Preferably not a broken neck, though.”
“Sorry, Kal,” said Jusik.
Skirata checked his chrono: 2155.
A good rousing chant of Dha Werda might have psyched him up better, but this was a different battlefield.
“Bard'ika, those explosive packs are well wrapped, aren't they?”
“Thoroughly. They're really affecting the handling of this speeder, too.”
“We've got a few minutes. Take it easy.”
“Udesii ...” Jusik grinned. “If things get a little hairy out there, I can use my Force powers, can't I?”
“No witnesses. Go ahead.”
Jusik took the speeder high over the landing strip, and Skirata noted Ordo and Sev flat on the roof of the warehouse as they spiraled down to land. The two soldiers didn't move. Omega and Delta were nowhere to be seen. That reassured him enormously. It had been a joy to train commandos who became better soldiers than he could ever be.
Tonight would test them, though. There were enough explosives in the area now to take out a quadrant and well beyond. Fine on a battlefield—but not in a city.
Careful. Go careful.
The speeder settled and hung at rest just above the ground. A group of five men and the middle-aged woman he'd seen at the meeting earlier were the welcoming committee, and they all had blasters visible on belts or held loosely at their sides. They directed Jusik to a spot between two trucks, sheltered from anyone who might pass by.
Skirata and Jusik got off the speeder bike and stood with their arms at their sides, calm and business-like. Skirata removed his helmet. Jusik kept his buy'ce on.
“The credits cleared fine,” Skirata said.
The woman inspected the speeder, which was laden like a Tatooine bantha with anonymous bags of rough sacking. “This is all the five-hundred-grade?”
“Four hundred quarter-kilo packs, bagged in tens. I suggest you split the load for safety.”
The woman shrugged. “We know how to handle explosives.” She reached out to unfasten one bag and squatted down to slide the ten bundled packets onto the ground. She squinted at the thick packaging and took out a knife from her pocket…
Skirata didn't need to see Jusik's face to know that the blood had drained from it.
Don't stick anything metallic into it. The electrolytic reaction will set it off
Mereel's little chemical enhancement to thwart the bomb makers in the event of their getting away with any of the explosives was about to kill them all.
“Whoa!” Skirata sighed irritably and hoped to the Force that he didn't sound the terrified man he was right then. “Don't shove a knife in that, woman! Unwrap it properly. Here, let me do it. Are you sure you know what you're doing?”
There was a collective involuntary gasp in his comlink earpiece, a very restrained one. He heard Ordo mutter, “Osik.”
“You insolent little Mandalorian thug,” she sneered, but she stood back to let him take over. And she held her blaster to his head.
Skirata ripped the bundle open with nervous hands and broke out one packet, tearing the flexiwrap with his teeth to expose the soft light brown contents. It tasted … oddly sweet.
“Here. Believe me?”
The woman scowled at him and squeezed the explosive between her fingers. “I'm checking that this isn't just dyed detonite.”
“Tell you what,” Skirata said, wondering if Jusik might try a spot of mind influence right then, “pick as many packs as you like at random and I'll unwrap them, and then you can prove to yourself that they're not booby-trapped, either.”
He heard Ordo's voice in his ear. “Kal'buil, you're scaring us …”
“Okay.” The woman pointed to another bag on the speeder bike. “That one. Empty it in front of me.”
Skirata obeyed. He unwrapped the bundle and waited for her to choose a pack at random. He tore it open and let her inspect it. She repeated the process three times.
Skirata stood up, hands on hips, and sighed theatrically. “I've got all night, sweetheart. Have you?”
The woman looked into his face as if she liked the idea of killing him anyway. “Bag it up and get out of here.”
He glanced at his chrono: 2220. Obrim would be getting jumpy now, with squads of CSF officers waiting throughout Galactic City to raid the long list of suspect addresses he'd given them.
“You heard the lady.” He shoved Jusik in the back. “Get on with it.”
The last few seconds before a hasty exit were always the most terrifying. A hairbreadth lay between victory and defeat, life and death. Jusik secured the last of the bags and dumped the rest from the speeder in a pile between the trucks.
“Now get lost,” she said.
“I take it I can't count you as a repeat customer, then?”
She raised the blaster eloquently. Skirata replaced his helmet and swung onto the speeder bike behind Jusik. They lifted into the air and climbed above the warehouse.
“Fierfek,” said Darman's voice in his ear. “I hate it when you improvise, Sarge.”
“Like you don't.”
“Standing by.”
Ordo cut in. “The woman's loading all the explosives except a single bag into one truck. The one with the green livery nearest the loading bay. I repeat, negative the green truck. Do not target the green truck or it's good-bye to half of Coruscant.”
“Females never listen to a thing I say, thankfully,” Skirata said. He knew she'd react like that. “So that means there's only one vessel we can't blow up.”
“Copy that, sir,” a chorus said.
Jusik set the speeder down three hundred meters behind the warehouse in a cluster of shuttered wholesalers' units. Skirata sat breathing deeply for a moment to steady himself before opening his comlink again with a double click of his back teeth.
“Obrim, this is Skirata.”
“Got you, Kal.”
“You can roll now, my friend. Talk to you later.”
“Copy that.” Obrim's channel snapped into silence.
“Omega, Delta, all units, this is Kal. We're clear. All yours, Captain.”
“Copy that, Sargeant.” Ordo began counting down. “Five, four, three, two … go go go! Oya!”
A bitter little war with far-reaching consequences was unleashed in downtown Galactic City.
22
We will watch you, I promise. You will not see us or hear us or even know we stand beside you. How does that feel, Jedi? How does it feel to be at the mercy of a species with powers even you don't have? Now you know how others regard you. Keep your promises, General, or you will see how hard a small, invisible army can strike.
–Jinart the Gurlanin, to General Arligan Zey, on the pledge to relocate all human colonists from Qiilura within eighteen months
CoruFresh depot, 2225—H Hour
At 2225 hours Triple Zero time, Fi and Mereel broke from behind the low wall at the southern edge of the landing strip and positioned themselves between the parked repulsor trucks at the far side facing the warehouse.
Fi focused the infrared scope of his DC-17 on the green truck and saw a bright patch of heat on the fuselage. He tilted up and saw the dim patchwork indicating the varying temperatures of a human's upper body, a pilot waiting to depart.
“I've got a target in the pilot's seat of the green truck, and his drive's showing up warm on the infrared scope. Is the explosive loaded? Can anyone confirm?”
“I can see the rear of the truck. They've closed the hatch with two targets inside as well as the pilot.” Ordo paused. “The green truck is now confirmed as laden. We have to keep that vessel grounded, vode. We can't detonate it, not here.”
“Dar, you got a clear shot at the pilot?”
There was the sound of fast breathing and a grunt as someone dropped next to him. Fi looked left and saw Darman kneeling on one leg with his Verpine rifle raised, elbow braced on his knee. A Verp slug was guaranteed to punch a hole in the truck's viewscreen and kill the pilot without triggering the five-hundred-grade. “Got him lined up. Standing by.”
Fi swung his Deece to locate Ordo on the roof. He couldn't see Sev, but Ordo's helmet range finder was just visible as he turned his head.
“Delta,” Ordo said, “stand by to take the rear of the green truck when we kill the illumigrids. Omega, target all walking targets on the landing strip.”
Kal's voice cut in. “Ord'ika—we're at the rear of the warehouse blocking the back doors. Force is estimating twenty-four live targets in all, I'm told.”
Fi refocused his scope on the interior of the warehouse. He could see at least nine men and women scurrying around inside, and two more visible via infrared, ripping open crates and bundling small boxes and blasters into bags. “I've got a minimum of eleven contacts around and inside the warehouse and it looks like they've got a small arsenal in there. Good news is that it's just one big empty space with partitioned offices down one wall.”
“Once the lights go out, they'll batten down …”
Sev cut in. “I've got two loading what looks like DC-15 rifle cases into the small red airspeeder on the northern perimeter fence.”
“Six of the trucks look warm and ticking over in my infrared,” Mereel said. “Can't see any activity in the rest of the speeders. There ought to be four ready to fly.”
“Hit them all, then, just to be certain,” Ordo said. “Hit everything except the green truck.
“I'm on night vision now,” Darman said. “Ready when you are, Captain Ordo.”
Corr sprinted into position to Fi's right, sliding behind a truck, with the rotary blaster braced against his belt and his left hand tight on the top grip. From his stance he looked like a man who felt pretty good about his chances. He wasn't even meant to be a commando; he'd just risen to the challenge.
Fi hoped Skirata would find a way of permanently absorbing him into Arca Company. He switched to his night scope and aligned the target icon on a man and a woman carrying a flat crate between them toward one of the trucks.
Fi's finger rested on the trigger.
“Lights!” Ordo hissed.
He and Sev fired their Plex rocket launchers, and both illumigrids were swallowed simultaneously by two balls of yellow flame.
The roar killed any chances of him hearing the shattering transparisteel viewscreen of the green truck. But he heard Darman an instant later.
“Truck pilot, clear!”
“We've lost one!” Jusik said.
“Say again?”
“One target's made a run for it, over in the northeast corner. I felt him go.”
There was a split second of frozen time before blue blasterfire sprayed from Fi's position, cutting down the two people moving a crate. Two of the trucks exploded in balls of fire, accounting for six more targets. The landing strip was now a dark void lit by the dying flames of two smashed trucks and sporadic bolts of Deece fire. From the far end of the depot the distinctive blue staccato attack of the rotary blaster hosed every vehicle on that side of the strip. Corr was definitely getting stuck in, as Kal'buir put it. He sprinted to Ordo's left, firing as he ran, taking out the last gray-and-silver airspeeder in a ball of white light.
“Jusik?” Ordo debated whether to worry about the one escapee. “Jusik, get Vau and Etain onto the one who's bolted.”
Beneath Ordo, Boss, Fixer, and Scorch raced to the rear of the green truck, Atin coming in from the other side. Boss fired a stream of bolts from his Deece at a shallow angle, slicing off half the truck's repulsor drive housing. It dropped flat on the ground with a massive crash of crumpling alloy. It definitely wasn't going anywhere now.
Scorch concentrated his fire into the warehouse. Ordo swung over the edge of the roof to rappel down into the melee, firing one of his twin blasters as he dropped. The shots sparked and smoked off closing doors. There were probably nine or ten terrorists now shut inside with a good supply of weapons. And right now they weren't Ordo's worst problem.
Sev thudded to the ground beside him and rewound his rappelling line. “Two Verp kills. That's all.”
“Two still alive inside the truck,” Boss said. “If you had a hundred kilos of thermal explosive, a lot of dets, and no escape, what would you do?”
“Take as many of the enemy out with me as I could,” Ordo said. “Storm that dik'utla truck now before they put us into orbit.”
Two minutes into the engagement felt like seconds. Fi sprinted down to the green truck on Mereel's heels with Corr, Darman, and Niner close behind.
“I make it ten bodies on the landing strip,” Niner said.
“One dead pilot and two live targets in this truck.” Ordo motioned Niner and Scorch to the front of the truck. “You stand by to distract them when Fixer and Boss go in the rear hatch.”
Ordo stood back with both blasters drawn as Fixer and Boss stacked either side of the hatch. He fired at the frame mountings and it buckled and burst open. There was a loud pee-eww pee-eww of ricocheting fragments from the front of the vessel and Fixer and Boss burst in with their gauntlet vibroblades drawn.
White lights flared and hissed: hand blasters. Ordo had a split second of thinking This is it, it's going to blow, we're dead, it's over—and then silence fell again. Battles seemed to him a mass of deafening noise interspersed with brief, dead silence.
“Fierfek, they didn't even get the dets lined up,” Scorch said. “Amateurs.” He scrambled out of the shattered truck, his armor blackened by blasterfire
. Boss jumped out behind him and shook blood off his vibroblade before sheathing it again.
Ordo took a breath. “Kal'buir?”
“We're still at the rear doors. It's gone a little quiet in there. Bard'ika says eleven inside.”
“Confirmed eleven on the infrared scope, too,” said Niner, who always needed to be certain.
“They've locked themselves in. We're just clearing the explosives out of the truck.” Ordo motioned to Corr, Niner, and Boss to go. “Mereel and I are going in the front doors. Dar and Fi, open up a hole in the south-side wall.”
“Want us to go in from the back, son?” Skirata said. “I'm pumping adrenaline and I'd like to get in on some action. For old times' sake.”
“Remember you don't have Katarn armor,” Ordo said, instantly more worried for Kal'buir than anyone alive.
Skirata snorted. “Remember you're not wearing Mandalorian iron.”
Ordo gestured to Mereel. His brother brushed a dusting of debris off his blue lieutenant's pauldron and reached over his shoulders with both hands to draw the massive Cip-Quad blaster strapped across his back.
“In three … ,” Ordo said.
“What happened to in five?”
“I just ran out of patience.”
Skirata held up his Verpine in his left hand, knife in his right, listening as Jusik drew his lightsaber, a Jedi Knight in a Mando helmet.
Bard'ika, I'll take that image to my grave.
He checked the infrared targeting beam, more out of nervous habit than anything, and hoped the hut'uune didn't have night vision.
The deafening double trip-hammer of Mereel's quad blaster shattered the brief calm and the rear doors were blown open. There was an explosion and a pounding rain of debris from the side of the warehouse. For a moment Skirata thought the doors had been blown out by the blast but Jusik punched the air as if it was a rather clever touch.
Fierfek. So that's the Force, is it?
There was no light spilling out of the doorway. Then someone inside the warehouse ran for the doors and a grainy figure shot through his night vision display.
Star Wars: Republic Commando: Triple Zero rc-3 Page 35
