Star Wars - Speaking Silently

by Jason Fry

  Captain Rex knew his brisk strides made his annoyance obvious to anyone watching. He didn’t care. An entire squad captured, Separatists preparing to collapse his left flank, generals hollering at him from Sector Command, and now someone from local militia was insisting on taking up time he didn’t have?

  Rex came to a halt in the middle of the forward operating base, scowling at the idea that a jumble of prefab shelters and camo-netting merited so lofty a name. His troopers in Torrent Company saw him coming and found other places to be. From their reactions, Rex knew what the expression on his face must look like. He didn’t care about that either.

  The militiaman waiting for him gave no sign of noticing the barely contained anger on Rex’s face. He was a tall human, slim and nut-brown, with a strong chin and dark, darting eyes. Another militiaman stood behind him.

  “Captain Rex?” the man asked languidly. “Lieutenant Sollaw ap-Orwien, Ereesus Planetary Security Forces. And this is Corporal Dafyd.”

  Technically, Rex supposed, he outranked the militiamen. But this was Ereesus, and locals on many worlds resented taking orders from clones, even when those orders saved their lives. So he kept his voice carefully controlled — brisk but not impolite.

  “What’s this about, soldier?” he asked.

  “The holo of the squad of militiamen captured last night,” ap-Orwien said. “I need to see it.”

  Rex cocked an eyebrow. “And why is that?”

  “It was Sergeant Palola’s squad, wasn’t it?” ap-Orwien asked. “Palola’s a miltiaman, about my height and build. The Separatists paraded him on the holo, showing off their captive. That’s correct, isn’t it, Captain?”

  “It might be,” Rex growled, thinking of chronos ticking down in the logic units of Separatist tactical droids out beyond the ridge. “If it were, why would it matter?”

  “Because Palo’s a Lorrdian like me,” ap-Orwien said. “Is the holo’s visual feed good quality? I need to know what Palo said in it.”

  Rex brought one hand down on a console with a bang, no longer caring about being polite or the possibility of complaints from local militia to Sector Command. He couldn’t afford to spend even a small part of his precious time answering stupid questions based on misconceived notions.

  “He didn’t say anything,” Rex said. “They wouldn’t let him, of course. These are tacs we’re dealing with, Lieutenant, not those idiot B1s.”

  A corner of ap-Orwien’s mouth jerked upward.

  “If the visual’s good quality, I guarantee you he said plenty,” ap-Orwien said. “Only the tac would never know it, Captain — and neither would you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Only another Lorrdian would understand,” ap-Orwien said.

  Rex hesitated. What would General Skywalker say? Not that General Skywalker was any guide to running a by-the-book military operation. Still… the Jedi certainly got results.

  I’m going to regret this, Rex thought, giving ap-Orwien a curt wave. “You two come with me. You can explain on the way.”

  “I’ll give you the short version,” ap-Orwien said as he hurried after Rex, boots slipping and sliding in the thick greenish mud of a late spring afternoon on Ereesus. “You’ve heard of the Kanz Disorders, Captain?”

  “Only just,” Rex said. “Ancient Republic, localized conflict.”

  Ap-Orwien and Dafyd exchanged a quick look. When he turned back, ap-Orwien’s eyes had turned cold and flinty.

  “You’re right about the ancient Republic part — the Kanz Disorders were nearly four millennia ago,” ap-Orwien said. “Nearly six billion beings died, many of them my fellow Lorrdians.”

  “No offense meant, Lieutenant,” Rex said. “I’m afraid these days I don’t have time to hit the history books. So. The short version, if you please.”

  “Very well, Captain,” ap-Orwien said as they ducked into the operations room. “During the Kanz Disorders Argazdan fanatics enslaved the Lorrdians. For three centuries we were forbidden to speak to each other.”

  Rex returned a salute from troopers Jesse and Ringo, then gave ap-Orwien a nod.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Rex said. “Jesse, activate the holotable and play the Separatist transmission we received last night.”

  Jesse nodded, fingers flying over the holotable’s keypad. A moment later a hologram shimmered to life. The captured Lorrdian sergeant stood glumly beside Oz, the Torrent Company trooper serving as a liaison between the Grand Army of the Republic and the militia.

  The trooper’s face — identical to that of Rex and Jesse — was carefully blank, betraying no emotion. He’d been trained to reveal nothing if captured. They all had.

  Battle droids surrounded the two men. A tactical droid turned the Lorrdian to face the holocamera, its mechanical face seeming somehow infuriatingly smug.

  As Rex had told ap-Orwien, neither Palola nor Oz said a word as the tactical droid made threats, followed by demands it knew the Republic wouldn’t meet. In fact, Rex barely saw the Lorrdian move for the two-minute length of the holorecording.

  Ap-Orwien glanced at Dafyd, nodded, and looked back at Rex.

  “We’ll need a gunship,” ap-Orwien said. “But the extraction team can be minimal — four or five troopers at most.”

  “Just a moment,” Rex said. “I deploy gunships and extraction teams around here, not you. Now, what are you talking about?”

  “My apologies — I sometimes forget not everyone’s a Lorrdian,” ap-Orwien said. “Your trooper, Palo and the rest of the squad are being held in the basement of a depot at the top of the Hidaci Ridge. Seven captives total. Only way out is up a narrow flight of stairs, so guards are minimal. The tactical droid’s base of operations is an old granary halfway down the hill. The Separatists have stockpiled artillery and fuel at points along the road — Dafyd and I can pinpoint them for you on a satellite map.”

  Ringo looked incredulously at Rex.

  “And you learned this how?” Rex asked.

  “Palo told us, of course!” ap-Orwien replied. “Well, he didn’t tell us. But he told any Lorrdian who happened to be watching. Good thing the tacs don’t care about culture or history any more than you do, Captain, or they’d never have put him on-camera.”

  “I still don’t understand—”

  “We call it kinetic communication, Captain,” ap-Orwien said. “With speech forbidden, we learned to talk to each other through the tiniest movements, the smallest gestures.”

  “And you can use that to discuss granaries and basements and artillery dumps?” Rex asked.

  “Perhaps you’d like to test us,” ap-Orwien said. “I’ll leave the room. You tell your trooper here something, with Dafyd listening. I’ll come back in and Dafyd will give me the message.”

  “Fair enough,” Rex said.

  Ap-Orwien nodded and left the operations room. Rex stepped over to Jesse and Ringo, then hesitated. Jesse raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m, uh, not in the habit of making up tactical information,” Rex explained, slightly embarrassed. “Um… send three squads to the ridge line. Squad on left takes point. Squad on the right will deploy with droid poppers. You know what droid poppers are, Corporal?”

  “Electromagnetic pulse grenades,” Dafyd said in thickly accented Basic. “Very good against the clankers.”

  Jesse grinned.

  “Right,” Rex said. He poked his head out to summon ap-Orwien, then turned to watch Dafyd. Now that he was looking closely, he could see the other Lorrdian moving in small, subtle ways — shifting his feet, blinking his eyes, twitching the corners of his mouth. But it was nothing that you’d register as out of the ordinary.

  “Three squads to the ridge,” ap-Orwien said. “Left ta
king point, right carrying EMP grenades.”

  Ringo whistled. “Got it dead to rights, Captain.”

  “It’s not exceptional hearing, or transmitters or something like that?” Rex asked.

  “Just the Lorrdian art, Captain, one we’ve never given up. Do you need another test?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Rex said. “Jesse, prep a gunship for liftoff at sundown. You, Ringo, Kix and Dogma. Plus the three of us. Have Kix bring field medi-kits, and… no, wait a minute.”

  He turned back to the two Lorrdians.

  “You’re sure about the fuel and artillery dumps?” Rex asked. “You can pinpoint the location?”

  Ap-Orwien nodded.

  Rex paused. How much would General Skywalker risk on a chance like this — an opportunity based on something he could

  barely detect and had no hope of understanding?

  Rex realized he already knew the answer to that one.

  “Don’t send that order yet, Jesse — get me Sector Command first,” he said.

  The gunship had been modified for stealth — fitted with engine shields and baffles and sprayed with a quick-dry black polymer that reduced its electromagnetic emissions to a whisper and its heat signature to a faint smudge. It was also unarmed, its missile launchers, ball turrets and laser cannons sacrificed to eliminate drag and noise.

  The modifications made the main hold so quiet that the clones and the two Lorrdians could converse in normal voices — yet Rex still found himself glaring at his troopers whenever they raised their voices above a low husk. The lights were out, but they could see easily enough in the moonlight. It fell through the slats in the gunship’s retractable side doors, silvery and accusingly bright.

  Stop it, Rex told himself. You can’t turn off the moon.

  “So the Y-wings will come in from the southeast?” ap-Orwien asked, wanting to go over the plan again.

  Rex nodded. Better that the Lorrdians ask one time too many than one time too few.

  “Right, while we circle and come in from the north,” Rex said. “The Y-wings will hit the fuel and artillery dumps. Meanwhile, our units will be making a big show, as if they’re planning to advance. That should draw the clankers south, leaving us time to slip in and free our people.”

  “And their tactical droid, he will not figure it out?” asked Dafyd.

  “We’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”

  “Don’t worry, boss,” said Jesse with a grin. “Sending that fuel dump sky-high will definitely get their attention.”

  “What makes you think I’m worried?” Rex asked, checking his DC-17s to make sure the power packs were seated properly.

  Jesse grinned. “Maybe it’s that you’ve got that look on your face that you get when you’re worried.”

  “And what look is that?” Rex asked — but it was ap-Orwien who answered.

  “l think it is this one,” he said, and then his lips pressed into a line, his eyes widened and looked straight ahead, his shoulders and back went rigid, and his hands began moving swiftly and precisely, field-stripping an imaginary firearm.

  The clones gaped at the Lorrdian. Ringo was the first to laugh, followed by Jesse and then the others. Rex forced himself to smile. He had recognized himself instantly, though ap-Orwien looked nothing like him.

  “Do Jesse next,” Ringo urged.

  “What’s the point?” Rex asked. “We’re the same person.”

  “You’re not,” ap-Orwien said. “You all move, act, and react differently.”

  Rex shook his head. “We’re clones.”

  “Which matters until birth,” ap-Orwien said. “After that, life makes you different — as it does with all of us.”

  “Maybe,” Rex said. “The mimicry — it’s part of your kinetic communication?”

  “Related,” ap-Orwien said. “With a language of small gestures, you learn to notice things. We’re excellent actors, imitators, interpreters.”

  “And observers,” Rex said. “But how does it work? How do you separate the gestures that communicate something from the ones that are just gestures?”

  “That’s something we don’t share,” he said. “We have had many enemies over the years. Today we are working with your Republic, but tomorrow things may be… different.”

  Rex started to object, but one of the clone pilots broke in over the comm.

  “Captain, fighters are beginning their attack run,” the pilot said. “Expect to have you on the ground in eight minutes.”

  Rex looked around the hold, saw his troopers’ faces harden. He knew they were reviewing mission objectives in their heads. That was what he was starting to do, as he’d done in thousands of drills on Kamino, and then on battlefields — so many that he had no chance of remembering them all.

  “Buckets,” he said, raising his helmet and settling it over his head, reorienting it so faceplate was forward. Jesse, Kix, Ringo and Dogma were doing the same. Ap-Orwien and Dafyd sat rigid.

  “Check your heads-up displays and comlinks,” Rex said, the words automatic by now.

  A bright orange flash on the ground somewhere behind them lit up the main hold, followed almost instantly by another. A moment later the gunship shuddered and they heard the roar of the impacts.

  “Fighters report ordnance delivered,” one of the pilots said calmly. “We are locked in on objective.”

  The gunship banked to the right, beginning its descent towards the rectangles and squares of fields below, stripped of color by the moonlight.

  It wasn’t until the gunship doors began to retract that Rex realized he’d forgotten to ask the militiamen something.

  “It’s ten meters down — do you know how to fast-rope?” he asked, even as the doors opened all the way and Jesse and Ringo flung the ends of the heavy cables down into the darkness.

  To his relief, ap-Orwien nodded and smiled, pantomiming a hand-over-hand descent.

  “Let’s go then,” Rex ordered, and a moment later the two clones were descending the rope into the compound below. The two Lorrdians went next, then Rex and Kix.

  Rex let go of the rope a meter above the ground, slipped in a slick of mud on the permacrete and wound up on his hands and knees. Cursing, he got to his feet, pistols drawn. They were in a small walled area, with a gate at one end and a platform at the other — a loading dock for speeder trucks. His helmet’s night-vision filter showed him Jesse and Ringo, scanning the yard with blasters raised. The Lorrdians were standing back to back in the center of the yard beside Kix, night-vision goggles over their eyes.

  Dogma landed beside Rex and he heard the faint shush of the gunship’s engines as it accelerated, already climbing skyward.

  “Yard’s clear, sir,” Jesse said.

  “Into the depot, then,” Rex said. “Lieutenant — any way to make use of your communications skills in a combat situation?”

  Ap-Orwien shook his head, but Dafyd patted his blaster.

  “Good shots,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Rex said. “We go in fast, get our people, get out fast. Leave only footprints and scrapped clankers.”

  “Roger, roger,” Jesse said, a hint of merriment in his voice. He and Ringo hoisted themselves onto the loading dock and attached charges to the broad door leading into the depot, the other clones and Lorrdians arranging themselves on either side. The door blew and the two clones ducked through the ragged hole they’d made, blasters howling in the space beyond.

  Rex leapt through the hole in the door, its edges a brilliant green in his night vision.

  Two battle droids were down on the floor, birdlike heads blown off. Jesse and Ringo were already on the other side of the cargo bay, examining the outer door.

  On the other side of that door they’d find a narrow walkway between the loading dock and the depot office — if the instructions silently transmitted by the Lorrdian captive could be trusted.

  Rex decided not to think about that if.

  The door’s indicator showed it was unlocked. Ringo n
odded at Jesse and the two thumbed it open and dashed through, moving low with their guns raised. The walkway was just as the Lorrdians had said. The door on the other side led to a cramped space around an unlovely, squat office. The clones cleared the yard, moving in pairs with practiced ease, then moved to cover the door leading inside.

  It was locked.

  “Our people should be two floors down,” Rex said as Jesse and Ringo set charges. “Dogma, give them a droid popper as a wake-up call.”

  The door exploded outwards and Dogma flung an EMP grenade inside, almost immediately wreathed in a nimbus of blue energy.

  This is too easy, Rex thought as he stepped over the smoking doorjamb, pausing to put a blaster bolt into the cognitive unit of a battle droid whose legs were still spasming. Too easy made him nervous — it never lasted.

  Inside, the lights were on. The troopers switched off their night vision and the Lorrdians lifted their goggles. Their boots clattered on the stairwell — and then Jesse yelled.

  “Commandos!”

  Descending the stairs, Rex ducked his head to try and spot the droids. That saved his life. Even as Jesse and Ringo fired at the commando droids advancing up the stairs, a third commando detached itself from a jumble of pipes on the ceiling above them, vibrosword slashing through the space where Rex’s head had been. The droid landed on the stairs behind Rex and kicked him in the rear, sending him tumbling down after Jesse and Ringo as the whistle of blaster fire filled the stairwell.

  Rex landed on his chest, nose smashing into the inside of his helmet. His hands and pistols were trapped beneath him. He tried to regain his feet, only to have something slam him down again and drive the air out of his lungs. Blows hammered at his armor — the commando droid, he realized. He flung himself sideways in an effort to free himself, wondering if he’d hear the sound of the vibrosword as it cut through his body glove and then his flesh. Or perhaps he wouldn’t hear anything.

  The droid was dead weight, he realized. Above him, ap-Orwien raised his blaster and smiled. Sparks spat from the back of the commando droid’s head.