Star Wars - Republic Commando - Hard Contact

by Karen Traviss

  "He doesn't like soldiers much," the woman said. "Is the Republic coming to help us?"

  "I can't answer that, ma'am," Darman said. He meant that he would never discuss operational matters; it was an auto­matic response under interrogation. Never just say yes, never just say no, and give no information except your ID number. Etain answered for him, which was her prerogative as a com­mander.

  "Do you want the Republic's help?" she asked.

  "You any better than the Neimies?"

  "I'd like to think so."

  The table fell silent again. Darman finished the soup. Pol-

  itics was nothing to do with him; he was more interested in filling up on something that had flavor and texture. If all went according to plan, in a few weeks he'd be far from here and on another mission, and if it didn't, he'd be dead. The fu­ture of Qiilura was genuinely of no relevance to him.

  The woman kept refilling his bowl with soup until he slowed up and eventually couldn't manage any more. It was the first hot food he'd had in days, and he felt good; little perks like that boosted morale. Etain didn't seem so enthusi­astic about it. She was moving each chunk cautiously around with her spoon, as if the liquid contained mines.

  "You need to keep your strength up," he said.

  "I know."

  "You can have my bread."

  "Thanks."

  It was so quiet in the room that Darman could hear the in­dividual rhythm of everyone's chewing, and the faint scrape of utensils against bowls. He could hear the distant, muffled sound of merlies nearby, an intermittent gargling noise. But he didn't hear something that Etain suddenly did.

  She sat bolt upright and turned her head to one side, eyes unfocused.

  "Someone's coming, and it's not Jinart," she hissed.

  Darman flung off his cloak and pulled his rifle. The woman and her relatives jumped up from the table so fast that it tipped despite its weight, sending bowls tumbling to the floor. Etain drew her lightsaber, and it shimmered into life. They both watched the entrance; the family scrambled through the back door, the woman pausing to grab a large metal bowl and a bag of meal from a sideboard.

  Darman doused the lamps and peered out through a hole in the air-brick. Without his visor, he was completely depen­dent on his Deece for long-distance vision. He couldn't see anything. He held his breath and listened hard.

  Etain moved toward him, gesturing at the far wall, indicat­ing seven—a whole hand then two fingers.

  "Where?" he whispered.

  She was marking something on the dirt floor. He watched

  her finger draw an outline of the four walls and then stab a number of dots outside them, most around the one she'd been pointing to, and one dot near the front door.

  She put her lips so close to his ear it made him jump. "Six there, one here." It was a breath, barely audible.

  Darman indicated the far wall and pointed to himself. Etain gestured to the door: Me? He nodded. He gestured one, two, three quickly with his fingers and gave her a thumbs-up: I'll count to three. She nodded.

  Whoever was outside hadn't knocked. It didn't bode well.

  He clipped the grenade attachment to his rifle and aimed at the far side. Etain stood at the door, lightsaber held above her head for a downward stroke.

  Darman hoped her aggression would triumph over her self-doubt.

  He gestured with his left hand, rifle balanced in his right. One, two—

  Three. He fired one grenade. It smashed through the sack-covered window and blew a hole in the wall just as he was firing the second. The blast kicked him backward, and the front door burst open as Etain brought her lightsaber down in a brilliant blue arc.

  Darman switched his rifle to blast setting and swung his sight on the figure, but it was an Umbaran and it was dead, sliced through from clavicle to sternum.

  "Two," Etain said, indicating the window, or at least where it had been seconds earlier. Darman sprang forward across the room, dodging the table and firing as he came to the hole smashed in the wall. When he stumbled through the gap there were two Trandoshans coming toward him with blasters, faces that seemed all scales and lumps, wet mouths gaping. He opened fire; one return shot seared his left shoul­der. Then there was nothing but numb silence for a few mo­ments, followed by the gradual awareness that someone was screaming in agony outside.

  But it wasn't him, and it wasn't Etain. That was all that mattered. He picked his way across the room, conscious of the growing pain in his shoulder. It would have to wait.

  "It's all clear," Etain said. Her voice was shaking. "Except for that man ..."

  "Forget him," Darman said. He couldn't, of course: the soldier was making too much noise. The screams would at­tract attention. "Load up. We're going."

  Despite Etain's assurance that there were no more waiting outside, Darman edged out the door and kept his back to the wall all the way around the exterior of the farmhouse. The wounded soldier was an Umbaran. Darman didn't even check how badly hurt he might be before he shot him cleanly in the head. There was nothing else he could do, and the mission came first.

  He wondered if Jedi could sense droids as well. He'd have to ask Etain later. He'd been told Jedi could do extraordinary things, but it was one thing to know it, and another entirely to see it in action. It had probably saved their lives.

  "What was that?" she asked when he returned to the lean-to. She already had the extra pack slung on her back, and he realized she'd actually moved the micromines even though they were still live. Darman, swallowing anxiety, disabled the detonator and added it to the list of things he needed to teach her.

  "Finishing the job," he said, and pulled on his bodysuit section by section. She looked away.

  "You killed him."

  "Yes."

  "He was lying wounded?"

  "I'm not a medic."

  "Oh, Darman ..."

  "Ma'am, this is a war. People try to kill you. You try to kill them first. There are no second chances. Everything else you need to know about warfare is an amplification of that." She was horrified, and he really wished he hadn't upset her. Had they given her a lethal lightsaber and not taught her what it really meant to draw one? "I'm sorry. He was in a bad way, anyway."

  Death seemed to shock her. "I killed that Umbaran."

  "That's the idea, ma'am. Nicely done, too."

  She didn't say anything else. She watched him attach the

  armor plates, and when he finally replaced his helmet he knew he didn't care how conspicuous he looked in it, be­cause he wasn't going to take it off again in a hurry. He needed that edge.

  "No more safe houses," Darman said. "There's no such thing."

  Etain followed him into the woodland at the back of the house, but she was preoccupied. "I've never killed anyone before," she said.

  "You did fine," Darman told her. His shoulder was throb­bing, gnawing into his concentration. "A clean job."

  "It's still not something I would care to repeat."

  "Jedi are trained to fight, aren't they?"

  "Yes, but we never killed anyone in training."

  Darman shrugged and it hurt. "We did."

  He hoped she got over it fast. No, it wasn't enjoyable, killing: but it had to be done. And killing with lightsaber or blaster was relatively clean. He wondered how she'd handle having to stick a blade in someone and see what ran out. She was a Jedi, and with any luck she'd never have to.

  "Them or us," he said.

  "You're in pain."

  "Nothing major. I'll use the bacta when we reach the RV."

  "I suppose they turned us in."

  "The farmers? Yeah, that's civilians for you."

  Etain made a noncommittal grunt and followed silently behind him. They moved deeper into the woods, and Darman calculated how many rounds he'd expended. If he kept en­gaging targets at this rate, he'd be down to his sidearm by nightfall.

  "It's amazing how you can sense people," Darman said. "Can you detect droids, too?"

  "Not es
pecially," she said. "Usually just living beings. Maybe I can—"

  A faint whine made Darman turn in time to see a blue bolt of light streaking toward him from behind. It struck a tree a few meters ahead, splitting it like kindling in a puff of vapor.

  "Obviously not," Etain said.

  It was going to be another long, hard day.

  A warning siren sounded: three long blasts, repeated twice. Then the peaceful fields northwest of Imbraani shook with a massive explosion, and terrified merlies bolted for the cover of the hedgerows.

  "Blasting today, then," Fi said. "Lovely day for it."

  Niner couldn't see anything but droids—industrial droids— moving around the quarry. He ran his glove across his visor to clear the droplets of rain and tried several binoc magnifi­cations, flicking between settings with eye movements. But if there were organic workers around, he couldn't see any.

  The quarry was a massive and startling gouge in the land­scape, an amphitheater with stepped sides that allowed droid excavators to dig out rock for processing. The depression sloped gently at one side; it was a towering cliff on the other. A small site office with alloy-plated walls and no windows sat beside a wide track at the top of the slope. Apart from the steady procession of droids laden with raw rock for the screen­ing plant, the area was deserted. But someone—something— was controlling the detonations. They had to be in the building. And structures with solid alloy walls like that tended to have interesting contents.

  The all-clear siren sounded. The droids moved in to scoop up the loose rock, sending spray and mud flying as they rum­bled up the slopes.

  "Okay, let's see what we can liberate from the hut," Niner said. "Atin, with me. Fi, stay here and cover."

  They darted out of the trees and across a hundred meters of open land to the edge of the quarry, dodging between giant droids that took no notice of them. One droid, its wheels as high as Niner was tall, swung its bucket scoop un­expectedly and struck his shoulder plate a glancing blow. He stumbled and Atin caught his arm, steadying him. They paused, waiting for the next droid to return up the slope, then jogged alongside it until level with the site building.

  They were now exposed, pressed close to the front wall.

  The building was only ten meters wide. Atin knelt at the door and studied the single lock.

  "Pretty insubstantial if this is where they store the explo­sives," he said.

  "Let's take a look."

  Atin stood up slowly and placed a scope on the door to lis­ten for movement. He shook his head at Niner. Then he slid a flimsi-thin flat endoscope around the jamb, working it back and forth, slowly and carefully. "Now that's a tight fit," he said. "Can't get it in."

  "We could always just walk in there."

  "Remember, we're probably heading into a store full of explosives. If I could get a probe through it could at least get a sniff of the air and test for chemicals."

  "Okay, let's walk in carefully, then."

  There was no handle. Niner stood to the hinge side, Deece in one hand, and pressed silently on the single plate that made up the door. It didn't yield.

  Atin nodded. He took out the handheld ram, ten kilos that had seemed like dead, useless weight in their packs until now. He squared it up to the lock.

  Niner raised one finger. "Three ... two ..."

  It applied a force of two metric tons.

  "Go."

  The door fell open, and they both leapt back as a stream of blasterfire shot out. It stopped suddenly. They squatted on ei­ther side of the entrance. Usually this was simple: if some­one inside didn't want to leave, a grenade coaxed them out, one way or another. But with a high chance of explosives being inside, that method was a little too emphatic. Niner shook his head.

  Atin moved the endoscope carefully, getting a glimpse of the building's interior. Then he edged the probe into the doorway, drawing another stream of blasterfire.

  "Two moving around," he said. "Light's out. But the probe got a sniff of explosives."

  "Spot-lamp and rush them, then?"

  Atin shook his head. He took out a grenade and locked it

  in the safety position. "How nervous would you be if you were sitting on enough stuff to put this quarry into orbit?"

  "Drink-spilling nervous, I'd say."

  "Yeah." Atin hefted the grenade a few times. "That's what I thought."

  He bowled the disabled grenade into the doorway and jerked back. Three seconds later, two Weequays rushed out. Niner and Atin fired simultaneously; one Weequay dropped instantly, and the other's momentum carried him on a few meters farther, until he fell in the path at the top of the ramp. The quarry droids trundled on, oblivious. If the shot hadn't killed him, the advancing droid did.

  "Sarge, you need some help down there?"

  Niner motioned Atin inside. "No, Fi, we're set here. Keep an eye out in case we get company."

  The building reeked of cooking and unwashed Weequay. A small droid, lights blinking on standby and caked in dried mud, stood by a console. The rest of the space—three rooms— was taken up by explosives, detonators, and various spare parts and stenciled crates.

  "There's your demolitions man," Atin said, tapping the droid on its head, and retrieved his grenade. He wiped it with his glove and put it back in his belt pack.

  "I'd rather have Darman," Niner said. He studied the inert droid, which seemed to be waiting for the dislodged rock to be cleared. It jerked suddenly into life, made its way toward a crate of explosives, opened the safety lid, and took out sev­eral tubes. Then it turned toward the room where the detona­tors were kept. Niner reached out and opened its control panel to deactivate it. "Take some time off, friend," he said. "Blasting's over for the day."

  It didn't appear that the Weequay had been employed here. The droid sorted all the charges and oversaw the blasting. On an upturned crate were the remains of a meal, eaten off makeshift plates fashioned from box lids. It looked like the Weequays had been hiding out here, and Niner was pretty sure he knew who they had been avoiding.

  Atin checked the various charges and detonators, select-

  ing what appeared to take his fancy and piling it in a clear space on the muddy floor. He was a connoisseur of technol­ogy, especially things with complex circuitry. "Lovely," he said, with genuine satisfaction. "Some dets here that you can set off from fifty klicks. That's what we need. A bit of a pyrotechnics show."

  "Can we carry as much as we need?"

  "Oh, there's some beauties here. Darman would think they were pretty basic, but they're going to work fine as a diver­sion. Absolute beauts." Atin held up spheres about the size of a scoopball. "Now this baby—"

  Crash.

  Something fell to the floor in one of the rooms off the main one. Atin held his rifle on the doorway and Niner drew his sidearm. He was edging toward the door when a sudden voice almost made him squeeze the trigger.

  "Ap-xmai keepuna!" The voice was shaking, and judging by the accent it probably belonged to a Weequay. "Don't kill! I help you!"

  "Out. Now." Projected from his helmet, Atin's voice was intimidating enough without a rifle to back it up. A Weequay stumbled out from behind a stack of crates and sank to his knees, hands held up. Atin pushed him down flat with his boot, Deece aimed at his head. "Arms behind your back and don't even breathe. Got it?"

  The Weequay appeared to have got it very quickly. He froze and let Niner cuff his wrists with a length of wire. Niner did a sweep of the rooms again, worried that if they'd missed one target they might have missed more. But it was clear. He walked back and squatted down by the Weequay's head.

  "We don't need a prisoner slowing us down," he said. "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't kill you."

  "Please, I know Hokan."

  "I'll bet you know him pretty well if you were hiding out here. What's your name?"

  "Guta-Nay. I were right-hand man."

  "Not anymore, though, eh?"

  "I know places."

  "Yeah, we know places, too."
>
  "I got key codes."

  "We've got ordnance."

  "I got codes to Teklet ground station."

  "You wouldn't be messing around, would you, Guta-Nay? I don't have time for that."

  "Hokan kill me. You take me with you? You Republic guys nice, you gentlemen."

  "Steady, Guta-Nay. All those syllables might burn you out."

  Niner looked at Atin. He shrugged.

  "He'll slow us down, Sarge."

  "Then we either leave him here or kill him."

  The conversation wasn't designed to scare Guta-Nay, but it had that effect anyway. It was a genuine problem: Niner was reluctant to drag a prisoner around with them, and there was no guarantee the Weequay wouldn't try to buy back favor from Hokan with intelligence on their strength and movements. He was an unwelcome dilemma. Atin clicked his Deece, and it started to power up.

  "I get you Neimie boss, too!"

  "We definitely don't need him."

  "Neimie's really mad at Hokan. He put droids in his nice shiny villa. Floors messed up."

  Guta-Nay's breathing rasped in the silence of the room. Niner weighed the extra baggage against the prospect of some edge in gaining access to Uthan.

  "Where's Uthan now?"

  "Still in villa. Nowhere else to hide."

  "You know a lot about Hokan, don't you?"

  "Everything." Guta-Nay was all submission. "Too much."

  "Okay," Niner said. "You got a reprieve."

  Atin waited a couple of seconds before powering down his rifle. He seemed doubtful. Niner couldn't see his expression, but he heard the characteristic slight exhalation that was Atin's silent oh-terrific.

  "He'll leave a trail a worrt could follow."

  "Ideas?"

  "Yeah." Atin leaned over Guta-Nay, and the Weequay turned his head slightly, eyes wide with terror. He seemed more terrified by the helmet than the gun. "Where do the droids take the raw rock?"

  "Big place south of Teklet."

  "How far south?"

  "Five klick maybe."

  Atin straightened up and indicated with a pointed finger that he was going outside. "Technical solution. Wait one."

  His predilection for gadgets was becoming a blessing. Niner was tempted to take back the unkind thoughts he'd had about the man's training sergeant. He followed him outside. Atin jogged alongside one of the excavation droids, match­ing its pace before jumping up scrambling onto its flatbed. The machine rumbled inexorably up the slope as if nothing was going to divert it from its progress to the screening plant. Then it stopped and swung around, narrowly missing the droid bringing up its rear. It paused a couple of meters from Niner; Atin, kneeling on the flatbed, held up two cables.