"Let's avoid, that, shall we?"
"Let's."
Etain was hovering at Niner's shoulder. He glanced at her, hoping she'd take the hint.
"You've never worked as a complete team before, have you?" she said unhelpfully.
"No," Niner hissed, and withheld the ma 'am.
"You're going to do fine," she said. "You're the best-trained, most competent troops in the galaxy and you're confident of success."
Niner was close to responding with a few words of pithy Huttese, but he suddenly saw her point. His stomach settled into a peaceful equilibrium again. He could hear Darman clearly. His drumming pulse had faded. He was perfectly content not to think how she had achieved that reassurance.
"In ten," Darman said. He still had his forward helmet cam patched through to Niner's HUD. He was scrambling through a tunnel. Niner had a sensation of rushing down a flume and half expected to splash into a deep pool at the other end.
"Five .. ." It went dark. Darman had his head tucked into his chest. "Three . . ." Niner felt for the remote detonator. "Two . . . go go go."
Niner squeezed the remote.
For a fraction of a second the landscape was picked out in brilliant, gold, silent light. Niner's antiblast visor kicked in. Then the ground shook, and even at two klicks the roar was deafening. It seemed to go on for several seconds. Then he realized he was hearing two blasts—one at the villa and one below the facility.
As the fire blazed and clouds of amber-lit smoke roiled into the air, the droids on watch outside the facility started reacting.
"Hold, Fi." Niner swallowed to clear his ears. "Dar, Atin, respond."
"Was that us or you?"
"Both. You okay, Dar?"
"Teeth are a bit loose, but we're fine."
"Nice job with the custom ordnance, you two. I think the villa's got a new indoor swimming pool."
"The chamber's holding down here, just about. Going in."
Silence had fallen on the countryside. It was as if everyone was waiting for the next move. Fi moved the five-pack of energy cell clips a little closer to him. Niner aimed his Deece to get a better view of the front of the villa, and saw droids milling around and an Umbaran officer with binocs scanning left to right across the fields.
"Ready, Sarge."
"Wait one."
A few more droids came out of the farmhouse door. If Niner hadn't seen the plans, he would never have believed what was concealed inside and beneath the convincingly shabby wooden siding. Etain stood to one side of him.
"Ma'am, you might want to duck and cover."
"I'm all right," she said. She looked longingly at the Trandoshan concussion rifle. "Let me know when I'm needed."
Darman's voice cut in on the comlink. "We're about to enter the drain cover," he said. "Time for distraction, Sarge."
"Got it." He knelt beside Fi and touched him on the shoulder. "Put a couple down a little short of that barn. Just to say hello. Then fire at will."
Fi hardly moved. The characteristic whoomp of the energy cell was followed by a ball of fire and a fountain of splintered wood. The barn rained back down, burning as it fell.
"Oops," Fi said.
It got the droids' attention, all right. Six formed a line and began marching down the field.
Fi opened up. Niner could feel the roar of noise in his chest as droid shrapnel rained down on them and incoming fire whisked over their heads. A large chunk of metal flew in an arc: Niner heard it fizzing in the air as it cooled while it
fell. He didn't see where it landed, but it was close. His night vision saw the sprays of shrapnel as brilliant white irregular raindrops. A few tinnies were getting through. Niner picked off two with the grenades.
The next rank of droids advanced. Fi was firing in short bursts; Niner picked off whatever was still standing. Hot metal shrapnel continued to rain down on them. At the E-Web's rate of fire he was going to run out if he simply hosed them, and they were only minutes into the engagement. They'd dropped around twenty droids. That meant twenty more inside the facility, at least. Then the tinnies stopped coming.
The field fell silent, and it rang in Niner's ears as loudly as the cacophony of battle.
"I hate it when they work out what's happening," Fi said. He was panting from the effort.
"They'll sit tight."
"If it's just twenty or so in there, I say we go in now."
"Let's make sure we haven't got guests arriving." Niner opened the long-range comlink. "Majestic, Omega here, over. Majestic—"
"Receiving you, Omega. That was some fireworks display. Got trade for us?"
"'Majestic, extra target for you. Have you got a visual between targets Greenwood and Boffin?"
"If you've got a remote you can patch us into."
Niner slipped off his pack and took out a remote, releasing it into the air. "Droids, estimated strength no more than fifty. If they're heading toward us, do me a favor and spoil their day, will you?"
"Copy that, Omega. Sitrep?"
"We've breached the facility and we've got twenty or thirty droids and an unknown number of wets holed up in there."
"Say again?"
"Two of our squad are inside. Ingress via the drainage system."
"You guys are off your repulsors."
"The thought did cross our minds."
"Okay, some fireworks coming your way, Omega. Be advised we still have a Techno Union vessel standing off, and we're expecting a response when we train the lasers."
"Watch how you go," Niner said. "Omega out."
Apart from the ticking of cooling metal, it was silent. Even the chatter and whistling of Qiilura's nocturnal species had stopped. Smoke was billowing across the field from the wrecked barn.
"You okay, ma'am?" Fi said.
Niner glanced around and expected to see Etain in some state of distress, but she wasn't. She was kneeling in the grass, alert, as if listening to something. Then another huge explosion shook the ground to their north.
She closed her eyes.
"Ma'am?"
She gave a little shake of her head as if loosening stiff neck muscles.
"It's fine," she said. "It just took more out of me than I imagined."
"What did?"
"Diverting all this debris. Droids make a terrible mess when they explode."
Niner hadn't a clue what she was talking about. It was only when he turned around that he saw the meter-long jagged sheet of metal right behind him. It had almost given him an unwanted haircut. Etain managed a grin.
"Can you open doors as well, ma'am?" Niner asked.
Darman and Atin looked around the plastoid-lined chamber and decided not to remove their helmets.
"This is one way to find out if a nanovirus can breach our filtration masks," Atin said.
Darman checked the cupboards, looking for booby traps and other surprises. "I don't feel dead yet. Anyway, they don't leave this stuff lying around. It'll probably be sealed in something."
He checked the room. It was exactly like a medic's station on Kamino, except it was completely constructed from plas-
toid ceramic. Some of the cupboards had transparent fronts; he could see racks of vials in them. In the middle of the room there was a separate sealed booth, running floor-to-ceiling, with a glove box in it. It was empty. There was also a refrigerated cabinet full of flasks and small boxes. He had no idea what might be live virus and what might be the lab technician's lunch, and he wasn't going to open everything to find out. This was another case of using P for plenty.
"Seeing as they're not helpful enough to label this stuff with a skull and crossbones, I'm going to set an implosion device in every room, to be on the safe side." He ran his hands over the walls, testing for signs of metal substructures that might block his signal. The HUD showed zero from his glove sensors. He checked his comlink to be sure that he could get a signal outside. "Darman here. Anyone receiving, over?"
"Fi here."
"The inne
r chamber's clear. I'm setting charges and then we're going to move out into the rest of the building."
"We're approaching the front. It's gone quiet out here and we think you've still got up to thirty tinnies for company."
"Is that you shaking the ground?"
"Majestic."
"Good to know the navy's here."
"Leaving the helmet comlink channel, by the way. Make sure you leave us your visual feed."
"We'll let you know if it spoils our concentration. Darman out."
He gave Atin a dubious thumbs-up and took the implosion charges out of his pack. He could improvise most devices, but these were special, guaranteed to create such a high-temperature fireball and shock wave that they would destroy not only everything standing in a half-klick radius, but also every microorganism and virus as well. They were disappointingly small for such massively destructive power, a little smaller than the average remote.
Darman still had two. It was overkill, and overkill made him feel safer. He picked up the lidded boxes in the refrigera-
tion unit and tested each for weight—very carefully—before finding a lighter one that suggested it was half empty. He set it on the table, held his breath, and eased the lid off.
It held a few metal tubes with sealed caps, and enough space for one of the devices. He placed the thermal carefully inside and replaced the container.
"Go careful," Atin said, indicating the boxes.
"I will." He found another lightweight box and peered inside. "There. And if they get to searching, they might even stop after they find one device." He closed the refrigerator door.
"That won't reduce the blast any, will it?" Atin asked.
"Not so you'd notice, believe me."
'Time for the tour of the building, then."
There were status panels to the right of the door, set to warn some monitoring system if the chamber was opened, and a hand-sized button marked emergency close, a smart precaution if you were handling deadly viruses. Opening the door would advertise the fact that they had gained entry to the building. Atin moved in and carefully unclipped the control plate. He took out a disruptive device about the size of a stylus and held it just clear of the exposed circuits. It was much the same technology as a mini EMP, only with a less powerful electromagnetic pulse. Nobody wanted a full-strength EMP going off a few centimeters from their HUD, hardened or not.
"Next big bang," Atin said. "Then they might think they've just taken a hit."
The ground shook again, and Atin touched the mini EMP against the control panel. Status lights winked out; the door gave a sigh as it lost its safety vacuum seal. A thin vertical gap opened in the smooth ceramic. Sound now filtered in from outside: explosions, shouts from officers, the occasional monotone responses of tinnies. He stood back and gestured to Darman.
The gap was big enough to admit a flat endoscope, as well as the claws of the ram. He slid the probe cautiously through
and checked the image it was receiving. The corridor lights were flickering. There was no movement.
"I'll force the doors and you stand by. I'll be ready to lob in an EMP grenade and a flash-bang."
"Both?" Atin said.
"Yeah, I don't want to waste any, either, but we've got wets and tinnies out there somewhere."
Darman wedged the ram's claws into the gap and locked the bars in place. It was more awkward to configure it as a spreader than as a simple ram, but he didn't want to blow it open. He pumped the ratchet handle furiously. An eight-metric-ton force slowly pushed the doors apart.
Atin checked outside with the endoscope again, then stepped through the opening with his Deece raised. "Clear."
Darman dismantled the ram and hurriedly hooked it back into his webbing. "Room by room, then. Killing House time."
That was something they'd done many, many times before. Each time they entered the Killing House on Kamino for an exercise, the walls and doors had been reconfigured. Sometimes they knew what they were going to find, and sometimes it was like a real house clearance, a sequence of nasty surprises that they had to take as they came.
But there was a lot more at stake now than their individual lives.
Atin gestured left. The inner corridor was a ring with doors leading off it and a single passage to the front entrance. At least there were no stairs or turbolifts to cover. They moved almost back-to-back, pausing at the corner to slide the endoscopic probe out far enough to check.
"Oh boy," Atin said, just as the first droid swung around and blasted. Darman heard the clatter of metal feet from exactly the opposite direction, and for a frozen moment he found himself staring down his scope at a very surprised Umbaran officer.
Darman fired. So did Atin. They both kept firing down their respective ends of the corridor.
"Okay, plan D," Atin said. "Niner, we're pinned down here, over."
"We're concentrating fire on the front." Niner's voice cut back in with a background of explosions both near and farther away. That was why Darman didn't like a having a four-way open comlink during an engagement. The noise and chatter were overwhelming. "They've pulled back inside. But nobody's coming out."
"We haven't located Uthan yet."
"Can you hold the position?"
"Can you see where we are? West side corridor, left of the entrance."
Atin emptied a clip into two droids that came around the corner. Then there was no noise except for their respective panting.
"Dar?"
"Still here, Niner." Back-to-back with Atin, he waited and stared down the polished hallway twenty meters ahead. There were two doors on the right, unconventional hinged doors. He glanced up at the ceiling to locate the emergency bulk-heads: one was on the other side of Atin, and the next was be-tween them and the inner chamber. If those were activated, they'd be cut off on both sides, boxed in and waiting to be picked off. And then anyone could easily enter the biohaz chamber and defuse the implosion device.
It seemed that someone had the same idea at the same time, because there was an uh-whump noise and then the quiet whine of a small motor.
The bulkheads were descending from their housing.
"Atin, chamber, wow!" Darman yelled, even though he didn't need to, and they both sprinted back toward the chamber. The bulkhead was down to waist level when they reached it and skidded under on their knees.
It sealed with a clunk behind them. It was suddenly so silent that Darman knew another bulkhead had closed somewhere along the ring, sealing them in. There was the sound of a door unlocking manually, a real clunk-click noise, and then nothing.
"Start again," Darman sighed. "Let's see what's around there."
Atin moved forward and edged out the scope. He paused. He sat back on his heels and shook his head.
"Show me," Darman said, and switched his HUD to the scope view, expecting disaster.
"I think it's called irony."
Darman crawled up to him and patched the endoscope into his own helmet.
Yes, irony was a good word for it. He almost laughed. Between the corner and the next bulkhead, he could see two doors, one closed and one partly open. Someone—someone humanoid—was peering around the edge of it.
"Women don't half look different, don't they?" Atin said. "That's the most amazing hair I've ever seen."
Darman agreed. They hadn't seen a lot of females in then-lives, but this one would have been memorable even if they had seen millions. Her blue-black hair was streaked with brilliant red stripes. They were trapped with Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan.
And she was clutching a Verpine shatter gun.
17
CO Majestic to Coruscant Command
Techno Union vessel is now drifting. Damage assessment is incomplete but it is no longer returning fire. Vengeance is standing by to dispatch a boarding party. Will continue to provide turbolaser gunnery support to Omega Squad.
"Who activated the emergency systems? Which di'kut hit the button? Tell me!" Ghez Hokan found himself shout
ing. He had abandoned dignity. "Open this di'kutla bulkhead!"
Captain Hurati's voice was strained. They were both on the wrong side of the first safety bulkhead, in a single unforgiving corridor that led to the entrance, and the main doors were jammed shut. It was a very secure building: and, as Uthan had said, it was designed to stop anything from getting out if things went wrong. It was doing that well.
"We've been infiltrated, sir."
"I worked that out for myself, di'kut." He was interrupted by a grenade exploding against the front wall. "How in the name of—"
"I don't know yet, sir, but the bulkheads activated because the containment chamber doors weren't registering on the system as closed, and it triggered the emergency systems."
"Stuck open, in other words."
"Yes."
Hokan swung around on the nearest droid. "Anyone up on the surface see signs of entry?"
A pause. "Negative."
Oh, how he longed for decent communications again. He could guess from the strength and direction of some of the explosions that the area was coming under laser cannon fire, which meant the Republic assault ship had finally showed its hand. It could even be landing more troops.
But that wasn't his immediate concern. The bad news was that somebody had already managed to get in, and not through the front door. They couldn't have come in through the drains. They shouldn't have been there. But there was firing, and droids were reporting casualties.
There were Republic commandos inside the facility.
Hokan had never thought himself infallible, but he had at least imagined he was exceptionally competent. He'd locked down the facility and they'd still found a way in. His first thought was that Uthan had wanted a live subject so badly that she was prepared to lure them in and trap one, but that was ludicrous: she hadn't the means or the opportunity to bypass security.
The nanovirus was out of Hokan's reach behind bulkheads that wouldn't yield. Droids patiently fired blasters into the face of the alloy. But, as in his earlier test, they were making no impression beyond heating the sealed corridor to tropical temperatures.
"Do we know if all the bulkheads are down?" he asked the droid. Its comlink with its peers made it suddenly a lot more useful than Hurati. "All of them?" Hokan was trying to work out if he had any way of getting to Uthan or the nanovirus. The control board in the office off the main corridor was showing red throughout, but he didn't know whether to believe it or not.
Star Wars - Republic Commando - Hard Contact Page 24
