"Omega here, Majestic. What's that Techno warship doing?"
"Listing to port and smoking a bit, Omega."
"You've been busy."
"If we get busier, we'll let you know. We're dispatching the gunship now. It'll be waiting when you reach the extraction point."
Niner crawled back to Fi's position and nudged him. "You might as well make a move for the EP now with Etain. I can hold this position."
"No."
"Can I give you an order?"
"I might call you Sarge, but right now I'm ignoring you."
Etain appeared on the other side of Fi, with Jinart. "What's happening?"
"The gunship's on its way. I suggest you and Fi head out and meet it."
"Where's Darman?"
"About fifty meters down the tunnel. It's heavy going."
"It's still the quickest path through the warren," Jinart said. "Short of digging them out."
"Digging through five meters of soil without power tools or explosives is going to take a long time." Niner turned to Etain. "Is there anything you can do, ma'am?"
Etain pushed her tangled hair back from her face. "If Jinart can find the shallowest point of the tunnel, I can try to part the soil. If you explain to me what needs to happen, I can picture it. The more accurately I can picture it, the better my chances of bringing the Force to bear. I have to see what's happening in my mind."
"I can find their position," Jinart said.
"By all means bring your lightsaber, ma'am," Fi said. "But only use it if you miss with this." He handed her his blaster.
Etain shoved it in her belt. "You persuaded me."
Jinart was fast. Etain had trouble keeping up with her when she was running on all fours, her snout to the ground. The Gurlanin's rhythmic sniffs were in counterpoint to Etain's gasping breath.
They were moving in a square search pattern across the field to the east of the facility, trying to locate the exact section of tunnel that Darman and Fi had taken. Etain could sense Darman now. They were close.
"Are you following scent?" Etain panted.
"No, I'm listening for echoes."
"With your nose?"
"Where I keep my ears is my own business." Jinart stopped
dead and pressed her snout into the soil with a few short, strong snorts. "Here. Dig here."
"I hope they know we're right above them."
"We aren't. They're about ten meters back up the tunnel. If you excavated where they are you could bury them completely."
Etain wasn't sure if Jinart was making a general point about rescue procedure, or commenting on her competence. She didn't care. Darman was down there and he needed her help. Atin was down there, too, but the thought of Darman focused her because ... because he was a friend.
She could almost imagine him advising her that sentimentality was a luxury that a commander could never afford.
"Here we go," she said, more to herself than to Jinart.
Etain knelt to one side of the line of the tunnel and placed her hands flat on the ground. When she closed her eyes, she visualized the warren, seeing its uneven walls with tree roots emerging from them like knotted rope. She saw small stones and seams of amber clay.
Then her focus became more intense. She saw smaller roots, and then the individual grains of mineral and veins of organic material. She felt her breathing slowing, changing, as if her lungs weren't moving within her but rather the air outside her body was pressing and relaxing, pressing and relaxing, slowly and rhythmically.
And she finally saw the space around each microscopic grain. It wasn't empty. It was invisible, but it was not a void. Etain felt it. She had control of it at a fundamental, subatomic level. She could feel the pressure throughout her body.
Now all she had to do was shape it.
At the sides of the tunnel, she pictured the space thinning and reducing, compacting the walls, strengthening them against collapse. Overhead—and she now felt like she was lying flat on her back looking up at the vault above her—she saw the space expand.
The grains moved farther apart. The space flowed in to
displace them. The space flowed upward to lift them. And then the space was suddenly all there was.
Etain was aware of something cold and slightly damp across the backs of her hands and opened her eyes. She was kneeling in fine, friable soil. It looked as if a patient gardener had sieved it to prepare for planting seeds.
She was looking down into an open trench. There was a domed line of soil along both sides, as neat and regular as if an excavator had done the job.
"That," said Jinart's voice beside her, "was quite extraordinary." The Gurlanin's tone was almost reverent. "Quite extraordinary."
Etain knelt back on her heels. Instead of the exhaustion she normally felt after using the Force to shift objects, she felt refreshed. Jinart slipped down into the trench and disappeared. A few moments later, a familiar blue-lit, T-shaped visor popped up from the darkness below, and it didn't alarm her at all.
"There's always a career for you in the construction industry, Commander," Darman said.
He scrambled out of the trench, and Etain threw her arms around him without thinking. Her blaster clunked against his armor plates. It was odd to hug something that felt like a droid, but she was overwhelmed by relief that he'd made it. She let go and stepped back, suddenly embarrassed.
"Yeah, I've been in a sewer," he said, all guilt. "Sorry."
Atin's voice carried from the trench. "Dar, are you going to stand there all night posing for the commander, or are you going to help me lift this?"
"As if I could forget," Darman said.
After some grunting and cursing, the two commandos managed to lift a thoroughly trussed body onto the edge of the trench. Etain pulled off the hood and stared into the half-closed eyes of Dr. Uthan. She was drifting in and out of consciousness.
"How much did you give her?" Etain asked.
"Enough to shut her up," Darman said.
Etain hoped the woman didn't vomit and choke to death.
It was always a risk with heavy sedatives. They hadn't come this far to lose her. Atin leaned forward, and Darman heaved Uthan onto his back.
"Ten-minute shifts," Atin said. "And I'll be counting."
"I hope she's worth the effort," Etain said.
"So do I," Jinart said. "You must make your own way now. I've done all I can. Remember us, Jedi. Remember what we have done for you, and that we expect your help in reclaiming our world. Honor that promise."
Jinart looked the Padawan up and down as if measuring her, and then the Gurlanin lost her outline and became black fluid again, vanishing into the undergrowth.
"To think I nearly shot her," Darman said, shaking his head. They moved off toward the extraction point across country remarkably empty of gdans.
Ghez Hokan lined up the young scientists on the other side of the door. He gestured to Hurati.
"On my mark," he said. "Kill the lights."
"Sir, if the speeders have been destroyed, what are we going to do?"
Hokan thought it an unusually stupid question for such a fine officer, but perhaps he was thinking about just how far untrained civilians might get on foot before falling to the enemy.
"Run," he said. "Just run."
He turned to the four biologists, hoping terror would speed them up, as it often did. "What's your name?" he asked the woman.
"Cheva," she said.
"Well, Cheva, when the lights go out, hang on to me and run like crazy, understand?"
"Yes."
"And if the captain or I shout drop, you drop down flat. Got that?"
"I can assure you I have."
"Hurati, you take the rear. Don't lose any of them."
Hokan was expecting more laser bombardment. It was
quiet outside, but he felt that it would begin again as soon as they emerged. He couldn't defend a facility with its doors jammed open. There was at least one squad of enemy com�
�mandos still out there. His last chance was to make a run for it with the remnants of Uthan's team and hide them somewhere. Then he would look for Uthan.
One way or another, he would salvage what he could of the nanovirus program. Beyond that, he hadn't made plans.
"Ready, Hurati?"
"Ready, sir."
Hokan slid on his Mandalorian helmet, as much for comfort as protection.
"Lights!"
19
CO Majestic to Coruscant Command
Standing by to retrieve LAAT/i from Qiilura. Be aware we have detected two Trade Federation warships approaching from the Tingel Arm to reinforce Qiilura. Vengeance is moving to protect our flank.
"We're almost at the one-klick line," Darman's voice said. "Ready when you are."
Niner clapped his glove to the left side of his helmet. He feared it was becoming a nervous tic. "Good. See you at the EP."
"Give me a few minutes."
Fi made a casual thumbs-up gesture and adjusted his shoulder plate. Five minutes felt like forever right then.
"Whoa, what's happening here?" Niner said. "Dar, hold off. Wait one."
The light from the front doors had died, and his night-vision visor kicked in.
He thought he saw Darman or Atin, another odd flashback now that the stims were wearing off, but then he realized the T-slit visor coming out the door was Hokan's. He opened fire. The hesitation had cost him half a second, an eternity, and he didn't see anyone fall.
Fi laid down a burst of plasma bolt rounds, and they waited. Nothing. Then there was another flurry of movement and someone yelled "Drop!" but the three shapes didn't, at least not until the plasma rounds hit them.
It was silent again. Niner paused. As he and Fi began edg-
ing forward to check, someone got up from the blast-cratered ground and sprinted around the far side of the building.
Niner and Fi sprayed more rounds and paused again. But there was no more movement.
"If there's more inside that lobby, Sarge, can I put a bit of anti-armor in there? I don't fancy running with droids behind us."
Standard grenades wouldn't trigger the thermal detonator. "Lob in six," he said. "And then set the E-Web to self-destruct."
Fi lined up the blaster, easing it a little on its tripod. Niner heard a high-pitched noise like a repulsorlift drive starting up, but then it was drowned out by the whump-whump-whump of the first three grenades launching and exploding.
The doorway of the facility belched black, rolling flames and smoke.
"Now that's endex," Niner said, and they ran. They ran over rutted fields and crashed through two hedges and were into the trees before Niner managed to open his comlink and gasp out the take-take-take command to Darman.
The white flash illuminated the track before them a second or two before the shock wave smacked Niner hard in the back. It threw him forward. His mouth smashed against the interior of the visor and he tasted blood. When he turned his head and tried to get up, Fi was also flat on his chest, arms out in front, head turned toward him.
"No, Sarge," Fi said, still seeming totally pleased with life. "That was endex."
Ghez Hokan found himself on the ground with his speeder bike upended, its drive still running. The blast was ringing in his ears. He froze, head covered, waiting for incoming cannon fire. But only silence followed.
He struggled to his feet and managed to heave the speeder upright again. A steering vane was slightly bent, but it was serviceable. He dusted himself down and then swung back into the rider's seat.
He could see his hands gripping the bars. The tan glove on
his left hand looked black; it was still wet. Cheva had hung on to him. She'd run, as he'd told her. Her blood had sprayed over him when she was hit. It was the closest he had come to feeling pity in many years.
Enough of this. You 're going soft, man. Concentrate.
"Sir." It was hard to identify the voice from a single shout. Hokan turned to check, but there was really only one man who would have struggled to stay with him. "Sir!"
Hurati rode up from behind and stopped his speeder level with his. He had no second rider. Hokan didn't need to ask.
"I'm sorry, sir," Hurati said. "They froze when the shooting started. They didn't even drop."
"Civilians tend to do that," Hokan said wearily.
"That blast was the facility. Judging by the color, that was a high-temperature implosion. Not laser cannon."
"Does it matter?"
"Nothing could have survived that, even in a blastproof container. If there were any samples of the nanovirus, they're gone now."
So there was now no nanovirus in Separatist hands, and no scientists with any degree of expertise in the program, either. That made it imperative to retrieve Uthan.
Given the blast area of an implosion device, they were using sensitive remote detonators. Hokan was relieved that he had some EMP grenades in his cargo pannier.
"Find them," Hokan said.
He couldn't even trace their route from the drainage system now. Where would he start? The enemy would need to leave Qiilura. They would have a vessel somewhere. If intelligence from Geonosis was any guide, they would have gun-ships to extract them and evacuate wounded.
It was a quiet, backward, rural planet. You could hear motors and drives for kilometers, especially at night.
Hokan powered down the speeder and waited, listening.
Etain could feel it long before she saw or heard it. She hadn't been able to detect droids, or so she thought, but she could feel something big disturbing the Force, and it
was getting nearer. She wasn't sure if it was mechanical or organic. And it didn't communicate any sense of threat beyond a mild anxiety.
Then she heard the rushing air and steady drone of a vessel's propulsion drive. She stopped and craned her neck. Atin and Darman stopped, too.
"Oh, I love that sound," Darman said.
"What is it?"
"The sound of us getting out of this cesspit in one piece. A larty. A gunship."
The sound was practically right overhead. As Etain scanned the night sky she picked out a silhouette against the stars. The vessel wasn't showing any navigation lights. It dipped slightly, its drive changing pitch, and Darman reacted as if someone were talking to him. He gestured and nodded. Then he waved. The gunship picked up speed and lifted higher before shooting away.
"They tracked us by our comlink transponder," Darman said. "Good old Niner. Bless him for knocking out Teklet."
Atin jerked his shoulders to heave Uthan a little higher on his back. "Your carriage, princess," he said to her, far more cheerful than Etain had imagined him capable of being. His presence felt almost healed, but not entirely. "Want to sit up front?"
Uthan had recovered from the sedation enough to squirm. Etain realized that the scientist was the only person she had ever seen who could convey such rage just by writhing. She didn't envy the soldier who had to untie her.
"Your turn, Dar," Atin said.
"Okay." He seemed elated as well as edgy. Etain could feel it. It was nearly over: they'd pulled it off. She wanted to ask him what he was going to do when he got back to base, but she could guess that it involved a lot of sleep, a hot shower, and food. His dreams were modest. She thought that was a fine example to set, even for a Padawan.
She just hoped that she could become a competent officer. She wanted Darman's respect.
"Come on, Dar," Atin said irritably. "Uthan's starting to weigh a ton. Your turn."
"Try this," Etain said, and lifted with the Force. Atin half turned to check what was relieving the weight on his back. Darman had almost caught up with him.
Crack. Atin pitched forward.
Etain thought he had merely tripped, but Darman was now down on the ground, and she followed suit. He was sprawled across Atin with his rifle raised. Atin wasn't screaming, but he was making a rhythmic ah-ah-ah noise as if he was trying to gulp air. Uthan was lying in a heap on the grass.
"Man down," Darman said, unnaturally calm. Etain heard him clearly: he still had the voice unit open. "Sarge, Atin's hit."
Whatever Niner's response was, Etain didn't hear it. Darman fired rapidly and she saw the brilliant rounds fly over her head.
Why hadn't she felt anyone behind her? Because she'd been distracted. This was her fault. If Atin died, she would have him on her conscience for the rest of her life.
The firing stopped. It was over inside thirty seconds. The world had somehow gone back to the way it was before, except for Atin.
Darman could obviously see something through his rifle sight that Etain could not. She watched him get up, run forward, and aim at an object on the ground. He switched on his helmet lamp.
"One of Hokan's officers," Darman said. "A captain."
"Is he dead?"
A single shot. "He is now," Darman said.
This time Etain wasn't quite as appalled as she had been when Darman had dispatched the wounded Umbaran. She was wrapped up in concern for Atin. Her perspective had shifted radically.
Atin was now worryingly quiet. When Darman turned him carefully onto his side, there was a shattered hole in his armor plate about twenty centimeters below his right armpit that was leaking blood. Darman took a small, gray oblong
container with rounded edges from his belt and emptied the contents on the ground. He shoved what looked like a field dressing in the gaping hole and taped it to the armor.
"Get on," Atin said. His voice was shaking. "Go on. Leave me."
"Don't go all heroic on me or I'll smack you one."
"I mean it. Get Uthan out of here."
"Atin, shut up, will you? I'm not leaving anyone anywhere." Darman was working with all the precision of someone who'd been drilled repeatedly in combat first aid. He nodded at Etain. She grasped Atin's hand and squeezed it hard. "That's what a Verpine projectile can do to Katarn armor . . . easy, brother. I've got you." He removed one of Atin's thigh plates, peeled back the section of bodysuit, and exposed the skin. He held two short single-use syringes in his hand. "It's going to hurt a bit, okay? Steady."
Star Wars - Republic Commando - Hard Contact Page 26
