Republic Commando: Hard Contact

9

There is something very touching about them. They look like soldiers; they fight like soldiers; and sometimes they even talk like soldiers. They have all the finestqualitiesof the fighting man. But behind that is nothing–no love, no family, no happy memory that comes from having truly lived. When I see one of these men killed, I weep more for him than for any ordinary soldier who has lived a full and normal life.

–Jedi General Ki-Adi-Mundi

Darman had flattened Jinart’s face against the wall and put his blaster to her head in the time it took Etain to jump to her feet.

“Steady there, boy,” Jinart said quietly. “I mean you no harm.”

He had her pinned securely. The expression on his earnest face was entirely benign, so far divorced from the potential violence he was ready to mete out that Etain shuddered.

“Let her go, Darman,” she said. “She’s a fellow Jedi.”

Darman stood back instantly and let Jinart go.

“I’m not a Jedi, I tell you,” Jinart said irritably. She looked up into Darman’s face. “So you’d shoot an old woman, would you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Darman said. Etain stared, horrified. “Threats come in all guises. Not all soldiers are young males, and not all soldiers wear uniforms.”

Etain waited for Jinart to aim a kick at his groin, but the old woman broke into a satisfied grin. “There’s a sensible boy,” she said. “You’ll do well. Trust this one, Etain. He’s very good at his job.” She peered at the blaster, still firmly in his grip. “DC-seventeen, I see.”

“There are four of them,” Etain said, expecting Jinart to react with the same disappointment she had.

“I know.” The woman handed Etain a bundle of rags. “A complete squad of clone commandos. Here, dry clothing. Nothing chic, but at least it’s clean. Yes, I know all about them. I’ve been tracking the other three.”

“They’re okay?” Darman was all anxiety again, still emit­ting that same sense of child that Etain found hard to bear. “I’ve got to rejoin them. Where are they?”

“Heading north.”

“To RV Gamma.”

“Whatever you say, lad. You’ve all led me on something of a dance. You’re a challenge to track.”

“That’s how they trained us, ma’am.”

“I know.”

Jinart was still staring at Darman’s face. “You really are a perfect copy of Fett, aren’t you? In his prime, of course.” Her voice had become lower, with less of the hoarse cracking typical of the very old, and Etain wondered if this was the moment at which she would reveal that she was a Sith. The Padawan slid her hand slowly into her sodden cloak.

Jinart suddenly became black as Coruscant marble, and then devoid of texture and hair and fabric and wrinkles, as if she were wax poured into a crude mold. Her form began flowing.

Darman’s incongruously innocent face broke into some­thing like a familiar smile. Etain was ready this time. She was focused; she visualized the lightsaber as part of her arm. She was prepared to fight.

“You’re the Gurlanin,” Darman said. “We weren’t told you were on this mission. How did you manage that?”

“I’m not Valaqil,” said a soothing liquid voice. “I’m his consort.” Jinart, now a four-legged, black-furred creature, sat up on her haunches and seemed to simply extend upward like a column of molten metal. “Girl, you do look surprised.”

Etain couldn’t argue with that. Even if you’d encountered the full diversity of nonhuman species—and she certainly had, even within her own Jedi clan—seeing a shapeshifter metamorphose before your eyes was mesmerizing. On top of that, even this naive clone soldier knew what this creature was. She didn’t.

“You’re quite a revelation, Jinart. But why can I sense something about you that feels like the Force?”

“We’re telepaths,” the Gurlanin said.

“Oh…”

“No, I’m not delving into your mind. It doesn’t work like that. We communicate only with each other.”

“But I heard your voice that night, in my mind.”

“I was standing near you, actually. Not in any shape you’d notice, of course.”

“And me, ma’am?” Darman asked, seeming totally ab­sorbed by the conversation.

“Yes, I told you to get some sleep. I make a convincing fallen tree, don’t I?” Jinart flowed and changed and reassem­bled herself into the epitome of a crone again. “I know, stereotypical, but effective. Old women are invisible. Like you, Darman, we go where others won’t and do what others can’t. The communications network here is totally controlled by the Trade Federation, and in practice that means a single relay and monitoring ground station at Teklet. And while my kind cannot transmit details over interstellar distances, we can communicate broad ideas and notions to each other. My consort and I are your comlink. Not perfect, but better than silence.”

The Gurlanin made a liquid sound like water boiling. “I’ve spent the last two days running myself ragged to gather this intelligence, and it’s as much for this young man as it is for you. Ghez Hokan now has command of the armed forces here, such as they are, and he’s no fool—he realizes Republic troops are here for Uthan’s box of tricks. Darman, he’s tracking your comrades.”

“We’re pretty good at evasion.”

“Yes, but they do tend to leave bodies and parts behind them. He admits he doesn’t know how many of you there are, and that troubles him.”

“You’re privy to his concerns, then?” Etain said. She trusted nobody now. She still didn’t know who had betrayed Master Fulier, and until she did she would keep an open and cautious mind. Although her Master hadn’t told her about the clones, he must have known if he had discovered Uthan’s ac­tivities. But he hadn’t trusted her. For all his kind words, when it came down to it he simply confirmed—even from the grave—that she was not fit to become a Jedi Knight.

“I know Hokan’s concerns because I can make a very con­vincing old man as well as an excellent grandmother,” Jinart said. The reply made no sense. “I’ll catch up with Darman’s comrades and try to direct them to somewhere safe. They have no reliable intel, as you call it, a finite amount of ord­nance, and no advantage of surprise any longer. Hokan knows what you have come to do and he has enough fire­power and droids to stop you. That makes your mission next to impossible without some change of plan or intervention.”

Darman considered her carefully. Jinart’s news hadn’t dented that tangible confidence: Etain saw not a flicker on his face. “It could be worse. I quite liked the sound of a sin­gle transmitter.”

“Might I also add that the locals will turn you in for one chance to get disgustingly drunk.”

Darman looked at Etain. She squirmed. “Out of ideas, sol­dier?” she asked.

“I await your orders, Commander.”

It was the final straw. Weeks of fear, hunger, and fatigue on top of years of doubt and disillusion suddenly brought Etain’s fragile edifice crashing down. She had done all she could do, and there was nothing left in her to give.

“Stop it, stop calling me Commander.” She felt her nails dig into her palms. “I am not your blasted commander. I haven’t a clue what to do next. You’re on your own, Darman. You’re the soldier. You come up with a plan.”

Jinart said nothing. Etain felt her face burn. She had lost all dignity. A lifetime of careful training in the art of control and contemplation had come to nothing.

Darman changed before her eyes. He transformed not in the physical sense that the Gurlanin had, but the change was just as startling because the sense of the child that Etain de­tected so clearly simply evaporated. Its place was taken by calm resignation and something else, a rather forlorn feeling. She couldn’t pin it down.

“Yes ma’am,” he said. “I’ll do that right away.”

Jinart jerked her head in the direction of the door. “Get some air, Darman—I need to talk to Commander Tur-Mukan.”

Darman hesitated for a moment and then slipped outside. Jinart rounded on Etain.

“Listen to me, girl,” she whispered, all harsh sibilants. Droplets of fine saliva glittered briefly in the dim light. “That soldier may think a Jedi’s every word is a divine pronounce­ment, but I don’t. You’d better sharpen up fast. The comman­dos and I are all that stands between maintaining some kind of order in the galaxy and its fragmentation, because if the clone army can be wiped out, then the Separatists will win.

“You can either help us or stand aside, but you will not be an obstacle, and that’s what you are if you can’t lead those men. They’ve been bred to obey Jedi without question. Sadly, in this case that means you.”

Etain was used to feeling worthless. There was no lower place that Jinart could cast her. “I didn’t ask for that respon­sibility.”

“And neither did Darman.” Jinart flashed back into a mass of seething black sinews for a terrifying second. “That’s the nature of duty. It calls and you give your all. He will. So will his comrades, every single one of them. They need you to help them do their job.”

“I’m still learning how.”

“Then learn fast. If those soldiers weren’t conditioned to obey you I’d consider cutting you down now and have done with it. My kind have nothing to thank Jedi for, nothing at all. But we share a common enemy, and I want to see Valaqil again. Think yourself lucky.”

Jinart swept out. Etain sank down on her knees in the hay and wondered how she had come to this. The barn door creaked open slowly, and Darman peered around.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.

“You okay, ma’am?” He winced visibly. “Apologies. Etain”

“You probably think I’m useless as well, don’t you?”

“I came up with a plan, as you ordered.”

“Bred for diplomacy, too, eh?”

“If Hokan has set the facility as a decoy, then we need him to think that we believe it’s still the genuine target. So we split—”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Darman lapsed into silence.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Carry on.”

He knelt down, facing her, and swept the floor clear with i his hand, creating a clear space on which to demonstrate something. He reached for some crusts of bread and a lump of insect-eaten wood.

“What do you think I am?” he asked quietly,

“From what Jinart says, a clone soldier bred to obey.” She watched him break the wood and the crusts into separate chunks and place them in a row like game pieces. “No choice.”

“But I do have a choice,” he said. “A choice in how I inter­pret your orders. I’m intelligent. I’ve seen Jedi fight, so I know what you’re capable of. Once you’re exposed to situa­tions that call on your skills, you’ll be the same.”

He was all contradictions. She wondered for a moment if he wasn’t a clone soldier at all but another Gurlanin playing spiteful games with her. But she could feel a combination of quiet desperation and… faith. Yes, faith.

He was the only person in many years who had shown any degree of confidence in her, and the first since Master Fulier who had shown her real kindness.

“Very well,” she said. “This is your overriding order. Whatever happens, you are to intervene if anything I do or say compromises your mission. No, don’t look at me like that.” She held up her hand to stifle the protest she could see forming on his lips. “Think of me as a commander in training. You must train me. That might mean showing me the correct way to do things, or even saving me from my own lack of… experience.” She could hardly bring herself to say it. “And… and that’s an order.”

He almost smiled. “This is why I have confidence in obeying a Jedi commander. Your wisdom is unequaled.”

Etain had to think about that for a few seconds. If Jinart had said it, she would have seethed. Darman meant it. And perhaps he meant it in a number of ways.

Yes, he was intelligent and subtle, not a droid at all. How did a ten-year-old get that way? Disturbed, she concentrated on the comfort of believing that he had seen things that she never had, and so knew best. “Go on,” she said. “You had a plan.”

RV Gamma, laying-up point, nightfall

“How do you feel now?” Niner asked.

Atin moved his arms, bent at the elbow in a swimming motion, testing his pectoral muscles. “Nearly good as new. No breathing problems, either. No, just a hard smack on the plate.”

Fi’s disembodied voice spoke up in their helmet comlinks. He was tucked under a bush on the edge of the ridge, keeping watch on the track below. “I’m such a good field medic. Wait till you see me do a tracheotomy.”

“I’ll pass if that’s all right with you,” Atin said, easing off his helmet. “Dinner?”

“What do you prefer,” Niner asked. “Dry rats, dry rats, or maybe dry rats?”

“Let’s go with the dry rats for a change.” Yes, Atin was definitely feeling better, and not just physically. “Who used to say that, then?”

“Uh?”

“The dry rations thing.”

“Oh. Skirata. Our old instructor sergeant.”

Atin took a bite out of the white cube and washed it down with a gulp of water from his bottle. “He never trained us. Heard a lot about him.”

“Trained Fi and Darman, too. Our squads were all in the same battalion.”

“We had Walon Vau.”

“That explains where you get your cheery outlook.”

“Sergeant Vau taught us the importance of planning for the worst scenario,” Atin said, all loyalty. “And maximizing your tech. Being hard is good, being hard with superior tech is better.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’d heard everyone loved Skirata, though. Even if he was a bad-tempered drunk.”

Niner had never been drunk and he didn’t even know what alcohol tasted like. “He cared what happened to us. He was one of us, pretty much. Not just there because he couldn’t cope with not being in the army anymore, or had to disap­pear. No, he was a good man.” Niner would have given a great deal to have seen Skirata come limping through the trees right then, demanding to know what they were doing lounging around like a bunch of Kaminoan nahra artists. “No idea where he is now, not since we left Kamino. Best covert ops and sabotage man ever.”

“You’d know, of course.”

“We’ll all know soon. I’m relying on what he taught us to get this mission completed.”

Niner ate the perfectly balanced, sensibly designed, and utterly tasteless cube, and sat silently, still waiting for Dar­man. They couldn’t even trap something and cook it: the smell of roasting meat and the light of the fire would betray their position.

With Fi on watch, he could shut his eyes and sleep for a couple of hours. He put his helmet back on, partly to be ready to move fast if they had enemy contact, and partly to keep the temperature up in his suit. It was getting chilly. He allowed himself one comfort that he didn’t really need, for morale.

You scare me. You just absorb everything I tell you. Don’t you ever forget?

“No, Sarge,” Niner said.

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He woke with a start at the sound of Fi’s voice.

“Possible contact, due east, range forty klicks. Looks like it’s centered on Imbraani.”

Even through the visor, it wasn’t clear exactly what Fi had spotted, but Niner could see it now, too. A glow marked the horizon like a false sunrise. It was constant, the gentlest graduation from amber to deep red: it wasn’t an explosion.

Niner switched between visor modes, main spectrum to infrared to full spectrum, and then back again. The glow was hot, too. The infrared long-range picked it up.

“I reckon that’s one big fire coming,” Fi said.

They waited, watching: Niner could hear Atin a few me­ters away, gathering up equipment and assembling it, ready to pull out. With the binocs on full distance, they could see that the fire was being eclipsed in places by billows of smoke. Eventually, Atin joined them, and all three observed the distant blaze in silence.

“They’re not burning crop stubble at night,” Fi said. “They haven’t even finished harvesting that stinking barq stuff yet. They’ve found something.”

“I know.”

“Either they’ve found Darman, and they’re teaching the locals not to shelter the enemy, or they haven’t found Dar­man and they’re trying to flush him out.”

Niner thought it was relatively good news. “But it means he made the landing,” he said. “So we wait here right up to the last second, and maybe a little longer just to be sure.”

Atin laid the gear down again. He was too professional and disciplined to slam it on the ground, but Niner picked up on the slight sag of his shoulders. “And if he doesn’t show by then?” he asked, with a level tone that suggested he didn’t want to show dissent any longer. “Next plan?”

“We take another look at the whole area from Teklet to Im­braani,” Niner said. “We start from scratch.”

“This isn’t to scale,” Darman said. He scraped marks in the loose soil on the exposed dirt floor of the barn and placed pieces of stale bread carefully on the crude chart. “This is the river. These three crusts are RVs Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.” He snapped the wood into more pieces and placed them. “This is the droid base … and this is Uthan’s lab.”

Etain held out her cupped hand. He dropped two chunks of wood into it. “This is Lik Ankkit’s residence,” she said. “He’s the Neimoidian overlord, for want of a better word. He runs the agricultural produce export business, and that near enough makes him an emperor here.”

“Okay. What else have we got?”

Etain crumbled her remaining lump of wood into smaller pieces and scattered them carefully in patches. “Imbraani it­self, and Teklet, which is the spaceport, and its storage and distribution depot.”

“And this was the last known position for my squad.”

Etain stared at the worm-eaten wood and the moldy crusts that might help them save the Grand Army from destruction. “Why are we scraping maps in the dirt when we’ve got per­fectly good holocharts?”

“That’s what Sergeant Skirata used to do,” Darman said. “He didn’t like holos. Too transparent. He also thought that feeling the texture of dirt focused your mind.”

“And you don’t need any technology to do it.”

“He was a great believer in intuition.”

Darman drew his blaster and turned suddenly. The barn door opened. He relaxed and dropped his arm to his side. Ji­nart held more drab fabric bundled in her arms. “You have to go,” she said breathlessly. “Take a look out there to the east. They’re burning the fields to flush you out and deny you cover. There’s somewhere you can lie low, but you have to pass for farmers—that’s not going to be easy for you, lad. You’re too big and well fed.”

Etain didn’t rise to the bait. She knew she’d fit in fine with the undernourished, shabby locals.

“I have to take my gear,” Darman said. “I can lay up some­where with it if I have to.”

“Can’t you leave any of it?”

“Not if we’re going to blow up that facility. I’ve got all the implosion ordnance to deal with the nanovirus, as well as the E-Web cannon. We need it.”

“Then take a cart. There’s a curfew on powered vehicles.” Jinart tossed one of the bundles to Darman. “And get out of that armor. You couldn’t be more conspicuous if you were wearing a wedding gown.”

“We can try to make RV Gamma.”

“No, go to the first safe house you can find. I’ll reach your squad and let them know, then I’ll return to you.”

There was an assortment of barrows and handcarts stored in the barn, all in various states of disrepair. They’d attract no attention: the network of dirt roads was well traveled by peo­ple trying to get their quota of barq and other crops to Teklet on foot or with merlie-carts.

Loading the sections of the blaster cannon on the sturdiest barrow they could find made Etain realize just how heavy a burden Darman had carried. When she tried to heave one of the gray packs into the cart, it nearly wrenched her shoulder from the socket, so she decided to enlist a little assistance from the Force. She hadn’t expected it to be so heavy. She wasn’t the only one with deceptive physical strength.

“This is all weapons?” she asked.

“Pretty much.”

“Not enough to take a hundred droids, though.”

“Depends how you use it,” Darman said.

Etain wondered if he looked more conspicuous out of his sinister gray armor than in it. The armor had made him look much bigger, but even without it he was so solidly built that it was obvious he’d spent his life training for strength, eating adequate protein. Subsistence farmers didn’t have that dis­tinctive slope from neck to shoulder formed by overdevel­oped trapezius muscles. Even the youngsters bore the marks of constant exposure to the elements; Darman simply looked strikingly healthy and unburned by the sun. He didn’t even have callused hands.

And then there was that ramrod parade-ground posture. He looked exactly like the elite soldier he was. He would never pass for a local. Etain hoped the farmers would be more terrified of him than they were of Hokan.

The night horizon was amber like the urban skies of Cor­uscant, but it was flame, not the light of a million lamps, that caused the reflection from the clouds. It looked like rain might follow; they could cover the cart with a tarpaulin and not cause any curiosity. Layers of barq stalk, sacks of barq grain, and strips of dried kushayan buried Darman’s “gear,” as he kept calling it. His language swung from slang and generality to highly educated subbtlety, from gear–his catchall noun for any artifact—to DC-17s and DC-15s and a whole slew of numbers and acronyms that left Etain befud­dled.

“Look at that,” Darman said, assessing the skyline. “That flame front must be four klicks, at least.”

“That’s a million or more credits’ worth of barq going up in smoke. The farmers are going to be furious. The Neimoid­ians are going to be even angrier.”

“So will Birhan,” Jinart said. “That’s a fair whack of his barq you’re using for camouflage, girl. Get going.” The Gurlanin took Darman’s datapad and inserted a mem-stick. “These are all the relatively safe homes I could chart. Don’t advertise your identity, either of you. Even if the master of the house you call on knows who you are, do him the favor of not compromising him by admitting it.”

Etain had covered her distinctive Jedi cloak with an Im­braani ankle-length tunic. Jinart indicated her hair. “And that,” she said.

“The braid, too?”

“Unless you want to advertise what you are.”

Etain hesitated. She had once heard someone say they could never remove their betrothal ring, not until they died. Her Padawan’s braid felt equally permanent, as if her soul was woven in with it, and that removing it after so long—even temporarily—would rend the fabric of the universe and underscore her belief that she was not Jedi material. But it had to be done. She unfastened the single thin braid and combed the strands of wavy hair loose with her fingers.

She felt less like a Jedi than ever, and not even remotely close to a commander.

“I imagine you never thought a Jedi commander would run away from a fight,” she said to Darman as they made their carefully unhurried way up the track.

“Not running away,” Darman said. “This is E and E. Escape and evasion.”

“Sounds like running to me.”

“Tactical withdrawal to regroup.”

“You’re a very positive man.” The child was almost com­pletely absent now. She could mainly sense focus and pur­pose. He shamed her without intention. “I’m sorry that I lost my composure earlier.”

“Only in private. Not under fire, Commander.”

“I said not to call me that.”

“Where we can be overheard, I’ll obey your order.” He paused. “Everyone loses it now and then.”

“I’m not supposed to.”

“If you don’t crack sometimes, how do you know how far you can go?”

It was a good point. For some reason he was far more re­assuring than Master Fulier had ever been. Fulier, when not getting caught up in putting the galaxy right, was all effort­less brilliance. Darman was expert at his craft, too, but there was a sense of hard-won skill, and there was no randomness or mystery to that.

She liked him for being so pragmatic. It crossed her mind that she might be saving clone soldiers from death by biologi­cal agent so they could die from blaster and cannon round. It was a horrible thought.

She didn’t like having to kill, not even by another’s ac­tions. It was going to make life as a commander exception­ally hard.

The droids advanced along the edge of the wood with flamethrowers borrowed from the same farmer whose fields they were burning. Ghez Hokan and his lieutenants Cuvin and Hurati stood in the path of the blaze, staring back at it from three hundred meters.

“We’ll have to burn a great deal of land to deny all cover to the enemy, sir,” Cuvin said.

“That isn’t the point,” Hurati said. “This is as much to cre­ate the impression of protecting the facility as it is to flush out troops.”

“Correct,” Hokan said. “There’s no point alienating the natives, and I can’t afford to compensate them all for lost production. This is sufficient. We’ll use droids on the remaining boundaries.”

Cuvin seemed undeterred. “May I suggest we use hunting strills? We could bring in a pack with their handlers in two days. The Trade Federation won’t welcome the disruption to the barq harvest, and a shortage of the delicacy will be no­ticed by some very influential people.”

“I don’t care,” Hokan said. “The same influential people will be even more inconvenienced by the arrival of millions of Republic clones on their homeworlds.”

Hokan was in full Mandalorian battle armor now, not so much for protection as to convey a message to his officers. Sometimes he had to indulge in a little theater. He knew that the glow of the flames illuminating his traditional warrior’s armor made a fine spectacle, calculated to impress and over­awe. He was at war. He didn’t have to prostitute his martial skills as an assassin or bodyguard for weak and wealthy cow­ards any longer.

Cuvin was right about the strills, though. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to deal with his dissent, but finding the Re­public troops wouldn’t be easy.

“How many do you estimate now, Hurati?” he asked.

Hurati flicked a holochart into life and a fly-through image shimmered in the dark. “Vessel downed here, confirmed Re­public R5 military droid.” He pointed. “Remains of two Weequay militia found here, here, and here—but gdans had dismembered and dragged the cadavers over a five-klick range, so the exact location of the kill is estimated. The air-speeder was brought down here. The speeder circuitry was found dismantled here, but as it was at the entrance to gdan burrows, there’s no telling where they might have found it to start with. The engagement with the droid patrol was here, because we deployed the patrol based on that finding.”

“That’s pretty much all in a five-klick corridor spanning forty klicks. Looks obvious to me that they’re heading for Teklet, probably to take the port before targeting the facility.”

“It would look that way, sir.”

“Numbers?”

“I would have said no more than ten, sir. We have reports from farmers who’ve found evidence of movement across their land. They’re very protective of their crops, so they no­tice these subtle signs—unlike droids, sir.”

“And what does that suggest, then?”

“Multiple tracks crossing an area forty klicks by thirty klicks, sir. Expertly done, too—the locals thought it might be wildlife, but these tracks are not random. I’d say we’re being decoyed.”

Ten troops. Ten—pathfinders, special forces, saboteurs? Were they preparing the ground for more troops, or were they tasked to complete the mission on their own? Hokan wished he had a few Mandalorian mercenaries, not droids and career officers. He kept his concern well hidden behind his full-face helmet. He also wished he had more airspeed­ers; he’d never needed more than one to police farms, and it would take days to have any shipped to Qiilura. “Farmers can be pretty cooperative, can’t they?”

“Remarkably so, ever since that one found the circuitry, sir.”

Hokan turned and started walking back toward the re­search facility that was now empty but lavishly and conspicuously guarded. He beckoned Hurati to follow him. Cuvin started to follow, too, but Hokan held up his hand to motion him to stay put.

“Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Any sign of my former em­ployee, Guta-Nay?”

“Not yet, sir. Patrols have been briefed.”

“Good, and keep an eye on Cuvin for me, won’t you? I don’t think he’s going to make captain.”

Hurati paused, but briefly. “Understood, sir.”

It was amazing what the unspoken promise of an extra rank insignia could do. Hokan wondered what had happened to the code of conduct.

So there were perhaps ten commandos operating in the region. Hunting them down would be enormously time-consuming. Barring luck, Hokan would never catch them, not with droids and these young academy theorists. Sooner or later, the enemy would need to resupply; sooner or later, they would show themselves.

The Republic was playing decoy games with him, and he with them. It was looking better all the time. They didn’t ap­pear to be adopting their usual tactic of landing infantry in force. It was a game of wits, and if need arose he could sit tight and force the Republic to come to him.

If he wanted to bring the Republic close enough to shoot, then he might need an even more compelling bait.

Dr. Uthan would understand. She was a pragmatic woman.

Fi was getting edgy. It wasn’t like him. Niner had only known him a matter of days, but you made quick judgments on small detail if you were a clone commando, especially among your own.

He didn’t sleep when Niner relieved him on watch, and after fifteen minutes Fi came forward to the observation po­sition and settled down beside him. The fires seemed to have stopped; the glow was still visible, but it was static. It had probably reached one of the streams and was burning itself out.

“They know we’re here anyway,” Fi said. Niner needed no telepathy to know he was worrying about Darman. “We could try the comlink at longer range.”

“They’d get a fix on positions.”

“They’d have to get lucky.”

“And we only have to be unlucky once.”

“Okay. Sorry, Sarge.”

He lapsed back into silence. Niner adjusted his infrared filter to remove the distracting light of the fire. Suddenly, it was abnormally silent, and that meant the gdans had stopped their incessant prowling, which was not good.

Niner looked down his rifle scope one-handed to get a nar­rower focus on the bushes in front of him. As he panned across 180 degrees, he caught sight of little paired reflec­tions, the alert eyes of gdans huddled in uncharacteristic stillness to avoid something.

Movement. His scope flashed blue in one quadrant, warning him. Maybe whatever it was could see infrared. He killed the targeting, switching to image intensification and the Mark One Ear’ole, as Skirata called it. You got eyes and ears, son, good ones. Don’t rely on the tech too much. Something was coming, something slow, stealthy, smaller than a man, more sly than a droid.

Niner put his hand on Fi’s shoulder—Stay down–not daring to speak, even on comlink.

It was ten meters away, coming straight at them, making no attempt to stalk. Maybe it didn’t know what they were. It was going to get a surprise, then.

Niner flicked on his tactical spot-lamp, and the blinding beam caught a shining black shape. He cut the beam imme­diately, muscles relaxing. The creature was so flat to the ground now that it looked as if it were flowing water. It was only when it was right in front of them that it sat up and became Valaqil.

“I thought I’d let you see me coming, given your arma­ments,” said a voice that wasn’t Valaqil’s but was equally liq­uid and hypnotic. “I make it a rule never to startle a humanoid with a rifle.”

“Just as well that we’ve seen a Gurlanin before,” Fi said, and touched his glove to his helmet politely.

“I didn’t seem to surprise your colleague, either. I’ve come to brief you. I’m Jinart. Please don’t call me ma’am every two seconds like Darman does.”

Niner wanted to ask a hundred questions about Darman, but the Gurlanin had used the present tense and so he was alive. Niner was glad he had his helmet in place. Displays of emotion weren’t professional, not to outsiders, anyway.

“You’re heading for the wrong target,” Jinart said. “You’re on a course for the Separatist base. Normally you’d be knocking on the door of a barracks with a hundred droids in­side, but they’ve moved half of them to defend the research facility and patrol the area. Neither Uthan nor her nanovirus is at the actual facility any longer.”

“So it’s all going just great,” Fi said cheerfully.

“Your targets are at a villa just outside Imbraani, despite what evidence you might see of the facility being defended. It’s a trap.”

“What’s Darman doing?” Niner asked.

“He has your special ordnance and detailed plans of your targets. I’ve sent him into hiding with the Jedi.”

“General Fulier? We thought—”

“You thought right. He’s dead. The Jedi is his Padawan, Tur-Mukan. Don’t get your hopes up. She isn’t commander material—not yet, perhaps never. For the time being, this is still your war.”

“We weren’t planning on a frontal assault, not without in­fantry,” Niner said. “Now that we’ve lost the advantage of surprise, we’re going to have to get it back again.”

“You do have one element—Ghez Hokan has no accurate idea how few of you there are. I’ve made sure there are many, many obvious signs of movement through the woods and fields.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“I can do a good impersonation of a small army, or at least its movement.” Jinart glanced at Atin and Fi as if checking them. Maybe she was working out how she would mimic the form of a commando. “Not thinking of shooting and eating any merlies, are you?”

“Why?”

“That armor isn’t looking such a tight fit on you as it should.”

Fi nodded. “She’s right. Expending about thirty percent more calories than planned, Sarge. They didn’t calculate for us carrying gear overland.”

“You’ll exhaust your rations soon,” Jinart said. “Merlies are delicious. Just never shoot one, please. If necessary, I could hunt them and leave them for you.”

“Why?”

“The one you shoot might be me.”

It was one more angle they hadn’t covered on exercises. Not even Kal Skirata had dealt with Gurlanins, it seemed, or if he had he hadn’t mentioned it. Niner liked them. He won­dered what world they came from. It was bound to be a fas­cinating one.

“Where will you head now?” Jinart asked. “I need to let Darman know where you are.”

“I’d have said RV Gamma, but that’s going the wrong way, from what you’ve told us.”

“I can give you the location of a suitable area nearer Im­braani, and when I return to Darman I will give him the same coordinates.”

Atin cut in. “They mine gems here, right?”

“Zeka quartz and various green silicates, mainly, yes.”

“Picks and shovels or mechanized?”

“Mechanized.”

“They’ll have explosives for blasting, then. And remote detonators with nice, safe, long-range settings.”

Gurlanins chuckled just like a human. She might have been amused. On the other hand, she might have been thinking Atin was a madman. But Niner liked the direction that Atin’s inventive mind was taking.

“Get your holocharts,” Jinart said. “Let me give you a vir­tual guide to the gem industry of the Imbraani region.”