Republic Commando: Triple Zero

2

Yes, I know I should be directing the battle from the ship. Yes, I know we could reduce the surface of Dinlo to molten slag from orbit. But we can extract more than a thousandmen, and that's worth doing. I asked for volunteers and I got the whole ship's crew and every man in Improcco Company, and not from blind obedience. Let me try.

–General Tur-Mukan, in a signal to General Iri Camas, Battle Group Command, Coruscant, copied to General Vaas Ga, Commanding Officer, Sarlacc Battalions,Forty-first Elite Infantry, Dinlo

Republic assault shipFearless,approaching Dinlo,Expansion–Bothan Border, 367 days after Geonosis

General Etain Tur-Mukan watched the HNE news feed with mixed feelings. On one hand the events at home saddened her: on the other, they reminded her what the war was about.

“Fifteen soldiers and twelve civilian support staff are reported dead after today's second bomb blast, this time at a GAR logistics base. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but a security forces spokesman said today that the proximity to tomorrow's first anniversary of the Battle of Geonosis was significant. It brings the total number of deaths in apparent Separatist terror attacks this year to three thousand and forty. The Senate has pledged to smash their networks …”

Clone Commander Gett stood at her side, hands clasped behind his back as they waited on the repulsor platform that shunted ammo boxes from the magazine to the hangar deck.

“No way to die,” he said.

Etain turned to look at the troops around them. “Neither is this.”

They were set to go. Fearless was half an hour out from Dinlo and the gunship pilots were making their way down the passage from the flight briefing to carry out their pre-sortie checks, yellow-trimmed helmets tucked under one arm. They all held the helmets exactly the same way, no doubt the result of thorough drill. General Etain Tur-Mukan noted that.

She stood back from the hatch to let them through and got a salute from each as he passed. One glanced at the somewhat unconventional weapon slung across her shoulder and grinned. He indicated the huge LJ-50 concussion rifle that almost dwarfed her.

“Does that thing light up blue, General?”

“Only if you're on the receiving end, trooper,” she said, and gave him her most reassuring smile.

She knew they were afraid, because a commando called Darman had taught her that only idiots didn't fear combat. Fear was an asset, an incentive, a tool. She knew how to use it now, even if she didn't embrace it.

Today she needed to tell Improcco Company that. They knew it already, but this was her first mission with them, and she had learned that a little openness with the troops went a long way. And she wanted them to know that she saw them for the human beings they were. Meeting Republic commandos on Qiilura for the first time had been a painful revelation for her.

“Are you okay with that, General?” Gett seemed to be able to guess what she was thinking almost all the time, and she wondered briefly if telepathy was in their genetic mix. Then she reminded herself that men who all looked the same learned to be very, very sensitive to tiny behavioral cues. “We've got a DC-15 if you prefer. Nice piece of kit.”

The LJ-50 was exhaustingly heavy. She'd developed her arm muscles in the last year, but it still took some handling.

“Some very competent gentlemen taught me to use a conc rifle,” she said. “They persuaded me to keep my lightsaber for close-combat. Besides, the LJ's got a four-meter spread at a thirty-meter range. I'm a great believer in efficiency over style.”

Gett smiled. He knew the stories about the Qiilura mission. They all did, it seemed. Gossip traveled at light speed in a closed community, and it'd had months to make the rounds. “I understand Omega are okay and on TIOPS in the Outer Rim right now.”

“It's kind of you to check for me, Commander.” She had to ask. “What's TIOPS?”

“Captain Ordo makes a point of giving your signals priority.” He lowered his voice. “Traffic interdiction operations. Boarding the bad guys' vessels.”

“Thank you. I've never met Ordo, but he does seem to take care of me very well.”

“One of Kal Skirata's Null ARCs.”

“Oh, Kal again …”

“You've never met him, have you?”

“No, but I hope I do. I feel as if he's been walking behind me for a long time.” She looked around the hangar and noted there was one platoon still missing. She'd wait. She needed them all to hear this. “I envy his ability to inspire people.”

Gett said nothing. Tact, perhaps, or merely nothing to add; Etain feared that she still projected her own doubts onto others. She was a Jedi Knight now. She had passed her trials on Qiilura with Master Arligan Zey, working under deep cover with him to mobilize the colonists against the remnants of the Neimoidian and Trandoshan occupation. It was silent, grim, secret work, and even though a Republic garrison had now been established on the planet, she still felt that the dwindling population of native Gurlanins and the human farmers were set on a collision course. The Republic had promised the Gurlanins that they would remove the human colony from their world.

So far, they hadn't.

It would have been a simple case of broken promises—like many others in the galaxy's history—had the Gurlanins not been a race of shapeshifting predators, working as spies for the Republic. This was their bargain: they would provide their unique espionage skills if the farmers stopped driving away the prey on which Gurlanins depended. As far as the Gurlanins were concerned, that meant the removal of the human settlements on Qiilura.

Etain knew Gurlanins made bad enemies. They were more than capable of killing farmers, as they'd proved when they exacted revenge on informers on Qiilura. But the war came first, and diplomacy had to take a backseat.

“All present and correct now, General,” Gett said. He flicked the controls of the repulsor platform and it lifted them about a meter above the deck, so that the assembled company of 144 clone troopers could see and hear her clearly. There was no noise apart from the occasional clack of armor plates as one soldier brushed too close to another, or the quiet clearing of throats. They didn't chat.

Gett still defaulted to drill. “Company—a … ten … shun!”

The chunkkk of armor and rifles being slapped hard against chest plates was one synchronous noise. Etain waited a few moments and concentrated on projecting her voice across the cavern of the hangar. She hadn't been trained as an officer. It didn't come naturally.

They needed her to be one, though, just as Darman had when he had expected all Jedi to be competent commanders. She inhaled slowly and felt her voice lift from her stomach through her chest.

“Stand easy,” she said. “And buckets off.”

The clack and hiss of helmets being removed was a little more ragged than the snap to attention. They weren't expecting that. She stared down into identical faces, reaching out into the Force to get some sense of who they might be and their state of mind, much as she had with Omega. It was a complex tapestry, and yes, there was fear; there was an intense sense of belonging and focus, too. And there was not a trace of the hopeful child that had once so confused her when she felt Darman long before she saw him for the first time.

Clones grew fast and learned even faster. A year at war—real war, not just fatally realistic training—had made them a lot more worldly-wise and less idealistic.

“We have two battalions pinned down on Dinlo,” she said. “You've seen the op order. We open up that exit route for them by cutting through droid lines so they can reach the extraction point. You'll have air support, but we'll be relying predominantly on your infantry skills.” She paused. They listened politely. Whatever focus they had appeared to come not from her but from something inside them. “I'm not going to shoot you any line about glory, because this is about survival. That's my first rule as a Jedi, you know that? Survive. And so should it be yours. I don't want any wild sacrifices. I want to come out of this with as many of you and the Forty-first alive as possible—not because you're assets we need to use again, but because I don't want you to die.”

She felt the silence change, not in quality but in the realization that shivered almost imperceptibly through the Force. This wasn't how they were used to seeing themselves.

“We weren't exactly queuing up for it ourselves, ma'am,” said a pilot, one boot on the step to his cockpit. There was a ripple of laughter, and Etain laughed, too.

“I'll try to keep my arc of fire under control, then,” said Etain, and patted the Stouker. She glanced at Gett's forearm; he tilted it so that she could see his chrono readout. “Ramps down in twenty-four minutes. Dismissed.”

The men broke up, replacing their helmets and falling into platoons and squads to make an orderly path to their assigned craft. The squadron of LAAT/c gunships had been stripped out to create troop space on their cargo decks. Gett inspected the interior of his helmet, holding it in both gloved hands.

“Aren't you supposed to wish that the Force be with them, General?”

Etain liked Gett. He didn't treat her as an omniscient military genius but as just another being stuck in a hard place without a lot of choices. She could hear a faint sound coming from his helmet's audio feed; when she concentrated, she could hear singing, and so held out her hand for the helmet. She'd tried on Atin's once and been stunned by the welter of data it flung at the wearer. Helmet held close to her head, she could make out strong male voices, a choir of them, singing an anthem she had heard snatches of but rarely had the chance to listen to: “Vode An.”

They were singing, in the privacy of their own helmet comlinks, retreating into their world, like Omega Squad did from time to time. She could hear nothing outside the helmets, of course, and she felt oddly excluded. But they were not her brothers all, however much she wished to be part of something greater than herself, even more than the Jedi Order. They were gearing up for battle.

It sounded less martial and more of a lament to her ears right then.

She'd have to ask General Jusik for a translation. He was very much the Mando'a speaker these days.

She handed Gett his helmet back and gave him a nod of thanks. “It's not just the Force we need with us today, Commander,” she said. “It's reliable kit and accurate intel.”

“Always is, General,” he said. “Always is.”

He slipped his helmet back on and sealed the collar.

She knew without asking that he had started singing, completely silent to her, but one voice with his brothers.

* * *

Special Operations Brigade HQ, Coruscant, twenty minutes after the explosion at Depot Bravo Five, 367 days after Geonosis

Captain Ordo needed General Bardan Jusik, and he needed him fast.

He wasn't answering his comlink. That irked Ordo because an officer was supposed to be contactable at all times. And this was precisely the kind of emergency that proved the point.

Ordo settled the two-seater Aratech speeder bike outside the main doors—far enough to one side not to obstruct them, as safety precautions dictated—and strode down the main passage that led to the briefing and ops rooms.

“Location for General Jusik, please,” he said to the admin droid that was operating the comlink relays in the lobby area.

“Meeting with General Arligan Zey and ARC Trooper Captain Maze in the CO's office, sir, discussing the incontinent ordnance situation—”

“Thank you,” said Ordo. Just say bomb, will you? “That's why I'm here, too.”

“You can't—”

But he could; and he did. “Noted.”

The red light above the office doors told Ordo that the general didn't want to be interrupted. He expected the Jedi's Force sensitivity to detect him coming and open those doors, but they remained closed, so Ordo simply made use of the list of five thousand security codes that he had memorized for an eventuality like this. He would never trust them to a datapad alone. Skirata had taught him that sometimes you could only take your own brain and body into battle.

Ordo took off his helmet first, a courtesy Skirata had also taught him, and tapped in the code on the side panel.

The doors parted and he walked up to the meeting table, a pool of dark blue polished stone where Zey, Jusik, and Zey's frankly surprised ARC captain sat staring at him.

“Morning, sir,” said Ordo. “My apologies for interrupting, but I need General Jusik now.”

Jusik's thin pale face with its straggly blond beard was the picture of horrified embarrassment. Ordo thought all Jedi could sense him coming, but that never seemed to buffer their surprise when he arrived on urgent business.

Jusik didn't move fast enough. Ordo made a gesture toward the door.

“Captain, it's not customary to interrupt emergency meetings,” Zey said carefully. “General Jusik is our ordnance specialist and—”

“That's why I need him now, sir. Sergeant Skirata sends his compliments, but he would like the general to join him at the incident scene, seeing as he's the explosives expert and his skills would be best spent on practical matters rather than discussion.”

“I think your sergeant should be leaving all that to Coruscant Security,” said Captain Maze, who clearly didn't understand the situation well enough.

Typical ordinary ARC. Typical stubborn ARC.

“No,” Ordo said. “Not possible. If I could hurry you a little, General Jusik, I have a speeder right outside. And please remember to leave your comlink active in the future. You must be contactable at all times.”

Maze looked at Zey, and Zey shook his head discreetly. Ordo caught Jusik by his elbow and hurried him down the passage.

“Sorry about reprimanding you in front of Zey, sir,” Ordo said, scattering droids and the occasional clone trooper as they hurried back up the passageway. “But Sergeant Skirata is livid.”

“I know, I should have left it on—”

“Like to pilot, sir? I know you enjoy it.”

“Yes please—”

It was the rapid thud of boots behind him that made Ordo stop and turn just as Captain Maze put his hand out to tap him on the shoulder. He deflected the ARC'S arm and brushed it aside.

Maze squared up. “Look, Null, I don't know who your sergeant thinks he is, but you obey a general when he—”

“I don't have time for this.” Ordo brought his fist up hard and without warning right under Maze's chin, knocking him against the wall. The man swore and didn't go down, so Ordo hit him again, this time in the nose—always demoralizing enough to stop someone dead, but nothing seriously damaging, nothing to cause lasting pain. He would never harm a brother if he could help it. “And I only take orders from Kal Skirata.”

Jusik and Ordo sprinted the rest of the way to the speeder to make up lost time.

“Ordo.”

“Yes?”

“Ordo, you just flattened an ARC trooper.”

“He was delaying us.”

“But you hit him. Twice.”

“No permanent harm done,” Ordo said, lifting his kama to slide over the pillion seat behind Jusik. He sealed his helmet. “You can't convince Alpha ARCs of anything by rational argument. They're every bit as obtuse and impulsive as Fett, believe me.”

Jusik looked perplexed as he started up the drive. He took the speeder bike into a straight vertical lift and spun it around at the top of the climb. His hair, tied back in a bunch, whipped across Ordo's visor on the slipstream, and the ARC brushed it aside in irritated silence. It was high time the boy braided it or got it cut short.

“Where to, Ordo?”

“Manarai.”

“Brief me,” Jusik said.

“CSF is struggling with this. If you get in right now and use the Force while the incident scene is fresh, we might get a break.”

Jusik banked right to avoid a slim spire and chewed his lower lip. He seemed to be able to fly without thinking. “I've been over the data six or seven times and I can't see any consistent pattern in any of the devices. Not the materials, not the method of construction, nothing. Just that they're all very complex devices, and hard to set.”

Ordo blinked to switch his helmet audio to filter out the wind noise. Next time, he'd commandeer an airspeeder with a canopy. “Always explosives.”

“Say again?”

Ordo adjusted his volume. “I said always explosives.”

“Chemical and biological ordnance has limited use on a planet with more than a thousand different species. Things that go bang, though, are guaranteed to hurt every race.”

“I'd buy that if these devices were being used randomly. They're not. It's all Grand Army targets. Humans.”

“Are you sure it's me you need for this?” Jusik asked. “I'm not as adept with the living Force as others.”

“You want to go back and have a nice meeting?”

“No.” Jusik looked back over his shoulder with a big grin. Ordo had learned not to tell him to keep his eyes straight ahead, but it was still unnerving to watch a Jedi navigate a craft by his Force-senses alone. “I've never seen anyone walk over Zey like that.”

“I simply had to get the job done, sir. No offense.”

“Do you mind my asking you something, Ordo?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why do you tolerate me? You don't take the slightest notice of Zey. Or Camas. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Skirata respects you. I trust his judgment.”

“Oh.” Jusik didn't seem to be expecting that answer. “I—I have a very great regard for our sergeant, too.”

Ordo noted the word our. And that was what made Jusik different, as far as Kal'buir, Papa Kal, was concerned: he had thrown in his lot with his men. But, as Kal'buir said privately, you could stick a Weequay officer in front of the clone army and they would still fight well. An army of three million men with very few Jedi officers had to be self-directing.

Ordo was well used to directing himself.

Jusik never asked if Ordo thought of him as his commanding officer, though. He probably knew, and didn't need to be reminded that Ordo answered only to the one man who had stepped physically between him and death once, twice, more times than was decent to count: Kal Skirata. And while Ordo knew intellectually that a detached, unsentimental officer was the kind who won wars and saved the most lives, his heart said that a sergeant who was ready to die to protect his men got the very last drop of sweat and blood from them, and given gladly.

“I think you might really be in trouble with Zey this time, Ordo.”

“And what do you think he's going to do about it?”

“Aren't you afraid?”

“Not since Kamino.”

If Jusik understood that, it didn't show. “Is it true that your brother Mereel hijacked a transport to Kamino?”

“It's known as hardening targets, General. Challenging security to improve it. We do that.”

It was a lie, but not entirely: the Nulls tried not to remove GAR assets from the battlefield unless it was absolutely necessary, but in this case Kal'buir had said it was. The Jedi command turned a blind eye to the irregularities if they detected them because the Null squad produced unparalleled results. No, Zey wouldn't touch him. If he was foolish enough to try, he would learn a hard lesson.

“General, do you remember being taken from your parents?”

Jusik glanced to his left and a few moments later a CSF patrol appeared on their flank, dipped a wing in acknowledgment, and dropped away below them again.

“They're just pinging us to be sure we are who they think we are,” the Jedi said, evading the question. “Can't trust anything to be what it seems these days.”

“Indeed.”

“I hope CSF aren't offended by our intervention.”

Ordo tightened his grip. “It's not their fault they can't handle this.”

“They're very competent.”

“They're competent at defense. They're not used to attacking. We can think like an enemy better than they can.”

“You can. I fear I never will.”

“I was trained to kill and destroy by any means possible. I suspect you were trained to obey some rules.”

“I do actually.”

“What? Obey rules?”

“No, I remember being taken from my family. Just being taken. Not my family, though.”

“And what makes you so attached to us?” Ordo chose his words precisely, knowing what attachment meant to a Jedi. He knew the answer anyway. “And doesn't that worry you?”

Jusik paused for a moment and then turned with an anxious smile. Jedi weren't supposed to feel powerful emotions like vengeance or love or hate. Ordo could now see that conflict on the boy's face daily.

And Jusik was a boy: Ordo was the same physical age as the general—twenty-two—but he felt a generation older, despite being born only eleven years ago. And the Jedi drew strength from the things that tore up his heart, just as Kal Skirata did.

He and Jusik were opposites in so many ways and yet so very similar in others.

“You have such a passionate sense of belonging,” Jusik said at last. “And you never complain about the way you're used.”

“Save your sympathy for the troopers,” Ordo said. “Nobody uses us. And a clear sense of purpose is a strength.”

The southern side of the logistics depot was a wasteland of shattered metal and rubble. From the air, it looked like an abandoned construction site with a brightly colored perimeter fence. As Jusik dropped lower, the perimeter resolved into crowds held back by a CSF cordon. The GAR supplies base was right on the boundary of a civilian area, separated only by a strip of landing platforms, with levels of warehousing operated by droids below it.

It had obviously been a big device. Had the same bomb exploded in the civilian heart of Coruscant, the casualties would have run to thousands.

“Whatever do they find to look at?” Jusik asked. He had trouble finding a space to set down and had to land outside the security cordon. He was clearly offended by the sightseers and didn't wait for Ordo to clear a path through the crowd for him. For a quietly spoken man, Jusik could certainly make himself heard. “Citizens, unless you have contributions to make here, can I suggest you clear the area in case there's a second device still set to detonate?”

Ordo was impressed at the speed with which most of the crowd melted away. The resistantly curious hung around in small groups.

“You don't want to see this,” Jusik said.

They paused, and then walked away. A CSF incident support vessel skimmed across the strip and hovered for a moment beside Jusik. The pilot leaned a little way out of the hatch. “Never seen mind influence in action before, sir. Thank you.”

“I wasn't using the Force,” Jusik said.

Ordo found a new reason to like this Jedi every day. He took the war as personally as Kal'buir did.

A thickset man in gray tunic waved to them from the inner cordon, where a large group of civilians and hovercams waited. Captain Jailer Obrim wasn't wearing his Senate Guard finery any longer. Ordo knew him well: since they'd worked together with Omega Squad on the spaceport siege, Obrim's time had been increasingly taken up with counterterrorism duties. He was seconded to CSF now, but they still didn't seem able to persuade him to wear the blue uniform.

“Can you influence the media to go away, General?” Ordo said. “Or shall I do it manually?”

The CSF forensics investigation team was still picking a slow and careful path through the debris of the entrance to Bravo Eight when Ordo and Jusik reached the cordon. Set back ten meters from the inner cordon was a screen of white plastoid sheet with the CSF badge repeated across its surface: the worst debris had been screened from the cams and prying eyes.

It was grim work for civilian police. Ordo knew that they had neither the expertise nor the numbers to handle what was happening lately. And how did they cope with the things they saw if they hadn't been trained to deal with them from childhood, as he had? For a moment he felt pity.

But there was work to do. Ordo flicked on the voice projection of his helmet with a quick eye movement. “Mind your backs, please.”

An HNE crew and a dozen other media representatives—some wets, as Skirata called organic life-forms, some tinnies, or droids—formed a cautious audience for the grisly aftermath of the explosion. They parted instantly, even before they looked around and saw Ordo striding toward them. Then they gave him an even wider berth. An ARC trooper cut an imposing figure, and a captain—marked in the brilliant scarlet that subconsciously said danger to many humanoid species—cleared a big path.

Obrim deactivated a section of the cordon to let Jusik and Ordo pass.

“This is General Bardan Jusik,” Ordo said. “He's one of us. Can he wander around and assess the site?”

Obrim looked Jusik up and down with the air of a man who believed more in hard data than the Force. “Of course he can. Mind the evidence markers, sir.”

“I'll be cautious,” Jusik said, meshing his fingers in front of him to do that little Jedi bow that Ordo found fascinating. Sometimes Jusik was one of the boys, and sometimes he was ancient, wisely sober, another creature entirely. “I won't contaminate evidence.”

Obrim waited for him to walk away and turned to Ordo. “Not that it'd matter. The forensic is getting us nowhere. Maybe we need the Mystic Mob to give us a break. How are you, anyway?”

“Focused. Very focused.”

“Yes, your boss is pretty focused, too. He can curse the slime off a Hutt, that man.”

“He takes all casualties personally, I'm afraid.”

“I know what you mean. I'm sorry about your boys, by the way. They catch it coming and going, don't they?”

Skirata was bent deep in conversation with a CSF officer, their heads almost touching, talking in low and agitated voices. He swung around as Ordo approached. His face was gray with suppressed anger.

“Fifteen dead.” Skirata clearly didn't care about civilian casualties, traffic disruption, or structural damage. He gestured toward a large fragment of white leg armor in the rubble of what had been a security post. “I'm going to rip some chakaar's guts out for this.”

“When we find them, I'll make sure you're first in line,” Obrim said.

There wasn't a lot any of them could do at that moment except to allow the largely Sullustan scenes-of-crime team to do their work. Skirata, chewing vigorously on that bittersweet ruik root that he'd recently taken a liking to, stood with his fists in his jacket pockets, watching Jusik stepping delicately between chunks of debris. The Jedi occasionally stopped to close his eyes and stand completely motionless.

Skirata's expression was one of cold appraisal. “He's a good kid.”

Ordo nodded. “Do you want me to look after him?”

“Yes, but not at the expense of your own safety.”

After a few minutes Jusik made his way back to the cordon, arms folded.

“You didn't pick up anything?” Skirata said, 'as if he expected Jusik to bay like a hunting strill latching on to a scent.

“A great deal.” Jusik shut his eyes for a second. “I can still feel the disturbance in the Force. I can sense the destruction and pain and fear. Like a battlefield, in fact.”

“So?”

“It's what I can't sense that bothers me.”

“Which is?”

“Malevolence. The enemy is absent. The enemy was never here, in fact.”

* * *

Republic Fleet Protection Group traffic inderdiction vessel (TIV) Z590/1, standing off Corellian–Perlemian hyperspace intersection, 367 days after Geonosis

Fi really didn't like zero-g ops.

He took off his helmet with slow care and put one hand on the webbing restraints that stopped him from drifting away from the bulkhead of the anonymous utility vessel that had been customized for armed boarding parties. If he moved a little too quickly, he drifted.

Drifting made him … queasy.

Darman, Niner, and Atin didn't seem bothered by it at all; neither did the pilot, who, for reasons Fi hadn't yet worked out, was called Sicko.

Sicko had shut down the drives. The unmilitary, unmarked, apparently unimpressive little TIV—a “plain wrapper,” as the pilots tagged it—hung with drives idling near an exit point of the hyperspace route, cockpit panels flickering with a dozen weapons displays.

Externally, it looked like a battered utility shuttle. Under the rust, though, it was a compact assault platform that could muscle its way onto any vessel. Fi thought that traffic interdiction operations was a lovely euphemism for “heavy-duty military hijack.”

“I do like a noncompliant boarding to start the day,” Sicko said. “You okay, Fi?”

“I'm sorted,” Fi lied.

“You're not going to throw up, are you? I just cleaned this crate.”

“If I can keep field rations down, I can handle anything.”

“Tell you what, chum, put your bucket back on and keep it to yourself.”

“I can aim straight.”

Fi had learned the skills of maneuvering in zero-g late in life—just before he turned eight and sixteen, not all that long before Geonosis—and it didn't come as naturally to him as those troopers trained specifically for deep-space duties. He wondered why the others had come through the same training with more tolerance of it.

Niner, apparently impervious to every hardship except seeing his squad improperly dressed, stared at the palm of his glove as if willing the wrist-mounted hololink from HQ to activate.

The squad now wore the matte-black stealth version of the Katarn armor that made them even more visibly different from the rest of the Republic Commando squads. Niner said it was “sensible” even if it made them pretty conspicuous targets on snow-covered Fest. Fi suspected he liked it better because it also made them look seriously menacing. Droids didn't care, but it certainly put the wind up wets—organic targets—when they saw it.

If they saw it, of course. They usually didn't get the chance.

An occasional click of his teeth indicated Niner was annoyed. It was Skirata's habit, too.

“Ordo's always on time,” Fi said, trying to take his mind off his churning stomach. “Don't fret, Sarge.”

“Your buddy … ,” Darman teased.

“Rather have him for a friend than an enemy.”

“Ooh, he likes you. Hobnobbing with ARC officers from the Bonkers Squad, eh?”

“We have an understanding,” Fi said. “I don't laugh at his skirt, and he doesn't rip my head off.”

Yes, Ordo had taken a shine to him. Fi hadn't fully understood it until Skirata had taken him to one side and explained just what had happened to Ordo and his batch on Kamino as kids. So when Fi had thrown himself on a grenade during an anti-terrorist op to smother the detonation, Ordo had marked him out as someone who'd take an awfully big risk to save comrades. Null ARCs were psychotic—bonkers, as Skirata put it—but they were unshakably loyal when the mood struck them.

And when the mood failed to strike them, they were instant death on legs.

Fi suspected that Ordo was bored out of his brain, stuck in HQ on Coruscant for most of the last year with nothing to kill except time.

So Fi stared at Niner's glove, too, willing his stomach to stay put. At precisely 0900 hours Triple Zero time, right on cue, Niner's palm burst into blue light.

“RC-one-three-zero-nine receiving, sir,” Niner said.

The encrypted link was crystal clear. Ordo shimmered in a blue holoimage, apparently sitting in the cockpit of a police vessel, helmet beside him on the adjoining seat. But he didn't look bored. He was clenching and unclenching one fist.

“Su'cuy, Omega. How's it going?”

“Ready to roll, sir.”

“Sergeant, latest intel we have is that the suspect vessel left Cularin bound for Denon and is headed for your position. The bad news is that it appears to be traveling with a couple of legit vessels as a smokescreen. Commercial freight is getting very edgy about piracy so they're forming up into convoys now.”

“We can weed out the target,” said Niner.

“It would be very awkward if you decompressed a civilian freighter at the moment. It'll be the Gizer L-six.”

“Understood.”

“And we need the di'kute alive. No slotting, no disintegration, no accidents.”

“Not even a good slap?” asked Fi.

“Use the PEP laser and keep it nonlethal if you can. Somebody's very keen to have a frank chat with them.” Ordo paused, head tilted down for a second. “Vau's back.”

Fi couldn't stop himself from glancing at Atin and noted that Darman had done the same. Atin had his chin tucked into the padded rim of his chest plate and was idly scratching the scar that ran from just under his right eye and across his mouth to the left side of his jaw. It was a thin white line now, a faint memory of the raw red welt it had been when Fi first saw him: and Fi suddenly realized something he hadn't worked out before.

I think I know how he got that.

Atin was from Sergeant Walon Vau's training company, not Skirata's. And over the months, as casualties mounted and more partial squads were regrouped with men from other companies, they all swapped stories. The Vau stories didn't get a laugh at all.

“You okay, ner vod?”

“Fine,” Atin said. He looked up, jaw set. “So how many bandits are we going to not slot, disintegrate, or speak harshly to, then, Captain?”

“Five, best intel says,” said Ordo.

“We'll assume ten then,” said Niner.

Ordo paused for a moment as if he thought Niner might be resorting to sarcasm. Fi could see it in the way his shoulders braced. He was a knife-edge kind of man, Ordo. But Niner was simply in literal mode, as he tended to be when things were getting intense. He always wanted to err on the side of caution.

Ordo obviously knew that: he didn't bite. “By the way, General Tur-Mukan is operating around the Bothan sector, and appears to be coping, according to Commander Gett,” he said. “And she's still packing the cone rifle, so your lesson wasn't wasted.”

“Beats swinging the shiny stick,” Fi said, winking at Darman. “It'd be fun to see her again, eh, Dar?”

Darman smiled enigmatically. Atin was staring in slight defocus at the bulkhead, jaw clenched. Fi thought it was high time the bad guys dropped out of hyperspace and took their minds off the individual things that were troubling them, which included his stomach.

“Ordo out,” the blue holo said, and Niner's glove held nothing but air again.

Darman prepped his helmet, resetting the HUD with a prod of his finger. “Poor Ord'ika.” He called him by the affectionate nickname Skirata used in private, a kid's name, Little Ordo. In public, it was strictly Captain and Sergeant. And you could call your brother vod'ika in the Mandalorian way, but nobody else could, and never in front of strangers.

“Who'd want to be doing the filing when the rest of your batch are off saving the galaxy?”

“Well, I hear Kom'rk is out at Utapau, and Jaing's cannoned up and gone hiking with extreme prejudice in the Bakura sector,” said Fi.

“Fierfek.”

“Knowing him, he's doing it for the fun of it. And as for Mereel—well, why has Kal sent him out to Kamino?”

Niner clicked irritably again. “Anyone else you want to discuss classified intel with, Fi?”

“Sorry, Sarge.”

The cabin was silent once more. Fi slid his helmet back on, sealed the collar, and concentrated on the artificial horizon of his HUD to convince his stomach which way was up. The Mark III Katarn armor now had more enhancements and was rated blaster-resistant up to light cannon rounds. Every op was full of new surprises from GAR Procurement—like a birthday, according to Skirata, although Fi, like all his brothers, had never celebrated one.

Now they even had a nonlethal pulsed energy projectile, or PEP, for the DC-17 that didn't exactly kill the targets, but certainly made their eyes water. It was police riot control kit, a deuterium fluoride laser: it would probably just annoy a Wookiee, but it sorted out humanoids in short order.

Fi focused on the icons in the frame of his HUD and blinked one into action, sending chilled air across his face. That soothed his nausea. Then he isolated his audio channel and accessed a articularly thumping piece of glimmik music.

Niner cut in on the comm channel override. “Now what are you listening to?”

“Mon Cal opera,” Fi said. “I'm improving my mind.”

“Liar. I can see you nodding to the beat.”

Relax, Sarge. Please. “Want to listen in?”

“I'm psyched up enough, thanks,” Niner said.

Darman shook his head. Atin looked up. “Later, Fi.”

Sicko glanced over his shoulder, excluded from the squad's conversation by their secure helmet-to-helmet comlink. But he could obviously see the body language that indicated they were chatting. Fi flicked to his frequency with a couple of blinks directed at the sensor inside his visor.

“How about you, ner vod? Want some music?”

“No thanks.” Sicko had much the same neutral accent as most of the infantry trooper clones. They'd learned Basic from flash-instruction and had rarely been exposed to outsiders with interesting accents. “But it's decent of you to offer.”

“Anytime.”

Commandos owed their lives to the guts of these pilots—Omega had been extracted under heavy fire by their astonishing skill a number of times—and the TIV pilots were the most daring of the lot. Any gulfs among clone trooper, specialist, and the elite commando units had now been swept away by shared hardship and they were an vode now—all brothers. Fi was happy to indulge them.

He killed the music feed and switched over to the open squad comlink again. The waiting was eating at him now. If—

“Got trade,” said Sicko. “They should be jumping out of hyperspace anytime now. Three contacts.” He flicked the tracking display from his console into a holoprojection so they could see the pulses of color that represented the ships—no outlines or shapes, just a flickering array of numbers and codes to one side, awaiting a ship to tag. “Intercept in two minutes. They should all be less than a minute apart.”

“Bring us in starboard-side-to, please,” said Niner.

“There you go … the L-six is coming out first.” Sicko pressed a pad on the console and Fi heard the grapple arms extend and retract like an athlete flexing muscles before an event. The display picked up the ship, then another. “But the second profile looks like an L-six, too …”

“Intel said—”

“Intel has occasionally been known to be less than one hundred percent accurate, apparently …”

Atin sighed a ffft of contempt. “You reckon?” Fi could see that he was checking ships' configuration data via his HUD. “I'm glad I'm shockproofed.”

“But we like intel,” said Fi. No, not again. Let it be right this time. “Sergeant Kal never read us bedtime stories, so intel satisfies our innate boyish need for heroic fantasy.”

“Is he always like this?” Sicko asked.

“No, he's pretty quiet today.” Darman clutched a magnetic frame charge to his chest plate—his hatch persuader, as he liked to call it. “So are we going to jump the first crate or what?”

“Play it by ear,” said Niner, who always seemed to resort to Skirata's voice under pressure. He hit the release on his restraints. “Let's see how it reacts when we approach. Pressure up helmets, gentlemen, and we're in business.”

“Coming about,” said Sicko. “And if I can't disable its drive, blow the navigation power conduit. The access ought to be outside the engineering compartment, but it's sometimes inside the port-side bulkhead, three meters from the hatch. So knock the rotten thing out, will you? Or they'll bolt and drag us across ten star systems.”

Then the pilot punched the TIV into a ninety-degree roll and the apparently fixed constellations Fi had been watching tilted before his eyes. He understood instantly why they called the man Sicko.

Fi grabbed a restraint instictively and his backpack hit the bulkhead.

“Oh fierfek—”

“Whoaaa!”

“Uhhh.”

Fi could see through the cockpit screen as he steadied himself alongside the hatch. A box-like freighter—yes, a Gizer L-6—loomed out of black nothing.

“Interdict that,”Niner said.

Fi reached for his jet-pack controls, hanging right beside Darman in free fall.

Sicko powered the TIV into a slow head-on approach and corkscrewed slowly to line it up and bring the deckhead hatch against the port side of the freighter, landing lights on.

The freighter slowed, too. Darman stood ready, fingers flexing over the jet-pack controls on his belt. He'd be first out, blowing the hatch controls when the blastproof coaming sealed against the target's hull, pulling aside to let the others storm in. As the TIV moved sedately along the freighter's flank, the landing lights picked out the bright orange livery of VOSHAN CONTAINERS.

“Oops,” said Sicko. “Looks like the legit one.”

“Back off, then,” Niner said. “If the other ship sees this, we've lost—”

A flash caught Fi's eye at the same time it did everyone else's. The second vessel was heading their way.

“Another L-six,” Sicko said. “Please don't let there be three of them.”

The first L-6 suddenly altered course with a rapid burn. It had probably picked up the wrong idea about a scruffy little ship in an area of space that was frequently populated by pirates. One of its spars wheeled ninety degrees almost instantly, looming in the TIV's viewscreen on collision course.

“Abort abort abort!” Sicko yelled. “Brace brace brace—”

He was cut short by a screech of tearing alloy that shuddered through the TIV, and suddenly it wasn't the tight gut-exhilaration of a boarding but the desperate scramble to survive. The impact spun the TIV off and the last thing Fi saw as he somersaulted involuntarily was Sicko pulling on the yoke and punching a stabilizing burn to stop the spin.

There was nothing Fi or the squad could do. It was all down to the pilot. Fi hated that moment of helpless realization every time. The display in his HUD shuddered like a cheap bootleg holovid as he hit the bulkhead harder than he thought possible in zero-g.

“Incoming! Returning fire.”

And then there was light: brilliant blue-white light. The instant hot rain of fragments peppered and pecked on the hull. Sicko had neutralized the incoming missile. The second L-6 powered up and punched back into hyperspace in a flare of light.

“Chew on that,” Sicko said, and slapped his fist hard on the console. “Foam deployed … hull breach secure.”

“What's that?” Fi said, suddenly ice-cold and focused, and not nauseous at all.

“BRB.”

“What?”

“Big Red Button. Emergency hull seal.”

The remains of the freighter's missile cartwheeled slowly into the distance, trailing vapor. It was the kind of self-defense many freighters felt the need to carry these days: wars created useful opportunity for the criminal community.

Niner sighed. “Oh, fierfek, everyone knows we're here now …”

“Anyone get his license number?” Fi said. “Maniac.”

“Yeah, and more maniacs along shortly, too.” Sicko turned his head toward the scanner readout. “Next one's due in sixty seconds … and the next one two minutes later, I reckon. I hope he doesn't call for assistance, or we're going to have to bang out of here really fast.”

“Tell me they're not going to notice that little fracas.”

“They're not going to notice that little fracas.”

“Vor'e, brother.”

“You're welcome.” The pilot didn't take his eyes off the scanner. “Happy to lie to a comrade anytime, if it makes him feel better—there you go …”

The next freighter fell out of hyperspace fifteen hundred meters from their port bow, and its pilot definitely noticed. Fi knew that because the immediate bright arc of laser cannon shaved the elint mast mounted on the TIV's nose just as Sicko let loose a sustained volley into the freighter's under-slung drive. It was still showering debris as Sicko brought the TIV about and swung back under the freighter to loop over its casing from its starboard quarter and bring the TIV, totally inverted, to rest hatch-to-hatch with the target.

And there was nothing the crippled freighter could do about it. Sicko was too close in, too far inside the minimum range of its cannon, and now riding a very angry Ralltiiri tiger.

“This is where you get off.” Sicko's voice was just a little shaky. “End of the line.”

“Stand to!” Niner said. The skirt of coaming shot out of the TIV's hatch housing and sealed tight against the freighter's hull while the grapple arms held it secure. The pressure equalization light flashed red and the TIV's blastproof inner hatch opened, then the outer one. “Dar, take it!”

Dar slapped the frame charges on the freighter's hatch, the inner hatch snapped shut again, and a muffled whump vibrated through the TIV.

How Sicko had managed to bring the TIV alongside the port hatch without ramming the vessel—or ripping the deck-head out of the TIV—Fi would never understand, but that was what trooper pilots did, and he was in awe of them. The inner hatch opened again. Darman bowled in two flash-bangs blinding, deafening stun grenades—and Niner was first through the hatch.

“Go go go—”

Fi, buoyed up on a wave of adrenaline, plunged through after him, DC-17 set to blaster mode. The TIV and Sicko were swept from his mind from that moment as time disobeyed all the rules and he was caught in an infinite, slow-motion split second while the squad burst through the hatch and the L-6's artificial gravity smacked him down hard on the deck. The impact ran up through the soles of his boots. He was running for seconds before his proprioception caught up with the gravity and his body said I remember this.

But there weren't many places to run on an L-6 freighter. It was a cockpit and a couple of cabins bolted to a durasteel box of nothing. Atin moved ahead and simply opened up with the Deece's new PEP laser, knocking two men flat in a massive shock wave of sound and light as they came out of the starboard cabin firing blasters.

Fi's anti-flash visor darkened instantly. Even with armor, he felt the shock of the PEP'S unleashed energy. They all did.

Fi ran on over Atin as he dropped to one knee to cuff and search the men, wrists to ankles, as they lay struggling for breath, whimpering. A PEP round was like being flashbanged and hit in the chest by several plastoid rounds at once.

It was usually nonlethal. Usually.

Two down, three—maybe—to go.

The cockpit doors didn't open when Niner stood back and hit the controls. Atin caught up with Fi again and they stood catching their breath.

Niner motioned Darman into position at the cockpit doors. “Shame that PEP doesn't work through bulkheads.”

“Confirmed, three still inside,” Darman said, running the infrared sensor sweep in his gauntlet up and down the seam of the doors. “Nothing in the port cabin.”

Intel had it right for once: there were five bandits on board.

“Encourage them to step outside, Dar,” Niner said, checking his Deece's PEP setting. He peered at the power readout. “This thing actually scares me.”

Darman unrolled a ribbon of adhesive thermal charge and pressed it around the doors' weak points. Then he pushed the det into the soft material and cocked his head to one side as if calculating. “All that fuss getting in and now we just walk over them. Anticlimactic, I think the word is …”

There was a dull echoing thud and screech of metal that vibrated through the deck. For a second Fi thought the det had gone off prematurely and that it was all a trick of his adrenaline-distorted perception, and that he was dead but didn't know it yet.

But it wasn't the det.

Fi looked at Niner, and Niner looked at Atin, and Fi saw in Darman's viewpoint icon that he was staring at a fragment of flimsi that whipped past him as if snatched by a sudden wind.

It was being carried on a stream of air. Escaping air. Fi felt it grab him and they all reached instinctively for a secure point to anchor them.

“Hull breach,” Fi said, arms tight around a stanchion. “Check suit seals.”

They went into an automatic and long-drilled check of their suit systems. Katarn armor was vacuumproofed. Fi's glove sensor confirmed his suit was still airtight and the thumbs-up from the rest of the squad indicated that their suit integrity was holding up too. The temporary gale of escaping air was abating.

“Sicko, you receiving?” said Niner.

Fi had the same thought, and judging by the rapid breathing on the shared comlink, so had Atin and Darman. The decompression was via the hatch. And that meant the seal formed by the TIV had been breached.

On their comlink there was only faint static and the sound of their own breathing and swallowing.

“Fierfek,” Atin said. “Whatever it is, he's gone.”

Niner motioned Darman to stay by the cockpit hatch and beckoned Fi to follow him. “Let's see if it's fixable. You two stay there.”

“Well, we've probably lost two prisoners now,” Darman said. “Better make sure we haven't lost the rest.”

There was no telling what had dislodged the TIV and whether they were going to meet someone boarding to deal with them. They made their way back up the passage to the entry hatch, DC-17s raised, and there was no sign of the two prisoners they'd left cuffed, nor anybody else.

And the hatch—about two meters by two—was wide open, star-speckled void visible beyond.

Fi gripped the rail on one side of it and leaned out a little. It was a good way to get your head blown off but he decided that the urgency of the situation warranted it.

There was no sign of the TIV. There was no sign of anything. He pulled himself back inboard. At least the gravity was still functioning.

Niner checked the environment sensors on his forearm plate. “Atmosphere's fully vented now.”

“They have to have a foam system in these things.”

“Yeah, but if you had us running around your vessel, would you seal the hull and help us out?”

“Is the cockpit airtight?” Fi asked.

“We won't know for sure until they go cold and we can't pick them up in the infrared.” Niner switched on his tactical spot-lamp and began searching the bulkhead for panels. “And by that time we'll be ice cubes ourselves.”

Katarn armor—even the Mark III version—was only good against vacuum for twenty minutes without a backup air supply. And they hadn't counted on being exposed that long.

For some reason Fi was distracted by Sicko's fate. It was a strange thing to discover when you were on borrowed time yourself. But Sicko had said the power conduits were routed via a panel three meters from …

… here.

Fi ejected the vibroblade from his knuckle plate and pried open the panel. Niner stood behind him and directed his spot-lamp into the recessed mass of cabling, pipes, and wires.

“That one's labeled ISOLATION BULKHEAD,” Niner said.

“Yeah, but where does that come down?”

They looked up at the deckhead for shutter housings. There were at least three back down the passage that they could see.

“Let's play safe and withdraw to the one nearest the cockpit,” Niner said.

“We could blow the whole panel here and shut everything down.” Including the gravity. Lovely. “Usually triggers emergency containment.”

Niner put his glove to the side of his helmet. It was a nervous habit of his, just like the way he grew increasingly irritable with Fi as his stress levels peaked. “Dar, are you getting this?”

“Halfway there already,” said Darman's voice.

Fi's chrono said they had fifteen minutes left to make this work. “Okay, if Dar blows this remotely and it activates the emergency bulkhead, then we'll be stuck between that and the cockpit hatch.”

“And if there's atmosphere in there, we can open it and cozy up to the other three huruune.”

“Or,” Fi said, “we find it's hard vacuum, too, and then we'll be completely stuffed.”

“Stuffed if we don't,” said Darman, appearing at Fi's shoulder with a ribbon of thermal detonator tape. “Go on. Get back there and wait for me while I set the timer.”

“We ought to call in a Red Zero.”

“Let's wait until we know if there'll be anything left of us to make it worth rescuing,” Niner said, trotting back down the passage. Fi watched him go, shrugged at Darman, and then patted the wide-open cover of the control panel.

“Thanks, Sicko,” he said.