Republic Commando_ Hard Contact Part 1

Star Wars.

Republic Commando.

Hard Contact.

by Karen Traviss.

PROLOGUE.

Okay, this is how it happened.

It's pitch black below and we're fast-roping into the creva.s.se, too fast: I can feel the impact in my back teeth when I land. I'm first down and I flood the chamber with my helmet spot-lamp.

There's a triple-sealed blast door between us and the Geonosians and I haven't got time to calculate the charge needed to blow it. A lot, then. P for plenty, like I was taught. Stick the thermal tape around the edges and push in the detonator. Easier said than done: the alloy door's covered with crud.

Delta Squad's CO gets on the helmet comlink. "You having a party down there, Theta?"

"Can't rush an artist..."

"You want to tell that to the spider droids?"

"Patience, Delta." Come on, come on. Stick to the metal, will you? "Nearly there."

"A lot of spider droids ..."

"I hear you, Delta."

"In your own time. No pressure. None at all..."

"Clear!"

We flatten ourselves against the cavern walls. It's all white light and painful noise and flying dust for a fraction of a second. When we can see again, the doors are blown inward, ripped apart, billowing smoke. "Delta Squads-clear to enter. Take take take."

"I thought you'd never ask." Delta Squad hits the ground and they're straight in, firing, while we stand back and cover their six. It's a warren of tunnels down here. If we're not careful, something could jump us from any direction.

My helmet's supposed to protect against high decibels, but war is noisy. Really noisy. I can't hear my helmet comlink through the omph-omph-omph of the Geonosians' sonic rounds and our own blasterfire. I can hear anti-armor going off, too. Fierfek, I can feel it through my boots.

Movement catches my eye up ahead, and then it's gone. I'm looking up through the DC-17's scope, checking that it was just my imagination, and Taler gestures toward another of the five tunnels facing us.

"Darman, take that E-Web and hold this position." He beckons Vin and Jay and they move almost back-to-back toward the mouth of the tunnel, checking to all sides.

And then I look up, overhead.

There's more Geonosians around than we thought. A lot more. I take down two above me and then more come out of the tunnel to the left so I open fire with the repeating blaster, nice and early, because if I let them get too close the blast will fry me as well.

Even so, it's knocking me back like a trip-hammer.

"Taler, Darman here, over." I can't see him. I can't see any of them, but I can hear rapid fire. "Taler, Darman here, you receiving me, over?"

Not so much silence as an absence of a familiar voice. Then a few fragmented, crackling shouts of"... down! Man down here!"

Who? Who's down? "Taler? Vin? Jay? You receiving, over?"

I've lost contact with my squad.

It's the last time I see them.

1.

SCRAMBLE LINE ENCRYPTED.

STAND BY STAND BY.

GEONOSIS FORWARD CONTROL TO FLEET SUPPORT, ORD MANTELL.

PREPARE TO RECEIVE CASEVAC TRANSPORT. MED TRIAGE TEAM ESTIMATE SERIOUS INJURIES, TWELVE THOUSAND, REPEAT TWELVE THOUSAND. WALKING WOUNDED EIGHT THOUSAND, REPEAT EIGHT THOUSAND. ETA TEN HOURS. LOGISTICS PRIORITY FOR BACTA TANK SUPPORT TEAMS.

PREP FOR SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND COMBAT-FIT TROOPS, REPEAT SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND, PENDING REDEPLOYMENT. PRIORITY WEAPONS SUPPORT FOR COMMANDO UNITS.

THAT IS ALL. OUT.

Republic a.s.sault ship Implacable: inbound for extraction from Geonosis. Stand by.

Republic Commando 1136 studied every face in line waiting to board the gunships.

Some were helmeted, and some were not, but-one way or another-they all had his face. And they were all strangers.

"Move it," the loadmaster shouted, gesturing side-to-side with one outstretched arm. "Come on, shift it, people-fast as you can." The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and troopers embarked, some turning to pull comrades inboard so the ships could lift again quickly. There was no reason to scramble for it. They'd done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they'd prepared for. This wasn't a retreat. They'd grabbed their first victory.

The gunships' downdraft kicked the red Geonosian soil into the air. RC-1136-Darman-took off his helmet and ran his gauntlet carefully across the pale gray dome, wiping away the dust and noting a few sc.r.a.pes and burn marks.

The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very, very few outsiders whom Darman had ever seen working with the Grand Army, a short, wrinkled Duros with a temper to match. "Are you embarking or what?"

Darman continued wiping his helmet. "I'm waiting for my mates," he said.

"You shift your shiny silver backside now," the loadmaster said irritably. "I got a schedule."

Darman carefully brought up his knuckle plate just under the loadmasters's chin, and held it there. He didn't need to eject the vibroblade and he didn't need to say a word. He'd made his point.

"Well, whenever you're ready, sir," the Duros said, stepping back to chivy clone troopers instead. It wasn't a great idea to upset a commando, especially not one coming down from the adrenaline high of combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Darman knew that there was no point in waiting any longer. They hadn't called in. Maybe they had comlink failures. Maybe they had made it onto another gunship.

It was the first time in his artificially short life that Darman hadn't been able to reach out and touch the men he had been raised with.

He waited half a standard hour more anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines of troopers became shorter. Eventually there was n.o.body standing on the desert plain but him, the Duros loadmaster, and half a dozen clone troopers. It was the last lift of the day.

"You better come now, sir," the loadmaster said. "There's n.o.body unaccounted for. n.o.body alive, anyway."

Darman looked around the horizon one last time, still feeling as if he were turning his back on someone reaching out to him.

"I'm coming," he said, and brought up the rear of the line. As the gunship lifted, he watched the swirling dust, dwindling rock formations, and scattered shrinking patches of scrub until Geonosis became a blur of dull red.

He could still search the Implacable. It wasn't over yet.

The gunship slipped into the Implacable's giant docking bay, and Darman looked down into the cavern, onto a sea of white armor and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed its thrusters and locked down on its pad was how quiet everyone seemed.

In the crowded bay full of troopers, the air stank of sweat and stale fear and the throat-rasping smell of discharged blaster rifles. But it was so silent that if Darman hadn't seen the evidence of exhausted and injured men, he'd have believed that nothing significant had happened in the last thirty hours.

The deck vibrated under the soles of his boots. He was still staring down at them, studying the random patterns of Geonosian dust that clung to them, when an identical pair came into view.

"Number?" said a voice that was also his own. The commander swept him with a tally sensor: he didn't need Darman to tell him his number, or anything else for that matter, because the sensors in the enhanced Katarn armor reported his status silently, electronically. No significant injury. The triage team on Geonosis had waved him past, concentrating on the injured, ignoring both those too badly hurt to help and those who could help themselves. "Are you listening to me? Come on. Talk to me, son."

"I'm okay, sir," he said. "Sir, RC-one-one-three-six. I'm not in shock. I'm fine." He paused. n.o.body else was going to call him by his squad nickname-Darman-again. They were all dead, he knew it. Jay, Vin, Taler. He just knew. "Sir, any news of RC-one-one-three-five-"

"No," said the commander, who had obviously heard similar questions every time he stopped to check. He gestured with the small bar in his hand. "If they're not in casevac or listed on this sweep, then they didn't make it."

It was stupid to ask. Darman should have known better. Clone troopers-and especially Republic commandos-just got on with the job. That was their sole purpose. And they were lucky, their training sergeant had told them; outside, in the ordinary world, every being from every species in the galaxy fretted about their purpose in life, searching for meaning. A clone didn't need to. Clones knew. They had been perfected for their role, and doubt need never trouble them.

Darman had never known what doubt was until now. No amount of training had prepared him for this. He found a s.p.a.ce against a bulkhead and sat down.

A clone trooper settled down next to him, squeezing into the gap and briefly clunking a shoulder plate against his. They glanced at each other. Darman rarely had any contact with the other clones: commandos trained apart from everyone, including ARC troopers. The trooper's armor was white, lighter, less resistant; commandos enjoyed upgraded protection. And Darman displayed no rank colors.

But they both knew exactly who and what they were.

"Nice Deece," the trooper said enviously. He was looking at the DC-17: troopers were issued the heavier, lower-spec rifle, the DC-15. "Ion pulse blaster, RPG anti-armor, and sniper?"

"Yeah." Every item of his gear was manufactured to a higher spec. A trooper's life was less valuable than a commando's. It was the way things were, and Darman had never questioned it-not for long, anyway. "Full house."

"Tidy." The trooper nodded approval. "Job done, eh?"

"Yeah," Darman said quietly. "Job done."

The trooper didn't say anything else. Maybe he was wary of conversation with commandos. Darman knew what troopers thought about him and his kind. They don't train like us and they don't fight like us. They don't even talk like us. A bunch of prima donnas.

Darman didn't think he was arrogant. It was just that he could do every job a soldier could be called upon to do, and then some: siege a.s.sault, counterinsurgency, hostage extraction, demolitions, a.s.sa.s.sination, surveillance, and every kind of infantry activity on any terrain and in any environment, at any time. He knew he could, because he'd done it. He'd done it in training, first with simunition and then with live rounds. He'd done it with his squad, the three brothers with whom he'd spent every moment of his conscious life. They'd competed against other squads, thousands just like them, but not like them, because they were squad brothers, and that was special.

He had never been taught how to live apart from the squad, though. Now he would learn the hardest way of all.

Darman had absolute confidence that he was one of the best special ops soldiers ever created. He was undistracted by the everyday concerns of raising a family and making a living, things that his instructors said he was lucky never to know.

But now he was alone. Very, very alone. It was very distracting indeed.

He considered this for a long time in silence. Surviving when the rest of your squad had been killed was no cause for pride. It felt instead like something his training sergeant had described as shame. That was what you felt when you lost a battle, apparently.

But they had won. It was their first battle, and they had won.

The landing ramp of the Implacable eased down, and the bright sunlight of Ord Mantell streamed in. Darman replaced his helmet without thinking and stood in an orderly line, waiting to disembark and be rea.s.signed. He was going to be chilled down, kept in suspended animation until duty called again.

So this was the aftermath of victory. He wondered how much worse defeat might feel.

Imbraani, Qiilura: 40 light-years from Ord Mantetl,Tingel Arm The field of barq flowed from silver to ruby as the wind from the southwest bent the ripening grain in waves. It could have been a perfect late-summer day; instead it was turning into one of the worst days of Etain Tur-Mukan's life.

Etain had run and run and she had nothing left in her. She flung herself flat between the furrows, not caring where she fell. Etain held her breath as something stinking and wet squelched under her.

The pursuing Weequay couldn't hear her above the wind, she knew, but she held her breath anyway.

"Hey girlie!" His boots crunched closer. He was panting. "Where you go? Don't be shy."

Don't breathe.

"I got bottle of urrqal. You want to have party?" He had a remarkably large vocabulary for a Weequay, all of it centered on his baser needs. "I fun when you get to know me."

I should have waited for it to get dark. I could influence his mind, try to make him leave.

But she hadn't. And she couldn't, try as she might to concentrate. She was too full of adrenaline and uncontrolled panic.

"Come on, you scrag-end, where are you? I find you..."

He sounded as if he was kicking his way through the crop, and getting closer. If she got up and ran for it, she was dead. If she stayed where she was, he'd find her-eventually. He wasn't going to get bored, and he wasn't going to give up.

"Girlie..."

The Weequay's voice was close, to her right, about twenty meters away. She sipped a strangled breath and clamped her lips shut again, lungs aching, eyes streaming with the effort.

"Girlie . . ." Closer. He was going to step right on her. "Gir-leeeeee..."

She knew what he'd do when he found her. If she was lucky, he'd kill her afterward.

"Gir-"

The Weequay was interrupted by a loud, wet thwack. He let out a grunt and then there was a second thwack-shorter, sharper, harder. Etain heard a squeal of pain.

"How many times have I got to tell you, di 'kut?" It was a different voice, human, with an hard edge of authority. Thwack. "Don't-waste-my-time." Another thwack: another squeal. Etain kept her face pressed in the dirt. "You get drunk one more time, you go chasing females one more time, and I'm going to slit you from here to-here."

The Weequay shrieked. It was the sort of incoherent animal sound that beings made when pain overwhelmed them. Etain had heard too much of that sound in her short time on Qiilura. Then there was silence.