The Clone Wars_ No Prisoners Part 12

Hallena was so pumped with adrenaline that she could feel no pain in her head as she ran.

Her lungs were screaming at her to stop, though. She felt the energy ebbing from her because she simply couldn't seem to get enough air down her throat. She also realized she was nowhere near as fit as a clone trooper, and that was who she was trying to keep pace with.

But she had her comlink. The data on that was too valuable to let fall into enemy hands. She left it on locate-transmit setting, just in case, just so that Control knew where she was now.

Behind her, she heard the shooting. She'd also heard the orders barked over the clones' audio system.

"We can't leave them," she panted.

"Keep going, ma'am." Ince grabbed her arm. She was slowing. "Coric's started the drives."

"We don't leave until the other guys catch up, you hear?"

"Ma'am-orders are to extract you-that's what we're doing."

She had a long list of questions backing up in her brain like an angry mob demanding answers. Her body told her they could wait their turn and that she had to get as far away from here as she could. But there was Shil maybe not dead, and she cared what happened to him, and there were all these strangers risking their lives to get her out, and she didn't have any information, anything at all, that made it imperative to rescue her.

"That's what my toxin capsule's for," she said. "So that I don't need extracting."

"It's not a myth, then ..."

The sound of gunship drives made them scatter for cover. One of the other troopers, one whose name she hadn't caught, pulled her down into the shelter of a bas.e.m.e.nt entrance until the vessel pa.s.sed overhead.

"Ince here, sir." Hallena could still hear him. Their helmets had external speakers. "Sep gunship, five minutes from you- heading northwest, probably going to miss you, but be aware." He sprang up from his crouch and waved them on down the street. "Hug the walls, guys. The captain's going to kill us if we screw up first time out."

The short breather had given Hallena a second wind. She ran as hard as she could. When she rounded the corner behind Ince and saw the derelict factory, she could already hear the faint rumble of a shuttle drive idling.

"It's us, Sarge," Ince yelled. "Got her. Open up."

The civilian with them-the one she'd been thrown to like a roll of carpet-helped her into the crew bay. She slumped onto one of the bulkhead benches and tried to get her breath back while he checked her head wound.

The pilot turned in his seat. He didn't have his helmet on, just a comm headset. He was a serious-looking young man with black hair cut menacingly short, and Hallena suddenly realized that she was looking at the face of an entire army.

"The captain's pinned down," he said. "You been listening to your comm?"

The three troopers pitched in all at once.

"I can see his HUD output, Sarge ..."

"Yeah, come on. We go back and help them, or what?"

"We can't just sit here."

"You can," the sergeant snapped. "And you will. Or else we could end up losing the whole detachment. Give it a few minutes. I'm watching the remote, and if you stopped to think for a second, you could patch into it, too."

Hallena had no idea what was going on-again. For more than a day now, she'd been effectively blind and deaf. And now she couldn't see or hear everything that the clone troopers could, just the parts of their conversation they let her hear, and she wasn't used to being that far out of the loop. The seconds were dragging like hours.

"You," she said to the civilian. "Are you Intel?"

"Jedi," he said. "Jedi Knight Geith Eris. I don't think even a trooper could catch you from that height without breaking something."

"Have you flashed Leveler to let Pellaeon know she's okay?" Ince asked the pilot. "He'll be crawling the walls if he can hear any of the comm traffic."

"Yes. I have, Trooper."

The mention of Gil's name-and his ship-split Hallena down the middle. Part of her felt foolish elation, and the rest was mortified that the romance was now clearly common knowledge even in the ranks.

"How's the ship holding up?" another clone asked. "No point banging out of here if we don't have a ride home."

"Sensors online, drives are fine, but the concussion missile targeting's not looking too clever. Maybe we can try for Kemla Yard in this crate if the worst happens."

"Range limited by oxygen, remember? Nah, we've got to get back on board." It was clear they were talking about a warship. "Are you transferring me to a ship?"

"Leveler, ma'am. Where else?"

Gil was insane. Had he come all this way-from wherever, doing whatever-and risked his ship because she was in trouble, and somehow that emergency comm had reached him? Guilt overwhelmed her. Spooks weren't supposed to need bailing out. They were supposed to do the bailing. It happened, but she didn't feel good about it.

"Crazy," she said to herself. "What's happening to your men back there?"

The sergeant-he had to be Coric-held his receiver a little closer to his mouth. "Wow. Hey, check your HUDs. Are you blind or something? See, this is why you always have to pack a Jedi or three."

Hallena couldn't stand it any longer. "Show me," she said to Ince. "Show me what you can see."

The trooper reached into his belt and pulled out a datapad. The small screen showed a jerking, chaotic picture like a holovid chase sequence, but it was obviously a clone's helmet cam recording what he was seeing. A ma.s.s of droids filled the street in front of him. What first looked like a barricade of rubble turned out to be shattered droid parts, and a few meters back from that barrier, two humans and a-a child, yes a child, a Togruta-stood with lightsabers drawn and their free hands extended. Blasterfire ripped into the droid ranks. A couple of white-armored figures appeared for a moment as the cam turned. When the helmet cam tilted-as the clone trooper looked down-she saw another trooper on the ground, his armor shattered, and another trying to pull him clear.

This is all over me. It's not about vital intelligence. I don't have any, not now.

It's never worth all those lives. I'm never worth all those lives.

Hallena caught Ince's arm to get his attention and had to shake him slightly. He was watching his comrades in trouble, torn between orders and doing what he felt he had to.

"Get them out of there," Hallena said. "Now."

BATTLE DROID LINE, ATHAR.

Vere's pov icon was still live on the left margin of Rex's HUD, and he couldn't shut it off.

He was sure Vere couldn't see the clouded sky he seemed to be staring at.

"No go, sir," Boro said. He was still trying to get a line into Vere's arm, the plastoid plates flung aside and sections of black undersuit peeled back. "No pulse, nothing."

Every second Boro spent trying to revive Vere put his own life at risk. As Rex drained another clip into the droid lines and dropped behind cover to reload, he struggled with a rising tidal wave of incoherent anger for a kid whose active service had lasted just eight days, from the time he shipped out of Kamino to the moment a droid grenade shattered his last line of defense, his armor.

Eight days wasn't enough for anyone.

The only things he could make pay for that were ma.s.sed in front of him. Fine. Even in the few months of this war, he'd lost so many men that it didn't seem to matter if he joined them sooner rather than later. If he did-he wouldn't have to spend another second feeling like he'd failed them and wondering how many more he'd lose tomorrow.

"Boro, pack it in." He caught the young clone's arm. "He's gone, kid. You'll be next if you don't grab that Deece and start shooting."

"Sir, I've done all the medic training. I can..."

Boro stopped abruptly, sat back on his heels for a moment, and sighted up with his rifle again. Rex heard his outgoing audio click off, so he was either yelling curses or sobbing or whatever he needed to do to cope with losing his buddy. But he got on with it. He laid down fire, and only someone who knew what went on inside the helmet could have guessed what it was doing to him.

"Rex! Rex!" Ahsoka broke from Altis and Callista, who were struggling to hold back the droid front ranks. "Take Vere and go."

The ma.s.s of metal was getting seriously congested now. If the tinnies ever had a smart thought, they'd break off a few pla-toons from the back and try another route to the side, but the images from the remote told Rex that they weren't. The side roads had been blocked by barricades thrown up by the rebel mob.

See, we'd just get a demolition team to blow a gap in it and run through. Tinnies don't think.

"He's dead," Rex said, and opened fire again.

"Oh."

"We can't keep this up much longer. Give me a couple of minutes to rig some charges across the street, then bang out."

"I could hold them back long enough for everyone else to make a run for it."

Rex snapped a grenade launcher to his rifle. It was a mod the DC-15 wasn't supposed to have, but it did now, and it worked okay. He took aim at a point just behind the front ranks and fired. Shrapnel arced high in the air and fell fizzing around him.

"n.o.ble," he said. "And useless, because I can't lose a Jedi on my watch."

"I can run like anyone else. You know I can."

"My squad," he said, wondering why he couldn't feel any panic now, just this awful choking anger. He counted his supply of grenades and tried to calculate how far the reel of high-yield detonite tape would stretch. "My decision. Hold that line while I lay the charges."

"You'll be killed."

"And the maximum number extracted. You know what your bosses say about attachment, littl'un. Don't get too attached to me."

Ahsoka blinked for a moment, then backed away, lightsaber drawn to deflect blasterfire as if it was an afterthought.

"Experienced captains are worth more than meat cans," Boro said. "Why don't I..."

"Okay, the line for senseless square-jawed sacrifice starts over there," Rex said irritably. "Take a ticket and we'll get to you as soon as we can."

"Sorry, sir."

"No, my fault. I'm sorry. As soon as we get this primed, get ready to grab Ahsoka and get her out of here."

"Would we be doing this if it hadn't been Pellaeon's girlfriend, sir?"

"Yes. Because that's what we'd want someone to do for us."

The ground underneath his boots was shaking. At first he thought it was artillery pounding away somewhere, but then he saw the cracks in the paving. They appeared as hairlines snaking across the permacrete, soon gaping apart in places to form wider fissures.

"Master Altis?" Rex yelled. "What's happening?"

Altis looked down. He still had his hand raised as if he were pushing against an invisible door where he wasn't a welcome caller. Callista and Ahsoka stood frozen in the same pose.

"Oh, that again," he said. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "We're generating so much pressure that it's causing subsidence."

Masonry toppled from buildings on either side of the road. Some debris plunged onto the droid ranks. And what had seemed like a ghost town suddenly erupted into desperate life as people boiled out from doorways, locals who'd been hiding until the fighting pa.s.sed. Now they were flushed from their hiding places by the threat of collapsing buildings.

"I think you ought to let go and run," Rex said.

"Good idea," said Altis. "Or I'll end up killing more non-combatants than the enemy." The Jedi Master grabbed Callista's shoulder as if to break her out of a trance, making her whip her head around. "Your trooper's pa.s.sed. I'm sorry."

"So am I," said Rex. "Coric?" He flashed the shuttle on his comlink. "Coric, we're pulling back now. Stand by." He gestured to Altis. "Give us a count, then, sir."

"In three . . . two . . . now!"

Well, three seconds' warning was better than nothing.

As soon as the Jedi released the Force push, the building to the right of the droid front line collapsed in a rumbling plume of dust that raced across the street like a volcanic eruption.

Boro looked back a few times as he ran. He had a piece of Vere's armor in his hand, a shoulder plate, but Altis ran to him to do the necessary before Rex did. The old Jedi put his hand on the trooper's back and said something. Whatever it was, it got Boro moving. Rex sprinted for the side roads, expecting the worst.

"Sir, stay put," said Coric's voice in his earpiece. "We're coming for you. We're setting down at the end of the street. Can you see the metal railings at the intersection?"

Rex did an about-turn and signaled everyone else to stop. There were no droids on their tail yet-they were probably still trying to negotiate the rubble because the stupid kriffing things couldn't climb-but that didn't mean they wouldn't get atten-tion from anything airborne.

"I see it," Rex said. "And I told you to wait."

"Agent Devis said to come back for you, sir." Coric sounded as if he was trying extra-hard to make light of things. "An offi-cer's missus always outranks him, so she's like a commodore. And she's in my face."

"Okay, give us time to make our way down there."

They ran again, sprinting in bursts and keeping well s.p.a.ced apart, just in case any of the locals were armed and aggrieved enough to settle a few scores with a Republic that had done nothing for them.

Good old Coric. How does a man know when you really, really wish he'd disobey an order?

It was too late for Vere. Rex could feel himself putting his anger to one side again, bolting it down to make sure it was just fuel for focusing on the job at hand. He'd let rip later, when n.o.body was around to watch him fall apart.

The familiar chuntering noise of the shuttle's drive was now audible, m.u.f.fled by the buildings until it moved into the open street with a sudden burst of noise. It hovered a meter above the pavement; its downdraft sent water spray leaping from the puddles. Ross and Ince jumped out to take up defensive positions, then the vessel settled on its dampers, still sitting on what looked like a cushion of mist.

"Boro," Rex yelled, "go."

He grabbed Boro's shoulder to push him ahead, surprised that his instinct right then wasn't to look after Ahsoka but to take care of his men. He sent the others racing for the shuttle one at a time, then ushered the two troopers inside. He didn't even have time to dog the hatch shut behind him before Coric lifted off.

"Good timing," Coric said. Rex hung on to the safety rail and looked down. "The tin-can army's arrived."

Beneath them, clunking along in orderly ranks as if nothing untoward had happened, battle droids moved toward the spot where the vessel had set down just moments earlier. There were a lot fewer of them; so these were the slightly smarter or randomly luckier ones that managed to blunder through the debris. They raised their blasters with the precision of a ceremonial honor guard at a state funeral, aimed, fired-and missed. Blaster bolts pa.s.sed beneath the shuttle's hull in red streaks.

Rex realized that all he knew about funerals-any funerals-was gleaned from what he'd seen on HNE. He pulled the hatch closed and sat back on one of the benches with his eyes shut for a few moments. When he looked up again, Hallena Devis was staring right at him.

She couldn't tell if he was looking at her or not, of course. All she saw was a closed helmet with a T-shaped visor like every other clone's. Just to be diplomatic, he took it off and let her make eye contact.