We could be watching them as they die.
“Go on,” Ordo said.
“Three suspects the other side of that hatch, and they can't open it now even if they wanted to. Dar's got to blow it.”
“In a confined space?”
“We've got the armor.”
Well, that was true: Fi had withstood a contact blast from a grenade in Mark II armor. “You don't have any choice, do you?”
“We've had worse days,” Fi said cheerfully.
Ordo knew he meant it. He could feel the other part of him, the Ord'ika who wanted to cry for his brothers, but he was very distant, as if in another life: there was just absolute cold detachment in the physical shell where his mind was situated now.
“Do it,” he said.
“The Red Zero's been transmitted to all GAR ships in striking distance,” Skirata said. Ordo didn't want him to watch the hololink in case things didn't go as planned, and turned his back to him. But Skirata turned him around by his arm and stepped into the holo pickup's field of view so the squad could see him. “I'm here, lads. You're coming home, okay? Sit tight.”
There was a certainty about Skirata regardless of how impossible that assurance sounded in cold reality. But Ordo could feel his utter helplessness, and shared it: Omega was light-years from the Coruscant system, far beyond the sergeant's ability to step into the firing line in person. The two soldiers turned together to shield the holoimage, and then Obrim moved in close, diplomatically blocking the view of his own team.
“Your lad Fi,” he said, “—my boys still want to buy him that drink.”
It was Obrim's men Fi had saved from the grenade. And that was probably as openly sentimental as Jailer Obrim would ever be.
“In five,” Darman said. “Four …”
Like a HoloNet drama whose budget hadn't run to a decent set, the image in Ordo's cupped hand showed the squad curling themselves against the far bulkhead, grasping conduit to anchor themselves in zero-g, heads tucked to their chests and hunkering down.
The image disappeared as Niner—whose gauntlet obviously carried the holofeed—buried his head, too.
“Three, two, go!”
The picture flared into a ball of blue light and the silent explosion looked even more like a poor-quality holovid whose audio track had failed.
The holoimage dimmed for a moment and then the squad's jet packs ignited and they surged forward in free fall, rifles raised, and the video feed broke up into wildly random movement with two more blinding flashes.
“Okay, three bandits down, not slotted, not fragmented, but not very happy either,” said Fi's voice, clearly relieved. “And oxygen.”
“Nice one, Omega.” Skirata had his eyes shut for a moment. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave a temporary white mark. “Now take it easy until we get to you, okay?”
Obrim's face was ashen. “I wish the public realized what those boys do,” he said. “I hate kriffing secrecy sometimes.”
“Shabu'droten,” Skirata muttered, and walked away. No, he didn't care much for the public at all.
“What's that mean?” Obrim asked.
“You don't want to know,” said Ordo, mulling over Jusik's tenuous analysis of the Force around the blast scene. The enemy was never here.
So … maybe there was nobody watching.
There was nobody waiting for precisely the most damaging moment to detonate the device from nearby.
Remote detonation of a moving device required one of two things: either a very good view of the target, or, if the target wasn't visible, a precise timetable so the terrorist would know exactly where the device might be at any given time.
And that meant either a very good knowledge of GAR logistics, or—if the terrorist wanted to see the whole area, not just the immediate base—access to security holo networks.
Ordo felt a sudden cool clarity settle in his stomach, a satisfying sense of having learned something new and valuable.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I think we have a mole.”
RAS Fearless: hangar deck
Clanky kept a tight grip on Etain's upper arm until she felt the drag of deceleration and the thud through the soles of her boots as the gunship docked in Fearless's hangar.
By the time she teetered on the edge of the troop bay, somehow more wary of jumping down one meter than ten, Gett was waiting, expression carefully blank.
“The general's got a taste for making shrapnel,” Clanky said approvingly. “You're instant droid death, aren't you, ma'am?”
Helmet off, he lowered his voice as he bent his head close to Gett's, but she still heard him. She heard the words rough time.
“We'd better get you cleaned up,” Gett said. “I fear it's the proverbial interview without caf when we get back to Fleet.”
Commander Gree limped past them with General Vaas Ga, both looking smoke-streaked and exhausted. “Oh, I don't think so,” Vaas Ga said. “Well done. Thank you, Fearless.”
“Let me walk this off a little, please, Commander.” Etain looked around the hangar deck, now crowded with gunships disgorging men. Medical teams moved in. The smell of burned paint and lube oil distracted her. “Anyone want to give me the numbers?”
Gett glanced down at the panel on his left forearm. “Improcco Company—four KIA, fifteen wounded, total returned—one hundred and forty out of one hundred and forty-four. Sarlacc A and B Battalions, one thousand and fifty-eight extracted—ninety-four KIA, two hundred and fifteen injured. No MIA. Twenty Torrents deployed and returned. That's seven point five percent losses, and most of those were during the Dinlo engagement itself. So I'd call that a result, General.”
It sounded like a lot of deaths to Etain. It was. But most had made it. She had to be content with that.
“Back to Triple Zero, then.” She'd called it Zero Zero Zero originally—the street slang—but the troopers had told her that was confusing, and that over a comlink it wouldn't be clear if she meant Coruscant or was simply using the standard military triple repeat of important data. She decided she liked Triple Zero better anyway. It made her feel part of their culture. “And not before time.”
“Very good, General,” Gett said. “Let me know when you want to refresh yourself and I'll call a steward.”
Etain didn't want to be back in her cabin on her own, not right now. There was a mirror on the bulkhead above the tiny basin, and she didn't like the idea of looking herself in the eye yet. She wandered around the crowded hangar.
The bacta tanks were going to be fully occupied on the journey home.
And the clone troopers of the Forty-first Elite who were trying to find somewhere to get a few hours' sleep seemed a different breed from the four almost-boys who had been her rough-and-ready introduction to unwanted command on Qiilura.
Men changed in a year, and these soldiers around her were men. Whatever naïve purity of purpose—this kote, this glory—fueled them when they left Kamino for the last time, it had been overwritten by bitter experience. They had seen, and they had lived, and they had lost brothers, and they had talked and compared notes. And they were not the same any longer.
They joked, and gossiped, and evolved small subcultures, and mourned. But they would never have a life beyond battle. And that felt wrong.
Etain could feel it and taste it as she wandered across the hanger deck, looking for more troopers she might be able to help. The sense of child that had so disoriented her when she first met Darman on Qiilura was totally absent. There were two shades of existence that tinted the Force in that vast hangar: resignation, and an overwhelming simultaneous sense of both self and community.