Niner was watching the group through his rifle scope, wondering why there was a preponderance of Weequays, when they all looked up, but not at him. They were looking to his right.
“Five more targets approaching,” Fi said.
Niner tracked right very gently. “Got’em.”
They didn’t look like militia. There was an Umbaran, very smart in a pale gray uniform that matched his skin, and four battle droids marching behind him. Some of the militia boys got to their feet. One of them, reclining on the ground, held his bottle out in offering, muttering something about curing rust.
The only words of conversation that Niner could pick up from the Umbaran were “… Hokan asks… any contact…”
The breeze took the rest. They’ve got reinforcements, he thought. They look like a different problem altogether.
And they were, but not for him this time. The reinforcement droids raised their integral blasters without warning and simply opened fire into the group of militia. They fired a few bolts in an orderly manner and then waited, looking down at their victims as if checking. The Umbaran—commissioned officer or sergeant?—stepped forward and fired another blast at close range into a Weequay. Apparently satisfied that their job was done, they gathered up the group’s assortment of blasters and sidearms, searched the bodies for something—ID, Niner suspected—and marched calmly away, back down their approach route.
Niner heard Fi exhale at the same time he did.
“Well,” Fi said. “You can empty your bladder now, I suppose.”
Niner slid down from the fork of the tree, and his leg buckled under him. He removed the plates and rubbed his thigh to get the circulation going. “What do you reckon that was all about, then?”
“Hokan doesn’t like them drinking on duty?”
Atin appeared, a jumble of circuitry and wires in one hand. “Looks like the tinnies have shown up to take over. But why shoot them?”
“Tinnies?” Fi said.
“What did your squad call them?”
“Droids.”
Niner nudged Fi. “General Zey said Hokan was violent and unpredictable. He executes his own people in cold blood. Let’s remember that.”
They gathered up their gear and this time it was the turn of Atin and Niner to carry the load they’d rigged underslung on a pole. Fi walked ahead on point.
“I haven’t fired a shot yet,” he said.
“On this sort of mission, the fewer the better,” Atin said.
Niner took it as a sign that Atin was joining in. His tone wasn’t as defensive. Regular people said they couldn’t tell the difference between one clone and another, did they? That was what came of spending too much time looking at faces and not enough wondering what shaped people and went on inside their heads.
“Save’em for later,” Niner said. “I think we’re going to need every single round.”
I must be out of my mind.
Etain watched the ramshackle farmhouse buildings through a gap in the barn’s planked walls. The roofs were outlined against the deepening turquoise of the dusk sky: two lamps stood by the porch of the main building to keep the gdans away from the path to the outside refresher. There were so many of the little predators nesting around the farm that one of their warrens had subsided, leaving a gaping hole in the farmyard that was now filling up every time it rained. Birhan wasn’t big on maintenance.
That did make some tasks easier, though. Satisfied that nobody was approaching, she went back to working boards loose from the barn’s frame at the rear of the building. There was no other exit if she were ambushed, so she was making one.
She concentrated on the boards, fixing their shape and position in her mind. Then she visualized them separating and moving aside, creating a gap. Move, she thought. Just part,swing aside... and the boards did indeed move. She rehearsed shifting them with the Force a few times, letting them fall back into place quietly.
Yes, she could use the Force. When she felt confident and controlled, she could master everything Fulier had taught her; but those days could be few and far between. She wrestled with a temper unbefitting a Jedi. She watched those with serene acceptance of the Force and envied their certainty. She wondered why Jedi blood had bothered to manifest itself in someone who was so fallible.
Etain hoped she could manage to use the Force to do something more momentous than moving planks if the situation demanded it. She was certain that the next few days would test her beyond her limits.
Jinart arrived just after it grew completely dark. Despite watching intently through the crack in the wall, lightsaber ready, Etain didn’t see her approach, or even hear her until the door swung open.
But she felt her. And she wondered why she hadn’t felt her before.
“Ready, girl?” Jinart asked. She was wrapped in a filthy shawl that seemed about to walk of its own accord. It was a pretty convincing disguise.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Etain asked.
“Tell you what?” Jinart asked.
“I might be less than the ideal Padawan, but I can always sense another Jedi. I want to know why.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not that at all. But we are serving the same cause.”
Jinart cast around and picked up the remnants of a loaf that Etain hadn’t finished. She shoved it under her shawl.
“That wasn’t an explanation,” Etain said, and followed her out the door. There were no gdans to be seen. If this woman was strong in the Force and not a Jedi, she had to know why. “I need to know what you are.”
“No, you don’t.”
“How do I know you’re not someone who has turned to the dark side?”
Jinart stopped abruptly and spun around, suddenly faster and more upright than an old woman should have been. “I can choose when I am detected and not detected. And given your competence, I’m the one who’s most at risk. Now, silence.”
It wasn’t quite the answer Etain was expecting. She felt the same authority as she had in the presence of Fulier, except that he exhibited peaks and troughs of the Force, while Jinart projected an infinite steadiness.
She was certainty. Etain envied certainty.
Jinart led her into the woodland that skirted Imbraani to the east. She was keeping up a punishing pace, and Etain decided not to ask any more questions for the time being. At various points along the way, Jinart deviated: “Mind the warrens,” she said, and Etain sidestepped holes and depressions that told her colonies of gdans had been busy beneath the ground.
They finally paused half an hour later, having covered an arc that brought them north to the edge of the Braan River. As rivers went, it was more of a large stream. Jinart stood still, apparently looking at the water but not appearing to focus. Then she jerked her head around and stared west, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.
“Walk upstream,” she said. “Follow the riverbank and keep your wits about you. Your soldier is still there, and he needs those plans.”
“A soldier. One?”
“That’s what I said. Come on. He won’t be there much longer.”
“Not a group, then. Not even a few.”
“Correct. There are others, but they’re a little way from here. Now go.”
“What makes you think I have plans?”
“If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be risking myself to direct you toward your contact,” Jinart said. “I have other work to do now. When you find your soldier, I’ll try to persuade Birhan to take him in for a while. He’ll need somewhere to hide. Get on with it. He won’t hang around.”
Etain watched Jinart start away toward the town, looking back just once. The Padawan slipped out her lightsaber and tried to get a sense of what might lie west along the river-bank, and when she glanced back again Jinart was nowhere to be seen. She was aware of the scrabbling of small clawed feet around her. Whatever influence had kept the gdans at bay while Jinart was with her was gone. She kicked out occasionally and hoped her boots were thick enough.