There were fifty battle droids in the column heading for Imbraani. If he managed to knock out the ground station, that would be the first message he’d send on his long-range comlink.
The chunk-chunk-chunk of their feet drew level with him and he froze.
Chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk.
It began to fade behind him. He breathed again. Once the excavator droid was coaxed past its logical destination of the screening plant, it would be that much more conspicuous. At least the tinnies looked busy. The worst part was having a pretty good idea about what orders they’d been given.
Just ten klicks. He was minutes away from the point where the droid would attempt to deliver its load. At that moment, he’d divert it toward Teklet itself, through the center of the town and into the ground station compound. At least the aerial recce appeared to have been right about that. Teklet was a sprawl of storage silos and shipping facilities for getting produce off the planet, and not much else.
The worst that the Trade Federation had ever anticipated dealing with was a band of angry farmers. It was going to make his job a good deal easier.
Just ahead, the droid’s flashing light bounced off a sign pointing left: all contractor traffic—no entry via main gate. The excavator knew its way and began slowing for the turn. Niner took Atin’s jury-rigged cables and unplugged one strand. Go on. Go on. Go…
The droid was almost at the turn. It was moving at around twenty-five klicks now, threatening to veer off. But it carried on, past the sign, past the slip road, and on toward Teklet. “That’s my boy,” Niner said. The sweat prickled between his shoulder blades, despite his suit’s environment controls. “Couldn’t speed up a bit, could you?” Maybe that was asking for trouble. When he eased his head clear of the layer of rubble and peered around the side of the scoop, he could see a procession of droids strung out behind him along the curve of the road, neatly line astern like battle cruisers, each flashing an orange hazard light with its outline picked out in blue.
It was actually pretty, all things considered. Then the nearest droid slowed and peeled off down the slip road, the light show behind Niner fading, then disappearing altogether. He was on his own. He settled back under the rubble with his head tilted so that he could see ahead through a channel in the debris.
Teklet had little in the way of street lighting, and there were few people about. As architecture went, this wasn’t tasteful, elegant Tipoca. It was a service depot and it looked like one. A couple of Trandoshans were sitting under an awning outside a hut, blasters across their laps; they stared at the droid with vague curiosity but didn’t appear to move. Niner was almost past the ribbon of huts when the thought struck him that a five-hundred-meter blast zone would take out a lot of Teklet, and people with it. Not all of them were Separatists.
Once you make that your concern, they’ll always have a weapon to use against you. Skirata said they had to get used to it. Achieving your objective sometimes had a high price.
A bonded cargo transporter with red security straps sealing its containers crossed in front of him. The droid missed it by two seconds. If the driver was cutting it that close, then they hadn’t taken much notice of the machine. So far, so good… and getting better. As the droid pressed on, Niner was checking his escape route. It was a good two-hundred-meter sprint to the nearest cover from any part of the road. It was going to be tight.
He had to get the droid to halt right alongside the ground station. If it kept going, the blast would be centered elsewhere. He could set the dets now, slide out of the scoop, and run for it, but that meant observing the droid up to the last second, and that meant he’d probably be too close when it blew.
But he was committed now. The ground station had to go. It would put a serious dent in the Separatists’ defenses for a few critical days, maybe even weeks, and that was an edge they needed.
Working some rubble aside with his finger, Niner could see the lights of the compound. He flicked to night vision, and the green image showed him flimsy mesh fencing and a waist-high retaining wall. The excavator would roll right over it on its path to the building itself.
They’d know he was there, all right.
He’d left the dets until last. The charges were linked by cord in series, just waiting for the final connection to the three detonators that—in theory—Niner could trigger remotely. He clamped the cords together and shoved them into the aperture of the det housings, snapping them shut.
The explosives were now live. He wasn’t just sitting on a bomb; he was sitting in one. The charges, dispersed among the rubble, were up to his neck. He began to ease his legs clear, ready to jump.
If he didn’t walk away from this, then that was the way it had to be. For a moment Niner felt a cold spasm in his gut that he recognized from a dozen all-too-real exercises. He was probably going to get killed. He was possibly going to get killed. If anyone thought intensive training wiped out the fear of dying, they were wrong. He was as afraid as he was when live rounds had flown past him for the first time. It never went away. He just learned to live with it, and tried to learn well enough that he could use it to work for him, and get him out of trouble faster.
Niner fumbled with the cabling. He steered the droid in a gentle arc so that it was square-on to the fence. It wasn’t the best course he’d ever steered, but with a five-hundred-meter blast zone, it was going to be good enough. He ducked. The wire mesh loomed in his face at the edge of the scoop, then strained and vibrated, tearing up posts with it as the droid pushed through, oblivious.
It was nearly at the wall. The building was five meters high; flat roof, no windows. They didn’t seem to like windows here. He heard a single shout, something like chuba, and he had to agree. This was going to fierfek someone’s watch with a lot of reports.
Niner yanked the cables apart and cut the droid’s power. Its momentum carried it on a few more meters, and metal twanged and squealed as the chain-link fence was stretched to the breaking point. The wires finally snapped back like a bowstring under the excavator’s wheels.
One, two, three …
The droid was at a dead stop hard against the wall. The blocks were beginning to crack, and gaps were opening between them. He had a sudden vision of finding himself buried in collapsing masonry and unable to move, and a combination of animal panic and a lifetime of training propelled him out of the rubble and over the edge of the scoop. He fell flat from two meters and struggled to right himself. Then there was shouting and, fifty-kilo pack or not, he executed the fastest bugout of his career, Deece in one hand and the remote det control in the other.
There was one way out and that was through the gap he’d smashed in the fence.
It wasn’t covert. A human in an overall was standing open-mouthed in his path, and Niner knocked him flat on his back as he ran full-tilt for the hole in the mesh.
He had about a minute to put distance between himself and the ground station before he blew the charges. At twenty klicks an hour, that meant he’d be about—
Fierfek, just do it.
Niner was past the first line of trees and into long grass when he dropped and pressed the remote det in both hands.
Teklet was a sudden ball of light. Then the roar of air and the shock wave shook him. He crouched as debris rained down on him, hoping—really hoping–that Katarn armor was all that it was cracked up to be.
Ghez Hokan was the first to admit that it was taking a lot less to get him irritated lately. He’d waited long enough. He tapped the comlink console impatiently.