“Hokan would have found him sooner or later,” he said. “If the Weequay’s managed to mislead him about our true target, he’s at least redeemed himself a little.”
“Dar,” she said. It was shockingly familiar, the squad nickname for him. “I killed him as surely as if I’d cut him down.”
“You told us yourself that he was a rapist,” Fi said, sounding irritated. “The world won’t miss him.”
“Shut up, Fi.” Darman tried again. “It’ll save lives in the end.”
“Yeah, ours,” Fi said.
Darman twisted around, angry. “I said shut up, didn’t I?”
Niner stepped in. “You can both shut it,” he said. “We’re all tired and we’re all testy. Save it for the enemy.”
Darman swallowed a sudden and unexpected desire to tell Fi to lay off Etain, and in no uncertain terms. Fi knew nothing about her, nothing. Darman was ambushed by a split second of protectiveness and was immediately embarrassed by it.
He turned back to her. “He’s right. It’s one life for many.”
“Means justify the end, right?” Etain stood up from her cross-legged position in one movement. “And what about you? What happens if I send you or Fi or any of you into a situation where you’re going to die?”
She was genuinely upset. He could see it in her face, and in the way she held one thin, scratched, bony hand clenched tightly into a fist. He stood up as well, walking after her as she headed for the edge of the coppice.
“We were all made for this,” Darman said. It was true, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t exist at all if it hadn’t been that someone needed soldiers, utterly reliable soldiers. But it didn’t feel that way right then. Her reaction told him he was wrong, and suddenly he saw Kal Skirata, in tears, a drink in his hand. You poor boys. What sort of life is this? “Etain, we all do what we have to. One day you really will have to give an order that’s going to get some of us killed.”
“Us?”
“Soldiers, troopers. Whatever.”
“Perhaps, but the day I can accept that without being diminished by it is the day I’m not fit to be a Jedi.”
“Okay,” he said. “I understand that.”
“How do you feel when you kill?”
“I never had time to think about it. On Geonosis, they killed my brothers and they were trying to kill me. They weren’t like us.”
“So what if it was someone you knew?”
“But you didn’t know Guta-Nay, and he isn’t like you. Or me, come to that.” Darman hadn’t a clue what she was going on about. She was new to killing. It was inevitable that she’d have a few problems dealing with it. “Etain, this squad needs you to be sorted and alert. Think about that.”
He turned and walked back to where Niner and the others were sitting. It seemed too obvious to replace their helmets and discuss privately whether the commander was going flaky on them. She wasn’t giving orders anyway. But a simple glance could convey a great deal. Darman hoped Fi understood that his fixed stare meant Lay off.
Apparently, he did. Fi made a quick palms-out movement with his hands as if in submission. The subject was dropped.
Niner was right. They were all frayed by the last few days, hovering on short fuses. They busied themselves checking and rechecking weapons.
We’ye never fought as a squad before.
They were probably all thinking the same thing. Darman took the hydraulic ram apart and reassembled it, then checked the hand pump for pressure. It came with an assortment of claws, and at least having the original plans and specs of both buildings meant he knew which ones to leave behind. It could exert eight metric tons, so if the charges didn’t get them through the door, the ram would. The hand-operated ram was lighter to carry, but packed less than half the punch.
He’d have liked cutting equipment, too, but he’d opened steel blast doors on Geonosis with thermal tape charges, and the ribbon version was even more powerful. Explosive moved at eight thousand meters a second, enough to slice through steeclass="underline" rapid entry didn’t get much more rapid than that.
This wasn’t a silent job. It was an application of force against an enemy who knew they were coming.
“Whoa, receiving,” Niner said. He shoved his helmet back on his head in a hurry. Darman could hear the blip of the alarm from where he was sitting. “Jinart’s got the remote cams in place.” He was looking at something only he could see, and judging by his quick head movements, it was interesting. Darman and the others followed suit.
“What are they doing?” A platoon of tinnies was marching down the track from the villa and into the facility. There appeared to be some urgency in their pace. “It looks like they’re going back to the laboratory.”
The remote was looking down on the scatter of small structures around the former farmhouse. It didn’t have a complete view of all the approaches to the building, but it did look out on both the front path and the land to the rear. It had no view of the rear slope of the roof or the land immediately at the back.
There was a man in armor very similar to their own, standing with a familiar helmet tucked under one arm. He was middle-aged and his hard face and confident attitude said clearly that he was a Mandalorian. It had to be Ghez Hokan.
Darman heard the collective holding of breath in his helmet comlink. Hokan was talking to a Trandoshan mercenary, making short stabbing gestures with a finger pointed at nothing in particular. He was agitated but in control. He was marshaling troops.
“Yeah, Dar, I think that’s exactly what they’re doing. Looks like he’s making some last-minute changes.”
“Why would they be doing that?” Darman said, but he had an unpleasant feeling that he knew.
“Because we’ve been too clever by half,” Niner said. “Fierfek . Guta-Nay did his job, all right. Too well. What would you do if you thought you were really facing two squads?”
“Assume two separate attacks were really possible.”
Atin made a noise that sounded like a controlled exhalation. “Oh well. We were going to meet the whole tinnie family sooner or later. Plan C, anyone?”
They waited, standing in an awkward group. Within half an hour they would know if Jinart had managed to get a remote cam close to the Neimoidian villa as well.
Darman felt a hard rap on his back plate and jerked around to see Etain standing with her hands on her hips, looking anxious. “What’s got everyone upset?” she asked. “Come on, I felt it. What’s gone wrong?”
Darman took off his helmet. “Guta-Nay did a pretty good job of convincing Hokan we were targeting the villa. But we overplayed our hand by hinting that we had another squad.”
“Why?”
“It looks as if Hokan thinks one squad will be going after each target. So our chances of getting most of the droids in one location have taken a bit of a tumble.”
Etain raked her fingers through her hair and shut her eyes. “Time for a rethink, then.”
Darman replaced his helmet to watch the feed from the remote. Then the second cam came online. There was a shaky but clear view of the Neimoidian villa and its outbuildings, seen from the branches of a swaying tree. A wide path stretched away out of shot from the front of the house.
At least they could now see the size of the problem facing them. If Hokan tried to move Uthan, they had a high chance of spotting her.
But whichever remote view Darman switched to, there were an awful lot of droids.
“Okay,” Niner said. “Fi, you take the first watch on the remotes. I’m going to see if we can get some backup. Majestic should be on station by now.”
“We were ordered to keep comm silence until we needed extraction,” Darman said, looking at Etain.
“Commander?” Niner said. “We’ve taken out the comm station. They can’t intercept our signal.”