“Comm silence from the time you take off,” Jusik said, leaning through the open hatch. “The assault ship the Majestic is diverting to Qiilura, and will remain on station a parsec from the planet until she receives your request for extraction. Then gunships will be at your transmitted location within the hour.”
Niner almost asked just how long the Majestic might wait, but he feared it would look as if he doubted his squad’s competence. He knew the answer: the ship would wait until Uthan was taken, even if that was several commando missions down the line. It wasn’t waiting for them.
“We won’t keep the Majestic waiting,” Niner said.
“Anything else you need?”
Niner shook his head. “No, Commander.”
Darman stood to one side of the ramp, like an honor guard, waiting for the Jedi to leave.
“Very well,” Jusik said, looking hesitant, as if he wanted to walk away but thought better of it. “I hope to debrief you on your return.”
Niner took that literally, although Jusik was looking at him as if it meant something else. It made sense for the Padawan commander to process whatever intel they might gain. Jusik turned and walked away, and Darman jumped inside. The hatch closed with a slight shudder, sending fine fragments of rusting metal to the deck.
It only has to land, Niner thought.
He switched on the holoprojection in his datapad and studied the three-dimensional flight path over fields, lakes, and forest. It was part real image, part simulation. Projected onto an existing chart, they were looking at an area thirty klicks north of a small town called Imbraani.
A single-story building with shabby sheet-metal roofing—ringed by an incongruously well-cut expanse of grass—nestled in a plantation of kuvara trees. Some of the image was blurred, but it was the best resolution that a surveillance remote could manage at that distance above the planet. Specks—people—wandered around an encircling path.
“It’s the capture alive bit that complicates matters,” Darman said, gazing at the image over Niner’s shoulder. “Or else we could just bomb it back into Hurt space.”
“That’s why they created us,” Niner said. “For the complicated jobs.”
He closed his eyes for a few moments to visualize the insertion: he saw it from takeoff to landing, smooth and planned, every detail, or as many details as their incomplete intel could furnish and his own experience of a hundred exercises could confirm.
In this detached state, something occurred to him. He pictured Jusik’s face and his awkward, nervous shrugs. He realized what the Padawan had meant when he said he was hoping to debrief them personally on their return.
He meant Good luck. He wanted them to survive.
Niner, who had known for as long as he could remember that he was a soldier bred to die, found that intriguing.
Gdans were about thirty centimeters long, fully grown, and it took a whole pack of them to bring down even a merlie calf. But at night—when they emerged from their warrens and hunted—the farmers locked their doors and stayed clear of the fields.
It wasn’t so much their teeth that the locals feared. It was the deadly bacteria the animals carried; a minor scratch or a bite was almost always fatal. And Master Fulier had used their entire supply of bacta spray in administering first aid to villagers, so Etain was as housebound at night as any of her hosts.
She could hear the little predators outside, squabbling and scrabbling. She sat cross-legged on the mattress and chewed on the thin-breads, almost hungry enough to gulp down the stew, but not that hungry. A few bacteria are good for your immune system, she thought. You’ve probably eaten worse without knowing.
But she knew this time.
Leaving the bowl where it stood, she rolled the holochart sphere over and over in her palms, running through all the possibilities for getting the information to the Jedi Council. Stow away in a transport—possible. Transmit the data from ground? No, all transmissions were tightly controlled by the Neimoidians; any other message traffic from Qiilura to Coruscant would draw instant attention. There was always the possibility of finding the right droid courier, but that was a long shot, and it might take so much time as to be useless.
Perhaps she’d have to do the job herself.
Lightsabers were superb weapons, but right now she needed an army. The realization that she had beaten the odds to obtain valuable information but was now unable to get it to those who needed it almost crushed her.
“I’m not done yet,” she said aloud. But she feared that she was, at least for the night. Her eyelids felt heavy and she braced her elbows on her knees, letting her head rest in her hands.
A good night’s sleep. She might have a better idea in the morning. Her eyes closed. Images of Coruscant, her clan practicing passing a ball by thought alone, a nice hot bath, food she trusted to be clean …
Then, suddenly, every fiber in her body leapt at once. Heart pounding, Etain thought at first that she’d had one of those half dreams of falling that sometimes came when she was dozing off. But now she was fully awake and knew that she hadn’t.
Something had changed. Something in the Force had been altered, and forever. She jumped to her feet, suddenly clear what it was; she needed no training or education to understand it. Every instinct coded in her genes cried out.
Something—someone–was gone from the Force.
“Master,” she said.
She had suspected he was dead. Now she knew he was, and she knew it had happened right then. It was impossible not to wonder how and where, but she knew enough about the Neimoidians’ hired muscle and their techniques to guess.
Ignoring the ever-present gdans, she went to the barn door and swung it open. It was an act of helplessness. There was nothing she could do, now or ever.
Something rustled in the grass. It was a solitary something, and it sounded larger than a gdan. She noticed for the first time that the constant snuffling and squabbling of the gdan packs had stopped. They’d gone.
Etain felt for her lightsaber, just in case.
Loud squawking and a flurry of wings made her start. A disturbed flock of leatherbacks rose into the air and scattered in the darkness, trailing sparks of light from their scales. Through the Force, she detected only small creatures with simple desires, and a male merlie wandering along the fence, armed with such fearsome tusks that not even gdans would risk approaching him.
She looked up at the night sky. It appeared unchanging, constant: but she knew it never was.
They’re coming.
She thought she heard the old woman’s voice. Putting it down to grief and lack of sleep, Etain stumbled back inside and barred the door.
It was just another crop sprayer hired to dress the fields after the barq harvest, laden with bug killers and soil enhancers and piloted by a droid. At least, that was what the Narsh crate’s transponder had told the Qiilura traffic controller, and judging by the absence of a missile up the tailpipe, he had believed it.
Darman was still exploring the enhancements to his helmet and suit. “I used to think I wore this armor,” he said. “Now I think it’s wearing me.”
“Yeah, they spent some credits upgrading this since last time,” Fi said. “Wow. Walking weapons system, eh?”
“Two hundred klicks,” Atin said, without looking up from his datapad. He’d propped his helmet beside him with the tactical beam pointed up to provide some light in the closed bay. Darman couldn’t hear him over the noise of the vessel’s atmosphere engines, but he could lip-read easily enough. “Let’s hope everything works.”