Hard Contact Read online

  Etain was still considering the scorched land when the Ubese and the Trandoshan jerked upright and turned to jog away toward the dirt track beside the field. The Ubese had one hand pressed to the side of his helmet as if he was listening to something: a comlink, probably. Whatever the summons had been, it had been urgent enough to get them running. It also confirmed that this wasn’t just a Narsh sprayer making an all-too-frequent crash landing.

  Etain waited a moment longer, then walked forward to peer into the pit to see what had so engrossed them.

  It had been a monstrous blast. The sides of the blackened crater were blown almost smooth, and there was debris everywhere. It was an enormous blast area for a small craft.

  She left Birhan and walked around inspecting the ground as Hokan’s men had done, not sure what she was seeking. She was almost at the kuvara orchard before she saw it.

  The early sunlight caught a scraped metal edge of something embedded in the ground, rammed deep by the explosion. Etain crouched down, as casually as she could, and worked the soil loose from it with her fingers. It took her a few minutes to expose enough to understand the shape, and a few more to work out why the scorched colors were so familiar. It was distorted, the metal frozen in a moment of being torn apart by enormous force, but she was pretty sure she’d seen one intact before.

  It was a plate from an R5 astromech droid—a plate with Republic markings.

  They’re coming.

  Whoever they were, she hoped they’d made it alive.

  Darman knew it was risky moving around by day, and the fact that his right leg seemed to scream every time he put his weight on it didn’t help matters.

  He’d spent two painful hours scooping out a shallow depression in a thicket about a hundred meters from what passed for a road. Roots and stones had slowed him down. So had the pounding he’d taken hitting the canopies of trees during his landing. But he’d dug in now, and he lay under a lattice of branches and leaves on his belly, watching the road, sometimes through his rifle sight, sometimes with the electrobinocular panel that flipped down in his visor.

  At least the little animals that had swarmed over him in the night had disappeared. He’d given up trying to fend them off. They had explored his armor for a while and then moved on to watch him from distance. Now that it was daylight, there were no more glittering eyes staring out from the undergrowth.

  He still wasn’t sure of his position, either. There was no GPS network he could use without being picked up. He needed to get out and about and do a recce if he was going to have any chance of aligning landscape features with the holochart.

  He knew he was facing north: the arc of small stones around a thin branch he’d stuck in the soil charted the sun’s progress, and gave him his east–west line. If his datapad had calculated speed and distance correctly, he was between forty and fifty klicks northeast of the first RV point. He’d never cover that distance on foot in time, not with the extra gear and not with his leg in this state. If he dragged the pack, he’d draw a neat follow-me line through the vegetation.

  Darman eased himself over on his back, removed his leg plates, and unsealed his undersuit at the knee. It felt as if he’d torn a muscle or a tendon above the joint. He soaked the makeshift bandage with bacta again and replaced the legging and plates before rolling back into position.

  It was high time he ate something, but he decided that he could wait a little longer.

  He checked the dirt road through the crosswires of the DC-17’s electromag scope. The first time he had worn the helmet with the built-in display shimmering before his eyes, he had been overwhelmed and disoriented by the flurry of symbols in his field of vision. The rifle scope made it seem even more chaotic. Lights, lights, lights: it was like looking from the windows of Tipoca City at night with the lamps and reflective surfaces of the refectory behind you—so many competing images that you couldn’t focus on what lay beyond the stormproof glass.

  But in time—that time being the short, desperate morning when the whole of Kilo and Delta squads first wore the HUD display while using live ordnance—he got used to it. Those who didn’t get used to it fast didn’t return from the exercise. He learned to see, and yet not see. He was constantly aware of all the status displays that told him when his weapons were charging, and if his suit was compromised, and what was happening around him.

  Now he was focused solely on looking down a clear tunnel framed by interlocking segments of soothing blue, with a highlighted area to show when he had an optimum firing solution for his target. The information on range, environment, and the score of other options was still there. He could take them in without consciously seeing them. He saw only his target.

  A faint rumbling sound made him stiffen. Voices: they were approaching from his right. Then they stopped.

  He waited. Eventually the voices started again and two Weequays came into his field of view, too slowly for his liking. They were looking at the road’s shoulders with unusual diligence. One stopped suddenly and peered at the ground, apparently excited, if his arm gestures were any indication.

  Then he looked up and started walking almost directly toward Darman’s position. He took out a blaster pistol.

  He can’t possibly see me, Darman thought. I’ve done this by the book. No reflection, no movement, no smells, nothing.

  But the Weequay kept coming, right into the bushes. He stopped about ten meters from Darman and was casting around as if he’d followed something and lost the trail. Then he moved forward again.

  Darman had almost stopped breathing. His helmet masked all sound, but it certainly didn’t feel that way. The Weequay was so close now that Darman could smell his distinctive sweat and see the detailed tooling on his sidearm—a KYD-21 with a hadrium barrel—and that there was a vibroblade in his other hand. Right at that moment Darman couldn’t even swallow.

  It’s okay to be scared.

  The Weequay stepped sideways, looking at waist height as if browsing for discs on a library shelf.

  It’s okay to be scared as long as you …

  The Weequay was right on him now, squatting over his position. Darman felt boots depress branches that were touching his back, and then the creature looked down and said something that sounded like gah.

  … as long as you use it.

  Darman brought his fist up hard under the Weequay’s jaw, ramming his own vibroblade up into the throat and twisting his fist off to one side to sever blood vessels. He supported the deadweight of the impaled Weequay on one arm, until it stopped moving. Then Darman lowered his arm, shaking with the effort, and let the body roll to the ground as quietly as he could.

  “What you find?” the other Weequay yelled. “Gar-Ul? Gar?”

  No answer. Well, here we go. Darman aimed his DC-17 and waited.

  The second Weequay began running in a straight line toward the bushes, and that was a stupid thing for him to do when he had no idea what had happened to his comrade. They’d been lording it over farmers for too long; they were sloppy. He also made the mistake of pulling out his blaster.

  Darman had a clear head shot and he took it almost without thinking. The Weequay dropped, cleanly and silently, and lay crumpled, with wisps of smoke rising from his head.

  “Oh, clever,” Darman sighed, as much to hear the reassurance of his own voice as anything. Now he’d have to break cover and retrieve the body. He couldn’t leave it there like a calling card. He waited a few minutes, listening, and then eased himself onto his injured leg to limp out into open ground.

  He dragged the Weequay into the bushes, noting the smell of cooked meat. Now he could see what the first Weequay had been following: a broad path of tiny animal footprints. The curious gdans had given him away. He limped out again, checking carefully, and obliterated the drag marks with a branch.

  Waste not, want not. The Weequays wouldn’t be needing the blasters or vibroblades now. Darman, pulse slowing to normal, searched the bodies for anything else of use, pocketing data cards and valua
bles. He didn’t feel that he was a thief; he had no personal possessions that weren’t the Grand Army’s property, and he felt no need to acquire any. But there was a chance the cards contained information that would help him achieve his objective, and the beads and coins would come in handy if he needed to buy or bribe something or someone.

  He found a suitable spot to hide the bodies. He didn’t have time to bury them, but was suddenly aware of movement in the undergrowth, animal movement, and gradually small heads appeared, sniffing the air.

  “You again, eh?” Darman said, although the gdans couldn’t possibly hear him beyond the helmet. “Way past your bedtime.” They edged forward and then swarmed across the Weequay with the shattered head, taking tiny bites as they settled on him in a dark-furred blanket of snapping motion.

  Darman wouldn’t have to worry about burying anyone.

  The faintest of liquid sounds made him look around at the other Weequay. Darman had his rifle aimed instantly. The Weequay wasn’t dead, not quite. For some reason, that upset Darman more than he could have ever imagined.

  He’d killed plenty of times at Geonosis, smashing droids with grenade launchers and cannons at a distance, hyped up on fear and the instinct to live. Survive to fight.

  But this was different. It wasn’t distant, and the debris of the kill wasn’t metal. The Weequay’s blood had dried in a stream down his glove and right forearm plate. And he hadn’t managed a clean kill. It was wrong.

  They had drilled him to kill, and kill, and kill, but nobody had thought to teach him what he was supposed to feel afterward. He did feel something, and he wasn’t certain what it was.

  He’d think about it later.

  Aiming his rifle, he corrected his mistake before the small army of carnivores could move on to their next meal.

  5

  Think of yourselves as a hand. Each of you is a finger, and without the others you’re useless. Alone, a finger can’t grasp, or control, or form a fist. You are nothing on your own, and everything together.

  —Commando instructor Sergeant Kal Skirata

  Darman moved on fast, up a tree-covered slope a kilometer south. He planned on spending the rest of the daylight hours in a carefully constructed hide at the highest vantage point he could find, slightly below the skyline.

  He concentrated on making a crude net out of the canopy cords he had salvaged. The activity kept him occupied and alert. He hadn’t slept in nearly forty standard hours; fatigue made you more careless and dangerously unfocused than alcohol. When he had finished tying the cord into squares, he wove grass, leaves, and twigs into the knots. On inspection, he decided it was a pretty good camouflage net.

  He also continued observation. Qiilura was astonishing. It was alive and different, a riot of scent and color and texture and sounds. Now that his initial pounding fear had subsided into a general edginess, he began to take it all in.

  It was the little living noises that concerned him most. Around him, creatures crawled, flew, and buzzed. Occasionally things squealed and fell silent. Twice now he’d heard something larger prowling in the bushes.

  Apart from the brief intensity of Geonosis, Darman’s only environmental experience had been the elegant but enclosed stilt cities of Kamino, and the endless churning seas around them. The cleanly efficient classrooms and barracks where he had spent ten years turning from instant child to perfect soldier were unremarkable, designed to get a job done. His training in desert and mountain and jungle had been entirely artificial, holoprojection, simulation.

  The red desert plains of Geonosis had been far more arid and starkly magnificent than his instructors’ imaginations; and now Qiilura’s fields and woods held so much more than three-dimensional charts could offer.

  It was still open country, though—a terrain that made it hard for him to move around unnoticed.

  Concentrate, he told himself. Gather intel. Make the most of your enforced idleness.

  Lunch would have been welcome about now. A decent lunch. He chewed on a concentrated dry ration cube and reminded himself that his constant hunger wasn’t real. He was just tired. He had consumed the correct amount of nutrients for his needs, and if he gave in to eating more, he would run out of supplies. There was exactly enough for a week’s operations in his pack and two days’ worth in his emergency belt. The belt was the only thing he would grab, apart from his rifle, if he ever had to make a last-ditch run for it without his forty-kilo pack.

  Beneath him, farm transports passed along a narrow track, all heading in the same direction, carrying square tanks with security seals on the hatches. Barq. Darman had never tasted it, but he could smell it even from here. The nauseatingly musky, almost fungal scent took the edge off his appetite for a while. If he had his holochart aligned correctly, the transports were all heading for the regional depot at Teklet. He twisted the image this way and that in his hands and held it up to map onto the actual landscape.

  Yes, he was sure enough now where he was. He was ten klicks east of the small town called Imbraani, about forty klicks northeast of RV point Beta and forty klicks almost due east of RV point Gamma. They’d picked RV points along the flight path because the Separatists would expect dispersal, not a retracing of their steps. Between RVs Alpha and Beta was a stretch of woodland, ideal for moving undetected by day. If the rest of his squad had landed safely and were on schedule, they would be making their way to Beta.

  Things could be looking up again. All he had to do was get to RV Gamma and wait for his squad. And if they hadn’t made it, then he’d need to rethink the mission.

  The idea produced a feeling of desolation. You are nothing on your own, and everything together. He’d been raised to think, function, even breathe as one of a group of four. He could do nothing else.

  But ARCs always operate alone, don’t they?

  He pondered that, fighting off drowsiness. Leaves rustled suddenly behind him, and he turned to scan with the infrared filter of his visor. He caught a blur of moving animal. It fled. His database said there were no large predators on Qiilura, so whatever it was could be no more troublesome than the gdans—not as long as he was wearing his armor, anyway.

  Darman waited motionless for a few moments, but the animal was gone. He turned back and refocused on the road and the surrounding fields, struggling to stay awake. Lay off the stims. No, he wasn’t going to touch his medpac for a quick boost. Not yet. He’d save his limited supply for later, for when things got really tough, as he knew they would.

  Then something changed in his field of vision. The frozen tableau had come to life. He flipped down the binoc filter for a closer look, and what he saw made him snap it back and gaze through the sniperscope of his rifle.

  A thin wisp of smoke rose from a group of wooden buildings. It was quickly becoming a pall. It wasn’t the smoke of domestic fires; he could see flames, flaring tongues of yellow and red. The structures—barns, judging by their construction—were on fire. A group of people in drab clothing was scrambling around, trying to drag objects clear of the flames, uncoordinated, panicking. Another group—Ubese, Trandoshan, mainly Weequay—was stopping them, standing in a line around the barn.

  One of the farmers broke the line and disappeared into a building. He didn’t come out again, not as long as Darman watched.

  Nothing in his training corresponded to what he was witnessing. There was not a memory, a pattern, a maneuver, or a lesson that flashed in his mind and told him how this should be played out. Civilian situations were outside his experience. Nor were these citizens of the Republic: they weren’t anyone’s citizens.

  His training taught him not to be distracted by outside issues, however compelling.

  But there was still some urge in him that said Do something. What? His mission, his reason for staying alive, was to rejoin his squad and thwart the nanovirus project. Breaking cover to aid civilians cut across all of that.

  The Separatists—or whoever controlled this band of assorted thugs—knew he was here.

&nb
sp; It didn’t take a genius to work it out. The sprayer had exploded on landing, detonating any demolition ordnance that Darman hadn’t been able to cram into his packs. The Weequay patrol hadn’t called in when their masters had expected. Now the humans—farmers—were being punished and threatened, and it was all to do with him. The Separatists were looking for him.

  Escape and evasion procedure.

  No, not yet. Darman inhaled and leveled his rifle carefully, picking out an Ubese in the crosswires. Then he lined up the rest of the group, one at a time. Eight hostiles, forty rounds: he knew he could slot every one, first time.

  He held his breath, forefinger resting on the trigger.

  Just a touch.

  How many more targets were there that he couldn’t see? He’d give away his position.

  This isn’t your business.

  He exhaled and relaxed his grip on the rifle, sliding his forefinger in front of the trigger guard. What would happen to his mission if they caught him?

  In the next two minutes, reluctant to move, he targeted each Ubese, Weequay, and Trandoshan several times, but didn’t squeeze the trigger. He wanted to more than he could have imagined. It wasn’t the hard-drilled trained response of a sniper, but a helpless, impotent anger whose origin he couldn’t begin to identify.

  Don’t reveal your position. Don’t fire unless you can take out the target. Keep firing until the target is down and stays down.

  And then there were times when a soldier just had to take a chance.

  They could be Republic citizens, one day.

  They could be allies now.

  Darman wasn’t tired anymore, or even hungry. His pulse was pounding loud in his ears and he could feel the constriction in his throat muscles, the fundamental human reflex to flee or fight. Fleeing wasn’t an option. He could only fight.