Part 3 (2/2)
”Fixer, you okay?” Vau waited for a reply. The world had suddenly gone silent except for that screaming Muun. The droids seemed to be regrouping behind a ten-meter chunk of dark gray ice. ”Fixer?”
”Fine, Sarge.”
”Okay, here goes.”
Vau fired. This EMP grenade had enough explosive power to make a mess of a small room, but its pulse was what really did the damage over a much larger area. It fried droid circuits. The small explosion echoed and scattered chunks of ice, and then there was a long silence punctuated only by the distant pounding of cannon as the Galactic Marines smashed their way into Jygat.
Vau refocused on the EM image in his HUD. He crawled to the bundle, dragging it into cover and strapping it back on his chest. It was way too much to carry, and he couldn't move properly. He knelt on all fours like a heavily pregnant woman trying to get up. ”I don't see movement.”
”It's okay, Sarge, they're zapped.”
”Okay, just the wets to finish off, then.” He switched back to infrared. The Muun guards would show up like beacons. ”I'll warm them up while you make a move.”
Vau pulled out the flamethrower, eased himself into a kneeling position, and opened the valve. Mird c.o.c.ked its head, eyes fixed on the weapon.
”Where'd you get that, Sarge?” Scorch asked.
”Borrowed it from a flame trooper.”
”Does he know?”
”He won't mind.”
”That thing could melt droids.”
”I was saving the fuel for a tight spot.” There was still no movement; Vau estimated that the patrol was still in the canyon, maybe looking for a way around behind them. The Muun who'd been injured was now silent-unconscious, or dead. ”Like this. I should have a full minute's fuel, so once I start-run. You too, Mird.” He gestured Mird toward the snowspeeder and pointed to the flamethrower. ”Go, Mird. Follow Boss.”
It was just a case of taking a blind run at it. I'm not as fast as I used to be. And I'm carrying too much. But a wall of flame was a blunt and terrifying instrument against almost any life-form. Vau struggled to his feet and ignited the flame.
The roaring jet spat ahead of him as he drew level with the small pa.s.s where the Muun patrol was holed up; then the sheet of flame blinded him to what lay beyond it. He only heard the screams and saw the flash on icons across his HUD as Delta Squad sprinted for the idling snowspeeder. Vau backed away, counting down the seconds left of his fuel sup-ply, ready to switch to his blaster when it ran out.
n.o.body was expecting a flamethrower on an ice patrol. Surprise was half the battle.
Vau turned and ran, gasping for breath. Not a bad turn of speed for his age, not bad at all on ice and so heavily laden, and there was Mird ahead of him, having listened for once, and the speeder was coming about...
And the ice opened up beneath him.
It took him a moment to realize he was falling down a sloping tunnel and not just sinking into unexpected soft snow. Fixer called out, but even though the sound filled Vau's helmet he didn't catch what was said. The two bags of booty took him down.
”Get clear!” Vau yelled, even though he had no need to with a helmet comlink. ”That's an order...”
”Sarge, we can't.”
”Shut up. Go. If you come back for me-if anyone comes back-I'll shoot you on sight.”
”Sarge! We could...”
”I raised you to survive. Don't humiliate me by going soft.”
I can't believe I said that.
Delta didn't argue again. Vau was in semidarkness now, his HUD scrolling with the icons of Delta's view of the ice field beneath the speeder as it lifted clear.
”. . . party . . .” said a voice in his helmet, but he lost the rest of the sentence, and the link faded into raw static.
The last thing I'll ever say to them is-shut up. n.o.ble exit. Vau..
Mortal danger was a funny thing. He was sure he was going to die but he wasn't terrified, and he wasn't worried about more patrols. He was more preoccupied by what he'd fallen into: a vague memory came back to him. As he slid down a few more meters, trying to stop his fall with his heels more out of instinct than intent, a detached sense of curiosity prevailed: so this was what dying was actually like. Then he remembered.
Mygeeto's ice was honeycombed by tunnels-tunnels made by giant carnivorous worms. He came to rest with a thud on what felt like a ledge.
”Osik,” he said. Well, if he wasn't dead, he soon would be. ”Mird? Mird! Where are you, verd'ika?”
There was no answer but the crunching and groaning o' s.h.i.+fting ice. But he still had the proceeds of the robbery strapped to him, both his goal and his fate.
Vau wasn't planning on dying just yet. He was now too rich to let go of life.
Chapter 2.
Clone subjects in the study showed a more marked variation in biological age and genetic mutation than seen in naturally occurring zygotic twins. In the group of 100 cloned men aged 24 chronological years, and who could reasonably be expected to present as the equivalent of a 48-year-old uncloned human, key biomarkers showed a range from 34 to 65 years with a median of 53 years. Further research is needed, but exposure' to battlefield contaminants and high levels of sustained stress appear to accelerate normal genetic mutation in men already designed to age at twice the normal rate. By the time Kamino clones reach the equivalent of their mid-40s, those mutations are very apparent and-like natural zygotics-they grow apart.
-Dr. Bura Veujarij, Imperial Inst.i.tute of Military Medicine, ”Aging and Tissue Degeneration in Kaminoan-cloned Troops,” Imperial Medical Review 1675 * * *
Republic Administration Block, Senate District, Coruscant, 470 days after Geonosis Can't the cops s.h.i.+ft them?” said the security guard on the main doors of the Republic Treasury offices. He stared past Treasury agent Besany Wennen-not something that many males managed-with an expression on his face that said he felt the protesters were messing up his nice tidy forecourt. ”I mean, they're Sep sympathizers, aren't they? And the cops are just standing there, doing nothing.”
Besany hadn't missed the protesters. She'd taken a keen but discreet interest in them, in fact, because the war with the Separatists had become an intensely personal one for her. These were expatriate Krantians, protesting about the pounding that their neutral planet had taken in a recent battle.
They'd taken up a position opposite what they saw as one of the centers of the war effort, the Defense Department ad-ministration building, where they seemed to think they might have some impact. Several government offices ringed the pedestrian concourse. Office workers had appeared at the windows to watch for a while, then returned to their desks because it wasn't their war, not yet. They had an army to protect them.
”They're neutrals, actually,” Besany said. ”So how would they protest to the Separatists?”
The guard looked at her, visibly puzzled. Holoscreens dotted the wall behind him, giving him a view of every floor and corridor in the building. ”What do you mean?”
”They're here because they're allowed to be. Where would they go if they wanted to lobby the CIS?”
The question seemed to have stumped the guard. He shrugged. ”Want me to see you safely past them, ma'am?”
”I don't think they're a threat, but thanks.” Besany wondered how she was going to spend the evening, but she knew what would occupy her: worrying about a Null ARC trooper captain called Ordo, a man she was too scared to contact be-cause she had no idea if he was on a mission at any given moment, and if a message on his comlink would compromise his safety. ”I'll risk it.”
She stepped out into Coruscant's temperate, climate-controlled early-evening air and gave the small protest a wide berth. A couple of CSF officers in dark blue fatigues were watching the protest from a doorway; one acknowledged her with a nod. She couldn't recognize him because the white riot helmet obscured too much of his face, but she'd had occasional contact with the Coruscant Security Force during investigations and they obviously found it easy to recognize her. She nodded back and clasped her bag more firmly under one arm.
Life went on in Coruscant despite the war. The protest here was a small rock in a river of normality, and the current of office workers and shoppers parted around it on the con-course and merged again downstream as if nothing had ever interrupted their routine. Besany wondered if they would flow around her in the same oblivious way; she was another isolated outcrop of the war. Eighty-three days ago-she was an audit officer, and exact detail was her job-a Jedi general had shot her with a nonlethal round, and she'd been plunged into a small, close-knit community of special forces troops. It was a window on a world of war without rules, of anonymous heroism, and an extraordinary and totally unexpected affection.
And it was her secret. Not even the Treasury knew about it.
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