Part 11 (2/2)
”ARCs aren't invincible. Anyway, what makes you think he's going to get violent?”
”If we've crashed into a covert op of his, he'll use us for target practice.”
Barman recalled Mereel saying he'd never really trusted ARCs, because they'd been ready to kill clone kids during the Battle of Kamino rather than let them fall into Sep hands. Removing two commandos who got in his way wouldn't make Sull miss a beat, then.
The railcar was half full, and Eyat wasn't Coruscant. The population was a tiny fraction of Galactic City. This was no anonymous sea of strangers who didn't take any notice of blue skin, tusks, or any of the other distinguis.h.i.+ng features of a vast range of resident species bustling everywhere. The people here noticed, all right. Barman and Atin got the occasional glance because-he a.s.sumed-there were small details that marked them out as not local.
Or maybe some thought they'd just pa.s.sed another man who looked exactly like Darman.
Sull, sitting with his back to them, took out a holozine.
Darman read all the ads on the unirail cab's walls and made a note of a couple of speeder rental agencies and a used-speeder emporium. Outside the railcar, Eyat streaked past; well-maintained apartment buildings, vessels landing at the s.p.a.ceport, rolling hills in the distance. Darman followed the unirail route on his datapad and tried to think of this city as a target he was setting up for an a.s.sault. He couldn't think of another mission he'd been on where that prospect disturbed him. This was somewhere he might. . . live, but the Marits who'd take over weren't like him at all.
He'd never considered if he had a side to be on beyond his brothers'. All that stuff about the Republic and freedom was just words that he hadn't started to fully understand until recently. The last thing he thought about under fire was the Re-public; it was always the brother right next to him, and the hope that both of them would still be alive tomorrow.
The railcar slowed as it approached another pickup point, and Sull appeared to still be reading. But as soon as it came to a halt he jumped to his feet and shot out the nearest exit. Atin and Barman scrambled to reach the doors before the railcar moved off again.
”Yeah, he does this for a living, all right,” Atin said.
”Talking of which, how does he eat?”
”I'll stop speculating and just ask him.”
”Yeah, maybe he'll make us a cup of caf and tell us about Eyat's places of interest.”
Sull's exit point brought them out in a less well-heeled neighborhood than the city center, but it was still clean and orderly. It wasn't the lower levels by a long shot. They fol-lowed the ARC to a low-rise apartment building fronted by a neat lawn, where he climbed the external stairs, walked along an access balcony, and went into a second-story apartment.
Darman and Atin walked past slowly, feigning conversation, and circled the block to check for rear exits. This was where they were at their most vulnerable. There was nowhere to hide to stake out the apartment, and this wasn't a commer-cial center where they could hang around with n.o.body ask-ing why. Darman reached into his tunic and pulled out a sensor. Then he opened the link to Niner.
”Got our coordinates, Sarge? Transmitting now ...”
Niner responded instantly. Darman could imagine him waiting, pacing up and down and giving Fi a hard time while he fretted. ”Copy that, Dar.”
”Apartment seven.”
”What are you planning?”
Darman glanced at Atin. ”We'll walk up to the door. We'll run a sweep to see if he's got company. If we like the odds, we'll knock. If we don't, we walk away, set a spycam opposite the building, and return to rethink and monitor. Is that okay, Sarge?”
”I'd say that's not what we came to do, Dar, but an ARC on the loose without explanation could throw the whole mission, so we might as well clear it up.”
Darman had a nagging thought. He had to get it off his chest. ”Ask A'den why he didn't stroll into Eyat and check it out.”
The Null had only been in-theater a few days. Even if he'd done a recce, there was nothing to say that he'd have seen Sull at all. Darman regretted the question immediately and hoped A'den hadn't heard.
”Will do,” said Niner. ”Leave your comlink open, okay?”
Darman and Atin ambled across the road and made their way to the apartment. Darman held the sensor as inconspicuously as he could, clasping his hands in front of him as if waiting for Sull to answer the door, and swept it slowly side to side.
He kept his voice at subauditory level, letting the sensors on his throat transmit on the comlink. ”I'm only picking up one body in there, At'ika.”
”Shame you're not a Jedi.”
”Yeah ... maybe they should have created Force-sensitive clones, and then we could have ditched half the kit.”
”Okay. Knock-knock time .. .”
Darman stood to one side of the doors, hand discreetly on his blaster, and Atin pressed the bell.
Silence.
They waited. The sensor showed someone moving to one side of the door, but there was no noise. Sull was a careful man: an ARC trooper couldn't be anything else. Then the doors parted.
Sull obviously didn't have a security holocam installed. For a split second he stood side-on to the entrance, his face all wide-eyed shock, then his arm came up and Darman spun away instinctively as a blaster bolt shaved his cheek. Atin cannoned past him with a sickening thwack of bone. Sull fell back with Atin on top of him and Darman hit the door controls. For the next few moments they grappled, trying to get Sull onto his stomach to pin his arms, but the ARC lived up to his reputation, bringing his knee up hard in Atin's groin and landing a fist in Darman's face. Eventually they got him facedown and Darman tried the old restraining trick of hooking two fingers into Sull's nostrils and jerking back hard. It must have hurt him plenty, but not half as much as he hurt Darman when the commando loosened his grip and Sull sank his teeth hard into his hand.
Demoralizing, painful, and causes serious infection. That was what Skirata said about human bites. Darman roared with pain and brought his fist down on the back of the ARC's head. Atin pounced again and got him in a headlock with his knee in his back.
”Right,” Atin panted. He had the tip of his vibroblade pressed into the hollow at the base of Sull's skull. ”Unless you want this right through your spinal cord, ner vod, pack it in and listen.”
”Do it, then,” Sull said. ”I'd rather die. They sent you to kill me, didn't they? Go on. Finish me off, if you've got the guts.”
Darman, blood welling from his bite marks, got a plastoid tie around Sull's wrists and knelt back to nurse his throbbing hand. Bacta. Clean the wound. What was he going on about, they sent you to kill me?
”We're definitely going to have to get a speeder to move him, Dar, rent one or something,” Atin said. ”You okay?”
”Yeah.”
Niner's voice cut in on the comlink. ”Sitrep, Omega ...”
”What do you mean, Sull?” Darman asked. ”What do you mean, they sent us? Who's they!”
”Who are you?”
”RC one-one-three-six, Darman, Omega Squad. We thought you were MIA. You are Alpha-Thirty, right?”
”Get knotted,” Sull said. ”Just get it over with.”
Atin tied the ARC'S ankles with plastoid tape and got to his feet. ”Well, I think you need a chat with a colleague of ours ...”
Darman held out his datapad. ”Speeder rental, At'ika. I made a note. You get the transport, I stay here.”
”Okay, you can keep Captain Charisma quiet for a while.”
”Omega...” Niner sounded at the limit of his patience. ”What the shab happened?”
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