Part 16 (2/2)

”Get them casevacked.”

”We'd have to recall the A-tee to do that at the moment, ma'am, and there's the small matter of where we evacuate them to anyway. If the bacta and med droids can't fix them, n.o.body can.”

Some generals might have thought that ten men down out of a platoon of thirty-six was acceptable, but Etain didn't. ”Let's take the hillside out, then.”

”Let me confirm that... you no longer want to take prisoners?”

Etain could hardly believe what she was saying. ”They're farmers. You're elite troops. With the gloves off, this would have taken you no time at all.”

”You want one last try at talking them down, ma'am?”

Level knew her better than she thought. He seemed to understand that she'd blame herself later if she didn't offer them one last chance to surrender. How many more times she had to offer she had no idea. They'd made their intentions clear.

”Okay. Bring up the A-tee.”

Blaster exchanges continued, but the troopers seemed to be fighting in complete silence. They could hear their com-link circuit in their helmets; she couldn't. There was just the crack of blaster rounds and the rain of frozen soil as cannon rounds ripped into the farmland around them. When she re-membered to click her teeth to activate the platoon comlink circuit, the voices switched on in her earpiece and she was plunged into the chaotic noise of battle, of men calling positions and range and elevation, and one voice repeating, ”Is he okay? Is Ven okay? Is Ven okay?”

Ven. He did have a name. She knew it now.

Etain switched back to her closed circuit with Levet. ”How long before the A-tee's in range, Commander?”

”Twelve standard minutes, ma'am.”

”Okay.” She concentrated on the hillside opposite, thinking into the minds of the men and women she'd known-- trained-and tried to persuade them by thought influence that they were hesitant, uncertain if they wanted to continue this, anxious to leave for a better life. ”Cease fire. Stand by.”

The troopers lowered their blasters immediately and edged back from the wall, some dragging wounded comrades. One of them wasn't showing any signs of movement at all. Ven lay a little way from the E-Web, helmet beside him, bright scarlet blood leaking into the snow and melting it. His comrade was still pumping his chest two-handed.

The firing from the hillside tailed off into silence.

Etain could sense the emotions around her like patches of colored light; sharp yellows of fear, the blue-white pulsing intensity of ebbing life, and something she could only identify as child-like, faint and gray. It was an echo of what she'd first sensed of Darman. It wasn't innocence, though: it felt lost and in need.

The baby kicked again. For a moment she thought it was him. One day he would need to know that his mother had done everything she could to give the farmers a way out.

”Birhan?” she yelled. ”Birhan, are you out there?”

The valley echoed. On rural Qiilura, sounds carried a long way. She thought she could hear the distant ee-unk ee-unk of the a.s.sault walker picking its way through the fields toward the road.

”It's not Birhan.” The voice that called back to her was a woman's.

”You can stop this now. You can all walk out of here.”

There was a long pause. ”You're the ones who are cut off on both sides ...”

”And we're the ones who've been trying to take you alive ... up till now.” The yelling was making Etain's throat sore. She checked her chrono. ”I'll give you five standard minutes to lay down your weapons and surrender.”

Silence. Absolute silence, other than the backdrop of wild sounds that Darman had labeled NFQ-Normal For Qiilura.

”I suspect that's going to be a no,” Etain said.

She waited, glancing at her chrono from time to time. It was so quiet that she could hear the snow flurries. .h.i.tting the troopers' armor, rattling like beans. Levet worked his way back toward her and signaled to check ahead.

Narrowing her eyes against the snow, she could see movement. From the lower slopes of the hill, figures in drab working clothes, faces swathed in scarves, rose slowly and held their hands up in surrender. Thank the Force. Some sense at last. She watched carefully for weapons, but they really did seem to have thrown down their rifles. She risked standing up, lightsaber in hand.

”Ma'am, when will you learn to keep your head down?” Levet said sharply. ”Jedi doesn't mean invulnerable.”

”I've got armor,” she said, ”and I can deflect blaster bolts if they lake a polshot at me.” It seemed unnecessarily aggressive to activate her lightsaber, but she did it anyway. She wasn't laking any chances. As she edged forward, with the weapon held away from her body, more figures popped up from snow-covered crags, some with hands on heads, some simply holding blasters and rifles aloft. The farmers on the lower slopes had started to pick their way down toward the road.

Their resistance seemed to be a gesture now. They just wanted to show some fight, save face, and be able to tell their children that they hadn't gone quietly. Pride mattered to them. She understood that.

”Okay.” She walked forward a few more meters and called out lo them. ”You've got nothing to fear. No reprisals, I swear. We're just going to take your weapons.”

There was no response. They seemed lo be laking a long lime lo gel down the slope, but the snow was more like packed ice, and treacherously slippery. She turned lo Levet, nodded, and then waved some of the platoon forward to relieve the farmers of their weapons. Fifteen troopers advanced through what had been a field of barq grain in the summer, ghosts against the white landscape picked out by the black of their bodysuits visible between the plates of plastoid alloy, and the single green rank flash of a sergeant.

Etain checked one more thing off her mental list. It was slow going, but they were getting there. ”Levet, evacuate the...”

That was as far as she got. An explosion peppered her face with dirt and lifted two troopers meters into the air. One fell screaming, and the other couldn't because he was blown apart.

Mines.

The platoon froze, trapped in an uncharted minefield.

Trap. You don't do that, you just don't surrender and lure my men to their deaths...

Etain's sense of time evaporated. She saw some of the farmers grab their weapons again, and an instinct overtook her that wasn't Jedi at all, an instinct lo kill for this act of betrayal. Levet was yelling over the comlink as the remaining men still behind cover opened up with rifle and E-Web fire.

Etain raised her lightsaber before she even realized she'd seen the muzzle flash of a blaster bolt, batting it away. Her comlink was filled with a cacophony of orders and responses, some from the a.s.sault walker. Another mine detonated. Another man screamed. Blasterfire and artillery rounds rained down from the hillside.

Etain took a moment lo realize it was her own voice calling in fire from the a.s.sault walker. ”A-tee, bearing five-five-six-zero, take it out, I repeal, take it out...”

Shouldn't get in Levet's way. He s the commander. He knows what he's doing. They're killing my men. They'll pay for that.

There was no moral argument left in her about who had first betrayed whose trust here. All that was left was her will to survive and to save her comrades. It was that visceral, that stark, that un-Jedi. She had no sense of anyone else around her except the dead and wounded troopers; she had no sense of anything beyond stopping the incoming fire and venting this red-hot rage that was choking her and tightening a band around her forehead.

She hadn't even realized she'd gone into the minefield. She felt she could see through the snow and soil to the devices beneath, devices they should have detected-no, they were custom anti-droid trip mines, plastoid and remotely armed. Somehow she was avoiding them all, but the troopers had no such Force-senses and simply knelt where they'd been forced to stop and returned fire.

Out of all the things she saw that day, that was the most extraordinary: men pinned down on an exposed field, still fighting, when the slightest movement might set off an unseen mine next to them. None of them was paralyzed by panic. No wonder fools thought that clones felt no fear.

”Ma'am, stop! Hold it, for fierfek's sake!” Levet's voice rang in her comlink. No, she wasn't going to stop. She couldn't. The hillside ahead of her erupted in a ma.s.sive plume of snow and dirt that rose into the air and fell again like hail. Then there was a rumbling sound. A section of the hillside gave way, taking rocks and soil with it. The sheet of compacted snow slid off like frosting separating from a cake and came to rest like an avalanche.

The walker fired again, shuddering with the recoil, and the stony ridge near the crest shattered as if a fist had punched through a sheet of transparisteel. The explosion deafened her for a few moments and then she felt grit and ice pepper her face, and ducked. There was a second explosion, and a third, and when she raised her head again she couldn't see the hill through the storm of debris that was rolling toward her like a giant foaming wave. The soil beneath her shook as intensely as a groundquake. And then the airborne debris began to hit the ground, the huge billowing wave collapsing, leaving be-hind it a reshaped hill and a road blocked by rock, soil, and ice.

The rebel fire was now coming only from the position to the south of them, not the hill. And men were still stranded in the minefield.

”Ma'am, I said stay where you are,” Levet shouted.

”No, you stay where you are, Commander.” Etain's anger always got the better of her. She'd never learned to control it If the dark side wanted her now, then it could lake her as long as she got her people clear. ”Take out the other artillery position. Just suppress it. Okay?”

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