Part 27 (1/2)
”What's keeping them?”
”Officer commanding-some nonclone captain called Pellaeon-says it's brinkmans.h.i.+p.”
”Back in ten ...”
”We're digging in. Surveillance sat shows Eyat's bringing in fighters from outside.”
”How many?”
”Six. And that might not be a problem for an a.s.sault s.h.i.+p but it's bad news for us, so get back here.”
That, at least, answered Darman's question about what use Gaftikar was to anyone. Apart from the mining corporation's interests, it was just another handy place for a fight.
And they were sending in the mongrels now, nonclones, some of the service personnel from the fleet. Pellaeon. Who the shab was he? Darman wondered who the 35th's Jedi general might be, because it wasn't Etain.
She said they'd finished on Qiilura.
Whatever it was, wherever they were sending her, she could tell him, couldn't she? Maybe she didn't want to worry him. Of course I'm worried. I'm always worried. Ordo . . . yeah, he'd ask Ordo. Ordo always obliged, always got the messages and letters through somehow.
The rebel camp had taken on a different air by the time Darman got back, and he'd only been gone thirty minutes. The Marits had thinned out, and E-Webs and cannon stood concealed under camo netting. He sprinted for the main building, realizing even as he made for the doors that it was so flimsy he was better off outside.
”Sarge?” Darman clicked through the frequencies on his helmet link. ”Sarge?”
”Ops room,” Niner barked.
Darman entered, pulled off his helmet, and stood over the ops table, trying to get a better look at the holochart that A'den had projected onto it. It showed the whole central region, with the scattered Marit villages and the occasional Gaftikari town, like small planets around suns. When he magnified Eyat and superimposed the latest aerial reconnaissance images on it, the sudden preparations became clear.
”That's as of fifteen minutes ago,” A'den said.
Eyat's boundaries were ringed with vehicles and vessels, and there was no steady procession of civilians out of the city as was usual when attacks were expected. There was nowhere else for the Gaftikari to go. They were marooned on islands in an ocean of enemies. All they could do was dig in.
”You reckon they really know what's coming?” Atin asked. ”I mean, really know?”
A'den, fully armored, tilted his head as if listening to a separate helmet comlink. ”No. Not a clue.”
”This is them reacting to the Seps reacting to our inbound s.h.i.+ps, yes?”
”That's their only source of surveillance,” said A'den. ”I'm not sure who they're more worried about, us or the Marits. But they know we're coming, so I'm not prepared to risk a squad in there to prep the battlefield if we've got two battalions, a squadron of Torrents, and Captain Pellaeon's nice big cannons arriving within a day. Unless Eyat's got some hidden superweapon we failed to spot, the place is just one big target.”
Darman still couldn't work out why the two task forces couldn't simply engage in s.p.a.ce and leave the planet alone. But taking Eyat without a bit of muscle and cannons behind them meant very messy fighting if there was no air cover to make the point. He wasn't sure which was the worse out-come for the civilians.
”We're not really the main game in town now, are we?” Niner said. ”Are we going forward with the Thirty-fifth?”
A'den must have switched his audio feed from Leveler to the general circuit, because Darman's helmet was suddenly full of the voice traffic between vessels. They seemed more concerned with keeping an eye on the Separatist flotilla, waiting for it to power up to hyperjump. A'den cut the link again and sat in silence, as if he was staring at the holochart lost in thought. He was waiting for instructions.
”Who's the Jedi in command?” Darman asked.
A'den looked up. ”General Mas Missur. Did you want to stay on the circuit?”
”No ...”
”It's that woman of yours, isn't it?”
”She wouldn't tell me where she was but she's been with Levet for some months, so yes-I want to know if she's with that flotilla and not telling me.”
Personal business didn't matter on the brink of a battle, but n.o.body argued with him. A'den switched to another channel, head barely moving. Darman heard the slight pop as he switched, and he guessed the Null was on a secure link to someone, either finding out or asking why he'd been saddled with a commando who couldn't save his private life for off-duty hours.
”Levet says she's not with the Thirty-fifth and she's not in a combat zone,” A'den said, unusually kindly. ”So stop fussing.”
Darman could have called her. He had a secure link: it wasn't as if he was going to give away a position to the enemy. He dithered, trying to decide whether to slip into the refreshers and comm her discreetly, just to be sure she wasn't somewhere even worse. He just wanted to tell her ...
Niner, as ever, seemed to read his mind. He shoved Dar-man with his shoulder plate. ”Go on,” he said quietly. ”Be quick about it, though.”
Darman stepped out into the corridor, opened his helmet link with a couple of blinks, and voice-activated Etain's code. The display in his helmet told him what he could hear: NO RESPONSE. He carried on paging the system for a couple of minutes, telling himself she might have been taking a shower or even asleep, and then he left a message. It was hard to say the words to cold dead air instead of to her standing in front of him.
”It's me, Et'ika,” he said. ”I never told you I love you.”
When he closed the link he felt embarra.s.sed, but he'd done it, however inelegantly. If anything happened to him, at least she knew.
A'den and Niner walked out of the ops room, heads moving in a conversation that couldn't be heard outside their helmets. Fi and Atin followed. Darman's audio circuit popped again.
”Change of plan, Dar,” Niner's voice said in his ear. ”The general wants us to play forward air control. As soon as it gets dark, we'll move up to the outskirts and recce the positions of their mobile triple-A. Levet says Leveler will be on station a couple of hours before dawn.”
”Lovely,” said Fi. ”It'll all be over in time for breakfast.”
The squad spent the next hour or so stripping out the rental speeder to make room for a couple of E-Webs. Atin re-moved its ID transponder and poked an a.s.sortment of probes into it to scramble the registration details.
”Just in case we need to go right inside the city.” He held up a small rectangle of plastoid. ”We're going to have a hard job walking in dressed like this.”
”I still think I should go in and blow the main power station,” Darman said. ”If only to give us the cover of complete darkness.”
A'den wandered over to them, obviously eavesdropping on their circuit. ”I'll be going .n to place a few EMP charges in sensitive spots around their communications centers, be-cause we don't want them chatting to the Seps once this kicks off. All you have to do is call in the air strikes. Okay? Once we've neutralized the big targets like their triple-A, and Leveled made a few holes in the infrastructure, then the Torrent squadron can provide air support for the Marits to go in. I don't want any of you deviating from that plan.”
”Yeah, where are the lizards?” Fi asked, straightening up-”I thought this was their big night.”
”Oh, they're all here ...”
It was almost dark now, and when Darman looked toward Eyat, he couldn't see the city. In the last few nights, he'd got used to the glow from its street lighting, all the more notice-able for being set in the middle of an unlit rural location. But it was in darkness tonight. He flicked his visor through its magnification and night-vision settings and still couldn't see much. Even in infrared, it was just a faint green flattened dome of heat.
”They've switched off the lighting,” he said. ”They're expecting air raids.”
”Shame that they're going to get creamed,” Fi said. ”It looked like such a nice place.”
n.o.body said it, but Darman thought it: there was no reason to fight here, beyond the fact that the Republic had staked a claim by way of supporting the Marits, and so the Separatists felt they had to front up, too. Darman wondered if it was treason to think that way, or just a difference of opinion on strategy.
”I wonder where Sull is now,” he said, but n.o.body answered. He glanced over his shoulder at the scrubby wood-land to one side of the camp, night-vision visor still in place, and thought it was malfunctioning until he realized the points of light-thousands of them, as if the display had ma.s.sive interference-were actually eyes.
It was the Marits. Suddenly, they were an army, silent and motionless, waiting for the signal to kill.