Jedi Trial (24 page)

Two battle droids came clattering into the little clearing between the rocks. Vick drew his blaster and, kneeling, destroyed them both with two quick shots.

“Run! Run!” L’Loxx screamed.

“I’ll stay here and slow them down,” Vick yelled back. The other three ran between the boulders. A flurry of blaster bolts flashed in the night behind them.
Vick came running out from between the rocks. “Too many of them!” he shouted as he skittered past Grudo. Calmly, Grudo unholstered his blaster and drew his vibroblade with the other hand. As the droids came charging at him from between the rocks he cut one down with his blaster and slashed through the neck cables of another with his blade. In ten seconds he lay six of them low, forming a small obstacle the others had to clamber over to get at him. He stood calmly firing into the charging droids. Blaster bolts caromed off the rocks, singeing him; two hit him glancing blows and he staggered, but didn’t go down. He piled the droids up. Thirty seconds into the fight there were no more droids to shoot at. Grudo stood panting for a moment. He holstered his blaster. Dead silence. No! Up ahead more droids were coming down from the hills. It was time to go. He turned and raced back in the direction of his comrades. At that point the artillery opened up again and the night turned to bedlam.

Odie stuck her head out of the hole she had cut in the rock. “A few more minutes, and I think I can get through!” She sat down beside him. “How’s the arm?”

“Well, an ordinary person would be screaming and writhing, but me? Heck, I’m a hotshot fighter pilot and we train in pain.” He grimaced, then turned serious. “I’m sorry, Odie, but I’ll need your help to get up through that hole when the time comes. My legs feel a little rubbery, you know?”

“Give me ten more minutes and we’re out of here!”

After the rock around the edge of the hole cooled
sufficiently, Odie lifted herself up to the rim. Erk gave her a boost from below and she was out.

The barrage started up again at that very moment. She slid back into the bunker. “Do you think we should go out there in this?”

“Who cares? Anything is better than another second in this tomb.”

“Use your good arm to hoist yourself up, and I’ll boost you from below. But be careful—it might be a tight fit.”

The cannon fire was so intense it lit up the interior of the bunker. Erk’s face showed pale and drawn in the flashing light. “Hope the crawlers don’t run over us,” he said weakly.

He managed to pull himself halfway through the hole, then got stuck. He grunted in pain. Odie grabbed his feet from below and with all her strength shoved him out into the clear. She tossed up her blaster rifle and followed him. They lay in the rubble, gasping for breath.

“We made it.” The artillery roared and thundered overhead, but nothing hit the ground where they lay. “They’re dueling,” Erk went on. “Nicest display I’ve ever seen.”

Figures emerged out of the dark. Odie grabbed her blaster and fired a shot.

“Don’t shoot!”
one of the figures shouted. “We’re friends!” Someone rushed up to Odie and slapped her blaster out of the way. “Blast you!” he shouted, “you shot one of my troopers, you fool! Didn’t anyone tell you we were coming through?” He looked at her in the
strobing light of the barrage, then at Erk, lying on his back beside her. Both looked the worse for wear. “Hey, who are you, anyway?”

“Grudo’s shot real bad,” Corporal Raders said. “She hit him in the side of his head. Blast you people! What the—” He stopped abruptly as he took in the pair.

“I—I—we—we were trapped in a bunker, sir. I—I thought you were the enemy. My buddy is badly hurt, too. I—I’m sorry about your soldier. I—”

L’Loxx turned and knelt beside Grudo. The side of the Rodian’s head gave to his probing fingers, but he was still conscious. His one good eye blinked in the gunlight. He tried to say something, but it came out as only noise.

“Let’s wait for the ARC troopers,” Raders suggested. “They can help us carry him back to the aid station. There’s nothing we can do for him here.”

“If we don’t get him back right now he won’t make it, and after what he’s done this night, we’re not waiting. You two,” L’Loxx said, indicating Odie and Erk, “give us a hand.”

“Sir, my buddy is badly burned—he can’t help carry anyone.”

“Okay, you help him along; we’ll handle Grudo ourselves. And stop calling me
sir
, I work for a living—
hey!
I know you two! You’re from General Khamar’s army. We came in together. I don’t remember your names, but I found you two out in the desert—”

“Sergeant L’Loxx,” Odie gasped.

“How’re you doing?” Erk asked from where he lay.

“I remember now,” L’Loxx said, “they sent you up to Izable after we came in together. Well, I’ll be—”

“Sergeant, let’s get moving? We can talk when we get back to our lines,” Raders suggested.

In moments they had rigged a stretcher from a net Odie found in her equipment belt and two long durasteel rods they wrenched from the ruins of a bunker. Carrying Grudo over the rough ground was easier than they’d expected.

Sergeant L’Loxx came to attention and saluted Halcyon.

“Make your report, Sergeant.”

“We didn’t wait for the other teams to come in, sir, because I had two wounded and had to get them to the aid station. Their right flank is vulnerable, sir.” He moved to a three-dimensional display. “First, this hill on the far end of the line is only lightly defended. I think they’re counting on the rocks at the foot of the hill to break up any assault. Second, I didn’t see any crew-served weapons up there. They haven’t brought in artillery. And finally, I have reason to believe lack of maintenance might be reducing the droid fighting force. We put them through some exercises, and they’ll lose combat strength through breakdowns.”

“Who was wounded?” Anakin asked.

“I’m afraid the Rodian, sir.”

“How badly?”

“Very badly, sir. But let me add this: we wouldn’t have made it back with this information if it hadn’t been for him. He stayed behind long enough to give the rest of us a chance to get some distance between us and the droid lines. I want to add also, sir,” he said, turning
to Halcyon, “that your two guards are solid soldiers. They held up their end.”

“Well, who’s the other wounded trooper, then?” Slayke asked. Briefly L’Loxx explained about Odie and Erk.

“I remember them. She went to Izable with the lieutenant,” Slayke said.

“She’s the one who shot Grudo,” L’Loxx told Anakin. “In the dark and the confusion she thought we were the enemy. It was just one of those situations nobody could have anticipated. It happens, sir. Friendly fire.”

“Very well, then.” Halcyon had made his decision. “It’s zero four hundred hours now. Commander Skywalker, at zero six hundred I want you in position to attack that right flank. Take two brigades of your division. Leave the third in reserve under the command of Captain Slayke.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the commandos to report, sir?” Halcyon’s operations officer asked.

“I’ll be interested to hear what they’ve found out, but no. This—” He pointed to the display. “—is the pivotal point in our assault, and we’ll attack there. I’ll take my division and attack the center. I’ll wait until you’re in place before I commence my attack, Commander Skywalker. You wait ten minutes after I move forward before moving in. I believe during that time the enemy will bring in troops from his wings to reinforce his center. We’ve given him two artillery barrages so far tonight to soften him up, or I hope he thinks so, and when we hit him again while my division moves into
position, he’ll see that as the main attack, I’m sure of it. I think we might just carry this off.” He turned to his operations officer. “Issue the order to all commanders.”

“May I see him?” Anakin asked the medical officer who met him at the aid station.

“This way.” The doctor’s slumped shoulders and the deep lines that carved his face spoke more eloquently than the bloodstains on his surgical gown of what Sons and Daughters of Freedom had been through since they landed.

Grudo was lying on a field litter behind some curtains. Anakin caught his breath when he saw how grievously the Rodian had been wounded.
Friendly fire
, Anakin thought, that was what the sergeant had called the accident. He wondered who had invented such a ridiculous term. Some staff officer, no doubt, someone safe and secure in a headquarters, someone who jested at scars but who’d never felt a wound himself. There was nothing friendly about fire that caused that much injury, no matter who it came from. Anakin fought down a surge of anger, not at the hapless recon trooper who had shot Grudo, but at the kind of military mind that would call such a thing “friendly fire.”

“Can he talk?” he asked the harried doctor.

“He’s been muttering something, whether it’s in his own language or just moaning, I don’t know. It’s astonishing that he’s even semiconscious with a wound like that. I’m not that familiar with the Rodian brain, but look here, you can see through the skull—”

Anakin cut the doctor off. “There’s nothing you can do, Doctor?”

The surgeon shook his head. “No, he’s just too far gone.”

“Can he hear us?”

“I don’t think so, but his status is the same if he can hear us or not. With a head injury like that he won’t last much longer. We can’t even give him a sedative, unless, of course, you want me to end his misery—”

Anakin turned on him. “If I ever again hear you say something like that about one of my troopers, I swear …” He shook his head. “Now have the courtesy to leave me alone with my friend.”

The doctor blanched, parted the curtains, and disappeared.

Anakin looked down at Grudo. “Can you hear me?” he asked. He bent closer. “Grudo, can you hear me?”

Grudo opened his one good eye. Something rumbled deep in his chest, and he coughed. “A-Anakin …” He let out his breath.

“Save your strength—you’re going to be just fine,” Anakin lied.

“No,” Grudo whispered. “Time—to—go.”

“No, no, Grudo! They’re sending you to the
Respite
, a fine hospital ship where they have everything they need to help you—”

With great effort Grudo raised himself up on an elbow and with his free hand gripped the young Jedi by the shoulder. He brought his ruined face close to Anakin’s. “Don’t cry over me,” he said, then fell back on the cot.

Anakin didn’t need to touch Grudo to know the life force had left him. He sat by his side for several minutes, then stood and returned to the command post. There would be an attack in the morning, and he would lead it. Grudo would be avenged.

O
ften the success of a military operation depends on a mere chance event, such as someone coming to a place—a crossroads, a river, a bridge, a village—only a few minutes before or after someone else. That matter of moments can spell the difference between victory or defeat on a battlefield. Or sometimes disaster hangs on a decision by a commander who makes it without full knowledge of his enemy’s intentions or dispositions; a good commander has to be able to make snap decisions, because delay can be fatal to a campaign. But so can the wrong decision, and even the very best commanders, pressed by the rapidly unfolding events of the modern battlefield to decide quickly on tactical matters, can make a mistake. Even with all the technology available to the warrior, the battlefield is still a confused and disorganized place where events move with lightning speed under a cloak of impenetrable darkness called the fog of battle. And no one who is not right there can penetrate it.

Thus the importance of the reconnaissance Nejaa Halcyon ordered, and thus the importance of the decision
he made based on the information garnered by only one of the teams sent on that reconnaissance.

Clone Commando CT-19/39, not Sergeant Omin L’Loxx, good as he might have been, was really the best reconnaissance man currently on Praesitlyn. His own nickname for himself was Green Wizard, because of his rank as a sergeant and his skill at patrol craft. As soon as he was given command of team one to cover the left flank of the enemy positions, he decided to split it up so each commando could conduct his own probe into the enemy lines and penetrate as far into them as he could, to bring back as much intelligence as possible.

Green Wizard made it all the way to the Intergalactic Communications Center buildings without being detected. Carefully, he committed the position of every gun he could find to memory, counted the droids staffing the positions, noted their armaments, noted where the enemy had dug in artillery. Of special interest to him was the fact that several guns were evidently being moved to the far left of the enemy line to strengthen the positions on the two small hills at that end of the defenses. In his opinion, however, the weak spot in Tonith’s line was on his right, not his left, because Green Wizard had come through there so easily—and especially now, since he could tell the general where every gun was on that flank. It was clear to Green Wizard that the attack should fall entirely on the left, the whole army thrown against that flank in echelon to slam into it with tremendous force and fold it back
upon itself, breaking Tonith’s hold and rolling up his entire defenses in one swift, irresistible blow.

The only trouble was that now Green Wizard had to get back to his own lines to report this information. He could call on his comlink, but General Halcyon had been very specific that no one was to break comm silence during the reconnaissance. Apparently his other two comrades had not had as much success as he at remaining undetected: there had been shooting all along the line, especially where they would have crossed—a lot of shooting—so Green Wizard was pretty sure they had been discovered and possibly had not made it back to their rally point just below the mesa. He wondered about the troopers who were supposed to probe the center. Would they have seen what he had? Had some of the shooting been directed at them? They were clone commandos so they were good, very good, but not as good as he, and everyone’s luck ran out sometime. Green Wizard knew one day his would, too, and perhaps this night it had for his comrades. He had to assume he was the only one left now and it was up to him to get the intelligence he’d gathered back to headquarters.