Solo Command (14 page)

Janson took the scorched comm pack from Runt’s back. Fortunately the unit within, though blackened along one side, was functional.

Maybe.

Janson looked up from it. “I’m getting nothing but hiss. Some of it may be because we’re too deep, but I think we’re being jammed.”

Face nodded. “That figures. All right, we go. Ten, you take point. Four, rear guard.”

Janson and Tyria nodded to accept their respective tasks.

Shalla got Dia up to her feet and quickly rigged a sling for her arm. Dia still looked groggy, but she managed to catch Face’s eye and gave him a look that said she was there, she was functional. There was no time for them to exchange anything else.

Piggy tried to haul Runt up to his feet, but the Thakwaash pilot shook off his hand and stood. He was a mess, much of his upper body marked by flame-blackened fur, and his eyes were wide, vibrating.

Face knew how he felt. It wasn’t just pain. Anger blossomed within him like the explosive cloud from a proton torpedo. “Wraiths,” he said, “no rules. No mercy. Take out anything that gets between us and home.”

From the looks in their faces he knew they’d have accepted no other order.

Lara hazarded another look over her shoulder. The nearest path to escape was the edge of the roof, some thirty meters back. But she was behind the last cover between this point and the edge. If she and Elassar got up to run, they’d be cut down. “I think we’re done for,” she said.

Elassar shook his head. “No. Today’s a lucky day. I calculated it before we started on this mission.”

“Ah. Did you remember to invite your luck? Or is it in its bunk on
Mon Remonda
?” Lara popped up to try another shot.

A laser blast, brilliant red, flashed out of the distance. It struck behind the equipment housing Lara had been firing at—and hit one of the stormtroopers there, blasting him sideways, leaving his charred and smoking body lying in plain sight on the rooftop.

Elassar gave her an infuriating grin. “My luck is your boyfriend. Excuse me.” He leaned out to the right of the housing protecting him.

Lara and Elassar had enemies dead ahead, and Donos with his sniper rifle across the street to their left. That meant that
stormtroopers close to the Wraiths could be protected from Lara and Elassar, or from Donos, but not both. Lara saw stormtroopers scramble to get their cover between them and Donos’s more potent weapon … and as soon as they got around the side of their cover, Elassar opened fire, taking down one, two, three of them before the remainder realized the full extent of their predicament.

Lara prepared to pop up for another exchange of shots. The stormtroopers, she knew, had only a couple of options. They could retreat until they could get cover between them and both sets of Wraiths, or they could take out one of the directions of enemy fire … which probably meant charging her and Elassar.

They rose and charged, roaring as they came. Lara half rose and opened fire.

The technician Drufeys, now in the command chair of the control room, watched events unfold on the rooftop. Of the eight stormtroopers who’d risen to charge the two visible Wraiths, four were now down, two felled by blaster pistols, two more by the laser sniper. The other four were in fast retreat. “This isn’t going well,” he said. “Call Argenhald Base and ask them to scramble a couple of TIE fighters. Give them the approximate position of the sniper.”

The technician he had addressed, the communications specialist, said, “We’re still jamming.”

“Use a land line, stupid.”

“You don’t have to call me stupid.”

“Yes, I actually do have to. Get to it.” Drufeys settled back into the chair. He liked the feel of it. Too bad this facility was being shut down. But perhaps, if he displayed enough competence, he’d find some task with Warlord Zsinj. He smiled. He liked that idea.

The Wraiths were within sight of the old turbolift doors, were within thirty meters and could see how the doors had been laser-welded shut, when a side door slammed open and stormtroopers
began pouring into the hall. Stormtroopers, an unarmored officer, a civilian woman.

“Get back!” Face shouted. “We have to—”

He was going to say “retreat.” They had to get back and away from a numerically superior—and uninjured—enemy force.

But then it happened. Face recognized the big man in the Imperial captain’s outfit. Weeks before, disguised as General Kargin of the Hawk-bats, Face had watched Shalla, in her own disguise of Qatya Nassin, bruise the big man in a test of martial arts skills.

And now he saw recognition in the captain’s eyes.

The captain couldn’t have recognized
him;
Face had been wearing burn-victim makeup designed to make stomachs turn. He must instead have seen Qatya Nassin in Shalla, recognizing her in spite of the makeup she’d worn at the time.

Shalla charged the big man and the dozen and more stormtroopers now crowding into the hall. Her intention was all too obvious: kill the big captain so he couldn’t report that a member of Wraith Squadron was also with the Hawk-bats.

She’s going to get herself killed
, Face thought.

And us too
.

He finished his command. “Charge!”

Wes Janson lurched into motion, charging in Shalla’s wake, taking the left side of the hall where she ran along the right.

He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people.

In full stride, he raised his blaster pistol and fired, catching the lead stormtrooper in the chest. The man was thrown back into the arms of one of his companions, his armor now blackened and penetrated.

Janson didn’t sight in—he aimed by instinct, by the natural point of his weapon, and fired again. The second stormtrooper took the shot in the dark visor material over his right eye.

Shalla wasn’t firing—why not? Janson traversed right and
shot at the lead stormtrooper on that side of the hall, catching him in the gut. Behind him was the big captain, now raising his own blaster. Janson fired again. His shot caught the man in the elbow, spinning him back into the wall, causing him to drop his weapon.

Janson traversed leftward again, targeting a stormtrooper with a blaster rifle, his shot catching the man in the throat.

Five steps. Five shots. Five hits. But the hallway was a natural channel for blaster bolts. Its straight lines would angle stray shots back into play. He’d never reach them—

He didn’t. He felt fire again and suddenly the world was spinning, slamming into his head—

Dark.

Netbers saw the dark-skinned woman charge and for a moment was so surprised by this tactical insanity that he couldn’t react. Then he shouted, “Fire!” and drew his own blaster pistol.

The woman’s gaze was fixed on him. He knew he was her target. He knew why, too. And he couldn’t get his blaster in line before she had hers aimed, before she pulled her trigger—

And the charred blaster in her hand failed to go off. He almost laughed. He aimed.

The stormtrooper in front of him was thrown back into him, jarring his aim. He shoved the man, probably already dead, aside.

A stray blaster beam slammed into his right arm. It spun him back and pain flashed through him.

That was all right. He knew pain. Pain was his friend.

When he looked up again, the dark woman was upon him, lashing out with a side kick meant to shatter his knee, to bring him to the floor. He twisted, took it as a graze against the side of his knee.

She was hurt. Burn marks all along her right side. Netbers swung at her flank, a left-handed slap that hit bare, burned flesh. The blow knocked her to the floor and she lay there, curled up, helpless.

Conditioning is a big part of it, Qatya
, he thought. He
reached down and took a blaster pistol from the dead stormtrooper beside him.
You might beat me once, but never twice—
Something loomed up before him and struck him across the face.

He crashed to the floor atop the body of a stormtrooper. The blow was incredible. He saw stars and his hearing failed. His body wouldn’t respond.

His attacker bent over him. It was a nonhuman, a big hairy thing burned all over its upper body, with wide, staring eyes and lips drawn back over square teeth. It grabbed him by the collar and hauled him, all 130 kilograms of him, up into the air as though he weighed nothing.

Netbers lashed out at the alien, striking at one of its burned patches, but the creature grabbed his wrist with its free hand.

Then, as casually as though it were swinging a bag of grain, it slammed him into the wall. He felt his shoulder blade break under the impact, felt something grate in his neck as his head battered into the metal of the wall.

Where are my stormtroopers?
But now there were black-clad, burned commandos charging past him, running toward the stairwell by which he and his men had descended. The commandos were firing blasters, shouting—Netbers could hear no noise.

The first wave of them passed and the burned alien swung him toward the opposite wall. Netbers felt himself hit, felt his right shoulder give way, felt something in his neck explode.

Then he felt no more.

“Call it off!” Face shouted. He was at the base of the stairs. Kell and Piggy were above, ahead of him, struggling across the bodies of fallen stormtroopers. Living stormtroopers were ahead of them, running for their lives. “Let’s get out of here!”

“The woman.” That was Piggy’s mechanical voice, inflectionless in spite of the pain he must be feeling. “She is one of my creators. We need her.” He fired up the stairs and continued his awkward run over the bodies of slain enemies. A moment later, he and Kell were out of sight, around a turn in the stairs,
and all Face could hear was more blaster fire. He grimaced and moved up the stairs as fast as his tired legs and burned body would let him.

One landing up, the two Wraiths awaited him. Piggy had the human civilian in his grip. Kell waited, his blaster aimed up the stairs, for a counterattack.

In spite of her situation, the woman seemed calm. Face said, “Eight, when the next wave of stormtroopers comes, use her as a human shield. I’m curious to see how long it’ll take blasters to burn through her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m too valuable for that,” she said.

“I doubt it,” Face said. “But we’ll see. If you want to live, you’ll tell us a way out of here that doesn’t involve more ambushes by your stormtroopers. If they do come at us, you’ll be our first bit of cover. Well?”

“Access tunnels,” she said. Her voice was cool.

“Show me.”

She pointed down the stairs.

They gathered where the big captain had died. Janson was on his feet, supported by Tyria, his right bicep wrapped in a thick bandage already stained through with blood, his arm hanging uselessly. There was blood spilling down his forehead, too, and a matching patch on the wall at head height. His face was already graying with shock. Shalla, too, was up. Runt was swaying and breathing hard where he stood; flecks of white spittle decorated the sides of his mouth. Seven stormtroopers and the big captain lay dead in the hall.

The female civilian, whom Piggy called Dr. Gast, led them back toward the incinerator room. Fire from the chamber had spread out into the hall. The air was becoming smoky and flames licked along the ceiling at the far end. But halfway there, Gast turned a toward blank wall and said, “Gast access override one-one-one.”

The wall section lifted like a high-speed doorway, revealing a small turbolift beyond. Gast gave Face a cool smile.
“Down one level is an underground landspeeder channel with a utilities shaft running parallel to it.”

Face boarded and the others followed. “You know what this means to you if this is a trick.”

She shook her head. “No trick. Zsinj will have me killed for failure. So my survival means getting you to safety. Gast, descend to sub-five.”

The turbolift descended for a few seconds. Then the door opened onto a dimly lit duracrete shelf. Beyond it was a dropoff; a few meters beyond that, a wall.

They exited cautiously, blasters raised right and left. This was a boarding platform for a railway of some sort, the dropoff being a low roadway.

“And may I say,” she continued, “that I always enjoyed your holodramas?”

“You couldn’t say anything that would nauseate me more.”

She smiled, her expression still calm. “Though I liked Tetran Cowall more.”

“That makes me feel better. He’s a no-talent bag of bantha droppings.” Face gestured right and left. “Which way?”

As they moved, fast as their ill-treated bodies would let them, they passed hatches allowing access into upper floors, tanks where water was stored and processed, power-cabling terminals, and equipment housings that were less easily identified.

Kell stopped beside a heavy metal beam running from the duracrete ceiling above into the duracrete shelf below. He tapped it with his forearm. His hand was still charred, twitching. “Hey,” he said. “This is a main support beam, isn’t it?”

Gast nodded. “I think so. Why?”

Face said, “Five, no. We can’t bring down this whole building. There may be other innocents, other test subjects up there.”

Kell offered him a smirk. “Boss, I don’t want to blow
everything
up. Listen. We just passed a power station a few meters back.”

“So?”

“So if we can adapt the power from that station to boost the signal strength of Runt’s comm unit,
and
patch the unit’s signal through this beam—”

“Then we use the whole building as an antenna.” Face slapped his forehead and regretted it instantly as his palm encountered burned flesh. “Do it. Do it fast.”

At a dead run, Hobbie charged up to where Wedge and Tycho sat under their camouflage covers. “Signal from the Wraiths, Wedge. They need immediate air support.”

Lara and Elassar had circled around, maintaining fire against the now much more distant stormtroopers, reaching the point on the wall where their fibra-rope rig would give them access to Donos’s roof, when they saw and heard the approaching TIE fighters. “Just what we need,” she said.