“Leave, Mird!” she whispered.
Etain took a breath then stepped into the room to meet another hail of blasterfire. She crossed the blue blades of energy and batted the bolts aside with a parting motion of her arms. I didn’t know I could do that. It was pure instinct, drawn from deep within her and many years in the past.
She lunged forward for the kill. As always, she saw little and felt nothing tangible, no shock up her arms, no resistance as she swept the blades, but she felt the Force change. A brief light blazed and died.
She thumbed off Master Fuller’s lightsaber and slid it into her tunic one-handed while keeping her own drawn just in case. She sensed nobody else. Mird limped into the room after her and she knew it was looking up into her face even though there was only the scattered light through the window from a city that was never completely dark.
“Oya,” she whispered, not knowing quite what the command might mean in this case.
But Mird rumbled quietly and sprang onto the body of the man she had killed. She shut down her lightsaber and walked out of the apartment, and Mird limped out a few moments later, crunching happily. She didn’t look too closely at what it had in its jaws. It swallowed noisily.
“Poor Mird.” Vau sighed. “Here, baby, come here.” He scooped the strill up in both arms and carried it to the turbolift. One of its legs had been seared raw by the blaster.
Etain opened her comlink. “Kal, everyone is accounted for.”
“Good work,” Kars voice said. He sounded tired. “See you at the RV point.”
Mird let Etain place her hands on its leg to heal it as the lift made its way down to the ground floor. Vau carried it all the way back to the speeder. It was a big, heavy animal, but he refused to let it walk. Etain took it on her lap and eased its pain as Vau started the speeder and they headed for the RV point.
There seemed to be nothing Vau wouldn’t do for Mird. He loved that animal.
RV point, two kilometers from CoruFresh depot, 2320 hours, 385 days after Geonosis
The strike team rendezvoused at a droid-operated construction site to the north of the depot. The droids needed no light to work by and the presence of a few strangely dressed humanoids in the near darkness would draw no attention.
Skirata counted the six speeders back in, gut churning until the last of the speeders arrived with Mereel and Corr astride. Corr was clutching the rotary blaster like a long-lost friend.
Good lad. I’ll shift Coruscant and all its rotten moons to hang on to him, Zey. We can always train more troopers as commandos. Just watch me.
“All thermal plastoid accounted for?”
“Yes, Sarge.” Boss leaned against the bodywork of a speeder. “Want to check?”
“I trust you to count. Ordo can slip that back into stores tomorrow after it’s been neutralized.”
“What’s the final score?” Fi said.
Niner eased off his helmet. Even with the environment control inside his sealed suit, he looked as if he’d sweated out an ocean. He rubbed his face slowly with the palm of his glove. “Er … I think we took out twenty-six bad guys.”
“Twenty-four at the site,” Mereel said. “We swept the site and did a tally. It was a bit hard to tell in some places but we logged the blasters that had been fired by their EM traces. So I say twenty-four.”
“Plus Perrive and our friend in the apartment block,” Etain said.
“Definitely twenty-six.” Jusik was subdued. “I felt them.”
“Okay, Shiny Boys twenty-six, Hut’uune nil,” Corr said. He was picking up Mando’ a fast. “I call that a home win.”
Jusik stood staring into the inside of his helmet as he held it in his hands. “No witnesses left standing. Just a nasty argument between crime gangs.”
“You’ll never get any public praise for this,” Skirata said. “But let me tell you now that every last one of you made me a proud man.” He looked down at the strill, limping on one of its six legs as it circled Vau, grumbling deep in its throat. “Even you, Mird, you stinking heap of drool.”
The strill looked up at Etain and made a musical warbling sound. She’d wrapped one arm around Darman’s waist, head resting on his chest plate with her eyes closed, but she opened them and watched Mird.
“Mird likes you,” Vau said. “You took care of it and let it have its kill.”
Fi gave Darman a weary slap on the back. “She has a way with dumb animals, ner vod.”
An exhausted silence settled on the team. The droids labored around them, carrying girders, stacking duraplast sheets, oblivious. If anyone thought wild celebrations followed operations like this, they were wrong. The instant elation of seeing a vessel go up in flames or an enemy drop from a well-placed shot was very short-lived. The hyperalertness of adrenaline lingered for a while, and then was swallowed up quickly by fatigue and a sense of … of void, of odd purposelessness, of looking for the next task.