“Su’cuy, Omega. How’s it going?”
“Ready to roll, sir.”
“Sergeant, latest intel we have is that the suspect vessel left Cularin bound for Denon and is headed for your position. The bad news is that it appears to be traveling with a couple of legit vessels as a smokescreen. Commercial freight is getting very edgy about piracy so they’re forming up into convoys now.”
“We can weed out the target,” said Niner.
“It would be very awkward if you decompressed a civilian freighter at the moment. It’ll be the Gizer L-six.”
“Understood.”
“And we need the di’kute alive. No slotting, no disintegration, no accidents.”
“Not even a good slap?” asked Fi.
“Use the PEP laser and keep it nonlethal if you can. Somebody’s very keen to have a frank chat with them.” Ordo paused, head tilted down for a second. “Vau’s back.”
Fi couldn’t stop himself from glancing at Atin and noted that Darman had done the same. Atin had his chin tucked into the padded rim of his chest plate and was idly scratching the scar that ran from just under his right eye and across his mouth to the left side of his jaw. It was a thin white line now, a faint memory of the raw red welt it had been when Fi first saw him: and Fi suddenly realized something he hadn’t worked out before.
I think I know how he got that.
Atin was from Sergeant Walon Vau’s training company, not Skirata’s. And over the months, as casualties mounted and more partial squads were regrouped with men from other companies, they all swapped stories. The Vau stories didn’t get a laugh at all.
“You okay, ner vod?”
“Fine,” Atin said. He looked up, jaw set. “So how many bandits are we going to not slot, disintegrate, or speak harshly to, then, Captain?”
“Five, best intel says,” said Ordo.
“We’ll assume ten then,” said Niner.
Ordo paused for a moment as if he thought Niner might be resorting to sarcasm. Fi could see it in the way his shoulders braced. He was a knife-edge kind of man, Ordo. But Niner was simply in literal mode, as he tended to be when things were getting intense. He always wanted to err on the side of caution.
Ordo obviously knew that: he didn’t bite. “By the way, General Tur-Mukan is operating around the Bothan sector, and appears to be coping, according to Commander Gett,” he said. “And she’s still packing the cone rifle, so your lesson wasn’t wasted.”
“Beats swinging the shiny stick,” Fi said, winking at Darman. “It’d be fun to see her again, eh, Dar?”
Darman smiled enigmatically. Atin was staring in slight defocus at the bulkhead, jaw clenched. Fi thought it was high time the bad guys dropped out of hyperspace and took their minds off the individual things that were troubling them, which included his stomach.
“Ordo out,” the blue holo said, and Niner’s glove held nothing but air again.
Darman prepped his helmet, resetting the HUD with a prod of his finger. “Poor Ord’ika.” He called him by the affectionate nickname Skirata used in private, a kid’s name, Little Ordo. In public, it was strictly Captain and Sergeant. And you could call your brother vod’ika in the Mandalorian way, but nobody else could, and never in front of strangers.
“Who’d want to be doing the filing when the rest of your batch are off saving the galaxy?”
“Well, I hear Kom’rk is out at Utapau, and Jaing’s cannoned up and gone hiking with extreme prejudice in the Bakura sector,” said Fi.
“Fierfek.”
“Knowing him, he’s doing it for the fun of it. And as for Mereel—well, why has Kal sent him out to Kamino?”
Niner clicked irritably again. “Anyone else you want to discuss classified intel with, Fi’?”
“Sorry, Sarge.”
The cabin was silent once more. Fi slid his helmet back on, sealed the collar, and concentrated on the artificial horizon of his HUD to convince his stomach which way was up. The Mark III Katarn armor now had more enhancements and was rated blaster-resistant up to light cannon rounds. Every op was full of new surprises from GAR Procurement-like a birthday, according to Skirata, although Fi, like all his brothers, had never celebrated one.
Now they even had a nonlethal pulsed energy projectile, or PEP, for the DC-17 that didn’t exactly kill the targets, but certainly made their eyes water. It was police riot control kit, a deuterium fluoride laser: it would probably just annoy a Wookiee, but it sorted out humanoids in short order.
Fi focused on the icons in the frame of his HUD and blinked one into action, sending chilled air across his face. That soothed his nausea. Then he isolated his audio channel and accessed a articularly thumping piece of glimmik music.