[Republic Commando] - 02(32)

You couldn’t defend yourself against cannon with a DC-17, not in a sealed and crippled section of a slowly drifting ship. Fi hadn’t found himself helpless for a long time. He knew he wasn’t going to handle it well.

Darman looked up suddenly. He hadn’t reacted at all to the grim news until then. He turned to face Fi, just a ghostly blue T-shaped light on the other side of the cockpit.

“I don’t want to throw any more cold water on this party,” he said. “But has anyone thought through the logical sequence of this extraction? Because I bet Delta has …”

RAS Fearless, time to target: twenty minutes

Commander Gett leaned over the ops room trooper, the one he called Peewo.

It had taken Etain a while to realize that he called all the men who took watches at that console Peewo; it was simply an acronym for “principal weapons officer.” The man’s name was actually Tenn.

Tenn’s face was blank with total concentration, thrown into sharp relief by the yellow light from the screens in front of him.

“There it is,” he said.

The Separatist ship-appearing on the tracking screen as a visibly shifting red pulse-was now within their scanning range. Omega’s wasn’t, although Tenn had programmed in a blue marker that corresponded with their last position and projected drift

“How many minutes are we still behind them?” Etain asked.

If Tenn didn’t like having a commander and a general breathing down his neck, he showed no sign of it. Etain admired his ability to ignore distractions, even without a little Force help from her. He didn’t seem to need it. “Five, maybe four if the velocities hold constant.”

“Now, what’s that?” Gett said.

A smaller target had appeared on the screen, first red, then blue, then flashing red with a cursor saying UNCONFIRMED.

“Sep drive profile, but the scan is probably detecting a GAR encrypted transponder,” Tenn said. “I think we can guess who’s in the driver’s seat there.”

“Wasn’t Delta carrying out a rummage of Prosecutor?” Gett asked.

“I gather they had expected visitors.”

“Doesn’t Delta file full contact reports?” Etain interrupted.

“No more detail than they have to, I understand,” Gett said. “Silent ops. I think they get out of the habit of talking to the regular forces side of things. Perhaps General Jusik might have a word with them.”

Delta, like Omega, was part of Jusik’s battalion, Zero Five Commando, which was one of ten in the Special Operations Brigade commanded by Etain’s former Master, Arligan Zey. A year before, there had been two brigades; casualties had slashed their strength in half.

And like all the commando squads, Delta was utterly self-reliant and operated largely without command, merely receiving intelligence support and a broad objective. It was the kind of command that was ideal for a very smart but inexperienced general. And there was no other way for one Jedi to run five hundred special forces men: clones led clones, as they did in the regular GAR. So Delta did more or less as they pleased within the overall battle plan. Fortunately, it seemed to please them to be blisteringly efficient, a quality Etain noted and respected in every clone soldier she met.

“Get me a link to them, Commander,” she said. “I need to talk to them. As do you, I have no idea how they’re going to play this.”

Gett just raised his eyebrows and turned to the signals officer to request a secure link via Fleet. It took thirty seconds. They were eighteen minutes to target. Time was running out. Tenn moved his seat a little so Gett could place the hololink transmitter on the console where they could see both the link and the tracking screen.

“Delta, this is General Tur-Mukan, Fearless.”

The image that shimmered before her showed one man in a familiar suit of Katarn armor, squatting with a DC-17 across his thighs. The blue light distorted natural color, but the dark patches on his armor suggested red or orange identity markings.

“RC-one-one-three-eight, General, receiving.”

It was time for names. “You’re Boss.”

“Yes, General, Boss. Our ETA is fourteen to fifteen minutes.”

“You don’t have any armament, do you?”

“No, and we’re aware that there’s another Sep ship right up our shebs that does.” Boss appeared to check himself. “Apologies for the language, General. But you’re the ones carrying the cannon.”

“Boss, how do you plan to execute this?”

“Get there first, get them out fast, and bug out even faster. That usually works pretty well.”

She bristled, but she knew that wasn’t fair to him. “Could you be more specific?”