“Dar-“
“Possible contact, first walkway level, my left of the bank entrance .
. .”
Fi adjusted his scope and tracked right. It was a boy he’d seen before: human, very short scrubby light hair, gangly. He was still hanging around the plaza. If he was a Sep, he was a disgracefully amateurish one. They watched for a few minutes, and then a young girl in a bright yellow tunic raced up to the boy and flung her arms around him. They kissed enthusiastically, drawing glances from passersby.
“I think he knows her,” Fi said. He felt his face burn. It bothered him and he looked away.
“Well, that’s just you and Niner left on the shelf now that your brothers are spoken for,” Scorch said.
There was a pause. Darman cut in. “You got a point to make, ner vod?”
“I think it’s kind of encouraging.” Scorch chuckled. “Atin gets a cute Twi’lek, Dar gets his very own general-“
“-and Scorch gets a thick ear if he doesn’t shut it right now”
The comlink was suddenly silent except for the occasional sound of swallowing. Darman wasn’t in a joking mood when it came to Etain. He never had been, not even on Qiilura, when there hadn’t been anything going on between them.
Why is this hurting so much? Why do I feel I’ve been cheated?
Kal’buir, why didn’t you prepare me for this?
It was too distracting. Fi shut his eyes for a few moments and went into the sequence he had learned to center himself when the battlefield pressed in on him: controlled breathing, concentrating on nothing except the next inhalation, ignoring everything that wasn’t of the next moment. It took a while. He shut out the world.
Then he found that he had his eyes open without even realizing and he was simply following movement on the plaza below through the breathtakingly accurate scope of the Verpine rifle.
“Now, do we get the best kit or what?” he said, becoming the confident man he wanted to be again. “Name me another army where you get handcrafted Verps to play with.”
“The Verpine army,” Scorch said.
“Do they have an army?”
“Do they need one?”
Silence descended again. At 1150 Sev cut into the comlink circuit. “Stand by. Kal’s moving into position.” Skirata wandered into the plaza from the direction of the Senate with Jusik one on side and an excited Lord Mirdalan straining on a leash on the other. He was doing a credible job of looking as if the strill were his constant companion. The animal seemed remarkably content with him, given the number of times Skirata had driven it off or thrown his knife at it over the years. Maybe the riot of strange new scents had thrilled the strill enough that it didn’t much care that the man who usually shouted at it was holding the leash. Fi watched as they took up a position near the door, sitting down on an ornate durasteel seat shaped like a bow.
Skirata’s voice came over the comlink circuit.
“How’s my boys?”
“Cramp, Sarge,” Darman said. “And Fi’s dribbling over your Verpine.”
“He can clean it, then. Ready?”
“Ready.”
At 1159 a human male in his forties-green casual tunic, brown pants, collar-length brown hair, beard, tall, lean build-walked toward Skirata and Jusik in a purposeful line. Fi tracked him.
“Got him, Fi,” Darman said. If anything went wrong, the man would be dead in a fraction of a second from a silent high-kinetic round in his back.
“Escort,” Sev said. “Looks like three … no, four. Three male, one female, all human … one male twenty meters south of Darman. Spread out but all moving toward Skirata.”
“Got him.”
“Got the female,” Scorch said.
“You sure they’re with the Beard?”
“Yeah, check their eyeline, Fi. They’re watching him, nothing else. They’re pretty cool about it but they’re obviously not professionals. They shouldn’t even be looking his way.”
Etain’s voice cut in. “There’s another female approaching slowly on the Senate side of the bench. I’m moving in behind her so you can spot her.”
Sev cut in. “Any more?”
“I can only sense four others plus the man approaching Kal.”
“Aww, look. They’ve taken up positions to block the main pedestrian routes off the plaza. Thank you! I love a target that identifies itself.”
“I hope this doesn’t turn into a shooting match,” Scorch said. “Too many civvies.”
“I can get a clear shot,” Sev said. “And I can take at least three out from here. Relax. You just worry about tagging ‘em.”
Tagging. Would they feel it?