It wasn’t the time to worry about that. Ordo hadn’t yet met a problem he couldn’t solve or a situation he couldn’t survive. Aay’han pushed through the shattered surface, and even at low speed it seemed like crashing into solid rock. For a moment Ordo thought he’d got it badly wrong, but the slow ice impact wasn’t anywhere near as violent as Weapons fire, and the shield held. Chunks scraped and screeched as she passed through the slush layer, and then everything went quiet in clear twilight water. They were in the lake itself. Now he had to align the air lock with Vau’s position.
“You knew the hull would take that, right, Ord’ika? Skirata jumped out of the copilot’s seat and pulled off his helmet. He looked shaken.
“Of course I did. Well, ninety percent sure.”
“Okay, close enough. Let’s do some scanning.”
The air lock was nearly two meters in diameter. Ordo aligned it at Vau’s rough position and used the penetrating sensors to look for a dense mass. Skirata went into the starboard cargo bay with his metal scanner and opened the inner air lock hatch. The warning light lit up on the console, and Skirata’s voice crackled over the ship’s intercom.
“Big immobile lump of durasteel and beskar about six meters in,” he said. “Good old Mandalorian iron. You can’t beat the stuff. That’s Vau all right.”
Six meters: that was a pretty thin wall between the tunnel and the water. At least there was no worm activity, but there was no way of knowing if the shock wave from the laser round would attract them. “Let me reposition. I’m a meter off.”
“I can’t tell if he’s alive.”
“Okay, we’ve got to cut through that ice now.”
“Heat it,” Skirata said.
“We can vent the meltwater through the tanks.”
“About eighty cubic meters. Maybe less.”
“Okay.” Ordo hiked the thermostat on the environmental controls: they needed to raise the temperature of the exposed ice on the other side of the air lock any way they could. “Maybe a combination of heat and cutting.”
“And Mygeeto TC wants us out of here in … about an hour and a half.”
Ordo extended the outer docking ring until he felt it embed in the lake wall. “Come out of the air lock, Kal’buir. I need to test for leaks. Clear?”
“Clear. I’m going to see what we’ve got in the tool locker.”
“Okay, closing inner air lock.” The status light changed to green again. He put Aay’han on autohelm to hold her steady against the ice wall. “Opening outer hatch.”
The sensors showed no leaks. When Ordo maneuvered the safety cam inside the air lock chamber, he saw a smooth glassy disc of dirty ice. A few meters on the other side of that lay Walon Vau. If they got it wrong while they tried to cut through the wall, the water would flood in and sink Aay’han. It was a lot of trouble to go to for a few credits and a man both of them disliked.
On too many occasions, Ordo had wished Vau dead. Now he found himself willing the chakaar to stay alive.
Special Operations Brigade HQ, Coruscant, General Arligan Zey’s office, 471 days after Geonosis
Sev thought it was just as well he had a reputation for being uncommunicative. General Zey walked up and down the short line of four commandos as if he was doing an inspection, pausing occasionally to stare at a detail of their armor or look into their eyes.
If the Jedi thought that would psych out Delta Squad, he’d have a long, long walk ahead of him.
Sev stared straight ahead, hands clasped behind his back, boots planted firmly at shoulder width. In his peripheral vision, General Jusik sat on a table swinging his legs. His disheveled Padawan image didn’t fool anyone. Sev had been on enough operations with him to know that he could make Scorch look overcautious. Zey’s ARC trooper aide, Captain Maze, prowled the room as if he wasn’t listening to the debriefing. On balance, Sev preferred the Null ARCs. They understood in a way that the men trained by Fett simply didn’t.
Zey came to a halt in front of Boss and stood with his nose almost touching his. “I’m not stupid,” he said quietly. “Am I, Sergeant?”
“Sir, no sir!” Boss barked.
“Want to tell me what went wrong with your exfiltration?”
“Sir, we encountered some resistance and were forced to exit the complex via an unreconnoitered passage, sir.”
Sev felt for Boss. They’d all made the decision to stick with Vau, but Boss was… the boss. So he got it in the neck. Sev found the occasional trips back to HQ unsettling. He wanted to be back out in the field with just his brothers for company, because Coruscant wasn’t their world, and he’d already had enough of it.