[Republic Commando] - 03(44)
He kept his voice at subauditory level, letting the sensors on his throat transmit on the comlink. “I’m only picking up one body in there, At’ika.”
“Shame you’re not a Jedi.”
“Yeah … maybe they should have created Force-sensitive clones, and then we could have ditched half the kit.”
“Okay. Knock-knock time…”
Darman stood to one side of the doors, hand discreetly on his blaster, and Atin pressed the bell.
Silence.
They waited. The sensor showed someone moving to one side of the door, but there was no noise. Sull was a careful man: an ARC trooper couldn’t be anything else. Then the doors parted.
Sull obviously didn’t have a security holocam installed. For a split second he stood side-on to the entrance, his face all wide-eyed shock, then his arm came up and Darman spun away instinctively as a blaster bolt shaved his cheek. Atin cannoned past him with a sickening thwack of bone. Sull fell back with Atin on top of him and Darman hit the door controls. For the next few moments they grappled, trying to get Sull onto his stomach to pin his arms, but the ARC lived up to his reputation, bringing his knee up hard in Atin’s groin and landing a fist in Darman’s face. Eventually they got him facedown and Darman tried the old restraining trick of hooking two fingers into Sull’s nostrils and jerking back hard. It must have hurt him plenty, but not half as much as he hurt Darman when the commando loosened his grip and Sull sank his teeth hard into his hand.
Demoralizing, painful, and causes serious infection. That was what Skirata said about human bites. Darman roared with pain and brought his fist down on the back of the ARC’s head. Atin pounced again and got him in a headlock with his knee in his back.
“Right,” Atin panted. He had the tip of his vibroblade pressed into the hollow at the base of Sull’s skull. “Unless you want this right through your spinal cord, ner vod, pack it in and listen.”
“Do it, then,” Sull said. “I’d rather die. They sent you to kill me, didn’t they? Go on. Finish me off, if you’ve got the guts.”
Darman, blood welling from his bite marks, got a plastoid tie around Sull’s wrists and knelt back to nurse his throbbing hand. Bacta. Clean the wound. What was he going on about, they sent you to kill me?
“We’re definitely going to have to get a speeder to move him, Dar, rent one or something,” Atin said. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Niner’s voice cut in on the comlink. “Sitrep, Omega …”
“What do you mean, Sull?” Darman asked. “What do you mean, they sent us? Who’s they!”
“Who are you?”
“RC one-one-three-six, Darman, Omega Squad. We thought you were MIA. You are Alpha-Thirty, right?”
“Get knotted,” Sull said. “Just get it over with.”
Atin tied the ARC’S ankles with plastoid tape and got to his feet. “Well, I think you need a chat with a colleague of ours …”
Darman held out his datapad. “Speeder rental, At’ika. I made a note. You get the transport, I stay here.”
“Okay, you can keep Captain Charisma quiet for a while.”
“Omega…” Niner sounded at the limit of his patience. “What the shab happened?”
“Alpha-Thirty thinks we’re going to kill him, Sarge. We’re bringing him back to base until we get this sorted.”
“Moron.” Sull sounded as defiant as ever. “You’ve got no idea, have you?”
“What?”
“You’re dead men.”
He didn’t say it like a threat. Sull said it like Skirata did.
That was what Skirata used to call them back in training: his dead men. It was all part of his unconvincing veneer of abuse, because the whole company knew Sergeant Kal would give them his last drop of blood, but the words now made Darman shudder.
“We all are, sooner or later,” he said.
It was sooner for clones than most.
Chapter 5
Order 4: In the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being incapacitated, overall CAR command shall fall to the vice chair of the Senate until a successor is appointed or alternative authority identified as outlined in Section 6 (iv).
Order 5: In the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being declared unfit to issue orders, as defined in Section 6 (ii), the chief of the defense staff shall assume GAR command and form a strategic cell of senior officers (see page 1173, para 4) until a successor is appointed or alternative authority identified.
-From Contingency Orders for the Grand Army of the Republic: Order Initiation, Orders 1 Through 150, GAR document CO(CL) 56-95
GAR landing strip, Teklet, Qiilura, 473 days after Geonosis