[Republic Commando] - 03(5)
They do say it s the quiet ones that want watching…
Darman tried to concentrate on Gaftikar. It looked like. nice place even at night. It wasn’t a red, dusty wasteland like Geonosis, or a freezing wilderness like Fest. From the height, the city of Eyat was a mosaic of illuminated parkland and busy, straight roads fringed by regularly spaced house speckled with gold light. A river wandered through the landscape, visible as a black glittering ribbon. It looked like the kind of place where people had normal lives and enjoyed themselves. It didn’t look like enemy territory at all.
Darman cut into Fi’s personal circuit to speak but was instantly deafened by the volume of the glimmik music. That was how Fi dealt with things: a thick wall of noise and chatter to shut out the next moment. Darman cut out of the circuit again.
The loadmaster lowered his visor and placed his hand over the control panel. “Okay, remember-just let yourselves drop like a normal parasail jump for a few seconds, then activate the jets. Don’t power out. Opening in five … four..
“I’d rather know if the jet pack didn’t work when I still had my boots on the deck,” Fi said.
“… two … and … go.”
The cargo doors slid back and a fierce blast of air peppered dust against Darman’s visor. The charts were over thick forest now; the loadmaster had one hand on the cargo release and his head turned toward the holochart projected on the control panel. It showed open land a few kilometers ahead. When Conveyor overflew it, the open space turned out to be short, dry grass. It showed up clearly in Darman’s night-vision filter.
“Kit away,” said the loadmaster, releasing the static lines The crates slipped off the ramp one by one and glided toward the land on extraction parasails that looked like exotic white blooms opening in the night. The last container dwindled to a speck beneath them, hitting the grass in a plume of dust
The ship climbed a little, and the ramp raised to a flat platform. “This is your stop, Omega. Stay safe, okay?”
Darman, like all the commandos, had done plenty of free-fall jumps. He couldn’t even recall how many, but he still felt a brief burst of adrenaline as he watched Atin walk calmly off the end of the ramp and vanish. Darman followed him, gripping his DC-17 flat against his chest on its sling.
One, two, three, four paces, and then five-on five, there was nothing beneath the soles of his boots. He fell and his stomach seemed to collide with his lungs, forcing the breath out of them for a heartbeat. He hit the jet-pack power button on his harness on the count of three. The wings ejected from their housing: the motor kicked in. He wasn’t falling any longer. He was flying, with the faint vibration of the jets making his sinuses itch. The green-lit image of Gaftikar’s heathland spread beneath him, and when he turned his head he could see the faint heat profile from Atin’s jets. Conveyor was gone. The crate had a lot more acceleration than he’d thought.
“Look, Ma,” said Fi’s disembodied voice on the secure channel. “No hands.”
“You haven’t got a ma,” said Darman.
“Maybe a nice old lady will adopt me. I’m very lovable.”
Darman couldn’t see the others now, only their viewpoint icons on his helmet’s HUD. The squad split up, each man following a different flight path to the RV point, dropping as low as they could and hugging the contours of the land. The plan was to hit the ground running-literally-as soon as the terrain changed to woods they could use for cover. Darman didn’t make quite the clean landing he’d expected. He somersaulted on the tip of one wing, coming to rest in low scrubby bushes.
Niner must have seen his HUD icon. “Can’t you ever land on your feet, Dar?”
“Osik.” Darman was more embarrassed than hurt. At least he hadn’t set fire to the vegetation: the jets shut off on impact. He scrambled to his feet and reoriented himself. “I’m okay.”
He couldn’t tell where Fi and Atin were from the view in their HUD icons. But he could see they were moving fast and their transponders were converging on the RV coordinates, blue squares edging toward a yellow cross superimposed on a chart of the drop zone. He realized he still had fifty meters to run with the jet pack, wings spread like an in sect.
“All clear.” Niner grunted as if he was struggling out of his harness. “Short-range comms only from now on, Omega Now where…”
“Y’know, on Urun Five, the locals would stick you on top of a festival tree as a decoration.”
An unfamiliar voice cut into Darman’s comm circuit. Now he could see a shape in his night vision, a faint outline that didn’t resolve into a man until he was right on top of it. He could see who it was now, a man who looked pretty much like himself except that, like all the Nulls, he was broader and heavier. The Kaminoans had played around with the Fett genome a little too much at first. Darman wondered how many other experiments they tried before they got the mix right.