And I ‘m pregnant. Am I crazy? I’m risking my child’s life. It’s not mine to risk.
But the AT-TE was already in action, pounding the southern position at the other end of the small valley with its can-non. It fell like a holovid was playing in the background, something utterly divorced from what was happening on the minefield. And il was: there was nolhing il could do for them other than suppress fire. She was in a minefield surrounded by stranded men, some of them bleeding to death.
It was the sound that lipped her over the edge. They said wounded men cried for their mothers, but troopers had no mothers; they didn’t even have a father figure like Skirata. They called for their brothers.
She knew now because one was doing just that. He was calling for Bek, or at least it sounded like that. Bek wasn’t responding. Maybe Bek was one of the dead.
It broke her heart, and her last fragile ties to the Jedi.
She looked over her shoulder: Level was edging his way through the minefield. She didn’t just try to influence his mind. She put all her effort into making him slop dead. He hesitated for a moment, but kept coming.
“You can’t detect these mines with your sensors, Levet. Don’t try.” She waved him back. “I can sense what you can’t. I’m okay. Don’t do this.”
Something caught her peripheral vision, a flicker of movement, nothing more. She stared, and then the snow seemed to ripple like an oil-covered sea. Shapes emerged from it, white Gurlanin shapes, and a dozen or more crept into the minefield.
Gurlanins could sense variations in soil density. Of course. Jinart had located gdan tunnels for her during Omega’s first mission, so they could detect buried trip mines. One of the Gurlanins tiptoed over to her.
“Jinart,” Etain whispered. “Go careful…”
“Valaqil,” said the Gurlanin. It was Jinart’s consort, once Zey’s personal spy. “Can’t you even tell us apart?”
“I can’t even see you half the time.”
“We’ll mark a clear path so you can rescue your wounded. I’ll lead your other men out of here.”
“I owe you.”
“Yes, you do, Jedi, and if anything happens to you then we may pay the price, so shut up and follow me.”
“I can sense where the mines are. I’m okay.”
“Pity you didn’t sense they were there before you sent your men in.”
It was brutally true. Etain’s moment of qualified relief was destroyed by shame and guilt. This was her fault. She’d caused these troopers’ deaths through her own incompetence, and not military incompetence at that: she hadn’t used her own Force-senses well enough.
But she didn’t have the luxury of self-pity now. She called to the stranded troops who could still walk, unsure if the anti-droid mines had emitted EM pulses, too. “Can you still hear me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Follow the Gurlanins. Walk in their footprints. They can lead you out.”
It was going to be harder moving the wounded men, but she’d do it. She wasn’t going to leave a single man behind dead or alive.
Levet clicked back into her comlink circuit. “Ma’am, a larty will be here in a few minutes. We’ll winch them clear. Back out of there…please.”
“What about the downdraft? Might detonate some more devices.”
“I have orders, ma’am. My general’s safety comes first.”
“No, it doesn “t.” Etain thought again about her child, but his father was one of these men. None of their lives could count for less than hers, or there was no meaning to having this baby. “I’m a Jedi. I can do this.”
There was one man she could reach easily. He was ten meters away, not moving, but she sensed he was alive. His right leg was shredded below the knee. Her Force-sense of danger was fully alert now, and when she looked at the snow, churned up with debris and blood, she could see where the mines were, like heat haze in her field of vision. She placed her boots carefully. If she could get a hold on him. lifting him with Force assistance would be relatively easy.
There was a meter-wide safe area she could see. Keeping her balance would be a problem, but if she could get him across her shoulders, she could lift him. She’d watched Dar-man lift Atin by rolling on him first, but she didn’t have enough safe space to do that. All she could do was kneel-carefully, one foot a hand span from a haze that indicated a mine-and ease her head and shoulders under his body.
He made a sound as the air was pushed from his lungs, but he wasn’t conscious; he’d lost too much blood. She was stuck now, the full weight of him across her back, and as she shuffled her legs into a kneeling position she nearly rolled him out of the safe zone. It took a little more maneuvering to get where she could straighten up and try the movement that needed a lot of help from the Force-to stand with an eighty-kilo man across her back.