[Republic Commando] - 03(9)
“I’ll give you three more days lo report lo the landing area with your families, Birhan.” Etain wanted to look a little more commanding, but she was small, skinny, and uncomfortably pregnant: the hands-on-hips stance wasn’t going lo work. She put one hand casually on her lightsaber hilt instead, and summoned up a little Force help lo press insistently on a few minds around Birhan. I mean this. I won’t back down. “If you don’t comply, I will order my troops to remove you by any means necessary.”
Etain stood waiting for the crowd to break up. They’d argue, complain, wait until the last moment, and then cave in. Two thousand of them: they knew they couldn’t resist several dozen well-trained, well-armed troopers, let alone a whole company of them. That was the remnant of the garrison. They were keen to finish the job and rejoin their battalion, the 35th Infantry, ft was one of those things Etain found most touching about these soldiers: they didn’t want to be doing what they called a “cushy” job while their brothers were fighting on the front line.
She knew the feeling all too well.
Birhan and the rest of the farmers paused for a few moments, meters from the line of troopers, and then turned and trudged away in the direction of Imbraani, silent and sullen. Jinart sat watching them like one of those black marble statues on the Shir Bank building in Coruscant.
Level cocked his head. “I don’t think they’re going to go quietly, ma’am. It might get unpleasant.”
“It’s easier to charge battle droids than civilians. If it does, we disarm them and remove them bodily.”
“Disarming can be the rough bit.”
Yes, it was quicker and simpler to kill. Etain didn’t enjoy the amoral pragmatism that always overtook her lately. As she lost her focus in the unbroken carpet of snow ahead of her, she thought the black specks that began to appear in her field of vision were her eyes playing the usual tricks, just cells floating in the fluid. Then they grew larger. The white blanket bulged and suddenly shapes began forming, moving, resolving into a dozen or so glossy black creatures exactly like Jinart.
They were Gurlanins, proving that they could be anywhere, undetected. Etain shuddered. They trotted after the farmers, who seemed oblivious to them until someone turned around and let out a shout of surprise. Then the whole crowd turned, panicking as if they were being stalked. The Gurlanins seemed to melt into the snow again, flattening instantly into gleaming black pools that looked like voids and then merging perfectly with the white landscape. They’d vanished from sight. Several farmers were clutching their rifles, aiming randomly, but they didn’t open fire. They didn’t have a target.
It was a clear threat. You can’t see us, and we ‘II come for you in the end. Jinart had once shown what that meant when she’d taken revenge on a family of informers. Gurlanins were predators, intelligent and powerful.
“You can’t feel them in the Force, can you, ma’am?” Levet whispered. One of the clone troopers seemed to be checking his rifle’s optics, clearly annoyed that he hadn’t spotted the Gurlanins with the wide range of sensors in both the weapon and his helmet “At least we’re working with the same limitations for a change.”
“No, I can’t detect them unless they let me.” Etain had once mistaken the telepathic creatures for Force-users, feeling their presence tingling in her veins, but they could vanish completely to every sense when they chose-silent, invisible, without thermal profile, beyond the reach of sonar … and the Force. It still alarmed her. “Perfect spies.”
Levet gestured to one of the troopers, and the platoon fanned out beyond the perimeter fence. “Perfect saboteurs.”
General Zey thought so, too. So did the Senate Security Council. Gurlanins were on Coruscant, in the heart of the Republic’s intelligence machine, maybe in a hundred or even a thousand places where they couldn’t be seen, and where they could do immense damage. If the Republic didn’t honor its deal with them sooner rather than later, they could-and would-throw a huge hydrospanner in the works, and no-body would see it corning.
“I’m new to this,” Etain said. “Why do we seem to create enemies for ourselves? Recruiting spies and then alienating them? Isn’t that like handing someone your rifle and turning your back on them?”
“I suppose I’m new to this, too,” said Levet. They headed back lo the headquarters building. Poor man: he’d only seen a dozen years of life, and all he’d ever known was combat. “I stay away from policy. All I can do is handle what comes down the pike at us.”