Star Wars - [Republic Commando 01] - Hard Contact (by Karen Traviss)

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

PROLOGUE

By KAREN TRAVISS

Copyrights

A CLONE WARS NOVEL

KAREN TRAVISS

BALLANTINE BOOKS - NEW YORK

By KAREN TRAVISS

CITY OF PEARL

CROSSING THE LINE

STAR WARSREPUBLIC COMMANDO: HARD CONTACT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Long ago, in a cinema far away, a film critic watched and reviewed a brand-new movie calledStar

Wars. If she’d known she was going to end up writing this book, she’d have taken more notes. . . so my

thanks go to editors Shelly Shapiro (Del Rey), Keith Clayton (Del Rey), and Sue Rostoni (Lucasfilm) for

their wise advice; to the manyStar Wars fans who made me welcome in their world; and especially to

Ryan Kaufman at LucasArts—Star Warsoracle, polymath, wit, and all-around good bloke, who gave

generously of his time and knowledge, and never ran out of patience when I asked for the umpteenth

time, “Yes, but does the armor have to be white?” It was the best of times, folks. Thanks.

PROLOGUE

Okay, this is how it happened.

It’s pitch black below and we’re fast-roping into the crevasse,too fast: I can feel the impact in my back

teeth when I land. I’m first down and I flood the chamber with my helmet spot-lamp.

There’s a triple-sealed blast door between us and the Geonosians and I haven’t got time to calculate the

charge needed to blow it. A lot, then.P for plenty, like I was taught. Stick the thermal tape around the

edges and push in the detonator. Easier said than done: the alloy door’s covered with crud.

Delta Squad’s CO gets on the helmet comlink. “You having a party down there, Theta?”

“Can’t rush an artist. . .”

“You want to tell that to the spider droids?”

“Patience, Delta.”Come on, come on. Stick to the metal, will you? “Nearly there.”

“Alot of spider droids. . .”

“I hear you, Delta.”

“In your own time. No pressure. None at all. . .”

“Clear!”

We flatten ourselves against the cavern walls. It’s all white light and painful noise and flying dust for a

fraction of a second. When we can see again, the doors are blown inward, ripped apart, billowing

smoke. “Delta Squads—clear to enter.Take take take.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Delta Squad hits the ground and they’re straight in, firing, while we stand

back and cover their six. It’s a warren of tunnels down here. If we’re not careful, something could jump

us from any direction.

My helmet’s supposed to protect against high decibels, but war is noisy.Really noisy. I can’t hear my

helmet comlink through theomph-omph-omph of the Geonosians’ sonic rounds and our own blasterfire.

I can hear anti-armor going off, too.Fierfek, I can feel it through my boots.

Movement catches my eye up ahead, and then it’s gone. I’m looking up through the DC-17’s scope,

checking that it was just my imagination, and Taler gestures toward another of the five tunnels facing us.

“Darman, take that E-Web and hold this position.” He beckons Vin and Jay and they move almost

back-to-back toward the mouth of the tunnel, checking to all sides.

And then I look up, overhead.

There’s more Geonosians around than we thought. Alot more. I take down two above me and then

more come out of the tunnel to the left so I open fire with the repeating blaster, nice and early, because if

I let them get too close the blast will fry me as well.

Even so, it’s knocking me back like a trip-hammer.

“Taler, Darman here, over.” I can’t see him. I can’t see any of them, but I can hear rapid fire. “Taler,

Darman here, you receiving me, over?”

Not so much silence as an absence of a familiar voice. Then a few fragmented, crackling shouts of “. . .

down! Man down here!”

Who? Who’s down? “Taler? Vin? Jay? You receiving, over?”

I’ve lost contact with my squad.

It’s the last time I see them.

SCRAMBLE LINE ENCRYPTED

STAND BY STAND BY

GEONOSIS FORWARD CONTROL TO FLEET SUPPORT, ORD MANTELL.

PREPARE TO RECEIVE CASEVAC TRANSPORT. MED TRIAGE TEAM ESTIMATE

SERIOUS INJURIES, TWELVE THOUSAND, REPEAT TWELVE THOUSAND. WALKING

WOUNDED EIGHT THOUSAND, REPEAT EIGHT THOUSAND. ETA TEN HOURS.

LOGISTICS PRIORITY FOR BACTA TANK SUPPORT TEAMS.

PREP FOR SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND COMBAT-FIT TROOPS, REPEAT SEVENTY-TWO

THOUSAND, PENDING REDEPLOYMENT. PRIORITY WEAPONS SUPPORT FOR

COMMANDO UNITS.

THAT IS ALL. OUT.

Republic assault shipImplacable: inbound for extraction from Geonosis. Stand by.

Republic Commando 1136 studied every face in line waiting to board the gunships.

Some were helmeted, and some were not, but—one way or another—they all had his face. And they

were all strangers.

“Move it,” the loadmaster shouted, gesturing side-to-side with one outstretched arm. “Come on, shift it,

people—fast as you can.” The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and troopers embarked, some

turning to pull comrades inboard so the ships could lift again quickly. There was no reason to scramble

for it. They’d done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they’d prepared

for. This wasn’t a retreat. They’d grabbed their first victory.

The gunships’ downdraft kicked the red Geonosian soil into the air. RC-1136—Darman—took off his

helmet and ran his gauntlet carefully across the pale gray dome, wiping away the dust and noting a few

scrapes and burn marks.

The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very, very few outsiders whom Darman had ever seen

working with the Grand Army, a short, wrinkled Duros with a temper to match. “Are you embarking or

what?”

Darman continued wiping his helmet. “I’m waiting for my mates,” he said.

“You shift your shiny silver backsidenow,” the loadmaster said irritably. “I got a schedule.”

Darman carefully brought up his knuckle plate just under the loadmasters’s chin, and held it there. He

didn’t need to eject the vibroblade and he didn’t need to say a word. He’d made his point.

“Well, whenever you’re ready, sir,” the Duros said, stepping back to chivy clone troopers instead. It

wasn’t a great idea to upset a commando, especially not one coming down from the adrenaline high of

combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Darman knew that there was no point in waiting any

longer. They hadn’t called in. Maybe they had comlink failures. Maybe they had made it onto another

gunship.

It was the first time in his artificially short life that Darman hadn’t been able to reach out and touch the

men he had been raised with.

He waited half a standard hour more anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines of

troopers became shorter. Eventually there was nobody standing on the desert plain but him, the Duros

loadmaster, and half a dozen clone troopers. It was the last lift of the day.

“You better come now, sir,” the loadmaster said. “There’s nobody unaccounted for. Nobody alive,

anyway.”

Darman looked around the horizon one last time, still feel-

ing as if he were turning his back on someone reaching out to him.

“I’m coming,” he said, and brought up the rear of the line. As the gunship lifted, he watched the swirling

dust, dwindling rock formations, and scattered shrinking patches of scrub until Geonosis became a blur of

dull red.

He could still search theImplacable. It wasn’t over yet.

The gunship slipped into theImplacable’s giant docking bay, and Darman looked down into the cavern,

onto a sea of white armor and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed

its thrusters and locked down on its pad was howquiet everyone seemed.

In the crowded bay full of troopers, the air stank of sweat and stale fear and the throat-rasping smell of

discharged blaster rifles. But it was so silent that if Darman hadn’t seen the evidence of exhausted and

injured men, he’d have believed that nothing significant had happened in the last thirty hours.

The deck vibrated under the soles of his boots. He was still staring down at them, studying the random

patterns of Geonosian dust that clung to them, when an identical pair came into view.

“Number?” said a voice that was also his own. The commander swept him with a tally sensor: he didn’t

need Darman to tell him his number, or anything else for that matter, because the sensors in the enhanced

Katarn armor reported his status silently, electronically.No significant injury. The triage team on

Geonosis had waved him past, concentrating on the injured, ignoring both those too badly hurt to help

and those who could help themselves. “Are you listening to me? Come on. Talk to me, son.”

“I’m okay, sir,” he said. “Sir, RC-one-one-three-six. I’m not in shock. I’m fine.” He paused. Nobody

else was going to call him by his squad nickname—Darman—again. They were all dead, he knew it.

Jay, Vin, Taler.He just knew. “Sir, any news of RC-one-one-three-five—”

“No,” said the commander, who had obviously heard similar questions every time he stopped to check.

He gestured

with the small bar in his hand. “If they’re not in casevac or listed on this sweep, then they didn’t make it.”

It was stupid to ask. Darman should have known better. Clone troopers—and especially Republic

commandos—just got on with the job. That was their sole purpose. And they werelucky, their training

sergeant had told them; outside, in the ordinary world, every being from every species in the galaxy

fretted about their purpose in life, searching for meaning. A clone didn’t need to. Clonesknew. They had

been perfected for their role, and doubt need never trouble them.

Darman had never known what doubt was until now. No amount of training had prepared him forthis.

He found a space against a bulkhead and sat down.

A clone trooper settled down next to him, squeezing into the gap and briefly clunking a shoulder plate

against his. They glanced at each other. Darman rarely had any contact with the other clones:

commandos trained apart from everyone, including ARC troopers. The trooper’s armor was white,

lighter, less resistant; commandos enjoyed upgraded protection. And Darman displayed no rank colors.

But they both knew exactly who and what they were.

“Nice Deece,” the trooper said enviously. He was looking at the DC-17: troopers were issued the

heavier, lower-spec rifle, the DC-15. “Ion pulse blaster, RPG anti-armor,and sniper?”

“Yeah.” Every item of his gear was manufactured to a higher spec. A trooper’s life was less valuable

than a commando’s. It was the way things were, and Darman had never questioned it—not for long,

anyway. “Full house.”

“Tidy.” The trooper nodded approval. “Job done, eh?”

“Yeah,” Darman said quietly. “Job done.”

The trooper didn’t say anything else. Maybe he was wary of conversation with commandos. Darman

knew what troopers thought about him and his kind.They don’t train like us and they don’t fight like

us. They don’t even talk like us. A bunch of prima donnas.

Darman didn’t think he was arrogant. It was just that he could do every job a soldier could be called

upon to do, and

then some: siege assault, counterinsurgency, hostage extraction, demolitions, assassination, surveillance,

and every kind of infantry activity on any terrain and in any environment, at any time. Heknew he could,

because he’ddone it. He’d done it in training, first with simunition and then with live rounds. He’d done it

with his squad, the three brothers with whom he’d spent every moment of his conscious life. They’d

competed against other squads, thousands just like them, but not like them, because they were squad

brothers, and that wasspecial.

He had never been taught how to live apart from the squad, though. Now he would learn the hardest

way of all.

Darman had absolute confidence that he was one of the best special ops soldiers ever created. He was

undistracted by the everyday concerns of raising a family and making a living, things that his instructors

said he was lucky never to know.

But now he was alone. Very, very alone. It was very distracting indeed.

He considered this for a long time in silence. Surviving when the rest of your squad had been killed was

no cause for pride. It felt instead like something his training sergeant had described asshame. That was

what you felt when you lost a battle, apparently.

But they had won. It was their first battle, and they hadwon.

The landing ramp of theImplacable eased down, and the bright sunlight of Ord Mantell streamed in.

Darman replaced his helmet without thinking and stood in an orderly line, waiting to disembark and be

reassigned. He was going to be chilled down, kept in suspended animation until duty called again.

So this was the aftermath of victory. He wondered how much worse defeat might feel.

Imbraani, Qiilura: 40 light-years from Ord Mantetl,Tingel Arm.

The field of barq flowed from silver to ruby as the wind from the southwest bent the ripening grain in

waves. It could have been a perfect late-summer day; instead it was turning into one of the worst days of

Etain Tur-Mukan’s life.

Etain had run and run and she had nothing left in her. She flung herself flat between the furrows, not

caring where she fell. Etain held her breath as something stinking and wet squelched under her.

The pursuing Weequay couldn’t hear her above the wind, she knew, but she held her breath anyway.

“Hey girlie!” His boots crunched closer. He was panting. “Where you go? Don’t be shy.”

Don’t breathe.

“I got bottle of urrqal. You want to have party?” He had a remarkably large vocabulary for a Weequay,

all of it centered on his baser needs.“I fun when you get to know me.”

I should have waited for it to get dark. I could influence his mind, try to make him leave.

But she hadn’t. And she couldn’t, try as she might to concentrate. She was too full of adrenaline and

uncontrolled panic.

“Come on, you scrag-end, where are you? I find you. . .”

He sounded as if he was kicking his way through the crop, and getting closer. If she got up and ran for it,

she was dead. If she stayed where she was, he’d find her—eventually. He wasn’t going to get bored,

and he wasn’t going to give up.

“Girlie. . .”

The Weequay’s voice was close, to her right, about twenty meters away. She sipped a strangled breath

and clamped her lips shut again, lungs aching, eyes streaming with the effort.

“Girlie . . .” Closer. He was going to step right on her. “Gir-leeeeee. . .”

She knew what he’d do when he found her. If she was lucky, he’d kill her afterward.

“Gir—”

The Weequay was interrupted by a loud, wetthwack. Helet out a grunt and then there was a second

thwack— shorter, sharper, harder. Etain heard a squeal of pain.

“How many times have I got to tell you,di ‘kut?” It was a different voice, human, with an hard edge of

authority.Thwack. “Don’t—waste—my—time.” Anotherthwack: another squeal. Etain kept her face

pressed in the dirt. “You get drunkone more time, you go chasing femalesone more time, and I’m going

to slit you from here to—here.”

The Weequay shrieked. It was the sort of incoherent animal sound that beings made when pain

overwhelmed them. Etain had heard too much of that sound in her short time on Qiilura. Then there was

silence.

She hadn’t heard the voice before, but she didn’t need to. She knew exactly who it belonged to.

Etain strained to listen, half expecting a heavy boot to suddenly stamp on her back, but all she could hear

was the swish and crunch of two pairs of feet wading through the crop. Away from her. She caught

snatches of the fading conversation as the wind took it: the Weequay was still being berated.

“. . . more important. . .”

What was?

“. . . later, but right now,di ‘kut, I need you to. . . okay? Or I’ll cut. . .”

Etain waited. Eventually all she could hear was the breath of the wind, the rustling grain, and the

occasional fluting call of a ground-eel seeking a mate. She allowed herself to breathe normally again, but

still she waited, facedown in ripe manure, until dusk started to fall. She had to movenow. The gdans

would be out hunting, combing the fields in packs. On top of that, the smell that hadn’t bothered her

while she was gripped by terror was starting to really bother her now.

She eased herself up on her elbows, then her knees, and looked around.

Why did they have to manure barq so late in the season anyway? She fumbled in the pockets of her

cloak for a cloth. Now if only she could find a stream, she could clean herself up. She pulled a handful of

stalks, crushed them into a ball,

and tried to scrape off the worst of the dung and debris stuck to her.

“That’s a pretty expensive crop to be using forthat,” a voice said.

Etain gulped in a breath and spun around to find a local in a grubby smock scowling at her. He looked

thin, worn out, and annoyed; he was holding a threshing tool. “Do you know how much that stuff’s

worth?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Sliding her hand carefully inside her cloak, she felt for the familiar cylinder. She

hadn’t wanted the Weequay to know that she was a Jedi, but if this farmer was considering turning her in

for a few loaves or a bottle of urrqal, she’d need her lightsaber handy. “It was your barq or my life, I’m

afraid.”

The farmer stared at the crushed stalks and the scattered bead-like grains, tight-lipped. Yes, barq

fetched a huge price in the restaurants of Coruscant: it was a luxury, and the people who grew it for

export couldn’t afford it. That didn’t seem to bother the Neimoidians who controlled the trade. It never

did.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” Etain said, her hand still inside the cloak.

“What were they after you for?” the farmer asked, ignoring her offer.

“The usual,” she said.

“Oh-ah, you’re not that good looking.”

“Charming.”

“I know who you are.”

Oh no.Her grip closed. “You do?”

“I reckon.”

A little more food for his family. A few hours’ drunken oblivion, courtesy of urrqal. That was all she was

to him. He made as if to step closer and she drew her arm clear of her cloak, because she was fed up

with running and she didn’t like the look of that threshing tool.

Vzzzzzmmmm.

“Oh, great,” the farmer sighed, eyeing the shaft of pure blue light. “Not one of you lot. That’s all we

need.”

“Yes,” she said, and held the lightsaber steady in front of her face. Her stomach had knotted, but she

kept her voice under control. “I am Padawan Etain Tur-Mukan. You can try to turn me in, if you want to

test my skill, but I’d prefer that you help me instead. Your call, sir.”

The farmer stared at the lightsaber as if he was trying to work out a price for it. “Didn’t help your Master

much, that thing, did it?”

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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTPROLOGUE1234567891011121314151617181920ByKARENTRAVISSCopyrights ACLONEWARSNOVEL KARENTRAVISS BALLANTINEBOOKS-NEWYORK ByKARENTRAVISS CITYOFPEARLCROSSINGTHELINESTARWARSREPUBLICCOMMANDO:HARDCONTACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Longago,inacinemafaraway,afilmcriticwatchedandreviewed...

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Star Wars - [Republic Commando 01] - Hard Contact (by Karen Traviss)

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