Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (11 page)

Howl had briefed Namir on the compound the day before planet-fall. Governor Chalis, he’d said, had described the Distillery as the main processing facility for Coyerti’s bioweapons. Inside, chemicals and toxins were refined and combined before being shipped on to spaceports for distribution offworld.

Chalis had promised that the destruction of the Distillery would set Coyerti’s operations back years. And thus, while the rest of Twilight Company—including twelve recruits from Haidoral who’d been barely cleared for combat and who would hinder their comrades as much as their foes—fought to preserve a desperate species, Namir and his squad were to risk their lives on the word of a traitor.

The squad waited atop the rise throughout the morning, observing the patrol patterns and noting the handful of entrances to the bunkers. No one mentioned the possibility of a trap anymore. Namir guessed the possibility of a trap was the
only
thing on anyone’s mind.

Around midday, a lightly armored transport skimmer brushed over the jungle canopy and landed outside the compound’s cargo entrance. Brand rose to a crouch from where she’d been lying flat in the shale. She disappeared down the rise without a word. Namir could barely tell she was still limping.

“Should we get closer?” Roach asked. Her hands were trembling but her voice was steady. “In case someone sees her?”

Gadren saved Namir the trouble of responding. “If someone spots her,” he said, “we all die. Give her room to work.”

Namir pulled out a pair of macrobinoculars and tried to follow Brand’s movements. Even the display’s smart-tracking only caught an occasional flicker between trees. He saw no sign that the stormtroopers had been alerted; they were busy carting brightly painted yellow and red and blue barrels from the skimmer to the compound, with only two on active watch.

The next time Namir spotted Brand, the stormtroopers were nearly finished unloading the cargo and Brand was halfway back up the rise. She climbed the steep slope rapidly but without, so far as Namir could discern, any special urgency.

“Done,” she announced, as she crested the top and crouched among the ferns again. “Set the timer for thirty minutes. Enough time to get down there. Not so much that they’ll find the device.”

“Will it be enough?” Gadren asked. “Which did you choose?” Brand stared at Gadren as if he were speaking nonsense. “A blue one,” she said. “It was closest.”

Gadren grunted. “Then we must hope the
blue one
is deadly enough for our needs … but not so deadly it kills us, too.”

“Next open recruit,” Namir said, watching the stormtroopers lock and seal the compound’s cargo entrance, “I’m bringing a medtech into the squad. And I’m not sharing with the rest of you.”

Thirty minutes later, somewhere in the Distillery, a microdetonator attached to the underside of a blue barrel exploded.

Namir didn’t see it happen, and the blast was far too small to be heard outside the bunker walls. But he knew the device had triggered when sirens began wailing from the compound and all its doors slid open simultaneously. He knew the plan was working when a stream of lab workers and security personnel hurried outside, looking more irritated than terrified and lining up with the rote certainty of people who’d drilled for disaster a hundred times before.

The squad descended the rise, circling away from the workers’ gathering spot. Namir indicated one of the back entrances to the compound, now open and guarded by a single stormtrooper. The guard didn’t make a sound when Brand slipped her knife inside the joint between his helmet and chest piece.

Inside, thick white fog sprayed from ventilators. “Neutralizer gas,” Brand said. “Seen it before. Puts out chemical fires, liquefies toxic gases for cleanup. Mostly safe. Try not to get a lungful.”

Gadren nodded. Namir glanced at Roach, but she didn’t seem to be listening—she was staring into the corridor ahead, her mouth open and teeth chattering.

If there was a trap, Namir thought, this was the last chance for Chalis’s allies to spring it. But it was far too late to turn back.

The four squad members worked their way through the compound as carefully as they could while knowing the workers might return at any time. They swiftly developed a system: In each room packed with laboratory equipment or thrumming vats, Gadren and Brand set explosives while Namir and Roach watched for reinforcements. When each room was rigged, they moved together to the next. Brand kept her mask in place, but no one bothered wearing the hazard gloves or rebreathers Quartermaster Hober had provided before planetfall; if the Distillery’s toxins were loosed, half measures wouldn’t do much good.

Midway through the second bunker, Namir and Roach entered a stockroom together. The neutralizer gas was too thick for visibility, but a cry of alarm made it obvious the room was occupied. Before Namir could locate the source, Roach turned and fired; five shots, one sending a vague silhouette crumbling to the floor and the others sparking against a containment tank. Namir pressed himself against a wall, listened for footsteps, and hurried to confirm Roach’s kill when he heard nothing more.

On the floor was a middle-aged human man dressed in a laborer’s uniform. The gas had already extinguished the fire wrought by Roach’s blaster, leaving two charred holes in his torso. He carried no weapon, no vial of toxins ready to be tossed at an intruder. He was an Imperial, however, and he was dead.

“We’re clear,” Namir called out. “Keep working.”

Namir didn’t stop Roach from approaching the body herself. She didn’t kneel to inspect her work. She bounced slightly on her knees a meter away, twisting her hands around her rifle as if she were trying to strangle it, staring at the man’s face. Namir gave her a few moments and then snapped, “Stay on watch. We’re not done yet.”

Roach didn’t move. Brand was watching her. Namir started to march toward her, but Brand was at her side faster, touching her shoulder to guide her away.

The squad was half a kilometer out when the compound blew with the sound of a thunderclap. Brand had sworn they were being followed, but Namir gave his team a moment to turn and watch dark smoke rise into the sky. Anyone in pursuit would pause, too. Then, together, they pressed on into the uplands. Only Gadren seemed uplifted by their triumph; the others kept their heads low and said nothing, as if they’d proven themselves fools caught in Governor Chalis’s trap.

There hadn’t
been
any trap. They might have just saved countless soldiers from bleeding out their ears or watching their skin drop off their bones, or whatever Imperial bioweapons were primed for. So why, Namir wondered, did they all feel like they’d been beaten?

The climb took them above the jungle canopy onto an escalating series of rocky plateaus covered in thinner vegetation. Their orders were to rendezvous in the evening with a drop ship that would return them to either the front lines or the
Thunderstrike
, depending on the campaign’s progress. Namir found himself hoping for the latter as he fought off a headache tumescing behind his eyes. Maybe the humidity was getting to him, he thought, or maybe the change in altitude had come too quickly.

Twice, Namir caught Roach lagging behind, bouncing on her knees to an inaudible beat, hands clenching her rifle. The first time, he lost his temper. “
You stay with your team
,” he yelled, after a lengthy series of obscenities. “I don’t care if you’re picking flowers or having a cry over some dead man—you keep up until your soles are bleeding, and then you crawl. Understood?”

Roach nodded jerkily and rejoined the line.

The second time she fell behind, Namir felt ire rise in his gut again, more powerful than before, but he didn’t have the strength to scream. Instead, he waved the group to a rest.

Let them catch us
, he thought, as he sipped from his canteen.
Can’t get any worse.

Then he looked at his companions.

Brand’s forehead glistened with sweat and she was breathing heavily. Her nostrils flared with every breath. She sat on the ground, legs outstretched, adjusting her boot on her injured ankle. Roach hadn’t bothered sitting; she’d just wrapped her arms around her chest, her head down as she shivered.

Gadren stood straight as ever, keeping watch.

Namir spit out a curse, tore off his helmet, rolled up his sleeves, and began inspecting his skin. He searched for a rash, a blister, any fresh blemish. He found nothing, and pounded his palms against the ground in frustration.

The others were watching him now. He slowed his breathing, tried to calm himself. “How bad do we look?” he asked Gadren, voice low and steady.

Gadren lowered his head and didn’t answer.

“Does anyone know what
happened
?” he asked. “Did we breathe something? Were we sprayed with biotoxins and I just didn’t notice?”

Roach didn’t look up. Brand sounded bitter as she said, “Doesn’t take much to have an effect. We might have cracked a container somewhere.”

Or maybe
, Namir thought,
you shouldn’t have picked the blue barrel.
But he loathed himself for the idea even as it sprang to his mind. Brand wasn’t at fault.

“Whatever it was,” Gadren said, “I seem to be immune.”

“Maybe,” Brand said. “Might just affect you slower.”

“Also possible,” Gadren conceded.

Namir squeezed his eyes shut and cinched the strap of his rifle, tried to evaluate his aches and the pain in his skull. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Anyone feel like they’re about to die? Anyone not able to walk another hour or two?”

No one spoke up.

“Then we keep moving,” he said. “Not much we can do here, so hold your guts in until we get to a medic.”

When they finally reached the rendezvous point, there was no drop ship waiting.

Namir didn’t have a backup plan. If the drop ship didn’t arrive, they were all dead. Even Gadren, who still showed no signs of illness. Even Brand, who could live through anything.

Namir didn’t tell his squad that. In the morning, as they picked at rations that none of them had the appetite for, he told them they’d wait for the drop ship as long as they could. There would be no attempts at communication; if they tried to send a message through the satellite uplink, odds were the Imperials would detect the signal. Besides, he didn’t expect their transport had
forgotten
about the pickup. If the drop ship could come, it would come.

In a worst-case scenario, Namir explained, they would hike toward the front lines and hope to reunite with the rest of Twilight Company. He didn’t tell the group that such an attempt would be suicide and he had no intention of trying it.

He didn’t think anyone believed him anyway.

Roach had turned pale overnight, her clammy skin now glistening with moisture. Brand kept her dignity better, but Namir caught her slipping away from camp to vomit in the underbrush. Namir’s headache came and went, which was a small mercy; during its worst periods, he saw colorful spots and was overwhelmed by vertigo.

After breakfast came the busywork. Patrols. Equipment checks. Scouting for food and water. Planning escape routes from the camp. Listening to static for unencrypted Imperial comm chatter. Listening to static for unencrypted rebel comm chatter. Listening to static for unencrypted Coyerti comm chatter. Equipment maintenance. Camouflage touch-ups. Wound inspections. Teaching Roach to use the uplink. Teaching Roach to disassemble and repair the uplink in case of emergency. Erasing patrol trails. Erasing trails left while erasing patrol trails.

Namir kept his people occupied until nightfall. Then they huddled around the heater while Gadren kept watch, none of them able to sleep.

Roach had pulled her knees to her chest inside her bedroll, then drawn the bedroll’s length around herself. She was still shivering. Namir found himself watching her, and when his skull didn’t feel too tight around his brain to think he realized how little she had said since the Distillery.

He wondered if she was thinking about her decision to leave Haidoral Prime, or about the man she’d killed. But he had nothing to say to comfort her. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to. He’d been through worse at Roach’s age, and if she lived, she’d be better for it. She’d be a better soldier, a better part of Twilight Company.

If she died, what did a few final hours of comfort matter?

“Roach.”

Brand’s voice was thick, but it cut through the night air. She’d lodged herself against a rock, sitting straight even through her pain.

Roach looked over at her, still silent.

“You want to know how I joined Twilight Company?”

Brand’s words caught Namir by surprise; if he’d been less ill, he might have shown as much. Roach bit her lip and nodded. She looked like a frightened child—which, Namir supposed, she was.

“I won’t repeat myself,” Brand said, “and you’ll respect my privacy.” It was a statement, not a question.

Roach nodded again. Brand spat a wad of phlegm onto the ground and began.

“I used to be a bounty hunter,” she said. “You know that. This is almost twenty years ago, not long after the Emperor took control. Not long after the Jedi died.”

Roach shook her head, frowning in confusion. Namir had heard the word
Jedi
mentioned by rebels before—they seemed to be some kind of religious warriors from before the Empire—but that was all he knew. Roach seemed equally uninformed.

“Forget it,” Brand said. “The point is, things were better then. Better than they are now. Better than they had been during the Clone Wars. People cared about the law. The Empire kept them safe.

“But the wars had done their damage. I worked Tangenine, mostly. Infrastructure there was hit bad by the Separatists and the syndicates stepped in, extorting folks in return for food, transport, basics. Imperial military tried their best, but the gangs and blackmailers still ran things below the surface.

“So they kept people like me on retainer. Empire didn’t like bounty hunters even then, but on Tangenine there were killers and smugglers to catch.

“I felt good about what I did.”

Brand’s head dipped forward, and for a short while Namir was worried she’d passed out. Finally, though, she squared her shoulders, looked into the distance, and resumed speaking.