Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (16 page)

Fektrin nodded. He didn’t look amused. Namir supposed he couldn’t blame him.

Namir listened to the other squads’ comm transmissions as he waited. From what he could gather, the teams were trying to hold key positions while pushing forward into engineering, opening the way for Fektrin’s technical crew. Ajax’s men had set up a choke point at one of the main passageways. Charmer was making hit-and-run attacks on guard posts, trying to keep the enemy off balance and obscure Twilight’s goal. Carver and Zab’s heavy-fire teams were at the vanguard, smashing their way through blast doors.

“We’re ready,” Chalis said. “The engineers can salvage the parts they need from one of the upper drive compartments. We’ve rerouted the power so they won’t be incinerated.”

Fektrin relayed instructions through his comm. Namir felt his guts tighten, knowing what came next. He checked the power meter on his rifle to put off saying it aloud. Still at 70 percent.

“That’s it for your job.” He was looking at Chalis. “We’ll work our way back to the pod and take off. Should be easier while the Imps are distracted.”

Chalis looked around the room and gestured with her head to a private corner. When Namir joined her, she spoke quietly. “I’m in no hurry to die as gloriously as Cappandar, but I’ll be no safer aboard the
Thunderstrike
if we fail here.”

Namir studied the governor’s expression, tried to read her and came up short. He spared a glance for Fektrin, who was organizing the others, and imagined a hundred ways the mission could end in disaster.

“Stick close to the engineers,” he told Fektrin. “We’ll tail you, keep anyone from coming up behind.”

Fektrin nodded carefully, then stepped to the body of a fallen stormtrooper and kicked the man’s rifle toward Chalis. It skidded across the floor with a hiss. Without a word, he led the engineers from the room.

Whenever Namir taught stormtrooper cadets—cadets who’d abandoned their units, reason, and steady pay to become Twilight Company fresh meat; cadets who, nine times out of ten, expected to become heroes of democracy and saviors of the weak instead of corpses abandoned on the battlefield—he had to teach them to fight alone. Or close enough, because even soldiers in a two-person fire team or a four-person squad certainly
felt
alone when outnumbered a hundred times over.

Fighting alone meant guerrilla tactics and dirty tricks instead of formations and shield domes and air support. It meant setting death traps and shooting people from behind and slitting their throats while they slept. It meant—as Namir recalled being told by one recruit days before she abandoned the company—performing acts that felt more like murder than war.

He wasn’t surprised that Chalis had no qualms with guerrilla tactics. He was surprised she was
good
at them.

When Fektrin and the engineers had descended to the lower decks, Chalis had identified a gas cooling pipe running down the corridor to the turbolift. With a bored expression, she’d secured the rebreather tighter over her mouth and shot the pipe three times along its length. She missed only once in the attempt.

The coolant gas was invisible and odorless, carried along by the wind that twisted through the ship. By the time an Imperial security team came marching down the hall, the officers involved—not stormtroopers, but by the looks of them washouts, eighteen-year-old idiots who’d been assigned to a rusting freighter to keep them out of harm’s way—were already unsteady on their feet. They couldn’t aim straight, couldn’t dodge. Namir huddled inside a doorframe and checked his scope, lined up his shots, and burned each of his targets through the chest. Chalis’s initial shots came a moment too late, went too wide, but she soon corrected her aim and grip.

The kill zone did its work well. Namir and Chalis eliminated a second team and a third—whoever made it past Ajax and his team’s blockade. Over his comlink, Namir listened to Fektrin and the engineers scramble to complete their salvage job; to the other squads desperately attempting to keep an exfiltration route clear. Twilight Company was hurting, but it was holding its own.

Twice, the
Thunderstrike
fired on the freighter, each time attempting to disable critical systems and stem the flow of Imperials into the combat zone. The busier the freighter crew was just trying to survive—the more Imperials who were repairing life support instead of fighting Twilight—the better. But there was only so much the
Thunderstrike
could do without killing its own people, and Namir and the others knew it.

When Fektrin and the engineers signaled that they’d finished their work, the squads changed tactics. The teams had stretched from their boarding pods into the interior of the freighter like elastic bands, dropping troops at key points and spacing themselves out. Now it was time for the elastic to contract, each team gradually withdrawing toward its initial position as the engineering team safely passed by. Namir found himself again staying close to Chalis, shielding her body with his own. They allowed the engineering team to overtake them and followed a short distance behind, out of sight but close enough to intercept pursuers.

As they approached the outer bulkhead, the engineers split up toward different pods. Fektrin sent the comm signal indicating it was time for a full withdrawal. The squad leaders acknowledged and began to pull back, contracting the lines further.

Chalis was smiling as Namir led the way back toward their own boarding pod. “Now we just hope your engineers were right about what they needed.”

Namir grunted. “Sure. Once we’re free and clear of the Mid Rim, we get to put this whole botched retreat in the past. Lick our wounds before the next massacre.”

“That’s the advantage you have with me aboard: The Rebellion won’t have to count on winning victories through smug self-righteousness anymore.”

Again, Namir couldn’t hold back a smile. “You’re one to talk about
smug.
”

Yet it was good to hear someone say the things he couldn’t around his colleagues.

Chalis laughed, and the sound wasn’t affected or measured—it was a note of genuine delight that echoed as they crept together toward their escape.

They’d nearly reached the pod when an alert came in from the
Thunderstrike:
Enemy reinforcements had arrived.

An Imperial
Gozanti
-class cruiser had jumped out of hyperspace and set course for the battle. Howl had given the boarding teams five minutes to complete their evacuation; after that, the cruiser would enter firing range, and its turbolasers and proton torpedoes would begin reducing the
Thunderstrike
to a molten cloud adrift in space.

Five minutes was more than enough for Namir and Chalis, but Namir knew half the boarding squads wouldn’t make it to their pods in time—not while they were still under fire from the freighter’s security teams. If they turned their backs on their foes they’d be shot dead. The burst of comm chatter following
Thunderstrike
’s transmission confirmed Namir’s suspicions, as Ajax, Charmer, Fektrin, Zab, and Carver—strained and cursing but never complaining—ordered their teams to do the impossible.

Namir stood motionless for only a moment. Then he turned away from the corridor leading to his boarding pod. Chalis moved between him and the rest of the freighter interior. “Five minutes,” he said.

The joy had faded from Chalis’s face. The creases of age seemed chiseled deeper into her cheeks, and Namir saw she’d been sweating. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. She looked at him gravely and shook her head. “We’re going now.”

Someone was shooting a blaster nearby. Namir aimed his rifle over Chalis’s shoulder. “You offered your support,” he said. “You had the chance to leave and you said you’d—”

“I said I wanted this mission to succeed. It
succeeded.
Your friends knew what they signed on for.”

Four and a half minutes left. There wasn’t time to argue.

“You know where the boarding pod is,” Namir said, and pushed his way past Chalis and toward the remaining squads. The governor snapped something more, but he didn’t hear what.

With four minutes to spare, Namir located Ajax’s squad. In their haste to withdraw, Ajax and his soldiers had backed themselves into a corner. Namir shot wildly into a throng of stormtroopers until his rifle glimmered with warning lights, desperately drawing fire until Ajax’s squad could break free. Ajax himself died shouting obscenities, with a grenade in one fist.

With three minutes to spare, Namir broke off from the remains of Ajax’s squad as Fektrin announced over the comm that his team had been split. The engineers were safely away, but the rest of the group was scattered. Fektrin’s men were being overwhelmed one by one.

With two minutes to spare, Namir found Fektrin’s corpse. The alien’s skin was somehow already cold. Namir realized he’d never touched Fektrin before.

With one minute to spare, Namir heard Charmer stutter into the comm and declare that his team had reached a boarding pod. Namir had never loved Charmer more than in that moment.

With no time to spare at all, Namir sealed the door inside Fektrin’s pod and launched it toward the
Thunderstrike.
He did so alone.

“Eight dead. It’s not a bad number until you look at who we lost.” Lieutenant Sairgon spoke slowly, as if he were testing each word for flaws before pronouncing it. He turned a datapad over in his hands without looking, addressing the gap between Namir and Howl in the captain’s cramped office.

Thunderstrike
and
Apailana’s Promise
had jumped to hyperspace under fire, and both ships wore scars from the battle. The
Promise
had lost its shield generator blocking volleys aimed at the
Thunderstrike
, while the
Thunderstrike
itself had been forced to seal off two decks due to hull breaches. Nonetheless, the engineering teams swore that the raid had been worthwhile;
Thunderstrike
’s course could not be traced again.

Chalis had arrived back aboard safely with the men who’d guarded her pod. If Howl knew Namir had arrived separately, he had not mentioned it.

“What about the recruits?” Howl was looking at Namir.

“Coyerti toughened them up—the ones who went, anyway. The others are mostly ready. They’ll shore up manpower, but we can’t just slot in a new Ajax …”

“If they’re willing to fight and willing to learn, it’s enough for now,” Howl said. “They’ll have time to train at the flotilla.”

Namir glanced toward Sairgon. The man’s expression hadn’t changed, but then it rarely did. Sairgon was built from granite. “We putting in for repairs?” Namir asked.

“Yes and no,” Howl said.

Sairgon was the one to explain. “The
Thunderstrike
and the
Promise
will rendezvous with three other battle groups in deep space. We’ve allocated a month to get both ships back in shape and let the men heal up. Alliance High Command should have new orders for the whole flotilla by then.”

Namir winced. On the one hand, a month of rest and gentle training would be good for the company. Soldiers assigned new squads would need time to adjust. He had lists of troops with minor injuries—burns, lacerations, sprains—that had gone ignored since before Haidoral. But a month in deep space was bound to be mind numbing. By the end, he wouldn’t be surprised if even the droids would be shooting holes in the walls to stave off boredom.

“All right,” Namir said. “That sounds like a yes. What’s the no?”

“Ah.” Howl smiled—a warm, sad smile that made Namir want to slap him. “I told you that Governor Chalis has been working on a schematic—”

Namir cut him off. “—of the workings of the Empire. Every trade route, every factory, every neuron in its brain. I’ve heard her speech.”

Howl bowed his head and turned to his holoprojector. He tapped a button. The overhead lights dimmed and a shimmering blue image filled the room—an intricate tangle that looked to Namir less like a machine or a monster and more like a plant floating within a fine mist. Gleaming droplets slid down a thousand stalks while spherical buds swelled and shrank. At a gesture from Howl’s head, the whole image rotated and a hundred labels flashed into place. Here and there, Namir spotted the name of a star system he recognized—Coruscant, Corellia, Mandalore—but they brought him no understanding.

“She really is something of an artist,” Howl said. “I can’t quite parse it all myself, but I’ve already confirmed portions with High Command.

“Two weeks ago, our spies uncovered a Tibanna mining operation in the Pantrosian Eye. It’s how the Empire was able to increase its blaster production rate over the past year. Chalis couldn’t have known we knew about it … but it’s there, in her masterpiece.”

“So it’s useful,” Namir said. “What does it mean for us?”

“
We
,” Howl said, “have received an invitation to High Command’s secret base, per direct order of Princess Leia. While the
Thunderstrike
is being repaired, Chalis and I, along with an escort, will be leaving Twilight Company to discuss the next phase of the war.”

Namir nodded carefully. His muscles felt suddenly fatigued, as if he’d been standing for hours. Howl’s departure would cause some complaints among the rank and file, but losing Chalis? It was long past time, and it could only bode well.

Howl leaned forward across his desk, eyes wide and gleaming as he smiled. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re part of the escort.”

Of course I am
, Namir thought, and he fought back a bitter laugh. Chalis was bad luck, after all, and he’d been carrying her like a charm.