Incoming transmission…
This is Jevia Cross, with the only news you need, Radio Liberty!
Those brave Mandalorians have dealt a devastating blow to the Empire on Degravane! Ground units with Fang fighter support captured the capital city and nearby villages. Gen Parn has stated in a report to the ruler of Mandalore, Bo-Katan Kryze that the final defeat of the Imperials on Degravane is soon at hand. We look forward to reporting on this grand victory.
When we get back, we'll continue our series on the armies of the New Republic with an in-depth look at the Lukazenian Mountain Commandos!
—
When the air-raid sirens screeched in the middle of the night, Telzeg Keivert thought it was a drill.
He figured some sadistic officer had found a new way to rob him of sleep, as if basic training didn't take enough anyhow. But listening to a sergeant screaming, "Get moving, assholes! This is the real thing!" sent him bouncing out of his cot in a hurry.
He could normally dress in three minutes. He had his stormtrooper armor on in under two. "Do we line up for roll call?" somebody yelled.
"By the Emperor, no!" the sergeant hollered back. "Get your asses into the shelter trenches! If you bastards live, we'll count you later."
They'd dug the shelter trenches near the Fort Tarkin barracks outside Submuloc, Juvarig the week before.
Wasted work, Telzeg had thought. And it had been then, in the dim dark disappearing days of peace. Now war was coming, riding closer every second on the screams of the sirens. War was coming, and what had been waste might save his life. A lesson lurked there somewhere, if only he could find it.
No time now, no time, no time. Along with the other raw recruits, he dove for the trenches. A mosquito whined through the din, the song of its wings somehow penetrating the greater madness all around. If it pierced him, he would itch. If fragments of steel from the greater madness pierced him, he would scream till he could no longer hear the sirens, till he choked on the song of death.
Antiaircraft guns pounding, pounding. Lights in the sky: bursting shells. And the buzz of engines overhead. Telzeg had never known anything like it before. He hoped he never did again.
When the Imperial Army conscripted him, he'd looked forward to war. What point to putting on the uniform if you weren't going to see action? Well, here it was, and it wasn't what he'd thought it would be.
He'd pictured himself shooting at Republic soldiers in butternut uniforms while they shot back at him.
He'd pictured them missing, of course, while his blaster bolts knocked them over one after another as if they were part of a funhouse shooting gallery. He'd pictured the enemy soldiers who managed to survive throwing up their hands and surrendering in droves. He'd pictured generals pinning medals on him, and pretty girls giving him a hero's reward.
What he hadn't pictured was lying in a muddy trench-it had rained two days before-while the Republic dropped bombs on his head and while he didn't even have a E-11 in his hand so he could shoot back. Whether he'd pictured it or not, that was his introduction to war.
Somebody not far down the trench started screaming as soon as he heard the bombs falling. Telzeg had thought he would laugh about something like that. It seemed funny and cowardly, both at the same time. He wasn't laughing, not for real. It was all he could do not to scream himself.
And then the bombs weren't falling any more. They were bursting. The noise was like the end of the world. He'd got used to the bang of blasters on the firing range. These, by contrast, were hammer blows against the ears. They picked him up and slammed him down. They tried to reach down his throat and tear his lungs out through his nose. The ground twisted and quivered and shook under him, as if in torment.
By then, plenty of people were screaming. After a little while, he realized he was one of them.
Fragments of bomb casing hissed and whistled past overhead. Telzeg wondered again what would happen if they ran into flesh, then wished he hadn't. Mud and dirt thrown up by bomb bursts rained down into the trench.
I could be buried alive, he thought.
The notion didn't make him much more frightened than he was already.
A chunk of metal thumped into the soft ground about six inches from Telzeg's head. He reached out and touched it, then jerked his hand away-it was hot as hell. Maybe it was a chunk of casing, or maybe a shell fragment from a round out of an antiaircraft gun.
If it had come down on his head instead of near it, he would have had himself a short and ignominious war.
A bomb hit the barracks he'd come out of a few minutes before. That rending crash was different from the ones he'd heard when bombs hit bare ground. "McCloskey!" Telzeg sang out, doing his best to imitate a pissed-off sergeant. "Pick up your fucking socks!"
Four or five scared recruits stopped screaming and laughed. Somewhere up the trench, Bobba McCloskey gave his detailed opinion about what Telzeg could do with and to his socks.
Then a bomb burst in the trench, less than a hundred feet away. The earthwork zigzagged, so the blast didn't travel far. What the bomb did do was bad enough anyway. Something thumped Telzeg in the shoulder. He automatically reached out to see what it was, and found himself holding a little less than half of somebody's hand.
Blood splashed and streaked his palm. With a cry of disgust, he threw away the ruined part of a man.
But shrieks from close by where the bomb had hit sent him moving in that direction. (Only silence came from the very place where the bomb had landed. Nothing right there lived to shriek.)
He stumbled over a man's head. It moved when his foot hit it-moved like a kicked football, moved in a way that proved it was no longer attached to a body. He gasped out a couple of horrified curses. He'd made a joke about Bobba McCloskey's socks when he didn't know how bad things could be. Now he was finding out, and whatever jokes might have lived within him withered.
It was still nighttime. He couldn't see very well. But he knew the bloody smell of a butcher's shop. He knew it, and he'd never expected to find it here, especially not mingled with the darker outhouse reeks of offal.
Along with the young men who were dead were several who wished they were. They shouted loudly for someone to kill them. Telzeg would have done it, too, if only to make them shut up, had he had any kind of weapon. Since he didn't, he had to try to keep them alive instead.
That was hardly easier than putting them out of their misery. He had no bandages, no medicines, no nothing. He found one fellow clutching a gaping wound in his calf. He tore the laces out of the injured soldier's shoes and used them for a tourniquet. He never knew for sure if that did any good, for he went on to someone else right away, but he dared hope.
Somebody let out a whoop of savage glee, shouting, "We got one of the sons of bitches, anyhow!" And so they had. An N.R. bomber overhead trailed fire from one engine. The flames slid up the wing toward the fuselage.
"I hope all the cocksuckers in there roast," Telzeg snarled.
Several other men nodded or wished something even worse on the Republic fliers.
Telzeg kept hoping this was a nightmare from which he'd wake up. The hope kept getting dashed, again and again and again. The bombers didn't linger overhead very long-they must have had other targets besides Fort Tarkin. It only seemed like forever, or ten minutes longer. As the bombs started falling somewhere else, Telzeg came out of the trench and looked around.
Nothing was left of the barracks except burning rubble. Several other buildings were also on fire. So were ships and troop transport. Bomb craters made the paths and lawns resemble a moon. Iit was the biggest, most god awful mess he'd ever seen in his life.
His mother and his granny had gone on and on about what Coruscant-his home planet-was like during the Clone War. He hadn't taken them too seriously. He didn't remember such things, after all. But now, with a convert's sudden zeal, he believed.
"Who the hell is that?" One of the other men pointed at somebody walking in out of the predawn darkness.
The newcomer wore a flight suit of an unfamiliar cut. Even by the light of blazing buildings and vehicles, Telzeg could see the flight suit was the wrong color, too. The stranger had a pistol on his hip, but he didn't try to use it. Instead, he raised his hands above his head. "Reckon you got me," he said, sounding cheerful enough. "Isn't much point for a flying man to go on with the fight once his fighter goes down, now is there?"
The bastard thought he could murder Imperial soldiers and then bail out of the war as easily as he'd bailed out of the bomber?
Growling like an angry dog, Telzeg took a couple of steps toward him.
A rock sailed out of the darkness and caught the Republic airman above the ear. In the firelight, he looked absurdly surprised. As he started to crumple, he tried to get the pistol out of the holster. He couldn't. His hands didn't seem to remember what they were supposed to do.
And it probably wouldn't have made any difference anyway. Telzeg and eight or ten others rushed him. He wouldn't have been able to hold on to the gun for more than a heartbeat. He might have shot one of the Stormtroopers, or two, but after that. . . . After that, he would have been a dead man. Which he was anyway.
By the time the soldiers finished pounding and kicking and stomping, he didn't look anything like a man any more. He resembled nothing so much as a large broken doll lying there on the grass, all of its limbs bent in directions impossible in nature. His neck had an unnatural twist in it, too.
A corporal came up right after the recruits realized the flier had no more sport left in him. "By the Emperor, you bastards, what the hell did you go and do?"
"Gave this asshole what he deserved," Telzeg answered. Morning twilight was beginning to paint the eastern sky with gray.
"Well, yeah." The noncom stared at the crumpled corpse. "But do you know how much of a stink there'll be if the Republic finds out what the hell you did? They're liable to start doing the same thing to our guys, too."
Telzeg hadn't thought of that. It was the only reason he could imagine for regretting what he'd just helped do. He would have rid the world of ten or a hundred Rebels as cheerfully, if only he'd got his hands on them.
One of the other men who'd mobbed the flier said, "Hell with it, Corporal. We'll throw the motherfucker in the trench where the bomb hit, toss his clothes on the fire, and bury the pistol somewhere. After that, who's gonna know?"
After a little thought, the soldier with two white stripes on his sleeve nodded. "All right. That's about the best we can do now, I guess. Get the identity disk off from around his neck, too, and bury it with the piece. That way, people will think he was one of ours when they deal with the bodies." He came closer and took a long look at the dead pilot. "Fuck! Nobody'll recognize him, that's for sure."
"It's a war, Corporal," Telzeg said. "You wanted us to give him a big kiss when he came in here with that shit-eating grin on his face? We kissed him, all right. We kissed him good-bye." The noncom waved for him and the others to take care of the body. They did. The corporal didn't do any of the work himself. That was what having those stripes on his sleeve meant.