Chapter Three
Silence sat heavy in the darkness of Amali's lab as I leaned in close to 623's wound, lifting his arm as much as I dared and adjusting one of the portable luminators to shine what little light it could into the puncture.
He pinched his eyes shut and leaned his head back against the wall, his legs dangling off the table he sat on.
"Congratulations, Shiny." Raile's silhouette spoke from the fog-backed tear in the wall. "You finally got your first battle-wound. Maybe next time, you'll duck."
You're not helping, Captain. Instead, I released a small breath. "It was meant for me."
"Sir?"
"The shrapnel. It was going to hit me." I looked from the bloodstained pearl, and glanced at 623's pinched face. "He stopped it."
Raile paused. Then he returned to scanning the fog in silence.
It was just as well.
I placed my hand on the edge of the puncture. I was no Healer, but I was all he had until we could get back to the ship. "Any luck raising the Valiance, Captain?"
"Negative. Comms have been totally fried. No idea what the tinnies did, but we have zero contact ability with the Valiance. I doubt they even know anything's happened."
With who-knows-what-else waiting for us down here... A fresh rivulet ran down 623's chest piece, and I pressed my lips together. "There's no exit-wound."
He grimaced. "Guess that explains why every breath feels like a stab in the heart."
Getting jostled, walking, even just turning wrong… "If it's pressing against something—an artery, an organ… It could kill you before we make it out of here." Before you've even been under my command a day.
He looked at me, and I swallowed. It wasn't really much of a choice. "This is going to hurt."
A tightening of the face, and a single nod. "Do what you need to do, Ma'am."
The trust in his eyes only made my stomach cinch tighter, and I focused fully on the crimson puncture as much to break away from his gaze as anything else. Please don't let me mess this up.
I held my hand over the wound, hovering an inch above the jagged gash. I didn't have the Healer's ability to look inside a person like I'd seen Barriss do when patching up troopers after a battle, but I had something they didn't. I'd just never used it this way before.
I closed my eyes, and sank into the sonic image filling my mind's eye. The room. The instruments. The Captain standing next to the breach in the wall. One by one, I pushed them away, sinking deeper and deeper into growing stillness until finally…
Babump… Babump… Babump…
All that remained was a single heartbeat pulsing in the void. Waves bloomed from the heart, pulsing through his body like an ocean tide trapped in a bottle, bouncing and swirling inside him. And I could see.
His heart… His lungs… There! Small, closer to the surface than I'd dared hope. But jagged. Foreign.
Painful.
The heart waves traced the torn path the piece had carved through his body. All I had to do was lead it back out the way it came. I could do that. I could. Don't let it rotate inside him. Don't let it scrape anything.
Don't hurt him more than he already was.
More gently than I'd ever done anything, I laid my hand over his wound, and the world fell away, nothing existing but the shard, and the path to follow.
The shard gave the briefest shudder. Then it inched backward.
Every muscle in his body contracted, and a gasp stuck in his throat.
I'm sorry. But I pressed my lips tighter and continued pulling as gently as I could. Almost…
A glint of metal in the opening of the wound, and with a final gentle pull, the piece popped out with a wet smack, sucking up into my palm like a magnet.
He exhaled a gust of air and collapsed back against the wall, breathing deep.
The shard sat in my palm like a jagged akul tooth. I… I actually did it. He was going to be okay. Crimson droplets soaked into the leather of my glove like a rose blooming in my palm, and I finally tossed the shard onto the table next to his helmet, pulling a tube of bacta-gel from my utility belt and squeezing a thick glob into the freshly-bleeding wound.
His response was something between a grunt and a sigh, and I gave a tight-lipped smile. "Tough it out, trooper. Almost over."
Raile spoke, staring out into the distant fog. "All due respect, Sir, I don't think this is even close to over."
I looked at him.
He began listing off, "We're cut off from the Valiance, our only transport is slag, we've got commando droids stalking us, and no idea where they are…"
I wanted to say something to counter the bleakness before he built up too much momentum, but the fact was, he was right. No amount of optimism would change that we were alone. And we had no idea where the enemy was.
Doctor Amali's quiet voice startled me from across the room. "I might." She emerged from Sumi's room, the heavy tarp flapping back into place behind her.
Even Raile turned to look at her.
She stopped at the holo-table filling the center of the room, and sniffed as she planted her hands on the darkened surface. "I've seen eyes at night. Glowing." She shook her head. "Nothing on this planet is bio-luminescent."
My mind flashed back to her glance toward the distant fog when we first arrived. The uncertainty that haunted her gaze.
And then she muttered under her breath too quiet for the other humans in the room to hear, "And that damn ghost."
I winkled my brow.
Raile looked out into the darkness, and hugged the stock of his blaster tighter against his shoulder. "We've already established hostile droid presence. How does knowing you've seen them at night help us now?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Because they always come from the same direction."
"The North," I said, remembering which direction her gaze had locked.
She nodded.
623 hopped off his small table with a grunt and stretched his shoulder out. "If they're using a jamming device to cut our communication with the Valiance, good money says it's in their camp."
Along with who-knows-how-many commando droids.
"If they've set up shop here, we'll put em' out of business," Raile said. "We'll gather the men and—"
"No, Captain." I shook my head.
He paused, and his frown shone even through the mask of his helmet. "Sir?"
"We don't know how many are out there or when they're going to strike next, but they're not going to just leave this place alone after one hit-and-run. Not after revealing themselves. Not with Amali's research and formulas still here, waiting to be transported to the Republic." They'd set a torch to it before they'd risk letting it get off-world.
Something niggled in the back of my mind. Why had they let her develop it to completion in the first place?
"So what are your orders?" Raile said.
I pushed the niggling aside for now and folded my arms. "I need you and the men to stay here and set up defensive positions—Protect Doctor Amali and her data at all costs. We can't afford to lose any of it."
"And what will you be doing?"
Trying not to get everyone killed. "We need to get contact with the Valiance…" The constant beeping from the other room resounded in my montrals, and I unfurled my arms and rubbed my palms. "…And we need to get the cure back for Sumi. I'll take a small strike team and see if I can solve our communications problem, and bring the cure back with us."
623 paused in stretching his shoulder, and looked at me.
Raile shook his head. "Sir, you can't be serious."
"I am." My voice was steadier than I expected it to be.
"You're going to go against an unknown force with a handful of men?"
"This fog doesn't mean anything to droids, Captain—a large force will be detected by their sensors a kilometer away." I met his gaze through the black lenses of his helmet. "I've seen the aftermath of what commando droids can do when they know you're coming. Have you?"
His glance toward the breach in the wall and the silence that followed answered for him.
"I've seen enough of my troopers hurt already," I continued more softly. "Like it or not, a small team has the best chance of getting close enough to strike a blow that matters without taking too many casualties." I buried a sigh at the phrase 'too many casualties'. As if there was an acceptable amount.
The realities of war, Little One… A voice echoed in my memory. A voice I wished was here now.
"Look, Sir," Raile said. "Valiance protocol is to check in after 24 hours if they don't hear from us. If you're concerned about casualties, maybe we should just wait."
"Sumi doesn't have 24 hours."
Amali looked at me.
Raile glanced between us, and finally he shook his head again, biting back whatever it was he wanted to say. "It's your call, Sir," he said instead. "I'll begin organizing the men. You can pick who you need when you're ready."
He shouldered out the door without another word, and this time, I couldn't stop the whisper that escaped my lips. A fine first mission with my men this had turned out to be.
"Miss Tano," Amali said.
I looked at her, and the faint lines creasing her eyes were deeper than I remembered.
"Thank you," she said.
A silent understanding passed between us, and the constant beeping filled the room.
OOO
Smoke still clung to the fog surrounding the camp, grey wisps streaking as troopers dragged jagged chunks of the LAAT's destroyed hull through the soil. The pieces large enough to serve as cover. Until the metal shards stood vigil around Amali's lab like tombstones.
Troopers began taking position behind them.
Raile stepped across the leftover ruts ploughed through the moss, and gave a stiff salute. "We're as fortified as we can get, Sir." His voice was just as stiff as his salute.
I nodded at him. The final troopers moved behind the shards.
623 and two others were left without cover, standing outlined in the fog.
"This isn't a good idea, Sir."
"What would you suggest we do instead, Captain? Leave Amali and her research here unprotected?" I nodded toward the silhouettes. "Who are those two troopers?"
He glanced at them. "Tuf and Dozer. Not very green, not very veteran either." He turned back to me. "And no, Sir. I don't suggest we leave the research here. I suggest we do what we came here to do—Secure the means to the cure, and then exfil."
I looked into his black lenses. "And Amali and her son?"
"They're not Republic. They're not our problem."
"The boy is dying."
"So are our men." He gestured to the smoking husk of the LAAT. "So will your men if you order them to hold this position against another attack. Is one civilian worth that?"
Faint golden embers still glowed within the edges of the gunship's warped steel, and I swallowed. "I don't know, Captain. Is your conscience worth that?"
"My conscience lies with my men. Where does yours lie?"
623 broke from the trio of silhouettes, and approached hesitantly, stopping in front of me and snapping a crisp salute. "The men are all set, Ma'am. Orders?"
Raile kept his silent gaze on me, and my own reflection stared back at me in his lenses.
I forced myself not to look away. "Tuf and Dozer will accompany me to the droid camp. The rest will dig in here and protect Amali and her research."
Raile's back straightened, but not out of respect. "Yes, Sir."
He marched away, and 623 looked between us as Raile joined the silhouettes on the perimeter and began speaking with them. "Ma'am?"
"Just learning what's beneath our armor." I turned to him. "Shouldn't you be in Amali's lab recovering?"
He shifted his weight and looked away. "Wanted to help get the pieces of cover into place. And… I wanted to ask you something."
His intention radiated off him so strongly, an initiate would have been able to pick up on it. "You're not coming with us. You have a hole in you, remember?"
He shook his head. "Not anymore, you sealed it up, remember? Besides, there's no cover for me out here. I'd be safer with you anyway."
"Amali's lab is your cover. Go back inside."
He looked into the shadowed door of the lab, and his presence roiled for a moment until finally he dropped his gaze to the ground. Then back at me. "Ma'am… Please. They already think I'm useless. Don't order me to prove them right."
A quiet desperation murmured beneath the softness of his voice. The kind that would fall back in line and do as he was told if I ordered him to. But the kind that silently begged me not to.
The kind that didn't want to live up to a disappointed expectation.
I'm not going to invite you to your death. But then, that raised another question, didn't it? If I ordered him to stay behind, would he really be able to bring himself to stay in the lab if shooting started?
Maybe. Maybe he would be able to leave them to fight alone. Maybe he wouldn't run out to help. Wouldn't be killed. Maybe there was enough cover.
I wouldn't be able to stay inside.
Blast it… I lifted my arm, palm facing toward him, and held my hand out to him. "Raise your arm. Push against my hand."
He moved his injured shoulder and settled his gloved palm against mine, slowly leaning into it.
I pushed harder, and he resisted, strength holding with just the slightest tremor through his arm. The seal of bacta held firm.
"I'm fit for combat, Ma'am. If I wasn't, I would tell you."
I know. That's not the point. But instead, I buried my own feelings and nodded toward Amali's lab. "Get your gear. We're moving as soon as possible."
His presence shifted and lightened, and he reached into a compartment in his utility belt and pulled out a small, crimson-stained piece of shrapnel. "You won't regret this, Ma'am." He dropped the piece in my palm, and jogged for Amali's lab. "I promise."
He disappeared through the shadow of the threshold, and the shard sat within the red stain in my glove.
Chapter Four
Moss and tendril painted the soil, and silenced our steps as Amali's lab disappeared into the fog behind us.
Tuf and Dozer flanked to the left and right in a wide delta. Wide enough that a single explosion wouldn't be the end of us all.
623 stayed close to me, fiddling with his scanner and sweeping the sensor in a long arc toward the distant fog.
It would have been a good thought against a different enemy. "Might as well put it away, 623. Not going to be much use against commando droids."
He shrugged. "Never know what they might have with them that won't be immune to scanners."
True enough.
Tension lurked behind the passing shadows of twisting roots and drooping vines, and I held my palm against the saber hilt swinging on my hip. The dampened sound-waves of our boots sinking into the moss died helplessly against the curtain of mist draping the surrounding wilderness, leaving nothing but a wondering void and vague shapes where image should have been, and imaginations of the worst to fill in the silence.
"What's it like being a Jedi?"
I looked at him, and he adjusted a dial on his scanner. The tightness of his shoulders matched the tension of the fog.
Droids would pick up our life-signs long before they picked up our voices.
I tapped a thumb against the steel of my saber. What would be honest without being demoralizing? "It's… Difficult. But worth it." The saber cooled under the pad of my thumb. "It's a life of learning to set aside yourself, and do what will be best for the many."
I didn't mean for it to sound so clinical, but couldn't think of another way to say it. Anakin was always better at making things sound fun.
"Plus, you get to swing around a laser sword," he said.
My lip went up despite myself. "There's also that."
The tension lacing the fog pulled tighter the farther behind us Amali's lab sank, and I struck the nail of my thumb against my saber hilt just hard enough to send a thin wave into the surrounding mist, sharp enough to cut through.
For the briefest moment, tendril and twisting undergrowth sharpened and clarified in my mind, and the gaps between them opened.
No movement broke the stillness.
I still slid the hilt from its anchor into my palm. "What about you?"
He looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Who were you before you enlisted?"
His fingers paused on the scanner, and he stepped over a curled root arching from the soil. "No one important."
Oh, well that doesn't sound mysterious. "Just an everyday guy who decided to join the Grand Army, huh? And what is this ordinary guy's name?"
"I'm RT-623, Ma'am."
I gave him a look. "The deliberate ignorance was cute at first. Now it's annoying."
He didn't alter his physical path, but his presence drifted away, and he adjusted a dial on his scanner.
"If you won't tell me, I'll have to make one up for you."
"I'm okay with that, Ma'am."
Sound broke the haze. The creak of dried wood. Not from one of our steps.
The tension focused to a needlepoint and I held up a hand.
Tuf and Dozer dropped to a knee, rifle barrels sweeping the fog. 623 pointed his scanner into the mist.
I slid my shoto into my off-hand. "Anything?"
"Strange energy readings. Nothing it can pinpoint to a single spot. Keeps jumping around like it's there, and then not."
The needlepoint sharpened. Ghosts whispered danger behind the mist, swirling closer. It was there. It was moving. Why couldn't I see it?
A flicker of light broke. Between reaching tendrils, a figure ran.
"Contact!"
A grenade landed in the soil at my feet.
Blaster fire burst from Tuf and Dozer, burning the mist in smoking trails, and washing out the faint image I struggled to hold in my mind. Hazy figures cut rippling silhouettes darting from branch, to trunk, to tendril.
623 dropped his scanner and yanked his blaster rifle against his shoulder as he sunk to his knees, firing off rounds into the ghosts. "Commando droids!"
My focus tunneled on the grenade blinking its light in the soil between us, unnoticed by him, and I clamped my fingers and pushed.
The steel ball accelerated hard toward the nearest silhouette, punched through the mist, and detonated.
The fog washed white, shrapnel flew in glowing streaks that crashed into branch and bark like ember punches.
The figure ran behind twisting vines.
A second explosion echoed far behind. From Amali's lab.
"Ma'am, I know I shot that one!" 623 flicked a switch on his scanner lying in the soil, and then continued firing.
I ignited my shoto and followed his gaze. A silhouette stood open among the falling vines. Three blaster bolts from 623 and Tuf zipped through its chest, and a shudder of light flickered where each bolt passed through steel plating, then winked closed again, leaving the appearance of smooth metal where smoldering holes should have been.
It darted behind the trunk of a long-dead tree.
Wait a minute… I held my blades across my body, but no blaster bolts streaked toward me. No bolts streaked toward my men.
Dozer let loose a barrage that cut through a third silhouette. Light flickered, smooth steel remained perfect. It jumped out of sight.
No movement registered in the sonic image of my mind's eye.
Commando droids might be able to fool scanners, but sound bounced off any physical being. And realization struck. "Holograms…"
623 risked a glance toward me. "What?"
"Stop firing!" My throat scratched with the force of yelling over the blaster fire. "Everyone stop firing!"
A final bark spat from Dozer's blaster and then silence crashed like a void, sucking the sound away until nothing remained but a slight ringing in my head.
The rippling figures still darted and jumped here and there, in and out of cover. Turquoise cracks in their forms flickered. They pointed blaster rifles, but never fired as they moved in silence and shuddering light.
Tuf lowered his blaster. "What in the blazes?"
Holograms can't throw grenades, that came from somewhere real. I squeezed my sabers tighter and squinted through the smoke trails hanging burned in the air.
Another muffled boom echoed from Amali's lab behind us.
Gloves creaked on blaster-grips. "Ma'am?"
A diversion. A performance to keep our attention. They knew we were coming. They knew we had left the lab…
They were watching us from the start.
And I had fallen for it. The curtain of mist closed, and a knot coiled in my heart. "Everyone back to Amali's lab. These are just ghosts to keep us—"
A quiet tink of metal, so calm and faint, whispered behind the foggy curtain. A wink of light in the mist. A silver orb arcing through the haze.
And the metallic figure that threw it, sitting small atop a cluster of twisting vines, staring down with the dead light of its eyes.
The knot cinched. "Above us!"
The grenade arced with a blink of light, and I stretched my own hand and pushed. The orb flew back. A blaster bolt from 623 cut through the droid's chest. A golden-charred crater burst through its steel plating. The grenade detonated as it fell.
The shockwave of the blast spat a vile mist the color of old rust. It tore the falling silhouette, and as warped, metal limbs crashed to the soil, the vapor engulfed the air around us, whipping and creeping like ghastly tendrils that felt along our armor, looking for a way in.
Toxin grenade. I didn't have a helmet with a filtered respirator. I exhaled as hard as I could against the creeping vapor, and swiped my hands in the strongest push I could muster. Air burst from me, from my palms, rushing in all directions outward, battering against the tainted fog, and the vapor flew away from us.
No more movement registered in my mind's eye. "Back to the lab, now!"
Fog and shadows passed like taunting whispers as we ran, and then the distant calls of blaster fire cracked as the faint light of Amali's lab broke the haze.
Commando droids—real ones—surrounded the lab, darting and diving from fallen tree tunks to embering pieces of wreckage left over from the LAAT gunship. Bolts of fire flew between the empty spaces—between the encroaching metallics, and the dug-in troopers pressing armored shoulders into the shards of cover planted in the soil around Amali's lab.
A few troopers lie motionless, dirt and scorch-marks pitting their armor.
Raile shouted orders from his shard, but the pounding of blaster barks drowned his voice.
A trap. It had been a trap. I squeezed my sabers, drove my feet into the ember-specked soot, and leapt.
The first droid fell with a slash. The next with a stab. 623, Dozer, and Tuf formed behind me—a protective half-circle spitting fire into the shadows at my blind spots.
Raile yelled something lost to the din of battle.
The droids turned, focused, and dead light stared at me through the fire-burned fog.
Something like recognition passed behind the glow of their eyes, and I stood ready, saber hilts squeezed in dampened palms.
They shifted. A silent communication passed between them. And then, as one, they turned again, broke formation, and sprinted, leapt, and darted away into the mist, bolts from the surviving troopers trailing after them as their silhouettes fell away as if swallowed by the haze.
The damage was done. Their trick had worked. Why would they stay behind to get killed?
I jabbed my thumbs into the steel of my sabers, and the blades retracted, taking all the light with them.
The men. Troopers began breaking cover to tend the fallen, saving who could be saved. Some didn't respond.
Amali appeared in the doorway of her lab, peaking out from the threshold, and then she hurried out with a med-pak in her hands, kneeling beside the nearest fallen trooper. She gave him a better chance than a medic.
Raile marched through the moss, and stared at me in silent question.
"A trap," I said, and the knot in my heart remained. "They saw us leave. They were waiting for us."
The air shifted, something changed. In his posture, in his presence. And the atmosphere of the camp changed with it. Invisible threads that once pulled taut, a growing tension between us since our first meeting in the Valiance hangar, now slackened in an instant. A giving up, a deciding had taken place.
And then he was walking away. Toward a fallen piece of cover lying broken on its side in the moss.
The shift in the atmosphere soured, and I took a step toward him. "Where are you going?"
He hopped up onto the embering piece of steel and called out, "Everyone listen up."
Every helmeted head turned to him. Amali kept working on her trooper.
623, Tuf, and Dozer stayed near me as I followed him. "Captain—"
"I'm assuming tactical command of this mission," he said, and it struck like a punch.
I stopped in my tracks, lips parting. "That—"
"Our men are dying, and I'm not willing to trade hundreds of my brother's lives to save one."
Amali stopped her work and looked at him.
He stared down at me from the shard. "And I'm not willing to let a neophyte general get us all killed."
My reflection stood small in his black lenses, staring back at me with wide eyes. Had I really lost my men so completely? So quickly? Without even talking to me first? "We're alone out here, Captain. The Valiance won't check in for another twenty-two hours. If we start turning on each other, We're already dead."
Surely he could see that.
Tuf and Dozer glanced at each other. 623 subtly adjusted his grip on his rifle.
Raile straightened amid the fading burn trails dissipating in the mist, and looked out across the men. "The General is exactly right. Rescue is still twenty-two hours away, and one thing is clear: This position will not last twenty-two hours. If we try to hold, we will die. And our brothers after us."
Boots shifted in the soil, murmurs passed. Some looked at me.
Uncertainty gnawed. I wanted to say something. Anything. But the worst thought filled my throat and stopped any words from coming out.
Was he right?
Raile spoke with the finality of command. "The General can help or not, but this mission is now ours, and our objective is clear: Save our people. Gather yourselves, pool your ammo, and be ready to move out; We're securing the doctor's formula and exfiltrating to survivable ground until the Valiance makes contact."
Amali rose to her feet quicker than I thought a woman her age could move, and stood in the doorway of her lab. "You're not going anywhere near my son."
The hardness in her voice had returned. The one that spoke from her doorway when we first landed. The devotion of a mother.
The voice I promised we meant no harm.
Raile hopped down from the shard, and began closing the distance between them. "We're giving you a chance to hand over the formula peacefully. I advise you not to make yourself a hostile, Doctor."
And so easily, the line was crossed. One I could never follow. No matter the lives at risk.
I gripped my saber hilts, and leapt between them, landing in the moss so harshly even the twisting undergrowth couldn't dampen the pinpricks that raced up my shins. And I locked eyes with him through his lenses. "No, Captain. This is not how we do things."
Not how I would ever do things.
"I'm sorry, Sir, but this is too important. I'm not going to let my brothers die just to make a green general feel like she's in control."
My heart fluttered. The men looked at me. And none of this was how I though it would be.
Maybe they saw what Raile saw—what everyone but the Chancellor had seen—A youngling playing pretend on a battlefield. 'After all,' they had said. 'Only the padawan of Anakin Skywalker would be given a command so young.'
They didn't know me. They'd never bled with me. Why should they trust me? Why should they listen to anything I say?
And then Amali stepped forward. "Enough."
Her voice was quiet. And rough. But it swept like the mother's scolding it was. Swept through me. And from the way his head drew back, swept through Raile.
Her hands hung still and tired at her sides, reddened from the trooper she had tried to save. And she looked at me.
"Enough."
Without another word, she turned and made the slow walk into her lab. Then reappeared with a data pad in hand.
She crossed the fog-smothered ground, the hem of her coat swirling with each step, and she walked up to Raile.
She held the pad out to him. "Take it." Fatigue, weariness dragged her voice. "Just take it and go. No more death. No more bloodshed. I've seen enough of it already."
An undercurrent passed away between them, and I shifted my grip on my saber hilt. "What about your son?"
"He doesn't have time for me to produce another dose." She still held the pad toward Raile. "If you won't take back the cure from the droids, he is already lost to me."
She stared into the blank features of his helmet. "Why should others die with him?"
The thought spoken out loud. It sounded right. It sounded wrong.
The camp went quiet.
623 stood close to me. And he spoke in a hush so quiet it barely registered in my hearing. "Ma'am, we're not really going to leave a kid to die, are we?"
No. I made no move to stop Amali or Raile. "Are you willing to die to save him?"
He shifted his feet, and looked away.
And then a quiet oath from Raile broke the silence. The air thickened between us. "Sir, realistically, what are the odds you can find the droid camp and slag their jammer before we all get killed?"
"I don't know." I had nothing left but the painful truth. For them, and for me.
623 touched the scanner at his side.
Raile stared at me, stared at Amali, and he looked away. And then another oath passed from his lips.
I knew the feeling.
With a slow exhale, he straightened, and turned away from Amali's offered data pad, facing me fully for the first time since the Valiance hangar. "What exactly do you intend to do?"
The knot in my heart loosened. "We need to prepare for the droid's return." Blaster-marked slabs of cover slouched crooked in the soil, blackened from smoke and fire. A few troopers leaned against them, bleeding from small shrapnel punctures.
I swallowed. "And we need to take care of our wounded."
The ones that could be saved.
Raile stood stiff as he stared at me in silence, and finally, he said, "Three hours, General. I'll give you three hours to do what you think is best. After that, I am taking that data pad and saving my men."
It shouldn't have been a surprise. "You'll be charged with insubordination and court-marshaled."
He nodded. "And my men will be alive to watch." He turned and started walking. "You heard the General. Get these fallen pieces back in place and see the medic if you're bleeding. We've got clankers to kill."
The troopers started moving, and my shoulders sagged. None of this was how it was supposed to be.
623 pulled the scanner from his hip. "Ma'am, permission to be dismissed for a few minutes? I want to study the readings I took of those holograms that ambushed us. There was something strange in the signal I want to check out. I think it's important."
His arm stretched as he moved, and a small, red rivulet ran down his chest-piece from the shrapnel-hole I had sealed with bacta.
I turned to him. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah. Just opened up a little in the ambush. It's nothing."
"It's not 'nothing' for one of my troopers to be bleeding. See the medic first."
He tapped the pad of his gloved thumb against the casing of the scanner. "…Yes, Ma'am. But there are others worse off, I should let them go first. In the mean time…" He held up the scanner in request.
It couldn't hurt to let him try. I nodded at him, and he snapped a salute, holding it for longer than I expected.
And then he hurried off to an isolated corner, working on his scanner under the glow of one of the luminators of Amali's lab.
Amali joined me in watching him. "I'll look at him after the more critical cases are out of danger."
I nodded again. "Thank you, Doctor."
"Just returning the favor, Miss Tano."
Her words hung between us, and then she left quietly, helping our medic sort our wounded.
The door of the lab stood dark and watchful beside 623. The steady beeping of life-monitors seeped out from within it, pulsing through the camp like a fading heartbeat, too quiet for humans to hear. Too loud for me to ignore.
Too loud for Amali not to hear in her heart.
End Chapter
