“Faie, what happened?”
“To what?” Penchant squinted out over the river. In the dark, it was hard to see exactly where it began and ended, just a flat expanse of silvery black fading into the matte darkness of the forest. The dam shuddered with the force of the current.
Faie pointed to a spot a few hundred meters downstream. “The current there. A few minutes ago, it was all messed up like there was something in the water, and now whatever it is is gone.”
“Huh. I didn’t see it. Maybe it got pushed downstream?” Penchant’s eyes shone in the floodlights. He had his helmet tucked under one arm to give his eyes a break from the night vision setting of their HUDs. It worked well and all, but the greenscale and grain made both of their eyes swim after a while. Faie had been fiddling around with the settings during their downtime this morning, back in the town proper, but he’d only succeeded in making his own display worse. After that, Penchant had firmly suggested that he leave it alone.
“Maybe.” Faie could have sworn he saw something there when they’d first arrived, but no matter. They’d been distracted for the last half-hour with setting up the new security system, and he supposed he could have missed quite a bit in that time.
LaMarke was a small town on a small moon in a small corner of the Mid-Rim, difficult to reach without clear and up-to-date maps, and until now, that had protected them from the worst of the dangers the galaxy had to offer. According to the mayor, it had been sixteen years since their last security update. The outdated equipment had been more than sufficient to identify and deter vandals and petty thieves, but with the CIS turning their attention that way, it needed some major upgrades.
It was the river’s fault, really. The LaMarke River, averaging a klik and a half across and fifteen meters deep, powered not only LaMarke but nearly all the settlements along its banks, including the province’s capital twenty kilometers downstream. The dam they stood on generated the power that kept the city’s lights on, and it had become evident in the preceding weeks that the CIS would rather the lights stay off. The dam was the biggest infrastructural target in a fifty kilometer radius, and Deadweight was there to make sure it stayed firmly within Republic hands.
A clunk had both of them turning to face the interior of the dam again. On top of the combined watchtower and control room, Mini and Valentine struggled to raise an antenna. Faie looked just in time to see Valentine recover the dropped bolt and straighten like nothing had happened. Mini snorted and Penchant echoed the sentiment with a short laugh of his own.
“Shut it!” Valentine cried. She wiped a strand of pink hair out of her face, smearing grease across her forehead as she went. “Unless you two are up here, I don’t want to hear it! Sirs!”
Faie shook his head. “Double time up there. I want that up and working by the time second patrol makes it back.”
“Yessir,” Valentine and Mini chorused. With a creak of plastoid framing and durasteel cables, they wrenched the tower up straight. Valentine braced herself against the lip of the roof, holding the cables steady while Mini darted in with a wrench and a heat-fastener.
Penchant started for the east end of the dam. “You want them to go out with third patrol?”
Faie chews his lip. “I don’t know. I’d rather have Mini out there just to make sure the rookies haven’t missed anything, but if we’re going to finish and rendevouz by sunup, it might be better to have them stay.”
“What’s Windu say about the schedule?”
“Only that we need to be ready to transmit by 0800. The shift change will happen at 0400, but I’d rather not leave a job half-finished for them to take care of.”
“Sounds…” Penchant trailed off mid-sentence. Before Faie could ask what was wrong, he’d jammed his helmet back on his head and darted to the edge of the dam, tense all over and looking out into the forest. Faie pulled his own bucket on just in time to hear Penchant hiss, “Did you hear that?” over private comms.
“What?” Faie’s hearing was unreliable at the best of times, and Penchant was looking off to the left. A ship could have exploded in that direction and Faie wouldn’t notice until he smelled the smoke.
Penchant leaned even further forward, up on his toes with his hands braced on the railing. “Out in the woods, right over there. Someone’s walking around out there.”
Faie sucked in a sharp breath. Calm yourself, he thought. Paranoia won’t get you anywhere. Two years in and the voice in his head already sounded more like Windu than Priest. Funny how that worked. “It’s probably an animal,” he told Penchant.
Some of the tension slipped from his sergeant’s shoulders and his heels came back down to the ground. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s probably—”
Penchant never finished the sentence, or, if he did, Faie couldn’t hear it over the explosion.
The blast cracked the dam. It wasn’t broken, though, and it wouldn’t burst until a little after four in the morning, or so Neyo told him. Faie wasn’t there for that part. He was there for the boom, for the heat and sound that sent him and Penchant diving for cover just before the shockwave hit, bringing pieces of the watchtower and the troopers inside with it. At the time, he’d been too panicked to wonder how it had happened, but later, Neyo told him it went like this:
The insurgents had set up ahead of time. Somehow, maybe a leak from the mayor’s office, they’d known about the renovations and patrols planned for that night, and they’d decided to take care of two nunas with one blast. Get the dam, get the team protecting it. Maybe drive the Republic out of the LaMarke area for long enough to get the capitol, too.
He couldn’t be sure, but what Penchant heard in the woods might have been the exfil team, retreating to their base in the southern part of the woods. If that was true, though, why leave half the team at the dam? Maybe Penchant had really just heard an animal. Faie would ask him if he remembered any more details, but…
Well.
It might have been an exfil team and it might have been an animal, but either way, the strike force had come up the northern side of the dam. They’d ambushed the returning patrol just before they came out of the woods, killing them quick and quiet with a bolt to the back of each head. Rookies. Faie wished he remembered all of their names.
With the patrol out of the way, the sentries had been quick work. They hadn’t even had time to raise the alarm. If Faie had known then how talented the strike team was, he might have made different choices in the moments following the explosion, but he hadn’t, and he couldn’t go back and change anything now.
By the time Faie’s vision and hearing came back to him, Penchant was already on the emergency comms line trying to get a hold of home base.
“This is shift Alpha to TOC. TOC, do you copy? Do you copy?”
Faie pushed himself up onto both arms. It took more effort than it should have. His ears rang and his head spun and for a moment, he was concerned he might throw up in his bucket. Another concussion for the medical record.
“This is Sergeant Penchant to TOC. TOC, do you copy?”
Faie opened his own comms line. “Anybody read me?”
The hiss of dead air was all that answered.
“TOC?”
“Does anyone copy?”
He shoved himself up to his knees. Most of the floodlights had been taken out, but he could just see Penchant through the smoke and grainy night vision. He looked alright, no better off than Faie. “Penchant,” he rasped. “Penchant, I think comms are down.”
Short-range HUD-to-HUD appeared to be unaffected, because Penchant’s reply crackled over their personal line. “Seems it. Fuck.”
Fuck was right. If it wasn’t a tech problem, then it was the whole system. Looking back, it was then that the gravity of their situation first started to sink in.
“We gotta get out of here.”
“Is anyone else—”
Penchant’s head snapped up. He was focused on something over Faie’s shoulder, in the remnants of the watchtower behind them. “No, Faie, we gotta get out of here. Now.”
Faie never saw the strike team on the dam. He heard them, though, slipping over the rubble towards them, and that was all he had time to register before clambering to his feet and ordering, “Run.”
It was a short sprint to the end of the dam. Neither of them bothered with the ladder down to the bank, just jumped the two meters down into the brush and made for the woods. “How many?” Faie panted.
“I saw six. Maybe seven. Heavily armed. What do we do?”
They made it to a particularly large bush and rolled behind it, crouching down for a moment’s talk. “We need to get back to town.”
“How?” Penchant pointed back to the ladder. “Somehow I don’t think they’ll miss us going back over the dam.”
One, two, three, four, five, six insurgents clambered down the ladder and into the brush. “Fuck,” Faie swore under his breath. Six versus two, armored versus unarmored… “We draw them into the woods and take them from behind. There’s a clearing a few kliks from here that’ll work fine.”
Faie might not have been able to see Penchant’s face, but he could feel his eyebrows raising. “You sure?”
“Do we have another choice?”
“The explosion went off at 0237 and you went into the woods right after?” Neyo frowns down at his ‘pad, then up at Faie.
“Yes.”
“According to your HUDs, you and Penchant were at the dam until 0302.”
“No, that’s… that’s not right. We left right after. There was no time.”
Neyo raises a single eyebrow. “The Sergeant’s HUD has a record of seventeen outgoing calls between 0237 and 0302. Are you sure?”
“I…” Faie shakes his head. After the explosion, they’d left, but—without checking for survivors? Why hadn’t they assessed the damage, or faced the insurgents on the dam? “No. That can’t be right.”
By the time Faie’s vision and hearing came back to him, Penchant was already on the emergency comms line trying to get a hold of home base.
“This is shift Alpha to TOC. TOC, do you copy? Do you copy?”
Faie pushed himself up onto both arms. It took more effort than it should have. His ears rang and his head spun and for a moment, he was concerned he might throw up in his bucket. Another concussion for the medical record.
“This is Sergeant Penchant to TOC. TOC, do you copy?”
Faie opened his own comms line. “Anybody read me?”
The hiss of dead air was all that answered.
“TOC?”
“Does anyone copy?”
“Penchant,” Faie rasped. “Penchant, I think comms are down.”
“Yeah, I’m gathering as much.” Penchant sounded coherent, at least. Pushing himself to his knees, Faie was able to see him just a few meters away, sitting braced against the wall with a chunk of duracrete between him and Faie. “What happened?”
“Ambush, I think.” Faie’s head was spinning. Comms down, but not short-range helmet-to-helmet… Maybe they’d taken out the comms tower? “We need to get up and scout for survivors.” He dragged himself upright, staggering into the wall before finally getting his feet under him. The dam seemed mostly intact, but the watchtower was gone. All of the troopers, Mini and Valentine, and the lookout crew—
“Stay down and keep trying to contact the base,” Faie ordered. “I’ll look for survivors.”
He turned the audio input on his bucket up as high as it would go. He hasn’t seen or heard anything or anyone yet, but there was that rustling in the woods, and Faie seriously doubted that whoever had set off the explosion (likely the insurgent group that had recently allied itself with the CIS) would just leave them alone after going to all that effort. There had to be an end game. A weakened dam and crashed comms wasn’t enough.
Farther down the dam, in the weak glow of the remaining floodlights, Faie saw the sentries. Based on the number of bodies, the patrol group had never made it back. Maybe they were delayed, but it was unlikely. Whoever had been talented enough to plant a bomb they couldn’t find wouldn’t be sloppy enough to leave survivors.
In the wreck of the watchtower, someone groaned.
Maybe a few survivors.
Mini was the first live one he saw. He was lying face-up under what remained of the doorframe, looking like he might have been huddled under it when the building came down. Perhaps they had a few seconds’ warning. Faie stepped over the body of a vod with a cinderblock for a head and went to his knees at Mini’s side.
“Commander,” Mini choked out. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His hair, matted with sweat and blood, was burned off in a large swath at the base of his skull. Most worrying, his chestplate was dented inwards.
“Mini,” Faie answered. “Stay calm. Sergeant Penchant’s calling for help.” He omitted the bit about the malfunctioning comms.
Mini lurched forward in what might have been an attempt to sit up, but fell back against the doorframe before making it so much as a centimeter into the air. Faie cringed as the clang of plastoid on durasteel reverberated over the river. “Commander, get—get Valentine.”
Faie followed Mini’s unfocused gaze to what had, minutes before, been the center of the watchtower.
“She was on the, on the roof.” Mini coughed and wiped the resultant blood away with the back of his glove. “Said, ‘Mini, they’re coming.’”
It took a long moment for Faie to differentiate Valentine from the sparking remnants of the control panels. His stomach turns. “Who?”
“Don’know. Get Valentine.”
With a last look up and down the dam, Faie obeyed. Picking his way through the electrical guts of the place was difficult. He didn’t want to put the insulation in his armor to the test just then, but when he got to Valentine, he realized he would have no choice. His kih’vod was wrapped in a thick support cable and the charred lines on her armor suggested the metal had been live. He didn’t give himself time for second thoughts, just grabbed the cable and hauled it off her, along with a few bits of duracrete. Either the insulation held, or the metal was no longer live, because he wasn’t shocked.
He wished he could say the same for Valentine.
Her helmet must have been off before the explosion, because he didn’t see it in her immediate vicinity. Instead, he got a good look at her bare face, already swollen and bleeding and raw with further electrical burning. Skin sloughed off her right cheek, hanging in blackened chunks towards the floor. Her eyes were half-open, but she hadn’t reacted to his presence at all. As he reached down to take her pulse, he prepared himself for the very real possibility that she was already dead.
Faie clears his throat. “Can I—can I get a cup of water?”
“Of course.”
She wasn’t, at least not yet. Her pulse was barely there, just a weak thrum under Faie’s fingers, but when he stuck her with a hypo from his emergency pack, her eyes drifted open and managed to focus on him.
“Commander?”
“Yeah, kid, it’s me.” Her legs were bent at the wrong angle. “You doing alright?”
A long pause. It wasn’t her legs, he realized, but her hips. Something wrong in her lower back. “What happened?” she finally asked.
He took his helmet off to get a better look at her. “Explosion. You’re going to be okay, just—oh.”
“Wha’?”
Faie stared at the puddle of blood beneath her. He hadn’t seen it before, it didn’t show up on the greenscale, but it had to be at least three quarts. “Nothing, don’t worry about it. We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”
Valentine’s eyes slipped closed again. Her breaths came slow and shallow through her burnt, broken nose. She was bleeding from her back, he was almost sure of it. He might be able to pinch it off, but she’d already lost so much.
“I know you’re lying to me, ori’vod.”
The sound of her voice, suddenly strong, startled him. “What?”
“Lyin’ to me.” The lazy slur was back. “I can feel… I feel floaty. Cold. Everything’s so far away.”
“Valentine—”
“Commander, will you stay with me?” She opened her eyes just long enough to make eye contact, then shut them again. Clumsily, she reached for his hand. “I don’t want to die alone.”
The pink half of her hair shone dimly in the low light, a beacon in the dust and rubble. The eyeliner of her left eye was still perfect.
He took her hand. “Of course, kih’vod. I’ve got you.”
With every beat of her heart, the puddle grew. Faie’s knees were wet. Valentine’s hand was cold.
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’m here.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “Faie…”
Her chest stilled. Her hand went limp. “Valentine.” He swore her hair looked duller. “Valentine.”
“Faie!” Penchant came clambering over the wall and into the caved-in control room. “Faie, we have a—oh. Oh, gods.”
Faie let Valentine’s hand slip out of his and onto the floor. “What’s going on?” he demanded. Penchant had his helmet under his arm again, and the look on his face was grim.
“Faie—”
“What’s going on?” he repeated.
“We need to get out of here. They’re coming.” Penchant scanned the room and Faie saw the moment his eyes caught on Mini. “It was the insurgents. The communications lines are all down, and now they’re coming up from the North side of the dam.”
“Shit.” Faie clambered to his feet and jammed his bucket back on his head, zooming in on the far entrance to the dam. Six of them. “Let’s move.”
“Wait!” Penchant was already on the ground at Mini’s side. “He’s still breathing.”
“Penchant…”
Penchant pulled Mini up into a sitting position. He muttered something Faie couldn’t hear, and Penchant shushed him. “It’s alright, Min. We’re getting out of here.” Then, to Faie, “We can’t leave him here. They’ll kill him.”
“Pen, ‘they’ are already at the ladder.”
“Then we’d better move quickly.” Penchant hiked Mini up into his arms and started for the South end of the dam. “Are you coming, or not?”
“Dammit, Penchant…”
Faie prayed to every god he knew that the insurgents didn’t have night vision equipment or macrobinoculars. There was no choice but to proceed fully upright and loudly down the dam with Penchant carrying Mini. They moved as quickly as they could, but by the time they’d reached the South ladder, he could hear conversation from near the watchtower.
“I’ll go down first,” Faie said. “Hand him to me and then follow me down.” He climbed down the first few rungs, then jumped into the brush. Getting Mini down was a bit awkward, and the sounds he made definitely weren’t ones of comfort, but soon enough, all three of them were down in the riverside brush. Below them, the river flowed on, a steady roar through the dam. He turned to Penchant and handed Mini back. “We have to run. Now.”
Penchant looked down to Mini in his arms. “Faie…”
Their voices were close. If Penchant and Faie didn’t get out of there, they’d be spotted.
“Sergeant, now.”
“Wait.” Penchant ran to the woodline where the brush was thickest and deposited Mini at the base of a tree. “We’ll have to come back and—come back and get him.”
Faie couldn’t hear them coming up. He must have been distracted by the look on Penchant’s face, the path into the woods, something, because he didn’t hear them until they were at the edge of the dam. He didn’t hear them until they yelled, “there,” and then Penchant and Faie were running for their lives.
“Wait, I can’t—he wouldn’t have—”
“Faie?”
“If he had just left Mini behind… But he wouldn’t have done that. Why did he do that?”
Neyo lets him cry for a minute or two. Then, “What did you do next?”
“We took them into the woods.
“I wanted to kill them.”
“What did you do next?”
“We took them into the woods.
“I wanted to kill them.”
“They killed my ad. Of course I wanted to kill them. So we went into the woods.”
Faie and Penchant had only known each other for two years, but those years might as well have been a lifetime for the way they understood each other. He’d heard the Jettise talk about connections in the Force before, about knowing their partner’s moves before they made them and about coordination that was more like instinct than thought, and privately, he’d thought they were full of shit. Not about the connection part, but about it being a “Force thing.” Faie and Penchant were about as Force-sensitive as the average bantha, but they understood each other intimately, deeply enough that planning was a matter of few words and fewer minutes, just outlines of an idea panted over internal comms as they sprinted through the woods.
They would draw the insurgents deep into the woods. Yesterday’s scouting party had noted a clearing a few kliks southwest of the dam and, though Faie hadn’t been there, he knew it had a few boulders large enough to provide cover. They’d cross the clearing to the far side and duck out of sight. With any luck, they’d assume Faie and Penchant would keep running and put themselves right in the middle of the clearing, right into position for Faie and Penchant to wrap around and ambush them from behind. There were only six of them. A few good shots to the back of their heads would go a long way toward leveling the playing field, and from there a close-quarters battle would be more than feasible.
Even with night vision, navigating unfamiliar woods at night was difficult. Every time he tripped on a root or took a branch to the face, he was reminded of the wilderness survival unit of ARC training. Don’t get lost, dipshits, Alpha-17 would yell. And if you get lost, don’t panic. And if you panic, don’t die.
Don’t step on rocks unless you want a broken ankle.
Don’t drink the water unless you’ve purified it twice.
Don’t trust branches to support your body weight.
Don’t panic, and don’t die.
“Were you panicking?”
Faie blinks at Neyo. Sound is a bit fuzzy and his vision is swimming and it takes him a moment to process the question. “Huh?”
“Were you panicking when you started to run into the woods?”
“No! No, we knew what we were doing. We had a plan.”
“Almost there,” Penchant huffed. “HUD says half a klik more. You ready?”
Faie shoved his way through a particularly thick patch of branches. “Are you?”
His hand still tingled with the feeling of Valentine’s last heartbeats. When he reached for his blaster, it wouldn’t shake. He was sure of it.
“Of course.”
Moonlight broke through the trees at the top of the hill. Almost there. Faie couldn’t hear footsteps behind him, but then again, he couldn’t hear much more than his blood rushing through his ears. Time was on their side, he thought.
They burst out into the clearing. It was bigger than the reports had made it out to be, nearly a half-klik of moss and wild grasses stretching out to reach a pile of rocks on the other side. They were at the foot of a mountain, Faie realized. The rocks must have fallen from above.
If it came to it, running further south would prove difficult.
It didn’t matter.
A yell came from somewhere behind them. A chorus of quieter voices answered. He and Penchant shared a quick glance, then Penchant pointed to the largest of the rocks. “There,” he said. “Behind them.” They ran for it.
If it was dark in the clearing, it was midnight behind the boulder. None of the early dawn light reached their hiding place, and if it wasn’t for his bucket, Faie doubted he would have been able to see Penchant at all. He was right there, though, crouched next to him with a hand braced on the lichen-covered rock and another on his blaster.
“Do you mean the rock was casting a shadow?”
Faie frowns. “I guess?”
“Hmm.” Neyo licks his lips. “But it was still dark out?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how did you know the rock had lichen on it?”
Hadn’t he just said… “I had my night vision on.”
“Our night vision isn’t even sensitive enough to pick up half the shit written on signs.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t that dark. Why does it matter?”
“Here they come,” Penchant said. “I count two in the clearing.”
Faie couldn’t see much from this angle, but he doubted Penchat was missing anything. “Wait until we have eyes on all six.”
Penchant snorted. “I know, ori’vod,” he laughed.
How did he get stuck with the sarcastic Sergeant? “I’m just making sure we’re on the same page.”
Penchant laughed again, then leaned over to knock their shoulders together. “I know, I know. Gods, you’re fun to wind up.”
Now’s not the time, he wanted to snap—
Wanted. Wants. He… didn’t know? Didn’t think it was so serious?
Was he worried?
Why were they joking around?
Didn’t they know? How could he not have seen, how could Penchant not have seen the other—
“Faie? You alright?”
“...Huh? Oh, um. Just… give me a second.”
“Take as much time as you need.”
“Four… Five…. Six. That’s all of them,” Penchant announced. He slid his blaster out of its holster and Faie followed suit. That familiar red-out battle rush was creeping up on him. “Ready?”
“Are you?”
“Always. Let’s go.”