They’re coming.
She thought she heard the old woman’s voice. Putting it down to grief and lack of sleep, Etain stumbled back inside and barred the door.
It was just another crop sprayer hired to dress the fields after the barq harvest, laden with bug killers and soil enhancers and piloted by a droid. At least, that was what the Narsh crate’s transponder had told the Qiilura traffic controller, and judging by the absence of a missile up the tailpipe, he had believed it.
Darman was still exploring the enhancements to his helmet and suit. “I used to think I wore this armor,” he said. “Now I think it’s wearing me.”
“Yeah, they spent some credits upgrading this since last time,” Fi said. “Wow. Walking weapons system, eh?”
“Two hundred klicks,” Atin said, without looking up from his datapad. He’d propped his helmet beside him with the tactical beam pointed up to provide some light in the closed bay. Darman couldn’t hear him over the noise of the vessel’s atmosphere engines, but he could lip-read easily enough. “Let’s hope everything works.”
It was helmets on at one hundred klicks. The squad was prepared both for a controlled landing and an early bailout and free fall if they were picked up by Separatist ground units. Darman hoped their luck would hold. They were landing heavy, with more gear than they’d ever used in training, and they’d have to hit the drop zone accurately to avoid an impossible trek across country. Accurate, if they had to jump for it, meant high-altitude low-opening procedure. They could drift for fifty klicks if they opted for the safer, slower high-opening technique.
Darman didn’t relish being defenseless in the air for that long.
Niner was studying his datapad, balancing it on his right thigh. A three-dimensional shimmering holo of their flight path played out a handspan above it. He glanced up at Darman and gave him a silent thumbs-up: On course and on target. Darman returned the gesture.
There was an art to loading up for a mission when carrying the firepower of a small army among four men. Darman had loaded his pack to capacity. The rest of his weapons and ordnance was in a second shockproof container that stood knee-high. The bowcaster—he loved that weapon—was strapped across his chest plate with jury-rigged webbing, to leave his hands free for the DC-17. He had an assortment of detonators, kept safely separate from the charges and other ordnance in the lower section. He was now so heavy even without the extra equipment that he had to bounce to get upright from a sitting position. He rehearsed standing a few times. It was tough. Fortunately, the squad would be inserted close to the target. He didn’t have to haul it far.
“One hundred klicks,” Atin said. He switched off his spot-lamp. “Helmets.”
The compartment was suddenly dark, and there was a collective hiss of helmet seals purging and reengaging. They could only talk to each other at very short range now: on Qiilura, anything more than ten meters risked detection. The only visible light was the faint blue glow from the heads-up display in their visors, a group of ghostly disembodied T-shapes in the gloom, and the shimmering landscape playing out from Niner’s datapad. His head was tilted down slightly, watching the actual position of the utility vessel in the simulated landscape.
The sprayer started to lose height, exactly on course. In a matter of minutes, they would be—
Bang.
A shudder ran through the airframe, and then there was no engine noise at all.
For a second Darman thought they’d been hit by anti-aircraft fire. Niner was on his feet instantly, moving forward to the cockpit, accidentally whacking Atin with his pack as he turned. Darman, without conscious decision, grabbed the emergency hatch handle and prepared to activate it for a bailout.
Darman could see the droid clicking and flashing, apparently engaged in a dialogue of some kind with the vessel. The ship wasn’t listening.
“AA, Sarge?”
“Birdstrike,” Niner said, deceptively quiet. “Atmos engine’s fried.”
“Can the R5 glide this thing down?”
“It’s trying.”
The deck tilted, and Darman grabbed at the bulkhead to stay upright. “No, that isn’t gliding. That’s crashing.”
“Bang out,” Niner said. “Bang out now.”
The Narsh dirt-crate hadn’t let them down. It had just succumbed to being in the wrong airspace at the wrong time, and met the local avian species the hard way. Now they were plummeting toward the kind of landing not even the latest Katarn armor could help them survive.
Darman blew the hatch, and the inrush of air sent dirt and debris whirling through the cargo bay. The door fell away through the opening. It was pitch black outside, a challenge for a free-faller even with night vision. Darman was starting to experience serious doubt for the second time in his life. He wondered if he was becoming one of those despised creatures that his training sergeant had called cowards.
“Go go go,” Niner shouted. Fi and Atin eased through the hatch and stepped out. Don’t try to jump, just let yourself fall. Darman stood back to make way for Niner: he wanted to salvage as much gear as he could. They needed the repeating blasters. He grabbed some of the dismantled sections.
“Now,” Niner said. “You first.”
“We need the gear.” Darman thrust two sections at him. “Take these. I’ll—”
“I said jump.”
Darman wasn’t a rash man. None of them were. They took calculated risks, though, and he calculated that Niner wouldn’t leave him. His sergeant was standing at the open hatch, arm held out imperiously, a clear sign to get on with it and jump. No, Darman had made up his mind. He lunged forward and shoulder-charged Niner out of the hatch, grabbing the door frame just in time to stop from plunging after him. It was clear from the stream of expletives that Niner was not expecting this, nor was he happy about it. The extra pack jerked out after him on its tether. Darman heard one last profanity and then Niner was out of range.
Darman grabbed a strap and peered down, but he couldn’t see his sergeant falling, and that probably meant nobody else could, either. He now had a minute, more or less, to salvage what he could and get out before the utility hit the ground.
He switched on his helmet lamp. He couldn’t afford the time to listen to the rushing wind and the complete absence of reassuring engine noise, but he heard it anyway. He dropped the bowcaster and began lashing the blaster sections together with a line. It was a shame. He loved the bowcaster, but they needed those cannons more.
Knotting lines was hard enough with gloves on, but was even harder when you were seconds from crashing. Darman fumbled a knot. He cursed. He looped the line again and this time it held. He let out a sob of relief, dropped the weapon, and dragged the gear down to the hatch. Nobody could hear him at this range, and he didn’t care what the droid thought.
Then he stepped out into black void. The wind took him.
There was no rushing landscape beneath him yet to take his attention from the heads-up display. He was free-falling at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour, trailing sections of heavy, heavy cannon. He maneuvered into tracking position, pack square across his back, rifle tight into his side, the remainder of his gear on the container that rested on the backs of his legs. When he deployed the canopy at eight hundred meters, he would release the container. And he’d use the powered-descent option, because that might save him from the unsupported, potentially lethal weight of cannon that was falling with him.
Yes, he knew exactly what he was doing. And yes, he was scared.
He’d never jumped with so much unsecured load in training.