Authors: David Sherman
Slayke had disabled the drives on
Scarlet Thranta
, leaving Halcyon and his men stranded on Bpfassh for several months until a repair ship could arrive. Grudo had been taken without further struggle as Halcyon’s prisoner—the only quarry to show for the whole mission. As the weeks dragged by in idleness, they had gotten to know each other fairly well. Finally one day Halcyon said, “Grudo, I’m letting you go when we get back to Coruscant. I’d be the laughingstock of the whole galaxy if I returned from this mission with only one prisoner. Here’s the deal: for your freedom, you stay put until I can find some use for you.”
In the meantime the Senate relented on its charge of treason and piracy, and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, bowing to the inevitable and making the best of the situation, commissioned Slayke to continue raiding Separatist shipping and outposts.
“So,” Grudo concluded, “I found rooms at the Golden Slug and there I waited until you and Halcyon came for me.”
The shuttle had been parked in the loading bay on the
Ranger
for some time before Grudo finished his story, its pilot fuming in the cockpit.
“Strange, isn’t it, how fate arranges our lives?” Grudo pondered. “Here we are now, very near to where I first met Halcyon and where I last saw Captain Slayke. Two very great men, and I have been honored to serve them both. Now, soon, we all meet again, and this time we’re all allies. Life is good!” He paused for a moment, then said, “I wonder what Captain Slayke is doing down there on Praesitlyn right now.”
T
hey could smell the battlefield before they ever got in sight of it. L’Loxx pulled his speeder into the shadow of a rock outcropping. “Now’s where it really gets hairy,” he told Erk and Odie. “There’s about a kilometer of open terrain we’ve got to cross to get to our positions. It’s constantly under observation, and the enemy is always directing harassment and interdiction fires onto it. Our labor droids have built a series of bunkers connected by deep trenches throughout the area—once we get inside our defensive perimeter, we’ll be all right. But it’s that race across the open ground where you’ll have to really be on your toes. I’ve done it several times. Zig and zag a lot. Follow me—I know where to cross our lines. The challenge for today is
widow
and the countersign is
orphan
, in case we get separated.”
“What
is
that smell?” Erk asked, wrinkling his nose.
L’Loxx smiled wryly at the pilot. “Right, you don’t have any experience with fighting up close.” It was the disdain of the infantry soldier, who lived and fought and bled in the mud, for those who slept in beds and fought in what foot soldiers considered clean environments. “You don’t know. There are tens of thousands
of troops down there, all stuck in one area, without running water. They start to smell after a while.” He looked away, and his face went blank for a moment. “Besides, we haven’t had time to bury all our dead.” He shook it off and returned to the matter at hand. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go in first on Jamur’s speeder. They’ll recognize me as friendly. Once I’m in, you two come on the seventy-four-Zs. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a redoubt down there that’s got this whole area covered in case the enemy flanks us and comes in from the rear. I’ll tell them not to fire on you, and the other outposts will direct counterbattery fire on the enemy guns. That should distract them enough so you can get through with no problem. Remember the passwords because they
will
challenge you. Can you handle that speeder there, flyboy?”
“Sarge, one of these days I’ll get you in the backseat of a fighter and show you some real handling,” Erk said.
L’Loxx grinned. “I look forward to that day, Lieutenant. One final thing. We’ve determined that whoever’s controlling the enemy guns only reacts to movement, so if you fall or are wounded, lie still and you won’t be a target.”
“How long do we lie there?” Odie asked.
“Until we come out and get you. Ready?”
Slayke’s army had dug in along a dry riverbed that faced the plateau on which the Intergalactic Communications Center sat. Various strongpoints connected by a trench-and-tunnel complex had been constructed. The remains of uncounted thousands of destroyed battle droids and war machines littered the complex, mute
evidence of the heavy fighting that had been going on. Right now the lines were relatively quiet. Occasionally high-energy weapons directed their beams into the defenses, or Slayke’s artillery lanced out at the enemy positions, but otherwise there seemed to be no movement at all.
Almost from the instant L’Loxx headed down the slope, high-energy ranging weapons began to take him under fire. It took him a full thirty seconds to cross the intervening open space, zigging and zagging without any apparent pattern, and disappear into the safety of a trench line where he was protected from the enemy guns.
“Ohboy, ohboy,” Odie muttered, putting her speeder into gear and roaring down the slope. She made it halfway to the trench line before the enemy opened fire, confused momentarily by the presence of one of their own speeders crossing no-being’s-land. Obviously, whoever or whatever was operating the enemy fire-control system was slow to make the connection that the bikes couldn’t belong to their side, since no lone recon trooper would be making a dash for the enemy lines. At that point Slayke’s own artillery responded to the enemy fire, which had slackened considerably by the time Odie made cover.
Erk swallowed nervously. The palms of his hands were sweaty on the speeder’s controls. He’d quickly learned how to operate the machine on the long trek across the desert, but what was required of him now would be a degree of skill in riding that he wasn’t sure he possessed. One mistake he would
not
make was to
exit his position in the same place as the other two had; by now every enemy gun would be trained on that spot. Carefully, he guided his speeder down the ridge about a hundred meters. That meant he’d have to aim for the trench line at an acute angle. Would the terrain look so different approaching from that angle that he’d miss the entrance? Would the violent maneuvering disorient him?
He gunned the speeder, cleared the ridgeline by ten meters, and slammed down on the other side with enough force to jar his teeth. Caught off guard, the enemy gunners didn’t fire at him at first, but after a few seconds beams began lancing down all around him, slagging the ground where they struck. Erk zigged and zagged, left, right, right, straight ahead for a few meters; stop for a one-second count; then straight ahead for a few more meters, executing sharp turns every few meters. He could feel the heat of the near hits as the enemy gunners tracked him. They could have laid down a curtain of fire between him and the trench but didn’t. Instead they kept tracking him as an individual target, as if trying to score points in a game.
Erk never saw the depression in the ground. Just as he crossed the depression’s forward edge, a bolt struck the speeder’s fuel cell and it exploded in a violent orange blossom, but he had already pitched headlong over the controls and slammed down into the ground with enough force to knock him unconscious. Those few seconds saved his life because the enemy gunners, or whoever was controlling them, seeing him lying on the ground and not moving, apparently thought he had been killed in the explosion.
The next thing Erk knew someone was hauling him to his feet. “Come on! Come on!”
It was Odie. Groggily, he straddled the machine she guided him to and held on to her for his life. The speeder leapt forward at top speed, almost throwing him off. She swerved sharply to the right and again to the left, the speeder cutting the turns so close that his knee dragged along the ground. In seconds they were inside the trench. Odie switched off her engine, and willing hands emerged from the bunkers to help the pair off.
“Fine work!” Sergeant L’Loxx shouted. “Flyboy, I sure hope you navigate that fighter of yours better than you did that speeder! You should have a medic see to that knee.”
Erk nodded dumbly, still dazed from being thrown. Then he gathered himself and asked, “Where’s the aid station?”
“Fifty meters or so that way there’s a connecting trench.” L’Loxx pointed to the right. “Follow it, you can’t miss it.” He turned to one of his soldiers. “Frak, show him the way. Wait for him and bring him back. If the docs can’t take care of him right away and you think he’s all right, bring him back—he can get treated later.”
While the sergeant was instructing Private Frak, Erk pulled himself to his feet. He looked to see how high the lip of the trench was. Confident that he was protected from direct fire, he followed Frak down the trench.
Odie’s concerned eyes followed Erk for a moment, then decided he was going to be all right and asked a
more immediate question. “Any chance of getting something to eat?”
“That’s what all of us would like to know,” L’Loxx answered. “What I can do is offer you a place to rest out of the elements.” He showed her into a small bunker with a cot. Odie didn’t care that the cot was filthy from the many unwashed soldiers who had slept on it—at least it was off the ground. She was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.
Sergeant L’Loxx woke her an hour later. “Come on,” he said. “Captain Slayke wants to see you and the flyboy.”
Odie sat up and rubbed her eyes. She mumbled something—the only word L’Loxx could make out was “Erk.”
“He’s back and he’s been taken care of. Let’s go. The captain’s waiting for us.”
Slayke’s army, composed of volunteers from all over the galaxy, was a polyglot conglomeration of species. As far as possible, Slayke had organized his units to keep individuals of a species together. As the trio negotiated the narrow trenches, at one point they squeezed past a squad of Gungan engineers rebuilding a caved-in bunker; in another sector a company of Bothans staffed observation posts. And everywhere was the detritus of war: destroyed battle droids, discarded weapons, abandoned personal items, and empty supply containers of all kinds littered the positions; engineer and labor droids scurried everywhere, collecting weapons and ordnance for salvaging, rebuilding damaged walls, helping living beings scavenge for supplies.
The command post was in a bunker deep underground. It was a hubbub of organized disorder, officers and noncoms taking reports from the outposts, others passing on orders, staff officers dealing with the myriad details required to keep an army operational in combat. At the center of it all was the commanding figure of Zozridor Slayke.
Sergeant L’Loxx approached the captain, came to attention, and saluted. “Recon report, sir,” he announced.
“Omin, I see you made it back again.” Slayke nodded for him to proceed, and L’Loxx made his report, concluding with the discovery of Erk and Odie and the trip back to their lines.
Slayke held out his hand. “Welcome to my victorious little army. Do you know if there are any other survivors of General Khamar’s force?”
“Nossir,” Erk answered. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that we didn’t see anyone else.”
Slayke shook his head. “Too bad. We could use the reinforcement, but since you’re all there appears to be, you’ll have to do. You’re a fighter pilot, Lieutenant? I’d like to assign you to an aircraft, but we’re all out of them just now. But you, trooper, you’re recon? Reconnaissance is my eyes and ears. I rely heavily on troopers like Omin here.” Odie was surprised at how Slayke used or even knew the first names of his soldiers. “The enemy is constantly trying to outflank us and take our positions from the rear. That’s why recon troopers are so important to me. I need someone to replace Corporal Nath. He was a good man, Jamur, but he’s gone now. Would you be willing to take on the job?”
With Slayke standing there looking straight at her with his penetrating eyes, it was very difficult for Odie not to shout out
Yessir!
but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d rather stay and fight alongside Lieutenant Erk.” She swallowed hard but couldn’t stop her face from turning red at the words. “He’s a pilot, sir—he doesn’t know how to fight on the ground. He needs someone to hold his hand.” She blushed more brightly when she realized how what she said could be taken.
Slayke raised his eyebrows, glanced at Sergeant L’Loxx, who just gave a noncommittal shrug, and turned to Erk.
“Um, she’s my copilot, sir, sort of, that is,” Erk said.
“Oh?” Slayke answered. “Come over here with me.” He gestured at a hologram map table behind where they stood. On it was a three-dimensional display of Slayke’s troop dispositions. “Here, this dry riverbed is no-being’s-land, the dividing line between our armies. The lines are very close together there.” He grinned wolfishly. “I had us move in so close that his ships in orbit don’t dare fire because they’d destroy his own droids. That’s assuming any of his ships can break contact with my fleet to pay attention to what’s happening down here. He caught on quickly and keeps his forces just as close to mine so my ships can’t fire on his ground forces.
“This redoubt,” he said, pointing at a fortified outpost, “is the most advanced part of our lines. It’s called Izable, and it’s there to warn us of any change in the enemy’s dispositions, any preparations he might be making to attack us. About six hundred meters behind
Izable, but out on the flanks, are two more forts, Eliey and Kaudine. Here, where we are now, is the main position in our defenses. About six hundred meters behind us is the final redoubt, Judlie, where you came into our lines. Judlie covers our rear. These five strong-points are massively dug in, and each has a three-sixty-degree field of fire, fully interlocked with the fields of fire from the other positions, so if the enemy gets through anywhere along our lines all the forts can bring fire on him. Here, here, here, and here are artillery positions, equally well dug in, but their guns are registered on every square meter of our own lines, so if the enemy breaks through they’ll be taken under direct fire. The redoubts are connected by a series of tunnels and trenches to allow us to shift soldiers and supplies from one point to another as needed. This place is an engineering marvel. We built it in just two days while under fire. That’s thanks to our engineers and hundreds of labor droids. Engineers saved this army.