“We'll assume ten then,” said Niner.
Ordo paused for a moment as if he thought Niner might be resorting to sarcasm. Fi could see it in the way his shoulders braced. He was a knife-edge kind of man, Ordo. But Niner was simply in literal mode, as he tended to be when things were getting intense. He always wanted to err on the side of caution.
Ordo obviously knew that: he didn't bite. “By the way, General Tur-Mukan is operating around the Bothan sector, and appears to be coping, according to Commander Gett,” he said. “And she's still packing the cone rifle, so your lesson wasn't wasted.”
“Beats swinging the shiny stick,” Fi said, winking at Darman. “It'd be fun to see her again, eh, Dar?”
Darman smiled enigmatically. Atin was staring in slight defocus at the bulkhead, jaw clenched. Fi thought it was high time the bad guys dropped out of hyperspace and took their minds off the individual things that were troubling them, which included his stomach.
“Ordo out,” the blue holo said, and Niner's glove held nothing but air again.
Darman prepped his helmet, resetting the HUD with a prod of his finger. “Poor Ord'ika.” He called him by the affectionate nickname Skirata used in private, a kid's name, Little Ordo. In public, it was strictly Captain and Sergeant. And you could call your brother vod'ika in the Mandalorian way, but nobody else could, and never in front of strangers.
“Who'd want to be doing the filing when the rest of your batch are off saving the galaxy?”
“Well, I hear Kom'rk is out at Utapau, and Jaing's cannoned up and gone hiking with extreme prejudice in the Bakura sector,” said Fi.
“Fierfek.”
“Knowing him, he's doing it for the fun of it. And as for Mereel—well, why has Kal sent him out to Kamino?”
Niner clicked irritably again. “Anyone else you want to discuss classified intel with, Fi?”
“Sorry, Sarge.”
The cabin was silent once more. Fi slid his helmet back on, sealed the collar, and concentrated on the artificial horizon of his HUD to convince his stomach which way was up. The Mark III Katarn armor now had more enhancements and was rated blaster-resistant up to light cannon rounds. Every op was full of new surprises from GAR Procurement—like a birthday, according to Skirata, although Fi, like all his brothers, had never celebrated one.
Now they even had a nonlethal pulsed energy projectile, or PEP, for the DC-17 that didn't exactly kill the targets, but certainly made their eyes water. It was police riot control kit, a deuterium fluoride laser: it would probably just annoy a Wookiee, but it sorted out humanoids in short order.
Fi focused on the icons in the frame of his HUD and blinked one into action, sending chilled air across his face. That soothed his nausea. Then he isolated his audio channel and accessed a articularly thumping piece of glimmik music.
Niner cut in on the comm channel override. “Now what are you listening to?”
“Mon Cal opera,” Fi said. “I'm improving my mind.”
“Liar. I can see you nodding to the beat.”
Relax, Sarge. Please. “Want to listen in?”
“I'm psyched up enough, thanks,” Niner said.
Darman shook his head. Atin looked up. “Later, Fi.”
Sicko glanced over his shoulder, excluded from the squad's conversation by their secure helmet-to-helmet comlink. But he could obviously see the body language that indicated they were chatting. Fi flicked to his frequency with a couple of blinks directed at the sensor inside his visor.
“How about you, ner vod? Want some music?”
“No thanks.” Sicko had much the same neutral accent as most of the infantry trooper clones. They'd learned Basic from flash-instruction and had rarely been exposed to outsiders with interesting accents. “But it's decent of you to offer.”
“Anytime.”
Commandos owed their lives to the guts of these pilots—Omega had been extracted under heavy fire by their astonishing skill a number of times—and the TIV pilots were the most daring of the lot. Any gulfs among clone trooper, specialist, and the elite commando units had now been swept away by shared hardship and they were an vode now—all brothers. Fi was happy to indulge them.
He killed the music feed and switched over to the open squad comlink again. The waiting was eating at him now. If—
“Got trade,” said Sicko. “They should be jumping out of hyperspace anytime now. Three contacts.” He flicked the tracking display from his console into a holoprojection so they could see the pulses of color that represented the ships—no outlines or shapes, just a flickering array of numbers and codes to one side, awaiting a ship to tag. “Intercept in two minutes. They should all be less than a minute apart.”
“Bring us in starboard-side-to, please,” said Niner.
“There you go … the L-six is coming out first.” Sicko pressed a pad on the console and Fi heard the grapple arms extend and retract like an athlete flexing muscles before an event. The display picked up the ship, then another. “But the second profile looks like an L-six, too …”
“Intel said—”
“Intel has occasionally been known to be less than one hundred percent accurate, apparently …”
Atin sighed a ffft of contempt. “You reckon?” Fi could see that he was checking ships' configuration data via his HUD. “I'm glad I'm shockproofed.”
“But we like intel,” said Fi. No, not again. Let it be right this time. “Sergeant Kal never read us bedtime stories, so intel satisfies our innate boyish need for heroic fantasy.”
“Is he always like this?” Sicko asked.
“No, he's pretty quiet today.” Darman clutched a magnetic frame charge to his chest plate—his hatch persuader, as he liked to call it. “So are we going to jump the first crate or what?”
“Play it by ear,” said Niner, who always seemed to resort to Skirata's voice under pressure. He hit the release on his restraints. “Let's see how it reacts when we approach. Pressure up helmets, gentlemen, and we're in business.”
“Coming about,” said Sicko. “And if I can't disable its drive, blow the navigation power conduit. The access ought to be outside the engineering compartment, but it's sometimes inside the port-side bulkhead, three meters from the hatch. So knock the rotten thing out, will you? Or they'll bolt and drag us across ten star systems.”
Then the pilot punched the TIV into a ninety-degree roll and the apparently fixed constellations Fi had been watching tilted before his eyes. He understood instantly why they called the man Sicko.
Fi grabbed a restraint instictively and his backpack hit the bulkhead.
“Oh fierfek—”
“Whoaaa!”
“Uhhh.”
Fi could see through the cockpit screen as he steadied himself alongside the hatch. A box-like freighter—yes, a Gizer L-6—loomed out of black nothing.
“Interdict that,”Niner said.
Fi reached for his jet-pack controls, hanging right beside Darman in free fall.
Sicko powered the TIV into a slow head-on approach and corkscrewed slowly to line it up and bring the deckhead hatch against the port side of the freighter, landing lights on.
The freighter slowed, too. Darman stood ready, fingers flexing over the jet-pack controls on his belt. He'd be first out, blowing the hatch controls when the blastproof coaming sealed against the target's hull, pulling aside to let the others storm in. As the TIV moved sedately along the freighter's flank, the landing lights picked out the bright orange livery of VOSHAN CONTAINERS.
“Oops,” said Sicko. “Looks like the legit one.”
“Back off, then,” Niner said. “If the other ship sees this, we've lost—”
A flash caught Fi's eye at the same time it did everyone else's. The second vessel was heading their way.
“Another L-six,” Sicko said. “Please don't let there be three of them.”