Allegiance (3 page)

He’d believed in the Empire at first. He really had. He’d been ten when the Fleet and infantry had come in force and spent five months clearing out the pirate nests that had plagued Copperline for decades. Eight years later, when the recruiters had come, he’d jumped at the chance to join such a noble group of people. Three years after that, when he’d been offered a spot in the elite Imperial stormtrooper corps, he’d jumped even harder, working and sweating and praying for the chance to be worthy of this ultimate challenge.

For six years everything had gone well. He’d served with all his heart and strength, fighting against the forces of evil and chaos that threatened to destroy Emperor Palpatine’s New Order. And he’d served with distinction, or so at least his commanders had thought.

For LaRone himself, awards and citations meant nothing. He was wearing the white armor, and he was making a difference. That was what mattered.

But then had come Elriss, where an entire town had had to stand out in the pouring rain for six hours while their identities were double- and triple-checked. After that had come Bompreil, and all those terrible civilian casualties as they’d fought to root out a Rebel cell.

And then had come Alderaan.

LaRone shifted uncomfortably on the bench. The details still weren’t entirely clear, but the official reports all agreed that the planet had been a center of Rebel strength, and that it had been destroyed only when it defied an order to surrender the traitors.

LaRone certainly couldn’t fault the motivation. The
Rebels were growing ever stronger, ever bolder, ever more dangerous. They had to be stopped before they destroyed everything the Emperor had created and dragged the galaxy back into more of the chaos of the Clone Wars era.

But surely the entire
planet
couldn’t have been on the Rebels’ side. Could it?

And then the quiet rumors had started. Some said that Alderaan hadn’t been a Rebel base at all, that its destruction had been nothing more than a field test of the Empire’s new Death Star. Others whispered that Grand Moff Tarkin, the Death Star’s borderline-psychotic commander, had destroyed all those billions of people over a personal grudge between him and Bail Organa.

But it almost didn’t matter what the reason was. The bottom line was that the response had been light-years beyond any provocation the Rebels could possibly have put together.

Something was happening to the Empire that LaRone had served so long and so well. Something terrible.

And LaRone himself was stuck right in the middle of it.

“Ground in three minutes,” Major Drelfin called from the front of the drop ship. “Stormtroopers, prepare to deploy.”

LaRone took a deep breath, forcing the doubts away. He was an Imperial stormtrooper, and he would do his duty. Because that was all that mattered.

The first of the speeder bike drop ships came to a cautious hover a couple of meters off the ground. As the ramps came down, Korlo Brightwater gunned his Aratech 74-Z Speeder Bike and roared out into the afternoon sunlight.

“TBR Four-seven-nine, pull it back,” the tart voice of
his commander, Lieutenant Natrom, growled in his ear. “Re-form to Search Pattern Jenth.”

“Four-seven-nine: acknowledged,” Brightwater said, taking a quick look around as he turned into a wide circle that would bring him back to the rest of the scout troopers still maneuvering their way out of the transport. They’d come in on a ground-skimming course just to the north of a set of low, tree-sprinkled hills, with the edge of their target town a couple of hundred meters away on the far side. Activating his helmet’s sensors, he gave the hills a quick but careful scan as he circled back toward the transport. There didn’t seem to be activity anywhere, of any sort, which struck him as highly suspicious. The hills included a picnic area, several walking paths, and half a dozen trees that had been patiently nurtured and manipulated over the decades into an elaborate children’s climbing structure.
Someone
from town ought to be taking his or her leisure out here on such a fine, quiet afternoon.

But there was no one. Something, apparently, was keeping the townspeople indoors today.

Such as the news of an imminent Imperial raid?

Brightwater shook his head in irritation. So the whole thing was a bust. The word had leaked, and any Rebels who might have been hiding here were halfway to the Outer Rim by now. “Command; TBR Four-seven-nine,” he called into his comm. “No activity in staging area. The operation may be blown. Repeat, the operation—”

“Scout troopers, you are cleared to secure the perimeter,” an unfamiliar voice cut in.

Brightwater frowned. “Command, did you copy?” he asked. “I said the lack of activity—”

“TBR Four-seven-nine, you will restrict your comments to tactical reports,” the new voice again interrupted. “All transports: move in.”

Brightwater craned his neck. The stormtrooper drop
ships were visible now high above him, dropping toward the ground like hunting avians moving for the kill.

Only there wasn’t anything down here worth killing anymore.

A movement to his right caught his eye, and he looked back as his partner, Tibren, came alongside. Brightwater lifted his hand in mute question; the other scout shook his head in equally silent warning.

Brightwater scowled. But Tibren was right. Whoever this idiot was running things, he was either too single-minded or too stupid to see reason. Nothing now for the stormtroopers to do but go along for the ride and treat the whole thing as just another training exercise. He nodded Tibren an acknowledgment and gunned his speeder toward his designated containment sector.

By the time they’d finished their encirclement the drop ships were down, their heavy guns sweeping over the rows of mostly single-story buildings, their hatches disgorging their complements of stormtroopers and uniformed command officers. Brightwater kept his speeder moving, watching with professional interest as the troops formed themselves into a double ring and converged on the town. For a change, everything seemed to be going perfectly, without even the small glitches that normally accompanied an operation this size. It really was a pity there weren’t any Rebels left in town to appreciate it.

The stormtroopers and officers disappeared from view, heading between and into the buildings, and Brightwater shifted his attention to the area outside the scout troopers’ perimeter. The Rebels had almost certainly fled the planet, but there were occasional cells with more audacity than brains who elected to stay behind and try to put together an ambush.

Brightwater rather hoped this bunch had gone that route. It would keep the afternoon from being a complete
waste, and it would give the stormtroopers the chance to blast them out here in the open instead of having to sort them out from the civilians.

He had curved to the crest of the nearest hill, his helmet sensors on full power, when he heard the sound of blasterfire from behind him. He swung his speeder sharply around, searching the perimeter on the far side of town. But all the scout troopers over there were still on their speeders, with no indication that anyone was shooting at them. There was another volley of blasterfire, and this time he realized that it was coming from inside the town itself.

He brought his speeder to a halt, frowning. The volleys had been replaced by a less organized stutter, but the shots all carried the distinctive pitch of the stormtroopers’ own BlasTech E-11 rifles. Where was the cacophonous mix of military, sporting, and self-defense weaponry that was practically the trademark of the Rebel Alliance?

And then, with a sudden chill, he understood.

He revved his speeder back to full speed, twisting its nose down the hills and toward town. What in the name of the Emperor did they think they were
doing
?

“TBR Four-seven-nine, return to your post,” Lieutenant Natrom’s voice said in his earphone.

Brightwater flicked out his tongue to the comm’s selector control, switching to the squad’s private frequency. “Sir, something’s happening in town,” he said urgently. “Request permission to investigate.”

“Permission denied,” Natrom said. His voice was under rigid control, but Brightwater could hear the anger beneath it. “Return to your post.”

“Sir—”

“That’s an order, TBR Four-seven-nine,” Natrom said. “It won’t be repeated.”

Brightwater took a deep breath. But he knew Natrom,
and he knew that tone. Whatever was happening, there was nothing either of them could do about it. “Yes, sir,” he said. Taking another deep breath, trying to calm himself, he turned his speeder back around.

The sun had set over the western horizon before the blasterfire finally came to an end.

T
HE FIRING RANGE WAS DESERTED WHEN
L
A
R
ONE ARRIVED
. Deserted, that was, except for Grave, standing in the booth at the far end with his T-28 propped against his armored shoulder. “Grave,” LaRone greeted the other solemnly. “How are you doing?”

For a minute Grave didn’t answer. He kept firing, coolly and methodically, completing the pattern the range had set up for him. LaRone watched the monitor as Grave hit crossmark after crossmark with the kind of accuracy expected of stormtrooper snipers.

He wondered whether Grave had been called on to use that skill earlier that day.

Finally, the blaster fell silent. Grave held his sharpshooter’s pose another couple of seconds as the echoes faded away, then laid the weapon down on the shelf in front of him and pulled off his helmet. “It was like something out of the Clone Wars,” he said, not turning around to face his friend. “The whole town—everyone. Slaughtered where they stood.”

“I know,” LaRone said soberly. “I was just talking to Korlo Brightwater—you know, the speeder scout? He told me he’d heard the official report’s going to say the Rebels launched an ambush during the search.”

“Not a chance,” Grave said firmly. “I was on rooftop sniper-suppression duty, and I didn’t see a single person
so much as poke his nose up there. Even Rebels are smart enough to go for the high ground in a fight.”

“Maybe,” LaRone agreed, feeling a twinge of doubt. “Still, I suppose there
could
have been Rebel activity in one of the sections of town I didn’t see.”

“Of course there
could
have been,” Grave retorted. “And since none of us could see everything, everyone can persuade himself that’s what happened. Typical ISB foggery.” He snapped his T-28 back up to his shoulder and fired off another half a dozen rounds. “Only they couldn’t stuff up our ears, could they?” he growled as he lowered the weapon again. “And every shot
I
heard came from an E-11.”

“I know,” LaRone conceded. “So were there
ever
any Rebels in that town? Or was this nothing but some bizarre object lesson?”

Grave shook his head. “You tell me, LaRone,” he said. “All I know—” He broke off. “Well, from what I could see, it looked like the first ones to be targeted were the aliens.”

“That was how it went down with my squad, too,” LaRone said heavily. “Not that anyone ever gave an order nearly that specific. The ISB men just pointed and ordered us to shoot.”

“And then watched to see if any of you shot to miss?”

LaRone felt his stomach tighten. That thought had never even occurred to him. “Are you suggesting this might have been a test of us?”

Grave shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, ISB never liked the idea of opening up the ranks to volunteers like us. They wanted to keep the stormtroopers strictly clones.”

LaRone snorted. “That was nine years ago. They really should have gotten over it by now.”

“Normal people would have,” Grave said sourly.
“But this is ISB we’re talking about.” He eyed LaRone. “I hope you shot especially straight today.”

“I did my duty,” LaRone said stiffly. “Grave, you don’t suppose ISB knows something we don’t, do you? Like maybe they
were
all Rebel sympathizers in there?”

“You mean like everyone on Alderaan?”

LaRone’s throat tightened. Alderaan. “Grave, what’s happening to us?” he asked quietly. “What’s happening to the Empire?”

“I don’t know,” Grave said. “Maybe it’s the Rebels. Maybe they’re pushing so hard, all the loose seams are starting to break.” His lips compressed tightly. “Or maybe the Empire’s always been like this. Maybe we just didn’t notice until Alderaan.”

“So what do we do about it?”

“We don’t
do
anything, LaRone,” Grave said, a warning tone in his voice. “What
can
we do?”

Join the Rebellion
? The thought flashed through LaRone’s mind. But it was a preposterous idea, and he knew it. He and the others had sworn an oath to defend the Empire and its citizens, and there was no way any of them were going to collaborate with people trying to collapse the whole thing back to chaos. “I don’t know,” he said. “But this isn’t what I signed up for.”

“What you signed up for was to obey orders,” Grave said, turning back to the firing line. Popping out his blaster’s power pack, he pulled a fresh one from his belt and slid it into place. “You
certainly
didn’t sign up to let ISB haul you off for seditious thinking.”

“That’s for sure,” LaRone agreed, a shiver running through him. Translation: don’t ever talk this way again.

“Because we’re supposed to be getting a complete ISB tactical unit in a day or two,” Grave went on. “Their own transports, their own chain of command, probably their own stormtroopers, too.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Marcross, of course,” Grave said, a wry smile peeking almost reluctantly from behind all his seriousness. “Where
he
gets all this stuff, I haven’t a clue.”

“You think he could be ISB himself?”

“Not a chance,” Grave said firmly. “He’s way too nice a guy for that. No, he just likes to keep his ear to the sky.”

“I suppose,” LaRone said. “Regardless, it sounds like someone’s getting serious about this Rebel hunt.”

“That’s fine with me,” Grave said. “And I intend to be ready next time we run into some
real
Rebels.” Turning, he put his helmet back on and keyed for a fresh target.