Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (10 page)

Without any formal negotiation, the Coyerti had become de facto allies of the Rebel Alliance.

Only now the Coyerti really were on the verge of annihilation. Three weeks earlier, High Command had received a garbled message stating that the onset of the Coyerti reproductive season had begun—a time during which, thanks to their peculiar biology, they would be effectively defenseless for a full phase of the planet’s moon. By order of the Rebel Alliance, Twilight Company was there to engage enemy forces and protect the Coyerti people until the Coyerti could once again protect themselves.

It was a mission that had induced snickering among the Twilight regulars. Namir had offered his own share of crude comments. But in securing Coyerti, Twilight Company would harden the invisible border between the Empire’s holdings in the Mid Rim and the galaxy’s uncontrolled outer reaches. If Twilight could focus the battle on Coyerti, force the Empire to keep spending resources there, it could provide cover for the Rebellion’s other retreating forces. It was, fates willing, the last rearguard action of the Mid Rim Retreat.

That was the official word. The truth was more complicated, and Namir suspected he knew only part of it. But his job wasn’t to win the Rebellion’s war or to understand the Coyerti. His job was to get Twilight through its latest operation intact.

That would be challenge enough.

Gadren nearly died in the first minute of the first battle. He
would
have died,
should
have, if not for a fluke—he’d charged into the Imperial camp, gripping his blaster cannon and shooting wildly while he tossed aside stormtroopers with his two free arms. He’d been entirely oblivious to the grenade that landed at his feet until it had been too late to take shelter.

Inexplicably, the grenade hadn’t detonated. Whether by dint of a manufacturer’s flaw, the corrosive effects of Coyerti’s atmosphere, or incompetence on the part of the grenadier, Gadren’s life was saved despite his own best efforts.

After that, the attack went more smoothly.

Namir’s squad had coordinated its assault plan with Sergeant Zab’s team before the drop. The target was an assortment of tents and perimeter sensors run by a skeleton crew—a newly erected scout post servicing the Empire’s fresh assault on the Coyerti people, totally unprepared for an attack from fed, rested, and heavily armed rebel forces. The two squads approached from opposite directions and made no effort at subtlety.
Surprise
, not
stealth
, was the day’s watchword.

Namir stayed close to Roach, taking shelter with her behind a fallen tree as they supplied covering fire. The girl was sweating, spending half her time diligently but fruitlessly lining up shots and the other half blasting randomly. Namir doubted she would hit anyone; that was fine with him so long as she followed his lead.

Brand had announced her intent to ambush any Imperials looking to flee or outflank their attackers on speeder bikes. Namir hadn’t seen her since she’d slipped off into the jungle, and he counted that as a good sign.

Gadren and two of Zab’s men pushed into the center of the camp, ensuring the Imperials couldn’t pull together to mount a defense. Their job was the riskiest, and Namir might have joined them if Charmer had been present to work with Roach. Instead, he scanned the battlefield and tried to keep the stormtroopers’ attention on him instead of on the soldiers coming for their heads.

The shooting was over within ten minutes. When each squad member signaled an all-clear, the teams converged carefully into the camp itself and began rigging what little equipment was present for detonation.

The acrid scent in the air was almost painful. Roach asked Namir about it, and he shrugged. “Blaster bolts rip up the atmosphere,” he said. “Every time you fire,
something
gets vaporized. Every planet stinks a little different.”

Roach nodded with a swift, jerky motion. She was sweating more than she had been while fighting.

After another five minutes, both squads were marching back into the jungle. Zab had wanted to steal the speeders, but Namir had talked him out of it—they’d be rigged with homing beacons, and no one on either team had the expertise to remove the trackers fast enough. Speed was imperative—there would be TIE bombers over the camp in moments, set to annihilate any straggling rebel forces.

That was how the war on Coyerti began.

On the second day of the Coyerti campaign, Namir and his squad mates spent the morning waist-deep in a stagnant bog. With improvised camouflage spackled on their heads and shoulders, they waited for an Imperial convoy to pass by. Namir had to warn Roach to secure her rifle when she started aiming at imaginary noises; she’d been twitchy ever since the first day’s firefight, and boredom didn’t seem to sit well with her.

Five hours in, a message from Lieutenant Sairgon came through announcing that the convoy had changed course at dawn. Namir cursed loudly enough to send marsh lizards scampering. He was cold and his thighs were cramped and he doubted he’d ever clean off all the muck—but in truth, he didn’t mind the change of plans. The boredom was over and the squad could move on.

That afternoon, Brand and Namir refilled their canteens from a murky creek while Gadren and Roach kept watch. Sterilization pills would make the water safe to drink, but only after the canteens filtered out any solids. Namir stared at the container in his hand, waiting for it to click into readiness.

“Remind you of anything?” Brand asked.

“Kor-Lahvan,” Namir said. “I remember.”

“I thought you’d get us all killed.”

“I remember that, too.”

Brand held a fist level with her eyes and watched a four-winged insect crawl across her knuckles. “You were a brat back then,” she said. “Kid from a galactic backwater who thought he’d been fighting longer than all of us put together.”

Namir bit back a smile. “And I had been.”

Brand shrugged. “Sure. But who would’ve believed it?”

The canteen clicked softly. Namir laughed, shook the mud from the filter, and clipped the container to his belt.

In the evening, green and orange glows lit the northern horizon. A dozen Twilight squads were attacking an Imperial fort, Namir knew—it had been part of the plan from the outset, the first large-scale engagement of the campaign. From thirty klicks away, all Namir could do was check for signals and watch the colors wash over the jungle canopy.

As evening became night, the colors grew more intense and black dots—ash or TIE fighters, Namir couldn’t tell which—speckled the sky. Occasionally an echo like distant thunder passed among the trees.

Gadren kept Roach occupied, first walking her through the steps to check her gear and clean the moisture from her rifle. Later they laid out a dozen different ration packs, organizing them by flavor (as labeled) and actual flavor (as determined by experience). When they handed Namir a compact nutrient bar that tasted like chemically infused mucilage, he didn’t argue and ate in silence.

Namir kept watching even after the more colorful blooms faded and were replaced by a guttering orange. When Roach and Gadren had zipped themselves into their bedrolls and the chittering of the night’s insects had begun, Brand paused nearby before beginning her patrol.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“Could be,” Namir said. “Might be another day.”

Brand tilted her head as if listening to something far off. Her expression was untroubled, however.

“You think they did it?” Namir asked.

“Fort’s trashed,” Brand said. She sounded certain. “Don’t know the cost, though. Carver is good, but you know how he gets.”

Namir nodded. Brand started to turn away before Namir asked abruptly, “You really don’t wish you were with them?”

Brand shook her head. “I’m here for a reason,” she said. “That’s good enough for me.”

Namir turned back to the fire in the north.

“Get some sleep,” Brand said.

On the third morning of the Coyerti campaign, Namir checked the portable satellite uplink for coded updates from the front. He received only a set of coordinates and a four-word message that, decrypted, read:
AT-ST SEEK AND DESTROY
.

Gadren took inventory of the squad’s weaponry while Roach and Namir packed up camp and Brand kept watch. “Three grenades,” Gadren told Namir afterward. “Together, they might take down a walker.”

“Not a lot of room for error,” Namir said.

Gadren nodded grimly. “I agree. So we use the detonators. One should suffice, and we would still have enough for—”

“No,” Namir said. “Those are spoken for. We’ll find a way.”

Their target had left a trail of snapped logs and burnt trees, and shortly before noon they caught up with it: a two-legged, box-headed All Terrain Scout Transport that marched through the jungle, turning mounted blaster cannons to whatever obstacle stood in its path.

The squad’s first engagement was a disaster. Gadren threw his grenade too hard against the vehicle’s shell and sent it bouncing away. Roach was nearly crushed by a tree whose lower trunk was turned to cinders by the walker’s cannons. Brand tried to climb to the walker’s cockpit and sprained her ankle when she fell.

The afternoon became a series of hit-and-run engagements. The squad kept the machine’s pilots from resuming their mission, forcing them to hunt. Gadren scorched the walker’s metal sides with repeated shots. Roach managed to lob a grenade close enough to its spindly legs to visibly damage its mechanisms.

But the machine kept walking and incinerating trees. If the jungle hadn’t been so humid, it all would have burned.

By evening, Namir had developed a new plan. The squad continued to strike and retreat to keep the machine in pursuit. Along the path of their withdrawal, the ground gradually turned from mud to water. It took hours of maneuvering, but by nightfall all four squad members were soaking wet and the walker was lying at the bottom of a marsh, its pilots sealed in the flooded, airless cockpit.

Namir ached from a day on the run, and at camp he stripped down to his underclothes to try to dry off. Brand was nursing her ankle, applying a nonregulation goo she swore by. Roach was trying to set up a heater to take the edge off the water’s chill, pretending not to stare at the brands between Namir’s shoulders or the tattoos on his legs. Gadren was standing at the edge of the camp, gazing out into the jungle.

Namir slapped Gadren hard between his shoulders. “Good day,” he said. “I think we won.”

Gadren raised a hand to hush him. “Listen,” he said.

At first, Namir heard nothing but a faint breeze and the chirping of insects. Yet gradually, he discerned a low thrumming in the distance. It was neither a drumbeat nor a hum, but something in-between—unmistakably alive, with the resonance of a hundred deep voices. Once Namir understood the thrumming, he began to hear other noises, too—high-pitched peals like bells or notes of birdsong, clicks like wood tapping wood.

“It is the Coyerti,” Gadren said.

Roach and Brand joined them, and both stared toward the distant sound—the singing, or chanting, or whatever it truly was. Namir looked between his companions and saw them transfixed, but he suddenly felt cold, and he smelled his sweat and the filth of the water in his hair.

“
Now
,” Gadren said, “it is a good day. We have served this world. Cherish the memory, and let it warm you in the face of true evil.”

Namir turned his back on the others and settled into his bedroll by the heater. “Don’t amuse yourselves for too long,” he called. “Tomorrow will be rough.”

On the fourth day of the Coyerti campaign, the order Namir had been awaiting came at last. He marched the squad out from the bogs and into the highland jungle, where the rotting trees took on the sickly hue of pus. Gadren took charge of navigation, leading them through dark, narrow valleys that wound among the hills. Now and again, he stopped to examine a tree that was still whole and vital, running his enormous fingers over bark dusted in vermillion pollen—as if he’d found a gemstone in the planet’s dross. Three times, Namir nearly scolded him for stopping, but Gadren never delayed for long.

They paused to eat at sunset, though Namir warned the others that the rest would be brief. Brand was limping slightly. Roach was soaked in sweat. Namir kept his attention on Gadren.

“How far?” he asked.

“Assuming we haven’t been lied to?” Gadren asked.

“Assuming nothing,” Namir said. “I want to know
when
we’ll reach the coordinates; I’m not asking what’s there.”

Gadren smiled, showing teeth that could sever a human neck. “If we march through the night, we’ll arrive by morning. According to the maps.”

“We march until midnight,” Namir said. “If we’re half dead when we arrive, we won’t have much of a chance.”

“Assuming we’ve been lied to?” Gadren asked.

Namir smirked. “If we’ve been lied to, we’re dead either way.”

It wasn’t until long after full dark that Namir realized Brand had been listening to the conversation. She matched Namir’s pace despite her limp and said softly, “If it’s a trap, I’ll kill her.”

Namir looked to Brand. He couldn’t make out her expression in the dark. He wanted to ask,
What makes you so sure you’ll survive?
But he’d fought with Brand long enough to know the answer. He’d spent enough hours with Brand to know what it meant for her to say such a thing.

Instead he said, “You don’t want to promise that.”

“I do,” Brand said. “I swear: If Everi Chalis lied, I’ll avenge you.”

On the fifth day of the Coyerti campaign, Namir and his squad crested a stony rise covered in thick red ferns and came into view of what Everi Chalis had lovingly called the Distillery.

Three white bunkers connected by narrow passages sat in a triangle below the rise, smokestacks rising from each to deposit a fine mist into the humid air. Vegetation covered the bunkers’ rooftops, occluding them from any satellite that penetrated the shroud of fog. Three patrols of stormtroopers moved about the structures, staying close to the walls—either they weren’t concerned about maintaining a wide perimeter, or they’d already drawn back in preparation for a fight.