Jedi Trial (25 page)

The barrage came unexpectedly, catching Green Wizard still behind enemy lines. That didn’t surprise him: such things happened often in battle. Someone had made a mistake, starting the barrage before all the teams had been accounted for, but that wasn’t his worry—getting back was. Yet even as Green Wizard hugged the ground, he noted how accurate Halcyon’s artillerists were. He respected accuracy and professionalism, and admired the artillery even as it came crashing
and smashing down all around him, bouncing him up in the air, crushing the breath out of him, shaking his teeth loose.

At first Green Wizard felt no pain at all. He knew his leg had been severed, but he just tied off the artery with a length of cord and considered his options. He knew that soon there would be pain, followed by shock. He had to do something and quickly, because the intelligence he had was too important to die with him. If he stayed where he was, he would be found and executed. He could call in his findings now and his mission would be over, successfully completed; but his orders were not to use the comlink except to signal that he was ready to come back in. He gave the signal and for a moment, but only for an instant, he felt a flash of something like anger that someone back at the command post had not followed the plan for the night. The barrage continued unabated.

So his only option now was to try to get back to his own lines. With one leg gone, that would be difficult, but not impossible. Clone commandos were at their best when faced with obstacles that would be insuperable to any ordinary being.

Slowly, carefully, he began to crawl. At some point the tourniquet on his leg came loose and he started losing blood. He succeeded in making it as far as the dry riverbed, but that was where he finally realized he could go no farther. He had to make his report before he was too weak to do it, orders or no orders. He reached for his comlink, but somewhere along the way he had lost it. He chided himself for that. He had let pain and physical exhaustion distract him. It would be
good if he did die here. He didn’t want anyone to know how incompetent he’d become. But Green Wizard also felt a terrible sense of frustration, not because he was dying, but because he would die with information that was vital to the army he served. His last conscious thought was that he had done his best.

“We don’t have much time,” Anakin informed his commanders, “so here’s the plan of attack.” He called up a huge three-dimensional view of the battlefield. “The focus of our attack is this hill. Note the jumble of huge rocks at its base. They’ll serve as cover for our infantry, and we’ll mount our assault from there. The key is to get across this plain as quickly as possible, because there we’ll be in full view of the enemy on the mesa. General Halcyon’s full-divisional attack on the center will draw troops away from the flanks to meet it and weaken their positions elsewhere, in particular here on this hill, which we know from last night’s recon is only lightly defended by infantry droids with no artillery. Once we occupy that hill, we’ll enfilade the entire enemy position. First Brigade will occupy the hill, while Second Brigade will sweep around to the rear of the positions. We will be attacking from three directions simultaneously.

“We will be preceded by Clone Commandos, led by an ARC trooper, who will infiltrate the position on this hill and cause a diversion. Under cover of that diversion we will attack in strength. Now, as I said, it’s vital we get across that plain quickly. We will be preceded by a battalion of crawlers that will lay down suppressing fire on the hilltop. Our infantry will follow in their
armored transports. We’ll use this dry riverbed to get into position—that will provide us cover until we’re ready to attack across the plain. We won’t mount our own attack until General Halcyon’s division is fully engaged. Fire and maneuver all the way across, but move your soldiers quickly—I cannot overemphasize speed. You will be under direct observation until you get to these rocks. You’ll be supported by artillery all the way, and it will continue to pound the enemy positions as you go up the hill, but as you can see, these rocks make the approach to this hill impossible for vehicles of any kind, so this phase of the operation will have to be accomplished on foot. This will be an infantry soldier’s fight.”

Anakin’s commanders stood in full battle gear. Their troops had been assembled for the attack some time before and were waiting for their orders. He turned to the ARC captain in charge of his clone commandos. “You will depart immediately, Captain, and go in first. I want you to penetrate the enemy position and raise havoc up there. As soon as you’re in, we’ll follow. Remember, all of this starts ten minutes after General Halcyon commences his attack on the center of the enemy’s positions. Everything we do must be coordinated to the second.

“That’s it. You’ve all been assigned your sectors and objectives. Return to your units and brief your subordinates. We jump off in thirty minutes.”

“Sir,” one of the two brigade commanders said, “who will be battlefield tactical commander?”

“I will,” Anakin replied. At the surprised silence that met his words, he straightened his shoulders and
silently reminded himself to relax and remember Grudo’s lessons. “First of all, I don’t believe in ordering someone else to anything I’m not willing to do myself. Second, if any mistakes are made this morning, I’m responsible whether or not I’m there with you, so I may as well be there. And finally, you can’t lead from behind. All right, let’s get going. Dismissed.”

“Sir, may I speak with you for a moment?” It was the ARC captain.

“Make it quick, Captain.”

“Yessir. We lost six troopers on the reconnaissance, so we know nothing about what the enemy intends to do in his main positions.”

“Well, Captain, I’m sure you lost your troopers because that part of the enemy line was impenetrable. That must mean that General Halcyon’s decision to take the hills is the correct one. You heard Sergeant L’Loxx’s report.”

“Yessir. Why did the second barrage open before we knew if the men had made it back?”

Anakin hadn’t expected that question. Was this clone questioning his commander’s orders? He knew ARC troopers were several cuts above the ordinary clone trooper, but this line of questioning was getting very close to insubordination. “General Halcyon had to make a decision, Captain: leave L’Loxx out there until your troopers reported in, take a chance on losing all the recon men, or bring at least some of them in to make a report. In the event, he made the correct decision.”

“But one did give the signal. Too late.”

“Yes, yes,” Anakin answered quickly, “I’m sorry
about that. Captain, you do realize that this entire attack depends on you and your troopers, don’t you? What do you say we get moving now?”

The captain saluted, made an about-face, and left the command post. Anakin stood there thinking for a moment. He had not expected a clone trooper—even an ARC—to question orders. When Anakin had craved a command of his own, he had not really thought about the responsibility that entailed: responsibility for the lives of individual sentient beings who would die on his orders, regardless of whether their loyalty had been bought by the Republic, as was the case with the clone army, or whether, like Khamar’s and Slayke’s soldiers, they fought because they thought it was their duty to oppose tyranny.

“A credit for your thoughts, Jedi.”

Anakin whirled to see Slayke standing there, a big grin on his face. “I was just thinking—”

“Thinking is dangerous for a commander.” Slayke laughed. “See where it’s gotten me?” He paused. “You are going to lead the attack personally, I hear.”

“Yessir. I can’t just send soldiers in there while I sit safely back at headquarters. Besides, if anything goes wrong, I want to be on the spot to correct it.”

Slayke nodded and held out his hand. “You’ll do just fine. I wish I could go with you, but we’re being held in reserve. I’ve had a talk with your Third Brigade commander and we have an understanding. I’ll hand it all back to you when this is over. I’ll be hanging around here during the attack, keeping an eye on Halcyon. Don’t worry,” he added, with a good-natured laugh, “I won’t let him goof things up. Well, good luck, Commander.”
They shook hands, and then Slayke took two steps back, came to attention, and saluted Anakin.

As Anakin walked to his command post, he noted a spring in his step and couldn’t help smiling. That brief conversation with Slayke had invigorated him. The old soldier, the rebel, the iconoclast, had actually taken the time to seek him out and wish him success. And had expressed his confidence in his leadership ability. That was a high compliment, and his spirits soared. Maybe Slayke wasn’t such a bad character after all.

“Driver,” Anakin shouted as he hoisted himself through a hatch, “crank this thing up. Time to move!”

A
dmiral Pors Tonith kicked the body gingerly with one foot and cast a wary eye at the armor that had been stripped from the corpse and piled off to the side. He was very nervous, being exposed like this in the open, but he’d been called out of his bunker to witness this grisly discovery and he realized it was important. It was still full dark and dawn was an hour away, but he was anxious to get back under cover again. “It’s a clone commando,” he said.

“We’ve found one more complete body and parts of others, possibly as many as five altogether,” the officer said. “Evidently they were killed by their own artillery last night.”

“Evidently,” Tonith replied. “Evidently they made it all the way inside our lines without being detected. Evidently”—his voice rose an octave in anger—“they now know a lot about how my army is disposed. These weren’t the only ones sent up here, you can be sure of that.”

“We must strengthen our lines, sir,” the officer said.

Tonith nodded in agreement. “That hill is the key to
our position. Did you move the troops and guns as I ordered last night?”

The officer shifted his weight nervously before he answered. “Some. We’ve experienced mechanical difficulties and—”

Tonith whirled on him. “You mean my orders weren’t carried out?” he asked, his voice rising again.

“We are carrying them out, sir, but—”

“No buts.” He was calmer now. “Here is what you will do. I want that hilltop reinforced. Right now. Shorten this line. Move troops from the right to the center; take some from the center to that hilltop. If they take that hilltop, our entire position will be exposed to their fire, and it’s all over. If the coming assault threatens to turn our right wing, I want the army to fall back to a line about there—” He pointed to a spot some distance behind them, closer to the communications center. “They will take the enemy under fire as he advances across the plain below us, but if he makes it to the mesa, the right flank will swing backward like a door closing. That will shorten the line and consolidate our forces. Once he’s on the mesa it’ll force him to come at us over another stretch of open ground, where we shall cut him to pieces.”

Tonith grinned, exposing his stained teeth. “And we have a little surprise for him down on the plain, don’t we? Get artillery up on that hill right now. Also, warn all commanders to expect infiltration by ARC troopers. They will send them up here to penetrate our lines and weaken them in concert with a ground assault. They’ll come at our center in full force, but the real objective
of their attack will be right there.” He gestured in the dark toward the hills again. “Now get to it and report to me in my command post when these dispositions have been made.” He spun on his heel and stalked off to his command bunker, where it was safe and warm and where a simmering pot of tea waited for him. Where, he asked himself, were those reinforcements he’d been promised?

Anakin’s assault force hugged the far bank of the dry riverbed, stretched out for nearly half a kilometer along the ancient stream. First light would be at precisely 0603, Praesitlyn time. It was now 0600. He sat at the communications console in his command transport. “This is Unit Six,” he said. “Mark the time, three minutes and counting,” he advised his commanders, all of whose eyes were glued to their chronos. He turned and grinned at the transport’s commander, a clone sergeant. “Nervous?”

“Nossir,” the tank droid commander answered automatically.

“Well, I am, and I hereby authorize you to be nervous, too.”

He may as well not have said anything, for all the reaction he got.

“We have two minutes, Sergeant. As soon as the transport column goes over the top of the bank onto the plain, I want you to swing around on the flank, climb the bank, and park there so I can supervise the movements of my units.” They’d been over this simple maneuver numerous times during the last hour, but
just talking about it—about anything—had a calming effect on the troopers, and on Anakin, too.

“Yessir,” the sergeant answered. The five sat silently, each thinking his own thoughts, each checking his chrono constantly, watching the seconds flash by.

“The worst part is to come,” Anakin said. “We have to wait a full ten minutes after the attack—” He cocked his head. “There it goes,” he whispered as Halcyon’s preparatory artillery fires commenced. Within seconds, concussions from the dozens of guns of all types reached them inside the armor of the tank droid. They could feel the pressure of the firing in their eardrums. Last night the barrages ordered to cover the reconnaissance had been spectacular displays, but this morning the soldiers were right underneath the guns’ trajectories and the noise was tremendous, especially when the enemy’s own artillery opened fire on Halcyon’s advancing troops.

“They’re really catching it up there,” one of the gunners commented. His voice showed no more emotion than did his blank-featured helmet. Over the command net they listened with rising anxiety to the cacophony of commanders’ voices as Halcyon’s troops dashed across the plain under the enemy’s devastating fire. Someone in a transport screamed.

“Switch to the tactical net,” Anakin ordered. They’d hear enough of their own troopers screaming soon enough—they didn’t need any of that now.

And then he realized something important. These were clone troopers sitting around him now—bred to war, bred to discipline, bred to obey without question
the orders of the powers that paid for their services. But though their faceplates were expressionless, minute perturbations in the Force told Anakin that these five were reacting to the impending attack like regular troopers, troopers who sweat, were afraid, who could imagine their own deaths. In his attitude toward the clones, had he himself prejudged them? They didn’t act here, inside this transport that might soon be their funeral pyre, like they did in ranks. He wondered if Jango Fett had had a sense of humor.