“You heard the lady.” He shoved Jusik in the back. “Get on with it.”

The last few seconds before a hasty exit were always the most terrifying. A hairbreadth lay between victory and defeat, life and death. Jusik secured the last of the bags and dumped the rest from the speeder in a pile between the trucks.

“Now get lost,” she said.

“I take it I can't count you as a repeat customer, then?”

She raised the blaster eloquently. Skirata replaced his helmet and swung onto the speeder bike behind Jusik. They lifted into the air and climbed above the warehouse.

“Fierfek,” said Darman's voice in his ear. “I hate it when you improvise, Sarge.”

“Like you don't.”

“Standing by.”

Ordo cut in. “The woman's loading all the explosives except a single bag into one truck. The one with the green livery nearest the loading bay. I repeat, negative the green truck. Do not target the green truck or it's good-bye to half of Coruscant.”

“Females never listen to a thing I say, thankfully,” Skirata said. He knew she'd react like that. “So that means there's only one vessel we can't blow up.”

“Priority is to isolate the green truck and ground it before engaging other targets.”

“Copy that, sir,” a chorus said.

Jusik set the speeder down three hundred meters behind the warehouse in a cluster of shuttered wholesalers' units. Skirata sat breathing deeply for a moment to steady himself before opening his comlink again with a double click of his back teeth.

“Obrim, this is Skirata.”

“Got you, Kal.”

“You can roll now, my friend. Talk to you later.”

“Copy that.” Obrim's channel snapped into silence.

“Omega, Delta, all units, this is Kal. We're clear. All yours, Captain.”

“Copy that, Sargeant.” Ordo began counting down. “Five, four, three, two … go go go! Oya!”

A bitter little war with far-reaching consequences was unleashed in downtown Galactic City.

We will watch you, I promise. You will not see us or hear us or even know we stand beside you. How does that feel, Jedi? How does it feel to be at the mercy of a species with powers even you don't have? Now you know how others regard you. Keep your promises, General, or you will see how hard a small, invisible army can strike.

–Jinart the Gurlanin, to General Arligan Zey, on the pledge to relocate all human colonists from Qiilura within eighteen months

CoruFresh depot, 2225—H Hour

At 2225 hours Triple Zero time, Fi and Mereel broke from behind the low wall at the southern edge of the landing strip and positioned themselves between the parked repulsor trucks at the far side facing the warehouse.

Fi focused the infrared scope of his DC-17 on the green truck and saw a bright patch of heat on the fuselage. He tilted up and saw the dim patchwork indicating the varying temperatures of a human's upper body, a pilot waiting to depart.

“I've got a target in the pilot's seat of the green truck, and his drive's showing up warm on the infrared scope. Is the explosive loaded? Can anyone confirm?”

“I can see the rear of the truck. They've closed the hatch with two targets inside as well as the pilot.” Ordo paused. “The green truck is now confirmed as laden. We have to keep that vessel grounded, vode. We can't detonate it, not here.”

“Dar, you got a clear shot at the pilot?”

There was the sound of fast breathing and a grunt as someone dropped next to him. Fi looked left and saw Darman kneeling on one leg with his Verpine rifle raised, elbow braced on his knee. A Verp slug was guaranteed to punch a hole in the truck's viewscreen and kill the pilot without triggering the five-hundred-grade. “Got him lined up. Standing by.”

Fi swung his Deece to locate Ordo on the roof. He couldn't see Sev, but Ordo's helmet range finder was just visible as he turned his head.

“Delta,” Ordo said, “stand by to take the rear of the green truck when we kill the illumigrids. Omega, target all walking targets on the landing strip.”

Kal's voice cut in. “Ord'ika—we're at the rear of the warehouse blocking the back doors. Force is estimating twenty-four live targets in all, I'm told.”

Fi refocused his scope on the interior of the warehouse. He could see at least nine men and women scurrying around inside, and two more visible via infrared, ripping open crates and bundling small boxes and blasters into bags. “I've got a minimum of eleven contacts around and inside the warehouse and it looks like they've got a small arsenal in there. Good news is that it's just one big empty space with partitioned offices down one wall.”

“Once the lights go out, they'll batten down …”

Sev cut in. “I've got two loading what looks like DC-15 rifle cases into the small red airspeeder on the northern perimeter fence.”

“Six of the trucks look warm and ticking over in my infrared,” Mereel said. “Can't see any activity in the rest of the speeders. There ought to be four ready to fly.”

“Hit them all, then, just to be certain,” Ordo said. “Hit everything except the green truck.

“I'm on night vision now,” Darman said. “Ready when you are, Captain Ordo.”

Corr sprinted into position to Fi's right, sliding behind a truck, with the rotary blaster braced against his belt and his left hand tight on the top grip. From his stance he looked like a man who felt pretty good about his chances. He wasn't even meant to be a commando; he'd just risen to the challenge.

Fi hoped Skirata would find a way of permanently absorbing him into Arca Company. He switched to his night scope and aligned the target icon on a man and a woman carrying a flat crate between them toward one of the trucks.

Fi's finger rested on the trigger.

“Lights!” Ordo hissed.

He and Sev fired their Plex rocket launchers, and both illumigrids were swallowed simultaneously by two balls of yellow flame.

The roar killed any chances of him hearing the shattering transparisteel viewscreen of the green truck. But he heard Darman an instant later.

“Truck pilot, clear!”

“We've lost one!” Jusik said.

“Say again?”

“One target's made a run for it, over in the northeast corner. I felt him go.”

There was a split second of frozen time before blue blasterfire sprayed from Fi's position, cutting down the two people moving a crate. Two of the trucks exploded in balls of fire, accounting for six more targets. The landing strip was now a dark void lit by the dying flames of two smashed trucks and sporadic bolts of Deece fire. From the far end of the depot the distinctive blue staccato attack of the rotary blaster hosed every vehicle on that side of the strip. Corr was definitely getting stuck in, as Kal'buir put it. He sprinted to Ordo's left, firing as he ran, taking out the last gray-and-silver airspeeder in a ball of white light.

“Jusik?” Ordo debated whether to worry about the one escapee. “Jusik, get Vau and Etain onto the one who's bolted.”

Beneath Ordo, Boss, Fixer, and Scorch raced to the rear of the green truck, Atin coming in from the other side. Boss fired a stream of bolts from his Deece at a shallow angle, slicing off half the truck's repulsor drive housing. It dropped flat on the ground with a massive crash of crumpling alloy. It definitely wasn't going anywhere now.

Scorch concentrated his fire into the warehouse. Ordo swung over the edge of the roof to rappel down into the melee, firing one of his twin blasters as he dropped. The shots sparked and smoked off closing doors. There were probably nine or ten terrorists now shut inside with a good supply of weapons. And right now they weren't Ordo's worst problem.