Long ago, in a cinema far away, a film critic watched and re­viewed a brand-new movie called Star Wars. If she’d known she was going to end up writing this book, she’d have taken more notes … so my thanks go to editors Shelly Shapiro (Del Rey), Keith Clayton (Del Rey), and Sue Rostoni (Lucasfilm) for their wise advice; to the many Star Wars fans who made me welcome in their world; and especially to Ryan Kaufman at LucasArts—Star Wars oracle, polymath, wit, and all-around good bloke, who gave generously of his time and knowledge, and never ran out of patience when I asked for the umpteenth time, “Yes, but does the armor have to be white?” It was the best of times, folks. Thanks.

Okay, this is how it happened.

It’s pitch black below and we’re fast-roping into the crevasse, too fast: I can feel the impact in my back teeth when I land. I’m first down and I flood the chamber with my helmet spot-lamp.

There’s a triple-sealed blast door between us and the Geonosians and I haven’t got time to calculate the charge needed to blow it. A lot, then. P for plenty, like I was taught. Stick the thermal tape around the edges and push in the deto­nator. Easier said than done: the alloy door’s covered with crud.

Delta Squad’s CO gets on the helmet comlink. “You having a party down there, Theta?”

“Can’t rush an artist…”

“You want to tell that to the spider droids?”

“Patience, Delta.” Come on, come on. Stick to the metal, will you? “Nearly there.”

“A lot of spider droids …”

“I hear you, Delta.”

“In your own time. No pressure. None at all…”

“Clear!”

We flatten ourselves against the cavern walls. It’s all white light and painful noise and flying dust for a fraction of a second. When we can see again, the doors are blown inward, ripped apart, billowing smoke. “Delta Squad—clear to enter. Take take take.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Delta Squad hits the ground and they’re straight in, firing, while we stand back and cover their six. It’s a warren of tunnels down here. If we’re not careful, something could jump us from any direction.

My helmet’s supposed to protect against high decibels, but war is noisy. Really noisy. I can’t hear my helmet comlink through the omph-omph-omph of the Geonosians’ sonic rounds and our own blasterfire. I can hear anti-armor going off, too. Fierfek, I can feel it through my boots.

Movement catches my eye up ahead, and then it’s gone. I’m looking up through the DC-17’s scope, checking that it was just my imagination, and Taler gestures toward another of the five tunnels facing us.

“Darman, take that E-Web and hold this position.” He beckons Vin and Jay and they move almost back-to-back toward the mouth of the tunnel, checking to all sides.

And then I look up, overhead.

There’s more Geonosians around than we thought. A lot more. I take down two above me and then more come out of the tunnel to the left so I open fire with the repeating blaster, nice and early, because if I let them get too close the blast will fry me as well.

Even so, it’s knocking me back like a trip-hammer.

“Taler, Darman here, over.” I can’t see him. I can’t see any of them, but I can hear rapid fire. “Taler, Darman here, you receiving me, over?”

Not so much silence as an absence of a familiar voice. Then a few fragmented, crackling shouts of “… down! Man down here!”

Who? Who’s down? “Taler? Vin? Jay? You receiving, over?”

I’ve lost contact with my squad.

It’s the last time I see them.

SCRAMBLE LINE ENCRYPTED

STAND BY STAND BY

GEONOSIS FORWARD CONTROL TO FLEET SUPPORT, ORD MANTELL.

PREPARE TO RECEIVE CASEVAC TRANSPORT. MED TRIAGE TEAM ESTIMATE SERIOUS INJURIES, TWELVE THOUSAND, REPEAT TWELVE THOUSAND. WALKING WOUNDED EIGHT THOUSAND, REPEAT EIGHT THOUSAND. ETA TEN HOURS. LOGISTICS PRIORITY FOR BACTA TANK SUPPORT TEAMS.

PREP FOR SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND COMBAT-FIT TROOPS, REPEAT SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND, PENDING REDEPLOYMENT. PRIORITY WEAPONS SUPPORT FOR COMMANDO UNITS.

THAT IS ALL. OUT.

Republic assault ship Implacable: inbound for extraction from Geonosis. Stand by.

Republic Commando 1136 studied every face in line waiting to board the gunships.

Some were helmeted, and some were not, but—one way or another—they all had his face. And they were all strangers.

“Move it,” the loadmaster shouted, gesturing side-to-side with one outstretched arm. “Come on, shift it, people—fast as you can.” The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and troopers embarked, some turning to pull comrades in­board so the ships could lift again quickly. There was no rea­son to scramble for it. They’d done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they’d pre­pared for. This wasn’t a retreat. They’d grabbed their first vic­tory.

The gunships’ downdraft kicked the red Geonosian soil into the air. RC-1136—Darman—took off his helmet and ran his gauntlet carefully across the pale gray dome, wiping away the dust and noting a few scrapes and burn marks.

The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very, very few outsiders whom Darman had ever seen working with the Grand Army, a short, wrinkled Duros with a temper to match. “Are you embarking or what?”

Darman continued wiping his helmet. “I’m waiting for my mates,” he said.

“You shift your shiny silver backside now,” the loadmaster said irritably. “I got a schedule.”

Darman carefully brought up his knuckle plate just under the loadmasters’s chin, and held it there. He didn’t need to eject the vibroblade and he didn’t need to say a word. He’d made his point.

“Well, whenever you’re ready, sir,” the Duros said, step­ping back to chivy clone troopers instead. It wasn’t a great idea to upset a commando, especially not one coming down from the adrenaline high of combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Darman knew that there was no point in waiting any longer. They hadn’t called in. Maybe they had comlink failures. Maybe they had made it onto another gunship.

It was the first time in his artificially short life that Dar­man hadn’t been able to reach out and touch the men he had been raised with.

He waited half a standard hour more anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines of troopers be­came shorter. Eventually there was nobody standing on the desert plain but him, the Duros loadmaster, and half a dozen clone troopers. It was the last lift of the day.

“You better come now, sir,” the loadmaster said. “There’s nobody unaccounted for. Nobody alive, anyway.”

Darman looked around the horizon one last time, still feeling as if he were turning his back on someone reaching out to him.

“I’m coming,” he said, and brought up the rear of the line. As the gunship lifted, he watched the swirling dust, dwin­dling rock formations, and scattered shrinking patches of scrub until Geonosis became a blur of dull red.

He could still search the Implacable. It wasn’t over yet.

The gunship slipped into the Implacable’s giant docking bay, and Darman looked down into the cavern, onto a sea of white armor and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed its thrusters and locked down on its pad was how quiet everyone seemed.

In the crowded bay full of troopers, the air stank of sweat and stale fear and the throat-rasping smell of discharged blaster rifles. But it was so silent that if Darman hadn’t seen the evidence of exhausted and injured men, he’d have be­lieved that nothing significant had happened in the last thirty hours.