“Find them,” Hokan said.

He couldn’t even trace their route from the drainage sys­tem now. Where would he start? The enemy would need to leave Qiilura. They would have a vessel somewhere. If intel­ligence from Geonosis was any guide, they would have gun-ships to extract them and evacuate wounded.

It was a quiet, backward, rural planet. You could hear motors and drives for kilometers, especially at night.

Hokan powered down the speeder and waited, listening.

Etain could feel it long before she saw or heard it. She hadn’t been able to detect droids, or so she thought, but she could feel something big disturbing the Force, and it was getting nearer. She wasn’t sure if it was mechanical or organic. And it didn’t communicate any sense of threat be­yond a mild anxiety.

Then she heard the rushing air and steady drone of a ves­sel’s propulsion drive. She stopped and craned her neck. Atin and Darman stopped, too.

“Oh, I love that sound,” Darman said.

“What is it?”

“The sound of us getting out of this cesspit in one piece. A larty. A gunship.”

The sound was practically right overhead. As Etain scanned the night sky she picked out a silhouette against the stars. The vessel wasn’t showing any navigation lights. It dipped slightly, its drive changing pitch, and Darman reacted as if someone were talking to him. He gestured and nodded. Then he waved. The gunship picked up speed and lifted higher before shooting away.

“They tracked us by our comlink transponder,” Darman said. “Good old Niner. Bless him for knocking out Teklet.”

Atin jerked his shoulders to heave Uthan a little higher on his back. “Your carriage, princess,” he said to her, far more cheerful than Etain had imagined him capable of being. His presence felt almost healed, but not entirely. “Want to sit up front?”

Uthan had recovered from the sedation enough to squirm. Etain realized that the scientist was the only person she had ever seen who could convey such rage just by writhing. She didn’t envy the soldier who had to untie her.

“Your turn, Dar,” Atin said.

“Okay.” He seemed elated as well as edgy. Etain could feel it. It was nearly over: they’d pulled it off. She wanted to ask him what he was going to do when he got back to base, but she could guess that it involved a lot of sleep, a hot shower, and food. His dreams were modest. She thought that was a fine example to set, even for a Padawan.

She just hoped that she could become a competent officer. She wanted Darman’s respect.

“Come on, Dar,” Atin said irritably. “Uthan’s starting to weigh a ton. Your turn.”

“Try this,” Etain said, and lifted with the Force. Atin half turned to check what was relieving the weight on his back. Darman had almost caught up with him.

Crack. Atin pitched forward.

Etain thought he had merely tripped, but Darman was now down on the ground, and she followed suit. He was sprawled across Atin with his rifle raised. Atin wasn’t screaming, but he was making a rhythmic ah-ah-ah noise as if he was trying to gulp air. Uthan was lying in a heap on the grass.

“Man down,” Darman said, unnaturally calm. Etain heard him clearly: he still had the voice unit open. “Sarge, Atin’s hit.”

Whatever Niner’s response was, Etain didn’t hear it. Dar­man fired rapidly and she saw the brilliant rounds fly over her head.

Why hadn’t she felt anyone behind her? Because she’d been distracted. This was her fault. If Atin died, she would have him on her conscience for the rest of her life.

The firing stopped. It was over inside thirty seconds. The world had somehow gone back to the way it was before, ex­cept for Atin.

Darman could obviously see something through his rifle sight that Etain could not. She watched him get up, run for­ward, and aim at an object on the ground. He switched on his helmet lamp.

“One of Hokan’s officers,” Darman said. “A captain.”

“Is he dead?”

A single shot. “He is now,” Darman said.

This time Etain wasn’t quite as appalled as she had been when Darman had dispatched the wounded Umbaran. She was wrapped up in concern for Atin. Her perspective had shifted radically.

Atin was now worryingly quiet. When Darman turned him carefully onto his side, there was a shattered hole in his armor plate about twenty centimeters below his right armpit that was leaking blood. Darman took a small, gray oblong container with rounded edges from his belt and emptied the contents on the ground. He shoved what looked like a field dressing in the gaping hole and taped it to the armor.

“Get on,” Atin said. His voice was shaking. “Go on. Leave me.”

“Don’t go all heroic on me or I’ll smack you one.”

“I mean it. Get Uthan out of here.”

“Atin, shut up, will you? I’m not leaving anyone any­where.” Darman was working with all the precision of some­one who’d been drilled repeatedly in combat first aid. He nodded at Etain. She grasped Atin’s hand and squeezed it hard. “That’s what a Verpine projectile can do to Katarn armor… easy, brother. I’ve got you.” He removed one of Atin’s thigh plates, peeled back the section of bodysuit, and exposed the skin. He held two short single-use syringes in his hand. “It’s going to hurt a bit, okay? Steady.”

Darman stabbed both needles into Atin’s thigh in quick succession. Then he scrawled something on Atin’s helmet with a marker and replaced the thigh plate.

Etain stared at the letters p and z now written on the fore­head of the helmet.

“P for painkiller,” Darman said. He laid Atin flat on his back. “And Z for blood-loss control agent, because B looks too much like P when you’re in a hurry. It’s for the medics, just in case they don’t scan him, so they know what I’ve dosed him with. Now, this is going to look really odd, but trust me …”

Atin was flat on his back, breathing heavily. Darman slid on top of him, back-to-chest, then slipped his arms through Atin’s webbing and rolled both of them over so he was lying underneath. Raising himself on his arms, he drew his legs to a kneeling position and then stood up with Atin secure across his back. He tottered slightly. But he didn’t fall.

“Easiest way to lift and carry a heavy man,” Darman said, his voice sounding a little strained.

“I could have done that for you,” Etain said.

“Yeah, but he’s my brother. Besides, you’re going to carry Doctor Uthan.”

Etain felt momentary guilt for not checking on her. But the scientist was still lying there trussed, quite silent, and no doubt bewildered. Etain leaned over her.

“Come on, Doctor,” she said. She went to lift her, but her hands touched something cold and wet. There was a jagged sliver of pale gray plastoid alloy protruding from just under her ribs. It was shrapnel from Atin’s armor. The doctor was bleeding heavily.

“Oh no. Not this. Look. Darman, look.”

“Fierfek After all this rotten—”

“No, she’s alive.”

“Just get her to the extraction point. They better have a medic on board.”

The disappointment was sudden and crushing. Etain felt it. It almost made her stop in her tracks, too overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all to move, but it didn’t stop Darman, and so she was determined to go on. His absolute discipline was tangible. In a few days she had learned more from him than she had ever been able to learn from Fulier. Being seconds from death so many times drove the lessons home that much harder.

Etain also knew it had forged a bond that would cause her enormous pain in years to come. It was worse than falling in love. It was a totally different level of attachment: it was shared trauma. Master Fulier said you could fall out of love, but Etain knew you could never fall out of this, because history could never change.

She lifted Uthan across her back by her own arm and jerked her forward until she was comfortably across her shoulders.