Karen Traviss - Hard Contact (Star Wars: Republic Commando, Book 1)

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.