Karen Traviss - Order 66 (Star Wars: Republic Commando: Book 4)

Darman's screaming filled his helmet; or maybe it was his own voice. "Etain! No, no, no, no, no! Not my girl! Not my girl!"

He was aware of another scuffle starting to his left, but he was targeting, and he was running, and now he had to kill or be killed, nothing in between.

He cannoned into the melee, pushing troopers aside, and swung with a vibrobladed left fist. He knew he'd hit a Jedi. The man staggered, turned, and swept the lightsaber across him, but it skidded off his neck plate. The Jedi hesitated, because that wasn't supposed to happen.

Skirata's three-sided knife was in his hand already. He brought it up into the Jedi's chest, under the rib cage, in that fraction of a second's pause. It was hate; it was an explosion of loathing and grief. He wanted to destroy the world and every breathing thing in it that wasn't his.

The yelling and screaming was outside his helmet as well as inside. A trooper captain shoved him aside and dropped to his knees beside Etain, hands crossed, flat on her chest, trying to pump. It was Ordo. He tried, he really tried, but she was dead, eyes staring, sliced from shoulder to spine, dead dead, dead.

Skirata's brain shut down. Something else seized control. He drew Jusik's lightsaber, snapped it alive, wading into the crowd in pursuit of another Jedi. They seemed to be everywhere. He saw six, seven of those shabla blades, those filthy cold things, and he saw nothing else. Jedi were still trapped in the press of bodies. People were being trampled. It was a battlefield; he saw only what he needed to kill.

And Jedi needed to die. He got one square in the back, kidney level, and those burning blades worked on a Jedi every bit as well as on a chakaar like him. One got away. Skirata swung around to chase.

Darman was still screaming names, but it was Niner now-Niner, Niner, where are you Niner?-and that was when Skirata saw that Darman was way back behind looking down over the edge of the bridge, frantic.

Darman saw the Jedi too late, and Niner hadn't even been trying to stop the kid escaping. The Jedi leapt; Niner fell.

If it had been Darman in his way when the barve tried to jump clear, he would have had a vibroblade in his throat now, killing for killing, death for death, because-even though Darman's brain was saying it couldn't have happened, that Etain would be coming through the barrier now because she'd been so close, so very near, just a few meters and minutes from putting her hand in his and leaving forever-he'd seen the lightsaber strike.

She's dead. No, she can't be.

Even though he was looking down onto the maintenance walkway below the bridge and could see Niner lying at an awkward angle, his vision was filled with that split second of Etain and the lightsaber.

She's gone, she's gone, she's gone-It wouldn't stop. But his hard-wired training interrupted him and he swung out from his rappel line, on autopilot, dropping down beside his brother.

"Shab..."

"Can you move? What hurts?" Darman defaulted to being another Darman, RC-1136, because that was what he did under fire, what Skirata had drummed into him to stay alive. "Atin, down here! Man down! Atin! Below the bridge, maintenance parapet!"

"Dar ... Dar, what's happened to Etain?" "Can you move?"

"Shut up about me." Niner's voice was hoarse, a gasp. "Where's Etain?"

She can't be dead. She can't be. She was right there, right in front of me. "Can you-"

"Dar! For shab's sake, what's happened to her?"

"Shut up. Can you move?"

Niner lay at an odd angle, legs bent. "I can't feel my feet. Shah, Dar, what's up with you? Etain! The shabla Jedi hit her. What happened? Is she okay?"

"She's dead. She's dead." Darman said it, heard it, and hated himself. He'd said it; he'd made it real. How could he be here? How could he be moving, talking, dealing with Niner? Why wasn't he doing something about Etain? He didn't know what. "It's over. Nothing matters."

"What about Kad? What about your kid? Go! Go to him!"

How do I tell him I couldn't save his mother?

"It's my fault." A minute ago, maybe two, Etain had been alive and now she wasn't. It was such a fine, cruel, implacable line. It seemed impossible that he couldn't push it back. He couldn't believe she wasn't there anymore, and that nothing he could do would ever change that. "I should have done this different."