The Last Day of the War - Part 3

"She’s saved us more often than some old General…" Tora nodded her head and the twins vanished down the hall.

I heard the Sergeant Major sigh across the room and turned my head toward him. He was looking at Velvel’s body and shaking his head slowly.

"From the mouths of babes, Angel dear. Next time you change a plan like that please let me know ahead of time. A malicious grin would suffice. You take years off your poor Sergeant Major’s life when you startle him like that." The Sergeant Major spit on Velvel’s face. "I was going to slit the traitorous bastard’s throat and shove him off that bridge on the way back, you know."

"You were? How sweet of you Sergeant Major."

"Yes, well, I planned on surprising you for a change. You can express your girlish delight once we get back to base." The Sergeant Major looked at his wrist display and then moved to the door. "I have to admit though, that your way will make much more of a statement with Velvel’s staff tomorrow morning. A bit rough, perhaps, on the cleaning people."

Our return trip went much the same as our infiltration. Whatever passed for Palean security troops were woefully inadequate for the task, or so I thought until the Sergeant Major offered his own thoughts on the matter. He theorized the best security troops were being used to keep their fellow soldiers from slipping away in the night. I thought back to the images of the buildings identified on the briefing map as troop barracks and remembered they bore a striking resemblance to a high security prison facility. The Sergeant Major further explained that Kaarl augmented his peculiar motivational style with a heavy sprinkling of narcotics. He and his officers attempted to keep the regular troops on the verge of a killing frenzy and succeeded for the most part. Sometimes a few would fly into a rage, and at other times a few would wake up from their long nightmare long enough to…

Voices up ahead brought an end to the Sergeant Major’s quiet discourse. I tapped the magnification control for my night vision lenses and zoomed in on the area around the bridge to see six men milling about in apparent confusion searching for the troop detail that was supposed to be guarding the bridge. The patrol was either an hour early in their rounds or four hours behind. I cursed under my breath and assumed the latter was the case.

"All hell will break loose if one of them has a handlight…" The Sergeant Major muttered beside me. I turned off the magnification on the lenses and nestled my rifle against my shoulder as I settled into a crouch. Tille and Tora moved a slight distance away and took up similar stances. The field of view of the rifle’s scope was much narrower than the night vision lenses and I could only keep track of one or two soldiers at a time. The Sergeant Major hissed as he looked at the enlarged image of the enemy soldiers through his night vision lenses. "One of them does have a handlight. Open fire."

Our energy rifles whined sharply as the invisible bolts reached out and struck down the members of the patrol in rapid succession. In the distance I heard a siren begin to wail its alert to the base population as the primitive sensor net responded to the firing of our weapons. The Sergeant Major gathered us up and began ushering us down the road at a run. It was not a very long run, as military runs went, but threat of pursuit made the distance to our hidden speeder seem infinite. When the copse of trees came into view, Tille sprinted ahead. Running was one area the twins found their abilities did not match. Tora was capable of running very quickly, but Tille was like a spirit on the Path. The girl was well on her way to bringing the craft back up to full power when we reached the speeder. By the time we removed the camouflage netting she had the fastest course to the extraction site plotted in to the navigation computer.