on his face. “Good to see you again,” he rasped.
“Sergeant Maganinny!” Odie dismounted from her speeder and helped him into a sitting position on the ground.
“I thought—I think they got everyone else. My speeder—” He paused to catch his breath and gestured behind him. “I thought it was all over for us, kid,” he said.
“Sarge—”
He shook his head. “My face isn’t as bad as it looks. It’s mostly superficial. Leave me here. You can send help. Get back to HQ.”
“No.” Odie shook her head firmly. “You can ride with me. I won’t leave you here.”
“Look, trooper,” he said, a note of the old noncom command presence creeping back into his voice, “you do what—”
“No.” She put a hand under his armpit and helped him to his feet. “We can ride tandem. It’ll be dark soon and we can use the terrain to cover us.”
Maganinny groaned, partly from the pain of his wounds, but partly because he was too weak to argue. “One thing, though, trooper,” he said. “I’m not riding with any soldier who’s out of uniform.”
“What?”
“Get your helmet on,” he said.
Odie stared at him in disbelief for an instant, and then they both burst into hysterical laughter.
General Khamar turned to his chief of staff. “Let’s move. We can take these droids. Get our armored infantry and artillery onto this high ground here—” He jabbed a finger at a three-dimensional terrain map. “Dig in. Get them to come to us. Hit them with every fighter we’ve got right now to cover our advance.” He turned to his staff officers. “If we get to that high ground first, we can hold them.” The officers dispersed to their various commands to issue the necessary orders and get the army on the move.
Odie had stood quietly at attention while the general and his staff used the information she had gathered to plan their attack. She wondered about the fate of her comrades, none of whom had been heard from. She struggled to control the lump in her throat when she realized they were probably dead. Occasionally someone would nod at her, or give her a thumbs-up gesture, and these silent acknowledgments helped soften the sorrow she felt—and the physical exhaustion that wasnow taking over—by causing her chest to swell with pride.
At last Khamar turned to her. “At ease, trooper. You are one brave soldier, and pretty lucky to boot.”
She had never been this close to high-ranking officers before and was impressed at the quiet efficiency with which they laid their plans. Now the general himself was talking directly to her! She had not been able to clean up; her face was stained with dirt and sweat, and her hair hung in dirty strands about her face. Her voice sounded too high-pitched when she spoke, but she did not hesitate in her reply. “I was scared all the time, sir, and I didn’t need any luck: Sergeant Maganinny backed me up when I needed him.”
The general looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Well,” he said, “now you know what really makes an army work.”
5
G eneral Khamar and several of his principal staff officers were observing the invaders from the same ridge where Odie had watched them barely hours before. Khamar had succeeded in reaching the ridge before the enemy deployed and quickly established a strong defensive position. So far, the invaders had been content to direct only harassing fires against Khamar’s force, but had made no attempt to attack him.
“We’re too well entrenched,” one of the officers remarked.
“They’re mostly droids anyway, no match for our troops,” another observed.
General Khamar glanced at him.
No match for our troops?
Obviously, that was an officer who had no idea how deadly the droids were. He briefly considered replacing him with someone more in touch with the realities of their situation, but realized there was no time to call up a replacement. He returned his thoughts to the situation before him. There was something odd about all
Donald Luskin, Andrew Greta