Star Wars_ X-Wing 04_ The Bacta War - Michael A. Stackpole [66]
Iella heard a single click over her comlink, so she hurried forward, remaining low. She reached Elscol’s side and looked off in the direction where the smaller woman pointed. Silhouetted against the lights from the house she saw two Thyferran Home Defense Corps guards wandering along. Elscol tapped her finger twice against her comlink and huge shadows rose up to eclipse the guards. Iella heard no screams or shots being fired, but another double-click played over the comlink, indicating the guards had been neutralized.
The rest of the group moved up to the edge of the clearing around the estate. Barely twenty-five meters separated them from the mansion solarium. Iella dropped to one knee next to one of the guards and felt for a pulse in his neck, but her hand encountered a sticky wetness that told her all she needed to know. The sound of a stun shot being fired or the light from the blue burst could have been seen. These men had to die.
Elscol tapped two of the SpecNav soldiers on the shoulders and they sprinted forward across the lawn to the shadows beside the solarium. Iella found herself holding her breath, waiting for a reaction from the house. A single click from the comlink told her the SpecNavs felt safe. Elscol sent them a double-click, and Iella prepared herself to run.
The SpecNavs pulled an electronic device from an equipment satchel and slapped it over the solarium’s door lock. Iella saw lights on the device flicker and shift color, then five of them all burned green at the same time. They went out after three seconds at which point one of the SpecNavs pushed the door open. Another double-click came through the comlink, and Iella was up and running.
With each step she braced herself for a shot from the darkness, a burning red bolt that would hit her, lift her up and send her flying across the yard. She’d seen it happen to others before, more times than she could remember. The look of surprise on the victim’s face as confident immortality dissolved into dismay and despair haunted her. In death, especially violent death, no one ever looks pretty.
She made it to the door and passed through, then cut to the left and hugged the wall on the other side of the doorway into the main house, opposite the first SpecNav trooper. After her, came Elscol; then Sixtus. They both ran through the doorway, then double-clicked an all clear so Iella and the SpecNav moved up. Other members of the team fanned out through the mansion’s lower floor and secured it without incident.
Elscol and Sixtus moved up the stairway to the main floor. Iella followed them up and found the main floor dark save for a muted yellow light coming through one open doorway further along the main hallway. The darkness didn’t surprise her terribly much—the raid had been timed to reach the estate halfway between midnight and dawn to take advantage of the fact that most people would be asleep. That a light was still on seemed odd, but carelessness couldn’t be ruled out.
Nor can someone’s working late. That’s supposed to be Dlarit’s office. Iella crept forward cautiously. Though only ten meters separated her from the lit doorway, she took two minutes to make it that distance. At the edge of the doorway she tilted her head and got a quick glimpse into the room. What she saw prompted a smile and made her double-click her comlink and invite the others forward.
She strode into the office and shook her head. Wearing his finest Thyferran Home Defense Corps uniform, Aerin Dlarit sat sprawled in a high-backed chair behind his desk. The holoprojector plate built into the desk displayed a meter-tall replica of a monument featuring a larger-than-life statue of Dlarit atop a pedestal. The hologram slowly rotated in the air, complete with a throng of miniature well-wishers gasping and applauding at its base.
Elscol drew her blaster pistol and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Get the holocam up here. He dies a monument