He’d been waiting for her for three days, ever since Nemik had let it slip over weapons training.
The kid had been trying to help. Trying to point out to Skeen and the others that he would know his business, after three years in the Stormtrooper Corps.
Skeen had simply snorted. Vel, who’d told Nemik already, had quickly turned a worried look to Cinta.
Cinta was good. She’d frozen for under a second. But Taramyn had seen the look on her face so many times before.
He’d seen it in the eyes of the Mimbani as their mud shacks burned, before the men were lined up and the women and children led off for sale to pay for the officers’ campaign bonuses. He’d seen it in on Yar Toga and the cleanup on Antar and the suppression on Wobani.
Except Cinta was not locked in a coffle of sentients destined for a Hutt market or a labor camp or a cremation pit. She was here, a fellow rebel sworn to the destruction of the Empire that Taramyn Barcona had served for three long years as a member of the Corps and six years before then as an Army trooper, and more to the point she was armed as much as he was.
He’d expected her to strike in the middle of the night, the knife in the dark. It was the tactically safer option for a woman of her size.
Instead it came in broad daylight, as she relieved him on the far western drey pasture. It was hidden from view of the camp, and he imagined that was why – because Vel wasn’t around to stop it.
He’d been on his guard, but she had shown nothing but a simple, empty look as she took over his watch. A nod as she approached and took up his spot by the lookout on top of the hill. He’d turned and bent to pick up his canteen and she was on his back, the knife coming down.
Only the fact that he’d been expecting it for so long kept him alive then. He’d twisted as soon as she leapt, so the knife scraped along his shoulder blade instead punching into his throat. The serrated edge caught in the fibers of his muscle and the thick wool coat, just long enough to grab her by the wrist and hold her while he rolled both of them onto the ground and landed atop her.
She’d screamed her rage then, her other hand probing for his eyes, but his bulk and strength were too much with her on her back with no leverage. He’d rammed his elbow into her temple twice and she’d gone glass-eyed, long enough for him to take away the knife and then press its edge against her neck.
“Stop it,” he’d said then. “Just stop!”
“Finish it,” she had spat, eyes unforgiving. She tried to knee him in the groin and he turned it against his thigh.
Taramyn thought about it. What was one more, after all, for someone who’d manned a heavy repeater on Mimban? Who’d turned it on a line of men kneeling in front of a grave the size of a small canyon, and then the next line, and then the next? He couldn’t even count how many had gone in that one afternoon, his first week in the Corps. It had stopped being like war and was more like turning a lathe at his uncle’s wood shop.
He couldn’t remember what happened then. Only that he was on his knees, weeping silently, and Cinta in front of him on her feet, staring warily. He must have lost the knife, because she was already holding it.
“Take it,” he said.
She tightened her grip on the knife, and took a step towards him. He waited.
Get on with it.
His eyes were too full of tears to see. He only heard her soft spitting breath.
“We’ll say you fell on a rock. There’s salve and bandages at camp, Vel can show you.” Her hand brushed his shoulder, and she was holding out a small cloth.
Taramyn wiped his face and took it, pressed it to his shoulder. He rose to his feet.
