Binalie opened his mouth to answer - "Open space for three meters to the north, twenty meters to the south," one of the clone troopers they'd left behind on guard duty spoke up. 'Tree cover begins five meters to the east and remains intermittent."

"Not perfect, but it'll do," Roshton decided. "Line up on the stairway.

Lord Binalie, is there any trick to operating the exit door?"

"The controls are right there," Binalie said, pointing to the panel, his tone suddenly sounding strange. "But-"

"But what?" Roshton demanded, glaring at him.

Binalie threw a quick, ambiguous glance at Tories. "Nothing," he muttered. "It'll keep."

"Fine." Roshton looked up the stairway as his troopers headed up. "Get in position," he called softly. "We break cover at the sound of the first shot."

"Two minutes to go," Lieutenant Laytron said, consulting his chrono. "All squads, report by number."

He fell silent, listening intently to the reports coming in over his headset. Doriana found himself gazing off to the north, across the open grassland and the picket line of combat droids standing guard there. The force was largely a token one, of course, since there were no doors or windows on the southern side of the plant. The main droid army, plus all their remaining AAT battle tanks, was concentrated around the more vulnerable eastern, western, and northern approaches.

But even a single person or machine on that forbidden stretch of lawn was anathema to the Cranscoc twillers who were the actual heart of the Spaarti operation. They were probably still twitching their indignation, in fact, over all those droids standing around out there. But of course, the Separatist commanders didn't care about that.