The Clone Wars

by Lou Anders

  I plucked my new hat off his head as he crashed to the floor. A perfect fit.

  “Well,” said Dooku. “It looks like Bane has found our first weak link. Anyone else have unfinished business to take care of? No? Then welcome to the tournament.”

  Dooku waved at Eval’s big box. From up close it looked like a building-sized womp rat trap.

  And when we got inside I realized that was basically all it was: a trap. Nothing but dirty tricks and trapdoors. Flamethrowers in one room. Poison gas in the next.

  And always some sort of trick before you could escape—like diving through the poison gas to find the exit.

  I never had much trouble getting through each door, but what bothered me was that I was usually the second one through. Hardeen kept getting there ahead of me.

  Twazzi beat me a couple times, too. You ever meet her? Well, watch your back if you do. She’s as fast as a Thunian wart-hornet and kinda looks like one, too.

  Embo wasn’t as fast, but he always managed to make it through each door just in time.

  The last challenge was an impossible round of target shooting. Normally, a moving target’s no challenge for me. But this one moved at random. No way to guess where it was going to go next.

  And did I mention we were standing on a narrow platform high above a pit of flames?

  This cocky gunner, Sixtat, grabbed the rifle Eval had supplied us.

  “Step back, boys. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  He started blazing away. He got a couple hits and then he missed. The platform gave way underneath him, and he fell into the pit of flames.

  Not sure which killed him, the fall or the flames, but either way I wasn’t in a big hurry to go next.

  “I get it,” said Hardeen. “If we miss the target, this platform gets smaller. Soon there won’t be any platform left.”

  Another hatch opened and Hardeen grabbed the rifle inside.

  At least I’ll finally get rid of him, I thought.

  Except I didn’t. That ugly son of a Hutt never missed.

  Seven shots. Seven hits. Seven impossible hits. Who was this guy?

  Then he went for eight and his rifle just clicked.

  “Oh, what a shame,” chortled Eval from the doorway. “Out of charges. It’s also important for a bounty hunter to be lucky…and your luck just ran out.”

  He tapped a controller. The platform under Hardeen disappeared.

  And that cocky punk fell into the pit.

  I flung out my electro-lash and caught Hardeen before he hit the flames.

  Why?

  Well, like I told Eval right then: “If you’re going to kill him, do it like a man.”

  Dooku must have agreed with me. A blank wall turned into a huge screen showing his face, and his voice boomed into the Box.

  “You heard him, Eval. Show us what you are really made of.”

  Most of the flamethrowers at the bottom of the box turned off, giving Hardeen and Eval a large space for a brawl. The rest of us watched from our platform.

  It was hardly a fair fight. Eval had a controller to activate all the leftover dirty tricks he’d built into the Box. Flying droids swarmed Hardeen, and walls popped up to trap him in a maze.

  And yet a minute later, Hardeen had trashed the droids and escaped the maze. Then he busted the controller and knocked Eval senseless. “Finish him, Hardeen,” Dooku’s voice boomed.

  But Hardeen just walked away.

  “Very disappointing,” grumbled Dooku.

  “All due respect, I just want to do my job and get my money,” Hardeen said.

  It was the first time I’d agreed with him about anything.

  “Nevertheless,” said Dooku, still glaring at us from the screen, “congratulations on surviving the Box.”

  Just like Eval had predicted, there were five of us left: me and Hardeen, Embo, Twazzi, and this gas bag Derrown. When I say he’s a gas bag, I don’t just mean that he talks too much. He’s a Parwan. Ever met one? They fill themselves up with some kind of gas and float around grabbing stuff with their tentacles. It looks ridiculous.

  The rest of the twelve were all dead—killed by Eval’s cheap tricks and traps. I wasn’t exactly crying over any of them, but I was glad Twazzi had made it—she owes me money.

  The platform lowered itself and we stepped off to join Hardeen and the cringing would-be crime lord, Moralo Eval.

  “Tomorrow you will kidnap Chancellor Palpatine at the festival on Naboo,” Dooku told us. “With the leader of the Republic as our hostage we will demand the release of all Separatist prisoners. If our demand is not met, the Chancellor will be executed. Either way you will help reshape the galaxy.”

  That old buzzard sure likes to hear himself talk. But the next thing he said did get my attention.

  “The operation on Naboo will be run by Cad Bane. All of you work for him now.”

  Hardeen started to object, but since he could barely stand after that beating, he gave in.

  As for me, I was thinking about how much my fee would go up now that I was running the show.

  A few hours later we were on a transport to Naboo.

  It’s Palpatine’s home planet, so he was visiting to make a speech at their big festival.

  If you ask me, listening to that old bag of wrinkles run his mouth ain’t no festival. If we could kidnap him before he started, the Naboolians or whatever they’re called would probably give us a medal.

  “All right, Eval,” said Dooku after we made the jump to lightspeed. “Go over the plan with Bane so that he can lead our team.”

  “But, Your Excellency, it’s my plan.”

  “Quite so, and if you want to be paid for it, you’ll make sure that Bane knows every detail. The rest of you may get some sleep. We’re going to need everyone sharp from the second we land on Naboo.”

  As the others filed out, Eval flipped on a holoprojector and a city map appeared.

  Hardeen slowed down to get a good look. A real good look.

  I flipped the holo off. “You heard Dooku. Go catch some shut-eye. I’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.”

  Hardeen left and I flipped the screen back on. We were looking at a big eyesore of a palace with balconies and turrets and fancy junk everywhere.

  “Most of the festival will take place down below in the streets,” said Eval. “But the Chancellor will give his speech up here on this large platform, surrounded by the queen, some royalty and rich people, a lot of guards, and probably an electromagnetic shield.”

  He zoomed in on the platform.

  “Its only connection to the palace is a single walkway, which, of course, will be well guarded.”

  “What’s your plan?” I asked.

  It took him an hour to go over the details, but it boiled down to this: wear masks.

  And they weren’t even real masks. Some kind of new shadow hologram gadget we were supposed to wear. It was supposed to make us look like guards.

  That way one of us could sneak in and turn off a shield so another one could shoot Palpatine with a stun gun so another one could pretend to be Palpatine so another one…eh, you get it.

  “That’s your perfect plan? A perfect pile of bantha dung if you ask me,” I replied. “A million things could go wrong, starting with those holograms.”

  “Nothing is going to go wrong with my plan unless you mess it up,” snarled Eval.

  The first thing that went wrong with his plan was when our ship landed at the abandoned docking bay he had found.

  Turns out it wasn’t actually abandoned, so we all got a little warm-up taking out the techs who were working the late shift.

  After we set up a base of operations, Dooku made a little speech that he probably thought sounded smart.

  “This is it, my friends. The day of reckoning for the Republic,” he boomed. “Execute your roles and you will all be immortalized in history, not to mention rewarded with enough credits that you will never have to work again.” He was as much of a gas ba
g as the Parwan.

  “I’ll let Cad Bane take it from here,” he finished. Finally.

  I gave the team their assignments and their disguises. The shadow holograms actually worked, and I was starting to think Eval’s plan might, too. Or at least it would get us close enough that I could take matters into my own hands.

  “When you leave here you’ll have no communication with the rest of the team,” I warned them. “Now get to your positions.”

  The others left, but Dooku motioned for me to stay behind.

  “Well handled. I should have put you in charge long ago,” he said. “A word of advice, though. Keep an eye on Hardeen. There’s something about him I do not trust.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m keeping my eye on all of them.”

  Turns out I should have kept an eye on Dooku, too.

  We split up and all took different routes to the festival.

  I had a little difficulty getting in position myself. My holomask made me look like one of Palpatine’s toadies. Unfortunately, I ran into the real toady on my way to the festival platform. Blaster fire would have alerted the whole palace, so I knocked him out, tied him up, and left him in a droid-charging closet.

  When I got up to the festival platform, I was shown to a seat next to even more toadies. I blended right in. Crowds of Naboolians were cheering far below. The Chancellor was crossing the narrow walkway from the palace to the platform. He was escorted by a whole bunch of royal-looking folks…and several Jedi. Including Skywalker and the little lady!

  You know I’m not scared of no Jedi, but there’s a feeling that goes up your spine when you realize you’ve walked into something you might not walk out of. Some people might call it fear, but I call it being smart.

  It looked to me like the Jedi knew something was up. And that meant the plan was already blown and I was really going to have to work for that reward.

  Palpatine started talking. And talking and talking. Another gas bag.

  And sitting there among the toadies, I had to act like I gave a blurrg’s behind what he was saying. Clapping and cheering like some spineless lackey! It was probably the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done, and that includes what happened on Corellia that one time.

  Suddenly, the Jedi sprang to their feet. Skywalker fired up his lightsaber and went running across the platform toward the shield generator.

  Then with a loud zap the shield went down. The Parwan had managed to get his tentacles on the controls. But somehow the Jedi had known he was going to do it. They were at least one step ahead of us.

  The whole thing was smelling worse than a rotting rathtar.

  Meanwhile, the whole place was going crazy—Jedi waving lightsabers, rich people diving under their seats, guards trying to shield the royalty. I had to hope that two of those guards were Embo and Twazzi getting close to Palpatine.

  And we all had to wait for Hardeen to blast the old man with a stun bolt.

  It didn’t happen.

  There was no time left to wonder why the plan wasn’t working, so I blasted the Chancellor myself. Real subtle-like, of course, and on stun to make Dooku happy.

  Two guards leapt forward to catch Palpatine as he crumpled to the platform. I kept my eye on them and saw the switch. In the blink of an eye, one of the fake guards turned into a fake Palpatine. That was really Twazzi. Meanwhile, Embo planted a holomask on the real Palpatine, turning him into a fake guard. Then the other fake guard helped the fake Palpatine get away.

  See what I mean about this plan being too complicated?

  Well, like it or not, it was time to play my part. I knelt by the stunned body they’d left behind. It sure looked like a dead guard, so I reached through the hologram and felt the wrinkles on his face. Yeah, it was old Palpy, all right.

  I started dragging him to the edge of the platform. No one tried to stop me or help me. All eyes were on the fakes.

  I had the great pleasure of seeing Skywalker rush in to rescue “the Chancellor.” Instead of thanks, he got a punch in the face.

  Eval zoomed up to the platform’s edge in a speeder.

  “Move it! Move it!” he yelled at me. “Shove him in!”

  Did he think I would fall for that old trick? I drew my blaster.

  “Hands off the controls. You move before I’m in this speeder and I blow your head off.”

  “You’re wasting time!”

  “No, you’re wasting time. Hands off the controls!”

  He complied. I shoved the old man in.

  Without taking my gun off Eval, I glanced back at the action.

  The Jedi had seen through the masks by then and were running my way.

  I stepped into the speeder.

  “So long, Jedi!” I said as Eval zoomed us out of there, leaving Skywalker and the others stranded on the platform.

  “What did I tell you, Bane?” crowed Eval as we landed in the canyon where we were supposed to meet Dooku. “My plan worked to perfection.”

  “It wasn’t your plan. It was my execution of your plan,” I said, pushing the groggy Chancellor out of the speeder. “Your precious plan fell apart before it even got started. You’re lucky I was there to make it work.”

  “That wasn’t luck, it was part of my plan!”

  “Well, what about the part of your plan where we get paid? Where’s Dooku? I thought you said he’d meet us here.”

  “That was the…plan,” mumbled Eval.

  “What…what’s happening?” groaned the Chancellor.

  “Just get up,” I told him, sticking my blaster in his face.

  He staggered to his feet.

  Pathetic, I thought, all of us fighting over this weak old man. I was getting a bad feeling and it got worse when Hardeen showed up.

  “Hardeen, you’re not supposed to be here yet.”

  “I don’t want to be double-crossed.”

  “I think we’ve all been double-crossed,” I told him. “Dooku’s a no-show.”

  “What do we do with the Chancellor now?” asked Eval.

  “We ransom him ourselves,” I said. “If Dooku won’t pay us, somebody else will.”

  And then all of a sudden, I had a blaster sticking in my face!

  “I’m afraid the Chancellor is coming with me,” snarled Hardeen.

  Eval rushed him from the side. Hardeen flung him back easily, but it gave me a split second to duck under Hardeen’s blaster and knock him to the ground.

  I was done talking and ready to start shooting.

  I pulled my LL-30s and blasted him right in the heart…except…I missed. Hardeen wasn’t there anymore. He’d dodged my blast. Impossible! No one can dodge a blaster bolt, especially not when I’m doing the blasting. No one.

  Except maybe…

  A Jedi.

  I’d seen Hardeen move pretty fast before, but now he was impossibly fast. Jedi fast. He managed to move in on me while I was blasting away. Next thing I knew he’d grabbed me and flung me on top of Eval.

  Before we could get to our feet, more speeders were buzzing in and Jedi and clone troopers were swarming the place.

  Skywalker leapt off a speeder and ran over to join Hardeen.

  “Obi-Wan?”

  “Yes, it’s me, Anakin.”

  “Kenobi?” wheezed Eval.

  “I should have known,” I said. “Something smelled wrong about you from the start!”

  “Well, spending so much time with you was no reward, either,” he said.

  “Reward? I’ll give you your reward one of these days, Kenobi…when I plug you full of laser bolts!”

  As Eval and I were dragged off by clones, I heard Skywalker getting angry with Kenobi.

  “Why did you trick me, Master? Why did you let me think you were dead?”

  “I had to, Anakin, I—”

  I didn’t hear the rest, but who cares what Kenobi had to say? He’s a liar. He’d been lying from the start.

  I would have expected that from Eval. Or Dooku. But a Jedi?

  I remembe
r when you could trust a Jedi to at least give you a fair fight.

  Well, times change.

  “I told you that story would make you sick. We all got played for fools by that Jedi. And I never got paid for any of it. And I lost another hat.”

  “Jedi are the worst!” spat Boba.

  “Yeah, it’s not like it was back in the day. Almost makes me wonder if I should fly off into the sunset somewhere and let you take my place as the best bounty hunter in the galaxy.”

  “KURZHRKZZZ!”

  “Sure, you too, Bossk,” I lied. “Here, have some more glop.”

  The big lizard grabbed my plate and slurped the green goo into his huge mouth.

  “Htlhrkkzzzz,” he said, sighing.

  “Well, don’t hang up your blasters yet, Bane,” said Boba. “’Cause me and Bossk have a plan. A big one. Way bigger than anything Eval ever dreamed of! And we need you. And you’re going to need the blasters.”

  Sometimes this kid reminded me of myself a long, long time ago.

  “Sounds pretty good,” I said. “And anyway, I won’t be ready to hang up my blasters until they give Kenobi his reward…right between the eyes.”

  ASAJJ VENTRESS WAS HARD TO KILL.

  She’d survived being ripped away from her mother on Dathomir. She’d survived being enslaved. She’d survived Jedi training with her old master. She’d survived Count Dooku. She’d survived General Grievous’ massacre of her sisters. She’d survived dueling with Jedi scum like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker.

  Ventress survived because the only other choice was not surviving, and she was too stubborn for that. But for a very brief moment inside the crammed cargo hold of the transport vessel, she did not think she’d survive the smell coming from the Weequay pirate sitting next to her. The aroma on this transport was like a fathier stable, but it was all she could afford for the time being.

  Squeezed into the ship’s hold with dozens of other passengers headed to the Outer Rim, Ventress felt her mind slipping to recent events and how they all had ended in ruin. Returning to Dathomir was not something she had done lightly, but after Dooku’s betrayal, it had felt like the entire galaxy was punching down on her. And Mother Talzin had welcomed her home. She and the Nightsisters had put Ventress back together once before, giving her strength and purpose. But this time returning had been different. More permanent. That night, she’d pledged herself to the sisterhood. Abandoned her old life to become a sister of the night. Then Dooku’s droid army had destroyed everything.