The Clone Wars

by Lou Anders

  Even wounded and on her own, she had been able to get away. She could barely remember it. Crawling onto a ship after the droids had left, she’d had no choice but to leave everything, and everyone, behind. Who had buried her sisters? Who would mourn them?

  Once Dooku learned that Ventress was alive, he would come for her again. She needed to exile herself so deep into space that her former master wouldn’t find her. Somewhere she could find work and lay low. The remote desert planet the transport was approaching would do just as well as any other backwater on the fringes of the galaxy, even if she did have an enemy or two there.

  But as the ship arrived on Tatooine, Ventress had her doubts about staying. She breathed in the dry air. Even a mouthful felt like it filled her with sand. Every step she took caused her mind to compare this wasteland to the place she’d just come from.

  Dathomir was delectably dark. The twin suns on Tatooine made her retinas hurt. Dathomir’s air vibrated with ancient power. Tatooine simmered with heat and dust. Dathomir was supposed to be her home. Tatooine, at the very least, had a cantina.

  As she walked toward Mos Eisley, she was keenly aware of the eyes that followed her. A Jawa standing beside an eopie tried to hail her attention. He called something she didn’t understand in a high-pitched voice. She ignored him and the other Jawas who lingered in front of wooden stalls, selling their scavenged goods and blasters. Ventress carried nothing with her except the clothes on her back and the lightsabers strapped to her hips. No matter what she’d been through, she held her head up high.

  She approached the heart of the settlement, where more eopies sauntered lazily. Everyone else seemed to walk like they had somewhere to be. Ventress did the same. She knew the only place to get out of the heat was the cantina. Vibrant, cheerful music spilled from the establishment as she approached the door. The sound was far happier than she felt.

  Ventress’s eyes adjusted to the dimly lit space. Hazy lights clung to the walls. Game tables were littered with cards and disgruntled losers. A Bith blew on a kloo horn while a yellow-skinned Twi’lek girl danced. Pirates and bounty hunters kept one hand on their drinks and the other on their blasters.

  No one in there had any idea what had happened on Dathomir. To her. No one knew that her world had ended.

  Every step she took was a reminder that she was alone. The thought rankled her. No, it infuriated her. The rage she’d felt for years simmered beneath her skin. Then she heard Mother Talzin’s words again. Your destiny will always be linked with ours. But you have your own path to follow now.

  Well, here she was. What was her path? What was her destiny?

  Enough, Ventress thought. She took a seat at the bar.

  “Prow,” she said, throwing a credit on the counter. “Straight up.”

  The bartender busied his beefy fingers to serve her right away. She could smell the bitter blue liquid as it was poured, just as she could still smell the smoke in the dark air of Dathomir. She wanted to wash her thoughts clean.

  Ventress slammed the empty glass on the counter and said, “Another.”

  The bartender refilled her glass, but before she could drink, she felt a presence. She should have noticed him earlier, but her connection with the Force had felt scattered since Dathomir.

  “Hey, there,” came a deep voice.

  She cut her eyes toward him but didn’t bother to look up.

  “What’s a pretty bald babe like you doing in a desert like this?”

  Ventress narrowed her eyes. The creep was humanoid, with pasty skin and two small horns right above the slits of his nose. Four fleshy tendrils hung from his flat face, framing a smile full of sharp teeth. She was in no mood for his pathetic attempt at conversation. “Get lost.”

  She could sense that he wasn’t going to leave. Worse, he touched her. Grabbed her by the wrist like she was a thing he could possess. Ventress belonged to no one but herself.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you, lady.”

  Ventress remembered the way she’d felt helpless on Dathomir. She’d only ever felt that way two other times in her life. When she’d watched her Jedi master murdered. When Count Dooku had ordered her killed. Being helpless felt like drowning. When the stranger put his hand on her and she looked into his split-pupil eyes, she didn’t feel helpless. Here she could fight back. Best of all, she could win. With a grip around her lightsaber, Ventress pressed the hilt close to his stomach. She ignited it.

  The surprise in his eyes, well, surprised her. It seemed that men who tried to push her around were always surprised when she fought back.

  The music came to a screeching halt. Everyone from the gambling fuzzy-headed Snivvian to the green Rodian down the bar gaped at her. The Twi’lek dancer gasped. A glass shattered somewhere.

  Ventress returned her drink to her lips and proclaimed, “I’m not much of a talker.”

  The cantina patrons laughed at that, and the band of Biths resumed their playing.

  For a moment, Ventress breathed a little easier. Now she was positive she’d be left alone.

  The bartender returned with a glass in his hand. His dark eyes were wary, and she sensed his nerves sparking like cut circuits.

  “Uh, compliments of the lizard in the back,” he said.

  Sitting in a circular booth were two strangers. One was the lizard who’d sent the drink. He was with a young Theelin female. Her skin was lilac and her orange hair was split into pigtails. The lizard-faced Trandoshan held his bottle in the air and waved her over.

  This wasn’t the sort of place where someone made friends. They’d just seen her impale the last guy who bothered her and they wanted to, what, talk? But something, a feeling she wasn’t quite sure of, made her get up and join them.

  “What do you want?” Ventress asked, crossing her arms over her body.

  Lizard-face’s tongue licked the air. “I’m Bossk and this is Latts Razzi. We’re bounty hunters, and—”

  “We have a problem,” the Theelin girl said, cutting him off.

  Ventress placed her hands on her lightsabers. Though she didn’t sense any animosity coming from the two, she could never be too careful. “What kind of problem?”

  Bossk motioned to the body on the floor behind them. The bartender was dragging him out by his feet.

  “You just killed one of our team,” Bossk said.

  Ventress shrugged. “Sorry about that.”

  Bossk looked at her curiously. His serpentine voice hissed with a flick of his flat tongue. “So, where’d you get the lightsabers?”

  “Stole them,” she said without missing a beat.

  He seemed impressed. “Bounty hunter, then?”

  Bounty hunter. She was Asajj Ventress. An assassin. A Force wielder. She’d been so many things, but he thought she was nothing but a common hired gun.

  “No,” she said.

  “Ever considered it?” Bossk asked. His reptilian eyes looked her up and down. “You certainly have the right disposition.”

  “Never thought about it,” she said, taking a seat. “Does it pay well?”

  Latts Razzi held up her glass, displaying the many rings on her fingers. Expensive-looking, glittering rings. “Very well.”

  “We have a job to do.” Bossk stood up to his full height. He wore a flight suit that protected his neck. “And you owe us a man. Join our merry band of bounty hunters, or we turn you over to the authorities.”

  Ventress remained where she sat. She didn’t like threats or ultimatums. She quickly considered that he was lying. Were there authorities in a settlement like this? Then she remembered: there was a different kind of authority on Tatooine. The Hutts. And where there was a Hutt, there was someone willing to pay. Ventress couldn’t afford attention from Jabba, not after playing a part in kidnapping his kid.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “It’s best we show you,” Latts said.

  In the back of her head she heard Mother Talzin’s words again: You have your own path to follow now. Her path couldn’t mean th
is job. But at least it was a start.

  Ventress followed Latts and Bossk back out into the dry day. They walked in heavy silence. Despite having decided to go along for the ride, Ventress didn’t fully trust them. Whenever she trusted people, it all turned out wrong.

  Bossk headed toward a run-down house with a human male sitting on crates out front, cradling a blaster. He was swathed in scarves, and his head was covered to shield him from the sun.

  “Hey, Bossk,” the man said. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Shut up, Dengar,” Bossk growled, and kept walking.

  Bossk led the way, pushing aside a curtain. The room they entered was bare. Ventress recognized it for what it was: a ditch to hide in while their crew picked up a job. There stood a C-21 droid and a boy about half its size.

  “Hey, boss,” the lizard said.

  “Boss,” Ventress repeated. They had to be joking. “This is your boss?”

  The boy had a familiar face she couldn’t place. His hair was buzzed to the scalp and there was a mean frown between his eyes. She sensed the fury, the anger that wrapped around him like a rope. “You got a problem with that? My name’s Boba, and this is Highsinger.”

  The droid called Highsinger emitted a deep, metallic sound.

  “I see you’ve already met Bossk and Latts,” Boba said. “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t have a name,” Ventress said blandly.

  Boba scoffed. “So, it’s gonna be like that, huh?”

  “Look, kid,” she said darkly, closing the distance between them. “I don’t take orders very well. Especially from someone of your—stature, and obvious lack of experience.”

  As if he could taste the tension in the room with his tongue, Bossk stepped forward to explain. “She killed Oked. So she agreed to fill in for him on this particular job.”

  Latts turned to Boba. “She’s a little rough around the edges, but we need six hunters. Without her we got no job.”

  “Fine. Let’s get going.” Boba pushed through them impatiently.

  The matter was settled, then.

  She followed them to the rectangular ship Latts called the Hound’s Tooth. As she boarded, Boba’s cunning eyes cut to her lightsabers with a mix of admiration and suspicion.

  “Let’s see if you can keep up with the rest of Krayt’s Claw,” he said.

  “Is that what you call yourselves?” she said with a smirk, and buckled in for the ride.

  The Hound’s Tooth docked at a star-shaped space station orbiting the planet Quarzite. When they disembarked they were greeted by a Belugan male. Within seconds, Ventress felt a strange sense of urgency. He was in a hurry to please someone very important.

  “Welcome. Welcome. I am Major Rigosso,” he said. The four beak-like lips of his mouth revealed a row of small teeth. “We are thrilled to have you here. Please allow me the pleasure of explaining the mission.”

  Major Rigosso clicked on a holo image of their station with a pointed nail. Ventress had never seen anything quite like the mechanism on the display, though she’d heard of planets that needed such contraptions to get to the surface when ships wouldn’t survive the trip through the atmosphere.

  “These elevators will take us beneath the surface of the planet below. Waiting there is a subtram which is carrying very precious cargo. Your mission is to protect the tram as it makes its way to the final destination.”

  “What is this precious cargo?” Dengar asked.

  “That’s none of your concern,” Major Rigosso said curtly. “Just make sure it gets where it’s going.”

  Latts stepped forward to ask, “And where exactly is it going?”

  Major Rigosso gestured to a new holo image. The Belugan had a round belly and stood with one hand raised dramatically. Ventress recognized him as someone in power, or someone who believed himself to have power.

  “To my lord, Otua Blank. He rules over this planet with an iron fist. If you fail to protect his cargo, losing your bounty will be the least of your concerns. This way, please.”

  Major Rigosso allowed no room for comments. Or objections. Ventress didn’t care for the way he talked about his lord. Was that how she once sounded when talking about Dooku?

  She followed the others to the elevator.

  “Why do we have to travel by subtram?” Boba asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to land at our destination?”

  “You’d think so. The atmosphere of our planet is completely pressurized, leaving all aerial travel impossible. If we attempted to land on the planet’s surface, our ship would immediately implode.”

  She didn’t quite hear what Boba said next. They stepped up on circular platforms lit with blue lights. There was the pressurized hiss of the elevator, and then they were propelling down. Her ears popped and she felt the pressure ever so slightly against her body. A strange sensation gripped her, and she blamed it on their rapid-fire descent.

  When they arrived, they were greeted by a group of guards standing around a giant trunk with ornate metal handles.

  “No matter what happens, do not open this box,” Major Rigosso warned them.

  “You make the rules,” Boba said with a shrug. “I follow them.”

  Ventress watched as guards hauled the large box onto the tram. What could be so important as to hire six bounty hunters to protect it when this leader’s own guards could not?

  She told herself it didn’t matter. She would do the job, collect her credits, and then disappear deeper into the Outer Rim.

  The tram set off at full speed on magnetic rings. Ventress was relegated to the back of the high-speed vehicle. As the newest addition to Krayt’s Claw, she expected the grunt work.

  Ventress leaned against the rails and watched the strange landscape of Quarzite pass by. It was dark like Dathomir. Again and again her mind reeled back there. She had to stop. Living in the past was a dangerous thing. But so was living without a future, and as she stood alone in the back of the tram, she knew that was what waited for her. What she’d told Boba when he asked her name suddenly felt true. She was no one. Nothing.

  Quarzite’s towering caves were dotted with clusters of crystals that glowed purple. She looked over the railing and saw hundreds, thousands more, pulsing like kyber crystals jutting out of the earth. The strange sensation she’d felt when listening to Major Rigosso returned. Slowly, she reached for the power that lived inside her, but that power did not answer back the way it used to. Whatever she’d thought she felt was gone.

  Dengar was sent to protect the back of the car with her. He had an easy way about him, loose like his lips.

  “So, what do you think is in that box?”

  She thought about cargo she’d hauled for Count Dooku. Credits, gold, treasure—all those things were easy enough to get across the galaxy. So why was the lord of Quarzite having so much difficulty getting his prize? What could he have that was unique enough to steal?

  “Whatever it is, it better be worth all this effort,” she told Dengar.

  Then Ventress could feel their presence before she saw them.

  Two warriors dressed in all black leapt onto the platform with them. Every part of their bodies was covered in leather except their eyes. Ventress recognized the distinct glowing yellow irises and markings of the Kage. Ventress took a moment to assess them. She knew their fighting technique was fast as shadows. But she was faster.

  One jumped in the air and kicked Dengar in the face. The second lunged at her. She blocked his powerful blows and shoved him with her boot. But as soon as he went down, another climbed aboard. He twisted in the air over her head. Ventress whirled around in time to deflect. She punched and punched, then shoved the Kage warrior off the platform.

  Adrenaline flooded her body. She felt the familiar spark of battle. Her instinct drew her attention to her left, but a fraction too late. A third warrior’s fist collided with her face. She felt the sting of her teeth cutting inside her lip. Tasted the metallic tang of her blood. Her heart soared with rage. She locked on to
the feeling and used it to fight back. Gripping the Kage by his shoulders, she slammed him into her knee. She felt his rib crack and heard the groan that left him breathless.

  Another wave of Kage warriors leapt onto the moving tram and raced across the roof. She didn’t have time to wonder where they were coming from. Her comlink came to life with Dengar’s voice. “Heads up, people. We’ve got company.”

  Company was one way of putting it. It felt like they were materializing out of thin air. The violet crystals of the scenery were a blur. She looked up. They were outnumbered.

  Dengar fought hard but was faltering. He slapped explosives on his two Kage opponents, then crouched with a grin on his face. He pressed the detonator attached to his belt. Ventress heard a familiar whir getting faster and faster just as two blasts lit up the back of the tram.

  Seeing their mates get blown up did nothing to stop the three men throwing punches at her. She had to focus. The Kage were fast. They were relentless. Dodging their fists from side to side, she was defending herself. She needed to choose the offense. They backed her into a corner, but she did a backflip up on the caboose to get the high ground. All three of them drew electric blades that crackled with pale green lightning.

  How quaint, she thought, and ignited her twin red lightsabers.

  She drank in the moment of surprise as her blades cut through all three of theirs. She relished the fear emanating from them as she landed on a Kage warrior’s chest. Ventress jammed her elbow back and flashed her wide smile. After the dullness of travel, she realized that she missed this. She missed using her fists. Using her legs. Using the power that had marked her as special since she was a little girl. Ventress felt the surge of anger that came with getting hit, and she hit back harder.