Stealth

by Karen Miller

  Already there was grime and sweat smeared over Anakin’s face. Jaw stubbornly set, his gaze directed elsewhere, in his eyes shone frustration and resentment and hurt.

  And then, with a sharp nod, he let them all go.

  Hugely relieved, Obi-Wan clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Come on. Whoever Lanteeb’s newest visitor is, he or she must be disembarked by now. We don’t want to miss seeing who it is. And there has to be an entrance along this wretched wall somewhere.”

  Side by side they moved on, picking up their pace—but not to a run, because running would attract the attention of a passing Separatist official or one of the battle droids patrolling across the road. After a couple of minutes they saw the signs they were looking for.

  LANTIBBA SPACEPORT DOCKING BAYS 11-16.

  RESTRICTED ACCESS. NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

  “What do you think?” said Anakin. “Will our entrance be counted as Unauthorized?”

  “Oh, most definitely, I’d say,” he replied, and flashed a sly grin. “But I don’t see why that should stop us, do you? Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Except they were stopped—before they could take a single step off the sidewalk. Four MagnaGuards patrolled the spaceport entrance, each droid armed with two fully charged and activated electrostaffs. So much for influencing security to let them pass.

  “Halt! Hands up!” the lead guard commanded, menacingly looming, its photoreceptor eyes burning with an almost sentient zeal. “Your presence is unauthorized. Do not move. You will be scanned.”

  Snapping immediately into his meek Lanteeban persona, Obi-Wan swallowed a curse and raised his hands. At least here was confirmation that Bail’s instincts were right. MagnaGuards weren’t Sep cannon fodder, tinnies, or clankers. They were Grievous’s elite, the most intelligent, aggressive droids in the Separatist arsenal. A MagnaGuard’s level of AI programming was so high, the things were but a microcircuit or two from being alive. They wouldn’t be stationed here if the prize they protected wasn’t vital. Unfortunately this also meant that their chances of escaping this confrontation with whole skins were less than encouraging.

  He didn’t dare look at Anakin.

  Clandestine, remember? Humble. Downtrodden. I know you can do it.

  The ID chip in his wrist burned as the spaceport’s security sensors passed through it. And though he had complete confidence in Jedi technology, still he held his breath while the scanner hummed over the shielded pocket inside his shirt. But his lightsaber wasn’t detected, and neither was Anakin’s.

  So far so good. Now if only the droids didn’t insist on a body search…

  “What is your purpose here?” demanded the lead MagnaGuard. “This area is restricted. You are breaking the law.”

  Ranged wide behind it, blocking the spaceport entrance, the other three droids stood poised to attack. Eager for any excuse to strike, they twirled their crackling electrostaffs idly. Suggestively.

  “We’re sorry,” said Anakin, trying to watch all four at once. “We’re lost. We just landed and realized we left something important on our ship. We need to get back to it and—”

  The MagnaGuard’s move was so swift Anakin couldn’t save himself. The electrostaff in its left hand stabbed him in the belly, discharging a vicious micro-ionized energy blast into his body.

  He dropped, limbs flailing, eyes rolled to white crescents.

  “No, sir, please, no!” cried Obi-Wan and plunged to his knees, arms cradling his head. “This is a mistake! We mean no harm! We’ve been away from home a long time and everything’s changed. We’re confused. We didn’t mean to trespass. We didn’t know we were breaking the law. Oh please, please, sir, don’t hurt us! Please let us go!”

  Beside him, Anakin twitched and groaned on the recently resurfaced ferrocrete. But that was good. Twitching and groaning were good. They meant he wasn’t dead. Frustratingly, tantalizingly, the interior of the spaceport was only meters away. Continuing his pretense of devastated cringing, through half-closed eyes he took in the scene beyond the intermittent wall of MagnaDroids.

  More droids. Battle units, this time. Lethally armed but easily dispatched—by a properly armed, unencumbered Jedi. What a shame that wasn’t his job description today. He could see humans, too—not browbeaten Lanteebans but more Separatist forces, at least a score of them, each man uniformed and armed to the teeth with blasters and shock-sticks. So far their attention was trained on whoever had arrived on the VIP ship, but that might change at any moment—and there were too many for him to mind-control on his own.

  A sudden stirring beyond the Sep officials and ranked battle droids. Raised voices. A steadily blarping klaxon. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the Techno Union vessel, but he could see a large vehicle with opaquely tinted windows slowly advancing. The sleek, expensive groundcar carved its way between the Sep security officers and battle droids, who fell back to each side of the spaceport’s restricted-access entryway. Red and orange laser beams flared as the vehicle negotiated a coded defense grid barring access to the inner docking bays.

  Obi-Wan felt his jaw tighten.

  So much security here. So much new infrastructure. The Seps certainly haven’t wasted these past several weeks.

  It was going to make getting to the bottom of this mystery a challenge.

  Anakin moaned and blinked at the sky, his disordered nervous system trying to reassert control. He muttered something. Struggled to roll over.

  Obi-Wan reached out. “No, no, Markl,” he whispered. “Don’t move. Don’t—”

  The lead MagnaGuard stuck one durasteel foot under Anakin’s rib cage then lifted and shoved, propelling him onto the road and into the path of an oncoming groundcar. No need to fake fear this time. Obi-Wan dived after him, and grabbed one elbow and an ankle and hauled him desperately onto the sidewalk using mundane strength only. It was too risky to use the Force. The groundcar swept by, its driver wide-eyed with horror, not daring to stop or even sound the horn. Thwarted of prey, of grisly entertainment, the MagnaGuards spat curses and advanced, raised electrostaffs flaring. It would mean instant death if they struck the face or throat or heart. And at this close range the droids couldn’t fail to hit their mark.

  “Please,” Obi-Wan whimpered, hunched over a still-dazed Anakin. “Please let us go. We won’t come back. We promise.” Knowing what would most appeal to these cold, ruthless droids, he squeezed out a tear. “Please. We can’t hurt you.”

  The lead MagnaGuard tossed the electrostaff from its right hand into its left. With perfect precision, its three companions followed suit. And then there were four built-in laser cannons trained on them, muzzles glowing and primed to fire.

  “We know you can’t hurt—”

  “Hey, you stupid barves!” the nearest Sep officer shouted, noticing at last the commotion behind him. “What are you doing? Let the feebles go and get out of the way before I decommission you!”

  The MagnaGuards stood down.

  Not waiting for a follow-up question from the man who’d just saved their lives, Obi-Wan hooked his arm around Anakin’s shoulders, roughly hauled him to his unsteady feet, and dragged him pell-mell across the road in the face of traffic coming at them from both directions. Horns blared. Somehow they made it to the far sidewalk without mishap. Breathing hard, he turned right and didn’t stop staggering until they’d reached the farthest end of a line of shops facing the spaceport’s high-security entrance.

  Every one of the outlets was abandoned. Boarded up. From the freshness of the hoardings, it hadn’t happened long ago. And it hadn’t happened peacefully, either; the sidewalk was stained with smears and blotches of dried blood.

  Coughing, his assaulted muscles still twitching, Anakin fell against one barricaded door and swiped his shaking forearm down his sweaty, dirty face. “Well, I think it’s official,” he rasped. “This is now my least favorite mission ever.”

  “I don’t know, Anakin,” said Obi-Wan, watching the MagnaGuards march onto the road and stop th
e oncoming groundcars and trundle carts in their tracks. “You’re so hard to please.”

  “Ha.” With a last dry cough Anakin pushed off the door to stand unassisted, swaying a little, but able to keep his feet. “What are we looking at?”

  “That,” he said, nodding at the groundcar. “In there is our mysterious VIP Separatist. Someone the security guards were anxious not to delay.”

  With the traffic held up, the VIP vehicle proceeded to make a left-hand turn onto the ill-maintained road. Pushing aside the city’s ambient misery, Obi-Wan stretched his senses toward the retreating vehicle. But instead of feeling a sentient intelligence, for good or ill, he felt himself sliding like water over glass.

  “That’s odd.”

  “What is?” said Anakin.

  “I can’t pick up whoever’s in that groundcar. Can you?”

  The electrostaff shock had left Anakin pale, his gaze not quite focused. “Ah—wait—I don’t—” He shook his head, frustrated. “Sorry. I’m still scrambled. Give me a minute.”

  The groundcar was picking up speed as it headed off down the road. “Anakin, I’d love to, but they’re getting away.”

  Anakin rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah. I can see that. If I jump on your back, I suppose Force-sprinting after them is out of the question?”

  “Very funny.” Still—if Anakin could make appalling jokes he mustn’t be hurt too badly. A minor victory. “But perhaps, until you’re less scrambled, we need to think not of speed but of persistence.”

  The traffic was flowing again, coming toward them, an empty open-topped trundle cart. “Got it,” said Anakin, and stepped unsteadily to the edge of the sidewalk. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle.

  “Yes, that’s the idea,” Obi-Wan sighed, as the vehicle changed lanes and started to slow, “but remember subtlety, Anakin!”

  It was Anakin’s turn to smile. “I’m hard to please? Come on, quick. Before our quarry manages to lose us.”

  Trying to appear casual, not the least bit hurried or desperate, they piled into the trundle cart. The droid operator’s availability light flashed over from blue to red.

  “Where to, good sirs?”

  Anakin leaned forward. “No specific destination. See that flash groundcar up ahead? Follow it. Not too closely.”

  “Cannot comply, good sirs,” said the droid. “Programming overrides do not permit interactions with government vehicles. Please state another destination.”

  Obi-Wan felt a twinge of irritation. “All this Separatist interference is getting on my nerves.”

  “Hold on,” said Anakin. “You give up too easily.”

  Bending down, wincing, he used a quick burst of Force-enhanced strength to remove the droid’s control plating.

  “Okay. Let’s have a look-see,” he said under his breath, talking to himself as he often did when fixing machines. “Right. If I pull this wire—and this wire—and switch out these two control crystals—and cross-clamp this node with that one—”

  “Anakin…” Obi-Wan flicked an uneasy glance across the street, toward the MagnaGuards. They hadn’t noticed anything as yet, but that could change in an instant. “Are you quite sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Me? No,” said Anakin, fingers still busily rearranging the droid’s innards. “I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Obi-Wan looked at him. “So when I said before that you’d do well not being flippant, I was using a word with which you’re unfamiliar? Is that it?”

  “Hush,” said Anakin, scowling with concentration. “Don’t distract me. Why do you always have to distract me when I’m trying to work?”

  By this time the VIP groundcar was a blip in the distance. Obi-Wan looked around. Any moment now, any moment, they were going to be accosted. There were patrolling battle droids farther down the sidewalk, heading their way. A handful of Lanteebans scattered as they approached, a miasma of fear rising from them, feeding the dark side.

  “Anakin.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, hold on,” Anakin muttered, not looking up. “Almost there… almost there…” He sat back. “Okay. That’s it. Manual override.” Picking up the semi-detached interior control panel, he pressed a series of switches in swift succession. The droid beeped and the trundle cart’s engine shifted up a gear out of idle.

  The VIP groundcar had completely disappeared.

  Obi-Wan breathed out sharply. Well, this mission’s off to an encouraging start. “Wonderful. We’ve lost them.”

  “Only temporarily,” said Anakin. “I hope.”

  “Can you feel what you felt when that ship was landing? Or are you still scrambled?”

  “A bit,” Anakin muttered. “My head hurts.”

  He took Anakin’s wrist; felt its pulse beneath his fingers, and the burning behind Anakin’s eyes. Felt the pernicious echoes of the electrostaff shock’s disruption. Reaching for the healing Force, he settled Anakin’s disordered senses. Melted the pain. Cleared his vision.

  Anakin sighed. “That’s better. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, can you find that groundcar?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot…” Anakin murmured, then handed over the doctored control panel. “Here. You drive. I need to concentrate.”

  He nudged the trundle cart into the sputtering traffic flow, and they chugged their way back past the spaceport’s restricted entrance and its brutal quartet of MagnaGuards, past their human superiors, the open markets, and many more patrolling battle droids. It seemed the droids outnumbered the Lanteebans here: a standard Separatist tactic. Next they passed another long row of boarded-up shopfronts. Dismayed he stared at them. As if Lanteeb weren’t suffering already. How many livelihoods had Dooku’s people destroyed? How many lives?

  And still there are systems who join his Alliance willingly. How can they be so blind? How can they not see the monster behind the smiling, urbane mask?

  The stream of traffic swept the trundle cart onward. Lanteeb’s spaceport was steadily falling behind them. Now they were passing through an odd, in-between stretch of abandoned buildings. Somnolent warehouses and smokeless chimneys. In the Force, a strong sense of decay.

  Anakin shifted in the trundle’s cramped seat. “Obi-Wan, you’ll have to speed up. I think I’m sensing whoever’s in the groundcar, but the contact’s faint and—and—it’s weird, it’s slippery and—”

  That fleeting sensation of water on glass. “Like you can’t quite grasp it?”

  “Sort of. I can grasp it and then it slithers through my fingers. Which means they’re getting a long way ahead of us, so let’s hurry.”

  He flicked a look at the other vehicles sharing the double-laned road, cruising along at a steady pace. “I appreciate your concern, but we can’t go any faster. Droid transports are speed-limited, they—oh. Of course. That was the first control you disabled, yes?”

  Anakin grinned. “Surprise!”

  “No.” He sighed. “Not really. But even so, we can’t shoot off, Anakin. We’d only make ourselves conspicuous.”

  “We’ll have to risk it,” Anakin insisted. “We can’t afford to fall any farther behind. So get a move on or this fascinating local tour we’re taking will end up being a colossal waste of time.”

  “D’you know what your problem is?” he said, cautiously nudging the trundle cart’s accelerator circuit. With a grinding whine of protest, the vehicle increased speed. “Your problem is that every time you get into a vehicle—any vehicle—you immediately think you’re Podracing again.”

  Eyes half closed in concentration, Anakin chuckled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Still whining, the trundle cart passed an open groundcar. Its elderly Lanteeban driver flashed them a startled, disapproving look. Vape it. He eased off the accelerator.

  “No. Don’t,” Anakin protested. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to avoid trouble,” he retorted. “Who knows what kind of traffic-control measures the Seps have put in place?
For all we know there are autospeed sensors monitoring our progress, and if we trigger one of those things we’ll—”

  “Yeah, okay, but Obi-Wan—I can practically walk faster than this!”

  “Do stop exaggerating and focus. We need to find that groundcar.”

  “No, do we?” said Anakin. “I thought we were taking the air for our health.”

  That made him stare. “Really, Anakin, there’s no need to be sarcastic. I don’t know where you get it from, but it’s most unbecoming.”

  Anakin stared back. “Are you—” He shook his head. “Never mind. Sorry. I just want to get this done and go home.”

  Trust me, that makes two of us. “Then stop talking and start sensing.”

  By now the spaceport was kilometers behind them and they were entering a run-down industrial district. There were smokestacks on many of the long, high buildings surrounding them, most belching greasy gray and dark brown effluvium. The air smelled burnt. Soaked in noxious chemicals. Obi-Wan felt his eyes sting. Felt every shallow breath scorch his mouth and throat. Stay here too long and surely their lungs would corrode to bloody sludge.

  Coughing, Anakin pointed. “We need to go that way. Change lanes, quick.”

  He fiddled with the control panel.

  “No, look where I’m pointing, Obi-Wan! Right, not left!”

  “Sorry—sorry—” Amid a blasting of horns he managed to career the trundle cart across the next traffic lane into a turnout. Wrestling the control panel, he jiggled them to an idling halt.

  “No, no, don’t stop, Obi-Wan, go!” urged Anakin. “Come on, hurry, I’m losing the vaping groundcar!”

  With an unwise burst of speed he scooted the trundle cart in front of the oncoming traffic, off the main road, and into a quiet street running between two long lines of active factories. Within meters their vehicle’s engine cut out, the droid beeping ominously as they lost momentum.

  “Vehicle has exceeded permitted transport distance. Engine override. Engine override.”