Stealth

by Karen Miller

  “Not go? Honestly, Mother, you can’t be serious.”

  And then one beautiful morning, a month after beginning her life-changing, groundbreaking work on Taratos IV, as the planet’s pale mauve sky exploded into riotous dawn color—explosions of a different kind had rent the warm and scented air. Without warning, out of nowhere, an enormous ship had appeared disgorging hordes of battle droids. On two feet, on no feet, rolling at lethal speed, armed with blasters and laser bombs, flying through the air on weapons-mounted mobile platforms. Without mercy or provocation, the Separatists attacked.

  She and her research team weren’t the only scientists at Niriktavi Bay. Oceanologists, marine biologists, archaeologists—so many ologists she’d given up trying to keep track. Just recently opened to exploration and academic investigation, the Taratos IV central government at long last cajoled into sharing its planet’s wonders, the Bay was a treasure trove and had attracted the best, the brightest, the most astounding scientific minds in the Republic. Generations of knowledge and experience and painstaking study, gathered in this one place to celebrate learning and the mysteries of life. But the Separatists didn’t care about that. They slaughtered indiscriminately, efficient as a plague.

  Slaughtered nearly everyone. Slaughtered her friends and co-workers and people she didn’t know, who might have become her friends if she hadn’t been working so hard. But Bant’ena Fhernan, they took. A few other scientists, too, though she never saw which ones. And as the droids dragged her away, screaming, as afterward her human Separatist captors pumped her full of suffocating drugs, all she could think was No, no, please, not for me. Not all this killing so you could take me.

  She still had no idea where the other captives were, or what had happened to them. What they were doing. She’d asked once, and been punished, and didn’t dare ask again.

  Grief rising like a tidal wave, Bant’ena pressed her hands harder against the jutting bones of her face. Two months, three weeks, and seventeen Corellian days ago she’d been plump. She wasn’t plump anymore. Right here, right now, a cantina musician could use her rib cage for a xylophone.

  If Raxl could see me he’d be horrified. Appalled. He hated skinny women. He loved the meat on my bones.

  The thought of her research assistant and sometime lover scalded fresh tears to her eyes. Raxl was one of those decomposing bodies on the blasted remains of Niriktavi Bay. She hadn’t seen him die but knew that one of the dreadful screams she’d heard had to have been his.

  A convulsive intake of air as open weeping threatened to consume her. Savagely she struck her fists against her chest.

  Stop it, you fool. Don’t do this. Don’t think of what happened. Don’t think of him. It doesn’t help. There’s no going back, no undoing it. You’re a ghost now—and so is he. So are they all.

  Thanks to her captors, the laboratory she slaved in—her other prison—was state-of-the-art. When it came to equipment and resources there was nothing she could ask for that her Separatist masters wouldn’t supply. As though a request for this electroscope or that particle divider meant she had joined them. That she didn’t loathe them. That she was in fact one of them. But she did loathe them. And if she had joined them it was never an act of free will.

  I just wish I believed that made any kind of difference. Who will care why I did this after it’s done? When I’m finished—when I’ve succeeded—I’ll be a murderer, just like them.

  Unless she rebelled, of course. Unless she took a stand and refused point-blank to cooperate anymore. Let them punish her further, in large ways and small. Forced them to inflict upon her the ultimate retribution.

  And if I do that—well, I’ll still be a murderer. So it makes no difference, does it. Either way I lose.

  Her chest hurt where she’d pounded it. She rubbed at the bruises. Looked again at the wall chrono. It wasn’t that late. She should be working. Someone would be along to check on her soon. They checked her progress every day. And if she didn’t have something positive to show them, if she wasn’t able to demonstrate a gain, to justify her existence, to calm their easily woken suspicions, then they would indicate their displeasure.

  They were very skilled at hurting her in ways that didn’t interfere with her work.

  Ranged down the long right-hand wall of her lab she had seven different experiments, each in a different stage of development. Three she had hopes for. Two were lost causes, but she’d decided to let them play out. The other two were winners. Not completed, not yet. Nearly. Just looking at them made her feel sick. She made herself feel sick.

  Why was I born good at this? Why couldn’t I be a talented ballerina?

  The lab’s back wall was taken up with cages, not quite half of them home to a soon-to-be-dead rodent. The ugly underbelly of science. Small, expendable lives. She’d long ago come to terms with their deaths. What difference was there between eating an animal in a restaurant and killing it in a lab, when diner and scientist shared the same goal?

  There was no difference. In that case, at least, her conscience was clean.

  Sublimely oblivious to their own dwindling time, the lab rodents chittered and snuffled as she began to clean out their cages. In her old life she’d had a droid to do such chores. But it pleased her captors to keep her humble.

  And then behind her, the closed door swung open and her principal jailer swept into the lab.

  “Doctor Fhernan! You’re back! Welcome home, my dear.”

  No, you stinking barve. I’m not your dear. Never your dear.

  Belly churning, ruthlessly she schooled her expression and turned to face him. “General Durd. I wasn’t aware you’d returned to Lanteeb.”

  The slovenly, bloated Neimoidian smiled, unctuous and insincere. “Yes, yes. Several hours ago. I’d have been along to see you before now but I was engaged in other matters. But now I’m here and you’re here. Isn’t it delightful? Such a happy reunion, hmm?” A calculating look crept into his odd, alien eyes. “And how are you, my dear? Your little adventure went well, I take it?”

  The coded secure-box she’d escorted back to the compound sat unbreached on its own bench against the lab’s left-hand wall. Abandoning the doomed rodents, she crossed to it. Stood beside it, gaze subserviently lowered. Durd loved it when she abased herself before him.

  “Yes, General.”

  “Yes, General—and?” Durd prompted.

  She looked up. She had her pride, battered though it might be. “And I procured the substance we discussed.”

  “Oh, how delightful,” said Durd, his eyes gleaming with unrestrained avarice. “And you’re quite sure it’s what you need to move the Project along to the next stage?”

  The Project. That was what Durd insisted on calling this terrible weapon she was helping him create. As though an innocuous euphemism could somehow make it less evil. Not that he considered it evil, of course. In his sick and twisted mind, what they were doing was glorious.

  On the far side of the lab, her experiments quietly bubbled.

  “Yes, General,” she said, her voice perfectly even. No hint, never a hint, of what she kept to herself. If ever once he suspected… He thinks I’ll come around to him. He thinks my passion for the science will seduce me to his side. But he’s wrong, he’s so wrong. “The rondium you sourced for me is exactly what’s required for the job.”

  “That’s not a very big container,” said Durd, frowning at the secure-box. “Will we have enough?”

  His ignorance never failed to astound her. “Of course, General. I’ve brought us more than enough rondium to run extensive controlled laboratory tests and—” She cleared her throat and sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness. “And undergo multiple field applications.”

  “Hmm.” Coming closer, Durd trailed one languid finger across a benchtop, in passing. “Curious, isn’t it, that you had to travel to see our friends at Ralteb Minotech, instead of testing the rondium here? At home?”

  This is not my home, you pustulent slimebag. This will never b
e my home.

  She lowered her gaze again, terrified he’d read the revolted thought in her eyes. “I’m sorry, General. Did I not adequately explain the reasons for my trip? Colonel Argat seemed to think I did, which is why he gave me permission to go.” She looked up. “With an armed security detail, of course.”

  Halted in front of her, Durd was smiling, unamused. “Colonel Argat miscalculated, Doctor, when in my absence he allowed you to leave Lanteeb. Even with an armed security detail. As a result, Colonel Argat is no longer in a position to authorize anything. Colonel Barev is your liaison now. You’ll meet him when he arrives in the morning.”

  “Oh,” she said faintly. Did that mean Argat was dead? Had she gotten the man killed? Did she care? He was one of them, a Separatist.

  But he was never unkind. And there were times, when he didn’t realize she was watching him, that he seemed sad. As though he didn’t want to be here any more than she did.

  “Tell me, my dear,” said General Durd, one moist fingertip beneath her chin, tipping her face up so she had to look at him. “Were you thinking you might be able to evade your armed security detail? Or slip a note to someone at Minotech? Even find an unsecured comlink and send out a call to the Republic, for help?”

  Of course I was. “No, General,” she said, her mouth horribly dry. “As I explained to the colonel, rondium is highly idiosyncratic. Depending on where it was mined, it can contain impurities that would render it useless for our purposes. Minotech has rondium sourced from twenty-two different systems. It was less risky, less—less conspicuous—for me to go to them and test it on site than it was for them to transport twenty-two samples here to me.”

  Playfully, Durd tapped the end of her nose. “No wonder Argat believed you, Doctor Fhernan. Such a convincing little thing you are. Tell me, why did you sit outside in your groundcar for so long? I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come in.”

  So he’d been spying on her. Surprise, surprise.

  I was talking myself into setting foot in here again, General. I was talking myself out of breaching the secure-box and committing suicide with the rondium.

  She manufactured an earnest smile. “Oh. Yes. Actually, I was thinking. Just as we were on final approach to the spaceport I had an idea about the Project. About the problems we’ve been having with the conversion process.”

  Durd raised an eye ridge. “We?”

  “I’m sorry. I mean me, of course, General,” she said hastily. “I was thinking about the problem I’ve been having with the conversion process. I was still working my way through a possible new formula when the groundcar pulled through the compound gates and you—you know what it’s like when inspiration strikes. You don’t want to interrupt your train of thought. So I sat outside until I could get the whole formula clear in my mind.”

  Durd’s pupils bloomed. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, General.” She crossed to her main workbench and snatched up the datapad she’d been scribbling on. “See?” she said, thrusting it toward him. “I’ve been double-checking my new calculations. I’m sure they’re accurate.”

  “Hmm.” Durd glanced at her notes as though he could actually understand them. “Well, my dear. It’s a start in making up for your corruption of Colonel Argat. But I suggest you continue your reparations by giving us a breakthrough with that rondium. Tonight. Count Dooku was rather disappointed to lose the colonel’s services, you know. Receiving an encouraging update on the status of our Project will surely put him in a forgiving mood.”

  Reparations? Forgiving? Oh sweet mercy… “I’m very sorry Count Dooku is disappointed, General.”

  “As you should be. And now—” Durd yawned. “I bid you good evening. I’ve been very busy and I want my bed. A general’s duties are endless, you know.” Hands clasped over his belly, he cast a pleased look around the lab, at her seven experiments and all the formulae and notes scrawled across the intelli-boards and the benches of expensive equipment and the stacked cages of sacrificial rodents. “We’re doing great work here, Doctor Fhernan. Great work. And when all is said and done, the galaxy will be deeply, deeply in our debt. We are on the brink of achieving freedom from the tyranny of the Republic and its raddled Senate. There’ll be songs sung about us one day, my dear. Songs. I can hear them now.”

  Somehow she managed not to gag. “Yes, General.”

  Halfway to the lab door he clapped a hand to his clammy forehead and turned back. “My dear, my dear!” he exclaimed. “I was so excited to have you home again I completely forgot.” He plunged a hand into his pocket. Pulled out a compact holo-unit and placed it gently on the nearest bench. “A gift for you. Enjoy.”

  She stood where she was for a long time after he left. Breathing, just breathing, until the urge to vomit passed. Until her tear-blurred vision cleared. The holo-unit sat on the bench like an unexploded bomb.

  Don’t look. Don’t look. He wants you to look. Don’t look.

  But how could she not look?

  The first recording was of her mother, shopping in the fresh produce market held every week in downtown Tiln. It meant an hour’s uncomfortable traveling, but Mata Fhernan wouldn’t buy her rubias and her chee-chee berries anywhere else. The shielded droidcam capturing the image had also recorded sound. Her mother was talking about Palpatine’s latest address in the Senate with one of the stall holders. Durd’s way of authenticating the recording. She’d watched the address herself, live, two days ago. It was the only news she’d been permitted to see.

  Mother looked well.

  So did her brother, Ilim, and his wife and the new baby, in their Corel City apartment. So did her sister Chai, and Chai’s husband, Bem. Both their boys had colds, though, and runny red noses. Probably it wasn’t a smart idea to take them on their annual camping trip to Alderaan, but Bem was so tenderhearted. He hated disappointing his young sons. The droidcam had caught them disembarking their transport at Alderaan’s central spaceport, three days earlier.

  Angry, despairing, Bant’ena smeared the tears from her cheeks.

  I should’ve been born an only child. I should’ve been orphaned years ago.

  And it was a pity she wasn’t the kind of person who couldn’t make friends, because if she was that kind of prickly person then Didjoa and Samsam and Lakhti and Nevhra wouldn’t now be living with unseen, loaded blasters pointed at their heads.

  A dreadful cramp of fear, revulsion, and grief doubled her over. Hanging on to the bench to stop herself from falling, she felt the tearing sobs rise in her throat. Heard them burst and break the lab’s cool silence.

  I have to do this. I have to. If I don’t, they’re all dead.

  “Hmm,” said Obi-Wan thoughtfully. “I wonder if this was such a good idea after all.”

  Anakin looked at him. “I bow to your wisdom in all things, Master.”

  “Since when?” Obi-Wan retorted, half smiling. “Now hush a moment.”

  They were crouched deep in a concealing pool of shadows, at the rear of the Separatist compound’s delivery station. After passing through four security checkpoints undetected they’d stayed on the truck’s roof as it made achingly slow progress along a narrow ring road that took them past the compound’s roofed parking area where the fancy groundcar had been left to keep company with two others, and around to the back of the searingly lit sprawling two-story complex. Eventually the truck pulled into an enclosed loading dock and a droid crew came out to unload its contents: three large antigrav pallets’ worth of unmarked crates.

  As soon as the driver was preoccupied with getting his documentation cleared, and the droids were busy juggling boxes, Obi-Wan had nodded and they’d leapt down from the truck’s roof. Letting the Force blur their presence, they melted into the darkness around the edges of the delivery station.

  By Anakin’s estimation that had been nearly an hour ago. Since then another six crate-filled trucks had arrived, been unloaded, then departed. And still they were stuck in here because they had to be clandestine. They couldn’
t just take out the droids and march right into the complex’s main building to find out what was being cooked up there. Because that would be acting like Jedi, and on this mission they weren’t allowed to act like Jedi. Not proper Jedi, anyway.

  He was starting to hate clandestine.

  “Look,” Obi-Wan murmured. “This might be our chance.”

  The delivery station was now crowded with loaded antigrav pallets. The next truck, if there was a next truck, would never fit inside. And it seemed the droids had finally noticed that because their designated leader, a boxy unit with a faulty vocoder that turned its voice into a ludicrous squeak, was issuing orders for the pallets to be convoyed up to the main building.

  “According to instructions, General Durd wants what’s in these crates,” it announced. “And what General Durd wants, General Durd gets. So stir your servomotors, you bunch of rusty spare parts!”

  Anakin sucked in a sharp breath. General Durd? Lok Durd, Dooku’s pet weapons inventor? But Durd was in Republic custody—wasn’t he?

  Obi-Wan leaned close. “I don’t suppose there are two General Durds?”

  “I doubt it.” He watched the line of droid-propelled antigrav pallets snake out of the delivery station. “But that means the stinking barve’s escaped Republic custody. How is that possible? And why haven’t we heard anything?”

  “Well…” Obi-Wan ran a hand over his beard. “We’ve been a bit busy lately. Perhaps we missed the memo.”

  “Or perhaps there’s a cover-up,” he retorted. “Because it doesn’t look good, does it? Another captured Separatist slipping through our fingers?”

  “Now, now,” said Obi-Wan, soothing. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Maybe it was Durd in the groundcar. That would explain why I felt something familiar.”

  “Then I suppose we should be grateful for what happened on Maridun,” said Obi-Wan. “Since it gave you the connection.”