by Sean Stewart
"I didn't get scrapped. Though I suppose you could say I lost my job." Solis
indicated a flight of stairs, and together they started up. "We were both built
as servant droids, Fidelis and I."
"A gentleman's personal gentlething," Scout said, grinning. "Whie told us."
"Just so. We were initially programmed to perform quite a wide range of . . .
household duties. Makers of sentient property have typically found that if one
has an intelligent model, equips it with a wide spectrum of skills and
abilities, and sends it off into the world in a role requiring some foresight
and initiative—if, in effect, one allows it to live—the property has a
disconcerting habit of developing a personality and opinions of its own."
Scout couldn't be sure if that comment was supposed to be ironic.
"In our case, therefore, the bedrock of our programming was loyalty—a loyalty
to our purchaser that was absolutely hardwired."
"Only the loyalty didn't run both ways," Scout said. "Since I guess your
family let you go."
"In a manner of speaking," Solis said, reaching the top of the stairs. "They
were murdered."
Scout didn't know what to say.
"It was a small war. Soldiers had found their way into the house. My family
intended to use a secret escape passage. My mistress sent me down to the safe
room to get the family jewels. I said I thought I should stay and cover their
retreat. My mistress called me a fool and invoked the override. I got the
jewels. But the family had been betrayed, and the secret passage was not so
secret. The soldiers caught them and shot them before I returned. By the time I
got there, everyone was dead. I dropped the jewelry on the bodies and walked
away."
A tall, chitinous alien of indeterminate gender jostled Scout, who realized
she had been standing, transfixed, at the top of the stairs. "Stars," she
murmured. "What happened to the soldiers? The ones who caught your family?"
"I don't remember," Solis said blandly.
Yeah, right, Scout thought. She gulped, wondering exactly how the rest of
that story had gone. They started walking again, toward the food court, and she
found herself eyeing the gouges and scuff marks on the droid's metal body,
wondering how many of them represented ordinary wear and tear, and how many more
might have come from blasterfire, or needlers, or vibroblades.
"Fidelis still has a family, but other than that you're pretty much the
same?"
"Not at all. My family was killed more than two hundred standard years ago.
If you had a twin sister—and you might, you know—how different might her life
have already become from yours, in just a decade?"
"Two hundred years?" Scout said, goggling. "How old are you?"
"Younger than your artoo," he said, with an uncomfortably penetrating glance.
Scout felt suitably quelled, and not a little uneasy.
They came to the little circle of tables in the food court area. Whie, who
was supposed to be off using the refresher, was instead sitting at a table with
Fidelis, head down, listening intently. "Hey!" Scout said. "What are you doing
here?"
Whie jerked around with a guilty start. "None of your business," he said.
"Talking. It's allowed."
"None of my business? Did I just hear that come out of Saint Whie's mouth? It
surely is my business if I catch you consorting with strangers and lying about
it. Or have you forgotten who your real family is?" she said tight-lipped,
jerking her head down at the concourse below, where Jai was laboriously counting
out credits for their tickets to Vjun.
"From where I sit, it looks like we are consorting to the same degree," Whie
said, getting himself back under control.
A funny sort of control, though: still angry and defensive. As quick as Scout
could be to take offense, something about the whole situation was so strange she
couldn’t maintain the thread of her anger. "What is up with you today?" she
said, genuinely puzzled. "You've been weird all day. I didn't mean to rattle
your cage—to tell the truth, I didn't even know you could get rattled. I was
just surprised, that's all. What's going on?"
"You're late," Fidelis said to Solis.
The unpainted droid shrugged. Late? Scout thought. Late for what?
A small platoon of armed Phindians in blue-and-white uniforms jogged into the
food court carrying blaster rifles and grim expressions. The captain, a
hard-faced Phindian with a rank badge on his shoulder, was the only one whose
rifle was still slung on his back. "Stay perfectly calm," he announced to the
staring diners. "I am Major Quecks, Phindar Spaceport SPCB. We have received a
report of an extremely dangerous unlicensed droid on station," he said, looking
at Fidelis. "Make, model, and serial number, please."
"Master?" Fidelis said, looking to Whie.
Whie goggled.
"Are you the owner of this droid?" the captain said sharply.
"Yes," Fidelis said.
"No!" Whie said. "What is going on? Who are you?"
"Sentient Property Crime Bureau, Tactical Squad," Solis remarked. "Carrying
regulation blasters and neural-net erasers." The attention of the Tactical Squad
swung around and fixed on the battered, unpainted droid.
"This one's with me," Scout said.
"That remains to be determined. Are either of you carrying any weapons?"
Major Quecks asked Whie.
Don't look at me, Scout thought, knowing he was about to. Don't look around,
just lie.
Whie looked at her. "Scout?"
"You remembered to check your blaster cannon, didn't you, bro?"
"I love your sense of humor" Quecks remarked. "Those of us in security love
jokes about blaster cannons from juvenile aliens traveling with dangerous
droids. It's our favorite thing in the world."
His soldiers gripped their rifles more tightly.
Scout made eye contact with the major and summoned the Force as best she
could. "No, we aren't carrying any weapons. Are we, Whie?"
Whie's eyes widened, and he followed her lead. "Nosir. We're just kids," he
explained—and even Scout, who knew perfectly well that she had a lightsaber
hidden under her cloak, felt how absurd it was that the major should be bullying
two such obviously innocent children. The eight soldiers behind him looked
around and lowered their guns.
The Phindian slowly relaxed. His arms were so long that his hands, hanging at
his side, nearly brushed his ankles. "Very good, then. Remain seated at this
table with the droids, please, until we sound the all-clear."
In the middle of the major's last sentence, Fidelis cocked his head to one
side, as if listening for something. An instant later Solis did the same thing.
"What?" Scout said urgently. "What's going on?"
"The thing about spaceport security," Solis remarked, "is that it's designed
to keep passengers from getting to ship personnel." Now even Scout could hear
distant blasterfire, and smell the lightning-burn of ozone in the air. "As
opposed to the other way around," the droid finished.
In a whirling blur of metal and high-tech ceramic, a platoon of battle droids
came spinning down the corridors from the boarding area, ble
w through the
security lines, and unpacked into full combat readiness with a deployed arsenal
of blades, blasters, flechette launchers, and weapons Scout didn't even
recognize. The droids themselves were half again as big as a human, built like
sharpened exoskeletons, their lean hatchet-faced heads swept back to a scything
point. The fluorescent spaceport lights glittered off every lethal surface.
The mixed throng of native Phindians and traveling galactics just passing
through the spaceport stood for a long moment, transfixed, staring at all the
hardware of death that had opened suddenly on them. A series of tinny beeps
broke the eerie silence. "Look at that," Solis observed dryly. "They've set off
the metal detectors."
Then mayhem broke loose.
Twin blades of light appeared as Master Maruk and Master Leem swept out their
lightsabers, ready to deflect the battle droids' blaster bolts. So much for
disguise, Jai Maruk thought. "DO NOT PANIC," he bellowed, drawing the Force into
his voice so it lashed out in a tone of absolute command. Right now, the
civilians could be as dangerous to themselves as could the battle droids,
depending on exactly what this little welcoming party was here for. A Dooku
double cross, or just plain bad luck? "KEEP DOWN AND HEAD FOR THE EXITS."
The terrified throng, held in some semblance of order by the force of his
will, bent low and hurried like spider-roaches for the sides of the big main
gallery, disappearing into duty-free gift shops, running for the turbolifts, or
crushing into the refresher stations, searching for someplace to hide.
Six of the battle droids flanked out, knocking bodies out of their way, to
take up crossfire positions on him and Master Leem. "Ohma-D'un super battle
droids?" she asked.
Jai Maruk shook his head. "Confederacy assassin droids," he bellowed,
shouting to be heard over the din. He recognized them from Anakin Skywalker's
report on his mission to Jabiim. Anakin's foes had featured fairly generic
armament—usually one handheld blaster and a shoulder-mounted backup. This squad
had a much more eclectic array of weapons—aside from their built-in blasters, he
could see a couple of flechette launchers, sonic grenades, two flamethrowers,
even two fat, hollow tubes that he was pretty sure were tactical tractor beam
prototypes.
A custom outfitting job. Pretty much the stuff you might equip your battle
droids with if you knew you were hunting Jedi and had heard they were good at
deflecting blaster bolts, Jai thought grimly.
Two of the assassin droids held up and triggered what looked like small
antenna dishes, no bigger than dinner plates. Sudden thunder burst in Jai's
skull—a keening explosion of sound, agonizingly loud, blew out his eardrums and
dropped him to his knees. The noise was stupefying—loud enough to knock over the
little R2unit; so loud the sheer sonic assault hit Jai like an iron bar in the
face. Maks Leem dropped her lightsaber. Her mouth was open and she was probably
screaming, but Jai couldn't hear it. He suspected he wasn't going to be able to
hear anything for a very long time.
Focus.
He couldn't think. His head was coming apart in plates, the bones of his
skull rattling like dropped china. Hard-sound guns—he'd read reports about them,
but nothing had prepared him.
Something wet on his neck. Blood. Blood was pouring from his earholes.
Focus.
A crackle of energy passed between him and Maks Leem as the tactical tractor
beam smacked the R2 unit into the air like a tin can blasted by a slugthrower
bullet. Then the beam steadied and slammed hard to the floor, the R2 can clamped
tight in an electromagnetic vise.
The droids knew Master Yoda was in there.
They were hunting him down.
Beside Jai, Master Leem held out her hand. Her lips were pulled back over her
long, narrow jaw in a grimace of concentration. Her lightsaber flew into her
hand. With one swing she cut the head off one of the little metal poles that
held the line-divider ribbons. The chunk of metal went spinning into the air.
The Gran grabbed it in her other hand, spun, and hurled it through one of the
two hard-noise projector dishes. It exploded in a shower of sparks.
Jai couldn't actually tell if the other one was still making noise. It was as
if the auditory section of his brain had blown a fuse—everything happening fast,
but soundlessly. Finally the rattling feeling inside his skull subsided, and he
managed to find a still point, an almost peaceful center to the maelstrom. A
lifetime of training took over, and he was running, leaping, twisting in the air
through a slicing hail of flechettes that opened a dozens cuts on his body.
Everything crystal clear and soundless, as if it were happening behind
transparisteel. Curiously impersonal now: the last battle of his life.
He dropped in front of the droid with the second hard-sound projector, and
his lightsaber carved it into smoking ruin.
The terminal was a pandemonium of screams and shouts. The crowd, seeing Jai
drop to his knees with blood streaming from his ears, had lost its tenuous sense
of order, and people were now scrambling witlessly through the spaceport
concourse like mermyns running from a burning nest.
Up on the second level by the food court, Scout tore her eyes away from the
madhouse and started thinking again. "Hey, Major!" she yelled at the SPCB
commander. "That looks like some pretty dangerous Sentient Property down there.
Start shooting!"
The men looked uncertainly at the indecisive Major Quecks. One SPCB trooper
raised his blaster rifle and sighted down into the main concourse. A Confederacy
assassin droid looked up, and half a second later the SPCB trooper toppled
forward with a burn crater where his face had been.
Major Quecks stared at the body. "That's it," he said unsteadily. He drew the
neural-net eraser from his sideholster and covered Solis and Fidelis with a
shaking hand. "Take these units into custody and retreat until reinforcements
arrive."
"That sounds like a good idea," Solis said. "Except for the first part."
There was a brief blur of motion, inconceivably fast, like a repeating blaster
striking, and suddenly the major was looking from the broken fingers of his
right hand to the neural-net eraser now in Solis's comfortable grip. "Do you
want to live?" the droid asked.
"Y-y-yes!"
"Me, too," the droid said, and he crushed the weapon into scrap. It wasn't a
slow squeeze, metal buckling and shrieking. It was instant and effortless, as if
the eraser had fallen under the gigantic footpads of an AT-PT transport.
The SPCB troops broke and ran.
Another troop of assassin droids came down the walkway from the docking
terminals. A few little sirens and blinking lights saluted them as they passed
through the spaceport metal detectors in two groups of four. Between them paced
a lithe bald woman with a tattooed skull. She was smiling as she came. It was
not a pretty smile.
The eighteen assassin droids—the full complement that Last Call could carry
in her outboard crèches—
now split into four distinct groups. Four of the
newcomers stayed with Asajj. Four others peeled off and headed upstairs to
secure the food court area. Five were closely engaged with the two Jedi, where
the one Jai had taken down lay in a heap of smoking metal. Two were operating
the tactical tractor beam, holding the R2 unit pinned to the floor a safe
distance away, while two others approached just close enough to pitch sonic
grenades to within centimeters of the droid's casing. The grenades went off with
a churning, concussive vibration that buckled the floor underneath the R2 and
made its casing writhe and ripple.
There was something anticlimactic about the business, Ventress felt. Part of
her would far rather have taken on the old Jedi: Asajj Ventress and Master Yoda,
lightsaber-to-lightsaber, winner take all. But Dooku, though an elegant man with
a profound sense of the aesthetic, never confused flair with efficiency, and
never accepted style in lieu of substance. Killing Yoda was the thing, and if it
was messy and brutal and somehow perfunctory, it remained far better than giving
him any chance to stay alive.
Still, it didn't make the next part especially pleasant. Asajj was not
squeamish by anyone's standards, but she was not looking forward to seeing what
a pair of high-decibel sonic grenades would have done to an old body trapped in
such a metal shell—if indeed the little cripple had survived the opening blast
of hard sound and subsequent tractor beam smack-around. But it had to be done.
Flanked by her guard, Asajj approached the R2 unit, drew her twin lightsabers,
and carved the metal canister opened with a flourish, so it fell slowly into
pieces, like a flower shedding petals in the breeze.
It was a fine, dramatic moment, completely spoiled by the fact that the
canister was empty.
Asajj blinked. There, where the bottom of the R2 unit should have been, was a
neat circular hole. Yoda had carved an escape hatch through the floor and
dropped into the dim ship's parking level below.
Ventress growled like a sand panther that had missed its kill and slashed
another ring around Yoda's escape hatch so the assassin droids could fit
through. "Get down there!" she snarled. The first of her droid commanders
dropped into the hole feetfirst and disappeared. There was a thump.