If he hadn’t spun to grasp …
If the exhalation hadn’t been perfectly timed …
He would have been smashed down, dragged under, ground into splinters. As it was, Obi-Wan struggled to pull himself up higher and higher on the car, until, scraped and panting, he lay above it and settled in for the rest of the ride.
In the council rooms, members of the Five Families fortunate enough not to be kidnapped were watching the entire display with shock. “What kind of creatures are these Jedi?” Llitishi whispered, mopping perspiration from his crinkled blue brow.
“I don’t know … but I am profoundly grateful to have them on our side,” said the elder Debbikin, hoping for his son’s safety. “I think that we must seriously reconsider our stance.” There was much murmured agreement, followed by eager attempts to tap into the sensors for further data.
39
For more than an hour after the magcar’s power had been cut and it had settled to the shaft floor, the mood in the diverted car continued to deteriorate. The captured leaders of the Five Families had watched with alarm as their solitary kidnapper was joined by three ruffians dressed in Desert Wind khakis. The intruders had exchanged a few quiet words, then gone about their plans. Clearly, they wished to separate their captives from the city grid as swiftly as possible.
“What do you intend to do with us?” Lady Por’Ten whispered.
“Wait,” a masked Desert Wind soldier replied. “You’ll see.” The dark-eyed Nautolan said nothing.
At first they had hoped for rescue, but as they watched their kidnappers set up electronic scramblers to confuse the tunnel sensors and monitors, they realized their chances of being found were slight.
One man patrolled outside the car, leaving two within it with the Nautolan. Young Debbikin watched the one outside. He walked back and forth around the car … and then he was gone. For a moment there was confusion, and then the figure reappeared. Only … was it the same person? Had he been mistaken, or had the car’s tinted windows revealed some kind of brief and violent struggle?
Hope was a luxury they dared not indulge in. And yet …
“And now—” the taller of the Desert Wind ruffians began. He never had a chance to finish the words. A black noose dropped down under his chin. The cord tightened, and the man was hauled up through an emergency door in the car’s roof, kicking and screaming, scrabbling at his neck with hooked fingers. Instantly their Nautolan kidnapper wheeled, snarling.
Cloak fluttering around him like the plumage of some bird of prey, Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped down into the car. The tan-clad Desert Wind soldier was the first to reach him, and therefore the first to go down in a brief flicker of a lightsaber. He stumbled back, the shoulder of his jacket smoking and spitting sparks.
The Nautolan glared at his adversary, and for a moment the hostages were all but forgotten.
“Jedi!” the Nautolan snarled.
Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed to slits, his courtly manner a distant memory. In an instant he had transformed from ambassador into the deadliest of warriors. “Nemonus,” he hissed, then added, “Not the first time you’ve tried blood diplomacy.”
“Nor the last,” the Nautolan growled. “But it is the last time I’ll tolerate your meddling.”
Without another word the two leapt toward each other and the fight was on.
As long as they lived, the men and women in that car would remember the next few moments. The Nautolan wielded his glowing whip in a sinuous blur, with demonic accuracy. It arced up and around, flexing and coiling like a living thing. Wherever it went and whatever he did, the Jedi was there first.
There had been much speculation as to why a Jedi would prefer a lightsaber to a blaster. All of the disadvantages of such a short-range weapon were obvious. But now, watching the drama unfold before them, another fact became obvious as well: Obi-Wan’s lightsaber moved as if it were an extension of his body, a glowing arm or leg imbued with the mysterious power of the Force.
The two adversaries were almost perfectly matched. One might have expected the lightwhip’s greater length to give advantage, but in the confined space that simply wasn’t true. Strangely, while the Nautolan’s lash splashed sparks here and there, gouged hot metal from panels, and sent flecks of fire floating down to where they huddled on the ground, none of them was touched. The Nautolan was pure aggression. His face narrowed to a fighting grimace, spitting curses in strange languages, moving his torso with a boneless agility that seemed impossible for any vertebrate.
Certainly the Jedi would cower. Would flee and save himself. Nothing could stand before such a bafflingly lethal onslaught—
But Master Kenobi stood firm. He wove through that narrow space, his lightsaber flashing like desert lightning, deflecting every flicker of the whip. The Nautolan’s speed and ferocity were matched by the Jedi’s own cold and implacable determination. They leapt and tumbled, wheeling through the confined space, somersaulting so that they were virtually walking on the ceiling as they evaded and attacked, achieving a level of hyperkinesis simultaneously balletic and primal.
Master Kenobi was the first to penetrate the other’s guard, such that the lightwhip was barely able to enmesh the glowing energy blade in time to deflect. The cloth along the Nautolan’s arm flared with brief, intense heat. They saw the abrupt change in the kidnapper’s demeanor. The Nautolan snarled, and fear shone in his face. The Jedi was winning! In another engagement, two at the most, Master Kenobi would have solved the lightwhip’s riddle, and go for the kill.
The Nautolan lashed this way and that as if gathering his energies for renewed aggression. Then with a single smooth, eye-baffling motion he scooped up the wounded Desert Wind soldier as if he were a mere child. The Nautolan bounded up through the roof, and was gone. They heard his footsteps pattering down the tunnel. And then … nothing.
Master Kenobi turned to them, his face beginning to relax back from its battle mask. If he had not chosen to speak, there might have been no words voiced in that car for an hour. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
Quill was-reduced to mere babbling. “No! I—that was amazing! I’d always heard stories of the Jedi, but never … I just want to say thank you! Thank you so much.”
Master Kenobi ignored him and went from one of them to the other, checking to see that all were well. Then he examined, analyzed, and disconnected the override device. Within moments light returned to the car. The droid began to wheel and pivot as if awakening from drugged slumber. He looked at Kenobi. “Ah! Master Jedi! I assume it is you who has returned my function.”
“That’s true.”
“And your orders?”
“Get these people back to the capital.”
“At once, sir.”
The droid fit his action to his words. The rescued hostages gave a ragged cheer—even Quill, whose faceted eyes shone with awe. Young Debbikin tugged at their savior’s robes again. “Master Jedi,” he asked. “How can I repay you?”
The Jedi smiled grimly. “Tell your father to remember his duty,” he said.
40
Deep in the mountains a hundred klicks southeast of the capital raged a mighty celebration. There was much dancing and laughter, and more than a bit of drunken boasting.
Nate leaned back against a rock, deeply satisfied. The operation had indeed gone smoothly, without a single life lost. His throat was a bit sore from General Kenobi’s lariat, but the support brace concealed in the neck of his cowl had worked perfectly. The extra padding in the shoulder of OnSon’s “Desert Wind” uniform had protected him from the carefully judged swipe of General Kenobi’s lightsaber. In every way, from obtaining the crucial intelligence from the criminal Trillot to transferring it, from evaluation to creation of a plan, from penetrating the transport security network to diverting the car, from impersonating the exhausted forces of Desert Wind to subduing resistance among the Five Families, from simulating combat with General Kenobi to effecting their eventual escape …
Every step had gone o
ff without a hitch.
There was another, additional bonus: from his perch atop the roof of the car he had been able to witness the “duel” between the two Jedi. Nate had thought that he had seen and learned everything about unarmed combats. Now he knew that, in comparison, Kamino’s most advanced martial sciences were mere back-alley thuggery.
Nate knew that the Jedi had something that would keep troopers alive, if he could only learn more about it.
But how? That thought burning in his mind, he sat back and looked up at the stars, deliriously content to replay each motion of lightsaber and whip.
Sheeka Tull had landed Spindragon a safe distance away, and walked into camp under a burgeoning double moon. She had just completed a tiring run connecting three of Cestus’s six major city nodes, delivering volatile cargo illegal to ship through the subterranean tunnels.
A familiar unhelmeted form in dark green fatigues approached her, waving his hand. “Ah, Sheeka. Good to see you.”
From brown skin to tightly muscled body, everything was familiar, but still she looked at him askance. “You’re not Nate,” she said, although the trooper’s casual dress lacked military insignia or other identifying marks.
Forry blinked then transformed into wide-eyed innocence. “Who else would I be?”
She grinned and pointed. “Nice try. He has a little scar right here on his jawline. You don’t.”
Sirty came up behind Forry, laughing at their brother’s efforts to fool her.
Forry grinned ruefully. “All right. You’re right. Just a little game we like to play.” He jerked his thumb. “Nate’s on the other side of camp.”
“Nice try.” She slapped him on the back and went to see her new … friend? Were they friends? She supposed that she could use that word for their relationship. Friends with her dead sweetheart’s clone. It was a bit morbid, but also strangely exciting.
She found him leaning back against a rock, lost in his own thoughts. He smiled and raised a cup of Cestian spore-mead as he saw her.
“What do we celebrate?” she asked, suspecting that she already knew the answer.
“A little operation that went even better than expected. And no, no one is dead.”
She searched his face. “Disappointed?”
He glared at her. “Absolutely. I was hoping for human barbecue tonight.”
She leaned back against the rock with him. “Touché. I shouldn’t blame you simply for enjoying your work. It’s what you were trained to do.”
“Superbly,” he agreed. She was relieved that these lethal, bottle-bred warriors had a sense of humor.
“And you’ve been fully trained in all matters of soldierly behavior?” she asked.
“Fully.”
She paused, and looked at him more carefully. “And do soldiers dance?”
Now he seemed to lose that smile and become genuinely thoughtful. “Of course. The Jakelian knife-dance is a primary tool for teaching distance, timing, and rhythm in engagement.”
She groaned. Practicality again. “No. Dancing. You know: man, woman. Dancing?”
He shrugged. “The cohorts compete with each other in dance. Team and individual events.”
Sheeka found herself fighting a growing sense of exasperation. “Haven’t you ever done it for fun?”
He squinted. “That is fun.”
“You exhaust me,” she said, and then held her arms out. “Come on.”
He hesitated, and then came to her.
The musicians were playing some fast-paced number with flute and drum. Their jig steps were bouncy and light. The other recruits grinned, laughed, chattered, and swung their partners around with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested a serious need to blow off steam. The troopers watched, tapping their feet to the rhythm. From time to time one of them would perform a series of precise, martial movements to the music, spiced with tumbling floor gymnastics. The recruits approved, clapping along and cheering.
Just what happened today? She hesitated to ask. He had great coordination, but not much sense of moving in unity with a partner. Still, she liked it. She liked it a lot.
“I heard things on the scanner,” she said, innocently enough.
“Really?” he asked. “What did they say?” He held her firmly and caught a half beat cleverly enough to spin her. Several of the other couples had as well, and the air filled with whoops of joy.
“Oh, something about a group of Five Family types being kidnapped and then rescued.”
“Kidnapped? Rescued?” he said. Wide-eyed. “Goodness. Sounds exciting.”
So. He wasn’t going to say anything. Need-to-know, she supposed. Still, from the number of people celebrating, she knew that the operation had been substantial, and she guessed that she might be able to pry the details out of a farmer or miner.
He must have noticed the thoughtful frown on her face, and misinterpreted its meaning a bit. “So,” he said. “I get the sense that you don’t approve of our mission.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”
“But you don’t. Why do you help us?”
“Not voluntarily.”
“Then why? What leverage does someone have?”
Her answering laugh was a bit tighter than she had intended. “Somewhere on Coruscant is a computer file listing every indiscretion ever committed in the galaxy. There was a need, my name came up, and doing a favor is better than spending a decade on a work planet.”
“And your name is on this list?”
She nodded. “You’re a quick study.”
“I believe that’s called sarcasm.”
“Ooh,” she squealed. “More human by the minute. Next we try irony.”
He scowled ferociously, and she laughed. “So … what did you do?”
“My younger sister joined a religious sect on Devon Four. When they refused to pay taxes Coruscant slapped an embargo on them. When a plague struck the colony, they were going to die, every woman, man, and child. No one would do a thing. So …”
He nodded understanding. “So you got them their medicine. And your sister?”
She brightened. “Raising a squalling brood of brats somewhere in the Outer Rim. I’d do it all over again.”
“Even though it brought you here.”
Strangely enough, she was feeling more than just comfortable, and a thought drifted through her mind that here meant both the planet and his arms. Hmmm. “Even though.”
“I notice you spend more time talking to me than my brothers,” he said, his lips close to her ear. “Why is that?”
“You hold my interest.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Perhaps because you are the only one trained for command. That makes you more like Jango.”
His attention sharpened. “They say he was a loner.”
“Yes,” she said. “But a natural leader, too. At other times he could be invisible, as I understand quite a few people learned to their brief and painful regret.”
Nate gave a hard, flat chuckle. Yes, indeed.
“But if he wanted, when he entered a room every head would turn.” She paused a beat. “Especially mine.” Her voice grew softer. “But that was all so long ago. I was eighteen years old, and Jango was twenty-five.”
“Was he a bounty hunter then?”
She closed her eyes, dredging up old memories. “I think he was in transition. He’d only been free maybe two years, since the Mandalorians were wiped out. I met him in the Meridian sector. He’d lost his armor somehow, and was searching for it.” A ruminative smile. “We had just about a year together. Then things got dangerous. We were raided by space pirates. Our ship got blown from the sky, and in the middle of a really nasty space battle we were forced to take separate evacuation pods. I never saw him again.” She paused. “I heard he survived, and got his armor back. I don’t know if he looked for me.” Sheeka shrugged. “Life is like that, sometimes.” Her voice had grown wistful.
Then she chuckled, and he drew back
slightly and looked at her in puzzlement. “Why do you laugh?”
“You do remind me of Jango. He always locked his emotions away. But I can remember times when he let them out of their cage.”
“Such as?”
Her sweeter, saucier side was bubbling to the fore, and she was happy to feel it. She’d feared she’d never feel that evanescence again. “If you’re lucky, I might tell you sometime.”
She knew he was curious now, and pardoned herself for the slight exaggeration. In truth, Jango was a man of few words who kept his feelings in check. In his life, and his chosen lifestyle, that reserve had been vital for survival.
Just from their few conversations, she knew that for all his practical and lethal knowledge, Nate hadn’t the foggiest notion about ordinary human lives. Until this, until the moment that he had taken her in his arms, she could feel that he had treated her with a certain respect and distance, more like a sister than anything else. He probably knew only two types of women: civilians to be protected or perhaps obeyed, treated with courtesy at the least. On the other hand were the sorts of women who offered themselves to soldiers in exchange for credits or protection, to be used and discarded. It could be emotionally risky to break down such a simplistic worldview.
But she had to admit that she was interested in breaking through his reserve, wondering what she might find beneath it.
What would happen, how might he respond if she allowed the bond between them to deepen? And if she took it in a new direction? She drew him away from the dancing and laughter into the shadows. “What now?” she asked.
“We’re off-duty until dawn, why?”
The Cestus Deception: Star Wars (Clone Wars): A Clone Wars Novel Page 20