Their intentions were announced with the first bolt that sizzled in her direction, striking sparks and splashing slag from the rocks.
Her face tightened in a fighting snarl: the daughter of Sheevis Tull was not so easily killed. She had made low-altitude runs through the mountain passes more times than she wanted to remember, every one of them wickedly dangerous. Always in the past she had risked arrest, imprisonment, revocation of her flying privileges. This was different. This time, it was life and death.
Without further delay, Sheeka accelerated her ship toward the south, scrambling her transponder beacon so that it would broadcast no identifying signals. Now the only thing she had to worry about was being shot down in a blazing fireball.
Of course, that was a pretty big only.
If only she had armament! But Spindragon went in and out of cities too frequently, was scanned on a weekly basis. The Five Families were terrified of another uprising, and forbade suborbital craft from carrying mounted weapons.
The pursuit craft were two-person security units, built for long-range recon and pursuit of … well, of suborbital ships like hers. All muscle and brain. But it just might be possible to meet their challenge …
Unlike her pursuers, Sheeka Tull knew the mines.
She rose up, flipped, and dived into an opening that was little more than an angry gash in the desert floor. With stomach-wrenching speed she dropped straight down. At the last moment she straightened out, making a sharp right turn.
The security ships were only seconds behind her. Her task was to get far enough ahead of them to break visual contact. The heavy mineral deposits would reduce scanner efficiency. Given that, there was an excellent chance they’d be confused by the tunnels, and confusion shifted the odds in her favor.
But first—
A flash bright enough to stun the eye washed the tunnel from wall to wall. Sheeka screamed and threw a hand in front of her face in a reflexive motion that almost cost her her pitch and yawl control. She spun Spindragon sideways to slip between two enormous underground pillars, then zipped around a corner and sank to the cave floor swiftly, killing all lights.
She could hear them, but they could not hear her. Distant searchlights splashed around the broken rock walls as they slowed to a crawl.
“Where … are we?” Jangotat gasped.
Sheeka slipped out of her captain’s chair and walked quietly to him. “Shhh,” she said. “They can find us with sound.”
“That may be a problem,” he gasped.
“Why?”
“Because I think I’m going to scream.” Despite the pain his lips curled in a bitter, self-mocking smile. “I’m out of pain meds.”
She wanted to hug him. Instead she said: “I think we’ll make it. Hold on.”
Sheeka had a few tricks up her sleeve, and one of them was specifically designed to misdirect scanners: a trick that would blind her and the pursuing security ships as well.
The difference was that she had been down here before, and they had not.
She hoped.
“I’m going to try something,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, then—”
“Try it,” he said, and closed his eyes against another fit of shakes.
“For luck,” she said. She bent and, wiping the blood from his chin, kissed him firmly on the lips. His eyes widened in pleased surprise, then she gave a crooked grin and went back to her captain’s chair.
No way to prevent this next part from being dangerous. She could see a searchlight off in the distance, reflected between a pair of stalactites, and figured that this would be her best chance. Sheeka enriched the fuel mixture absurdly, until the unburned hydrocarbons gushed from Spindragon’s rear as dense, black smoke.
Within seconds the lights had turned in her direction, and she struggled against a surge of panic. Then she calmed her breathing and lifted off from the ground a meter or two—much more was impossible because of the low ceiling. But she moved. Yes … even without her running lights, the reflected illumination revealed a turn up ahead. It was just as she remembered. If only the rest of it conformed to memory as well …
She turned the corner just in time: a sizzling energy bolt slagged the wall just behind her. The passageway churned with dense, oily smoke. The pursuing ship slid past them, right through the murk, and collided with the wall in a flame-blossom that temporarily turned a smoky night into day.
Just as she thought: the ships were maneuvcrable and fast, but not well armored, and with no crash shields. The entire cavern glowed fiercely as the ship exploded.
Her chance. Spewing more smoke, Sheeka took the opportunity to cruise low, knowing that the other ships would home in on the destruction.
And there came one now, prowling like some kind of predator. Smoke belched from Spindragon’s rear as the engine labored on its absurdly rich mix, but she knew that the cloud was large enough to conceal her.
The approaching ship had twin beacons in the fore, so that it looked like some kind of lurking predator. An energy bolt ripped through the smoke and slammed against the wall, causing a rock slide she could hear and feel but not see. She tensed as another bolt sizzled by, but didn’t move. The search ship was just questing about. It didn’t know where she was.
But Sheeka did. Just barely, but she did. She lifted up and pivoted her ship about. She knew where another exit lay, and if she was careful, she just might make it.
Both front and rear viewscreens showed nothing as she crept away. Occasionally she caught the barest glimmer of a headlight, but then as she turned the comer once and then twice she left that behind and moved as quickly as she could toward the exit, trying not to think of the deadly search behind her, or wonder what had become of the Jedi and their proud plans.
58
Obi-Wan surveyed the small group of stragglers who had survived the cave slaughter. They huddled in a rocky defile, invisible to any ship overhead, but of course also invisible to other survivors or potential allies. If there were any who had not fled into the desert.
All in all, he estimated that half their force had been killed or captured, and most of the rest scattered. He did not look forward to making his next report to the Supreme Chancellor.
That, of course, assumed there would be another report.
He climbed back up to the top of the ridge without exposing himself to enemy fire, looking down to where they had left their new transport, a cargo craft purchased from a small farming community southwest of the capital.
The ship was now a smoking crater. Much of the communications gear, and their astromech unit … gone. Doolb Snoil … slain while heroically saving Obi-Wan’s life. At least two clones had made it out—he did not know if there was a third. He had seen one ARC go down protecting the woman Tull, but no more than that.
Unless something changed drastically, this mission was shaping into the greatest disaster of his career.
Kit Fisto came up behind him. Although it was not in Kit’s way to offer a comforting gesture, Obi-Wan knew his companion’s hearts. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, but none of it had been the Nautolan’s fault. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was not his fault, either. G’Mai Duris had warned him that sinister forces were at work. That they were never meant to succeed … could that be true? And if so, what did it mean?
“I do not understand.” Kit said. “Each individual move we have made has been without stain.”
Obi-Wan rotated those words in his mind, seeking to put the lie to them. To his sad relief, he could not. They had done everything right. “And yet we’ve been outmaneuvered at every turn,” he said, finishing his thought aloud. “Almost as if we’ve been playing the wrong game all along.”
All along. Obi-Wan remembered the moment in the throne room when he had pretended to locate the car by sensing its influence on the rest of the system. Well, he had only thought of that because of similar, less complex exercises taught long ago by Qui-Gon Jinn. He’d felt that same part of himself triggering, rising as from
slumber. He needed to see something. To notice something. Look at all the pieces. Which ones have been disturbed? What do you not see, as well as see? Not sense, as well as sense? Where should there have been a ripple where there was not? If something has caused each of your plans to disrupt … if someone attempted to kill you … was that Duris’s way? And do any of the Five Families have the power to cause such catastrophe? And if they do not, then what possibility does that leave?
“Obi-Wan?” Kit asked, and suddenly Obi-Wan realized that he had been staring trancelike into the distance. Kit was studying him, and worry creased the Nautolan’s normally impassive face.
He whispered his reply. “There is another player. Another major participant in this tragedy, and has been from the beginning. Somewhere in all of this.”
“But where?”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “I don’t know. But I fear that before this is complete, we will know the answer to that question. And will wish we didn’t.”
One of the clones approached from behind him. He cursed his self-pity. If he was confused, how much more so were these poor creatures, raised since before birth to operate within an immutable chain of command? He had to shake off this malaise, be worthy of their trust.
“Your orders, sir?” Sirty asked.
“Collect the equipment,” he said. “Round up the survivors. We’re moving to the secondary location. I don’t know who betrayed us. But this time, we keep the loop closed.”
Sirty nodded tightly. “Very good, sir.”
“Casualties?”
“Sixteen dead or captured that we know of, sir.”
Obi-Wan noticed that a few more stragglers had joined them without attracting the hunters. Good. Where there was discipline, courage, and creativity, hope still remained. “Casualties?”
“Captain A-Nine-Eight, Nate, is missing and presumed dead.”
That hit Obi-Wan hard. Strange. Hundreds of thousands of clones, all cut from the same cloth. And yet hearing about that particular trooper caused him a special pain, and he wasn’t entirely certain why.
59
Sheeka Tull made very, very certain her pursuers were thrown off the track before continuing. She traveled south to the commercial air corridors, and then slipped along those, changing directions several times to be absolutely sure that Spindragon was not followed.
Once certain, she zigzagged 200 kilometers into a stretch of rolling brown mounds 180 klicks east of the Dashta Mountains. A river channeled snowmelt from the Yal-Noy’s whitecapped peak to their north, so the hills were greener than much of Cestus’s surface, pleasing to the eye even from a distance. Still, the water supply was adequate rather than generous, so the population remained relatively low.
Most called them the Zantay Hills. Sheeka Tull called them home. Sheeka went into a landing pattern, and breathed a sigh of relief as the engines slowed and stopped.
At first there was no sign of habitation. Then an X’Ting cloaked in a brown robe emerged from one of the metal buildings. As Sheeka Tull walked Jangotat down the ramp, he hailed her, the customary smile of greeting gone thin and tight.
“Brother Fate,” she said.
“Sheeka,” he said. His faceted eyes peered more carefully at the burned uniform, and the unhappy expression deepened. “Bringing this soldier here is dangerous.”
Sheeka tightened her grip around Jangotat’s waist. “He was injured in our cause. Help him, Brother Fate. Please.”
The old gray-tufted X’Ting examined the wound, rubbing the singed cloth between his fingers. “Blaster?”
“What difference does that make?” she said urgently. “Help him!”
Brother Fate let out a long, slow sigh. His faceted emerald eyes were filled with pity. “For you, my child,” he said, and then raised his voice to the others. Slowly, a few other people, and then a stream, emerged from their shelters and, smiling, approached.
Three children emerged, came running toward her, crying, “Nana!” and hugging her leather skirts.
“Tarl!” she cried, hugging the boy child. “Tonoté,” the girl. “Where is Mithail?” One youngster hung back a bit, but then she gathered him into her arms and kissed his mop of unruly red hair. “How have you all been?” she asked. As she distributed hugs and kisses to them she watched from the corner of her eye while Jangotat was carted away by several X’ Tings in dark cloaks.
“Who is the man?” Mithail, the youngest, asked.
“A friend,” she replied, and then ruffled their hair. “A friend. Now. Tell me everything that’s happened in the last week.”
60
Groaning with pain, Jangotat pulled himself into wakefulness. Everything inside him hurt, which he found alarming. Was this how it felt to die?
He tried to open his eyes. He felt his lids slide up, but was still unable to see. Global pain combined with blindness triggered an unexpected and quite unwelcome panic response. He sat up, as he did so experiencing a tearing sensation in the skin along his waist. Agony forced an oath from his lips, and he thrashed his arms about, trying to discover the extent of his …
Prison?
“Now, now, calm down.” A pleasant male X’Ting voice. “Everything is all right. It is imperative that you rest.”
Absolutely nothing in that voice triggered any sense of threat, but Jangotat couldn’t dampen his reaction. Danger flared over his entire nervous system, as if his every sense had triggered simultaneously. And yet …
And yet …
His conscious mind knew that he was not in danger. In the oddest paradox, the flood of pain and the sense of danger existed simultaneously with a sense of peace, and this he found confusing.
“What … what are you doing?” he gasped, alarmed at his own weakness as they took his arms gently. Tenderly, perhaps. He wanted to sink back into those sheltering, supporting arms and find peace and release. Wanted it so abruptly that the very depth of his desire frightened him. “Stop. I have to report—”
“You must heal,” a familiar voice said.
It was the robed X’Ting who had met Sheeka outside her ship. Yes. The ship. He knew this creature. Where had Jangotat seen him before …? “Who are you?”
“Call me Brother Fate,” he said.
“Where is Sheeka?” Jangotat gasped.
“With her children,” the robed X’Ting replied. A burr of other voices filled the room around him.
“Her … children?”
“Yes. She makes her home here, among us.”
“Is this where her husband lived?”
“Yes.” Brother Fate paused. “Before she left this last time, she asked us to take special care of her children. I believe she suspected herself to be in danger.” The voice paused again. “It seems she was correct.”
“Yes. But it was … in a good cause.”
“Yes,” the voice said. “So were they all.”
“I have to go,” Jangotat gasped. “Or at least report.”
“Not yet. You will interrupt the healing process. You could die.”
“The first duty of a trooper is to protect the safety of the whole. We live but a few days, the GAR lives on forever …” His mouth seemed to be moving without his mind being engaged, and in that automatic state he momentarily seemed his old, fierce self. Then his strength ebbed, and he sank back down again.
“Forever?” Brother Fate clucked. “You won’t last an hour if you don’t stay quiet and let me treat this wound.”
Jangotat groaned. Then something minty and cool was pressed against his nose, and sleep claimed him.
Under ordinary circumstances, the only time Jangotat remembered his dreams was when sleep-learning vast quantities of tactical data. Then events in the external world might trigger the memory of an odd dream or two. Aside from that, nothing.
But then he’d spent his entire life surrounded by troopers and the tools of war. This place was different. This was all new and unknown. Here in this alien place the darkness swarmed with odd images: places he’d never been, peopl
e he’d never seen. It was all so strange, and even while sleeping he seemed to grasp its oddness.
Twice … perhaps three times he rose toward the surface of his mind like a cork bobbing up in an inky sea. Neither time could he see anything, but once he felt something, as if something heavy and oblong lay on his chest. When he began to move beneath it, it slithered away, and once again he slipped from consciousness.
Jangotat awakened from a dream of a rising sun, and once again felt a squishy, flat weight upon his chest, a resistence against inhalation. This time, his skin no longer felt tender. It was a rather gauzy feeling, if that made sense, as if he were filtering all sensation through some kind of thin filter.
But the weight was there. He moved his hand much more slowly this time, just a bare centimeter at a time.
Whatever lay on his chest pulsed more rapidly, but didn’t move. His fingertips probed at a solid but gelatinous mass. Cool, but not cold. It felt rather like a piece of rubbery fruit. He moved his hands in both directions. It was about half a meter long, and …
But that was all the strength he had. His hands dropped away, arm gone numb. He tried to call out, to ask someone to remove the thing from his chest, but some instinct told him that it was this thing that kept the pain from searing his mind. So he said nothing and settled back again. Beneath the sheltering bandages his eyes closed, and then relaxed. There was nothing he could do right now. That much was true. So he could heal. Would heal, if such capacity remained.
Jangotat remembered the cave debacle. He remembered watching their recruits scattering, mowed down by the killer droids, captured by the JKs, or fleeing from the cave to be slain by enemy blasters.
Xutoo had perished in orbit. All right. And men and women who had trusted him died in the caves. And that meant there was a debt to repay. And troopers knew how to repay debts. Yes, that was one thing they understood quite well.
The Cestus Deception: Star Wars (Clone Wars): A Clone Wars Novel Page 27