The Clone Wars

by Karen Traviss

  “What if the slug dies anyway?”

  Anakin would have swapped every Hutt in the galaxy for one trooper. Ahsoka seemed to be rethinking the position.

  “Rex won’t thank you for it.”

  “Okay, Snips, open your comlink and tell him.”

  “What, me?”

  “Yes. Comm Rex and say you’ve made me change my mind, because you’ve convinced me that neither he nor his men are important enough to save.”

  “Master . . .”

  “If you want to make a tough decision that costs men their lives, you better be prepared to look them in the eye and tell them why.”

  He bet she wouldn’t. He was worried that she would, though, just to prove she was grown-up enough to be his Padawan. And then she’d quote it back at him.

  “Besides,” he said, “Rex can help us find a ship. Get us out.”

  “Master, that’s not very convincing.”

  “Okay, I’m not leaving him while we still have a chance of getting the Hutt out and the troopers. He wouldn’t abandon me. He wouldn’t abandon you. That’s what holds an army together. Break that unspoken promise, and we might as well surrender now.”

  They were fifty meters into the corridor when Artoo whistled a warning. Anakin heard a sound he dreaded: the steady hum of destroyer droids. Movement caught his eye, and he saw two of the things rolling down the corridor toward them, readying cannons. They opened fire and the two Jedi were forced back.

  “Only one way to go,” Anakin said, blocking laser bolts as he backed away. “Artoo, get ready to bar the door.”

  They retreated to the landing platform. Just before R2-D2 rolled in to shut the door and lock it, Anakin saw a humanoid form striding in the wake of the Destroyers, a shaven-headed woman. R2-D2 thrust his interface arm into the lock. The door sealed with a hiss.

  “It’s Ventress,” Anakin said. “At least they’re sending the management to kill us now.”

  The door vibrated for a moment. Two hot spots appeared in the metal plate: Anakin took a guess that Ventress had thrust her lightsabers into the door. He watched, and then realized she was cutting with both of them simultaneously, sawing a circle like a workshop laser cutter.

  “Time to retreat,” he said. “There’s a lot of jungle to hide in.”

  Ahsoka looked over the edge. “There’s a lot of things in the jungle, too, carnivorous and poisonous things . . . oh, and spider droids.”

  Anakin darted to the platform perimeter and looked down. The droids were clambering up the shroud of vines that draped the whole plateau. Several paused to fire into the platform. Anakin felt the shock wave under his boots.

  “Well . . . the choice is to have the platform shot out from under us, or stand here and wait for Ventress, or go over the side and meet the spider droids.”

  Ahsoka’s gaze was darting everywhere, as if she was sizing up distances and options. “Can I answer none of the above, Master?”

  Rotta was wailing intermittently now. Anakin recalled the hasty battlefield first-aid training he’d been given before he was deployed with troops—a noisy casualty was less concern than a quiet one. As long as they were screaming, they were conscious. It was the silent, unconscious ones who were in the most trouble.

  “Carry on complaining, my smelly friend,” Anakin said over his shoulder. Rotta switched to a new sound, a coo of surprise repeated over and over. “Well, a change is good as a rest.”

  “What’s he pointing at?” Ahsoka asked.

  “He’s pointing?”

  “Over there.”

  Anakin turned to look, and Rotta wailed. Ahsoka scanned the trees, eyes narrowed.

  “How did we miss it? I never spotted that before.” she said. “Over there. Another plateau. And look what’s on it!”

  “What? I can’t see.”

  Anakin reached into his satchel for the electrobinoculars. The flat-topped peaks dotted like stepping stones through the jungle were ancient volcanic plugs, so there might have been a chain of them across the landscape on a fault line. With Ventress hacking her way onto the platform and spider droids firing from below, his mind wasn’t on a geology lesson. All he could see was the thick haze above the trees and a group of those huge insect-like creatures the size of speeders. They looked like a ketes, or even a Kashyyyk can-cell; long bodies, two pairs of rapidly beating gauzy wings, and a bulbous head. They circled the plateaus, diving and snatching at invisible prey.

  “Look at the thing that’s glittering,” Ahsoka said.

  “It’s—hey, you’re right.” It was a vessel on a landing platform much like the structure they were standing on now. It made sense; how else could anyone get around this terrain? “It’s a ship. But we’re here, and it’s there. I make that . . . two klicks away. Three.”

  “Yeah . . . I know. It was just a thought.”

  R2-D2 warbled frantically. Anakin turned to the door. Ventress’s twin lightsabers were making better progress than he’d expected. In a matter of minutes, she’d break through. And they’d be trapped.

  The platform shook from another cannon barrage. It couldn’t withstand much more of that.

  And we’ll be plunging to the forest floor, too . . .

  Then the word Kashyyyk hit him squarely between the eyes. It was one of those moments that Master Qui-Gon used to call intuitive association. Anakin groped for the link, and then he saw the answer his subconscious had laid out for him. Kashyyyk also had dense forest, impassable terrain, huge flying insects, and . . . those insects could be ridden. Can-cells—Aleenan scouts and sometimes even humans rode them. They were also drawn to the sound of fliers’ drives, just as the giant insects here had buzzed the LAAT/i.

  “Artoo!” he called. “Can you generate an audio signal that matches a larty’s drive profile?”

  R2-D2 beeped to say that he could mimic the full range of Republic vessels, and some Sep ones too if he was asked nicely. He obliged with a demonstration that made Anakin’s hair bristle, right down to the LAAT/i’s close-to-infrasonic note that droned steadily under the rapid puttering sound.

  “Master, just tell me . . .” Ahsoka asked.

  “We’re calling in one of those insects, and we’re going to ride it out of here.”

  Ahsoka just nodded gravely. Maybe she was too tired to argue now. “Okay. I’ve done a lot of crazier things today. Why the sound effects?”

  “The insects think it’s an invitation to go on a date. They were all over the larty, remember?”

  Ahsoka didn’t respond. Suddenly it wasn’t something they could joke about, not with a dead LAAT/i crew somewhere beneath them.

  “Can you steer?” she asked. The platform took another direct hit from underneath. It was starting to tilt; a pebble rolled a few meters toward the edge. “Provided we can hang on, of course.”

  “Force-pull here, Force-push there. As long as we take off. That’s my priority.”

  R2-D2 rolled gingerly to the edge of the platform, transmitting gunship love songs to gullible insects. This would be one incident Anakin could tell Padmé about. She’d laugh. He wasn’t sure he’d ever tell her how bloody the battle had been, though. There were some things he simply couldn’t express. He stood as close to the edge as he dared with Rotta on his back, looking for amorous mega-insects on the prowl.

  Behind him, Asajj Ventress was close to breaking through the door.

  He listened for the machine-like hum of fast-beating, three-meter wings.

  LANDING PLATFORM DOOR, MONASTERY SIDE

  Ventress had cut a perfect freehand circle into the door, a feat said to be the hallmark of a gifted artist.

  As she rotated both lightsabers around a common center, the two separate arcs met, and she gave the thick metal disk a Force push. It crashed onto the landing platform. She lowered her head a little and stepped through the gap, using the excised disk as a step.

  There was no sign of Skywalker. The Togruta Padawan and the astromech droid were still there, though. Ventress searched around her in t
he Force to see if Skywalker was somewhere above, waiting to leap from an upper floor. But there was nothing.

  “So, Padawan, he’s abandoned you.” Ventress took her lightsabers and snapped them together, hilt to hilt, to form a double-ended weapon. Then she sent the astromech tumbling at the feet of her battle droids. She didn’t trust it. “It’s a Jedi habit.”

  Ahsoka held her lightsaber two-handed and prowled in a circle around Ventress. Their gazes locked. Ventress felt no pity; nobody raised in the brutal ganglands that were Rattatak could afford that level of emotion. They learned to shut down just to cope. It was excellent training, had she known it at the time.

  But Skywalker was too fond of his heroic reputation to let a child like this die in his place. He’d be here.

  “Where are you, Skywalker?” Ventress called. “Or would you rather let a novice do your dirty work for you? One of Master Windu’s handy career tips, if I recall.”

  Ahsoka scowled as if she’d been snubbed. “You’re fighting me.”

  “So I am.” Ventress let Ahsoka come within striking distance, then twirled her lightsaber from the center like a baton, flicking one end over the other to catch the tip of Ahsoka’s blade. “Nothing personal.”

  Ahsoka charged at her holding her blade high, then dropped to her knees and skidded under Ventress’s guard. Or so the child seemed to think, anyway. It was a simple matter for Ventress of leaping backward to avoid the sweep across her legs. Ahsoka was up on her feet again, racing wide to attack again from the rear, making Ventress pirouette to keep her in view. Blades clashed in parry and thrust while Ventress kept one eye out for Skywalker to come crashing to the rescue. But he didn’t appear.

  Now, forty-five seconds into the duel—and these matters never lasted long, she found—Ventress was impatient, and had seen most of Ahsoka’s basic technique; a combination of rapid switches and feints, darting from one side of the battle ground to the other, as if she was trying to exhaust her opponent enough and dart in to deliver the fatal blow. It was very Togrutan.

  Ventress countered by making Ahsoka come to her, not by evading or even pursuing her. At one point, Ventress stood still, double blade held to one side with her body exposed, to tempt the child into a fatal error. The Padawan moved in cautiously. As she lunged, Ventress decided Skywalker would not be lured into showing himself, and whipped Ahsoka’s lightsaber from her hand with a figure-eight movement before slamming her flat with a Force push and holding her there with an outstretched hand.

  “Where’s Skywalker?”

  Ventress put one boot on her chest. Ahsoka squirmed, trying to push back. “You’ll find out the hard way.”

  “Very well. I can wait.” Ventress looked up. “I can start lopping off body parts, Skywalker. Your call.”

  The landing platform lurched a fraction, opening an ominous crack that ran at right angles from the wall of the monastery. Skywalker’s droid beeped plaintively. Well, if the little Jedi prince wouldn’t come back for his Padawan, maybe he valued his droid.

  “Let’s trade,” Ventress called. She felt a faint tingle deep behind her eyes; ah, he was somewhere in the neighborhood now. She held the tip of her lightsaber a hand’s breadth from Ahsoka’s throat. “Special two-for-one offer—a Padawan and a droid for one Huttlet. Can’t say fairer than that.”

  Ventress felt a rush of air accompanied by a steady buzz. She’d been here long enough to begin to get used to the oversized insect life, but the creatures still made her wary. She raised her eyes without moving her head, just to note where it was.

  It was then that it hit her square in the back—something very heavy, very fast, and sharp-edged, a shadow that punched into her like a missile.

  She pitched forward, winded, and almost took Ahsoka’s head off as she fell. One blade of the lightsaber plunged into the permacrete platform almost up to its hilt. She rolled and was on her feet again in an instant, ready to fight, but in that same moment Ahsoka had also rolled clear.

  But that was irrelevant now. Ventress was confronted by a massive hunting fly, a pretty thing with a brilliantly iridescent body and gossamer wings at a safe distance, but, up close, a totally different creature; powerful, fast, predatory, surprisingly noisy, and armed with savage mandibles the size of her hand. The delicate wings with their fine tracery of veins were actually a thick translucent hide stretched on a sturdy bone framework.

  And this beast had a rider: Anakin Skywalker.

  The Huttlet was strapped to his back.

  The hunting fly hovered and darted with the precision of a remote, rising vertically from a dead stop and then hanging in the air, seeming motionless except for a blur of wings that buzzed like a high-speed rotor.

  Rifles clicked and whirred in unison as the battle droids took aim.

  “Hold fire!” Ventress barked. She flung out her arm in a stop gesture. “Hit him, and you kill the Hutt.”

  “You catch on quick,” Skywalker said, drawing his lightsaber. “I’d like my Padawan back, please.”

  He clung grimly to the hunting fly one-handed as it made what felt like strafing runs past Ventress, creating its own downdraft. As Skywalker swooped, he tried to reach out to pull Ahsoka on board. It was easier said than done even for a Jedi. The creature’s wings made a close approach next to impossible. Ventress spun defensively as the hunting fly zipped up and down the platform like a starfighter out of control, flicking its jointed tail and snapping its mandibles. It was heavy and fast-moving, and if it hit her, it would just run her down as hard as a repulsortruck.

  It clearly wasn’t enjoying the ride, and neither was Skywalker. He’d hitched a ride on a large, angry predator.

  Ventress looked for an opening to unseat him; Ahsoka darted around trying to jump on board. It was going to end in tears for one of them. The hunting fly was getting more aggressive and panicky by the second, shying from the lightsabers and flexing its long body as if it was trying to buck. The platform beneath her boots felt as if it was moving.

  It was.

  Her horizon tilted violently as the permacrete slab snapped cleanly away from the wall and hung at a forty-five-degree angle for a few final moments, supported only by a few massive brackets, which were pulling free one by one under the sheer weight of the structure. Ventress ducked to avoid an outspread wing that would have snapped her neck on impact. Then she leaped for the door, launching herself into the sudden void.

  “Jump!” Skywalker yelled.

  He didn’t mean her, of course. Ventress landed on the narrow tread of the doorway and clung to the frame. An avalanche of permacrete and durasteel thundered to the jungle floor.

  When she looked back, the hunting fly was banking right to begin a vertical climb with Ahsoka sprawled facedown in front of Skywalker, scrambling to get a grip with her legs. The astromech droid trailed them with its rockets on full burn.

  “Ma’am.” A battle droid’s voice wafted from inside the doorway, almost drowned out by the rumbling debris below. “Ma’am—”

  “Silence!”

  Ventress watched in helpless rage as the Jedi escaped with her prize. For a second, she almost gave the order for the vulture droids to pursue and destroy. The only thing that stopped her was that she hadn’t given up yet, and she could still retrieve the Huttlet alive.

  She rested her forehead against the wall for a moment, adjusting her plan. Beneath her was a sheer drop of eight hundred meters.

  “Electrobinoculars,” she ordered, holding out her hand to the droid. She got a focus on the hunting fly, a speck vanishing into the treetop haze followed by the twin points of light from the astromech’s jets. “I think I know where they’ll try to head next, but their ride might have other ideas. Track them.”

  “Ma’am, I was trying to tell you that Count Dooku is demanding a report on your mission. Shall I tell him that the Jedi escaped?”

  Ventress handed back the electrobinoculars. “No. Because they haven’t. They still have to get off this planet. And I’m still going to stop them
.”

  She stalked back down the corridor, checking on her datapad that the vulture droids were monitoring the area. Skywalker had to land somewhere. She opened her comlink.

  “Air Control, this is Commander Ventress. I want a vulture tracking Skywalker immediately, and have my fighter ready.”

  “Ma’am, sensor scans are picking up Republic fighters deploying from a cruiser in low orbit. All vulture squadrons have scrambled to engage them.”

  “Kenobi,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Keep him busy, then. He mustn’t be allowed to land troops. Leave Skywalker to me.”

  “Do you still require the Ginivex to be standing by for you, ma’am?”

  “Yes. I may have to intervene personally.”

  Ventress paused on the stairs. The battle in the courtyard was still raging; and she had to forgo air support in her hunt for Skywalker because the vultures were committed elsewhere. What had happened to the much-vaunted Separatist numerical advantage? So far, an army had failed to suppress a company of the 501st Legion—not even battalion strength—and nobody seemed able to detain two Jedi and a baby.

  Including me. It’s going to be hard to explain that to Dooku.

  Droids, she decided, were a liability, but right now they were all she had. She needed to make doubly sure that all the exits were sealed. As long as Skywalker couldn’t clear his name with the Hutts, at least there was a negative victory to cling to. She switched to another channel.

  “Four-A-Seven,” she said, “what’s your position? You should have been long gone by now.”

  “I fear we left too late to slip past the Republic flotilla, ma’am, but I think we have a task to finish here anyway.” The spy droid had a talent for being in the right place at the right time. Ventress admired that. He wasn’t an average droid. “I’ve been observing for the last couple of hours. Excellent view of the monastery from here . . . and incoming flights.”

  Ventress began thinking in terms of putting long-range artillery on the mesa. That could give Kenobi a little surprise if brought into play at the right time. “You have a visual on Kenobi’s squadron?”