Star Wars: Jedi Trial

by Sherman, David

  “What do you want?” Reija gritted.

  “Are you being treated well?” Tonith smiled and took a seat opposite Reija. “Are we not looking after your welfare, madam?”

  “If you can call murder, unprovoked warfare, beastly—”

  “Shut up, woman!” Tonith’s voice cracked like a whip. “Listen to me very carefully. I’m going to put you on a HoloNet transmission to the Republic Senate on Coruscant.”

  Reija started at the news.

  “Sit there and be quiet,” Tonith snapped. “There’s more. You will read a prepared statement. If you do not agree to this proposal, or if you try any tricks while reading the statement, I will kill your Sluissi friend. Here, read.” He handed her a short script. “Read it aloud.”

  Reija glanced at the short paragraph and smiled. “I knew they would come,” she whispered. Her lip quivered as she spoke, and her eyes grew moist, but then she grinned broadly. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “Shut up, you arrogant…” Tonith visibly drew in his anger. “Read the statement. Read it back to me. Now.”

  Slowly, Reija read the statement.

  I AM REIJA MOMEN, DIRECTOR OF THE PRAESITLYN INTERGALACTIC COMMUNICATIONS CENTER. MY STAFF AND I ARE BEING HELD PRISONER BY AN ARMED SEPARATIST FORCE. THE COMMANDER OF THAT FORCE DEMANDS THAT YOU ORDER THE TROOPS NOW OPPOSING HIM TO WITHDRAW FROM PRAESITLYN IMMEDIATELY. FOR EVERY HOUR YOU DELAY ISSUING THAT ORDER, ONE OF MY STAFF WILL BE EXECUTED, ENDING WITH ME. I BEG YOU, FOR THE SAKE OF MY PEOPLE, TO COMPLY IMMEDIATELY.

  “Add a little more emotion toward the end. Otherwise, very good. Now we shall proceed to the communications room—”

  “You’ll never kill all of us. You need us as hostages. As long as we’re alive the Republic forces won’t mount a massive attack on the center, and you hope you can delay that until you’re reinforced.”

  Tonith sighed and snapped his fingers. A droid entered the room. “Make ready to slice off her left ear,” he ordered. The droid seized Reija with one hand and deftly gripped her left ear in strong, mechanical fingers. Those fingers squeezed—hard—and Reija fought not to scream. “Now get her to her feet,” he commanded the droid. “We don’t want to keep the Senate waiting.”

  They pushed Reija down the corridors to the control room. She did her best to get a grip on herself and to ignore the painful burning sensation that engulfed the left side of her head as the droid continued to put pressure on her ear. “You must know that the Senate isn’t even in session,” she gasped.

  “No matter. We will transmit to the transceiver in the Senate Communications Room, and I guarantee you, one minute after it’s received the Chancellor will be calling the Senate into emergency session.” Tonith laughed outright.

  A hologram pod had been set up in the main control room of the communications center, and a chair placed in front of the pod for Reija to sit in. She was unceremoniously thrust into it by the droid. As the droid retreated, she pressed a hand to her burning ear.

  “Remember, my dear,” Tonith sneered, “if you try to get smart with me during the transmission, I will have that ear removed. I must say,” he continued pleasantly, “you look charming—or you will when you put your head down and compose yourself. The Senators will be impressed. Here is the script. Read it slowly and verbatim. Wait for the signal from the technician.” He nodded to a technician at the controls.

  Reija studied the script. “When will you begin the executions?” she asked.

  Tonith shrugged. “When enough time has gone by without a response. When I’m ready. We may not have to execute anyone at all if you do this right.” He nodded at the technician.

  “Begin,” the technician said.

  Reija looked calmly into the middle distance. “I am Reija Momen, director of the Intergalactic Communications Center on Praesitlyn,” she began, her voice steady and well modulated. “My staff and I,” she continued, “are being held prisoner by an armed Separatist force. The commander of that force demands you order the troops now opposing him to withdraw from Praesitlyn immediately. For every hour you delay issuing that order, one of my staff will be executed, ending with me.” She paused for a full three seconds. The technician glanced nervously at Tonith, who, smiling, held up a hand indicating he should let Reija finish her statement.

  “I beg you, for the sake of my people, Attack! Attack! Attack!” she screamed.

  18

  The flag of the Republic wrapped around his neck, Zozridor Slayke leapt gracefully over the ramparts the labor droids were erecting and looked around. His heart raced. For almost as far as he could see the sky was full of landing craft; others, already landed in vast clouds of dust and sand, were disgorging squads of armored troopers. An older human male with brown mustaches and brilliant blue eyes looked up as Slayke approached and nodded to his companions, who appeared to be studying maps or plans. They turned as one and stared at the battle-scarred figure rapidly approaching, a huge grin on his face.

  Slayke stopped before the older man, came to attention, and saluted him smartly. As his hand came up to his right brow at a forty-five-degree angle a tiny cloud of dust puffed off his arm. “Captain Zozridor Slayke, commanding the force opposing the Separatist invaders of Praesitlyn, sir. I hereby offer my full assistance in your campaign to liberate this world.”

  The older man, an embarrassed expression on his face, slowly returned Slayke’s salute and said, “Well, I’m here to tell you!” He gestured at a Jedi standing next to a—a Rodian?

  “Who is that?” Slayke asked, startled.

  Anakin stepped into full view. “Jedi Anakin Skywalker, Captain Slayke. I’m in command of the landing force. This,” he said, nodding at Grudo, “is my sergeant major. I am very pleased and honored to make your acquaintance.”

  Slayke looked over at the older man he’d mistaken for the commander, but that gentleman shrugged.

  “The Republic’s so low on soldiers they’re robbing the cradle now, eh?” Slayke slammed a fist into his thigh. A cloud of dust puffed up. “What was your name again, Jedi General?”

  “Anakin Skywalker, sir.” Anakin bowed slightly at the waist. “And it’s Commander, not General. Sir, I have heard a lot about you and am honored—”

  “Look, Jedi Commander Anakin Skywalker, I have only about two thousand soldiers left of all those who landed here with me. We fought them hard and upset their plans. But you’re honored? Don’t talk to me of ‘honor,’ Jedi. We’re nothing but blood, guts, and sweat here and—” He shook his head as he looked over the landing force. “If there’s anything more useless in this galaxy than a Jedi’s brain, it’s a clone trooper. They’re one step above a droid—in fact, I’d prefer droids over these ugly clones anytime. You can’t tell clones apart, and they all have the same personality.”

  “Now, see here!” the older officer protested. “We’ve heard quite enough from you, Slayke. I’m here to tell you!”

  “Who is this, since he’s not the general?” Slayke asked Anakin.

  “My quartermaster, Major Mess Boulanger.”

  Slayke roared with laughter and pointed a finger at Boulanger. “You mean I was dumb enough to try to report to a blasted box kicker? Oh, that’s rich! Well, Major, rather you commanding this force than this beardless wonder here.”

  Anakin held up a hand. “Captain Slayke, right now I’m busy landing my troops. We’re going to establish a defensive position. I suggest you remove your forces to this spot and consolidate with us. As soon as General Halcyon joins us—”

  Slayke groaned and slapped his forehead. “Halcyon, did you say? Nejaa Halcyon? He’s commanding this fleet?”

  “Yessir. As soon as he joins us—”

  Slayke laughed. He turned his eyes skyward and raised both arms over his head. “Why is this happening to me!”

  “Captain, I know you and General Halcyon, er, had some, uh, differences once—”

  “Oh, you do, do you, young beardless Jedi?” Slayke laughed louder. “I never met the man.” He scowl
ed. “I was too busy stealing his ship. So the best the vaunted Republic can do is send me a boy and a certifiable idiot with an army of—of—test-tube soldiers,” he sneered.

  “We’ll do,” Anakin said shortly, controlling his annoyance with effort.

  “All right! All right!” Slayke held out both palms. “I’m going back to my troops. You see that slight rise over there? That’s my command post. When General Halcyon gets here, you and him come on over and we’ll talk. I’m the one who’s been fighting the droid army. You want to know what it’s been like, you come on over and see me.” With that, he spun on his heel and stomped off.

  “Whew,” one of the officers standing nearby sighed. “He’s what we call a hard case where I come from.”

  “Well,” Anakin answered slowly, “he has been through a lot. Did you hear what he said? He only has two thousand soldiers left of the army that landed here with him? That’s a fantastically heavy casualty rate! No wonder he’s bitter.” He turned to his officers. “Let’s land the rest of our force, and when General Halcyon gets here, we’ll go on over and pay Zozridor Slayke a formal visit.”

  The landing continued unopposed.

  Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s expression did not change as he watched the short transmission from Praesitlyn. “Reija Momen is from Alderaan, isn’t she?” he asked Armand Isard, who had been enjoying drinks with the Chancellor when Lieutenant Jenbean, the Senatorial Communications Center watch officer, delivered the transmission.

  “I believe so, sir.” Isard also had watched Reija Momen’s statement without evident emotion.

  “Hmmm.” Palpatine replayed the transmission. “A brave woman.”

  “Shall we call an emergency session of the Senate? Or perhaps we should respond? The first hour in the ultimatum will be up soon.”

  “To view this? I don’t think so. What good would it do? The hostages? They won’t kill them. This is a bluff, and a blackmail bluff at that. The Republic will not, cannot, permit itself to be bullied like this. Lieutenant Jenbean,” he said, turning to the watch officer who had brought Momen’s statement directly from the communications center, “have you showed this to anyone else?”

  “Nossir. I brought it directly here as soon as it was received. The technicians on duty have seen it, sir, but that’s all.”

  “Good.” Palpatine paused. “Do you know Momen personally?” he asked then.

  “Nossir, not personally. I know her by reputation. She is one of the most highly respected persons in our profession.”

  “I understand. I will keep this with me until I decide what to do. Until then, you are to treat this as absolutely top secret, is that understood? Have your log entry show only that a transmission came in from Praesitlyn, nothing more. If anything else like this comes through, I want you to bring it directly to me. Inform your relief that if anything comes in from the communications center on Praesitlyn he’s to do the same thing.”

  After Jenbean left, Isard turned to Palpatine and asked, “Do you really think he’ll keep this to himself?”

  “No. Armand, where emotion rules, the wise man will hedge his bets every time. Did you see the lieutenant’s expression as we watched the transmission? You know he’d seen that thing several times before he brought it to me. That woman, Reija Momen, she’s an icon; she looks like the ideal mother. Only old hard cases like us can resist an appeal like that to our basic instincts. What about Tonith? Is he serious about killing the technicians?”

  “Yes, Supreme Chancellor, he is fully capable of that once they lose their value to him. Or he may not kill them. It depends on how he calculates his odds for personal survival. He’s a cool one, very dispassionate—what you’d expect of a banker; a living calculating machine, profit here, loss there, balance the account and so on. What will you do with this situation?” He nodded at the recorder.

  “Nothing for now. Our young communicator friend will do it for us.” Palpatine smiled enigmatically.

  “May I ask how you know?”

  Palpatine inclined his head in a slight bow. “Trust me. I know. All I had to do was look at that young man’s face. May I refill your glass?”

  Lieutenant Jenbean was incensed, and the farther he got from Chancellor Palpatine’s residence the angrier he became. They had just sat there watching that transmission without even a change of expression. How could those politicians have taken this so lightly? Didn’t individuals count anymore in this Republic? Wasn’t the Republic the guarantor of the freedom and lives of each of its citizens? Surely nobody would expect Palpatine to call off the relief expedition, but shouldn’t he have shared this information with the commanders, demanded a plan to free the hostages?

  When the transmission had come through, everyone on his shift had watched it several times, thinking at first it could only be a hoax. None of the communicators had much knowledge about what was happening on Praesitlyn except that the Separatists had captured it and the Senate had sent a relief force to liberate it. But they all knew Reija Momen—everyone in the field knew her. And there she was—he shook his head and clenched his fists—a prisoner of some fiend, being forced to make this transmission.

  Although it was not clear to Jenbean just what Chancellor Palpatine—or anyone else—could do about Momen’s situation, he was incensed that the Chancellor proposed to do nothing at the moment. In just a few minutes one of the technicians on Praesitlyn would be murdered; maybe it had already happened. He shuddered at the thought of further transmissions showing people he knew lying dead in the Praesitlyn Intergalactic Communications Center.

  Before he put in place the caveats on the transmission that Palpatine had demanded, Lieutenant Jenbean, staking his entire future on doing what he thought was right, would retransmit Momen’s broadcast to someone who could do something to save her.

  Anakin smiled as Halcyon stepped into his command post. They shook hands warmly.

  “You’ve done an excellent job landing and deploying the army,” Halcyon told him. “What’s happening?” He nodded toward the high ground.

  Briefly Anakin filled him in on the tactical situation. “Our landing went off unopposed. The enemy is withdrawing to the plateau, and we haven’t been able to take advantage of the movement because we weren’t fully deployed when it began. Now they occupy the high ground, and I’m sure they’re fortified up there, using the communications center and its staff as hostages to prevent us from mounting a full-scale attack. It’s going to be hard to dislodge them.”

  Halcyon nodded. “That’s why we’ve got to be flexible. I’ve got a couple of ideas. Have you met Slayke yet?”

  Anakin smiled. “Yes. He wants us to visit him in his command post as soon as you’re ready.”

  “I’ve never met him in person, you know. He was too busy stealing my ship the only time our paths crossed.” Halcyon grinned. He unfastened his cloak, sat on the nearest chair, and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m tired, and the battle hasn’t even started yet.”

  Anakin sobered. “How badly damaged was the Ranger?”

  Halcyon shrugged. “We had to scuttle her. We lost a large number of her crew, as well. It was close.”

  “For Captain Slayke, too,” Anakin told him. “They put up a great fight, but his army was almost destroyed.”

  “Not good, not good,” Halcyon said, shaking his head. He was silent for a long moment. At last he took a deep breath and stood up again. “Shall we go pay the Great Man a formal visit in his lair and get this army moving?”

  19

  Their courses inexorably set, the vast armada sped through the cold, eternally dark reaches of space. Aboard each ship systems pulsed with energy as its computers, carefully attended by an army of perfectly functioning droids, kept it on its predetermined course. Weapons systems that could destroy whole fleets were at the ready.

  These were dead machines, almost as cold inside as the vacuum of space outside their hulls, kept just warm enough to prevent metals and plastics from weakening and lubricants from freezing
. They had no names, only numbers and nomenclatures. Nowhere except on the flagship—a monstrous killing machine in its own right—was there to be heard the voice of a single living being; no laughter, no cursing, no complaining, no life; just the muted whispering of machinery. And on the flagship itself, grim-faced beings went about their duties with the calm born of an ingrained military discipline as rigorous as the technology that controlled the droid infantry in the transport ships following the battle cruisers. In those transports silence pervaded the compartments crammed with hundreds of thousands of battle droids folded motionless in their racks, waiting for the signal that would turn them into dispassionate, efficient killing machines.

  Had there been living beings on board these transport ships, and had they walked through the storage compartments where the droids awaited the call to battle, it would have been like visiting a vast crypt where the bones of a monster species sat patiently entombed while awaiting resurrection. The huge bays were silent except for the constant pulsation of the ships’ drives sending their vibrations through the deckplates. The droids were lined up perfectly in their serried ranks; occasionally a slight course deviation or a change in the ships’ rate of speed caused them to sway minutely in their racks to the soft click-click-click of metal on metal. And were a visitor to stare too long and too closely at those skeletal miracles of mechanical invincibility, especially were his attention to be drawn into the black sockets of their optics, he would shudder with the vision of his own mortality reflected there, and scurry back into the world of warmth and fellowship and hope that distinguish the living from their machines.

  This fleet was the long-awaited Separatist reinforcements, the armored fist reaching out to smash the world known as Praesitlyn.