“What? How can you say that? How long do you think it will last?”
“My best guess? About twelve hours. Maybe less.”
She could only stare.
And finally, he saw on the widescan screen what he’d been waiting for: the droid starfighters peeling away from the dogfight and streaking back toward space, and the handful of surviving gunships turning to limp home.
“See that?” he said, opening his hand toward the screen. “Do you know what that means?”
Depa nodded. “It means that someone figured out what we did.”
“Yes—and that this someone has the control codes for those starfighters.” He turned toward her now, and in his eye was a spark that on another man would have been a wide fierce grin. “I told you: I don’t have weeks or months to spare.”
“I don’t understand—What are you going to do?”
Mace said, “Win.”
He keyed the command frequency for the Republic landers. “General Windu for CRC-09/571. Stand by for verification and orders. Initiate simultaneous data link. Tightbeam.”
The comm crackled. “Seven-One here. Go ahead, General.”
Depa was so astonished by the orders she heard Mace issue that she nearly crashed the Turbostorm into a mountain. When she had finally wrestled the craft back to stability, she flipped on the autopilot and faced her former Master breathlessly. “Are you insane?”
“Just the opposite,” Mace said. “Haven’t you heard? There’s nothing more dangerous than a Jedi who has finally gone sane.”
She sputtered like a droid with a shorted-out motivator.
“And if you don’t mind, I’d like my lightsaber back,” he added apologetically. “I think I’ll need it.”
“But—but—but—” Finally the words burst out of her. “We’re going to take Pelek Baw?”
“No,” said Mace Windu. “We are going to take the whole system. All of it. Right now.”
Chapter 20: Dejarik
The key to the Gevarno Loop was the Al’har system. The key to Al’har was control of the droid starfighter fleet. The fleet was controlled from a secure transmitter below the command bunker of the Pelek Baw spaceport.
The spaceport did have a chance. But only one.
Two of the landers and their complements of troopers had been grounded at the Lorshan Pass, to establish a defensive perimeter around the lone open grasser tunnel, and to provide light artillery support. The other ten hopped over the mountains and kept going at their top atmospheric speed, which was not particularly impressive, but was still somewhat better than could be done by the few battered Turbostorms that were limping back to their various bases, scattered among the larger towns close by on the Highland.
Only one of the gunships went as far as Pelek Baw.
It crept over Grandfather’s Shoulder on one-quarter repulsorlift power, leaking smoke and radiation. The tower officers at the spaceport listened in horror to the pilot’s gasping message: a reactor breach. Imminent catastrophic failure. The pilot had heroically kept his craft in the air, making for Pelek Baw, because only the spaceport itself was fully equipped for containment and decontamination—to have landed anywhere else might have meant the sacrifice of his crew, and of the infantry platoon on board…
The news leaped like lightning from the tower to the ground staff, from the anti-rad techs to the bored garrison crews working the spaceport’s Confederacy-provided array of modern turbolasers and ion cannons; this was the most exciting thing that had happened since the Separatist pullback. The battle at the Lorshan Pass had been astonishing, even tragic, but that was all the way on the other side of the Highland, and so didn’t really count.
Every eye in the spaceport watched the Turbostorm, either in person or on screen, rooting for it, praising the crew’s selfless courage as it swung wide around the city so as not to endanger civilians below, some praying aloud that they would make it, many more secretly hoping to witness a spectacular crash—
Instead of tending to their duties, such as monitoring their sensor screens.
After all, why should they? The spaceport was linked in realtime with the network of detector satellites in orbit around the planet; nothing was in the air right now except the twenty-odd surviving gunships. The last of the droid starfighters had returned to space hours ago, and the Republic landing craft which had caused so much excitement had vanished shortly thereafter.
No one was worried about those landers. After the staggering 40 percent losses they had suffered, the Republic ships surely would seek no further battle. Without a doubt, they were hiding in the “soup”—the thick oceanic swirl of toxic gases that surrounds the Highland plateau—until a cruiser could sneak in-system to extract them.
Without a doubt.
This was a considerable display of confidence on their part, because those same detector satellites on which they depended were as out of date as the rest of the local government’s planetary equipage. Their IR and visual-light detectors were useless to penetrate the thick hot swirl of the “soup,” and the satellites’ more subtle sensors were defeated by the extremely high metals content of the gases. Once the landers went deep enough, they effectively vanished from the face of the planet.
Which is why any sensor tech at the Pelek Baw spaceport with the discipline to keep his eyes on his short-range screen might have seen indications of something extraordinary.
Pelek Baw spread along the western shore of the Great Downrush, the mightiest river on Haruun Kal. The Downrush was fed by tributaries from across the Highland—from as far east as the Lorshan Pass, and as far north as the lands above the impassable cliffs called the Trundur Wall. By the time the great river reached the capital, it was a full kilometer wide. Its dramatic roaring spray-clouded plunge from the terminal cliffs that formed the southern boundary of the city was one of the great natural wonders of the sector: it foamed and misted and spread as it fell kilometer after kilometer, becoming a snowy fan that stirred the roiling “soup” below into wild fractal whirls and blooms of colorfully immiscible gases.
What the sensor tech would have seen, had he been disciplined and duty-conscious enough to still be looking into his short-range screen, was ten Jadthu-class Republic landers climbing, straight up, within the Downrush Falls—single file, battered by the thundering water, but perfectly cloaked from long-range detection. If the sensor tech had seen that, the outcome might have been different.
That was the only chance they would have had.
But the sensor techs’ attention was caught up in the drama of waiting to see if the crippled gunship could possibly struggle in for a landing before it blew up.
Not to mention the fact that a second or two before it would have touched down, it opened fire on the guardhouses surrounding the spaceport’s control center, and an instant later seven immense half-naked Korunnai with shaven heads leaped from it, landing on the permacrete like pouncing vine cats, and charged toward the control center with their hands full of blaster rifles spitting fire.
And that these unexpected Korunnai were followed by a man and a woman bearing what was unquestionably the single most conspicuous and instantly recognizable type of personal weapon in the entire galaxy, and the type least welcome when it appeared on the opposing side.
The Jedi lightsaber.
So flustered were the spaceport’s crew, that not a being among them even bothered to look up until the very moment the light of Al’har upon their positions was eclipsed by the shadows of hovering Jadthu-class landers.
Then they did look up: in time to see ten durasteel clouds burst in a rain of armored clone soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, whose arrival was so swift, efficient, and disciplined—and in such overwhelming force—that the antiship emplacements were taken without the loss of a single trooper.
The same, however, could not be said of the militia crewmen.
The clone troopers, being unsentimental about such things, did not even bother to wipe the blood off the walls and flo
ors before replacing the crews with their own men.
The fighting at the control center was hotter, and lasted a few seconds longer, but the outcome was the same—because the attackers were Akk Guards and Jedi, and the defenders were, after all, only ordinary beings.
The capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport took less than seven minutes from the instant the gunship opened fire, and resulted in the capture of 286 military personnel, of whom thirty-five were seriously wounded. Forty-eight were killed. Sixty-one civilian employees of the spaceport were detained unharmed. All of the spaceport’s aerospace defense units were captured intact, as were all spacecraft then on site.
Taken together with the Battle of Lorshan Pass, the capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport would have been considered one of the masterstrokes of General Windu’s distinguished career, if only the rest of the operation had gone as planned.
But it is a truism that no battle plan long survives contact with the enemy.
This one was no exception.
Mace didn’t even have to leave the command bunker to watch everything start to go wrong.
The command bunker was a large, heavily armored hexagon in the middle of the spaceport’s control center, filled with angled banks of consoles. The only illumination in the room was spill from the console monitors and the huge rectangular holoprojector views that dominated each of the six walls; the general gloom thickened below console-height so that everyone inside waded hip-deep in shadow. Dead space below the wall screens was currently serving as a holding area for prisoners, as well as a makeshift aid station where wounded men and women sat or lay while clone troopers dispassionately tended their injuries.
Kar Vastor and his Akk Guards paced the perimeter of the room, restless as the wild animals they so nearly were. The Force swirled around them as they stalked among the terrified prisoners; Mace could feel them drawing on the prisoners’ fear and pain and anguish, gathering it into themselves, storing it like living power cells.
Mace hadn’t asked what Kar was planning to do with that power. He had a more pressing problem.
In the darkest corner of the room stood an armored console, separated from the rest; it wore a codelocked cowl of durasteel to prevent tampering. This console was a late addition to the command center, having been installed by specialists from the Techno Union at the same time they had modernized the spaceport defenses. It was called the mutiny box, and contained individual triggers for each of the destruct charges built into every turbolaser and ion cannon, every strongpoint and anti-starfighter turret.
It seemed the Confederacy did not trust that the justice of its cause was sufficient to ensure the loyalty of its troops.
In the shadow of this console, on a makeshift pallet made of seat cushions ripped from nearby chairs, lay Depa Billaba, nearly blind with pain. She had been weakening ever since the seizure of the command center, and now she lay with one arm covering her eyes. Blood trickled from one side of her mouth, where she had gnawed her lip raw.
Troopers controlled all the essential stations in the command center. Several of them had removed their helmets to accommodate earpieces or goggles; Mace avoided looking in their direction. Empty helmets sitting on the consoles too closely resembled the full one he had left on the arena sand at Geonosis.
Mace stood at the satellite console. At one shoulder stood Nick, breathing out a continuous whisper of obscenities. At his other was the stolidly motionless presence of CRC-09/571.
CRC-09/571 was still wearing his helmet. This made it easier for Mace to talk to him. He didn’t particularly want to see the commander’s face.
He remembered too well the first time he had seen it.
Just knowing that face was there, under the smoked mask of the helmet, was like a mocking finger tapping on the back of his head to remind him of Geonosis. Of everything that had happened there.
Of everything his failure had begun.
He did not want to be reminded of Geonosis. Especially not now.
He couldn’t take his eyes from the monitor. Onscreen was the realtime display from the detector satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
“Seven-One.”
The clone commander’s voice crackled through his helmet speaker. “Sir.”
“Get the landers’ engines hot. All of them.”
“We never shut them down, sir.”
“All right.” Mace’s habitual frown deepened. “If we go, we’ll need to give them plenty of targets. Initiate start-up on every ship in the port. Every one that’s armed gets a gunner. How many of your men are qualified pilots?”
“All of them, sir.”
Mace nodded. “Detail your best—no.” He scowled at himself. Though many of the craft in the spaceport carried some armament, only the landers themselves were actual warships. This would be virtually a suicide mission. “Ask for volunteers.”
“It would be the same, sir.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We always volunteer, sir. All of us. It’s who we are.”
“Your best, then.”
“Yes, sir.” CRC-09/571 turned aside to issue crisp orders on his helmet’s command-comm.
Nick stopped cursing long enough to ask, “Are we leaving?”
“No time,” Mace said, still staring into the screen.
It showed the airspace over Pelek Baw.
“It’s that bad?” Nick spread his hands. “I mean, you’ve got a plan, right? You’ve got some trick to get us out of here?”
“No more tricks,” Mace said.
The sky was full of droid starfighters.
Incoming.
“How long do we have?”
Mace shook his head again. “Seven-One. We hold the ranking militia officer, yes?”
“Yes, sir. Major Stempel.”
“Get him.”
CRC-09/571 saluted stiffly. Mace acknowledged his salute with a wave of dismissal, and the clone commander strode away toward the huddle of prisoners.
“What good is he gonna do us?”
Mace pointed to a console a few meters away. “You see that? That is linked by landline to a secure transmitter beneath this bunker. Which is the only one on this planet that can send orders to those starfighters; that’s the reason this bunker is a bunker. Whoever called them in had to be here.”
Nick nodded, understanding. “The control code.”
CRC-09/571 returned, accompanied by two troopers who held between them an ashen-faced trembling man in the sweat-stained uniform of a militia major. “Major Stempel, I am Mace Windu,” Mace began, but the shaking man cut him off.
“I—I know what you want. But I can’t help you. I don’t know it! I swear. I never knew it. The codes are on a datapad—it’s just a big personal datapad in an armored shell. He carries it with him. I didn’t even know what he was doing—he just ordered me to relay his signal through the control console—”
Mace closed his eyes, and put his hand to his forehead.
He felt a headache coming on.
“Of course. I should have expected this,” he muttered to himself. “I keep forgetting that he’s smarter than I am.”
“He? He who?” Nick demanded. “Who is this he you keep talking about?”
“Priority signal incoming,” the trooper at the comm board announced. His helmet rested on the console at his elbow; a cybernetic headset hung across his brow and down one side of his jaw, but even so, when he looked back it was Jango Fett that Mace saw.
“He says his name is Colonel Geptun,” said this stranger with the face of a dead man. “He’s asking for you, General. He’s calling to accept your surrender.”
An immense, bluishly-translucent Lorz Geptun smiled his well-fed lizard smile down into the command bunker from the main holoprojector view. His khaki uniform shirt was again impeccably starched, and his aluminum-colored hair was swept back from his forehead.
“General Windu.” He spoke with the same cheery lilt. “When last we met, I had no idea I was entertaining such a distinguished Jedi M
aster. Not to mention famous. It’s an honor, sir. How was your trip upcountry?”
Depa was sitting up now, leaning on a desk, staring dazedly up at the screen. The light cast by Geptun’s image threw black shadows that swallowed her eyes.
Kar and his Akks still paced. The clones stood motionless.
“I take it,” said Mace Windu, “that you did not get my message.”
“Message? Oh, the message. Yes, yes, quite. My Jedi Problem and all. Very thoughtful. Most appreciated.”
“Then you didn’t believe it.”
“Should I have?”
“You had the word of a Jedi Master.”
“Ah, yes. Honor, duty, justice. The flavor of the month. I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t simply take the word of a Jedi Master. Really, what could I have been thinking? Mmm—by the way, how is Master Billaba? Hasn’t found the mass murders of our citizens to be a strain on her health, has she?”
“You,” said Mace Windu, “said something about surrender.”
Geptun’s lips pressed together as though he tasted something sour. “Really, Master Windu, it’s not every day a man in my position achieves such a resounding victory. In any civilized society, I should be permitted a moment to savor it.”
“Take all the time you want. Call back when you’re finished.”
“Ah. Quite. After all, I didn’t call to gloat. Well, not entirely. So. This is your situation.
“There are several hundred droid starfighters over your position. Anything that takes off from the spaceport will be shot down without warning. Anything airborne throughout the capital district, in fact. Meanwhile—oh, by the way, have I complimented you on your maneuver at the Lorshan Pass? Brilliant, Master Windu. Truly a work of art. You must be quite the dejarik player.” His pale eyes sparkled gleefully. “I have been known to indulge in the game myself. Perhaps—should our discussion today end profitably for us both—we might have a match some time.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Without a sideways glance or change of expression, Mace sent a pulse in the Force down the connection he had forged with Nick Rostu. The young Korun’s eyes widened, then narrowed; his face went blank, and he turned away to speak softly to a nearby trooper.
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