“In a way, Master Windu. In a way. So. Where was I? Yes: Meanwhile, back at the Pass… I have fifteen thousand regulars on the ground. And while your clever bit of droid-baffling cost me almost fifty gunships, I have some left. Several, in fact. Of which twenty or so are already at the Lorshan Pass, and have already made a bloody mess of your landers and your defensive perimeter. I’m told your surviving troopers still hold the mouth of the tunnel, but of course they won’t for long. I imagine their next move will be to mine the tunnel, and collapse it like you did the others. Which works for me; I have sappers clearing the other tunnels already. We’ll be inside within the hour. Which is exactly how long you have to save your people.”
“An hour.”
“Ah, no: you misunderstand. I am plagued by unreliable subordinates; perhaps you can sympathize. My troops are not so disciplined as yours. They are young men, after all, and their blood is up. It may take them an hour to get inside. It may take them ten minutes. Once they enter those caves, I should be very much surprised if any Korun leaves that place alive.”
“Geptun—”
“Colonel Geptun.”
“—there are over two thousand civilians in there. The old, and the very young. Would you have your men slaughter children?”
“There is only one way to stop them,” Geptun said regretfully. “I must give them the order to stand down before they breach those caves.”
“And for that, you want our surrender.”
“Yes.”
“There are,” Mace said slowly, “civilians in here, as well.”
“Of course there are.” Geptun’s smile broadened. “Civilians that you, Mace Windu, would give your life to protect. I cannot be bluffed. Not by you.”
Mace lowered his head.
“Don’t take it too hard, General. In dejarik, part of true mastery is recognizing when a game is lost.” Geptun cleared his throat delicately. “You have, sad to say, only one move left: to resign.”
“Give us a little time.” Defeat had leaked into Mace’s voice. “We—we’ll have to talk it over—”
“Ah, time. Of course. Take as long as you like. It’s not actually up to me, is it? My sappers are quite, shall we say, gifted? They could break through at any moment. It would be—mmmm, ironic—if your surrender were to come too late to save all those innocent lives…”
“Yes.” Mace’s voice was subdued. “I’ll call back on the same frequency.”
“I look forward to it. It’s been a pleasure playing against you, Master Windu. Geptun out.”
The image on the huge wallscreen faded. Silence shrouded the room.
Depa tottered to her feet. “Mace…” Her voice trickled off into a whimper of pain; she lowered her head and clenched her jaw, pulling herself together by sheer willpower. “Mace, we can’t let the militia kill those people. Your people—”
“My people,” said Mace Windu, “are Jedi.”
He lifted his head, and he didn’t look beaten at all. “Nick.”
Nick Rostu looked up from the console where he was huddled with a pair of troopers, and his eyes sparkled. “Got him. The Ministry of Justice. Pegged him with his own bloody satellites!”
Depa looked stunned; Kar Vastor’s face birthed a predatory grin.
Mace nodded. “Depa. Time to fight. Are you strong enough?”
She passed a hand before her face, and her gaze sharpened for a moment, but then she sagged, holding herself up with one hand while the other pressed against her temple. “I—I think so, Mace—but it’s too, too—there’s so much…”
The ragged exhaustion in her voice twisted in his stomach like a knife. “All right. Stay here.”
“No—no, I can fight—”
“Perhaps you can. But I can’t, while I know that you’re about to collapse. You’re staying. That’s an order.”
He turned away. “Nick: you’re with me. Get Chalk and meet me at the gunship.”
Nick jumped for the door, then jerked to a stop, whirled, and made a credible attempt at a salute that he ruined with a smirk and a one-armed shrug. “Sorry: forgot.” Mace acknowledged his salute, and Nick vanished through the bunker’s doorway.
“Mace—” Depa struggled toward him, and reached out as though to take his hand from across the room. Kar Vastor strode up behind her, arms out to catch her if she fell. “You can’t—you won’t have a chance… They’ll shoot you down before you clear the landing field.”
“They won’t shoot me down. I’m not going up. That gunship is about to become Haruun Kal’s largest landspeeder. Nick knows the streets. He can get us where we need to go.”
She half-fell toward the nearest chair; Vastor caught her and lowered her gently into it. She winced a rueful thanks up at him, and placed her hand on his before turning back to Mace. “You’re going after the Colonel—?”
“I don’t need him. I need that datapad.”
“What will you…” Her eyes drifted closed, and she had to force the words out. Kar squeezed her hand, and a half a smile flowed across her lips before draining into the burn scar at the corner of her mouth. “What will you do… with Geptun?”
Mace stared at them: Depa Billaba and Kar Vastor.
He had to go. He had to leave her behind. Let her stay. With him.
He might never see her again.
He couldn’t make himself say good-bye.
In the end, all he could do was answer her question. “Colonel Geptun is a dangerous man,” he said. “Exceedingly dangerous. I’ll probably have to kill him.”
He frowned, and tipped his head in a Korun shrug. “Or, possibly, offer him a job.”
Chapter 21: Inferno
Twilight.
Turbolaser batteries cast building-sized shadows across the darkening plain of permacrete. Silent clones sat behind the plated shields of anti-starfighter duals and quads; the only sound was a soft whine of servomotors as computer-tracked cannons traced the motion of droid starfighters still too high to be more than bright specks in the setting sun.
A tiny noise—a half-swallowed whine of pain and frustration—brought Mace’s attention up from the gunship’s preflight checklist. Chalk was struggling with the nav chair’s seat straps; her tightly bandaged wounds wouldn’t let her twist far enough to reach the length control. Her face had gone so pale that her freckles stood out like grease-splatters, and a streak of blood reddened the sheath of bandages around her chest.
“Here, let me.” Mace adjusted the strap length and buckled her in. He frowned at the blood on her bandages. “When did this happen?”
Chalk shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “On the jump, maybe. At the Pass.”
“You should have said something.”
She pushed his hands away and busied herself with weapons checks. “’M okay. Tough girl, me—”
“I know you are, Chalk. But your wounds—”
“Don’t have time to be hurt, me.” She nodded up through the oval lightsaber-cut gap in the windscreen. Far above the city, the setting sun struck sparks from the impossibly complex shimmerfly dance of the droid starfighters. “Are in danger, people. People I love. Can hurt later, me.”
The fierce conviction in her voice gave Mace pause. An inventory of his own wounds flickered through his mind: his concussion that was giving him this headache, his cracked ribs, his sprained ankle that had him limping, the infected blaster-burn on his thigh, the spray-bandaged bite wound that Vastor had given him, not to mention all his minor cuts and the bruises that covered so much of his body it was hard to tell one from the next.
And yet he fought on, and would fight on. Wounds? Right now he could barely feel them.
Because someone he loved was in danger.
“When this is over,” he said, nodding his understanding, “you and I will check into a med center. Together.”
The smile she gave him showed only a trace of pain.
Nick poked his head through the cockpit doorway. “Looks like we’re a go—hey, look at this,” he said with a sudde
n frown, staring out through the windscreen.
Through the shadows slashing the landing field loped Kar Vastor. His shields flashed eye-stinging highlights from the glowpanel dayfloods that now, with sunset passing, shone upon the ships. He waved as he ran, clearly asking Mace to wait for him.
“What, does he want to fight again or something?” Nick brightened. “Y’know, we could just shoot him—accidentally, like. One of those senseless weapons-check tragedies—”
“Nick.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Without expression, Mace watched Vastor approach. Only moments ago—just before he left the command bunker to come out here—he had pulled aside CRC-09/571 for a private conversation.
“Your orders come only from me, do you understand?” he had told the clone commander. “I want you to be absolutely clear on that.”
CRC-09/571’s helmet had tilted to a quizzical angle. “But Master Billaba—”
“Has been relieved of her duties. As has Kar Vastor.”
“And his men, sir?”
“They have no military rank or authority.”
“Would the general like them disarmed and restrained?”
Mace had grimly surveyed the cramped quarters of the command bunker, crowded with troopers and prisoners. In his mind, he saw twenty corpses in a gunship’s troop bay. “No. I’m not sure you can. But watch them. They are not to be trusted. They may become violent without warning. They may try to harm the prisoners. Or possibly even you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And get the prisoners out of here. Away from them. Not all at once. Make up some pretext, and start moving them out as efficiently as possible.”
“And if there is a confrontation, sir?” CRC-09/571’s dry voice had slowed, as though the commander were reluctant to even consider the possibility. “If they attack?”
“Defend yourself, your men, and the prisoners,” Mace had told him. “Use all necessary force.”
“Lethal force, sir?”
Mace had stared at his own reflection in the commander’s smoked eyeshield. He had to swallow once, hard, before he could reply.
“Yes.” He’d had to look away; he’d found that reflection too dark for what he knew he had to say. “You are authorized to use lethal force.”
Out on the landing field, Vastor didn’t bother to come around toward the troop bay doors; without breaking stride he burst into a Force leap that carried him up to the Turbostorm’s nose below the cockpit with a clank that must have been his deactivated vibroshields getting in the way of his grab for the nose armor. He climbed up into view, settling himself into a crouch on the nose armor outside the windscreen.
He squatted there for a moment, forearms resting on his bent knees, staring gravely at Mace through the opening.
Mace, Jedi of the Windu. Even his growl was reluctant. Almost contemplative.
“Kar.”
We have not been friends, you and I. If we both survive this day, I suspect that again we will not be friends.
Mace only nodded.
We may not meet again. I would have you know that I am glad I did not kill you this afternoon. No one else could have done what you have done today. No one else could have brought us so far.
This, also, did not call for a reply. Mace waited.
Vastor’s mouth compressed as though sharing this caused him pain, and his growl became almost a purr, low in his throat.
I would have you know that I am proud to be your dôshalo. You are a credit to the Windu.
Mace took a deep breath. “You,” he said, slow, coldly deliberate, “aren’t.”
It was Vastor’s turn to silently stare.
“I am not Mace, Jedi of the Windu. Windu is my name, not my ghôsh. You and I are not dôshallai. The Windu are no more, and what you have done disgraces their memory. My ghôsh,” said Mace Windu, “is the Jedi.”
He went back to his preflight checklist. “It would be good,” he said distantly, “if you were to be gone when I get back.”
Vastor had turned his face toward the spiral dance of the starfighters as Mace spoke; he did not seem to hear. He stared upward as though listening to the stars. He passed a second or two in silence and stillness, then he nodded gravely and looked back at Mace.
Until we meet again, dôshalo. He spun like a startled branch leopard and sprang down from the Turbostorm’s nose to sprint away across the floodlit permacrete.
Mace flicked the last ten switches into flight sequence, and the Turbostorm rocked gently as its repulsorlifts brought it up to an altitude of just under a meter.
“Let’s go.”
By the time the Turbostorm roared through the spaceport gates into the warehouse district of Pelek Baw, it was already doing over two hundred kilometers an hour. The lightsaber gap in the windscreen shrieked like a bad wailhorn in a third-rate smazzo band. Immense night-blackened blocks of warehouses crowded the right-of-ways for a kilometer or more north of the spaceport, but the streets themselves were empty. Mace intended to take advantage while he could.
Nick held on to the backs of Mace’s and Chalk’s chairs, squinting doubtfully up through the windscreen’s gap. “Uh, y’know, if you don’t mind my asking, are you sure those droid starfighters won’t come down for ground vehicles as well?”
“I’m sure.”
“But, I mean, how do you know?”
“I’ll show you.” Mace heeled the Turbostorm over, using its thrusters to help negotiate a tight corner; it bounced jarringly off a warehouse hard enough to dent its armor and knock a steamcrawler-sized hole in the building’s wall. He fought the controls and steadied the ship, then nodded forward along the long straight stretch of street.
Half a klick ahead, the gigantic slope-armored hulk of a ground assault vehicle clanked out from a side street.
Mace said, “That’s how.”
Its turret was already rotated the quarter turn to bear on the Turbostorm and Mace said, “Chalk,” but she was ahead of him: the quad turrets on both sides of the gunship burst to life and filled the street with streaking packets of energy—
Which crashed into the GAV without even scratching it.
Nick was shouting, “You’ll never breach that armor!” while Chalk was letting her gaze defocus and her hands relax on the split yoke. “Not shooting at his armor, me,” she murmured and she held down the triggers as the GAV’s cannon bucked with the launch of an armor-piercing shell—
That met a laser blast nose-first while still inside the barrel.
The explosion was gratifying.
It left the cannon’s barrel peeled back on itself in a spray of blackened durasteel twists, making the GAV look like a droid smoking an exploding cigar.
“Okay,” Nick said. “Now I’m impressed.”
The GAV’s gunners opened up with its heavy slug-repeater, making riding in the Turbostorm resemble having one’s head inside a durasteel trash barrel that’s being clubbed by a pack of drunken squibs. Slug impacts pounded prismatic dents across the transparisteel windscreen. Mace said, “Time to get off the street.”
“You can’t!” Nick shouted. “They’ll shoot us down!”
“Off, not up. Open fire.”
Chalk held down the quad triggers. Mace yanked the control yoke to slew the Turbostorm sideways and sent full power of both quads against the warehouse beside them. A huge mouth, teeth of duracrete dangling from reinforcing bars, suddenly gaped in the wall, and Mace rammed the gunship through the gap.
Inside the building.
“Yow!”
“Know what you’re doing, you?”
“Keep firing.”
Cargo containers flashed by them to either side, lit red by the blaze of fire from their guns, then another cannon-blasted mouth opened in the opposite wall and they broke out into the next street over—
Which was also full of militia.
At least a company of heavy infantry, with a couple of mobile artillery pieces and possibly more out there that Mace didn’t have tim
e to identify because he just kept the gunship roaring straight on through the middle of them and into the warehouse across the street before any of the astonished Balawai could so much as charge their weapons.
Blasting through buildings when they had to, zooming along open streets when they could, zigzagging and backtracking to find gaps in the tightening net of heavy armor that was rolling through the warehouse district, they fought their way out into the city, leaving a wake of astonished Balawai and an immense connect-the-dots trail of burning warehouses.
Sometimes, when things go wrong, they go wrong one at a time: a chain of misfortune that must be dealt with link by link. Those are the easy times.
Sometimes troubles come in a starburst.
When they had finally broken free from the warehouse district, Mace brought the gunship down to a walking pace. The evening thoroughfares of Pelek Baw were crowded as always, but beings of all species hastily stepped aside for the idling gunship cruising through the city at street level.
At least, whenever they stopped staring long enough to move.
“Nick. Do you know where we are?”
The young Korun leaned around him to stare out the windscreen; off to their port side, the sky was red with the light of the fires they’d left behind. “So much for the element of surprise…”
“Nick.”
Nick shook his head dejectedly. “Don’t you get it? They know we’re coming now. The Ministry of Justice is like a fortress. Hell, it is a fortress. Not even you can get in there. Not now. Now they’ll be ready for us.”
Mace said, “They always were. That’s all right: we’re not going there.”
“Huh?”
“Geptun is smart. Possibly too smart for his own good. He knows we’ll come for him; it’s the only move we have. That’s why we tracked his signal so easily: he wants us to hit the Ministry of Justice. If he were really in the Ministry, he could have found a way to mask his signal. There won’t be anything there except a very large number of troops. Or possibly only a very large bomb.”
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