The entrance to the Republic Intelligence station was a waterproof hatch; it was disguised as part of the checkered tile pattern on the bottom of a steaming mineral bath fed by the natural hot springs below the Washeteria. The lieutenant led Mace and Nick to a wading-stair from the deck down into the shallow end. Two sweating regulars brought up the rear, rifles slanted across their chests.
Nick made a face. “Stinks in here. People really want to go in that?”
“Not many, I bet,” the big man said. “If they did, it wouldn’t make a real good secret entrance, would it?”
A concealed latch opened a code panel that swung down from the stair rail. The lieutenant tucked Mace’s lightsaber under his arm so he could punch some keys, and the field generator built into the stairs and the pool floor hummed to life. An electric crackle heralded the opening of a channel; walls of sizzling energy held back the sulfurously steaming water. Toward the deep end the channel became a tunnel. Another code panel opened the waterproof hatch, and openwork stairs with drains beneath them led down into a dry, brightly lit room filled with the very latest electronic surveillance, code-breaking, and communications equipment.
A handful of people in civilian clothes monitored the various stations like they knew what they were doing. There was an undertone of insistent muttering, and many of the console monitors showed only snow.
The lieutenant showed them to a small gloomy chamber with holoviewer walls and a heavy lammas table in the center. The only light in the chamber came from the holoviewers: they showed realtime images of the city. The ceiling sparkled with swooping droid starfighters and the hurtling ships they pursued. Burning buildings cast a dull flickering rose-colored glow that silhouetted a small plump man seated at the far end of the table.
“Master Windu. Please come in.” Geptun’s voice was thin, and the self-deprecating chuckle he offered had a fragile edge. “It appears that I miscalculated.”
Mace said, “We both did.”
“I never suspected that Jedi could be capable of such… savagery.”
“Neither did I.”
“People are dying out there, Windu! Civilians. Children.”
“If your concern for children had included Korunnai, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Is that what this is? Revenge?” The colonel sprang jerkily to his feet. “Do Jedi take revenge? How can you do this? How can you do this?”
“You are not the only one,” Mace said evenly, “with unreliable subordinates.”
“Ah—” Geptun sank slowly back into his chair and lowered his head into his hands. A weak, sickly laugh shook his shoulders. “I understand. I didn’t misjudge you. You misjudged your people. This is all your mistake, not mine.”
“There will be plenty of guilt to go around. All that is important right now is the power to make it stop.”
“And you have this power?”
“No,” Mace said. “You do.”
“You think I haven’t tried? You think I don’t have every person in this station working to deactivate those starfighters? Look at this—you see all this?” Geptun’s voice was going shrill. A shadow-wave of a trembling hand swept the images on the walls and ceiling. “These are land-line sensors. Hard-wired. Want to see our remotes?”
He stabbed a control on the tabletop. All four walls and the ceiling fuzzed to eye-stinging white snow.
“See? Don’t you see? All our signal-jamming controls are at the spaceport, too! Even if you wanted to order your pilots to stand down, you can’t. We can’t get through—it’s out of our hands… We are helpless. Helpless.”
In the white light from the screens, Geptun looked pale and disheveled. His eyes were red and puffy. His lips were swollen as if he’d been chewing them. Black sweat stained his blouse from his armpits to his belt.
Mace said, “There is one more thing you can try.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Surrender.”
Geptun’s laugh was bitter. “Oh, certainly. Why didn’t I think of that?” He shook his head. “Surrender to whom?”
“To the Republic,” Mace said. “To me.”
“To you? You’re my prisoner. And you’re wasting my time.” His hand shook when he waved at the lieutenant. “Take them away.”
The big man shrugged. “You heard him—” the lieutenant began, but he finished the statement with a sudden yelp of surprise and pain when the lightsaber he held ignited in his hand, the blade stabbing downward to drive a smoking hole through his thigh.
His hands opened; the pistols clattered to the floor and the lightsaber flipped into Mace’s palm. “You hold it like this,” Mace said, sizzling blade poised a centimeter from the end of the big man’s nose.
The two regulars behind them cursed and fumbled with their rifles. Nick spun to face them and brought up his arms as both his pistol yanked themselves through the air to smack into his hands. “Let’s just not, okay?”
The two militiamen, blinking and cross-eyed as they tried to focus on one muzzle apiece, settled on the better part of valor. Pale and grimacing, the lieutenant sagged against the holoviewer at his back, clutching his thigh.
“These are my terms,” Mace said evenly. “The planetary militia will immediately cease all operations in the Lorshan Pass. You will turn over to me the starfighter control codes. And, as the ranking military official—and the ranking officer of the Confederacy—you will sign a formal surrender ceding Haruun Kal, and the Al’har system itself, to the Republic.”
“Colonel—” The lieutenant’s growl was thin with pain. “Maybe you oughta think about it. Y’know? Think about it. I mean, all the guys—we got families here—”
Geptun clutched the edge of the table, livid. “If I don’t?”
Mace shrugged. “Then I won’t save your city.”
“How am I supposed to trust that you will? That you even can?”
“You know who I am.”
Geptun trembled, and not from fear. “This is extortion!”
“No,” Mace said. “It’s war.”
The formal surrender had been drafted, witnessed, and signed right there in the Intel station.
“You know this has no legal standing,” Geptun said as he affixed his signature and retinal print. “I sign this surrender only under duress—”
“Surrender is always made under duress,” Mace observed dryly. “That’s why they call it surrender.”
Mace set the comm gear to automatically make a number of transmissions the instant signal-jamming abated enough that communications could resume. Many of the transmissions would be simple orders to the various battalions of militia to lay down their arms. More significant would be a HoloNet report to Coruscant with a copy of the surrender agreement, along with an emergency summons for a Republic task force. If the Republic could get here in force before the Confederacy did, their landing would be unopposed. By the time signal-jamming would end, he’d have control of the starfighters; even if the Separatists got here first, Mace would be in a position to make the Al’har system uncomfortably hot for them.
And if they tried to land, the spaceport controlled the planetary defenses as well.
Now all he had to do was control the spaceport.
They had the whole platoon plus the armored groundcar squad for escort through the chaos of Pelek Baw.
Geptun got them through the militia perimeter that stretched in a thick arc among the burning warehouses, then Mace stepped out of the groundcar. “Nick. You drive.”
He shooed away the rest of the militiamen. Geptun started to follow them. “Not you, Colonel. Get in the car.”
“Me?” The ride to the spaceport had given Geptun time to recover his composure; he looked almost his old self again. “You can’t be serious! What do you expect me to do?”
“You’ll transmit the deactivation codes. To make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“Why should I have to do anything? What will you two be doing?”
Nick stared through the windshield at the
spaceport gates. “Killing people.”
Geptun looked at him, blinking as though he were expecting a punchline.
Mace said, “Get in the car.”
“Really—I mean, please—I don’t know what kind of man you think I am—”
“I think,” Mace said, “that you are a very brilliant man. I think that you have more courage than you have ever guessed. I think that you truly care about this city, and the people in it. I think your cynicism is a fraud.”
“What—what—really, this is astonishing—”
“I think that if you were truly as corrupt and venal as you pretend,” said Mace Windu, “you would be in the Senate.”
Geptun’s blank gape hung on for one silent second, then gave way to an abrupt guffaw. Shaking his head, still chuckling, he walked around to the other side of the groundcar. “Here, young man, shove over. I’ll drive.”
“You will?”
“You might have to shoot people, yes?”
Nick looked at Mace; Mace shrugged, and Nick slid over to the passenger side. Geptun adjusted the pilot’s seat to make himself comfortable behind the control yoke. “I suppose,” he said with a vast theatrical sigh, “I am as ready as I will ever be.”
Mace ignited his lightsaber.
He lifted its blade, and stood for a moment, staring into its blaze as though he could read his future there.
Perhaps he could.
That killing flame might be the only future he had.
He let it drop to his side but held it alight, and walked toward the spaceport gates.
“Follow me.”
Geptun engaged the groundcar’s drive system and let the armored vehicle roll along behind the Jedi Master’s deliberate stride.
Turbolaser towers loomed to either side. From the city at his back came the shriek of fighting ships cutting the air, the hammer of weapons and the rolling booms of exploding buildings, but beyond the durasteel bars of the gate, all was silence and stillness.
He reached the gate, and looked across the bare landing field toward the control center.
Empty. Silent. Vast. The dayfloods threw stark white glare.
His blade flashed. Durasteel clanged on permacrete.
Mace walked into the spaceport.
The groundcar rolled in after him.
He had no idea what to expect here. He thought he was ready for anything. He was almost right.
One thing he didn’t expect was the crackle of a helmet speaker from the ground-level hatch of the turbolaser tower to his left.
“General Windu! General Windu, is that you?”
Three troopers crouched in the doorway.
Mace called, “Yes.”
“Permission to approach, sir!”
He waved them over, and they came at a run. They snapped to attention in perfect file. “With the general’s permission—the sergeant sent us out to see if it was you, sir!”
“And it is,” Mace said. “Me.”
“They said your ship blew up.”
“Did they?”
“Yes, sir! They told us you were dead!”
Mace Windu said, “Not yet.”
Mace stared at the bleak durasteel of the blast door while the trooper captain filled him in.
The blast door was a full meter thick, and locked with internal bolts of neutronium. Its surface was smooth. Dull matte gray. From the outside, it was controlled by a code panel. The inside had a manual wheel. When the wheel was engaged, the code panel was useless.
The command bunker was more secure than most treasure vaults. Only the swiftness of their assault had allowed Mace, Depa, and the Akk Guards to capture it in the first place; the defenders had not had time to swing it shut.
The brightly lit corridor seemed unreal. A full platoon of heavy assault troopers crouched in a tight arc on the white tile around the blast door, bolting tripods into the floor and charging weapons. Four more platoons waited in reserve, two down either direction of the corridor. Mace stood in front of the door. Geptun sat on a heavy repeater’s fusion pack, white-knuckled hands clutching his armored datapad. Nick sat on the floor with his back against the wall beside the door, eyes closed. He might have been asleep.
The trooper captain was designated CC-8/349. He told Mace that the regiment had had no communication from the bunker since the news that the general had been killed; that was shortly after Master Billaba had ordered them to use the spaceport’s ships to draw the droid starfighters down upon the city. The rest of the clone troopers had been ordered to stand ready to repel a militia infantry assault.
Since then, there had been no communication from the bunker. No one had entered. No one had left.
Mace had a good idea how the inside of the bunker looked right now. Too good an idea.
A surge of dark power spread across the city like the shock-front of a fusion bomb.
Behind that door was ground zero.
“Makes you wonder,” Nick said slowly, eyes still closed, “just what they’re doing in there.”
Mace said, “They’re waiting.”
“For what?”
He looked down at the lightsaber in his hand. “To see if I come back.”
Nick seemed to chew this over. He opened his eyes and pulled himself to his feet. He shook his arms loose and hooked his thumbs over his gunbelts. “Then I guess we shouldn’t disappoint them.”
Mace frowned at the slug pistols holstered on Nick’s thighs. “You should borrow a blaster.”
“Fine with these.”
“Blasters are more accurate. More stopping power.” Mace’s voice was grim. “More shots.”
Nick drew his right hand gun, turning it over as though admiring it for the first time. “Thing about slugs is, they only go one way,” he said lazily. “Blasters are all well and good, but I don’t particularly care to eat my own shot. Slugs don’t bounce.”
“Off a vibroshield they will.”
Nick shrugged. “Not off a lightsaber.”
Mace lowered his head. He had no answer.
The sick weight that had gathered in his chest for so long now threatened to crush him altogether.
“Captain Four-Nine,” he said slowly. “No one comes out of there but us. Do you understand? No one.”
“General, we should go in first—”
“No.”
“With the general’s pardon: That’s what we are for.”
“Your purpose is to fight. Not to die uselessly. Master Yoda knew better than to send troopers against a single enemy Force-user on Geonosis; in that bunker may be as many as seven.”
“Eight.”
Mace glared at Nick. Nick shrugged. “You know it’s true.”
The Jedi Master set his jaw.
“Eight.”
He turned again to CC-8/349. “I will go in first. Your men will enter on my command. Two platoons. Come in shooting: blast anything that moves. But this is not search and destroy. You’re there solely to cover Colonel Geptun. You will take all available measures to protect him, and to ensure that he completes his mission. His mission is the objective of this operation, understood? If he fails, nothing else matters.”
“Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”
“The rest of you will remain out here to hold the doorway. If you have to. And if you can.”
“Um, if I might interrupt—?” Geptun coughed delicately. “Has anyone considered just how we are going to get in?”
“Just like we do everything else,” Nick said. “The hard way.”
“Pardon?”
“Shaped charges,” Mace told him. He turned to the trooper captain. “Proton grenades. Blow the door.”
“General—!” CC-8/349 stiffened to attention. “With the general’s pardon, sir, Commander Seven-One’s still in there! With more than twenty men. And there are prisoners to consider, sir. Including civilians. If we use proton grenades, the casualties—”
“There is no one in that room except the dead,” Mace said heavily. “And the people who killed them.
”
He nodded to Nick. “Cover my back from the doorway.”
The young Korun drew Chalk’s pistol from his left holster. He held both guns low and loose, and nodded back.
“Colonel Geptun.”
The plump little Balawai pushed himself to his feet. He clamped the armored datapad under one arm but still held it with both white-knuckled hands. One of his kneecaps jumped and shuddered, but his voice was light and steady as ever. “Ready when you are, Master Jedi.”
“I can’t protect you in there.”
“Lovely.”
“You won’t be using the console. The transceiver unit itself is in a chamber below the bunker. I will provide access. Stay out here until I call for the troopers.”
“Certainly. I am in no, ah, hurry, if you take my meaning. I have never been anything remotely resembling a hero.”
“People,” Mace said with tragic conviction, “change.”
He ignited his blade. He held it with both hands.
“May the Force be with us.”
He looked at CC-8/349.
“All right, Captain. Blow the door.”
Chapter 23: The Hard Way
Greasy smoke curled from the shattered blast door. It reeked of blood and flesh and human waste.
The smell of death.
Mace stood next to the door, waiting for the smoke to thin.
The command bunker was dark as a cave. The only light was the white shaft that spilled in through the opening that used to be the door. The interior materialized as though it slowly drew substance from the haze itself.
Bodies were everywhere.
Piled along the walls. Draped over the banks of monitor consoles. Facedown on the floor in black pools.
Some wore combat armor. Some wore militia khakis. Some wore no uniform at all.
Some were missing pieces.
Mace’s blade hissed in the smoke as he went inside.
As a weapon, a lightsaber was uniquely tidy. Even, in a sense, merciful. Its powerful cascade of energy instantly seared and cauterized any wound it inflicted. The wounds rarely bled at all. It was a clean weapon.
A vibroshield was not.
The floor in the command bunker was treacherously slippery.
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