Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  “The trouble with lightsaber amputations is they cauterize,” Dr. Ysa’i was saying. A golden-furred Bothan of about Bwua’tu’s age, Ysa’i was a highly acclaimed orthopedist specializing in his own species. “You see, Bothan nerves can’t be stimulated to reattach after they’ve been burned apart.”

  Daala raised her hand in a wave of indifference. “Nek is an old soldier. He’s lost more important things than an arm.” She motioned toward the holographic brain-activity image floating above the head of his bed. At the moment, it looked like a heavy sea, with high swells rolling from one end to another. “That’s what we can’t afford to lose. How long before he awakens?”

  Ysa’i’s ears flattened. “Comas are hardly my area of expertise, Chief Daala,” he said. “I’m just here to take—”

  “Now would be a very bad time to put a plate of poodoo in front of me,” Daala interrupted. She continued to look at Bwua’tu as she spoke, wishing they could tape his eyes shut. An FX medical assistant droid had told her that exposing “the patient” to visual stimuli, such as the vid-screen hanging above his bed, increased the likelihood he would eventually awaken. But it also made him look dead, especially with the moisture preservative making his eyes glisten, and she did not like seeing Bwua’tu that way. “You’ve had training. How long before I have my Chief of the Navy back?”

  Ysa’i allowed a low snort of discomfort to escape his snout. “I’m not a neurologist,” he said. “But I doubt anyone can give you the answer you’re looking for.”

  Daala sighed. “That bad?” She let her chin drop, then said, “Okay, tell me what you do know.”

  Ysa’i’s voice developed a note of arrogance. “That’s what I’m trying to do, Chief Daala.” He stepped closer to the head of the bed and slipped a leathery finger into the holograph. “Brain images are fairly easy to read, at least on a superficial level. These rolling waves indicate there is activity, but it’s very deep and nonreactive. Something is definitely happening in there, but I doubt it’s a reaction to us—or anything in his external environment.”

  “I believe that’s because the waves are rounded and regular, correct?”

  This question came from the other side of the bed, where Bwua’tu’s chief aide-de-camp, Rynog Asokaji, was standing. A Bith male with an old burn scar across the cheek folds on one side of his face, Asokaji had angrily accused Daala of ordering the assassination attempt in retaliation for Bwua’tu’s secret effort to work out a compromise with Hamner. To his surprise—and Daala’s, too—she hadn’t grown angry at him in return. Instead she had praised his courage in defending his superior, then advised him to ask permission the next time he felt the need to speak frankly. The pair had been on good terms since.

  Asokaji continued, “I was told that when the waves grow sharper and the pattern more irregular, it will indicate that he’s listening to our voices.”

  “Or responding to something else in the environment, yes,” Ysa’i clarified, still addressing himself to Daala. “A neurologist can tease more information from the patterns than I can, Chief Daala. But the sharper, higher, and more irregular the waves, the greater the likelihood that he’s going to awaken.”

  “Then it appears there’s no reason to hope the admiral will awaken anytime soon,” Wynn Dorvan said. He returned to the bedside next to Asokaji, still holding the comlink he had stepped away to use. A human of unremarkable looks and brown hair neatly trimmed in a conservative cut, he had the appearance of a conscientious lifetime bureaucrat—which he was. “So why would Admiral Bwua’tu need to be fitted for a prosthetic hand now? Isn’t that a bit premature?”

  Ysa’i’s muzzle curled at the implied challenge to his medical authority, but Daala recognized the deeper significance of her assistant’s question. Wynn had noticed an inconsistency in the situation. To his meticulous way of thinking, inconsistencies often concealed deceptions, and—given that it had been an assassination attempt that had put Bwua’tu into the medcenter in the first place—any deception concerning the admiral’s care was not to be tolerated.

  When Wynn met Ysa’i’s half snarl with a determined glare, Daala sighed. “The hand fitting is my doing, Wynn.” The confession did not embarrass her so much as make her feel vulnerable, for she had learned during her long military career that every sentimental indulgence revealed a weakness that could be exploited. “I don’t want Nek waking up to a stump.”

  “Very wise,” Ysa’i agreed, a little too quickly. “Having the prosthetic will make the transition easier.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Daala said. Choosing to forgive the doctor’s somewhat obvious attempt to curry favor—he was Bothan, after all—she reached over the rail and squeezed Bwua’tu’s knee. “The Alliance needs you back, old friend.”

  She started to withdraw her hand, but Ysa’i reached out to stop her. “Wait.” He pointed toward brain-activity holograph. “He’s responding.”

  Daala looked up and saw that a long chain of sharp peaks had appeared amid the rolling hills. Realizing that it had been her touch that had drawn the reaction, she experienced a flutter of schoolgirl joy—and immediately felt a bit silly. She and Bwua’tu were too old and too jaded for such romantic nonsense … and yet, she couldn’t help being more protective of him than ever.

  “What should I do?” she asked Ysa’i.

  “First, have someone call Dr. Javir,” Ysa’i said, naming the medcenter’s chief neurologist. He thought for a moment, then added, “Second, keep touching the patient. Perhaps speak to him, see if it increases the activity.”

  “Very well.” Daala nodded, and Asokaji immediately turned toward the exit. Daala turned her attention back to Bwua’tu, looking into his glistening, vacant eyes, and began to speak. “Admiral Bwua’tu, wake up. I need your report on the assassination attempt yesterday, and you’ve been lying around here for over a week.”

  She glanced up at the activity monitor and found the peaks unchanged, no higher or sharper.

  “Keep going,” Ysa’i urged.

  Daala squeezed Bwua’tu’s knee again. “You’re being remiss, Admiral. I’m giving you a direct order to wake up and report.”

  She paused and glanced over at Ysa’i.

  “No change,” the doctor said.

  “Nek, are you listening to me?” Through the sheet, Daala began to run her fingers against the grain of Bwua’tu’s leg fur—that always got him going. “I need to know who attacked you.”

  “There!” Ysa’i said. “Follow that. His attention spiked.”

  “Nek, we think the lightsaber wounds were a misdirection,” Daala continued, “because, well, you survived.”

  Bwua’tu’s eyes moved, not much, but it seemed to Daala that the pupils had definitely dipped toward his lower eyelids.

  “Nek, we need to know who did this to you,” Daala said. “And we have no leads.”

  She paused again, waiting for Bwua’tu’s eyes to move, or for Ysa’i to say something encouraging about the monitor.

  When neither happened, Daala pressed on, “Nek, if they’re willing to attack you, they’re a threat to the entire Alliance. You’ve got to help us figure out who did this to you.”

  His pupils moved again, this time rising slightly to the right—away from her. She paused, hoping Ysa’i would report another spike on the monitor.

  It took more than a second. “There—in a different area. He’s definitely interested.”

  “In something,” Daala said. She removed her hand from his knee. “Any change?”

  “Not that I have the training to see,” Ysa’i replied. “But the monitor is capturing this on a chip. I’m sure Dr. Javir can interpret the data more accurately than I can.”

  Instead of replying, Daala continued to watch Bwua’tu’s eyes. It took only a couple of seconds for his pupils to shift again. She turned to look in the same direction—and felt the excitement of a few moments earlier draining away.

  Bwua’tu’s gaze was fixed on the vidscreen above his bed, where the impish figure of M
adhi Vaandt was broadcasting from a plaza surrounded by the looming, cut-stone buildings of Blaudu Sextus’s capital city, Arari. Behind the newscaster, thousands of shaggy-furred Octusi were racing past, squealing and shrieking as they fled a line of Mandalorian QuickStryke assault sleds.

  “Madhi Vaandt,” Daala growled. She glanced over at Wynn, who was watching the vidscreen with an expression that seemed a lot less surprised than it should have. “I thought we were going to suppress her reports.”

  Wynn shrugged. “Needmo said he’d pull her off the assignment voluntarily,” he explained. “Apparently, he was lying.”

  “And you took a newscaster at his word?” Daala asked. “It’s not like you to be so careless.”

  “I wasn’t.” Wynn shot a meaningful glance at Ysa’i, then added, “Needmo would have challenged a formal suppression order as a matter of principle, and we would have had to demonstrate material relevance in open court. I thought an informal request was the better option.”

  What Wynn was being careful not to say in front of the doctor was that the informal request had been their only option. To avoid a direct link between her government and the effort to suppress the slave revolt, Daala had arranged for a local mining company to hire the Mandalorian mercenaries with laundered funds. Defending a formal security order in court would have meant running the risk not only that the order would be overturned, but that the entire arrangement would be revealed to Needmo—and therefore the general public—in the process.

  Daala exhaled in frustration, then nodded. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “But no more playing nice with Perre Needmo. If one of his reporters airs so much as a stang, I want him off the air.”

  Wynn nodded. “I’ll alert the Galactic HoloNet Commission.”

  “You might want to hold off on that until after Admiral Bwua’tu awakens,” Ysa’i said. He pointed at the brain-activity image. “The situation on Blaudu Sextus seems to be catching his interest.”

  The holograph had blossomed into a virtual mountain range, with spires and peaks shooting up in all quarters. Daala checked Bwua’tu’s pupils and found them locked on Madhi Vaandt, tracking her image as it shifted to different parts of the display.

  “Nek?” Daala asked. “Is it her?”

  The image on the vidscreen shifted to a close-up of one of the Octusi, and the peaks on his activity graph began to subside.

  “That’s strange,” Daala said. “There must be some connection.”

  “A connection?” Asokaji asked, stepping back into the room. “Is he coming awake?”

  “It’s too early to tell,” Ysa’i replied. “At least for me.”

  “But there’s something happening,” Daala said. “He seems interested in Madhi Vaandt.” She looked up. “Can you think of a reason?”

  Asokaji’s face grew a deeper shade of blue, and he could not help shooting a quick glance in Wynn’s direction—a glance that was returned just as quickly, then broken off. Daala found herself confused for a moment, until the image of Vaandt’s face appeared on the vidscreen again. With sharply pointed ears, shaggy white head fur, and long narrow eyes, she was, Daala had to admit, quite bewitching.

  “A reason aside from the fur, I mean.” Daala’s tone was crisp without being sharp. “She’s beautiful, but I don’t think that’s what is catching Nek’s interest. There’s some connection to the attempt on his life.” She looked back to the brain-activity image, which had once again blossomed into peaks and points. “There has to be.”

  Asokaji glanced at Ysa’i and reported that Dr. Javir was on her way, then fixed his attention on the vidscreen and furrowed his brow in thought. Daala pointed to the remote control on the far side of Bwua’tu’s bed and made an up motion with her thumb, and Wynn turned on the sound. The image switched to a close-up of a Mandalorian assault sled herding a crowd of terrified Octusi out of the plaza, while Vaandt’s report continued in a voice-over.

  “… claim they were contracted to protect the interests of the Sextuna Mining Corporation, but that seems unlikely.” The image switched to a giant strip mine carved into the flank of a desolate mountainside somewhere on Blaudu Sextus. “This is Sextuna’s nearest interest, located over eighty kilometers from the protest march in central Arari.”

  The image switched back to Vaandt’s impish face. “Until the Mandalorian assault sleds arrived and began to run down protesters too determined to flee, the march was entirely peaceful. Even now, after a provocation that was clearly one-sided, the only reported casualties are Octusi.” The vidscreen displayed a large, shaggy-furred body that had been crushed beyond all recognition. “Given recent events at the Jedi Temple, this reporter is left wondering just what these Mandalorians are trying to protect—and who they’re really working for.”

  A deep rage began to burn inside Daala’s chest, and she looked across Bwua’tu’s bed. “She’s going too far with this, Wynn. We need to do something about it.”

  “I understand,” he replied evenly. “I’m just not sure what we can do—unless you’re willing to risk the uncertainties of open court.”

  Translation: Unless we want the whole galaxy to know that Vaandt’s right, we have to take our lumps. Daala clenched her teeth and looked away—and that was when she saw Bwua’tu’s eyelid twitch.

  “Did you see that?” she asked, turning to Ysa’i. “He blinked.”

  “I didn’t, but you mustn’t allow it to raise your hopes,” Ysa’i said. “It’s an automatic reflex.”

  Daala looked back to Bwua’tu, waiting for him to blink again. He didn’t, but she could see for herself that his activity image was peaking and spiking every time Vaandt’s image appeared on screen.

  “No, Doctor, it means something.” She glanced back up at the vidscreen, where Vaandt was just doing her sign-off with an image of Arari’s smoking skyline in the background. “I think there’s some connection between Madhi Vaandt and the attack.”

  Asokaji’s scarred cheek folds widened in shock, and he glanced over at Wynn with an expression that suggested he thought Daala was losing her mind.

  “Something troubling you, Rynog?” Daala asked. “Speak freely.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” he replied. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would a reporter involve herself in an attack on Admiral Bwua’tu?”

  “I didn’t say she was involved,” Daala corrected. “I said there was a connection—and, at the moment, that’s all we have.”

  “Is it?” Asokaji asked. “I know you’re convinced that this couldn’t have been a Jedi attack because it was botched, but maybe it wasn’t botched. What if the goal wasn’t to assassinate, but to incapacitate?” He pointed at the body cast covering Bwua’tu’s midsection. “Only a Jedi could do that and be sure not to kill.”

  Daala raised her brow. She had to admit the possibility had not occurred to her, but it didn’t feel right, either. She looked to Wynn and cocked a brow.

  Wynn thought for a moment, then said, “Sometimes a lightsaber attack is just a lightsaber attack. But I don’t see the why.” He turned to Asokaji. “If Bwua’tu was trying to help Hamner work out a compromise with Chief Daala, why would the Jedi want to kill him?”

  “Because not all Jedi want a compromise,” Asokaji said. “Hamner told the admiral that he was having difficulty convincing the other Masters to be patient. Perhaps a splinter group decided to take matters into their own hands and put a stop to the negotiations.”

  “It’s not out of the question,” Daala admitted, recalling the assassination attempt on the Solos—an attempt that had spoiled her own efforts to negotiate a compromise. “There’s no question that someone wants to keep us at each other’s throats.”

  Asokaji nodded. “Exactly.” His gaze was fixed on Bwua’tu’s form, and Daala did not need to be a master of Bith facial expressions to see that he was thirsty for revenge. “We need to bring the Jedi into line, Chief, before it’s too late. If they’ll go after Admiral Bwua’tu, they’ll go after you.”

  Wynn’s fa
ce grew pale. “Rynog, we don’t know that they did go after the admiral,” he said. “In fact, what little evidence we have suggests it wasn’t them.”

  “You underestimate the Jedi.” Asokaji circled the bed and pushed between Daala and Ysa’i. “Give the order, and I’ll have five thousand space marines storming the Temple tomorrow.”

  Daala was tempted … sorely tempted. But as much as she wanted to bring the Jedi to heel, she didn’t want to destroy them unless it was absolutely necessary. And even if she’d thought it was necessary, she would not have entrusted the job to someone whose judgment was so obviously clouded.

  She turned to Asokaji. “Thank you for the offer, Commander, but I don’t see the Jedi faking a Jedi attack in an effort to throw us off their trail. Too many things can go wrong.”

  Asokaji’s shoulders fell. “You’re letting them get away with it.”

  Daala shook her head, then laid a hand on Asokaji’s arm. “No. I assure you, whoever did this to Admiral Bwua’tu is going to pay. But I want it to be the true attackers, not their patsies.”

  An audible sigh of relief sounded from Wynn’s side of the bed. “Very smart, Chief. We don’t want to play into the assassin’s hands.”

  “No, we don’t,” Daala agreed. “What we want is to find out who they are. We also want them to know we’re looking for them—and we want them scared. We want them very scared.”

  Wynn’s expression grew worried. “Am I to assume you have some idea of how to accomplish that?”

  “Yes, you are.” Daala’s gaze returned to the vidscreen, where Madhi Vaandt was delivering a final recap of the day’s events on Blaudu Sextus. “Dr. Ysa’i, would you please excuse us? We’re about to have a very secret conversation.”