Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction

by Allston, Aaron

  From his briefcase, he withdrew a stack of documents on flimsi. These looked thicker and stiffer than most flimsi.

  The false Tevarkian saw her look and must have guessed her question. “Laminated. They last longer that way.”

  “Ah.”

  “That’s the story, anyway.” He turned the first of them so that the printing faced Daala. He pressed it up against the transparisteel, just below the level of her head, and smoothed it into place. It adhered on its own. “I’m going to take these down in a few moments, but when I do, they’ll leave the front facing of their laminate behind. Here we get into cost issues plaguing our prisons. The holocams watching this chamber are not of the highest quality. They and their operators will not see the laminate adhering to the transparisteel.” He set another document precisely beside the first.

  Daala glanced at the documents. One was a reproduction of the charges laid against her at her arraignment. The other was the first page of the transcription of her arraignment hearing.

  She could keep her face emotionless, she could keep her voice level, but she couldn’t keep her heart from racing. She was about to go into battle. “I take it the laminate is laced with some material—”

  “I don’t want to use the exact word, as it’s a very potent one, and if a droid guard’s audioreceptor picks up that word …”

  “I understand.”

  “But the substance is a new, very exciting, crystalline boom-boom material.” He set out a third document.

  “Surely in quantities like this isn’t it not more, um, potent than transparisteel is strong.”

  “No, not at all. But again, cost-of-construction issues rear their ugly head. The force will be enough to kick the transparisteel out of its frame.” He gave her a candid look. “I do a number of domicile insertions every year. If you reinforce a domicile against intrusion, you strengthen the doors and viewports. But the walls remain vulnerable. You find the weak spot, you exploit the weak spot.”

  “Just like in military tactics.”

  “So … in a minute, there will be nothing of consequence between us. And this facility will immediately seal up.”

  The false attorney had five pieces of flimsi on the transparisteel now. That was the entire stack. He began to take them down, carefully peeling them away from the barrier. Daala, though, could see the almost invisible rectangular patches of laminate that remained behind.

  “Forgive me if I don’t understand, but I would think that sealing this place would make it harder for us to walk out.”

  He gave her an admonishing look. “Yes, but there are times when a prison will not execute a shutdown under any circumstances.”

  “No, there aren’t.”

  “You’re thinking of military prisons, and with military prisons, you’d be correct. But this is a civilian prison. So. What circumstances?”

  She shook her head.

  He touched the rear edge of his datapad and then brought the same finger up to touch the first document. Daala saw, but no prison holocam was likely to be acute enough to see, the nearly transparent filament that stretched from the back of the datapad to the laminate clinging to the barrier.

  The false attorney held his finger there for a moment, then withdrew it. The filament remained. “Think mercifully, Admiral. A shutdown involves sealing off all exits. Ventilation also shuts down.”

  “Which is the way it should be.”

  “Yes. But if there is a poison gas attack on the facility, shutting down the ventilation kills everyone inside.”

  “Your employer isn’t going to use poison gas—”

  “And if a disaster contaminates all the food and water, and the prison is cut off from all relief, sealing all exits dooms the prisoners as well as the staff. So, by decrees dating back to the reforms of the New Republic, a prison experiencing such an event cannot be sealed. It has to rely on the staff to maintain security.”

  Daala gave him a suspicious look. “We’re in the heart of Coruscant. This prison can’t be cut off from all relief.”

  “Nor can the Senate Building experience a Yuuzhan Vong attack without the military having some clue that one is coming. Yet that exact thing seemed to happen … for a few crucial minutes … the day you were so seriously inconvenienced.” The false attorney had now attached filaments to all five sheets of laminate.

  Daala buried her face in her hands for a brief moment. “Standardized operational procedures.”

  “Correct! All prisons operated by the Galactic Alliance Department of Corrections, for consistency and to save costs, use the same basic computer system, which has to be able to handle a giant facility at the heart of Coruscant and a piddly little outpost on a remote moon near Dathomir. Same program, same emergency codes.”

  He replaced his documents in the case and closed the latches. “In a moment, I’m going to press a button on this datapad. This will begin a five-second countdown and transmit an automated signal to someone still active in the Department of Corrections who believes very strongly that you should be in charge of the Alliance. This person has set up an automated code that will be transmitted from a secure and unimpeachable control computer at the seat of government power, which will tell this prison’s computer that it is now experiencing a poison gas attack and has been cut off from all relief or reinforcement by a Yuuzhan Vong assault.” He shrugged. “My employer thought it was only justice to trip the Jedi with their own cord.”

  “And at the end of five seconds—boom-boom?”

  “Boom-boom. And let me say, it’s a delight to hear the legitimate leader of the Galactic Alliance talking baby talk.”

  She frowned at him, both because the remark was inappropriately personal and because there were still unresolved issues. “But this leaves me where you are, with guards and armor between me and freedom.”

  “At that point, it’s all up to my employer. I can assure you, though, that immediately after boom-boom, I will no longer look as I do now, will no longer be carrying the identicard with which I entered this facility, will no longer have even the fingerprints or retinal patterns of Tevarkian. Oh, by the way, bear in mind that most of the boom-boom power is headed toward you.” The false attorney pressed a button on the datapad. “Five.”

  Daala stared at him. He wasn’t moving.

  “Four.”

  Then she understood. He was playing Blink, a classic game of children, thrill-seekers, and military tacticians the galaxy over. Every species, every culture knew Blink. Sometimes called Swerve, sometimes named after particularly belligerent local animal species, it followed the same basic set of rules: two landspeeders, two military vehicles, two athletes would hurtle at each other, a move that, if it were to end in collision, would be at least very costly, at worst an example of mutually assured destruction. One, usually, would change direction an instant short of disaster. The other would win.

  Daala could not help but grin.

  “Three.”

  On the tabletop, she drummed her fingers.

  “Two.”

  To his credit, the false attorney never looked nervous. But as the milliseconds counted down, as Daala’s internal sense of alarm rose, he sat there grinning at her, and then suddenly he was gone, ducking below the level of the table.

  Using her free hand, the one not drumming fingers in a show of nonchalance, Daala yanked herself down and slammed into the floor.

  UNLIKE DAALA, TAHIRI WAS ACCOMPANIED BY HER DROID ESCORT AS she entered the visitors hall. The chamber’s overseer droid directed her to Booth One, the farthest from the entrance. Her YVH droid took up position near the entryway while she shuffled to her booth. She passed behind Daala, who seemed deep in conversation with a well-dressed blond man.

  Eramuth Bwua’tu awaited Tahiri on the other side of her booth viewport. The attorney had an encouraging if lupine smile for her. She took her chair but did not return the smile.

  “Good morning, my dear.” Bwua’tu cocked a furry eyebrow as he looked at her stun cuffs. “I’m wor
king on a measure to get you out of those. Obviously it has lower priority than efforts to call for a dismissal of the results of your trial, or to demand a new trial altogether, but I am attacking your situation on all possible fronts.”

  “Thank you. But what are the odds?”

  “It’s not a question of odds but of time. We will prevail. Still, the longer it takes for the Jedi Order to leave the Chief of State’s office, the more resentment the situation causes in the rank and file of common government officials, and the longer it will take for justice to manifest itself.”

  “That doesn’t speak well for my chances of survival. Honestly, if we can’t get a new trial until after I’m executed, don’t bother.”

  Bwua’tu shook his head. “We will overturn the death sentence.”

  “Which one? The one determined by the court, or the one that’s inevitable when you’re shackled in prison with a criminal population that’s had forty years to learn to hate the Jedi?”

  “You feel you are in danger?”

  Tahiri sighed. “Probably no more than any other prisoner here. But the shackles reduce my ability to defend myself, and if the Force should fail to alert me, I could take a shiv to a vital organ as easily as anyone else.” She gave Bwua’tu a look that she knew was half resignation. “I don’t want to … but maybe I was meant to die here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re speaking from depression brought on by the changes to your situation. Hang on to what’s important to you, and your combative spirit, your survival instincts, will return.”

  “Sure.”

  From his pocket, Bwua’tu pulled a sheet of flimsi and unfolded it on the tabletop before him. “We need to discuss the appeals process. I know how I want to proceed, but you need to understand my tactics if you’re to enhance them and improve your odds of achieving freedom. Shall I proceed?”

  “Please.”

  Tahiri tried not to tune him out, but her mind would not fix firmly on his words. He spoke of the order of presentation of appeals, of unofficially seeking the aid of the Jedi Order, of convincing a documentarian doing a HoloNews series on irregularities in the court system to profile her—a measure that would exploit her appeal as well as give the public a better understanding of what had happened at her trial while their attention was on the loss of the Fireborn and on the Jedi takeover. She nodded and accepted each of his recommendations, barely retaining details from any of them.

  Then she felt it, a tickle of alarm in the Force. Her eyes widened. “Eramuth, get down.”

  He froze midsentence. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Danger. Get down!”

  Spry for an elderly Bothan, he went to the floor.

  To Tahiri’s right, a booth exploded. Noise hammered at her ears. Smoke roiled out from the destroyed booth. Droids standing well back from the booth on the secure side of the hall flew backward and smashed to the floor. Buffeted by the explosion’s shock wave, Tahiri and her chair tilted toward the near wall and crashed to the floor.

  Siren whoops filled the air. Tahiri rolled up to her knees to look around.

  A transparisteel panel from one of the booths was now angled into the secure area, leaving a gap beneath it, and Chief Daala was in the process of scrambling through that gap.

  Tahiri’s eyes stayed wide. This was an escape.

  She spared a glance for Bwua’tu. The attorney was scrambling to his feet, apparently unhurt.

  She looked at the gap again. Daala was now through it, tumbling down to the floor on the far side, half masked by smoke from the explosion.

  If this was an escape planned by Daala’s friends or subordinates, surely it wouldn’t end here. Surely the woman had a route out of the prison complex.

  Tahiri glanced at Bwua’tu again. He was staring right at her. When she caught his eye, he shook his head. She didn’t have to tap into the Force to know what he was thinking. Don’t.

  She sprinted toward Daala’s booth.

  And fell on her face. The ankle cuffs—

  Her own moment of forgetfulness saved her life. Blasterfire hammered into the booth viewport above her, heavy blasterfire from her YVH escort droid. The droid was not being careful of the lives of those near Tahiri—it sprayed her vicinity with blaster bolts irrespective of the other prisoners, who scrambled wildly to get clear of the danger.

  Tahiri continued her forward fall into a roll. She suppressed an urge to call on the Force to speed her movements. The stun cuffs she wore, especially designed for Jedi, would detect the brain activity consistent with Force use in humans and shock her, depriving her completely of the ability to use the Force and probably of consciousness, as well. In fact, it would only be a matter of seconds before someone in a control chamber activated that shock anyway and she’d be helpless.

  On the floor below Daala’s booth, Tahiri sprang upward, slithering through the gap far more gracefully than Daala had. She did not go down to the floor on the far side. She gripped the top of the booth on that side and let her feet hang below the lower lip of the bent transparisteel panel, bringing her ankles together.

  The YVH droid switched its aim from the transparisteel to her feet. It was a sensible, appropriate tactic—injure the Jedi and she would not be able to flee.

  There was no emotion associated with the droid’s decision to fire, no spike of alarm in the Force. Tahiri had to time it by what she saw. The instant the droid finished bringing its arm into line, she snapped her ankles apart.

  Blasterfire erupted from the droid and smashed into the binding cable between her ankle cuffs. The sheer force kicked her legs up and backward. But the cable was sheared through—her legs were free, and the circuit the cable made between the cuffs, necessary for the restraints’ shock function, was destroyed.

  She dropped to the floor, onto an empty suit jacket and a blond wig. She ignored them. She didn’t have time to be curious. She held her wrists before her mouth and popped up like a hole-dwelling rodent, exposing only her head and hands to the gap in the booth.

  The YVH droid was in midstride forward. Seeing her, it aimed and fired again, a near-instantaneous reaction.

  Tahiri jerked several centimeters to one side and snapped her wrists apart as far as they would allow. Again heavy blasterfire sheared into her restraints. The cable parted and blasterfire hammered into her right-hand cuff, stinging and numbing her arm all the way to the shoulder. The force of the attack knocked her over backward. She felt a burning pain in her right wrist from a graze by one of the blaster bolts. But flat on her back, she was now free—as free as one could be in a planetary prison with guard droids and a YVH droid converging on her position.

  * * *

  Daala scrambled over her tabletop, fell to the floor beyond, looked around. Visitors buffeted by the explosion lay all over the floor, though there was little if any blood; the transparisteel barrier seemed to have sustained most of the force of the blast. A few visitors, meters away, had not fallen or were already rising. The false Tevarkian was gone—

  No, he was a few meters off to her right, elbow-crawling, his jacket and shirt off, revealing medical scrubs beneath. His hair was black now. Only his suit pants and his physique gave him away as the man she’d been talking to. She elbow-crawled after him. The smoke was thicker immediately above, but here at floor level she had decent visibility.

  She crawled across Tevarkian’s discarded pants and shoes. Now the man ahead was fully dressed in scrubs.

  There was a distant boom to her left. Daala thought it came from beyond the huge durasteel doors that allowed visitors entry into the hall. They were closed at the moment, not damaged in the least by the explosion.

  Purple smoke began issuing from behind Daala and flooding the air above. She glanced back and saw that it was coming from her false lawyer’s abandoned briefcase, which was on fire. A new tone joined the standard alarm cycle, a shrill note indicating a biohazard.

  Daala grinned again. If it weren’t so dangerous, this would have been a good show.r />
  The doors out of the hall slid open. Hovering just on the other side, in the mostly empty hallway beyond, and now wreathed in the smoke that flowed out of the visitors hall, was a repulsor gurney, the type with a platform at one end to accommodate a pilot. Daala saw the false Tevarkian angle to crawl toward it. She followed.

  There was a whoosh, rocket noise, and Boba Fett flew into the hall. He hovered just before the doors, the rocket thrust from his pack stirring the smoke into violent whirls, the green of his Mandalorian armor clashing with the smoke around him.

  Daala’s eyes widened. She’d never expected Fett to appear in a recognizable form. To do so was to invite retaliation from the Jedi now controlling the Chief of State’s office. But there he was, big as life, hovering, scanning the visitors hall in his methodical fashion. Daala had to admit to herself that the man knew how to make an entrance.

  The YVH droid was just reaching Booth Six when Tahiri, meters away, exerted herself through the Force. The bent sheet of transparisteel she’d crawled under bent farther, slamming into the droid, hammering it, sending it sprawling back into the secure area.

  There. That would give her a good two seconds of breathing room. She rolled over, scanning the chamber before her, trying to sort details out of the confusion of running visitors, purple smoke, shrilling alarms—