broadcasts his information to Palpatine, Cestus Cybernetics is done.
I think we can trust them to be suitably... definitive in response."
Murdering a Jedi? What in the brood's name had Trillot gotten
herself into? Too late to complain now . . . nothing to do but ride it
out. Trillot cursed the day she had agreed to help the Confederacy,
the day she had betrayed the Jedi. Bantha muck. While she was at it,
why not simply curse the day she was hatched? That was, in the final
analysis, more to the point.
45
No honor guard appeared at the spaceport to see Obi-Wan and
Doolb Snoil away. Considering the hash he had made of his attempts
at diplomacy, the Jedi was glad to be allowed to leave at all.
The guards who escorted him to the spaceport said not a word
until they actually reached the site. One of them turned as if to speak,
then paused, looking down at the ground. He walked away, shaking
his head.
Obi-Wan walked up the landing ramp into the Republic transport
ship. Behind him, Snoil shuffled along with only the slightest of slime
trails on the track. "Obi-Wan," he said plaintively. "What happened?"
"I am not certain, my friend," he said, and as the door closed behind
him, he strapped himself in. His mind was still far away. Something
was wrong, had been wrong since his arrival. No. Not then. But
things had disintegrated soon after. What had been the trigger? He
did not know. Blast! If only he knew the source of the incriminating
holo! He turned to the lawyer. "On Coruscant," he said, "tell all that
you know. You performed well. Whatever fault exists is mine—" He
paused, the vaguest of suspicions forming in the back of his mind.
"Or perhaps—"
"What?"
Obi-Wan sighed. "I don't know, but I felt something. From the beginning,
there have been factors beyond my understanding. I have
missed something, and that blunder made all the difference."
"Oh dear," Snoil said. "All of that planning and work. I never
dreamed things could go so wrong."
Obi-Wan shook his head, but said nothing. He had no words to
comfort his distraught friend. This was, in every possible way, a complete
disaster.
As soon as Xutoo made the basic preparations, the ship lifted off.
As it rose, Obi-Wan turned to Snoil. "I've made my decision," he
said. "It is no longer safe for you on Cestus. You will go, but I must
stay. My job here isn't finished. I'm going to join Master Fisto."
Snoil's eyestalks trembled with amazement as the Jedi began a
checklist of preparations for jettisoning an escape pod. "But you were
told to leave! It was a direct request, and any deviation would be a
violation of Code Four-Nine-Seven Point Eight—"
"I've gone a little too far to be worried about such niceties," he said.
"We have other mynocks to slice." He managed a smile. "Good-bye,
Doolb. You're a good friend. Go home now. There's no more work for
a barrister here."
"But.. . sir!"
Obi-Wan turned to Xutoo and gripped his shoulder. "Get him
home safely."
"Yes, sir."
And so saying, Obi-Wan pressed a series of switches, and the capsule
sealed. It seemed to sink into the wall behind it. A moment later
there was a light shoosh sound, and the Jedi was gone.
The ship had just crested the upper atmosphere, making the transition
to vacuum. Ground-based and orbiting scanners tracked every
ship exiting or leaving, but at this point, where the two sets of data
overlapped, it was easiest to cloak activity.
A red warning light blinked in front of him, indicating that the
emergency system was about to begin its instructional sequence.
Obi-Wan disabled it: the computer voice would merely be a distraction.
He intended to pilot the craft by skill and instinct. The escape
capsule had both manual and automatic settings, and could maneuver
its way to a ground beacon, but Obi-Wan dared not allow its
repulsors to fire too quickly: their radiation would be too easily detected.
So he plummeted, counting on the capsule's heat shielding and
headed down toward the Dashta Mountains.
He had to time this very, very carefully, waiting until he was low
enough that his appearance on the scanner wouldn't be connected
with a disgraced diplomat's transport. Let them think his capsule was
merely an unlicensed pleasure craft.
As Obi-Wan counted off the seconds, the heat became more and
more oppressive. Crash foam, doubling as insulation, billowed up
shoulder-high in protection. As the temperature of the outermost
layer of shielding climbed to thousands of degrees, he was sobered to
realize that he was dropping blind, his fate entrusted to the unknown
pod technicians. He hated that dependence even more than he disliked
flying, far preferring to trust his own profound connection to
the Force. But there was no avoiding it. This time, he had to trust.
It was time. His fingers found the repulsor button and . . .
Nothing happened.
As the ground raced toward him he watched the altimeter, fighting
a surge of panic. Something was wrong. His metal tomb hurtled
toward the ground at such speed that, if it struck, they wouldn't retrieve
enough midi-chlorians to enlighten a Jedi amoeba.
Obi-Wan struggled to reach his lightsaber, the mushy thick foam
filling the capsule making every effort a struggle. When he finally
wrapped his hands around the silver handle, he angled it away from
his body and triggered the blade. Foam smoldered. Sparks and smoke
erupted in the narrow, cramped confines. The capsule juddered, wind
beginning to peel away the external shielding beginning at the point
where the lightsaber beam had damaged its aerodynamics. Critical
seconds dragged past as the external layers sloughed away. But he'd
achieved the desired effect: the repulsors' trigger circuits ran through
the capsule's skin, very near his shoulder. If he couldn't send a signal
by pushing a button, the lightsaber's energy field might power that
circuit more directly.
Nothing happened. All right, then . . . a few centimeters to the left.
He tried again, burning a second hole in the capsule. More of the
outer shielding peeled away, but luckily, this time the circuit fired.
One huge jolt, and then another. Blessedly, the damaged external
shielding shucked away clean. The capsule parted like two halves
of a nut shell, and Obi-Wan was in a thin, transparent, winged
capsule. Wind whistled through the lightsaber holes, but the inner
life-support capsule, constructed of a nearly indestructible cocooned
monofilament, held together better than the external shell.
After the first few moments, air flowed freely. Watching pieces of
metal flipping away around him, Obi-Wan held his breath as the automatic
repulsor circuits took the capsule into a smooth glide path. A
few rough moments, and then he was sailing in a long, shallow unpowered
arc. His descent began to slow. The wind howled again
st the
outside skin. Below him, the desert floor was an endless stretch of
brown and dull green spots. Far ahead, visible only as darker wrinkles
beneath the cloud cover, lay the Dashta Mountains. In minutes
he'd be close enough to see ground detail. Minutes to think, and
plan, and allow his disappointment to simmer into pure energy. Obi-
Wan watched a chunk of pod skin flipping away around him. Other
chunks turned end-over-end, tumbling away from him. It wouldn't
be the end of the world if a blip showed up on a scanner. Not necessarily
a bad thing, he thought. If there is someone behind this, and if they
damaged my escape pod, then they might be scanning the sky. If they see the
metal debris, they might just conclude that their plot worked...
Whoever they are. And whatever they want.
Doolb Snoil watched the display as their ship rose, freeing itself of
Cestus's gravitational pull. Once free, it paused as the nav computers
plotted their jump to hyperspace. He already missed his friend
Obi-Wan, and was formulating an explanation to the Chancellor.
What would he say? Was there any way to cast this disaster in a favorable
light? He doubted it, b u t . . .
Xutoo's voice disturbed his reverie. "Ah, sir, we may have a problem."
There was an edge of something Snoil understood all too well
in that voice: controlled panic.
"Problem? Problem? Master Kenobi promised there would be no
problem!"
"I don't think he took that into consideration, sir."
"What?"
From a point between Cestus's two moons, a small ship approached
them, bearing in like a bird of prey. It was small and black,
with an ominously spare design that said it was built for pure practicality.
A war drone. A hunter-killer.
Mind working at fevered overdrive, Snoil managed to rationalize
the ship's presence. Perhaps it's just visiting Cestus, and has mistakenly
aligned its flight path with our departure point—
Then all such optimistic speculations were revealed as foolish. The
new ship fired a probe droid at them. The intelligent weapon spiraled
in, locked on target, and began to home in, a spinning ball of death.
A salute from the Five Families?
The consummate professional, Xutoo managed to keep his voice
calm at a moment when Snoil wanted to scream at the top of his
lungs. "I've commenced evasive maneuvers, but I don't know. Sir, I
would suggest that you follow General Kenobi's example and evacuate."
All Snoil could say was: "Aiyee!"
The ship began to make looping evasive maneuvers. More probe
droids must have joined the first, because they rocked and juddered
with blasts as Xutoo did his best.
"Sir," Xutoo repeated. "I suggest you go."
"No. I will stay here with you. Master Kenobi promised I would be
safe."
"I can't make you go, sir, but in a moment I'll jettison the remaining
escape pods in an attempt to distract the missile." Listening
to Xutoo's machinelike calm somehow penetrated S noil's defensive
mechanisms as even the explosions had not. No escape pods! He
broke. "No! No! Wait for me!"
Pushing himself to emergency speed, Snoil moved as rapidly as a
human being might stroll, wedging himself into the escape capsule.
He pushed the automatic sequence button, and his eyestalks twined
in anguish. Crash foam billowed up around him, and sight was lost.
For a moment he could barely breathe. Then his lips found the emergency
nozzle and air flowed into his lungs.
Then things went black as his pod sank back into and through the
ship's walls. He felt a rush, and then a jolt . . . followed by sudden,
deep quiet. Then a sensation of floating.
Snoil had no control at all—everything was managed by the automatic
emergency program. A screen opened up before his eyes, some
kind of computerized display showing the exterior of the ship as six
other escape pods burst free.
Two of them attracted probe droids away from Snoil as he plummeted
toward the atmosphere, but the screen showed the ship evading
one . . . two . . . three of the droids, and he began to feel more
optimistic.
Then the screen went very, very bright. When the light dimmed,
only smoke and debris remained. Xutoo and the ship were gone, destroyed.
He stared, horrified but almost incapable of speech, watching as
missiles streaked after the remaining pods.
Snoil was frozen with fear as the pod descended. The pods spun
crazily as evasion programs began to kick in. One of the droids
rushed past a spinning pod—and headed directly for him.
He watched as one pod after another was blown completely out of
the sky, now beginning to turn blue as they skimmed deeper into the
atmosphere. He heard something babbling in the background and
became horribly aware that that sound was his own voice, raving out
against the moment of expected pain and finality. "I'll sue! Or my, my
heirs will sue! For damages and emotional distress . . . " A probe
passed immediately close to him on the left, in pursuit of one of his
capsule's programmed distractions. The resultant explosion painted
the sky yellow and sent his pod juddering to the right, coincidentally
forcing another droid to miss its target. "Oh my, that was
close, and—" another horrendous explosion, and he made a bubbling,
shrieking sound. "And oh my!"
He turned to look back up—once he managed to determine which
direction "up" was—and saw another missile heading directly for
him. "No, no, I was joking! I'll retract that complaint! I'll file a full
admission of guilt or wrongdoing, or . . . Aiyee!"
And in the instant before discourse would have become terminally
irrelevant, one of the other escape pods swooped back in, intercepting
the offending missile.
As Snoil closed his eyes and offered his soul to the Broodmaster, a
new explosion dwarfed all the others in both scope and effect on
Snoil, who realized that his shell would certainly need washing after
all this.
Then suddenly, there was nothing but silence from outside. To his
wonder, he realized that he had survived the storm. Now there was
just the little matter of the landing.
A red warning light flashed on the control panel, and the capsule
requested a series of manual operations, warning him in a calm female
voice that certain "explosive impacts have damaged the capsule's
automatic systems. Please do not worry, as the manual backup systems can
perform perfectly well. Please perform the following functions in the sequence
requested."
And one after another he did perform the tasks as requested, while
simultaneously watching the ground explode toward him. The altimeter
shifted toward zero with nauseating rapidity. "—Now disengage
the external shields—" A switch. "—and now please, within five
seconds, disengage each of the primary source nodes, routing all of their
power to the secondary chamber—" Which switch? The altimeter
dizzied him, but he dared not look at it, nor glimpse the groun
d spinning
up at him like a vast hand rising to swat him from the sky.
"And now please trigger the main repulsor."
Disaster was almost upon him now. Certainly nothing he did
would make any difference. Surely this next moment would be his
last. Surely—
A violent whip sideways almost made Snoil's stomach roll. The
capsule bobbed as the repulsors fired, and the air outside flamed pink.
Snoil managed to breathe again, his eyestalks ceasing their wild and
frantic dance as he drifted toward the ground below.
Far below him and to the west, Obi-Wan Kenobi rolled his escape
pod into shadows and heaped sand and rocks atop it. Instinct made
him gaze up at the sky, where streaks of red and white blossomed
against the clouds. He frowned, trying to make out the shapes, and
then recognized them for what they were: shattered chunks of the
ship reentering the atmosphere. His heart was heavy, fearing that his
bungled mission had cost the lives of Xutoo and the harmless, brilliant
Snoil. How had this happened? What secret forces opposed
them here . . . ?
Then he saw the purple glow of repulsor fire, and relaxed just a bit.
Someone had escaped the ship. And Snoil was nothing if not lucky.
There was more than a chance that his old friend remained alive.
And that would be good. If anything on Cestus could be considered
certain, it was this: they would need every strong hand and agile
mind in the hours ahead.
46
0bi-Wan disguised his distress signal with narrow-burst encoded
messages. Less than two hours later, Thak Val Zsing and Sirty
reached him with a dozen recruits. He sent half of them after Snoil
and followed the others back to camp, where he rejoined Kit Fisto
and the clone troopers.
There he was heartened to see all that had been accomplished.
They fed him, listened to the short version of his narrow escape, and
then settled down for serious conversation. "The least of our problems,"
he concluded, "is that negotiations with G'Mai Duris and the
leadership of Cestus have failed."
"I agree," Kit said. His black eyes gleamed. "There are other forces
at play here. From the beginning, we have been manipulated. It is
time the next phase of our operation went into effect. Nate?"
He said this raising his voice and nodding toward the clones, who
one by one rose and gave their reports.