After all, the initial strategy may have gone awry, but their secondary
plans had gone swimmingly. If the Jedi regretted the loss of
life, the rejuvenated forces of Desert Wind felt that they had finally
struck a telling blow against the Five Families.
After six of those raids, Sirty's communications skills combined
with Doolb Snoil's phenomenal mind for research, tapping into
ChikatLik's holovid network to extract a vital and telling piece of
data: droid production had dropped by more than 30 percent. If they
could but maintain the current pace of action, the Five Families and
the government would be forced to the bargaining table, where all
desires could be met.
And while Obi-Wan wasn't nearly so certain that their current
course would indeed take them to the desired land of plenty, there
had been much violent action, many hairbreadth escapes, and three
lost comrades to honor. Tensions were building to a killing point, and
a bit of celebration would do them good.
So the revel had been building for hours, guards posted at the cave
mouth. While alert status remained high, Desert Wind's heightened
appetites were simultaneously slaked with food, drink, games, bragging
and boasting, and dancing.
Resta Shug Hai spent most of her time by herself, sipping mead, a
drink that had similar effects on human and Cestian. Since the very
first days of training she had been an outsider, the lone X'Ting
among human recruits. The barrier had gone both ways: after a lifetime
of fighting for her land and identity, there was little love lost for
the offworlders. Even as the troops began to enjoy victories, and the
normal camaraderie bound them all together more tightly, she had
remained somewhat apart. But she finally stepped forward, swaying
slightly as if her tongue had been loosened by the mead. "I sing
song," she said.
Doolb Snoil happily clapped his chubby hands together, cheering
her on.
"X'Ting songs like Thak Val Zsing's history lessons," she explained.
"Every clan have own song. Tell people's story. When song
die, people die. Resta last to know her clan song."
And she sang it. Obi-Wan didn't speak the language, but he didn't
need to. He understood the emotions behind the alien words. And if
emotion held true, the song spoke of courage, and toil, of love and
hope and dreams.
What struck Obi-Wan most was her evident pride and courage. If
Resta and G'Mai Duris were typical of their people, the X'Ting were
incredibly strong folk. Despite the plagues, despite their lands being
stolen from under them, despite no external evidence at all, they
dreamed on.
When she finished, the rock walls rang with applause.
Jangotat made his rounds of the outer caves, taking a few moments
to speak to each of his brothers, all of whom declined intoxicants.
Then he checked in with the recruits who were taking guard positions
among the rocks or monitoring the scanners. No matter how
well hidden they believed themselves to be, it was inevitable that
eventually their lair would be discovered. Still, considering that the
mountains themselves could shield them from enemy bombardment,
it would take hours for enemy troops to ascend the slopes under fire,
and all rear exits were either well guarded or sealed off.
In the world of field operations, this was about as secure as life
could get.
Making his third rounds, a sense of ease descended over Jangotat.
General Kenobi's initial plot had failed, but this new operation
seemed to be working fine: breaking energy lines, crippling water
plants, and looting payrolls for their growing war chest. The local
troops had performed well under pressure.
Unknown enemies had doomed their initial ruse. Jangotat now
considered the entire world of diplomatic subterfuge unfit for a soldier,
or, he now believed, those strange and fascinating creatures
called Jedi. Odd. He thought of the Jedi not merely with respect, but
with the sort of fraternalism ordinarily reserved for members of the
GAR. In the unchanging order of things they were high above him,
but were fighters, leaders extraordinaire. The most recent adventure
into the scalding water had been only a temporary, if intense, pain. A
liberal application of synthflesh from their first-aid kits had covered
wounds and reduced redness and swelling in a few hours.
Most important, they had won.
Jangotat found himself entering a state of contentment rarely experienced
by one of his station. He was fulfilling his primary function,
enjoying an opportunity to learn from two superlative teachers.
There were other .. . interesting factors as well.
He cast about, hoping to find Sheeka Tull, but did not. Doubtless
she was ferrying in another load of supplies. The thought gave him a
warm feeling.
In the last moments before he lost his honor, old Thak Val Zsing
was thankful and content. For years he had struggled to bring advantage
to his people, and those hard times had taken their toll even before
the last few disastrous years, when betrayals and murderously
ruthless security reprisals had reduced Desert Wind to a shadow of
its former strength.
But despite his early reservations, it looked as if the Jedi were actually
the answer to his prayers; perhaps his grandchildren would not
have to eat the dust for as many long, painful years as had Val Zsing
before them.
He had watched the revelry, noted with sober approval that the
two Jedi maintained a slight and leaderly aloofness from the proceedings,
polite but not intrusive.
These Jedi were responsible and respectful. Strange, all of 'em.
The human, the clones, the Nautolan . . . and that Vippit was the
strangest. All fluttery fear when the retrieval team found his capsule,
but as soon as they'd brought the mollusk into camp, he'd instantly
found work coordinating intelligence. Sharp as a laser scalpel, that
one.
In the final analysis, Thak Val Zsing had lost leadership of Desert
Wind, but was winning the war. Not a bad trade. Not a bad final
chapter in the long, strange life of a murderer's great-grandson, a history
teacher turned miner and anarchist leader.
So Thak Val Zsing found himself a fine bottle of Chandrilan
brandy and wandered back to one of the rear caves to enjoy it—
a taste of a homeworld he might never see again. There were only
two things that Thak Val Zsing enjoyed: fighting and drinking.
The bottle was three-quarters empty when he momentarily blacked
out, leaning back against the cave wall to watch the stalactites spin.
And spin they did, in a happy blur that made him cry out in pleasure
as finished the bottle. He was down to the dregs, sliding down a
warm dark tunnel toward blissful slumber, when he heard a cracking
sound. Another. Then the ground beneath him began to heave.
He looked at it curiously, finding it amusing. Distantly, the tinkle
; and burr of dance music echoed through the caves. Although he
could not hear the happy voices, Val Zsing knew that they were
there. He could feel it: after an uncertain start, with the Jedi attempting
to pull off some kind of elaborate con operation, the plan
was back on track, with the program of harassment and sabotage that
Desert Wind had begun so long ago. And now it would succeed.
He was basking in that thought when the cracking sound came
again. Thak Val Zsing rolled over onto his hard round belly so that
the cave was right-side up again, and blinked his bleary eyes.
A rock rolled to the side, revealing a fissure in the ground. Perhaps
it was one of the myriad micro-tunnels running through every bit of
these mountains. Most were too small for a human, so there was no
need to be concerned about the safety. What was this, then, some
kind of volcanic activity? Perhaps a burrowing male chitlik... ?
And then the first shadowed, amorphous shape emerged.
The four plastidroids and their JK companions had traveled a hundred
kilometers at an average rate of just under ten kilometers per
hour. It had taken them half a day to reach their target. Tirelessly
they crawled through the dusty tunnels, edging toward their prey.
The droids did not always travel in a straight line: when tunnels
branched, some of them took alternate paths, either burrowing or
reached an obstacle that they could not easily push or burrow through,
they backed up and went around. When the sensors at their surface
detected the sounds of music, they began to converge, all of the fractally
mapped alternative pathways canceled. Machines could not sigh
with relief, but one prone to fancy might have attributed a certain eagerness
to the manner in which they seemed to accelerate as they
emerged from the cave floor.
The plastoid infiltration droid pushed its way through, melting
and crushing rock as it went. Then a second, third, and fourth followed
it.
After them appeared the JKs, until all hunched quivering in that
empty cave—empty save for a single intoxicated human who watched
dazedly, assuming that the drink that dulled his pain had also clouded
his sight with hallucinations.
The four plastidroids looked like a gigantic protozoans, studded
with shadowy mechanical puzzle pieces in place of nuclei or organelles.
Once reaching the desired destination, magnetically encoded
pieces suspended within each bag wormed their way toward each
other and began snapping together. Slowly, as the lengths of metal
and plastine found each other, the newly formed limbs created nightmarish
silhouettes beneath the transluscent skins, stretching them.
The JKs seemed to watch as the four bags of plastine and metal
heaved and quivered. In turn, each was distorted by the assembling
metallic pieces within it, until there stood not four amorphous shapes
but four fully formed infiltrator droids, treaded monstrosities as tall
as three humans with heavy armored bodies and long, flexible necks.
Thak Val Zsing watched, not understanding what he was seeing,
laughing at the hallucination's oddness. Intoxication had caused
stranger visions in the past, but not many. It was all terribly amusing.
He continued to chuckle until the first infiltrator machine was almost
completely formed. Its outline, suddenly and horribly familiar,
began to resemble that of a killer droid that had shattered a mining
union strike five years earlier.
That outline burned its way through the chemical fog, the realization
that death had just, impossibly, oozed up from the very ground
below him. He stood and staggered back against the wall. Then a
moment came when he realized that he was wrong, that what he saw
was no hallucination at all, but something real and appalling.
There are defining moments in a being's life, moments when actions
are taken—or not taken. Once done, certain things cannot be
undone. Thak Val Zsing was drunk, so perhaps he could be excused.
He was also old, and the veteran of more Desert Wind raids than he
could count. Perhaps life gave every person a specific allotment of
nerve, and when that allotment was expended, there was simply no
more.
Until the end of his days, Thak Val Zsing struggled to explain, to
himself if not others, why he did nothing except crawl back beneath
a shelf of rock. And there he trembled, sobbing his fear and misery.
And did not raise the alarm that would have turned the murder
machines' attention to him.
It is a choice no one should have to make: to save life, at the cost of
the soul.
As the JKs waited patiently, lubricant drained from the plastine
skins still tightly stretched over the now fully assembled bodies of the
infiltrators. One at a time, the skins stretched around the metal
frames, then ruptured, like birth membranes rupturing around metal
infants.
The JKs sniffed the air like living things, as if hungry to fulfill their
function.
And in their mechanical way, perhaps they were.
54
Kit Fisto leaned back against the uneven rock wall, his tentacles
twitching in sympathetic rhythm with the music. Although his face
did not change, he was amused to find himself responding to these
primitive melodies. Like most Jedi, Kit had been raised not on his
homeworld, but in the halls of the Temple. However, to amuse himself,
he had made a study of Glee Anselm's customs, becoming especially
fond of its music. On Glee Anselm, no one would be gauche
enough to play songs with less than three different rhythms, and far
more complex melodies than this. Still, there was something attractive
about it, and he finally raised a hand and said: "Hold! I would
join you."
The musicians paused, surprised that the normally taciturn Nautolan
had spoken, let alone that he wished to participate. Nervously,
they offered the various instruments at their disposal. Kit scanned
them, before choosing one that combined string and wind. "This will
suffice."
He noted that Obi-Wan and Doolb Snoil were watching and decided
to make a special effort. Obi-Wan had proven himself one of
the ablest warriors of Kit Fisto's experience. And while some might
have considered it an unworthy urge, he wished to impress his companion
with his native music.
So, taking the instrument in hand, he began to blow and strum simultaneously,
each action reinforcing the other. It took him a few
moments to find his way, and despite his extreme dexterity there
were notes that he could not hit, chords that he could not play. It
mattered not. As had his forebears, Kit had mastered the art of performing
music underwater, and although he was comfortable in the
air, sound took on a different character when transmitted through
the thinner medium. Adjustments had to be made, and his nimble
mind and fingers made them within moments. As his tones grew
smoother and more pleasuring
, the other musicians began to accompany
him on string and wind instruments. Then voices crooned in
wordless song, in a fashion that almost made him homesick. Despite
the aridity of their world, these Cestians were a good lot.
Then came the ultimate compliment: some of the more daring attendees
rose and actually began to dance. At first they had difficulty
finding the beat and rhythm. With Nautolan music it was more important
to listen to the pauses between notes than to the notes themselves,
which were sustained in irregular bits. They seemed to find
their groove, and were beginning to really enjoy themselves. Snoil's
long, fleshy neck traced the beat in the air, his eyestalks keeping
counterpoint.
Then Kit stiffened, his dark eyes narrowing before his conscious
mind comprehended the threat.
The rough cavern floor trembled, as if sections of the mountain
had wrenched their way free and now crawled toward them in the
darkness.
A bearded miner from the Clandes region sprinted out of the back
caves. "We're invaded!" came a scream. Then a light flashed, and the
miner hit the ground like a bag of smoking rags, no longer screaming
at all.
"What in space is that?" Skot OnSon yelled, shoulder-length
blond hair flagging.
"This shouldn't be possible," Fisto said, surprise momentarily fixing
him in his tracks.
Something appeared in the passageway leading to the back caves.
Its neck was serpentine but mechanical, supporting a head that was
both weapon and sensory probe. The body it was attached to was as
tall as two humans at the shoulder, but composed of more individual
pieces than he would have thought possible for something of its size,
almost as if it were constructed from baubles found in a child's toy
chest. It rolled on treads. A thin sheaf of plastine was stretched about
the frame, and his mind searched frantically, some part of him sure
he already knew what this thing was.
Whirring around its feet were one . . . two . . . three . . . four of the
golden JK droids.
"Run!" Skot cried. That single word accomplished what the appearance
of horror had not: spurred them into action.
Revelers fled toward the exit. The general chaos spoiled the sight
lines for targeting, made the soldiers of Desert Wind fear to fire for
risk of hitting their own people. The infiltration droid's blaster fired