his own eyes. Three stories. According to his information the third
floor held the most vital controls, so that was where he went.
Obi-Wan floated from the shadow on the wall, ascending using
even the narrowest of handholds, using his sensitivity to balance on
footholds where a reptile might have fallen to its death. Once at the
window he looked back down at the street. The alley was narrow, so
that it wasn't easy to see him, but if anyone looked directly up, there
would be a problem he would rather not deal with. So far, so good.
The lock was not as easy. It was complicated and beyond his ability
to pick. Security alarm? He felt around the edge, trying to sense the
presence of a protective energy field. Yes. He could sense the conduits,
but the power wasn't pulsing with any intensity. So the alarm
circuit existed, but wasn't on during the day, when the purification
plant probably swarmed with guards.
Obi-Wan triggered his lightsaber and burned a hole through the
lock and window. When sparks ceased to spit and the window cooled,
he reached through and opened it.
He slid through and was in. The room was empty, but not for
long—the door slid open.
He spun across the room and was in hiding before the door
opened. A man walked in, and Obi-Wan rendered him unconscious
before he was even aware of a threat. His victim wore an uncoweled
uniform, one that would expose Obi-Wan's face. All he could do was
hope that there were enough employees that he wouldn't be immediately
detected.
Fewer would die that way, and that was to be hoped for. Their
original mission had gone awry. Hopefully, things were beginning to
get on the right track . . .
He stepped out into the control room, scanning swiftly. Smaller
than he might have thought, with banks of control computers along
the walls. This part of the operation was simple enough to be run by
one or two attendants, and perhaps, just perhaps, he'd already taken
out his opposition.
Then optimism died. There, in the middle of the room, squatted
the deceptively beautiful golden hourglass of a JK droid.
Obi-Wan groaned. Any fool could have anticipated that Cestus
would continue to make use of its own security droids. Still, hope is
a terrible addiction to overcome. No way through it now, though. He
had limited time, and it was all too possible that his companions were
already selling their lives dearly.
The glittering, elegant form would seem oh, so innocent to one
who had never seen the droid in action. He approached it gingerly.
What to do? Once it recognized him as an intruder he would have
only moments to act. In all probability it was already too late. Disaster
loomed if the JK raised an alarm. Only an idiot would relish the
prospect of simultaneous duels with droid and guards.
What was the JK's alarm perimeter? He was surprised that it
wasn't the room itself, then realized that it might be possible for
maintenance workers to enter a room as long as they kept a certain
distance, behaved in a specific way, or carried electronic identification
of some kind. Did the JK trigger on sound? Proximity? Was he even
now being scanned for security codes embedded in badges or clothing?
Were there spoken code words that might disarm the mechanism?
Two things he was certain of. One, he didn't have those code
words. Two, if he attempted to reach the controls it would attack.
What to do?
He had faced the JKs in the caves, and had little taste for another
encounter.
Speed. He needed speed. Gambling everything, Obi-Wan Kenobi
drew his lightsaber and triggered it to life. He hurled it at the control
panel at the same time that he threw himself directly at the JK.
Its attention was split between orders to protect the equipment
and those to apprehend the attacker. Tentacles extended rapidly from
its side, snapping after the tumbling lightsaber, and might have
caught it if not for the beam severing two of its arms.
As the lightsaber hit the panel, the JK hissed as if it were alive. The
energy blade sliced through the control paneling. Coils of wire
bulged free, and sparks showered from the smoking metal; automatic
shutdown went into effect. The JK seemed to realize it had been
tricked into splitting attention, and turned itself fully back to Obi-
Wan.
Obi-Wan called to his lightsaber, but he saw at that moment that
it was tangled in the panel's wiring. There was not another full second
for thought—the JK was closing fast. Making a snap decision he
raced toward the biodroid, pulling the lightwhip at his side as he did.
The biodroid was on him, wrapping its arms around his legs.
Pain. The mechanical arms surged with energy. The hair on Obi-
Wans head flared away from his scalp and he fought shock as the
charge threatened to shut down his nervous system and paralyze his
diaphragm. As it pulled him closer, attempting a retinal scan, Obi-
Wan triggered the lightwhip, and it spun out at an angle, ensnaring
an entire quadrant of arms in a single instant. Sparks sprayed from
the torn durasteel. He threw his hands in front of his eyes as the
spray splashed across his face. He heard, but did not see, the mechanical
arms as they tumbled to the ground, severed by the strands.
But now he had lost both tools.
The droid seemed to realize that it, too, had been wounded, and
actually rolled back a step. Obi-Wan made a snap decision and lunged
in, deciding that it would be least prepared to deal with an aggressive
forward motion. It attempted to respond, but this time with a noticeable
time lag in response. Stumps twitched as the JK attempted to
strike him with phantom severed limbs, but the remaining arm
lashed across his face, tearing skin and shocking with a sizzling jolt of
pain—but by then he had moved to close quarters.
His vision was still blurry, but the Force was strong in Obi-Wan.
He could sense the place where the lightwhip had struck, weakening
the JK's sparkling case. There. Obi-Wan closed his traitorous eyes,
inhaled, finding the place within himself where there was no fear or
doubt. Dwelling there. Every muscle in his hand was perfectly coordinated
as it flashed down, gaining acceleration as it struck, a perfect
transference of force to the already damaged surface. He heard the
crack! and folded his arm, striking again and again with his elbow at
the same spot. The injured droid tumbled over backward, sparks
spraying all about them.
He didn't know how many times he struck, only that when he was
finished, the JK lay thrashing weakly on its side. Obi-Wan stood,
feeling similarly weakened. He looked down at the droid with newfound
respect. It had required two energy weapons and bruising
hand-to-tentacle combat to stop the thing. His heart thundered in
his chest, but he focused and continued about the business at hand.
Obi-Wan had only to plant his explosives, and all was done. If they
were disarmed before detonation, then he hoped
Desert Wind had
done its job, planting beacons to guide a bombardment that would
destroy the purification plant.
Obi-Wan plucked his lightsaber from the ground, and then the
lightwhip. He triggered it; the narrow luminescent thread flared for a
moment and then died. Its power cell was exhausted, and regretfully
he tossed it away. The device had served its master well, but now
there were other concerns. No more time for toys.
64
T.wenty-five kilometers away, Kit Fisto crouched in the shadows of
the aquifer station's bleached white rectangular walls, waiting. The
security sweeps revolved once every twenty seconds, invisible, undetectable
to anyone without superb apparatus—or profound Force
sensitivity. He moved them through the energy maze one level at a
time, until they were completely within the shadow of the station's
walls. "I have to leave you now. If you manage to cut the power, make
your way inside."
"And you?" Thak Val Zsing asked.
"I'll meet you there," he said. Kit peered down into a flat-bottomed
duracrete riverbed outside the walls. Without another word he
jumped and slid down its rough, slanted side toward the bed. He was
able to slow his sliding descent, but knew that he wouldn't be able to
get back out up the wall. If the plan went wrong, there would be
trouble indeed.
According to their information, water from the Dashta dam sluiced
through the trench in hourly currents. There was no way around this
next part, and he prepared himself. He heard the rumbling before he
saw it, a great pounding wave that shook the duracrete and swept
around the corner like a raging wall. Kit rolled into a ball as it struck
him, allowing it to carry him along with it down the channel and to
the mouth of the drop-off. Within moments he was flipping through
the current as if he had never left Glee Anselm at all. Bang. The tide
slammed Kit into the wall, but he relaxed with the force, riding it,
feeling the pressures and intensities of the raging flow. A grid up
ahead, metal bars twisted together to make fist-size holes. Kit's
lightsaber flashed, foaming the water with clouds of gas bubbles. A
circular swipe, and the bars parted as Kit's head slammed into the
severed section, knocking it ahead of him. He eeled through, kicked
himself away from another wall, and found himself in an even narrower
channel, water pressure increasing the speed and intensity of
the flow.
Ahead the water was passing through a flash-heating ray, boiling it
for a few seconds before passing the heated water on to another system
of pipes.
The ray brushed his skin, and Kit's nerves screamed with shock
No!
He swam upcurrent, caught between icy flow and the boiling heat
ray. Fire and ice, he thought, suddenly aware that the cold had
leached strength from his body.
The current pushed him back toward the boiling water, and he
pulled at the sides of the channel, trying to lift himself out. No purchase.
The first thread of panic wormed its way into his mind, and Kit
Fisto clamped down on it instantly, concentrating on each stroke,
centering himself, allowing the Force to find his way between the onrushing
currents one meter at a time, until he reached a ladder, only
two meters overhead. Kit concentrated, dived down in a fast loop,
and burst up out of the water to grab the bottom rung and lift himself
out. He shivered: the snow runoff was as cold as the cauldron had
been torrid. It took a moment before his body adjusted and the shaking
diminished. Here on the far side of the scanners, he could climb
the wall safely, make his way to a juncture box on the second level.
Clinging to the wall, he waited.
And waited.
Something was wrong. Val Zsing and his people should have gotten
through by now. He checked his chrono—
And then suddenly the water flow beneath him died to a trickle.
The power had been cut! A backup alarm began to ring. Distant
shouts echoed in the corridor. There would be only a few moments
before the power would come back on, but his men had heard those
shouts or the alarm, and would make their move. It was his job to
clear the way.
Kit crawled along a ledge until he found a barred window, and used
his lightsaber to slice through it, letting himself in.
He heard the sound of racing feet just outside the door. A secondary
alarm rang insistently, perhaps announcing the appearance of
Desert Wind. He waited until the feet had passed, then made his
way along the corridor.
The pumping station's ground floor was some ten thousand square
meters, with a ceiling that arched four stories overhead. The artificial
streambed ran through the center of it, where every bit of water
trickled past heat rays and the crackling arc of a flux light, the first
line of purification. While not filtering the water as thoroughly as the
station in town, it was the first line of defense, killing 80 percent of
microorganisms and neutralizing many toxins.
The floor bucked as an explosion shook the complex. This blast
originated near one of the outer doors. Kit Fisto smiled grimly as
more guards ran in that direction.
With the present limited lighting and a distracting attack going
on at the front, it would be easier for him to complete his mission.
Not easy, perhaps, but easier. Clinging to the underside of the catwalk,
breathing into the strain in his fingers and shoulders, Kit handwalked
to the deck, landing silently.
He slipped into the room, and the single guard didn't even have
time to turn around before Kit hurled himself forward. The guard
managed to level his sidearm as Kit sliced it from his hand. The
Nautolan continued the motion into a kick to the head, disabling the
hapless Cestian before he could make a sound.
He whirled, examining the control panel, shutting down the water
flow to Clandes. The next phase was easy: destroying the panel to
freeze the setting. Kit's lightsaber flashed, and within seconds the
panel was a smoking ruin.
He surveyed the damage swiftly: it would take days to get this station
working again. The floor beneath his feet shook as an explosion
ripped through the building.
Good. More confusion, more damage. Hopefully, not more loss of
life.
Time to make good his escape.
Kit Fisto left the room and instantly ran into the returning security
team. He was a beat ahead of them, his lightsaber flashing as he
was forced to defend himself without restraint. He tried to avoid
lethal maneuvers. They are just trying to do their jobs. There came a
time when such restraint was of no use at all, and after a whirlwind
engagement, two men fell. A third brought his weapon to bear and
the Jedi leapt over the railing, falling two stories to land in a crouch.
More guards. His lightsaber seemed to move of its own accord, before
the blasts were launched, and he
blocked two, three, four . . . and
then was among them, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed.
Guards screamed, dying there.
This Cestus affair grows uglier by the moment, Kit Fisto thought bitterly.
Then regrets and second guesses dissolved as a web of lightsaber
light filled the air around him, and guards crumpled to the
ground. He flirted with battle fever, the howling demon in his mind
trapped behind the bars of discipline, but guiding him as he slid
down Form I's razor edge.
He heard the siren before he stopped, but just before, making him
think that the sound had simply not impressed itself on his consciousness;
his focus had been so tight that everything external had
simply failed to register.
Eight guards lay around him, moaning. Kit's mouth twisted in an
oath he would have been ashamed for the Jedi Counsel to hear. This
was exactly the sort of carnage he'd hoped to avoid.
Out.
On the way a huge technician swung a pry-bar at him. Sick at
heart, the Jedi spun to the inside of the aggressive spiral and twisted
it out of his hand. He shifted his attacker against the wall as his eyes
rolled up, voluntary nervous system paralyzed by a strike to the nerve
plexus beneath his arm. "Sleep," Kit Fisto whispered as the technician
slumped. "All life is a dream."
Or a nightmare, he thought. One from which more and more Cestians
would never awaken.
65
Nothing even vaguely resembling good cheer lived in ChikatLik's
halls of power. The word from the Clandes manufacturing facility
was that the water flow was reduced by three-quarters, and it would
take days if not weeks to get everything back online. In the meantime,
if drinking water was not shipped into the city, Clandes risked
an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.
G'Mai Duris's three stomachs felt variously heavy, sour, and
leaden. Who was doing all of this? The Jedi? Might Obi-Wan still
live? After his ship had been blown from the sky, they had detected
only a single escape capsule, containing the barrister. Who then?
And in another sense it hardly mattered. It was obvious to her where
all of this would ultimately end. There would be a naval bombardment,
and the Republic's war would leave Cestus a smoking husk.
And the worst thing of all was that she was about to meet a complication.