darkness.
76
Another hour's crawling brought him to the wall of the outer
chamber. A swift scan revealed that the wall was only one-centimeter
durasteel, and Jangotat knew that he could handle it. The armorpiercing
mines were designed for use against battle droids, but they
would work here as well. Pulling out two of the round, flat disks, Jangotat
attached them to the wall with their adhesive bands and set the
timer. He and Thak Val Zsing had barely had time to retreat back
around the bend when the sharply focused blast detonated with a
clap that knocked both men onto their backs.
Dazed, Jangotat grabbed his rifle and rushed into the next room
as red and yellow lights flashed warning. Through the smoke he
glimpsed a bank of communications equipment and stacks of food
supplies. He swiveled in time to glimpse a human and a Wroonian
rushing into a dome-shaped durasteel bunker, slamming the door.
He got there too late, banging against the door with the butt of his
rifle. The door was at least five centimeters thick. Nothing in his sack
would get them through that.
The shelter hummed, vibrated, then settled down as the doors
sealed shut.
"What now, star-boy?" Thak Val Zsing asked, coming up behind
him.
"Let's check the room out," Jangotat said. "There might be something."
The room was an atrium, a hothouse designed to fit in with the
rest of the shelter. It was as dense as a rain forest, unlike any terrain
Jangotat had seen on Cestus. They moved through it slowly, watching
for any movement.
He turned to see the Jedi Killer coming for them. He did not
think, he acted.
He remembered the JKs all too well. Their speed, power, and versatility
were beyond intimidating. There was no time to think, little
even to move. He managed to step backward as its tentacles reached
for him, and barely heard Thak Val Zsing scream "Look out!" as the
floor beneath him rippled. A disguised tentacle, reaching, changing
colors for camouflage as it did!
Amazing. One of the tentacles touched him, and he felt the shock
for but an instant as he leapt back. One instant was long enough to
send the hair exploding away from his scalp, but he was able to trigger
a rifle blast at close range, severing the tentacle.
Thak Val Zsing was firing from the side, but the energy bolts
glanced harmlessly off the JK's golden casing.
Val Zsing scrambled back screaming, just in time to avoid another
tentacle. Jangotat threw himself to the rear, firing as he did, riding it
out and rolling backward, coming to his feet in a single smooth motion,
turning in the same motion, switching his rifle to maximal energy
pulses.
Too fast!
The JK was a marvel, zigging this way and that, its narrow treads
blurring far too quickly to track. Three shots, four. The rifle's barrel
pulsed white as its blasts furrowed walls and floor, always missing the
skittering machine. The rifle's power core was overheating, about to
shut down. Jangotat gave ground, leaping back the way they had
come.
Thak Val Zsing was already crouching there in the shadows, trembling
and silent. The JK moved a meter toward them, then stopped
and floated backward. Clearly, it wasn't going to be lured out of position.
"We can't stop it!" Thak Val Zsing said, shaking.
Jangotat grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him hard. "Get
yourself together, man! Thousands will die if that cruiser fires."
But whatever emotional bones Thak Val Zsing had fractured back
in the caves were still unable to carry the weight of his fear. Thak Val
Zsing retreated.
Jangotat cursed and made a decision. Perhaps he couldn't stop
the thing with gun blasts. Let's see what bringing down the ceiling on it
will do.
He jumped through the hole, rolling and blasting at the ceiling as
he did. Chunks of rock fell massively, glancing off the duracrete shelter
dome and burying the JK, almost killing Jangotat at the same
time. He lay gasping, leg shattered, as the rock began to roll away and
the JK emerged.
"Thak Val Zsing!" he screamed as the thing came toward him.
"Blast you, Val Zsing! Coward!" His frustration was complete, as was
his failure.
The JK pulled him close, until he was almost touching it. It shone
a beam of light into his eyes, perhaps attempting to match a retinal
scan to its data bank. Then, unable to identify, it sent a jolt out along
its tentacles.
Jangotat fell onto his side. Crackling blue flames danced up and
down his body. He could see them. Feel them. Hear them.
What he couldn't do was move. At all.
"Thak Val Zsing! Coward!"
The former leader of Desert Wind was beyond fear, beyond shame.
There are moments that define a human being, and once those moments
occur it is impossible to undo them.
But sometimes, one could create a new fate.
Val Zsing peeled the adhesive off the mounting strip and slapped
one of the armor-piercing mines to his chest. He had observed Jangotat,
and was familiar enough with explosives to figure out the directions.
He entered the shelter and went straight at the droid. Its arms
grabbed him so swiftly that he barely had time to trigger the timer.
The JK hesitated for a moment, as if trying to figure out why Thak
Val Zsing hadn't attempted to escape. Come on. A little closer . . . It
drew him in, to within a meter, and a tentacle rose to face level and
flashed a light in his eyes.
Now, he thought. Let it be now.
Thak Val Zsing heard a last sound. Ding. Light flared, dwindled
swiftly to black, and then there was nothing at all.
The detonation sent a wave of energy through the room, jolting
Jangotat's nervous system. The little blue crackles rippling over his
body died out, shaking him out of paralysis. Groggily, he checked his
leg: broken, punctuated with shrapnel. A few bits of cloth told him
what had happened to his companion.
So. No coward after all, Thak Val Zsing.
The JK was spattered with blood and dust, sooty, but began to
right itself, its case undented. The thing was indestructible. A mixed
curse: its case had shielded him from the blast.
Jangotat groaned. It was over. There was no hope after a l l . . .
But then the JK began to thrash about. As Jangotat watched in
stunned amazement, it pushed itself upright, then fell over, then spun
in a circle, stood, and shook, making an ear-grating keening sound.
And suddenly Jangotat guessed the truth. What a great joke! The
best ever. He could only hope that he could tell it to someone, that
his companions might one day laugh at the big freaking joke the
whole business on Cestus had become. Jangotat laughed hysterically
as he took a painful glance over at the bunker door. Nothing. The
Five Family executives were sealed safely inside.
No one is safe, he snarled. Time for a little lesson.
Would this be right? Wrong? These people had sentenced an entire
planet to death, and there was no one to stop them.
The JK ignored him, running back and forth and then banging itself
into a corner, shuddering and bumping back and forth.
Jangotat thought that that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.
He managed to drag himself over to the shelter door, wedging it
shut with the blaster rifle. There. The weapon was good for something
after all.
Now he couldn't get in, but neither could they escape.
Pain fogged his mind. What were the coordinates? He couldn't
remember. What a joke. What an enormous joke. Then he remembered:
why, the coordinates were him. He was the coordinate.
He fished for his comlink and pulled it out. . . smashed and useless.
Then he began laughing at himself again. This was a fully stocked
shelter, from which the Five Families had evidently thought to ride
out any revolt or attack. Their own communications gear would work
just fine.
On board the Nexu, the communications tech, a veteran named
CT-9/85, detected a signal. "Sir," he said to the officer in charge. "We
have an ARC targeting code coming in over the radio, priority frequency."
Commander Baraka crossed to the comm station, face suddenly
intent. "And the message?"
"To change initial bombardment coordinates to . . . somewhere a
little east of Kibo Lake. Then to stand by for further instructions."
"Does this look legitimate?"
"One hundred percent. Trooper's calling the load in right on top of
himself. Can't get more serious than that."
Baraka snorted his discomfort. What kind of brainless machines
were these creatures? "What is that location?"
"We show it as a blip on the power grid. Might be some kind of secret
base."
"Then let's get on with it," Baraka said, and gave the order.
Jangotat lay half across one of the chairs in the atrium, his shattered
leg splaying out to the side. He busied himself with another
message for ten minutes, and hit the transmission button just seconds
before the bunker began to hum and shake.
The entire time Jangotat waited, he was surprised to find himself
humming a tune.
One, one, chitliks basking in the sun.
Two, two, chitlik kista in the stew.
Three, three, leave a little bit for me...
What was the name of that tune? When had he learned it? Oh,
yes: he remembered that he had heard Tarl and Mithail and sweet little
Tonote singing it, in the Zantay Hills. He hoped they would be
safe.
The next explosion was shattering, and very close.
"From water we're born, in fire we die," he whispered. "We seed
the stars."
77
Moments after the Nexu released the full fury of her primary energy
weapons, the dome above the mysterious target had become a
flame-scarred concavity. The groundquake fault that should have destroyed
Clandes instead sent a minor tremor throughout the Kibo
Plateau. There were no fatalities and few injuries, although the shock
was measured as far south as Barrens. In Clandes a few walls cracked
and alarms sounded citywide. To the north, toward ChikatLik, there
was another, more immediate effect.
The underground lake's surface reflected flashes of red and yellow
lightning as the energy field confining Obi-Wan and Kit Fisto lessened
for an instant. He felt pain and fire as he lunged through, his
lightsaber absorbing enough of the energy to keep the shield from
frying him. It snapped back on swiftly enough to singe Kit's left heel
as the Nautolan jumped free.
The protocol droid barked an order, and all of Ventress's allies laid
their weapons down.
"Surely they're not surrendering," Kit said.
Ventress laughed. "By no means. I told them they don't stand a
chance against you with blasters."
"And . . . "
"And now," she said, "defend yourselves, Jedi."
The young X'Ting thugs moved in. Obi-Wan groaned. He couldn't
simply cut them down. Young and foolish, they believed they were
acting for the good of the hive.
"I know what you're thinking," Ventress grinned. "You wish you
could talk to them. A pity you don't speak X'Ting."
"Obi-Wan?" Kit asked.
"Well, we can't just slaughter them."
No.. ? Kit seemed to want to ask. "They're hardly innocent." The
Nautolan radiated urgency, the pull of Form I strong as he prepared
for battle. Ventress was the key. They had to stop her. And if these
idiots put themselves between them and Dooku's minion, the
woman who might be the salvation of millions, that was their misfortune.
But... it would be a massacre. Obi-Wan searched his conscience,
and made a hard decision. "We must do this without our lightsabers."
Kit seemed to struggle with the idea, and then finally sighed. "A bit
of exercise, then," he said, and reluctantly extinguished his blade.
Obi-Wan dampened his as well, and as if on cue, Ventress's foolish
young X'Ting allies attacked from every angle. Obi-Wan leaned
away from the swipe of a durasteel crowbar, the edge of his foot
cracking the X'Ting's knee as he did. A second youth jumped on him
from behind. Obi-Wan gripped a primary right hand, a secondary
left hand, and torqued: The X'Ting corkscrewed through the air and
shattered a pile of boxes.
techniques. His attack was absolute fluidity, one motion flowing into
the next without a wasted effort. Heads cracked, limbs twisted
against their joints, and X'Ting flipped howling into the lake.
Ventress stood back, her eyes watching, and Obi-Wan knew she
was waiting, learning about her opponents.
The cavern was awash with whirling bodies. These were lackeys,
and Ventress would sacrifice every one of them to learn what she
wished to know. She knew the Jedi wouldn't just cut them down. She
was watching, and studying, and saving the moment for herself.
The Jedi's unarmed tactics would reveal their lightsaber technique:
there was nothing they could do to prevent it.
Obi-Wan's opponents had enthusiasm, but little technique. The
Force blossomed within him, and time perception distended, slowing
reality to a crawl. He had all the time he needed to slide out of the
way of the blows, retaliating with perfect economy.
From the corner of his eye he saw that Kit had made his way almost
to Ventress, and what he saw as the Nautolan increased his efforts
almost broke Obi-Wan's concentration. His companion was a
living, martial hurricane, his body moving in two and three directions
at once, joints flexing, unlimited by human vertebral restraints.
Who he touched went down. And those who went down, stayed
down. Ventress might have gathered a rabble, but the youthful X'Ting
were fearless, and fought as if for their lives.
Such an onslaught left no time for thought or planning, no room
for pretty moves. There was only attack and defense, and precious little
time for defense.
Obi-Wan himself could only attack and attack, taking the battle
to
them, creating his own timing and distancing, smashing his way
toward Ventress.
Stingers bared, the young X'Ting came at them in waves. Obi-
Wan calmed himself, using them as shields against each other, moving
continuously and ferociously as he went.
Now . . . a blow from the upper left quadrant. Obi-Wan was just a
hair slow defending there, and a wicked knife slit his cloak. Again
and again, he narrowly skirted disaster. She's watching? Obi-Wan
thought. Let her.
Obi-Wan missed the moment, but Kit finally won his way through
to Ventress. She raised her hand, and the X'Ting who had harried the
Nautolan turned to attack Obi-Wan, leaving her to face Kit alone.
Now, finally, Kit drew his lightsaber. Ventress drew a pair of blazing,
red blades. She inclined her head, breathing more quickly, lips
curling into a smile.
"Finally," she said.
"Your pleasure," Kit hissed, and went at her. He was like fire, Ventress
like smoke. The dance had substance but not form, a blur of
light that seemed impossibly fast, unbelievably deadly. The two leapt
and swerved, collided and bounced away. Single against double lightblades.
Hands, knees, feet, all in a mind-numbing blur.
Obi-Wan would have given his right hand to join. Or even to
watch such a display. But he had his own worries, his own battle
to fight.
He struggled with the urge to simply draw his lightsaber and
slaughter the X'Ting. His enemies came on and on, struck quickly
but clumsily, got in each other's way. Obi-Wan was direct in attack,
and as elusive as a breeze.
He'd missed the engagement, but suddenly—Kit was down!
Wounded and groggy from a kick in the jaw, for the first time Ventress
had pierced his guard. Her left-hand saber sliced his arm but as
sparks flew he dove away from her left blade, leaning into a glancing
blow from her right.
Obi-Wan heard the scream but couldn't see the wound's severity.
Kit rolled as Ventress came at him, splashing down into the lake.
Ventress stood on the dock smiling hugely, arms and legs spread in
triumph, laughing in that arctic voice.
The Jedi tore his way through the X'Ting, breaking arms and legs
as he went, then drew his lightsaber.
"This is between me and Ventress," he screamed. Enough of this
play! "Anyone who stands between us, dies. Translate it, Ventress!"