Yoda, Dark Rendezvous

by Sean Stewart

"I didn't get scrapped. Though I suppose you could say I lost my job." Solis

  indicated a flight of stairs, and together they started up. "We were both built

  as servant droids, Fidelis and I."

  "A gentleman's personal gentlething," Scout said, grinning. "Whie told us."

  "Just so. We were initially programmed to perform quite a wide range of . . .

  household duties. Makers of sentient property have typically found that if one

  has an intelligent model, equips it with a wide spectrum of skills and

  abilities, and sends it off into the world in a role requiring some foresight

  and initiative—if, in effect, one allows it to live—the property has a

  disconcerting habit of developing a personality and opinions of its own."

  Scout couldn't be sure if that comment was supposed to be ironic.

  "In our case, therefore, the bedrock of our programming was loyalty—a loyalty

  to our purchaser that was absolutely hardwired."

  "Only the loyalty didn't run both ways," Scout said. "Since I guess your

  family let you go."

  "In a manner of speaking," Solis said, reaching the top of the stairs. "They

  were murdered."

  Scout didn't know what to say.

  "It was a small war. Soldiers had found their way into the house. My family

  intended to use a secret escape passage. My mistress sent me down to the safe

  room to get the family jewels. I said I thought I should stay and cover their

  retreat. My mistress called me a fool and invoked the override. I got the

  jewels. But the family had been betrayed, and the secret passage was not so

  secret. The soldiers caught them and shot them before I returned. By the time I

  got there, everyone was dead. I dropped the jewelry on the bodies and walked

  away."

  A tall, chitinous alien of indeterminate gender jostled Scout, who realized

  she had been standing, transfixed, at the top of the stairs. "Stars," she

  murmured. "What happened to the soldiers? The ones who caught your family?"

  "I don't remember," Solis said blandly.

  Yeah, right, Scout thought. She gulped, wondering exactly how the rest of

  that story had gone. They started walking again, toward the food court, and she

  found herself eyeing the gouges and scuff marks on the droid's metal body,

  wondering how many of them represented ordinary wear and tear, and how many more

  might have come from blasterfire, or needlers, or vibroblades.

  "Fidelis still has a family, but other than that you're pretty much the

  same?"

  "Not at all. My family was killed more than two hundred standard years ago.

  If you had a twin sister—and you might, you know—how different might her life

  have already become from yours, in just a decade?"

  "Two hundred years?" Scout said, goggling. "How old are you?"

  "Younger than your artoo," he said, with an uncomfortably penetrating glance.

  Scout felt suitably quelled, and not a little uneasy.

  They came to the little circle of tables in the food court area. Whie, who

  was supposed to be off using the refresher, was instead sitting at a table with

  Fidelis, head down, listening intently. "Hey!" Scout said. "What are you doing

  here?"

  Whie jerked around with a guilty start. "None of your business," he said.

  "Talking. It's allowed."

  "None of my business? Did I just hear that come out of Saint Whie's mouth? It

  surely is my business if I catch you consorting with strangers and lying about

  it. Or have you forgotten who your real family is?" she said tight-lipped,

  jerking her head down at the concourse below, where Jai was laboriously counting

  out credits for their tickets to Vjun.

  "From where I sit, it looks like we are consorting to the same degree," Whie

  said, getting himself back under control.

  A funny sort of control, though: still angry and defensive. As quick as Scout

  could be to take offense, something about the whole situation was so strange she

  couldn’t maintain the thread of her anger. "What is up with you today?" she

  said, genuinely puzzled. "You've been weird all day. I didn't mean to rattle

  your cage—to tell the truth, I didn't even know you could get rattled. I was

  just surprised, that's all. What's going on?"

  "You're late," Fidelis said to Solis.

  The unpainted droid shrugged. Late? Scout thought. Late for what?

  A small platoon of armed Phindians in blue-and-white uniforms jogged into the

  food court carrying blaster rifles and grim expressions. The captain, a

  hard-faced Phindian with a rank badge on his shoulder, was the only one whose

  rifle was still slung on his back. "Stay perfectly calm," he announced to the

  staring diners. "I am Major Quecks, Phindar Spaceport SPCB. We have received a

  report of an extremely dangerous unlicensed droid on station," he said, looking

  at Fidelis. "Make, model, and serial number, please."

  "Master?" Fidelis said, looking to Whie.

  Whie goggled.

  "Are you the owner of this droid?" the captain said sharply.

  "Yes," Fidelis said.

  "No!" Whie said. "What is going on? Who are you?"

  "Sentient Property Crime Bureau, Tactical Squad," Solis remarked. "Carrying

  regulation blasters and neural-net erasers." The attention of the Tactical Squad

  swung around and fixed on the battered, unpainted droid.

  "This one's with me," Scout said.

  "That remains to be determined. Are either of you carrying any weapons?"

  Major Quecks asked Whie.

  Don't look at me, Scout thought, knowing he was about to. Don't look around,

  just lie.

  Whie looked at her. "Scout?"

  "You remembered to check your blaster cannon, didn't you, bro?"

  "I love your sense of humor" Quecks remarked. "Those of us in security love

  jokes about blaster cannons from juvenile aliens traveling with dangerous

  droids. It's our favorite thing in the world."

  His soldiers gripped their rifles more tightly.

  Scout made eye contact with the major and summoned the Force as best she

  could. "No, we aren't carrying any weapons. Are we, Whie?"

  Whie's eyes widened, and he followed her lead. "Nosir. We're just kids," he

  explained—and even Scout, who knew perfectly well that she had a lightsaber

  hidden under her cloak, felt how absurd it was that the major should be bullying

  two such obviously innocent children. The eight soldiers behind him looked

  around and lowered their guns.

  The Phindian slowly relaxed. His arms were so long that his hands, hanging at

  his side, nearly brushed his ankles. "Very good, then. Remain seated at this

  table with the droids, please, until we sound the all-clear."

  In the middle of the major's last sentence, Fidelis cocked his head to one

  side, as if listening for something. An instant later Solis did the same thing.

  "What?" Scout said urgently. "What's going on?"

  "The thing about spaceport security," Solis remarked, "is that it's designed

  to keep passengers from getting to ship personnel." Now even Scout could hear

  distant blasterfire, and smell the lightning-burn of ozone in the air. "As

  opposed to the other way around," the droid finished.

  In a whirling blur of metal and high-tech ceramic, a platoon of battle droids

  came spinning down the corridors from the boarding area, ble
w through the

  security lines, and unpacked into full combat readiness with a deployed arsenal

  of blades, blasters, flechette launchers, and weapons Scout didn't even

  recognize. The droids themselves were half again as big as a human, built like

  sharpened exoskeletons, their lean hatchet-faced heads swept back to a scything

  point. The fluorescent spaceport lights glittered off every lethal surface.

  The mixed throng of native Phindians and traveling galactics just passing

  through the spaceport stood for a long moment, transfixed, staring at all the

  hardware of death that had opened suddenly on them. A series of tinny beeps

  broke the eerie silence. "Look at that," Solis observed dryly. "They've set off

  the metal detectors."

  Then mayhem broke loose.

  Twin blades of light appeared as Master Maruk and Master Leem swept out their

  lightsabers, ready to deflect the battle droids' blaster bolts. So much for

  disguise, Jai Maruk thought. "DO NOT PANIC," he bellowed, drawing the Force into

  his voice so it lashed out in a tone of absolute command. Right now, the

  civilians could be as dangerous to themselves as could the battle droids,

  depending on exactly what this little welcoming party was here for. A Dooku

  double cross, or just plain bad luck? "KEEP DOWN AND HEAD FOR THE EXITS."

  The terrified throng, held in some semblance of order by the force of his

  will, bent low and hurried like spider-roaches for the sides of the big main

  gallery, disappearing into duty-free gift shops, running for the turbolifts, or

  crushing into the refresher stations, searching for someplace to hide.

  Six of the battle droids flanked out, knocking bodies out of their way, to

  take up crossfire positions on him and Master Leem. "Ohma-D'un super battle

  droids?" she asked.

  Jai Maruk shook his head. "Confederacy assassin droids," he bellowed,

  shouting to be heard over the din. He recognized them from Anakin Skywalker's

  report on his mission to Jabiim. Anakin's foes had featured fairly generic

  armament—usually one handheld blaster and a shoulder-mounted backup. This squad

  had a much more eclectic array of weapons—aside from their built-in blasters, he

  could see a couple of flechette launchers, sonic grenades, two flamethrowers,

  even two fat, hollow tubes that he was pretty sure were tactical tractor beam

  prototypes.

  A custom outfitting job. Pretty much the stuff you might equip your battle

  droids with if you knew you were hunting Jedi and had heard they were good at

  deflecting blaster bolts, Jai thought grimly.

  Two of the assassin droids held up and triggered what looked like small

  antenna dishes, no bigger than dinner plates. Sudden thunder burst in Jai's

  skull—a keening explosion of sound, agonizingly loud, blew out his eardrums and

  dropped him to his knees. The noise was stupefying—loud enough to knock over the

  little R2unit; so loud the sheer sonic assault hit Jai like an iron bar in the

  face. Maks Leem dropped her lightsaber. Her mouth was open and she was probably

  screaming, but Jai couldn't hear it. He suspected he wasn't going to be able to

  hear anything for a very long time.

  Focus.

  He couldn't think. His head was coming apart in plates, the bones of his

  skull rattling like dropped china. Hard-sound guns—he'd read reports about them,

  but nothing had prepared him.

  Something wet on his neck. Blood. Blood was pouring from his earholes.

  Focus.

  A crackle of energy passed between him and Maks Leem as the tactical tractor

  beam smacked the R2 unit into the air like a tin can blasted by a slugthrower

  bullet. Then the beam steadied and slammed hard to the floor, the R2 can clamped

  tight in an electromagnetic vise.

  The droids knew Master Yoda was in there.

  They were hunting him down.

  Beside Jai, Master Leem held out her hand. Her lips were pulled back over her

  long, narrow jaw in a grimace of concentration. Her lightsaber flew into her

  hand. With one swing she cut the head off one of the little metal poles that

  held the line-divider ribbons. The chunk of metal went spinning into the air.

  The Gran grabbed it in her other hand, spun, and hurled it through one of the

  two hard-noise projector dishes. It exploded in a shower of sparks.

  Jai couldn't actually tell if the other one was still making noise. It was as

  if the auditory section of his brain had blown a fuse—everything happening fast,

  but soundlessly. Finally the rattling feeling inside his skull subsided, and he

  managed to find a still point, an almost peaceful center to the maelstrom. A

  lifetime of training took over, and he was running, leaping, twisting in the air

  through a slicing hail of flechettes that opened a dozens cuts on his body.

  Everything crystal clear and soundless, as if it were happening behind

  transparisteel. Curiously impersonal now: the last battle of his life.

  He dropped in front of the droid with the second hard-sound projector, and

  his lightsaber carved it into smoking ruin.

  The terminal was a pandemonium of screams and shouts. The crowd, seeing Jai

  drop to his knees with blood streaming from his ears, had lost its tenuous sense

  of order, and people were now scrambling witlessly through the spaceport

  concourse like mermyns running from a burning nest.

  Up on the second level by the food court, Scout tore her eyes away from the

  madhouse and started thinking again. "Hey, Major!" she yelled at the SPCB

  commander. "That looks like some pretty dangerous Sentient Property down there.

  Start shooting!"

  The men looked uncertainly at the indecisive Major Quecks. One SPCB trooper

  raised his blaster rifle and sighted down into the main concourse. A Confederacy

  assassin droid looked up, and half a second later the SPCB trooper toppled

  forward with a burn crater where his face had been.

  Major Quecks stared at the body. "That's it," he said unsteadily. He drew the

  neural-net eraser from his sideholster and covered Solis and Fidelis with a

  shaking hand. "Take these units into custody and retreat until reinforcements

  arrive."

  "That sounds like a good idea," Solis said. "Except for the first part."

  There was a brief blur of motion, inconceivably fast, like a repeating blaster

  striking, and suddenly the major was looking from the broken fingers of his

  right hand to the neural-net eraser now in Solis's comfortable grip. "Do you

  want to live?" the droid asked.

  "Y-y-yes!"

  "Me, too," the droid said, and he crushed the weapon into scrap. It wasn't a

  slow squeeze, metal buckling and shrieking. It was instant and effortless, as if

  the eraser had fallen under the gigantic footpads of an AT-PT transport.

  The SPCB troops broke and ran.

  Another troop of assassin droids came down the walkway from the docking

  terminals. A few little sirens and blinking lights saluted them as they passed

  through the spaceport metal detectors in two groups of four. Between them paced

  a lithe bald woman with a tattooed skull. She was smiling as she came. It was

  not a pretty smile.

  The eighteen assassin droids—the full complement that Last Call could carry

  in her outboard crèches—
now split into four distinct groups. Four of the

  newcomers stayed with Asajj. Four others peeled off and headed upstairs to

  secure the food court area. Five were closely engaged with the two Jedi, where

  the one Jai had taken down lay in a heap of smoking metal. Two were operating

  the tactical tractor beam, holding the R2 unit pinned to the floor a safe

  distance away, while two others approached just close enough to pitch sonic

  grenades to within centimeters of the droid's casing. The grenades went off with

  a churning, concussive vibration that buckled the floor underneath the R2 and

  made its casing writhe and ripple.

  There was something anticlimactic about the business, Ventress felt. Part of

  her would far rather have taken on the old Jedi: Asajj Ventress and Master Yoda,

  lightsaber-to-lightsaber, winner take all. But Dooku, though an elegant man with

  a profound sense of the aesthetic, never confused flair with efficiency, and

  never accepted style in lieu of substance. Killing Yoda was the thing, and if it

  was messy and brutal and somehow perfunctory, it remained far better than giving

  him any chance to stay alive.

  Still, it didn't make the next part especially pleasant. Asajj was not

  squeamish by anyone's standards, but she was not looking forward to seeing what

  a pair of high-decibel sonic grenades would have done to an old body trapped in

  such a metal shell—if indeed the little cripple had survived the opening blast

  of hard sound and subsequent tractor beam smack-around. But it had to be done.

  Flanked by her guard, Asajj approached the R2 unit, drew her twin lightsabers,

  and carved the metal canister opened with a flourish, so it fell slowly into

  pieces, like a flower shedding petals in the breeze.

  It was a fine, dramatic moment, completely spoiled by the fact that the

  canister was empty.

  Asajj blinked. There, where the bottom of the R2 unit should have been, was a

  neat circular hole. Yoda had carved an escape hatch through the floor and

  dropped into the dim ship's parking level below.

  Ventress growled like a sand panther that had missed its kill and slashed

  another ring around Yoda's escape hatch so the assassin droids could fit

  through. "Get down there!" she snarled. The first of her droid commanders

  dropped into the hole feetfirst and disappeared. There was a thump.