Across the end of one sofa lay what appeared to be a Wookiee, but it was flat, deflated, as if the creature’s bones and organs had been removed, leaving only skin behind. At the round table sat a slightly oversized silver protocol droid with a human head, a thruster-pack-wearing clone trooper of six decades before, his helmet on the floor beside him, and a berobed female with the gray hands of a Neimoidian but the face of an elderly human female. A Neimoidian face, noseless and gray, as deflated as the body of the Wookiee, lay on the table beside her. A circular card-dealer droid scuttled around crab-like on the tabletop, and young, fit men and women dressed in dark garments were positioned along the walls. All looked up as the Emperor and his undead companion entered.
The Emperor gestured as if preparing to launch Force lightning. “Upon pain of death … deal me in.”
The human/Neimodian clapped her hands together and beamed. “What a marvelous impersonation. Why have you never done this before, at social events?”
The Emperor shrugged. When he spoke again, it was in his own rich, mellow tones, not the Emperor’s curdled voice. “One must be in the correct crowd to amuse with that impersonation, my dear Senator Treen.” He glanced sideways at the headless Gamorrean, who bowed, then walked—cheekily, still in character, with a bounce to his stride accentuated by the foam suit he wore—to the wall, taking up a proper bodyguard’s station there.
The Emperor took an empty seat, then reached up to peel his face off. He set the Emperor mask beside Treen’s Neimoidian face. “That’s a relief.”
The protocol droid, Senator Bramsin, gave him a sympathetic look. “I know what you mean. I couldn’t wait to get that monstrous mask off.” He glanced at the clone trooper. “It must be hard for you.”
The trooper shook his head. “Built-in cooling system. But it’s hard to sit and even harder to stand up.”
Bramsin nodded. “I now understand why I’ve never seen a protocol droid sitting down.”
Senator Treen looked between the Emperor and the clone trooper. “Moff Lecersen, allow me to present you General Jaxton, Galactic Alliance Starfighter Command.”
“We haven’t met, but I recognized the general from the news, of course.”
Jaxton gave Lecersen a little sand-panther-ish grin. “And from intelligence briefings, I would imagine.”
Lecersen resumed Palpatine’s oily tones for just a moment. “Such things are not spoken of.”
The card droid flipped three cards, thoop-thoop-thoop, facedown to land neatly before Lecersen. The cards bore the emblem of the Empire on their backs. He smiled; how fitting. He picked them up and looked at their faces, surprised to discover that they were playing Chambers instead of sabacc. He held the Red Courtesan, Blue Destroyer Droid, and Red Imperial Guardsman.
Treen glanced at her cards with affected disinterest. “Fifty.”
In silver letters, the words FIFTY THOUSAND CREDITS appeared on the tabletop before her, indicating her bet.
Jaxton glowered at her. “Some of us are public servants, you know.”
“Oh, yes. Rescale stakes for the armed services, please.”
The words before her changed to FIFTY CREDITS.
Lecersen set his cards down. “Match.” The same bet appeared on the table before him. “So now I understand why this casino has had regular costume nights for so long.”
Treen nodded. “Actually, I established costume nights years before ever hosting a meeting here, but with an eye toward this sort of gathering.”
Jaxton, around the table to Lecersen’s right, pushed his cards together as if closing a fan. He was clearly thinking hard.
Lecersen was amused. The ancient Imperial game was probably new to Jaxton, who doubtless wished he were holding cards from a children’s deck, which would have all the values printed on them.
Finally Jaxton shrugged. “Match.” The words representing the bet appeared on the table in front of him.
Bramsin, around the table to his right, rolled his eyes. “Hundred. So, what news?” His bet appeared on the table.
Treen did not bother looking at her cards again. “Match.”
Then it was Lecersen’s turn. “Match.”
“Match.” Jaxton offered a slight expression of disapproval. “I’m afraid that Admiral Bwua’tu is not proving as amenable as we had hoped.”
Treen tossed out a card, the Red Clone Trooper Captain. “We always knew that his quirky personal ethics might make it difficult.”
Lecersen tossed the Red Imperial Guardsman beside it.
Chambers was based on that most ancient of children’s questions, “If so-and-so fought so-and-so, who would win?” A card tossed out by a player was presumed to meet with the card to its left in a private chamber, with the stronger card winning the presumed combat. But complicating the comparisons were choices of categories—Strength, Will, and Chance—and card colors, with blue trumping white, red trumping blue, and black trumping red. So Lecersen was in a superior position to Treen.
Jaxton hesitated, then threw out the White Clone Trooper Private, among the lowest-powered cards in the deck. “Well, it’s more than that. My psychological warfare officer, who is doing analysis on Bwua’tu’s mental profile based on the assumption that he’s evaluating a captain of industry in the Corporate Sector—”
Lecersen snorted.
“—sees a pattern of loyalty to Daala that goes beyond the professional.”
Bramsin set down a White Imperial Guardsman. It easily trumped the White Clone Trooper Private but did not trump Lecersen’s card.
The dealer droid collected the four played cards. Its voice was the whisper of a quiet sports commentator. “Current hand, Round One. Two kills each to Lecersen and Bramsin. Please adjust bets.”
“Stand fast.” Treen fiddled with her cards as if nervous, which Lecersen knew she was not. “Bwua’tu remains your objective, General. What is your next step?”
Lecersen, in line to bet, interrupted. “Stand fast.”
“Raise to two hundred.” Jaxton looked unconcerned. “Time is substantially on our side. I’m continuing to make our choice for the next head of the navy into a combination of Thrawn and Mon Mothma in the public eye, and to determine what influences might cause Bwua’tu to resign. Sadly, he does not seem the sort for early retirement.”
Bramsin seemed unworried. “Stand fast.”
Treen nodded. “Stand fast on two hundred.”
Lecersen stood fast as well. One more revelation of cards later, Treen had one kill, Lecersen one more.
On the third and final round of the hand, Treen raised the stakes to a thousand. The others matched. The Kuati Senator then tossed out the Blue Vizier, a powerful card. “And what if he can resist your efforts to retire him?”
Lecersen smiled and tossed out the Red Courtesan, whose Will value exceeded that of the Vizier.
“We’ll find someone to kill him, of course.” Jaxton played the Black Emperor, which trumped everything.
Bramsin offered a little sigh of vexation. He tossed out his card facedown, admitting that it could trump neither Jaxton’s nor Treen’s.
The dealer droid collected the cards. “One kill to Lecersen. Two kills to Jaxton, plus ten for a clean hand sweep. Final results for the hand, Treen one, Lecersen four, Jaxton twelve, Bramsin two. Launch proceeds to Lecersen.”
Jaxton looked appreciative as the bet values blanked before the other players and his adjusted to FOUR THOUSAND CREDITS. He smiled at the others. “You shouldn’t underestimate the new boy.”
JEDI HILL CAMP, DATHOMIR
IN THE DEAD HOUR OF THE NIGHT BEN SKYWALKER LAY AWAKE IN HIS bedroll, in one of the lengthy waking spells he’d experienced between short bouts of sleeping. He could have slept well despite the discomfort of thin bedding over hard stone, could have meditated himself to peacefulness despite the danger they were in. But part of him wanted to be alert, awake for any change.
And so he was when the trickle of dark side Force energy passed overhead.
It
was a strange sensation. He visualized it as if someone held the end of a ball of yarn and threw the ball itself across the room, there to be caught by a friend, stretching a single strand of yarn between them. But here the yarn was Force energy far above his head, and it hung in the sky, unseen.
Ben rose noiselessly and stared up after it. He saw only stars, a brilliant sea of them, a vista you could only get somewhere hundreds of kilometers from cities and lights.
There was noise near him. He saw a woman rising, staring up as he had done. He could also feel her, strong and distinctive in the Force—Kaminne.
He returned his attention to the sky. He kept his voice quiet, barely more than a whisper. “Any idea what that is?”
“The start of a spell known as a control web. Known by some Witches as the Crawler’s Perch, by others as the Guiding Net.”
“What does it do?”
“It allows firm and difficult-to-interrupt control of animals over a broad area.”
“Of course.”
“They would have used one like it with the sparkflies. But this one is stronger, meaning that the animals they will send have stronger wills. They—”
She broke off as Ben felt another thread of Force energy pass overhead. The first one had moved southwest to northeast; this one moved southeast to northwest.
Kaminne offered a vexed sigh. “They are building it fast. There is no subtlety here as with the sparkflies, just speed. I’m going to rouse the camp.” She turned and, with her toe, prodded at the dark shape of the woman sleeping nearest her.
Ben moved over to the southwest lip and looked down to where his father should be. He could not see Luke, but could feel him there, awake, alert.
In minutes, dozens more Force threads had passed overhead and the warriors and Witches of the two clans had been awakened. Now no new threads were being added, but Ben could feel the web of energy slowly descending, like an almost weightless net sinking through thick liquid.
Torches and glow rods were springing to gleaming life all over the hilltop. Ben noted that, though he was ostensibly owner of the encampment, the clan members turned to their individual clan leaders for orders. Tasander situated his warriors, spears forward and bows and blasters behind, as a wedge at the center of the southwestern slope. Kaminne split her force into two units and set up one unit, warriors ahead and Witches behind, to either side of Tasander’s wedge. Reinforcements and nonfighters stayed to the center of the camp.
And nothing happened. There was no noise at all from the woods surrounding the hill; insect noises had ceased altogether. Now a murmur, increasingly nervous, sprang up from the Dathomiri.
Ben reached a conclusion and sprang up atop a rock. “Your attention.”
The Dathomiri turned to look at him.
“What’s happening now is what the Empire and Alliance call psychological warfare. Why don’t they attack? you ask. Because they want you to get more and more nervous. They want your nerves to break. Are you going to let them do that?”
“Never.” The voice was Drola’s.
Others repeated his word. Drola’s voice rose above theirs. “Cowards hide and wait. Warriors laugh at them.” And he began to laugh, a forced and unnatural laugh.
More joined in, women as well as men, and the laughter rose. Ben imagined it flowing down the hillside and into the surrounding trees.
He hopped down from his boulder and found Dyon beside him.
“Good thinking, Jedi.”
Ben shrugged. “My cousin became a master at psychological warfare.”
“Your cous—oh.”
Ben felt a twitch from overhead, as if a giant spider made of Force energy had stepped onto its web. Then, from the southwest, he heard a thum-thum-thum of footsteps—huge, heavy footsteps.
Down below, in the starlight and moonlight, three humanoid shapes broke free of the tree line and moved toward the hill at a run, a pace whose speed no human short of a Jedi could match.
Rancors.
“Bows, blasters, fire at will!” That was Tasander. “Spears, brace yourselves!” Kaminne was shouting similar orders to her warriors and Witches.
Far below, halfway between ground level and hilltop, a short line of green light gleamed into life—Luke’s lightsaber.
Ben got his own lightsaber into hand, but held off from joining the spear line. Much as he wanted to be there to help resist the initial shock of the rancors’ impact, he also knew that he’d be far more valuable plugging up the line if and where it began to fail.
From pockets in his vest, Dyon drew matching blaster pistols, small ones. He stood ready for the first rancor to top the crest of the hill ahead.
The imaginary Force spider took another step. Threads of Force energy were being depressed. Ben swore to himself, not wanting to be distracted from the events playing out below.
The rancors reached the bottom of the slope and hurtled upward, half running and half climbing, their pace barely slowed by the change in angle. As the rancors reached the halfway point, Ben saw his father’s lightsaber swing with shooting-star speed. Then it disappeared as the central rancor’s body interposed between Ben and Luke—but suddenly that central rancor was howling in rage and pain, climbing more slowly or not at all, being left behind by the other two.
Blasterfire and unseen bowfire rained down on the rancors. It illuminated them in brief glints of light but did not seem to slow them at all.
And suddenly they were at the crest, two of them, roaring. At first only their hands and heads were visible, then they heaved up, their waists at the hilltop.
The Broken Columns spearmen in the center and the Raining Leaves spearwomen to the sides surged forward, driving steel-headed weapons and improvised stakes into the bodies of the rancors. But the beasts continued forward and a second later both stood towering over the warriors.
And Ben could feel where those other Force threads were being tugged. He tore his attention away from the rancors and glanced at the opposite side.
Dyon aimed a blaster at the rightmost rancor. Ben caught his wrist and pushed it down again. He turned toward the fight. “Attack from the rear!”
No one heard. He put some Force energy into it. “Attack from the rear, reinforcements to the rear!”
Some heads turned, but in the tumult and confusion, no one responded.
Well, at least he had Dyon’s attention. He gestured toward the northwest slope. “That way!” Then he himself bounced from rocktop to rocktop toward the east slope.
Before he reached it, a rancor heaved itself over the crest, moving as though precisely launched from some ancient artillery piece, and landed before him. It immediately reached for Ben, roaring.
He caromed off his last landing-rock and veered rightward, hitting and rolling across the uneven stone surface, and rose with his lightsaber glowing in his hand.
Now that he was close to a rancor, he could see, even in the dim moonlight, that the beast was swatched in patches of crude hide armor. Such armor provided almost no defense against a lightsaber’s energy, but the rancors already had bones and muscles thick enough to make them hard to hurt. Ben slashed out at the beast’s knee, splitting thick hide and skin, doubtless cutting into the kneecap, but the rancor merely howled and swept an arm before it. Ben leapt above his arm and the blow missed, but it filled the air with flying stones and camp goods. Something metallic rebounded from his skull with a deep clank. Sudden dizziness spoiled his acrobatic flip and he under-rotated, coming down hard on his heels, falling awkwardly onto his backside.
And there was that hand, reaching for him again. He rolled to one side, realized belatedly that his lightsaber was gone. The rancor’s hand plowed through a tent beside the spot he’d just been sitting. He did a backward handstand and came up on his feet, shaking his head to clear the dizziness.
Ah, there was his lightsaber, still lit. The blade had fallen upon a leather tent and cut its way through the material. Ben gestured and the weapon flew into his hand.
The ran
cor took two steps and was in reach of him again. It lunged. Ben leapt forward, somersaulting between its legs, and stood out of the roll at the very crest of the hill. He turned to face his opponent.
It spun and lunged again. Ben skipped along the ridge of rocks along the crest, and it pivoted. Then he reversed directions, somersaulted past it, and lashed out at the back of its already injured knee.
He connected, a good slash. He couldn’t tell if he’d hamstrung the beast, but as he rose he knew he’d succeeded at his objective. The rancor flailed and fell, toppling over the crest of the hill.
Ben watched it go. It rolled, crashing into outcropping after outcropping on its way down, creating a miniature stone avalanche. Then it hit the ground, rocks from the avalanche pouring down atop it.
Even then, it was not still. It rolled away from the stone downpour and struggled to its feet. Then it began limping back toward the trees.
Ben turned and found Dyon.
Dyon might not have been a Jedi, but he possessed the acrobatic ability of one. He leapt, he rolled, he spun, he rebounded, all the while firing into his rancor’s chest and limbs and face with his small, underpowered blasters. The constant stream of fire from his weapons looked like energy from a blaster battery in miniature.
But that rancor did not fall and did not seem slowed, for all that its face and armored body were peppered with spots of char.
Still, it was slightly off-balance. Dyon executed a beautiful leap, a flying side kick that caught the rancor in the temple just as it was leaning slightly out over the far crest of the hill. Dyon bounced off from the impact and landed hard, rolling away from the rancor in an effort to stay out of its reach. The rancor wobbled but did not fall. Ben leapt in that direction, knowing he could not reach the beast before it regained its balance.
Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 23
