The Clone Wars

by Karen Traviss

  “I’m disappointed you feel that way, Lord Jabba.”

  “Well? Convince me. Tell me how you know.”

  He couldn’t. Jabba watched him clasp his hands slowly, and wondered what he might lever out of the Separatists by turning the tables on Dooku.

  “It would be wrong for me to reveal my sources, because it would put my agents at risk, but I have evidence.”

  Jabba stared at Dooku in complete silence. It was a tactic that always worked, sooner or later, and it was less trouble than strapping him to a thermal detonator with a ticking timer.

  Dooku took a visible breath. “Lord Jabba, I have footage from a security holocam on Teth that shows your son being held hostage by Jedi, and . . . I’m sorry, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but the recording also shows that they’re planning to destroy you.”

  Jabba hadn’t been expecting that.

  But Rotta was alive. Now Jabba had some control over the situation again, real hope, the kind that set him thinking what revenge he might exact on the guilty parties—beyond denying them the access they needed. But he had no intention of begging for crumbs.

  “This is an outrage—show me!”

  Dooku held up his hand. “One of my agents is risking her life right now to get your son back from the Jedi. She has the recording and is due to transmit it very soon—a matter of minutes.”

  Jabba leaned on one elbow and disguised the kind of desperate hope and relief that didn’t look at all becoming on a kajidic lord.

  “Then I will wait,” he said. “Minutes.”

  TEN

  General Kenobi, you’re clear to land, Docking Bay Five. Ready to proceed to Teth on your order.

  AIR GROUP CONTROL, Jedi cruiser Spirit of the Republic, Tatooine space

  MONASTERY BUILDING, TETH

  ASAJJ VENTRESS HAD taken some years to fully understand that information was as much a weapon in war as the lightsabers on her belt.

  She understood it fully now as she watched the espionage droid 4A-7 edit the holocam record of events in the Huttlet’s cell.

  “This,” said 4A-7, “is elegant proof of a saying they have at HNE News.”

  “How do you know anything about HoloNet news?”

  “The media are an integral part of intelligence, ma’am, whether they know it or not. Sometimes very helpful, too.”

  “Whether they know it or not . . .”

  “Indeed. Feed them convincing information, and they do our job for free.”

  Ventress studied the recording intently, keeping an eye on the chrono. She didn’t have long to put this evidence together. She knew the sections of hologram she needed, and now it was just a matter of editing them together in such a way that they appeared to be one continuous event. “So what is this saying they have, then?”

  “That every audio receiver is a live audio receiver.” 4A-7 paused the recording and magnified the image; the little Togruta Jedi was frozen with Rotta the Hutt in her arms. “Meaning that you should assume anything you say is being recorded to be used in the most inconvenient way. They catch many unwary Senators that way, I gather. They chatter too candidly when they think the audio recorder is switched off.”

  Ventress suspected that 4A-7 enjoyed his calling. She didn’t feel that her conditioning to want something very badly—justice, a different kind of galaxy, some way of putting her terrible memories to rest—was all that different from whatever lines of code controlled this droid’s motivation. “Any innocent conversation can be edited to look less innocent than it is.”

  “But if the speaker is especially careless . . .” 4A-7’s manipulators moved at lightning speed and tapped codes onto a small keyboard. “See if this is the effect you wanted. If this is satisfactory, I’ll adjust the edit points so that the recording appears seamless. Just a matter of blurring the transitions so that there are no embarrassing jump cuts.”

  Yes, he was as pleased with himself as any droid could be. Ventress watched the edited sequence and understood why.

  Anakin Skywalker and the Togruta child Ahsoka stood outside the cell, seen from an angle just above their heads. The security holocam image had a frame at the bottom with a record of the local time, moving forward by seconds. Skywalker’s tone was surly: “They all smell like that. He’s a Hutt. I hate them . . . we won’t be able to destroy them if we don’t grab his kid.” The two Jedi walked into the cell, disappearing from vision for a moment until the next holocam inside the cell picked them up, with a screaming, obviously terrified baby. The time code had jumped. “Come on. Let’s get him out of here.” The Togruta bent over Rotta and picked him up. Then a clone trooper walked into the cell. “That kriffing Hutt is honking, sir. His dad must need a decomposing nerf as an air freshener. Can we stow him in the cargo bay?” The Togruta put the baby in a military backpack with some difficulty; then Skywalker turned and walked out first, face not visible but voice clearly audible. “Yes, let’s get out before I change my mind.” The holocam angle then switched to the exterior passage again, as the Togruta carried the now immobile baby in the backpack on her shoulders, she was heard saying, “We need you to get your daddy to let us use his space lanes.”

  Ventress had to smile. It was very clever. But then the Jedi had inadvertently given them such wonderful raw material.

  The droid turned his head to focus his photoreceptors on her. “It’s not perfect, but once I fill the timeline gaps with a little image extension, and match up the light and audio levels, it’ll look like one continuous event in real time. I have enough images of Skywalker with his face turned away from the lens to put any audio of his voice over it, suitably spliced. No need to synchronize with lip movement. Then I blur the whole sequence with a little haze from signal interference, insert a bogus time code that makes it look as if nothing has been edited out, and nobody knows the difference.”

  Brilliant. Ventress checked the chrono again. “You’ve got three minutes.”

  “I’ll do it in two,” said 4A-7.

  And he did. His manipulators moved faster than she could follow. She leaned over his shoulder, mesmerized, and she watched reality bent out of shape and remolded into a new and equally convincing record of events.

  Truth was a flexible thing at the best of times. In the hands of technology, though, it became utterly fluid to the point of having no meaning. Truth—reality—was whatever you wanted or needed it to be. She might have been distorting the facts, and that troubled her because she had never thought of herself as dishonest; but if the detail of the event was distorted, the reality for her had not been compromised. The Jedi did the Republic’s bidding, and the Republic was self-serving and corrupt. The larger truth was still true.

  Ventress inspected the short but eloquent holorecording. “Perfect.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Ventress opened her comlink and turned to the holoreceiver. An image of Dooku appeared instantly. He was impatient, waiting, stalling an equally impatient Jabba.

  “I’m transmitting the recording now, my lord.” She didn’t smile. She was long past smiling, and the elation of success had lasted only a moment. It gave way now to grim satisfaction, because no technical skill could edit the past and bring the dead back to life, and all she could do was work for a different future. “It’ll achieve the desired outcome. Stand by.”

  She gestured to 4A-7 to transmit the footage. Then she watched Dooku’s expression as his gaze dropped to the datapad in his hand.

  Dooku wasn’t one of life’s smilers either. His eyebrows twitched, though.

  “Excellent, Asajj,” he said softly. “Mission accomplished. Now you have another.”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Retrieve the Huttlet alive and well. Don’t let Skywalker leave with him.”

  Ventress gave Dooku a stiffly formal nod. “Consider it done, my lord.”

  JABBA’S PALACE, TATOOINE

  “You took your time,” Jabba growled as Dooku swept back into the throne chamber.

  “I wa
nted to be certain, Lord Jabba,” Dooku said. “Even I was surprised by this.”

  He set the holoprojector on the nearest table, and waited a couple of seconds to make sure the weight of what was to unfold hit home. Jabba sat almost alone—no decorative dancers or musicians, or even his menagerie of exotic species that might or might not have been fully sentient, just two Nikto bodyguards.

  The edited evidence flickered to life. Jabba, to his credit, waited until the he’d heard the offending phrase before exploding into fury. The slit pupils of his eyes widened and he bellowed insults and threats that even Dooku’s grasp of Huttese couldn’t fully follow. It was a more complex and vividly expressive language than non-Hutts gave it credit for. By the time Jabba had settled into the more familiar vocabulary of what he would have done with Skywalker had he still been a slave here, and what Jabba would do to him anyway when he finally caught him, and what would happen to any Jedi poodoo who dared enter Hutt space, Dooku was satisfied that a wedge the size of Coruscant had been rammed between Jabba and the Republic.

  “My son!” Jabba slowed into outraged disbelief. “Did you hear his screams? They treated him like an animal!”

  Dooku had wondered if Jabba’s rages were all part of keeping up his image of a dangerous enemy to make—as if that needed emphasis—but he felt no hint of a bravura performance now.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, Lord Jabba, but it was necessary. I’ve taken the liberty of deploying my droid troops and agents to rescue Rotta, and they’re engaging Skywalker’s forces now.”

  “His welfare,” Jabba said, almost hissing with frustration, “is paramount. No mistakes. He must not be harmed.”

  “You have my word.”

  “And?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Lord Jabba.” Dooku didn’t, not for a moment anyway. “And what?”

  “What do you want in exchange for this help? Because it will cost you troops, and nobody does anything in this galaxy for nothing. Even the pious Jedi have a price, as we’ve seen.”

  “Very well, I’ll ask for something that’s of mutual advantage.”

  “How much?”

  Dooku waved away the suggestion. Credits meant nothing. It was what they could buy when it was unbuyable that mattered, and what he wanted was the weight of a galaxy-spanning operation that even the Republic couldn’t shut down when it wanted to.

  “I want your support, Lord Jabba,” Dooku said. He wasn’t going to lie to him—well, not over anything this fundamental. The doctored holorecording was a necessary evil. What he said now was something he believed, and believed in, with every fiber of his being; he was prepared to die for it. He certainly wasn’t in this to grow wealthier. “The galaxy needs to clear house. Support the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Lord Jabba. The Republic’s become a disease, and the Jedi are keeping it in power for their own ends, so help the systems that are breaking away to end that dictatorship once and for all. Because it is a dictatorship. Planets do things the Republic’s way, or not at all. Otherwise, why not just let them cede from the alliance?”

  “Hutt worlds aren’t part of the Republic.” Jabba wasn’t bargaining now, that was clear. It seemed as if he hadn’t seen things that way before. “We’re separate already.”

  “But if the Republic wins this war, and forces unwilling worlds to submit, do you seriously think they’ll leave you alone forever?”

  Jabba’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “You’ll have full access to Hutt space, and the Republic will not. Now get my son back.”

  Dooku bowed and left, following a Nikto guard to the exit. The palace was unnaturally quiet, as if all Jabba’s motley entourage were hiding in their rooms in terrified silence, waiting for his rage to erupt and engulf them. The corridors echoed, and Dooku emerged into the blinding midday of Tatooine’s twin suns.

  “Thank you,” he said to the Nikto. “I can make my own way from here.”

  The sand sucked at Dooku’s boots as he walked to his swoop bike, concealed in a cave in the sandstone cliffs.

  Nearly done. Nearly won. But just one more battle in the longer war.

  He had never expected Jabba to take up arms and rush to the barricades in a frenzy of revolutionary fervor, so simply sowing more seeds of dissent was a bonus. He had what he needed; the Separatist forces would be able to move at will in the Outer Rim, and the Republic would not.

  The one thing he needed to be certain of now was the safe return of the Huttlet.

  After that, he would give consideration to which of his various contingency plans for Jabba’s uncle Ziro he would put into effect.

  Ziro wasn’t going to get the chance to take over Jabba’s empire now, and he’d be disappointed in the emphatic and troublesome way that only a Hutt could. If Ziro had any sense, he’d keep his mouth shut about their deal when he finally found out that his leverage over Jabba was gone.

  Dooku pondered. More convenient surveillance footage showing Ziro arranging to frame me? A tragic accident? A shoot-out with a rival kajidic or Black Sun gang which ends—also tragically—in Ziro’s death?

  There were many ways to make sure Ziro treated the change of plans as a character-forming experience that nobody else ever needed to know about.

  “You would have reneged on our deal in time if the Republic had offered you more,” Dooku said to himself. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Now he’d never know for sure. And he would lose no sleep over that.

  COURTYARD, TETH MONASTERY

  Anakin’s Delta starfighter dropped into the courtyard and R2-D2 hopped out of the astromech housing mounted on the wing. The droid swiveled his dome to focus on Rotta, whistling mournfully.

  “Yeah, he’s not well at all, Artoo.” Anakin peered into the backpack. “But at least we have him. Is General Kenobi on his way?”

  R2-D2 projected a hologram of Kenobi in midair in front of him. “I am,” Kenobi said. “With reinforcements, too. Have you found Jabba’s son?”

  “If holomessaging transmitted smell, you’d know already. Yes, we have him. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “He’s really ill. We need to get him to a specialist medic soon. Hutts just don’t get sick, so this is serious.”

  Kenobi ran his hand over his beard, not in that considered I’m-pondering-mighty-issues way, but fast, as if he was stifling a groan of despair.

  “That’s the last thing we need right now, Anakin.”

  “I think I worked that out, Master. And I’m pretty sure that this is a sting by Dooku. The whole situation stinks worse than the Huttlet.”

  “He’s set us up to alienate Jabba, then. To stop us from getting access to Hutt routes.”

  “I realized something was wrong after I lost half my men in breaching the monastery, and then we were allowed to just stroll in unopposed and get the kid.” The adrenaline had now ebbed enough for Anakin to start wondering how he could have seen this coming and avoided the bait. “I was waiting for the ambush, but maybe this is it—he’s literally left us holding the baby. And it might end up being a dead baby.”

  Kenobi leaned out of the range of his transmitter, looking as if he was checking something. “You think Dooku has poisoned the youngling?”

  “No idea. But the timing and circumstance make me wonder.”

  “Let’s make sure Rotta survives, then.”

  “I’m sorry, Master. Maybe I should have seen this coming. But it was a bad idea to deal with the Hutts. You can never win with them. You can only choose how badly you lose.”

  “Anakin, if we’d refused Jabba’s request for help, we’d never have been granted access to those routes anyway. We had no choice.”

  “You think he’s colluding with Dooku? That he maneuvered us? It was very unlike Jabba to ask for Republic help.”

  “I don’t know, but one thing we can’t do is play into Separatist hands by letting anything happen to the baby. Top priority. We return it in one piece.”

  Ahsoka had been completely silent up to tha
t point, rocking the Huttlet by bouncing a little at the knee as she stood there, but Anakin heard her rumble at the back of her throat. It was an oddly feral noise that made the hair stand up on his nape.

  “Okay, Master,” Anakin said, ignoring her. “Understood. We—oh, great . . .”

  That was as far as he got.

  “Down! Everybody down! Enemy fighters, incoming!”

  The next thing he knew Rex was yelling at everyone to take cover, and Ahsoka was running for the shelter of the monastery doors. Flashes of brilliant light blinded him as he instinctively looked up at the sky. Something rumbled and thundered. It wasn’t a storm; it was a massive Separatist landing ship escorted by at least one squadron of droid vulture fighters. R2-D2 stood his ground, still transmitting Kenobi’s message.

  “Master, we’re under attack. Got to go. And hurry up . . .”

  “Anakin?” Kenobi’s transmission was breaking up. “Anakin!”

  And then it was gone, and the rising whine of a fighter diving to attack sent Anakin scrambling to the monastery wall with R2-D2. Vulture droids swooped. There was no option but to retreat into the monastery.

  “Ahsoka! Are you okay?” Anakin couldn’t see her. A fighter strafed the monastery, ripping up ancient flagstones in a dead straight line and scattering chunks of stone like shrapnel. R2-D2 rolled up beside him. “Talk to me, Snips!”

  “I’m okay, Master.” Her voice came from behind him, muffled by something. She must have had her face buried in the backpack against her chest, shielding Rotta the hard way. For all the sheer terror of the attack, Anakin could think only of the fact that she was inhaling concentrated essence of Hutt. Now, that takes guts. “I’ve got Rotta. I think he’s too sick to notice what’s going on, poor kid.”

  “It’s okay. Keep your head down. And his.” Anakin gestured to the droid. “Artoo, get over there with her.”