The wind had diminished significantly by now. Odie stood. “Sir, follow me!” she said, extending her hand to help him up.
At that instant the world around them exploded.
6
The fight for the Intergalactic Communications Center was fierce but short-lived, and the outcome was never in doubt. The valiant Commander Llanmore and the mixed human and Sluissi soldiers in his battalion knew that the rest of their army, even if it was still fighting and hadn’t already been destroyed, wasn’t able to come to their aid. They knew that now their mission was to delay the capture of the center long enough for Reija Momen and her technicians to destroy the communications equipment. They were only partially successful.
“Stop!” Reija ordered her technicians as the first battle droids burst into the control room. “Don’t resist them. I don’t want any of you killed.” But she couldn’t save them all. Three technicians didn’t hear her command and continued destroying equipment. They died when droids blasted them.
“I think, Mistress, that we are about to become prisoners,” Slith Skael muttered. He stepped in front of Reija to protect her from the advancing droids, while everyone else was raising his or her hands in surrender. With blows and shoving, the droids forced the technicians into the center of the control room and surrounded them, weapons leveled.
Cleaning droids scurried about the bodies of the three technicians, scrubbing at the mess on the floor. One of them, programmed to haul away small amounts of trash, vainly tried to move one of the bodies. Frustrated, it emitted a whirring noise but wouldn’t give up trying. If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, Reija would have found the droid’s attempts highly amusing.
“What next?” someone asked.
“Si-lence!” one of the droids commanded.
“I demand to speak with your commander!” Reija said in a voice of authority. A droid darted around Slith and jabbed the muzzle of its blaster into Reija’s midsection, knocking the wind out of her. Slith spun about and grabbed her in time to keep her from falling. He raised his caudal appendage protectively between Reija and the droid as he cradled her in his arms.
“Si-lence!” the droid repeated.
“Ah, most touching.” A tall, cadaverous figure stepped into the control room. He bowed slightly toward Reija, who stood bent over, gasping in Slith’s arms. “May I introduce myself? I am Admiral Pors Tonith of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, and I am now in charge of this miserable rock.” He bowed again. Pretending diffidence, he brushed some dirt off his cloak. He grinned at Reija, revealing his horribly stained teeth. “I presume, madam, that you are the chief administrator of this facility?” He did not wait for an answer, but signaled the droids to stand back. The room’s quiet was broken by a whirrr, whirrr, whirrr.
“What is that infernal noise?” Tonith looked about the space until he saw the cleaning droid that was making the noise. “Blasted things are always underfoot. Destroy it,” he snapped at one of the battle droids. In a moment, the cleaner was crushed. Components clattered to the floor, and other droids scuttled over to sweep up the debris.
Tonith smiled, shrugged as if settling his cape more comfortably, and reached out for Reija, but Slith hissed and raised his appendage defensively.
“How gallant!” Tonith smirked, but he stepped back quickly. “Oppose me again, you Sluissi garbage, and I will have you killed. Come here, woman!” He pointed to the floor in front of himself.
“General—Khamar—” Reija struggled to get her breath. “G-general Khamar and his forces are not that far away, and he’s coming to—”
Tonith shook his head, pretending sadness. “Alas, no. Your tiny and ineffectual army has been destroyed. Now, come here.”
“Mistress?” Slith asked, reluctant to let her go.
“I’m all right, my friend,” Reija gasped. Slith released her, and she walked unsteadily to stand in front of Tonith. He smiled broadly. She was close enough to smell his breath, which was exceedingly foul. Grinning even wider, Tonith deliberately exhaled in her face.
“I’ve always hated your kind,” Reija gritted. Years before, one of the clan families had helped her father with the mortgage on his farm during a period of bad harvests, but when he couldn’t make the loan repayments on time, they seized his property. All very legal and very unfortunate, but the old man lost his farm. The Momens had had to move to the city, and the loss of his beloved farm had caused Reija’s father to fall into a state of depression that eventually led to his death.
“Oh?” Tonith leaned very close to Reija now. “Love? Hate? Those emotions mean nothing to me. Neither does your life, woman. I am here to do a job and you are assets to me, nothing more than assets.”
Reija had had enough. Her hand shot out reflexively to slap the face of this creature who had come to ruin her life and kill her people. The smack of her hand startled everyone, but no one as much as Pors Tonith, who staggered backward into one of his droids, a hand clasped to his cheek and a look of total surprise on his face so ludicrous that Reija, knowing she had nothing to lose, started to laugh.
With unexpected strength and agility, Tonith lurched forward, grabbed Reija by the hair, and threw her to the floor. Slith leapt up to protect his boss, and Tonith whirled on him. “Kill this reptile!” he shouted. The nearest droid shifted its blaster in Slith’s direction while the technicians, some screaming in fear, crouched out of the line of fire.
“No! No!” Reija screamed from where she lay on the floor. “No more! Please, no more!”
Tonith gestured to the droid to lower its weapon. “Listen to me, all of you,” he said, addressing the small group. “You are totally abandoned by the Republic, and I own Praesitlyn now. You are my prisoners. You will be treated well if you follow my orders.”
Reija had managed to get back on her feet. “I dispatched a distress message to Coruscant,” she began, knowing it was a bluff but determined to say something defiant.
Tonith waved her into silence. “You mean, you tried to send such a message. But you know it was never received. We blocked all transmissions to and from Praesitlyn. No message from here will ever reach Coruscant unless I will it.” He grinned again. “No one even knows what’s going on here, and by the time they find out, it will be too late. Well…” He nodded at the frightened technicians and bowed again at Reija. “It has been a rather touching experience, this brief interview, but now I must be getting back to my army.”
He turned and walked toward the door, but just as he was about to exit the control room, he stopped as if he’d remembered something and turned back toward Reija. “Madam, one more little thing. Keep that big mouth of yours shut from now on, or I’ll turn you over to the droids.” With that, swirling his cloak, he stepped through the door.
The dust storm had started up again, and worse, the temperature had plummeted. Odie and Lieutenant Erk H’Arman found shelter in a clump of rocks and huddled shivering under the scant protection offered by the ground sheet she had unfolded from her equipment pack.
“What do we do now, sir?”
“Hey, let’s get one thing straight: none of this military protocol stuff, okay? I’m Erk and you’re Odie. I’m a fighter jock, remember? Not a staff officer. Besides, if we ever get out of this I think it’s going to be you who gets us through. Now, if we were in a fighter—” He laughed and punched Odie lightly on the shoulder. A strong gust of wind threatened to blow off the ground sheet, but they grabbed handfuls of the light fabric and managed to hold on.
The massive attack by Tonith’s ships in orbit against General Khamar’s army had caught the pair in the open, between the main lines and the fortified position. Both positions had been blasted and then assaulted by ground troops. Unable to do anything to help, they had taken cover and waited for the battle’s outcome, which was neither long in coming nor ever in doubt. Using her electrobinoculars, Odie had seen no sign of resistance in either place once the fighting subsided.
“Battle droids,” she had said, her voice waver
ing. “Thousands of them.”
Battle droids were on the ridge where General Khamar’s army had been camped. And then, as if even the weather were allied with the invaders, the dust storm had started up again, and Odie and Erk had been forced to find precarious shelter.
“How much water do we have?” Erk asked now.
Odie checked her canteen. “Little less than a liter.”
“Well, surrender’s no option.”
“No.”
“Is there any place we can hide out for a while?”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we go back to the center? Maybe they’re still holding out.”
Erk shook his head. “Maybe, but the center has to be the Separatists’ objective, and I think we ought to stay out here until we’re sure who’s holding the place. Besides, you saw yourself how powerful this landing force is.” He shook his head. “No, nobody’s holding out back there.”
“Oh, no!” Odie’s shoulders began to quake as the impact of what had happened sank in. “All my friends! Everyone…”
Erk laid a hand on her shoulder. “Mine too, Odie, mine too. That’s what happens in war. Ah, we were a heck of a crew,” he muttered. He took a deep breath. “Look. We’re still alive and we’re going to stay that way,” he said, as much to reassure himself as her. “Hey, I’m no pebblepusher. I won’t last long down here if you give out on me.”
“Y-yes. Yes. I mean, no, I won’t give out on you. Let me think. There are some caves about seventy-five kilometers to the southeast of here,” she began. “I’ve seen them on patrols. We can hide out there. I don’t know what’s in them, maybe there’s water. I have a small supply of rations on my speeder. They’ll last us awhile if we take it easy.”
“Can you get us there in—this?” Erk nodded at the storm all around them.
“Hey! Can you fly a fighter? Sure I can get us there!” She laughed without humor.
“You know, once we get out of this, why don’t you volunteer for flight training?” Erk said.
She snorted. “Are you serious?”
“Sure I am. You’ve got the right attitude. Come on. We may be on our own, but two hotshots like us? Sheesh, with your skill and my brains—”
“My brains and your skill—”
“Now you’re really talking like a fighter pilot!” They shook on it.
It took them two agonizing days to find the caves. The small amount of water they had was exhausted by the time they reached the shelter, and they were on the verge of dehydration. But at least crawling into the shadowy coolness of the caverns spared them the devastating effects of the broiling sun.
“We’ve got to find water,” Odie gasped.
“You’re telling me?” Erk croaked. “Let’s rest here awhile in the cool, then we can look for a way down into the caverns. There should be water here somewhere. Do you know how extensive these caves are?”
She shook her head. “No. We stopped here once on a routine recon mission, but nobody was interested in doing any exploring.”
They lay resting for a time before regaining enough strength to start the search. Odie produced a brilliant white signal flare from a pouch on her equipment belt to light their way. “This’ll burn for twenty minutes,” she told Erk over her shoulder as they walked carefully over the rock-strewn floor. “Then we’ll have to switch to some other color.”
“Make sure you save some so we can find our way back.”
The piercing flarelight cast their shadows huge on the walls around them, like grotesque cave creatures picking their way along.
“Hold it!” Erk shouted suddenly. “Move your light over here.” He indicated a patch of rock that appeared darker than its surroundings. He ran a hand over it. “Moisture! Water’s seeping through this rock. We’re in business.” A little farther on, the narrow passage widened abruptly into a huge cavern.
“Hey!” Odie shouted. Her voice echoed off the chamber walls. She held the flare high over her head. “I can’t even see the ceiling. This place is huge.”
“Listen!” Erk held up a hand. “Listen. I hear running water! Can you hear it, Odie? There’s an underground stream down there.”
The cavern floor sloped gradually downward, and as they worked their way toward the bottom, the wonderful sound of running water came distinctly to them from somewhere ahead, where a cool stream of fresh water fed into a deep pond before rushing off to disappear deeper into the cavern. Odie jammed the flare between two rocks and flung herself bodily into the pool; Erk followed her immediately. They drank themselves dizzy on the glorious, life-giving liquid.
They lingered in the caves for two days, recuperating. “We have to move on,” Odie said on the evening of the second day, “if for no other reason than we’re out of food.”
“What say we start out at first light tomorrow?” Erk suggested. “We’ll ride until it gets too hot and then rest until late evening. We can cover some ground during the night if there’s enough starlight to see by. How long do you think it’ll take us to get to the communications center?”
“Two, maybe three days? The terrain’s mighty rough out there, and we had to detour a bit to get here. Can we survive on two liters of water for three days? All we have to carry it in is this canteen.”
“We’ll have to. We’ve got your speeder—that’ll save us expending all our energy on walking. We’ll take it easy, conserve body fluid as much as possible. Odie, there’s nothing you and I together can’t do!”
He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her face turned even redder than usual, then she turned and kissed him full on the lips. They held the embrace for a long moment.
“Ah,” Erk said at last, “what’d I tell you? You’re the best wingmate a fighter jock ever had!”
After a moment, Odie said, “I wonder if any of our people survived…”
“I’m sure some did. Come on, let’s get some sleep.”
They lay close together for a long while, not speaking, thinking instead about what might lie ahead of them. Just before he dropped off to sleep Erk turned to Odie. “Maybe we’re the only two left alive on this blasted rock, but we’re going to stay that way, right?”
“Absolutely,” Odie answered. She snuggled closer to Erk’s warmth.
7
But they weren’t alone—not quite.
“Just like those parsimonious fools,” Zozridor Slayke remarked to one of his officers. “The Republic Senate has always been foolish about defense spending. They leave a strategic place like this to be defended by only a small garrison. What do you expect the Separatists to do, eh? Sit on their hands?”
“The Republic forces are spread thin, sir,” the officer replied, shrugging. “Do we go in now?” He grinned at his commander and leaned forward expectantly. This was the moment he had been waiting for.
Zozridor Slayke grinned back. “And give them the surprise of their short lives? You bet. Assemble my commanders.”
The atmosphere was tense in the wardroom of Plooriod Bodkin, as it always was before going into battle—but there was no nervousness. The officers gathered around the battle charts were charged with the anticipation of action, like a group of Cyborrean battle dogs waiting to be released by their handlers.
Zozridor Slayke himself, however, was relaxed, as he always was. Standing a full head above his officers, a mixed group of humans and nonhuman sentients, he would never be mistaken for anything but the leader. It wasn’t just his unadorned, long-sleeved, military-style tunic with the high collar, the standard officer’s uniform in his army, it was also the body language of his officers—each leaning expectantly toward him, eagerly anticipating his words. Slayke projected the confidence of a man who knew he was in charge and knew what he was doing, and his officers—and every soldier in his fleet down to the lowest ratings—knew it, too.
“Mighty crowded out there—” Slayke gestured at the holographic chart of the space lanes around Praesitlyn and Sluis Van. This comment generated some laughs among his officer
s. “They outnumber us at least four to one.” He made the comment as if he were merely remarking on the brightness of the stars flickering on the chart. “Well, now that we’re here, does anyone have a plan?” He looked around expectantly.
“B-but, sir! We thought you did!” a man standing next to him blurted out, feigning horror. At this everyone burst into loud laughter. They all knew that Zozridor Slayke definitely had a plan. And they all knew him well enough that they did not need to be told the essence of that plan: attack, attack, attack.
Slayke let them enjoy the moment, then held up a hand for quiet. “Let’s see, at last report they had one hundred and twenty-six ships in a cordon around Sluis Van, am I right?” He nodded toward his intelligence chief, who confirmed the figure. “That’s bad,” he continued, “because the Sluissi will be occupied defending their own world. But the Separatist fleet will also be busy with its cordon. That’s good, because those ships won’t be able to interfere with us. The enemy commander has divided his forces. That’s good, too. And the Separatists don’t know we’re here…yet—that’s even better.” The way Slayke emphasized the word yet, resulted in more good-natured laughter among his officers.
He pointed a finger at the display of the Sluis sector. “He has about two hundred ships in orbit around Praesitlyn, many of them capital ships. Now, that’s bad.” He stroked his short black beard thoughtfully, then rubbed a forefinger beneath his nose and pulled on his earlobe, as if not sure what to say next. He nodded again at his intelligence chief. “Your reconnaissance drone reports a big droid army down there.”
“Yessir. They seem to have defeated the defense force and have taken the Intergalactic Communications Center, as well. I estimate, from the number of transports on the ground and the quantity of equipment deployed, that the army tops a million battle droids. They mean to stay there awhile, sir.”
“Well, then. They outnumber us. That’s very bad,” Slayke said. “But they’re only droids! That’s good.” More laughter.
Star Wars: Jedi Trial Page 5
