Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  The Octusi were casting a few wary glances toward the assault sleds, but continuing to organize and repair placards. Madhi knew from her time on the planet that the semi-sentient Octusi probably did not understand what the arrival of the Mandalorians meant. They were a gentle, rule-abiding species that could not conceive of others being otherwise. And since a peaceful assembly in their own Big Circle of Fun did not violate the rules established by their Blaudun masters, it simply had not occurred to them that the Mandalorians might intend them harm.

  Madhi, on the other hand, had a very good idea of what was about to happen, and in her heart she ached to rush out and explain the danger to the Octusi. She wanted to urge them to flee, or at least to turn on their oppressors and go down fighting. And part of her wanted to take Tyl up on the roof, to reveal their presence so the Mandalorians would know the entire galaxy was watching as they did whatever they had come to do.

  Instead Madhi called, “Shohta, how long? I want to be live on the ’Net when this thing blows.”

  “Blows, mistress?” Shohta asked. “You think there is going to be a riot?”

  “A riot or a massacre,” she said. “Maybe both.”

  The back of the room fell quiet as Shohta stopped work. When Madhi heard no indication of it resuming, she glanced back down the aisle. The Chev was standing idle and slump-shouldered, holding a power feed in one hand and a coupling socket in the other, his brutish Chev features sagging with dismay.

  “Shohta!” she snapped. “We need to go live now.”

  Shohta merely cocked his head. “So we can show a massacre live on the HoloNet?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we do something instead?”

  “We are doing something, Shohta,” Madhi retorted. “Our jobs. And if you want to keep yours, get me that HoloNet link.”

  Shohta knelt down and connected the power feed to the generating unit, but his movements were slow and languid, a silent form of protest that Madhi had learned to recognize among slaves and the grievously oppressed. She let out a long breath and, starting to feel like a despot herself, spoke in a gentler tone.

  “Look, Shohta,” she said. “We’re journalists, not Jedi. We don’t involve ourselves in the story.”

  “Not even to save lives?” Shohta asked.

  It was Tyl who answered, in a voice devoid of sympathy. “Not even to save lives.” His gaze remained fixed on the cam display. “If we involve ourselves with the story, we change the story.”

  “And what is wrong with changing it?” Shohta demanded. “What is wrong with saving the lives of innocent beings?”

  “What’s wrong is that if we try to interfere, the most likely thing to happen is that we get killed first.” Tyl’s voice had grown hard. “And then the galaxy will never know what happened here.”

  “We’re not police and we’re not medicos,” Madhi added. “We’re journalists, and our first duty is to report the facts.”

  “As you wish, mistress.” Shohta depressed the power unit’s activation safety and held it down, then slowly ran his gaze over the small control panel, searching for the priming switch that he had probably flicked a thousand times since joining Madhi’s crew. “After the power unit is running, I’ll have to find a good place for the antenna. We should have a link in ten minutes or so.”

  “Ten minutes?” Tyl tore his eyes away from his display and started to set his vidcam aside. “That’s ridiculous, Shohta. If I have to do this myself—”

  “Tyl,” Madhi interrupted. “Stay on the cam. Shohta will handle the HoloNet link.”

  Tyl’s brow rose, but he nodded and looked back to his cam.

  Madhi turned to Shohta. “Shohta, I understand how you feel. So does Tyl. But it’s the truth that matters in this job, not our feelings about it.” She paused, waiting for a nod that did not come, then continued, “If we go out there to interfere and somehow survive the experience, then we become the story—not the Mandalorians and what they’ve come to do.”

  “But a lot of lives might be saved,” Shohta said.

  Madhi shook her head. “Those lives might be saved,” she said. “But more would be lost in the long run. We can’t be there every time an army of thugs uses violence to put down a slave revolt.”

  “This way, the galaxy sees what’s really happening,” Tyl said, his gaze still fixed on the cam display. “Maybe the public won’t care about a bunch of four-hooves on a world so far off the hyperspace lanes that the Empire never bothered to give it a survey number. But my guess is, when they see Mandalorians blasting Octusi in cold blood, they’ll want it stopped.”

  “And not just on Blaudu Sextus,” Madhi added. “On Tatooine, Karfeddion, Thalassia … and on Vinsoth, too. If we keep doing our jobs and exposing the truth about slavery, maybe the public will demand that the Galactic Alliance stop turning a blind eye. Maybe it will start asking questions about who’s been sending Mandalorians to put down the revolts.” Madhi paused, allowing herself a smile of anticipation. “And when we tell them, they’re going to want her head.”

  “Assuming we can confirm what we know,” Tyl reminded her.

  “We’ll get there,” Madhi assured him. “We’ll connect her to the credit trail, or the Sextuna executives will get tired of taking the blame and admit she’s the one who’s really paying the Mandalorians. Something will turn up. It has to.”

  “By her, you mean Daala?” Shohta asked. “She has been helping the slavers?”

  “We’re pretty sure,” Madhi said. “But we don’t have the evidence to prove it yet.”

  Tyl looked from the cam display toward Shohta. “What you need to decide is whether you want to stop her,” he said. “Whether you want to help all slaves, or just the ones you see out there.”

  Madhi saw the resentment in Shohta’s eyes change to understanding, then to determination, and his fingers quickly found the priming switch he had seemed unable to locate just moments before. The generator gave a soft clickclack, then hummed to life. Shohta grabbed the antenna assembly and began to point it around the room, his eyes fixed on the interface screen as he tried to find the strongest signal.

  “Link in two minutes,” he reported. “I’m sorry for the delay.”

  “Don’t waste time apologizing,” Madhi ordered. She slipped her sound bud into her ear and activated the button mike on her tunic collar. “Just get me on the ’Net.”

  Madhi returned her attention to Big Circle and saw that the Mandalorians already had the field surrounded. Finally beginning to sense that something was wrong, the Octusi had stopped their preparations and were looking toward the main entry arch, located just a hundred meters or so from where the wounded veterans of the last demonstration were lining up. She stepped to one side of the window and leaned against the wall, straining to see what had caught the Octusi’s attention.

  Floating down the narrow lane directly in front of the repair shop she saw a QuickStryke urban assault car. Protruding from the commander’s hatch were the head and shoulders of a helmetless Mandalorian male with blond, short-cropped hair and cold blue eyes. He had a long scar down one cheek and a flat, crooked nose that had obviously been broken several times—both signs, to Madhi’s way of thinking, that he probably wasn’t one of Mandalore’s better hand-to-hand fighters. He held his chin a little too high, peering down on the Octusi as though he were a butcher selecting stock for his slaughterhouse.

  “That commander looks familiar,” Madhi said. As she spoke, an image came to her, a HoloNet report she had seen of the siege of the Jedi Temple. She pulled her datapad from her pocket and activated the search function. “Isn’t he the one who blasted that apprentice on the steps of the Jedi Temple?”

  “Sure looks like him,” Tyl replied. “Rhal, I think. Something Rhal.”

  Madhi entered the name and moments later was rewarded with a news capsule of the incident. The apprentice, Kani Asari, had been Kenth Hamner’s personal assistant, and the killer had been a Mandalorian commander placed in charge of the siege by Chief Daala herself. Madhi comp
ared the killer’s image with the commander outside, and her heart began to pound in excitement.

  “Tyl, this is it,” she said. “Belok Rhal was the Mandalorian commander at the siege of the Jedi Temple.”

  “So?” Tyl asked.

  “So, Daala gave him complete authority at the Temple siege, and he killed an unarmed apprentice in full view of the media,” Madhi said. “And now here he is, putting down a slave revolt on Blaudu Sextus.”

  “That’s a coincidence, not proof,” Tyl said. “It doesn’t establish a connection to Daala.”

  “No,” Madhi said. “But it is a fact—and we do report facts, don’t we?”

  Tyl thought for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. “Just be careful with your phrasing, okay?”

  “No worries, I won’t imply anything,” Madhi said. Outside her window, the QuickStryke had come to a stop directly in front of the wounded Octusi, and Rhal gazed out over the Octusi, probably looking for a leader. “Shohta, how are we coming with the link?”

  “We’re connected to the relay satellite,” he reported. “But I’m trying to buy more bandwidth. Their equipment is old out here, so we’re only getting grade-three signal.”

  Madhi glanced over at Tyl. At grade three and standard bandwidth, her voice would be distorted and the vidimages grainy and jerky. But both would be recognizable—and the primitive quality of the broadcast might give the report an added note of urgency.

  “Let’s do it,” she said.

  Tyl nodded. “Keep the offer open,” he said to Shohta. “And bring the parabolic mike to Madhi. We’ll want an enhanced voice signal on Rhal.”

  As Tyl spoke, he raised one hand and began a silent five-finger countdown. Madhi made a quick mental list of the points she needed to cover in her introduction, keeping in mind that her feed was arriving at the Perre Needmo studio at the beginning of their workday, about six hours before they were scheduled to go on-air. By now, a vidimage of the situation in Big Circle was already streaming onto the control room, where a startled production assistant would be rushing to bring it up on a monitor and confirm that the automatic recording equipment was capturing the transmission. Next, he would feed the transmission into the studio’s internal network and bring it to the attention of Perre Needmo and the senior production staff, who would decide whether to relay the report to the network immediately or save it for their own broadcast. Given the likelihood of the situation erupting into mass violence, Madhi was betting they would pass it into the network immediately—which meant her report would need to mention the Perre Needmo Newshour prominently and often, if she wanted to keep her employers happy.

  Tyl’s last finger folded down into his palm, and Madhi began to speak in a hushed, urgent voice. “This is Madhi Vaandt on assignment for the Perre Needmo Newshour on Blaudu Sextus in the Regulan system, an insignificant mining world on the galactic edge where the hands of power operate beyond the umbrella of Alliance law. The field below is Big Circle of Fun, an Octusi sporting arena in the capital city of Arari. As you can see, a mechanized company of Mandalorian infantry has surrounded a gathering of Octusi slaves preparing to begin a protest march through the downtown area. Although this will be the thirteenth such march in as many days, the Mandalorian company is a remarkable show of force. The Octusi are a pacifist species whose demonstrations have been marked by their gentleness and good order.

  “It appears, however, that their Blaudun masters may be growing weary of the inconveniences caused by the daily marches. Yesterday a group of Mandalorian mercenaries hired to put down the revolt opened fire on the front of the march, killing fifteen Octusi, wounding more than fifty, and causing a stampede that resulted in the first significant property damage of the revolt. Determined to avoid a repeat of the aggravation, today the Mandalorian mercenaries have trapped the Octusi in their staging area, surrounding them with light armor more suitable for urban combat than crowd control.

  “Whatever the Mandalorian intentions, they seem determined to present an ominous front, as they have brought in a veteran commander with a reputation for ferocity.”

  Madhi glanced over at Tyl, waiting for the nod that would indicate the vidcam was now focused on Rhal, and saw Shohta approaching with a small parabolic mike that she could use to capture Rhal’s words. Normally, journalistic ethics would prohibit eavesdropping on a subject without his knowledge, but since Rhal was in a public forum obviously preparing to make a public statement, an exception could be made. She nodded her thanks to Shohta and pointed it out the window at Rhal.

  When Tyl nodded that he was ready, Madhi continued, “This is Commander Belok Rhal. No stranger to our news audience, he was in command of Mandalorian forces during the siege of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Chief of State Daala had personally charged him with persuading the Jedi to turn over Jedi Knights Sothais Saar and Turi Altamik, who were then suffering from the mysterious psychosis that had been plaguing Jedi Knights at that point. It remains unclear whether his authorization included a dispensation to commit murder, as only a handful of government officials know the full extent of his orders. But one thing is beyond debate: Belok Rhal is the man who killed a teenage girl named Kani Asari on the steps of the Jedi Temple, in cold blood and in full view of the Coruscant media, just to make a point. And his presence here sends a chilling message.”

  Rhal’s gaze finally settled on an Octusi Elder with a wrinkled face and gray fur, and he began to say something that Madhi could not quite make out from her hiding place.

  “And I think we’re about to hear exactly what that message is.” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Let’s listen.”

  Madhi activated the parabolic mike, and a moment later Rhal’s voice began to come through her earbud. It was just the way the feed would sound to listeners on Coruscant—a little fuzzy and distorted, but clear enough to convey the Mandalorian’s words.

  “… been hired to put a stop to this illegal revolt, and we intend to do so.” Rhal’s voice grew menacing. “What is your name, slave?”

  The Octusi stepped forward, until he was standing chest-to-armor with the QuickStryke. “I am Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind of the Redolog family, Elder of the Quansasi Haulage Team. And what is your name, Mandalorian?”

  “Not for you to know,” Rhal replied. “You appear to be the leader of this mob. Is that so?”

  Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind inclined his head. “I am one of the Elders, yes.” He laid a palm flat on the QuickStryke’s nose armor. “And I am asking you to remove your carriages, Not-for-You-to-Know. They frighten our people.”

  “Then your people are wise.” Rhal flicked something inside the command hatch, and his voice rang out across the circle. “Elders will come forward and present themselves.”

  A low murmur rolled through the crowd as dozens of elderly Octusi began to make their way forward. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind twisted his upper body around, turning his T-shaped head sideways so that he was looking up at Rhal with one eye and out over the crowd with the other.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I ordered it,” Rhal said. “As I told you, this revolt has come to—”

  “No.” Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind boomed the word calmly, sharply, and loudly enough that it carried out over the circle and brought the migration of Elders to an instant stop. He turned back to Rhal and continued in his deep Octusi voice. “You are no one’s master. You do not order us—”

  The defiant words came to a shrieking halt as Rhal raised a blaster pistol from inside the commander’s hatch and sent a single blue bolt burning through the Elder’s head. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind’s upper body folded back over his shaggy midsection, and then he collapsed onto his side, limp and dead before his body hit the dirt.

  So shocked was Madhi that she forgot why they were here—until Tyl began to speak in a soft voice. “I’m going in for a close-up on the body.” With a grade-three signal, his words would probably be audible only as background noise, but it hardly mattered. They
had just captured a cold-blooded murder on vid, and their viewers would be too shocked to be wondering what the cam operator was saying. “You might want to do some personal reaction, then slip into conjecture about where this is all going to lead.”

  The suggestion brought Madhi back to her senses, and she slipped smoothly into a hushed narrative. “This is Madhi Vaandt for the Perre Needmo Newshour. What you have just seen is the cold-blooded murder of an Octusi Elder by the Mandalorian commander, Belok Rhal. The Octusi crowd is obviously as shocked as we are, and there is no telling what will happen next.”

  Outside, Rhal leveled his blaster pistol at another Elder. Madhi deactivated her button mike long enough to whisper, “Tyl, get back on—”

  “Got it,” Tyl said, scraping his right-angle lens along the windowsill. “Stay live. The image might be fuzzy enough that you need to confirm what’s happening.”

  Madhi clicked her button mike back on, but before she could resume, the parabolic mike began to pick up Rhal’s voice again.

  “You, slave, come forward.”

  The Octusi remained where he was and, in a loud booming voice, said, “No.”

  A blaster bolt screeched from Rhal’s weapon, taking the Elder low in his forequarters. His huge mouth opened wide, and he let out a deep, thrumming howl of pain that was instantly echoed by all of the other Octusi in the circle.

  “I don’t know how well you can hear that over the HoloNet,” Madhi narrated for her audience. “But the entire Octusi crowd has joined the wounded Elder in crying out. It’s called the Song of Sorrow, and we witnessed the same thing yesterday …”

  As Madhi spoke, a female voice began to sound in her earbud. “This is network control, letting you know that we’re carrying this live on the news channel. We’ve just seen the murder, and we’re estimating a five-second signal lag. Your vid is grainy, so keep telling us what we’re seeing.”