Dark Disciple

by Christie Golden

  “You couldn’t possibly have—”

  “General Kenobi! General Skywalker!” Cody’s voice issuing from Kenobi’s comlink was frantic. “They’ve escaped! Looks like my men are all dead. They got Desh and Bayons, too. They’re heading down the corridor now, back to the hangar.”

  “Can you give chase?” Kenobi asked. As he spoke, he and Anakin had already activated their lightsabers and were heading to the door.

  “Sorry, sir, that’s a negative, my leg’s been snapped like a twig.”

  “We’ll get you patched up, Cody, don’t you worry,” Anakin said, muttering, “Those slippery, slimy…”

  “Save your breath,” said Kenobi, “and run.”

  —

  “Ventress?”

  Ventress closed her eyes in relief. “Vos? Is it done?”

  “I’m sending you the coordinates of our location.” His voice was tense.

  “Coordinates? Our? Who’s with you?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “You’ll explain now.”

  “Now is really not the time.” His voice was rising and he sounded distracted.

  Again, the alarm bells sounded in her mind. “Fine. I’m on my way. But I don’t like this, Vos.”

  She entered the coordinates and her eyes widened. Vos was on a Jedi cruiser! For a moment, Ventress hesitated. Something had clearly gone wrong. But Vos wasn’t dark. The Jedi needed to know that. Perhaps she should reach out to Kenobi—

  Even as she had the thought Ventress dismissed it. No. Better to rescue Vos and disappear immediately. Let the Jedi think what they would. Their opinion would no longer matter.

  Ventress brought her ship beside the hangar door just as it opened. Activating the door to the Banshee, she heard two thumps as Vos and his unknown companion jumped inside. She hit the controls, slamming the door shut and sped off, entering random coordinates to confound pursuit, then unbuckled herself and strode back to greet Vos.

  “I see you’re still in one…” Her voice trailed off. Dooku! Standing in the hold and peering up at her, the count seemed almost as shocked as she was. White-hot anger shot through Ventress and she whirled on Vos. “What have you done?”

  “It’s not what you—” Vos began.

  “It’s not what I think? How is this possibly not what I think? Dooku? In the flesh? Still alive?”

  “Our escape plans hinged on her?” Dooku exclaimed almost at the same moment, his lip curling. “The most abysmal assassin of all time?”

  Vos’s face went hard and he shoved Dooku. “Watch your mouth!”

  “I don’t trust her!”

  “Well, I do, and you’re free because of me. We had a deal. Understand?” Contempt and resignation flickered over Dooku’s patrician face, then he nodded. “Good. Now strap yourself in.”

  “Vos,” Ventress said, barely reining in her anger, “we need to talk. Now.” She jerked her head toward the cockpit. Vos nodded and quickly climbed the ladder. Glancing back at the hold, Ventress whispered, “What the hell is going on?”

  “I will tell you. I promise.”

  “Yes, you will,” Ventress agreed. “Right now.”

  “Right now, we’ve got a Jedi cruiser on our tail. Let’s get somewhere safe first, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Where is ‘safe’?”

  “Christophsis. We’ll rendezvous with a Separatist cruiser there that’s expecting us.”

  While he was speaking, his gaze wandered to the hold and his eyes narrowed. Ventress looked at him incredulously for a moment. She searched his face, seeking answers there. He was right. They were fleeing, and Dooku absolutely needed to be watched every minute.

  “All right,” she agreed. “But I don’t know of anything you can say that can convince me that bringing him along isn’t a huge mistake—one that might get us killed.”

  Skywalker and Kenobi stood on the bridge of the Vigilance, which was closing the distance fast. “Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, watching the Banshee head straight for a Separatist dreadnought, “we can’t allow them to escape again. We’ve got to fire on them.”

  “And risk killing all on board?” Kenobi shook his head. “No. We must take them back to the Temple alive. There’s too much they know that we need to find out.” Yes, he thought bitterly, by all means, let’s make sure we keep them alive, only to kill them in the end anyway.

  “Just a graze. I promise,” Anakin insisted. “It’ll damage their ship, and they’ll be forced to land. It’s far better than the alternative of them getting away.”

  Kenobi stroked his beard, pondering. Ventress’s ship was closing the gap. “All right,” he said.

  Anakin turned to Threepwood, the clone at the weapons station. “Fire when ready. Bring them down!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  —

  They had almost reached the waiting dreadnought. Ventress was all too keenly aware of the Jedi cruiser behind them. She was torn between taking evasive maneuvers and getting the Banshee into the hangar as soon as possible. She reached into the Force—

  “Hang on!” she cried. Ventress pulled the ship hard to port, but not in time to evade the Jedi’s attack. The Banshee rocked violently. Smoke began to fill the cabin as the controls went haywire. Frantically, Ventress tried to keep the Banshee heading toward the open hangar, but like a rancor set on charging, the ship would no longer obey her. She couldn’t make it to the ship, but maybe she could land it on Christophsis. There was no question at this point but that they were going to crash. The question was, how hard.

  “Hang on!” she shouted. “Strap in and brace yourselves, I’m going to try to set us down!”

  They hurtled through the atmosphere, the unforgiving crystalline ground rushing up as if eager to meet them. Ventress struggled with the controls, trying desperately to slow the fall, get the nose up—

  She let go of the controls and tapped into her fear and anger, commanding the Force. She would not die in a ridiculous crash. There were questions she needed answers to. She poured forth all her will, insisting, demanding, that the Banshee slow, slow, even out, and—

  They slammed into the surface.

  —

  Obi-Wan piloted the Jedi shuttle to the crash site and hovered over it. He and Anakin stared at it silently. It had been easy to locate; Ventress had left a trail of sheared-off blue-green crystal in what was obviously a barely controlled approach.

  “You assured me it would be just a graze,” Obi-Wan said.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Threepwood. “They veered at the last minute.”

  “Let us hope there are survivors,” Kenobi said. “Prepare to take on injured.”

  As he settled the shuttle down on a flat area near the wreckage, Obi-Wan wasn’t optimistic. The crash was bad. The clone had been right. Probably using her Force sensitivity, Ventress had indeed made a sudden move at the last minute. What was intended to be a graze had ended up being a solid strike at the ship’s stern, and the engines had been damaged. Christophsis was a bad planet on which to crash, and the Banshee had not landed gently. Bits of debris were strewn everywhere.

  The two Jedi, lightsabers ignited, and Threepwood, Tracker, and Boil, the clones who had accompanied them, made a silent circle about the downed vessel. Anakin signaled for the others to stay back as he stepped forward to cut a hole in the ship’s door with his lightsaber. Using the Force, he pulled out the circular chunk of metal and placed it down. Smoke billowed out. He stuck his head inside, then turned to look at Kenobi. His face was contorted in anger.

  “They’re not here!”

  “Sir,” Tracker called out to them, “there’s blood here. I think they kicked their way out of the forward viewport in the cockpit.”

  Kenobi looked. There was indeed blood—quite a lot of it. “Well,” he said, “someone’s been injured. They can’t have gone far, then. Start searching the forest.”

  —

  Anger, Ventress thought sourly, was good for so many things. Right now it was doing a supe
rb job of keeping her on her feet, even moving with a fair approximation of speed, although her left knee and shoulder had been gouged by the shattered controls when they slammed into the unforgiving ground. They were heading for a tower where, Dooku assured them, they would find ships waiting to take them offworld to their next destination. She had no idea where that would be, of course. No one was telling her anything.

  Vos had some bruises, but otherwise appeared to have escaped unscathed. Dooku was the most severely injured of the three. He hadn’t been properly strapped down in the ship’s hold when the Jedi had fired on the ship, and he was paying the price. He had one arm slung around Vos for support as they made their way through huge, jutting hexagons that comprised what served Christophsis for a forest.

  As if on cue, she heard that smooth-as-silk voice, tense now with pain, pant, “I…have to stop.”

  “Ventress, hold up,” Vos said. He lowered Dooku to the ground, propping him up against a tall, blue-green natural obelisk. The count winced and put a hand to his side.

  Ventress gritted her teeth. “Of course, the one we came to kill is going to get us all killed.” Shaking her head, she limped up to Vos and shoved him, hard. “You promised me that it would be over!”

  Her words made Dooku chuckle, though he winced slightly at the pain. “Over? My dear Ventress, quite the opposite. It’s only begun.”

  A cold finger of apprehension traced its way along her spine. “Vos,” she said slowly, “what’s he talking about? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Vos jerked his head at Dooku, then took her elbow and attempted to steer her out of hearing range. She wrenched her arm free, but accompanied him.

  “I have something better in store for us,” Vos said in a low voice. “You have to trust me on this one, Asajj, okay?” His eyes were pleading.

  “This isn’t about you,” she said. “This plan was about us. Together. Remember?”

  “It is about us, I promise!”

  “You’ve been making promises an awful lot in the last hour,” Ventress said. If he were anyone else, she’d simply strike off on her own at this point. But where could she go? She’d helped Vos escape, with Count Dooku himself in tow, no less. Somehow, she didn’t think the Jedi would offer her a pardon a second time. And…she could still sense Vos’s feelings for her. Whatever this “plan” was, he really was doing what he thought was best for the two of them. She had to keep trusting him, at least for now. This time, when he touched her face hesitantly, mindful of her turning away from him as she had earlier, she sighed and leaned her cheek into his hand.

  “If you two lovebirds are done with your nauseating display,” came the count’s unwelcome voice, “we should probably keep moving.”

  Ventress turned to him, not bothering to hide her loathing. “You were the one who asked us to stop,” she reminded him. At that moment her comlink began to blink. She looked at it in surprise, then started to thumb it off.

  “No,” Vos said. “Go over there. Take it.”

  She nodded. She limped a meter or two away from them, leaned against a chunk of stone, and answered. A hologram of Obi-Wan Kenobi popped up. He lifted his hands pleadingly. “Ventress,” he said, “don’t disconnect, please. Hear me out.”

  In a whisper, she said, “I don’t have time for this, Kenobi.”

  “I’ll be brief. Master Yoda has sensed that Vos has turned to the dark side. He has entered into a partnership with Count Dooku. You must convince him to surrender, or we’ll be forced to execute him!”

  She inhaled swiftly. Execute? First Dooku, now Vos…she had never expected this from the Jedi. Then the other words the Jedi had said sank in.

  No. It wasn’t possible. She’d been able to sense the darkness in Vos before, but that was gone. He’d come back from it, as she had…but—no matter how much she believed Vos loved her, he had insisted on bringing Dooku, and he was definitely keeping something from her. Ventress looked over at the two men. Both were watching her, but neither could hear what she or Kenobi was saying. Keeping her voice low, she whispered, “You’re wrong, Kenobi. He’s going to complete his mission. You must give us time!”

  Ventress clicked it off and took a deep breath. Vos stepped up to her. “What did he say?” he asked quietly, not wanting Dooku to overhear.

  She spoke bluntly. “Obi-Wan told me you’ve turned to the dark side. He says they’re going to kill us all unless you surrender.”

  Vos’s eyes widened at the word kill, but he shook his head firmly. “Surrender? Now? No way. Not when we’re this close.”

  “Close to what?”

  His expression softened. He cupped her bone-white face in his dark hands. “Close to the end. Close to being utterly and completely free.” He bent and kissed her tenderly, and Ventress returned his kiss almost desperately, hoping with all that was in her that he was right.

  —

  “She’s blinded by love,” Anakin said, not without sympathy.

  Kenobi didn’t disagree. All he said was, “We’ve got to find them.”

  His comlink chirped again and he answered quickly, hoping it was Ventress. Instead, the image of a grim-faced Mace Windu appeared.

  “What’s your status, Master Kenobi?”

  “We were in pursuit of the vessel and brought it down to the surface. It looks like all aboard survived and, unfortunately, managed to escape. We’re following them now. At least one appears to be injured.” Obi-Wan hesitated. “We spoke briefly with Ventress, but she said very little. She doesn’t believe Vos has turned. She says he is close to completing his mission…” He hated how uncertain his voice sounded.

  Mace, however, was decidedly not uncertain in his response. “If he was close, it should have already been completed. The time for action is now. Trying to bring them in alive was clearly a mistake. Find the fugitives, and execute them.”

  A still, small voice inside Obi-Wan Kenobi said: This is wrong.

  “All of them?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Anyone who gets in your way,” Mace replied.

  Ventress, Vos, and Dooku pressed on. At first the promised tower appeared to be nothing more than another one of the beautiful, gigantic natural formations that adorned the planet’s surface. But as they drew closer, Ventress saw that what once had indeed been nothing more than simply another crystal—albeit a particularly emormous one—had been cunningly hollowed out. It gleamed in the sunlight, but some of that gleam was on windows and weapons. It was indeed a tower, a place where death and deceit were conducted, and Ventress felt a peculiar, hot rush of hatred at the violation of something that had once been both extraordinary and innocent. They were close enough so that they walked in the tower’s shadow, but before their arrival was detected, Dooku requested another stop.

  “What now?” Ventress demanded.

  “I mustn’t look weak,” he said. “Most of those we encounter will be droids, but there are a few organics among them. Vos—help me—”

  Ventress folded her arms and watched. She had hoped Dooku would bleed out on the journey. She and Vos could return to the Jedi, having completed the mission. Once things had settled down, then, at last, they would leave as they had planned. Unfortunately, Dooku was as determined about this as he was about many things, and he insisted on clinging to life. As Vos assisted him in cutting loose the bloodiest part of his shirt and draping the outer fabric so that it concealed the wound, Ventress bit back a scathing comment.

  Vos, you’d better be right about whatever it is you’re planning.

  “That’s better,” Dooku said.

  “No thank you?” Ventress couldn’t help it. The count gave her a disdainful look, straightened himself, and strode forward. Ventress had to admit, he gave away nothing. He was indeed a master of deceit.

  Hundreds of droids clustered at the base of the tower, more hexagonal formations hitherto serving as concealment. It was a disconcerting feeling to have so many weapons pointed at one simultaneously. “Hold your fire!” Dooku shouted, striding out o
f the crystal forest into the open area with his hands raised in a commanding gesture. “It is I, your lord!”

  “Count Dooku!” There was a clatter as every droid lowered its weapon in perfect unison.

  “There, that’s a better way to greet your master. Now take me to the command room.”

  “And them?” One of the droids peered at Dooku’s companions. Ventress tensed. Against so many droids, the outcome was certain, but she’d go down fighting. If Dooku was going to betray them, now would be an ideal moment, when they were completely at his mercy.

  “Yes, they are with me,” Dooku said smoothly. Ventress relaxed, ever so slightly.

  “Roger that. Right this way, sire.”

  —

  Ventress’s skin crawled at being in the very heart of a Separatist site. She had to stifle the urge to cut every droid she saw in half. By the time…whatever this was…was done, she knew she would be utterly drained. But then, she and Vos would be together and away from all of this—the Jedi, the Separatists, Dooku, everything. And that was worth adrenal depletion now.

  They followed Dooku into a lift that took them up to one of the top stories, and stepped into a large room. Presumably one-way glass wrapped around the room floor-to-ceiling, providing a 270-degree view. Even the naked eye could see for kilometers, and, listening to the hum and whir of various displays and consoles, Ventress realized that from here, the Separatists could also monitor nearly everything on Christophsis. The planet’s unique composition had provided Dooku the ultimate camouflage for a key base.

  The room had been buzzing with high-pitched droid chatter, which fell silent when Dooku entered. Vos and Ventress hung back slightly. She glanced at Vos, but his gaze was locked on Dooku. Ventress wondered if he was starting to have second thoughts. She hoped so.

  “Sir,” one of the droids piped up, “Darth Sidious has been trying to contact you. He says it’s urgent!”

  “Urgent? Really?” Dooku asked. “I wonder what he could want. Reach out to him immediately.” He eyed Ventress and Vos. “You two will wait here.” The count turned and stepped into a side door on the right of the lift. Vos immediately slipped in behind him with no glance at Ventress. Furious with both of them, she followed just as the doors were closing. The chamber was dark, the only light coming from a single holotable in its center.