Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Force Heretic III - Reunion - Book 19

by Sean Williams

"I'm a prophet." Mace lowered his voice as though sharing a secret. "I can see the future ..."

  "Sure you can." He set his stubble-smeared jaw and showed jagged yellow teeth. "What do you see?"

  "You," Mace said. "Bleeding."

  His expression might have been a smile if there had been the faintest hint of warmth in his eyes.

  The big man suddenly looked less confident.

  In this he can perhaps be excused; like all successful predators, he was interested only in victims. Certainly not in opponents. Which was the purpose of his particular racket, after all Members of any sapient species that are culturally accustomed to wearing clothes will feel hesitant, uncertain, and vulnerable when they're caught naked. Especially humans. Any normal man will stop to put on his pants before he throws a punch.

  Mace Windu, by contrast, looked like he might know of uncertainty and vulnerability by reputation, but had never met either of them face to face.

  One hundred and eighty-eight centimeters of muscle and bone. Absolutely still. Absolutely relaxed. From his attitude, the pro-bi mist that trickled down his naked skin might have been carbon fiber-reinforced ceramic body armor.

  "Do you have a move to make?" Mace said. "I'm in a hurry."

  The big man's gaze twitched sideways, and he said, "Uh?" and Mace felt a pressure in the Force over his left kidney and heard the sizzle of a triggered stun ba-

  ton. He spun and caught the wrist of the smaller man with both hands, shoving the baton's sparking corona well clear with a twist that levered his face into the path of Mace's rising foot. The impact made a smack wet and meaty as the snap of bone. The big man bellowed and lunged and Mace stepped to one side and whip-cracked the smaller man's arm to spin his slackening body. Mace caught the small man's head in the palm of one hand and shoved it crisply into the big man's nose. The two men skidded in a tangle on the slippery damp floor and went down. The baton spat lightning as it skittered into a corner. The smaller man lay limp. The big man's eyes spurted tears and he sat on the floor, trying with both hands to massage his smashed nose into shape. Blood leaked through his fingers. Mace stood over him. "Told you." The big man didn't seem impressed. Mace shrugged. A prophet, it is said, receives no honor on his own world.

  Mace dressed silently while the other travellers reclaimed their belongings. The big man made no attempt to stop them, or even to rise. Presently the smaller man stirred, moaned, and opened his eyes. As soon as they focused well enough to see Mace still in the dressing station, he cursed and clawed at his holster flap, struggling to free his blaster. Mace looked at him.

  The man decided his blaster was better off where it was.

  "You don't know how much trouble you're in," he muttered sullenly as he settled back down on the floor, words blurred by his smashed mouth. He drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. "People who butch up with capital militia don't live long around"

  The big man interrupted him with a cuff on the back of his head. "Shut it."

  "Capital militia?" Mace understood now. His face settled into a grim mask, and he finished buckling down his holster. "You're the police."

  The Pho Ph'eahian mimed a pratfall. "You'd think they'd hire cops who aren't so clumsy, eh?"

  "Oh, I dunno, Phootie," the Kitonak said in a characteristically slow, terminally relaxed voice. "They bounced real nice."

  Both Kubaz whirred something about slippery floors, inapppropriate footwear and unfortunate accidents.

  The cops scowled.

  Mace squatted in front of them. His right hand rested on the Power 5's butt. "It'd be a shame if somebody had a blaster malfunction," he said. "A slip, a fall-sure, it's embarrassing. It hurts. But you'll get over it in a day or two. If somebody's blaster accidentally went off when you fell?" He shrugged. "How long will it take you to get over being dead?"

  The smaller cop started to spit back something venomous. The larger one interrupted him with another cuff. "We scan you," he growled. "Just go."

  Mace stood. "I remember when this was a nice town."

  He shouldered his kit bag and walked out into the blazing tropical afternoon. He passed under a dented, rusty sign without looking up.

  The sign said WELCOME TO PELEK BAW.

  Faces

  Hard faces. Cold faces. Hungry, or drunk. Hopeful. Calculating. Desperate.

  Street faces.

  Mace walked a pace behind and to the right of the Republic Intelligence station boss, keeping his right hand near the Merr-Sonn's butt. Late at night, the streets were still crowded. Haruun Kal had no moon; the streets were lit with spill from taverns and outdoor cafes. Light-

  polestall hexagonal pillars of duracrete with glow-strips running up each facestood every twenty meters along both sides of the street. Their pools of yellow glow bordered black shadow; to pass into one of the alley-mouths was to be wiped from existence .

  The Intel station boss was a bulky, red-cheeked woman about Mace's age. She ran the Highland Green Washeteria, a thriving laundry and public refresher station on the capitol's north side. She never stopped talking. Mace hadn't started listening.

  The Force nudged him with threat in all directions from the rumble of wheeled groundcars that careened at random through crowded streets to the fan of death sticks in a teenager's fist. Uniformed militia swaggered or strutted or sometimes just posed, puffed up with the fake-dangerous attitude of armed amateurs. Holster flaps open. Blaster rifles propped against hipbones. He saw plenty of weapons waved, saw people shoved, saw lots of intimidation and threatening looks and crude street-gang horseplay; he didn't see much actual keeping of the peace. When a burst of blasterfire sang out a few blocks away, none of them even looked around.

  But nearly all of them looked at Mace.

  Militia faces Human, or too close to call. Looking at Mace, seeing nothing but a Korun in offworld clothes, their eyes went dead cold. Blank. Measuring. After a while, hostile eyes all look alike.

  Mace kept alert, and concentrated on projecting a powerful aura of Don't Mess With Me.

  He would have felt safer in the jungle.

  Street faces drink-bloated moons of bust-outs mooching spare change. A Wookiee gone grey from nose to chest, exhaustedly straining against his harness as he pulled a two-wheeled taxicart, fending off street kids with one hand while the other held onto his money belt. Jungle prospector faces fungus scars on their cheeks,

  weapons at their sides. Young faces children, younger than Depa had been on the day she became his Padawan, offering their services to Mace at "special discounts" because they "liked his face."

  Many of them were Korun.

  A later entry in his journal records his thoughts verbatim

  Sure. Come to the city. Life's easy in the city.

  No vine cats. No drillmites. No brassvines or death hollows. No shovelling grasser manure, no hauling water, no tending akk pups. Plenty of money in the city. All you have to do is sell this, or endure that. What you're really selling your youth. Your hope. Your future.

  Anyone with sympathy for the Separatist Cause should spend a few days in Pelek Baw. Find out what the Confederacy is really fighting for.

  It's good that Jedi do not indulge in hate.

  The station boss's chatter somehow wandered onto the subject of the Intel front she managed. The station boss's name was Phloremirlla Tenk, "but call me Flor, sweetie. Everybody does." Mace picked up the thread of her ramble.

  "Hey, everybody needs a shower once in a while. Why not get your clothes spiffed at the same time? So everybody comes there. I get jups, kornos, you name it. I get militia and Seppie brasswell, used to, till the pullback. I get everybody. I got a pool. I got six different saunas. I got private showersyou can get water, alcohol, pro-bi, sonics, you name itmaybe a recorder or two to really get the dirt we need. Some of these militia officers, you'd be amazed what they fall to talking about, alone in a steam room. Know what I mean?"

  She was the chattiest spy he'd ever met. When she eventually stopped for breath, Mace to
ld her so.

  "Yeah, funny, huh? How do you think I've survived this game for twenty-three years? Talk as much as I do, it takes people longer to notice you never really say anything."

  Maybe she was nervous. Maybe she could smell the threat that smoked in those streets. Some people think they can hold danger at bay by pretending to be safe.

  "I got thirty-seven employees. Only five are Intel. Everybody else just works there. Hah I make twice the money off the Washeteria than I draw after twenty-three years in the service. Not that it's all that hard to do, if you know what I mean. You know what an RS-17 makes? Pathetic. Pathetic. What's a Jedi make these days? Do they even pay you? Not enough, I'll bet. They love that 'Service is it's own reward' junk, don't they? Especially when it's other people's service. I'll just bet." She'd already assembled a team to take him upcountry. Six men with heavy weapons and an almost-new steam-crawler. "They look a little rough, but they're good boys, all of them. Freelancers, but solid. Years in the bush. Two of them are full-blood korno. Good with the natives, you know?"

  For security reasons, she explained, she was taking him to meet them herself. "Sooner you're on your way, happier we'll both be. Right? Am I right? Taxis are hopeless this time of day. Mind the gutter cookiethat stuff'll chew right through your boots. Hey, watch it, creepo! Ever hear that peds have the right-of-way? Yeah? Well, your mother eats Hutt slime!" She stumped along the street, arms swinging. "Um, you know this Jedi of yours is wanted, right? You got a way to get her offworld?"

  What Mace had was the Halleck on station in the Ventran system with twenty armed landers and a regiment of clone troopers. What he said was, "Yes."

  A new round of blasterfire sang perhaps a block or two away, salted with staccato pops crisper than blaster hits. Flor instantly turned left and dodged away up the street.

  "Whoops! This wayyou want to keep clear of those little rumbles, you know? Might just be a food riot, but you never know. Those handclaps? Slugthrowers, or I'm a Dug. Could be action by some of these guerillas as your Jedi runslots of the kornos carry slugthrowers, and slugs bounce. Slugthrowers. I hate 'em. But they're easy to maintain. Day or two in the jungle and your blaster'll never fire again. A good slug rifle, keep 'em wiped and oiled, they last forever. The guerillas have pretty good luck with them, even though they take a lot of practiceslugs are ballistic, you know. You have to plot the trajectory in your head. Shee, gimme a blaster any time."

  A new note joined the blasterfire a deeper, throatier thrummthrummmthrummthrumm. Mace scowled over his shoulder. That was some kind of repeater a T-21, or maybe a Merr-Sonn Thunderbolt.

  Military hardware.

  "It would be good," he said, "if we could get off the street."

  While she assured him, "No, no, no, don't worry, these scuffles never add up to much," he tried to calculate how fast he could dig his lightsaber out of his kit bag.

  The firing intensified. Voices joined in shouts and screams. Anger and pain. It started to sound less like a riot, and more like a firefight.

  Just beyond the corner ahead, whitehot bolts flared past along the right-of-way. More blasterfire zinged behind them. The firefight was overflowing, becoming a flood that might surround them at any second. Mace looked back along this street he still could see only crowds and groundcars, but the militia were starting to

  take an interest checking weapons, trotting toward alleys and cross streets. Flor said behind him, "See? Look at that. They're not even really aiming at anything. Now, we just nip across"

  She was interrupted by a splattering thwop. Mace had heard that sound too often steam, superheated by a high-energy plasma bolt, exploding through living flesh. A deep-tissue blaster hit. He turned back to Flor and found her staggering in a drunken circle, painting the pavement with her blood. Where her left arm should have been was only a fist-sized mass of ragged tissue. Where the rest of her arm was, he couldn't see.

  She said "What? What?"

  He dropped his kit bag and dove into the street. He rolled, coming up to slam her her hip-joint with his shoulder. The impact folded her over him; he lifted her, turned, and sprang back for the corner. Bright flares of blaster bolts bracketed invisible sizzles and fingersnaps of hypersonic slugs. He reached the meager cover of the corner and lay her flat on the sidewalk, tucked close against the wall.

  "This isn't supposed to happen." Her life was flooding out the shattered stump of her shoulder. Even dying, she kept talking. A blurry murmur "This isn't happening. It can't be happening. Mymy arm"

  In the Force, Mace could feel her shredded brachial artery; with the Force, he reached inside her shoulder to pinch it shut. The flood trickled to sluggish welling.

  "Take it easy." He propped her legs on his kit bag to help maintain blood pressure to her brain. "Try to stay calm. You can live through this."

  Boots clattered on permacrete behind him a militia squad sprinting toward them. "Help is on the way." He leaned closer. "I need the meetpoint and the recognition code for the team."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "Listen to me. Try to focus. Before you go into shock. Tell me where I can find the upcountry team, and the recognition code so we'll know each other."

  "You don'tyou don't understandthis isn't happening"

  "Yes. It is. Focus. Lives depend on you. I need the meetpoint and the code."

  "Butbutyou don't understand"

  The militia behind him clattered to a stop. "You! Korno! Stand away from that woman!"

  He glanced back. Six of them. Firing stance. The light-pole at their backs haloed black shadow across their faces. Plasma-charred muzzles stared at him. "This woman is wounded. Badly. Without medical attention, she will die."

  "You're no doctor," one said, and shot him.