Book 0 - The Dark Lord Trilogy

by James Luceno

  “What world will accept us now?” equine-faced San Hill asked in a disconsolate voice.

  “If none offers, Chairman, then I will take one.”

  Grievous walked to the hatchway, his talons screeching along the deck. “For now, return to your separate vessels. When a world has been selected, I will contact each of you in the usual manner, and provide you with new rendezvous coordinates.”

  Careful not to betray his sudden misgiving, Gunray traded covert glances with Haako.

  The “usual manner” meant the mechno-chair inadvertently left behind on Cato Neimoidia.

  A patchwork of dull red and pale brown, Charros IV filled the forward viewports of the Republic cruiser. The twin-piloted ship had been an antique twenty years earlier, but its sublight and hyperdrive engines were reliable, and with vessels deployed on so many fronts Obi-Wan and Anakin couldn’t be choosy. The cruiser’s once emblematic crimson color was obscured under fresh coats of white paint; as a result of the war, laser cannons were carefully tucked astern under the radiator panel wings, and forward, beneath the cockpit, in the space that had once functioned as a salon for passengers.

  Obi-Wan had plotted the three jumps it had taken them to reach the Xi Char world from the Inner Rim, but Anakin had done all the piloting.

  “Landing coordinates coming in,” Anakin said, eyes fixed on a display screen set into the instrument panel.

  Obi-Wan was pleasantly surprised. “That will teach me not to be skeptical. In the past when we’ve been informed that Intelligence has done the advance work, I’ve found that to be anything but the case.”

  Anakin looked at him and laughed.

  “Something funny?”

  “I was just thinking, Here you are again …”

  Obi-Wan sat back in his chair, waiting for the rest of it.

  “I only mean that, for someone with a reputation for hating space travel, you’ve certainly taken part in more than your share of exotic missions. Kamino, Geonosis, Ord Cestus …”

  Obi-Wan plucked at his beard. “Let’s just say that the war has prompted me to take a long view of things.”

  “Master Qui-Gon would have been proud of you.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  Obi-Wan had argued against going to Charros IV. Dexter Jettster, his Besalisk friend on Coruscant, could probably have furnished the Intelligence analysts with everything they needed to know about Viceroy Gunray’s mechno-chair. But Yoda had insisted that Obi-Wan and Anakin attempt to speak personally with the Xi Charrian whose sigil had been discovered on the walking chair.

  Now Obi-Wan wondered why he had been so averse to making the trip. Compared to the past few months, the mission already felt like a furlough. Anakin was correct about Obi-Wan’s having had more than his share of such assignments. But several other Jedi had also doubled as Intelligence operatives during the course of the war. Aayla Secura and the Caamasi Jedi Ylenic It’kla had taken a Techno Union defector into custody on Corellia; Quinlan Vos had gone undercover to infiltrate Dooku’s circle of dark side apprentices …

  And Supreme Chancellor Palpatine hadn’t been told—or learned since—about any of the covert operations.

  It wasn’t that the Jedi Council didn’t trust him; it was more a matter of no longer trusting anyone.

  “Do you think the Xi Char will talk to us?” Anakin said.

  Obi-Wan swiveled to face him. “They’ve every reason to be accommodating. After the Battle of Naboo, the Republic refused to do any business with them, for their having supplied the Neimoidians with proscribed weapons. They’ve been eager to atone ever since, especially now that their signature designs are being mass-produced more cheaply by Baktoid Armor and other Confederacy suppliers.”

  The Xi Char’s principal contribution to the Neimoidian arsenal had been the so-called Variable Geometry Self-Propelled Battle Droid starfighter, a meticulously engineered solid-fuel craft that was capable of configuring itself into three separate modes.

  Anakin adopted a thin-lipped expression of wariness. “I hope they won’t hold it against us that I destroyed so many of their fighters.”

  Obi-Wan laughed shortly. “Yes, let’s hope your fame hasn’t spread this far into the Outer Rim. But in fact, our success hinges almost entirely on whether TeeCee-Sixteen can speak Xi Char as fluently as he claims.”

  “Master Kenobi, I assure you that I can speak the tongue almost as well as an indigenous Xi Charrian,” the protocol droid chimed in from one of the cockpit’s rear seats. “My term of service to Viceroy Gunray demanded that I familiarize myself with the trader’s tongues used by all the hive species, including the Xi Char, the Geonosians, the Colicoids, and many others. My fluency will ensure complete cooperation on the part of the Xi Char. Although I expect that they will be rather disgusted by my physical appearance.”

  “Why’s that?” Anakin asked.

  “Devotion to precision technology forms the basis of Xi Char religious beliefs. They accept as a matter of faith that meticulous work is no different from prayer; indeed, their workshops have more in common with temples than factories. When a Xi Charrian is injured, he goes into self-exile, so that others won’t have to look upon his imperfections or deformities. A Xi Char adage has it that ‘The deity is in the details.’ ”

  “Wear your flaws proudly, TeeCee,” Anakin said, raising and clenching his right hand. “I do, mine.”

  The cruiser was descending into Charros IV’s ice-clouded atmosphere. Leaning toward the viewport, Obi-Wan gazed down on an arid, almost treeless world. The Xi Char lived on high plateaus, hemmed in by ranges of snowcapped mountains. Expansive black-water lakes dotted the landscape.

  “A bleak planet,” Obi-Wan said.

  Anakin made adjustments to the controls to compensate for strong winds that were buffeting the ship. “I’ll take it over Tatooine any day.”

  Obi-Wan shrugged. “I can think of far worse places to live than Tatooine.”

  Into view came the landing platform to which they had been directed. Oval in shape and perfectly sized to the cruiser, it looked newly built.

  “I’m certain that it was constructed specifically for us,” TC-16 said. “That’s why the Xi Char were unremitting in their requests to know the cruiser’s exact dimensions.”

  Anakin glanced at Obi-Wan. “The Republic could use the Xi Char right about now.”

  He set the cruiser down on its broad disks of landing gear and extended the vessel’s starboard boarding ramp. At the top of the ramp, Obi-Wan raised the hood of his cloak against a frigid wind that howled down the slopes. Ahead, a gleaming alloy runner ran from the edge of the landing platform to a cathedral-like structure half a kilometer distant. To both sides of the runner stood hundreds of excited Xi Charrians.

  “Guess they don’t get many guests,” Anakin said as he, Obi-Wan, and TC-16 started down the ramp.

  As was often the case, the Xi Char’s technological creations mirrored their own anatomy and physiology. With their short, chitinous bodies, quartets of pointed legs, scissor-action feet, and teardrop-shaped heads, they might have been living versions of the shapeshifting droid fighters they had helped produce for the Trade Federation—in walk/patrol mode, at any rate. The wild chitterings of the hundreds-strong mob of welcomers was so loud that Anakin had to raise his voice to be heard.

  “Celebrity treatment! I think I’m going to enjoy this!”

  “Just be sure to follow my lead, Anakin.”

  “I’ll try, Master.”

  The closer the Jedi and the protocol droid drew to the edge of the landing platform, the louder the chitterings became. Obi-Wan didn’t know what to make of the sheer eagerness he felt from the aliens. It was as if some sort of footrace were about to begin. Frequently, an individual Xi Charrian, carried away by enthusiasm, would leap onto the sleek runner, only to be yanked back into the crowd by others.

  “TeeCee, are they normally so zealous?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Yes, Master Kenobi. But their zest has nothing to do wit
h us. It’s the ship!”

  The meaning of the remark became clear the instant the three of them stepped from the landing platform. At once the Xi Charrians surged forward and swarmed the cruiser, covering it from flat-faced bow to barrel-thrustered stern. Obi-Wan and Anakin watched in awe as patches of carbon scoring disappeared, dents were straightened, pieces of superstructure were realigned, and transparisteel viewports were polished.

  “Let’s remember to tip them when we leave,” Anakin said.

  Occasionally a Xi Charrian would leap on TC-16 or make a grab for one of his limbs, but the droid was able to shake his assailants off.

  “In their eagerness to perfect me, I’m afraid they’ll wipe my memory!” the droid said.

  “Would that be such a bad thing,” Anakin said, “after what you claim to have been through?”

  “How can I be expected to learn from my mistakes if I can no longer remember them?”

  They were halfway down the runner when a pair of larger Xi Charrians scurried out to meet them. TC-16 exchanged chitterings and stridulations with them, and explained.

  “These two will take us to the Prelate.”

  “No weapons,” Anakin said quietly. “That’s a good sign.”

  “The Xi Char are a peaceful species,” the droid explained. “They care only about the engineering of a piece of technology, not its intended use. That was why they felt unjustly accused and harshly judged by the Republic for the part their droid fighters played in the Battle of Naboo.”

  The enormous building TC-16 had called a workshop topped two hundred meters in height and was crowned with latticework spires and towers that evoked strains of eerie music from the steady wind. Arrays of tall skylights lit the vast interior space, in which thousands of Xi Charrians toiled. Arcades of exquisitely engraved columns supported a vaulted ceiling of exposed roof trusses, among which roosted several thousand more Xi Charrians, suspended by their scissor feet and humming contentedly.

  “The night shift?” Anakin wondered aloud.

  Their pair of escorts led them into a kind of chancery, whose tall doors opened on a spotless room that could have passed for the captain’s cabin of a luxury space yacht. Occupying a thronelike chair in the center of the room was the largest Xi Charrian the Jedi had yet seen, being attended to by a dozen smaller ones. Elsewhere, groups of tool-wielding Xi Charrians were going over every square millimeter of the chamber, scrubbing, cleaning, polishing.

  Without ceremony, TC-16 approached the Prelate and tendered a greeting. The droid had tasked his vocoder to provide Obi-Wan and Anakin with simultaneous translations of his utterances.

  “May I present Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Jedi Anakin Skywalker,” he began.

  Waving away his retinue, the Prelate pivoted his long head to regard Obi-Wan.

  “TeeCee,” Obi-Wan said, “tell him we’re sorry to have disturbed him during his ablutions.”

  “You’re not disturbing him, sir. The Prelate is attended to in similar fashion at all hours of the day.”

  The Prelate chittered.

  “Excellency, I speak your language as a result of my former employment in the court of Viceroy Nute Gunray.” The droid listened to the Prelate’s response, then said: “Yes, I realize that does not endear me to you. But may I say in defense that my time among the Neimoidians was the most trying of my existence. To which my physical appearance surely attests, and is cause for my great shame.”

  Clearly mollified, the Prelate chittered again.

  “These Jedi have come to seek permission from you to pose questions to a devotee in Workshop Xcan—a certain t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak.”

  TC-16 supplied the glottal stops and clicking sounds necessary to pronounce the name.

  “A virtuoso engraver, to be sure, Excellency. As to the Jedi’s interest in him, it is hoped that a work of art to which he devoted himself will provide a clue as to the current whereabouts of an important Separatist leader.” The droid listened, then added: “And may I add that anything that brings joy to the Xi Char brings contentment to the Republic.”

  The Prelate’s eye grooves found the Jedi again.

  “The lightsabers are not weapons, Excellency,” TC-16 said after a brief exchange. “But if permission to speak with t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak rests on their surrendering the lightsabers, then I’m certain they will comply.”

  Obi-Wan was already reaching for his lightsaber, but Anakin looked dubious.

  “You did say you would follow my lead.”

  Anakin opened his cloak. “I said I’d try, Master.”

  They handed the lightsabers to TC-16, who presented them to the Prelate for inspection.

  “It hardly surprises me that you see room for improvement, Excellency,” the droid said after a moment. “But then, what tool could fail to benefit from the touch of a Xi Charrian?” He listened, then added: “I’m certain that the Jedi know you will honor your pledge to leave the imperfections intact.”

  “That went better than expected,” Obi-Wan said as he, Anakin, and TC-16 were being escorted into the heart of Workshop Xcan.

  Anakin wasn’t convinced. “You’re too trusting, Master. I sense much suspicion.”

  “We can thank Raith Sienar for some of that.”

  Almost two decades earlier, the wealthy and influential owner-president of Sienar Design Systems—a chief supplier of starfighters to the Republic—had spent time among the Xi Char, mastering ultraprecision engineering techniques he would later incorporate into his own designs. Revealed to be a “nonbeliever,” Sienar had been exiled from Charros IV, and been made the target of bounty hunters, four of whom Sienar had managed to strand at a black hole known only to him and a handful of other hotshot hyperspace explorers. Sienar had engaged in similar acts of corporate espionage among the Trade Federation, Baktoid Armor, Corellian Engineering, and Incom Corporations, but the Xi Char had a long memory for what they considered sacrilege. Six years before the Battle of Naboo, a second attempt on Raith’s life had resulted in the death of his father, Narro, at Dantooine. But once again the heretic had escaped.

  Ten years back, Obi-Wan and Anakin had had their own brush with Sienar at the living world known as Zonama Sekot. Because Sienar had been partly responsible for Zonama Sekot’s disappearance, he was also the reason that the Xi Char no longer accepted human apprentices.

  Workshop Xcan was a marvel to behold.

  Xi Char artisans worked individually or in groups of three to three hundred, on devices ranging from high-end home appliances to starfighters, adding enhancements or adornments, tweaking, personalizing, customizing in a thousand different ways. Here were all the priceless devices Obi-Wan and Anakin had found crammed into storage rooms in Gunray’s Cato Neimoidia citadel. The environment was the antithesis of the deafening freneticism that characterized a Baktoid Armor foundry, such as the one the Republic had commandeered on Geonosis. Xi Charrians rarely conversed with one another while working, preferring instead to amplify their concentration through the repetition of high-pitched stridulations, analogous to chants. The few who did take notice of the three visitors in their midst showed more interest in TC-16 than in the Jedi.

  And yet, for all the fine work that was performed in Workshop Xcan, the cathedral-factory was little more than a stepping-stone for many Xi Charrians, who aspired to work for the Haor Chall Engineering conglomerate which had abandoned Charros IV for other worlds in the Outer Rim.

  The same pair of outsized aliens who had escorted Obi-Wan and Anakin to the Prelate’s chancery guided them to t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak’s altar, which was located in the workshop’s western colonnade, the piers of which were decorated with mosaics of engraved tiles. High overhead, resting Xi Charrians hung inverted from the great curving rafters that supported the roof, like configurable droid fighters arrayed inside a Trade Federation carrier.

  Obi-Wan could see how the sound of their ceaseless humming could be slightly unnerving.

  t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak was en
grossed in engraving a corporate logo into a piece of starship console. Dozens of yet-to-be-completed pieces walled him in on one side; completed pieces were on the other. On hearing his name called, he glanced up from his work.

  The escorts chittered to him briefly before TC-16 took over.

  “t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak, first allow me to say that your work is of such exceptional quality that the deities themselves must be covetous.”

  The Xi Charrian accepted the compliment in humility, and chittered a response.

  “We appreciate the offer to watch you at work. But in fact, we are not unacquainted with some of your finer pieces, and it is because of one piece in particular that we have journeyed so far to speak with you. An example that recently came to light on Cato Neimoidia.”

  The Xi Charrian took a long moment to respond.

  “A mechno-chair you adorned for Trade Federation viceroy, Nute Gunray, some fourteen standard years ago.” TC-16 listened, then added: “But surely it was yours, for the inner portion of the rear leg bears your devotional symbol.” Again he listened. “A Baktoid forgery? Are you suggesting that your work could so easily be imitated?”

  Anakin nudged Obi-Wan in the upper arm: Xi Charrians working nearby were beginning to take a keen interest in the conversation.

  “We understand your reluctance to discuss such matters,” TC-16 was saying quietly. “Why, the very fact that you autographed a piece could be interpreted by the Prelate as a statement of pride.”

  t’laalak-s’lalak-t’th’ak’s anger was apparent.

  “Well, of course, you should be proud. But should the Prelate learn that the piece has for all these years resided with a personage such as Viceroy Gunray—”

  Without another chitter, the Xi Charrian let go his tools and launched himself from his work pallet—not at TC-16 or either of the Jedi, but straight up into the web of overhead girders. Ignoring indignant squeals from rudely awakened Xi Charrians, he began to leap from one girder to the next, clearly determined to reach one of the tall skylights that perforated the roof.