The Clone Wars Read online

  “What if we’re busy?” TK-0 asked.

  “Then you get a decent funeral . . . or scrapyard of your choice.”

  “You’d be amazed how fast our customer-response times can be,” said Gaib, physically turning TK-0 toward the doors with both hands. “Pleasure doing business with you, Lord Jabba.”

  Jabba didn’t even see them go. He’d closed his eyes for a moment, every dread passing through his imagination. The scum that had taken Rotta might have botched the kidnap. They’d harmed him, accident or not, and when he caught them, he would harm them, in ways they couldn’t even begin to imagine. He opened his eyes again. The silent, anxious faces of the entertainers, servants, and guards stared back at him. The palace had had the air of an interrupted funeral for the last two days. He fought an urge to travel to Teth himself, but that was what he paid others to do, and he needed to be here to oversee operations.

  There was no telling what might happen if he turned his back and left Tatooine. Coups weren’t unknown. But there had been no ransom demand; whatever the kidnappers wanted, it wasn’t the usual pile of untraceable cash-creds or aurodium ingots, so there was every possibility that the leverage they were seeking was territorial, or it might have been simple revenge. A rival crime syndicate, or even a rival Hutt kajidic . . . Jabba had amassed a respectable list of would-be-if-they-got-the-chance enemies over the centuries, not that any of them had shown the courage or daring to take him on—yet. But wars created turmoil, and some fool might see this as a good time to take advantage of the chaos growing all around.

  Black Sun? No . . .

  They wouldn’t dare. Nobody wanted a gangland war now that there were rich pickings to be had from the real one.

  Or the Republic.

  It wasn’t the Republic’s piously high-minded style, but he didn’t trust Palpatine, and so he’d see what his request for Jedi help would shake down. If Palpatine put serious effort into it, the Jedi would pick up Rotta’s trail; if they didn’t, then Jabba would know that the Republic either wanted nothing from him, or had some involvement.

  Win-win. Of a kind.

  Jabba suspected everybody at the moment. He would rule them out one by one. Then he would punish whoever was left.

  “Captain,” he said. The Nikto waiting by his dais—the head of his security detail—snapped to attention. “Has the crew of the sail barge remembered anything else about the kidnapping? Any more useful detail at all?”

  “No, Lord Jabba.”

  “Have they tried very hard, do you think?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Execute them, then.”

  Nobody in the throne room breathed. A thin wisp of smoke drifted toward the ceiling from a rare halamo oil lamp. There wasn’t a twitch or a sigh, but Jabba was satisfied that the point had been made to his entourage. He wasn’t lashing out in anguish, not at all. He wasn’t mired in helpless rage. He was making it clear that failure on that scale could not be tolerated, and had to be punished.

  No, he wasn’t out of control, or weakened, he was certain. He was just managing his empire. Business as usual.

  He took another gorog from the jar and swallowed it headfirst.

  DOOKU’S PRIVATE SHUTTLE, LAID UP SOMEWHERE ON KEM STOR AI

  “Most inspired,” said Dooku. There was a storm coming; he could hear the fierce wind starting to shriek around the unsealed hatches of the ship. “I really am impressed.”

  A shimmering blue hologram of Ziro the Hutt sat on the table like an ornament in dubious taste, the kind that had been given by someone important and so could not be relegated to a cupboard. “Jabba would suspect he was being set up if it was more obvious. A trail of crumbs works better at luring him than a flashing sign. So I had someone throw in a few electronic transactions that only a good security operative would spot.”

  And was this your idea? You are more intelligent than you let on, aren’t you? It was always hard to find the balance between dangerously smart and usefully smart in a collaborator. “And if he’d missed it, Lord Ziro, we would have given him a few extra clues.”

  “He didn’t miss it.”

  I know. I wouldn’t leave this entirely to you, would I?

  “His bounty hunters are on their way to Teth, then. I’ll take over from here.”

  Ziro wobbled a little. “Take over . . .”

  “In that I need to ensure the information about Jabba’s bounty hunters reaches the right ears inside the Grand Army, and that the Huttlet isn’t actually rescued. A task best done by me. That’s all.”

  “And then?”

  “As I said before, simply leave the rest to me. I have a reliable associate who’ll take on the next phase of the operation.” Dooku bowed his head. “I’ll keep you informed.”

  The hologram vanished as the comlink closed. Dooku rolled his head a little to ease the tension in his neck, then settled down at his desk—even on a shuttle, he needed some illusion of permanence—to study the ground plan and schematics of the monastery on Teth again. There was never a guarantee that any plan would unfold even remotely as intended, not even the small stages, the step-by-step increments of putting the dejarik pieces in place. But this was going well.

  Dooku opened his datapad. There were so many layers to planning, so many flow charts to build in his head that would direct events this way and that, or implement the appropriate contingency plan when one coin flipped the wrong way. Planning was a science; he hated to see it reduced to less.

  The kidnapping could have gone wrong, and the kidnappers seized. But there was nothing to connect them to Dooku, and he had contingency plans to try again without Ziro’s assistance. There would be other wedges to drive between Jabba and the Republic. The clues about the flight to Teth might not have been spotted, but he would have nudged a few more Jabba’s way. Jabba might not have called for Jedi assistance, but in the end Dooku had a cascade plan of operations to eventually place some Jedi with Rotta in an incriminating spot.

  I’ve spent years preparing to break the Republic’s stranglehold. Years. A long way to go, still, but it’ll come. The galaxy is ready for it. Worlds want to run their own affairs. Make it happen soon, Darth Sidious. The Republic’s the worst kind of dictatorship—a pseudo-democracy cloaked in smiles and tolerance, as long as you do as it says.

  And I will not do as anyone says. I’ll think for myself.

  Dooku stared into the mesh of light that showed the plan of a castle-like structure full of passages, chambers, and high walls.

  Don’t think, Padawan Dooku.

  “You were wrong then, Jedi,” he said aloud. “And you’re wrong now.”

  Destiny was not about feeling; destiny was about thinking, about rationality. Dooku didn’t see reacting blindly to feelings as some mystic virtue, but as a weakness.

  In a child, he would have punished it as giving in to impulses, a lack of maturity and self-control.

  As a child, he had been trained not to think. As a child, he had been trained to be a Jedi.

  Don’t question so much, Padawan Dooku. Feel. Don’t doubt. Believe.

  Well, he questioned things now. And he didn’t believe. The Republic was corrupt to its core, and the Jedi were its lackeys—sanctimonious mercenaries. Their comfortable little cartel was coming to an end. Darth Sidious would finish it off, and Dooku knew it was his moral duty to help bring about that day.

  Then he saw snow again, not the polished apocia wood desk; a battlefield in winter, finally silent. The schematic’s hair-fine lines of red light became spatters and trails of blood that Dooku feared he would never be able to wash from his hands.

  He was standing ankle-deep in the muffled, ice-cold whiteness of Galidraan in winter. Jedi and Mandalorian dead lay everywhere. And he could still hear his own appalled voice, his own shame.

  What have we done?

  It was a massacre; and the Jedi had carried it out, pawns of the corrupt Galidraan governor, who had set up the Mandalorian army for his own agenda. Looking back on it, Dooku saw it
was the tipping point that had changed his life. It was the moment he had started to think.

  I believed my Masters. I didn’t think for myself. They didn’t question, either; they took the governor at his word. They just believed. And we killed people. We killed them on the say-so of a criminal.

  If you were going to take lives, go to war, then there was no benefit of the doubt to be given, no other’s word to take. Dooku trusted only proof now.

  What have I done?

  You came to your senses.

  But I’m setting up the Jedi now. That makes me as degenerate as they are.

  Think of it as using their own complacency against them. Turning their own weapon on them. Poetic justice. Whatever it takes. They won’t say sorry and step down simply because you point out the error of the Republic’s ways, will they?

  He had these arguments with himself more than ever lately.

  The snow had melted; the dead were buried. But he couldn’t erase Jango Fett’s face, the face of a man back from the living death of a slavery that Dooku had delivered him into, etched with all the bitter lines of surviving only to have his moment of justice. It was always the last image to leave Dooku. It wasn’t just that the millions of troops cloned from Fett made forgetting it impossible. It was that Fett hadn’t lived to see the downfall of the Jedi. Fett’s motive for sharing—aiding—Dooku’s ambition hadn’t been greed, he realized, but the same understanding that the Jedi Order was a destructive, destabilizing cabal.

  The Jedi had killed Fett in the end. But most of him seemed to have died at Galidraan anyway, and only his insatiable hunger for justice had kept that formidable body moving.

  We’ll have our day, Fett.

  Dooku opened the comlink again, this time to the monastery on Teth. It was time for the next stage of the operation.

  “Ventress,” he said. “Ventress, is the Huttlet all right? Bring me up to speed.”

  FOUR

  You have to know the provenance of information to evaluate it. In other words, who wants you to know this? Who doesn’t? And why? If you come by sensitive information too easily, it might be planted. So if you check out Teth, go carefully.

  INTELLIGENCE OFFICER LIEUTENENT KOM’RK, N-6, Special

  Operations Brigade, Grand Army of the Republic

  OBSERVATION POST, CRYSTAL CITY, CHRISTOPHSIS

  ANAKIN KNEW HE had to grit his teeth and take a certain amount of Jedi Council bureaucracy, but there was a war on. And there was every chance that they’d die here.

  He didn’t have time for a Padawan.

  He also didn’t want to kick up a stink in front of Rex. There was nothing more demoralizing for troops than a commanding officer who didn’t look solidly in control. If his clone troopers could take any onslaught without murmur, then he had to do even better. It was what officers did. It was expected of him.

  The abandoned skyscraper was a useful observation point. When visibility was good, they could see for thirty klicks in every direction. Smoke hanging in the air had cut that down dramatically, but it was still an excellent vantage point, and went some way to making up for the lack of air cover and forward air control. He could direct long-range artillery from here.

  We need reinforcements. Ground troops, a fighter squadron, an armored battalion, too.

  Ahsoka stood on a rail to look out from the top of the abandoned skyscraper as if she were sightseeing. She wasn’t tall enough to peer over unaided. Anakin grabbed her by the belt and pulled her back down.

  “This isn’t a training exercise, youngling,” he snapped. “The Seps use live rounds. They’re awkward that way.”

  “I know what I’m doing.” Ahsoka readjusted her belt. “Why don’t you send a couple of squads to infiltrate the—”

  “Skyline yourself like that again and you’ll get your head shot off, Jedi or not.”

  Rex had his head turned toward the droid positions. He might have been watching, or he might not; there was no way to tell. Anakin envied him his helmet at times like this. Rex didn’t have to grit his teeth. He could just switch off his links and retreat into a private world. He could vent his spleen as much he wished, and nobody would be any the wiser.

  The clones did that. He knew.

  “I thought you said you’d never have a Padawan, sir . . . ,” Rex said at last.

  “Someone must have fouled up the flimsi.” As soon as the battalion was relieved, Anakin would pack Ahsoka off to the Temple again. “I don’t have a Padawan. I can’t have a Padawan. There’s normally at least some discussion about this kind of thing first.”

  Ahsoka stepped in front of him. “I’m still here, Skyguy. Stop talking about me as if I’m not.”

  “Skyguy.” Rex took off his helmet and laughed. “Skyguy . . .”

  Anakin wasn’t in the mood. He fixed Ahsoka with a don’t-mess-with-me look. “What did you call me? Look, don’t get snippy with me, youngling. You’re not even old enough to be a Padawan.”

  “I’m not a youngling,” she said. “I’m fourteen.”

  Rex kept a straight face. “I’m ten,” he said, “but I’m tall for my age.”

  “Anyway, Master Yoda thinks I’m old enough.”

  “Master Yoda’s light-years away, so it’s me you’ve got to persuade,” Anakin said. “And seeing as I can’t ship you back to Coruscant yet, you might as well make yourself useful. Rex, give her an acquaint of the position. And don’t take any backchat from her.”

  Rex checked the charge on his rifle and both sidearms, then gestured to the stairs. “Very good, sir. Come on, youngling.”

  She followed him without further argument, scowling, but Anakin saw her lips move soundlessly: Padawan. She really cared about her status, that one.

  “And if Captain Rex gives you an order,” Anakin said, “you take it, okay?”

  Ahsoka narrowed her eyes a fraction. “Yes, Skyguy.”

  Stang, he didn’t have time to play games with a kid. He watched her disappear down the smoke-stained stairwell with Rex before he felt he could breathe again.

  Kenobi sat next to the mobile comm station, one ear cocked to the chatter of static thrown up by the solar storm ripping through the upper layers of Christophsis’s atmosphere. “Don’t you think you’re a little hard on her?”

  “No. This isn’t a game.”

  “I admit she’s not what I expected in terms of self-discipline.” Kenobi paused as the white noise seemed to resolve into a clear comm signal, but it vanished again. There was still no window to make contact with Coruscant. “But then neither were you.”

  “I had a better excuse,” said Anakin. “And I didn’t play the brat in the middle of a war, either.”

  “You’re not that much older than she is.”

  “Oh, I am, Master,” Anakin said quietly. “A lifetime older.”

  Kenobi just looked at him, one eyebrow slightly raised. There might have been the suggestion of a smile under the beard. Then it faded as he appeared to realize what Anakin meant.

  “Yes, I know what war does to you,” Kenobi said at last. He didn’t ask Anakin to go on, although he must have felt his pain from time to time in the Force. But it was more than the war. Kenobi never asked for any details about what had happened on Tatooine, and whether that was from tact or disinterest, Anakin didn’t know. “Well, then, you’re old enough to cut her some slack.”

  You don’t know what it is to love, Master. Or to lose. You didn’t even know your own mother.

  Anakin hadn’t yet settled on a consistent view of his former Master—and he still called him Master, and thought of him as such—so that half smile, benign as it was, made him wonder if he was being scolded. Sometimes he felt Kenobi was stability and safety; sometimes he thought he was an overbearing older brother who held him back and even competed with him.

  He’d told Padmé that. She’d been taken aback by it.

  And he didn’t want to take me as a Padawan, did he? He only did it out of duty.

  Anakin often found himself ambus
hed by thoughts he didn’t want. It was even worse sometimes than the recurring memory of the Tusken village, because he only had to face its ghosts, but it was harder to handle his sporadic resentments and doubts about a Master he cared for and respected.

  “I’ve got some maintenance to do,” Anakin said, grabbing a battered comlink from the makeshift console. “I’ll be back soon.”

  It was his hint that he wanted some space. Kenobi never asked why. Usually, it was to find privacy to comm Padmé or to compose a message to her that he could send when he next got a chance. It was hard to be apart. It was even harder to keep their relationship secret.

  No attachments. I know. But I can’t live that way, Master.

  Anakin found a quiet room two floors beneath the observation level and settled into a corner. The room must once have been an entertainment suite; a large holovid projector jutted from one wall, cables exposed, framed by the pockmarks and scattered black debris from a cannon round that had passed through the room to leave a hole in the far wall. Plush upholstered seats—brilliant green Farus shimmersilk with a close-cut pile—lay tipped on one side, pleekwood legs snapped off, pale stuffing spilling onto the floor in a way that looked distressingly like brain tissue.

  Anakin dismantled the comlink almost without thinking, the probes and microspanners as natural in his hands as an extension of his own body. Putting things back together was soothing. It gave him control over events just long enough to calm his thoughts.

  Skyguy. I bet she thinks that’s cute. It’s just juvenile.

  Ahsoka really annoyed him.

  He wasn’t sure why, beyond the fact that he didn’t relish responsibility for—or power over—others. And she talked too much. And she was far too cocky, in that naive, chirpy, why-can’t-we-fix-it way, as if he and the clone troopers had never been in combat before. When it came to battle—well, he’d still take lessons from them, thanks. And she could do the same.