Star Wars_ Labyrinth of Evil Part 17

Blaster bolts began to sear into the ice around them before they made the first bridge. Glancing over his shoulder, Obi-Wan saw three sleds gaining on them from upriver. On the bridge, two beings bundled up in cold-weather gear were drawing a bead on him with a pintle-mounted repeating blaster.

29.

The star that warmed Naos III was a white blur, low on the horizon.

Ominous clouds obscured the mountains to Obi-Wan's right. Snow was falling harder. Tearing into it as fast as the sled would carry him, he felt as if he had run smack into a blizzard. The lovely, crystalline flakes would have been like pellets against his face and hands if not for the Force. Even so, he could barely see, and the ice - - gray, white, and sometimes blue - - was nowhere near as smooth as he had thought it would be.

Pebbly where surface water had thawed and refrozen countless times; mounded up over debris trapped during the freeze; pocked by fis.h.i.+ng holes; heaped high with ice that had filled the holes... Matters weren't helped any by the fact that he was being shot at. Bolts from the repeating blaster on the bridge had him weaving all over the river, slaloming around ice dams and leaping small mounds. The repulsorlift would have allowed him to fly over the obstacles - - as Anakin was doing, farther downriver - - but Obi-Wan just couldn't get the hang of it. More to the point, engaging the repulsorlift required using two hands, and just now he had none to spare. His left was gripped on the control bar/throttle; his right, tight on the hilt of his ignited lightsaber, as he fended off bolts from above and behind. For a moment he was back on Muunilinst, jousting with Durge's speeder-freak lancer droids. Except for the snow.

A vacillating roar in his right ear told him that one of the pursuit sleds had caught up with him. Out of the corner of his streaming eye, Obi-Wan saw the sled's human pilot bend low over the control bars to provide his Rodian rider with the clearance he needed to send a blaster bolt through Obi-Wan's head.

Braking, Obi-Wan allowed the sled to come alongside more quickly than the Rodian had planned. The rider's first shot raced past Obi-Wan's eyes; the second, he deflected slightly downward, straight into the sled's engine.

The machine exploded instantly, flinging pilot and rider head over heels in opposite directions.

Quickly, however, a second sled was catching up. This one carried a pilot only, but a more skillful one. Twisting the throttle, the pilot drove his sled into Obi-Wan's, trying to send it spinning out of control or, better still, into the trunk of ma.s.sive tree that was protruding acutely from the thick ice. Narrowly missing the latter, Obi-Wan went into a sideways skid. Overcorrecting, he added spin to his slide and couldn't resume his course until the sled had whipped through half a dozen counter rotations.

By then his crash-helmeted pursuer was well positioned to ram him a second time, but Obi-Wan was ready for him. Turning sharply, he steered into the pursuit sled, hanging on through the jarring collision, then directing a Force push at the rebounding pilot. The sled shot forward as if supercharged, with the pilot all but dangling from the control bars.

Speeding up the face of a hummock, the craft went airborne, then ballistic, plummeting into a thinly iced-over fis.h.i.+ng hole at an angle that took machine and rider both deep under solid ice. Water geysered into the air, drenching Obi-Wan as he raced past.

The third sled was still clinging to his tail, and blaster bolts were whizzing past his ears. Up ahead, he saw Anakin and Fa'ale lean their sled through a sweeping turn to the south, between two of Naos III's many hills. Lethal hyphens of light streaked down from the bridge that linked the hills, but not one found Anakin or Fa'ale. Unable to replicate Anakin's deft turns, Obi-Wan was falling farther behind with each quarter kilometer, and was now making himself an easy target for the a.s.sa.s.sins on the bridge. With no hope of negotiating the hail of fire, he maneuvered the sled through a long turn away from the span. But no sooner did he emerge from his half circle than he found himself on a collision course with the last of the pursuit sleds. The inevitability of a head-on crash left him no choice but to abandon his machine for what was going to be a very long slide on the ice.

But just short of his leap, a bolt in the jagged line the bridge gunners were st.i.tching along the river caught the pilot of the onrus.h.i.+ng machine in the chest, hurling him into the air. Twisting the throttle, Obi-Wan swerved around the pilotless sled and continued to race upriver, out of range of the blasters. To his right a clamor built over the hill, and the shadow of something large and swift fell over him. A repeating blaster clacked repeatedly, fracturing the ice directly in his path and opening a wide, surging breach of agitated water. Uncertain he could leap the gap even if he wanted to try, Obi-Wan applied the brakes - - hard!

The sled was ten meters from the ice-chunked fissure when a metal claw dropped over him, snapping shut and plucking him from the seat. Wrenched from his hand, his lightsaber flew onto the ice, and the sled sailed off into the frothing water.

"Stars' end," Obi-Wan muttered.

Suspended on a swaying cable, the claw began to ascend toward the open belly of a graceless snow skiff. Red hands clamped around Anakin's waist, Fa'ale whooped and shouted, clearly enjoying herself. Even through the daze of too many drinks - - or more likely because of them.

"You missed your calling, Jedi," she shouted into his right ear. "You could have been a champion Podracer!"

"Been there, done that," Anakin said over his shoulder. It was then that he caught sight of Obi-Wan being lifted from his sled. Bringing brakes and thrusters to bear, Anakin powered the sled through a fast 180 and shot back upriver, under the bridge they had just left behind, dodging the unrelenting fire of hand blasters.

"Sharptooth collector," Fa'ale explained when she saw the snow skiff.

"Gathers catch, so the fishers won't have to ferry their loads into the city. That's what I do here - - my job, such as it is."

The claw that had Obi-Wan in its grip was halfway to the skiff.

"I don't see any way of reaching him in time," Fa'ale said.

"Get ready to take the control bars!" Anakin said.

Fa'ale's hands clutched his robe.

"Where are you planning to go?"

"Up."

Pouring on all speed, Anakin steered the sled up the side of the hill that supported one half of the bridge. At the zenith of the climb, he engaged the repulsorlift. Then, leaping from the now rocketing sled, he called on the Force to propel himself toward the swaying cage. The pilots of the skiff saw him coming, and banked hard to starboard, but not soon enough to prevent Anakin from latching onto the claw. A Rodian in the copilot's chair cracked open the door and began firing down at his moving target.

"I had a feeling you'd show up," Obi-Wan said from inside the claw.

A lucky shot from above hit the cage and ricocheted.

"Hang on, Master! This isn't going to be pretty."

Obi-Wan heard the snap-hiss of Anakin's lightsaber. Peering through the metal fingers of the claw, he saw what was coming.

"Anakin, wait - - "

But there was no stopping him. As the claw came within reach of the cargo hold, Anakin swung his lightsaber and sliced open the floor of the skiff's c.o.c.kpit. Sparks and smoke poured from the rend, and almost immediately the craft slued to starboard. Pa.s.sing within a meter of one of the bridge towers, it began to twirl toward the hillside. An instant before the crash, Anakin severed the claw cable, and the cage plummeted, striking the slippery ground and racing down to the frozen river, out onto the ice, spinning crazily, with Obi-Wan bouncing around inside and Anakin Force-fastened to the outside through all the unpredictable pitches and tumbles.

The skiff crashed into the hillside. By the time the claw came to a rest on the far side of the river, the two Jedi were so covered in snow they looked like wampas. Anakin's lightsaber made short work of the fingers of the claw. Obi-Wan scrambled out, spitting snow, and shaking like a hound.

"That has to make it forty - - "

"Stop," Obi-Wan said. "I concede."

He paused to empty the sleeves and hood of his sodden cloak.

"Where's Fa'ale?"

Anakin scanned the hillsides. The a.s.sa.s.sins on the bridge had packed up and fled. Ultimately, he pointed toward the opposite bank of the river, where a sled was wedged between two mounds of ice. When they reached her, Fa'ale was laying facedown a few meters from the machine, which had been holed by blasterfire. Gently turning her over, Anakin saw that one bolt had amputated the Twi'lek's right lekku. Her eyes blinked open, focusing on him as he cradled her in his arms.

"Don't tell me," she said weakly. "I'm going to live, right?"

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news."

"A week in bacta and you'll be good as new," Obi-Wan said.

Fa'ale sighed. "I won't hold it against you. You did your best to get me killed."

She gazed around.

"Shouldn't we be looking for cover?"

"They're gone," Anakin said. Fa'ale shook her head. "After all these years, they finally - - "

"I don't think so," Obi-Wan interrupted. "Someone more important than Raith Sienar doesn't want us to learn too much about the star courier."

"Then I had better tell you the rest - - about Coruscant, I mean."

Anakin raised her up.

"Where did you deliver the s.h.i.+p?"

"To an old building in the industrial quarter, west of the Senate. An area called The Works."

30.

Macrobinoculars pressed to his eyes, Mace studied the distant building top to bottom, his gaze lingering on broken windows, fissured ledges, canted balconies. Central to a complex of half a dozen structures, the building was more than three centuries old and going to ruin. For two-thirds of its towering height it was an unadorned pillar with a rounded summit. Support for the superstructure was afforded by a circular base, reinforced by ma.s.sive fins. Where the superstructure and the sloped tops of the b.u.t.tresses met, the building was fenestrated by windows and antiquated gear-toothed docking gates. Many of the permagla.s.s panels and skylights were intact, but time and corrosion had done their worst to the vertical hatches of the docking gates. An investigation was under way to determine who had raised the building, and who owned it - - although, judging by its location and prominence in The Works, it appeared to have served as corporate headquarters for the factories and a.s.sembly plants that surrounded it.

Mace and his team of Jedi, clone commandos, and Intelligence a.n.a.lysts were a kilometer east of the structure, in an area of squat, peak-roofed foundries, lorded over by smoke-belching permacrete stacks.

A more dispiriting place this side of Eriadu or Korriban would have been hard to find, Mace told himself. Five hours spent here could take five years off someone's life. He could feel the damage with every breath he took, every grimy surface he touched, every vagrant-poisoned whiff that wafted his way. The acids in the air were fast digesting everything, but not quickly enough for some. Ambitious developers and urban renewalists had deliberately introduced stone mites, duracrete slugs, and conduit worms to aid and abet the caustic rain, without heed for the risk such vermin poised to the nearby skysc.r.a.pers of the Senate District. All in all, the perfect environment for a Sith Lord.

"Probe remotes are away, General Windu," the ARC reported.

Mace trained the macrobinoculars on the flock of meter-wide spherical droids that were maneuvering with purposeful unevenness toward the building. The Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee had attempted to interdict the use of commandos and probe droids. In the minds of the committee members, the idea that a Separatist stronghold could exist on Coruscant was absurd. Fortunately - - and admittedly unexpectedly - - Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had overruled the committee, and Mace had been allowed to compile a dream team that included not only ARC commander Valiant and Captain Dyne of Republic Intelligence, but also Jedi Master Shaak Ti and several capable Padawans.

"No indications that the probes are being targeted," the ARC updated.

Mace watched the black spheres begin to drift through shattered windows and into areas of the superstructure where the building's facade had disintegrated and the bones of its plasteel skeleton were exposed.

Moment of truth, he thought. The Lethan pilot Obi-Wan and Anakin had searched out on Naos III hadn't been able to furnish anything more than a portrait of the building to which she had delivered the star courier. A product of Sienar Advanced Projects Laboratory, the craft had been modified - - perhaps unwittingly by Sienar itself - - for the Sith who had killed Qui-Gon Jinn. The pilot had been provided with landing coordinates on Coruscant, but, in fact, the courier itself had homed in on those. Paid in full for her services, she had been taxied to Westport, and had left for Ryloth soon after. The physical description of the courier's destination hadn't given the Jedi much to go on.

Though more horizontal than most areas of equatorial Coruscant, The Works sprawled for hundreds of square kilometers and contained thousands of buildings that could have fit the description. A break hadn't come until Jedi Master Tholme had recalled a detail from the debriefing of his former Padawan, Quinlan Vos. As part of Vos's covert mission to penetrate Count Dooku's inner circle of dark side apprentices, Vos had been tasked with a.s.sa.s.sinating a duplicitous Senator, named Viento. Immediately following the a.s.sa.s.sination - - and a brutal duel with Master K'Kruhk - - Vos had met briefly with Dooku in The Works. There, Dooku had informed his would-be protege that Vos had been incorrect in a.s.suming that Viento was a Sith, and had again denied that he himself answered to any Master.

At the time, no one had paid much attention to Vos's remarks, because Vos seemed to have been seduced by the dark side and lost to the Order. The rendezvous was considered to have been only that: an out-of-the-way meeting place. Of greater interest to the Jedi and Republic Intelligence was the fact that Dooku had managed to arrive at and depart Coruscant without detection.

"Holoimages of the interior coming in," Valiant said.

Mace lowered the macrobinoculars and s.h.i.+fted his gaze to the field holoprojector. Dazzled by diagonal lines of static, the 3-D images were of forlorn rooms, stretches of dark corridor, vast empty s.p.a.ces.

"The building appears to be completely abandoned, General. No signs of droids or living beings - - other than varieties common to similar manufacturing slums."

"Abandoned, perhaps, but not forgotten," Captain Dyne said from behind Valiant. "The building's live. It has power and illumination."

"Doesn't mean much," Mace said. "Many structures in this district were self-powered, often by dangerous, highly unstable fuels." He gestured broadly. "They're still belching smoke."

Dyne nodded.

"But this one shows periodic and recent use of power."

Mace turned to Valiant.

"All right, Commander. Give the go-ahead."

From behind and to both sides of the observation post, LAATs lifted off into the smoke-filled sky, doorway gunners traversing their repeating blasters and commandos standing ready to deploy from the guns.h.i.+p's troop bay. Elsewhere, AT-TEs and other mobile artillery vehicles began to lumber across the debris-filled urbanscape toward the target.

Valiant turned to the troopers who made up Aurek Team.

"The building is a free-strike zone. You are to consider anyone we find inside to be hostile." He slammed a fresh power pack into his short-stocked blaster. "Troopers: find, fix, finis.h.!.+"

No matter how often he heard it, the grunting, communal response to the ARC's rallying cry continued to disturb Mace on some level. Although it was probably no different from what the clone troopers heard when the Jedi said to one another, May the Force be with you.

He swung and waved a signal to Shaak Ti. "I'll ride with Aurek Team. You have Bacta."

As beautiful as a flower, as deadly as a viper, Shaak Ti was the Jedi Master one wanted by one's side in chaotic circ.u.mstances. Graced with the ability to move quickly through crowds or tight spots, she was often the first to wade into close-quarter engagements, her striped montrals and lengthy head-tail alert to distances, her blue lightsaber quick to find its mark. She had proved instrumental in the defense of Kamino and Brentaal IV, and Mace was glad to have her with him now.

Aurek Team's guns.h.i.+p was already packed with commandos and Padawans by the time he clambered inside. Lifting off, the LAAT/i aimed straight for the summit of the building.

The strategy was to work from the top down, in the hope of flus.h.i.+ng hostiles out through the lowest levels, where infantry and artillery units were already taking up firing positions around the b.u.t.tressed base.

The entire area was undermined with tunnels that had been used for transporting workers, droids, and materials. While it wasn't possible to monitor every entrance and egress, many of the princ.i.p.al tunnels that opened on the building's subbas.e.m.e.nts had been outfitted with sensors capable of detecting droids or flesh-and-bloods. No functioning docking bay large enough to accommodate a guns.h.i.+p had been discovered. The commandos had advocated blowing a gaping hole in the side of the superstructure, but engineers feared that an explosion of the strength required could very well collapse the entire structure. Instead the LAAT/i carried the team to the largest of the blown-out windows below the summit, and hovered there while everyone was inserted.

Leaping the gap, Mace activated his lightsaber and instructed the Padawans to follow suit. Weapons raised to their chests, the commandos spread out in fire-and-maneuver squads and began to move deeper in the building, checking out each room and alcove before declaring any level secure.

Mace's blade glowed amethyst in the gloom. Stretching out with the Force, he could feel the presence of the dark side. The only explanation for Quinlan Vos not having felt it was that he, too, had gone dark. Yoda had warned Mace that the dark side might cloud his mind to certain rooms and pa.s.sageways - - places that the Sith Lords didn't want Mace to discover - - but he felt alert in all ways. Besides, that was what the commandos were for. They worked their way down and down, without encountering resistance or finding anything of interest.

"Quiet as a tomb, General," Valiant said when the top ten levels had been secured.

Mace studied the 3-D map displayed by the ARC's wrist gauntlet projector.

"Inform Bacta Team that we will rally with them in designated sector three."

Valiant was about to speak when his comlink toned.

"Commander, this is Bacta Team leader," a voice said. "We have a functioning docking gate on level six that shows evidence of recent use.

And, sir, wait until you get a look at the landing zone."

The floor that served as a landing area was scarcely large enough for a guns.h.i.+p, but it gleamed as if scrubbed and polished daily by custodial droids. Parallel to the long sides of the rectangle were banks of slender blue illuminators.

"Everyone stay exactly where you are," Captain Dyne said when Mace and the rest of Aurek Team appeared at the mouth of a corridor that intersected the docking bay at its lengthwise centerpoint.

Deployed in a circle formation, Shaak Ti and the Padawans who had entered with Bacta were cl.u.s.tered in the middle of the floor. Thirty meters to Mace's right, Dyne and two other Intelligence officers were interpreting the data being sent to them by several probe droids meandering with design throughout the room, some of them misting the floor with a highly volatile substance. The well-lubricated vertical docking gate was open, revealing an oval of blackened sky.

"A Huppla Pasa Tisc sloop occupied this docking bay less than two standard weeks ago," Dyne said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "The arrangement of its landing gear and aft boarding ramp match the footprint of the Punworcca 116-cla.s.s that launched from Geonosis during the battle there."

"Dooku's s.h.i.+p," Mace said.

"A reasonable supposition, Master Windu," Dyne said loudly.