Star Wars - The Clone Wars 01

  "When he's all grown up and he's a two-ton crime lord, you'll have a devoted friend for life."

  "Talking of loyalty-Rex and his men ..."

  "I know. I know." The job had to be done. It didn't mean Anakin had to like it, though. "This is one of the worst lessons you'll ever have to learn, Snips. Command means being prepared to get troops killed."

  "They'd do anything for you."

  "And I won't throw their lives away."

  "Is it better not to get to know them?"

  "No. It's not. It's shirking your responsibility, and it's disrespectful. Get to know them, and then you fully understand the price you're asking them to pay."

  "With any luck," she said, "General Kenobi will arrive before then."

  Kenobi was pretty good at showing up when needed most. But Anakin had the feeling he'd be too late for what was left of Torrent Company.

  R2-D2 trilled triumphantly. It was a merciful distraction for Anakin.

  "Found it, Artoo?"

  The droid spun ninety degrees. He'd found plans of the drains, he said, and those might do in a pinch. But where there were drainage plans, there might also be construction schematics. He'd carry on drilling down.

  "Drill faster, buddy," Anakin said.

  * * *

  ENTRANCE TO THE TETH MONASTERY

  "Can't you work any faster?"

  Ventress jumped down from the wall and strode up to the door. Cutting was taking far too long. The droids were opening a square section in the door, which was unsatisfactory enough given how much it would limit their rate of entry, but at this pace it would take the rest of the day.

  She needed to get that Huttlet back to Jabba fast. The longer he fretted, the worse it got.

  "Ma'am, this isn't as simple as it looks," the commander said, trotting ahead of her and trying to look back at the same time. "The door is massive, and you said no rapid entry using charges."

  "I didn't tell you to work your way through with a manicure file, either ..."

  Two droids were working on the external controls, tinkering with colored wires. No wonder the Republic chose to use cloned humans. Ventress watched in dismay for a few moments as they debated over which wires to reattach, the red ones or the blue ones.

  "You're not defusing a bomb, you fools!" she snapped. "Try each combination and see what works. There aren't that many, are there?"

  "Ma'am, the Republic troops fused the interior controls by..." "So you can't open it."

  "We can, but we have to isolate the circuit above the point where the damage occurred."

  Ventress sized up the panels that surrounded the door. In the time the droids had taken to get this far, the clones inside would have prepared any number of traps and countermeasures to slow them down. She certainly would have. She'd have excavated a pit just inside the door, for a start; she'd have rigged charges in the joists and supports to bring the roof of the passage crashing down the moment the bulk of the droid assault force was inside. She'd have made finding a rear exit a priority.

  She estimated that Skywalker had maybe forty or fifty troops left, but it was impossible to know how much ordnance they had or if they'd taken any special equipment in with them.

  "Stand aside," she said.

  At least droids didn't argue. They let her inspect the controls. She could see wires protruding from a metal conduit buried in the doorframe, but the frame was so thick that the internal mechanism was embedded too far inside for her to see it or reach it. There was a quick, one-way solution, though. She motioned the droids away from the frame, drew both lightsabers, and turned to face the ranks of battle droids waiting to begin the assault.

  "When I give the order," she said, "you will storm the entrance, because the door will be open. The troops inside will have the initial advantage, because you have to negotiate a choke point which will negate your numbers, but you have vastly superior numbers, and you will simply press on until you overwhelm them. It's that simple. You will neutralize the Republic forces, but you will not proceed farther until I tell you to do so, because I must have that Huttlet alive and well. Is that clear?"

  The droids listened intently. They should have been programmed to do this, but she liked to be certain that they were on the same page of the manual that she was. Lateral thinking was not their forte.

  The battle droids responded in one synchronized chorus. "Copy copy!"

  Ventress raised her right arm, igniting one red lightsaber blade and twirling the hilt in a stab grip. "Stand by."

  She brought the blade down in a fast arc and gouged clean through the frame and the metal conduit, shorting out the entire system in a pyrotechnic display of blue-white sparks. Most doors were designed to fail in the fully open position for safety reasons, and had been made that way for centuries; the monastery door was no exception. The slab of material rocketed to the lintel, opening a dark maw that spewed blue blasterfire and anti-armor rounds. The first two lines of droids fell, and Ventress stepped calmly to one side as the ranks behind them marched through the shattered debris of their comrades to press into the entrance.

  They would keep marching, and marching, and marching. Eventually-very soon, in fact-Skywalker would run out of troops before she ran out of droids.

  As she waited, she wondered briefly what she might have done if the door had failed in the closed position.

  It didn't matter. She was a thorough planner, like her master, Count Dooku.

  She already knew where the exits were, and had them covered.

  TWELVE

  If we can't stop them, then we delay them as long as we can, and after that we make sure they have to crawl over our bodies.

  It's been an honor, gentlemen.

  Clone Captain Rex, CC-7567, 501st Legion, Grand Army of the Republic, to Torrent Company

  * * *

  MONASTERY ENTRANCE

  Numbers; it was all about kriffing numbers, and Rex didn't have them.

  There was no command to fire. His men knew what they had to do. It was close-quarters battle, as dirty as it came, and when the door flew open and vanished into the roof, a tidal wave of sand-colored metal stormed in.

  The only response possible was to open up with everything they had and hose the tinnies until the ammo ran out.

  The noise was deafening until Rex's helmet buffers kicked in. What he saw through his visor-searing white light from blaster discharge and grenades fading instantly as the optical interface shielded his eyes-was men reduced to reflexes. They'd trained for this every day of their lives.

  And this was the day those lives finally ended.

  His helmet could dampen the decibels from external sources, but as long as he was on the comlink circuit, he couldn't shut out the cries and panting breathlessness and screams of his men.

  A wave of battle droids caught the trip wire that Ged had laid a few paces from the door. Thermal detonators taped on both walls blew inward and buried what was left of the droids in rubble. We should have done that first. We should have collapsed the first ten meters of the passage and made them dig us out. But it was too late for that now, and super battle droids poured in after the smaller battle droids, blaster arms extended and firing. Spider droids rushed ahead of them and opened up with laser cannon.

  The bolts passed close enough to Rex for his damage sensors to detect the fizz and crackle of superheated air before smashing into something behind him.

  Something. My boys.

  Every detonation was more lethal for being in a confined space. The smoke was now so thick that Rex was relying on thermal imaging in his HUD. He glanced up at the huge beams supporting the ceiling, the vaulted section behind that, and knew he didn't have the firepower to bring it down on the tinnies. All he could do was aim and fire at whatever was coming at him.

  Rex saw Ged fall, then Hez and three of his squad. A trooper who hit a tinny at point-bank range was decapitated by a razor-sharp slice of shrapnel that flew from the thing. Coric, caught on a reload, swung his Deece sideways like
a club, and Rex broke off from laying down fire to put a stream of bolts into the droid. If it saved Cork's life, he didn't see; the next thing he knew he was on his back, knocked flat by something much heavier than himself, and his hardwired reaction was to draw one of his sidearms and empty the clip into the dark shape bearing down on him.

  Events were moving so fast that he had no time to do anything more than let his body react, and yet-as always-what he could see was unfolding in slow motion, some detail so intense that he would never forget it, everything else a blur.

  The hot flare in his infrared told him he'd hit something at close range. Then every bit of breath was knocked out of him. He felt a crushing weight on his chest, followed by an intense pain like a blade in the ribs. No, that was wrong; he'd been stabbed before, and it felt like a punch, not sharp at all. Why the stang was he thinking stupid stuff like this? He was dying. This wasn't how he thought it would be.

  "Coric!" he called. "Coric?"

  If Coric could hear him, he didn't answer. His helmet filled with muffled silence, and try as he did to move, he felt pinned down.

  No, it wasn't how he thought it would be at all.

  * * *

  ABANDONED THRONE ROOM, DEEP INSIDE THE MONASTERY

  The noise of the explosions made Anakin start, even in these buried vaults. He had no hard data, but he felt death, pain, and fear rip through the fabric of the Force, and that only could come from living beings snuffed out of existence, not droids.

  I'm sorry, Rex. I'm so sorry.

  "The droids have broken through," he said. "Artoo, get a move on. We still have an objective to achieve. Ahsoka, are you ready to evacuate?"

  She snatched up the backpack and struggled into the straps. Rotta seemed to wake, blinking, and gurgled.

  "Hey, you back with us, Stinky?" Ahsoka craned her neck to look around at him. "Little nap do you good?"

  "Just don't die on us," Anakin said. He'd probably lost an entire company just to save this slug. He wondered if the Outer Rim routes were really that critical, and if a little more strategic thought could have circumvented the supply-chain problem. It was all too late now. "The sooner we can get rid of you, the better."

  Ahsoka frowned slightly. "I know you probably have good reasons for hating Hutts, just like everyone else, but what can Rotta possibly have done? He's a baby. He's only guilty of being a slug."

  "I'm sure he'll make up for that when he gets older." Anakin wasn't in the mood to debate speciesism. The Huttlet was still alive, but most of his troops weren't. Maybe none of them. The worst thing about the pressure easing for a moment was that all the other ugly thoughts and memories flooded back in. "Look, I do my duty, but I reserve the right to think what I like about whether it's worth the sweat and blood or not."

  "If it means we can fight more effectively, doesn't that save lives?"

  "If we get chummy with organized crime, and turn a blind eye to our allies making a living from slavery, drug running, extortion, and murder, what exactly are we fighting for?"

  Ahsoka stared at him, wide-eyed. "Is this a test?"

  "No, it's just me getting angry."

  R2-D2 beeped frantically. He was triumphant. He'd found what he was looking for. Anakin's train of thought was broken-mercifully-and he concentrated on the holographic plan that appeared from the astromech droid's projector.

  It showed a network of passages leading out of the monastery. But even better than that was a landing platform jutting out of the sheer side of the cliff, set a little way from the top, and approached from the rear.

  "That's a great place to land a larty," Anakin said. "Artoo, you're the navigator-lead us down there and I'll call for extraction."

  "You're going home, Stinky," Ahsoka whispered to the Hutt.

  "Hang in there. You'll be back with your daddy soon."

  "Lucky slug," Anakin said sourly.

  It wasn't the way a general should have behaved, he knew; it was a poor example to set for a Padawan. But Anakin was twenty, having lived through things most kids his age hadn't, and he'd had few of the carefree times that young men his age took for granted.

  And Rex and his men had even less. I've at least got Padme. What am I griping about?

  It was too bad. He was the Chosen One, a Jedi, and he wasn't the one doing the choosing. He had a destiny. But sometimes it was very hard to take it in his stride without anger, frustration, and a growing list of unanswered questions.

  "Get going, Artoo," he said. "Next stop, Tatooine."

  * * *

  MONASTERY ENTRANCE PASSAGE

  Rex wasn't sure when the weight on his chest lifted, but it had, and he could breathe again.

  He flicked his visor back to normal light vision with a couple of blinks. Either he was dead, and being dead was an awful lot like being alive, or he'd survived. It took some moments to work out that he was propped against the wall on a carpet of wreckage.

  Biosign icons blinked in his HUD; five of his men were still alive.

  Yeah, I'm alive. I really am. You should have finished me off when you had the chance, tinnies . . .

  But he couldn't spring up and get on with the fight. He needed to assess the situation.

  "Nobody move," he said. In the privacy of his helmet, he could speak with his men undetected. "Report in if you can hear me."

  "Receiving, sir."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I hear you, sir."

  "Got you, sir." Coric. He'd made it. "Just a few bruises."

  "And me, sir."

  "CT-nine-nine-three-two, sir."

  Rex felt he'd taken back control of the situation, no matter how many droids were still out there. "Anyone not capable of moving or using a weapon, speak up now." There was just the sound of breathing in his audio circuit. "Okay, time for dynamic risk assessment. Follow my lead. When we get the chance to make a run for it, we head for the courtyard, grab any spare weapons, and rappel back down onto the jungle floor."

  There was a chorused mumble of agreement. He could make it sound so simple. As he lay slumped, he saw a pair of boots and the swinging hem of a robe coming toward him at a leisurely pace, accompanied by a pair of droid legs. The range of vision in his HUD gave him a panoramic view without him moving his head if he needed it. Playing dead, he adjusted the view with a few blinks and saw a battle droid in commander's livery, and a severe-looking, shaven-headed woman in a black costume, with what looked like a lightsaber grasped in one hand.

  Nice choice of hairstyle, sweetheart, but something tells me you're not a Jedi.

  He knew who she was. His HUD database held a rogues' gallery of Separatists, and Asajj Ventress, Dooku's assassin, was one of the easiest of the scumbags to identify.

  "Stand by," he whispered.

  Rex took a chance that the rest of the droids had moved on. He reached slowly for his sidearm. Droid first, or Ventress? He opted for the droid, aimed his sidearm and blew its head off, then swung onto Ventress..

  He really should have picked her off first.

  She ignited her lightsaber and batted the fire away in the fraction of a second it took him to shift his aim. The next he knew, his weapon was jerked out of his fist by an unseen force, and he was lifted bodily by his throat. The rim of his helmet took most of the stress, and if it hadn't he was certain that it would have snapped his neck.

  Ventress had grabbed his throat in a stranglehold. She didn't even need to touch him.

  I won't make that mistake again. Now, nobody else move . . . keep your nerve . . .

  "Captain," Ventress said. "What a miraculous return from the dead. Where's your general?"

  "Which one?"

  "Don't get smart with me. You know who. Skywalker. I know he's here."

  "I haven't seen him since the shooting started."

  "At least you're not lying."

  "I'm not talking, either ..."

  She gave a little surprised snort. "Why do you bother to waste your lives for these Jedi scum?" Her Force grip tightened, not enough to c
hoke him into unconsciousness, but hard enough to let him know she could rip out his trachea. "They don't care what happens to you. They don't care about anything except themselves and their nice, comfortable, Coruscant lives." She loosened her grip a fraction. "You're less than an animal to them. A piece of equipment. So tell me where Skywalker and the Hutt are. I've got no personal grievance with you or your men."

  There was only one answer he was obliged to give as a prisoner of war. "Rex, Captain, Five-oh-first Legion, number CC-seven-five-six-seven."

  Ventress tightened her grip a notch. "They don't deserve your loyalty, soldier. When are you going to realize that?"

  "Rex, Captain." He was trained to resist interrogation. He focused on that, shutting out her threats and cajoling exactly as he'd been taught. "Five-oh-first Legion, number CC-seven-five-six-seven."

  "When you've served your purpose, they'll leave you to rot and die like they left my Master. And he was one of their own, a Jedi. How much do you think Skywalker cares about a chattel like you? When you're too broken to use, he can get another one just like you right away."

  "Rex, Captain, Five-oh-first Legion, number CC-seven-five-six-seven."

  He tried to look past Ventress and fix on a point in the wall behind her, to escape mentally to another place. He focused on getting out alive. He focused on getting his remaining men out alive. He focused on everything except the words coming out of her mouth, because those were her real weapons, a far greater danger than her lightsabers or violent Force powers. When he accidentally caught her eyes, they were disturbingly pale, blue, obsessed.

  She loathed the Republic, and Jedi in particular. It was written all over her face. She meant every word. She hurt deep down. They'd made a devoted enemy of her somehow. She wasn't an opportunistic criminal, she was...

  No, stop. That's all part of her game.

  "They'll leave you when it suits them, clone." Her voice was now softer, conspiratorial. "We're all the same to them, you see. Even those of us with Force powers. We're all expendable when it suits them. Help me crush them now, before they end up getting you all killed."