"Are you sure?" Anakin asked.
Obi-Wan looked south into the dark maw of the cleft. There were no fires there, no forges. Instead, a cold blue light flickered across the wet stone walls, and long tendrils crawled like snakes over the walls and the sandy, rock-strewn floor.
"Clients never return!" Vagno shouted at them as he marched alongside the carapod, his stumpy legs pounding the ground. He capered and poked his blade into the air. "They don't remember, and if they did remember, they'd be too afraid! But me and my crew, we live here We're the bravest in all the universe!"
Obi-Wan, at this moment, could not have agreed more.
Chapter 40
Vagno gruffly introduced them to the chief of the shaping team, a tall, wiry man named Vidge. Where Vagno was squat and red, Vidge seemed more like a tall wisp of night fog-pale, with large, wet eyes. Even his clothes were wet and sprinkled with bits of glowing slime that made him look like a creature hauled forth from the depths of an ocean.
"You've brought so many," he complained in a sepulchral tone as he counted the disks stacked on the three carapods. "What are we to do with fifteen?"
Vagno shrugged expressively. Vidge turned to gloomily survey Anakin, then glanced over at Obi-Wan. "Did you pay more to the uplanders, to get so many seeds?"
"No questions!" Vagno cried out. "It's time to paint and shape!"
Vidge raised his hands in mock surrender and turned to his own team, all tall and damp and insubstantial. They wielded different tools, long heavy brushes and rough-edged paddles. Behind them rose a tall warehouse made of roughly assembled sheets of lamina, sagging and corroded from years of rough use. Vidge grabbed the carapod closest to him by its center leg and pulled it toward the warehouse. It hung back reluctantly, as did the other two, who were urged forward by Vidge's crew.
Vagno stood back. "Not my place," he said, suddenly humble. "Here's a different art." He waved them to follow Vidge.
The warehouse echoed with hollow bubbling and sighing. Tendrils crept in from around the edges and spread wide and flat, and at their tips grew broad fruits unlike any they had seen elsewhere swollen, translucent, and filled with a sparkling, thick fluid that swirled slowly within, churned by screw-shaped organs at the core of each fruit.
Anakin and Obi-Wan helped Vidge's crew unload the seed-disks and arrange them upright in racks near the shaping platform. Here, on a riser about ten meters wide, Vidge and two assistants lifted a long knife and harvested one of the fruits, slicing it along a lateral line with three swift whacks. The glowing clear fluid within oozed forth and writhed slowly along the platform, filled with a haze of flexible white needles.
From a door at the back of the warehouse, a large carapod crawled out of the shadows. On its back it balanced a metal and plastic frame, apparently a form for their spacecraft.
"A ready-made frame, sent here by Shappa Farrs," Vidge said sorrowfully, as if announcing the death of a dear friend. "The shaping brings it alive."
Another carapod, protected by thick metal plates woven into a fabric shield, carried objects Anakin recognized immediately two Haor Chall type-seven Silver-class light starship engines, as well as a very expensive hyperdrive core unit. Anakin saw that on both the engines and on the core unit, some parts were oddly missing, and other parts had been modified.
And yet a third carapod, much smaller-barely as large as Anakin himself-walked with jaunty steps forward into the greenish light emanating from the warehouse walls. This one carried a delicate crystalline structure Anakin did not recognize.
Obi-Wan, however, did. Organoform circuits had been rumored for hundreds of years, and supposedly had been developed on the more advanced Rim worlds that had continued to resist involvement with both the Republic and the Trade Federation. Rumors only . . . until now.
"What's that?" Anakin asked, fascinated by the glittering curves and continually active circuitry.
"I think it's the device that will integrate our ship," Obi-Wan said. "The interface between the living and the machine."
The first thing Vidge did was cut away and scoop up a thick glob of fluid from the fruit. He spun the glob about, tossed it in the air, and caught it with his long spade, forming it into a ball. He then dropped it deftly onto the back of the smallest carapod, where, with a hiss, it settled over the organoform circuit. Cutting loose more globs, he spread them on the edges of each of the white seed-disks as his assistants carried them past. Where the gel touched, the disks turned a dark purple, and the edges began to curl and stretch forth sinuous, questing pseudopods.
Next, the shaper critically analyzed the frame atop the largest carapod. "Not enough," he grumbled. "Shappa never tells us what we need to know." To his crew, he said, "Get a second frame."
His crew conferred doubtfully among themselves. Vidge shouted out, "Fifteen forged plates, too many for one frame! We need two frames!"
"Are they going to make two ships?" Anakin asked Obi-Wan.
"I don't think so," Obi-Wan said. But he was in no position to be certain.
"Now, we move fast," Vidge called out, his tone as slow and tomb-haunted as before. "To the Jentari!"
Anakin and Obi-Wan climbed up beside the large carapod just as a second frame was loaded beside the first.
Vidge gave them their instructions. From this point on, they would ride inside the frames, sitting on thick flat beams between the oval-shaped main members, surrounded by a flexible weave of struts and cross braces. "It's the way it's done."
Anakin took his position within one frame. Obi-Wan sat in the other. The frames creaked and rattled on the back of the carapod.
The entire warehouse smelled of flowers and baking bread, and of other things less pleasant, odors that made Anakin dizzy. He felt as if the dream had become too much for him, too strong. His stomach was doing flip-flops.
Obi-Wan felt the same incipient nausea, but kept his attention on the slow, deliberate walk of Vidge beside the thre e carapods conveying the components of the Sekotan ship. The carapods exited through the back of the warehouse, back into the sea-gleam shadows of the cleft. Darker shadows like giants rose on each side, backs pressed against the walls of the cleft, with more giants on their broad shoulders, climbing hundreds of meters to a canopied ribbon of night, a few lonely stars gleaming through the interlaced branches.
Anakin felt like an insect about to be squashed. Even with the shapers running and walking alongside, he had lost his confidence. Not even the memory of Qui-Gon's words-if they had come from Qui-Gon and not from his fertile imagination-could reassure him now. This was unsettling, disturbing-were there actually giants on either side? Maybe the air was drugged. Maybe it was all an illusion and something dreadful was about to happen to him and to his master. He felt his throat closing down and tucked his chin into his chest, drawing from the exercises he had learned two years ago control of the body's fear, control of animal chemistry and hormonal rhythms.
The mind's fear-his worst enemy, the deepest and darkest failing of Anakin Skywalker-was another problem, one he was not sure he would ever overcome.
Obi-Wan could feel the faltering of his Padawan's heretofore almost boundless confidence. Strangely, he, himself, was now calm. The smells bothered him, but were no worse than some very unsavory places where he had stood beside Qui-Gon and calmly carried out his duties.
Anakin felt the frame lurch forward as the carapod was brought to a halt by Vidge's crew. Vidge climbed up slowly and gracefully beside them and waved his flat-bladed instrument over his head, letting the fumes of the gelatinous interior of the swollen fruit drift away in dim purple sweeps.
Vidge's assistants played bright torch beams along the shadows of the giants, and Anakin saw not arms and legs, but thick green and purple trunks, gleams of metal, glints of other artificial substances, supplements, add-ons to the natural makers of the boras and the tampasi.
The purple vapors rose between the giants. Limbs stirred, joints creaked.
"Stay here inside the frame, no matter
what," Vidge said, and handed Anakin and Obi-Wan breather masks similar to the Jedi issue they carried concealed in their robes. "We're loading up the engines and core and organoform circuitry now. They will be conveyed alongside the frames, until the time comes for their placement. The ships will be made around you. The seeds will make you part of their dreams of growth. They will ask you questions." Vidge leaned forward to examine Anakin closely. "They will make demands. This is crucial. The ship will not be made if you fail to give the necessary guidance."
"I won't fail," Anakin said.
Vidge's crew transferred the engines and core and circuitry o smaller Jentari. Large limbs lifted them high, like giant cranes in a starship maintenance yard.
"And you?" Vidge queried Obi-Wan. "You, too?"
"We will not fail," Obi-Wan said.
"There will only be one ship, unless I've guessed wrong,"
Vidge said softly. "And I've never guessed wrong before." He drew back. Great grasping limbs dropped from the sides of the cleft and lifted the frames high above the ground, above the carapods and shapers.
"The Jentari!" Vidge shouted. All the shapers waved their blades in unison. "The makers of Sekot!"
"Hang on!" Obi-Wan shouted. It was their turn now. The limbs dropped, lifted them along with the frames, and passed them from one Jentari to the next, along with stacks of forged and painted seed-disks. Other limbs slapped the disks around the frames, almost jolting the passengers loose. Instantly, the seeds began to join and grow, to mold and shape.
The two frames were jammed together. Engines were slipped into their fairings. Seed-disks slipped purple-edged tissues on the joints, and sparks flew as the points of lasers darted all around. Their journey began.
They were passed limb to limb down the cleft, the frames groaning, the fluid tissues of the seeds and the treatment juices flopping and slopping around them, deeper into the realm of the Jentari. Their eyes could hardly follow the process.
Every second, a thousand moves and assemblies were carried out on the joined frames. Around Obi-Wan and Anakin, the ship began to take shape as if by magic. The giants flung them even more quickly from limb to limb, hand to hand as it were, making sounds like hundreds of voices singing deep geological chants.
"The Jentari are composites! Cybernetic organisms!" Obi-Wan shouted. "The Magisters must have bred them, made them, and put them here to work for them!"
Anakin was lost to any rational explanation. His seed-disks, the former seed-partners, were asking him what he wanted. They offered him up Shappa's catalog of designs, plans for past ships, dreams of what future ships might be like in a century of more development and learning. Shappa's design was not final; Sekot would have its input, as well.
Anakin Skywalker was in a very special heaven. After a while, in his own time and in his own way, Obi-Wan joined him, and together they listened to the seed-disks, to the Jentari.
In the blur of speed and questions, they lost all sense of time.
The frame and the new ship-owners sped down the cleft, surrounded by sparks and vapors and flying tissues and trimmed bits of metal and plastic.
Within less than ten minutes, they were over twenty kilometers from the warehouse and the shapers, and the finishing was upon them.
The passage through the Jentari slowed.
Their numbness passed. Perception slowly returned.
"Wow!" Anakin said when he could breathe again. "That was unbelievably rugged!"
"Wow," Obi-Wan agreed.
Anakin was filled with an unadulterated, primal delight. He could think of nothing but the Sekotan ship. Obi-Wan could see it in the boy's eyes as they roamed over the smooth, iridescent lines of the ship's interior. Green and blue and red, gleaming like a coat of ruby and emerald mineral enamel, yet not just a dead brilliance, but a pulsing quality of light that signified youth and life.
"Ferocious!" Anakin cried out in approval. "It's here! I can't believe it's really here."
"It doesn't look quite finished," Obi-Wan observed.
Anakin's face wrinkled into a brief frown. "Some little stuff, that's all," he said. "Then it will fly. And did you see that hyper-drive core? I can't wait to find out what they did to it-how they modified it!"
Chapter 41
Raith Sienar's first foreboding came with a mechanical shiver of his E-5. The battle droid sentinel loomed large in one corner of the commander's cabin, its senses tuned to all the cabin's ports of entry.
He entered the viewing area in a tight-cinched sleep gown, wondering what the subdued whirring and clinking was all about.
"Stand down," he commanded the droid when he saw it was having difficulty. The droid dropped to a position of rest, relieving some tension from its vibrating limbs. Still, the droid remained a sad, shivering hulk.
He returned to his personal effects in their cases in the sleeping quarters and brought out a small holo-analyzer. The device could find nothing wrong with the droid's external mechanisms. Still, whenever the E-5 tried to return to an active posture, it clanked like an old iron wind chime in a stiff breeze.
"Self-analysis," he commanded. "What's wrong?"
The droid returned a series of beeps and whines, too high-pitched and too fast for Sienar's instrument to understand. "Again, reanalyze."
The droid responded and the analyzer once again failed. It was as if the droid were speaking another set of languages entirely-a near impossibility. No one else had tampered with it-and he had programmed this droid himself. Sienar was very knowledgeable about such things and adept at small engineering tasks.
He also had a sixth sense about ships, and the sudden small series of vibrations he felt through the soles of his slippers felt distinctive and wrong. Before he could demand a report from the bridge, Captain Kett's image appeared in the middle of the viewing room, full-sized and tinted alarm red.
"Commander, five battle droids have unexpectedly departed from the weapons bay. Did you order a drill . . . without my knowledge?"
"I've ordered no such thing."
Kett seemed to listen to someone. He turned to Sienar- whom he could still not see-Sienar had his room projectors covered for the evening-and said, his voice shaking with anger, "Sir, passive detection reports-we have a visual sighting, actually- that five starfighter droids have exited through the Admiral Korvin's starboard loading hatch and are flying directly toward Zonama Sekot. I have already locked down all other droids and sent my personal ship's engineers into the weapons bay. No more will escape."
Sienar absorbed this as if Kett had just announced there would be a change in tomorrow's meal plan. Without replying, leaving Kett's image to hang and flicker above the floor of the cabin, he slowly turned back to the E-5.
"Did you install my program in all of the starfighters?" Sienar asked the captain.
"I followed your orders to the letter, Commander."
Sienar's lips curled in a brief and silent curse. He had underestimated Tarkin. No doubt Tarkin had customized the droids-all the droids-with hidden subcode blocks containing contingency programs. Sienar had not bothered to look. He had taken some things at face value.
So who was the fool now?
"Destroy the starfighters," he said, trying to keep calm.
"That will reveal our presence, Commander."
"If we do not destroy them, they will reveal our presence for us. I do not want rogue units in action out there."
"Yes, sir." Kett made a slashing motion with one hand. Another vibration came through the ship's hull-turbolasers reaching out with short-range settings.
"We have intercepted one of the five," Kett said. "The others are out of range. I will dispatch-"
"No. Hold. Sweep this entire syste m with active sensors, Captain Kett. Let me know the results immediately."
"Yes, sir."
Sienar took out his laser pistol and approached the shivering E-5 with some trepidation. He wondered if Tarkin's subcodes included orders to assassinate. In truth, however, he could not be sure such subco
des even existed-and he needed to learn quickly.
"Drop your armor integrity. Deactivate and shut down all energy sources, damp them completely," he ordered, and flashed an authorization code from his analyzer. The droid complied with his instructions-which meant that any subcode
programs did not completely wrest control from the main intelligence.
As the E-5 slumped with a weary little howl, Sienar slipped on a breather mask and applied his laser to the droid's outer shell. In minutes, he had filled the commander's cabin with dense smoke, setting off alarms which he grimly ignored.
Chapter 42
Workers at the end of the factory valley helped Anakin and Obi-Wan out of the new-made Sekotan starship and guided them to a platform that surrounded the finishing station. It was early morning, and darkness still covered the valley, though they were now above the canopy. The blaze of stars and glowing gases, and the ubiquitous red and purple pinwheel, cast vague colored shadows on the dimly lit platform.
Their new ship lay in a cradle of Jentari tendrils, rocking gently from its brisk creation, or-Anakin could not help thinking- quivering with its own youthful energy.
Anakin had never seen a prettier ship. The hull of the little starship glowed faintly from within, and pools of deep-sea luminosity seemed to come and go under its shiny green skin. He walked around it on the platform, with Obi-Wan at his side, and together, they surveyed the ship in whose creation they had played such a substantial role.
"I wonder if it's lonely," Anakin said.
"It can stand to be apart from us for a few minutes," Obi-Wan said. "Besides, they need to put in the last-"
"I know," Anakin said. "I was just wondering." His Master's inability to understand what he meant irritated him. The ship filled his eyes and it filled his heart, it seemed so much a part of him.
The workers and artisans at this end of the valley were once again Ferroans, dressed in long black robes with edges of nebular blue. They walked over the lamina platform in the near dark, their slippered feet making tiny padding noises, and younger assistants-most no older than Anakin-directed the spots of tiny electric torches on the parts of the new ship they wished to examine.