Sienar regarded Tarkin narrowly. The two were breathing slightly faster, as if they might go after each other with fingernails and fists at any moment.
But that was not likely. They were gentlemen of military bearing and training, of the old school. Their dignity, at least would not crumble under this pressure, even if other dustings of honor had long since been swept away.
"I swear, you've pushed me into this deliberately," Sienar said quietly, breaking their gaze in a way that showed such a contest was beneath him. "Looking at this equipment, I'm not at all sure of your motives."
"There you go again," Tarkin said, trying for a tone of amusement. "You have a large-capacity and heavily armored flagship with three landers, and three utility vessels-a Taxon-class probe ship, a fleet diplomatic boat that can double as a decoy, and a mobile astromech repair station. Battle droids, sky mines . . . Your squadron is more than sufficient to accomplish our mission."
"And you'll be in just the right place to repair any damage my failure might cause?" Sienar asked.
"I am staying on Coruscant to support the effort politically. That is likely to be far more difficult than conquering a jungle planet." Tarkin shook his head. "We both of us have far to go up the ladders of this new way of life that is coming. You, my friend, need opportunities to shine. So I give this job to you, not without ulterior motives, to be sure. I am ce rtain you will not fail. Now." He drew himself up. "I must return to Coruscant. Ah, here is Captain Kett."
The captain of the Admiral Korvin approached Sienar and bowed his head quickly before speaking. "We are to leave orbit in twenty minutes, Commander. There is one last load of weapons to take aboard. Droid starfighters, I believe. They will be stowed in ten minutes." The adjutant glanced at Tarkin with a flicker of recognition.
"There, Raith," Tarkin said. "More than I hoped for. If you can't win this planet with droid starfighters . . . Well."
Sienar acknowledged Kett's message with a curt twist of his head. "Allow me to escort you to the transport deck," he said to Tarkin.
"No need," Tarkin said.
"I insist," Sienar told him. "It is the way things are done on my ship."
And it would also insure that Tarkin had no time to make last personal arrangements with any secret cadre inside the cruiser. Suspecting as much was churlish, to be sure, but this was rapidly becoming an age of churls.
Sienar felt very much out of place in this age, and on his own flagship.
He would have to do something about that, and quickly.
Chapter16
Your ship is recognized," the voice of orbital control from Zonama Sekot said-masculine and probably human, Obi-Wan judged. "You have registered as an authorized client transport vessel. Yet the account of your last delivered client is in doubt."
Charza Kwinn seemed to be cleaning his bristles before he spoke. He drew himself up to the full height of the cabin bulkhead, and a shower of food-kin spilled off him. Anakin shielded his face as they clattered and leapt around the cabin.
Obi-Wan did not shield his face and received a fair-size pink shell square across the lips.
"Apologies," Charza murmured. Then he switched on the return link. "This is Charza Kwinn, registered owner of Star Sea Flower. I do not recall personally guaranteeing client accounts."
"No," the controller admitted, "but we prefer our client transports to bring us reliable customers."
"I will return my previous client to her homeworld, if she so desires, for free, and at no cost to you," Charza said innocently. "Where is she?"
There was a lengthy pause. "That will not be necessary," the controller said. "Landing permission granted. Use the northern plateau. Coordinates have not changed."
"Wastes fuel," Charza huffed. He switched off the link. "An equatorial landing site would be much better."
Obi-Wan watched the surface of Zonama Sekot roll by beneath. "Odd. I've never seen such a perfectly divided weather system."
"It has not changed since we were last here," Charza said.
The Star Sea Flower flashed its sublight drives for a few thousandths of a second and began the quick drop from orbit. Just as they entered the upper atmosphere, Obi-Wan thought he spotted an anomalous brown desert or rift in the wide, deep green, but it quickly passed out of view.
Atmospheric shields protected them from the buffet, and a beautiful plume of ionized air flared around the ship, blocking his view for a few seconds. When the glow cleared, the landscape below, a smooth carpet of green from orbit, quickly acquired mottled detail. Mountain ranges sparsely dotted with huge reddish boras, and valleys filled with thick green growth, stood out in shaded relief against the glancing light of a westering sun.
"Dextrorotation," Anakin observed. "Very little axial tilt. It looks normal enough, except for the southern weather."
Obi-Wan nodded. Vergere had provided them with so few details that all this was new information. "Temperature at the landing point?"
"Last time, it was above freshwater freezing," Charza said. But only a little. The landing point is near the pole, a slender flat plateau surrounded by ice-covered seas."
"Are the seas salty?" Anakin asked.
"I do not know," Charza said. "Anything I do up here, such as sending a laser beam down for spectrum analysis, becomes known to the planet's managers. They do not appreciate prying."
"Curious," Obi-Wan said.
"They love their secrets," Charza said.
The northern plateau where they had been cleared to land was easily a thousand kilometers long and narrow as a finger, covered with broken blocks of snow and ice. The top of the plateau showed little relief, and the square field, beside a small cluster of hemispherical buildings, was nothing more than smooth rock cleared of snow.
Charza swung the Star Sea Flower around in a graceful arc, relying on atmospheric propulsion jets, and brought it down gently in the middle of the field. Two other ships-atmospheric transports, not spacecraft-were parked in the open at the edge of the field, both lightly dusted with snow.
Snow was falling in large rainbow-hued flakes outside the craft as Charza dropped the ramp. Food-kin retreated from the draft of frigid air. Anakin drew up his robes, slipped out of his waterproof overboots at the top of the ramp, and walked to the bottom. Obi-Wan tossed him their kits and removed his own boots.
Charza watched them, bristles and spikes knocking together in the cold.
Anakin descended the ramp, with Obi-Wan a few steps behind. He saw a single figure, heavily bundled, standing away from the overhang of the ship their lone reception.
Charza brought the ramp up behind them, and the ship lifted a meter or so and moved slowly to its berth beside the other two vessels.
"Welcome to Zonama Sekot," a woman's voice said through the red face filter of a snow mask. Her midnight blue eyes were barely visible above the thick heat trap. She held up her hand in brief greeting, turned before they were even close, and walked toward the nearest dome.
Anakin and Obi-Wan looked at each other, shrugged, and followed.
Chapter 17
Anakin was disappointed by both the reception and his first glimpse of life on Zonama Sekot. He had hoped for scale, spectacle, something to fit the vivid preconceptions of a twelve-year-old boy. What they saw, entering the first dome, was an empty shell, its interior so cold their breath clouded.
Obi-Wan, however, had carefully kept preconceptions from taking hold. He was open to anything, and thus found the reception and the spare quarters-if quarters they were-interesting. These people did not feel the need to impress.
The woman removed her helmet and mask and shook out a thick fall of gray-white hair. The hair quickly arranged itself into a neat spiral that hung with a springlike flex down the back of her suit. Despite the color of her hair, her face was free of wrinkles. Obi-Wan would have thought her younger than he, except for the cast of wary resentment in her deep blue eyes. She seemed very experienced, and tired.
"Rich, are we, and bored?" she asked cu
rtly. "Is this your son?" She pointed to Anakin.
"This is my student," Obi-Wan said. "I am a professional teacher."
She shot off another question. "What do you hope to teach him here?"
Obi-Wan smiled. "Whether or not we are rich, we have money to buy a ship. What the boy learns here will begin with your gentle answers to our questions."
Anakin tipped his head in her direction, showing respect, but unable to hide his disappointment.
The woman looked them over with no change in expression. "Bankrolled by somebody else, or a consortium, too locked in luxury to come by themselves?"
"We are given funds by an organization to which we owe our education and our philosophical stance," Obi-Wan told her.
The woman snorted in derision. "We do not provide ships for delivery to research groups. Go home, academics.'"
Obi-Wan decided against any mind tricks. The woman's attitude interested him. Contempt often veiled bruised ideals.
"We've come quite a long way," Obi-Wan said, undaunted.
"From the center of the galaxy, I know," the woman said. "That's where the money is. Did they tell you-the traitors who do most of our essential advertising-that you must prove yourself before you come away with whatever prize Zonama Sekot will offer? No visitors are allowed to stay more than sixty days. And we have only resumed accepting customers in the last month." She flung her hand out at them. "We've seen all the tactics here! Customers ... a necessary evil. I do not have to like it!"
"Whatever our origins, we would hope to be treated with hospitality," Obi-Wan said calmly. He was about to try a subtle bit of Jedi persuasion when the woman's whole aspect changed.
Her features softened, and she looked as if she might have suddenly seen the face of a long-lost friend.
She stared over their shoulders.
Anakin turned his head to look. The three of them were alone in the shelter.
"What did you do?" he whispered to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan shook his head. "Pardon me," he said to the woman.
She looked down from a vague distance and focused on Obi-Wan again. "The Magister tells me you are to go south," she said. "Your ship can remain for four more days."
The abrupt turnaround caught even Obi-Wan by surprise. She did not seem to be equipped with an ear-receiver. Some other comlink was concealed in her clothing, he surmised.
"This way, please," she said, and gestured for them to go through a small hatch on the opposite side of the empty dome. There, they found themselves again outside, in the middle of a biting, almost horizontal blast of snow.
Obi-Wan looked up at a ghostly shadow descending through the storm. Though the woman showed no concern, his hand slipped automatically through his jacket to his lightsaber.
What had alerted him? What stray bit of clue from the future had made him feel threatened by the expected arrival of a transport, of all things?
Not for the first time, he regretted this mission and its possible impact on his Padawan. The danger he felt came from no specific source but from all around-not threat of physical harm, but of a possible imbalance in the Force so drastic it overshadowed anything he had ever imagined.
Anakin Skywalker was not so much at risk as he was a possible cause of this imbalance.
For the first ti me since the death of Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan felt fear, and he quickly drew up the discipline instilled by long Jedi training to control and then quash it.
He reached out to grip Anakin's shoulder. The boy looked up at him with a brave grin.
"Your ride south," the woman announced over the wind as a broad, flat, disk-shaped transport landed in the blowing drifts of snow.
Obi-Wan lifted his own small comlink and opened a channel with the Star Sea Flower. "We are leaving the plateau," he told Charza Kwinn. "Stay here as long as they allow, and after that. . . maintain a position nearby."
Given that Obi-Wan felt he could trust no one, flexibility was essential.
Chapter 18
It should have been among the proudest moments of Raith Sienar's life. He had been given the rank of commander, in charge of a squadron, putting to use training he had once thought forgotten. The squadron of four ships was preparing to enter that most entrancing of places, hyperspace-entrancing for an engineer, if not a tactician-and yet he felt nothing but a cold, seedy dread in his viscera.
This was not what he wanted, and it was certainly not what he had imagined when he had purchased the Sekotan ship two years before.
Even learning the probable location of Zonama Sekot seemed a hollow triumph, since he had to share the knowledge. Sienar rarely liked sharing anything, especially with old friends. Most especially, now, with Tarkin.
Sienar was a competitive fellow, had recognized this since boyhood, but it had been a fragile knowledge, as he had realized over and over again, that his competitive nature had its limits. He had had to focus his efforts to win, and after a while, he had never failed to choose arenas in which his talents were most suited, and avoid those where they were not.
It was disheartening to be shown how much he had come to overestimate his greed, and to underestimate the infinite ambition of others. Of Tarkin.
But there was little time for ruing his precarious position. The adjutants, impatient and less than obsequious toward their new commander, had arrayed themselves on the command deck of the Admiral Korvin, and they expected dispatch.
He had to give the order for coordinated entry into hyperspace.
It was the final commitment he dreaded, leaving the system, in which he had pooled most of his armor, most of his political cronies and contacts, and all of his wealth.
Leaving home.
There had not been five seconds strung together in the last six hours since he had seen Tarkin off the ship in which he had been free enough to think things through. No time for arranging backup plans, escape plans. Instead, he had been involved in the minutiae of command system checks, drills, and the inevitable, infuriating delays of old equipment breaking down.
Tarkin had from the very beginning herded him down a narrow chute like an animal in a slaughterhouse.
No time for self-pity, either. Sienar was not without resources. But getting his reflexes back into shape was going to take some time. He had built up considerable mental flab on Coruscant in the last decade, giving in to discouragement at the decline of the economy, embittered by the increasing corruption of the aristocracy that had been his mother even more than his real mother had.
He had put on a hard face and found that the expression comfortable, and not entirely false. It seemed natural for his uniform, which he had chosen the day before-that of an old-line Trade Defense officer, black and gray and red with opalescent striping.
He now had at least the illusion of control over these ships, these men. Might as well use that as a beginning, a stable ground on which to regain his footing and test how much power and independence he actually had.
"Are the squadron cores in synchrony, Captain?" he asked. "They are, Commander," Kett responded. Kett wore a merchant's uniform, a holdover from the Trade Federation, no doubt something he was used to, and less formal than Sienar's. Rumpled, actually.
We are all of us little better than pirates, but we choose our images carefully, Sienar thought. "Then let's blow the Stardust off our tails," he said, hoping that language was not too antiquated.
"Yes, sir." Kett made a small, secret smile.
Sienar stared through the forward ports, hands gripping the railing of his command pulpit. Kett, half a level below him, stood at bridge-rest position, hands folded behind his back, knees slightly bent, as the order was carried through to the linked squadron droid navigation system.
"Departure, Commander," Kett murmured to Sienar as the forward view skewed and fanned outward, then drew in to a brilliant point. "We are entering hyperspace."
"Thank you, Captain Kett," Sienar said.
"Estimated journey time, three standard days," Kett said.
"Let's
use that time to examine and do more drills on defensive systems," Sienar said. That would serve as a good distraction for the flagship crew while he did other tasks. "And present me with the service records of every command officer in the squadron. The complete records, Captain Kett."
That sounded better.
"I'll prepare a plan and submit the records within the hour, sir," Kett said.
Much better. It felt right, a good beginning to a complicated mission.
Sienar drew up his shoulders and set his jaw firmly, staring with steely determination at the potentially nauseating and twisting view outside the ship until the port covers closed all the way.
He then stepped aside and climbed down. A slender, pipe-frame, dark blue navigational droid mounted the pulpit to perform its essential and quite boring duties.
Chapter 19
Anakin squirmed on the cramped transport, unable to see through the small ports placed inconveniently behind the seats. All he could see was a flash of sky and a lumpy green horizon. As the transport flew south, they were moving in and out of the terminator, and the cabin grew light and dark alternately until the transport veered to the west and they flew toward the youth of the day.
The transport offered only the most basic comfort on their trip four seats, narrow and slung beneath a low ceiling, and a closed cabin door between them and the pilot. Obi-Wan could sense a human behind the door and nothing more. The transport was a familiar enough model, a light expeditionary vehicle often carried inside larger vessels for close-in exploration. Nothing exotic here.
"This is no way to run a planet," Anakin said.
Obi-Wan agreed. "They behave as if they have recently suffered problems."