Star Wars: Rogue Planet

  “What sort of toy?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Perfect toy for an age of pirates,” Charza said. “I have to make plans, in case the Jedi no longer need my services, no?”

  Obi-Wan folded his arms. He was still chilled by the memory of the Blood Carver, the manner in which he had died. Anakin has made his first kill in direct combat. I know it was in self-defense. He did it without a lightsaber, against a much stronger foe. Why then do I feel that something went badly wrong?

  I’m very impressed,” Tarkin said to Anakin Skywalker as the Sekotan ship was winched out over the closed bay doors, now serving as the bay’s floor. Racks of empty sky-mine cradles overhead and on all four sides jangled with the vibration of the old ship. “You made this?”

  Anakin stood still, head bowed, and said nothing. He could feel the ship’s mind, quiet, waiting. Like him.

  Raith Sienar climbed up on the harness and walked around the top of the ship, kneeling at one point to examine its hull with a special instrument. “Very healthy,” he pronounced.

  The taller one, Sienar, is smarter, Anakin thought. The shorter one is very powerful and resourceful. Ruthless as any man I’ve met. This was the older voice speaking once more. Anakin realized that in his present situation, with no real chance of rescue, he would have to listen to this voice very carefully in order to survive. And survive he would, at all costs. There was too much unfinished business in his life, even if his career as a Jedi was now at an end.

  He did not believe they would return him to the Temple.

  Believe nothing they say. You are just a part of the ship to them.

  “Are these ships as special as the rumors say?” Tarkin asked him in a conversational tone.

  “I haven’t had much chance to try her out,” Anakin said. “You attacked the planet and nearly killed us all.”

  “I’m sorry you had to experience that,” Tarkin said, focusing on the boy intently. “Strategy is a tough master at times, as any Jedi should understand. We protect the greater interests, sometimes at the expense of the smaller.”

  “Zonama Sekot did you no harm,” Anakin said.

  “It did not respond to our authority, and these are troubled times,” Tarkin said. The boy was interesting. A very strong character, well beyond his years. “Did you kill the Blood Carver?”

  “His name was Ke Daiv,” Anakin said. “I killed him after he threatened Jabitha.”

  “I see. A clumsy misunderstanding of our orders. Well, you can never trust his kind, can you? I prefer dealing with humans, don’t you?”

  Anakin did not answer.

  “Tell me about your ship. We shall let you command it, of course, and fly it, once we return to Coruscant.”

  “They could make many more for you if you just paid them and—”

  “Enough,” Tarkin said, his voice gathering a rough edge.

  Sienar stood atop the Sekotan ship with his hands on his hips, listening. Anakin looked up at him. Sienar smiled and nodded, as if in agreement.

  “Will you allow me aboard your ship?” Tarkin asked, recovering his calm tone. He stroked the long upper edge of the starboard lobe as he walked around the ship.

  Anakin stood still, head lowered again.

  Tarkin glanced over his shoulder and frowned at the boy’s quiet concentration, thought of the condition of the Blood Carver’s body, and shot a brief, commanding look at his personal guards, spaced around the bay. They touched their weapons.

  “I say once more, will you—” Tarkin began again.

  Anakin looked up suddenly and stared directly into Tarkin’s eyes. “Do whatever you can,” he said. “I will not help you.” There it was again, the contrariness, the defiance that seemed completely illogical. The older, wiser self chafed within.

  He could feel another part of the trial approaching. It was far from over. His hopelessness was a weakness and had to be banished, and if he cooperated with these men, or showed any signs of giving up, giving in, then all would be lost, wiser self or no.

  Sienar shrugged and climbed over the hull to the upper hatch.

  “We’ll have to wait until we transfer it to the Einem,” Tarkin said with a sigh. “The boy will see reason eventually.”

  Loader droids rolled across the deck, preparing for the docking. They beeped around Anakin’s legs, warning him that he should move. The bay doors would be opening shortly.

  “Come,” Tarkin said, taking the boy by the shoulder. His hand burned, and he jerked it aside, waving it through the air in pain. A very impressive lad! He stopped himself from swatting the boy’s face.

  Anakin looked up at Tarkin, and his eyes seemed to lose all focus. Tarkin felt something twitch in his chest, in his abdomen.

  Alarms rang out all around the ship. Sienar jerked his gaze away from Tarkin and the boy and squinted at the flashing red lights, the wailing of horns.

  Anakin stepped back and pulled in his anger. I was going to do it again!

  Something heavy clanged against the bay doors and the ship quivered. Hot spatters of metal spun outward from the seam where the doors met, and a vortex of hot gases and smoke spiraled up into the empty mine racks like a questing finger.

  The personal guards escorted Tarkin out of the bay. Sienar jumped down from the Sekotan ship, glanced around wildly, felt the air pressure drop, and ran after the guards with barely a glance at Anakin.

  Other guards remained, slapping pressure masks over their faces. They dropped to their knees and drew laser weapons.

  Out of the twist of smoke and metal vapor, through a meter-wide hole in the doors, rose a hooded figure clutching a brilliant green lightsaber. Before he was completely inside the ship, laser fire surrounded him, and in a blur of motion, the lightsaber deflected each and every beam.

  Anakin cried out for joy, and then felt a hot flash of shame. He had not believed in his master or in the near miracles a dedicated Jedi could work, and that shamed him.

  But there was no time to waste. Obi-Wan stood at the hub of a dozen spokes of laser fire, and beams sizzled against the walls all around.

  The boy stood by the ship, bent his legs, and leapt the three meters to land on top. The hatch opened at the touch of his boots. The ship instantly switched on her engines, and heated air blasted through the bay.

  Obi-Wan, wielding his blade with supreme skill and blinding speed, stepped up on the bay doors and marched toward the Sekotan ship. Pieces of rack dropped around him, cut down by errant and deflected laser fire. Nine guards broke ranks and retreated.

  “Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted. “We’re leaving now! Prepare our ship!”

  The alarms within the bay grew more strident. Seeing they could do nothing more, the last three guards exited through the last open hatchway, firing as they fled. Obi-Wan jumped to the top of the ship and sliced the harness cables expertly with the lightsaber, working three on one side, three on the other, and then back again to finish the job. With the severing of the last three cables, the ship hovered on her own engines.

  “We’re almost out of fuel!” Anakin called from inside the ship.

  Obi-Wan looked up through the smoking ruins of the racks, saw fuel hoses snugged up tight below the bulkhead. They had fittings to service droid starfighters as well as powered sky mines.

  All used high-grade fuel, just like the Sekotan ship.

  “Three minutes!” Obi-Wan shouted, and climbed up a precariously swaying rack to bring down a fuel hose. Anakin lifted the ship above the floor another meter to ease his master’s task.

  What Obi-Wan did not tell his Padawan was that the Star Sea Flower was even now setting a delayed charge on the bay doors of the mine ship.

  They had just seconds more than three minutes before it blew.

  Tarkin was beside himself with cold rage, his face almost purple. He hunkered beside Sienar in the escape pod as the elderly mine ship captain sealed them in with a sad, fatalistic nod.

  “Two minutes from docking!” Tarkin shrilled, pounding the thin bulkhead with his fists.
“We were that close!”

  “Careful,” Sienar said. “These interiors are none too sturdy.”

  Tarkin froze, quivering with anger, and stared very hard at Sienar.

  “Lowest bidder, you know. I designed them for lightness, not strength,” Sienar said.

  Tarkin grabbed for a comlink and yanked it from the wall. He was connected directly with the Einem. “Captain, whatever you do,” he shouted, “destroy that damned cargo ship, and destroy all that remains on the planet!”

  Charza Kwinn pulled the Star Sea Flower away from the mine ship and retracted the boarding tunnel. He had left a plug in the hole, and attached to the plug, a charge sufficient to blow the bay doors wide open.

  He surveyed with many sharp eyes the ever-changing network of defensive fire spreading out from the Rim Merchant Einem. The mine ship was drifting dangerously close to the hull of the control ship.

  An escape pod shot out from the port side of the mine ship and was instantly snared by tractor fields from the Einem.

  Obi-Wan and his Padawan had only a few seconds remaining before the charge went off, and it was time for Charza to make his own escape.

  Obi-Wan kicked aside the high-pressure hose and ducked a spray of corrosive fuel. Smoke billowed within the bay. Gravitation within the bay was failing; Charza’s bore must have severed grid cables in the doors. Debris drifted up from the floor.

  He jumped through the hatch and closed it tight behind. Anakin waggled their ship back and forth to free her from two fallen mine racks. He clasped his master’s hand firmly as Obi-Wan settled into his couch.

  “Ready?” Obi-Wan asked.

  Anakin had never been more ready to leave a place in his life.

  “Brace,” Obi-Wan warned.

  The charge blew and the doors drew up and ripped aside in less than the blink of an eye. Racks and smoke and debris shot out into space, and the extra nudge pushed the mine ship against the hull of the Einem. The control ship shields braced its hull against the intrusion, but the smaller mine ship did not have a chance. Older, built to be expendable, it cracked along its main structural elements like an egg, and all its fuel—and three defective mines kept in storage—exploded.

  The shock wave propelled the Sekotan ship through the breach in the doors. A rack punctured one lobe, and in Anakin’s mind the ship gave a small cry of pain, then sealed the wound. He could not control her motion yet; the turbulence was too extreme. He felt more punctures and then a rip across her stern, and again the ship made healing repairs, but her pain was intense.

  As the brilliant light of the explosion faded, Obi-Wan saw they were tumbling end over end away from the control ship and the expanding wreckage and plasma ball of the old mine ship.

  Anakin brought them up and around, through bursts of aimless laser fire, and directly into a swarm of starfighters. The fast, deadly droid ships seemed to flock out of nowhere, two nearly solid walls flanking the Einem. Anakin had no choice but to reverse course, swoop into the control ship’s shadow, and make a desperate run down toward Zonama’s atmosphere.

  Every other route was blocked.

  “She’s intact,” Anakin told Obi-Wan. He gave his master a quick smile. “She’s brave and she’s beautiful. She’ll go anywhere we tell her to.”

  Obi-Wan gripped his Padawan’s shoulder. “Shall we live to fight another day?”

  “You bet!”

  Anakin buried his arms in the control panel, and the ship told him everything that she knew about the planet, where they could fly, and how they might escape.

  “The sky is still full of mines,” Obi-Wan said. He touched his set of controls lightly. His fingers sank into the panel, and rows of small green lights flashed around his hands. Impulses passed up his arms, and he was directly connected with the ship and with Anakin, as well. The ship fed him her specifications and characteristics. In a few seconds, he learned almost all a pilot needed to know—but Anakin had spent hours attached to the ship, and his expertise was much greater. There is only one pilot.

  “I think it’s best if I just supervise,” Obi-Wan said.

  “You can keep track of what’s going on down below. Sekot talks to the ship while we’re in range.”

  “Sekot?”

  “The mind Vergere was talking about.”

  “Vergere?” Obi-Wan was at a loss.

  Anakin quickly explained.

  The ship skipped lightly along the upper atmosphere near the equator, reentered with six quick shudders, and shed her friction-generated heat.

  “She likes being warmed that way,” Anakin said.

  “I can tell. She’s frisky.”

  “She’s great.” Anakin could feel relaxation and reassurance smoothing up along his shoulders, into his neck and back. He sighed and wriggled in the seat. Being connected with the ship was like conversing with an old friend, and they had so much gossip to catch up on.

  She almost made him forget the last few hours.

  But Tarkin’s forces were not about to let them go. All the sky mines and most of the starfighters that had fled the ruined mountain were now massing directly west of them, and another tide of mines was dropping from the east. They were about to be enveloped once again in devious, automated death.

  Above, a tight-packed ceiling of starfighters flowed in like a storm. Whatever damage the Rim Merchant Einem had sustained had not reduced its ability to command and control.

  Anakin could easily imagine the grimly determined face of Tarkin, tracking them with gray hunter’s eyes.

  “We have to go lower.”

  “The factory valley,” Anakin said. “Our ship says the canopy has withdrawn and they’ve stopped manufacture.”

  Obi-Wan could piece together the ship’s message, but not as quickly as Anakin.

  “But they’ve been stockpiling a lot of ships, Obi-Wan. And something else …”

  “What?”

  “She says the settlers are going to escape.”

  Obi-Wan narrowed one eye. “Everybody, in one big ship?”

  “That’s what she seems to think. Could they make something that big?”

  “With the Jentari, I don’t see why not. But it would take days to assemble all the settlers, even if they were willing to go.”

  Starfighters climbed from behind a low chain of hills and fanned out in a V behind them. Anakin accelerated and dropped down to the level of the tampasi, as he had done earlier when Ke Daiv rode beside him.

  The starfighters tracked close behind, weaving around the taller boras.

  “There it is,” Anakin said. The factory valley’s concealing canopy had shrunk away, exposing the basalt floor and leaving the stone pillars thrust up like snaggled peg teeth.

  The sky over the valley was alive with the still-raging battle between the Sekotan defenses and yet more starfighters.

  “It looks very narrow from up here,” Obi-Wan said.

  “It is,” Anakin said.

  Obi-Wan kept track of the Sekotan ships defending the planet. They came in a bewildering variety, none larger than sixty or seventy meters in any dimension, and none as sleek or fast as their ship. But all pursued starfighters with impressive determination, clamping them in implacable jaws and bringing them down to the tampasi, or to the valley floor, where they exploded in brilliant red flashes and arcing showers of metal debris. Smaller craft took on the sky mines by simply ramming into them.

  “They don’t have pilots,” Obi-Wan said.

  “I think Sekot is the pilot. It’s controlling all of them.”

  Obi-Wan was still absorbing the idea of a planetwide mind, but he did not doubt his Padawan.

  “It’s going to be real close,” Anakin said. “Any other ship and we’d get creamed for sure.”

  “They’re forming up all along the valley,” Obi-Wan observed. “We have about three minutes until we reach the end.” He suddenly accessed different eyes, and seemed to rush along the valley walls well ahead of them, seeing patterns of enemy ships in much greater detail. The
tampasi was supplying their ship with its own sensory data, and the ship was translating for her human occupants.

  “Don’t you just love her?” Anakin said softly.

  “She’s showing us we don’t have a chance,” Obi-Wan observed. “More starfighters from orbit, and more mine delivery ships—”

  “Never give up!” Anakin reminded his master.

  Pillars of brilliant light rose into the sky, three to the north, one to the south. The air all down the valley pulsed with an immense pressure wave. Starfighters overhead were blown high into the stratosphere and churned as if with a giant paddle. Only by staying within a few meters of the valley floor did their ship maintain her course.

  The terminator between day and night was sweeping toward them, brightening one wall of the valley with what, in other circumstances, would have been a lovely yellow dawn glow. Clouds rushed to fill in the wake of the pressure wave, and they, also, caught the dawn glow, which painted them with an uncanny purple and gold aura.

  Yet to the north, the dawn was interrupted by what looked at first like steep mountain peaks shooting up from the planet’s crust. They were too regular and smooth to be mountains, however.

  They were vanes of some sort, and they looked oddly familiar to both Anakin and Obi-Wan.

  “The ship says if we don’t want to go with them, we’d better get out of here,” Anakin said. “We’d better find some way to go into a solar orbit. And fast.”

  Obi-Wan, using all the new sources of vision, examined the vanes from many angles. They’re hyperdrive field guides—and they’re over three hundred kilometers high! And the shafts of light—those are the plasma cones of engines. Huge engines.

  He looked across the console at his Padawan.

  Another pressure wave shot down the valley and shook the ship. Boras all along the rim were being uprooted and tossed to the bottom of the valley.

  “This is insane,” Obi-Wan said. “We don’t know where they’ll go.”