STAR WARS: TALES FROM THE CLONE WARS Page 5

  “So what do you suggest?” Torles asked.

  Binalie’s lips compressed briefly. “That we get the Separatists out ourselves, now, before Roshton and his clone troopers can regroup to attack. Bribe them, blackmail them—even help them finish their work if they’ll promise to get out afterward.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Torles protested, frowning. There was a whisper of warning from the Force; a sense of alien minds nearby.

  “Why not?” Binalie countered. “What are you worried about, Roshton’s blatherings about treason? That’s nothing but a bunch of-” He stopped as heavy footsteps suddenly sounded outside the office door. “What in the world?” he muttered, starting to rise to his feet.

  With a crash, the door was shoved violently inward, the warped panel slamming to the floor and bouncing another two meters across the room.

  Binalie dropped back into his chair with a curse, his hand darting toward one of the desk drawers.

  “No!” Torles snapped, reaching out with the Force to lock the other’s arm in place.

  He was just in time. Half a second later the monstrous metal shapes of two large combat droids strode into the room, the heavy blasters permanently attached to their forearms lifted and ready. Their heads and weapons swung once around the room as they searched for danger, and then they moved back to flank the doorway in guard positions.

  Through the opening stepped a pair of brightly dressed Neimoidians. The one in the lead wore the blue and purple robes and black miter of a unit commander, while the other wore a simpler outfit of red and purple. His headgear was blue, with four twisted horns atop it. “Good day, Lord Binalie,” the commander said in a stilted voice. “I trust we do not intrude?”

  Torles looked a silent warning at Binalie, got merely a glare in return. But the other brought his hand up-empty-and let it drop onto the desktop. “Of course not,” he growled sarcastically. “It’s not like I have any actual work to do. What do you want?”

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” the spokesman said, sending glances at first Torles and then Corf. “I am Tok Ashel, Commander of the Cartao Expeditionary Army.” He gestured to his companion. “This is Dif Gehad, Master Creator of New Products.”

  “And what new products are you trying to build in my factory?” Binalie asked. Gehad started to speak. - “Not so quickly, Lord Binalie,” Ashel interrupted.

  “First, let us have the rest of the introductions.” His large red eyes turned pointedly to Torles.

  “I’m Corf Binalie,” Corf spoke up before either of the two men could answer, his voice strong and defiant. “This is my private tutor, Master Jafer. Does this mean there’s no school today?”

  Ashel made a sound like crumpling tin wrap. “It may, young one,” he said, eyeing Torles. “What do you teach, Master Jafer?”

  “A little of everything,” Torles told him. “Ethics, wisdom, the ways of life.”

  “Ah—a philosopher,” Ashel said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand and turning back to Binalie. “Now, to business.” He gestured to Gehad.

  “As you have surmised, we wish to use Spaarti Creations to work for us,” the Master Creator said, his voice neat and precise. “But thus far we have been unable to restructure the assembly lines. You will tell me now how to do that.”

  Binalie shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Do not speak foolishness,” Gehad warned. “You are director of this facility. You know everything there is to know about it.”

  “Of course I do,” Binalie agreed. “Including what can and cannot be done. Only the Cranscoc twillers can manipulate the fluid tooling system.” He lifted his eyebrows at Gehad. “I take it they haven’t been willing to do so?”

  “It was the ruins of our vehicles on the south lawn,” Ashel said. “We now know about that taboo and have moved to correct it.”

  “But we do not intend to be stymied in that way again,” Gehad added. “So I repeat: you will tell me how we may change the tooling ourselves.”

  “And I repeat, I can’t,” Binalie said. “But there are things I can do to help. I’d like to suggest a deal that—”

  “You will not block us further!” Ashel snapped, flicking his fingers in an odd and probably obscene gesture. “Not you, and not the Republic forces hiding in the tunnel beneath the southern lawn. Oh, yes, we know they are there-we have tried twice to dislodge them and have now sealed the plant’s exit against them. We also know the other end of the tunnel is somewhere on these grounds. Do not deny it!”

  “I can’t do anything about the Republic forces,” Binalie said, starting to sound angry himself. “What I can do, however, is help you. . .”

  “And you will tell us how to restructure the machines,” Ashel insisted again, even more stridently this time. “Or you will regret the consequences.” The skin of Binalie’s face hardened, and even with the masking influence of two alien minds at close range, Torles could feel Binalie’s sense harden along with it.

  Even the invasion of his home and the destruction of his office door had apparently not put Binalie off the idea of offering the Neimoidians a deal to get them out of his plant. But threats were something else entirely. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm.

  “It means this.” Before Binalie could do more than inhale sharply, Ashel wrapped his long fingers around Corf’s arm and hauled him out of his chair.

  “The grub will go with us,” the Neimoidian continued, pulling Corf close in front of him. “When you decide to cooperate, you may join us in the plant.”

  “Let him go,” Binalie ground out. He was on his feet now, ignoring the droid blasters suddenly pointed at him. “I’ve told you already. . .”

  “And do not consider too long,” Ashel warned, backing to the door with Corf firmly in tow. The boy’s eyes, Torles saw, had gone wide with fear. “We are patient beings, but we will not be patient forever.”

  Corf threw Torles a half frantic, half pleading look. But the Jedi had already measured the distances with his eyes, and even with the advantage of surprise he knew he couldn’t take two combat droids before at least one of them got off a shot. And that didn’t even take into account what other forces the Neimoidians might have waiting outside.

  Which simply meant he would have to try something else. “Just a moment,” he said primly, standing up. “The boy has two exams to complete today. I will not permit my schedule to be disrupted.”

  The Neimoidians paused in the doorway, gazing at him with those expressionless alien faces. Torles stretched out toward their minds, wondering just how susceptible this species was to Jedi suggestion. He’d seldom used this trick, and never before with a Neimoidian. If they didn’t buy into his manipulation, he might have to tackle those combat droids after all.

  “The boy will come with us,” Ashel declared at last. “If you choose, you may come with him.”

  “Thank you,” Torles said, bowing in proper tutor fashion. Throwing a warning glance at Binalie, he stepped over to join the Neimoidians.

  “But bring many lessons,” Ashel added as they stepped back into the corridor.

  There were, Torles noted, two more of the big droids waiting for them out there. Just as well he hadn’t gone on the attack. “Lord Binalie is stubborn, even for a human. You may be with us for some time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Torles said, squeezing Corf’s shoulder reassuringly. “I have everything I’ll need.”

  The two Neimoidians and their assault droid escort were still in the mansion when Doriana finally reached Roshton. The commander was bending over the sculpted bush in front of him, his face carefully turned away from the visitor, puttering away industriously with a set of pruning scissors.

  “What are you doing here?” Doriana hissed at him.

  “Tendin’ the plants, my lord,” Roshton said in a quavering old voice, snipping off a couple more leaves.

  “Stop it, Roshton,” Doriana ground out. “It’s me.”

  Roshton an
gled an eye cautiously up at him. “Ah-Master Doriana,” he said, abandoning both the accent and the phony garden work. “You’re just in time for the show.”

  “What show?” Doriana asked. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ll see,” Roshton said, shifting his eyes to the mansion and the ring of droids. “Ever seen a droideka go bounce?”

  “Uh. . . no.”

  “Then you’ve got a treat in store.” Roshton pulled the front of his tunic slightly back to reveal a comlink hidden behind the flap. “Number seven, stand by. . . now.”

  And from the direction of the house came the thundercrack of an explosion. Doriana twisted around in time to see one of the droidekas, still in wheel form, soaring over the heads of its startled companions. Behind it, a blackened hole in the ground trailed a strand of smoke. “Number ten: now,” Roshton said.

  There was a second explosion, this one squarely at the feet of one of the assault droids. The big machine lost its balance and toppled backward to land with a sickening thud. “Where are they firing from?” Doriana demanded, looking around in bewilderment. There were no clone troopers in sight, and precious little cover anywhere nearby for them to be hiding in. “Roshton?”

  “Later,” Roshton said. “Five and eight: go.”

  Two more explosions ripped into the defensive line, each sending a pair of battle droids flying across the neatly trimmed lawn. “And here come the soft ones,” Roshton added as the brightly colored Neimoidian robes appeared in the doorway. “This should be fun.”

  “Hold it,” Doriana said, squinting across the distance. Nearly hidden in the folds of the robes. . . “Hold your fire, Roshton,” he repeated urgently.

  “They’ve got Binalie’s son with them.”

  Roshton muttered something under his breath. “Rotten cowards,” he said contemptuously. “They can’t just. . .”

  He broke off, a tight smile suddenly twisting his lips. “Well, well. Cowards and fools both.”

  “What?” Doriana asked, frowning.

  “They’ve got Corf Binalie, all right.” Roshton gestured. “They’ve also got Jafer Torles.”

  He lifted his eyebrows at Doriana. “Like I said. This should be fun.”

  Two more explosions, the third and fourth by Torles’ count, shook the house as Ashel and Gehad hurried them down the entry hallway to the mansion’s main door.

  “I do not understand,” Gehad said nervously as they peered outside. “Where are they shooting from?”

  “What does it matter?” Ashel bit out, gesturing to the droids. “Droids! Form a cordon to the transport!” Obediently, the droids abandoned their encirclement positions, scurrying or rolling or lumbering, as their capabilities allowed, toward the vehicle squatting a dozen meters away. They were lining up into two rows, their weapons pointing outward, when another explosion caught the transport’s right front corner, bouncing the vehicle a meter into the air and leaving a section of armor plating black and twisted.

  “This is impossible!” Gehad shouted. “How do they do this?”

  “Ask questions later!” Ashel growled, pointing toward the Spaarti plant. “Look! Here is our air support.”

  And impressive air support it was, too, Torles had to admit. A hundred STAPs had appeared in the sky, sweeping in from both east and west as they converged on the Binalie estate.

  But the STAPs were still out of range, the droids in their cordon had their weapons and sensors aimed outward as they searched for their unseen attackers, and the Neimoidians were far too preoccupied with their own safety to be watching their prisoners. Time to go to work.

  “Now,” Ashel said, ungluing himself from the partial protection of the doorway and sprinting between the rows of droids toward the transport. Grabbing Corf s arm, Gehad started to follow, tugging the boy along behind him. They didn’t get far. Reaching forward, Torles caught the boy’s other arm and planted his feet solidly into the ground just outside the mansion’s doorway. For a moment, Corf was stretched between them like a pull-war cable, and then Gehad stopped and spun around.

  “What do you-?” he snarled. He never finished his question. In that same brief second, the two combat droids that had been marching along a meter behind them, caught offguard by Torles’ sudden halt, arrived at either side of the Jedi. And in a single smooth motion, Torles reached beneath his robe, pulled out his lightsaber, and ignited it.

  Gehad gave a little deep-throated scream, letting go of Corf’s arm as if he’d been burned and scuttling away from him. Torles gave the boy a quick shove back through the doorway as he slashed the lightsaber across the upper chest of the droid to his left. The brilliant green blade sliced through the thick acertron armor like it was wrapping plastoid, and the top third of the droid slid off and fell with a crash onto the ground. The rest of the machine, caught in a trick of balance, remained standing stolidly upright like a beheaded corpse patiently awaiting further orders.

  Torles didn’t wait to see whether or not it would fall. The assault droid to his right was already reacting to this unexpected threat, twisting at its hips to try to bring its blasters to bear. Torles swiveled to his right to meet it, swinging his lightsaber around and down across the raised forearms above the mounted blasters and dropping them onto the ground. His second cut took off the droid’s legs; even before the pieces clattered to the ground, he leaped backward through the doorway into the mansion.

  “Go!” he ordered the Neimoidians, lifting his lightsaber into guard position. As if in emphasis, another nearby explosion blew clouds of dirt into the air. The two aliens didn’t need further encouragement. Turning, they sprinted down the line of droids and scampered into the transport. The surviving droids followed, closing up the cordon neatly behind them.

  A minute later the transport, joined now by three more of the vehicles, was heading east at high speed.

  “Wow,” Corf breathed.

  Torles turned to see the boy gazing up at him, a stunned expression on his face. “You all right?” he asked.

  Mechanically, Corf nodded. “I never saw anything like that,” he said.

  “Just doing what I was trained for,” Torles said. With one last look outside, he closed down his lightsaber. “Let’s go tell your father you’re all right,” he said. “And after that,” he added grimly, “you may both want to go to your safe room. This could get nasty.”

  “There they go,” Roshton commented as the last of the droids piled into the transports. The first vehicle, the one with the Neimoidians aboard, had already left the ground and was clawing for distance, the STAP escort forming up around it. “They won’t be trying that again for awhile.”

  “Probably not,” Doriana agreed, his eyes still on the remains of the D- 60s that had taken Torles maybe half a second to turn to scrap. He’d been around Jedi much of his life, but never before had he actually witnessed one in full combat mode.

  And for the first time he began to truly see why Sidious wanted them eliminated.

  “Estate units, secure,” Roshton was saying into his comlink. “City, forest units: stand ready.”

  With an effort, Doriana pulled his attention back to the military situation. “What do you mean, stand ready?” he asked. “And how did you manage those shots?”

  “Don’t be dense,” Roshton chided. “That was nothing but a set of strategically placed, remote-controlled land mines. You must not have noticed all the landscaping being done around the grounds the past two days.”

  “I had other things on my mind,” Doriana said tartly, watching the fleeing transports. Instead of taking the straightest route back to Spaarti Creations, they were swinging far to the east. What in?. . .

  And then, he got it. “They’re avoiding the south lawn,” he said. “They don’t want to risk anything else crashing on it and irritating the Cranscoc.”

  “Exactly what I thought they’d do,” Roshton said with grim satisfaction. “Forest unit: secure. City unit: fire at will.”

  Abruptly, a dozen blaster bolts sizzled u
p from the northern edge of Foulahn City, blowing apart STAPs and peeling chunks of armor from the transports.

  “What are you doing?” Doriana demanded. “You’ve chased them away. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” Roshton said. “City unit: take them down.”

  The STAPs were returning fire now, and that whole section of sky seemed to be filled with multicolored blaster fire. Doriana found himself holding his breath as he watched the transports dodging and staggering, trying desperately to reach the safety of the plant. If Roshton’s zealousness got the Neimoidians killed—or worse, if it panicked them into pulling their droids out of the factory for a counterattack. . .

  And then, something else in the sky caught his eye. Just a pair of specks, but as he watched they grew visibly larger. “Roshton!” he snapped, fumbling out a compact set of electrobinoculars and switching them on. “We’ve got company.”

  “Let me see,” Roshton ordered, reaching for the instrument.

  Doriana twitched it away, pressing his eyes against the lenses.

  A single glance was enough. “It’s a pair of C-9979 landing ships,” he told Roshton, handing over the electrobinoculars. “Looks like all your little stunt accomplished was to persuade the Separatists to bring in reinforcements. “

  The Neimoidian commander’s careless choice of a landing spot two days earlier had enabled Roshton’s clone troopers to slow down their troop deployment long enough for the Republic forces to evacuate the Spaarti Creations complex. With this second wave, the Separatists made no such error. The landing ships put down to the west and northeast of the city, in open territory where no close-in attack would be possible, and immediately began deploying their troops and vehicles.

  Roshton had barely enough time to order his men to pull back before the MTT transports and AAT battle tanks made their orderly way through the streets of Foulahn City, along the serviceways of Triv Spaceport, and even into the mostly uninhabited wooded hills west and north of the Spaarti complex. The AATs took up position at official buildings and strategic road intersections, while the MTTs quickly found places to dump their deadly cargos of battle droids, super battle droids, assault droids, and droidekas. By late afternoon, every square meter for fifteen kilometers around Spaarti Creations was in Separatist hands. With one small exception.