Star Wars: Cloak of Deception Page 8

  Qui-Gon finally turned to him. “There are many paths to take, Obi-Wan. Not all of us are fortunate enough to find the one with heart, the path the Force has set before us. What do you find when you search your feelings about the choices you have made?”

  “I feel that I’ve found the right path, Master.”

  “I agree.” Qui-Gon clapped Obi-Wan on the shoulders, then smiled as he turned to regard the students. “Even so, I think you would have made a good field hand.”

  The students were kneeling in two rows, legs tucked underneath, with feet crossed behind them. The room was still, save for the sound of the lightsaber Master’s bare feet adhering to the floor mat as he sauntered between the two rows, appraising each of his students.

  A Twi’lek, with slender head-tails and a heavily muscled upper body, his name was Anoon Bondara, a duelist of unparalleled skill. Qui-Gon engaged him in matches at every opportunity. For a match with Bondara, no matter how brief, was more instructive than twenty contests against lesser opponents.

  The lightsaber Master stopped in front of a female human student named Darsha Assant, who happened also to be his Padawan. Bondara squatted down on his haunches to regard her at eye level.

  “What were you thinking when you attacked?”

  “What was I thinking, Master?”

  “What was in your thoughts? What was your intent?”

  “Merely to be as forceful as possible, Master.”

  “You wanted to win.”

  “Not to win, Master. I wanted to strike impeccably.”

  Bondara made a face. “Rid yourself of thinking. Don’t expect to win; don’t expect to lose. Expect nothing.”

  Obi-Wan glanced at Qui-Gon. “Now where have I heard that before?”

  Qui-Gon shushed him, without taking his eyes from Bondara, who was in motion once more.

  “The lightsaber is not a weapon with which to vanquish foes or rivals,” Bondara said. “With it, you destroy your own greed, anger, and folly. The forger and wielder of a lightsaber must live in such a manner as to represent the annihilation of anything that impedes the path of justice and peace.” He stopped and glanced at everyone. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master,” They replied in one voice.

  Bondara clapped his hands together loudly. “No, you don’t. You must learn to hold the lightsaber by loosening your grip on it. You must learn to advance rhythmically so that you will learn to produce formless rhythms. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master,” they replied.

  “No, you don’t.” He scowled and sat down at the end of the rows. “I will tell you a story.

  “A human, wrongly accused of a crime, was being transported by repulsorlift vehicle across the desert wastes of a remote world, to a prison, located even deeper in the wastes. Without warning, the vehicle experienced a malfunction directly over a pit that was, in fact, the huge and ravenous mouth of a creature that inhabited the wastes.

  “The sudden malfunction catapulted the human’s escorts down into the mucus-coated maw of the creature. The human was also thrown from his perch. But at the last instant he was able to grab on to the vehicle’s landing strut. Not with hands, however—for they were shackled in stun cuffs behind him—but with his teeth.

  “Shortly a caravan of travelers happened by. Lost and hungry, the travelers inquired to know the whereabouts of the closest settlement, so they might replenish their meager stores.

  “The human found himself in a quandary. By failing to respond, he understood that he might be sentencing the lost travelers to certain death in the sand wastes. But merely by opening his mouth and uttering a word, he would be sentencing himself to certain death in the digestive tract of the sand creature.”

  Bondara paused. “Under such circumstances, what must the human do?”

  The students knew in advance that they were not likely to hear the answer from Anoon Bondara.

  Getting to his feet, the lightsaber Master added, “I will hear your responses tomorrow.”

  The students bowed at the waist and kept their foreheads to the mat until Bondara had left the room. Then they rose, eager to compare opinions of the training session, though not a one spoke of possible solutions to the instructor’s thought-puzzle.

  Qui-Gon tapped Obi-Wan on the shoulder. “Come, Padawan, there’s someone I wish to speak with.”

  Obi-Wan trailed him down the steps and onto the soft floor. There, several Jedi Masters were conferring with their Padawans. Obi-Wan knew some of the Masters slightly, but the person Qui-Gon steered them toward was not someone he had ever met.

  She was perhaps one of the most exotic women Obi-Wan had ever seen. Her eyes were oblique and widely spaced, with large blue irises that seemed to favor her upper lids. Her nose was broad and flat, and her skin was the color of fruitwood.

  “Obi-Wan, I want you to meet Master Luminara Unduli.”

  “Master Jinn,” the woman said, taken by surprise, and inclining her head in a bow of respect.

  Qui-Gon returned the gesture. “Luminara, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi, my Padawan.”

  She bowed her head to Obi-Wan, as well. Her face was triangular in shape, and the lower portion was tattooed in small diamond shapes that formed a vertical stripe from her lush, blue-black lower lip to the tip of her round chin. The backs of her hands also bore tattoos, atop each knuckle joint.

  Qui-Gon’s expression became serious. “Luminara, Obi-Wan and I have had a recent encounter with someone who bears markings similar to yours.”

  “Arwen Cohl,” Luminara said before Qui-Gon could go on. She smiled faintly. “Had I grown up on my homeworld and not in the Temple, I’m certain I would have heard tales of Arwen Cohl throughout my youth.”

  She met Qui-Gon’s curious gaze. “He was a freedom fighter, a hero to our people during a war fought with a neighboring world. He was a great warrior, and he made many sacrifices. But soon after our people won their freedom, he was accused of being a conspirator by the very people on whose side he had fought. That was their way of assuring that Cohl would not be elevated to the position of authority our people wished him to assume. He spent many years in prison, subjected to cruel punishments and harsh conditions, and those further hardened a man who already had been hardened by war.

  “When he left those conditions—when he escaped that awful place, with the help of some of his former confederates—he avenged himself on those who did him wrong, and he swore that he would have nothing more to do with the world that he had fought so hard to liberate.

  “He became a mercenary, boasting openly that he would never make the mistakes he had once made. That he now understood the nature of the cosmos, and would always be one step ahead of those who would seek to bring him down, capture him, or in any way thwart him.”

  Qui-Gon inhaled through his nose. “Did he bear any special grudge against the Trade Federation?”

  Luminara shook her head. “No more than anyone else in my home system. The Trade Federation brought us into the Republic, though they did so at the expense of my world’s resources.

  “In the beginning, Arwen Cohl would hire himself out only to those whose cause he felt was justified. But over time—no doubt because of the blood he shed—he became nothing more than a pirate and a contract killer. He was said never to have betrayed a friend or an ally.”

  She paused for a moment, then added, “It is regrettable that history will remember the criminal Cohl rather than the exemplary Cohl. I was sad to hear that he had perished at Dorvalla.”

  When Qui-Gon didn’t respond, Luminara asked, “Did he not?”

  Qui-Gon appeared preoccupied. “For now, I’ll grant that he vanished at Dorvalla.”

  Luminara nodded uncertainly. “Whether Cohl is dead or alive, the matter is in the hands of the Judicial Department, is it not?”

  Again, Qui-Gon took a moment to respond. “All that is certain is that Cohl’s destiny is in hands other than mine.”

  Carbon scored and blistered by the explosion that
had sundered the freighter, an arc of the Revenue’s starboard hangar arm hung over Dorvalla’s wan polar cap. Just outside the reach of the planet’s shadow, the great curve of durasteel appeared to have been there forever. Perpetual sunlight poured in through the main hangar portal—where the arm’s hand might have been—illuminating a shambles of cargo pods and barges.

  Affixed like a barnacle to the inner hull, however, sat a lone battered shuttle. Inside the shuttle, and even the worse for wear, sat her crew of eight.

  “I’m still waiting for that pardon you promised,” Cohl said to Rella.

  She shot him a look. “If and when you get us out of this, and not a moment before.”

  They were each in their chairs, as were the others, some of them asleep, heads pillowed on folded arms or hung backwards with mouths ajar. Lighting was faint, the air was frigid, and the scrubbed and rescrubbed oxygen had a distinctly metallic taste.

  The much-abused refresher was rank.

  They had been inside the arm for almost four standard days, subsisting on food pellets and relieving the boredom by putting on EVA suits and venturing out into the hangar. Where the shuttle had artificial gravity, moving about in the arm was like exploring a deep-sea wreck. Many of the cargo pods had massed along the outer wall of the arm, but clouds of lommite and tangles of droids drifted about like flotsam and jetsam. Boiny had even discovered the body of one of the Twi’leks who hadn’t made it back to the rendezvous point, burned almost beyond recognition by blasterfire.

  They hadn’t planned on remaining in the hangar arm after the explosion. But once it had been determined that the arm was just outside the tug of Dorvalla’s gravity, Cohl had decided that the hangar would be the best place to bide their time. The Hawk-Bat and the Nebula Front support ships had fled, and even the Acquisitor had disappeared—a fact that Cohl found curious, since it was unlike the Neimoidians to leave cargo behind, jettisoned or otherwise.

  Another option would have been to race for Dorvalla’s surface, to what had been their base before the boarding operation. But Cohl suspected that the base had been discovered and would probably be under surveillance. When Rella and some of the others had suggested striking out instead for nearby Dorvalla IV, it was Cohl who reminded them that salvage and relief ships would be on their way to Dorvalla, and a lone shuttle, crawling through space, would certainly attract unwanted attention.

  In fact, salvage crews had arrived within local hours of the explosion. Since then, Dorvalla Mining had been employing their ferries to gather up what cargo pods they could, though much of the lommite had plunged into the atmosphere, as if bent on returning home. The detached centersphere and the other hangar arm had been hauled off, in advance of Dorvalla’s bringing them down. Soon the salvagers would turn their efforts to the starboard arm.

  For Cohl, the long days were no more than tedious; nothing like the years of confinement he had endured after being imprisoned on false conspiracy charges by people he had fought beside and had counted as friends. Because the rest of the shuttle’s crew trusted him implicitly, they, too, suffered the monotony without complaint. Most of them were stoic by nature and no strangers to privation, in any case. Anyone who wasn’t wouldn’t have been selected for the operation.

  Only Rella was inclined to speak her mind. But she and Cohl had an understanding.

  “Anything on the comm?” Cohl asked Boiny.

  “Not a peep, Captain.”

  Rella snorted. “Who are you expecting to hear from, Cohl? The Hawk-Bat is long gone.”

  Cohl looked past her to the Rodian. “What’s the status of the systems?”

  “Nominal.”

  Rella growled impatiently. “You know, I can last in here as long as any of you, but this litany is driving me space happy.” She mimicked Cohl’s voice, “Systems status,” then Boiny’s, “Nominal.” She gave her head a shake. “Can’t you at least come up with other ways of saying it?”

  “Here’s something that will cheer you up, Rella,” Jalan said irritably. “The arm’s orbit is deteriorating.”

  She forced her eyes wide open. “If you mean we’re actually in danger of falling from the sky, you’re right: I’m thrilled!”

  Jalan looked at Cohl. “No imminent danger, Captain. But we should probably begin to think about leaving.”

  Cohl nodded. “You’re right. It’s time we bid good-bye to this place. Served us well, though.”

  Rella raised her eyes to the low ceiling. “Thank the stars.”

  “Where are we off to, Captain?” Boiny asked.

  “Downside.”

  “Captain, I hope you’re not thinking of riding this thing down to Dorvalla,” Jalan said. “The salvage crews will—”

  Cohl shook his head negatively. “We’re returning to base under our own power.”

  The crew members traded uneasy looks.

  “Begging your pardon, Captain,” Jalan said, “but didn’t you say the base was probably being watched?”

  “I’m sure it is being watched.”

  Rella stared at him for a moment. “Are you scrambled, Cohl? We’ve been monitoring Judicial Department ships for the past four days, not to mention Dorvalla Space Corps corvettes. If you wanted to be caught, why did you make us sit through—” She gestured broadly. “—this?”

  The others muttered in agreement.

  “Even if we make it to the base in one piece,” Rella went on, “what happens then? Without a spaceworthy ship, we’ll be stranded.”

  “Maybe Dorvalla IV’s worth a shot, after all, Captain,” Jalan interjected. “If we manage to make it … I mean, with the Nebula Front likely thinking that we’re dead, and all that aurodium right here with us …”

  Rella cast Cohl a sly glance. “Are you listening?”

  Cohl firmed his lips. “And when the Nebula Front learns that we survived? You don’t think they’ll move planets to hunt us down?”

  “Might not matter, Captain,” Boiny said guardedly. “That much aurodium could buy all of us new lives in the Corporate Sector or somewhere.”

  Cohl’s gaze darkened. “That’s not going to happen. We took this job on, and we’ll see it through. Then we collect our pay.” He swung angrily to Rella. “Begin your preflight. The rest of you, prepare for launch.”

  The small ship burned its way through sunlit Dorvalla’s nebulous envelope, red nose aglow and losing pieces of itself to the thin air. The crew cinched their harnesses tighter and focused silently on their separate tasks, even as items broke loose from the consoles and began to carom around the cramped cabinspace like deadly missiles.

  Rella aimed the trembling shuttle for a broad valley in the equatorial region, defined by two steep escarpments. There, where ancient seas had once ruled and plate tectonics had wreaked havoc with the terrain, the land was blanketed by thick forest, with trees and ferns primeval in scale. Massive, sheer-faced tors, crowned with rampant vegetation, rose like islands from the forest floor. Blinding white in the sunlight, the tors were the birthplace of waterfalls that plunged thousands of meters to turbulent turquoise pools.

  But for all the wildness, it wasn’t a wilderness. Dorvalla Mining had carved wide roads to the bases of most of the larger cliffs, and two circular landing fields, expansive enough to accommodate ferries, had been hollowed out of the forest. The tors were gouged and honeycombed with mines, and a thick layer of lommite dust blanketed much of the vegetation. Likewise the product of outsize machines, deep craters filled with polluted runoff water reflected the sun and sky like fogged mirrors.

  It was from here, with an assist from several disenfranchised employees of Dorvalla Mining, that Cohl had finalized his plans for boarding the Revenue. But not all of Dorvalla expressed a loathing for the Trade Federation, much less a tolerance for mercenaries; certainly not those who saw the Trade Federation as Dorvalla’s salvation, as the planet’s only link to the Core Worlds.

  The shuttle was leveling out of its bone-rattling ride down the well when a blunt-nosed ship tore past to port
, intent on making its presence known.

  “Who was that?” Rella asked, reflexively ducking as the sonic boom of the ship’s passing overtook the shuttle.

  “Dorvalla Space Corps,” Boiny reported, his black orbs fixed on the authenticators. “Coming about for another pass.”

  Cohl swiveled his chair to the viewport to watch the ship’s lightning-fast approach. It was a fixed-wing picket ship, single-piloted but packing dual laser cannons.

  “Incoming transmission, Captain,” Boiny said. “They’re ordering us to set down.”

  “Did they ask us to identify ourselves?”

  “Negative. They just want us on the ground.”

  Cohl frowned. “Then they already know who we are.”

  “That Judicial Department Lancet,” Rella said, turning to Cohl. “Whoever was piloting it probably registered our drive signature.”

  The picket ship screamed overhead, closer this time.

  “Another pass like that and they’re going to knock us to the ground, Captain,” Jalan warned.

  “Stay on course for the base,” Cohl ordered.

  The picket barrel-rolled through a tight loop and came back at them once more, this time firing a burst from its forward laser cannons. Red hyphens streaked across the shuttle’s rounded nose.

  “They mean business, Captain!” Boiny said.

  Cohl swung to Rella. “Keep an eye out for a place to crash.”

  She gaped at him. “You mean land, don’t you?”

  “As I said,” Cohl emphasized. “Until then, all speed. Get us as close to the base as you can.”

  She gritted her teeth. “There had better be an aurodium ring at the end of this thrill ride, Cohl.”

  “The picket’s firing.”

  “Evasive,” Cohl said.

  “No good, Captain. We can’t outmaneuver it!”

  The picket’s lasers stitched a ragged line across the shuttle’s tail, flipping it through a complete rotation. What had been a steady roar from the engines became a distressed whine. Flames licked their way through the aft bulkhead, and the cabin began to fill with thick, coiling smoke.

  “We’re dirtbound!” Rella shouted.