Hero of Cartao 3. Hero's End Read online

  Hero of Cartao 3. Hero's End

  Timothy Zahn

  Timothy Zahn

  Hero of Cartao 3. Hero's End

  The streets of Foulahn City were dark and deserted as Kinman Doriana picked his way through the litter of broken droids, small missile craters, shattered buildings, bodies, and the general clutter of war. The military comlink he'd borrowed from Commander Roshton had allowed him to listen in on the Republic side of the battle, and he'd known the fighting here and at the Triv Spaceport had been fierce. But even that knowledge hadn't prepared him for the actual carnage the soldiers had left behind.

  A half dozen craters overlapped each other across the street in front of him, half filled with rubble from the buildings the missiles had destroyed and a few mutilated bodies of the civilians who'd been caught in the crossfire.

  The fighting here must have been particularly bad, he decided, with a higherranking officer directing the Republic side of the attack. Maybe here he'd finally find what he was looking for.

  He hoped so. It was well after midnight, he was achingly tired, and the new Separatist masters of this part of Cartao undoubtedly had a curfew in place for the citizenry. The first patrol that spotted him would be trouble, and he wasn't in the mood for arguing with combat droids. Despite the dramatic events and reversals of the past few hours, things were still adhering reasonably closely to Lord Sidious's plan, but that didn't mean Doriana himself had to enjoy the situation. He'd had his fill of battles a long time ago, and very much preferred to stay at his desk in Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's office and handle his schemes and manipulations long-distance.

  A glimmer of white to the left caught his eye, and he picked his way carefully toward it through the shattered road material. Probably just another piece of the deco-rative white roof trim Foulahn's residents were so fond of, he thought sourly, but it still had to be checked out.

  But it wasn't a piece of roof trim. It was the half buried body of a clone trooper. A lieutenant, from the markings on his armor.

  Finally.

  Under normal circumstances, it would have been the work of perhaps two minutes to dig the body out of the rubble. With the need for absolute silence, it took Doriana closer to ten. But it was worth the effort. Hidden away in the back of one of the survival pouches on the lieutenant's utility belt was an unlabeled datacard. Slipping it into his pocket, Doriana resealed the survival pouch and started to straighten up.

  "Halt," a flat mechanical voice ordered from behind him. Doriana froze in mid-crouch. "Don't shoot," he called, stretching his hands slowly to the sides so that the droids could see they were empty. "I'm an official medical observer."

  "Turn and identify," the voice ordered.

  Doriana obeyed, turning carefully on the uncertain footing. It was a complete patrol, all right: six of the old-style battle droids, one of them standing slightly in the lead. In the dim light, Doriana couldn't tell whether there was anyone of command rank among them. "Identify," the droid in the lead repeated.

  "My name is Kinman Drifkin," he told them. "I'm a member of the Aargau Medical Observer Corps. We're a neutral power sworn to observe and report on any atrocities taking place during this conflict."

  The droid seemed to digest that. "Come forward," he ordered. "Do you have official identification?"

  "Of course," Doriana said, slipping his hand into his ID pocket as he walked toward the group. The droids lifted their blasters warningly as he withdrew his hand, relaxed slightly as they saw he held only a datacard.

  "Which of you has a reader?" he asked.

  "I will take it," the spokesman said, shifting his grip on his blaster and extending a claw-like hand.

  Doriana stepped to him and handed him the datacard. So this one was definitely the leader; and at this distance, he could see now the pale yellow markings of a command officer on its head and torso. Excellent. "I believe you'll find my credentials are in order," he added, glancing casually around.

  There was no one else in sight, human or droid.

  "We will see," the officer droid said, taking the datacard and sliding it into a reader slot set into the lower part of its jaw line. "It says here that your assigned observation area is...'

  "Barauch seven-nine-seven," Doriana said in a low voice. "Filliae gron one-one-three."

  The officer broke off in midsentence. Doriana eased a few centimeters to his right, watching to see if the droids and their weapons would track his movement.

  They didn't. To all appearances, the entire squad was frozen and oblivious. "I'll be crocked," Doriana murmured to himself, feeling muscles relax that he hadn't noticed were tense. So, the magic backdoor lockout code that Sidious had given to him actually worked.

  And if the lockout code worked... "Pinkrun four-seven-two aprion oneeight- one-one," he said, reaching out to the spokesman's jaw and retrieving his false ID. "Backskip three minutes; pause one minute; restart. Execute."

  The patrol gave a group shiver. "Accessed," the spokesman said, his mechanical voice sounding somehow even flatter than it had before.

  Smiling tightly, Doriana sidled past them, heading back the direction they'd come from as quickly as he could manage without twisting his ankle on the loose stone. He had just one minute to disappear before the droids came out of their freeze and restarted their patrol, with this little incident conveniently erased from their group memory. He reached the nearest corner and ducked around it, pausing there to listen. A few seconds later he heard the distinctive clunk as the droids came to life again. With more clattering, they continued on their patrol, their footsteps fading off into the night breezes.

  Smiling again, Doriana detached himself from the wall and headed back toward the Binalie estate.

  "You all right?" a voice asked softly from the shadows. Doriana jumped violently. "Who's there?" he hissed.

  "Relax," Jafer Tories calmed him, stepping into view from a doorway, his lightsaber ready in his hand. "It's just me."

  Doriana took a deep breath. "You nearly stopped my heart there," he said reproachfully. "In the future, kindly practice your Jedi skulking techniques on someone else."

  "Sorry," Tories said with a faint smile. "But for a moment there I thought I was going to have to demonstrate more than just skulking. What happened over there?"

  "What do you mean, what happened?" Doriana hedged, wondering uneasily just how much the Jedi had seen. "It was just a standard security patrol."

  "Who looked at your ID and then let you go," Tories said pointedly.

  "Since when do the Separatists give free passes to Palpatine's advisors?"

  Doriana started breathing a little easier. So, the Jedi had been close enough to see the confrontation, but not to hear what was said. Good enough.

  "No free passes for advisors, no," he told Tories, digging out his false ID

  again. "But plenty for neutral observers. Kinman Drifkin, Aargau Medical Observer Corps, at your service."

  "Cute," Tories said. He took the ID, peered at it, and handed it back.

  "Holds up to baseline scrutiny, does it?"

  "As you saw," Doriana reminded him, putting the datacard away again.

  "Supreme Chancellor Palpatine can hardly afford to let his people get picked up by the enemy in the middle of a war zone. Speaking of which, what are you doing out here, anyway?"

  "Funny; I was going to ask you the same question," Tories said, his voice suddenly going a little odd. "Lord Binalie said you'd gone into the city and asked me to see if you might be in trouble. So what are you doing?"

  "Feeling mildly pleased with myself, and ready to get out of here,"

  Doriana told him. "Has Lord Binalie found a place to settle in yet?"

  "We've got one, yes,
" Tories said.

  "Good," Doriana said. "Take me there, and we'll all sort it out together."

  For just the briefest moment Tories continued to gaze at him in that discomfiting way Jedi all over the galaxy seemed to have learned to perfection. Then, reluctantly, Doriana thought, he nodded. "All right. Follow me."

  He headed off down the deserted streets. Doriana followed, scowling to himself. It was Tories' fault, after all, that the situation had ended up the way it had, with Roshton and his clone troopers holding the plant while the Separatist droid armies waited uselessly outside. It wasn't at all the way Darth Sidious had planned this operation, and he winced as the thought of what the Sith lord would say about it the next time Doriana contacted him.

  Still, the situation was far from lost. Republic reinforcements were undoubtedly days away, which gave Doriana time to put things back on track.

  And as for the Jedi...

  He gazed at Tories' broad back as the other picked his way around yet another missile crater. Now that he thought about it, Tories' unabashed heroics tonight might actually work to Doriana's advantage. Certainly the other had risen to new heights of respect and prestige in the handful of days since Doriana had landed on Cartao.

  Which would make it that much more of a pleasure to bring the Jedi down.

  With the tunnel under the Spaarti Creations' south lawn collapsed and impassible, there was no longer any reason for the Neimoidians controlling the Separatist forces to occupy the Binalie estate. They had occupied it anyway, probably out of spite for the way Tories had helped chase them out of the mansion not too many hours earlier. With his home occupied by battle droids, it had become necessary for Lord Binalie and his son Corf to find other accommodations.

  The estate's greenhouse had been probably the least likely possibility, given the near-complete visibility through the building's long transparisteel panels. Which was precisely why Tories had suggested it. What any searchers would assume-at least, what Tories hoped they would assume-was that there was no chance of anyone hiding in such an open place and move on to more likely prospects.

  What any such searchers would have forgotten was the profusion of plants inside the greenhouse, plants that could be shifted and adjusted and layered to form hidden areas as sheltered and invisible as a military camp in deep forest.

  Binalie and Corf had nearly finished setting up their new quarters when Tories and Doriana arrived. "Ah; Master Tories," Binalie said, setting a package of emergency food rations beside three more against a line of tall plants with wide overhanging fronds. "Did you find Doriana? Oh-there you are," he added as he caught sight of Doriana in the dim starlight. "Any trouble?"

  "None," Tories said. "I found him bluffing his way past a droid patrol."

  "Really," Binalie said. His voice was casual, but Tories could sense the sudden suspicion in his sense. "And how exactly do you bluff battle droids?"

  "With the judicious use of false credentials," Doriana told him briefly.

  "But never mind that. I have something to show you that should be considerably more interesting. Is there a place where we can have a little more light?"

  "I suppose," Binalie said reluctantly. "Master Tories-?"

  "Why don't you go ahead and take him downstairs," Tories suggested. "I'll go take a quick look around outside."

  "Thank you," Binalie said, sounding a bit relieved. "This way, Master Doriana."

  By the time Tories returned from his sweep of the surrounding area, Binalie, Corf, and Doriana had taken up seats in the greenhouse's underground storeroom. "All clear," the Jedi confirmed, lowering the trap door back into place and plunging the space into complete darkness. "Go ahead, Corf."

  A moment later he found himself squinting as the boy flicked on a small ceiling light. "All right, Master Doriana," Binalie said. "Let's hear it."

  "This is a soldier's ID," Doriana said, producing a datacard. "I took it from a dead clone trooper lieutenant. Normally, it contains nothing but name, rank, and operating number. A field officer's card, however, also has something called a contingency deployment profile. It gives detailed instructions as to where and how to regroup in case of command structure disruption or the kind of disaster we've just experienced."

  "I've never heard of anything like that," Binalie said.

  "It's not well advertised, for obvious reasons," Doriana said dryly. "For the same reasons, the information's also not easy to access."

  "But you can do that?"

  "Yes," Doriana said. "By morning, when the townspeople are allowed to move around outdoors again, you and Master Tories should be able to casually travel to the rendezvous point and make contact with the survivors of last night's battle."

  "Just the two of us?" Tories asked. "You're not coming?"

  Doriana shook his head. "Now that the Separatists are in control here, I need to keep as low a profile as possible. My face might have been seen in the background on one of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's broadcasts, and I can't take the risk that someone will recognize me. I can give you an authorization datacard, though, that will confirm you have the authority to give them orders."

  "Wait a second," Binalie said, frowning. "What orders?"

  "We have to get Roshton and his people out of there, Lord Binalie,"

  Doriana said, his voice suddenly low and sincere and very persuasive. 'The longer they're trapped inside Spaarti, the weaker and more vulnerable to attack they'll become. Don't forget, all those techs he took in with him probably weren't carrying soldiers' field packs, which means the whole group is starting out critically low on food and water. If we let them get too weak, our chances of getting them out alive will slip from poor to nonexistent."

  "And you don't think the Republic will send help?" Corf asked quietly.

  Tories focused on the youth. It was remarkable, he thought distantly, how rapidly Corf had grown up over the past few days. He'd started out as a cheerful, carefree boy, content to track down siviviv weeds or just hang out with Cartao's resident Jedi Guardian.

  And then Doriana had arrived, and the events that had followed had turned Corf's home and his neighborhood into a war zone. Now, he was quieter, more thoughtful, more brooding.

  The war had come to Cartao. Sadly, it had also come to Corf Binalie.

  "I don't know, Master Binalie," Doriana admitted, his voice as grave as the boy's. "I've spoken with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and I know he truly wants to help. The question is whether there are any Republic forces strong enough and close enough to deal with this particular Separatist army. I'm sure you understand that there are many other worlds and systems out there in equally desperate situations."

  He looked at Tories. "Unless there are other forces available that I don't know about?"

  Tories frowned. "What do you mean?"

  For a moment, Doriana gazed at him as if trying to read something hidden.

  Then, almost too casually, he shrugged.

  "Nothing," he said. "I just thought you might have a line to-never mind."

  He gestured to the trap door above them. "I'd suggest the three of you go back up and get some sleep," he said. "I need to stay down here for awhile and get this contingency deployment decrypted."

  Binalie looked at Tories, his eyebrows lifted slightly. Tories shrugged microscopically in return. He could sense an air of secretive-ness surrounding Doriana's mind, but that could be nothing more than the natural caution of a man dealing with high-level military security. "All right," Binalie said. "Let us know when you're ready to come back up."

  "I will," Doriana promised, turning off the light so the others could open the trap door without giving their presence away.

  "Good-night. And don't worry," he added, his tone suddenly thoughtful in the dark. "I have a feeling that by tomorrow night this will all be over."

  There had been seven possible rendezvous points listed on the contingency deployment datacard, ranked in descending order of preference. The first, one of the hangars at the spaceport, was alre
ady occupied by Separatist forces busily working on damaged vehicles. The second, a warehouse on the northern edge of the city, had been effectively demolished in the night's battle. At the third, an automated hydroelectric plant straddling the Quatreen River, Tories and Binalie found the Republic forces.

  "This is all rather irregular," their commanding officer, a young-looking lieutenant, said as he handed back the introductory datacard Doriana had given them. "But it does seem to be in order." He gave a hand signal, and the ring of clone troopers that had suddenly appeared on their third step through the door lowered their blasters. "I'm Lieutenant Laytron. What's this all about?"

  "What it's about is a couple hundred Republic troops and a thousand Republic techs trapped inside the Spaarti Creations plant," Tories told him.

  "Yes; Commander Roshton's group," Laytron said. "We've been in brief contact with him. It sounds like they're making good progress on whatever the project is they're working on in there."

  "That's nice to know," Binalie said sourly. "Did he happen to mention food or water or other irrelevant subjects?"

  Laytron regarded him coolly. "For the moment, he seems to be doing all right."

  "Which is a complete illusion," Tories pointed out. "And you know it."

  "The question is, what are you doing to do about it?" Binalie added.

  "Look around you, gentlemen," Laytron said darkly. "We hit Cartao with ten gunships and four hundred fifty officers and men. I'm the last officer still alive, and I have exactly two hundred thirty-three troops - and no vehicles-left to work with. Balance that against probably two thousand functional combat droids, plus STAPs and battle tanks, and you're talking seriously poor odds. I'm cut off from higher authority, and I can't legally justify taking action on my own without a reasonable chance of success. That chance doesn't exist."

  "So you're not even going to try?" Binalie demanded.

  "I'm sure reinforcements are on the way," Laytron said. "When they arrive, my men and I will be right there fighting beside them. Until then, there's nothing I can do except hope that Roshton's people can hold out."