Hero of Cartao Part 6

For perhaps half a minute he listened, his forehead wrinkled inconcentration. Then, surprisingly, he smiled. "Understood," he said. "We'llgive it a try. Lieutenant?"

"I'm on it, sir," the clone trooper said.

Roshton turned back to Doriana. "Maybe we do have a choice," he said."Defense line, configure for inverse hailstorm; target on my command. And getthese doors open."

With a ponderous rumble, the heavy doors began to slide slowly to thesides. 'Time to get to cover, Doriana," Roshton said, gesturing to the side.'This way."

A few seconds later they were crouched behind a large cargo truck parkedalong the side wall. "What's going on?" Doriana asked, trying to keep hissudden misgivings out of his voice.

This was suddenly not going the way he'd planned. "Won't this open us up to a full-scale a.s.sault?"

"It might," Roshton agreed. "Or it might let us come up with a different ending for this game."

That sounded distinctly ominous. "Is this what the Jedi said to do?"

Doriana probed carefully.

"No, this part was my idea," Roshton said. "Master Tories simply reminded me of another of our objectives." He craned his neck.

"There they go."

Doriana eased an eye around the truck's push plate. Outside, the C-9979'sheavy clamsh.e.l.l deployment doors were swinging open, the foot ramp starting toslide down toward the ground. In the relative darkness behind the doors, hecould see the slightly bulbous nose and blaster cannon of a MTT armored droidtransport waiting in the landing pedestal. "Stand by," Roshton ordered calmly."Target is starboard laser capacitor."

Doriana frowned; but before he could ask, the MTT gave a brief snort of cooling system ground vents and began to slide forward toward the ramp.

"Fire," Roshton said calmly.

And with a thunder of weaponry that echoed deafeningly through the huge room, the clone troopers opened fire.

Doriana squinted into the glare as the hundreds of energy weapons focusedtheir fury on the thick armor behind the MTT's leftmost blaster cannon ballturret, wincing at the noise and the waves of heat that rolled over him. TheMTT's armor was incredibly thick, he knew, but the transport's designers couldnever have antic.i.p.ated a situation where so much firepower would be focused onsuch a small spot. The sun-bright glare around the power capacitor began todiffuse outward as the casehardened metal alloy vaporized into superheatedplasma...

And barely two seconds into the a.s.sault, the Republic weapons burned through the armor to the high-energy capacitor behind it.

The entire left front of the MTT vanished in a gigantic fireball thatwrithed its way upward to billow across the leading edge of the C-9979'sforward wing. A series of smaller blasts erupted from behind the first a.s.secondary systems went up in a chain reaction. A few seconds later, with anearsplitting scream, the repulsorlifts disintegrated, and the blackened sh.e.l.lthat had once been a fully loaded MTT collapsed onto the ramp.

Completely blocking the vehicles waiting behind it.

"That's it!" Roshton shouted over the pandemonium, a savage grin on his face. "All units withdraw!" He grabbed Doriana's arm.

"Come on, Doriana."

They didn't stop running until they were two a.s.sembly areas into the plant and the noise outside had faded to a dull roar.

"Clever," Doriana said, breathing hard as Roshton slowed them down to afast jog. "You block the exit ramp, and they're stymied until they can clearout the wreckage. But what exactly did it gain you?"

"Options, of course," Roshton told him, glancing back over his shoulder.Doriana looked, too, to see the clone troopers following in an orderlyretreat. "Before we did that, there would have been no way to retreat withoutbringing the battle into the plant, which you had forbidden us to do. We wouldhave had to stand and die."

He gestured ahead of them with his blaster. "Now, we should have time toget through that tunnel of Binalie's and go to ground." Doriana felt his liptwist. Nine hundred clone troopers, ready and waiting to hara.s.s the Separatistarmy. This was not how it was supposed to have gone. "So what exactly didTories tell you?"

Roshton threw him a smile. "You'll see. Come on, and save your breath for running."

They stood on the hill at the edge of the Binalie estate: Tories, Binalie himself, Doriana, and Commander Roshton, the latter now disguised in civilian clothing. "So that's it, is it?" Binalie asked.

"For now, yes," Tories told him, gazing across the gra.s.sy strip that lay between them and Spaarti Creations as the pinks and yellows of sunset began to fade from the western sky.

And the shadows from the smoldering hulks of half a dozen AAT battletanks stretched across the forbidden gra.s.sland. "My compliments to yourgunners," he added.

"It wasn't hard," Roshton said grimly. "Standard Trade Federation attackprocedure always includes throwing a cordon around the target zone. All we hadto do was set our ambush and make sure we dropped the ones in the place thatwould irritate the Cranscoc the most."

"Yes," Tories murmured, feeling a twinge of guilt. It had been his idea,and it had been necessary. But he still didn't much like the fact that he'ddeliberately caused distress and discomfort to sentient beings. Especiallysentient beings who had nothing to do with the chaos now swirling around them.

"I just hope it works," Doriana murmured.

"It will," Tories a.s.sured him. "The twillers aren't even going to be able to relax until those hulks are removed, let alone retool the plant for anything the Separatists want to build in there."

Roshton grunted. "Let's hope they don't figure it out until our reinforcements get here," he said. "Then we'll see how good they are."

"As long as you don't destroy the plant in the process," Binalie warned.

"We'll do what we can," Roshton promised. "But that's up to the Separatists now."

Tories felt his throat tighten, the fading light in the sky mirroring his own darkening mood. Because even if Spaarti survived, the thing he'd feared for so long had already happened.

The war had come to Cartao.

Hero of Cartao.

Episode II.

Hero's Rise.

by Timothy Zahn.

Coming to a midair halt above the kilometer-wide gra.s.sy strip separatingthe Spaarti Creations manufacturing plant from the northern edge of theBinalie family estate, the heavy cargo lifters began lowering their magneticgrapples. Kinman Doriana couldn't see the ground beneath them from hisposition - the estate's hills were blocking his view-but he could guess thatthey were hovering over the last of the shattered war machines that had endedup there in the aftermath of the Separatists' a.s.sault on the plant two daysearlier.

At least, Doriana thought unkindly, the Neimoidians commanding theoccupying droid army had learned not to simply drive cleanup vehicles ontothat forbidden stretch of gra.s.sland. Glancing around to make sure the copse oftrees he was standing in wasn't under observation, he pulled out hisholoprojector and keyed in the contact code.

The connecting light blinked on as the device linked first to the localcomlink central switching office, then to his personal ship and its specialHoloNet node, then across the vast expanse of the Republic to one of the dozenHoloNet nodes on Coruscant, and finally to the private desk of SupremeChancellor Palpatine himself. Doriana watched the lifters as he waited, wondering if Palpatine would be there or out at yet another meeting.

The image of the most recognized face in the galaxy appeared in the air above the holoprojector. "Master Doriana," Palpatine said, nodding to his advisor. "You have good news?"

"Just the opposite, I'm afraid," Doriana admitted. "The Separatists are still holding Spaarti Creations, and they seem to have finally figured out that vehicles or people on the plant's southern border upset the Cranscoctwillers inside. They're clearing the last of the debris off the gra.s.slandnow, and my guess is that by tonight they'll be able to get the plant retooledfor whatever it is they want to build in there."

"Not a pleasant thought," Palpatine said gravely. "Are you familiar with the D-90 project?"

"No," Doriana said. "Is it one of ours?" Palpatine's lip twisted."Hardly. It's an experimental combat droid, reputed to be as tough as theTrade Federation's D-60 a.s.sault droid, but more versatile."

"I see," Doriana said. The D-60 was a hulking, man-and-a-half-sizeversion of the super battle droids the Trade Federation had debuted at theBattle of Geonosis. "How much more versatile?"

"Considerably," Palpatine said. "They'll be coordinated in small teamsinstead of entire army blocks so that they can be used as commando units aswell as simple battlefield shock troops."

"An unpleasant thought, indeed," Doriana said. So, the Separatists finally had a new weapon on the plotting board. About time. "You think they've come here to begin production?"

"That's what our Intelligence people believe," Palpatine said."Personally, I suspect there are still some system flaws and that they hope touse Spaarti to test and finalize the design. What's the current militarysituation?" "For the moment, basically stalemated," Doriana told him."Commander Roshton and his clone troopers have gone to ground, some of themhere on Lord Binalie's estate, the rest dispersed elsewhere. They've beenhara.s.sing the droids wherever possible, but the Separatists have mostly beenstaying inside where we can't get at them without risking damage to the plant."

"Which neither we nor they want," Palpatine said. "What about the techs?"

"Binalie has a secret safe room-basically a shielded sub-sub-bas.e.m.e.nt- that connects with the tunnel to the plant," Doriana said. "The techs are hidden down there." "Communications?"

"The Separatists are still blocking the local comm system and the HoloNet node," Doriana told him. "But Roshton's reconfigured their comlinks somehow to get around it. They'll be able to move quickly if they get the chance."

"Then they shall have it," Palpatine said. "A Republic light cruiser ison its way with the necessary firepower to destroy the control ship orbitingabove you. Once the droid army is helpless, I trust Commander Roshton won'thave any trouble with the Neimoidian overseers and their techs."

"I'm sure he won't," Doriana agreed. "When can we expect this ship?"

"Possibly as early as tonight," Palpatine said. "Possibly not for another three days. It depends on how much resistance they run into along the way."

"Understood," Doriana a.s.sured him. "Thank you, Chancellor. We'll look forward to their arrival."

Palpatine gave him a tired smile. The war, Doriana knew, was weighing heavily on him. "Keep me informed."

The image vanished. Doriana broke the connection from his end and lookedback at the lifters. They had the blackened hulk of the last ruined warmachine in the air now and were towing it back toward the plant.

Planning to dump it elsewhere on the extensive Spaarti grounds, no doubt.Why the alien Cranscoc insisted that this particular stretch of land-and onlythis particular stretch-be kept unsullied not even Lord Binalie knew. Dorianawatched until the lifters and their burden had vanished behind the juttingroof of the Spaarti plant, then keyed a different code into his holoprojector.He'd done his official job, reporting the situation to the man whose officepaid him.

Now it was time to do the same for the man who gave him his orders. Asusual, it took longer for the holoprojector to make this connection. Dorianacultivated his patience, gazing idly at the sky as he wondered what theNeimoidians were doing inside the plant. Now that the south lawn was clear,they would certainly try tonight to get the Cranscoc twillers to retool theplant. The only question was, which direction would that retooling take? Tocreate the D-90 prototypes, as Palpatine thought? Or were they up to somethingelse? In the distance, he could hear the hum of repulsorlifts... And suddenly,four small transports appeared over the hills between him and SpaartiCreations, a squadron of STAPs flying defensive screening around them,everything moving with the urgency of pilots who knew there were snipers inthe area. The whole crowd shot past nearly overhead, then angled downward, thetransports abruptly splitting formation and swinging into position on the foursides of the Binalie mansion a kilometer away. With the kind of precision onlyremote-controlled droids could achieve, all four dropped simultaneously to theground. And from the hatches poured military-straight lines of battle droids.

"Report."

With a start, Doriana jerked his attention back to his holoprojector. Thehooded image of Darth Sidious hovered over the small projection platform, his.e.xpression unreadable. "Your pardon, Lord Sidious," Doriana apologizedhastily. "My attention was distracted."

To his relief, Sidious merely smiled thinly. "The Neimoidians have finally made a move?"

"Of a sort, yes," Doriana said, daring to split his attention between hismaster's image and the activity going on around the mansion below. The battledroids had been joined on the lawn now by a handful of the hulking D-60a.s.sault droids and a pair of droidekas. Most of them settled into a defensivecordon around the mansion, but four of the a.s.sault droids were waiting insteadjust outside the transport nearest the mansion's front door. As he watched,two Neimoidians emerged from the hatch into the protective square of thea.s.sault droids and scuttled across the lawn toward the door.

"It looks like they've decided to have a talk with Lord Binalie," he told Sidious. "Will talking be of any use to them?" Doriana shrugged as the group vanished inside.