Star Wars_ Labyrinth of Evil Part 15

"What does he mean by that?" Mace Windu interjected.

"Finally will I look to you, all of you, to author a new spirit in Coruscant, in the Core, throughout the star systems where the light of democracy continues to shine, so that we can look forward to another thousand years of peace, and another thousand beyond that, and so on, until war itself is stamped from our just domain."

"Had enough?" Sta.s.s Allie asked while the Senate broke into extended applause. Tall, slender, and dark-complected, she wore a Tholoth headdress similar in design to that worn by her immediate predecessor on the Council, Adi Gallia. When no one objected, she deactivated the holoprojector.

Turning to Bail, Yoda said, "Appreciate your visit, we do, Senator Organa."

"I just wanted all of you to know that, despite what the HoloNet news might lead you believe, not all of us were on our feet."

"Aware of this, we are."

Bail gestured broadly to the room's triangular windows and shook his head in dismay.

"Coruscant is already in a celebratory mood. You can practically taste it in the air."

"Premature, any celebration is," Yoda said ruefully.

Mace leaned forward in his chair. "What can Palpatine be thinking - - committing half of Coruscant's home force to the Outer Rim sieges?"

"Emboldened Palpatine is, by what we achieved at Belderone."

"The Supreme Chancellor singles out Mygeeto, Saleucami, and Felucia," Plo Koon said from beneath the mask that supplied him with life gases.

Ki-Adi-Mundi's elongated head made a subtle nod. "atriad of evil,' he labeled them."

"Separatist bastions, they are," Yoda said. "But so remote, so insignificant."

"A danger to the body of the Republic," Bail said.

Mace ridiculed the idea. "When the body is damaged, it prioritizes. It doesn't rally its defenses to deal with a pinp.r.i.c.k when the chest has been holed by a blaster bolt."

Bail glanced around the room.

"Some of us are concerned that the Supreme Chancellor has been persuaded to press these sieges as a means of acquiring worlds by force. There are bills before the Senate now that could grant him the authority to overrule local system governments."

Yoda compressed his lips in indignation.

"A labyrinth of evil, this war has become. But protect ourselves, we must. Safeguard the traditions the Jedi have upheld for one thousand generations."

Mace ran a hand over his shaven head.

"We can only hope that Obi-Wan and Anakin find their way to the source of this war before it's too late."

28.

With a slurping sound, Anakin's right leg sank almost to the knee in the muck that pa.s.sed for Naos III's main street. An equally onomatopoeic sound accompanied Anakin's reclaiming of the leg, and expletives flew from his lips as he hopped off on his left foot toward solid ground.

Crossing his right leg over his left while standing, he tried to shake some of the filth from his boot, then pointed to a pinkish strand that refused to let go.

"What is that?" he asked in alarmed disgust, with breath clouds punctuating his every word.

Reluctantly, Obi-Wan leaned in to peer at the slick boot, not wanting to get too close.

"It could be something alive, or something that was once alive, or something that came from something alive."

"Well, whatever it is, it's going to have to catch a ride on someone else."

Obi-Wan straightened and shoved his hands deeper into the sleeves of his robe.

"I warned you there are worse places than Tatooine."

Lining both sides of the puddled street were low-slung prefab buildings, their alloy roofs capped with crystalline snow and bearded with thick icicles. Pieces of a collapsed skyway had been moved to one side of the street, left to marinate in a puddle much like the one Anakin had inadvertently waded into, and fashioned by areas of radiant heating that still functioned beneath the mostly ruined ceramacrete paving.

Anakin began stomping his boot on the solid ice. Ultimately the clingy, unidentifiable pink thing decided that it had had enough and flew off into a snowdrift.

"Worse places than Tatooine," he mumbled. "And, what, you feel we need to visit every last one of them? When are we going to be allowed to return to Coruscant?"

"Blame Thal K'sar. He was the one who suggested we should start here."

Anakin gazed around.

"I just can't help thinking the next place will be worse."

They both fell silent for a moment, then said in unison: "Almost makes me nostalgic for Escarte."

Anakin winced. "You know it's time to end the partnership when that happens. In fact, I could see you and Yoda teaming up. You share the same fondness for caution and lectures."

"Yes, we're two of a kind, old Yoda and me."

They continued their slog toward what seemed to be the heart of the place.

For most of its short year the moon known as Naos III was a frigid little orb with days that never seemed to end. Indigenous herbivores and carnivores had been hunted to extinction early on by colonists from Rodia and Ryloth, lured by the hope of discovering rich veins of ryll spice in Naos III's volcanically heated cave systems. The creatures one saw most often now were bovine rycrits and woollier-than-normal banthas. The moon's continued habitation owed to a pink-fleshed delicacy fished from the ice-covered rivers that plunged turbulent and roaring from a surround of nearly sheer mountains. Known as the Naos sharptooth, the fish sp.a.w.ned only in the coldest months, was shipped offworld, flash-frozen, and sold at exorbitant prices in eateries from Mon Calamari to Corellia. Still, few locals banked enough credits to buy pa.s.sage off Naos III, preferring instead to return their meager earnings to Naos III Mercantile, which oversaw the sharptooth industry and owned nearly every store, hotel, gambling parlor, and cantina. The dispirited humanoids who had colonized the moon had never bothered to award a name to their princ.i.p.al population center, so it, too, was known as Naos III. Visitors expecting to find a typical s.p.a.ceport found instead a cl.u.s.ter of fortified hilltops, interconnected by bridges that spanned a delta of waterways.

As befitted a place with such a dearth of creativity, the moon had attracted nomads and s.p.a.cers of dubious character, eager either to lose or reinvent themselves. While Rodians and Lethan Twi'leks comprised the majority, humans and other humanoids were well represented. A few wealthy sportfishers arrived each year, but Naos III was simply too remote and too lacking in infrastructure to support a tourist trade. Despite the fact that the moon seemed a perfect place for a red-complected Twi'lek to hide, Obi-Wan doubted that Fa'ale Leh would be found here.

To begin with, she would have certainly changed her name by now, possibly even the color of her complexion. More important, Naos III didn't offer much in the way of job opportunities for a former spicerunner unless Leh was one of the death-defying few who piloted loads of flash-frozen sharptooths to the Tion or Coreward on the Perlemian. According to K'sar, Leh had been in the business of transporting shipments of spice from Ryloth to worlds in Hutt s.p.a.ce when Sienar had hired her to deliver the experimental s.p.a.cecraft for which K'sar had constructed a transceiver identical to the one he had affixed to Gunray's mechno-chair. To Obi-Wan's mind the ship in question could only be the modified star courier that had belonged to the Sith he had killed on Naboo, and had been confiscated by the Republic after the battle there. Flight, weapons, and communications systems had self-destructed when Republic Intelligence agents had bungled an attempt to enter the courier, but, unknown to many, its burned-out carca.s.s still sat in a clandestine docking bay in Theed.

It had long been a.s.sumed that the tattooed Zabrak Sith had performed the modifications, but information supplied by K'sar suggested that Raith Sienar's Advanced Projects Laboratory had been responsible not only for building the ship, but also for implementing Darth Sidious's designs.

Obi-Wan and Anakin might have gone directly to the source - - to Raith Sienar - - had Supreme Chancellor Palpatine not vetoed the idea. The Republic's other major supplier of weapons, Kuat Drive Yards, was known to have contributed to both sides during the war. Under its subsidiary, Rothana Heavy Engineering - - the builders of the Acclamator-cla.s.s a.s.sault ships, as well as the AT-TE walkers - - KDY had also supplied the Confederacy with the Storm Fleet, which had been "the Terror of the Perlemian" until retired from service with the help of Obi-Wan and Anakin. With snow falling harder in Naos III, the two stopped to get their bearings.

Obi-Wan gestured to a nearby cantina.

"This has to be the fifteenth we've pa.s.sed."

"On this street," Anakin said. "If we stop for a drink in each one, we'll be drunk before we reach the bridge."

"With any luck. Still, they're likely to be our best source of information."

"As opposed to just looking up her name in the local comm directory."

"And a lot more fun."

Anakin grinned.

"Fine with me. Where do you want to start?"

Completing a circle, Obi-Wan pointed to a cantina diagonally across from them. The Desperate Pilot.

*** Four hours later, half drunk and near frozen, they entered the final cantina before the bridge. Brushing snow from the shoulders of their cloaks and lowering the hoods, they scanned the patrons crowding the bar and occupying nearly every table.

"Not a lot to do in Naos Three when you're not fishing," Anakin said.

"I've the distinct impression that some drinking goes on even during work hours."

Replacing two Rodians who stumbled away from the curved bar, they ordered drinks. Anakin sipped from his gla.s.s.

"Ten cantinas, as many Lethan females, and every one of them claims to have been born onworld. I'd say we're in for a long stay."

"K'sar didn't supply you with anything else to go on - - scars, tattooed lekku, anything?"

Anakin shook his head.

"Nothing." When Obi-Wan signaled for the human bartender, he added: "You order one more Twi'lek appetizer, I promise I'm going to cut your arm off."

Obi-Wan laughed. "I found the izzy-mold at the last place to be very flavorful."

Anakin took another sip.

"And speaking of arms."

"Were we?"

"We were. At least I think we were. Anyway, remember in the Outlander Club when you went off to get a drink? Did you have an inkling that Zam Wessel would follow you?"

"On the contrary. I knew she would follow you."

"Implying that shapeshifters have a special fondness for me?"

"The way you were strutting around, what female could help herself?"

Mimicking Anakin's voice, Obi-Wan said: "'Jedi business.'"

"Then you admit it - - you were using me as bait."

"A privilege that comes with being a Master. You have more than repaid me in kind, in any case."

Anakin raised his gla.s.s.

"A toast to that."

Seeing the bartender approach, Obi-Wan placed a sizable credit chip under his empty gla.s.s and slid it forward.

"Another drink. And the rest is for you."

An athletic man with red hair that fell almost to his waist, the bartender eyed the credit chip.

"Rather large remuneration for such a rudimentary libation. Perhaps you'd permit me to concoct something a trifle more flavorsome."

"What I'd actually prefer is a bit of information."

"Now, how did I guess."

"We're looking for a Lethan female," Anakin said.

"Who isn't." Obi-Wan shook his head.

"Strictly business."

"That's what it often is with them. I suggest you try the Palace Hotel."

"You don't understand."

"Oh, I think I do."

"Look," Anakin said, "this one probably isn't a... ma.s.seuse."

"Or a dancer," Obi-Wan thought to add.

"Then what would she be doing on Naos Three?"

"She used to be a pilot - - with a taste for spice." Obi-Wan watched the bartender closely. "She would have arrived on Naos Three within the past ten or so years."

The bartender's eyes narrowed.

"Why didn't you say so to begin with? You mean Genne."

"The name we know her by is Fa'ale Leh."

"My friends, on Naos Three a name is nothing more than a convenient handle."