Clone Wars Gambit: Siege Read online

  “I thought you were shorthanded.”

  “Shorthanded or not, someone still must take the lead,” said Rikkard, staring. “Teeb, you talk a great deal. Men learn best by listening.”

  “Sorry,” Anakin muttered. “Just wondering, I was.”

  Hitting the cage’s pulley switch, Rikkard stared harder. “Wonder on your own time. You belong to me until you don’t.”

  “Teeb,” Obi-Wan said swiftly, before Anakin reacted to belong. “Up above I met Greti. Bohle’s daughter.”

  With a growling grind of metal pulley teeth against metal cable, the cage began its slow, swinging descent of the rough-hewn shaft. Strung lights glowed within grubby plastiseal housings, reflecting yellow against streaks of raw damotite in the walls. The sounds of mining grew nearer and louder. All around them the ground pressed close.

  “Greti?” Rikkard raised an eyebrow. “What of her?”

  “Worried, she seemed, for her mother’s hurt hand.”

  “Worried she should be,” said Rikkard. “Bohle made a fool mistake and she’s paying a steep price for it.”

  Life in Torbel was brutal, so the miner’s harshness wasn’t surprising, but even so… “There’s nothing you can do for her?”

  “What we can do, we’ve done,” said Rikkard, one shoulder lifting in a fatalistic shrug. “Mining’s no soft business, Teeb. You’ll learn that today, along with how to swing a vibro-pick.” His teeth bared in a smile. “Mind now—there’ll be bumping to throw you.” He yanked a lever beside the pulley switch. “Keep your feet.”

  They were passing the next level down, where suited figures were transferring chunks of raw damotite from trolley trucks into a huge metal bucket suspended on bulky chains in another shaft.

  “Keep your feet!” Rikkard said again, louder this time, as their metal cage shuddered and swung and banged against the wall.

  Obi-Wan glanced at Anakin and shook his head in a small, swift warning. Yes, they could ride the Force and be as easy and unperturbed as Rikkard—but Rikkard knew them for farmers. If they weren’t awkward and clumsy, they’d arouse his suspicions.

  The metal cage bounced harder on its pulley ropes and they let themselves stagger, then tumble clumsily against each other. Anakin went farther, letting himself drop halfway to the cage floor. Amused, as hard men were often amused by a green one, Rikkard laughed.

  “Keep your feet, I told you,” he said, hauling Anakin upright. “Ah well. You’ll get your cage legs one of these days—if you stay.”

  They rode down four more levels, making sure to stagger at each rough transition. On every level suit-shrouded villagers pulled raw damotite out of the soil. So much green mineral—planets and planets and planets of death, thanks to Lok Durd and Bant’ena Fhernan. The air grew heavier and warmer, even though there was some kind of filtration system working. The shaft lighting flickered, throwing shadows that turned them into men of nightmare and deception. Inside their own protective suiting the sweat poured and pooled. Obi-Wan felt it stinging the blaster-bolt grazes he’d earned in Durd’s compound. Compressed against his rib cage, his lightsaber felt like a weapon from another life. Almost a dream.

  And then the cage bumped to a halt, and Rikkard swung its door wide. “Bottomed out, we are,” he said, waving them ahead. “Here’s where we loosened the new chamber. Here’s where you’ll get your first true taste of Torbel.”

  Obi-Wan looked at the suited figures toiling in the three cramped corridors leading away from the cage platform. Through the Force he could feel the miners’ grim, oppressive thoughts and fears.

  “Arrad!” called Rikkard, waving at a helmeted-and-suited figure coming toward them from the middle tunnel. “Arrad, to me!”

  Reaching them, the figure pulled off its helmet. This Arrad was a young man, roughly Anakin’s age, with broad shoulders made broader by his heavy protective gear.

  “Arrad is my son,” said Rikkard, one proud hand lightly touching the young man’s arm. “To be head miner after me, most like. He feels the damotite better than I do, does Arrad. When he cuts himself I think he’ll bleed green. Arrad—”

  Unembarrassed by his father’s praise, Arrad stared at the newcomers with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Father?”

  “We’ve Teeb Yavid and Teeb Markl here, come back to Lanteeb after some years in the Core. They’re staying to see if Torbel could be a home. Put them to work, but be careful. They’ll get their legs if you don’t rush them.”

  Arrad nodded, not terribly impressed. “Yes, Father.”

  “Teeb Yavid—” Rikkard was scowling again. “Arrad will give me tales of you, so mind. And mind this, too—not a finger you lay to the damotite without your gloves on. Hole your gloves and you whip quick smart topside and fetch new ones. With your gloves on you don’t touch your bare face. You’re safe in the suits, and you’re better safe with what Jaklin gave you. But you don’t tease the damotite, for it’ll win.” His stern gaze shifted to Anakin. “You hear me, Teeb Markl?”

  Anakin nodded. “I hear you, Teeb.”

  “You listen to my son. He’ll keep you alive on your first day with the damotite. Arrad—”

  “Father?”

  “Best you stay with them till you can be sure they’ll not kill a soul.”

  “Yes, Father,” said Arrad, and pulled his helmet back on.

  “I’ll see you Teebs hours from now,” said Rikkard. “And then we’ll know if you were born to be miners.”

  They watched him climb back into the metal cage and swing up the shaft and out of sight. When his father was gone Arrad turned and looked at them, resigned to his unwanted duty.

  “You ever been so deep in a world, Teebs?”

  He was strong, this young man. A solid presence in the Force. “No, Teeb Arrad,” Obi-Wan said, gentling himself until he close to disappeared. He hoped Anakin was paying attention. You see this, Anakin? You see what I’m doing? “Farmers, we were. On the ground, not under it.”

  “Farmers,” said Rikkard’s son, his voice laced with disgust. “You never used a vibro-pick?”

  “Used a vibro-ax on Alderaan,” said Anakin. Almost humble. Almost meek. Almost would have to be good enough today. “Used other bits of machinery when we had our farm.”

  “Huh.” Arrad looked up at the rocky ceiling, close to their helmeted heads. “That’s as high as the sky gets, down here. You can breathe through that? How bad are you sweating?”

  “It’s warm,” said Obi-Wan. “I’m sweating.”

  “Huh.” Arrad’s deep-set eyes reflected doubt and impatience. “You feel panic coming, you tell me. There’s been miners die of a sudden for want of wide blue. They choke on the close green.” He thumped his fist against the nearby rock wall. “Your heart needs to pump damotite to live in Torbel.”

  “Until the drought came our hearts pumped growing grain,” said Obi-Wan. “Could be they can learn to pump damotite instead.”

  “We’ll see,” said Arrad, turning. “Follow me. Do what I say.”

  As their new master stamped off toward the nearest rock tunnel, Anakin rolled his eyes. They were pretty much all that could be seen of his face, between the low-sitting helmet and his suit’s high-reaching collar.

  “Come, come,” Obi-Wan murmured. “A Jedi embraces new experiences, remember?”

  What Anakin suggested he could do with this new experience was… improbable.

  “Teebs!” Rikkard’s son shouted over his shoulder.

  And so they hurried to catch up, committed to a long day of hard labor without help from the Force.

  The work was relentless. Driven by the fear of not meeting their quota, Torbel’s miners attacked the newly blasted seams of damotite as though they were a mortal enemy. Verbal communication was minimal. Hand signals and the ease of familiarity combined kept the dance flowing without misstep.

  Sweating and aching, prising raw damotite from blasted chunks of plain rock with his vibro-pick, Obi-Wan found himself thinking: Well, I can’t imagine Durd stumbling across us do
wn here. I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least.

  Without warning a cold, prescient shudder rippled through him, leaving an icy nausea in its wake. He let the vibro-pick drop.

  “What?” said Anakin, leaning close. “What’s the matter?”

  Arrad-the-Overseer was elsewhere, joined with two other miners in wrestling a new section of chamber free of blasted rock. For the moment at least it was safe for them to talk.

  “You didn’t feel that?”

  “I felt you. What happened?”

  Closing his eyes, Obi-Wan tried to recapture the elusive sensation. Danger. Evil. A merciless, relentless mind. But it was gone now. Just a memory. Perhaps… his imagination?

  No. It was real. Something—someone—is out there.

  “We need to be very careful,” he said, retrieving his vibro-pick. “I think—”

  “What?” said Anakin, when Obi-Wan didn’t continue.

  This is going to sound ridiculous. “I think—we’re being hunted.”

  A loud smashing crash, as part of a weakened tunnel wall collapsed. Shouting, as the miners made sure everyone was unharmed. Anger surged through the Force as Arrad rushed to see what kind of a delay they were facing. Always, always, the pressure of time.

  Keeping an eye on Rikkard’s son, not wanting to draw his ire, Anakin shifted to the next section of their own cut. “Not exactly a news flash. We knew Durd would—”

  Recalibrating his vibro-pick, Obi-Wan shook his head. “This wasn’t Durd. It was something else. Unfamiliar. I’ve never felt a touch like it before.”

  “Great,” Anakin muttered, and plunged his own pick into a tiny crack in the green-seamed wall. “Just what we need. Another problem.”

  Rattle, rattle, bang, rattle went the next damotite-laden bucket up the shaft toward the surface. More poison for Durd and Bant’ena Fhernan to play with.

  Obi-Wan eased his aching back with a groan. “How’s your shoulder holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” Anakin grunted. “Look. What are we going to do about—”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do. In fact—” The tunnel slip dealt with, Arrad was heading in their direction. “We need to vanish. No Force-use at all, not even to sense for possible rock slides. We can’t afford to make so much as a ripple.”

  Air hissed between Anakin’s teeth. “But—”

  “Are you working?” Arrad demanded, rejoining them. “Keep working. No slowing down. You want to be a miner in Torbel, this is it. Make up your minds, Teebs—work, or go somewhere else.”

  With a warning glance at Anakin, Obi-Wan jammed his vibro-pick into the wall. Felt the shock of it run up his arm, buzz through his bones and every offended scrape, burn, and bruise. Anakin hissed again, then followed suit.

  And in the heat and the close air, beneath the rock ceiling pressing down, deeply buried in Lanteeb’s core, Obi-Wan felt another cold shiver—and knew for certain that however deep they were… it might not be deep enough.

  Lok Durd eyed Barev’s miracle psychic seeker with distaste. So, this was a Drivok. Native to Faket, some obscure Wild Space world he’d never heard of. Humanoid, but not human. That at least was a blessing—the stink of humans turned both of his stomachs. Curiously, this creature had no natural smell at all. But that was the only attractive thing about it. Small, emaciated and hairless, naked and apparently sexless, the Drivok had milky eyes and moist mauve skin stretched tight over its knobby skeleton. It stood before the imager in his new and secret compound’s office communing with the captured holoimagery of the Jedi as they fought off his droids.

  Durd glanced at Barev, who stood beside him stinking with fear. “This had better work, Colonel,” he murmured. “You know what’s at stake, and that thing’s been standing there for nearly two hours now.”

  Barev was sweating. “I told you, General. As a hunter the Drivok is unequaled.”

  The creature passed one thin hand through the holoimage, then swung around. Its mouth was small and crowded with sharp teeth. “I have Jedi.”

  Durd felt a sizzle of relief flash across his skin. “You’re sure?”

  “Sure,” said the Drivok. All those tiny sharp teeth cut the word to slushy ribbons. “Taste one in my mind.”

  “One? But there are two of them, bounty hunter.”

  “Taste one. Sense two.”

  All thanks to the hive. “Where are they? Where have they hidden themselves?”

  The Drivok’s feeble shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Map.”

  He slapped Barev across the chest. “Well? Well? What are you waiting for? Fetch your psychic seeker a map!”

  Barev’s expression tightened. “General.”

  He returned to the office some minutes later, bearing a map cube. After slotting it into the holoimager and activating it he stood back, giving the Drivok room to work.

  More silence as the Drivok walked its slow way around and around the three-dimensional holoimage of the planet.

  “There!” the seeker declared, stopping, its crooked finger stabbing through the holoimage. “Jedi mind there.”

  Durd lurched forward to get a closer look. “And where is there? Show me!” He peered at the holoimage, fuming. “I can’t tell. This map is useless, Barev.”

  “Leave it to me, General,” said Barev, his voice hoarse. “I promise you I’ll have an exact location by morning.”

  He shot the man a furious glare. “See that you do,” he spat, then left Barev to it. He hadn’t checked up on Dr. Fhernan for hours… and if he didn’t ride that woman closely he knew—he knew—she’d do her best to thwart him.

  But I won’t be thwarted. Not by her and not by Jedi scum. I will be triumphant, and Count Dooku will praise my name.

  Ten bone-crushing hours after burying himself alive below the surface of Torbel, Anakin stripped off his protective suit and gloves and let them fall to the rocky floor. His clothing was wringing wet with sweat, his soaked hair dripped, his eyes stung with salt, and every hurt was singing a chorus of complaint. So preoccupied was he with these simple, physical miseries that it took a moment for him to notice the disturbance in the Force.

  Beside him, Obi-Wan jerked straight. “Stang. Have we been found?”

  They were alone in the equipment room, but voices and heavy footsteps were approaching—more miners finishing up for the night. “Don’t know,” Anakin whispered, and waited for his mine-dulled senses to sharpen. “Don’t think so. I think it’s something else.”

  “What?”

  He couldn’t tell. All he knew was he felt danger, rising on a cold dark wind just out of sight. “It’s not what you felt earlier?”

  “No,” said Obi-Wan, after a pause. “But I can’t put my finger on it, either.”

  And that wasn’t like Obi-Wan. It wasn’t like him.

  “Never mind,” Obi-Wan muttered. “Let’s get back to Jaklin’s cottage. We can meditate on this question there, in private. Whatever the trouble is, it’s a little way off yet. We have some breathing room.”

  Danger shivered through Anakin. “Not much.”

  “No. But enough.”

  Barely. Except Anakin didn’t say so, because Obi-Wan wasn’t in the mood for contradictions. With their protective equipment neatly stowed and the sweat drying on their skin, they made their way out of the mine and into the gloriously fresh night air. Beautifully far away, so perfectly high overhead, the scattered stars twinkled, whispering promises of home.

  Coruscant was out there. Padmé was out there. There was a heart in his chest, beating, but it was only an echo. She was his true heart. She was his home.

  “Anakin?”

  He glanced at Obi-Wan, whose face in the mine’s sputtering floodlights looked bleached to the bone with fatigue. “You can’t do another ten hours tomorrow,” he said, not caring in the least how such a pronouncement sounded.

  “I’ll do what I must,” said Obi-Wan. “I swear, the way you talk you’d think I had one foot in my grave.”

  Their fellow mine
rs were streaming into the night. They couldn’t argue for long, which was probably a good thing. “No, I don’t think that,” he said, while he still could. “But—”

  “Don’t,” Obi-Wan warned. “Besides, you’re imagining things.”

  No, he wasn’t. He knew from Yoda, and from what he felt every day, that something in Obi-Wan had changed, thanks to Zigoola.

  You can pretend all you like, Master. But we both know it’s true.

  A groundcar’s tooting horn made them turn.

  “I came out of the refinery and saw you,” Devi said, slowing her vehicle to an idling halt beside them. “It’s only now you’ve finished?”

  Anakin nodded. Odd, when everybody else was walking home, that she’d choose to drive. “You’re working late, too—and after a day in the power plant? Don’t you get to rest?”

  “It’s long hours we’re all working.” She sighed. “So much damotite they want in the city.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Somebody called out a good night. Devi waved back, smiling. “No. I don’t even think Rikkard knows. Can I take you Teebs to Jaklin’s? You’re staying under her roof tonight, aren’t you?”

  “We are,” said Obi-Wan. “And we thank you. But we’ll walk, Teeba. After so long underground the fresh air is a relief.”

  She laughed. “Bed is a relief. But walk if you like.”

  They watched her drive away, threading a path between the wandering groups of miners. Footsteps behind them had them looking around. It was Arrad. Stripped of his smothering protective gear, even in the fitful light it was clear he was his father’s son.

  “You’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, passing them. “Two days till the convoy and there’s more damotite needed yet.”

  Anakin grimaced. “I can’t wait. Because there’s nothing I like better than smelling like a week-old bantha corpse.”

  “Yes,” said Obi-Wan, his lips twitching. “It is a rather unfortunate aroma.”

  “I hate to break it to you, cousin, but I’m not the only one with a problem.”

  “I know,” Obi-Wan said, heaving a sigh. “And no bath until tomorrow. Truly, this is a most uncivilized life.”