Clone Wars Gambit: Siege Read online

Red human blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Weak tears filled her eyes. “What happens now?”

  He bared his gums at her. “Now we finish our Project. But not here. We leave this facility tomorrow. Pack up the lab.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Why should you care?” he said, and kicked her in the ribs. Carefully. Bruises, not breakage. That was the goal. “All you need to know is that the Jedi will never find you. They’ll be dead soon. And if you don’t do exactly what I say, when I say it, they won’t be the only ones.” He nodded at the holodisplay on the table, which was playing a continuous loop of her friend Samsam’s execution. The droids guarding her were under orders to make sure she didn’t touch it, or walk away, or close her eyes. “You understand?”

  Her gaze shifted to the little figure in yellow as it plummeted into the lake. “Yes.”

  Bending, he captured her ugly human face between his fingers and pressed and pressed until the bones beneath her flesh threatened to give way.

  “Good.”

  Struck speechless, Bail Organa stared at the man he’d called his friend for nearly fifteen years.

  I must be hearing things. He cannot have said what I think he just said. Because Tryn Netzl might be the walking, talking embodiment of an absentminded professor, but he’s not an idiot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “You’ve done what?”

  Swathed throat to mid-thigh in his stained and patched lucky blue lab coat, his pale hair pulled back from his predatory face in a braid, Tryn didn’t look up from carefully tipping a small capful of dark blue crystals into a glass beaker.

  “Hmm? Oh. I’ve successfully created a sample of the bioweapon.” He nodded at the lab’s glass-fronted safe hutch, a stone’s throw distant at the other end of his bench. “It’s in there.”

  And indeed, through the hutch’s security-shielded transparisteel door Bail could see a lidded container three-quarters full of some greenish, noxious-looking substance. Before he could stop himself he’d taken an alarmed sideways step.

  “Tryn—”

  Surprised, Tryn finally looked at him. “What?”

  Am I slipping? Did I not make myself clear? “You created the filthy stuff? I thought you were supposed to be finding a way to kill it!”

  Tryn shrugged. “Can’t kill what I don’t have, Bail.”

  Funny. He’d forgotten how pragmatically indifferent his friend could be. He’s a scientist, remember? He worships at the altar of objectivity. “I know that, but—”

  “But what? Bail…” Tryn put down the glass beaker. “Look. How’s this for an idea? I’ll refrain from telling you how to get legislation passed in the Senate and you can hold off telling me how to be a biochemist. Sound fair?”

  Nothing about this current crisis was fair. Prickling with unease, Bail started to pace around the impressive Jedi Temple laboratory Yoda had offered to his friend for as long as it was needed.

  “Shelve the flippancy, Doctor Netzl,” he snapped. “I’m not in the mood. I’ve just spent half a day cooped up with the most self-interested, self-righteous, self-everythinged senators it has ever been my misfortune to know. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and if I have to hear one more piece of bad news I’m going to—”

  “This isn’t bad news, Bail,” said Tryn, watching him closely. “It’s good news. The toxin’s formula is proven. I’ve got a solid place to start from now.”

  “Proven?” Halting on the far side of the lab, Bail felt his belly turn over in a queasy roll. “You mean you’ve tested it? Here?” What was he thinking? “Tryn, we already know the filthy stuff works!”

  “No, we were told it works. Now we have firsthand proof. There’s a difference.”

  “You tested it.” Pacing again, he fought the furious urge to smash something. “Tryn, this is the Jedi Temple. Up there—” He jabbed a pointed finger at the ceiling. “—is the Jedi Council. You cannot endanger them by—”

  “Hey!” Now it was Tryn’s turn to snap with temper. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my own lab. This place is the best facility I’ve ever worked in. Trust me, I’m the only sentient at risk.”

  Which was simply one more reason for him to feel sick. “I don’t care how secure this lab is, what you’re doing is too dangerous.”

  Tryn stared at him. “That’s not your call.”

  “Excuse me, but I think it is. As head of the Republic’s Security Committee I—”

  “Bail, all due respect, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tryn said. “I did what I had to do, with Master Yoda’s full knowledge and approval. And now that I know this bioweapon inside out I can get to work on creating an antidote. Something broad enough to cross the species barrier and bind up the active toxins while they’re still in a victim’s bloodstream.”

  That brought Bail up short. “You mean that?” he said, his heart pounding his ribs. “You can really do this?”

  “Well—I’m not making any promises,” Tryn said, pulling a face. “But I wouldn’t have left my students halfway through the semester if I didn’t think I could help.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. I’m not suggesting—you’re brilliant, I didn’t mean to—” Tangled, Bail stopped talking and started pacing again. A tension headache was brewing behind his tired eyes. “Sorry. Like I said, it’s been a long day and it’s not over yet.”

  Tryn came around to the front of his bench and hitched himself onto it. His bright orange trousers rode up his skinny ankles, revealing mismatched socks of fluorescent green and pink. His lab clogs were crimson. So were his eyes. Well. Today they were crimson. Yesterday they’d been violet. Tomorrow, who knew? Tryn was a man of changeable disposition.

  “Bail?” he said, gentle now, his temper abandoned. “I’ve never heard you sound this scared. What aren’t you telling me? What’s happened now?”

  Nothing had happened, and that was the problem. There’d been no word from Obi-Wan or Anakin since they alerted Yoda that they were going back to Lok Durd’s compound. And in this situation no news was not good news. No news was very bad.

  “You don’t have to say,” Tryn added. “But as it stands, I’m the next best thing you’ve got to a captive audience.”

  Bail hesitated. Tryn Netzl had been Witness at his marriage. Had put him and Breha with the best fertility doctor in the Republic and matched him drink for drink after every one of Breha’s five miscarriages. Tryn had let him weep without saying a word when their last hope for a child was exhausted. There was nothing he could not entrust to this man.

  But I need him focused. So pull yourself together, Organa. If he’s worried about you, he can’t do his job. And if he can’t do his job…

  “You’re right, I am worried about something,” he said, because he would never lie to Tryn. “But it’ll keep. What can you tell me about this bioweapon?”

  Tryn frowned. “It makes me ashamed I was ever proud to call Bant’ena Fhernan a colleague.”

  There was a second bench in the lab, piled high with flimsies and hard-copy biochemistry texts and at least a score of datareaders. Bail leaned one hip against it and folded his arms.

  “She’s under duress, Tryn.”

  “I don’t care. What she’s created is a perversion of science. She’s betrayed herself and her calling.”

  “There are those who say every weapon created is a perversion of science,” he pointed out. “And that using those weapons is a betrayal of life. I seem to recall you making a few heated points in favor of that argument, once or twice.”

  Tryn scowled. “I don’t like war. I don’t like killing.”

  “I don’t either,” he said, after a moment. “But since we last sat down face-to-face, my friend, I’ve killed. It was in self-defense, and in defense of others, but even so…” Remembering the desperate battle on that secret space station, a confrontation he often relived in his dreams, Bail shook his head. “I can’t even tell you how many. There wasn’t time to stop and count. And while I’
m coming clean, I suppose I should also confess that I voted for the creation of the Republic’s clone army—now, that’s science taken to extraordinary lengths—and two days ago I approved the diversion of funds from a refugee crisis program to the discretionary account used to make up the shortfall in payments for clone replacements.”

  “I don’t—I can’t see—” Tryn wrapped his long braid around his fingers and pulled hard, a familiar nervous habit. “Stang, Bail. Why would you tell me that?”

  “I guess because…” He sighed. “How do we know what we’d do if we were forced to watch someone we loved die because we didn’t do as we were told?”

  Tryn stared at the floor, uncomfortable. “I’d like to think I’d have the guts to stay strong, no matter the pressure—or the punishment.”

  “Yes, well, we’d all like to think that,” he said drily. “But in these past months I’ve learned a lot of things, Tryn. Most of them unpleasant.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that,” Tryn said, his dark red eyes somber. He looked around the magnificently equipped lab. “I mean, you and the Jedi? Brand-new best friends? Have to tell you, Bail, I didn’t see that coming.”

  “Neither did I,” he admitted. “Oh, and I was right, by the way. The Jedi aren’t always comfortable but you can trust them. And I promise you that without them our Republic would be in tatters by now. As it is, even with them—” Abruptly overwhelmed, Bail dragged a hand down his face. “Things are bad, Tryn. With no way of knowing where or when the Seps will strike, if we don’t have a reliable antidote to this bioweapon then they’ll win. And that means the end of the Republic. So I need you to make this happen.”

  “No, Bail!” Tryn protested. “I told you, I can’t promise you anything. I might despise Bant’ena Fhernan for a gutless coward but she’s still a genius. This—this thing she’s invented—this monstrosity of a weapon—”

  His friend’s abrupt distress was worrying. “Tryn, you can do this. You’re the best biochemist I know.”

  Tryn glowered at him. “You’re a nidziga, Organa. I’m the only biochemist you know.”

  Bail tried to smile but failed, abysmally. “Tryn. Seriously. Whatever you need, no matter what it costs. Tell me and I’ll get it for you. No questions asked.”

  “You’ve changed,” Tryn said after a taut silence. “I can see it now.”

  As if I didn’t know that. “Not for the worse, I hope.”

  Tryn bit the end of his braid: another old, familiar habit. The one he turned to when he was particularly upset. “I hope so, too.”

  “I have to go,” Bail said, glancing at his wrist chrono. “There’s a late Senate session tonight that I need to prepare for.”

  “Look,” Tryn said, hunched inside his lucky blue lab coat. “I’ll do my best for you, Bail. If the work needs fresh blood, I’ll even open my own veins. But you need to tell the little green guy and whoever else you answer to—this might not happen. You have to understand that. You have to prepare.”

  For what? Annihilation? Sickened, Bail nodded. “I will. But I believe in you, Tryn. I believe you can make it happen.”

  Tryn rapped his knuckles on the bench once, and got back to work.

  Chapter Three

  Despite the late hour and his continuing obligations, Bail didn’t leave the Temple for the Senate straightaway. Instead he made the long and convoluted journey from its lowest levels up to the giddy heights of the Jedi Council Chamber, where Yoda had arranged to meet with him.

  “I take it there’s still no word, Master?”

  Standing before the panoramic window, watching a distant, impressive Republic Cruiser heading for the GAR docks, Yoda shook his head. “Correct you are, Senator.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  Yoda glanced over his shoulder. “Delayed they have been. Dead they are not.”

  Not dead… not dead… Bail swallowed. “You’re sure?”

  “Clouded is the Force with dark side menace, but know that much I do. Obi-Wan and Anakin live.”

  It was odd, how relief could be as sickening as fear. “And when you say delayed?”

  Supported by his spindly gimer stick, Yoda turned from the window and began an aimless wandering of his Council aerie. “The answers that you seek, Senator, give you I cannot.” The gimer stick rapped the Chamber’s beautifully parqueted floor once, with sharp emphasis. “Against Obi-Wan and Anakin going to Lanteeb I was. Spies and agents the Jedi are not. A task for your people this mission was.”

  He was being rebuked—and didn’t much care for it. “Then why did you approve their involvement?”

  “Know why you do,” said Yoda, ears low, eyes hooded.

  Because I asked a friend for help. And that friend asked you to let him help me.

  But he wasn’t about to let guilt cripple him. There was way too much at stake for that. “We can point fingers later, Master Yoda. Right now we’ve got another crisis to avert. If Obi-Wan and Anakin are in trouble—”

  “Hmmph,” said Yoda, and kept on pacing. “If? A Jedi you need not be, Senator, to know that trouble Obi-Wan Kenobi and young Skywalker have likely found.”

  Clasping his hands behind his back, Bail braced his shoulders. “In that case, Master Yoda, what do you intend to do about it?”

  Yoda stopped his slow pacing. Planting his gimer stick before him, both hands braced, he pulled his chin to his chest. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Even though he’d been half expecting the answer, still it shocked him. “Master Yoda, we can’t abandon them. Forget the fact that we have a personal stake in what happens—for all we know Obi-Wan and Anakin hold the key to defeating Durd and his bioweapon. We can’t—”

  Another emphatic rap of the gimer stick. “We can and we must, Senator. No clue is there to what is happening on Lanteeb. Rush to help them we could, yes, and make things worse. Patient we must be. Trust in Obi-Wan and his former Padawan we must have.”

  Trust wasn’t the issue. This was a matter of honor and obligation. I got them mixed up in this. I can’t leave them twisting alone. “But—Master Yoda—”

  “Senator Organa—” Abruptly, Yoda’s severe expression eased. “For your friend fearful you are. Understand that I do. But a survivor Obi-Wan Kenobi is. Know that better than anyone you do. The Force is with him. Your own battles now you should fight. Enemies our Republic has both inside and out. The Senate your arena is. The Jedi you must leave to me.”

  He could argue, of course, but there’d be little point. In this place Yoda was the supreme authority. And to rail at him for being a Jedi would only threaten their new and in many ways tentative partnership.

  “Of course, Master Yoda,” he said, bowing. “But if the time comes when I can be of assistance—”

  “Call upon you I shall, Senator Organa,” said Yoda. “Doubt that do not. A loyal friend to the Jedi you are.”

  And as a friend he had to admit his own part in their current dilemma. “I’m very sorry, Master Yoda, that my actions have once again put Obi-Wan in harm’s way. And that this time Anakin’s at risk, too.”

  Sighing, his gaze downcast, Yoda traced a small circle on the floor with the tip of his gimer stick. “No. Done that the war has, Senator. If not trouble on Lanteeb then trouble elsewhere would they have found. In these dark times finding trouble every Jedi is.” He looked up. “Your scientist friend. Doctor Netzl. Progress has he made in defeating Lok Durd’s weapon?”

  Bail hesitated, then shook his head. “Not yet. But he’s committed to finding an answer.”

  “And believe, does he, that an answer can be found?”

  I really don’t want to answer that. But he had to. “Master Yoda, he’s hopeful.”

  “Hmmm.” Turning, Yoda again stared out across never-sleeping Coruscant. “Hope we must all have. But win a war hope will not. Save lives hope will not. Defeat the Sith hope will not.”

  He’d never imagined he’d hear Yoda sounding discouraged. “The Jedi defeated the Sith once. You can do it again.”

/>   “But defeat them we did not, Senator,” Yoda retorted. “Only into hiding did we drive them.”

  “And you’ll drive them out again. Out of hiding and to their destruction. They can’t prevail, Master Yoda. Two Sith against so many Jedi? It’s just not possible.”

  “Yes. Yes,” said Yoda. He sounded so weary. “Hope that we must.”

  Tendrils of fog were creeping through the city’s forest of buildings. Illuminated holo-billboards and beacons and the headlights of passing speeders and other vehicles glowed luminous and strange, rainbow colors muting and smearing. Fog turned Coruscant from brash and beautiful to mysterious.

  It’s a wonder it doesn’t collapse under the weight of all the secrets it’s hiding.

  He should be getting back to the Senate. He’d arranged to meet Padmé there before the evening’s scheduled preliminary vote regarding a trade dispute between Devaron and Kelada. The rival planets’ spat was threatening to disrupt the Corellian Trade Spine, and the Corellians were in turn threatening punitive action.

  Because of course what the Republic really needs right now is more fighting.

  He and Padmé had agreed to share their research on the situation. She’d be waiting for him by now. Only…

  “If a question you have, Senator, then ask it you should,” said Yoda. Now he sounded faintly amused. “And answer it I will, if able I am.”

  Once, in idle conversation, Obi-Wan had called this ancient Jedi the most intimidating person I’ve ever known. He wasn’t wrong. And it wasn’t even deliberate. Yoda simply exuded the kind of innate authority that turned everyone around him into a subordinate. Partly it was the weight of his long life, but mostly it was because he’d accrued not just centuries, but centuries of wisdom. The Jedi Master hadn’t let a minute of his nine-hundred-odd years go to waste.

  And though I’m little more than a child compared to him, he seeks out my opinion and sometimes follows my advice.

  Every so often, remembering that, Bail found it hard to breathe.

  “Yes, Master, I do have a question,” he said. “When do you intend to tell the Supreme Chancellor about the bioweapon and the mission to Lanteeb? When are you going to tell him that Obi-Wan and Anakin are in trouble?”