The Clone Wars (The Clone Wars, 1) by Karen Traviss

Author:Karen Traviss [Traviss, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780099533191
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2008-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

I haven’t heard from Dooku. What’s he doing with Jabba’s son? I hear worrying rumors from my spies on Tatooine. But then there are always rumors.

ZIRO THE HUTT, to a trusted aide

COURTYARD, TETH MONASTERY

The ranks of battle droids parted, and Asajj Ventress walked slowly through their line to pause at the entrance to the monastery.

White armor jutted from the rubble. The Jedi were running out of slaves to take the blaster bolts for them.

“Skywalker!” Ventress suspected he wouldn’t hear, but she wanted to say it anyway. “You’ve got nowhere to run. Just choose how fast you want to die.”

The battle droid commander trotted up to her. “They’ve barricaded themselves in. The door controls have been destroyed, and we heard activity behind it that suggest the Republic troops are reinforcing it.”

“Then get them out.”

“Permission to use explosives for rapid entry, ma’am.”

Ventress took a few steps back, hands on hips, twin lightsabers swinging from her belt. She didn’t have forever, but neither did the Jedi. The baby slug—Hutts were hard to kill even if you tried, but this wasn’t the time to find out that she was wrong.

“Denied. Use cutters. Take no chances around the Huttlet—I don’t want a scratch on him, do you hear? No explosives unless you confirm he’s not in the blast area. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She withdrew to a meter-high wall that had managed to survive the assault and leaped onto it to survey the progress. Droids ferried cutting equipment to the doors. When they began lasering the surface, smoke curled off the ancient panels—was it metal, composite, or some ultra-hard wood?—and the droids seemed agitated.

Whatever it was made from, it was going to take some time to breach.

“We could demand a surrender and offer them terms, ma’am,” said the droid commander.

“A waste of time,” Ventress said. “They won’t accept. This is the Grand Army—and the Five-oh-first, at that, Skywalker’s own men. Every indication we have is that they’re not just good little loyal clones, they’re personally loyal to him. If he orders them to die for him, they will. Fools. I hope for their sakes that they realize what the Jedi are before they die in the proverbial ditch to save their miserable skins.”

“That’s a negative, then, ma’am.”

Droids weren’t capable of sarcasm. Ventress went back to watching the progress of the cutting tools. “Skywalker got a message out to the Republic. We’ll have armed company sooner or later. Stay alert. I want vultures and spider droids patrolling the whole complex.”

“Copy that.”

Ventress didn’t like heroism. She didn’t disrespect heroes; she just knew that sacrifice was seldom rewarded, and always exploited. Narec’s heroic efforts for the people of Rattatak hadn’t meant a thing to Mace Windu. It was the Jedi Master who had abandoned Narec—her mentor, her only friend—to die.

I wish you hadn’t told me that, Dooku. But we all need a focus.

Narec had been expendable, just like those clones behind that door. There was no point thinking too hard about their plight, though. It would weaken her resolve. There

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