Clone Wars Gambit: Siege (5 page)

Early the next morning Jedi Master Taria Damsin tracked Ahsoka down in the Temple arboretum, where the grass was cool and moist and the tumbling waterfall filled the warm air with spray and bright sound.

Discreetly inspecting the Jedi Master, Ahsoka thought she seemed perfectly recovered from their wild mission on Corellia. Either Taria was an excellent actress, or her Boratavi syndrome was back under control.

My guess is it’s a bit of both
.

“Ahsoka,” said Taria, as cheerful as ever. “I’ve been thinking.”

Unfolding from her final meditation pose—
a flower stem bends and does not break in the wind
—Ahsoka treated the older woman to a grin.

“Thinking? That’s dangerous. Should I be afraid?”

“Cheeky brat,” said Taria. “Now listen. I know you hate that you’re stuck here, waiting for word from Masters Kenobi and Skywalker. There’s nothing worse than being left behind when your Master’s off on a mission that doesn’t require a Padawan’s presence. And the Force knows that after Corellia my appetite’s been whetted for something a little less sedate than research in the library. So what do you say we get a nice little competition going? Something to challenge the senior Padawans that’ll challenge us at the same time.”

“That sounds intriguing,” Ahsoka admitted. “What kind of competition?”

Taria’s tawny eyes were alight with mischief. “A race through the new training dojo. Two teams—we lead one each. First team to light the beacon at the top of the mini city’s central tower wins.”

“Wins what?”

“Bragging rights, of course,” said Taria, grinning. “What else?”

The new training dojo, completed a few days before the mission to Kothlis, took up all of the Temple’s massive sublevel nineteen. Tricked out with artificial atmospherics and randomly generated zero-g pockets, terraformed into marshy quagmire, thick foliage, a ravine, a cliff, a stretch of wide-open quake-ground, a very small and self-contained river,
and
four large blocks of streets complete with buildings and towers, it was also populated by a panoply of actual Sep battle droids—salvaged from real battles—which had been modified to shoot stingers instead of blaster bolts. In short, it was the ultimate in urban and natural habitat warfare training terrains. The poor little Padawans were going to get their butts
kicked
.

But better they were kicked in the safety of the Temple than out there in the real war, where second chances were rare and dead really meant dead.

“So,” said Taria, teasingly taunting. “Are you game? Say yes. This could be the start of a Temple tournament.”

“It sounds like fun,” Ahsoka said slowly. “But—a tournament means winning and losing, doesn’t it? The Jedi philosophy discourages pride.”

“True,” said Taria, her amusement fading. “But this isn’t about pride, Ahsoka. It’s about finding a way to train without dwelling on what we’re training for. War. Padawans learn better when they aren’t afraid. When they’re actually enjoying themselves? That’s when the lessons stick.”

And that was true, too.
As for me, this might be the perfect thing to take my mind off Skyguy
. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go get our teams!”

Twenty minutes later Ahsoka stood outside the dojo with eleven eager senior Padawans. They were the Green team. Taria had won the toss, so her Blue team had twelve. The Blues were now their enemy—at least for the next hour or so. Given that this was these Padawans’ first time in a war zone, all were wielding training lightsabers designed to stun instead of kill. They wore colored bibs to identify one another, too, although the fluctuating light levels and sudden bursts of storming rain would make it tricky to see anything clearly.

Green team entered the dojo first, its consolation prize for losing the toss. Ahsoka’s Padawans were entirely trusting and alarmingly impressed because she was Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice and knew the best clone soldiers by nickname and had crossed lightsabers with the likes of Asajj Ventress—and lived to tell the tale.

Hey, Skyguy. Don’t let me mess this up
.

“Right,” she said, raising her voice over the dojo’s first computer-generated cracks of lightning and howls of wind. “Focus on the objective, people: reaching the tallest tower in the center of the mini city and lighting its beacon. That means you keep your eyes peeled, and if you get into trouble then you rely on the Force… and each other. Understood?”

“Understood!” the Padawans shouted.

The rules only gave them a three-minute head start on the Blues. Since the opening terrain was the dreaded quake-ground, it was time to get cracking. First of all, though, she had to inspire her team. Captain Rex’s Hints for Leaders #4:
If they think you’re having fun, they might forget to be terrified
.

Spinning to face her Padawans, walking backward without missing a stride, Ahsoka smiled at the youngsters closest to her. Chivas and Tabrugni smiled back, two small peas in a Kuatipod, the glow of their ignited training lightsabers reflecting in their wide, excited eyes.

“There’s an old Hutt saying,” she told her Green team, as beneath their feet the treacherous quake-ground woke and shivered a warning. “And it goes like this:
Ungdaliki-aigoto-aigoto-grutaaaaah!
”

A moment’s startled silence, and then the Green team shouted back. “
Ungdaliki-aigoto-aigoto-grutaaaaah!
”

Then the game began, and Ahsoka forgot that none of this was real. Long since blooded in battle, she couldn’t think that way anymore.

Christophsis. Teth. Maridun. Kaliida Shoals. Bothawui. Kothlis
.

Memories of each encounter rose to drown her, and instead of fighting them she let herself sink beneath their hot red surface. What she’d learned in the real war could help her now, could help these Padawans. It might even make the difference between life and death for them one day. And she owed it to Anakin to train them as well as he trained her.

With Taria’s Blue team coming close on their heels, the most important thing was to find cover before they ran into any Sep droids. The Green team staggered and fell and rolled across the heaving quake-ground, then pounded into the dojo’s thick foliage as a hard, driving rain began to fall. That was where the first wave of mosquito droids found them. Relentlessly they harried the Padawans, whose excitement swiftly turned to uncertainty and confusion as the rain flogged them and the quake-ground unbalanced them and more mosquito droids came in hard and blasting.

Fiercely focused, remembering Kothlis, Ahsoka led the attack, shouting encouragement and instructions to her stunned, faltering team. They rallied quickly. Amazingly, she lost only one. Crushed with disappointment, downed Laksh’atz waved them a forlorn good-bye as the Greens zapped the last mosquito droid and pushed on to the river.

A detachment of battle droids waited for them on its far bank. Proudly Ahsoka watched three Padawans take the initiative by felling a tree and rolling it into the water. Instinctly responsive, the rest of Green team formed up to give them cover. The dojo’s damp air spat and sizzled as volley after volley of stinger bolts were deflected, knocking all but three of the battle droids out of the game. They lost T’boor in that engagement, but the rest of the Greens stayed safe using the tree trunk for cover as they half waded, half swam across. When they reached the river’s other side, Ahsoka took out one of the remaining droids and Chivas the other two.

“Good job, Greens!” she said, grinning, and waved her team on toward the ravine. Feeling a familiar stirring in the Force she looked around and saw Taria, leading the Blues toward them in a furious charge. “Whoops!” she said, and chased after her team.

After that they lost sight of their opponents, but they could hear distant blaster shots and the buzzing whine of lightsabers even though the atmospherics program was enthusiastically deluging them with another storm. Somebody was keeping the Blue team busy. And then they forgot about everything but their own survival, because STAP-riding battle droids were swooping in for an attack as they stumbled across a treacherous pocket of zero-g—which shut off when they were some five meters above the ground.

Avoiding the droids
and
riding the Force to a safe landing got a bit messy. They lost the Mon Cal Padawan Baggro in that engagement.

Using the Force and the strength of their newly forged bond, the Green team Padawans fought their way down the dojo’s steep ravine and up the other side through another cloud of mosquito droids, and then faced the daunting cliff. More droids on STAPS threatened them there. Breathless, determined, Ahsoka drew on every lesson Anakin had ever taught her to lead her team. Too busy now to be scared for him, instead she leaned on him even though he was so far away.

See, Skyguy? I was paying attention
.

But even so, by the time they reached the first re-created city street Green team’s numbers had dwindled from eleven to four, not counting herself.

“Come on,” she told the remaining Padawans, remembering Rex’s Hint #6:
The worse things get, the more confident you need to look
. “This is the last stretch. We can do this. We can win.”

What was left of the exhausted Green team rewarded her with straightened spines and renewed determination. She smiled at them.
This must be what it feels like to be Anakin
. And then the narrow street was full of droidekas and battle droids and they were desperately scrambling to survive.

Sprinting through puddles, leaping crumpled groundcars and artfully scattered piles of rubble, diving through open windows and rolling across splintered floors to dive back outside again, deflecting blaster bolts left and right—they gave themselves over to the madness of urban battle.

The Greens lost another two team members to droids in the last desperate push to reach the tower and its beacon ahead of the Blues. Taria’s team had taken its own route into the city and was racing to take the prize at its center.

The teams reached the tower at the same time. “
Go on!
” Ahsoka shouted to Chivas and Veneka, her last two Padawans. “That beacon isn’t going to light itself!”

Breathing hard, aware of sore muscles and scrapes and bruises, she watched the Padawans scale the tower’s external wall. Taria had three Blue team members still standing. They took off after the Greens, leaving Taria to cheer them on.

Ahsoka looked the older Jedi over. Slushed with muck from the quagmire the Greens had managed to avoid, Taria was scraped and bruised, too, with several rips in her sedate dark gray bodysuit. After what had happened rescuing the scientist’s mother, probably she shouldn’t be taking part in this game. But Master Damsin was a stubborn law unto herself.

“I’m fine, Ahsoka,” Taria said, not shifting her gaze from the race up the tower. “So you can stop looking at me like—oh. Stang.”

One of the Blues had misjudged a handhold and was tumbling not very tidily to the street below. Her command of the Force to cushion the fall proved far from perfect.

“Sorry, Michka,” said Taria to the winded Padawan. “I think that has to count as dead.”

The Padawan groaned and let her yellow-scaled head thud to the ground.

Ahsoka stared again at the tower where two Greens and two Blues were scrambling to the top with a lot more enthusiasm than finesse. She couldn’t help smiling.

“You were right, Taria. This is an excellent way for Padawans to learn.”

“And what have you learned?”

“Me?” she said, surprised.
Oh. Right. I’m still a Padawan, too
. She thought of Anakin. “That nothing’s ever as easy as it looks.”

Taria smiled. “Don’t worry, Ahsoka. No matter who wins this, you haven’t let your Master down.”

The lurking unease she’d managed to outrun came surging back. “Taria…” She felt her breathing hitch.
Say it, say it. You know you have to say it
. “I’ve got a bad feeling. About Master Skywalker.”

Taria’s greenish-blue hair, stuck through with twigs and unraveling from its long braid, caught the flickering streetlights and shone like living ice. For the first time since they’d entered the dojo, Ahsoka saw a hint of discomfort in her eyes as her terrible illness made itself felt. Atop the tower the Padawans reached the competition beacon together, and ignited it together with loud triumphant hollering. A tie.

Applauding their effort, Taria slid her tawny, topaz gaze sideways. “I’ve got one, too. About Master Kenobi.”

“Oh.” Ahsoka swallowed. “Really? And what does that mean?”

Taria snorted. “You’re too smart for a question like that, Ahsoka. You know as well as I do what it means.”

She did. Oh, she did.

Skyguy… where are you? What’s going on?

Anakin sat up, shifting between heartbeats from deep sleep to waking. Even as he looked around his unfamiliar surroundings—a storeroom, its walls lined with prefab durasteel shelves not even a quarter filled with cans and boxes—he could feel his senses unfurl and test the cool, dry air for danger. Nothing. At least, nothing immediate. Only the same clouding anxiety and tension he and Obi-Wan had felt as they approached the village. And he sensed Teeba Jaklin, the woman who’d warily given them permission to enter the village, brought them back here to her home, and offered them tea and soup and rough beds on her floor. Vaguely, he remembered drinking something bitter, swallowing some kind of gritty gruel, then afterward falling facedown on this thin mattress. And then lights out.

So. Look on the bright side, General Skywalker. And don’t forget that things can always be worse
.

Obi-Wan sprawled in a sleeping heap next to him, his breathing soft and regular. No cause for concern there, even though dried blood discolored his beard and his face was marred by cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Slivers of shadow striped him where light from the new day slid between the warped shutters covering the storeroom’s single small window.

The new day
. Going by Lanteeban time, that meant they’d slept without stirring for nearly twenty local hours. The good news was he definitely felt refreshed. The bad news—there always had to be bad news—was that his empty belly was rumbling like a rockslide. With luck there’d be breakfast.

But we can’t stay here after that. We have to get back in the fight. So the question is, what’s next?

Obi-Wan opened his eyes. “Well? How are your bruised bruises this morning?”

“Surly,” Anakin said. “Yours?”

“I’ll live.”

And so would he, but not comfortably. Everything hurt. And in the unfortunate absence of pain meds… “Hey. Don’t suppose you could—”

“Sorry,” said Obi-Wan, sounding genuinely regretful. “Miraculous overnight healing is likely to raise eyebrows.” Wincing, he threw back his blanket and rolled untidily to his feet. “Never mind. We’ll manage. Now, what are your impressions of this village?”

Anakin watched Obi-Wan tug the window’s shutter aside and stare through the scratched and warped transparisteel at the dwellings beyond. They were even more dilapidated than Gardulla the Hutt’s Mos Espa slave quarter, where he and his mother had lived before being sold to Watto. Small, featureless boxes with flat roofs and shuttered windows. No grass to soften the hard ground, or flowers to give even the illusion of cheer. What a sad place this was. But despite its sunken, sunbaked sorrow—

“I think we’re fine,” he said. “At least for the moment. Obi-Wan, we have to get a message to the Temple.”

“You’re reading my mind,” said Obi-Wan nodding. “With the mine active and supplying damotite, the village must possess some kind of comm center. The question is—”

“Will they let us use it?” He shrugged. “Probably not. So I say we don’t even bother asking. We can just—”

Prompted by muffled footsteps outside the storeroom door, Obi-Wan turned. “It appears our hostess is up and about. I suggest we go and make friends. We’ll need her support while we’re here.”

“And if we don’t get it?” said Anakin, slowly getting up off his mattress. His scrapes and bruises really were surly. “What then? You try a little gentle persuasion?”

“I’m not certain that would work,” Obi-Wan said at last. “This Teeba has a very
definite
personality. If she’s unprepared to offer further hospitality, we’ll have to see if someone else will take us in. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll simply have to find another settlement where the natives are friendlier.”

“Except we’re in the middle of nowhere already and I can’t sense another village anywhere close by. Can you?”

Obi-Wan grimaced. “Right now I can’t sense much beyond the need for a ’fresher.”

Good point. His own unhappy body was making urgent demands, too. With elaborate courtesy he opened the storeroom door and stood back. “After you, Cousin Yavid.”

They found Teeba Jaklin in her small kitchen, slicing a rough loaf of mixed-grain bread. Putting the knife down, she considered them with her wary, pale blue gaze. “So. There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you’d died.”

Her demeanor was odd. Not hostile, but not exactly friendly, either. More than anything, Anakin sensed a resigned resentment in the woman. As though their arrival on her doorstep was just one more burden in a long and disappointing lifetime of burdens.

Undaunted, Obi-Wan pressed his hand to his heart and offered her his most polite bow. “We certainly slept like the dead, Teeba. Again, you have our most humble thanks. I think my cousin and I were ready to lie down in the road.”

From the look on her face the Teeba wasn’t sure whether to believe him. She sniffed. “I think you were too, Teeb. But likely you’d have been safe enough. There’s no convoy due for a few days yet. Still…” She wrapped the remaining uncut bread in a cloth and dropped it into a bin on the bench. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Indeed,” said Obi-Wan. “Ah—Teeba—”

She pointed through the kitchen’s other door. “The ’fresher’s down the corridor there. Can’t offer you the tub today. No body bathing till tomorrow.”

Anakin swallowed a groan. His skin was tacky with dried sweat and blood and grime.
We might as well be back on Tatooine
. “Your water’s rationed?”

“That’s right,” she said, indifferent to his dismay. “First, second, and third priority’s the mine. Then beasts and crops and drinking. Washing bodies and clothes comes a long way last.”

“That’s quite all right, Teeba Jaklin,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “You’ve given us shelter and sustenance. We don’t expect you to launder us as well.”

Teeba Jaklin stared at Obi-Wan, steadfastly refusing to be softened by his charm. “You get a splash of wet in the bottom of the ’fresher basin for the worst of the stink. No more than a splash, mind. I’ll know otherwise. There’s a gauge.”

“A splash,” said Obi-Wan. “Yes, of course.”

She frowned at his cuts and bruises. “Not brawling each other, were you? We don’t hold with brawling here.”

“No, Teeba,” said Obi-Wan. “As we said last night, there was an accident. We’re not trouble, my word on it.”

“In that case there’s a pot of salve in the cupboard over the basin. Use what you need of it. I make it myself.”

Obi-Wan bowed again. “That’s very generous. Thank you. Markl—you go first. But don’t dawdle.”

“I won’t, Yavid,” Anakin murmured, the obedient younger cousin, and left Obi-Wan to his closer reading of the Teeba and their current predicament.

Like the dingy, cramped kitchen, the cottage’s refresher was run-down and hardly big enough to turn around in. As he washed his flesh-and-bone hand and his face at the tiny basin, using no more than the requisite miserly splash, he stared at his wobbly reflection in the cracked mirror. Could be worse. A thin cut along his hairline. Bruising along his left cheekbone and under his eye. A scrape on his chin. Tugging his shirt open, he counted more bruises. His right collarbone ached viciously, as did two of his ribs and both knees. Perhaps it was for the best that the tub was denied him. He had the feeling he was a patchwork of purple and green bruises and red blaster blisters, which would make for a depressing sight.

Still. If looking awful makes us seem less threatening… more vulnerable… that’s all to the good
.

He daubed himself liberally with Teeba Jaklin’s stinking, sticky green salve. It stung like fire. Then he returned to the kitchen. Upon his arrival Obi-Wan withdrew, leaving him alone with their hostess.

Obi-Wan’s right. Her mind’s about as pliable as durasteel. Whatever we need from her we’ll have to get with old-fashioned cajolery
.

And hadn’t his mother always told him he could coax the stars down from the sky if he put himself to the trouble? Didn’t Padmé say the same, not always so admiringly?

He offered the plain, tough woman his most winsome, winning smile. “Thank you, Teeba Jaklin. It’s very good of you to help us like this. If we hadn’t come across your village when we did, or if you’d turned us away as vagabonds, I’m not sure how we would’ve survived.”

With an unimpressed glance the Teeba fired up her kitchen’s clunky old stove. “We keep ourselves to ourselves in Torbel, young Teeb, but that don’t make us cruel. I took you in for it was the right thing to do.”

“And the right thing for us to do is be grateful for it,” he replied, meaning it. “Kindness isn’t found everywhere, Teeba Jaklin.”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. It’s not.”

“Have you lived here all your life?”

“No,” she said, fiddling with the stove’s knobs. “Twenty-one seasons. Came here with my man. He died a miner. I stayed. Took to teaching.”

Behind her laconic reply Anakin sensed an aching well of memory—and was sharply reminded of Bant’ena Fhernan. This was turning into a mission overrun by sad women.

Or maybe it’s just that nobody anywhere can truly call themselves happy
.

“Twenty-one seasons in the same place,” he said, to fill the silence. “Hard to imagine. It’s almost longer than I’ve been alive.”

She sniffed again. “Practically a boy, you are.”

He watched her place two slices of bread on the compact cooktop grill. Beneath her reserve and her sorrow she remained wary, watching him from the corner of her eye as she toasted the bread.

This isn’t going to work if we can’t get her to trust us
.

“Can I do something to help, Teeba?”

“Eggs in the cupboard there,” she said over her shoulder. “Know how to whip eggs, do you?”

The question woke memories. Sharing kitchen time and laughter and dreams with his mother: fetching pots, measuring agra-flour, slicing dried ottith when he was old enough for her to trust with a knife.
Family
. Real family, not the oddly separate togetherness of the Temple.

“Yes, Teeba. How many?”

“All you find in the bowl. Fork’s in the drawer. Cracked shells go in the ’cycler.”

After emptying the raw eggs into the bowl and disposing of the shells, he started beating the pink yolks and whites together. “Teeba, is this right?”

Another disparaging sniff. “Thought you said you knew whipping eggs.” But she looked into the bowl and gave him a small, approving nod. “Right enough.”

The toasting bread smelled good. His stomach rumbled again, loudly. “Sorry,” he said, seeing the woman’s eyebrows lift. “Good appetite.”

“That’s enough with the eggs,” she said, exchanging toasted bread for fresh. “You can set them aside and put plates on the table. Four. There’s someone coming.”

Laying places at the table, Anakin looked around the kitchen. The only splash of color was a handful of flowers on the windowsill. Otherwise he got no sense of the woman who lived here. As a rule he never had any trouble reading people, but this Teeba Jaklin? Wary and sad. That was it.

And that’s not very much when we’re risking our lives
.

As he finished setting knives and forks to go with the plates on the battered old table, Obi-Wan returned with his hair slicked wet and no dried blood in his beard. A tiny nod as their eyes met, and a casual flick of his fingers: Obi-Wan code for
Nothing untoward in the rest of the house
. He’d done his own dawdling to make sure of their safety. Nobody did “cautious” like Master Kenobi.

Teeba Jaklin turned off the grill and fired up the stove’s two small hotplates. “You. Teeb Yavid,” she said briskly. “Pull the butter and nutpaste from the cool box and put the crisped bread on the table.”

“Of course,” said Obi-Wan. “Anything else?”

Their hostess wore the same brown tunic, trousers, and boots, but her gray hair was caught in a blue scarf this morning. Jaklin tucked a loosened wisp back into confinement and shook her head. “No. Not a man born can make tea or cook eggs in any proper fashion.”

Swallowing a smile, Obi-Wan did as he was told. “There’s an extra place set, Teeba.”

“Good to know you’re not blind,” she said, setting a kettle of water to boil. “Two of us oversee Torbel village. Me and Teeb Rikkard, the head miner. He’s a need to assay you, Teebs. It’s true you’ve not murdered me under my own roof but these are sideways-looking times. You’ll not complain.”

Anakin exchanged another look with Obi-Wan.
No, I’m pretty sure we won’t
. “How many live here in Torbel, Teeba Jaklin?”

She had a pan on the stove now, with oil poured into it and starting to spit. Holding the bowl of frothy pinkish eggs ready to pour, Teeba Jaklin flicked him a glance. “Four hundred and thirty-seven. There was twice that and more in the old damotite days. With production stepped up again we might see us grow a bit. New times are here on Lanteeb. But what they’ve brung us…” She shrugged, then poured the eggs into the hot pan. “We’ll see.”

What they’ve brung you, Teeba, is more misery
. In fact, if he and Obi-Wan were successful here, they’d be leaving this woman to a cruel and uncertain future. But he couldn’t tell her that. Indeed, after the disaster that was Bant’ena he wasn’t even tempted. Obi-Wan was right. Getting caught up in these transitory people’s lives was a mistake.

We’re Jedi. We need to take a longer view. Focus on the big picture and not get lost in the small details
.

He felt a stir in the Force and a moment later heard banging on the cottage’s front door. Danger? No. They were still safe.

“That’ll be Rikkard,” said Teeba Jaklin. “You’ll mind your manners, Teebs. He’s a good man and a brave one and his word in Torbel is weighty.” She slid the eggs off the stove and left the kitchen.

Anakin rolled his eyes. “She makes Master Yoda look cuddly, but I don’t sense she’s a threat,” he murmured. “I just wish I could tell how far she’ll go to help us. Can you?”

“No,” said Obi-Wan. “All I can say for certain is that events are in flux. Perhaps that’s why—”

Teeba Jaklin returned with a lanky man in tow. Dressed like their hostess, his close-cropped head was roped and crisscrossed with livid scars. His right eye drooped half closed, and more scar tissue marred his hookish nose.