Jedi Trial (12 page)

Odie drew her blaster and took it off safe. “I’m ready,” she said, more strongly than she felt.

“Listen up,” L’Loxx said over the tactical net. “We have a long ride ahead of us. If we meet up with enemy patrols we have one advantage. We have an extra person on each speeder who can shoot while the other maneuvers. You can shoot, right, flyboy?”

“Sure can, dirt-eater,” Erk snapped back. “So can my copilot there.”

L’Loxx grinned. “Well, I guess you rescued us then, huh? The enemy is riding seventy-four-Zs. Your ‘copilot’ knows what that means if it comes to a running fight.”

Odie groaned. She certainly did know what that would mean.

“But we aren’t getting into any fights,” L’Loxx continued. “We’re taking it easy and we’re playing it very cool. So follow me.”

They descended rapidly into the riverbed. The bottom was strewn with boulders and debris. In some places water had cut deep, narrow gorges that temporarily blocked out the sunlight; in others it had meandered over the flat country, fully exposed to the surrounding terrain. Still, the banks were high enough that if they moved carefully they could find a degree of cover. They traveled that way for half an hour.

They were attacked at a point where the river rose to the surface in a floodplain. The first bolt sizzled between Odie and L’Loxx so close it singed the cloth on his shirt and burned the tip of her nose as it passed. For the briefest instant Odie wondered what had happened; then instinct honed by training took over. She swiveled and fired in the direction the shot had come from—and then she saw them: three 74-Z speeders coming like the wind across the floodplain. L’Loxx jumped his speeder over the low bank and gunned it directly at the attackers. Badly aimed blaster bolts sizzled past them. Odie leaned around his right side and
snapped off two more blasts. She could clearly see one hit a speeder, but its armor absorbed the energy and bled it out onto the sand as an electrical discharge. The other hit the rider she had aimed at, and he flipped backward over the tail of his machine.

“Whooie!” someone—it sounded like Erk—yelled over the comm. Odie glanced to her left. A few meters behind them and a bit off to the side she could see Erk leaning forward around Corporal Nath’s side, firing methodically at the two remaining enemy speeders. The four racing speeders threw up tails of dust that hung suspended in the still air behind them.

“Break! Break!” L’Loxx shouted. He swerved to the right so sharply that Odie’s knee scraped the ground as he roared around the oncoming troopers. The maneuver confused the attackers. Behind them, instantly and at two hundred kph, L’Loxx aimed his speeder at the closest enemy rider, who broke to his left sharply. L’Loxx followed him around, keeping close on his tail. Odie kept firing, but her bolts disappeared harmlessly into the enemy speeder’s armor. Still, it forced the enemy trooper to keep his head down and concentrate on maneuvering his machine, so he couldn’t return the fire.

A huge cloud of dust rose up to cover the melee as the speeders pirouetted desperately around each other, seeking to ram their opponents or gain an opening for a shot that would count. Flashes from blaster bolts ripped through the curtains of dust so that anyone observing from a distance might have thought the cloud was pulsating with an energy and life of its own. The dust, thick and choking in the windless air, clung to
them like a second skin and blinded them. Suddenly, L’Loxx stopped his speeder and took off his helmet. Odie was taken aback by the utter silence.

“Where are they?” she whispered, swiveling her head, listening carefully for the sound of the other speeders. There was none. No firing, either; the only sound was the air rasping in their lungs.

“Good shot,” L’Loxx whispered, meaning the one with which Odie had hit the first enemy trooper. “I can’t raise my partner,” he added. “He must be down.”

Odie pushed her helmet back behind her ears so she could hear better. It was then she felt the gentlest of breezes passing by her face. She looked up. The sun penetrated the dust like a small golden ball, but gradually it grew brighter. The cloud was dissipating. The two tensed like threatened feral beasts, not sure if they’d have to attack or run.

The wind grew stronger and the dust began clearing rapidly. Like a curtain being rolled back from a stage whereon a tragedy was about to unfold, the dust cloud trailed away on the wind to reveal, not ten meters from where they were standing, an enemy trooper sitting on his speeder. He was looking away from them.

Before Odie could swing around and fire, L’Loxx leapt off the speeder, sprinted across the space between them, and smashed into the enemy trooper. Odie could clearly hear the crash as the two slammed into the dirt. The enemy trooper was big, and he wasn’t human. The two grunted and cursed in different languages as they rolled in the dust, but the advantage was with the enemy trooper, who wasn’t as stunned as L’Loxx had thought.

Odie ran up and leveled her blaster at them. “Surrender or I’ll shoot!” she shouted. No good. She risked hitting L’Loxx if she fired. She holstered her piece and jumped into the fray.

The enemy trooper grunted as Odie’s weight came down on his back, but he didn’t loosen his grip on L’Loxx’s throat. He stood up slowly, holding L’Loxx by the neck with one arm and shaking him. With the other hand, he reached over his shoulder, grabbed Odie by the head, and wrenched her off his back. He flung her away like a doll; she crashed and rolled in the dust, stunned. He dropped L’Loxx to the ground, put a massive foot on his chest, and drew a macelike weapon from his belt. L’Loxx lay half stunned, gasping for breath. The enemy trooper, a Gamorrean, whirled the mace around his head several times, grunting victoriously in his own language. L’Loxx groped for his blaster, but he’d lost it in the struggle. He grabbed the foot pinning him to the ground and tried to wrench it to the side, but the Gamorrean was too strong for him to budge.

A blaster bolt hit the Gamorrean in the right pectoral. He grunted in pain and dropped the mace. With his left hand he drew his own sidearm and fired. Odie was finally able to get off a shot and hit him squarely between the shoulders. A parasitical morrt fastened behind the Gamorrean’s left shoulder detached itself and burrowed into the sand as its host staggered, whirled, and fired back, but his shot went wild and hit L’Loxx’s speeder instead. Another bolt hit the Gamorrean in the lower spine, forcing him to his knees. Unable to turn
around and shoot back, he fired again in the direction where Odie lay. But now L’Loxx found his blaster and he put three quick bolts into the Gamorrean, who finally crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Erk walked up, his blaster covering the downed Gamorrean. “You picked the wrong guy to tangle with,” he said. With one arm he helped L’Loxx to his feet, keeping his blaster trained on the still form of the Gamorrean. “How many bolts did that guy absorb before he went down?” he asked in awe.

Odie limped up. “Five, at least. I think he’s still breathing. Are you all right?” She broke into a great grin as if she’d only just now recognized the pilot standing there.

“Where’s my trooper?” L’Loxx asked before Erk could say anything.

“I’m sorry, Sarge, the bad guy shot him. I dropped him with one shot. I’m sorry about your man, I really am.”

L’Loxx nodded. “My speeder is trash, but we now have two serviceable seventy-four-Zs. I’m going to collect my partner’s body. You come with me, Odie, and bring back the other seventy-four-Z. Flyboy, you stay here. I don’t know if they reported us or not before they attacked.” He nodded at the prostrate Gamorrean. “Our long-distance transmissions are blocked, so maybe theirs are, too. But we’d better move out smartly, just in case. Where’d you leave Jamur?”

Erk pointed. “That way, about half a kilometer.”

“All right. You wait for us here.”

*    *    *

“I need those reinforcements, my lord,” Pors Tonith said to the image of Count Dooku floating in front of him.

The Count’s somber features twitched in annoyance. “I thought I told you to deal with Commander Ventress on all operational matters.”

“This operation will fail without those reinforcements,” Tonith continued, ignoring Dooku’s displeasure.

“You will learn to follow my orders.” At Dooku’s meaningful look, Tonith blanched. He remembered another time Dooku had taught him a lesson. At that time, he’d experienced a sudden shortness of breath as if a great weight had been placed on his chest. He’d struggled to draw in air. As quickly as the seizure had come over him, it had passed. Dooku wasn’t near enough to use the Force against him now, but Tonith knew he’d suffer in the future if he persisted.

“I am following your orders, my lord,” he said hastily. “They are to capture and secure this planet. The plan you devised for this campaign, which I’ve followed to the letter, called for immediate reinforcement once that was done. I repeat, lord, where are they? This rogue force is causing me problems, and if it is reinforced before I am, we will lose Praesitlyn.”

Dooku’s image floated silently before Tonith for a long interval before he replied. “They are on the way. Why did you not foresee this intervention?”

Tonith caught his breath. Now he was being blamed for not anticipating what had happened? Monstrous! Blast the Count. But he replied calmly, “It was one of the great imponderables of war, my lord, but we still
hold the Intergalactic Communications Center intact. But I have lost many droids, and can replace only a few of those losses from my repair shops. For every one of them we kill, they destroy five or six of my droids.”

“You started out with a million battle droids; throw them all in at once and overwhelm this rogue force.”

“My lord,” Tonith responded patiently, “I have far fewer than a million droids now. Wave attacks are wasteful and bad tactics. If I were to do that I’d be left with a severely reduced army and no reserve. The opposing commander is very shrewd. He keeps his lines close enough to my own that I can’t bring my heavy weapons to bear effectively without sacrificing my own forces and weakening my own defenses.”

“We all must make sacrifices,” Dooku said dryly.

Tonith paused, mustering his dwindling patience. “Lord, his ships are keeping mine at bay in orbit so I can’t rely on reinforcements from their crews, and they cannot engage the ground forces with their onboard weapons systems. I repeat, if the Republic sends reinforcements before—”

“He cannot replace his losses at all, can he?” Dooku smiled.

“No, my lord,” Tonith replied sharply, “but if the Republic has been alerted and dispatched a force against us—”

“—so your enemy is being worn down by attrition.”

“—and they get here before my reinforcements—”

“They will not. Keep your foe engaged. Hold your positions. Help is on the way. I have confidence in you.” The transmission went dead.

Far, far away Count Dooku smiled. That Pors Tonith was a feisty one, but a bit too cautious—just like a banker, he reflected. But he was the right officer for the job. Things were going precisely according to plan. It just wasn’t the plan Tonith thought he was following.

A
n army travels on its stomach, I’m here to tell you,” old Quartermaster Mess Boulanger stated, his bright blue eyes sparkling. No one before now had ever asked him the details of his duty as a quartermaster officer, and since this young commander—Skywalker was his name—had inquired, old Mess was not about to let him go without a thorough lecture on what he called “the sinews of war.”

Carefully, Mess caressed his long, drooping brown mustaches and regarded Anakin balefully. He held up a bony forefinger. “Many think it’s valor, planning, the offensive spirit that wins battles, sir, but I say, ‘Pish!’ I’ll tell you what wins battles, sir. It’s logistics! The sinews of war, I call it, sir. Logistics! That’s the thing, I’m here to tell you. That’s what makes armies function. Well—” He made a deprecating gesture with one hand. “—that is if they’re not
droid
armies.” He spat out “droid.” “With them, all you need is lubricants and spare parts, but!” He held up his forefinger again. “That’s logistics, too! Yessir, even with an army of machines, you’ve got to know how much lubricants, spare parts, electronic components to stow in your ships! But
with living beings, it’s far more complicated, far more, I’m here to tell you. We’re lucky this time, sir. Clones all eat the same foods. But when you have other creatures along, well, you’ve got to figure in their special diets. Very complicated, sir. But it’s been done, I know the formulas …” His voice trailed off as if he were contemplating those very formulas.

“Remember this—” Boulanger perked up again, although he looked askance at Grudo, not sure whether he should be talking about sensitive matters in front of someone he wasn’t convinced wasn’t really on a bounty hunting mission. “COMETS-Q! Yessir, it’s COMETS-Q that gets you to the battlefield, sustains you once you’re there, and gets you home again. That’s the combat-support branches of modern warfare, sir: Chemical, Ordnance, Medical, Engineer, Transportation, Signal, and Quartermaster.”

Anakin was about to ask a question when Mess suddenly added, “And that’s not all. Not at all! Do you know, sir, what an army consumes in just one day of heavy combat? Do you know how many calories an infantry soldier burns up in just one day’s fighting? Eh? Well, I do, I’m here to tell you, sir! You have to know this if you’re going to supply your army in the field. You have to estimate casualties, too, yessir, very important. You may think that’s impossible, the nature of combat being unpredictable in the extreme, but it’s not, it’s not.” He nodded his head firmly so his mustaches waggled. “Before we even left Coruscant, I conferred with your operations staff, and we estimated that by the third day of battle you’ll have lost ten percent of your fighting force. So we stocked enough
medical and hospital supplies to accommodate such losses. Remember, for every one soldier killed in battle, three others are wounded!” He held up his forefinger again as if this were an immutable law of nature that permitted no argument.

“Ask him.” Boulanger gestured at Grudo, who’d sat silently throughout the lecture. “If he’s been around as much as he claims, he’ll tell you.”