Star Wars: Scourge (12 page)

Reen pulled the microphone toward her, but Mander pulled it out of her hands. “Attention IRDs. We are experiencing difficulties. Our repairs did not hold. We are losing altitude and will have to ditch. Systems are fail—” He stopped midword, and returned the transceiver to the cradle. “If they call back, don’t answer.”

“You’re doing horrible things to your Jedi reputation,” said the Bothan.

A pair of ionic blasts bracketed the craft.

“That’s one,” said Mander. “Regulations say they have to try twice more, since we are apparently in distress.” They were deep inside the atmosphere now, and the Jedi scanned the horizon, looking for one particular feature. “There,” he said, pounding Eddey on the shoulder and pointing to the east.

“Dust storm,” said Reen. “Pull up to get over it.”

“No—” said Mander, “head into it.”

“It will play hobs with the navigation,” said the Bothan. “And I just cleaned everything out.”

“Exactly,” said Mander, and another pair of blaster bolts streaked past the cockpit. “That’s two. They won’t wait as long to fire the third … and then all bets are off.”

Mander held his breath as the wall of sand and dirt, visible from orbit—carried from one side of the world to the other—approached and then towered over them. It filled the observation scanners, panning across them. There was a third blast of ionic fire now, but Mander didn’t even pay attention to it. Another couple of seconds and—

They were inside the cloud, the dust screeching against the hull. Eddey cursed, more for the damage done to the finish than any real effect on the ship’s structure. Around them the storm licked at the engines and coated the
flight surfaces. The sky lightened and a string of bolts laced around them, but none of them hit.

“They’re on instruments now,” said Mander. “Can you manage?”

“I’ve got my own scanners up, but we’re awfully low,” said the Bothan.

A dark shadow passed by the ship, then another, and a third. “Those are rock formations!” shouted Reen. “We’re too low. Pull us up!”

“Not for another minute,” said Mander. The Bothan did not reply, though he clutched the steering yoke in a death grip.

Another set of bolts, but these were wide and faint. Then the sand started to diminish, and they were clear of the leading edge of the storm.

And there was a mesa wall dead ahead of them.

Cursing, Eddey pulled back on the stick, pitching the ship almost perpendicular. They cleared, but as they topped the rise, the IRDs caught sight of them again. They closed, their forward-facing guns blazing. One of the IRDs smoked along the side as a concussion missile fired.

“They’re going to catch us,” said Eddey. “Sorry.”

“Ten more seconds,” said Mander. “Gun it.”

The
New Ambition
screamed as it lunged forward. The concussion missile was fast, but the chunky Suwantek’s engines were more powerful, and it fell away behind them. The two IRDs could have redoubled their own speed, but instead they pulled up almost vertically, heading for space.

The three in the cockpit let out a long sigh, and Eddey tried to bank the sand-clogged engines. “What happened?” asked Reen.

“Standard operating procedure,” said Mander. “The IRDs have air-breathing capacities, but maintenance rules say they can only spend so long in a planetary envelope.

Failure to do so would result in a notation on their personal record.”

Reen looked at the Jedi and said, “You said you were reading their manuals … you knew that was there.”

“I knew
something
was there that we could use,” said Mander. “Even so, I think we’ll need to keep a low profile once we get to Tel Bollin. Eddey, if you can find some dry wash close enough to the city that we can reach it by cargo skiff, but beyond their normal scanners, I would be much obliged.”

“Done,” said the Bothan. “And let me be the first to welcome you to scenic Endregaad. After this landing, everything else that happens will be smooth sailing.”

They left the
New Ambition
a short distance from Tel Bollin. Mander set some security monitors along the perimeter of the camp while Reen and the Bothan unfurled long strands of red-tan camouflage netting and draped the ship in it. It wouldn’t stop a determined searcher, but the odd passerby or aerial patrol would not give it a second look. Then the pair readied the Ubrikkian Bantha III from the cargo hold. The Bantha III was a lightweight repulsorlift skiff that could carry them and a young Hutt, if need be. It had the smooth lines common to most of the Ubrikkian pleasure craft products, and it did not surprise Mander that Popara had put one in the ship’s hold.

Mander watched the Bothan and Pantoran working together quickly and efficiently. There was a minimum of words between them, yet one would have a tool ready when the other needed it. They seemed to fit naturally into the world, as if assembling a cargo skiff on a plague-ridden planet while hiding from the Corporate Sector Authority were the stuff of everyday life.

It was never like that with Toro, Mander thought. From the start the young Pantoran was hidden from him—not particularly secretive, but not open, either. The young man was so intent on becoming a Jedi—so driven to live up to the image from the holofilms and the legends—that he found the older archivist, with his magnaspecs
and dusty old records, to be a bit of a disappointment. He said nothing at the time, but to Mander the young man was clearly crestfallen when they first met, expecting something more heroic.

And the disappointment remained even after their first sparring session, when the youth rushed at him and Mander dispatched him easily. The older Jedi sidestepped every charge, blocked every attack, and met the young Pantoran’s passionate fury with a calm response. But it did little to remove that doubt. Now in the young student’s eyes Mander Zuma was a mystery to be solved, a puzzle to be unlocked. The older man held secrets that belied his unassuming appearance, and Toro wanted to learn them. Indeed, how could an unassuming person such as Mander Zuma defeat a dedicated opponent, if not by Jedi magic?

For his part, that first mock duel was equally troubling to Mander. Yes, he had beaten the youth calmly and handily, but wasn’t that what was expected of a Master? And even then he could feel the Force within the youth, impatient though he seemed. It was clear that with the proper training, Toro Irana could be a powerful Jedi.

The proper training. Mander shook his head. Perhaps that was Mander’s ultimate failure. He had calmed the fury of the youth, but had never taught him to master it. Toro was always challenging, both in training and in philosophy. He was always questioning, always pushing, always looking for a weak spot. The ability to see a weakness in a plan or an opponent was invaluable as a Jedi, yet Toro would always go for that weak spot immediately, often ignoring caution.

Was that what led his former student to Tempest? Perhaps he was looking for something even more powerful to master than the philosophies of his teacher. He wanted to prove himself better. He wanted one more
advantage on others. It was a common enough road to destruction, and Mander had read enough tales in the Archives to know that it was a tempting trap.

Mander set the last of the perimeter monitors and watched the sky, a dusty inverted bowl lightening only slightly with the dawn, the ruddy brown stain of the sky darkening with pollution in the direction of Tel Bollin. The cloud cover would keep them safe from most observers above the atmosphere, but a determined scan would punch through the clouds and find their ship with little problem. The question, he thought, was how determined any search would be. The lieutenant commander was headstrong enough to pursue them, even if it meant breaking a few directives of the CSA—directives that Mander had found in his own research. And while her obvious intelligence made Mander feel that she was aware of those directives, he hoped that her dedication would keep her from violating them too blatantly.

While he was in thought, Reen had come up with a bundle of cloth. “Here,” she said. “Put this on.”

Mander unraveled a poncho-like cloak. “It’s a zerape,” she explained. “Local coloring out here in the Outer Rim worlds. Even if Krin is too busy to scan for us, she probably has told people what to look out for.”

“We are a Jedi, a Bothan, and a Pantoran,” said Mander. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to blend in with the local population too much.” Still, he took the garment and shed his outer robe. The zerape was little more than a blanket with a neck-hole, but it fit well enough, and left his arms free.

“I don’t know—it’s not like you’re what I expected from a Jedi,” said Reen.

Mander started. Her words mirrored his own dark thoughts. “You’ve met other Jedi?” he asked. “Other than your brother, I mean.”

“No,” said Reen, “And I didn’t see Toro after he left
to join your Order. But the holofilms. The old epics and the news reports from the war. The Jedi were always moving, always attacking, always taking risks. Heroic. You seem too …”

“Insufficient?” suggested Mander, and the dream rose in the back of his mind.

“Ordinary,” Reen suggested, but the word gave Mander little solace. “Normal. You were more willing to talk than fight me when we first met. You were polite to Popara and his people. And you surrendered the medicine to the CSA.”

“They
will
be better at distributing it than we would,” noted Mander.

“Fine. But I still expected you to brandish your lightsaber, or throw someone across the room, or use your mind control powers to make them dance,” Reen said.

“What makes you think I can’t do any of that?” said Mander, smiling—and hoping that the smile would turn aside further questions.

It did not. “What do you do as a Jedi?” she asked.

“Different Jedi have different roles,” suggested Mander.

“But what is yours?” Reen insisted.

“I was Toro’s Master,” said Mander. “I taught him in the ways of the Force.”

“Yes, I know,” said Reen. “And when he mentioned you in his messages, he spoke well of you. Is that all you do, teach young Jedi?”

Mander gnawed his upper lip. “There are few teachers and many who need instruction,” he said. “But no, I do have other tasks.”

“Such as?”

Mander let out a deep sigh. “I go where I am sent by the Order. Currently, I am overseeing the Jedi Archives on Yavin Four. One of my tasks is to track down texts and holos throughout that region of the galaxy and
compare them against those in the Jedi library on Coruscant. During the Galactic Civil War, many of the vital records were corrupted—”

Reen interrupted, “You’re a librarian.”

“Archivist, if you please,” said Mander.

“Librarian,” said Reen, with a small laugh.

Mander felt himself redden with embarrassment. “I served as an apprentice to the great Jedi historian Tionne Solusar. She has been trying to restore the Archives in the old Jedi Temple, and my work has been vital in identifying and confirming lost texts.”

Reen beamed a wide smile, and Mander would have called it a playful and winning smile if the woman weren’t being completely insufferable. “A librarian!” she laughed. “My brother never told me that. But I should have guessed. He complained you were always sending him to this text or that volume for some quote from an old Jedi philosopher who was dead long before the Republic was created!”

The Jedi wanted to respond, to point out the fallacies in her argument, but Eddey hollered from outside the ship. The Bothan had closed up the cargo bay and was already at the control pedestal in the floater’s stern. Reen moved at his call, and was down the hillside and clambering onto the skiff.

Mander let out a frustrated sigh and wondered why he let her get under his skin. Probably because she was very much like her brother. The Jedi pressed the last security code into the monitors and followed her.

The skiff was open-topped, in the Ubrikkian style, and Eddey skated along the dry wash at a good rate of speed, such that any conversation of less than a shout was lost in the swirling dust they kicked up. They passed between a pair of sentinel rocks and were out of the wash and into the open bottomland that held Tel Bollin.
Mander turned to confirm where they had come from. The dust in their wake shifted from red and tan to a lighter shade, and the Jedi realized that the city was built on an evaporated lakebed, probably the remnant of when the planet last saw rainfall millennia ago.

The town itself was a dirty smudge on the horizon that did not look much better close up. Like most miner worlds, the place had a temporary look about it, the walls made of precast concrete dropped in from orbit and supplemented by mud bricks. Nothing was more than two stories tall, and all the edges were worn away into soft curves. Were the city to be abandoned, it would disappear into the lakebed within a generation.

It seemed to be well on its way already. Most of the outlying buildings were empty, open doors and windows staring blankly out at the world. Some were scorched around the entrances from fire. Some were marked with a crimson skull and a number underneath. Plague houses, indicating the number of bodies found inside. There was no movement on the streets, and if there were inhabitants, they were watching weakly from the shade.

Eddey slowed the skiff and Mander said, “Find a place to set this down, and we’ll go farther into the city on foot. We’ll stand out on this skiff. After all,” he added for Reen’s benefit, “we want to blend in.”

Eddey chose a location that was either an abandoned scrap yard or a multivehicle pileup. The scrap yard’s office, if it had been the former, had been gutted by flames, and smoky stains marked the walls. Mander made sure no one was about while Eddey secured the skiff. Reen adjusted her blaster, setting it to ride low on her right hip.

From eye level, the city did not improve in the least. As they moved deeper into Tel Bollin, there were finally people—dust-covered wretches moving through the morning light. It would normally be the time when people
would be abroad, before it got too hot, but the inhabitants were few and far between. Small beads rattling in a much bigger box. One of them staggered by—a miner, by his look—and Mander hailed him, asking where he might find the Skydove Freight offices. That was Popara’s business, and that was where they should start.