"I'll be ready for him," she said. "For all of them."
Asajj Ventress waited for the hologram to vanish, then took her jointed lightsaber in both hands and snapped it back into two lethal blades.
That was how she would snap Skywalker's neck when he finally stood in her way.
NINE
The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, "Why are we not acting to stop this?" Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench. The Jedi cannot help the slaves of Tatooine, but they can help the slavemasters.
Dooku, Yoda's former Padawan, to Darth Sidious
* * *
MONASTERY ENTRANCE, TETH
The armored door opened with an ominous rumble like a bantha's gut and a faint smell of decay. Rex sighted up, checking out the long corridor in his rifle's optics.
Yeah, he thought. We picked the wrong end of the bantha again.
He flicked on his helmet spot lamp, throwing a blue-white disk of light on the far wall. The four troopers with him-Coric, Vaize, Ayar, and Lunn-followed suit. Dense black pools marked the alcoves spaced at regular intervals along the full length of the passage, and where there were blind spots, there were potential ambushes.
It was like one of the nightmarish house clearance exercises the GAR instructors on Kamino would run as part of training. They liked to show you just how many ways you could get yourself killed if you didn't have eyes in your backside and didn't treat every shadow as hostile.
Standing on a nice open battlefield with good honest laser rounds raining down was actually comforting by comparison. Rex put his finger to his lips and signaled his squad to do a forward overlap maneuver, checking and clearing each section of the tunnel before moving on.
"Kill the lights unless we make enemy contact," Rex said. "Night-vision visor and infrared." He turned to Skywalker. "You can see okay, can't you, sir?"
"I can sense my way," Anakin said.
Ahsoka's boots crunched on something. "I'm fine. Togrutas have good low-light vision."
"No snacking on the local rodent life, littl'un." He was glad she could take a joke. That was a big plus. "But unless it's wearing a diaper, shoot it. No chances."
"Is that fair?" Ahsoka asked. The two Jedi crept along the passage behind him. Rex hoped their Force sense of danger was working.
"In hostage extraction, you don't have the luxury of checking ID. You slot them before they slot you. The only ones you give the benefit of the doubt are those you've already identified positively as hostages. Everyone else is a hostile until proven otherwise."
"Wow," she said. "What if..."
"I think hostile is a given here, Ahsoka," Skywalker said. "Do what Rex says."
They edged down the passage, waiting for the worst. Rex tried to get an idea of the layout of the monastery, planning a search pattern in his head. It was going to take time.
And it's going to have some Dooku surprises along the way. The general knows it. I know it.
Something a few meters ahead showed up in Rex's night vision, an unnaturally smooth surface that appeared as a green smear. It moved. Rex raised his rifle. Coric and Lunn, five meters ahead, slammed it against the wall and put their Deeces to its head just as Skywalker lunged forward with his lightsaber drawn.
It was a droid-not a battle droid, just a regular domestic clanker-and it was lucky it wasn't already a smoking pile of scrap.
"Who are you?" Skywalker demanded. His blue blade lit up its face.
"I am the caretaker of this holy place, sir. Four-A-Seven. You have liberated me from those battle droids." The droid froze. Coric and Lunn didn't stand down. "Thank you."
Skywalker didn't look inclined to shut down his lightsaber either. "Where's the Hutt?"
"The battle droids kept their prisoners on the detention level."
"Kept." Skywalker's grip on his weapon didn't relax one bit. "So they've all left, have they?"
"I appear to be alone here, yes."
It didn't matter if Four-A believed that or not. Rex didn't, and it was obvious that Skywalker didn't either. "So where's the detention level?"
"Down those stairs, sir. They lead to the storage cellars, which were turned into cells by the heathens who defiled this place."
Rex gestured to Coric and Lunn to let the droid go on its way, but he kept an eye on it as it left. And he didn't like the sound of cellars and stairs. Both presented their own security issues. Skywalker motioned Ahsoka ahead and turned to Rex.
"Yes, I know-but you stay here and secure the exit, Captain."
"Yes, sir. You must be psychic."
"No, just as suspicious as you are."
Skywalker vanished into the gloom, Ahsoka at his side. Coric flicked on his helmet spot lamp and tracked Four-A up and down the passage as the droid went about its business, which seemed to consist of flicking pieces of debris from ledges and muttering to itself.
Rex switched to a secure comm circuit that linked him to his squad and nobody else. "Trust is a virtue, Sergeant." He stood at the doorway to scan the courtyard outside for devices and droid activity. "Like patience."
"I must have been at the back of the line when they handed those out, then, sir."
"Me too."
"He knows he's walking into trouble, doesn't he?"
"Yes."
"I have this nagging feeling we ought to be down there with him."
"Don't worry, Sergeant." Rex activated a few more HUD icons with rapid blinks. He knew the coordinates of every gunship, each sergeant. "If the general comes back with any broken bones . . . they won't be his."
* * *
DETENTION LEVEL, TETH MONASTERY
Anakin couldn't sense droids as entities in the same way that he could feel organic beings, but his Force sense of danger knew something was wrong.
He also had a brain that worked just fine, and it told him that no Sep commander in his-or her-right mind would kidnap a strategic hostage, put up a token fight, and then run away.
Count Dooku certainly wouldn't.
"Master, you do know you're walking us into a trap, don't you?" Ahsoka whispered.
Anakin crept carefully along the flagstones, ready for booby traps and ambushes. Something moved in his peripheral vision. "I do."
"We just passed two battle droids." "I know."
"Can I just take care of them?"
"If it makes you feel better. They obviously don't want to kill us."
Ahsoka fell back. Anakin heard the vzzzm of her lightsaber, saw a bloom of green light reflected from the slick layer of condensation on the wall, and waited for the sound of destruction. Metal clattered; Ahsoka grunted a couple of times. Then she was at his side again, but he hadn't heard even a single footstep. She really could be a silent hunter.
"Why did you say they don't want to kill us?" she whispered. "You think they weren't trying? They were pretty serious about it from where I was standing."
Then again, maybe she hadn't caught on to the whole stealth thing. "Can we have this conversation later?"
"Won't that be too late?"
"It's a trap. And if it's Dooku's, then it won't be a simple case of gotcha."
The whole monastery smelled of decay and ancient dampness. But on top of that aroma wafted something distinctive, a scent firmly embedded in Anakin's memory. Smell was the most evocative of senses for a human, the most primal, even for a Jedi; and this smell went back to before conscious memory, to his earliest childhood.
It was . . . ammonia. That was the nearest thing Anakin could compare it to. It had that sinus-searing quality, but it was also laced with sulfur and other compounds that made him gag.
Hutt.
It was a scent he'd somehow grown up with on Tatooine. At a time when he was trying ha
rd to suppress emotionally painful memories and concentrate on doing his duty, however much that duty stuck in his craw, he didn't need his buttons pressed by things that whispered to the buried primal self deep within.
"He's down here." He broke into a faster walk, still alert and ready for a fight. "I can sense him. Cover me."
When he looked back at Ahsoka, she was sniffing the scent too, inhaling with her lips slightly parted as if tasting the air. The more he looked at her, the more he saw not this gawky child desperate to be taken seriously and treated as an adult, but the legacy of a species that could bare its claws and rip apart its prey without a second thought when need arose.
Anakin knew what it was to be dismissed as just a pushy kid when there was so much that he could do.
"Eugh, that's pretty rank." She inhaled like a Corellian wine taster, sucking in the air in a long, slow sigh. Droids moved in the shadows, and Anakin half watched them, waiting. "Not just scent glands . . . something ickier. I don't think Dooku's minions know how to take care of kids. Like changing diapers."
"They all smell like that. He's a Hutt." Anakin's revulsion just slipped out, or maybe he wanted it to. Ahsoka was attuned enough to sense his emotional struggle anyway. "I hate them."
"I can tell, Master. So why are you doing this?"
"Because duty is about doing what's right, about keeping your word, not just doing what you feel like doing."
"And this isn't about helping Jabba but about defeating Separatists."
"We won't be able to destroy them if we don't grab his kid. It's that simple."
"I think that must be the hardest part of being a Jedi." She put her hand on the door of the cell. The stench of ammonia and sulfur was like a flashing sign saying the hutt's in here. "I think I can hear him."
Anakin strained to hear. The door to the cell looked almost like a cube that had been rammed into the aperture, so massively heavy that it was as good as soundproofing. "Stand back."
Ahsoka snapped her lightsaber to life and stood to one side of the door. Anakin eased it open with a Force push to leave his hands free for whatever might try to rush him on the other side. But as the creaking slab of wood swung inward, what hit him wasn't a fist or a blaster bolt, but a wall of noise, and a smell that he could have sliced with a blade.
The Huttlet was crying-screaming-on a mattress in the middle of the floor. Ahsoka rushed in and knelt down beside him.
"Oh, he's just a baby!" Her expression was part pity, part dismay. "I was expecting him to be older."
"Yeah, and then we wouldn't have been able to lift him . . ." Anakin was still waiting for the trap to be sprung, but the baby needed moving. "Come on. Let's get him out of here."
The Huttlet was screaming himself into a frenzy. Ahsoka tried to soothe him. "It's okay, Rotta, you're going home. You're going home to Daddy. Come on, Rotta, stop crying . . . Master, do you know any Huttese?"
Oh yes, I most certainly do. I grew up speaking it. I never wanted to speak it again.
"Rotta," Anakin said quietly. "Rotta, pedunkee, da bunk dunko. Sala. Sala."
He was a slug. A baby slug, a helpless one, but Anakin knew what he'd grow into. When Rotta sobbed himself to a gulping standstill and squirmed to see where the voice was coming from, Anakin couldn't quite reconcile his feelings.
How can I bate a youngling? He's just a victim. He doesn't know what his father is. He just loves him and wants to go home.
And Anakin understood that simple hunger better than any Jedi he knew.
"Wow," Ahsoka said, "I don't know if he understood you, or if you stunned him into silence, but he's calmed down. He's so cute. He's just like a little toy!"
"You just volunteered to carry him, Snips ..."
"Fine." She squatted down and scooped Rotta up in her arms, but Anakin saw the surprise on her face as she realized he was a lot heavier than he looked. "How did you learn Huttese? Or were you just making that up?"
"You pick up all kinds of things as a Jedi." Ahsoka wasn't stupid. She knew there was something eating away at him, and he hoped she'd think it was just a dislike of Hutts. It wouldn't make Anakin unique, that was for sure. Hutts didn't inspire affection.
"Let's go. Rex, this is Skywalker, over. All clear?"
Rex's voice carried over the comlink. "All secure here, sir. Got him?"
"Safe and sound. We're coming now."
"I'll send Coric back to make sure the droids don't get ideas. Can't risk any accidents with the kid now."
"Good point, Captain." Anakin sized up the Huttlet with a practiced eye. "Ask Coric to fetch a backpack, too. Rotta's heavy cargo."
"Copy that, sir."
It was nearly done. Anakin waited, defending the door until Coric showed. Ahsoka did her best to keep Rotta calm, rocking him. Nobody could ever accuse her of giving less than a hundred percent; cuddling a Hutt was beyond the call of duty, because she'd be in the 'freshers for a week scrubbing the smell off herself.
So the Jedi Council can pull out all the stops for a Hutt criminal when it suits them.
And they send me.
Is Master Yoda trying to teach me a lesson about submission to the will of the Force? Does he even remember how I came to be a Jedi?
Anakin wondered just how good, how clever, how brave he'd have to be to get any acknowledgment from the Jedi Masters. He didn't serve for prizes; he served because Qui-Gon Jinn believed he had a destiny, and he needed to know what that was to make sense of the pain and loss in his life. But he knew as surely as he knew anything that his troops liked him and cared if he lived or died, and that Kenobi did his best to make up for the sheer . . . dislocation Anakin felt at being absorbed into this Jedi world of no families, no loves, and no passions.
But I've got Padme, and nobody can take her from me. Not your rules, not your traditions, not your disapproval. I have to find my own way, Masters.
"You okay, Skyguy?" Ahsoka asked. "You look worried. You know I only call you that to get you to lighten up, don't you?"
"Yeah . . ."
"You worried that this has been too easy?"
"Not with half my men lying dead, no. Not easy."
"Sorry."
Boots thudded in the passage outside. Coric entered with a backpack in both hands, and almost screeched to a halt as if he'd hit a wall. Anakin couldn't see his face, but the jerk of his head showed he had his helmet filters open and had inhaled Rotta's distinctive aroma.
"Sir, permission to speak freely?" Coric held the backpack out to Ahsoka. "That kriffing Hutt is honking, sir. His dad must need a decomposing nerf as an air freshener. Can we stow him in the cargo bay?"
"My sentiments entirely, Sergeant. Let's go."
"Awwww," Ahsoka said. Her sympathetic noise turned into a grunt of exertion as she heaved the laden backpack onto her shoulders. "He probably thinks we stink, too."
"I bet you wish you had a helmet with filters right now, ma'am ..." Coric adjusted the breather unit of his helmet and stood back to let the two Jedi exit the cell. "The captain's got a larty on standby, sir. You got everything you need?"
"Yes, let's get out before I change my mind about the Hutt."
"He doesn't mean it, Rotta," Ahsoka said, jiggling the backpack and trying to glance over her shoulder. "We need you to get your daddy to let us use his space lanes." She paused, dropping her voice. "And I think you're adorable."
Anakin made his way back to the exit, checking every alcove for Dooku's real trap. There had to be one. Separatists made mistakes and lost battles, but not like this, not this blatantly. He saw daylight ahead and Rex silhouetted against it, kama swinging as he turned repeatedly to check something outside in the courtyard, and he tried to work out what could possibly go wrong in these final minutes.
An attack once we're airborne.
Hawk was the best pilot of a brilliant squadron, and the LAAT/i could take a serious pounding.
They couldn't possibly have booby-trapped a baby . . .
Seps would try anything, but there were
n't many places to strap an explosive on a baby Hutt.
I don't get it. I just don't get it. Not yet.
"Skyguy..."
Anakin didn't look around. His gaze darted everywhere in the shadows ahead. Coric had their six. "Don't tell me, the Hutt's thrown up on you."
"No, but I think something's wrong."
Here we go.
"How wrong?" Anakin slowed, ready to swing his lightsaber. He was prepared to believe that a Togruta could detect things that even he couldn't. "Can you sense something?"
"I think I know why he was screaming. And then why he went quiet."
"What? Spit it out, Snips."
Ahsoka did a turn so that Anakin could peer into the backpack. "Look at him. He's making awful noises. Does he look okay to you? I think he's ill. Really ill."
Anakin couldn't recall seeing a baby Hutt on Tatooine, but he didn't have to be a doctor to see that Ahsoka's fears were justified.
Rotta the Hutt, his vengeful father's pride and joy, was dull-eyed, tongue lolling, struggling for breath.
He was ill, all right. They now faced the prospect of handing back Jabba's kidnapped heir in a body bag.
Now, that's some trap.
Dooku was much, much subtler than even Anakin had imagined.
* * *
JABBA'S PALACE, TATOOINE
As soon as the Jedi Kenobi left, satisfied that he had a deal, Count Dooku arrived.
Jabba had long since decided they were both in this for the same thing, both of them from the same nest-arrogant ootmian, offworlders from the Core who thought that he was some ignorant Outer Rim peasant shag who couldn't see the bigger picture or the political game they were playing.
One of them had probably set up the other. Jabba just didn't know which. Maybe the Jedi wasn't that devious-maybe, although Jabba would never bet on it-but he served politicians, and the Senate was not Jabba's kind of scum. They were beneath contempt. They bribed, lied, cheated, defrauded, stole, and murdered. Jabba did quite a few of those things too, but he never claimed otherwise, nor was what he did against Hutt law and custom. Republic Senators, though . . . they paraded one morality in public, but lived another in private.
Hypocrisy wasn't the Hutt way. Jabba was ashamed of nothing.