Star Wars - Labyrinth of Evil (by James Luceno)

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Labyrinth of Evil

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For my loving aunt and uncle,

Rosemary and Joe Savoca

And for my earliest mentors,

Pat Mathison, who was forever urging me to tell him stories,

and Richard Thomas, who introduced me to science fiction,

Ian Fleming, and Thomas Pynchon

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

...............

Heartfelt thanks to Shelly Shapiro, Sue Rostoni, and Howard Roffman, for

remaining in my corner throughout this project; to George Lucas, for

responding to my many queries; to Matt Stover, for providing additional

material and creative inspiration; to Dan Wallace, for sending me an early

version of his Prequel Era chronology; to Haden Blackman, for graciously

yielding some of the Big Moments; to the staff of the Hotel Casona, in

Flores,Guatemala, for keeping the espressos coming; and to Karen-Ann and

Jake, for granting me the time and space to daydream.

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= 1 =

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Darkness was encroaching on Cato Neimoidia's western hemisphere, though

exchanges of coherent light high above the beleaguered world ripped looming

night to shreds. Well under the fractured sky, in an orchard of manax trees

that studded the lower ramparts of Viceroy Gunray's majestic redoubt,

companies of clone troopers and battle droids were slaughtering one another

with bloodless precision.

A flashing fan of blue energy lit the undersides of a cluster of trees: the

lightsaber of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Attacked by two sentry droids, Obi-Wan stood his ground, twisting his

upraised blade right and left to swat blaster bolts back at his enemies.

Caught midsection by their own salvos, both droids came apart, with a

scattering of alloy limbs.

Obi-Wan moved again.

Tumbling under the segmented thorax of a Neimoidian harvester beetle, he

sprang to his feet and raced forward. Explosive light shunted from the

citadel's deflector shield dappled the loamy ground between the trees

cast-ing long shadows of their buttressed trunks. Oblivious to the chaos

occurring in their midst, columns of the five-meter-long harvesters

continued their stalwart march toward a mound that supported the fortress.

In their cutting jaws or on their upsweeping backs they carried cargoes of

pruned foliage. The crushing sounds of their ceaseless gnawing provided an

eerie cadence to the rumbling detonations and the hiss and whine of blaster

bolts.

From off to Obi-Wan's left came a sudden click of servos; to his right, a

hushed cry of warning.

"Down, Master!"

He dropped into a crouch even before Anakin's lips formed the final word,

lightsaber aimed to the ground to keep from impaling his onrushing former

Padawan. A blur of thrumming blue energy sizzled through the humid air,

followed by a sharp smell of cauterized circuitry, the tang of ozone. A

blaster discharged into soft soil, then the stalked, elongated head of a

battle droid struck the ground not a meter from Obi-Wan's feet, sparking as

it bounced and rolled out of sight, repeating: _"Roger, roger… Roger,

roger_…"

In a tuck, Obi-Wan pivoted on his right foot in time to see the droid's

spindly body collapse. The fact that Anakin had saved his life was nothing

new, but Anakin's blade had passed a little too close for comfort. Eyes

somewhat wide with surprise, he came to his feet.

"You nearly took my head off."

Anakin held his blade to one side. In the strobing light of battle his blue

eyes shone with wry amusement. "Sorry, Master, but your head was where my

lightsaber needed to go."

_Master._

Anakin used the honorific not as learner to teacher, but as Jedi Knight to

Jedi Council member. The braid that had defined his earlier status had been

ritually severed after his audacious actions at Praesitlyn. His tunic,

knee-high boots, and tight-fitting trousers were as black as the night. His

face scarred from a contest with Dooku-trained Asajj Ventress. His

mechanical right hand sheathed in an elbow-length glove. He had let his hair

grow long the past few months, falling almost to his shoulders now. His face

he kept clean-shaven, unlike Obi-Wan, whose strong jaw was defined by a

short beard.

"I suppose I should be grateful your lightsaber _needed_ to go there, rather

than desired to."

Anakin's grin blossomed into a full-fledged smile. "Last time I checked we

were on the same side, Master."

"Still, if I'd been a moment slower…"

Anakin booted the battle droid's blaster aside. "Your fears are only in your

mind."

Obi-Wan scowled. "Without a head I wouldn't have much mind left, now, would

I?" He swept his lightsaber in a flourishing pass, nodding up the alley of

manax trees. "After you."

They resumed their charge, moving with the supernatural speed and grace

afforded by the Force, Obi-Wan's brown cloak swirling behind him. Victims of

the initial bombardment, scores of battle droids lay sprawled on the ground.

Others dangled like broken marionettes from the branches of the trees into

which they had been hurled.

Areas of the leafy canopy were in flames.

Two scorched droids little more than arms and torsos lifted their weapons as

the Jedi approached, but Anakin only raised his left hand in a Force push

that shoved the droids flat onto their backs.

They jinked right, somersaulting under the wide bodies of two harvester

beetles, then hurdling a tangle of barbed underbrush that had managed to

anchor itself in the otherwise meticulously tended orchard. They emerged

from the tree line at the shore of a broad irrigation canal, fed by a lake

that delimited the Neimoidians' citadel on three sides. In the west a trio

of wedge-shaped _Venator-_class assault cruisers hung in scudding clouds.

North and east the sky was in turmoil, crosshatched with ion trails,

turbolaser beams, hyphens of scarlet light streaming upward from weapons

emplacements outside the citadel's energy shield. Rising from high ground at

the end of the peninsula, the tiered fastness was reminiscent of the command

towers of the Trade Federation core ships, and indeed had been the

inspiration for them.

Somewhere inside, trapped by Republic forces, were the Trade Federation

elite.

With his homeworld threatened and the purse worlds of Deko and Koru

Neimoidia devastated, Viceroy Gun-ray would have been wiser to retreat to

the Outer Rim, as other members of the Separatist Council were thought to be

doing. But rational thinking had never been a Neimoidian strong suit,

especially when possessions remained on Cato Neimoidia the viceroy

apparently couldn't live without. Backed by a battle group of Federation

warships, he had slipped onto Cato Neimoidia, intent on looting the citadel

before it fell. But Republic forces had been lying in wait, eager to capture

him alive and bring him to justice--thirteen years late, in the judgment of

many.

Cato Neimoidia was as close to Coruscant as Obi-Wan and Anakin had been in

almost four standard months, and with the last remaining Separatist

strongholds now cleared from the Core and Colonies, they expected to be back

in the Outer Rim by week's end.

Obi-Wan heard movement on the far side of the irrigation canal.

An instant later, four clone troopers crept from the tree line on the

opposite bank to take up firing positions amid the water-smoothed rocks that

lined the ditch. Far behind them a crashed gunship was burning. Protruding

from the canopy, the LAAT's blunt tail was stenciled with the eight-rayed

battle standard of theGalacticRepublic .

A gunboat glided into view from downstream, maneuvering to where the Jedi

were waiting. Standing in the bow, a clone commander named Cody waved hand

signals to the troopers on shore and to others in the gunboat, who

immediately fanned out to create a safe perimeter.

Troopers could communicate with one another through the comlinks built into

their T-visored helmets, but the Advanced Recon Commando teams had created

an elaborate system of gestures meant to thwart enemy attempts at

eavesdropping.

A few nimble leaps brought Cody face-to-face with Obi-Wan and Anakin.

"Sirs, I have the latest from airborne command."

"Show us," Anakin said.

Cody dropped to one knee, his right hand activating a device built into his

left wrist gauntlet. A cone of blue light emanated from the device, and a

hologram of task force commander Dodonna resolved.

"Generals Kenobi and Skywalker, provincial recon unit reports that Viceroy

Gunray and his entourage are making their way to the north side of the

redoubt. Our forces have been hammering at the shield from above and from

points along the shore, but the shield generator is in a hardened site, and

difficult to get at. Gunships are taking heavy fire from turbolaser cannons

in the lower ramparts. If your team is still committed to taking Gun-ray

alive, you're going to have to skirt those defenses and find an alternative

way into the palace. At this point we cannot reinforce, repeat, cannot

reinforce."

Obi-Wan looked at Cody when the hologram had faded. "Suggestions,

Commander?"

Cody made an adjustment to the wrist projector, and a 3-D schematic of the

redoubt formed in midair. "Assuming that Gunray's fortress is similar to

what we found on Deko and Koru, the underground levels will contain fungus

farms and processing and shipment areas. There will be access from the

shipping areas into the midlevel grub hatcheries, and from the hatcheries

we'll be able to infiltrate the upper reaches."

Cody carried a short-stocked DC-15 blaster rifle and wore the white armor

and imaging system helmet that had come to symbolize the Grand Army of the

Republic--grown, nurtured, and trained on the remote world of Kamino, three

years earlier. Just now, though, areas of white showed only where there were

no smears of mud or dried blood, no gouges, abrasions, or charred patches.

Cody's position was designated by orange markings on his helmet crest and

shoulder guards. His upper right arm bore stripes signifying campaigns in

which he had participated: Aagonar, Praesitlyn, Paracelus Minor, Antar 4,

Tibrin, Skor II, and dozens of other worlds from Core to Outer Rim.

Over the years Obi-Wan had formed battlefield partnerships with several

Advanced Recon Commandos--Alpha, with whom he had been imprisoned on

Rattatak, and Jangotat, on Ord Cestus. Early-generation ARCs had received

training by the Mandalorian clone template, Jango Fett. While the Kaminoans

had managed to breed some of Fett out of the regulars, they had been more

selective in the case of the ARCs. As a conse-quence, ARCs displayed more

individual initiative and leadership abilities. In short, they were more

like the late bounty hunter himself, which was to say, more _human._ While

Cody wasn't genetically an Advanced Recon Commando, he had ARC training and

shared many ARC attributes.

In the initial stages of the war, clone troopers were treated no differently

from the war machines they piloted or the weapons they fired. To many they

had more in common with battle droids poured by the tens of thousands from

Baktoid Armor Workshops on a host of Separatist-held worlds. But attitudes

began to shift as more and more troopers died. The clones' unfaltering

dedication to the Republic, and to the Jedi, showed them to be true comrades

in arms, and deserving of all the respect and compassion they were now

afforded. It was the Jedi themselves, in addition to other

progressive-thinking officials in the Republic, who had urged that second-

and third-generation troopers be given names rather than numbers, to foster

a growing fellowship.

"I agree that we can probably reach the upper levels, Commander," Obi-Wan

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LabyrinthofEvil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Formylovingauntanduncle, RosemaryandJoeSavoca Andformyearliestmentors, PatMathison,whowasforeverurgingmetotellhimstories, ...

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