Jedi Trial (5 page)

Odie had stood quietly at attention while the general and his staff used the information she had gathered to plan their attack. She wondered about the fate of her comrades, none of whom had been heard from. She struggled to control the lump in her throat when she realized they were probably dead. Occasionally someone would nod at her, or give her a thumbs-up gesture, and these silent acknowledgments helped soften the sorrow she felt—and the physical exhaustion that was
now taking over—by causing her chest to swell with pride.

At last Khamar turned to her. “At ease, trooper. You are one brave soldier, and pretty lucky to boot.”

She had never been this close to high-ranking officers before and was impressed at the quiet efficiency with which they laid their plans. Now the general himself was talking directly to her! She had not been able to clean up; her face was stained with dirt and sweat, and her hair hung in dirty strands about her face. Her voice sounded too high-pitched when she spoke, but she did not hesitate in her reply. “I was scared all the time, sir, and I didn’t need any luck: Sergeant Maganinny backed me up when I needed him.”

The general looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Well,” he said, “now you know what really makes an army work.”

G
eneral Khamar and several of his principal staff officers were observing the invaders from the same ridge where Odie had watched them barely hours before. Khamar had succeeded in reaching the ridge before the enemy deployed and quickly established a strong defensive position. So far, the invaders had been content to direct only harassing fires against Khamar’s force, but had made no attempt to attack him.

“We’re too well entrenched,” one of the officers remarked.

“They’re mostly droids anyway, no match for our troops,” another observed.

General Khamar glanced at him.
No match for our troops?
Obviously, that was an officer who had no idea how deadly the droids were. He briefly considered replacing him with someone more in touch with the realities of their situation, but realized there was no time to call up a replacement. He returned his thoughts to the situation before him. There was something odd about all of this. An army of an estimated fifty thousand droids was sitting down there without making a move against him. What could they be waiting for?

“Sir, they can’t flank us—we have strong forces to both sides,” an officer observed. “If they’re going to attack, they have to come at us straight up this slope. We’ll cut them to pieces if they do. They must be waiting for reinforcements.”

General Khamar frowned thoughtfully as he rubbed the stubble on his chin. He had not slept in the past forty-eight hours. That was a big problem about going to war: one never got enough sleep. Many times Khamar had requested more troops from Coruscant—as well as capital ships to protect the planet from orbit—but his requests had been refused. The Republic, he knew very well, was engaged on a vast scale, and the forces he felt he required to defend Praesitlyn had been denied because they were needed in other theaters. When he pointed out how strategically important the Intergalactic Communications Center was, he’d been told merely that he’d have to make do and to prepare his defensive plan with the forces at his disposal. Not even the Sluissi, who had the ships, would help him; they needed all their spacecraft to protect their shipyards.

It was almost as if the Republic wanted the Separatists to attack Praesitlyn. The general had kept this thought to himself, of course. It was ridiculous anyway. Everyone knew how important Praesitlyn was. Everyone knew how dangerously thin the Republic’s forces were spread.

But …

Suddenly the general knew with absolute clarity what was about to happen. He turned to the hologram map of his positions and the surrounding terrain and
put his finger on a vast, jumbled rock formation about ten kilometers behind his line.

“I want a redoubt established here,” he said, speaking rapidly. “Start moving our troops on the double. Move fast but in small increments, infantry and support troops first. If the enemy gets wind of a retrograde movement and attacks, I don’t want the bulk of our troops caught in the open. Have the combat engineers go in with the first group, to fortify the area. Armor and mobile artillery will lay down a barrage on the enemy to keep his head down. They’ll move last, to hold on to this ridge until the last possible moment until we can secure that area, then withdraw into it. How many fighter craft do we have?”

“A full wing is operational, sir, but—”

“Good! We can use the air assets to cover our withdrawal.”

“But, sir,” another officer protested, “we have a classic defensive position where we are. They can’t possibly break through here.” Other members of his staff murmured their assent, glancing nervously one from the other and casting questioning looks at their commander.

“They aren’t going to break through here, and that is not the main force,” the general announced quietly. “We’ve been duped. The main force hasn’t landed yet. When it does, it’ll land behind us, between this position and the center. This force”—he nodded down the ridge—“is the anvil. The hammer is about to strike—from behind us.”

Absolute silence enveloped General Khamar’s command
post for a full five seconds as the meaning of his words sank in. “Oh no,” someone whispered.

General Khamar sighed. “Listen carefully. There’s no easy way to put this except we’re retreating. Call it what you want, but it’s vital that morale not be affected.”

“General,” an officer said, “let’s not say we’re retreating, then. Let’s just say we’re moving our position to attack from a different direction!”

General Khamar smiled and clapped the officer on his shoulder. “Brilliant! All right, hop to it. I intend to save what I can of this army, and if the Separatists succeed in capturing this planet, which they will if I’m right about this, at least I’m going to make them pay for it. Just hope we aren’t too late to make it to those rocks.”

Pors Tonith didn’t bother even to glance up at Karaksk Vet’lya, his chief of staff, when the Bothan brought him the news. “So he’s not as stupid as we thought,” Tonith commented, a tight smile on his purple-stained lips. “How long has this retrograde movement been going on?” His tone was deceptively mild.

Karaksk’s fur rippled softly as he searched for the proper words to make what he had to say appear in the best possible light. “About an hour, sir, but we—”

“Ah!” Tonith finally looked at Karaksk, holding up his forefinger for silence. “
We
, you say?
We?
Have you by any chance a dianoga stuffed in your pocket? Who is this
we
who are making decisions in my command?”

Karaksk swallowed nervously. “I meant, sir, that our staff observed this retrograde movement on the part of
the defending forces and we, the staff and I, that is, we decided to observe it for a time to, ah, determine the enemy’s plan.” His fur rippled less gently as his fear moved closer to the surface.

“You did?” Tonith carefully set his teacup on a saucer and stood. “The plan seems to be to withdraw, wouldn’t you say?” He smiled. Then: “You idiot!” he screamed. Spittle flew from his lips, and a damp spot appeared on Karaksk’s fur. “They’ve figured out what our plan is. They’re moving to a more defensible position! A droid could have figured that out!” Tonith managed to calm himself. “How much of their force remains in the original position? How far is the main body from the communications center?”

Feeling more confident now, Karaksk replied, “Their mobile artillery and armor remain in place, sir. Some of the infantry and support troops have reached the redoubt, a natural barrier some ten kilometers behind their original main battle line. The rest seem to be en route. They are about one hundred fifty kilometers from the center.”

Tonith was beginning to sense a challenge here. “Interesting. We shall proceed to the bridge. I’m ordering the main force landed immediately. I have two choices, it seems: I can let this garrison fort up, and isolate them while I move with the rest of my army to take the center; or I can first destroy the garrison and then move on the center. Which course would you advise, my dear fellow?”

“Well, sir, if I may. Isolate them and move on the Intergalactic Communications Center. We do not need
the entire army to take the place. Your plan, sir, is working perfectly!”

“And leave an enemy force in my rear? Really?”

“Well …”

“Dead enemies cannot fight back. We will destroy this army in detail and then take the communications center. We have the strength, we have the time. Now leave,” he finished with a glare.

Tonith smiled at Karaksk’s rapidly retreating back. Bothans were duplicitous, opportunistic, and greedy—characteristics he well understood and could manipulate. And the rippling of their fur allowed the astute person to read them so easily.

“I have a mission for you.”

Odie stood at attention before the reconnaissance platoon commander and another officer whom she recognized by his collar tabs as an engineer. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Kreen, the commander of our engineer battalion. That rock formation where you met Sergeant Maganinny, I want you to take Colonel Kreen back there. Right now.”

“Yessir,” Odie responded.

“Let’s go, trooper,” Colonel Kreen said. He stepped off with a short nod at the lieutenant. As he and Odie briskly headed for the engineer battalion’s bivouac, he briefed her on the mission.

“I have a convoy of cargo skiffs all loaded and ready to go. I want you to lead it back to that rock formation, where they’ll unload and prepare another defensive position.” He smiled down at her, but her heart skipped a beat as she instantly interpreted the nature of
this move for what it really was. “It’s not a withdrawal,” he cautioned her. “We’re just establishing a rear supply base.” He smiled reassuringly, seeing her expression. “Are you ready to leave right now?” He grinned. His confidence was reassuring, but that slight pause spoke volumes.

“Yessir!” Odie replied enthusiastically. Since she wasn’t needed for any reconnaissance missions at the moment, she’d been put into the army’s field communications center to work in her secondary specialty—and she was bored to death.

Reconnaissance trooper Odie Subu straddled her speeder as she closely watched the three hundred vehicles of the engineering battalion finish forming up for the rearward movement to the redoubt. There were dirt movers, bridgers, graders, ground clearers, diggers, and more exotic machines whose uses she couldn’t guess. The most numerous, though, were cargo carriers, many of which were marked with symbols she recognized as indicating their cargoes were explosive ordnance.

She estimated there were enough explosives in the convoy to obliterate the army’s entire position. She briefly wondered why General Khamar didn’t order the engineers to use the explosives to destroy the droid army. Then she realized the army had no way to get the explosives into the midst of the droid army without whoever was doing the job getting killed before they could accomplish their mission. Still, she thought, it seemed a waste to not set some of them in the droids’
path, to destroy as many as possible when they followed the retreating army.

Well
, she decided,
General Khamar must know what he’s doing
. Besides, how did she know the engineers hadn’t already emplaced explosives to kill the droids when they passed over this ground?

“Recon scout,” Lieutenant Colonel Kreen’s voice came through her helmet comm.

“Recon here, sir,” she said into her mike.

“We’re ready. Move out.”

Odie took a last look at the convoy. Whatever route she chose had to accommodate the largest of the engineering vehicles. The shake of her head went unseen inside her helmet. The biggest of those machines was so big, she was going to have to lead them in a round-about manner.

“Moving out, sir,” she said, and eased her speeder into gear.

She wasn’t able to lead the convoy at speed, not even the paltry 250 kilometers per hour that was all her speeder was capable of. Over this rugged terrain, she had to keep her speed down to under fifty kph, which was the fastest the slower vehicles in the convoy could manage—at times she had to slow to little more than a trot for them to keep up, and sometimes she had to slow because Colonel Kreen said they were raising too much of a dust cloud. The distance they had to cover was only ten kilometers, line of sight. But the route she had to follow, this way and that, and sometimes doubling back, made it nearly four times that distance—and more than four times the length of time to cover.

But at last they made it. She stopped and pulled aside, while the engineering vehicles trundled past.

Colonel Kreen had his command vehicle pull off the trail next to her.

“Well done, trooper,” he said. “I’ll see to it General Khamar and your platoon commander both get a report on how well you did. Now you’d better get back.”

“Thank you, sir.” Odie saluted and waited until the engineering commander was back in his vehicle before she turned her speeder around and gunned it. She headed back at top speed.

Lieutenant Erk H’Arman knew he was going down, but even as he plummeted toward the ground he remained cool, calling upon every fiber in his body and all the skill he could muster to save his starfighter. The hit from the enemy fighter had slammed into him like a hammer and sent him into an uncontrolled spin downward. He had only just been able to pull out and stabilize his machine at a mere thousand meters above the ground. His hydraulic system was failing fast, and he knew he had but two choices: eject or ride his fighter in. So far there was no fire inside the cockpit. A pilot’s worst fear was to burn alive in his or her cockpit; crashing was no problem—that would be over quickly.

This was the most target-rich environment Erk and his fellow pilots had ever encountered. Not even in the many simulated practice sessions had anyone thought to program this many marks. Already, three pilots in Erk’s wing had been killed crashing into enemy fighters—not on purpose, but simply because there were too many of them to fly through without hitting one. The fight continued
far, far above Erk. The enemy was winning, but now Erk H’Arman was intent on saving his life and, if possible, his ship.