Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (30 page)

"It
has to, " she insisted. "You told me about your
psychometric ability..."

"My
unreliable psychometric ability, Larin. "

"...and
that your Master thinks you can tame it. What better time to try than
now?"

"No
better time, " he agreed, "but you can't make it work just
by wanting it to. "

"I
trust you, " she said with unaffected candor. "And you
haven't let me down yet, not even once. I don't expect you to start
now. "

That
stopped his protests. He reached out, took the shard of metal from
her hand, and held it up to the light. It gleamed like a metallic
diamond.

"Is
that what I think it is?" asked Ula.

"It's
a piece of the nest, " she confirmed.

"And
Shigar can use his mind to find out where it comes from?"

"I
can try, "said Shigar, sternly. "That's all. I can't
promise anything. "

"Well,
it's a start. How long will it take?"

"I
don't know. I'll talk to Master Satele, first. She might be able to
guide me through this. Can you put a call through to Tython?"

"Faster
than you can ask me to. "

"I'll
take it in the main hold, " he said. "There's a
holoprojector there. "

Shigar
got up from the copilot's seat. Jet fiddled with the instruments in
front of him, opening up comm channels and shunting data through the
ship.

Larin
was sitting thoughtfully, eyes staring blankly at the ladder down
which Shigar had disappeared. A tiny worry line creased the bridge of
her nose.

Ula
leaned in to whisper, "You don't really think he can do this, do
you?"

Her
green eyes focused on him. "There's only one thing I think, "
she said. "If he doesn't even try, that'd be worse than failing.
"

Ula
could only nod in the face of her unswerving integrity, and wish that
he possessed half of it.

"Now,
" she said, "I have to get this glove off and look at my
hand. In the absence of a field medic, I need one of you two to help
me out. Private Hetchkee? Envoy Vii?"

"I'll
do it, " said Ula quickly. "You stay here and back up Jet,
in case he needs it, " he told Hetchkee.

"Medkit's
in the aft air lock" Jet called out. "Let me know when you
have a destination and I'll get this crate moving. "

"Will
do. "

Larin
headed for the ladder and Ula followed her, frantically dredging up
everything he'd learned about medicine from a brief training session
on Dromund Kaas, years ago.

CHAPTER
23

Shigar
paced the Auriga Fire's cramped hold as best he could while waiting
for Jet to patch him through to Tython. He wasn't doing a very good
job of it. He could only manage three long strides from one side to
the other, and he had banged his head on a protruding instrument
panel twice already. The pointlessness of the exercise was just
becoming apparent to him when the old-model holoprojector flickered
and emitted a soft whisper of static.

He
pulled from the opposite wall a retractable chair designed for
someone much smaller than him and sat down, feeling all knees and
elbows.

A
blueish image of the Grand Master formed. It flickered and jumped but
held firm enough to follow.

"Shigar,
" Satele Shan said, raising her hand in greeting. "I'm
pleased to hear from you. Are you on Hutta?"

He
briefly outlined his current position: in a smuggler's vessel over
the Hutts' homeworld, still wearing what remained of his impromptu
disguise. "I find myself in an intractable position, and I need
your counsel, Master. "

She
smiled, slightly but not unkindly. "You have agreed to things
you do not feel you can accomplish, or which you do not want to
accomplish. Perhaps both. "

Her
powers of perception startled him. "You can sense this from so
far away?" Truly she was the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy!

She
shook her head and smiled with charming self-deprecation. "No,
Shigar. I just remember what its like to be in the field.
Responsibility, decisions, consequences-they feel very different when
assumed in isolation. Do they not, my Padawan?"

He
lowered his head. "Yes, Master. "

"Tell
me, " she said, "and I will offer what counsel I can. "

Shigar
started at the beginning, with his and Larin's arrival on Hutta. He
skipped the mundane details of his infiltration of the palace and
described his first encounter with the unique technology offered for
sale by Tassaa Bareesh, the silver roots spreading out from the vault
into the underground tunnels, and Larin's account of the droid-nest
that Jet Nebula had pulled from the wreckage of the Cinzia. He
described his three-way fight with Dao Stryver and the young Sith,
then the emergence of the hexes and their near-escape.

"You
fought a Sith?" Master Satele asked him, sounding impressed.

"I
believe she was an apprentice like myself, " he admitted, "else
I wouldn't have survived. "

"Regardless.
A Sith and a Mandalorian at once, and you did survive. Few Padawans
could boast of such a thing, Shigar. The fact that you are not
boasting of it I take to be a sign of good character. "

"Master,
I do not believe I survived by skill, or even luck. " In the
retelling, he noticed several things that hadn't occurred to him at
the time. "Stryver would have defeated both myself and the Sith
apprentice, given time. The interruption of the hexes changed
everything. He no longer fought us. He stood back to watch us fight
this new enemy. I believe he was holding back. "

She
leaned back into her seat, cupping her chin with one hand. Shigar
recognized the background; she was in her private study, an austere,
minimalist space with few ornaments, but constructed from the finest
possible orowood.

"I
see" was all she said. "Go on. "

He
described the hexes in more detail, beginning with the sixfold
symmetry of their basic appearance, their identical lack of
personality or individuality, and their deadly unwillingness to stand
down, then moving on to the glimpses of their internal structure that
he had received while killing one of them.

"The
technology is quite outside my experience, " he said,
remembering honeycomb matrices and strange oily fluids leaking from
the body. "The hexes are no more resourceful than any normal
droid- certainly no more so than the training droids on Tython-but
they display an adaptability I've never seen before. An injured one
merged with another to form a single eight-legged version. Later, one
activated a camouflage system that the others didn't seem to possess,
and the weapons of a third became more powerful. It almost seems
like... "

"Like
what, Shigar?"

"I
don't want to say evolving, Master, but I do think they're capable of
adaptive redesign. "

"In
the heat of combat?"

"Yes.
Particularly so, I suspect. "

"That
makes them very remarkable droids indeed, " she said. "Who
could have built such things?"

"Envoy
Vii was interrogated by Dao Stryver, Master. The Mandalorian let slip
that Lema Xandret was a droid maker. "

"Do
you think these are her creations, Shigar?"

"I
have too little information to say for certain, but what we do have
is suggestive. "

She
nodded. "Indeed. Dao Stryver was hunting both a particular droid
maker and a ship containing the means to build remarkable droids.
Lema Xandret is most likely the architect of these things. But what
is their purpose? If they are weapons, whom are they meant for?"

"It's
possible, Master, that they aren't weapons at all. Not aimed weapons,
anyway. They may simply have been fighting to get home. "

"To
do what?"

Shigar
had no speculation to offer on that point. He vividly remembered the
droids' screeching rage at being obstructed in their quest to escape.
Such emotional programming was not normal for combat droids-or any
droids at all, in his experience.

"There's
something else, " he said. "When Stryver confronted the
Sith apprentice, he said something about her mother. I don't know
exactly what he meant, but it got a reaction from her. Whoever her
mother is, she's connected somehow. "

He
let that fact sit where it was. As it stood, the Sith's involvement
was unexplained. While tempted to draw conclusions from suggestive
facts, he thought it best to wait until they had more information.
The wrong conclusion could be deadly, if they based their actions
upon it.

Master
Satele, it seemed, agreed.

"So,
" she said, "the thing in the Cinzia wasn't an ancient
artifact that we or the Sith might find useful. It was something
strange and new. Where does that leave us?"

"The
Mandalorian has the navicomp, " he said. "He'll be decoding
the information it contains as we speak. "

"And
then what?"

"His
motives are unknown, " Shigar said, casting his mind back to the
things Ula and Larin had said on the way to orbit. "I believe
that the Mandalorians have been involved in this from the beginning.
Stryver may have wanted the navicomp, in part, to destroy evidence
that the Cinzia's 'diplomatic mission' was with Mandalore-but that
makes less sense the more I think about it. Mandalorians aren't
unified, and they don't parley with anyone. Fight or conquer, that's
their philosophy. "

"They
allied themselves with the Empire against us, " Master Satele
reminded him.

"Yes,
but that's the Empire, not some isolated colony in the middle of
nowhere. "

She
nodded. "What are your plans now, Shigar? Are you returning
Envoy Vii and your friend to Coruscant?"

Shigar
knew that look on his Master's face. She already knew the answer to
her question. She had either worked it out or seen it in a vision.
There was also a slight emphasis on the word friend that encouraged
him to cast his answer in the frankest terms possible.

"Larin
thinks I can use psychometry to find this world. " He held up
the sliver of silvery alloy that she'd recovered from the nest. It
glittered in a way that wasn't beautiful, but was certainly eye
catching. "I think she places too much faith in my abilities. I
would rather bring it to Tython for someone reliable to read it
there. "

"That
would waste time, Shigar, and time may be of the essence. "

"Do
you know this, Master, or do you just suggest it?"

"It
doesn't matter. I do know that Larin's faith in you is not
unwarranted. Perhaps you should have faith in her, too. Does she
strike you as a fantasist?"

"Anything
but. " Larin was as solid as a rock. "She sees what she
sees and she says what she says. "

"Well,
then. Maybe the one who doesn't see is you, Shigar. "

"Perhaps,
Master. But if I fail..."

"Metaphorically
speaking, " she said with a smile, "if is the smallest word
in the Galactic Standard lexicon, yet it stands between us and our
greatest dreams. Let it be a bridge, Shigar. It's time you crossed
it. I will be waiting for you on the other side. "

He
took a deep breath. "Yes, Master. "

"Meanwhile,
I am hopeful that Supreme Commander Stantorrs will provide us with
substantive backup. Where the Mandalorians are concerned, he's
unlikely to take any chances. But it will undoubtedly be a military
mission, not Jedi. I'll suggest rendezvousing at Honoghr. Send
coordinates to me there, once you have them, and we'll get on our
way. "

Shigar's
mind reeled at the logistical efforts unfolding in response to his
actions. "Yes, Master. "

"The
Force is with you, Shigar. "

The
line crackled and died.

Shigar
slumped momentarily into the seat, and then went to find somewhere
quiet to meditate.

*
* *

Larin
hadn't intended to eavesdrop on Shigar's conversation with his
Master, but the Auriga Fire was too small to allow anyone actual
privacy. Where she and Ula sat facing each other was less than five
meters away from Shigar, and the metal-lined corridors carried every
sound. Ula spoke softly so as not to disturb him, and it was easy for
Larin to phase the envoy out.