Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (63 page)

He
skulled the contents of his glass without taking his eyes off her.

She
was careful not to give him an answer. "Where does the irony
come into it?"

"We
have no leader. Do you remember that? I'm sure you do, and I'm sure
it struck a chord. Your kind is of a fairly individualistic bent, as
is mine. We sympathize with Lema Xandret's desire to follow her own
path, even if we don't share her methodology. After all, we don't
have the army of droids that allowed her political indulgences-an
army that was probably more about building and terraforming
originally than fighting anyone, until we showed up. And that's where
the irony lies.

"The
Emperor certainly didn't endorse Xandret's egalitarian aspirations,
and I'm positive the Supreme Chancellor would have disapproved, too.
Empires and Republics dislike those with the capacity to overturn
their regimes. In that sense, our two squabbling friends are more
alike than they prefer to think-and Xandret's political meme might
have been even more dangerous than her hexes, had it escaped. "

Stryver
nodded, thinking of the stratified hierarchies, bureaucracies, and
underclasses she had witnessed in both Empire and Republic, all
foaming with discontent, not all of it brought about by the cold war
that had existed for more than a decade now. It wasn't impossible to
imagine either regime being overturned by rebellion from within.

Just
as dangerous, however-and for more important-was the possibility that
the two rival factions might one day unite against a common enemy, as
they had against the hexes. Keeping the two at each other's throats
was therefore vital, from a Mandalorian perspective.

"Are
you nodding off, " Jet asked, "or agreeing with me?"

Stryver
focused her thoughts. "I am thinking that the most dangerous
thing in the galaxy is an ambitious serf. "

"As
every exploitative regime discovers to its cost, when those who do
the work decide they want to keep the profits for themselves. "

"What
would happen if droids ever came to the same decision?"

"It
would mean the end of civilization as we know it. Luckily, the hexes
weren't ambitious per se-just badly programmed. "

"I'm
not talking about the hexes. I'm talking about Clunker. "

Nebula
showed enough teeth to suggest that his smile might be a threat, too.
"Don't you think we'd already be his slaves, if that's what he
wanted?"

"You
tell me what he wants. What motivates a machine that can take over
Imperial and Republic ships at will, and then just run away?"

"Not
power or glory, obviously. Or profit, otherwise I'd be a
trillionaire. Sometimes he does what I ask him to, and sometimes he
doesn't, so it's not about obeying me. To be honest, I've been trying
to figure him out for years and may be no closer to the answer than I
was when I started. "

"You
didn't make him like this?"

"Not
a chance. He was a mistake, some kind of factory error, and he'd been
scheduled for melting when I found him. His brain had a reset
problem, apparently. Every few minutes, he'd shut down and lose his
memory. A droid with no capacity for storing incriminating evidence
appealed to me, so I nicked him and patched him up as best I could.
These days, he can manage days at a time without flatlining, but it
still happens. The only things he remembers are me and the ship, I
guess because we were where his life really started. "

Stryver
peered up at the stationary droid. "So he won't remember
Sebaddon and what happened there?"

"No.
He's reset four times since then. I've come to think it's all
connected-like his thoughts get too big for his brain to handle, so
it shuts itself down periodically to stop him going crazy. After all,
what could be worse than a droid with ambition, as you put it? You've
seen what people do to them when they get ideas. "

"And
with good reason, when it came to the hexes. "

"Clunker
is no hex. He's just a damaged droid struggling to cope in a big, bad
universe. "

"Then
perhaps the time has come to relieve him of his burden. "

"I
advise against trying. "

"I
advise against resisting, Jeke Kerron. " Something hardened in
his eyes. Stryver stood and reached for her carbonizer.

She
was never entirely sure what happened next.

Clunker
moved. That was expected. She had planned for that. But the attack
didn't come from his direction. It came from four other angles
simultaneously and she was flung back into her seat by convergent
energy pulses. Her suit sparked and smoked; her limbs shook. For a
potentially fatal moment, her vision grayed out into nothing.

Then
she recovered, and the crowded cantina was exactly as it had
been-except that the smuggler and his droid were gone.

"Better
drink up, " the bartender cluttered, indicating the glass still
sitting before her. "He asked us not to kick you out
immediately, but there's a limit to my generosity. "

"He
asked...?" She snapped her mouth shut as her brain caught up. He
had been coming here for days. That was how she had found him. She
had thought him wasting money on fellow gamblers and lowlifes, when
in actual fact he had been preparing a trap. For her.

The
crowd studiously avoided her challenging stare.

Stryver
laughed on the inside, profoundly pleased on two points.

One:
she was still alive.

Two:
it was good to have a worthy adversary.

Dao
Stryver had come a long way from her pit fighting days, when a young
Gektl's life was cheap and expected to last not even a single week.
She had accrued considerable glory since then, and considered herself
the living embodiment of the Mandalorian creed. War was fought by
individuals, not by Emperors and politicians. Battles were decided by
people whose names might never be recorded in history. But the point
wasn't history, or even who won. Anyone who strove hard enough could
become a hero. That was the point.

Her
enemy understood. It was important to her that he did. She had traced
his history backward from captain to first officer of a very
different vessel, where the trail had ended. But the captain of that
ship, Jeke Kerron, had had a reputation for being entirely too smart
for his own good. He had made enemies among several cartels and
ultimately disappeared. It was a simple leap to wonder if one had
taken the place of the other.

They
might never be on the same side again, Stryver thought, but at least
from now on they would be playing the same game.

She
downed the liquor and shouldered her way out of the Wing and
Wanderer, into the dry glare of Tatooine. With her helmet back in
place, she was just another Mandalorian, one among many on the
gladiatorial world. She would search every spaceport in the city as a
matter of course, even though she suspected the Auriga Fire would
slip through her fingers once more. Then she would report to the
Mandalore. If required to do so, she would hunt her enemy to the ends
of the galaxy, and she would be ready for him when they met again. If
not, she would go back to studying the Empire and the Republic, safe
in the knowledge that there would soon be glory enough for everyone.

War
was coming. The certainty of it warmed her warrior's soul.

She
raised her eyes to stare at the sun and wished the man who called
himself "Jet Nebula" good fortune in battle.