Part 8 (1/2)
”You'll be pleased to learn that I've chosen a world for us, Viceroy,”
Grievous was saying. ”Belderone will be our temporary home.” The cyborg fell silent for a moment. ”Viceroy? Viceroy!” Whirling to someone off cam, he barked: ”End transmission.”
Dyne paused the message before Grievous had faded from view. ”As high-resolution an image as I've ever seen,” he said. ”Technology of a different order than we're used to seeing - - even from the Confederacy.”
”About his image, Sidious cares, ummm?” Mace's clean-shaven upper lip curled. ”What was the source of the transmission?”
”Deep in the Outer Rim,” Dyne said. ”Six clone pilots pursued a core s.h.i.+p that jumped to the sector following the Battle of Cato Neimoidia. None returned.”
”Rendezvous of the Confederacy fleet, it is,” Yoda said.
Mace nodded. ”And Belderone next.” Again his gaze fell on Dyne. ”Anything further on the source of the original Sidious transmission?”
Dyne shook his head. ”Still working on it.”
Mace paced away from the table. ”Belderone is not a highly populated world, but it is friendly to the Republic. Grievous will kill millions just to make a point.” He glanced at Yoda. ”We can't let that happen.”
Dyne looked from Mace to Yoda and back again. ”If Republic forces are waiting when Grievous attacks, the Separatists will realize that we've managed to eavesdrop on their transmissions.”
Yoda pressed his fingers to his lips in thought. ”Act, we must. Lying in wait, Republic forces will be.”
Dyne nodded. ”You're right, of course. If no actions are taken, and word of this intelligence were to leak...” He regarded Yoda. ”Do we inform the Supreme Chancellor?”
Yoda's ears twitched. ”Difficult, this decision is.”
”The information stays here,” Mace said firmly.
Yoda sighed with purpose. ”Agree I do. Use the beacon we will, to gather a force.”
”Obi-Wan and Anakin aren't far from Belderone,” Mace said. ”But they're pursuing another lead to Sidious's whereabouts.”
”Wait, the lead will. Needed Obi-Wan and Anakin will be.” Yoda turned to the still image of General Grievous. ”Prepare carefully for this battle, we must.”
18.
In dreams, Grievous remembered his life. His mortal life.
On Kalee, and in the aftermath of the Huk War. After all the close calls on battlefields on his home system worlds, on Huk worlds, sowing destruction, exterminating as many of them as he could... After all the times he had returned home wounded, bloodied to the bone, surrounded by his wives and offspring, basking in their support - - relying on it to recall him to life.
After all the brushes with death... to be fatally injured in a shuttle crash. The unfairness, the indignity had cost him more pain than the injuries themselves. To be denied a warrior's death - - as was his due!
Floating suspended in bacta, keenly aware that no healing fluid or gamma blade wielded by living being or droid could repair his body. In moments of consciousness: seeing his wives and offspring gazing on his ravaged body from the far side of the permagla.s.s.
Offering words of encouragement; prayers for his return to health. He had asked himself: could he be content to be a mind in a body without feeling? More, could he abandon a life of combat for a life in which the only battles he fought were with himself? The struggle to endure, to live another day...
No. It was beyond him. By then, the Huk War had ended - - more accurately had been ended by the Jedi, and the Kaleesh were still reaping the whirlwind. Their world in ruins, their appeals for justice and fair play ignored by the Republic. Ever on the alert for investment opportunities, members of the InterGalactic Banking Clan had offered Kalee a dubious sort of rescue.
They would support the planet financially, a.s.sume its staggering debt, if Grievous would agree to serve the clan as an enforcer. Their hailfire weapons were proficient at delivering ”payment reminders” to delinquent clients, and their IG-series a.s.sa.s.sin droids took care of the wet work.
But the hailfires had to be programmed, the IGs were dangerously unpredictable, and a.s.sa.s.sination was bad for business. The clan wanted someone with a talent for intimidation. Both to save his world and to provide himself with a touch of the life he had known as a warrior, a strategist, a leader of armies, Grievous had accepted the offer. IBC chairman San Hill himself had overseen the details of the arrangement.
Still, Grievous wasn't entirely proud of his decision. Debt collection was a far cry from warcraft. An arena for beings without principles; for beings so attached to their possessions that they feared death. But Kalee had profited from his work for IBC. And Grievous's previous notoriety was such that it could not be eclipsed. Then: the shuttle crash. The accident. The misfortune... He told his would-be healers to fish him from the bacta tank. He could bear to die in atmosphere or the vacuum of deep s.p.a.ce, but not in liquid. In the shadow of felled trees that would fuel his funeral pyre, he lapsed in and out of consciousness.
That was when San Hill had paid him a second visit. Something consequential in mind. Obvious even to someone who could barely see straight. ”We can keep you alive,” rail-thin Hill had whispered into Grievous's unimpaired ear.
Others had promised as much. He pictured breathing devices, a hover platform, a surround of life-sustaining machines. But Hill had said: ”None of that. You will walk, you will speak, you will retain your memories - - your mind.”
”I have my mind,” Grievous had said. ”What I lack is a body.”
”Most of your internal organs are damaged beyond the repair of the finest surgeons,” Hill had continued. ”And you will have to surrender even more than you already have. You will no longer know the pleasures of the flesh.”
”Flesh is weak. You need only gaze on me to see that.” Encouraged by the remark, Hill had talked in glowing terms of the Geonosians: how they had raised cyborg technology to an art form, and how the blending of living and machine technology was the future. ”Consider the battle droids of the Trade Federation,” Hill had said. ”They answer to a brain that is also nothing more than a droid. Protocol droids, astromechs, even a.s.sa.s.sin droids - - all require programming and frequent maintenance.”
Two words had caught Grievous's attention: battle droids.
”A war is brewing that will call many droids to the front,” Hill had said just loudly enough to be heard. ”I am not privy to when it will begin, but when that day comes, the entire galaxy will be involved.”
His interest piqued, Grievous had said: ”A war begun by whom? The Banking Clan? The Trade Federation?”
”Someone more powerful.”
”Who?”
”In time, you will meet him. And you will be impressed.”
”Then why does he need me?”
”In every war, there are leaders and there are commanders.”
”A commander of droids.”
”More precisely, a living commander of droids.”
So he had allowed the Geonosians to go to work on him, constructing a duranium and ceramic sh.e.l.l for what little of him remained. His recuperation had been long and difficult. Coming to terms with his new and in many ways improved self, even longer and more difficult. Only then had he been presented to Count Dooku, and only then had his real training begun. From the Geonosians and members of the Techno Union he had already come to understand the inner workings of droids. But from Dooku - - Lord Tyra.n.u.s - - he came to understand the inner workings of the Sith.
Tyra.n.u.s himself had trained him in lightsaber technique. In mere weeks he had surpa.s.sed any of Tyra.n.u.s's previous students. It helped, of course, to have an indestructible body reminiscent of a Krath wardroid. The ability to tower over most sentient beings. Crystal circuitry. Four grasping appendages..
. In dreams he remembered his past life. But in fact, he was not dreaming, for dreams were a product of sleep, and General Grievous did not sleep.
He endured instead brief periods of stasis in a pod-like chamber that had been created for him by his body's builders. While inside that chamber he could sometimes recall what it had felt like to live. And while inside, he was not to be disturbed - - unless in the event of inimical circ.u.mstances. The chamber was equipped with displays linked to devices that monitored the status of the Invisible Hand. But Grievous was aware of a problem even before the displays told him as much. As he exited the chamber and hurried for the cruiser's bridge, a droid joined him, supplying updates. No sooner had the Separatist fleet emerged from hypers.p.a.ce at Belderone than it had come under attack - - not by Belderone's meager planetary defense force, but by a Republic battle group.
”Wings of starfighters are converging on the fleet,” the droid reported.
”a.s.sault cruisers, destroyers, and other capital vessels are arrayed in a screen formation above night-side Belderone.”