Part 26 (1/2)

In the maze of walkways below the dome's oculus window, blaster bolts darted and crisscrossed in the tinted light. Others glanced from a lightsaber's green blade. Sparks showered down on the drummers and trumpeters like a benediction.

Sei screamed.

Jedi Masters Adi Gallia and Vergere rushed forward, their swords ignited.

Then a figure plummeted from one of the walkways.

From the Trade Federation's side of the hall, the chair of the directorate watched open-mouthed as a blaster fight erupted in the overhead trusses and gantries. On the floor, at the same time, three Jedi and several judicials were moving quickly if surrept.i.tiously toward the directorate rostrum.

The Kuati glanced between the ceiling and floor. Had the summit been engineered to trap the directorate? he asked himself. Would the Republic be so bold as to attack them in public?

The security droids had gone from standing at attention to postures of readiness, crouching slightly, with arms crooked and left legs extended behind. They were programmed to answer to any or all of the directorate members--or at least relay a directorate member's commands to the central control computer on board the Trade Federation vessel--but the droids responded best to the Neimoidians.

The Kuati chair looked around for Viceroy Gunray and realized that he hadn't returned. At a loss for what to do, he swung to one of his aides.

”Activate the force field!” he ordered.

The sounds of blasters and panic on the floor infiltrated the media booth Havac had secured.

Seated in a chair with a hand weapon leveled at Havac, Cohl heard the holocam click on and saw Havac glance at it.

”Am I correct in a.s.suming that you intend to kill me?” Havac asked.

”Killing is what you are good at, after all.”

”You're doing pretty good for a beginner, Havac.” Havac snorted in disdain. ”I'm prepared to die for the cause, Captain.”

”Maybe you are,” Cohl said. ”But I'm not going to give you that privilege. You're going to die for killing Rella. Besides, your cause is lost.” Havac glanced at the cam again. ”You think so?” Cohl gestured toward the transparisteel window.

”You hear those blaster bolts? The Jedi found your shooter--the one controlling the droid. Valorum is out of danger. I never thought much of the plan anyway, seeing how Valorum is trying to dismantle the Trade Federation, the same as you are.” Havac laughed shortly. ”You failed to see the truth, Cohl. You really are too old for the game.

What makes you think that we were ever after Valorum?” Cohl's grin straightened.

Grimacing in pain, he pushed himself out of the chair and limped to the window. The blaster fight had thrown the hall into utter chaos. The members of the Trade Federation Directorate were standing behind their curved table, surrounded by their security droids, everyone safe inside a s.h.i.+mmering force field.

Off to one side, a group of Jedi and judicials were closing on the Federation's rostrum.

Cohl swung to Havac, his eyes blazing.

”You're after the Trade Federation!” Havac couldn't restrain a triumphant smile.

”It was just a matter of getting them to activate the force field.” He indicated the devices that were aimed down at the hall. ”The scanner detected the activation. The holocam is going to do the rest.”

”The remote,” Cohl said, as if in a daze.

He lunged for the cam, meeting Havac halfway.

They slammed into each other and fell grappling to the floor of the booth. They rolled toward the door, each man fighting for superiority, the blaster between them, in the clutch of four hands.

Cohl swung his elbow into Havac's face, knocking him sideways, then used Havac's momentum to pitch himself on top of Havac, pinning him to the floor with his knees.

Havac squirmed, but held tightly to the blaster, triggering a bolt into Cohl's abdomen. Cohl fell partially back, then slumped forward, bringing all his weight to bear on the weapon and forcing it down into Havac's chest.

With what little of his strength remained, Cohl squeezed out a final bolt.

Dangling by one hand from the swaying walkway, Qui-Gon looked down at the floor of the hall.

The trumpeters had stopped midfanfare and were scattering for cover, abandoning their horns as they ran. Everywhere else delegates were fleeing their seats, literally climbing over one another in a desperate attempt to escape.

Valorum was on his feet, but completely encircled by Senate Guards and Jedi Knights.

Saesee Tiin, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Obi-Wan had taken up positions in front of the Trade Federation rostrum, their lightsabers lifted to deflect fire from the droids.

But the directorate members had raised their force field, which meant that no bolts could enter or leave the translucent energy s.h.i.+eld.

The thirteen droids reached over their right shoulders for the blaster rifles secured to their backpacks.

The judicials loosed a storm of blaster bolts, which the force field simply consumed.

Then, all at once, the droids pivoted through an ab-face.

The members of the directorate mouthed commands and curses and began to back away from the curved table.

The droids fired.

As the Jedi and judicials watched helplessly, bolts tore into the table and chairs and into the flesh of the members, shaking them about and hurling them to all sides of the rostrum.

The firing ceased as abruptly as it had started.

For a moment, the droids stood with their cooling blasters, then they put them back over their shoulders and turned to face the hall.

Stunned by what he had witnessed, Qui-Gon clambered onto the shaky walkway and dropped cross-legged to the slanted floor, staring off into s.p.a.ce.

????? the inner circle The Nebula Front has largely disbanded,” the judicial officer explained to Qui-Gon. ”The few we've been able to track down contend that they knew nothing about Havac's plans for Eriadu.

Some of them had never even met Havac, and a.s.sert that the name was applied routinely to almost everyone in the Front's militant faction. The Eriadu operation was conceived in great secrecy, in any case, since the militants were convinced that there was an informant among them.”

”The informant was one of the moderates,” Qui-Gon amended. ”It was through him that I learned about Cohl's designs to raid the Trade Federation freighter at Dorvalla, and, on Asmeru, about a clandestine operation Cohl was executing for Havac.” The judicial, a thin, brown-haired woman with a personable manner, made note of Qui-Gon's remarks on a desktop datapad. It was just the two of them in a small cubicle in the Justice Department's cavernous headquarters on Coruscant. Almost a standard month had gone by since the a.s.sa.s.sinations.

Deactivating the s.h.i.+eld the members of the Trade Federation Directorate had thrown about themselves--unknowingly ushering in their own demise--had required a team of technicians, using a pair of field disrupters. The two Neimoidians who had survived the ma.s.sacre, Viceroy Nute Gunray and Senator Lott Dod, had not protested when the same disrupters had been employed to dazzle the thirteen droids into states of guaranteed submission. Diplomatic privilege had permitted the Neimoidians to depart Eriadu without answering any questions.

Supreme Chancellor Valorum had ordered the Justice Department to commence an immediate investigation, but the chief investigators had soon found themselves thwarted by Lieutenant Governor Tarkin.

Tarkin insisted that, since Eriadu had failed to provide adequate security, the case should be handled by Eriaduan investigators. There was some concern that Tarkin, fearing retaliation by the Trade Federation, would seek to s.h.i.+ft the blame to other parties. But, instead, he had simply impeded the investigation by allowing evidence and eyewitnesses to vanish. Ignored, the judicials Valorum had asked to remain behind on Eriadu had finally decamped.

Qui-Gon had tried to stay abreast of developments in the case, but the chief investigator who served as liaison with the Eriaduan team had only just returned to Coruscant.

”Havac turns out to have been Eriaduan,” the judicial officer continued.

”His real name was Eru Matalis, a media correspondent and holodoc.u.mentarian, with a long-standing grudge against the Trade Federation. At some point he became the leader of the Nebula Front's cell on Eriadu, and rose through the ranks to a command position in the organization.