8/Polyskin

THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, THE ROCKY DESERT WORLD OF GEONOSIS HAD SUFFERED its share of catastrophes and mass extinctions, including the rogue comet strike on its largest moon that had very nearly wiped out the planet’s entire population. Taking into account the resulting debris field, the flash floods, and the random solar radiation storms, it wasn’t difficult to see why the ancient Geonosians, what remained of them, had moved underground.

Not much had changed since then.

Standing here amid the caverns and rock spires of whatever remained, Rojo Trace realized that the Republic officer in front of him had finished talking, or had at least paused for breath. The officer’s name was Lieutenant Norch, and despite the fact that he was staring Trace directly in the eye and almost shouting to be heard above the wind, he still managed to sound both officious and insincere in his delivery. In other words, a perfect product of the bureaucracy to which he’d sworn allegiance.

“Furthermore,” Norch continued, “on behalf of the Republic’s military and security divisions, we appreciate the Order’s timely response.” The lieutenant gestured at the huge polyskin tent spread out in front of them, half a kilometer of rippling silver micropore, flapping and popping in the wind like the sail of a ship going nowhere. “Given the nature of our discovery here, I’m sure you understand the urgency of our request.”

Trace nodded, wincing a little at the grit that blew into his face. He was a dark-haired man of unremarkable build and complexion, tall and steady and vaguely handsome in a way that didn’t draw attention to the unshaven jawline, the green eyes, and the faintly smiling lips. Yet for every moment that he stood motionless outside the tent—perhaps listening, perhaps not—a sense of intensity seemed to gather around him, a sense of acute psychological awareness of its own rarefied state.

“We got the initial report of it last night,” Norch said, raising his voice even louder over the baked-dry wind. “Independent long-range hauler on its way through the Outer Rim picked up on an unfamiliar heat signature. They thought it was a distress signal. But when they landed they saw this.”

And with a gesture no doubt intended to be dramatic, he turned to the tent and flung back the flap, allowing Trace inside.

Trace ducked under the polyskin, glad to be out of the wind, and stopped, looking down. The crater was still smoking, but he could see the wreckage piled up inside, perhaps one hundred meters down, where it had punched a hole and permanently altered the landscape. Peering down into it, he was aware of the lieutenant watching him intently with a sense of barely reserved judgment, until he was no longer able to contain himself.

“Well?” Norch asked. “What do you make of it?”

“It’s a Sith warship, obviously. The five engine pods, the boxy design …”

The lieutenant shook his head. “With all due respect, you mistake my meaning. We’re aware that it’s a Sith warship. We saw our share of them in the sacking of Coruscant.” And then, puffing inside his uniform: “The question is what caused it to crash here on Geonosis, and whether its arrival here ought to be considered an act of deliberate aggression.”

“Why would you assume that?” Trace asked.

Norch narrowed his eyes as if reassessing the Jedi Knight’s trustworthiness. “The Republic has been evaluating this planet as a possible defense stronghold in the Arkanis sector—that’s strictly confidential, of course.”

“And?”

“And when I contacted the Jedi Council, they informed me that you were in possession of certain telemetric abilities that might clarify our enemy’s underlying intent.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, in any case.” Now Norch was giving him the Full Scowl—out of impatience or the simple exertion of shouting out over the flapping tent, Trace couldn’t be sure. At last the lieutenant cleared his throat and found some speck out on the horizon to stare at. “It was my personal understanding that upon arriving here, you would use your particular, ah … abilities to assist us in our investigation.”

“And it was my understanding,” Trace said, “that I would be given complete authority here to perform my investigation, without any outside interference.” He was still looking down into the great smoking hole, at the warship and the colossal planetary bullet wound that its impact had created. It was even deeper than he’d initially suspected, and he could already hear the subtle, lethal whisper of escaping pressure.

“What exactly do you want from me?”

Trace looked up at him. “Get your men and clear out.”

“From the tent?”

“From the planet.”

One eyebrow arched up, a trick the lieutenant had been saving until now: “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not safe.”

“We’ve already reinforced the ground around the site for a kilometer in every direction—”

“I’m not talking about the ground.” Trace allowed his voice to become slightly sharper. “Do you hear that hissing sound? The warship struck a subterranean gas deposit, a big one by the sound of it, and the underground gases here on Geonosis are notoriously unstable. If it sublimates while your men are around, you won’t have men anymore.”

“Listen here. I’m in charge, and—”

“Then you’d do well to listen to what this man says,” a new voice cut in.

Trace turned to see a female Republic officer, perhaps in her early thirties, dark-haired, and attractive, smiling at him. From Norch’s salute, she clearly outranked him, but she didn’t even acknowledge the response.

“Rojo Trace? I’m Captain Tekla Ansgar. Welcome.” Her pale blue eyes glimmered at him, sharp and confident. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I certainly hope you won’t judge your experience here on the basis of one unpleasant conversation.”

“Frankly,” Trace said, “my own experience here couldn’t matter less. I’m here to do a job.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s more to it than that.” She stepped toward him, casually brushing his arm with her own. “I have to confess, I’ve always admired the Jedi Order, but I’ve never had the opportunity to get to know a Jedi Knight personally.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen today,” Trace said.

She frowned a little. “But—”

Before she could continue, Trace moved past her, turned, and jumped straight into the crater.

The plunge took the better part of thirty seconds, but to Trace it seemed both instantaneous and, in an unreal way, much longer. Shearing downward through the chasm, he summoned the Force, generating a cushion of resistance beneath him until he felt his free fall slackening, the crater walls slowing down, individual molecules meshing to buffet his descent. Now, with a little bit of concentration, he could see every crack and divot in the rock as it passed.

By the time he noticed the rest of the warship lodged at the bottom of the pit, he’d decreased his rate of descent to the point where he could reach out and catch hold of the broken fuselage. Cold durasteel slapped his hands. Swinging his legs around, Trace dropped through a ragged gash in the hull, boots thumping off a narrow band of twisted metal that had once been part of a catwalk.

He took a breath and looked around.

Even from here, the warship was a predictably ugly thing, inelegant and utilitarian, the work of a culture that saw nothing of beauty in the galaxy. The impact of the crash had actually improved its aesthetics, giving it some makeshift degree of originality. Standing here, he could feel the hulking weight of the craft tipping unsteadily around him, the wreckage still settling, rocking into place. Sharp edges rasped and scraped against the deep sedimentary layers, carving random glyphs into the soft sandstone. Beneath it all, omnipresent and lethal, was the stealthy whoosh of escaping gas. He didn’t have much time.

Edging his way deeper into the vessel—bulkheads shifting even as he passed through—Trace paused, expanding his senses to draw in any indication of any remaining life aboard.

There was nothing.

Up above in the tent, the military officer had told him that the initial bioscan had come back negative … though he feared that a handful of Sith survivors might somehow be jamming the reading, preparing an ambush.

Trace could have told him already that was not going to happen. But he’d come this far, and simple curiosity drew him onward. Dropping farther, taking his time, he clamored through the main flight deck and groped in the dark until his fingers brushed against something smooth, damp, and still faintly warm. There was a soft organic pulpiness to it. Without needing to look, he knew he’d come across the first corpse.

Slowly his eyes began to adjust. The remains of the Sith flight crew lay smashed and bleeding, burned, skin bubbling over exposed bone and melted into the fabric of their uniforms. Fire and impact had fused several of the bodies into a single twisted mass of faces and broken limbs embedded into the seats where they’d died.

He could smell the gas now, its sulfuric rotten-egg fumes trickling into his lungs, and knew time was short. He closed his eyes again but didn’t remove his hand from the mass of dripping flesh and bone. Proximity was important; physical contact was even better. Beneath the inner geometry of his own thoughts, he began to hear the curses of the crew as the ship’s navigational system failed, felt their dawning horror as they realized the engine pods were going to bury them deep below the planet’s crust. In the end, the impending inevitability of death had reduced them to something as brainless and scurrying as Mustafar lava fleas, their faith in the dark side, their sworn oath to the Sith Lords with their incantations and ancient sigils, stripped away in a final spasm of animal panic.

And then silence.

Always silence.

Trace exhaled, reminded now of other terms he’d heard used to describe the Republic’s role in crash sites like this. The officers might call them investigators, but the enlisted men on the ground had other names. Names like corpse counters and dirt tourists.

The nicknames meant little to him. That was the job; everything else was a distraction, including female officers who wanted to get to know him personally. He was aware of his reputation for being cold and impersonal: it didn’t bother him in the least.

He withdrew his hand, preparing his ascent to the surface—

And sucked in a quick breath between his teeth. The bright lancet of sudden overwhelming fear that he’d just experienced had nothing to do with the warship or the remains of its crew.

Something else was happening, somewhere far distant.

Something far worse.

He saw his sister’s face.

There could be no doubt about it. It was Zo and she was screaming in a frenzy of pain and helplessness. And although Trace couldn’t see her attacker clearly, he realized from the erratic sunbursts of her thoughts that she had no defense against the thing that loomed above her, dragging her out of the Jedi Agricultural Corps facility, toward—what?

He stopped, frozen, his current locale utterly forgotten, blindsided by a storm of disjointed images: the shaft of a spear, dripping with blood; a flash of green; a whiff of something rancid and feral. His nostrils burned with the stench of a place that had been bottled up too long, a place of death and solitude and agonized last breaths. He could feel her confusion and apprehension pumping through his own circulatory system, as if they shared the same heart. For a moment he could feel the presence of her abductor.

Listen to me, Trace told him. I don’t know who you are, but I am in possession of a very special set of skills. If you bring my sister back right now, unharmed, then I’ll let you go. But if you don’t, I promise you, I will track you down. I will find you. And I will make you pay.

Of course there was no response.

From beneath him came a stuttering, squealing lurch, then a deafening crash as the fuselage of the crashed Sith warship swayed under his feet and abruptly gave way in a waterfall of sparks. There was a sudden whoosh and a plume of flame as a gas pocket blasted open from the wall.

The explosion rocked the crater to its depths. Snapping around, Trace felt huge slabs of scorched rock scaling loose, tumbling down toward him. On reflex, he threw up a solid bubble of air, pressing it outward to ensure enough breathable oxygen—too little and he’d suffocate inside here, a bug in a jar.

The bubble did its job. Debris hammered down on top of it, shale bouncing and skittering across the dome. Trace scarcely noticed. He cast his thoughts back toward Zo, back to the place in himself where he’d seen and felt the final compulsive timpani of her distress, straining for any hint of where she might be, where her captor was taking her.

But there was nothing there now, only dead air as deep and final as that which followed the crash of the warship where he now stood.

And awful silence.

Rising upward with the bubble, Trace made for the surface of the crater, the light from above growing brighter, broadening to illuminate the deep frown etched onto his face.