Chapter Twenty-Nine: Transit

It was a good thing traffic was so heavily restricted around the Senate complex, Qui-Gon thought to herself. The vehicle the Chancellor had provided was such a jumpy little thing that she probably would have plowed into an oncoming airspeeder had the sky been more densely populated.

As it was, she was displaying a rather flagrant disregard for the planetary piloting restrictions, which stated that all vehicles capable of flight needed to stay slaved to their autopilot barring certain emergencies. Fortunately, the craft was so fast that no police cruisers had any hope of catching her. Not that an aerial chase wouldn't be a fun way to start off this rescue, but Qui-Gon imagined that both the Jedi and the Chancellor would be less than pleased if she ended up having to explain to the local traffic court how she'd wound up there.

Sunlight streamed into the viewport as she eased the ship east—she adjusted the transparisteel's polarizer and continued to list. There were closer gates through the planetary shield, but the one she was headed for was going to be far more convenient.

She patted the empty seat next to her. "Just hang in there, Obi-Wan," she said. "In a little while we'll be flying you back to your boss and swapping tales of how much nonsense he's put us through."

Not that she bore the Chancellor any hard feelings. She could see what Obi-Wan was drawn to in him—anyone who would go through the harebrained scheme of traveling to the Underworld on the off chance a potentially existent Jedi would come to his rescue was something of a kindred spirit to her old partner. And while the man's attempt to bring down the fleet around Had Abbadon had gone horribly wrong . . . at least he'd tried to do something.

Last time she was at the Temple, she'd run into Giv Davran, who'd tangled with some of the clones when they'd attacked the Outer Rim world he'd been assigned to. Old Giv wasn't easy to shake—the aging Mon Calamari had seen his share of atrocities out on the frontier—but the eyes beneath his nictitating membranes had stared off into another place as he told her the story, clouding over as he spoke of the children he'd seen incinerated, of the buildings turned to ash by orbital strikes. After he'd come back to himself, he'd grimly told her, "The Republic aren't prepared to deal with this. They've not had a war in lifetimes, and war with terrorists is far worse than war between sovereign governments. And there's only so much any of us can do with our swords and our meditation." He'd shaken his head. "Preemptive action is the only way out of this."

Well, when she and Obi-Wan had made it safely back, she'd have to see if there was anything she could do to stave off ruin. Not that a vote of no confidence was anything she had experience in fighting. It certainly wasn't an enemy you could mindtrick into laying down its weapons and walking away.

The shield station was growing larger in the distance—a hovering ring whose telltale pulses of energy signified the opening and closing of the gate. The stations along the main thoroughfares were always clogged by multiple lanes of starships eager to make the trip elsewhere, but this one's traffic was fairly tepid; a couple of shuttlecraft were approaching from the south, but Qui-Gon, goosing her ship's throttle and feeling it scream forward, was confident she'd beat them there.

Reaching down to the comm controls, she keyed the ship's mic to a certain tightbeam frequency. "Code Jedha."

After a few moments' silence, the comm crackled. "You are cleared for the priority gate in sector A1-90, Madame Jinn." Then, quieter: "Leaving the planet? Don't tell me you've been reassigned."

"No, no, Kit," she replied, "need to know business. I'll be back."

"Copy that." A faint series of beeps issued from the background. "You're first in line. May the Force be with you."

A corner of her mouth lifted upward. "And also with you." A bit overzealously, she wrenched the ship into place in front of the incoming shuttles.

As the shield dissipated, pale blue particles fading into nothingness, Qui-Gon felt a little thrill pass through her. The first time she'd been offworld in—how long had it been?

Well, she said to the Force as she shot through the gap, I'll choose to take that little tingling sensation as approval from you. Not too self-serving, I hope.

The rest of the atmosphere flew by quickly, the ship's engines straining faster and faster. Zippy little thing—good for getting in and out of tight spaces at a moment's notice. Hopefully that would come in handy.

And it had a hyperdrive—how the manufacturer had managed to fit it under the hood of this thing she had no idea, but its controls were on the board, and at 1.5 it was rated higher than usual. She'd have to talk to the Chancellor about who his guy in the travel business was when this was all over.

She punched the coordinates he'd sent to her comm into the navicomputer. There were several seconds of calculations, after which a disembodied voice informed her: "Data indicate that the Had system is currently under a travel advisory due to the presence of ongoing terrorist activity. Civilian travel not recommended. Do you wish to proceed?"

"Well, when you put it like that." She closed her eyes, took a breath, and, in a gesture Obi-Wan probably would have scoffed at, crossed her fingers. "Let's go."

Stars smeared into starlines, and she was off.


Rask Petram felt uncomfortably out of place amidst the sea of wetworks. A room full of humans was easy to read. These things were not.

He had been thrust into command of this operation not by a promotion, but by default, as the wreckage of the Helios had streaked like a great meteor through the atmosphere of Had Abbadon. Now, on the bridge of the Arbiter, he stood in the center of a crew of clones that felt entirely wrong.

A human crew—a normal crew—should have been getting antsy. Bombing runs had been on hold for nearly two days. The four remaining Dictat-class cruisers had been holding position in orbit above Had Abbadon, scanning the surface and awaiting the next set of orders from the now-Commander Petram. The commander would have expected his bridge crew to make an impatient jab at the situation, or pass the time by fooling around on their station terminal. The wetworks did no such thing.

They sat dutifully, without complaint or comment, and waited. It elicited a squirming feeling in the pit of Petram's stomach that only grew more intense as one of the clones approached him.

"The admiral is calling for you, sir."

Petram's eyes widened. He had hoped to avoid talking to any higher-ups until he had something good to report. The commander attempted to stand even taller than he already was; he prayed his nervousness would not be visible on a holoprojection. "Very well, then, put her through."

"Commander Petram," the hologram of Admiral Valis crackled as it flickered to life. Mercenary she may have been, but the sternness of her face was enough to match any of the Republic officers Petram had served under. And unlike them, she'd grown up in a world without rules. It could have been worse, though. It could have been the Zabrak calling.

"Admiral," Petram replied with a slight nod. "I assume you're calling for a report."

"I'm calling with a warning, Commander," Valis said, holding up a hand to halt her subordinate. "Lord Maul is on his way."

Petram tried to swallow the quickly-forming lump in his throat. "I see."

"He has business to take care of on the surface. Put the operation on hold until he arrives."

"I, uh. . . the operation is already on hold, Admiral," Petram said with a shaky voice.

Valis' eyes appeared to narrow. "Explain."

"When the Helios was blitzed, the craft split in two. The first half crashed quickly. The second was moving slowly enough for us to capture it. We are holding it in orbit with tractor beams and have scanned Had Abbadon to locate the weakest point on the surface. When the time is right, we will drop the wreckage."

Commander Petram motioned to a clone officer, who called up a holographic image of Had Abbadon. His voice gained an air of confidence as he explained his plan. "This is a predictive model of what de-orbiting the wreckage will do. Ideally, we should be able to create a large crack in the crust between the two crash sites. Bombing runs on this surface crack will give us access to the lower caves."

Valis nodded in approval; her hologram stared at the planet projection for several seconds. "Well done, Commander. Proceed with your plan, then. Drop the wreckage, bomb the resulting crack, but do not send troops into the caverns until after Maul gives the go-ahead."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"And Commander?"

"Yes, Admiral Valis?" Petram said, surprised that the admiral had not hung up.

"You've got a promising career ahead of you. Don't get in his way. I'm sure you're aware of what might happen if you do."

Before Petram could respond, the hologram of Admiral Valis fizzled out of existence. Once again, he was alone in the sea of wetworks. Only now, he was infinitely more terrified. His knees weak, he turned on a heel and slowly shuffled to the exit of the bridge.


REPUBLIC ARCHIVES: PLANETARY SHIELD

A large-scale version of the deflector shield technology found in starships can be used to protect a planet from orbital bombardment or unauthorized landing. These planetary shields are prohibitively expensive, and are usually found only on wealthy and populous worlds.

Though shields protect a planet from being fired on from orbit, they also prevent surface-to-space weapons from being useful; the protection offered by a shield works in both directions. To counter this, Coruscant—the most notable shielded planet—utilizes several orbiting defense stations and ships to deal with potential attacks.

Travel through a planetary shield is achieved through the use of "shield gates," which open small gaps in the shield to allow vessels to pass through. There are hundreds of shield gates around Coruscant, each staffed by a team of both droids and sentient traffic controllers. Though the departure and arrival process is extremely efficient, this does not stop impatient travelers from occasionally trying to jump the queue and pass through a shield gate out of turn. This is highly illegal, and can result in harsh fines and ship impounding.