Chapter 7: Shenanigans in the Snow

In some ways, it looked as though Grievous and Nan's revelations about their past and the nature of their crimes did not affect them too much. Aside from sabotaging the Separatist war machine, they still spent a lot of time messing around, making fun of people, and trying to outsmart one another. Nan decided that Grievous had spent too long being single and needed a girlfriend. She suggested several droids and reprogrammed a few to respond with, "Sure thing, baby," instead of the usual chorus of rogers. When he didn't rise to the bait, she started making various innuendos about appliances and other equipment.

She said on one occasion, "You know that copy machine in the mailing room? I've heard that she's really into you and would like to give you her part number."

Another time she said, "You see that helicopter? She's been admiring the way you twirl your lightsabers and I've heard that she would like you to take her out for a spin."

Grievous' responses to this were either noncommittal gestures or the statement, "You're really not as funny as you think you are, Nan." After a while, though, he got revenge by finding a photo of a particularly brainless furry rodent species that little kids often got as pets and photoshopping it into a picture with Nan. He drew a heart around them and wrote, "Soul mates," under it.

Dooku had been going on about some ice planet whose fuel the Separatists wanted to steal for a while and he finally decided to go there and pretend they wanted to protect the Nearilians from the Republic. Or something. Grievous left the lying to Dooku as a rule but Dooku asked him to come to the negotiations along with some members of the Trade Federation and the leaders of a few Separatist planets. Dooku did not ask Nan to go but she wanted to tag along because Nearilan had great skiing slopes.

"You don't know how to ski," pointed out Grievous.

"I do so totally know how. Maybe I've never done it but I've watched a video and it looks like pure physics," boasted Nan.

While saying this, she pretended to push off from the floor using two ratchet wrenches instead of ski poles. The General took one and looked it over. He'd never seen a ratchet wrench before.

"What is this, some kind of doctor's tool?" He asked.

"It's a doctor's tool for you," said Nan.

Dooku showed up as a hologram and told Grievous that he had to send personalized invitations to everybody who was going with them to Nearilan, write up a plan for the meeting, fill out all necessary paperwork, and get Dooku's shuttle ready. Dooku was much too busy to do these things himself and it all had to be done in two days. He signed off.

"Ugh, fuck me," said Grievous.

Nan couldn't let the opportunity slide and said, "Should I use a Phillips or a flathead?"

Grievous spent the next two days yelling at Trade Federation people who claimed to have other engagements and what was Dooku thinking, telling them about this at the last minute? Usually when Grievous threatened to go visit them and convince them in person, they backed off and said they could make it if they moved their appointments around a bit. There were unexpected problems with the engine of the Count's shuttle. Nan worked on it with some droids. Nan and Grievous didn't get much sleep and were quite tired. The Count showed up looking like he'd been at a spa. When he saw that his shuttle still didn't have fuel in it, he threw Grievous into a stack of pipes with the Force and ordered himself a drink. He went to sit at the front of the hangar.

Grievous pulled himself out of a pipe and moved a fuel canister on a hovercart toward Dooku's ship. Nan looked at him carefully. He did not seem to be angry at Dooku for the unfair treatment. He winked at Nan and held up the gas nozzle.

"Hey Nan, I'm about to give the ship some gas."

She didn't even get the innuendo at first, she was still puzzled that he wasn't fuming mad at Dooku. Grievous had to repeat himself.

"This ship wants gas and I am going to fill her up."

He started laughing as he said this so that his words were garbled, but Nan finally got it and laughed so hard she fell.

They were the last to arrive on Nearilan. The planet was sparsely populated and mostly rural, though they had electricity. The meeting was to be held at a lodge several miles from the station where the ships were parked. The Nearilans thought that would be more appropriate. The ships of the Trade Federation's ambassadors and others were parked outside the station. A light snow had fallen and the ships were covered in a thin layer. Grievous went into the station and found some child-sized skis for Nan. How she did it so quickly, he didn't know, but in that short interval she managed to draw inappropriate pictures in the snow on the windshields of all the ships except Count Dooku's.

"It would be redundant," she said. "His ship is already phallus-shaped."

"Here, show me you can ski," he said, while attaching his own skis to his claws.

"I can ski," said Nan. "I can totally ski."

"Catch me if you can, then," he said and pushed off, literally leaving Nan in his snow dust.

A few hours later, after the meeting was over, he used a heat sensor to find Nan under several feet of snow. She had almost gone into hibernation. He put her near a radiator in the station and started exaggerating the great food the Nearilians had served during the meeting.

"There was roasted duck, mashed potatoes with herbs, chocolate cake, marinated vegetables…"

"And you let me freeze in the snow?" Asked Nan.

"Hey, you said you could ski."

"I thought we were friends. You could have at least brought me some duck."

"Actually, there wasn't anything good to eat, only some nuts that nearly broke a guy's tooth. The Nearilians made it clear that they're not happy about joining the Separatists. They know Dooku only wants them to join so a few months later he can depose their leaders and turn this place into a fuel factory. They're joining only because they know what the other option is. War."

The Separatists arrived at the station on a sleigh pulled by some large white dogs. Dooku arrived last on a snowmobile that he'd brought with him as a show of power. He went into the station for a bit to talk to Grievous. Nan watched the Separatists discover the pictures on their windshields. One guy sighed and said, "At least it's not drawn with shit."

Suddenly, all the ships exploded, blowing the Separatist leaders to bits. The explosions blasted apart the wall of the station but Grievous managed to shield Nan. Dooku used the Force to keep the rock back. They climbed out of the wreckage and stared stupidly at the holes in the landscape.

"The Nearilians set us up!" Said the Count. "I should have known they are too proud to agree to be controlled by us. They decided to fake submissiveness and strike the first blow. It's incredible how close they came to killing me. Unlike these dead fools, I'm irreplaceable."[1]

While he fumed, Nan checked her phone and announced that they had no long-range communications. The Nearilians were jamming them.

"The Republic must have gotten to them before we did," said Grievous, "or they decided to buy the equipment for themselves when we first contacted them."

"It doesn't matter about the long-range communications," said Dooku, "I had a droid battleship follow us and orbit the planet just in case the Republic found out about our meeting and showed up. I've got a direct line to it and I'll call it down right now."

The ship approached the surface of the planet. It held several thousand droids and a few dozen drones. Dooku activated the drones using a remote. He figured he could just use the drones to shoot up the nearest village and the Nearilians would surrender. He did not notice the look Nan and Grievous exchanged when they saw the serial number on the battleship. The look meant, "Uh oh." It was one of the ships they had sabotaged.

The drones flew away from the battleship, but instead of heading for the village they turned around and flew back. Dooku did not have time to wonder what was happening. The drones smashed into the battleship's engines and it went down, exploding in several places. Luckily, it went down over an empty field and there were no casualties. There was nothing left of it. Nan and Grievous had programmed the drones to destroy the ship completely once they were released.

"That was amazingly inept," said a Nearilian that had been watching all this from behind the sleigh.

The Nearilians were very furry, including their faces, and had curved ram horns and long tails. This was Chief Vanko, who had organized the ambush of the Separatists. She was flanked by several other Nearilians and the white sled dogs. She didn't seem worried that her opponents were a powerful Sith, a mechanical warrior and…well…she'd seen Nan try to ski from a spy camera so she really wasn't worried about her.

"If you turn off your jamming equipment now, we'll pretend this never happened," said Dooku. "You've shown your strength and we'll respect that."

"I'm not going to let you walk away so easily," said Chief Vanko. "I know what you intend to do to my planet. You will dig up the mountains and forests I call home to power your disgusting war. By taking you out now, we may have time to raise an army before the Separatists attack."

"You'll dig up your forests yourselves trying to fight them," said Grievous.

Rats in a trap that they were, the Nearilians fought back. Chief Vanko set the dogs on them. Dooku told Nan to go talk to the dogs. Nan went forward and growled. The dogs growled back civilly enough. A few more grunts were exchanged, then Nan ran back saying, "I made it worse, I made it worse," with the dogs on her tail. Dooku pushed the dogs back with the Force and turned on his lightsaber. A bullet whistled through the air and landed next to him. There were armed Nearilians everywhere. For a while, Grievous and Dooku knocked bullets and laser blasts out of the air with their lightsabers while Nan ducked around their feet. They were in the open and surrounded. Grievous noticed that a metal door from the station had survived the explosion undamaged and told Dooku his plan. They moved toward it and while Dooku covered him, Grievous picked up the door with one set of arms and used it to shield them.

It started to snow. They were all reasonably worried. Dooku had never been in a situation where the odds were so much against him. They were all surprised when the shooting stopped, but not for long. A bomb landed next to them and Grievous barely had time to throw them all out of harm's way before it exploded. He kept a hold of the door and shielded them with it. Nan came up with a plan and quickly told it to the Count. He got up and turned around just in time to do as Nan asked, to catch the next bomb with the Force. He gave it to Nan and she used a program on her phone to stop the countdown, since it wasn't a very complicated bomb. The Nearilians realized something was wrong when the bomb did not explode and guessed what happened. It was snowing harder and harder every moment. Grievous used his heat detector to locate what he thought was Chief Vanko, or at least a figure surrounded by some dogs.

"Don't throw it yet," said Dooku. "Let them expect an explosion any moment and retreat farther into the trees. Meanwhile, this snow is so strong they won't see us escape."

Slinking low to the ground, they went in the direction the heat detector showed the least amount of figures. There was a minor skirmish among the trees but Dooku and Grievous beat back the Nearilians and the three of them ran off into the woods. They just had to keep going until they were out of range of the communications jammer, which Nan said was twenty miles. The prospect of walking that far through the snow did not appeal to her. She jumped on Grievous' back. The navigator on her phone worked, though it didn't show much detail.

After a few miles, she said, "They're following us with the jammer. They don't know exactly where we are but as long as they know what direction we're going in, they can beat us in terms of speed."

They paused, considering their options. Dooku examined the map on Nan's phone and decided their best bet was to go in a different direction and keep moving while the snow was going. That way the Nearilians could not track them. Once the snow cleared, they'd leave footprints and the dogs could sniff them out. They started off again. Nan was freezing. Grievous' back was very cold and her feet went numb. Eventually he carried her wrapped up in his cape. Dooku was freezing as well but the thought of coming back here with a working army and beating the shit out of Chief Vanko kept him going.

It took them a while to realize they were climbing and they hadn't consulted the map for some time. They were halfway up a gently-sloped mountain before they realized it.

"How long do you think this storm will last?" Asked Dooku.

Nan consulted her weather app and said it would last at least another ten hours. Dooku wanted to pause for a bite to eat. He always carried some provisions. They found a cave. Dooku and Nan shared a frozen sandwich. Grievous greased his joints. He was going to need a lot of new parts after this. At one point Nan swiveled her ears. She thought she heard something far down in the cave. Actually, she smelled some kind of animal. She said so.

"We need to get going anyway," said Dooku. "We don't have time to fight a bear. Why did I share my sandwich with you? You're not even walking. My mother taught me manners too well, I suppose."

"Those manners don't stop you from murdering innocent people," thought Nan.

They approached the entrance to the cave. Too late, Nan smelled the animal again. It was above them. It jumped, and the mound of earth and snow at the front of the cave collapsed on them. Tired and cold, they were all knocked out for a while.

The Count was the first to wake up. He looked down. He was not happy with what he saw. He looked up. Ditto. The view around him was also enervating. He was hanging from a ceiling covered with sharp rocks, icicles, and what he at first took to be white ropes. He was hanging over a pit so deep, he could not see the bottom. The rocks and icicles protruded all over the cavern. Light came from a hole in the wall. It was crisscrossed with the white ropes, which the Count was starting to realize were not ropes. Nan and Grievous hung next to him, wrapped up in the white stuff. Nan mumbled in her sleep.

"Muffins…ice cream, no not ice cream, too cold…pizza with everything."

Dooku swung and knocked into her. She woke up and nudged Grievous awake too.

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire," said Nan with a sigh.

"What fire? It's still freezing," said Grievous.

"Please tell me these cords are not what I think they are," said Dooku, but his guess was right. The white ropes were the web of a giant spider. Dooku had some unfortunate experience with them from Admiral Trench. This spider, however, would probably not be cowed if he yelled about lowering its salary. The arachnid in question was at the other end of the cave, finishing off a Nearilian. When it was done, it tossed the body into the pit, its private garbage can. It looked at them with interest.

"I can unhinge my other arms and cut myself free," said Grievous.

"That's good, but fighting here will be tricky," said Dooku. "The spider can move along its web without getting stuck to it but we will be trying to avoid the web, the sharp icicles, the spider's fangs, and trying not to fall to our deaths. I see a ledge with a cave entrance over there but the spider is in front of it."

"It sure is smart for a spider," said Nan. "It knew we would be challenging to battle head on so it collapsed the tunnel on us. Could it be sentient? It could replace Admiral Trench no problem."

"It? Can you tell what sex it is?" Asked Dooku, looking strangely at Grievous.

"I'm not an expert on arachnid physiology but since it is so big, and unlike Admiral Trench, it's not wearing pants, I can say confidently that it's a male."

Dooku looked at Grievous some more and said, "You know, Grievous, you kind of look like a spider."

"No," said the General. "No, no, no, I can see where this is going and I won't do it."

"There is no choice in the matter. We need to get away without engaging the spider and for that we need a distraction. You look like a spider so we need you to try and get its attention for a bit. Just act like a female spider, that's all."

"That's all? How the fuck does a female spider act? I bet she doesn't wink coquettishly or put mascara on all eight of her eyes!"

"It's okay, G, I promise I won't laugh at you," said Nan.

Grievous laughed at this blatant lie, but he could tell there was no other way out.

"Just act like any spider, female or male," said Nan. "Scuttle around, make sudden little dashes and then stay still, and make some clicking noises."

Grievous groaned and cut himself free from the web. He also cut Dooku's hands free. He swung to a stone outcrop and scuttled. The spider appeared to focus on him. Dooku cut off the rest of the web and released Nan. The spider moved toward Grievous. Nan and Dooku jumped to a stone outcrop farther away from Grievous. Dooku used the Force to throw Nan to another one. She had some ideas about the properties of the web and when she twisted it round and round into a helix, it was not very sticky at all. She made a rope for the Count. They slowly progressed across the cavern. Luckily, spider love is a slow process. By the time they reached the cave entrance, the spider just reached Grievous. Nan filmed them. Grievous and the spider stared at each other.

"Love at first sight," said Nan.

Grievous whacked the arachnid on the head hard enough to wind it, turned on his lightsabers and leaped across the cavern from ledge to ledge, spinning the blades to cut all the web.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Said Nan.

"You're not the one who nearly got raped by a spider," he said.

"Oh, come on! It didn't even touch you. Besides, what could it possibly do to you?"

"It's what it was thinking, Nan, that bothers me. That is one lecherous spider."

"Enough of this exchange, already," said Dooku. "Let's go before it comes to."

Nan could smell the way out of the cave. Outside, she became quite cheerful. She forgot that Dooku was actually their enemy and chatted away as if they were just a group of friendly hikers.

"You know what I feel bad about?" She said. "Those dead Separatists. I mean, they weren't great or anything, but I feel kind of bad that the last thing they saw before they died was a dick pic on their windshields."

"Oh yes, I noticed," said Dooku. "That was your doing?"

"I thought it would be funny. You know what else is funny? If I hadn't come on this trip, Grievous wouldn't have warmed me up in front of the radiator and you wouldn't have stopped to talk to him. You would have been blown up with your ship. Technically I saved your life."

"Is that how you see it?" Said Dooku.

Grievous shot Nan a look to get her to shut up, but she didn't notice and continued: "Grievous would probably have been killed in the explosion too, but what if he wasn't? He would have taken over the entire Confederacy of Independent States! We would have ruled the Separatists together and we would have definitely done things differently."

Dooku paused, then laughed so hard that several crows took off from a nearby tree.

"Are you kidding me? Can you seriously imagine Grievous and yourself ruling the Confederacy? I thought you were a genius scientist. You must be mad. You two are the most unapt, malingering jackasses I have ever employed. Grievous couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag and you can barely finish a sentence without mortally offending someone. What did you say to those dogs? I don't want to know. You two are morons and if I had to die, it would be worth it to see what a ridiculous bungle you would make of this war and the Separatist government."

Nan was silent after that. Grievous also did not raise any points. They trailed after Dooku for about a mile until they came to a spot where Nan's phone worked. They called for backup. Dooku's revenge on the Nearilians would have been immediate, only a battle with the Republic had broken out somewhere else and he let them be for a while. He told Grievous not to come.

"This is an important battle and I don't want you messing it up," he said. "I'll go lead it myself."

"But why…?" Began the General.

"Why are you still here when I know how useless you really are? For starters, you still strike fear into the hearts of some. Then, there is your undivided loyalty. Also, you're still effective enough for relatively mild things, like the job I have planned for Hondo's posse. I have to be careful where I send you from now on. Oh, yes, you're also the only person so far who has been able to successfully operate that industrial-sized copy machine on the Despair."

Count Dooku rarely made jokes and he was quite proud of this one.

After he left, Nan and Grievous sat around, not wanting to talk about what happened. They had nearly gotten themselves killed with their own sabotaging. Maybe they just weren't cut out for this. The Count certainly didn't think much of them and unlike Ventress, who'd actually posed a threat, they weren't worth the effort of getting rid of them.

But despair was not going to make things any better. Nan hacked some files that Separatist field scientists had created about the fuel on Nearilan and made it say that the fuel was of poor quality and too much trouble to extract. Dooku never got around to attacking the snow planet again. Nan also sent Grievous a fake message from "icespider29." It said, "Hey there, sexy. I think we should meet again. I know you're not a real spider but I'm open to trying new things."

Footnote

[1] But then, in "Revenge of the Sith," we find out that he isn't.