Anakin and Obi-Wan were standing by the door when the cell's grime-encrusted illuminator faltered and died. Obi-Wan shoved his hands sideways through the air, Plo Koon moving his hands in the opposite motion and the door retracted, security locks disengaged.
Travale shook his head in wonderment. "It never ceases to amaze me."
Anakin swung to Vos and K'sar. "Now! Hurry!"
The six of them moved into the unlit hall. "Emergency power should come on shortly," Travale said.
Ahead of them they could hear the five guards toggling switches on the console and speaking in excited voices. Anakin wasn't halfway to the anteroom when one of the guards appeared at the end of the narrow corridor. The Aqualish's huge eyes allowed him to see in the dark, but not as well as the Bith, nor as well as the Jedi. Before the guard could realize what was happening, his raised blaster was soaring down the corridor into Anakin's hand. A Force push from Obi Wan sent the Aqualish flailing back into the anteroom and slamming into the turbolift wall.
The rest of the guards hurried out from behind the darkened console to counterattack. By then the Jedi were on them, dropping them with punches, side kicks, Force pushes. Bodies sailed across the anteroom, tumbled over one another, smashed into display screens. One Aqualish managed to get off a shot, but the blaster bolt missed anyone during its mad carom around the room.
The fracas was over almost before it began.
In the red glow of emergency lights, K'sar cast a dumbfounded look around.
"You're Jedi!"
"You don't say?" Travale said. "Took you long enough to figure you out. I mean, I'm not a Jedi but still."
"But...what are you doing here? On Escarte?"
Anakin pressed his forefinger to his lips with elaborate seriousness. "Republic business." Then into K'sar's hands he pressed the blaster he had summoned from the guard.
K'sar stared at the weapon. "But-"
"I won't need it."
"Here's where we part company," Travale said to Anakin and Vos. "Remember: stay left until you reach the stairway."
"Where are you sending him?" K'sar asked.
"Docking Bay Thirty-Six."
The Bith nodded. "I know the way."
Travale chuckled. "This just keeps getting better and better." He swung back to Anakin and Vos. "K'sar will also know the way to Docking Bay Forty. That's where we'll be waiting for you. Escarte Control won't be able to bring the tractor beam back online immediately, and judging by the way you fly, you shouldn't have much trouble dodging the patrol craft. But good luck, anyway."
"Thanks, but to answer your question, we don't believe in luck" Vos grinned.
As Travale and the two Jedi masters were running off, Anakin noticed that one of the turbolift cars was descending.
"Security detail coming to check on the guards," K'sar said.
Anakin nodded toward the dark corridor they were supposed to take. "Go!"
K'sar's long legs propelled him at a fast clip. But instead of going left as Travale had advised, he turned right at the first intersection. Vos blocked his maneuver, halting his retreat.
Anakin grabbed the Bith by the shoulder and spun him around. "This isn't the way we were told to go."
"Damn it, listen. The captain's a newcomer to Escarte," the Bith said, short of breath. "I've been here for fifteen years. I know every route through this rock."
Anakin regarded him in silence while Vos stared at the turbolift doors that would soon open with guards. Most likely, heavily armed ones.
"Trust me, Jedi, I have nothing to gain by lying to you and remaining here."
Anakin tapped him into motion. Several minutes of running brought them all to a rickety stairway, which K'sar didn't hesitate to climb.
"I'd still like to know what you did to end up in detention," Anakin asked from behind K'sar.
"And I wish I could tell you," he said. "My superior, a Gossam, said I had made an accounting error that would cost the Commerce Guild a small fortune."
"Here we were, thinking you killed somebody" Vos chimed to the Bith's horror.
"You were always an exec?" Anakin interjected, feeling an irony that he was playing the role of mediator, a role that was usually filled by Obi Wan.
"I started out as a technician, design, installation, the whole gamut. Gradually, I worked my way up."
"Up, maybe. But you're on the wrong side in this war. Your entire species."
K'sar stopped to catch his breath. "Clak'dor Seven had little choice," he said. "The Separatists were offering unrestricted access to hyperspace routes, better deals on trade goods, no interference… As for me, I was already working for the guild. One day it was business as usual, the next, on the heels of what happened on Geonosis, at any rate, the guild was suddenly at war with the Republic." He raised his gaze. "We go left at the top of the stairs."
Vos heard a note of indecision in his voice that wasn't lost to either Jedi. "You don't sound as sure as you did. We can't have you hesitating on this."
"I haven't been in this area for a long while, but I'm certain we can reach the docking level."
The rock walls of the corridor into which they raced bore the scars of the giant drills that had hollowed Escarte. Light and oxygen were scant, and the uneven floor was slippery. Anakin clamped his right arm around the Bith's narrow waist to help him along. Vos, having no such restriction, was able to angle himself opposite of Anakin and climb symmetrically to him.
"Wait, wait!" K'sar said suddenly.
"What's wrong?"
K'sar eyes filled with dread. "I made a mistake! We shouldn't have come this way!"
Anakin prevented him from moving. "Too late to turn back."
"We have to! You don't understand"
K'sar words were swallowed by the sound of servomotors and hydraulics. Around a bend in the gloomy tunnel raced a dwarf spider droid, its long-barreled blaster cannon already sweeping side to side, in search of targets.
"Well this can't be good" Vos whispered with an empty laugh.
"Someone's coming" Obi Wan warned Travale and Plo Koon.
They were standing on a narrow gantry that accessed the control panel for Escarte's number three tractor beam coupling station. Six meters high, the tower rose from a circular platform that projected from the wall of a deep air shaft. They'd had to wait for full power to return to the area before seeing to the task of disabling the tractor beam. Initially, Travale had made a few mistakes, but he had sorted through his confusion and was almost done.
Obi-Wan peered around the corner of the tower in the direction of the voices he had heard. Three Geonosian security guards were approaching the coupling station from a corridor on the far side of the shaft.
"Never a lightsaber when you need one," Travale whispered. "Can you divert them somehow?"
Obi-Wan considered his options, then made a flicking motion with the fingers of his right hand. An unidentifiable sound issued from deeper in the corridor the guards had taken. Whirling, the three Geonosians hurried off to investigate.
Travale shook his head back and forth in appreciation of Obi-Wan's skill. "It's a wonder the war isn't over yet."
"Too few of us" Plo Koon answered grimly, doing his best to assist Travale and ensure that he didn't fall to his death.
Travale studied the Jedi for a moment. "Is that the reason?"
Obi-Wan touched Travale on the arm, and motioned with his bearded chin to the tower. "No time to waste."
The Jedi watched over Travale's shoulder as he dialed the coupling power feed to zero.
"These things are the future," Travale said. "Fill a ship with enough tractor beam arrays and you could prevent an enemy from jumping to hyperspace."
"There aren't ships large enough" Plo Koon commented.
"There will be," Travale said. "To ensure that another war doesn't happen. Or perhaps to end a war quickly before it gets a chance to escalate."
Mainstay of the Commerce Guild's mining operations, the dwarf spider droid was a hunter-killer. The spider didn't stand much taller than a Trade Federation battle droid, but it was agile and equipped with two powerful blaster cannons. Perched at the juncture of four splayed legs, the hemispherical body was dominated by two huge circular photoreceptors, which appeared to be fixed on Anakin and K'sar as the droid rushed in to make the kill.
Anakin threw K'sar to one side and rolled as the dwarf spider fired. Vos narrowly avoided the blast by dropping onto his chest and dropping slightly behind. Two glaring bolts gouged a trench in the hewn floor of the tunnel, and the report of the cannon resounded deafeningly from the walls. The head pivoted, photoreceptors finding Anakin, and the weapon discharged again.
Anakin flipped himself away, only for the bolt to fall right onto Vos a second time. Calling on the Force, the Kiffar swirled his free hand in front of him to prevent the intense heat from engulfing his body. The bolt couldn't be stopped but it was at least redirected to the wall above him which was seared with superheated energy.
Rolling once more, Anakin tried to get underneath the droid's striding legs, but the spider anticipated him, skittered backward, and loosed another burst. Fortunately, the shot missed entirely as Anakin leapt away but it was certainly enough to destabilize part of the ceiling. Vos had to call on the Force to prevent falling stones from crushing himself and K'sar. As the stones tumbled, Vos found that he was getting buried by the ceiling and hoped that Anakin could deal with the spider droid.
Propelled by the Force, as well as the force of the explosion, Anakin struck the arched ceiling and fell hard to the floor. Blacking out for a moment, he awoke to find the droid charging toward him, reorienting the smaller of its cannons to place him in the crosshairs. Catapulting to his feet, he flew forward, intent on ripping the power cells from beneath the droid's dome. No less determined, the droid countered by retreating and rearing up. Falling short of the mark, Anakin curled his body, counting on momentum to carry him forward.
The spider continued to retreat, then dropped back on all fours, traversing its cannon.
Feigning a sidestep, Anakin hurled himself completely under the droid, but still couldn't find cover. He heard the sound of the spider's dome rotating, then the sound of the muzzle of the long cannon hitting the scabrous wall. Realizing that it had entered a section of the tunnel too narrow to allow for a half turn, the droid stamped its legs in frustration, then began to back itself into the wider stretch.
Without a clear plan in mind, Anakin chased it, heard the dome begin to pivot once more, then the sound of a hand blaster set on full automatic.
Ten meters down the corridor, the pyramid of stones that was formed from the falling debris was opened with a repulse of force energy channeled by Quinlan Vos. In front of the Kiffar, K'sar was on his feet, the heavy weapon held with a two-handed grip, firing directly into the spider's bulging red photoreceptors and power cells. Confused, the droid tried desperately to spin around, but there wasn't room. Loose rock calved from the walls as the barrel of the cannon struck again and again. All the while, the Bith continued to advance, emptying the blaster's power cell. An electronic shriek tore from somewhere inside the spider, and sparks began to geyser from its perforated dome. The four legs danced in anger for a moment longer, then stopped, and the tunnel began to fill with smoke. Finally the droid collapsed, the tip of its cannon slamming into the floor at K'sar's feet.
"That's for having a really bad day" the Bith declared, triggering the cooling mechanism on his blaster rifle.
Anakin eased around the smoking machine and gently removed the blaster from the Bith's shaking grip. The droid's dome pinged as it cooled; a steady susurration escaped the blaster's gas chamber.
"Nice shooting" Vos commended, approaching from behind.
"How much farther?" Anakin asked after a moment.
"We're close," K'sar said in a daze. "Half a kilometer or so past the bend."
"Can you make it?"
K'sar nodded, and they hurried through the final stretch, emerging from a tunnel opening at the rear of the docking bay. A hundred meters away the cruiser was sitting just where the tractor beam had left it. Few guards were about, and most of them were battle droids.
Anakin took a moment to study the disposition of the droids, then turned to K'sar, who seemed to have recovered from the ordeal in the tunnel. Vos' face was unreadable as he stared towards the guards and the means through which they would reclaim their ship.
"No matter what we do, I want you to head straight for the boarding ramp. Don't stop running until you're inside the ship, understand?"
K'sar nodded, apparently having experienced enough combat for the day.
Anakin leapt out of the corridor, deliberately calling attention to himself to distract the droids from firing at K'sar. Evading blaster bolts with perfectly timed jumps and rolls, he got close enough to the droids to wave some of them into others, toppling them as if they had been picked up by a strong wind. From one, he called a blaster rifle into his own hands, and mowed down those that were still on their feet.
Taking a cue from Anakin, Vos summoned two droids into the air as if a great wind swept from underneath and channeled force energy to hold them defenseless. With a wave of his hands, the droids fell towards reinforcements that were rushing to their location in an attempt to deny their departure. Leading K'sar up the boarding ramp, Vos watched as Anakin mowed down more battle droids who tried in vain to follow their programming at their own peril. Anakin rushed towards the cockpit and began to power up the cruiser's defensive systems as bolts from the droids' blasters ricocheted from the fuselage and transparisteel panels. Traversing the cruiser's fore and aft cannons, Anakin fired, burying the droids under huge chunks of ferrocrete blown from the walls and ceiling.
When the flight systems were online he left the cockpit to man the rotary cannon on the starboard dorsal side of the cruiser. Vos turned his gaze from Skywalker to K'sar who was sitting on the floor of the main hold, panting.
"Why aren't you raising the ship?" the Bith said. "Guild corvettes are probably already on the way."
Vos stepped closer to him, his expression darkening visibly. "You and I need to talk first. And either you answer my questions, or I jettison you here, and let the Gossams do what they will with you."
The Bith's eyes expanded. "Talk? About what?"
"A hyperwave transceiver you designed fourteen years ago."
"Fourteen years ago? I can barely remember last week."
Vos glared at him from beneath an angrily furrowed brow illuminated by a yellow streak that ran across his face. "Think harder."
"Why are you doing this to me? I just saved your life!"
Vos had to raise his voice over the booming roar of the cannons that Anakin used to repel the battle droids that continued to pour into the hanger. K'sar flinched from the sound but Vos persisted in his interrogation.
"Remind me to thank you later. Right now you're going to tell me about the transceiver and the mechno-chair you installed it in. It would have been a special order. More than the usual secrecy. You would have been well paid."
K'sar started. His wrinkled mouth puckered and he stared at Vos in terror. "Now it all comes together. My arrest and imprisonment! The death sentence! The transceiver… that's what brought you here."
"Who placed the order?"
"I suspect you already know the answer."
"How did he contact you?"
"Through my personal comlink. He needed someone of great skill. Someone willing to follow his every instruction without question. The designs he sent were like nothing I had ever seen. The end result was almost … artistic."
"Why did he allow you to live? What stopped him from killing you?"
"I was never sure. I knew I'd been useful. I thought he might require additional devices, but I never heard from him again."
"If you're right about your arrest, that means he has been keeping an eye on you. Tell me the rest and we might be able to keep you from his long reach."
"That's everything! Leave me alone!"
"You're holding something back," Vos said in a flat, menacing tone. Dark thoughts began to push their way into his mind and he snarled. His hand grabbed the Bith's skull and energy was drained into Vos' hands. "Speak! I command you!"
K'sar gulped, and clutched at Vos' hands. "I built two of them! Me and my partner."
"Who received the second one? One of the Separatist leaders? Dooku?"
His mind fading into unconsciousness K'sar whispered: "No. The Republic."
Vos blinked in surprise at this response. More importantly, he recognized what he was doing and how he allowed these dark thoughts to be indulged. His anger dissipated to shame and he pulled his hand away and took a moment to pause. "What do you mean the Republic? Who?"
His strength returning, K'sar rubbed the large temples on his head. "Sienar. His name is Sienar."
"You mean Raith Sienar?" Vos asked, looking for clarity. "The head of Sienar technologies?"
"Not officially" K'sar replied, blinking nervously. "It was designed for some sort of experimental spacecraft they were building. One of their advanced prototypes."
"And who was the craft for?"
"I don't know. I swear, Jedi, I don't." K'sar paused, leaning against the side of the cruiser. "All I know is the name of the pilot that Sienar hired to deliver the ship. Me and my partner, the Xi Charrian, we delivered the mechno-chair to the pilot. But then my partner died soon after. He was found dead, his body all burnt up as if he were-"
"Stop! Focus." Vos interrupted. "What do you know about the pilot?"
"I only knew her briefly. I don't know if she's still alive. All this time I thought I was left alive because I might have been important."
"Can you tell us anything?" Vos pressed. "Anything at all? Her name? A planet?"
Looking at Vos with a quivering voice he nodded finally. "I know where you can start. But I have to warn you. If there is something to all of this. If there is some trail you're following, you better be careful. If they are trying to kill me, they'll want to kill you even more."
Travale and the two Jedi negotiated the cofferdam that linked Escarte's air lock to a docking ring just forward of the cruiser's tri-barreled thruster fantail. Looking around the scorched hanger, they noticed that a particular gunner had not hesitated to blast a swarm of battle droids into oblivion. Stepping into the main hold, Travale gave a shout of joy.
"Good to be alive!"
Obi-Wan glanced at Thal K'sar, thinking the Bith might feel the same. Instead, K'sar was curled up on the hold's worn acceleration couch. Trading looks with Plo Koon, the Jedi accepted that he was rattled from some sort of questioning. They hurried on to the cockpit and strapped into the copilot's seat as Anakin and Vos were initiating takeoff sequences.
"Any problems reaching the ship?" Plo Koon asked?
"The usual close calls," Anakin said evasively. "We had the spider droid well under control."
"You'd think he would learn to suppress his craving for excitement" Obi Wan spoke up.
"Hey, it's not like we asked for it to shoot at us. We just had to improvise."
"If by improvise, you mean get rescued by K'sar after I defended him from your antics" Vos smirked.
"Oh don't you start!" Anakin protested.
"While this occurred, we were successful at disabling the tractor beam" Plo Koon interrupted.
"Not a skill I expect to draw on again, but, yes, thanks to Travale" Obi Wan agreed.
Anakin glanced at the console, waiting for the cofferdam telltale to go off, then called on the thrusters to move the cruiser away from Escarte. Off to port, Obi-Wan saw two Guild corvettes dead in space. "And here I was certain we weren't out of this yet."
Anakin shrugged. "Anticlimactic."
"We could wait for them to call for help" Vos challenged.
"Oh, of course not. Anakin, if you please" Obi Wan replied, pointing at the controls that Anakin was watching closely. As the ship accelerated Obi Wan continued. "It's just, K'sar seemed rather...subdued. I'm guessing he was questioned."
Anakin busied himself with the controls. "Ask Vos."
Obi Wan and Plo Koon alike trained their gaze on the Kiffar. His gaze was transfixed on the empty space in front of him, as if his mind was drifting into infinite. "We have a new lead. I interrogated K'sar when Anakin was providing cover. I nearly gave into my emotions. I know it doesn't justify anything but I was afraid of this investigation being for nothing. Afraid that it would reach an empty void."
Plo Koon watched the Kiffar lower his head in guilt before he took a moment to reflect himself. Obi Wan turned to him as if trying to read his thoughts, to which Plo Koon extended a hand onto Vos' shoulder. "You resisted your temptations. They could have taken you but you chose to deny them. Learn from this."
"I agree, Vos" Obi Wan spoke. "As I say to Anakin, anticipation is distraction. Focus on what is."
"Glad we all are getting along," Anakin interrupted after a moment of silence. "But hyperspace coordinates are complete. Say goodbye to Escarte."
Banking widely, the cruiser left the planet and sluggish light behind as it accelerated across the galaxy at lightspeed.