Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [299]
“No way to know.”
“Except they made their move too soon.”
Salvo nodded. “Even now, troopers and Jedi are battling it out inside the Temple on Coruscant. Thousands are believed dead.”
“I’ve never been to Coruscant,” Climber said, breaking a brief silence. “Closest I ever came was training on one of the inner worlds of that system. You’ve been there?”
“Once. Before the start of the Outer Rim Sieges.”
“Who would you rather be serving, Commander—Palpatine or the Jedi?”
“That’s outside the scope of the part we were created to play, Climber. When this war ends, we’ll be sitting pretty. I wouldn’t have thought so even twelve hours ago, but now, with the Jedi out of the picture, I suspect we’re in for a promotion.”
Climber glanced at the sky. “Going to be dark soon. Puts our search teams at high risk of being ambushed by Seps.”
Salvo shrugged. “More than a hundred seeker droids have been deployed. Shouldn’t be hard to find three Jedi.”
Climber blew his breath out in derision. “You know as well as I do that they’re too smart to be caught.”
“Granted,” Salvo said. “By now, they’re probably wearing bodysuits and armor.”
Eat,” Shryne said, forcing some of the rations he had taken from his utility belt on a distracted Olee Starstone. “We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.”
Several hours had passed since they had fled the ambush site, and they’d traveled clear across the city to an empty warehouse close to the access ramps of the northernmost of the landing platform bridges. It was midnight, and they were attired in the garb of three mercenaries they had taken by surprise behind the Argente Tower.
Shryne continued. “There may come a point when we’ll have to get rid of our comlinks, beacon transceivers, and lightsabers. Being taken prisoner could be our way off Murkhana.”
“Should we use Force influence?” Starstone said.
“That might work on a couple of troopers at a time,” Shryne said, “but not an entire platoon, much less a full company.”
Chatak eyed her Padawan with clear intent. “It’s a matter of surviving until the Republic is victorious.”
Shryne had a ration pack lifted to his mouth when his beacon transceiver began to vibrate. He fished the device from the deep pocket of the Koorivar robe and regarded it in silence.
“Could be troopers, tapping into our frequencies,” Chatak said.
Shryne studied the beacon’s small display screen. “It’s a coded burst-transmission from the Temple.”
Chatak hurried to his side to peer over his shoulder. “Can you decipher it?”
“It’s not a simple Nine Thirteen,” Shryne said, referring to the code the Jedi used to locate one another in emergency situations. “Give me a moment.” When the burst-transmission began to recycle, he turned to Chatak in stark incredulity. “The High Council is ordering all Jedi back to Coruscant.”
Chatak was dumbfounded.
“No explanation,” Shryne said.
Chatak stood up and paced away from him. “What could have happened?”
He thought about it. “A follow-up attack on Coruscant by Grievous?”
“Perhaps,” Chatak said. “But that doesn’t account for the clone troopers’ disloyalty.”
“Maybe there’s been a universal clone trooper revolt,” Starstone suggested. “The Kaminoans could have betrayed us. All these years, they could have been in league with Count Dooku. They could have programmed the troopers to revolt at a predetermined time.”
Shryne was glancing at Chatak. “Does she ever stop?”
“I haven’t been able to find the off switch.”
Shryne moved to the nearest window and watched the night sky.
“Republic starfighters will be setting down on the landing platform by late morning,” he said.
Chatak joined him at the window. “Then Murkhana is won.”
Shryne turned to face her. “We have to reach the platform. The troopers have their orders, and now we have ours. If we can seize a transport or starfighters, we may yet be able to return