Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [73]
Mace and his team of Jedi, clone commandos, and Intelligence analysts were a kilometer east of the structure, in an area of squat, peak-roofed foundries, lorded over by smoke-belching permacrete stacks. A more dispiriting place this side of Eriadu or Korriban would have been hard to find, Mace told himself. Five hours spent here could take five years off someone’s life. He could feel the damage with every breath he took, every grimy surface he touched, every vagrant-poisoned whiff that wafted his way. The acids in the air were fast digesting everything, but not quickly enough for some. Ambitious developers and urban renewalists had deliberately introduced stone mites, duracrete slugs, and conduit worms to aid and abet the caustic rain, without heed for the risk such vermin poised to the nearby skyscrapers of the Senate District.
All in all, the perfect environment for a Sith Lord.
“Probe remotes are away, General Windu,” the ARC reported.
Mace trained the macrobinoculars on the flock of meter-wide spherical droids that were maneuvering with purposeful unevenness toward the building.
The Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee had attempted to interdict the use of commandos and probe droids. In the minds of the committee members, the idea that a Separatist stronghold could exist on Coruscant was absurd. Fortunately—and admittedly unexpectedly—Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had overruled the committee, and Mace had been allowed to compile a dream team that included not only ARC commander Valiant and Captain Dyne of Republic Intelligence, but also Jedi Master Shaak Ti and several capable Padawans.
“No indications that the probes are being targeted,” the ARC updated.
Mace watched the black spheres begin to drift through shattered windows and into areas of the superstructure where the building’s façade had disintegrated and the bones of its plasteel skeleton were exposed.
Moment of truth, he thought.
* * *
The Lothan pilot Obi-Wan and Anakin had searched out on Naos III hadn’t been able to furnish anything more than a portrait of the building to which she had delivered the star courier. A product of Sienar Advanced Projects Laboratory, the craft had been modified—perhaps unwittingly by Sienar itself—for the Sith who had killed Qui-Gon Jinn. The pilot had been provided with landing coordinates on Coruscant, but, in fact, the courier itself had homed in on those. Paid in full for her services, she had been taxied to Westport, and had left for Ryloth soon after. The physical description of the courier’s destination hadn’t given the Jedi much to go on. Though more horizontal than most areas of equatorial Coruscant, The Works sprawled for hundreds of square kilometers and contained thousands of buildings that could have fit the description.
A break hadn’t come until Jedi Master Tholme had recalled a detail from the debriefing of his former Padawan, Quinlan Vos. As part of Vos’s covert mission to penetrate Count Dooku’s inner circle of dark side apprentices, Vos had been tasked with assassinating a duplicitous Senator, named Viento. Immediately following the assassination—and a brutal duel with Master K’Kruhk—Vos had met briefly with Dooku in The Works. There, Dooku had informed his would-be protégé that Vos had been incorrect in assuming that Viento was a Sith, and had again denied that he himself answered to any Master.
At the time, no one had paid much attention to Vos’s remarks, because Vos seemed to have been seduced by the dark side and lost to the Order. The rendezvous was considered to have been only that: an out-of-the-way meeting place. Of greater interest to the Jedi and Republic Intelligence was the fact that Dooku had managed to arrive at and depart Coruscant without detection.
“Holoimages of the interior coming in,” Valiant said.
Mace lowered the macrobinoculars and shifted his gaze