Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [83]
Thus far, no images of Dooku had surfaced in the recordings that had survived. Even if images of Dooku’s tavern mates did surface, the Jedi had no means of identifying any of them as Darth Sidious, but the images could provide an additional starting point for further investigation.
By now Mace could hear movement and soft voices ahead.
Hardly a good tactic for hostiles intent on springing an ambush, but one never knew. He stretched out with his feelings, alert for diversions or clues he might have overlooked—obscured by the dark side, or owing to his own neglect.
Standing nearby, Valiant looked to Mace for the go signal.
When Mace nodded, Valiant said: “Light it up!”
Weapons raised, gas and fragmentation grenades enabled, the commandos sprinted into the intersecting tunnel, firing tracer bolts into the gloom.
Tight on their heels, Mace heard Valiant yell: “Down on the floor! Don’t move! I said, don’t move!”
More fire erupted, then several commando voices were shouting: “Stay still! Down on your faces! Hands up—all four of them!”
All four of them? Mace thought.
Edging through the commandos, he reached Valiant, whose BlasTech was aimed at a cowering crowd of thirty or so four-armed insectoid aliens, who were babbling in some language other than Basic, or speaking it with an accent so thick as to make their worlds unintelligible.
“Lower your weapons,” Mace told the commandos. “And someone bring that interpreter droid forward!”
Mace’s command was relayed down the line, and a moment later a highly polished silver protocol droid tottered into the tunnel, muttering to itself.
“I don’t understand how I’ve gone from serving the Separatists to serving the Republic. Did I undergo a partial memory wipe?”
“Consider yourself lucky,” one of the commandos said. “Now you’re on the side of the good guys.”
“Good guys, bad guys … who can tell anymore? What’s more, you won’t be so quick to say that should someone compel you to shift loyalties at a moment’s notice.”
“Droid!” Mace shouted.
“I do have a name, sir.”
Mace glanced at Valiant.
“TeeCee something or other,” the ARC said.
“Fine,” Mace said, grabbing hold of TC-16 and pointing him in the direction of the terrified aliens. “See if you can make sense of what these folk are saying.”
The droid listened to the babbling, responded in kind, and turned to face Mace. “They are Unets, General. Speaking their native language, which is called Une.”
Mace regarded the huddled, shivering group. “What are they doing down here?”
TC-16 listened, then said: “They say that they haven’t the slightest idea where they are, General. They arrived on Coruscant in a shipping container that was air-dropped at a decrepit landing platform some twenty kilometers from here. The personage who was to have guided them into the depths of the Uscru Sector stole all their credits and abandoned them in The Works.”
“Undocumented refugees,” Valiant said.
Mace frowned. The tunnels beneath the Grungeon Block held countless surprises.
“They almost got themselves killed.”
“Apparently that’s nothing new for them,” TC-16 said. “Their planet fell to the Separatists, the freighter they originally took passage on was attacked by pirates, several of them—”
“That’s enough,” Mace said. “Assure them that they’re not going to be harmed, and that we’ll see to it they reach a refugee camp.” He nodded to Valiant, who in turn told two of his troopers to carry out Mace’s command.
“Talk about your corridor ghouls,” Dyne said, eyeing the aliens as he approached Mace.
“Squatters, death stick runners, lost droids, now undocumented refugees …”
“Next it’ll be Cthons,” Dyne