Timothy Zahn - Hero of Cartao 2. Hero's Rise

Tories turned to see the boy gazing up at him, a stunned expression on his face. "You all right?" he asked.

Mechanically, Corf nodded. "I never saw anything like that," he said.

"Just doing what I was trained for," Tories said. With one last look outside, he closed down his lightsaber. "Let's go tell your father you're all right," he said. "And after that," he added grimly, "you may both want to go to your safe room. This could get nasty."

There they go," Roshton commented as the last of the droids piled into the transports. The first vehicle, the one with the Neimoidians aboard, had already left the ground and was clawing for distance, the STAP escort forming up around it. "They won't be trying that again for awhile."

"Probably not," Doriana agreed, his eyes still on the remains of the D-

60s that had taken Tories maybe half a second to turn to scrap. He'd been around Jedi much of his life, but never before had he actually witnessed one in full combat mode.

And for the first time he began to truly see why Sidious wanted them eliminated.

"Estate units, secure," Roshton was saying into his comlink. "City, forest units: stand ready."

With an effort, Doriana pulled his attention back to the military situation. "What do you mean, stand ready?" he asked. "And how did you manage those shots?"

"Don't be dense," Roshton chided. 'That was nothing but a set of strategically placed, remote-controlled land mines. You must not have noticed all the landscaping being done around the grounds the past two days."

"I had other things on my mind," Doriana said tartly, watching the fleeing transports. Instead of taking the straightest route back to Spaarti Creations, they were swinging far to the east. What in?...

And then, he got it. 'They're avoiding the south lawn," he said. 'They don't want to risk anything else crashing on it and irritating the Cranscoc."

"Exactly what I thought they'd do," Roshton said with grim satisfaction.

"Forest unit: secure. City unit: fire at will."

Abruptly, a dozen blaster bolts sizzled up from the northern edge of Foulahn City, blowing apart STAPs and peeling chunks of armor from the transports.

"What are you doing?" Doriana demanded. "You've chased them away. Isn't that enough?"

"No," Roshton said. "City unit: take them down."

The STAPs were returning fire now, and that whole section of sky seemed to be filled with multicolored blaster fire. Doriana found himself holding his breath as he watched the transports dodging and staggering, trying desperately to reach the safety of the plant. If Roshton's zealousness got the Neimoidians killed - or worse, if it panicked them into pulling their droids out of the factory for a counterattack...

And then, something else in the sky caught his eye. Just a pair of specks, but as he watched they grew visibly larger. "Roshton!" he snapped, fumbling out a compact set of electrobinoculars and switching them on. "We've got company."

"Let me see," Roshton ordered, reaching for the instrument.

Doriana twitched it away, pressing his eyes against the lenses.

A single glance was enough. "It's a pair of C-9979 landing ships," he told Roshton, handing over the electrobinoculars. "Looks like all your little stunt accomplished was to persuade the Separatists to bring in reinforcements."

The Neimoidian commander's careless choice of a landing spot two days earlier had enabled Roshton's clone troopers to slow down their troop deployment long enough for the Republic forces to evacuate the Spaarti Creations complex. With this second wave, the Separatists made no such error.

The landing ships put down to the west and northeast of the city, in open territory where no close-in attack would be possible, and immediately began deploying their troops and vehicles.

Roshton had barely enough time to order his men to pull back before the MTT transports and AAT battle tanks made their orderly way through the streets of Foulahn City, along the serviceways of Triv Spaceport, and even into the mostly uninhabited wooded hills west and north of the Spaarti complex. The AATs took up position at official buildings and strategic road intersections, while the MTTs quickly found places to dump their deadly cargos of battle droids, super battle droids, assault droids, and droidekas. By late afternoon, every square meter for fifteen kilometers around Spaarti Creations was in Separatist hands. With one small exception.

"One of the C-9979S is here," Roshton said, tapping a spot on the holomap due west of Foulahn City. "Its droids and AATs are occupying western Foulahn, plus all the territory west and north of the Spaarti complex. The other one's here-" he indicated a point near the Quatreen River where it meandered its way between the city and the Triv Spaceport to the northeast of it"-where they can cover the eastern city and the spaceport. I hear some units have gone a ways up the Quatreen and into Navroc City, too, but I don't have independent confirmation of that."

Tories looked over at Binalie. The other's face looked pale, but that could have just been the lighting. With only limited power supplies available here in the depths of the Binalie family safe room-and with no desire to attract notice from the droids occupying the main house upstairs-Binalie had elected to shut down everything except the permlights. "So where does that leave us?" Tories asked.

"Basically, stuck in here," Roshton said heavily. "My troops are doing what they can to harass the droids, but we don't have nearly enough manpower to push them back to the landing ships. Master Doriana tells me Supreme Chancellor Palpatine has promised help, but that could be as much as several days away.

"And meanwhile, your clones and the droids tear Foulahn City to shreds,"

Binalie growled.

"We're keeping the war out of your plant, aren't we?" Roshton retorted.

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"What I wanted was for the whole cursed war to stay off my world,"

Binalie shot back.

"I'm afraid those choices aren't always ours to make," Doriana spoke up calmly.

"It certainly wasn't Commander Roshton's idea to bring the war here."

"So we just sit here and let them wreck our city?"

"If I were you, I'd focus on the central issue," Roshton said tartly.

"Namely, once the sun sets they'll be able to get the Cranscoc to retool the plant. Once that happens, you can wave goodbye to any hope for your city or your world."

"What do you mean?" Corf asked, huddling a little closer to his father.

"The Separatists are about to launch a brand-new line of assault droids,"

Roshton told him. "Once they get it up and running, every hour they spend in there means a stronger droid army on Cartao. If they're not stopped, sooner or later they'll have enough troops to defeat anything the Republic can spare to throw against them."

He looked back at Binalie. "And at that point, the only way to stop them.

.."

"No," Binalie said flatly. "Don't even think it."

"You think I want Spaarti destroyed?" Roshton asked, his voice icy calm.

"Those new cloning tanks we were building could conceivably turn the war around in a matter of months, and this is the only place we can fine-tune the production quickly enough to get the most efficient design possible. But at the same time, we can't let this new D-90 assault droid line get started, either. I'm sorry, but we're running low on options."

"Just a moment," Doriana said, straightening up and pulling a holoprojector from a belt pouch. "We may have news."

He flicked it on, and an image of an Iktotchi head appeared over the projection platform, its distinctively shaped horns curving down toward its shoulders. The words were too faint for Tories to hear, but suddenly Doriana smiled. "Thank you, General," he said, standing up and walking over to Roshton. "Commander, General FyefeeTiis of the Republic Light Cruiser Whipsaw would like a word with you."