"You'll see," Roshton said, shifting his eyes to the mansion and the ring of droids. "Ever seen a droideka go bounce?"
"Uh... no."
"Then you've got a treat in store." Roshton pulled the front of his tunic slightly back to reveal a comlink hidden behind the flap. "Number seven, stand by... now."
And from the direction of the house came the thundercrack of an explosion. Doriana twisted around in time to see one of the droidekas, still in wheel form, soaring over the heads of its startled companions. Behind it, a blackened hole in the ground trailed a strand of smoke. "Number ten: now,"
Roshton said.
There was a second explosion, this one squarely at the feet of one of the assault droids. The big machine lost its balance and toppled backward to land with a sickening thud. "Where are they firing from?" Doriana demanded, looking around in bewilderment. There were no clone troopers in sight, and precious little cover anywhere nearby for them to be hiding in. "Roshton?"
"Later," Roshton said. "Five and eight: go."
Two more explosions ripped into the defensive line, each sending a pair of battle droids flying across the neatly trimmed lawn. "And here come the soft ones," Roshton added as the brightly colored Neimoidian robes appeared in the doorway. "This should be fun."
"Hold it," Doriana said, squinting across the distance. Nearly hidden in the folds of the robes... "Hold your fire, Roshton," he repeated urgently.
"They've got Binalie's son with them."
Roshton muttered something under his breath. "Rotten cowards," he said contemptuously. "They can't just..."
He broke off, a tight smile suddenly twisting his lips. "Well, well.
Cowards and fools both."
"What?" Doriana asked, frowning.
"They've got Corf Binalie, all right." Roshton gestured. "They've also got Jafer Tories."
He lifted his eyebrows at Doriana. "Like I said. This should be fun."
Two more explosions, the third and fourth by Tories' count, shook the house as Ashel and Gehad hurried them down the entry hallway to the mansion's main door.
"I do not understand," Gehad said nervously as they peered outside.
"Where are they shooting from?" "What does it matter?" Ashel bit out, gesturing to the droids. "Droids! Form a cordon to the transport!" Obediently, the droids abandoned their encirclement positions, scurrying or rolling or lumbering, as their capabilities allowed, toward the vehicle squatting a dozen meters away. They were lining up into two rows, their weapons pointing outward, when another explosion caught the transport's right front corner, bouncing the vehicle a meter into the air and leaving a section of armor plating black and twisted.
"This is impossible!" Gehad shouted. "How do they do this?"
"Ask questions later!" Ashel growled, pointing toward the Spaarti plant.
"Look! Here is our air support."
And impressive air support it was, too, Tories had to admit. A hundred STAPs had appeared in the sky, sweeping in from both east and west as they converged on the Binalie estate.
But the STAPs were still out of range, the droids in their cordon had their weapons and sensors aimed outward as they searched for their unseen attackers, and the Neimoidians were far too preoccupied with their own safety to be watching their prisoners. Time to go to work.
"Now," Ashel said, ungluing himself from the partial protection of the doorway and sprinting between the rows of droids toward the transport.
Grabbing Corf s arm, Gehad started to follow, tugging the boy along behind him. They didn't get far. Reaching forward, Tories caught the boy's other arm and planted his feet solidly into the ground just outside the mansion's doorway. For a moment, Corf was stretched between them like a pull-war cable, and then Gehad stopped and spun around. "What do you-?" he snarled. He never finished his question. In that same brief second, the two combat droids that had been marching along a meter behind them, caught offguard by Tories' sudden halt, arrived at either side of the Jedi. And in a single smooth motion, Tories reached beneath his robe, pulled out his lightsaber, and ignited it.
Gehad gave a little deep-throated scream, letting go of Corf's arm as if he'd been burned and scuttling away from him. Tories gave the boy a quick shove back through the doorway as he slashed the lightsaber across the upper chest of the droid to his left. The brilliant green blade sliced through the thick acertron armor like it was wrapping plastoid, and the top third of the droid slid off and fell with a crash onto the ground. The rest of the machine, caught in a trick of balance, remained standing stolidly upright like a beheaded corpse patiently awaiting further orders. Tories didn't wait to see whether or not it would fall. The assault droid to his right was already reacting to this unexpected threat, twisting at its hips to try to bring its blasters to bear. Tories swiveled to his right to meet it, swinging his lightsaber around and down across the raised forearms above the mounted blasters and dropping them onto the ground. His second cut took off the droid's legs; even before the pieces clattered to the ground, he leaped backward through the doorway into the mansion. "Go!" he ordered the Neimoidians, lifting his lightsaber into guard position. As if in emphasis, another nearby explosion blew clouds of dirt into the air. The two aliens didn't need further encouragement. Turning, they sprinted down the line of droids and scampered into the transport. The surviving droids followed, closing up the cordon neatly behind them. A minute later the transport, joined now by three more of the vehicles, was heading east at high speed. "Wow," Corf breathed.
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."