Timothy Zahn

Hero of Cartao 3. Hero's End

The streets of Foulahn City were dark and deserted as Kinman Doriana picked his way through the litter of broken droids, small missile craters, shattered buildings, bodies, and the general clutter of war. The military comlink he'd borrowed from Commander Roshton had allowed him to listen in on the Republic side of the battle, and he'd known the fighting here and at the Triv Spaceport had been fierce. But even that knowledge hadn't prepared him for the actual carnage the soldiers had left behind.

A half dozen craters overlapped each other across the street in front of him, half filled with rubble from the buildings the missiles had destroyed and a few mutilated bodies of the civilians who'd been caught in the crossfire.

The fighting here must have been particularly bad, he decided, with a higherranking officer directing the Republic side of the attack. Maybe here he'd finally find what he was looking for.

He hoped so. It was well after midnight, he was achingly tired, and the new Separatist masters of this part of Cartao undoubtedly had a curfew in place for the citizenry. The first patrol that spotted him would be trouble, and he wasn't in the mood for arguing with combat droids. Despite the dramatic events and reversals of the past few hours, things were still adhering reasonably closely to Lord Sidious's plan, but that didn't mean Doriana himself had to enjoy the situation. He'd had his fill of battles a long time ago, and very much preferred to stay at his desk in Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's office and handle his schemes and manipulations long-distance.

A glimmer of white to the left caught his eye, and he picked his way carefully toward it through the shattered road material. Probably just another piece of the deco-rative white roof trim Foulahn's residents were so fond of, he thought sourly, but it still had to be checked out.

But it wasn't a piece of roof trim. It was the half buried body of a clone trooper. A lieutenant, from the markings on his armor.

Finally.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been the work of perhaps two minutes to dig the body out of the rubble. With the need for absolute silence, it took Doriana closer to ten. But it was worth the effort. Hidden away in the back of one of the survival pouches on the lieutenant's utility belt was an unlabeled datacard. Slipping it into his pocket, Doriana resealed the survival pouch and started to straighten up.

"Halt," a flat mechanical voice ordered from behind him. Doriana froze in mid-crouch. "Don't shoot," he called, stretching his hands slowly to the sides so that the droids could see they were empty. "I'm an official medical observer."

"Turn and identify," the voice ordered.

Doriana obeyed, turning carefully on the uncertain footing. It was a complete patrol, all right: six of the old-style battle droids, one of them standing slightly in the lead. In the dim light, Doriana couldn't tell whether there was anyone of command rank among them. "Identify," the droid in the lead repeated.

"My name is Kinman Drifkin," he told them. "I'm a member of the Aargau Medical Observer Corps. We're a neutral power sworn to observe and report on any atrocities taking place during this conflict."

The droid seemed to digest that. "Come forward," he ordered. "Do you have official identification?"

"Of course," Doriana said, slipping his hand into his ID pocket as he walked toward the group. The droids lifted their blasters warningly as he withdrew his hand, relaxed slightly as they saw he held only a datacard.

"Which of you has a reader?" he asked.

"I will take it," the spokesman said, shifting his grip on his blaster and extending a claw-like hand.

Doriana stepped to him and handed him the datacard. So this one was definitely the leader; and at this distance, he could see now the pale yellow markings of a command officer on its head and torso. Excellent. "I believe you'll find my credentials are in order," he added, glancing casually around.

There was no one else in sight, human or droid.

"We will see," the officer droid said, taking the datacard and sliding it into a reader slot set into the lower part of its jaw line. "It says here that your assigned observation area is...'

"Barauch seven-nine-seven," Doriana said in a low voice. "Filliae gron one-one-three."

The officer broke off in midsentence. Doriana eased a few centimeters to his right, watching to see if the droids and their weapons would track his movement.

They didn't. To all appearances, the entire squad was frozen and oblivious. "I'll be crocked," Doriana murmured to himself, feeling muscles relax that he hadn't noticed were tense. So, the magic backdoor lockout code that Sidious had given to him actually worked.

And if the lockout code worked... "Pinkrun four-seven-two aprion oneeight- one-one," he said, reaching out to the spokesman's jaw and retrieving his false ID. "Backskip three minutes; pause one minute; restart. Execute."

The patrol gave a group shiver. "Accessed," the spokesman said, his mechanical voice sounding somehow even flatter than it had before.

Smiling tightly, Doriana sidled past them, heading back the direction they'd come from as quickly as he could manage without twisting his ankle on the loose stone. He had just one minute to disappear before the droids came out of their freeze and restarted their patrol, with this little incident conveniently erased from their group memory. He reached the nearest corner and ducked around it, pausing there to listen. A few seconds later he heard the distinctive clunk as the droids came to life again. With more clattering, they continued on their patrol, their footsteps fading off into the night breezes.

Smiling again, Doriana detached himself from the wall and headed back toward the Binalie estate.

"You all right?" a voice asked softly from the shadows. Doriana jumped violently. "Who's there?" he hissed.

"Relax," Jafer Tories calmed him, stepping into view from a doorway, his lightsaber ready in his hand. "It's just me."

Doriana took a deep breath. "You nearly stopped my heart there," he said reproachfully. "In the future, kindly practice your Jedi skulking techniques on someone else."

"Sorry," Tories said with a faint smile. "But for a moment there I thought I was going to have to demonstrate more than just skulking. What happened over there?"

"What do you mean, what happened?" Doriana hedged, wondering uneasily just how much the Jedi had seen. "It was just a standard security patrol."

"Who looked at your ID and then let you go," Tories said pointedly.

"Since when do the Separatists give free passes to Palpatine's advisors?"

Doriana started breathing a little easier. So, the Jedi had been close enough to see the confrontation, but not to hear what was said. Good enough.

"No free passes for advisors, no," he told Tories, digging out his false ID

again. "But plenty for neutral observers. Kinman Drifkin, Aargau Medical Observer Corps, at your service."

"Cute," Tories said. He took the ID, peered at it, and handed it back.

"Holds up to baseline scrutiny, does it?"

"As you saw," Doriana reminded him, putting the datacard away again.

"Supreme Chancellor Palpatine can hardly afford to let his people get picked up by the enemy in the middle of a war zone. Speaking of which, what are you doing out here, anyway?"

"Funny; I was going to ask you the same question," Tories said, his voice suddenly going a little odd. "Lord Binalie said you'd gone into the city and asked me to see if you might be in trouble. So what are you doing?"

"Feeling mildly pleased with myself, and ready to get out of here,"

Doriana told him. "Has Lord Binalie found a place to settle in yet?"