"Yes, run, Jedi," Ashel's mocking voice wafted after him, more painful even than the blaster bolt near-misses. "Tell us again of this trouble you can make for us."
Tories didn't answer. Ahead, he could hear the sounds of renewed blaster fire coming from Foulahn City, and from the sense of startled anguish rolling over his mind it was clear that the rest of the Republic forces had been taken as much by surprise as he had. Unless he could get to them in time, to lend his strength to theirs, the battle would be lost.
He couldn't.
And it was.
"I guess the Separatists have finally learned from their past mistakes,"
Doriana commented as he, Tories, and Binalie stood on one of the mansion's north-facing balconies. "They must have found a way to make a control matrix compact enough that they could bring a backup down to the planet surface. My guess is that it's probably in one of the landing ships. Not that it really matters."
"And not that we'll ever know for sure," Binalie said bitterly, shivering in the cold night air. "They're all dead, then?"
"Dead, or scattered," Tories said quietly, and Doriana could hear the pain and self-reproach in the Jedi's voice. "Except for the ones Roshton took into Spaarti with him." Binalie sighed. "And they're as good as dead, aren't they?"
"I can't see it any other way," Doriana agreed, gazing out toward Spaarti Creations. Above the plant, a hundred STAPs were circling through the night sky like carrion-eaters, glinting with the light from a dozen distant fires.
On the grounds around the plant, invisible from where the three men stood, a thousand combat droids and a dozen battle tanks stood their own silent watch.
And between the Binalie mansion and the plant, acrid smoke still rose from the crater where the Separatist hailfire droid had emptied both of its missile pods into the ground, collapsing the tunnel and cutting off the clone troopers' last avenue of escape. The Separatists had been nothing if not thorough. "The only reason they're still alive is that the Separatists don't want to wreck the plant trying to force them out," he added.
"But then, they don't have to, do they?" Tories said quietly. "By the time General Tiis can return with enough ground troops, they'll likely have starved in there."
"Yes," Binalie said. "Ironic, isn't it? Commander Roshton spent all that effort to retake the plant. And he succeeded.
"And that's where he's going to die."