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."
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."