Narsk swallowed, or tried to. The only things above him at the moment were his feet.
And meddling, he knew, was something Ayanos Bactra worked at doing without ever seeming to take a side. He’d stayed out of the conflict between Odion and Daiman, both of whose territories bordered his own. In fact, Narsk knew, the ancient Quermian had gone out of his way to avoid destructive battles with most of his neighbors, preferring, instead, to accumulate more intangible holdings: corporations. Several of the interstellar firms that had continued to operate in the sector under Sith rule were headquartered in Bactra’s space.
Quietly, Bactra’s influence among his neighbors had grown. A less thoughtful strategist might have become a supplier to one side or another, but Bactra understood that clumsy partisanship would have earned him enmity. A Sith expected an arms dealer to sell secretly to all sides, so Bactra did it openly and equally. And when contested worlds fell and their manufacturing interests fled, Bactra’s space just happened to be there as a convenient haven. Chaos served Bactra.
As it was serving him now. “I … gather that the sabotage creates a weakness in your technical capacity, Lord Daiman.”
“Purely temporary.” Daiman lay back on the plush bed, staring at the skylight.
“Of course. But it is a problem in the near term,” Bactra said. “Consider what you could do if you held the solution—as I do.”
“Industrial Heuristics?”
“The one.” Narsk knew that Daiman had recently begun allowing Bactra’s firm to recruit in his territory, in exchange for some of the fruits of research his people produced. Now Bactra offered Daiman something more immediate. “From what your aides told mine, you’re prepared to consider a further expansion of our franchise.”
“I don’t see a better way,” Daiman said. “There are reports my brother is considering building a second factory complex, even larger than The Spike.” He sat up, his cape a crumpled mass. “An arxeum is the answer. I require one—delivered.”
The rotation slowing, Narsk considered what he’d just heard. He recognized the name. Arxeums were an Industrial Heuristic invention: giant mobile universities dedicated to the war-making sciences. Students sometimes spent their entire working lives aboard a single arxeum, churning out new military designs. The clever aspect was the mobile part. By making arxeums space-worthy, the company had made it possible for the valuable facilities to move, should conditions warrant.
But what Daiman was suggesting was new. Industrial Heuristics turned students into researchers in a lot of places, but all were in Bactra’s realm. Daiman was asking for the outright purchase of a working arxeum, shipped directly into his space. No information sharing, this time; Daiman’s people would be building weapons directly for him.
Not bad, Narsk thought. The Black Fang had taken years to build, and seconds to destroy. Daiman had just figured out how to replace it in days. What price must that come at?
Bactra was ready with the answer. “I require passage across your territory to strike at Vellas Pavo. Temporary; we do not intend to hold the world. Six weeks should suffice.”
Daiman stared. Vellas Pavo was unoccupied by any Sith Lord, Narsk knew. The Sith Lord looked to his Woostoid aide, down below. “Why does he want this?”
“Gadolinium,” Uleeta replied, temporarily muting the conversation. “As my lord knows, Bactra controls three of the four largest superconductor interests in the sector. The fourth sources most of its gadolinium from Vellas Pavo.” By striking at the mining operations, Uleeta explained, Bactra expected to take out a competitor. “As my lord knows.”
Daiman sneered. “Bactra hasn’t changed. Play for third, hope to win.”
“My lord knows.”
Daiman stood from the bed and approached the holographic image. “You have your passage,” he said. “But I would want to unite the recruits your firm has already found here with the facility as quickly as possible, that they may begin work. Is there a suitable frontier world for the rendezvous?”
Bactra paused, referring to something off to the side. “We have a number of facilities that could reach your territory quickly. There is one near Tergamenion. Alphoresis. Gazzari …”
“Gazzari. That sounds well.”
Narsk’s prison suddenly sped up again. This time, when the rack turned him upside down, it stayed there, whirling him faster and faster. Fighting against passing out, Narsk looked for a fixed point to focus on. All he could find was one of the seven darkened doorways leading from the Adytum, a blot behind the crystal railing of the catwalk. The faster his prison rotated, the faster the doorway flickered, until the vision of it persisted. The doorway—and something just inside. An outline. A figure.
Narsk blinked, sure he was hallucinating. He’d only seen something like it once before, in the Black Fang whenever he looked at his own hands …
The Jedi!
“Jedi?” Daiman looked back from the hologram with a start. He scanned the faces of his followers below. “Which one of you—?” Daiman’s voice trailed off. “Never mind.”
Turning the Bothan upright again, the rack slowed. Narsk swallowed, taking care to shield his thoughts. The Jedi had the stealth suit. And she’d come here, of all places!
The Jedi had come here for some reason—and what was more important, only he knew about it. The young lord had known for several days that Narsk had used a stealth suit to enter the testing center, and that the Jedi had taken it. The fact that she was here meant that even with that knowledge, Daiman had no proof against it.
For the first time since his capture, Narsk managed the tiniest smile. What might a word of warning mean now, coming from a condemned prisoner?
I might get out of this yet.
CHAPTER SIX
Kerra was glad for the stealth suit for one thing: no one could hear her swearing.
Certain now of her invisibility, she stood gawking in the doorway. The place was impossible. There was no way she could reach Daiman’s loft-like platform at the center of the great room to deposit the explosives. Even if she could stay hidden within the Force from him and the Correctors below, Daiman’s silly cape was throwing all kinds of light everywhere. She had no idea what the effect would be on the Mark VI.
That left affixing the explosive packets to something physical and tossing them inside. But she wasn’t sure she could get clear if she just tossed them over the side of the catwalk and ducked back outside. She wanted to stop Daiman, but she wasn’t going to throw her life away.
And Bactra’s appearance had thrown her. Kerra wanted to end Daiman’s oppression. But, she realized while standing in the doorway, there was another reason she’d come to Sith space. She wanted to understand. What was it that made brother fight brother here, destroying the lives of countless innocents underfoot? What was the role of the other would-be Sith Lords? Could they stop this madness between Daiman and Odion, or were they just making it worse?
Kerra cocked her head. The mask had provisions so she could see and hear what was going on outside, but she needed a straight shot at the speakers. Daiman kept moving—and the hologram was on the far side of the platform. That’s the side she needed to be on.
She ran back down the hallway she’d entered through. There were six other entrances to Daiman’s room at this level. There had to be some route to one of the doors at the other side. But where?
Blast!
Facing the doorway again, Narsk squinted. He couldn’t see the Jedi anymore, but that didn’t mean anything. That he’d seen her at all was an accident: a trick of the light, generated by the freak combination of his motion and the crystal walkway between them.
Behind him, the conversation with Bactra was ending in a deal. Daiman mentioned his plans to travel aboard his flagship to Gazzari to meet the mobile research center. Hearing Daiman end the call, Narsk steeled himself to raise his voice. One way or another, this might be made to serve his—
Whulp!
Suddenly Narsk plummeted. The metal frame he was bou
nd to bounced once on a cushion of antigrav force and struck the floor. Two Gamorrean sentries stepped to either side, guiding the prison, wheel-like, toward an exit. “Get him out of here,” he could hear Daiman say from behind.
Tumbling, Narsk watched helplessly as a crowd of others filtered into the Adytum, past him. Strange faces—alien species he rarely saw in the Daimanate.
“Wait!” he croaked, his dry throat too raw for his voice to carry far. “Wait!”
Rusher didn’t think long about the torture device being wheeled past him, or the poor soul strapped to it. Other Sith Lords liked to do things for show, and Daiman certainly seemed to fit the breed. Rusher looked mildly back at the chattering Bothan as the door closed behind him. Rough day to be you, pal.
More interesting was what lay ahead. The Sith Lord stood suspended on his crystal platform, gesticulating before a huge planet hanging in the air before him. It was a holographic image, five meters wide. Motioning, Daiman wheeled the cloudy gray world around, reaching in occasionally to touch the image with his talon-tipped fingers. At every brush, a light burst from the surface of the pseudo-planet.
Cauldron of creation, Rusher thought, looking around the heptagonal temple. Everything he’d heard about Daiman was true.
“The specialist battalions.” Daiman addressed the company of generals without looking at them. “You will depart Darkknell at sunset, each jumping to different destinations. In four days, you will reassemble here, on Gazzari.” Daiman spun the virtual globe again and gave it a shove. The holographic world danced through the air before drifting to the marble floor, just ahead of Rusher and company. The lights shining through the clouds were each marked with unit names in Daiman’s alphabet. “You will deploy your forces at the locations being shown to you now. Memorize them.”
Kr’saang the Togorian peered at the hologram. “This is where we’re setting up. Where’s the enemy?”
“Odion will arrive thereafter,” Daiman said offhandedly. “I have arranged for it.”
The Nosaurian, another gunnery leader, emitted a series of warbling squawks. Rusher didn’t know the language, but he figured the question. “How do we know he won’t bomb us from orbit before he lands?”
Reacting to a nod from Daiman, the Woostoid woman stepped beside the floating image. “Lord Daiman created Gazzari to be a volcanic world, shrouded in a cloud of metallic ash. Your emplacements will be quite invisible when the Great Enemy arrives.” Beneath the haze, Gazzari’s pockmarked surface was ridden with lofty ridges overlooking wide rills, providing excellent spots to set up for an ambush.
Sounds like a lovely place, Rusher thought. He and the others only had a minute to study their assigned locations before the image vanished.
“Ambush. That’s about what I expected.” Kr’saang turned on a massive clawed foot and began walking toward the exit.
Daiman looked down, clearly puzzled. “What?”
The Togorian turned back and stuck out his armored chest. “It’s what I expected from you. Like on Chelloa. Odion’s people are still talking about that one.” Rusher noticed others stepping back from the Togorian. It seemed a good idea.
But Daiman reacted mildly. “You expect fairness, do you?”
“I expect a straight-up fight—but I heard you don’t do those. Looks like they’re right.” He reached for the gilded doorknob.
A spray of multicolored light flashed against the door in front of Kr’saang. Turning his head, he saw Daiman’s lustrous cape thrown in the air, catching the sunlight from above. Its owner, freed, hurtled downward toward the floor. Kr’saang pivoted, reaching for a blade hidden in his belt—only to see a flash of crimson ahead of him. Before he hit the ground, Daiman quartered the massive alien with two great strokes of his lightsaber.
For several moments, Daiman looked down in seeming fascination at the disgusting remains at his feet. Finally, he looked up. “Where’s my cape?”
Daiman’s attendants sprang to his side, delivering the requested garment as he deactivated his lightsaber. “What was he?”
“Kr’saang,” Uleeta said. “He led shock troopers, as my lord knows. Specialist Unit Two Hundred Seven, in our accounting. His transport, the Dar’oosh, is at the north end of the old parade grounds.”
“Send Correctors there and induct the lot.”
Rusher winced. Kr’saang’s warriors had just become part of Daiman’s slave army.
“I’m telling you, there’s a Jedi here! I have to talk to Lord Daiman!”
The sentries didn’t speak. The burly Gamorreans simply continued to wheel the imprisoned Narsk down a hallway, ignoring his every plea. Narsk wondered for a moment if this was why he got into the Black Fang so easily. Does Daiman only hire the deaf?
More likely, he thought as he heard their guttural grunts, they simply didn’t understand Basic. He tested the theory with a remark about Gamorrean females. A further stream of insults confirmed it. There was literally no talking to them.
Leaving the main thoroughfare, the guards rolled Narsk’s prison down a side hallway. Darkness lay ahead. For a time, Narsk felt only the bumps of the tiles as his prison rumbled onward. Back to the dungeon, he assumed.
Then he was alone.
Narsk blinked. The Gamorreans had parked his wheel against a wall and wandered off. The Bothan craned his neck forward and behind, straining to see anything down the hallway. Nothing.
For five minutes.
“Just leaving me? Fine!” If this was a new kind of torture, it was working. Narsk ranted. Days with no food and only enough water to keep him talking. Days of mental invasions from the monomaniac and his minions. And today, spinning on display like a child’s toy. All of it came pouring, foully, out of the Bothan’s mouth—
—until an unseen hand clasped his muzzle shut. A foreign thought touched his mind.
Shut up.
Startled, Narsk felt the wheel turning again. Propelled seemingly by nothing at all, the frame rolled down the darkened hall and through an open doorway into a deserted service passage. The door closed behind, leaving him in a small, dim maintenance area. An unused scullery for one of the countless dining rooms he’d been wheeled past, he expected.
The wheel stopping gently against a wall, Narsk smiled. “You’ve come to return my property, I hope.”
“That depends,” Kerra said, removing her mask, “on what you tell me. And how quickly you tell it.”
The remains of the Togorian oozed untouched on the temple floor. Daiman donned his cape, unconcerned; the generals parted to let him pass. “You will deploy to Gazzari in four days,” he resumed. “More vessels will arrive. Remain in your positions. You will not disturb them.” With a wave of his hand, more holograms appeared, depicting several ships.
Rusher studied them. There were four personnel transports, each labeled with the corporate logo of Industrial Heuristics, and a much larger structure. A floating cluster of connected towers, the city-in-miniature also bore the climbing-arrow logo that symbolized the “manufacturer of intellects.” He’d heard of the firm, back when working in Bactra’s territory. A few on his crew had even learned their trades there. “An arxeum,” he spoke aloud. “Some kind of war college, isn’t it?”
“And our personnel to be trained within it. They will arrive first, before the facility. And, then,” Daiman said confidently, “Odion will arrive.”
Rusher flinched. Why?
“He will come to destroy the facility Bactra sends. Or he will try. He will certainly know of it.” Daiman didn’t say how. “And he will know we are sending our bright young prospects there to meet it. Industrial Heuristics has been recruiting openly on Darkknell for days—and my brother is known to have spies here,” Daiman said, waving offhandedly toward the entrance. “You met one as you entered.”
“You’re using the training center as bait,” Rusher said, looking down at his walking stick. The knob atop it glinted as he twirled it in place. “And … the students.”
“Yes.” Daiman returned to
the center of the room. “He will not attack when the facilities are in Bactra’s hands. He’ll wait until the delivery is made, so the loss will impact me and not Bactra.”
It was a standard move for Odion, Daiman said, but as ever, he was the better gamesman. “He must see the recruits waiting on the ground to seal the illusion.”
“What do we do if he doesn’t take the b-b-bait?” Mak stammered.
“He will. I have arranged for it.”
Daiman gestured, and a shining staircase descended from the crystal platform at the center of the room. Setting foot upon it, he was interrupted by a statement from behind: “I’m not sure I like this.”
Daiman stopped climbing. “What?”
“I said I’m not sure I like this,” Rusher said, grasping the walking stick more tightly. Spying Mak’s wild expression, he shrugged. No, I don’t know what I’m doing, either. “You’re taking younglings on the battlefield, and you’re expecting them to be taken out.”
“And I’m expecting you to do as you’re told.” Daiman crooked his head slightly in irritation. “Who are you?”
“Brigadier Jarrow Rusher. I carry eight battalions running medium artillery, laser and missile. I’ve worked jobs for you for years,” he said. “But I’m an independent operator—”
Daiman’s response dropped below freezing. “As you’ve just seen, there is no such thing.”
Rusher swallowed. He could feel the Sith Lord’s supplicants glaring at him—and it didn’t help that the other generals were edging out of the way. Some colleagues. “We’re not part of your army, Lord Daiman.”
“That can be corrected,” Daiman said. To one side, the violet-clad Correctors took a step forward. He waved them off. This moment was his. “I created you, Brigadier,” the young Sith said, raising his metal-tipped hand. “You will function as I desire.”
Yanked by an unseen power, Rusher rose several meters into the air. The walking stick clattered to the marble beneath as Rusher’s gloved hands clutched at his neck, just above his collar. There was nothing there, but he could feel the presence of Daiman’s hand. Even the false fingertips, clawing at the back of his neck. Shaking, Rusher coughed and kicked—and tried to speak.
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