by Paul S. Kemp
“It will be done, my lord.”
Presently, the charges were set and Malgus held a remote detonator in his hand. He eyed the Temple one last time, its towers, the stacked tiers of the central structure, the toppled statues, the great entryway made into a rough and jagged sneer by the passage of the drop ship. The rest of his Sith forces stood gathered around him.
“Should we remove to a safe distance?” Adraas asked.
Malgus regarded him with contempt. “This is a safe distance.”
“We are twenty meters away from the entrance,” Adraas said.
Staring into Adraas’s face, Malgus activated the detonator. A series of low booms sounded, starting deep within the Temple and drawing closer as the charges exploded in sequence and undermined the Temple’s foundation.
A strong gust of dust and loose debris blew out of the entrance. The explosions on the upper levels began, grew louder, fiercer. Stone cracked. Large chunks fell from the Temple’s façade and crashed to the ground. Flames were visible through the entrance. A whole series of explosions followed in rapid succession, the sound of the snapping spine of the Jedi Order.
The huge edifice, a symbol of the Jedi for centuries, began to fall in on itself. The towers collapsed in its wake, the huge spires crumbling as if in slowed motion. A jet of fire and bits of rock moving faster than the speed of sound exploded out of the now-collapsing entrance.
Instead of taking cover, Malgus fell into the Force, raised both of his hands, palms outward, and formed a transparent wall of power before himself and his warriors. His fellow Sith joined him, mirroring his gesture, mirroring his power. Rocks and debris pelted into the shared barrier, the speeding shrapnel of ruin. The jet of flame struck it and parted around it, water to a stone.
The Temple continued its slow demise, falling inward, shrinking into a shapeless mound of rubble and ruin. And then it was over.
A thick cloud of dust hung like a funeral shroud over the mountain of shattered stone and steel that had been the Jedi Temple. There could have been Jedi survivors in the Temple’s lower levels. Malgus did not care. They were either crushed or trapped forever.
“And so falls the Republic,” Malgus said.
The Sith around him cheered.
NO ONE AMONG the Republic delegation to Alderaan spoke until they had cleared the hall. No one seemed to know what to say. Aryn struggled to keep their collective emotional turmoil at bay. Like her, they were bouncing randomly among grief, rage, and disappointment. Even Dar’nala was struggling to stay centered, though she appeared outwardly calm.
Dar’nala finally broke the silence, her tone, at least, all business.
“We need to reach Master Zym as soon as possible. I need his counsel.”
“How can we be sure he is alive?” Satele asked. “If Coruscant is fallen …”
As one the delegation faltered. Syo and Aryn shared a look of shock. It had not occurred to Aryn that Master Zym, too, might have been lost.
“I would have felt it if he were … dead,” Dar’nala said, nodding as if to assure herself. “Arrange a secure communications link, Satele.”
“Yes, Master Dar’nala.”
“No one is to leave here,” Dar’nala said to all of them. Aryn saw that the Master’s eyes were bloodshot. “When word of the attack reaches the public, the press will want comment. We are to give none until we have settled on our course. I will speak for this delegation for now. Agreed?”
All nodded, even Senator Am-ris.
“This will ultimately be a decision for the Republic to make, Senator,” Dar’nala said. “The Jedi will advise, of course.”
Am-ris slouched when he spoke, weighed down by events. “I will discuss matters with the acting head of the Senate,” he said.
“The Senate may not exist as of today,” Dar’nala said. “You may have to act in its stead. Your advisers here can assist you. We will support you and whatever decision is ultimately made.”
Worry lines creased Am-ris’s forehead. He swallowed, nodded.
They walked through the empty corridors, despondent. The High Council building had been vacated for the negotiations. Even the Alderaanian guards typically stationed within the structure had been relegated to posts outside. Though the windows looked out on courtyards of manicured grass and shrubs, gently flowing fountains, and elegant sculptures, Aryn nevertheless felt as if they were walking through a tomb. Something had died within the building.
Her thoughts churned. All of them seemed to be on the edge of saying something, yet no one said anything. Aryn finally gave voice to what she imagined all of them must be thinking.
“We cannot let this aggression stand, Master.”
Satele and Syo gave small nods of agreement. Dar’nala stared straight out a window at the Alderaanian countryside.
“I fear we will have no choice. The Chancellor is dead—”
“Dead?” Aryn asked.
“We saw it happen,” Satele said, nodding, her voice tight. “He said an Imperial fleet attacked Coruscant. It seems the attack focused on the Senate and the Jedi Temple.”
“I doubt they stopped there,” Am-ris said.
“There were Padawans in the Temple,” Syo said.
Satele continued. “We have no idea of the numbers of the Imperial forces or what other damage they may have wrought.”
“We cannot surrender Coruscant,” Aryn said.
The statement appalled everyone into silence.
“I agree,” Dar’nala said at last. “It should not come to that.”
“Should not?” Syo asked.
Aryn could scarcely believe what she was hearing. The Jedi had been duped, had failed in their charge to protect the Republic. Master Zym should have foreseen the Sith plan. She stared out the windows as they walked, barely seeing the Alderaanian landscape, the nearby river.
She had fought Imperial forces on Alderaan, had beaten them into retreat. She wanted nothing more than to fight them again now.
Dar’nala’s voice brought her back to the present. “How did you know the Sith had attacked Coruscant before we exited the negotiation room, Aryn?”
“I didn’t,” Aryn admitted. “Not with certainty. I only knew that …” She tried and failed to keep the emotion from her voice. “Master Zallow had been killed. And when I saw the look in the eyes of the Sith …”
Syo moved a step closer to her, as if he would protect her from her grief.
“Master Zallow is dead, then,” Dar’nala said, stiffening. Her words sounded tight, the grief leaking through her control. “You are certain?”
Aryn nodded but said nothing more, simply built a wall of her will to hold back tears. Syo seemed to want to offer her comfort, but instead he did nothing.
“We all mourn him, Aryn,” Dar’nala said. “And the others lost today.”
Aryn could not keep the anger from her voice. “Yet you would have us return to negotiate with those who did this.”
Dar’nala stopped in her tracks, turned to face Aryn. Aryn knew she had overstepped. Dar’nala’s voice remained level, but the heat in her eyes could have set Aryn afire.
“There are billions of people on Coruscant. Children. Their lives depend upon us acting judiciously, not rashly. Your emotions are controlling your tongue. Do not let them control your thinking.”
“She is right, Aryn,” Senator Am-ris said and put a hand on Aryn’s shoulder. “We must think of the good of the Republic.”
Aryn knew both of them were right, but it did not matter. She would get justice for Master Zallow, one way or another.
“Forgive me, Master,” she said. “Senator.”
“I understand,” Dar’nala said, and the group started walking again. “I understand all too well.”
ZEERID TRIED and failed to sleep in his chair for a few hours while Fatman pelted through the blue tunnel of hyperspace. Instead, he worried over his next job. More, he worried about the job after that, and the one after that. He worried about his daughter, about how she
’d get the care she needed when he—he saw it as inevitable now—died on one of his jobs. The hole he lived in seemed to be getting deeper all the time, and he got no closer to digging his way out.
The instrumentation beeped a signal to indicate the end of the jump. He de-tinted the cockpit canopy as the ship came out of hyperspace and blue gave way to black.
The ball of Vulta’s star burned in the distance. Vulta was visible through the canopy, its day side shining like a green-and-blue jewel against the dark of space.
Arriving in Vulta’s system made him feel immediately lighter. The part of him that kept work at bay reasserted itself. The thought of seeing Arra always did that for him.
He engaged the engines and Fatman sped through the empty space between him and his daughter. When he neared the planet, he turned the ship over to the autopilot and waited for planetary control to ping him.
While waiting, he called up a news channel on the HoloNet. His small in-cockpit vidscreen showed images of the peace negotiations on Alderaan. He’d forgotten about them. Since mustering out, the war between the Empire and the Republic had become little more than background noise to him. He knew Havoc Squadron had accounted well for itself on Alderaan, but not much more.
Footage of the Sith delegation entering the council building filled the screen, commentary, then footage of the Jedi delegation doing the same. He thought he saw a familiar face among the Jedi.
“Freeze picture and magnify right.”
The vidscreen did as he’d ordered, and there she was—Aryn Leneer. She still wore her long, sandy hair loose, still had the same green eyes, the same hunched posture, as if she were bracing herself against a storm.
Which she was, Zeerid supposed, given the keenness with which she felt the emotions of those around her.
He hadn’t seen her in years. They had become friends during the months they’d served together on Balmorra. He’d come to know that she could fly pretty well and fight very well. He respected that. And because he fought pretty well and flew still better, he thought she had respected him. She never drank with Zeerid and the commandos, but she always hit the cantina with them. Just watching them.
Zeerid had assumed she came along because she liked the emotional temperature of the commandos when they drank—relief and joy at having survived another mission. She always had an openness to her face, an expression in her eyes that said she understood. Her openness had drawn drunk soldiers like sweet flies to nectar honey. They’d wanted to look in her eyes and confess something. Zeerid imagined it must have been exhausting for her. And yet she’d always been there for them. Every time.
The vid cut to a shot of Coruscant and a commentator said, “Until today, when an attack …”
The ship’s comm unit chimed receipt of a signal and Zeerid killed the vid. Expecting planetary control, he reached for it but stopped halfway when he realized it was the encrypted subspace channel he used with The Exchange.
He considered ignoring the hail. Speaking to Oren so near to Vulta would soil his reunion with Arra. He did not want business on his mind when he saw his daughter.
The steady, red blink of the hail continued.
He relented, cursed, and hit the button to open the channel, hit it so hard that he cracked the plastoid. He tensed for what he would hear.
“What?” he barked.
For a moment Oren said nothing, then, “If voice analysis didn’t show it to be you speaking, I might have assumed I’d hailed someone else.”
“I have something else on my mind right now.”
“Oh?” Oren paused, as if awaiting a more thorough explanation. Zeerid offered none, so Oren continued: “As I alluded to before, I have something urgent. Delivery requires someone with extraordinary piloting skills. Someone like you, Z-man.”
“I just finished a job, Oren. I need time—”
“This job will wipe your slate clean.”
Zeerid sat up in his chair, not sure he’d heard correctly. “Say again?”
“You heard me.”
Zeerid had heard him; he just couldn’t believe it. Mere hours ago, he imagined he could never get clear of The Exchange. Now Oren was offering him just that. He tried to keep his voice steady.
“This just a drop?”
“It is a drop.”
“What’s the cargo?” He tried not to choke on the next word. “Spice?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it going?”
He figured it had to be heading to some seriously hot hole of a planet for Oren to have offered to clear his debt.
“Coruscant.” Oren pronounced the name reluctantly, as if he expected Zeerid to balk.
“That’s it?
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did. You said ‘Coruscant.’ So what’s the catch?”
“The catch?”
“Coruscant ain’t exactly a hot LZ. It’s a vacation compared with what I’m used to. So what’s the catch?”
“You haven’t caught the holo?”
“I’ve been in hyperspace.”
“Of course.” Oren chuckled. “The Empire attacked Coruscant.”
Zeerid leaned in close, once more not sure he had heard correctly. Oren’s simple statement and the flat tone in which he delivered it did not seem to have the wherewithal to carry the import of the words Zeerid thought he’d heard.
“Repeat? There were peace negotiations taking place on Alderaan. I just saw them on the holo. What do you mean by ‘attacked’?”
“I mean attacked. An Imperial fleet is in orbit around the planet. Imperial forces occupy Coruscant. No one knows much else because the Empire is jamming communications out of Coruscant.”
Zeerid’s thoughts still could not quite wrap around the idea. How could the Empire have attacked any of the Core Worlds, much less the capital?
“How could they have gotten past the defense grid? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I neither know nor care about the particulars, Z-man. Though I gather it was a surprise attack that occurred right in the midst of the peace negotiations. If nothing else, one can appreciate the Empire’s boldness. You fought against the Empire, didn’t you, Z-man?”
Zeerid nodded. He had traded shots with Imperial forces many times, originally as a commando in the Republic army, then as … whatever he was now. For a moment, he flashed on the ridiculous notion that he should re-up with the army. He chided himself for stupidity.
“You can get the rest from the holo,” Oren said. “Meanwhile, start planning for this drop.”
The drop. Right.
“You want me to fly a ship full of spice into a freshly conquered world occupied by the Empire? You said they locked down comm traffic. They’ll have orbital traffic to a minimum, too. I can’t sneak through that, even flying dark. They’ll blow me out of space.”
“You’ll find a way.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“I have faith you’ll figure something out.”
“At the least we should wait until matters settle. The Empire will probably allow regular commercial ship traffic to resume in a week or so. At that point—”
“That will not work.”
“It’s got to work.”
“No. The cargo needs to move immediately.”
Zeerid was starting to like things less and less. His sense of smell picked up something turning to rot. “Why?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I do if I’m hauling it. Which I haven’t even decided yet.”
Oren fell silent for a moment. Then, “This is engspice.”
Zeerid blew out a sigh. No wonder the job would wipe his slate clean. Chem-engineered spice was not only especially addictive, it also altered users’ brain chemistry such that only more of the same “brand” of engspice could satisfy their need. Mere spice would not do. Dealers called engspice “the leash,” because it gave them a monopoly over their users. They could charge a premium, and did.
“We have a buye
r on Coruscant whose supply is running low. He needs this order to get to Coruscant quickly, Empire or no Empire. You know why.”
Zeerid did know why. “Because if the users can’t get their brand of engspice, they’ll go through withdrawal. And if they get through that …”
“They break their addiction to the brand and our buyer loses his market. His concern over this is great, understandably.”
“Which means The Exchange got to name its price.”
“Which works well for you, Z-man. Don’t sound so contemptuous.”
Zeerid chewed the corner of his lip. He felt a bit nauseated. On the one hand, he could be free with just this run. On the other hand, he’d seen an engspice den on Balmorra once, while serving in the army. Not pretty.
“No,” Zeerid said. For strength, he stared through the cockpit canopy at Vulta, where his daughter lived, and shook his head. “I can’t do it. Spice is bad enough. Engspice is too much. I’ll earn my way out of this some other way.”
Oren’s voice turned hard. “No, you won’t. You can die trying to make this drop, or you can die not making this drop. You understand my meaning?”
Zeerid ground his teeth. “Yes. I understand it.”
“I’m glad. Look at it this way. If you make the drop, you’re even with The Exchange. Maybe you even walk away, huh? If you don’t make the drop, you’re dead and who cares?”
Oren chuckled at his own cleverness, and Zeerid wished for nothing more than to choke the bastard.
“Then I need more,” Zeerid said. If he was going to get dirty, he wanted enough credits in hand to buy a shower for his conscience. “Not just a clean slate. I want two hundred thousand credits on top of wiping out the debt, and I want a hundred of it paid before I land on Vulta, which means you’ve got a quarter of an hour.”
“Z-man …”
“This is non-negotiable.”
“You need some play money, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Very well. Done. The first one hundred will hit your account before you touch down.”
Zeerid bit his lip in anger. He should have asked for more. “When do I go?”
“The cargo is en route to Vulta now. And when I say it’s time to go, you move your tail.”