Vidian didn’t wait to hear Palfa’s suggestion. His arm lanced out and caught the director by the collar. Yanking downward, he pulled the screaming bureaucrat’s cape over his head and forced him to the rocky surface. The stormtroopers watched, blasters drawn, as Vidian rained powerful blows on Palfa’s body.
The count stepped back, satisfied, as the cloth-covered guildmaster’s body stopped moving. Vidian looked admiringly at his hands; they still had their sterling shine.
“My lord!” one of the stormtroopers said.
“Eh?” Vidian looked at the soldier—and then back at the group of workers he’d been standing amid. They were all staring at him. “Industrial accident,” he said. “Get to work—unless I told you to get out. Your firms will find more suitable labor for you on Gorse. Unemployment in a strategic resource system is unlawful. The Empire does not tolerate layabouts.”
Seeing the wary workers complying, Vidian nodded with satisfaction. Management, the Imperial way. It was so much more efficient than under the Republic—and it came to him easily. Firing a manager inspired only the ambitious who wanted to take his or her place. But murder motivated everyone. It belonged in every supervisor’s tool kit.
He changed his audio channel. “Captain Sloane, are you listening?”
From Ultimatum, the captain’s voice filled his ear. “Affirmative.”
“Inform Coruscant that there is an opening atop the Cynda Mining Guild. I’m sure the Emperor can send us someone appropriate.”
“Done. Sloane out.”
Leaving the stormtroopers to mind the workers as they disposed of the body, Vidian continued his tour alone. In the next chamber, he found another work crew—and while he had no intention of personally going through and identifying every slacker, he couldn’t resist when he saw a white-haired man kneeling as he cleaned his pick.
“You’re definitely too old,” Vidian said, grabbing at the man’s collar.
“Yeah? Well, you’re too ugly,” the man responded before he even turned to see who had accosted him. When he did, he cried out in revulsion. “What are you supposed to be?”
Vidian didn’t react. He read the old man’s badge. “Okadiah Garson.” Not one of the names on the dissident list, but it didn’t matter. He was through here. “Stop gawking at me like a fool.”
“Sorry.” Okadiah pointed to a spot behind the cyborg’s ear, where his synthskin didn’t completely cover the scar tissue beneath. “It’s just—you missed a spot there.”
“It’s not for vanity. It’s for the benefit of those who lose efficiency when confronted with the extraordinary.” He tightened his grip on Okadiah’s collar and shook. “I find this galaxy already has enough ordinary beings. Maybe you’d like to have your skin removed, as well, to see what it’s like!”
“Maybe you should let him go,” a voice said from behind.
Vidian looked back to see a dark-haired young man standing with a heavily laden hovercart in the opening to a tunnel. He held a blaster pointed straight at the count.
“Well, well,” Vidian said, not in the least concerned for his safety. “We have a gunslinger. Or perhaps we’ve found our missing saboteur!”
In his travels, Kanan had seen a lot of people with prosthetics. Most were decent individuals, using technology to overcome misfortune. But the cyborg that had Okadiah by the collar had really gone to town with it. He looked like a war droid playing a human at a masquerade party.
“I’m no saboteur,” Kanan said, still holding his weapon. “Heard a scream—sounded like trouble. What’s this about?”
“I am Count Vidian, here for the Emperor. And I am doing his work.” Vidian, seeming totally unconcerned by Kanan’s blaster, started to lift the writhing old man by the neck.
Kanan fingered the trigger of his weapon. He had no desire whatsoever to tangle with the Empire, much less the top Imperial in the area. He was thankful when another way occurred to him. “There’s something you should know.” He lowered his blaster as he trod cautiously onto the work floor. “You’re about to mangle the man who knows how to mine thorilide better than anyone.”
Vidian paused. “Doubtful. He can’t have the strength to dig or haul much.”
“He teaches those who do,” Kanan said. “Moonglow’s the most efficient producer for its size.”
Vidian shook Okadiah for a short moment before abruptly dropping him to the cavern floor. “At last—someone who understands what’s important,” he said. “You’re fortunate I’ve already beaten someone else to death today, gunslinger. I have a schedule to keep.” With that, the cyborg abruptly turned and exited with his guards.
Kanan holstered his blaster and turned back to check on Okadiah. Being tended to by his fellow miners, the old man rubbed his neck and looked at Kanan. “You always have to poke the gundark.”
“Just following your lead,” Kanan said.
Yelkin, the miner he’d tangled with that morning, rolled his eyes at Kanan. “I don’t know why you didn’t shoot that creep! Someone said he killed the guildmaster!”
“I pick who I party with,” Kanan said. He walked back to the hovercart and activated it. “I don’t mess with the Empire—and it doesn’t mess with me.”
“Zone Forty-Two awaits, gentlemen,” Okadiah said. “I want to be done with this day.”
Far across the wide chamber, Hera lowered her electrobinoculars. She’d had a bit of luck in the last hour, when all the stormtroopers had left her area. From what she’d been able to overhear, they were all after someone who had violently resisted arrest. She was interested to learn that story, but Vidian had to come first—and so she’d kept following along, trying to find safe places in each cavernous chamber from which to watch.
She’d been unable to get within a hundred meters, but she’d seen enough to know he was a vile thing, completely worthy of an important station by the Emperor’s side. She’d seen both his attack on the poor guildmaster and how his escort had reacted to it: as if managerial murder was the most normal thing in the galaxy. And she’d seen him harassing the old man, moments earlier. It was good luck that the younger guy had come along. At least someone had a spine.
Watching the dark-haired man leaving with his hovercart, Hera felt a moment’s impulse to follow him. People with the will to stand up to the Empire were worth knowing. But then she remembered that this wasn’t a recruiting trip. She needed to keep after her objective.
Maybe next lifetime, pal. Hera slipped down from her perch and took off after Vidian.
More stormtroopers ran past as Kanan pushed the hovercart down the last tunnel to Zone Forty-Two. No doubt they were still looking for the idiot who had flipped out and attacked them in Zone Thirty-Nine. Lal Grallik had popped into the work area long enough to confirm the rumor that it was, indeed, Skelly on the loose. Kanan wasn’t in the least surprised—or upset. At least Skelly was out of his hair.
It wasn’t unusual to see stormtroopers in the Empire. But while he had hopped around some, Kanan’s travels through the galaxy had tended toward a spiraling path, moving outward from the galactic center. Core Worlds, Colony worlds, Inner Rim: Each represented a new frontier for him. And each had turned out the same, with Imperial presence starting at nil and gradually growing. Kanan sometimes wondered how the stormtrooper uniform suppliers kept up with the demand. When the Imperials reached the fringe of the galaxy, what would they be wearing?
Not that the sight of stormtroopers alarmed him. No, like the woman who had spoken to him from the Star Destroyer, they were all functionaries. Organic droids, trained to react a certain way and seek out certain targets. Vidian was maybe the most literal expression that he’d seen: all their robotic efficiency and general nastiness bound up in a mass of metal, with a little skin on top. The best way to avoid being hassled by them was simply to fit perfectly into the stereotypes they were expecting to find.
On worlds like Gorse, the Empire expected to find workers of the sort drawn to low-skill, high-risk jobs. Rowdy and rambunctious characte
rs—just not rebellious. Threats to their own sobriety and to one another, but never to the Empire. Not politically active, or even conscious.
It happened that those were the planets Kanan found the most fun. The role of roughneck suited him. He traveled the galaxy, looking at the sights—and sometimes the ceiling, after the odd fight or drunken binge. He’d visited more places than he could remember, and, beyond Okadiah, he’d never learned the names of most of the people around him. Why bother, when you were just going to leave?
Kanan pushed the cart into Zone Forty-Two. Deep beneath Cynda’s surface, it was the largest chamber yet opened—and more important, sensors had found large recesses hiding behind its walls: other areas sure to be thick with minable thorilide. For weeks, various teams had triggered controlled blasts—barely audible over Skelly’s objections—trying to get at the rich deposits. In a newly hollowed alcove, Moonglow’s techs were working on their own attempt.
Kanan parked his cart outside the opening and pounded on the outside wall. “I’m thirsty. Let’s get this done!”
Yelkin appeared from inside the hole, now wearing a white safety vest. He frowned when he saw Kanan. “You again.”
“You bet.”
Aggravated, the Devaronian surveyed the load of explosives. “We’re measuring the length of the borehole for the charge. It should be just a—”
“Wait,” someone called from inside the carved-out area. “There’s a problem.”
Kanan sighed as Yelkin hustled back inside. Kanan was about to start off-loading the crates himself when he glanced back into the recess. Beside Yelkin, he saw another technician sticking a long prod into a hole drilled for explosives. Or trying to. “Something’s already in there!”
Kanan’s eyes widened—and for the first time, he looked down at the ground outside the short tunnel. There was something he’d seen before: small and brown, discarded nearby.
Skelly’s toolbox.
Kanan yelled into the opening. “Get out! Get out!”
He didn’t have to yell a third time. The techs were moving.
“Someone’s wired something already,” Yelkin said in a panic. “There’s a timer! Thirty seconds—”
No disarming that! “Forget it!” Kanan yelled. “Go!”
Moonglow’s demolition techs kept a portable siren in the blast area; it was right in Kanan’s path. He activated it. All across Zone Forty-Two, workers charged for the exit tunnels to the west.
Ahead of him, Yelkin stumbled across the craggy surface and fell. Kanan, on a headlong run, slowed as he approached the miner—the only other soul left in the enormous crystal atrium. But Yelkin wasn’t asking for help. He was pointing, instead, to something Kanan had forgotten about.
“Kanan! Your cart!”
Kanan looked back at the hovercart with its full load of baradium bisulfate—a hundred times more material than Skelly would have been carrying in his kit—and remembered the demolition guys’ adage: It’s the secondary that does the damage. His cart could bring down half the cave network.
Kanan bounded back toward the opening—and its ticking bomb inside—and seized the hovercart. Turning with it, he ran, pushing it as fast as he could across the long clearing.
Yelkin wasn’t moving, he saw—he’d twisted his ankle. Kanan pointed the cart toward him as his boots pounded the surface. His voice echoed across the chamber: “Yelkin! Grab for it!”
It wasn’t easy to see or hear much after that.
Light from the blast came first. Emanating into the work area from the blasting tunnel, it reflected dazzlingly off the crystal structures above and to either side of Kanan. The sound came next, a muted boom. Kanan had just reached Yelkin with the crate-topped hovercart when the shock wave hit him in mid-stride. The cart’s repulsors were still working; its front bumper caught Yelkin in the gut—and now both they and the hovercart were carried forward, Kanan’s hands locked onto the handle for dear life.
Searing cracks resounded across the atrium. Kanan, now a passenger hanging on like Yelkin, knew what was next. Like icicles on a summer day, meter-wide stalactites across the chamber began falling across the ground they’d already covered. First the crystal knives—and then the rock and stone suspended above them, all plummeting into the open space.
Seeing the first shard strike nearby, Kanan hit the ground with his heels for the first time in seconds. Without thinking, he leapt.
Leapt, as he hadn’t in nearly a decade, farther than any mortal normally could. Leapt, atop the crates filled with deadly explosives on the careening cart. Leapt, to where he could reach out and grab the shoulder of the unaware Devaronian, clinging for dear life.
The western opening through which the other miners had evacuated was just ahead. Pulling the hapless Yelkin fully onto the hovercart in one motion, Kanan hit the ground off the left side with his next. Guiding the airborne vehicle like a wader moving a raft, he slung the cart toward the exit tunnel. He stumbled, a step shy of safety, as he tried to follow. Twisting faceup as he dropped, Kanan hit the ground. He looked up into the onrushing mass—
—and stopped it, with his mind.
It was an odd feeling, like putting on an old article of clothing. It was like the leap, something he had sworn never to do. Not in front of anyone, to be sure.
But now he had done it. All light was gone, but he could sense the black mass of debris quivering a meter from his head, even as he heard apocalyptic clamor all around. Instinctively, Kanan dug his heels into the tunnel floor and forced himself backward, the tail of his shirt grinding against the surface until he was fully inside the reinforced western tunnel.
And then he let go. Let go with his mind, and listened as a mountain, denied, found the space where he had landed.
Vidian was in an upper chamber addressing the droidmaster and his three terrified aides when the floor fell in.
Everything went dark as Vidian, his audience members, and all their furnishings tumbled downward. The fall was brief, with the remnants of what had been the floor beneath their feet smashing to pieces on the tougher surface below. An immense jolt rocked Vidian.
Up to his hips in stone, he took a moment to regain his bearings. His eyes switched to night-vision mode, and he realized that a sinkhole had opened beneath the droidmaster’s office: The walls of the room, as well as the hallway leading from it, were intact, several meters above.
Disregarding the pained cries of the others struggling in the rubble, Vidian used his cybernetic arms to dig himself out. Then he began climbing for the aperture above.
“We’re trapped down here,” a voice called behind him. “Help us!”
“Someone will arrive before you starve,” Vidian said, reaching for the bottom of the doorway.
“But there may be aftershocks—”
“Aftershocks? Impossible. This moon’s crystal columns are supposed to prevent tremors,” Vidian said. The event couldn’t have been natural. Pulling himself up and into the intact hallway, he began to suspect what had happened.
His anger returned anew.
In the darkness, Hera felt the world rumbling around her. She’d seen Vidian fall through the floor and disappear; she’d lingered for a few moments, hoping he was gone for good.
No luck, she thought, hearing his voice from the recess up ahead. The moon had tasted him and spat him out.
She heard voices in the hallways around her, and spied portable lights flashing this way and that. There was too much activity now—someone had kicked the insect nest. She needed to use the darkness while she could.
Recon’s over, the Twi’lek thought. She turned from Vidian’s chamber and ran back up the hall.
Kanan continued to force himself backward as debris struck the ground behind him. Finally, after what seemed like an eon, stillness came.
And then the work lights.
Okadiah arrived at his side and knelt. “Lad? You all right?”
Kanan coughed up dust and nodded. Blinking particles from his eyes, he vaguely saw his hover
cart, its securely fastened crates of explosives still there. Yelkin lay facedown atop it, wheezing.
“What happened?” Okadiah asked.
“I didn’t see,” Yelkin said. He looked back at the rubble-blocked passage. “I guess we caromed into the tunnel! I thought we were goners, for sure!”
“A million-to-one shot,” Okadiah said, scratching his chin. He looked at Kanan. “My boy, you are the lucky one.”
Kanan knew he was anything but lucky. For Kanan Jarrus was Caleb Dume, the Jedi who never was.
And now, he knew, it was time to go.
The Force was a mysterious energy field that sprang from life itself; that much, every Jedi student knew. The Force could be used for many purposes: protection, persuasion, wisdom—even the manipulation of matter and the performance of great physical feats. Jedi taught younglings all of those things.
But they never taught how to make the Force go away when it wasn’t wanted. That was all Caleb—all Kanan had wanted from the Force for years. And the blasted thing had just shown up again on Cynda. It had saved his carcass, true—but if anyone had seen, Kanan’s life wouldn’t be worth a Confederacy credit.
He had left a moon in chaos. Zone Forty-Two’s ceiling had caved in, producing tremors that caused dangerous seams to open in some floors higher up. Thankfully, no chambers had vented to space: They were too far beneath Cynda’s surface. It was a miracle no one had been killed.
Kanan didn’t know if Count Vidian was still there or not, or if the Empire suspected Skelly of planting the charges that caused the collapse. It was a safe bet they did. It was mining in Zone Forty-Two that Skelly had warned about; perhaps he’d decided to bring the roof down before anybody else did. Cynda was laced with tunnels, but the Imperials had numbers. They’d find Skelly eventually, and he’d get what was coming to him.
Kanan had used one of those back tunnels to slip away, leaving Okadiah and his crew behind. Taking little-used elevators back to Expedient, he’d raised ship before security knew any better. He could hear over the transceiver that departures had been grounded. He doubted it would be a problem. The Moonglow techs below would vouch for his having warned them; no one would suspect Kanan of having planted the bomb, at least. He was just returning his ship safely to home base, on Gorse, like he was scheduled to do.
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