by Troy Denning
The remainder of the squad swiftly moved to firing positions, dropping to a knee in the middle of the corridor or pressing themselves against the tunnel wall, and brought their blaster rifles to their shoulders. Caedus sent a surge of Force energy sizzling down the corridor, reducing the electronic opticals inside their helmets to a blizzard of static. They opened fire anyway, but most of the bolts went wide, and those that did not Caedus deflected with the occasional flick of a hand.
He was still ten paces away when the squad leader pulled his helmet off and, bringing his weapon to bear, began yelling for the others to do the same. Caedus raised his arm, catching the leader’s bolts on his palm and deflecting them harmlessly down the tunnel. As the second and third man prepared to open fire, he flicked a finger toward the leader’s blaster and sent it spinning into them. It slammed the second man into the wall and knocked the third’s weapon from his hands.
Caedus summoned the leader forward with two fingers, using the Force to bring the astonished soldier flying into his grasp.
“I have no intention of harming anyone beyond that door,” Caedus said, making his voice deep and commanding. “But I have no time to waste, so I won’t hesitate to kill you or your men. I trust that won’t be necessary?”
The sergeant’s eyes bulged as though his throat were actually being squeezed shut—which it was not—and his face paled to the color of his armor.
“N-n-no, sir. N-not at all.” The sergeant motioned for his men to lower their weapons. “S-s-sorry.”
“No apologies necessary, Sergeant,” Caedus said. “Obviously, you haven’t been informed of the new chain of command.”
Caedus set the sergeant’s boots back on the tunnel floor, then turned to look at each of the others in the squad. He made it appear that he was requiring each man to look into his yellow eyes, but actually he was Force-probing their emotions, looking for any hint of anger or resentment that suggested there might be a hero in the group. He was down to the last two when he sensed a fist of resolve tightening inside one.
“Don’t do it, trooper,” he said. “There aren’t enough good soldiers in the Alliance as it is.”
The fist of resolve immediately began to loosen, but the trooper wasn’t too surprised to say, “With all due respect, Colonel, we’re not Alliance soldiers.”
“Not yet.” Caedus gave him a warm smile and turned toward the blast hatch, presenting his back to the entire squad. “My escorts will be along shortly. Don’t start a firefight with them.”
When he felt the squad leader motion the hero and everyone else to lower their weapons, Caedus nodded his approval without turning around. Then he circled his hand in front of the blast door, using the Force to send a surge of energy through its internal circuitry until a series of sharp clicks announced that the locking mechanisms had retracted. A moment later, a loud hiss sounded from inside the heavy hatch, and it slid aside into the wall.
Caedus stepped through without hesitation and found himself looking down on a sunken conference pit where a couple dozen Imperial Moffs—most of the survivors of the slaughter aboard the Bloodfin—were rising to their feet, some reaching for their sidearms and others looking for a place to take cover. Across from them, a small swarm of insectoid administrators from other Verpine hives squatted on their haunches, their shiny heads cocked in confusion and their mandibles spread wide in an instinctive threat display.
“No, please.” Caedus extended his arms toward the Moffs and motioned for them to return to their seats—using the Force to compel obedience. “Don’t get up on my account.”
The Moffs dropped almost as one. Most landed in the chairs they had been occupying, but a couple missed and landed on the floor. Several of the aides standing behind the Moffs’ chairs were pointing holdout blasters in his direction, looking to their superiors for some hint as to whether they should open fire or stand down. Caedus swept his arm up and sent them all flying out of the conference pit onto the surrounding service floor.
“I’m afraid this will be a confidential conversation,” he said. “Leave us.”
When the aides did not instantly obey, he gestured at one of those who had been pointing a blaster at him and sent the man tumbling out the hatch.
“Now.”
The remainder of the aides scrambled for the door, many without bothering to stand. Caedus watched them go, his attention divided between them and the Moffs, ready to pin motionless anyone who even thought about raising a weapon. Once the aides were gone, a simple glance was all it took to send the Verpine administrators scuttling after them, leaving him and the Moffs alone with a single huge Verpine with age-silvered eyebulbs and a translucent patch on her thorax where the carahide was growing thin. She showed no inclination to rise from her position at the far end of the conference table, where she lay stretched along a heavily cushioned throne pedestal.
“Jacen Solo, where will the hives ever gather the wealth to settle our account?” The Verpine spoke in an ancient, thrumming voice that seemed to resonate from the very bottom of her long abdomen. As the High Coordinator of the Roche system’s capital asteroid, she was effectively the hive mother and chief executive officer of her entire civilization, outranking even the Verpine’s public face, Speaker Sass Sikili. “First, you rescue us from the Ancient Ones, and now you come with your fleet to send away the whiteshells. Welcome.”
“Thank you, Your Maternellence. But the name now is Caedus. Darth Caedus.”
The hive mother inclined her head. “We have heard you went through a metamorphosis. It is hard to believe you were just a larva when you saved us before.” She unfolded an age-curved arm and gestured at the Moffs. “The hives will be happily rid of these wasps. Proceed.”
“I wish it were that simple,” Caedus said. He turned his attention to the Moffs, who were studying him with expressions ranging from impatience to annoyance, depending on whether they were brave, astute, or just plain foolhardy. “But you’re misinterpreting our presence. My fleet and I aren’t here to free the Roche system—we’re here to hold it.”
It was difficult to tell who was more outraged, the mandible-clacking hive mother or the grumbling Moffs. Caedus raised his hand and—when that failed to produce quiet—used the Force to muffle the clamor.
As soon as he could be sure of making himself heard again, he said, “This will be best for everyone. The conquest of the Roche system has given it a significance far beyond the value of its munitions factories.”
The hive mother raised her thorax off her couch and demanded, “What significance? The hives are neutral! We have nothing to do with your war.”
“You have been selling munitions to all sides—and profiting handsomely,” interrupted a combat-trim Moff with close-cropped gray hair. “That makes you a legitimate target.”
“Moff Lecersen makes a good point,” Caedus said. “And I did warn you that the Mandalorians lacked the strength to protect you.” Before the hive mother could argue, he turned to Lecersen. “But the Moff Council should have consulted with me before acting. There have been indications in the Force all along that this invasion would be a mistake.”
“Because you want the Roche munitions factories for yourself?” scoffed a youthful Moff.
Caedus recognized him from intelligence holos as Voryam Bhao. With his honey-colored complexion, curly black hair, and a sneering upper lip just begging to be ripped off his face, he looked even younger than the twenty-three standard years listed in his file.
“Spare us your dark prophecies, Colonel Solo,” Bhao continued boldly. “Everyone at this table sees what you’re trying to do.”
The bile began to rise in Caedus’s throat, but he reminded himself of his resolution and resisted the urge to snap the young Moff’s neck—as he had Lieutenant Tebut’s not so long ago.
Instead, he said in a calm, durasteel voice, “You really should listen more carefully, Moff Bhao.” He made a dipping motion with his index finger, and Bhao’s head sank toward the table as though he were bo
wing. “It’s Caedus now. Darth Caedus.”
If Bhao’s older peers were amused, they did not show it—not even in the Force. They simply glared at Caedus, and another of the Moffs—this one a round-faced man with a roll of red neck-flab hanging over the collar of his buttoned tunic—shook his head in open disapproval.
“We are all aware that you are very powerful in the Force, Darth Caedus,” he said. “But you seem to be forgetting that we are quite powerful in our own right. If not for us, that catastrophe at Fondor would have been the end of you and the Galactic Alliance.”
“Nor do we need to consult with you about anything,” Moff Lecersen added. “The last I checked, the Empire was an ally of the Galactic Alliance, not its territory. We don’t need your permission to conduct our operations … and we surely don’t need your fleets to hold what we take.”
Caedus brought his anger under control by reminding himself that he deserved such a rebuke. He had not failed at Fondor because of Niathal’s treachery, or his admirals’ lack of boldness, or even because of Daala’s surprise attack. He had failed because of his own blindness, because he had allowed his anguish over Allana’s betrayal to make him arrogant and selfish and vindictive.
And then, once his thinking had cleared, he began to see how the situation must look to someone who did not have the Force. To someone who could not look into the future and see Luke hunting him down, or see Mandalorian maniacs bursting from walls and asteroids burning as bright as stars, Caedus’s assertion might be hard to believe. Without such foresight, it might be easy to convince oneself that this lonely cluster of rocks could not be as important as all that—that the balance of an interstellar war could never hinge on what was about to happen here.
After a moment’s silence, Caedus said, “You don’t believe me.” His tone was more disappointed than angry. “You think this is about spoils.”
Lecersen exchanged suspicious glances with several of the other Moffs, then asked, “You don’t really expect us to believe you came out here to protect us, do you?”
Caedus had to stifle a laugh. While he hadn’t been thinking of it in those terms, he realized that was exactly what he was doing here—protecting the Moffs and their crucial fleets.
“I suppose that does sound absurd.” Realizing that only events themselves would convince the Moffs of his sincerity, Caedus turned and started toward the exit. “The truth so often does.”
Ben had heard officials from the Reconstruction Authority speak of Monument Plaza as their crowning achievement—a fitting finale to the agency’s commission as the rebuilder of galactic civilization. Their technicians had spent three years sonichipping a two-meter crust of Yuuzhan Vong yorik coral off the classic Old Republic architecture that surrounded the square, and their artisans had dedicated five years to replicating—with original methods and materials—the thousands of ancient statues that had given the plaza its name.
Even KnobHead, the outcropping of bare mountaintop that was one of the only places on Coruscant where one could touch actual planetary surface, had been rescued: a team of RA geologists had spent more than a year scrubbing away a blanket of stone-dissolving lichen that may or may not have been a Yuuzhan Vong terraforming device. By the RA’s own very loud proclamation, the project was a stellar success, one more example of the job it had done restoring the galaxy to its pre–Yuuzhan Vong glory.
What Ben saw, however, was a vast durasteel square teeming with bored tourists and loitering office workers, strewn with litter and badly in need of a cleansing rain. The smog-pearled sky was kept blissfully free of air traffic by a no-fly security zone, and the only possible location for an observation post was inside the monuments themselves, all of which were surrounded by softly rumbling rivers of sightseers that would render even the most sophisticated eavesdropping equipment useless. In short, what Ben saw was the perfect place to avoid being seen without being obvious about it, a seething mass of life so vast that even GAG could not identify every being it contained.
No wonder Lon Shevu liked to meet his informants here.
Ben found one of Shevu’s favorite statues—a gray monolith depicting a droid mechanic—and sat on one end of the empty viewing bench. A hologram of an attractive female Sullustan rose out of the plaza decking and began to explain that Devoted Technician was both the newest and largest monument in the plaza, a fitting tribute to the billions of dedicated beings who had worked so hard under the Reconstruction Authority to rebuild the galaxy after the war against the Yuuzhan Vong.
The hologram continued, spewing a self-congratulatory stream of propaganda about the remarkable job the RA had done with limited resources in a very difficult political climate. If Ben had not had more important things to think about—like why the hairs on his neck were standing erect when he knew he hadn’t been followed from the Mizobon Spaceport—he would have been bored to yawns.
Ben had experienced that same sensation a thousand times since he had left the Sweet Time—the much-modified KDY space yacht the strike team was using as its base of operations. He reached out in the Force, searching for anyone who might be watching him. Lon Shevu might be a GAG captain himself, but anyone who caught him talking to Ben would instantly realize that Shevu was also a spy, a traitor who wanted to bring Caedus down as much as Ben did—well, almost as much. Caedus hadn’t murdered Shevu’s mother, after all.
Ben was being watched, of course. Aunt Leia and his cousin Jaina were both in the crowd, serving as his backups but keeping their distance to avoid drawing attention to him or Shevu. And he could sense about a dozen young females keeping a furtive eye on him, overly interested but bearing no hint of harmful intentions—probably just admiring the Arkanian wardrobe that Aunt Leia had chosen as part of his nobleman’s disguise. There were also several presences that felt watchful but not focused, no doubt just plainclothes security agents looking for nervous demeanor, irrational conduct, or any of a thousand other behaviors that usually betrayed terrorist attacks in the making.
What Ben did not sense was any curiosity or suspicion directed his way, no hint that he would be bringing danger along when he made contact with Shevu. Reassured, he rose and made his way to the opposite corner of the monument.
Shevu was standing behind a viewing bench, posing as a tourist. He wore the now meaningless uniform of the Reconstruction Authority Space Patrol, and he was using a small vidcam to record another hologram, this one narrated by an attractive Falleen female. His hair was tinted gray, and he was wearing a false goatee beard in the same color. In fact, he looked so much like a retired RASP pilot that despite his familiar Force presence, Ben wasn’t quite sure he had the right man.
Or maybe it was the changes that weren’t part of Shevu’s disguise that were throwing Ben off—the sunken eyes and ashen complexion, and the worry lines that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Ben stopped half a step in front of him and a little off to the side, pretending to be interested in the same hologram. It was a bit more interesting than the last one. The Falleen was explaining how the Reconstruction Authority had liberated the Maltorian mining belt from the notorious pirate captain Three-Eye.
Shevu surprised him by speaking first. “That’s not quite how it really happened, you know,” he said. “I could tell you about Three-Eye, if you’re interested.”
Ben casually turned and found Shevu smiling at him from behind his vidcam—but also holding his brow cocked in concern and curiosity.
“So you were there, sir?” Ben asked, still playing the role of the polite young noble.
Shevu shook his head. “I’m acquainted with some people who were. The way I heard it, the fighting was over by the time we arrived. Three-Eye was actually handed over to us by a pair of Jedi Knights.” He lowered his vidcam and looked directly at Ben. “Jedi have a funny way of doing that—just appearing when nobody expects them.”
“I’m sure they have their reasons,” Ben said. “Did you serve with RASP long, sir?”
“The whole ten years,” Shevu sa
id. “Time of my life.”
When Shevu did not suggest a snack or lunch as a prelude to going somewhere they could talk more freely, Ben realized his friend was also worried about their security. He extended his Force awareness again, and this time he did feel a pair of focused presences—but they were focused on Shevu, not him. The watchers could have been a GAG backup team, of course—but Ben doubted it. Shevu came here to meet informants, and a careful spymaster did not risk his assets by allowing a backup team to see them. If someone had Shevu under surveillance, it was because they suspected him of treason.
Ben’s first instinct was to take his friend and flee, but that would be a stupid move. Even if they could fight their way out of the plaza, Shevu’s defection would be considered a security emergency. By the time they reached the Sweet Time at Mizobon, GAG would have a full-scale “recovery” effort under way, with every spaceport on the planet sealed tight and whole divisions of GAG troopers scouring every cranny within a hundred kilometers of the plaza.
Ben finally identified Shevu’s watchers, a narrow-snouted Rodian couple about thirty meters away. They were pressing suction-tipped fingers to each other’s green cheeks, running a vidcam, and generally trying too hard to look like a couple on holiday. Ben began to subtly flick his fingers in their direction, sending a steady stream of surveillance-negating Force flashes toward the vidcam.
Once Ben felt certain that the Rodians’ recording equipment was useless, he turned back to Shevu.
“Do you know what happened to him—Three-Eye, I mean?” Ben asked, continuing to speak obliquely but coming directly to the point. If he and Shevu were at risk, it was best to get done and get gone. “I have some friends who might like to meet him. I’m sure you would find it worthwhile to help us.”