Closer and closer she came to Stryver. He didn’t look behind him. His attention was focused solely on going upward. Past the glare of his jetpack she could see the transparisteel box clutched tightly in one massive hand. The navicomp was still inside. She almost reached for it through the Force, but held herself back. If she revealed her presence prematurely, Stryver would have time to react. Better to strike him in the back and take the prize from his dead hands.
Two more floors. Three. She threw up a barrier to prevent the heat of the jetpack from flaying away her skin. Four. Now she was so close she could almost have reached out and tripped him. The pounding of his cannon was deafening.
Now.
She lunged for the navicomp just as Stryver burst through the roof of the palace. A brown glare struck them, and Ax squinted as she struggled for possession of the box. Stryver showed no surprise, although he momentarily lost control of his jetpack. They spiraled and swooped across the roof, while guards peppered them with blasterfire.
Stryver’s gloved hands let go of the box.
For a fleeting instant, she felt triumph. She braced herself to kick away from him.
Then his left hand lunged out to catch her around the throat while his right brought up the assault cannon and fired into her stomach.
At point-blank range, the shot was like being hit by an aircar in full flight. Had she not put a Force barrier in place, her entire midsection would have been instantly vaporized. As it was, she was blown backward out of his cruel grip and left sprawling, momentarily insensate, on the roof.
Stryver caught the box neatly, one-handed, and flew off into the sky.
Ax watched dazedly, too stunned to feel anything other than curiosity. Where was he going? His jetpack couldn’t possibly have enough fuel to get him far. Tassaa Bareesh would have a price on his head within the hour—a price large enough to guarantee he would never leave Hutta.
Then a sleek black shape swooped into view. A ship. She recognized the angular foils of a Kuat scout but couldn’t determine the model. It dipped low to intercept Stryver, and then roared up into the sky.
Her quarry was gone.
She felt nothing.
A blurry shape occluded her view of the muddy sky. She tightened her focus. It was a Nikto guard. She was nudged by a business-like boot, as though to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. Another Nikto joined it, then a third. She watched them as though from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
I will kill you, Dao Stryver, or die trying.
Her rage returned, like life itself. She had lost the navicomp, but that didn’t have to be the end of the world. She would find another way to satisfy Darth Chratis and the Dark Council—and herself, too. It wasn’t really about Stryver and the navicomp, anyway. It was about where they led. The mysterious rare-metal world. The fugitives from Imperial justice. Her mother.
It couldn’t end here.
She wouldn’t let it.
She was on her feet in a single eyeblink. The dozen or so guards converging on her across the roof weren’t going to be a problem at all.
HER FIRST STEP was to devise a new plan. Stealing the navicomp and cracking its secrets obviously wasn’t going to be possible now. Stryver had it, and she had no illusions at all regarding the likelihood of him sharing those secrets.
There had to be another way. All she had to do was find it.
The palace was in an uproar as she fought her way back to the site of the battle with the droids—the “hexes,” as she had overheard someone calling them. It made sense to return to the scene, since only there lay any chance of learning anything about their origins. She wasn’t sure exactly what she hoped to find, though. Maybe the smuggler hadn’t told the Hutts everything he knew. Maybe she could torture him to extract every last piece of information.
As she wound through the palace’s labyrinthine halls, she passed a clutch of Gamorreans bearing the unconscious Jedi captive over their heads. She smirked but didn’t stop. It was good to see someone worse off than she was.
When she arrived at the ruins of the security air lock, she found it sealed behind a dense press of guards wielding laser cannons. The hole in the wall was protected by a bank of portable particle shields. Getting in wasn’t going to be as easy as getting out—and she had no intention of crawling back up the avalanche of debris. Fighting was an option, of course, but fatigue was beginning to take its toll. Under better circumstances, she would never have let Stryver beat her like that.
She needed to be smarter, rather than stronger.
Retreating to a quiet place to think, she examined everything she knew about the hexes. It wasn’t much. They were single-minded—but what did she know about the minds they possessed? They refused to acknowledge any authority beyond that of their maker. They killed everyone else with impunity. Was there anything else she could say about them?
She remembered the way they had tricked the Twi’lek into blowing an escape route for them through the wall. That displayed resourcefulness and cunning, qualities lacking in many droids, but not all. It wasn’t a unique feature of their design.
Something niggled at the back of her brain. A thought stirred there, hesitantly pushing itself forward for consideration.
Escape.
The hexes had been trying to escape.
So where were they trying to escape to?
Home.
But how did they know where home was?
The answer to that question burst into her mind with crystalline clarity.
The navicomp isn’t the only map.
Ax was moving, circling the ruin until she found the path that the two escaping droids had taken. No one stood in her way until she reached the first of the bodies. It was cordoned off by Gamorreans, and she let them be. The Jedi had made a real mess of that hex, spilling its guts out in a mess of silver and red. The second, she hoped, would be in better condition.
It, too, was cordoned off, but she could see through the guards that the body was intact, tangled up in a net like an animal caught in a trap.
Perfect, she thought, bringing her lightsaber into play.
WHEN SHE HAD the corpse safely slung over her shoulder, all she had to do was leave. That was accomplished as easily as walking through the palace to the spaceport, where the Imperial shuttle awaited her pleasure. Palace security had been tightened in an attempt to stop anyone from leaving. The attempt was doomed to failure.
Two armed Imperial guards stood at attention by the air lock’s inner door. They saluted as she stepped through.
“Any problems?” she asked them.
“There was a guy sniffing around the Mandalorian’s ship before it took off,” said one.
“And some nonhuman scum trying to get in here,” said the other. “We sent him packing.”
“Very good.”
She strode confidently up the ramp and into the cockpit, where the pilot sat waiting. He took in her dusty, battered appearance but didn’t remark upon it.
“We’re leaving,” she said. “Advise Darth Chratis of our imminent rendezvous. I want a droid tech on hand the moment we dock.”
“Yes, sir. But what about the envoy?”
“He’s no longer with us.”
The pilot nodded uncertainly, obviously comparing his standing orders with those he had just been given. A Sith always outranked a superior officer. That was the only conclusion available.
While the repulsors warmed up, Ax took the dead hex and stored it in the secure hold that had been set aside for the navicomp. This cargo was no less precious. The good thing about a droid was that, although dead was indisputably dead, memory took time to fade. With the right expertise, the location of the mystery world could be extracted from the data stored in the carcass, and her success would be assured.
A warm glow filled her, part relief, part pride, part exhaustion. She was looking forward to sitting down. But there was something she had to do first.
The shuttle was lifting off when she returned to the cockp
it. She gazed through the viewports at the spaceport and its minuscule cluster of ships.
“Which ship did the Republic envoy arrive in?”
“That one,” said the pilot, indicating a stubby, fat-nosed craft resting on four wide-spaced legs.
“Destroy it,” she said.
“Yes, sir.”
The shuttle’s cannon fired, strafing the back of the defenseless ship. It burst into a ball of flame so bright it outshone the sun.
Ax smiled in satisfaction as the palace’s scarred roof receded into the distance. With any luck, she thought, that was the last she’d ever see of Hutta.
SHIGAR HAD SEEN the spaceport on plans of the palace, but hadn’t been there before. He moved quickly and carefully through the corridors of the palace, counting corners and noting landmarks while avoiding guards and security cordons. Getting lost or pinned down was the last thing he needed. Stryver would have farther to go but he knew the layout better. If there was going to be another confrontation, Shigar wanted to have the advantage.
Also on his mind was Larin’s well-being. Again he debated the wisdom of bringing her to Hutta. She had been a great help, and good company, too, but now she was hurt, possibly maimed, and that made her future prospects even grimmer. He swore to make sure her hand was properly tended, but was that enough? Had the kindness he had assumed he was doing for her turned into an intolerable cruelty?
He was afraid of what his Master would think when she saw where his judgment had led him.
All the more important, then, to succeed with Stryver. The entire palace was in an uproar, which was to be expected after explosions in the lower levels, a fight in the security air lock, rogue droids running wild through the corridors, and the multilevel collapse Stryver had engendered. Conflicting alarms overlapped wildly, creating a head-jangling row that Shigar did his best to ignore. He could only imagine how Tassaa Bareesh was taking it.
The spaceport guards were on high alert. Shigar plucked a sentry from his regular patrol and used the Force to persuade him into revealing the command structure of the emplacement. There had been enough killing already that day. Besides, any evidence of a struggle would alert Stryver to an ambush.
Encaasa Bareesh was a junior nephew of the palace’s matriarch. He oversaw the security detail from an office two floors away, and was notorious for only occasionally glancing at the cam views. It was a simple matter to convince Encaasa that a completely unrelated crew member wanted to board their ship, but had misplaced their clearance code. Shigar imagined the indolent Hutt wearily slapping his fat fingers on the right controls and then settling back into his hammock. Not even a palace-wide security alert could ruffle him.
The main entranceway to the spaceport slid open. Shigar walked through, watching behind him for any sign of the Mandalorian. None, yet. The doors closed, leaving him alone in the circular disembarkation area.
Shigar had asked the guard which berth the First Blood had been assigned to, and he headed straight there. The spaceport’s umbilical door was open, revealing the gray skin of Stryver’s ship at the far end. Shigar wasn’t so foolish as to go anywhere near that inviting portal. It would be booby-trapped for certain.
Instead he waited nearby, in full view of both the First Blood and the spaceport entrance, with his lightsaber inactivated but held tightly at the ready. Stryver had to come for his ship sometime, and Shigar would be prepared.
He emptied his mind of all concerns—every worry about Larin and his mission, every ache and pain—and stood poised and ready for action.
The sound of repulsors activating broke him out of his trance. One of the ships was warming up its engines for liftoff. He circled the disembarkation area to identify which one, but the sound wasn’t coming from any of the closed air locks. It was coming from Stryver’s berth.
That surprised him. He had assumed Stryver was traveling alone. There could, therefore, be no one inside his ship to warm it up for him. Either Shigar was wrong on that point, or Stryver had activated it by remote.
The repulsor whine continued to rise in volume. This wasn’t just warming up. The ship was about to take off.
Cursing under his breath, Shigar abandoned subtlety. Approaching the ship’s outer air lock, he quickly examined it for weak points and found just one. The door was keyed to Stryver’s biometric signs—height, breadth, proportion of limbs, and so on—but it also featured an override, just in case Stryver was ever grievously injured in the course of a mission. If he lost a major limb, for instance. That override could be sliced into by someone clever enough.
Shigar wasn’t as good a slicer as Larin, but he had seen this kind of trick before. Mandalorian ships had been Jedi targets ever since the Great War, and he had been taught over and over again the best way to disable them. Working quickly, he tapped a series of codes designed to reset the override function back to a commonly used default. When he typed in the default, the door slid open.
Not a moment too soon. The repulsors were at screaming-pitch and the ship was hovering lightly on the ground. In another second, it would’ve been high above the palace.
Shigar leapt lightly into the air lock and was swept upward with it. The moment his boots touched the floor, however, a secondary security system kicked in. Powerful electric shocks coursed through his body, sending his muscles into irresistible spasms. He fell onto his side, unable even to cry out. His jaw was locked open in a silent scream.
The autopilot raised the ship straight above the spaceport and adjusted its trim. Shigar felt himself rolling toward the open air lock, but couldn’t move a finger to save himself.
The electric shocks ceased the moment he cleared the air lock. That was something to be grateful for as he fell like a stone to the roof below.
HOW LONG HE WAS unconscious he didn’t know. Minutes, probably. Sufficient time for his helpless body to be gathered up by a roof security team, secured with binders at wrists and ankles, and gagged for good measure. When he woke, he was being transported through the palace on the shoulders of a squad of Gamorreans. Neither his lightsaber nor his comlink was within reach.
Instead of fighting, he concentrated on easing his body’s many bruises and batterings. He didn’t know how far he had fallen, but fortunately he had ended up with no broken bones. A ringing skull, yes, and a crushing blow to his dignity, but nothing worse. For the moment, he was grateful simply to be alive.
His captors whisked him at a brisk jog through the palace. He memorized the turns but without a starting point had no way of knowing exactly where he was going. His general impression, however, was of opulence increasing around him, not decreasing. When he arrived at a large space full of people whispering and talking, with one loud voice booming away in Huttese over the top of them, he guessed instantly where he was.
The Gamorreans came to a halt in the center of Tassaa Bareesh’s throne room, and with a coordinated grunt dumped him onto the floor. Silence radiated around him as people noted his presence. He clambered awkwardly to his feet and looked about.
A large crowd of beings stared back at him, whispering and pointing. He saw no less than twenty different species in one quick glance, from trunked Kubaz to feline Cathars, with bipeds occupying a pronounced minority. Their exotic origins belied their unified purpose: to pander and preen before the one who controlled their fates.
“Bona nai kachu,” roared the matriarch of the palace, “dopa meekie Seetha peedunky koochoo!”
Shigar turned to face Tassaa Bareesh. She was sprawled heavily on a horrifically ornate throne-bed at one end of the hall, and decorated almost as ornately as it was. He didn’t know enough about the Hutts to read her expression, but the quivering of her lipless mouth and the spittle she sprayed as she talked left little to the imagination.
An A-1DA protocol droid shuffled forward on spindly legs. “Tassaa Bareesh wishes you to fully comprehend the certainty that you will be punished, treacherous Sith.”
Shigar considered his options. There were at least two dozen
weapons trained on him. Behind the crowd, armed guards ran back and forth, responding to various emergencies unfolding in the palace.
He bowed as ceremonially as he was able, given his bindings. “I must correct your mistress. I am in fact a Jedi.”
“Stoopa dopa maskey kung!”
He ignored the insult. “I can hardly have double-crossed you when we had no agreement between us. Beyond trespassing on your territory without permission, I mean no harm.”
Tassaa Bareesh rumbled threateningly, shifting to a different dialect now that she realized he could understand at least some of her words.
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your intention was to steal from her. For that, you must die.”
“If you search me, you’ll find I’m carrying nothing I didn’t come here with.”
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your accomplices have made off with the prize.”
“The navicomp? The last time I saw that it was in the grip of a Mandalorian, not a Jedi.”
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your treachery is surpassed only by your puniness. He stole it from you after you stole it from us.”
“You are upset,” Shigar said. “Your judgment is clouded. A moment ago you thought I was a Sith. Perhaps the lie you think I am telling is actually the truth.”
The crowd muttered in consternation. Clearly few people were bold enough to question Tassaa Bareesh’s judgment to her face.
The Hutt matriarch growled something long and involved that didn’t really need translation. The droid rapidly blinked its round blue eyes and made a valiant effort anyway.
“Tassaa Bareesh is most displeased. She has, ah, devised numerous ways to use you for entertainment.”
Shigar didn’t argue the point. He had finished counting the guards and exits, and reached the conclusion he’d expected. There was no way to fight his way out of this one, and he couldn’t rely on reinforcements. He would have to talk. He might even have to make a deal.
That thought sickened him to the stomach.
“Your anger is perfectly justifiable,” he said. “Your palace has been attacked, and the property and information you planned to sell have been stolen. You’ve been deprived of the profit you deserve. No one would deny that you have a right to seek revenge, to make an example out of those who have caused you embarrassment and significant harm.” He bowed again. “All I beg is that you blame the right people.”
The Old Republic Series Page 17