Larin nodded and wiped her nose.
Ula let her hand go.
When next she glanced up, he was gone.
THE IMPERIAL SHUTTLE came out of hyperspace above the green and empty world of Kant, deep in Bothan space. Kant’s two moons possessed a sparkling array of asteroid companions. Among them lurked the seventeen vessels of the half division granted to Darth Chratis by the Dark Council. The bulk cruiser at its head, an aging hollow-nosed Keizar-Volvec behemoth called Paramount, hung low and heavy dead ahead. Ax felt an anticipatory dread as the shuttle swooped in to dock. She had cleaned the wounds on her face and neck and changed into clean attire. Still, she felt unready for what was surely to come.
A full detail awaited her on the hangar deck. She ignored their salute.
“Where’s the technician I asked for?”
“Specialist Pedisic is on her way, my lord.”
“Not good enough. I asked for one to be here when I arrived. What about Darth Chratis? Is he on his way, too?”
“No, my lord. He wishes you to attend him immediately.”
“Again, not good enough.” She wrapped the Force around the man’s throat and squeezed until he gasped. “Tell him that I have important work to oversee, and I will not be distracted.”
“Yes … sir!” the red-faced soldier managed.
She let him go and he scurried off to obey her orders.
Behind her, the pilot and another grunt carried a sealed metal case down the ramp with exaggerated care. She had impressed upon them the importance of its contents. If anything happened to the remains of the hex, she was sunk along with the mission.
“I need somewhere secure to open this box,” she told the next soldier in line. “Show me to the nearest quarantine bay.”
“Yes, my lord.” He snap-turned neatly on his heel and led her to a glass-windowed room set into one wall of the hangar deck. The box promptly followed.
The quarantine bay was small but well equipped. The box went onto the floor next to a gleaming metal table. A heavy-breathing droid tech finally arrived, and Ax sent everyone else packing.
“Inside that box is a droid,” she told the technician. “And inside the droid is information of the greatest possible importance. It’s your job to get it out.”
“I understand, my lord.”
“Good. Well, open it!”
Specialist Pedisic unsealed the clasps, stared for a moment at what lay within, then reached in to scoop out the remains. The dead hex had collapsed in on itself and was now reduced to the size of a small human child. Its legs curled protectively around its midriff. Dark brown fluid stained everything.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Pedisic told her, wiping her hands on a cloth she produced from inside her uniform.
“What you’ve seen or done before doesn’t concern me,” Ax said. “It’s what happens now that matters. If I said this was a matter of life and death, I wouldn’t be exaggerating. For you, it certainly is.”
Pedisic swallowed. “Let me send for some more equipment, and I’ll get started right away.”
Ax nodded. “You have one hour.”
She swept out of the quarantine bay, past the double guard stationed at the door, and went to find her Master.
THE BLOW CAME SO fast she couldn’t avoid it, even though she’d expected it from the moment she boarded the Paramount. She felt herself swept up and thrust with crushing force into the nearest bulkhead, and held there, unable to move.
“You were sent to Hutta to claim one thing.”
The deadly hiss of her Master’s voice slid like a red-hot needle into her right ear. She could feel him next to her, even though the room was in absolute darkness. His presence was like a foul-burning fire in the fabric of space itself.
“One thing only,” he repeated, “yet you return without it, you stand by while the Emperor’s official envoy is killed, and you delay before reporting to me. What am I to do with you, Eldon Ax? What punishment would be most fitting?”
“The envoy was a puppet,” she managed in her own defense.
“They always are, but they remain the public face of the Emperor. To slight one of them is to slight him. Would you be party to such a thing? Should he be informed that you have allowed his authority to be disrespected?”
“No, Master. That was not my intent.”
“Perhaps it was not. It is hard to be certain. Your confusion is exposed to me. You are weakened by attachment, by the existence of a mother …”
She flinched away from him as though physically struck. “You lie!” she cried, even though part of her worried that it might be the truth.
The lights burst on, blindingly bright. She fell to the floor, released, and blinked away bright afterimages. The room was square, black, and empty apart from her Master’s meditation sarcophagus mounted securely in the center. He was inside it, his withered face hidden safely behind the lid.
He had never been standing beside her at all.
“Allow me to explain, Master.”
“If you cannot, I will crush your mind to dust.”
She began with her attempt to infiltrate the vault and moved quickly on to her confrontation first with the Jedi Padawan, then with Dao Stryver. Darth Chratis was displeased at her inability to slay either of her enemies, and she felt his feverish will coiling about her again, but she plowed on without hesitation. Her fate rested on convincing him of the worth of the hexes.
“Droids,” he breathed. “Lema Xandret was a droid maker.”
“This surely confirms beyond all possible doubt that the Cinzia was connected to her. Doesn’t it, Master?”
“Do you have any other evidence?”
She pushed aside a memory of the hexes’ relentless screeching. “They consistently attacked me first, as though they possessed an embedded resentment of the Sith. Otherwise, they lashed out only when either attacked themselves or their way was impeded.”
“Suggestive indeed. You say the Mandalorian had the measure of them, as though he had seen their kind before?”
“He held back until it was clear the hexes were going to escape.”
“I find that very interesting, too.”
“The Hutts clearly had no idea what they had found, Master. They might have sold it for the material value alone, had it not been activated.”
“Do you think your presence triggered some kind of awakening?”
“No, Master. It was a matter of expediency. The seed-factory remained relatively quiescent until circumstances ruled that tactic unworkable. Then it moved to another tactic. If the auction had been held a week later, I believe the hexes would have escaped unchecked into the Hutta biosphere, and from there made their journey home.”
“To report, I presume.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Can you recover their route from the remains you brought here?”
“I intend to, Master.”
“If you do not, I will flay you alive in front of the Dark Council, before they in turn flay me.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Abase yourself before me,” he told her, “and swear to me that the thought I see in your mind is not another reason I should kill you now.”
She froze. All she had been thinking was that the hexes fought her as hard as they fought her enemies—harder, in fact, because she was a Sith. Surely, instead, they should have recognized her and held back. After all, Lema Xandret had created both of them. She had even named the ship after her daughter. They should be her allies, not her enemies.
Darth Chratis held her mind like an egg, ready to crack it with a thought.
She did exactly as he said, pressing herself face down onto the cold metal floor to reaffirm her allegiance to him.
“I remain your trustworthy servant,” she said. “I am yours to kill if you deem it fit.”
She waited, hardly daring to breathe, and gradually the pressure eased.
“You shall live,” her Master told her, “for now. Find me the l
ocation of that planet. If you fail me again, I will show no mercy. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Leave.”
She went.
Only when she was sure she had reached a safe distance did she dare think, You can expect no mercy from me, Master, the day our positions are reversed.
THE VERY SECOND the medkit bleeped to tell her its work was done, Larin slid her half hand free and headed for the refresher. She was tired and ached all over, but this couldn’t wait. There was only so much she could ask of a self-cleaning body glove. A good rinse was exactly what it needed.
When she was done, she did as Ula had suggested, and looked through his suitcases for anything she might be able to wear. Much of it was formal wear and still vacuum-sealed in its original packaging. A lot of it was also made from more expensive natural fabric, and therefore not amenable to on-the-fly adjustments, but Ula wasn’t significantly larger than she. Eventually she found dark blue pants and a matching jacket with a militaristic cut. The sleeves and legs came up to match her length, and the other measurements pulled in tight enough. With the black body glove underneath, she almost looked stylish—but for the bruises on her face and the missing fingers of her left hand.
Larin considered what she had told Ula she would do, and rejected it. She was tired, but knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The first thing she’d noticed on leaving the refresher was that the ship wasn’t moving. It was still in orbit about Hutta.
She explored the main level of the Auriga Fire. Hetchkee was sound asleep in the crew quarters, and like any good soldier hadn’t been disturbed by her rummaging around. The soft male voices coming down the stairwell from the cockpit belonged to Jet and Ula. All the holds she poked her head into were empty, bar one.
Shigar sat cross-legged with hands folded across his lap and eyes closed. The silver scrap sat innocently on the floor in front of him. His face was expressionless, but she could feel the tension radiating from him like an audible twang. He looked like she had felt half an hour earlier: exhausted, dirty, and beaten half to death.
She went and got the medkit.
“Your arm,” she told him when she returned. “How are you going to achieve anything if you bleed out here in the dark?”
Without moving a single other muscle, he opened his eyes.
“I can’t do it anyway, Larin.”
“You know, you’ll never be able to prove that true,” she said, holding the medkit at him like a challenge. “All you can prove is that you’ve stopped trying.”
“But if you distract me—”
“That’s not the same thing as giving up. That’s called a regroup. I’m your reinforcements.”
His mask of concentration finally broke into a faint smile. “I’d happily trade places with you.”
“Me, too,” she said, raising her injured hand.
He took the medkit from her without another word.
She explained the clothing situation while he tended his arm. He nodded vaguely. She slid down the wall and sat with her back against it. He didn’t stop her. By the light spilling through the open door, he looked much older than she knew him to be.
“Everyone is waiting for me,” he said as the medkit hummed away. “Not just you and Master Satele. Supreme Commander Stantorrs, hundreds of soldiers and starfighter pilots, the entire Republic—waiting for me to do something I’ve never been able to do. Not properly, anyway. It comes and goes. It’s not reliable. I can tell you where your armor came from, but this thing …?”
The piece of droid-nest glinted impassively back at him.
“What about my armor?” she said.
“Once, when I brushed against it, I got a flash of its former owner. She was a sniper from Tatooine. She got a medal for taking out a local Exchange boss.”
“What happened to her?”
“She didn’t die in the armor or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Larin nodded, feeling a small amount of relief. “Maybe she was promoted out of the field and took the armor with her. That happens, sometimes.”
“But she sold it,” he said. “Would she have needed the money that badly?”
“Her kids might have. It’s old armor, Shigar, last in action before the Treaty of Coruscant. Took me a lot of work to get it into the shape it was, let me tell you.”
“You could’ve bought new armor anytime,” he said, “but you didn’t want to. It’s a symbol standing in for all the things that need to be fixed.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Just a guess.”
His green eyes watched her unblinkingly. She felt sometimes that they looked right into her. Sometimes she liked that feeling. Sometimes she didn’t.
“You’re thinking too much,” she told him.
“That’s what I’ve been trained to do.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. I’m sure the Grand Master trained you to think just enough, and no more. But the lesson hasn’t quite sunk in yet because people only learn it the hard way. And that’s where you are right now. Absolutely stuck, in a hard place. Right?”
Still he didn’t look away. “Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing. You know you have to do something. You know what it is and you know why it has to be done. But you can’t do it because you’re too busy going over it and over it, making sure you’re absolutely right. Most of you knows you are right, but there’s a small part that wants to think it over one more time. The reasons, the method, the fallout. Whatever. Like you can plan everything in advance and then just sit back and watch it happen, so perfectly you don’t even have to be there to do it. Things will just happen on their own. Maybe you don’t need to do anything if you think about it hard enough. That’s always worth hoping for.”
“You’re speaking from experience, I can tell.”
“You bet,” she said, but then she stopped. The words had dried up.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I do. I need to tell someone, one day. It might as well be you, now.” She felt her face growing warm, and she turned away, hoping he couldn’t see. “I ratted on a superior officer.”
“I presume you had a reason.”
“The best. Sergeant Donbar was corrupt. But that didn’t change anything. I went against the chain of command and reported him to his superiors. They slapped him down and discharged him, but the reason for it was hushed up. There were always going to people who didn’t believe me, thought I was doing it out of a grudge, but because of the secrecy I couldn’t defend myself. No one wants Special Forces to look bad, and he was about as bad as it gets. He was discharged, and eventually I quit. It got way too uncomfortable.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Sometimes,” she said, thinking of the Zabrak on Coruscant, “but it had to be done. If I tried to capture the weeks of agonizing I went through leading up to me actually doing it, I’d bore you to death.”
The skin around his eyes tightened. “And now you think I should just get over myself and do what I have to do.”
“You don’t agree?”
“Not at all. Finding a planet that could be anywhere in Wild Space is a little different from putting in a report, don’t you think?”
“Sure it’s different. You don’t stand to lose every friend you’ve ever had if you do the right thing. And you’ve actually been training for this most of your life. Remember, Shigar, that you didn’t have to crawl up from nowhere to get where you are. You were handpicked from everyone on Kiffu to be a Jedi Knight. Whatever happens today, you’ll go back to the life you know. So you can do it at your own pace, or you can do it when you need to do it. I for one think there’s only one right choice.”
He looked away. “You came to tell me you think I’ve got it easy. That makes a huge difference. Thanks.”
His sarcasm stung. Larin didn’t know what she’d come to him for, really, except to break him out of his funk. She was surprised at how d
eep the feelings ran and the harshness with which she had spoken. It was hard to tell how much was for his benefit.
“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
When she stood, her knees practically shook with fatigue.
“I will do it,” he said. “I have to.”
“Well, keep it down when you do. I’m going to catch up on some sleep.”
She didn’t wait for his snappy comeback, if he had one. Letting her legs work on autopilot, she went to a bunk in the crew quarters and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
SHIGAR LISTENED TO her go. Already he regretted the way he had reacted to her combined advice and confession. Clearly, she had been building up to the latter part for some time, and he should have showed more compassion. But he was so bound up in his own issues, his own self-centered mess, that he hadn’t been able to see the raw wound she had exposed to him. Not her hand, but the aching severance from everything she had once held dear.
How would he feel, he asked himself, if he had to turn his back on the Jedi Order? It was impossible to imagine Master Satele ever doing anything counter to the Code he lived by, but famous Jedi had fallen to the dark side before. What if he discovered that she was in fact working against the Council? And what if he knew that her word would be taken against his? Was his sense of justice strong enough to make the call anyway, as Larin’s had been?
Once he would have been completely sure of himself. Now, after his dealings with Tassaa Bareesh, he wasn’t so sure.
And still there was the matter of the mysterious world, waiting to be resolved.
The piece of droid-nest glinted impassively back at him.
Larin was right on one point: sitting around thinking about it would get him nowhere. All the time he had been isolated in the dark, he hadn’t even touched the silver sliver. He had been trying and failing to get his mind into the right state, believing that there was no point even starting until he was completely ready.
Larin’s faith in you is not unwarranted. Perhaps you should have faith in her, too.
Shigar remembered how he had felt when Master Satele had ordered him to go to Hutta. He had invited Larin along because he felt she needed him to prove something to herself. She was full of bluster but lacking a clear sense of purpose. Now he understood why that core of her life was missing, and it was he who needed to prove something. If he didn’t, he would do much worse than let down his Master and the Republic. He would fail himself.
The Old Republic Series Page 21