by James Luceno
“Are you lecturing me, Syo?”
“I am reminding you, Aryn. All Jedi must sacrifice. Sometimes we sacrifice the emotional bonds that usually link people one to another. Sometimes we sacrifice … more, as did Master Zallow. That is the nature of our service. Don’t lose sight of it in your grief.”
She realized that there was more separating her from Syo than five meters of space. Her grief was allowing her to see for the first time.
“You do not understand,” she said.
For a time he said nothing, then, “Maybe I don’t. But I’m here if you need to talk. I am your friend, Aryn. I always will be.”
“I know that.”
He was silent for a moment, then stepped back from the ledge of his balcony. “Good night, Aryn. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night, Syo.”
He left her alone with her thoughts, with the night.
Sacrifice, Syo had said. Aryn had already sacrificed much in her life, and Master Zallow had sacrificed all. She did not turn from sacrifice, but sacrifice had to have meaning. And she saw now that it had all been for nothing. Always she had quieted her needs, her desires, under the weight of sacrifice, nonattachment, service. But now her need was too great. She owed Master Zallow too much to let his death go unavenged.
Dar’nala and Zym and Am-ris and the rest of them could accede to onerous Sith terms to save Coruscant. That was a political matter. Aryn’s matter was personal, and she would not shirk it.
She returned to her room and flicked on the vidscreen. More commentary on the attack, a Cerean pundit offering his analysis of how it changed the balance of power in the peace negotiations. Aryn watched the vids to distract her, barely saw them.
Vids.
“Vids,” she said, sitting up.
The Temple’s surveillance system would have recorded the Sith attack. If she could get to it, she could see Master Zallow’s murderer.
Assuming the Temple still stood.
Assuming the recording had not been discovered and destroyed.
Assuming the Jedi did not surrender Coruscant to the Empire.
It should not come to that, Master Dar’nala had said. Should not.
Aryn would not leave her need to chance, not this time.
She was thinking of jumping after all.
Having made the decision, she knew she had to act on it immediately or let doubt assail her certainty. She rose, feeling light on her feet for the first time in hours. She gathered her pack, tightened her robes, and stepped back out onto the balcony. The wind had picked up. The leaves hissed in the breeze. The next step, once taken, was irrevocable. She knew that.
She spared a glance at Syo’s room, saw it was dark.
Heart racing, she turned and leapt into the open air, following her thoughts groundward, untethered from the Order, from nonattachment, from everything save her need to right a wrong.
Using the Force to slow her descent, she hit the ground in a crouch and sped off. No one had seen her leave and no one would mark her absence before dawn. She would be at her ship and gone well before that.
She’d need to figure a way to get to Coruscant, and she had an idea of who could help her. She wanted those surveillance vids. And then she wanted to find the Sith who’d murdered Master Zallow.
The Order might be forced to betray what it stood for, but Aryn would not betray the memory of her master.
The rest of the Sith force had returned to the fleet, but Malgus lingered. He stood alone among the ruins of the Jedi Temple. He powered off his comlink, putting him out of touch with Imperial forces, and communed in solitude with the Force. Walking the perimeter of the ruins, he loitered over the destruction, pleased at his victory but flat with the realization that he had defeated his enemy and no obvious replacement was apparent.
He longed for conflict. He knew this of himself. He needed conflict.
There would be more battles with the Jedi and the Republic, of course, but with the capture and razing of Coruscant, the fall of the Republic was a certainty, only a matter of time. Soon his Force vision would be realized, then … what?
He would have to trust that the Force would present him with another foe, another war worth fighting.
Scaling a mound of rubble, he found a perch that offered an excellent view of the surrounding urbanscape. The cracked face of the statue of Odan-Urr lay atop the mound beside him, eyeing him mournfully.
There, astride the ruins of his enemy, Malgus waited for the Imperial fleet to begin the incineration of the planet.
An hour passed by, then another, and as twilight gave way to night the number of Imperial ships prowling the sky over Coruscant began to thin rather than thicken. Bombers returned to their cruisers, and fighters took up not attack but patrol formations.
What was happening? The Imperial fleet did not have the resources to manage a long-term occupation of Coruscant. Imperial forces had to raze the planet and move on before Republic forces could gather for a counterattack.
And yet … nothing was happening. Malgus did not understand.
He activated his comlink and raised his cruiser, Valor.
“Darth Malgus,” said his second in command, Commander Jard. “We have been unable to raise you for hours. I was concerned for your well-being. I just dispatched a transport to search for you at the Temple.”
“What is happening, Jard? Where are the bombers? When will the planetary bombardment begin?”
Jard stumbled over his reply. “My lord … I … Darth Angral …”
Malgus’s hand squeezed the comlink as he surmised the meaning behind Jard’s stuttering response. “Speak clearly, Commander.”
“It seems the peace negotiations are continuing on Alderaan, my lord. Darth Angral has instructed all forces to stand down until matters there crystallize.”
Malgus watched a patrol of Mark VI interceptors fly over. “Peace negotiations?”
“That is my understanding, Darth Malgus.”
Malgus seethed, stared at a smoke plume thrown up by a burning skyrise. “Thank you, Jard.”
“Will you be returning to Valor, my lord?”
“No,” Malgus said. “But get that transport to me now. I require an audience with Darth Angral.”
The terms of the negotiations prohibited either the Imperial or Republic delegations from posting external security around the High Council building and compound. Instead, both had their extended delegations posted in nearby cities.
Moving with Force-augmented speed, Aryn easily avoided the Alderaanian guards posted on the grounds of the compound. A canine with one of the guard teams must have caught her smell. It growled as she passed, but before the guards could turn on their infrared scanners, Aryn was already a hundred meters away. She did not exit through any of the checkpoints. Instead, she picked her way among the gardens until she reached the compound’s walls, veined in green creepers blooming with yellow and white flowers.
Without slowing, she drew on the Force, leapt into the air, and arced over the five-meter wall. She hit the ground on the other side, free.
To her surprise, she did not feel a pull to turn back. She took this as a sign that she had made the right decision.
The High Council building perched atop a wooded hill. Winding roads, streams, and scenic footpaths led down the hill to a small resort town nestled at its foot. Lights from the town’s buildings blinked through the trees and other foliage. The susurrus of traffic and city life carried up the hill.
It was late, but not so late that she couldn’t hail an aircar taxi and get to the spaceport before her absence was noted.
Without looking back, she sped off into the night.
When she reached town, she located a line of automated aircar taxis parked outside an open-air eatery filled with young people. A Rodian chef manned the central grill, his arms a whirl of cleavers and knives. The smell of roasted meat, smoke, and a spice she could not place filled the air. Music blared from speakers, the bass causing the ground t
o vibrate. She kept her hood drawn over her face and hopped into the first taxi in line. The anthropomorphic droid driver put an elbow on the seat and turned to face her. It wore a ridiculous cloth hat designed to make it look more human. Given her own fragile emotions, Aryn was pleased to have a droid driver. Droids were voids to her empathic sense.
“Destination, please.”
“The Eeseen spaceport,” she answered.
“Very good, mistress,” it said.
The door of the taxi closed, the engine started, and the car climbed into the air. The town fell away underneath them.
The droid’s social programming kicked in, and it tried to make small talk designed to put a passenger at ease. “Are you from Alderaan, mistress?”
“No,” Aryn said.
“Ah, then may I recommend that you try—”
“I have no need for conversation,” she said. “Please drive in silence.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Once the taxi took position at commercial altitude and fell into a lane, the droid accelerated the taxi to a few hundred kilometers per hour. They’d make the spaceport in half an hour. She considered powering on the in-car vidscreen but decided against it. Instead, she looked out the window at other traffic, at the dark Alderaanian terrain.
“Spaceport ahead, mistress,” said the droid.
Below and ahead, the Eeseen spaceport—one of many on Alderaan—came into view. Aryn could not have missed it. Its lights glowed like a galaxy.
One of the larger structures on the planet, the spaceport was really a series of interconnected structures that straddled fifty square kilometers. The main hub of the port was a series of tiered, concentric arms that twisted around a core of mostly transparisteel, which locals called “the bubble.” It was very much a self-contained city, with its own hotels, restaurants, medical facilities, and security forces.
From above, Aryn knew, the spaceport looked similar to a spiral-armed galaxy. It could dock several hundred ships at a time, from large superfreighters on the lower-level cargo platforms to single-being craft on the upper platforms. A tower for planetary control stuck out of the top of the bubble like a fat antenna.
Due to the late hour, most of the upper docking platforms were dark, but the lower levels were bright and busy with activity. As Aryn watched, a large cargo freighter descended toward one of the lower platforms, while two others began their slow ascent out of dock and into the atmosphere. Shipping firms often did much of their work at night, when in-atmosphere traffic was reduced.
Watching it all, Aryn was once more struck with the oddity of the fact that life for everyone else in the galaxy went on as it had, while the Republic itself was in grave danger. She wanted desperately to scream at all of them: What do you think is going to happen next!
But instead she kept it inside, an emotional pressure that she thought must soon pop an artery.
Dozens of speeders, swoops, and loader droids flew, buzzed, crawled, and rolled along the port’s many docks and in the air around the landing platforms. Automated cranes lifted the huge shipping containers carried in the bays of freighters.
Even from half a kilometer out, Aryn could see the lines of people and droids riding the autowalks and lifts within the spaceport’s central bubble. The whole structure looked like an insect hive. A portion of the bubble near the top housed a luxury hotel. Each room featured a balcony that looked out on Alderaan’s natural beauty. Seeing them, Aryn thought of her exchange with Syo.
“A Jedi must sacrifice,” she said.
She was about to do exactly that.
“I’m sorry, mistress,” said the droid. “Did you say something?”
“No.”
“What entrance, mistress?”
“I need to get to level one, sublevel D.”
“Very good, mistress.”
The aircar descended from the traffic lane to stop at one of the entrances on level one of the spaceport. The droid offered his hand, which featured an integrated card scanner, and Aryn ran her credcard. The Order would be able to track her from its use, but she had no other way to pay. She stepped out of the aircar and hurried through the automated doors of the port.
Once inside, she moved rapidly, barely seeing the other sentients on the walkways and lifts. Conversation occurred around her, but, lost in her thoughts, she heard it only as a distant buzz. Music blared from a darkened cantina. A young couple—a human man and a Cerean woman—walked arm-and-arm out of a restaurant, heads close together, laughing at some shared secret. Droids whirred past Aryn, carting cargo and luggage.
“Pardon me,” they said as they whizzed past.
Vidscreens hung in strategic places throughout the facility. She eyed one, saw a view of Coruscant, which then cut to the High Council compound on Alderaan. She avoided looking at any other vids as she went.
She kept her eyes focused on nothing, hoping that the late hour would spare her any contact with other members of the Jedi delegation who might be stationed at the spaceport. She feared the sound of their voices would pop the bubble of her emotional control.
Hurrying along the corridors, lifts, and walks, she reached the level where she’d landed her Raven and let herself relax. She raised her wrist comlink to her mouth, thinking to hail T6, but a voice from behind called to her and shattered her calm.
“Aryn? Aryn Leneer?”
Her heart lurched as she turned to see Vollen Sor, a fellow Jedi Knight, emerging from a nearby lift and hurrying to catch up with her. Vollen’s Padawan, a Rodian named Keevo, trailed behind him, a satellite in orbit around the planet of his Master. Both wore their traditional robes. They wore their lightsabers openly, outside their robes, as they would in a combat environment.
She tensed. Perhaps Master Dar’nala had noticed her absence and deduced her intent. Perhaps Vollen and Keevo had come to stop her.
She let her hand hover near the hilt of her lightsaber.
By the time the transport set down near the Temple, Malgus had followed enough communication chatter to understand what had occurred. And what he had learned only incensed him further.
He bounded onto the transport and stood in the small, rear cargo bay.
“Leave the bay open as you fly,” he ordered the pilot over the transport’s intercom.
“My lord?”
“Go to a hundred meters up and circle. I want to see the surface.”
“Yes, Darth Malgus.”
As the transport lifted him away from the ruins of the Jedi Temple, wind whipped around the bay and pawed at his cloak. He stood at the edge of the ramp and used the Force to anchor himself in place. From there, he surveyed Coruscant, the planet that should have been destroyed.
Most of the urbanscape was lit, so night did not hide the destruction. A haze of smoke hung like a funeral shroud over the still smoldering ruins. The air carried the faint, sickly sweet tang of burned bodies and melted plastoid. He tried to guess the number of the dead: in the tens of thousands, certainly. A hundred thousand? He could not know. He did know that it should have been billions.
Shafts of steel stuck like bones out of piles of shattered duracrete. Here and there droid-assisted excavation teams sifted through the rubble, seeking survivors or bodies. Frightened faces turned up to watch the transport pass.
“You should be dead,” Malgus said to them. “Not merely frightened.”
Quadrant after quadrant of Coruscant had been reduced to rubble.
But not enough of it.
Most buildings still stood and most of the planet’s people still lived. The Republic had been wounded, but not killed.
And there was nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.
Malgus had difficulty containing the anger he felt. His fist reflexively clenched and unclenched.
He had been misled. Worse, he had been betrayed. A score of his warriors had died for no reason other than to strengthen the Empire’s negotiating posture.
Sirens screamed in the distance, barely audible over the w
ind. Far off, unarmed Republic medical ships whirred through the sky. Speeders and swoops dotted the air here and there, the traffic light and haphazard.
Malgus had learned that Darth Angral had dissolved the Senate and declared martial law. But with the planet pacified, Angral had allowed rescuers to save whom they could. Malgus imagined that Angral would soon allow free civilian movement. Life would start again on Coruscant. Malgus did not understand Angral’s thinking.
No. He did not understand the Emperor’s thinking, for it must have been the Emperor who had decided to spare Coruscant.
Nothing was as it should be. Malgus had intended, had expected, to turn Coruscant into a cinder. He knew the Force intended him to topple the Republic and the corrupt Jedi who led it. His vision had shown him as much.
Instead, the Emperor had given the Republic a slight burn and begun to negotiate.
To negotiate.
A squad of ten Imperial fighters sped past, their wings reflecting the red glow of a nearby medical ship’s sirens. Smoke plumes from several ongoing fires snaked into the sky.
Malgus might have hoped that the Emperor planned to force the Republic to surrender Coruscant to the Empire, but he knew better. The fleet had temporarily secured the planet, but they did not have the forces to hold it for long. The planet was too big, the population too numerous, for the Imperial fleet to occupy it indefinitely. Even a formal surrender would not end the resistance of Coruscant’s population, and an insurgency among a population so large would devour Imperial resources.
No, they had to destroy it or return it. And it looked as if the Emperor had decided on the latter, using the threat of the former as leverage in negotiations.
The pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom. “Shall I continue the flyover, my lord?”
“No. Take me to the Senate Building. Notify Darth Angral of our imminent arrival.”
He had seen all he needed to see. Now he needed to hear an explanation.
“Peace,” he said, the word a curse.
Zeerid finally noticed the ping from Vulta’s planetary control. He watched it blink, half dazed, having no idea how long they had been signaling him. He shook his head to clear up his thinking, called up the fake freighter registry Oren had told him to use, ran it through Fatman’s comp, and used it to auto-respond to the ping. In moments he received approval to land and docking instructions.