The blow snapped his arm to full extension and beyond, breaking it at the joint, a clean break. Leurm shrieked, a gargling, burbling noise only a Hutt or a superheated mud hole could have made.
Gaharrag would now be almost on her. She leapt off Leurm’s back, landing immediately beside the Hutt and facing the Wookiee.
Gaharrag was there, approaching at controlled speed, and lashed out at Tahiri with one big, furry paw.
She ducked, rolling out in front of Leurm. The Hutt took the Wookiee’s blow. The huge, furry fist hammered the Hutt’s head, knocking him over onto his broken arm, which collapsed under his mass with a grinding noise. The Hutt’s screaming grew more shrill.
Tahiri came up on her feet within reach of an inmate, one who’d been at the rear of Furan’s pack a moment earlier, a Bothan whose white fur was dyed blood red in spatter patterns. She gave him no time to react either with fight or flight instincts. She hit him, open-palmed, in the jaw and felt it break under the impact. Unconscious where he stood, he stumbled a step and crashed to the floor.
It ran counter to her instincts to attack someone who had not overtly demonstrated hostile intent. But if Tahiri were to survive, she had to win this fight both by force and intimidation. If she managed to put the Wookiee down, there was the rest of the room to consider. If they were too intimidated to attack, she would survive … and fewer of them would be hurt.
Gaharrag turned, roaring, and came after her. That roar, sounding like an entire jungle’s worth of rage, was supposed to freeze enemies with dread for a critical second. Tahiri grinned. She’d trained so often against Lowbacca, the Wookiee Jedi, that the roar seemed almost welcome.
Training against Lowbacca had other advantages. She knew where a Wookiee’s vulnerable points were. There weren’t many. But with older Wookiees—and Gaharrag was no youngster—the knees were the first to go.
As Gaharrag came within reach of her—his reach, not hers—Tahiri ducked under his grasp and rolled to her left. She slapped out with her arms, anchoring herself in place on her side, and, as Gaharrag’s weight came down on his right leg, she lashed out at it. The kick took him in the side of the knee.
With a gruesome crack, his leg folded sideways. Roaring in pain, Gaharrag toppled toward Tahiri. She rolled out of the way and came up to her feet as he crashed to the flextiles. Then he folded up around his injury, howling.
Tahiri took a couple more steps back, to be out of his reach in case he decided to renew hostilities, and turned to look around. Though some of the other inmates had been in mid-stride forward a moment before, they were all now frozen in place, looking at her.
She pointed at the nearest one, a Sullustan. “You want to play? Come here.” He shook his head.
She gestured toward a far corner of the room. “Get out of my sight.” She turned to the next nearest one, a heavily scarred human who massed roughly three times what she did, almost none of it fat. “You?”
He shook his head, his expression stony.
She gestured. He withdrew.
The others began sidling away without further invitation.
She looked back at her downed opponents. The Bothan was facedown, blood pooling on the floor under his mouth. Furan, the Mon Cal, was clearly unconscious, his eyes closed, his body unmoving; the two inmates who had broken his fall were in slow retreat. Leurm and Gaharrag lay where they’d fallen, both conscious and in pain, the one issuing burbling whimpers, the other offering up little growling moans and curses in the Wookiee tongue.
There was another noise, too, a faint mechanical whine. Tahiri looked up toward the ceiling, seeking its source.
A metal cylinder half as long and wide as a human male had extruded itself from the ceiling. At its bottom end was a blaster barrel—aimed at her.
She jerked into motion but heard the weapon fire before she’d moved a handspan. Then everything was blackness.
Her wrists and ankles encased in bulbous durasteel shackles, with metal cables running from wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle, Tahiri was led by a guard-droid into the office. She had to shuffle; the cable between her ankles was too short to allow her to walk normally. Not that she would have been very energetic in any case. The stun bolt she’d sustained, scaled to bring down Wookiees and Hutts, was still affecting her, leaving her pained and listless even hours later.
The office was large but sparsely furnished. There was a desk with a black nerf-leather office chair on the far side and two visitors’ chairs on the near. The entire left wall was a square viewport looking down on a real exercise yard, a walled enclosure open to Coruscant’s sky, with towers at intervals on the walls and less ferocious prisoners down at ground level, three stories below.
And all over the walls were framed holos, some still and some moving in perpetual loops, showing the prison’s warden in happy times. Accepting awards from prominent politicians. Shaking the hands of celebrities. Posing with his arm around the shoulders of prisoners who constituted particularly heartwarming success stories of rehabilitation. In the holos, the warden, a rotund pale-skinned human with wispy gray hair, seemed just the sort of grandfatherly man for whom rehabilitation was a paramount concern.
The man himself sat in the office chair. He was studying a datapad on the desk before him and he was not smiling. Without the smile, he seemed far less grandfatherly.
He did not glance up. “Sit.”
Tahiri took one of the visitors’ chairs. The droid remained back by the door.
One of the holos on the wall, a moving image, showed the warden shaking hands with Admiral Pellaeon. Its frame was prominent and central on the wall. Tahiri felt an electric thrill of anxiety. This was not going to be a fair hearing.
Finally the warden did look up at her. “Jedi Veila—”
“I’m not a Jedi anymore.”
“Don’t interrupt me again. Jedi Veila, obviously you are not at this time serving a sentence here. You have not yet been convicted or sentenced. You have been remanded to our custody because of the danger you pose due to your Jedi warrior training. And we’ve worked under the assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty … even though no evidence in your trial suggests that you did not kill a great and important man.
“But this morning …” He shook his head. “Very unfortunate that a clerical error placed you in the high-security exercise area at the same time as the male prisoners, but the situation did not call for you to attack and brutally injure them.”
“ ‘Clerical error.’ Do you really imagine that a clerical error put me there? It was a setup, someone hoping I’d be killed.”
“Nonsense. Though I will make a note here about your possible paranoid delusions, in case it’s of interest to the prosecution.” He paused to type a few words.
“And I was the one under attack.”
He glanced up at her again. “I’ve just reviewed the recordings. I saw the inmates speaking to you and gathering around. There was no attack until you assaulted Furan. Who has, I might add, sustained a serious concussion. I imagine he probably was taunting you … but in my prison you may not respond to taunts with lethal violence.”
Tahiri kept silent. Even if this man was as impartial as he pretended to be, the excuse that her opponents were merely repositioning themselves so that her murder would be quick and inevitable was not something she could prove.
“For the protection of my other inmates, you will remain in shock cuffs. They will be removed only when you are returned to your cell or surrendered to the marshals for transportation to your trial.”
“I assume I’ll be confined to my cell when not coming or going from the courts?”
He shook his head. “Solitary confinement is a punishment, Jedi Veila. Since you are not a convict, I’m in no position to punish you for infractions. No, you’ll eat at the common mess and have your daily exercise, education, work, and therapy privileges, of course.”
“Ah.” Now she understood. The situation that had been set up for her had more than one level. I
f she did not die at the hands of Gaharrag and his fellows, then she would be rendered almost helpless while being exposed to the ordinary dangers of a maximum-security prison stay. Whether it happened today or at some near-future date, she was marked for death.
“Any questions, Jedi Veila?”
“No, you’ve answered them all.”
The warden looked past her to the droid at the door. “Take her away.”
BORLEIAS, PYRIA SYSTEM
IT WAS A DULL LITTLE WORLD WITH AN INTERESTING PAST. THICKLY overgrown with tropical trees and underbrush, lightly settled, it was a convenient stepping-off point between the Core Worlds and more distant reaches. It had intermittently been a useful outpost for the military leaders of whoever had ruled Coruscant in the past.
Once, its main military complex had housed Imperial biological development facilities, the type governments generally didn’t want the public to know too much about. Later, it had been the jumping-off point for the New Republic’s successful efforts to capture Coruscant and drive off the government that had gained control of the Empire after Palpatine’s death. Later still, when the Yuuzhan Vong invasion had reached Coruscant and the New Republic government itself had fled, Borleias had been the site of a holdout force, a target for the Yuuzhan Vong, its continued resistance giving the New Republic leaders time to escape and regroup. Most recently, it and Bilbringi had been traded to the Imperial Remnant by Jacen Solo in return for military aid. After Solo’s death, the government of Admiral Daala, unwilling to have such a valuable waypoint belong to a foreign power, conducted an aggressive negotiation with the Empire, resulting in Bilbringi remaining Imperial and Borleias staying with the Galactic Alliance.
But for all that, it was really just a place where old military careers went to die. Here were officers and personnel who needed a last chance to demonstrate basic competence but were not really expected to do so successfully, or who needed a place to serve out the remaining years of undistinguished careers. The outpost, one combined-forces military base, was noted for good communications and sensor gear, for self-destruction capabilities, but not for might.
There were, however, some opportunities for the smart fellow. Sergeant Dolo Karenzi, de facto night-shift quartermaster for the outpost, knew he was a smart fellow. Now he tried to keep the excitement off his face as he realized the opportunity he was being handed on a datapad. A spacer’s son who had made the military his home because no one else would have him, he was always alert to opportunity—just not always good at covering up his tracks.
The woman facing him, young, redheaded, and graceful, gave him another maddening I’m-way-out-of-your-league smile and offered the datapad again. “I don’t care. It’s paid for, the manifest is correct, you can sign for it and we can off-load, or you can refuse it and we take it away and try to figure out who fouled up.”
Dolo took the datapad and ran the situation through his mind one more time. The transport Dust Dancer was in orbit carrying a load of consumable luxury items with a listed destination of the Borleias outpost. The manifest included expensive wines, exotic foods, fresh sabacc decks, entertainment datapads, candies, pastries … all of it in high demand.
It was a mistake, of course. The quartermasters of this base had not been notified of any such delivery, and given its specialized nature, they ordinarily would have been. So something had happened in the ordering process, delivery locations had been scrambled or swapped, and a shipment designated for some deep-space hotel or rich individual’s estate had been diverted here.
All he had to do was sign for it—as illegibly as possible—and take possession. He could warehouse it in some little-trafficked storage pod, wait to see if anyone came looking for it, and, if not, arrange for it to be sold for a small fortune.
He scribbled his name across the datapad’s touch screen and handed it back to the young woman.
She dimpled another smile at him and handed him a datachip. “Your copy of the manifest. If you’ll give us landing authorization, we’ll bring the Dancer down and off-load.”
He smiled back, no longer caring that she was out of his league. “Consider it done.”
His good mood lasted barely half an hour.
The Dust Dancer, eighty meters of Kuat Drive Yards mechanical efficiency, had a ball for the command center at one end, a mass of engines at the other, and a connecting spar thickly clustered with cargo pods and shuttle attachment points dominating the middle. He had seen numberless ships like it before. It came in for a smooth landing at the dirt-topped field most distant from the base center of operations, and its small crew began off-loading Dolo’s precious new acquisitions.
Then the base sirens sounded, filling the air with a noise like a city-sized dragon mourning the death of its offspring. The base lights came up. Its squadron of starfighters began lighting off, readying themselves for space.
Dolo, at his desk, monitoring the off-loading of the Dust Dancer cargo, cringed. His chances of getting his goods hidden away before they were detected were dropping fast.
He stepped outside the dome-shaped prefab where the quartermaster offices and facilities were located. The landing field was now bathed in lights and busy with personnel running to the bare dozen starfighters that defended this world.
He managed to grab a soldier passing by, a Rodian corporal and motor pool mechanic he regularly played sabacc with. “Vez, what’s happening?”
The corporal cocked his head at Dolo. His voice emerged in the classic Rodian singsong, so imitated and mocked by comedians. “A Star Destroyer dropped out of hyperspace. It’s entering orbit.”
“So? Alliance or Empire?”
“Neither. Private. Wanted for action against the Alliance. The Errant Venture.”
“Oh … stang.”
Rumors had spread days before, of course. The Errant Venture had been hosting a high-stakes sabacc tournament, the sort that every player worth his or her skifter salivated at. Combine a luxury cruise, the wealthiest card-playing opponents, media, free-flowing wine and other spirits, companionship … it was to have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Well, it was, except perhaps not in the way the organizers intended. The Star Destroyer left Coruscant, aiding a wing of Jedi who, in defiance of government orders, had fled the world in their StealthX space superiority fighters. No one had known whether the card players were hostages or just innocent bystanders swept along in some mad Jedi plan.
And now they were all here. Dolo’s heart sank. It was very hard to do a bit of honest stealing while under intense military and media scrutiny. Not impossible, but hard.
The base starfighters did not launch. The general in charge knew, as did every soldier and support staffer on Borleias, that an assault on a Star Destroyer, even one with a reduced number of weapons emplacements, was a suicidal act to be taken only if there were no other options. Word was that the general was in frantic hypercomm contact with Coruscant.
The Errant Venture did not wait. Immediately after it achieved orbit, it began sending shuttles down. It did not request landing instructions, merely offered a stern transmitted warning that firing on the shuttles would be a very bad idea. The shuttles began landing at Dolo’s field, and he saw them discharge their contents.
Their contents? Sabacc players.
Some were happy, some confused, others morose or spiteful. Some had been awake for days. Some could not get it through their heads that they were not back on Coruscant, despite the fact that the landing field was surrounded by thick stands of trees rather than skyscrapers. There were card players, reporters, companions and camp followers, piles of luggage, bottles, streamers and bunting, glittering confetti, music blaring from datapads … The Errant Venture had delivered the sputtering remains of a galactic-level party to this remote outpost.
Dolo brought his office chair out of the dome and set it down in the fresh air to watch things unfold. He’d managed to get the Dust Dancer cargo under wraps. Now he was hard at work falsifying a second manifest, a
list of ill-fitting uniforms and tasteless preserved rations already in storage, that he could claim was the Dust Dancer’s delivery if all went well. When not copying and pasting items from list to list, he watched the events taking place on the field.
He recognized several of the celebrities brought down from the Star Destroyer—holodrama stars, famous dancers, millionaires, risk takers, politicians, high-ranking military officers. Dolo took a little time to make recordings of them. The recordings would at least be souvenirs, proof that he had been here on this historic night. Maybe, if he was lucky, some might serve as blackmail evidence.
It was once again turning into a good night.
One of the arrivals was Wynn Dorvan, chief of staff to Admiral Daala, the Galactic Alliance Chief of State. He was not drunk, not bewildered, but he still felt a bit shell-shocked.
When the Borleias base general arrived, the man deployed his command staff as shields, using them to keep outraged or incoherent celebrities from engaging him while he headed straight for Dorvan. He only had two aides left by the time he reached his objective. He held out a hand. “Wynn Dorvan? General Eldo Davip.”
Wynn shook his hand and gave him a close look. Davip was large, nearly two meters in height, and filled out his uniform to an extent that suggested a more strict diet and exercise regimen would have been a good idea. Wynn knew the man’s reputation: A lackluster career officer, Davip had been here on Borleias during the Yuuzhan Vong siege and had distinguished himself. Through the rest of the war and in the years since, he’d served well and intelligently. But doing his duty and following his orders, he’d ended up under co–Chief of State Jacen Solo’s command during the Second Galactic Civil War. Never accused of impropriety or complicity in Solo’s ruinous plans, he nonetheless was tainted by association, and had maneuvered for a transfer to this little-noticed outpost. It was a good way to retire inconspicuously while still drawing pay and doing a little good.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction Page 4