Dark Disciple

by Christie Golden

  Ventress chose her words carefully. “Before we begin,” she said, exuding calmness in the Force, “there are a few things we need to know. For instance—”

  “Why aren’t you sending your own men to bring them back?” Vos interrupted.

  Ventress jabbed him with an elbow and whispered harshly in his ear: “Because then we wouldn’t get paid!”

  Fortunately Marg Krim was too lost in his own turmoil to notice the exchange. “I should be able to, shouldn’t I? But I cannot. My supposedly devoted men are willing to let my family die if it means they do not have to join Black Sun. That hateful group sees this attack on my family as a victory either way, because they know it will hurt me. My family must be returned safely…and secretly. This will show both Black Sun and my own men that Marg Krim is still a powerful member of the Pyke Family.” He closed his eyes and murmured, “Family…”

  “Don’t worry,” Vos said warmly. “We’ll get your family back alive.”

  “Provided that’s the way we find them,” Ventress added. She did not want to be held responsible for failure if Black Sun kidnappers got trigger-happy.

  “Bring them home,” Krim said, his voice hollow. Then he added, in a whisper, “Please.”

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Vos said as they prepped the ship for takeoff.

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  Apparently, Vos did. “I know. It rattled me, too. We’re so used to bringing in sleemos and criminals, it’s hard to adjust to rescuing someone’s mate and kids.”

  “As long as the credits are good, I’ll bring in whoever anyone wants.” The pat words were easily spoken, but Ventress knew it was a lie, and not the first she had told Vos. Not that long ago, Ventress had not worked alone; she had been part of a team of bounty hunters led by Boba Fett. The team had been tasked with the delivery of a crate of mysterious but precious cargo. Ventress had discovered that the “cargo” packed in the crate was a young woman named Pluma Sodi. The girl, who looked to be only in her teens, had been abducted from her family and was being delivered to a greedy and lecherous Belugan named Otua Blank, who planned to make her his bride against her will. Ventress had not delivered Pluma Sodi like a wrapped present to the disgusting Belugan. She’d released Pluma and placed Boba Fett in the container in the girl’s stead. Sometimes, Ventress wondered if the boy would ever forget that incident, but she had no regrets. Even so, she did not like the memory. In that moment, Ventress had been soft, and life had taught her that the universe was not kind to the soft.

  Vos eyed her. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Shut up and enter the coordinates for Mustafar.”

  “Ah yes, scenic Mustafar, because everyone looks good in red lighting. Become a bounty hunter, see the galaxy!”

  She would never admit it, but, while there were times when she wanted to throttle Quinlan Vos, who never seemed to have a bad minute, let alone an entire bad day, there were also times when his ebullience was welcome. Ventress was none too keen on visiting Mustafar. No one in her right mind would be. The only thing it was good for was lava, and the only people who lived there were those who had the dangerous job of harvesting the molten export, Black Sun (who found the lava handy as well, specifically for convenient disposal of evidence), and various and sundry beings who either didn’t want to be found or had control of others they didn’t want found.

  Standing in the throne room, hearing that the destination was Mustafar and the obstacle toward recovering the bounty was Black Sun, Ventress had been tempted to walk. But Marg Krim was very powerful in his current position, and while everything had to be kept on the down-low, earning his gratitude could be lucrative over and above the already exorbitant fee they’d been promised.

  Well. Who wanted to live forever, anyway?

  They came out of hyperspace with the red planet looming before them. Vos opened his mouth to speak and Ventress turned to him with a finger raised in warning.

  “Not one word about the color,” she said.

  He laughed brightly. “How did you know?” He sounded delighted.

  “If there’s a bad joke to be made, you’ll make it. More than once.”

  Vos heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Guilty as charged.” He shrugged, as if he hadn’t been about to make another joke about the color. Ventress maneuvered the Banshee through thick clouds of black smoke to settle on a landing platform at the edge of a rough-looking mining town.

  The platform, and the town itself, were precariously perched on a ledge overlooking a river of orange liquid. Had this been Naboo or any other more hospitable world, and the liquid the cool blue of water, it would be prime real estate. But here, it was just a collection of shanties to house the unfortunates whose job it was to harvest the lava. Ventress debated putting on a breath mask, but decided against it. The masks were vital if one was constantly exposed to the fumes, but a few hours here wouldn’t harm them.

  The heat was oppressive, but endurable. The natives of this world, the Mustafarians, did wear breath masks while working near the lava. It made them all look mysterious and uniform. As passersby peered up at them curiously, Ventress realized, belatedly, that the masks could have helped camouflage them.

  “I hate small towns,” she muttered as she and Vos hurried toward a cluster of the rideable lava fleas that the Mustafarians had long ago domesticated. “Everybody knows everybody’s business.”

  “Yeah, but in this case that’s going to help us.”

  “Except within an hour, everyone will know we’re here.”

  They approached a stooped Mustafarian who clearly owned the fleas. A price was agreed on, and credits changed hands.

  “It’s a bit warm here, isn’t it?” Vos commented as they mounted their rented fleas. The Mustafarian glared at him and did not reply. Vos persisted: “Makes you thirsty. Where can we get a drink?”

  “The Last Resort,” the Mustafarian said, his voice sounding muffled through the breath mask.

  “That the best bar in town?” Ventress asked.

  The Mustafarian laughed. “Only bar in town.”

  “Guess that’s the place to be,” Vos said. “Thanks.”

  He tugged gently on the reins, and the creature gave an obedient leap in the direction of town. Ventress copied Vos’s motions, but her flea just shuffled awkwardly and gave a couple of hesitant hops. She placed a hand on its shiny carapace and thought: You’re not too big to squash. She was no telepath, but she pushed her intention at it through the Force, and it began to lurch sullenly after Vos and his mount.

  Ventress’s eyes watered from the smoke. She refrained from coughing by sheer determination, and concentrated on guiding her flea through the town. The narrow streets were growing increasingly packed with workers of an astounding variety of species, and most of them, she observed, seemed to be headed in the same direction.

  “It must be quitting time at the mine,” she commented. “Let’s just follow the crowd.”

  The mass of miners flowed like the lava, and the two rented fleas didn’t take much encouraging to join the current. Sure enough, The Last Resort appeared shortly. It was a large building, just as run-down as the rest of the town.

  “Looks like we found our bar,” Vos mused as he reined in and urged his mount to join the other lava fleas tied to the hitching post. He and Ventress dismounted.

  Inside, the bar smelled little better than the fumes exuded by the lava, and Ventress reflected that no matter what their décor or patron variety, places like this all had the same feel about them: a sense of despair, sullen resentment, and hunger, spiked here and there with a sharp upswing of short-lived euphoria.

  Here, though, a dull exhaustion was the dominant sensation, eclipsing the other emotions. The miners were being ground down, a little each day, to a sort of bitter lethargy that was—

  Ventress turned her head, following a thread of bright arrogance that wove throughout the blunter emotions. Her gaze fel
l on a group of burly Falleen. They wore nothing that definitively marked them as members of Black Sun, but they didn’t need to. Their posture and physiques, powerful not just from physical exertion but also from good nourishment, set them apart from the majority of the bar’s patrons, most of whom slumped over their glasses as if already half dead.

  One of the Falleen sat in a corner by himself, legs outstretched, draining a mug as he regarded his fellow drinkers with a thinly veiled expression of contempt on his mottled, green face.

  As if reading her thoughts, Vos murmured, “I think we’ve found a winner.”

  It was almost too easy. “Sit back and relax,” Ventress said. “I’ve got this one.”

  “So what do you think? The nod and a wink? Or the full-on gambit?”

  “Oh, definitely the full-on gambit for this one,” she said. This arrogant Falleen would be offended—and curious—if he thought his powerful pheromones weren’t working on her.

  Vos’s eyes danced. “Be my guest.” He stepped back, merging seamlessly with the shadows and the hunched shapes of the regulars. Ventress stood for a moment, letting the Black Sun Falleen’s gaze come to her first. When their eyes met, she walked slowly to the bar and slipped into the seat beside him.

  “Hello there, soldier.”

  He smirked. “Hello yourself, gorgeous. Can I get a pretty lady like you something to drink?”

  Ventress licked her lips, keeping her gaze locked with his. “I’m not thirsty. Not for alcohol, anyway.” She leaned closer and whispered, “It’s hard to…talk in here.” She ducked her head, running a hand through her short fair hair—the signal they had agreed upon that first time she and Vos had tried this together, on their hunt for the pirate’s wandering lover. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure slip out of the room.

  The Black Sun guard was so proud of himself and his oh-so-irresistible pheromones. This was going to be fun.

  “Yeah, it is hard to…talk,” he replied.

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  He almost knocked the stool over getting to his feet. Ventress winked at him and took him by the hand, leading him through the cluster of sorrowful drunkards down a dark corridor toward the restroom.

  The guard didn’t waste much time, shoving the door open and kicking it closed behind him. “Come here, pretty lady.” He grabbed Ventress by the shoulders, pushed her against the wall, and leaned in for a kiss.

  Ventress’s hand was on his chest. She chuckled throatily.

  “Not so fast, buddy. Didn’t we leave the barroom because we wanted to talk? Give a girl some conversation first.”

  He pulled back, his grin widening as he looked her up and down. “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?”

  “You have no idea” came a cheerful male voice.

  The guard, taken completely by surprise, grunted “Huh?” as he turned to stare at Vos, who had been awaiting their arrival concealed in one of the stalls. Watching as Vos slammed his lower left arm into the Falleen’s throat, Ventress had to wonder if the Black Sun syndicate was losing its edge. The guard choked slightly, but recovered enough to strike. It was a swift blow, but Vos ducked it with those almost unnaturally fast reflexes of his, his booted foot crunching into the Falleen’s knee. The guard doubled in pain, and Vos flipped him over the rest of the way so he ended up sprawled on the sticky floor with Vos’s knee on his throat. For good measure, Vos grabbed the guard’s arm and bent it back at a clearly painful angle.

  Vos looked up at Ventress and grinned. She let herself return the smile as she sank down beside the guard, her gaze on him as cold now as it had been inviting before.

  “Who are you?” the guard demanded, his eyes flitting back and forth from one to the other.

  Ventress ignored the query. “Where are the Pyke hostages?”

  “H-Hostages?” He tried to look innocent. It didn’t suit him.

  She sighed. “Come on, honey. Don’t make this more difficult.” As if on cue, Vos leaned a little forward on the Black Sun guard’s neck, pulled a little back on his arm, and the Falleen broke just that fast.

  “They’re in the main holding cell. At the house.”

  “We’re going to need more than that,” Vos said.

  “No, I can’t, they’ll kill me!”

  Patience had never been Ventress’s strong suit. The Black Sun guard represented the sort of person she despised most—the kind of swaggering thug who had no passion, no drive, for anything but his own base pleasure. She drew her lightsaber and activated it with a snap-hiss. “Yes, you can, or we’ll kill you.”

  “Okay, okay!” Vos eased up on the Falleen’s throat. The guard coughed, then spoke. “Upper level, left-hand side. The doors are all rigged with defenses, and there are twelve guards on duty at all times. Six above and six below.”

  Ventress smiled, extinguished her blade, and patted his cheek. “There, was that so difficult?”

  Even now, the guard looked hopeful. Ventress shook her head in disbelief, made a fist, and punched him in his overlarge jaw. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. She had originally wanted to kill him, but Vos had convinced her that they didn’t want to have Black Sun after them for murder if it could be avoided. And really, all they needed was to keep the guard out of the way long enough for them to get in, get Krim’s mate and children, and get out.

  “Don’t worry,” Vos said as he dragged the guard into the end stall. “He won’t be waking up anytime soon. Not from one of your trademark punches.” He paused, then, on a whim, arranged the unconscious Falleen in an undignified position.

  Ventress didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t help it. “Come on. We’ve got a fortress to infiltrate.”

  It occurred to Vos, as he stared up—and up—at the ominous structure, that he was putting an awful lot of time and effort into doing things that really weren’t even close to completing the mission. Take this Black Sun fortress, for instance. The thing towered over the mining facility and the ramshackle houses like an enthroned giant, and it was almost a town unto itself. The guard had referred to a “house,” as if the area were an ordinary dwelling place. This house, though, was perched high inside the massive tower that was the centerpiece of the fortress. Lights shone like eyes, and the whole thing reeked of power and the willingness to use it.

  He and Ventress had tethered their fleas at the edge of the town and had picked their careful way to the outlying area of the fortress, where they took up position on a storage building. Using a pair of electrobinoculars, he made a slow sweep of the area.

  “There are the guards, just like he said,” Vos murmured.

  Ventress peered through her own goggles, touching them with a long finger to magnify.

  “It’s a fairly fortified compound, but nothing I haven’t broken into before,” she replied. From anyone else, the words would have been a boast. Vos knew that from this woman, it was a simple statement of fact, and she had uttered it as such.

  After spending so much time in her company, he now understood why Kenobi held her in such respect, even though she had been an enemy. Was, still, an enemy. Sort of. Or was she? He mentally shook his head and refocused on the task at hand. Even with a Jedi and a powerful Force-user like Ventress, there were simply too many guards at the main entrance to either take out or try to sneak past.

  “Your would-be boyfriend said they were in the main holding cell in the house. Top section, left-hand side.”

  Vos looked upward along the “house” itself, and his eyes fell on an area of the roof that wasn’t sheer wall. Aha!

  “I see our entry point. Come on.”

  Swiftly, silently, they moved across the open area. As they circled around to the side of the huge tower, the flat stone of the courtyard area gave way to jagged black rock.

  Vos peered upward. “That looks like the base of an overhanging balcony,” he said. He fired his liquid cable launcher, and it found a secure purchase. “Grab hold,” he said to Ventress.

  She gave Vos
a quick glance, then pointedly reached for her bow, sending up her own plasma cable instead. For an instant, he simply stared as she quickly ascended, pulled up by the retracting cable. Vos found himself unexpectedly stung by the gesture. It hadn’t been necessary. What was he going to do, try to steal a kiss in midair? She knew better than that. Fresh concern about ever really gaining her trust washed over him, but he banished it and followed his partner—if she really could be called one.

  Ventress had reached the balcony first, and had used her lightsaber to cut a circular entrance through several of the metal railings. The railings made the whole area look like a cage—which, of course, it was. Vos slipped through the opening onto the balcony, carefully avoiding the orange, nearly molten metal around the entrance Ventress had made and landing lightly. “Jackpot,” she said, “but it seems awfully convenient.”

  She indicated a series of diamond-shaped, grated openings that served as windows. Vos heard the humming of an energy field. Carefully, he peered inside and beheld two small, huddled shapes clinging to each other. It was a welcome sight.

  “It does,” Vos agreed. “We need to move quickly. It could be a trap.”

  Ventress stepped to the side next to a set of controls. She plunged her still-activated lightsaber into an open terminal beneath the controls, overloading the shield generator. Vos slipped easily through the now-open window. The children’s heads whipped up, but Vos crouched down and lifted a finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he said, projecting calmness at them in the Force. He smiled. “We’re going to get you out of here. You just have to trust us and keep as quiet as possible, okay?”

  Trembling, they nodded. Ventress speared the control panel next to the door with her lightsaber, locking it. She turned, her blue eyes taking in the children and then scanning the room.

  “Where is she?”

  Vos started to ask Who, but stopped as realization dawned. The mother wasn’t here.

  “What’s your name, little guy?” he asked the boy.

  The child wiped his face with his hand and tried to look brave.