Part 43 (1/2)
”Looks like someone's found a way to do what we can't, ” said Jet. ”In which case, we're no longer needed. Out of the seat, Director Vii. It's time for us to go our separate ways. ”
The announcement had taken Ula completely by surprise. ”What are you talking about? I'm staying with you.”
”No, you're not. ” Jet had produced a blaster and covered him while Clunker dragged him from the c.o.c.kpit. The droid's strength was too great to resist. ”We've got business elsewhere. ”
”Wait!” Ula had clung to the lip of the air lock. ”Take me with you, please!”
Jet had shaken his head, but not without compa.s.sion. ”You have to find your own place, mate, and I don't think it's going to be with me. Say cheerio to that lovely lady-and stop faking it, if you ever hope to have a chance with her. ”
The air lock had hissed shut, explosive bolts had fired, and Ula had been flung out into the void. Had the pa.s.sing shuttle not found him, he might have fallen to the planet below-or even into the black hole-but Ula didn't suppose that Jet would have left something like that to chance.
Now he was within waving distance of Larin, and he didn't know what to do.
The ma.s.s of hexes that had overwhelmed Darth Chratis retreated into the lake, leaving just the young Sith behind. She turned to face the lake, raised her arms above her head, and spoke to them. The hexes responded, forming new agglomerations, turning their collective mind to new tasks. Some descended back into the lake; others swarmed toward several different places on the crater wall and combined their pulses into powerful cutting lasers. Vibrations reached him even through the walls and floor of the shuttle. He saw Larin and the others s.h.i.+ft on their feet, as though the ground was kicking beneath them, too.
Master Satele approached the young Sith. They exchanged a few words, then parted. The Grand Master returned to Larin and s.h.i.+gar and the officer who had run out to meet them. Together, they hurried into the shuttle.
”Recall the rest, ” she was saying as she mounted the ramp and entered the main pa.s.senger hold. ”If they can't make it here in time, send another shuttle. ”
”What's happening?” Ula asked. ”What's going on out there?”
Master Satele had already left for the c.o.c.kpit.
”I don't know, ” said Larin, smiling at him. The engines whined. ”But it looks like we're leaving. ”
s.h.i.+gar acknowledged him with a nod, which Ula gravely returned. The Padawan looked no less battered than Larin and Master Satele. The ground war had obviously been just as grueling as that fought in the air.
The shuttle's repulsorlifts pressed Ula back into the seat. He took one last glimpse through the window and saw the crater walls collapsing around the b.l.o.o.d.y lake. Fiery lava from the molten sea outside crashed in, burning and destroying as it came. Clouds of smoke thickened and curled, hiding the young Sith from view.
”You're going to destroy them, ”said Master Satele.
Ax didn't respond. It wasn't a question, but it demanded an answer, and she was careful to keep it to herself. The hexes were streaming downward to tear the flooded habitat to pieces. When they were done, they would break into the geothermal shafts and keep drilling until raw magma flooded in from below. What the real lava sea didn't burn, the heat of the core would melt and turn to slag.
”What about Lema Xandret?” Master Satele pressed. ”There's not much of that amniotic fluid left, but it could be saved. ”
”Do you think it should be?” Ax asked, thinking of her clone's life in the tank, cut off from the Force, so insulated from the universe around her that she didn't even know what the Empire was. Cinzia could have stopped the hexes at any time, but she hadn't. Lema Xandret's daughter reborn, and herself, mutated into a horrible echo of motherhood, were more responsible for the damage than the hexes themselves.
It was all about control, she realized now. Xandret had tried to control the cloned Cinzia, and had lost control of the hexes. Darth Chratis had tried to control Ax, but she had turned on him. Anger wasn't enough on its own.
She could still hear her mother screaming.
”It's not up to me to decide whether you should save her or not, ” Master Satele said, ”but you did promise Cinzia. ”
Ax had promised many things, to herself, to Darth Chratis, to the Dark Council, and ultimately to the Emperor.
But that had been before. Before she had understood that she had choices.
You can expect no mercy from me, Master, the day our positions are reversed.
”I lied, ” she said.
The Grand Master nodded. Ax didn't know whether she understood or not. That she stopped talking was enough.
Ax stood and watched the hexes at work while the others fled. The smell of burning blood was sweet in her nostrils. The ash that gently rained on her felt soft and warm, like feathers. Slowly, the voice faded from her mind. She breathed deeply, feeling at peace. Only the constant bleating of the shuttle's pilot disturbed her tranquillity.
She stayed as long as she could. When the ground threatened to dissolve under her and the sky lit up with shooting stars...o...b..tal hexes, falling to their doom-she turned to leave the home her mother had made, forever.
PART SIX.
PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.
CHAPTER 46.
Larin had never met Supreme Commander Stantorrs before, and she barely felt that she had met him now, even after half an hour of debriefing in his office. There were so many aides hurrying about bearing messages and sudden crises needing an instant decision that she rarely had his attention for more than a few seconds at a stretch. Even when she did, she found him very hard to read. Instead of watching his dour Duros face, she concentrated on his long fingers. They tapped, curled, folded, and rested in ways that, she hoped, gave her an insight into what he was thinking.
”You say you were followed there?”
”Yes, sir, ” she said. ”The Hutts placed a homing beacon in the Auriga Fire. ”
”You knew about that before you left Hutta. I seem to recall reading about that somewhere. ”
”That's correct, sir. ” This had all been in her report, and was no doubt in numerous other reports about the incident, but she let no sign of impatience slip through her guard. If he wanted to hear it from her face-to-face, so be it. He was the Supreme Commander, after all. ”We thought the beacon left with Jet Nebula, but it later turned up in the capsule he used to expel Envoy Vii. ”
”This 'Jet Nebula.' Is he a real person?”
”Yes, sir. His parents had a strange sense of humor, he says. ”
”What, yes?” An aide had pressed a datapad in front of him. His left index finger stabbed at something on the screen. ”That one, of course. Was Ta.s.saa Bareesh herself present in her expedition to Sebaddon?”
”No, sir. She placed someone else in charge, a deputy called Sagrillo. ”
”He's the one who claimed owners.h.i.+p of the planet and declared the remaining joint forces trespa.s.sers. ”
”Yes, sir. At the time, he outgunned us. His mistress was taking no chances. ”
The tips of the Supreme Commander's fingers joined to form a triangle in front of him. ”I can imagine his surprise when your reinforcements turned up. ”
Not just our reinforcements, she wanted to say, but the Imperials' as well. It had only been a matter of time before everyone else arrived. The universe's usual freakish sense of humor had ensured that they all came more or less simultaneously.
She remembered those stressful hours very well, even though she hadn't been on the bridge with the senior officers and the negotiators. She had been down in the crew hold, exchanging stories with Hetchkee and Jopp and the others who had survived the ground a.s.sault. They had stopped to watch through the viewports as s.h.i.+ps flashed in and out of hypers.p.a.ce around the black hole. There had been several clashes, leaving wreckage to spin helplessly into the impossibly steep gravity well, and several outlier s.h.i.+ps had fallen afoul of the jets themselves. They had waited with minds and bodies poisoned by exhaustion for the call to arms, as it surely had to come. The Republic s.h.i.+ps left over from the original mission were going to be pulled in eventually, and every available trooper would be desperately needed.
Then suddenly it had been all behind her. The Commenor had jumped to hypers.p.a.ce, leaving fresh s.h.i.+ps and their commanders to sort out the mess. And that was the last she had seen of Sebaddon and its hexes. Every sc.r.a.p of data from the campaign had been erased-by some kind of exotic electromagnetic pulse, she had been told. All that remained were confused recollections and reports like the one she had filed on returning.
Very few of them mentioned Dao Stryver. During the confusion the Mandalorian had disappeared as though into the depths of the black hole itself, never to be seen since.