And the needler was gone.
Narsk squirmed in panic as he heard the familiar hum from above. He clawed at the roadbed, desperate to avoid the moment he’d so often delayed. This had always been a danger; the risk that came with being special. All those jobs, and any one could have ended like this, with a flash of crimson—
Green.
Green!
Narsk’s eyes widened. The lightsaber was green.
“Jedi?” Narsk rolled over and looked at the woman’s eyes. Hazel. Wide, alert, focused—but on the right side of madness.
A Jedi. He couldn’t believe his luck. A Jedi? Here?
He’d heard a single Jedi had recently been on the loose in Sith space. One who had challenged Odion during the Chelloa affair—and who had lately given Daiman fits. Narsk had never met any Jedi, but he knew their reputation—and he knew he never could have hoped to have been discovered by anyone better on Darkknell.
“You’re her,” Narsk began. “Aren’t you? You’re Kerra Holt.”
The woman didn’t answer. Kneeling, she frisked him. In no position to resist, Narsk scanned her face more closely. Yes, it matched the images he’d seen. He licked his pointed teeth. He knew what to do.
“I’m on your side,” Narsk said. “I want to destroy Daiman, too.”
Ignoring him, the woman pawed at the stealth suit. Amazingly to Narsk—and seemingly so to her—the Mark VI had no rips, although it now had grit to go with its golden splotches. Stepping away with Narsk’s pouch, she found the datapad inside.
Eyes skimming the screen, she spoke. “You work for Lord Odion.”
Narsk was startled. Her voice was low and rough, not much more than a whisper. “Odion?” he responded. “What makes you think that? Maybe I’m a revolutionary.”
“There are no revolutionaries on Darkknell,” she said, voice rising as she deactivated the datapad. “And if there were, they wouldn’t be stealing military secrets.” Holding the datapad where Narsk could see it, she casually flipped the device into the air and bisected it with a sudden flick of her lightsaber.
Narsk gulped. All that work!
“All that work for Odion,” she said, catching his thought.
“Yes,” he said. No sense denying it now, he realized; he might as well hit her with some truth. “I was working for Odion. But I’m not an Odionite. It’s just a job.”
“That’s worse,” Kerra said, looking down. “You’re an enabler.” She nearly spat the word, causing Narsk to flinch. She yanked his bag from the ground and stepped back.
Narsk forced himself to stand, painful as it was. “Fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’ve denied Odion the knowledge. But the important thing is to deny Daiman the knowledge—and the warship he’s building. And we can do that. Look here, I can show you—”
Narsk stepped toward her and his bag, only to have her raise the lightsaber between them again. “I don’t work with Sith,” she said.
“I told you, I’m not Sith.” He gestured toward the pouch. “Look in the bag. You’ll see.”
The human deactivated her weapon and reached inside. Seeing her recognize the detonator control for what it was, Narsk flashed a toothy smile. “You see? We have the chance to do something important against Daiman.” He began to reach for the controller. “And all I ask is that I be allowed time to—”
“No.” In a single, liquid motion, the woman looked back up Manufacturers’ Way, pointed the detonator, and pressed the button.
A flash and a rumble came from the far end of the avenue. Two kilometers away, the opaque skin of the Black Fang heaved for a split second before erupting outward. Metal shards ripped free from the structure, desperate to escape. Thunder followed fire, more than enough noise and light to wake all Xakrea.
Narsk brought a bruised hand to his long nose in horror. They must have powered up the centrifuge again, he thought. Fully armed and fueled, Convergence would have exploded in an outward spiral. He’d thought that was a possibility before he planted his explosives, but he had always planned to be aboard a freighter lifting off from Darkknell before pressing the button.
Not gawking like an idiot on a skybridge with a Jedi.
“You fool!” Narsk yelled. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
The woman regarded the blaze with mild satisfaction. “Yes.”
Narsk wilted, forgetting the pain in his leg. He looked to the rooftop plazas at either end of the skybridge. No authorities were here yet, but they soon would be. And still, the Jedi seemed pleased with herself.
Idiot, Narsk thought. No wonder the Sith ran the Jedi out of the Outer Rim. He barked at her. “Is that it? Are we done here?”
“No,” she said, igniting her lightsaber and waving it in his direction. “Strip.”
The woman neatly slipped the folded Mark VI back into Narsk’s bag—although neither suit nor bag was particularly neat anymore, smeared and stinking of paint. “You’ve really made a mess of this thing,” she said. “Is this stuff permanent?”
“I don’t know,” Narsk snarled. He didn’t care about the suit anymore. The real authorities were out, screaming in their airspeeders toward the cauldron that was the testing center. And here he was: naked, but for his shorts, sitting in a garbage bin in a shadowy section of the plaza. The woman had marched him there, taken the stealth suit, and bound his wrists.
It was not where he wanted to be with Sith on the way.
“How can you do this? You know what they’ll do to me if they catch me!” Seeing her beginning to close the lid, Narsk grew more frantic. “You can’t do this! You Jedi are supposed to be about fair play and decency! You’re supposed to be a Jedi!”
The woman paused. “What?” Kerra Holt said, suddenly miffed. “I’m not locking it.”
The lid snapped shut above him.
CHAPTER TWO
“I declare the dawn.”
With Daiman’s words, the sun rose.
“I declare the dawn now, as I did, standing in the waters of darkness long ago.” The voice grew louder as it wafted through the streets of Xakrea, beckoning to dayshift workers leaving for the transit hubs. Their liege had prepared another day for them.
Seventy meters tall, the image of Daiman looked down upon his works and smiled. Colossal holographic hands opened just as the first rays of Knel’char I crested the city skyline. Product of sixty-four holoprojectors—and easily the single largest nonmilitary consumer of energy on Darkknell—the sparkling image rendered the giant in surprising detail. Above were the confident, piercing eyes, blue and amber, just like the stars, and the short crop of fair, golden hair. Even the talons molded to the fingertips of his right hand appeared in shimmering relief. The imaging specialists had done their work well.
Seven marble statues depicting Daiman’s rise to power and prominence ringed the image’s base. Huge themselves—yet dwarfs next to the crackling titan above—each stone figure looked down one of Xakrea’s major avenues, radiating from the central plaza. Daiman’s Rise faced Celestial Way, gazing the long kilometers toward the palace. Daiman at Chelloa triumphantly faced Mining Way, home to many of Darkknell’s processing plants. Daiman’s voice seemed to come from all the statues in unison. “I have decided the sun will shine for twenty-three hours today, with nine hours of night to follow. The warmth of summer I give to you, and light from the heavens.”
Kerra Holt was impressed. She thought the display could have been more effective only had several of the city blocks not been burning to the ground as the holograph spoke.
Hood pulled over her head, Kerra slipped from one doorway to another as she made her way back home. It had been a mistake, allowing the chase with the Bothan to carry so far down Manufacturers’ Way. To get home, she had to pass what was left of the Black Fang. What had been a lopsided pyramid was now a tangle of molten girders, with blazes still raging on many levels.
“My cosmic eyes will rest upon the people of the southlands today, but know that I am with you always,” Big Daiman said. “You are The En
cumbered. You are arms of my creation, extensions of my will. You know your functions.” As far as Kerra could tell, those functions right now seemed to be running around in confusion and screaming at random passersby. At least, that’s what Daiman’s sentries were doing. Normally stern and forbidding agents of order were dashing back and forth across the plaza, unsure of what to do without divine guidance.
“Never forget, my will is …”
No one heard what Daiman’s will was, because the blazing research center chose that moment to tip completely over in an exhausted faint. By the time those around recovered their feet—and their hearing—the loudspeakers throughout Xakrea had gone silent.
They’d heard it all before. Kerra used to hear the spiel every morning on the way to her job at the munitions plant, before she moved to later shifts. On all the worlds of the Daimanate, listeners were assured: Daiman controlled everything that happened in his realm.
Those listeners might be less sure if they were on the plaza this morning, Kerra thought. One of Daiman’s thugs was on fire. She recognized him. A terror in her neighborhood for as long as she’d resided there, now the hulking guard staggered about, screaming in pain. Kerra froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. Evil minion or no, the creature was suffering.
She stepped into the street, only to be knocked aside by the advance of three of his fellow sentries. Remembering her cover identity, Kerra began to exhale, relieved that someone else had gone to help him.
Nope, they shot him. Seeing the thug fall dead at his would-be rescuers’ feet, Kerra rolled her eyes and retreated into an alley. Sith space was like this everywhere: a place of sudden violence—almost completely devoid of compassion or remorse. She’d never understand it. But she didn’t have to understand it to win her fight.
And now she had a stealth suit.
A cracked window heaved upward. Lithely, Kerra slipped back into her home of the past few weeks. The only things inside were a pair of bedrolls, her duffel, and a stand for the portable glow lamp she had to share with Gub Tengo’s young granddaughter. From the look of the crumpled blankets in the corner, Tan was already gone for the morning. The room wouldn’t have been big enough for a closet back in the Jedi academy, a place where the students were preparing to live with no possessions. Here on Darkknell, it had to accommodate two.
Setting down the Bothan’s pouch, Kerra peeked through the open doorway into the main room. The old Sullustan was there, asleep in his chair again before a mass of documents. His arm stuck out at a right angle, his worn hand shaking as his fingers clutched an invisible pen.
Kerra edged into the room long enough to douse the glow lamp and push him back from the table. Flimsiplast cels fluttered to the floor. Kerra winced. Every part of Gub’s job was insane. Not just what he had to do—but how much of it he had to do. On other worlds with long rotational periods, societies made some allowances for species that were used to standard-length days. Not so for Daiman’s realm. The Sith Lord saw a day with thirty-two hours as a chance to get in another work shift.
Stealing back into her chambers, Kerra hung the ragged sheet that served as a door and reached for the gold-stained bag. For all the technology it contained, the Bothan’s bodysuit had folded up nicely. The label was just inside the seam. CYRICEPT.
Kerra hadn’t been gone that long from Republic space, but somehow, seeing something as simple as a familiar commercial trade name felt refreshing. And a stalwart firm, at that. As the Sith had advanced farther on the Outer Rim, other corporations had tried to deal with the new “locals,” usually to their ultimate regret. The more vital to Republic security a company was, the more the Defense Ministry usually had to cajole it to relocate. But Cyricept had repeatedly pulled its operations back from the frontier without being asked. Maybe it was because their whole stealth-systems business was about staying low and keeping out of trouble. What ever the reason, Kerra was overjoyed to see the suit now, even in its despoiled condition. Her supplies from the Republic were limited to the clothes she wore and the lightsaber in her knapsack.
That was never supposed to have been the case. Jedi Master Vannar Treece’s venture into Daiman’s space was supposed to have been a surgical strike: short and well supplied. An inspiring figure, Treece had led volunteers into Sith space several times, taking upon himself missions the larger Jedi Order could no longer perform. The Sith in the outer reaches had grown so robust that the Republic, already weakened by the Candorian plague, had largely written off everything beyond an inner security cordon. It had even deactivated the interstellar relays that allowed communications with the outside. Whole swaths of space lay abandoned.
The Republic government and the Jedi Order weren’t against Treece’s raids. The need for them was obvious. But the woman who headed both bodies, Chancellor Gennara, knew well that her fearful people wouldn’t tolerate her sending large groups of Jedi Knights on offense when all were needed to protect the home front. Treece had cleverly found a way around that. Each standard year, Jedi Knights had been serving three months on law-and-order patrol and nine months at the frontier. But sixteen days were allotted for travel between those assignments, a figure that remained the same even as the boundaries of the Republic contracted. And, as in peacetime, the travel arrangements remained in the hands of individual Jedi Knights.
That had given Treece an opening. There were enough Jedi volunteers in transit at any moment that Treece could usually get a team of them to rendezvous at a jumping-off point. That allowed a few days for a quick raid—usually one where no casualties were expected—before the Jedi returned to their designated duties.
The results of Treece’s raids generally pleased the Chancellor. The morale boost came cheaply; all ships and munitions involved came from private contributions. It was a much different reaction than Jedi Knight Revan had received, centuries earlier, in his own extracurricular efforts against the Mandalorians. But the circumstances, Kerra recalled, were different. The Sith were evil; the Mandalorians just had an attitude problem.
The logistics were complicated, but Vannar Treece had someone he could rely on in Kerra. Vannar—she had always been on a first-name basis with him—had rescued her from Aquilaris years earlier, just after that planetary paradise fell to forces led by the future Lord Odion. Vannar, sensing the child Kerra’s potential as both a Jedi and a motivated opponent of the Sith, became her sponsor and mentor. She had lost her family, but found a cause.
Kerra always wondered if he’d given her the work because he’d thought it would be therapeutic for her. No matter—it was. At twelve, she coordinated travel assignments for volunteers. At fourteen, she helped him raise donations. In the last three years, she’d taken charge of outfitting each group, making sure everything from blaster power cells to medpacs were aboard ship in abundance. In a short time, Kerra had learned everything necessary to run a volunteer paramilitary organization—all while working to become a Jedi Knight.
It had been a busy adolescence.
But she’d never joined any of the raids herself. Vannar had forbidden that while she was still a Padawan. Returning to Sith space was too emotional a mission for her, and Vannar knew it. So for years, she’d lived vicariously through him and his allies, taking some solace in the knowledge that she, in some small way, was helping the people she’d left behind.
When Kerra became a Jedi Knight the day before her eighteenth birthday, Vannar had remained reluctant to send her into action. But a dire warning from Sith space had taken that decision from him. Vannar called upon every Jedi available for a vital mission on extremely short notice. Kerra was available—and, as it proved, essential.
Kerra had found the addition of fieldwork to her duties enormously satisfying. All those forgotten, busy weeks preparing the way for others to strike at the Sith suddenly gained amplified meaning. Now she was the weapon, finally to be used in places she’d fled from when powerless. If anything, she prepared even harder for the mission. With Vannar and the other volunteers at her side, she�
�d have everything she needed.
Today, on Darkknell, what she needed was them. And they were gone forever.
The mission at Chelloa had been a disaster. Everyone had been lost. Everyone. Daiman’s forces hadn’t even been the cause. Vannar’s team had become trapped in the madness that was Sith space. The problem with making only occasional forays into the region was they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Vannar had valued surprise in ensuring that his Jedi Knights got in and out quickly and safely. But he’d forgotten that he could be surprised, too.
Only Kerra had survived, with none of the weapons, medicine, or supplies she had so carefully gathered. They, and the starship they’d arrived in, had disappeared into a sea of fire. Kerra didn’t even know how to get home. She’d memorized the hyperspace route they’d taken into Daiman’s territory, but that terminated at the planet they’d raided, a place now under such heavy guard she could never return to it.
She’d been tempted to end her own journey soon afterward. Residents lived in constant despair, and meeting both Daiman and Odion confirmed for her that things could never improve. Death was better than survival for those living underfoot—and, perhaps, for a Jedi alone. Better to go down fighting.
It had taken making friends here—including one surprising, selfless individual—to change Kerra’s trajectory. “You’re no good to us dead,” Vannar had always told her. That applied, too, to the people living under Sith rule. She was no good to them dead, either. Suicide-by-Sith wasn’t the answer. She had to live.
In a curious way, Kerra’s change of heart had been like another Vannar Treece raid. It stabbed into the darkness that had clouded her soul and offered hope. Defeating the Sith wasn’t the point; helping the people was. Fighting Sith was certainly one way the Jedi could help the downtrodden, but it wasn’t the only way. Yes, the people needed bold, dramatic acts of the Vannar variety, but they also needed more than gestures. They needed things that did immediate good: a tall order for a team of Jedi, much less one acting alone. She’d have to manufacture her own opportunities. That required a plan.
Star Wars: Knight Errant Page 3
