And why? She’d thought before there was no reason for Odion’s forces to come here, not into what was so obviously a trap. There wasn’t anything here worth fighting over. At least not until the monster city-ship showed up—
No.
Kerra bolted down the hillside, uncaring. This was wrong, all wrong. In minutes Daiman had turned Gazzari from a useless rock into a vital strategic target. And the target was her friend, tromping around down there in the ashen mud with her companions and laughing.
Daiman had baited a trap for Odion on Chelloa by using the explosive baradium mines as the lure. This time the bait was live.
The fastest way down the cliffside led away from Daiman’s dome. It wasn’t important now. Kerra launched down a rocky incline toward the crater floor, attracting the attention of two Sith soldiers at the perimeter. The armored warriors barely had time to look in her direction before she cut them down with a flash of brilliant green. Kerra stood revealed.
“Jedi?” came a stunned voice from higher on the ridge.
“Jedi!”
Kerra bolted into the valley, boots slapping against the ocher mud as she made for the temporary buildings. She hadn’t heard blasterfire yet, but she would. The transports were a good way off, but she still had the first warrior’s rifle. Maybe she could drive the crowds back onto the transports.
Lurching into the clear, Kerra tripped over her feet and slammed into the tarry surface. She looked up, stunned. Nothing had interfered with her progress; the ground was featureless in all directions. She listened again for blasterfire …
… and instead felt a stinging pain near her heart.
Ignoring the throbbing, Kerra tried to crawl across the blackened field. For a moment, she thought exhaustion from the past few weeks’ exertions had finally overtaken her. But hearing the rumbling above, she knew better.
Or worse.
Kerra opened her mind to the Force. Discretion didn’t matter; Daiman’s forces, including any Correctors present, already knew she was here. And if they were here now, they were probably feeling the same crushing pressure she was. Something was approaching. A psychic black hole, drawing in all that existed and destroying everything it encountered. It was a feeling she’d first felt on Aquilaris, the day she lost her family—and again on Chelloa, the day she lost Master Treece and the other Jedi, her second family. It was why Daiman’s forces weren’t shooting at her now. They’d gotten the word. They’d sensed his presence, just as she had.
Vannar Treece’s killer was here.
Lord Odion had arrived.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“It’s a trap, Lord Odion!”
“Of course it’s a trap,” boomed the stentorian voice from above. “The little snot doesn’t operate any other way.”
Narsk looked up at Odion and marveled. Daiman’s older sibling truly was his antithesis, both philosophically and aesthetically. Where would-be creator Daiman surrounded himself with light, destroyer Odion sat at the center of a sphere of darkness, lit only by holograms depicting the ships outside. Sword of Ieldis had one of the stranger bridge designs Narsk had ever seen. A great uncomfortable throne of Mandalorian iron sat on a pedestal suspended meters above the ship’s crew, themselves arranged in concentric circles beneath their lord. Some facing inward, to serve him; the rest facing outward, scanning the space outside.
Sword had come crashing out of hyperspace, hurtling into the Gazzari system at a speed that unnerved Narsk. It was just another day in Odion’s service. His flagship named to honor an ancient Sith warlord, Odion styled himself the barbarian king. Heavy battle armor hid a bulkier form, exposing only his hairless, burn-scarred head. Narsk thought it unlikely that true barbarian kings wore their armor all the time, but Odion seemed unbound by convention. Or much else.
“Of course, Bothan, if it is a trap, we could send you down first.” Odion glared down, ruby light from his left cybernetic eye pulsating in the blackness. “It ought to take you just a few minutes to bollix things up entirely!”
Narsk froze in his seat, searching for meaning in his employer’s scowl. Seconds later, Odion quaked with laughter, the sound amplified by his surgically implanted mouthpiece. Narsk bristled. The worst was the silence from the rest of the crew, unwilling or simply too afraid to join in their master’s laughter. Sword’s bridge had all the warmth of a polar icecap.
Even before Darkknell, working for Odion had been a barefoot dance on the long edge of a vibrosword. But Narsk had to return, even without the Convergence data he’d been sent to steal. Daiman had left Narsk alive for one reason: to arrange the upcoming battle. A battle that Odion desired more than a thousand datapads packed with secret schematics.
Narsk was now certain Daiman had wanted him to deliver Odion the news of the deal for Bactra’s arxeum. He’d had plenty of time to think back on it hiding in the cargo ship leaving the Daimanate. Daiman had kept Narsk in his presence long enough to hear everything that transpired with Bactra. Even the rotation of his gyroscopic prison, he’d realized, had been programmed to slow down whenever anything important was said.
And the Jedi woman was right. The Gamorrean sentries had loosened his bonds before abandoning him in the darkened hallway. If she hadn’t come along, he would have escaped himself.
As Daiman expected.
It also explained, he knew now, why it had been such a simple matter to emerge from the Darkknell junkyard and find offworld transit heading in the right direction. The freighter he’d chosen had hopped to a neutral planet, one that just happened to see regular visitors from the Odionate. In two standard days, Narsk had found himself back before Odion.
Narsk’s homecoming was harsh but brief compared with the punishment he had endured at Daiman’s hands. Narsk had destroyed the Black Fang, after all; if he hadn’t pushed the button, he’d planted the charges. And while he hadn’t mentioned the Jedi’s role in that—or his escape—he had described her presence on Darkknell, something that interested Odion immensely. Odion had kept him alive throughout the battle preparations, just to hear more about the dark-haired Jedi running amok in Daiman’s territory.
As ridiculous as Daiman seemed at times, he’d definitely thought things through. He had given Narsk the kind of information that negated all of his previous failures for Odion, thus ensuring Narsk would deliver it. And he had engineered a situation that was obviously a trap, and yet irresistible to his older sibling. Daiman had avoided direct confrontations ever since the loss of Chelloa. Odion would take any chance for a fight, regardless of the danger.
“Scan for Daiman’s forces,” Odion said as Sword decelerated, its ungainly, chunky form reaching the edge of the planetary nebula.
“Daiman’s forces are not in the system,” screeched a voice from the grave—or somewhere near to it. Jelcho, one of Odion’s Givin navigators, showed his fright-mask face. It turned Narsk’s stomach.
“No, Boy-boy’s here,” Odion said, sniffing. “He’s on Gazzari, like the bumbler said.” The main body of Daiman’s space forces had made a public show of being elsewhere during the last couple of days; Daiman, likewise, hadn’t covered his tracks about coming to this frontier world with a light escort. “Someone else is in the nebula,” Odion barked. “Tighten the scan.”
Jelcho turned his empty eye sockets back toward the monitor. Narsk was glad. He hated the Givin. An entire species with holes in their heads, and yet they made up the bridge crew. Diversity meant nothing in Odion’s service. He liked his spies Bothan, his engineers Verpine, and his navigators Givin—a curious species capable of calculating hyperspace jumps in their withered heads.
The holographic visuals surrounding Odion refreshed. He gestured to a small flotilla, loitering beyond Gazzari’s sun. “Who’s that?”
Jelcho had the answer. “Lord Bactra’s fleet.”
“Moving?”
Jelcho paused as another Givin whispered into his ear-hole. “If our scans on entering the system are correct, they have just delivered the arxeum to Gazzari’s
surface. They appear to be departing.”
“They’re not being very quick about it,” Odion growled. He waved a massive gauntleted hand, activating an unseen system. “Who’s that over there?” he called into the darkness. “Identify yourself!”
Cold moments passed before the holographic image of Lord Bactra materialized in the space before him. “It is Bactra, Lord Odion. My greetings to you.” The flickering Quermian shifted, uneasily. “We are … literally just passing through.”
“That’s a lie. I know what you were delivering to the brat!”
“And it is delivered,” Bactra promptly responded. “What happens to the arxeum now is no concern of mine.” His enormous neck dipped, bringing his icy smile into focus. “Of course, if you should like to employ Industrial Heuristics’ services yourself, I am sure something can be—”
Odion cut off the transmission. “Wretched little trader.” Despite the years of uneasy peace between them, his distaste for the Quermian’s ways was well known.
Another Givin bleated. “I have firing solutions on the Bactranites, Lord Odion.”
“Forget it. Pleasure first.”
Narsk watched through the bridge window as they passed Bactra’s ships, still dallying before their scheduled engagement on Vellas Pavo. Maybe they simply wanted to watch a good fight. While none of Bactra’s affair, the result would certainly alter the balance of power in the region. Bactra would be interested in that.
Knowing Daiman as Narsk did, it could always be something else. He wondered: Had Daiman secretly gotten Bactra to renounce his neutrality, adding to the ambush? If so, the Quermian hadn’t brought enough forces for it. Bactra’s dozen ships might suffice to escort an arxeum or destroy some gadolinium mines, but Odion had brought a quarter of his home fleet, even now forming an orbital perimeter around Gazzari.
And the master of destruction had brought something else, just now exiting hyperspace behind them. “It’s here,” Odion said, rising with a clank. “Thunderers, to their transports. Jelcho, you’re with me.” Pausing on the opaque catwalk leading out of his personal planetarium, Odion shot a wicked look down at Narsk. “You, too, bumbler.”
Narsk jolted upright in his seat. “Why me?”
“I might need you to blow up something else of Daiman’s.” Black teeth showed through curling lips. “Or if the Jedi wench is here, maybe you can let her destroy it for you … again!”
Kerra got to her knees just in time. Blasterfire from Daiman’s ridgeline encampment raked the pasty soil, spraying ash all around her. She could see Daiman’s forces scrambling toward their heavy artillery, and while she now knew that the firepower wasn’t intended for her, at least a few sentries were still after her. Finding her feet, Kerra made a dash for the cover of a temporary building.
Glimpsing through a window, Kerra saw what she expected: nothing at all. It was all a lure. The little outpost on the crater. The students. And now the towering Industrial Heuristics facility, just arrived. All of it was designed to attract Odion to Gazzari, so the forces on the crater walls could put him into a cross fire.
Could Odion really be so stupid, so desperate for battle as to walk into such a place?
Yes, she thought. That was definitely his presence she sensed entering orbit. And the rumbling of the clouds above meant more than rain. She looked urgently to the west. Clusters of students still marched across the ebon valley toward the facility, seemingly heedless of anything that had transpired between her and Daiman’s sentries.
Time was running out. Kerra bolted into the open.
“Command, Recon Ripper-Two! Additional contact!”
“I see it, Rip-Two,” Rusher said, doing his best to track the lone female figure on the poisoned plain. The brown-clad woman was making a headlong run for the protean mass of transport passengers, a kilometer away—and Daiman’s thugs on the ridge were taking potshots at her. “I don’t know who she is—or what she’s trying to prove. But she’s not our problem.”
“Not on the surface, Brigadier! Additional contact in the air, sky-high!”
Reflexively, Rusher lifted the macrobinoculars to look up, before realizing he didn’t need them to see what was descending. It was the last thing he expected to see here. And the one thing he never wanted to see.
“Death Spiral!”
* * *
Everywhere on the crater floor, beings looked up in awe. That included Kerra, halfway to the groups of children, watching the shadow pierce the haze above.
The form falling through the clouds was a featureless truncated cone, several hundred meters in height. Braking rockets allowed the monstrous obsidian shape to settle on the surface just southwest of the crater’s center, equidistant from the transports and the big facility that had arrived before it.
Within a second of planting itself in the similarly colored surface, the towering cone shuddered. With a clatter drawing shrieks of surprise and horror from the mob of students, the device shed its outer casings, ejecting mammoth metal panels to the ground.
For it was a device that remained. Kerra recognized it immediately from the history holos. A Death Spiral. Developed by Lord Chagras years earlier, it had been conceived as a siege tower in reverse. From its base to its tapering top were more than a dozen concentric rings of blaster turrets and missile launchers, all able to rotate independently. Dropped in the middle of a location under siege, a Death Spiral—named for the rotating levels giving the illusion that the cone was screwing itself into the ground—was designed to fire in all directions at once.
The late Chagras had built several of the devilish devices on a smaller scale; Vannar had barely survived to tell of his encounter with one. Those towers had been controlled remotely. But Odion’s version was so large, Kerra saw, that there were actual crews on each level, operating the guns. The huge base, too, served as its own transport and armory, wide doors lower down opening to release scores of airspeeders, speeder bikes, and three-legged armored transports.
Above, Odion’s troop transports descended. Kerra shuddered. It had been exactly like this on Chelloa: Odion, invading from the sky with a contraption of death. There was no mistaking it. This was nothing of Daiman’s. Odion’s symbol, imprinted on the transports, said it all. Seven chevrons in a circle, pointed outward, on a black field. Arrows reaching outward—but being swallowed from behind by an ever-expanding void.
With an ear-piercing groan, the Spiral’s turrets began to move and fire. The void was expanding.
“Quickfire, quickfire!”
Rusher gripped the railing as brilliant streaks erupted along the ridge on either side of him. In just a few minutes, the once-deserted crater floor had become a busy place. It was about to become a hot one, too. Laserfire from Rusher’s unit pounded the murderous pillar, towering to the southwest. Seconds later, the Nosaurian’s crew opened up from farther along the ridge. Rusher smirked. The Rushies were first on target again.
Some target. Yulan had spoken of Death Spirals, but Rusher had never seen one. And no one had ever seen one like this. The tower must have kept the fabricators on The Spike busy for months. As the flashes dissipated, Rusher could see the Spiral’s rings continuing to move, firing at Daiman’s forces to the north.
That wasn’t good. “Sergeant Wenna’lah! Target damage assessment!”
Rusher barely heard the spotter’s voice over the din of another round of outgoing energy. “Damage zero, command.”
“Zero?”
“Energy shield went live the second the target landed.”
Rusher swore. They’d had a clear shot while the beast was descending, but Daiman’s signal had ordered them to hold their fire. The young lord was waiting for Odion to make his appearance. Now that he had, somewhere out there in that swarm of transports disgorging his crack Thunder Guard troops, it was too late. Rusher’s most potent weapons were out of play.
“Ripper and Sat’skar! Projectile only, on the tower!” The two battalions had the largest number of proton mortar launchers.
“No shot from the north,” called a voice back. Ripper Battalion was on the upper flank, partially screened from the Death Spiral by the buildings of the arxeum.
“Aim high and lob ’em over!” Rusher rolled his eyes skyward. To clear the arxeum, they’d be firing into the clouds. Looks like rain. “Energy weapons crews, target Bad Brother’s vehicles and personnel. Rolling barrage—don’t let ’em cross!” Odion’s forces were moving, now, fanning out. The fliers would be the first across, reaching the arxeum, the transports, and the students if Daiman’s ground troops didn’t get there first.
The students! Rusher urgently scanned the field. The adolescents had broken from the semi-orderly companies the minder droids had organized, and were stampeding as a crazed mass back toward the transports. The Death Spiral hadn’t begun firing in their direction yet, but he didn’t put it past Odion.
And Rusher’s employer had put them in this position.
And you went along, to save your neck, Rusher thought. Stars help them.
To the south, the rings of the Death Spiral lined up, their guns unleashing their deadly potential. “Give me that blasted fire on the tower, now!”
Skrra-aakt!
Narsk folded his furry ears over and mashed his hands down upon them. Odion’s crew hadn’t bothered to supply him with a helmet, but this close to the Death Spiral, the Bothan found himself wishing for earplugs.
“That’s the way!” yelled Lord Odion, standing in the open drop-gate of the hovering transport. Looking gleefully at the spitting tower, he pulled his cybernetically attached comlink closer to his lips. “Do it! Again!”
Another shrill, piercing scream from above—and to the north, Narsk saw another of the Industrial Heuristics transports explode. Shrapnel showered the ashen mulch for hundreds of meters around, just short of the mob of teenagers. With a third volley destroying another transport, the trapped students turned again in panic, flowing like mercury back toward the arxeum.
Star Wars: Knight Errant Page 11
