She stepped toward the container carefully, remembering that the gas inside was as deadly to her as air was to the Celegian. The creature remained motionless and unresponsive. Kerra crinkled her nose. It didn’t make sense. This being was clearly the nerve center—it was impossible to avoid such references when looking at a giant disembodied brain. The telepathic messages back and forth to the city began and ended here in a cacophony she had to struggle to ignore. And yet the Celegian seemed nothing like a Sith overlord, an evil answer to ancient Master Ooroo. In fact, it looked dead. A specimen in a vial.
Touching the side of the cylinder, Kerra was surprised by a somber voice in her head, different in volume and tone from the others. What is your message?
“Message?”
What is your message?
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, aloud again. She didn’t remember whether Celegians had normal hearing, or were strictly telepathic, but the creature seemed to stir when she spoke. And the background buzz of outgoing telepathic communications had ceased. It’s listening. “Those people out there—they’re following your instructions. You’re the one enslaving people.” Kerra looked around, warily, expecting the Celegian to call for its enforcers.
But the creature simply sat, frozen in the gas. The buzz of background communications resumed, continuing between the Celegian and—what?
“And the battleships,” Kerra said, remembering the sight from outside. “You’re running them, too. With Celegians aboard, is that right?” She glowered at her reflection in the container. “You send them messages. You’re spreading this madness.”
For another long moment, there was no response.
Kerra knelt beside the cylinder’s base. There, at the bottom, were flashing controls. She couldn’t rupture the tank, but she could deactivate its circulation system. Within minutes, enough waste gas would build up inside to quiet the creature’s commands to its minions once and for all.
“I’m sorry,” Kerra said, reaching for a switch. “But you’re Sith.”
She looked up, one last time, for any reaction. Again, nothing.
And then a whimper.
It sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before—a thin, sonorous moan no louder than a whisper. But it felt like an ancient sadness had passed by, barely caressing her mind as it went. The thought, if that’s what it was, wasn’t directed at her. It was directed at the universe.
Like a whimper.
Kerra looked up at the beast towering in the haze behind the transparisteel. The facility was rife with emanations from the dark side of the Force. But none, she now realized, was coming from the Celegian.
Abruptly, she yanked her hand away from the switch. She’d been too quick, so busy listening to the telepathic noise that she hadn’t been minding the Force. The Celegian wasn’t using it at all, for good or ill.
Tentatively, Kerra placed her hand on the cool surface of the container and reached out through the Force. The second she touched the Celegian’s mammoth mind, emotions overwhelmed her. Fear. Anger. Joy. Hatred. Love. All of them at once, confused and intermingling.
Breaking contact, she realized the feelings were all hers, brought forward in self-defense against a mind that had become a null. A nonentity. The Celegian’s mind was alive and percolating with the messages it was conveying—but all that activity, she realized, was autonomous. The creature’s judgment centers had been bypassed, if they functioned at all. Independent reason had no place in its waking mind.
It spoke, but it didn’t know the words anymore.
Taking a breath, Kerra renewed her contact with the strange mind. This time, she focused her approach, trying to find her way through the wreckage of the Celegian’s psyche. Most conscious beings whose minds she had touched had a spark, a fire that drove them. Here only an ember remained, and what she felt chilled her.
The creature seemed … bereft. Its whole life was a timeless agony. An independent mind, reduced to a conduit and controlled by others. Others. Kerra reached for a visual image, but found only a single, shadowy figure, all scaly forearms and facial shell-platings.
“A Krevaaki? That’s who’s controlling you?”
Controlling … who?
Surprised to hear a response, Kerra looked around the base to find an identification plate. “One? That’s your name?”
The Celegian stirred, emitting a gentler version of the same sound. Kerra perceived that the creature had had another name, at one time, but that time had long since passed. She pressed for more detail on the Krevaaki—and on the others. But the wretched being had no understanding of space and time anymore. It understood there to be a greater power ruling the Krevaaki, but it could be on the next floor or in the next galaxy.
Hearing a thump on the other side of the room, Kerra quickly looked away. Seeing nothing, she looked down at the container’s base. “One, do you want me to free you?”
Free … who?
Kerra huddled up close to the plating. There wasn’t time for an existential debate. “Look, I need your help. I know what you’re doing—all of it.” One was responsible for Byllura—and for coordinating the defense of the mesa. Her talking to it had probably bought the quiet moments she’d had. She hadn’t sensed any commands relating to the fleet; from touching One’s mind, she’d understood that another Celegian, elsewhere in the building, was relaying commands to the ships through Sith comm system operators. They wouldn’t be able to link far-flung Celegians telepathically without intermediaries. But the quivering mass before her could make a difference for everyone. “Do you know where my friends are? Can you to tell the people chasing me to leave me alone?”
Tentacles shifted. It wasn’t understanding.
“They’ll listen to you, One,” Kerra said. “That’s how they decide to do anything. Just tell them to—”
She stopped. The warm colors on the Celegian’s frontal lobes began to dim. She was losing it again.
Realizing what she had to do, Kerra bit her lip and stood. Lifting the two fingers of her right hand before her, she spoke in a monotone: “You will command the sentries to return to their barracks.”
Life returned to the Celegian. I will command the sentries to return to their barracks. And then it did.
“You will command one sentry to deliver the Duros and the Sullustan prisoners to the airspeeder bay.” She could get them out from there, she figured; hearing it comply, she continued. “You will order the people of Hestobyll to their homes,” she said. “You will stop sending messages for others.”
One paused for a moment, seemingly puzzled, before finally repeating the commands.
For a moment, Kerra thought she felt another of the whimpers again. She smiled. She might have broken the Sith hold on Byllura only temporarily—they did have more Celegians—but One would no longer be a part of it, provided she could protect it from its masters. “I’ll get you out of here, somehow,” she said, patting the side of the container and looking around. The tank was bolted to the floor, and the doors weren’t wide enough. But at least Rusher had a team of engineers, presuming she could find them.
Walking toward the entrance, she reached to pull her headset back into place—only to hear the beep of an incoming call. She activated the comlink. “Where have you been, Rusher? I hate to break this to you, but we’re going to have another guest!”
“I am not Rusher,” a scratchy voice said.
Kerra stopped running. She didn’t have time for guessing games. “Look, I don’t care who you are, as long as you’re with Diligence—”
The speaker didn’t let her finish. “We met on Darkknell—twice. The first time, you stole something from me.”
Kerra stared into the dim light. She’d barely been able to get a signal before. But this voice was pure and clear. And familiar.
“The Bothan?”
“You do remember.”
“I—I’m surprised to hear from you.” Kerra didn’t even know his name. “Are you here?”
“I
wouldn’t be talking to you at all,” came the curt response, “but I have my instructions. And here are yours,” he continued. “Divide and conquer.”
“Wait! What?” She looked around the darkened control room. The only thing here was the Celegian in its tank.
“Where are you?”
“I am here, Jedi,” responded a much different voice from behind her. Seeing red light reflected in the container, Kerra felt fire lash her back. Rolling forward, she looked back to see six of the lightsaber-batons—all in the tentacles of a single attacker.
The Krevaaki!
I will destroy the Jedi!
Dromika’s command rang in the regent’s cavernous ears. It helped to remember it. Every syllable stirred his body to action, restored his lost youth and vigor. The teenager’s commands had always had that effect, but never so much as now—now, when he had just set his emerald eyes on his first living Jedi in years.
“I will destroy the Jedi! I will destroy the Jedi!” The Krevaaki’s tentacles whirled into motion, making deadly rotors of the weapons they held. He had discarded his robe in the turbolift—and on seeing the human woman dawdling, had pounced.
He’d only torn into the back of the dark-haired invader’s jacket when she dived forward, tumbling out of the way. She was a Jedi. She had to be, to move like that. And Quillan, upstairs, had already sensed that she was, and told Dromika, who had ordered the regent-aspect—
“I will destroy the Jedi!” he said, whirling ahead into the command center.
The woman leapt an overturned chair, left from the days when the Celegian wasn’t handling communications. There was the creature, up ahead, in its tube. Calician remembered that he hated it, this time. He would have to put it back to its tasks once he had dealt with the interfering Jedi Knight. “I will destroy the Jedi!”
“Shut up!”
The Jedi raised her hand and sent one of the chairs tumbling through the air toward him. A strange skill, Calician thought as he cut the furnishing to pieces in a blur of lightsabers. He vaguely recalled once knowing how to levitate things, but it had been more than a decade since he had exercised the power.
But combat, his body remembered. And Dromika’s command had unlocked talents he’d never had. Krevaaki were formidable fighters. But even the greatest Krevaaki Jedi, Vodo-Siosk Baas, had only used his two uppermost limbs to hold his battle-staff. Now tentacles that could not lift a cup for Calician that morning were wielding lightsabers of their own.
The Jedi stood, meters from him, her own weapon ignited. An emerald lance in the darkness. She looked at him, warily. “The Krevaaki, I take it.”
Calician didn’t deign to respond as he zigzagged through the maze of furnishings on the shortest route to the woman. The Jedi Knight backed off, leaping from desk to upended desk. She seemed to want to parlay, to find something out about him and the operation. Calician charged ahead. He had his orders.
And now he had his chance. Seeing the Jedi duck in front of the Celegian’s gas chamber, the regent twirled one of his lightsabers and hurled it at her. The woman started to move, just as he’d expected—only to halt, knocking the thrown weapon to the floor with her own. Charging, Calician threw another, aiming at a spot over her head.
“No!” the woman yelled, leaping to knock the smallish lightsaber away before it struck the tube. “What are you doing? You’ll smash the chamber!”
“I will destroy the Jedi!” Calician yelled.
“And you, too, you idiot!” She jabbed a thumb against the transparisteel.
Calician froze for a moment, watching the giant brain bobbing in the toxic gas. He looked down at the four remaining lightsabers curled in his tentacles. Yes, rupturing the tank would have killed them both. And yes, he didn’t care. He was destroying the Jedi.
The regent slithered back a meter, shifting the weapons to different limbs. This wasn’t supposed to be the Sith way—not the one that he remembered learning about. Sith weren’t self-destructive. He’d thought he was part of something larger, earlier, something worth surrendering his identity to. But Dromika’s implanted command had urged him to his own demise, in order to protect her and her brother.
Not this way, he thought. He gestured invitingly for the Jedi to engage him, well away from the Celegian’s chamber.
“Now you’re thinking,” the Jedi said, leaping a table and entering a defensive stance.
Calician lurched forward, tentacles whipping the lightsabers back and forth in a weaving motion. The Jedi lunged powerfully downward, glancing off the upper sabers before yanking her weapon back upward, singeing his facial tendrils. The regent advanced again, only to find her leaping nimbly to his right, forcing him to turn to follow. The more he turned, the farther she moved. The regent snarled. Moving in a circle kept him from bringing more than two of his weapons to bear at any one time.
The Krevaaki turned back the other direction suddenly, hoping to catch the Jedi off guard. But instead, she moved inward, grabbing one of his weaponless limbs with her spare hand and yanking. Knocked off balance, Calician fell—
—and found himself looking up at one of his tentacles, dead and unmoving in the Jedi’s gloved hand. She’d severed it on the way down.
No pain, Calician noticed. It was one of the limbs from his middle carapace; that morning, he hadn’t been able to feel a thing in it, either. Only Dromika’s power of suggestion had restored its movement. Now the thing was dead again.
And so would he be, if he didn’t move. Calician skittered backward as the Jedi advanced. The woman was too strong. He had the skills to destroy her, deep in the recesses of his memories. But he needed direction, just as his withered limbs had needed life. There was only one place to get both.
“Jedi!” he said, moving back toward the lift he’d descended in.
“So you can say something other than—”
Calician ignored her. “You came looking for children, Jedi. I heard the Celegian pass your command to the sentries.” He stepped inside the lift. “If you care to see children, follow me!”
The doors closed behind him. Byllura would, again, be a trap.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You’re not going to believe this, Brigadier.”
Waiting on the cargo deck, Rusher stared blankly as the image came up on the monitor. Defying all sense, they’d crossed over kilometers of ocean back to the mesa where the Dyarchy airspeeders had come from. And there, below, was Beadle Lubboon, sitting in the middle of an airspeeder and waving to the sky like a castaway outside a life pod.
Rusher looked over to Dackett, standing by at the drop-gate. “Now if we only had audio, we could hear your savior yelling like an idiot.”
Dackett rolled his eyes. “Are we clear to open or not?”
“Oh, by all means,” Rusher said, patting the master’s shoulder and stepping to the other side of the cargo door. “But remember, if you want to keep him, he’s your responsibility.”
Ignoring his elder aide’s response—something about brigadier generals and their mothers—Rusher flipped the switch to lower the ramp.
The Duros stood, alone, in an airspeeder floating just outside the speeder bay. No one contested his presence; in fact, nothing had impeded their own approach. From their level, they could see the Sullustan girl sitting on the ledge of the landing port, kicking her legs.
“Why didn’t you pick up the girl?” Rusher yelled down to the bobbing airspeeder.
Beadle gestured meekly toward the vehicle’s steering yoke. “I started the speeder before she got in,” he said. “I only know forward and stop.”
Directing his bridge crew to bring Diligence down closer to the sea, Rusher started to concoct a response. But the ship’s master got his attention first.
“Great suns, Brigadier. Look!”
Bodies littered the garage behind the nonchalant Sullustan. At least a dozen of the scarlet-clad sentries, like those who had hassled them at the dock, all chopped down at various points in the huge room. Here and there, wrecked
airspeeders still burned, remnants of a colossal melee.
Dackett looked down at Beadle, struggling to climb the line they had dropped to him. “Do you think he fought all those people to get her out?”
“I haven’t got the slightest idea.” Rusher looked at Dackett—and in unison, they both pulled on the rope, hauling up the wayward Duros.
“Where’s your headset, recruit?” Rusher asked, watching him clamber onto the ramp. “You see what comes of going out without your comlink.”
“Begging the brigadier’s pardon, Brigadier,” Beadle said, “but if the brigadier recalls, the brigadier gave it to the Jedi.”
Rusher pursed his lips. “Oh.” He looked back into the airspeeder bay, and the corpses strewn across the floor. “You did this?”
“Kerra Holt came after us,” the Sullustan yelled from her perch.
Rusher stepped aside so two of his troopers could leap down into the floating airspeeder. “Look—what’s your name?”
“Tan!”
“Tan, we’re going to back this speeder up to you so you can get on. My ship can’t land here, and we can’t get any closer.” The airspeeder bay was meters below, and cargo ramps would never reach it without the stowed cannon barrels jabbing the cliff wall. “Hop in when they get to you!”
“No!”
“No?”
“She’s here inside the mesa, somewhere. You have to go in after her.”
Rusher looked at Dackett. I’m going to die, he mouthed.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Rusher said, looking down and attempting to appear kindly. “We just don’t know where she is. This is a huge place, and we don’t know how much time we have to go searching for—”
Suddenly scrap metal struck Diligence from above, ricocheting off the starboard cargo assembly and raining down past Rusher.
He was almost afraid to ask. “What was that?”
“Droids, sir.” Dackett pointed to more of the stuff, coming down. Arms. Legs. The odd torso. All were part of a larger shower of transparisteel shards, falling from the cantilevered facility atop the mesa.
Star Wars: Knight Errant Page 21
