“She’s up there, Brigadier!” Tan squealed, standing on the ledge and jumping up and down. She pointed to the building, hundreds of meters above.
Rusher straightened. “I stand corrected. Just stop jumping, before you fall in!” He glowered at Dackett. “Or before I jump in.”
Another locker opened—and another droid launched forward, hurtling toward Kerra. As she had with the last five, she used the Force to hurl the bulbous thing through the shattered window.
This was getting old.
Kerra had followed the Krevaaki upstairs in a service turbolift. She wasn’t about to follow in the same car. It didn’t seem likely that the Krevaaki would kill her with a booby-trapped lift, but she wasn’t willing to put it past him.
Stepping out of the lift had confirmed her location. The room was vast, easily the full diameter of the squashed dome she’d seen from outside; spacious living quarters perched high above the bay. They always nest on the top floor, she thought. You could usually tell a Sith Lord by the real estate.
An opaque dome rising nearly to the ceiling sat in the room’s center, well away from her. The curved window went all the way around the pent house, its path interrupted every twenty meters by small rooms jutting inward. Some held nothing but multicolored storage bins neatly shut and stored away. Others held banks of lockers—and as soon as she passed, she learned what was in them.
Nanny droids. Big, chubby spheres-on-spheres, tumbling around on their repulsorlift bases. She’d seen their like before, in the Republic; the BD series had cared for generations of aristocratic young, teasing and tending with metal tendrils not unlike the Krevaaki’s.
And like the Krevaaki, they had thrown themselves at her in a most un-tender fashion. As each locker burst open, its metallic occupants sailed into the room, encircling the colossal upside-down bowl at its center in a whirlwind of protection. The droids were unarmed, but at a hundred kilograms each, the hurtling mamas were weapons themselves. With every step Kerra took into the room, another droid broke from the swarm, throwing itself at her. She’d beheaded the first three with her lightsaber—and while she kept it handy still, she had long since lost patience with this game. Now, when one lunged, she simply waved her free hand, angling the writhing projectile through the windows. If the living occupants of the room were here, they wouldn’t be able to miss the noise.
With the last droid tumbling down into the bay outside, Kerra surveyed the room. Still no Krevaaki; just the strange onyx hemisphere, a dozen meters across, sitting silently. The room around it had a playroom feel, but it seemed long since out of use. Brightly colored furnishings peeked out from beneath drab sheets. All the toys were tucked away. It reminded Kerra of the spare room in a neighbor’s house in Aquilaris, years before. A child had lived there, but childhood joy did not.
Instead, she only felt the angry presence of the dark side. She’d felt it elsewhere in the facility, but here in the loft—that was a good name for it, she thought—it permeated everything. And it was more than anger, she realized; it was furor. Furor over being trapped. Over the loss of something never known. Whoever lived here had sat on that resentment, letting it grow into a thick hate that made her heart sink with every step.
And at its center: the black dome. Lightsaber at the ready, Kerra circled it. Was it a prison? Or a lid? She heard rustling from within. Wrecking the place hadn’t drawn anyone out. Would anything?
Then she noticed a slightly raised platform in the shape of a diamond, just steps away from the dome. The carpet leading to it was worn; whoever stood there only ever approached from the outside, facing the dome. Gritting her teeth, she did the same.
As soon as both her feet were on the dais, Kerra saw the half orb ahead shudder. Recirculated air whooshed from its base as a gap opened between it and the floor. It was a lid, rotating on a horizontal axis and sinking back into the floor behind. A raised round stage sat within—but this was no amphitheater. Light from the shattered windows fell across a mass of orange cushions, piled high in the largest bed-fort she’d ever seen.
Near the center sat two teenage humans. A boy rocked with his hands around his knees, glancing furtively at Kerra and then looking quickly away. For someone just a few years younger than she was, Kerra thought he dressed younger still, sitting in bedclothes in the middle of the day. But his dark eyes looked old, set back in his bald head above heavy bags.
He, at least, seemed to notice her. The blond girl beside him sat endlessly brushing her hair, paying Kerra no mind whatsoever. Kerra wondered for a moment whether the well-fed pair were indeed the Krevaaki’s prisoners—until she realized that they were the focus of the dark side energy she’d felt. She looked up at the lid, tilted backward. A meditation chamber, the largest she’d ever seen.
The boy looked again at Kerra, eyes searching for familiarity. Just as Kerra started to speak, the girl noticed her, too, dropping her brush and speaking to the air. “Regent will address the Jedi-aspect.”
A strange statement from a stranger source. The girl dressed in the oversized nightshirt was well on her way to womanhood, and yet she had the wide eyes of a youngling.
“You are in the presence of the Dyarchy” came a voice from behind the round lid. The Krevaaki emerged from behind the half dome, bearing his four shortened lightsabers. His stump of a tentacle hung, limp and unbandaged. “This is Lord Quillan,” he said, gesturing to the boy, “and his sister, Lord Dromika.”
Kerra remained on the dais, looking warily at the pair. “And I call you—?”
The Krevaaki seemed to stall, fumbling for words. Looking back at the human couple, he finally answered. “I am regent here.”
The scheming regent, Kerra thought, remembering Rusher’s joke. But it wasn’t clear who was in charge here. “You’ve taken my friends,” she said. “I’ve ordered them freed.”
Quillan simply bobbed back and forth and looked away, while his sister looked angrily at Kerra. Dromika seemed eager to blurt something—but, glancing back at her brother, she said nothing.
“The Lords do not understand what you speak of,” the regent said. “They do not interact with the universe as you and I.”
Looking to the siblings and receiving no rejection, the Krevaaki explained. Twin children of a powerful Sith Lord, Quillan and Dromika had never perceived reality as others did. Quillan lived entirely inside his expansive mind, sensing other organics as phantasms moving in his personal dreamworld. No one could contact him, save Dromika, connected to him on a level no Sith scholar or physician understood.
But she, too, had a unique situation. Since learning to speak, Dromika’s only form of communication had been Force persuasion. And her talent for it was immense, acting on levels beyond the vocal. Even in infancy, before she knew the word for hunger, Dromika had possessed her human caretakers to get whatever she and her brother needed. “Now we use droids for their immediate needs when I am not present,” the regent said. Dromika’s power had been so great that she burned out less prepared minds.
They had Daiman’s problem, Kerra realized—only worse. Much worse. Daiman had come into his Force powers and his Sith philosophy at a later age, after he’d already been socialized to some degree. He may not have believed that others were sentient beings with free will—and he certainly perceived the environment around him through a strange prism. The universe was the playing field of some game on an astral plane. But Daiman at least interacted with that environment; he understood it, and accepted it as a given. The twins only acted through their environment, making other beings extensions of their own will.
It was exactly, she realized with horror, what Daiman had been trying to accomplish back in the camp with the Woostoid aide.
“I have been asked to explain this so you will cease your activities and submit to inclusion,” the regent said.
“Inclusion?” Kerra stepped down from the dais and walked, wary of coming too close to the now-watchful twins. “Like you included the Celegians? Did they ask to be part of this?�
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“They were useful. They needed to be first.”
“First of how many?” Kerra waved toward the window and Hestobyll, across the harbor. “You’ve already got a planet in thrall. How long are you going to let this go?”
They’re Sith, she realized, answering her own question. But could you be born Sith?
She faced the Krevaaki again and pointed to the siblings. “Listen, Regent—how is it they came to be the center of all of this? Why isn’t someone trying to help them?”
“I am trying to help them. I … have orchestrated all this. I have built it for us all. We will realize our destiny—as one.”
To the side, Quillan glowered at the Krevaaki. His sister followed suit. The regent seemed to shrink under their gaze.
Kerra noticed. “I don’t think they feel your role is as central as you do,” she said. “You’re just another Sith flunkie—just another tool.”
The regent shuddered with rage. “You will join us—join them—or be destroyed.”
“No.”
Expecting an attack from the Krevaaki, Kerra was startled to see movement from another quarter. The boy knelt atop the pillows and shakily raised his hand. The child had never exercised, she thought—if he had even left the room at all. But with his feeble motion, his sister stood and raised her hand.
“You will kneel,” Dromika said, facing Kerra.
Kerra stumbled. She’d fended off attempts to mesmerize her all day, but this was on another scale entirely. The younger girl’s words stabbed into her brain, raking at her free will. Kerra’s brow furrowed, her mental shields going up too late.
“You will kneel!” Dromika boomed, clenching her fists.
Kerra locked her knees together, fighting against the weight pushing down on her. It was more than simple suggestion. Dromika appeared to have mindlessly worked other forms of Force manipulation into her commands, acting out upon the physical world to force Kerra’s muscles and bones to comply.
Still, the Jedi fought. “I … will …”
“YOU WILL KNEEL!”
Kerra’s knees went out from under her. Hitting the floor with a painful thud, her hands struck the ground palm-first. Her weapon, extinguishing itself, clattered away.
Eyes tearing up, Kerra tried to crawl toward her lightsaber, just meters ahead of her. But immense pressure continued to bear down on her. The only way to keep from having the life crushed out of her …
… was to kneel.
“Regent-aspect,” Dromika said, much quieter. From the side, the Krevaaki glided toward Kerra, his quartet of mini lightsabers raised.
Sweat pouring, Kerra looked up and tried to speak. Tried to move. Tried to do anything against the executioner now looming above her. Tentacles curled, bringing the four glowing instruments of death centimeters from her neck on all sides.
Feeling their burning presence, Kerra had a fleeting thought of all the close calls she’d escaped, through sheer cussed stubbornness.
Now, at the end, that will had finally failed her.
Calician looked down at the Jedi, completely at his mercy. It had been so long, he thought, savoring the moment. So much had been lost to him. But this moment would be his, and his—
The regent saw his limbs flexing before him, ready to plunge their weapons into his victim.
“No!”
At the last moment, Calician had realized he wasn’t the one bringing the lightsabers to bear. “Let me do it!” The regent looked back to see Dromika standing there, at the edge of the pillows, her hands raised, willing him ahead.
“You will destroy the Jedi!” the girl yelled. She jabbed with clenched fingers, trying to make Calician move. “You will destroy the Jedi!”
Calician shuddered, the lightsabers pausing a hair’s breadth from the Jedi’s neck. “Yes—I will destroy the Jedi! Not you! Me!” He fought the force animating his tentacles. “Release me!”
The girl simply glared.
Incensed, the Krevaaki fought back, directing at his young master the psychic power he’d so often utilized in her name. “You will release me!”
Seeing the Krevaaki hesitate, Kerra fell flat to the floor and reached through the Force. Her lightsaber clattered between the regent’s legs and into her hand. Before a single second expired, Kerra ignited it and rolled to the right, depriving the regent of one of the tentacles that gave him footing. The Krevaaki screamed, doubling over and dropping his weapons.
Momentarily freed from Dromika’s control, Kerra regained her feet and started running. The girl shifted, beginning to react. Kerra couldn’t allow that. Reaching forward, she swept with her left hand, scooping up the droid-debris in her path and blindly launching it toward the siblings’ roost. Dashing in a circle around them, she wasn’t going to be able to strike them with anything. But she wasn’t trying to spread destruction—just distraction. To enforce the twins’ wills, Dromika had to get her attention, or at least concentrate.
Kerra wasn’t letting that happen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the teenagers reacting to the sudden shower of scrap. Quillan clasped his hands together and let loose a mournful howl, while his sister stumbled around on the cushions, trying to keep her body in front of him as Kerra turned.
The Jedi widened her circle, dousing her lightsaber and snapping it to her belt in a single, smooth move. She needed both hands as she ran ever-wider circles around the pair. It felt to her almost like a game in a gymnasium as she yanked storage containers from the open closets, hurling their contents into the penthouse. Toys. Food. Clothing. It all came out, rocketing to her left as she dashed. Through the miasma of junk she could see the boy standing now, balancing on shaky legs and wailing while his sister yelled something inaudible at the floored Krevaaki.
The regent wasn’t going anywhere, Kerra saw—but now Dromika was on the move. Kerra saw the girl clamber off the pile of pillows and onto the floor, into the stream of the hurled objects. As canisters and utensils clattered past, Dromika raised her hands and mimicked Kerra’s hand motions. Kerra skidded to a stop. Grabbing one of the nanny droids’ tubby abdomens from the floor with her hands, Kerra heaved, bowling it toward Dromika. Struck by the bouncing ball, the girl fell.
Quillan screamed—and as he did, Dromika leapt from the ground, reinvigorated. Kerra started running again, this time sweeping with the Force to rip window shards from the floor. She had to keep shifting strategies, keep them on the defensive. The twins’ only understanding of combat, physically or through the Force, came second-hand, through their minions. They couldn’t be accustomed to this kind of thing.
But she was quickly running out of things to throw. Changing tactics again, Kerra bolted across the diameter of the room, leaping onto and over the pile of cushions. Quillan lurched away, waving for Dromika to return. The girl moved faster this time, traversing the platform quickly. Kerra looked back, trying to find the turbolift she’d entered through.
That was a mistake. Dromika, running up behind her, reached out through the Force. Turning to run again, Kerra stumbled across an empty drawer from one of the cabinets she’d hurled. Falling before a shattered window, she reached instinctively for her lightsaber. But looking up, she saw the Sith girl, meters away and approaching with her hands raised. Dromika began to speak …
… and screamed, instead. Behind her, Quillan had seen something she hadn’t. Dromika’s head snapped to the right, looking out the window—and into the muzzle of a Kelligdyd 5000 cannon, racing toward her. The girl dropped as thousands of kilograms of Sarrassian iron stabbed through the window, driven by the movement of the warship outside.
Rolling away, Kerra looked back in surprise. Diligence!
The warship lurched away from the building, with-drawing the colossal makeshift battering ram and taking part of the window frame with it. Looking to see Dromika reviving, Kerra regained her feet and started running. Reminded, she reached for the comlink and yelled, “Is that you, mercenary?”
“Silly question” the response came.
Kerra couldn’t argue. To her left, she saw the Krevaaki trying to rise on his remaining tentacles. Only one of his lightsabers was lit—but looking back, she saw Dromika holding one of the others. Kerra winced. She should’ve put the regent down before this, she thought. And did the girl know how to use the lightsaber? She didn’t relish another confrontation.
Bounding across the room, Kerra looked back to see that Diligence was no longer hovering outside the window. Boots skidding on the rug, she heard the reason.
“We can’t get a ramp to you like this!” Rusher’s voice crackled. Kerra saw the ship bob outside the window and drop again. “We’re going to slip under where the building juts out. You’ll have to jump!”
When don’t I? Kerra wondered. She looked back. The regent had foundered, unable to make his remaining limbs obey. But Dromika continued to advance, green eyes now an empty red, matching the weapon burning in her hand. Behind and to her right, Kerra saw Quillan meekly backing toward the window, hands raised to mimic Dromika’s motions.
Or was it the other way around?
Divide and conquer, the Bothan had said. Kerra looked at Quillan’s eyes, as alive now as his sister’s were vacant. Dromika’s not the puppeteer. She’s just another puppet—for Quillan!
“Stop!” Dromika yelled, raising her free hand. Facing her, Kerra shuddered under the psychic command—
—and bolted, dashing straight between Dromika and the regent, heading straight for Quillan. The boy looked at her in wordless panic, his hand raised just like his sister’s. Charging, Kerra saw Dromika wilt, no longer animated by her connection to her brother’s mind.
“Ngaaah!” Quillan yelled. Tucking her head beneath his armpit, Kerra wrapped her hands around the boy and shoved toward the window where she’d seen Diligence last. With a mighty heave over the crunchy bottom of the pane, she carried Quillan over the side.
Tackle becoming a tumble, Kerra saw the lower levels of The Loft whisking by—and the luxury-cruiser-sundeck-turned-spotters’-nest of the warship rising up to meet her. Tucking her left leg under the terrified teenager, Kerra slammed violently into the hull. White heat shot from her ankle to her eyes in an instant.
Star Wars: Knight Errant Page 22
