If they’d known how fast he’d just been running, they wouldn’t have been smiling. Narsk gasped for breath as the lift doors closed. It had taken too long to find the Jedi. He’d just trusted to the Mark VI and hoped for the best, bolting headlong across Calimondretta. He hadn’t stayed long enough to learn anyone’s reactions, but surely a phantasm had been seen that day. At least no one had raised an alarm. He didn’t need that.
Not yet, at least.
The lift doors opened to reveal the hangar dome at the end of a long hallway. Narsk could hear the shuttle’s preflight preparations under way. Time was short. He stepped quickly, wondering if he had done the right thing. Freeing the Jedi had been a calculated risk. He’d only been ordered to watch her, and releasing her went a great deal beyond watching. But even before he’d heard Arkadia’s plans for Vilia, he’d known he would need a diversion. He couldn’t count on the cannoneer alone. Mercenaries could be bought off. Jedi couldn’t.
If Narsk dealt in backup plans, the Sith Lord did so doubly. The Bothan remembered what he’d seen earlier, when Arkadia had slipped the datachip beneath the gas canister assembly in the hoverchair. There was a second device, in addition to the receiver for his remote detonator: a timer. He’d seen enough in his work to recognize it immediately. Arkadia had planted a fail-safe. If Narsk didn’t trigger the poison gas trap in Vilia’s presence, it would go off anyway, at some period following the shuttle’s touchdown at his destination. How long would he have? He didn’t know. But it ruled out simply stealing away with Quillan and never triggering the bomb.
Quillan. Where was he? Narsk scanned the hangar floor for the hoverchair. The boy was supposed to have been brought here by now for transport. If he wasn’t, the whole scheme could unravel in a …
“What kept you?”
Narsk turned to see Arkadia, just inside the doorway, wearing her battle armor again. Her hair bound in a metal cap, the woman stood beside Quillan, the young man still huddled in the brown hoverchair. To their right, Narsk saw the swanky new chair, innocent and ominous as he’d remembered.
“I had to run the suit through some diagnostics,” Narsk said, bowing to Arkadia. “The Jedi had not been taking care of it.”
“Hmm.” Arkadia looked Narsk up and down before returning her attention to her brother. Carefully, she used the Force to levitate Quillan’s body from the dingy, battle-scarred chair. The boy sagged in the air before gently coming to rest on the new, velvety model.
“I’m just saying good-bye,” Arkadia said, shooting another annoyed glance at Narsk before returning to her private moment. She knelt beside Quillan, stroking his soft hand. “I’m sorry, my brother. You never had a chance in life.” Bowing her head, she spoke in low tones. “But in death, you may avenge our father.”
Narsk studied Quillan. There was no hint of comprehension in those eyes at all. Without Dromika at hand, he was truly nothing positive or negative—but he was still a living thing. Tragic, he thought.
Her steely gaze returning, Arkadia pointed to the tail section of the shuttle, its secret compartment in the rear open to view. A technician zipped across the room, depositing a small stepladder for the Bothan’s use. Arkadia looked down at Narsk. “Well?”
Narsk stammered. “I—I thought you might have more pressing business, right now.” He tugged at his collar.
“It’s all in hand,” Arkadia said. “This is an important day. I’m not going to miss this moment.”
“Very well,” Narsk said, looking fearfully at the vessel. Walking toward it, he looked past the magnetic field up ahead to the surface of Syned, in long afternoon shadows again. Nothing was happening out there—or in all Calimondretta, so far as he could tell. There was nothing else to do. He ground his teeth and stepped on the ladder.
Mercenaries! Looking inside the cramped compartment, he wondered whether anyone else had any respect for a job anymore. I paid for a diversion! Where’s my diversion?
“This is Calimondretta Control. Protective field is open, ’Crawler One. Welcome home.”
The magnetic barrier across the great doorway shimmered and vanished, permitting the icecrawler access to the thatched atrium. The massive vehicle lumbered forward, its lofty nose just clearing the top of the entrance to Patriot Hall. “Thanks, Cali Control,” its driver said over the communications system. “It’s been a fun ride. Won’t be long now.”
No, it won’t, Rusher thought, shutting off the transceiver. It was good that Arkadia had brought him into the process when it came to transferring the refugees; it had given him access to the command deck, and nobody in the ice city seemed to have thought it odd that he’d been the one speaking to them.
Rusher reached to the side and grabbed his space helmet. This was insane. Challenging a Sith Lord on one’s own was crazier than anything Beld Yulan had ever ordered near the end—and he’d run half his people off. And yet, as Rusher had described his crazy plan over the secure channel earlier, he’d gotten immediate agreement from Dackett and all the section chiefs. Even engineer Novallo had bought in, grudgingly.
Maybe it was the news of the Bothan’s payment. When Narsk had offered a series of jump coordinates leading safely to the Core Worlds, Rusher had laughed out loud. But then the spy claimed the proof of his knowledge was aboard Diligence, of all places: in the alleged stealth suit. Soon Rusher had Dackett on the comlink describing the amazing piece of technology in Tan’s possession—a product, according to the micro-tag inside, manufactured on Coruscant, four months earlier.
Perhaps seeing Tan demonstrate the suit had made everyone sign on: a trip to the Republic would be the shore leave of a lifetime for some, and a chance for escape for others. A chance for a real refit, beyond their endless jerry-rigging.
Or maybe it was because he was finally doing what Dackett had said, back in the solarium days earlier.
You can’t let ’em just see you going through the motions. You’ve got to do something. Pull the trigger.
Rusher could see their greeters gathering on the depot floor, far below the icecrawler’s overhanging cockpit. Arkadia’s Citizen Guards were out in force, ready to receive the vehicle and its passengers. Judging from the weapons some of them carried, it didn’t appear that they expected all the students to come willingly.
Well, good for you, Rusher thought. Makes me feel better about what we’re about to do. Clambering onto the ladder, he yelled down to his companions. “Get set, brigade! We’re about to make some history!”
The Houk Citizen Guard at the intersection of the frozen passageways waved his blaster at the workers clamoring for his attention. “I don’t care how many of you saw this—this phantom,” he yelled, brown jowls shaking. “Don’t you have jobs? I know I do!”
Kerra slipped from one doorway to the next, thankful for the distraction. The interrogation facility hadn’t been guarded like a prison, but evidently Narsk’s departure from it had attracted attention all along his route. Personal stealth technology wasn’t much help when forcing your way through a crowd of commuters.
Still, Kerra found herself wishing she had the hated suit now. Her muscles stinging, her head still ringing, she forced herself forward. The fact that Arkadia’s workers didn’t wear identical uniforms had given her a chance to move anonymously through the halls, but slowly. Too slowly.
Ten minutes, the spy had said. She didn’t even know why she was supposed to go to Patriot Hall, or what he meant by a diversion. How in blazes was she supposed to know when ten minutes were—
“Lockdown! Lockdown!” A pair of beefy blue-sashed sentries dashed past her alcove. “Hold everyone! There’s been an incident at the Impound!”
So that’s what they called the place. “I guess we’re doing this,” Kerra said, stepping into the ice tunnel and igniting her lightsaber. “Hey, guys!” she yelled to the guards up ahead. “I’m your incident!”
In the hangar, Arkadia raised her hand, preparing to close the compartment door behind Narsk. “You have my encrypted channel programmed
into your datapad,” she said. “Contact me when you’ve succeeded.”
Before she completed the motion, sirens reverberated through the dome. Narsk could hear them resonating all the way up the long hallway from the lift.
Arkadia looked angrily to a speaker on the wall. “What’s going on?”
“The Jedi has escaped the Impound,” a tinny voice responded.
Narsk wriggled from his confines. “The Impound? Is that a prison?”
“It’s more of a morgue,” Arkadia snapped. “Or it should have been, for her. She couldn’t get out alone. Somebody let her out!”
Reflexively, Narsk drew his arms back inside the false engine. His eyes darted to Quillan and his hoverchair, being walked toward the ramp for loading into the passenger compartment. “I … think you should attend to this problem, Lord Arkadia,” Narsk said. “I thank you for seeing us off, but matters are well in hand.”
“Yes,” Arkadia said. “That’s because it’s my plan.”
Storming toward the exit, Arkadia called one of her Wookiee Citizen Guards from his station by the wall. “You there!” She pointed to the tail section of the shuttle. “Make sure the Bothan shuts that chamber tightly. We don’t want him asphyxiating in space!”
Narsk’s heart fell as the sash-wearing tower of hair took station behind the engines. Behind the glaring Wookiee, Arkadia was already gone.
Narsk smiled weakly at the guard. “Nice day for a flight, isn’t it?”
* * *
The chubby depot manager pounded on the gate of the icecrawler. “We don’t have all day! When are you going to open up in there?”
Definitely not yet, Rusher thought, watching through the small viewport. Far behind the pasty-faced manager, he saw Arkadia and several of her minions crossing the atrium floor from north to south in a big hurry. Watching them vanish down one of the side ramps into the glacier, Rusher turned back to his team, waiting in place behind him inside the vehicle.
“Would have been nice to have seen that museum,” he said, his hand raised. “Drop the gate!”
Outside, the manager stumbled backward, nearly crushed by the falling drop-gate. Shaking his fist, he bellowed. “What do you think you’re—”
The manager’s jaw dropped. Instead of seeing the expected refugees inside the massive cargo hauler, he was staring down the long barrel of an ancient laser cannon, crewed by a team of determined-looking space-suited cannoneers.
“We’d like to have you meet Bitsy,” Rusher said, standing nonchalantly to the left. Looking at the wide-eyed Citizen Guards ahead of him, he lowered his hand. Rough day to be you, friends. “Fire!”
The ground beneath Embarkation Station 7 shook, causing flecks of ice to flutter from the hemispheric ceiling. Lodged inside the shuttle hidey-hole, Narsk looked wanly at the Wookiee guard. “Don’t you think you should go do something?”
The Wookiee snarled. Kicking away the stepladder, she grabbed Narsk’s snout and shoved him painfully backward into the compartment.
Narsk sputtered, coughing on his own whiskers. “That’s not what I meant, you idiot!”
* * *
Terrified workers stampeded through the carved-ice halls leading to Reflection Prospect. Kerra’s initial assault had caught the sentries who had raised the alarm by surprise. But the hulking Houk guard had thought nothing of the safety of his fellow citizens, firing his blaster as he charged through the crowd. The Houk had actually shot both the hapless Citizen Guards in the back before Kerra could strike them.
Flipping her lightsaber to her left hand, she pulled one of the fallen sentries’ weapons into her right hand with the Force and returned fire. Kneeling, she targeted the sheer crystalline wall to the Houk’s right, knocking him from his feet with the ricochet.
Several more combatants entered from side hallways, responding to the screeching siren. Holstering the blaster in her belt, Kerra charged ahead, raking from side to side with her lightsaber.
There wasn’t any release in lashing out this time. Not like on Byllura, with its crazed mesmerists. The Citizen Guards of Syned weren’t Sith hopefuls, but instead people devoted to—or stuck within—Arkadia’s military-industrial system. As another guard fell before her, Kerra was glad she hadn’t seen Seese in one of the blue sashes. It was always harder killing someone you knew.
Seeing an opening in the opposition line, Kerra leapt toward it. There, ahead, was the giant grotto with its balcony and escalator, surrounded by giant burbling pipes of Synedian algae. But no one was reflecting in the cave plaza now. A dozen guards had taken station near the other exits, and several snipers were on the overlook, the balcony leading back to Patriot Hall.
Alarmed at the numbers, Kerra drew her blaster and took aim at the tube where she and Rusher had quarreled so many hours earlier. “Let’s see what you think of this,” she yelled, firing.
Nothing happened.
Kerra rolled, avoiding return fire. She’d hoped to inundate the grotto with the blue slop—only the by-product was toxic, Narsk had said. But the towering cylinders were made of something tougher than transparisteel. Tossing aside the blaster, she went back into action with her lightsaber, deflecting fire as she tried to advance. But with the snipers firing from up above, Kerra could only retreat to the doorway she’d entered through. What I’d give for a concussion grenade, she thought. The plaza was the only route she knew to Patriot Hall.
Suddenly there was a break in the firing from the balcony. Kerra thought she heard thunder now, reverberating faintly above the klaxons. Atop the upper floor, the snipers parted to allow a new arrival to approach.
Lord Arkadia looked down from the ledge. “The errant Jedi,” she said, seemingly undistracted by the noises far behind. “You’re surrounded. It’s time to die.”
He’d thrown everything in. Rusher had Bitsy on the atrium floor now, tearing a new hole in the glaciated wall. After its first deadly shot, it had taken ten bearers and twenty seconds to get it out of the icecrawler and into action. Now Team Zhaboka fanned out to the left and right, slamming their missile launchers to the surface and firing anchor bolts into the floor. Behind, Zeller and her Team Ripper crewmates were rolling out the brigade’s last good Kelligdyd 5000, its crushing bulk crashing noisily over the drop-gate.
Deploying fast was easy when you didn’t expect to get your weapons back.
Rusher opened up again with Bitsy. No need for spotters in this battle. Every shot hit something. Arkadia’s welcoming committee was long gone. And every shot sent seismic waves through Patriot Hall. Through all of Calimondretta, it seemed.
On to stage two. “Zhabokas high!” Rusher yelled into his helmet comlink to troopers not ten meters from him. “Quickfire, quickfire!”
With synchronized precision, six mortar launchers tilted and chuffed, firing at the transparisteel covering atop the atrium. The shells’ sonic splitters activated on contact, pulverizing the screen protecting Patriot Hall from Syned’s frigid temperatures. Instantly, the atrium’s atmosphere ballooned outward, buffeting the metallic powder that had been the transparent roof and shearing it harmlessly outside.
At once, automatic durasteel doors shuttered the pathways into the city, protecting it from loss of heat and air. Dozens of Arkadia’s hapless soldiers, exposed now to both laserfire and Synedian ice, pounded on the barriers, clamoring to enter.
“Help them crack those doors,” Rusher ordered, not so helpfully. Bitsy spoke again, slamming the western barrier with such force that it snapped right off its durasteel gudgeon. The cavern ahead was open now, a gaping, smoke-filled maw leading into the underground city. Slapping the back of one of his troopers, the brigadier gestured for the team to pivot the weapon to the north. Kerra had been taken south, earlier—and much farther west led to the Promisorium, and Arkadia’s own younglings. He’d never before led an assault on a fortress from inside the fortress. This would take finesse, as much as could be managed with heavy artillery!
Still, they’d already seen some success. He looked up
at the cloud of destruction that had been the ceiling and marveled. Clean shots, all. The massive ice timbers still mostly stood, holding nothing but framing a view of the new night, outside.
Outside. Stage three. He tapped his helmet again. “Diligence, this is Rusher! Dackett—get moving!”
* * *
The Wookiee flinched. The ice sheet rumbled gently, causing loose items in the hangar to quiver. But Arkadia’s appointed guardian simply growled, staring down the Bothan stuffed into the tail of the shuttle.
“Oh, blast it!” Fumbling in the cramped space, Narsk yanked the mask back down over his head and activated the Mark VI, vanishing.
“Wurf?”
The female Wookiee stepped closer to the chamber, tilting her head left and right as she stared at the seeming nothingness.
Until she came too close. “Sorry, lady!” Narsk’s gloved hands shot out, grabbing a handful of hair on each side of the Wookiee’s face. Yanking, he slammed the guard’s forehead hard into the metal frame.
Narsk shot forward, tumbling over the back of his dazed victim. Hitting the floor, he stumbled behind one of the landing gear, out of sight of the technicians.
More thunder came from the south. Fearful of the visible effects of the snow falling from the shaking ceiling, Narsk curled up underneath the fuselage and strained to find Quillan. The boy sat placidly at the bottom of the ramp, surrounded by three technicians who were considerably less calm.
Join the club, Narsk thought. She’s not paying me enough for this!
Kerra pulled her lightsaber from one body only to embed it in another. Arkadia was letting her guards have their chance at her. Reflection Prospect had gone in a couple of minutes from a place of peace to a killing zone.
She struggled to find somewhere to stand. New attackers replaced every one that fell. And deflecting blaster shots into them wasn’t effective, she’d discovered. The fancy sash wasn’t the only thing Arkadia issued her Citizen Guards; the electromesh tunics under their clothes took the punch out of blasterfire.
Star Wars: Knight Errant Page 31
