Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse

by Troy Denning

  Tahiri activated her helmet’s reconnaissance kit. The electromag sensors picked up dozens of small emission sources arrayed at even intervals along the inner rim of the crater. They were almost certainly hidden security cams. When she viewed the durasteel “office” building at 20X magnification, it grew obvious that the walls beneath the transparisteel viewing bands were dotted with camouflaged weapons ports—many large enough to serve laser cannons. And the portal itself was sealed not by a standard air lock hatch, but by a blast door capable of withstanding a turbolaser strike.

  Most disturbing of all was the mine’s thermal readout. Hagamoor 3 was a hunk of metal-rich rock scarcely large enough to generate its own weak gravity. The tiny amount of compression heat that it did generate barely lifted the ambient temperature above absolute zero. But the area near the mine read more like the ground around a geyser. Tahiri began to worry that the yellow smoke rising beyond the crater might mean the entire mine was on fire.

  Seeing that Fett had not descended directly into the crater from there, she went down the slope until she was below the mine’s line of sight and followed his trail a few hundred meters along the exterior of the rim, then returned to the crest. Now she was adjacent to the portal, about fifty meters above it. Fett’s trail ended there, where a large blast circle suggested he had activated his jetpack to descend to the portal in a single hop.

  Tahiri didn’t have a jetpack, but she did have the Force. She took a moment to brush the dust from the emitter nozzle of her blaster pistol. She transferred a couple of thermal detonators from her pack to her belt, then pulled her lightsaber off its hook and took a deep breath. She felt like she ought to be making a situation report before jumping into action, but even if she had wanted to break comm silence, there was little to gain from it. If she failed to return, Vangur would report the obvious to Head of State Fel: the Imperial Hand followed Boba Fett into the Moon Maiden and failed to return.

  In the weak gravity, Tahiri required only two Force bounds to descend to the crater floor. Her third bound left her standing in front of the Moon Maiden’s portal, which was indeed a heavy blast door. Designed to swing outward in two interlocking halves, the door appeared to be made of a reflective duratanium alloy that was practically impervious to laser-based artillery. A faint shimmer in the metal suggested that the area was protected by a nullifier field, typically used in military installations to dampen the triggers of thermal detonators and other handheld explosives. But what really riveted Tahiri’s attention was the sense of boiling darkness she felt in the Force—an outpouring of fear and grief that seemed to be building somewhere deep inside the mine.

  Maybe Fett had led her to Abeloth, after all.

  Could I really be that lucky? Tahiri wondered. Could I really be that unlucky?

  She caught a flash of movement in the corner of her faceplate as a security cam descended on its control tether to give her a closer inspection. She extended a hand, using the Force to draw it into her grasp, then pulled the lens close to her faceplate and hit the chin toggle for her comlink.

  “Imperial Security.” She sent a surge of Force energy into the lens, creating a bright flash that would temporarily blind the cam. “Let me in … now.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” The reply was so static-scratched that it was impossible to identify the speaker’s species, but the voice sounded too thin and chirpy to be human. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  Tahiri felt a small ground shudder as one of the blast doors cracked open, creating a gap just wide enough for her to slip through. Half expecting the sentry to swing the door shut as she crossed the threshold, she slipped through the opening in a single quick bound. Inside, she found herself standing in an industrial air lock. It looked like a thousand others she had occupied, save that this one had a set of blaster cannons mounted high in the corners. She waved a finger at each of them, using the Force to push the barrels away—and to wreck the control system’s calibration.

  “Hey!” came the scratchy voice. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I told you,” Tahiri said. “Imperial Security.”

  She stepped over to a man-sized hatch in the rear wall of the air lock and peered through a head-height viewport down a long, well-lit tunnel. It was lined by white plastoid panels far too clean to belong in a working mine. The sentry’s post, wherever it was, could not be seen.

  “Are you going to open this air lock now?” Tahiri demanded. “Or am I going to blast through this hatch and decompress your whole operation?”

  “You didn’t say you were in a hurry.” The blast door thumped shut behind her, and the voice said, “Just give the pressure a minute to—”

  “No.”

  Tahiri stepped away from the hatch, then used the Force to hit the emergency release and shove it open. A tremendous squealing became a tremendous roaring, and she was nearly swept off her feet as air blasted into the chamber. After a second, the blast faded to a raging wind, and she sprang through the hatchway.

  A cold shiver of danger sense raced down Tahiri’s spine, and she spun around in time to see a weapons port sliding open in the door of a small sentry booth. With no face visible in the viewport above, she merely extended a hand toward the slot and shoved with the Force. In the next instant a line of blaster bolts stitched up the interior side of the viewport and began to traverse the ceiling.

  Tahiri ignited her lightsaber and stepped over to the booth, then peered through the carbon-scorched viewport. On the floor lay a furry, meter-high rodent-like being holding a T-21 repeating blaster that was almost as long as he was tall. With oversized ears and big round eyes, he could have been described as cute—if he hadn’t been a Squib. Tahiri used the Force to release the door lock, then opened it from the outside and stepped into the cramped compartment.

  She raised her faceplate. “You have a death wish?” She jerked the T-21 from his grasp with a Force pull. “I said Imperial Security.”

  “Yeah, right. And I should take your word for it?” the Squib retorted. “Do I look like some sort of fuzzling to you?”

  Tahiri studied his spotted fur and oversized ears, and then realized she had a pretty good idea of the Squib’s identity. Shortly after she had entered Jagged Fel’s service, the Solos had put the Head of State into contact with three Squibs—a female and two males. The trio had volunteered to test an experimental youth serum, which was being developed by none other than Moff Getelles. Test subjects who used the serum tended to develop overly youthful traits—like big ears and spotted fur.

  After a moment, she nodded. “Actually, you do look like a fuzzling,” she said. “Which one are you? You’re male, so it has to be Grees or Sligh.”

  The Squib narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “You know my superior, Jagged Fel,” Tahiri said. In truth, she was not quite sure how to describe her half-prisoner, half-Imperial-agent status. “You did an undercover job for him not too long ago—a job that was supposed to be over.”

  “That deal is over,” the Squib said. He began to crawl backward on the floor—and promptly ran into the wall. “This is a different one.”

  Tahiri shrugged. “Whatever you say …” She paused, as though she were using the Force the way Master Skywalker did—to pick people’s names out of their thoughts. Then she simply took a guess. “Sligh.”

  When the Squib’s ears went back in alarm, she knew she had guessed right. “Why don’t you tell me about this new deal of yours,” she said. “And remember, I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  Sligh shook his head. “I don’t think so, Blondie.”

  “Okay, then I’ll tell you,” Tahiri said, deciding to bluff. “You’re working for Daala now.”

  “Wrong,” Sligh said smugly. “Some Jedi you are.”

  “I’m no Jedi—not anymore,” Tahiri said. She opened herself to the Force again and sensed the same boiling darkness she had felt from outside the portal—and the same outpouring of grief and anguish. “And you didn’t let
me finish. You’re working for Daala through her agent, an Imperial lieutenant named Lydea Pagorski.”

  Sligh’s gaze shifted away. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Tahiri replied. “Pagorski is in charge of Daala’s election campaign, if you call starting riots a campaign.”

  Sligh shrugged. “It’s how they do things in the Empire. Who are we to judge?”

  “You have a point,” Tahiri said. Shifting to a friendlier interrogation technique, she shut off her lightsaber and motioned for Sligh to stand. “What I can’t figure out is why Pagorski came here, to Hagamoor Three. This is Getelles’s territory, and Getelles is on Jag’s side.”

  “What makes you think we had anything to do with it?” Sligh demanded. “We’re just contract agents.”

  Even had she not sensed the Squib’s alarm in the Force, Tahiri would have known he was lying. “You brought Pagorski here—because you’ve been here before,” she said, quickly seeing how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. “The Moon Maiden isn’t a mine. It’s the lab where Getelles was developing his youth serum—the lab where you were experimented on.”

  Sligh only blinked and tried to look innocent.

  “Pagorski was looking for a secret base of operations, one where no one would think to look for her,” Tahiri continued, watching the Squib closely. “And she needed it to be a place where a lot of people could disappear without being noticed. Because she’s not Lydea Pagorski anymore, is she? She’s something much more deadly. Something you don’t understand, and that you probably wish you had never gotten involved with. Right?”

  Sligh’s quick drop of gaze was all the confirmation Tahiri needed.

  “And then things got even worse, didn’t they, Sligh? Fett tracked you here—because he’s looking for the scientists who were experimenting on you.” The scientists who had developed the youth serum had also designed a nanokiller specifically attuned to Boba Fett’s genetic code—a nanokiller that the Moffs had released into Mandalore’s atmosphere, ensuring that Fett would never be able to return to his beloved world. “Fett’s not here because Daala sent him. He’s here because he wants your scientists. And you couldn’t stop him from going inside either. He’s already gone down the tunnel to find them—hasn’t he, Sligh?”

  Sligh’s ears went straight back, and his hands flew up so quickly that Tahiri instinctively ignited her lightsaber again. But the Squib’s hands only went to the sides of his face, and then he spun away from Tahiri and began to whip his head from side to side so hard she feared he might break his own neck. Suddenly he turned and hurled himself at her feet.

  Tahiri brought her lightsaber down, almost lopping off his head before she realized there was no aggression in his Force aura—only panic, terror, and confusion. She deactivated the blade at the last instant, then lifted one leg just in time to avoid being knocked off her feet as the Squib hit the floor beneath her.

  He shot out of the sentry booth into the white corridor beyond. Then, still whipping his head from side to side, he looked back and called, “Stay out of my brain, witch!”

  IF THE MOON MAIDEN HAD EVER BEEN ANYTHING BUT A SECRET LABORATORY disguised as a mine, Tahiri saw no hint of it in the primary access tunnel. At just two meters high by three meters wide, the passage was adequate for speeder traffic but too small for heavy equipment. It was also incredibly clean. Both the duracrete floor and the white plastoid liner had been carefully sealed to prevent the slightest ground infiltration, and even the glow panels were recessed behind transparisteel panes to minimize the number of joints where caulking might disintegrate. And every fifty meters, she passed through an ion curtain that captured any dust particles clinging to her vac suit.

  Outside the second ion curtain, Tahiri came to a pair of loaded hoversleds parked along the wall, as though being held there until the cargo could be transported. Crates on both hoversleds had been broken into recently—no doubt by a curious Boba Fett—and Tahiri removed a poster flimsi from a crate on the first sled.

  The flimsi showed an image of Admiral Daala in profile. Her eye patch was prominently displayed, and she had a noble, serious expression on her face. Below the picture were the words: NATASI DAALA. A TRADITION OF SERVICE AND SACRIFICE—FOR YOUR EMPIRE.

  As Tahiri looked at the image, she experienced a sudden surge of respect and confidence, and she found herself feeling like Daala might make a pretty decent Head of State after all.

  Force suggestion.

  Tahiri recognized what was happening only because she felt the power of the Force in it, and even then the flimsi’s influence was difficult to resist until she crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

  The second sled contained a stack of holosign projector pads. Rather than activate one and risk having a hologram of Daala pop up and start talking, Tahiri concentrated her Force awareness over the sled. There was a dark aura clinging to the projector pads, as though they had been imbued with a tiny amount of Force energy by a very powerful dark side Force-user.

  Abeloth.

  Tahiri started down the tunnel again, more concerned than ever. After the trouble Abeloth had gone to in running the blockade at Boreleo, it seemed all too likely that she had formed an alliance with Daala and was using her powers to boost Daala’s popularity in the Empire—and this discovery certainly supported those suspicions. But it also cast the campaign to elect the admiral in a whole new light. Tahiri could see only one reason for Abeloth to use her powers to guarantee Daala’s victory, and that was because she expected the admiral to become her puppet ruler.

  Abeloth intended to take the Empire for her own.

  And once Abeloth had the Empire, there would be no stopping her. The Empire would be an ideal base from which to expand, and against their combined powers, even the Galactic Alliance would not be able to oppose her for long.

  As Tahiri continued to walk, the cleanliness of the tunnel began to fade. Three hundred meters in, dark spots of mildew began to appear along the walls. At four hundred meters, the plastoid had turned dark with growth, and the fungus was starting to form mounds. By five hundred meters, she was picking her way past stalks of meter-high fungi and ducking under dangling curtains of moss. Though she had never visited a world where Abeloth held sway, she had spoken to enough Jedi to know what she was seeing—and how cautious she needed to be around the strange flora.

  Tahiri was about six hundred meters down the tunnel when she came to a scene as puzzling as it was gruesome. A secondary passage opened out to the left, where it became a steep ramp ascending toward the surface building that sat above this part of the Moon Maiden.

  At the base of the ramp, half a dozen human security guards lay scattered among the fungi stalks. Another half a dozen—probably the first to arrive—had made it into the main tunnel, where the plastoid walls were painted with blood and the floor was littered with bodies and weapons. A pair of guards had lived long enough to fling their blaster rifles aside and flee down the passage. Tahiri could see their corpses lying among the club mosses with huge char holes in their backs.

  Probably Fett, Tahiri decided. The handiwork was certainly his style, and she knew from her interrogation of Sligh that the Mandalorian had come down the tunnel ahead of her. Not wanting to risk leaving a ruthless bounty hunter between her and the exit, she started up the ramp toward the surface building—which, given all the dead guards, she was now confident in calling a security bunker.

  Tahiri had to travel only about thirty paces before realizing she had no need to worry about Fett. The bounty hunter was hanging in the center of the tunnel, upside down and motionless, trapped in a curtain of ropy moss like a flitnat in a spiderweb. Some of the moss-tendrils had worked their way into the seams of his armor and, presumably, penetrated the neoplas body glove underneath. Never having visited one of Abeloth’s strongholds before, Tahiri could only guess at the nature of the moss’s attack. Most likely it was some sort of acid or contact poison, though strangulation and allergic reaction were also possi
bilities. But the one thing she knew for certain was that if Fett had been expecting to be attacked by a plant, he wouldn’t have been captured—and perhaps killed—by one.

  It was a good lesson to bear in mind.

  Having stashed her helmet inside her vac suit cargo pack, Tahiri pulled the mike up from her suit collar and used the Moon Maiden’s internal network to link to a surface antenna, then opened a secure channel to Lieutenant Vangur aboard the Mabartak.

  “Change your mind about the escort?” Vangur asked, not even bothering to identify himself—or confirm that he was, indeed, talking to Tahiri. “We can be there in five minutes.”

  “Tempting, but no,” Tahiri said. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What?”

  “First, you’re to be two kilometers clear of the Moon Maiden in one hour, whether I’m aboard or not,” she said. “And that is an order. Understood?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Though even Vangur was too much of an Imperial officer to ask for an explanation, Tahiri could hear the curiosity in his voice.

  “Trust me,” she said. “If I’m not back, you won’t want to be anywhere near the Maiden.”

  “If you say so, ma’am.”

  “I do,” Tahiri replied. “Next, I need you to relay a situation report to Head of State Fel—and to him alone. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.” Vangur’s voice had finally grown serious. “But I don’t know if the Head of State is going to accept a direct communiqué from a—”

  “Tell him it’s from the Imperial Hand,” Tahiri interrupted. “You’ll get through. You’re to give Head of State Fel this location, along with this message: She’s here. Act soonest … regardless.”

  “She’s here. Act soonest, regardless,” Vangur confirmed. “Will the Head of State understand that last part? I mean, regardless of what, exactly?”