Are you fast enough, though? That’s the question, isn’t it? How about when you can’t see?
Picking up a pair of thermal lenses from the counter beside him, Hracken adjusted them over his eyes, then reached over and switched off the lights. Darkness swallowed the room, vast and total. Hracken flicked on the goggles. His vision helioscoped into a hundred brilliant variations of fluorescent green before resolving itself into focus, and he leaned forward with keen interest.
Down below, the now-blind Ra’at stopped in his tracks, processing what had just happened, and in that second the wall behind him burst open in a whistling array of heavy rubber whips, slashing into the air. Ra’at jerked forward, but it was too late—the whips drove him to his knees. Hracken saw the apprentice’s face clench, his lips drawn back in pain.
It’s over, he thought, and reached to switch the lights back on.
But it wasn’t.
Ra’at was on his feet again instantly, jumping clear of the whips. Hracken immediately realized that the apprentice was no longer hampered by vision, or lack thereof: now he was relying entirely upon the Force. When the swing-arm came down again, Ra’at reached up, grabbed it, and actually held on—a move that the Sith Master hadn’t seen before, even from Lussk—riding it all the way up to the ceiling. At the apex of its arc, he let go, twisting and launching himself headlong through open space to catch hold of the spring-loaded rod as it came spiking out of the wall.
It was a move of unprecedented grace and absolute precision. Ra’at spun himself around the rod once, twice, three times, building speed, and fired himself directly at the window of the control booth.
Master Hracken jerked backward. Ra’at slammed into the transparisteel with both hands, actually clinging there for a split second, long enough for Hracken to see the student’s face staring straight in at him.
Then he dropped.
Hracken whipped off the goggles and turned on the lights. Light roared across the room, filling every corner. He saw Ra’at standing down below, his face flushed, shining with sweat, shoulders rising and falling with the effort of catching his breath. Despite his obvious exhaustion, the apprentice’s face was almost incandescent with leftover adrenaline. When he saw Hracken coming down the stairs, his eyes filled with expectation, awaiting the Sith Master’s judgment.
“Interesting,” Hracken said. “Tomorrow we’ll see if you can do it again.”
Ra’at blinked at him. “Master?”
Hracken looked around. “What is it?”
“Lussk … in combat simulation, has he ever …?”
The Sith Master waited for Ra’at to finish the sentence, but in the end the apprentice simply nodded and looked away.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
Walking back to the dorm with his cloak drawn up over his shoulders and his wounds throbbing in the frigid night air, Ra’at stopped and glanced back at the simulation bunker. He was aware of what the other students and Masters said about him—how he was too small, too weak, in thrall to his own paranoid delusions—and he didn’t care. Tonight he’d shown Hracken what he was capable of. Soon the rest would see.
He stepped over a high snowdrift that had formed outside the library, making his way around the eastern wall of the building until he found himself in the shadow of the tower. It was snowing steadily, but Ra’at could still make out the tracks leading up to the tower’s main entryway, two sets of prints along with the familiar tracks of the HK droid.
Ra’at felt the requisite twinge of jealousy. The tracks in the snow meant that Lord Scabrous had brought visitors here, very recently. The Sith Lord had invited them into his sanctum, and they had stepped inside. Ra’at, who had never been inside the tower and could only imagine its secrets, wondered who the visitors had been. Lussk? Nickter? One of the Masters?
Slipping off his glove, Ra’at placed one bare hand directly on the closed hatchway, imagining for a moment that he could feel the power pulsating out from inside, power that he would do anything to possess.
Someday, he thought, I’ll go through there myself.
Until then, he would keep practicing.
6/Hot Ships
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT IN THE ACADEMY’S MAIN HANGAR. FINISHING UP THE LAST of his maintenance chores, Pergus Frode found himself glaring at the Corellian cruiser still taking up space in the corner of the landing pad. He’d refueled the craft and kept its engines hot, as its pilot had demanded, but that had been several hours ago and there’d been no word from the bounty hunters. Now it was late and he wanted nothing more than to shut things down, go back to his quarters, and collapse into his bunk.
With a sigh, he went back to the hangar’s control booth and sealed the hatch behind him. At least it was warm in here, a haven away from the wind. When he’d first taken over the job almost ten standard years earlier, Frode had retrofitted the booth to meet his needs, installing a personal thermal convection unit for hot meals along with a datapad for his favorite holobooks and holomags. As a hired hand, he had no Force powers and no particular allegiance to the Sith per se; he’d only encountered Darth Scabrous on a handful of occasions. But the last and only time that he’d ignored orders to stay up and wait, he’d spent a week in lockup icing a broken jaw.
Settling back with a reheated cup of Javarican espresso and a well-worn holo of Hot Ships, Frode saw something flicker past the booth. He sat up and wiped a hole in the steamed-up glass, peering out. The HK was standing there, its photoreceptors focused in on him.
Frode stood up and opened the hatch. “Hey.”
The HK turned and looked back at him. “Query: What is it, sir?”
“How much longer are those guys going to be in the tower?” Frode pointed at the cruiser. “I mean, their ship’s just sitting there, eating our fuel.”
“Response: I suppose you ought to shut it down.”
“But that guy Dranok said—”
“Statement: He won’t be coming back, sir. He, or his partner.”
Frode blinked. “What, you mean, like, ever?”
“Response: That is my understanding, sir, yes.”
Pushing back his mission cap to scratch his head, Frode turned his attention speculatively back to the bounty hunter’s vessel. “You know,” he remarked casually, “a ship like that’s gotta carry a pretty sophisticated flight computer.”
“Statement: I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir. The equipment of such vessels is not part of my programming, and—”
“You don’t think Lord Scabrous would mind if I yanked her out, do you?”
The HK regarded him blankly.
“You know, set it aside. Scrap-market value on that thing’s not too shabby.”
“Statement: I’m sure you could help yourself,” the droid said, with bottomless indifference, already turning away to go about its business.
Settling his cap back on his head, Frode nodded and got his tools, whistling a little under his breath as he did so.
Maybe, he thought, tonight would turn out well after all.
7/Marfa
HESTIZO TRACE ROLLED OVER, DREW IN A DEEP, RESIGNED BREATH, AND LIFTED HER head from the pillow. The small, nondescript sleeping chamber where she’d awakened had already begun to fill with soft artificial light. Although she was all alone here, she could feel the orchid waiting for her down below, some two hundred meters away but close enough to hear its voice quite clearly in her mind.
Hestizo! Emergency!
She sat up, pushing off her covers. What is it? What’s wrong?
My incubation chamber! Come quickly!
Realizing now what the voice must be referring to, she relaxed back down. Oh.
“Oh?” Alarm flashed through the flower’s tone. This is serious!
I’ll be down in a second.
Hurry, please!
Okay, she told it, all right. Hold on to your petals. I’ll be down there in a minute.
The orchid retreated in her mind, only marginally placated, as if still awaiting a
formal apology. Honestly, Zo didn’t mind its presence in her thoughts; the bond that they shared was, after all, part of her identity, a Jedi in the Agricultural Corps, one of the talented handful whose psychic green thumb kept her here in the nurseries and labs of the Marfa facility.
Marfa was a hothouse, its varying atmospheres, temperatures, and moisture levels all carefully maintained to foster the widest variety of interstellar fauna in this part of the Core Worlds. But it was the Force sensitivity of Zo and her fellow Jedi that drove the different species to their fullest potential. At twenty-five, Zo understood that there was innate value, even a kind of nobility in such things, nurturing every form of botanical life and encouraging every facet of its development and exploration.
Rousing herself fully from the last lingering vestiges of sleep, she slipped into her robe and headed up the corridor to the refresher. The faint sense of unease followed her, an unwelcome remnant of some other unremembered dream. She dressed for the day, choosing her lab frock and hood from a rack of identical uniforms, attributing the tinge of restlessness to that same nameless malaise that sometimes waited for her upon awakening here on Marfa.
Opting out of breakfast, she followed the concourse up to Beta Level Seven. Marfa’s planetary status was constantly shifting with the position of solar activity and galactic cloud patterns, but B-7 was currently the busiest and most vibrant of the various cultivation and growth bays honeycombing Marfa’s surface. Usually most of her fellow Jedi could be found there in the mornings, starting their day with de facto meetings to update one another on progress and research, and share their immediate plans for the future.
The turbolift doors opened on an eye-watering expanse of green, and Zo stopped there as she always did, letting the great familiar cloud of humid warmth wash over her. The smells of countless different plants competed for her attention—sap, fruit, and flower mingling in a mind-boggling banquet of fragrances.
Tilting her head back, she looked up on 150 standard meters of high-ceilinged vines and dangling root systems. All around were narrow, self-sustaining forests of succulents and subspecies and high trellises overrun with loops and whorls of growth so varied in color and size that only through sheer day-after-day familiarity was she able to process it all.
She could already feel them.
Her mind tuned instantly to the internal hum of hundreds of different vegetative life forces, each vibrating according to its own particular emotion, some low and oscillating, others pulsing high and bright to match the explosions of flowers that sprang from their stems. Many of the plants were local enough that she recognized their greetings in her mind, as she passed by. Zo walked among them, allowing their rustling enthusiasm of leaves and stalks to distract her from the nagging tug of unease that had followed her up from below.
“Good morning, Hestizo.” Wall Bennis was the first actual voice she’d heard this morning. A tall, soft-spoken man with calm brown eyes, the Jedi ag-lab director was waiting for her behind the thick red stalks of a malpaso tree with an extra cup of caf. “Sleep well?”
“Until the orchid woke me.”
Bennis handed her the cup. “Any idea what’s going on?”
“I’ve got a pretty good guess.”
“You do?”
“Mm-hm.”
“That’s good, then.” He went distractedly back to his own work and then seemed to remember something. “Oh, and Zo? When you get a minute, would you mind taking a look at the pulsifarian moss colonies on B-Two? There seems to be some kind of secondary parasite growing in the soil.”
“You always save the glamorous stuff for me.”
“You’re the only one who can understand it.”
“The moss or the parasite?”
“Both, I think.”
“I’ll take a look.” She carried the caf across B-7 until she’d reached the private incubation chamber in the far corner of the room. Deactivating the air lock, she stepped inside, resealing the door behind her.
Finally, the orchid burst out. What took you so long?
You’re not the only plant on this level. She took her time checking the temperature and moisture readouts on the wall unit, making incremental adjustments to both, and then walked over to the only plant in the chamber, a small orchid with black petals and a thin green stalk, its fronds seeming almost to quiver with impatience. For a moment she stood sipping caf and looking at it.
I was cold during the night. Exceedingly unpleasant.
Actually, I turned the temperature down in your incubation chamber, she told it. Almost a full two degrees, on purpose.
Why?
I’ve been telling you for ages that you’re a lot heartier than you thought. Now you know it’s true. Fact is, you could probably survive a twenty-degree temperature drop, maybe more, and you would have been just fine.
That’s cruel to test without warning!
If I’d told you, Zo replied, then you would have gotten yourself all worked up over nothing.
The orchid withdrew into sulky silence. As flora went, it was one of the most Force-sensitive species in the galaxy. The problem was that it knew it. Zo put up with it anyway, and most of the time she was happy to dedicate herself to studying its abilities and providing for its needs. Every so often, though, it needed to be reminded why it had endured for thousands of years: it was far more durable than it gave itself credit for.
Zo? the orchid said now.
What is it?
Something’s wrong.
What now?
Outside … something’s happening.
Zo reopened the incubator’s hatchway and stepped back out. Standing motionless in front of the chamber, she realized several things simultaneously.
First, that the initial sense of wrongness she’d been experiencing up until now had nothing to do with her work here on Marfa. Contrary to what she’d initially supposed, the feeling was emanating from an outside source, an interloper, something that clearly didn’t belong here. It hadn’t been a dream; it was an alarm.
And second, despite the silence, she wasn’t alone.
Zo? the orchid’s voice asked. What is it?
Give me a second. She listened to the entire greenhouse with her ears instead of her mind. She heard no audible voices, but that was to be expected. Her fellow Jedi often worked for hours among their individual species without speaking a word. Much of their daily routine was accomplished in absolute silence.
Pausing halfway down a long aisle overgrown with leafy stalks, Zo looked up. Far overhead, she found what she was looking for, an 800-year-old panopticon willow, a perfect specimen of organic surveillance, draping its limbs in a dense canopy of emerald-dripping lace. Each bud was tipped with a tiny golden eye.
Zo placed one palm flat against the shaggy trunk, allowing its root strength to pulse through her, aware at the same time that the tree was embracing her as an equal. She felt her ground-level perspective surging up through its branches, spreading out along colonies of sharply focused eyes. Her vision shifted, wobbled, and became clear again. She was now gazing down at herself and the entire floor from far above, from the willow’s point of view. The tree’s branches shifted and Zo felt a slight shimmer of cognitive dissonance as her perspective aligned itself and she saw the familiar robed figure of Wall Bennis leaning face-first against the sinuous, downy-tufted trunk of a Malpassian squid pine.
But Bennis wasn’t leaning.
He was slouched forward, motionless, his torso hanging at an unnatural angle, arms dangling at his sides, impaled by the spear that had been slammed through his back into the trunk of the tree. A long dagger-shaped bloodstain ran from between his shoulder blades down his back, soaking through his belt. The cup of caf he’d been holding lay on the floor between his feet.
Zo realized that she could see Bennis’s face. It hung ashen and slack, a dangling meat-mask from which all life had fled. His blood spilled down the spear’s rough-hewn shaft, and Zo watched, with the willow’s unblinking acuity, as a droplet
formed at the end, grew heavy, and fell into the already congealing pool on the floor by his feet.
Plip.
Something rustled behind her in the leaves.
Spinning around, her consciousness dropping back from the willow’s branches into her own optic and auditory nerves, Zo realized too late that she’d let her guard down. On the other side of the tree, somewhere just inside the thick green canopy, the rustling grew louder, closer. A branch snapped. Twigs crackled, trampled underfoot. Zo felt the presence of this new thing, whatever it was, making its way directly toward her, no longer bothering to be quiet or stealthy.
Fear took hold of her, vacuuming the air from her lungs. The buzz of plant emotion had fallen quiet—even the orchid was still—and the entire research level felt far larger and more desolate than it had just moments before. Glancing around, hearing only the faint click of her own throat, she suddenly wanted more than anything to run, but she was no longer sure which direction to go. The noises she’d heard on the other side of the tree now seemed, impossibly, to be closing in from all sides. She felt helpless, isolated, alone, except for the buzzing weightless swarm of her own terror.
A shape burst out of the green, into full view, two meters tall. The bulky, fur-shrouded torso stood well above her. The long, squinting face was inhuman: cheekbones and brow jutted forward; a pair of stained tusks pushed upward from the lower jaw; the eyes that glinted from beneath its forehead were shining and intent. It was a Whiphid, Zo realized—the biggest she’d ever seen. Somewhere in his chest, he gave a thick grunting sound that might have expressed anything from appreciation to disinterest.
Zo turned and fled. She had taken three steps when an arm the size of a load-bearing girder slammed sideways against her skull, spraying bright fragments of pain through the right side of her head. Her vision shattered into a wide field of star-rattled blindness.
Star Wars: Red Harvest Page 4
