Allegiance

by Timothy Zahn

  Deserters. Stormtroopers. Five of them.

  The Hand of Judgment.

  “It makes for an interesting story, anyway,” she said, trying to keep her voice casual. “Where are these renegades now?”

  “Probably off somewhere doing more good deeds,” Caaldra said. “The point is that Ozzel hadn’t reported their disappearance and figured his neck was for it after you interrogated his other stormtroopers or whatever it was you did while you were on his ship.”

  “Actually, I tapped into his computer,” Mara murmured, a horrible thought digging into her like a knife blade. It was the Reprisal’s attack on Gepparin, and only that attack, that had laid the burden of guilt squarely on Governor Choard’s shoulders. But if Caaldra was telling the truth, then Choard could very well be a completely innocent man.

  An innocent man whom she’d just sent five stormtrooper deserters to kill.

  She clenched her teeth. She had to get out of here, and she had to get out now. Lifting another chair from the stack, she added it to the line. One more, and she should have enough. “So what exactly is it you want?” she called, stalling for time.

  “I already told you,” Caaldra said, a whisper of suspicion starting to creep into his voice. “I want a free pass out of this. What are you doing in there?”

  “Waiting for you to spell out the details,” Mara countered, silently cursing herself. Preoccupied with her escape plan and even more so with the miscarriage of justice she’d set into motion, she’d completely forgotten that Caaldra had already presented his request. “I know people like you,” she improvised. “You’ll want everything done to your exact specifications.”

  “Absolutely,” Caaldra said, the suspicion in his voice deepening. “I’ll be taking the Happer’s Way—we’ll need a quick repair job on the cargo bay first—and then you’ll provide me safe passage off Shelkonwa with enough fuel—”

  “Wait a second,” Mara cut in as she set the final chair in line. Now all she had to do was figure out what she was going to do once she got outside. “You don’t really expect me to let you fly off with a ship full of military property, do you?”

  “Consider it my reward for helping you break up a potentially disastrous political crisis,” Caaldra countered. “Disra was all set to issue a declaration of independence and take Shelsha sector out of the Empire.”

  “You must be joking,” Mara scoffed, moving another chair to the wall. Unlike the others, she didn’t set this one upright but laid it flat with its back sticking out through the opening. “Or else Disra must be joking. He’d have half the Fleet in orbit over his head inside of a week.”

  “You really think Palpatine would take overt military action?” Caaldra asked. “You don’t think he’d cut a deal instead to keep it quiet?”

  “Emperor Palpatine doesn’t make deals like that,” Mara said, lifting two more chairs from their stack and moving them to the hole. Setting one of them down temporarily out of the way, she maneuvered the other onto the lying chair’s legs, trying to hook them together so that the new chair would brace the one leaning outside.

  “Not even if one of his own very special agents recommended it?”

  Mara nodded grimly to herself as the reason for this conversation finally became clear. Caaldra wasn’t interested in any deals. All he wanted was to sound her out, to try to gauge Imperial Center’s reaction to their insane neo-Separatist scheme. “Not even then,” she told him as she locked the last chair into position with the other two. “But it’s a moot point, because I’d never make such a recommendation in the first place. You’re talking treason, and treason carries an automatic death penalty.”

  Faintly through the door, she heard his sigh. “Too bad,” he said. “In that case you’re not worth anything at all to me. Good-bye, agent.” There was the crack of a blaster shot—

  And suddenly a waist-high wall of flame erupted by the door and raced across the room toward her.

  Mara reacted instantly, throwing herself off her unsteady perch atop the tables and leaping for the first of her line of chairs. She hit it and bounded off toward the second.

  She was in midair on her way to the third chair when the wave front swept past, engulfing her legs in flame. Stretching out with the Force to suppress the pain, she kept going. Ahead, dimly visible through the roiling smoke and heat shimmer, she could see the hole. Landing on the final chair in line, she ducked her head and leapt through the opening onto the chair back sticking out over the yard.

  The chair creaked ominously as her weight came down on it, but with the other two chairs providing a counterweight it held. The cool night air rushed over her, and she paused long enough to inhale a couple of breaths into her scorched lungs.

  But her position here wasn’t significantly safer than the one she’d just left. The guards she’d escaped from a few minutes earlier were still wandering around the grounds, looking for fresh targets. Even as she turned her face back toward the flames, a shout of discovery came from somewhere and the blaster bolts again began flying past. Pulling out her lightsaber, Mara ignited it and shoved off the chair back, aiming for one of the third-floor windows.

  The transparisteel proved much easier to cut through on the fly than the stone wall she’d tackled the first time around. The newly cut hole led into a wide reception area, and even as she hit the floor she was racing silently on the thick carpet toward where she estimated the end of the burning storeroom below her would be.

  She reached that point, went five steps farther, and stopped. “Here’s something you won’t expect,” she murmured, and slashed a circle around her through the floor.

  With a crackle of shattered wood and stone, the circle collapsed. Mara rode it down, bending her knees to absorb the impact as it smashed itself onto the floor below.

  There were four of them grouped around the storeroom door: Caaldra and three armed men in civilian clothing. All four heads were turned in Mara’s direction as she stepped off the broken section of flooring, their expressions ranging from stunned to dumbfounded. The man at the far left recovered faster than the others, whipping his blaster up for a quick shot. His reward was to be the first to die as Mara’s lightsaber threw the shot straight back at him.

  The second and third men, despite their civilian garb, were clearly as military as Caaldra himself. Without a word or even a hand signal passing between them, they dived simultaneously in opposite directions, both opening fire while still in midair. Mara deflected one of the bolts, leaping toward that shooter as the other man’s bolt sizzled through the air behind her. The first man’s eyes widened as she took another quick step toward him; he got off two more useless shots before the magenta blade slashed through his torso. Twisting back around, Mara raised her weapon just in time to send the other man’s final shot back at him.

  And Caaldra was alone.

  “I saved you for last,” Mara said conversationally, holding her lightsaber in casual guard position against the blaster pointed at her. “Any last words?”

  “You’re throwing away a big score,” Caaldra warned. His voice was tight, but Mara could sense his mind running coldly and dispassionately through his options. “It’s still not too late to make a deal.”

  “The deals ended when you tried to cook me,” Mara said, taking a step toward him.

  “At least give me a fighting chance,” Caaldra said, a note of feigned pleading in his voice. Lowering his blaster, he tossed it away. “You’re a fighter; I’m a fighter. Let’s settle this hand-to-hand, warrior-to-warrior, no weapons.”

  Mara raised her eyebrows. “You trying to appeal to my professional pride?” she asked.

  “I’m appealing to your sense of fair play,” Caaldra corrected. “Or are you like Vader, and don’t have one?”

  Mara felt her face harden. “You’re on.” Not even bothering to close down her lightsaber, she tossed it to the side.

  As she did so, Caaldra lifted his left hand to reveal a concealed hold-out blaster. “Fool,” he bit out, and fire
d.

  Directly into the lightsaber blade, as Mara calmly recalled the weapon to her hand.

  Caaldra jerked as the deflected shot burned through the center of his chest. For a moment he stayed standing, staring at Mara in disbelief. Then his knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor.

  Mara stepped over to him, nudging the hold-out blaster out of his limp hand with her foot. “I always play fair,” she said softly. “Exactly as fair as my opponents.”

  The unseeing eyes had no answer. Closing down her lightsaber, Mara looked around. She was in another expansive reception area like the one whose floor she’d just come through. Across the way she could see a pair of carved doors marking an entrance to the ballroom balcony. If Brightwater had been right about the governor having guests, the ballroom might be a good place to start looking for him.

  She only hoped she could get to him before LaRone did.

  With its lock no longer connected to the main part of the door, the kitchen entrance wasn’t really sealable anymore. Grave did his best, blasting a section of plumbing free and wedging it between the handle and the wall. Then, with LaRone taking point, they headed in.

  Most of the kitchen staff had made their frantic escape by the time the stormtroopers wove their way through the various work areas and equipment islands and toward a door at the far diagonal end. “Where to?” LaRone asked.

  “Ballroom,” Marcross said tersely.

  LaRone nodded, remembering Brightwater’s speculation that Governor Choard was entertaining. “Okay,” he said. “Watch for trouble.”

  The trouble was waiting in the corridor as they burst through the kitchen doorway: a half dozen guards standing in a semicircle with drawn blasters.

  Fortunately for those guards, the Hand of Judgment didn’t kill unnecessarily. Even more fortunately, they’d set up their defensive line well within an E-11’s stun range. “Set for stun,” LaRone ordered, flipping his selector and squeezing the trigger. The blue rings spread outward and the nearest guard twitched and fell over, his blaster sending a final spasmodic shot into the ceiling. One of the others managed to get two shots off, one of which caught LaRone in his upper chest plate, before they were all down.

  “You all right?” Grave asked, leaning over for a look at the blackened spot on LaRone’s armor.

  “No problem,” LaRone assured him, wincing as he moved his shoulder. There was definitely a burn there, but the armor had blocked most of the energy, and the injury wasn’t bad enough to slow him down. Marcross was already on the move, he saw, heading down the corridor toward an archway enveloped by a gently undulating light curtain. “Marcross, slow it down.”

  But the other either didn’t hear the order or else ignored it. He kept going, lowering his E-11 into hip-firing position as he reached the curtain. There was a ripple of multicolored light from his armor as he passed through it, and then he was gone.

  Swearing under his breath, LaRone set off at a quick jog, Grave and Quiller right behind him. They reached the curtain, and LaRone ducked through.

  The ballroom was comfortably full of elegantly dressed men and women, clearly the top level of Shelkonwan society. But at the moment they looked more like elegantly dressed statues than living beings. They stood silent and stunned, some with drinks frozen halfway to their lips, staring at Marcross as he strode toward the center of the room.

  There, looking as surprised as his guests, was Governor Choard, his huge bulk squeezed into a set of formal-wear, his bushy beard glistening in the fancy lighting.

  “Close it up,” LaRone murmured to the others and set off after Marcross, trying to catch up while still keeping his pace to something professional and dignified. The edge of the crowd melted away at their approach, and they reached Marcross as he came to a halt a couple of meters in front of Choard.

  Predictably, LaRone thought, the governor got in the first word. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  LaRone took a deep breath. “Governor Barshnis Choard, you’ve been found guilty of treason and condemned to death,” he announced. “We have been authorized to carry out that sentence.”

  “What?” Choard said, his jaw dropping in amazement. “That’s absurd.”

  Grave and Quiller, LaRone noted peripherally, already had their E-11s leveled. And Jade had been quite clear about their orders.

  But even as LaRone opened his mouth, he found the command sticking in his throat. He couldn’t order the others to fire on an unresisting civilian. Not like this. Not after Teardrop. “Will you come with us quietly?” he asked instead.

  “Go with Imperial stormtroopers?” Choard snorted. “Certainly not.” He jabbed a finger at a tall man wearing a fur-edged drape tunic. “Siner—go get my guards. Tell them the intruders they’re looking for are here.”

  “Everyone stay right where you are,” LaRone ordered, trying desperately to figure out what to do. Did Choard’s defiance provide enough justification to carry out Jade’s orders? Did he really want it to?

  And then, to his astonishment, Marcross turned, swinging his blaster rifle around to point at LaRone’s chest. “Lower your weapons,” he said, his voice low but determined. “All of you.”

  “What?” LaRone demanded.

  “You heard me,” Marcross said tightly. “All three of you. Now.”

  For a long moment LaRone stared at that blank white faceplate, trying to read something—anything—in the other’s stance. But there was nothing there. “I mean it, Commander,” Marcross said into the brittle silence. “Put them down.”

  Commander … and suddenly, in LaRone’s mind’s eye, they were back aboard the Suwantek after that skirmish with the swoop gang, their first battle as a team. That’s part of leadership, Marcross had said as the two of them stood alone in the cargo bay. Knowing and understanding the men of your command. And trusting them.

  Trusting …

  “Drop your weapons,” LaRone confirmed quietly, lowering the barrel of his E-11 and bending over to set it onto the floor in front of him. From beside him came two soft clattering sounds, unnaturally loud in the silence, as Quiller and Grave did the same.

  “I don’t understand this at all,” Choard said, his voice still angry but starting to fill with confusion. “What in the worlds is going on?”

  “What’s going on,” Marcross said, turning his E-11 around and handing it to the governor, “is that I’ve just saved your life.” Taking a step back, he removed his helmet.

  Choard’s eyes widened. “Saberan?”

  “Hello, Uncle Barshnis,” Marcross said, nodding to him. “It’s been a long time.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  THE BALLROOM WAS AS QUIET AS A CRYPT AS MARA slipped through the door onto the balcony. The railing was a solid wall of carved marble, blocking her view of whatever activity—or lack of it—was going on down there. Moving to the edge of the balcony, she eased an eye above the wall.

  LaRone and his three stormtroopers were there, facing Choard with perhaps a hundred other people standing dead-still around them. Marcross had taken off his helmet.

  Choard was holding Marcross’s blaster rifle on LaRone, Grave, and Quiller.

  Mara’s first reaction was to breathe a silent sigh of relief. Not only had she made it to Choard in time, but Marcross had apparently come forward and stopped LaRone from carrying out Mara’s flawed execution order. Now all she had to do was get down there, confirm that the governor was in the clear, and get them searching for Disra and any of his allies who might still be at large.

  “Your uncle?” LaRone said, his stunned voice carrying clearly up to the balcony.

  “I told you I hung out with his son when I was a teen,” Marcross reminded him. “You think a sector governor would let just any riffraff do that?”

  “I still don’t know what’s going on, Saberan, but I’m immensely glad to see you,” Choard said. “What are you doing here? Are you and these others from Lord Vader’s group?”

  “No, we’re a separate unit,” Marc
ross said. “This is all of us there are, plus a colleague who’s keeping most of your outside guards pinned down.”

  “I presume that’s why no one’s come to help,” Choard rumbled. “Now, tell me about this insane treason charge.”

  Mara looked around the edge of the balcony. To her annoyance, there appeared to be no stairways leading down to the main floor. She would have to either jump, which wouldn’t do her burned feet and legs any good, or else go back out into the reception area and find a way down from there.

  “They think you’re involved in a plot to use pirate gangs to harass shipping and steal Imperial property,” Marcross said. “In fact, there’s an Imperial agent in Makrin City right now who was sent here to kill you.”

  “I see,” Choard said, his tone suddenly thoughtful.

  “It seems to me the best plan would be to call Lord Vader and have him put you under the protection of the Five-oh-first while we get it all straightened out,” Marcross continued. “Let me borrow your comlink—mine won’t connect with any of their frequencies.” He took a step toward Choard—

  “I think not,” the governor said quietly, swiveling the blaster rifle to point squarely at Marcross’s stomach. “The last thing we want in here is more Imperials.”

  Mara stiffened, her relief transforming instantly into icy rage. So she’d been right the first time. Only instead of listening to her instincts, she’d let Caaldra and his smooth talk convince her otherwise. And now Marcross and the others were about to pay the price for her failure.

  She stretched out to the Force, trying to pull the blaster rifle from Choard’s hands. But the distance, the emotional turbulence generated by a roomful of stunned partygoers, and the simmering distraction of Mara’s own burns combined to defeat her efforts.

  Which left her only one option, only one chance to help LaRone and the others. Digging into one of her belt pouches, she pulled out the mist canister she’d been planning to use earlier to cover their approach across the palace grounds. The device wasn’t really intended for indoor use, but with her blaster gone and her useless grenades back at the Happer’s Way it was all she had.