by James Luceno
“I did … my lord.” Malgus’s mere presence pulled the last words out of him.
“Explain.”
Vrath found it more difficult than he would have imagined to compose his thoughts. “A freighter is en route to Coruscant. A Jedi is aboard.”
“Just one?”
“As far as I know just one, yes,” Vrath said, nodding. “A woman. Human, mid-thirties, I’d say. Long, light brown hair. She is flying with a man named Zeerid Korr. As far as I know, they are the only crew.”
“How do you know this woman is a Jedi?”
Vrath was starting to feel cold. He had to work to keep his voice steady. “I saw her using a green lightsaber. I saw her do things with the Force.” He held up his hands to show Malgus his wrists, still red from the binders Malgus had unlocked. “Things like this.”
Malgus eased half a step closer to Vrath and Vrath felt decidedly overwhelmed. “Tell me then, Vrath Xizor, what else is aboard this ship and why and when it is coming to Coruscant?”
Vrath bumped up against the doors behind him. He considered lying but did not think he could pull it off.
“Engspice, my lord. The ship is carrying engspice.”
He saw connections being made, conclusions being drawn, and more questions forming in the deep wells of Malgus’s eyes.
“This Zeerid Korr is a spicerunner?”
“He is.”
“Why would a Jedi associate with a spicerunner, Vrath Xizor?”
“I … don’t know, my lord.”
“And you?” Malgus loomed over him, all dark eyes, all dark armor, all dark power. “Are you a spicerunner? A business rival, maybe?”
The lie exited his mouth before wisdom could stop it. “No, no, I am a former Imperial. A sniper. I’m … I’m just doing my part for the Empire, my lord.”
Malgus inhaled deeply, exhaled, the mechanical sound heavy with disappointment. “You are a poor liar. You are a rival spicerunner, or a killer in service to one of the syndicates that runs spice.”
Vrath dared not deny it. He stood there, frozen, pinioned by Malgus’s eyes.
“When is this freighter due to arrive?” Malgus asked. “And how do they plan to get through the blockade?”
Vrath found his mouth was dry. He cleared his throat. “They are coming soon. Today. They must.”
“Because of the engspice?”
Vrath could not meet Malgus’s eyes. “Yes. I don’t know how they intend to get through, but I know they will try.”
Malgus stared at him for a long second that felt like an eternity to Vrath.
“You will remain on the bridge, Vrath Xizor. If this freighter and the Jedi it carries show up, I will overlook your illegal flight into restricted space. Perhaps I will even compensate you for your service. But if the ship doesn’t show then I will devise a … suitable punishment for a spicerunner found in restricted space. Does that seem to you unreasonable?”
Vrath choked on his response. “No, my lord.”
“Excellent.”
Malgus turned from Vrath and Vrath felt as though the air had become easier to breathe. Malgus took a seat in his command chair and spoke to Commander Jard.
“Commander, intensify all scanning until further notice. Any unusual readings are to be reported to me. And dispatch a squad of fighters to put eyes on all incoming ships.”
“Most of the fighter fleet is otherwise assigned, my lord.”
“Use shuttles then.”
“Yes, my lord,” answered Jard.
Vrath stared at the cruiser’s viewscreen, hoping that Zeerid had not scratched the run for some reason. Or just as bad, that Zeerid had somehow beaten him to Coruscant and already snuck through the blockade.
He had never before felt so vulnerable.
“We have to jump right on their heels, Aryn.”
Aryn did not bother to respond. She dwelled in the Force, floated in and on the warm network of lines that connected all things, one to another. Her consciousness expanded to see and feel everything near her. She focused on her perception of the passage of time, first on how it felt as she moved through it, then on spreading it, stretching it, until she could linger in a millisecond as if it were a moment, then a minute. To Zeerid it would appear that she were a blur of motion, existing simultaneously in multiple places. To her, it felt as if the universe around her had stilled. She smiled, seeing the moments that hung before her, each millisecond a long moment in which she could think, in which she could act. The effort taxed her, and she knew she could not maintain it for long.
“Watch the scanner,” Zeerid said, his words a lifetime in the utterance.
She did not watch the scanner. Her body could respond faster than any machine. Instead she watched the viewscreen. The Imperial ships had finished their hydrogen skim and now maneuvered into a formation suitable for a hyperspace jump, the supply ships within the ring of the frigate escort.
She tensed.
“They’re forming up,” Zeerid said. The waves of his tension crashed against her but she dammed them off, did not allow them to disrupt her focus.
She watched, waited, waited …
As one, the Imperial ships began to stretch in her perception. For a nanosecond, all of them seemed to stretch to infinity, their rear engines a hundred thousand kilometers off Fatman’s bow, their forms reaching across and through an incomprehensible distance. She knew it was illusion, that is was a trick of her perception caused by the moment they entered hyperspace seeming to freeze before her eyes.
She engaged Fatman’s hyperdrive and the black night of space turned blue.
“Now, Aryn! Now!” Zeerid said, but he was far too late.
They were already gone.
She remained immersed in the Force as Fatman surged through hyperspace. The ordinary maddening churn slowed to a crawl of spirals and whorls, the script of the universe writ large in characters of blue, turquoise, midnight, and lavender. She fancied there might be meaning in the lines, an important revelation that hung before her, just beyond the reach of her consciousness.
She lost track of the slow passage of time. Zeerid spoke to her from time to time but his words bounced off her perception, ricocheted without her comprehension. In time, something he said penetrated her understanding.
“Coming out, Aryn. Be ready.”
She watched Zeerid, moving in slow motion, pull back on the lever that engaged the hyperdrive.
She readied herself, and the moment the blue of hyperspace started to fade into black, she pushed a series of buttons and switches that turned Fatman cold except for life support, thrusters, and the small amount of power they’d need to create an electromagnetic bond.
The blue disappeared in favor of the midnight of space, and she returned to normal perception.
“Engaging thrusters,” Zeerid said. “Well done, Aryn.”
Sweat soaked her robes, pasted them to her body. She felt as if she had not slept in days.
“Now it gets fun,” Zeerid said.
The trailing freighter in the convoy, five times the size of Fatman, flew right before them. They had jumped out within the ring of frigates and gone cold so fast the frigates would not have perceived their arrival. They were directly under one of the freighters, a kilometer beneath its underside, maybe less.
In the distance, the metal-and-duracrete sphere of Coruscant floated in space. The rest of the convoy spread out before them. The trailing freighter’s ion engines fired, and it started to head out.
“Not so fast,” Zeerid said.
He punched the thrusters and Fatman lurched toward the freighter until its underside filled their field of vision. It started to pull away.
Zeerid hit the thrusters again.
“There it is,” he said, closing on the freighter’s cargo bay. His hands flew over the instrument panel, using one thruster then another to angle the ship, finally flipping Fatman over so that her flat ventral side faced a flat spot on the Imperial freighter. As they closed, Zeerid flipped a switch, usi
ng Fatman’s deflector array to form an electromagnetic field. He killed the thrusters and they coasted in.
“Brace,” he said.
Fatman closed a few hundred meters more and then the electromagnetic field did the rest, pulling them tight against the Imperial ship. Aryn felt barely a lurch.
“As soft as a kiss,” Zeerid said, and eased back in his seat. He looked over at Aryn, all grins, seemingly unsurprised by his success. “Let’s take a ride.”
Malgus felt a flash of discomfort, the irritating needle stab of a light-side user, the feeling oddly similar to that which he had felt when he’d fought Master Zallow in the Temple. The feeling lasted barely an instant and disappeared, leaving only a sensory ghost in its wake.
“Are you all right, my lord?” Jard said.
Malgus waved a hand dismissively. He sat in the command chair and the viewscreen of Valor showed the distant silver-and-white triangles of an Imperial convoy just out of hyperspace.
“Magnify the convoy,” he said, and the image grew large enough to see the ships—blocky freighters escorted by the much smaller, sleeker navy frigates. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Jard monitored incoming transmissions and ships’ registries from the command lectern at which he stood.
“All appears in order, Darth Malgus.”
Malgus examined the convoy’s details on his own command readout. They bore medical supplies, spare parts, and a contingent of Imperial soldiers. All perfectly ordinary.
“They are requesting landing instructions, my lord.”
“Provide it to them. But have the shuttles put eyes on them.”
“We could delay them, my lord. If you think something is amiss.”
“No. Let’s get those supplies on the ground so they can be distributed.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Aryn and Zeerid both hunched in their seats and said nothing, as if their silence within the cockpit would somehow assist Fatman in passing through the blockade. Zeerid radiated both apprehension and excitement. The angle at which Fatman had connected to the freighter restricted their field of vision to seventy or eighty degrees. The system moved into and out of their view, one small slice at a time. The convoy was on an approach vector and moving at less than one-half. Aryn could see the tail end of the starboard side of another freighter fifteen kilometers away.
“Can anyone see us?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
“Not at that distance,” Zeerid said. “We just look like part of the line of the ship. We’ll cut loose during atmospheric entry. Their sensors will be blacked out and we’ll be gone before they’re wise to us. I think we’re going to make it, Aryn.”
She nodded. She thought so, too.
Seconds slogged by, stretched into minutes.
“We have to be getting close,” Zeerid said.
Motion near the tail end of the nearby freighter drew Aryn’s eye. A small ship moved slowly around the freighter. Its tri-winged configuration told her it was an Imperial shuttle. She watched it for a time, unconcerned, until another came into view, this one cruising underneath the freighter.
“What are those shuttles doing?” she asked.
He frowned. “I have no idea.”
They watched the shuttles move methodically along the length and breadth of the tail section of the freighter.
“They’re checking its exterior,” Aryn said, and she felt Zeerid’s level of apprehension rise as he realized the same thing.
“Maybe it suffered damage in hyperspace,” Zeerid said. “Could be they’re just checking the one.”
“Could be,” Aryn said, and knew that neither of them believed it.
Zeerid cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his neck. “If we get seen, we either make a dash for the atmosphere and try to get lost under it, or we jump into hyperspace.”
“I need to get to the planet.”
Zeerid nodded. “Me, too. It’s unanimous then. We’ll make a dash.”
Malgus sat in his chair and watched his shuttles slide around the freighters, sand flies to banthas. None had reported seeing anything unusual.
One of the junior officers on a scanner called Commander Jard to him. The two conferred briefly, and Jard returned to his command lectern near Malgus.
“What is it?” Malgus asked.
“An anomalous reading from the Dromo,” Jard said. “An unusual magnetic signature.”
Malgus saw Vrath tense and lean toward them.
“Halt them and send the shuttles over.”
“My lord, it could just be an engine malfunction, scanner noise.”
Malgus thought not. “Do it, Commander.”
Jard raised the Dromo on the ship-to-ship. “Freighter Dromo, come to a full stop immediately.”
He cut off the connection before the Dromo’s captain could protest, then dispatched the shuttles.
“If there’s anything to it,” Jard said. “We’ll soon know.”
Aryn and Zeerid watched first one then another shuttle peel away from the other vessel and start toward them. Zeerid cursed as their freighter began to slow.
“Are we stopping?” Aryn asked.
Zeerid nodded, licked his lips. “I think we go hot right now. I don’t want a cold ship when they spot us.”
“If you fire up the engines, their scanners will pick us up.”
“They’re going to see us anyway. Those shuttles are coming. Let’s fire her up and make our run. You ready?”
Aryn watched the shuttles close the gap between them. She nodded. “Ready.”
Zeerid pushed buttons and flipped switches. Fatman came back to life.
The communications officer spun in his chair. “Sir, secured communication from Darth Angral. Shall I put it through?”
“What have the shuttles found?” Malgus asked Jard.
“Not there yet, my lord.”
Vrath turned his head sideways, as if he heard better out of one ear than another.
“Anomalous reading just flared and vanished,” the scan officer said.
“Vanished?” Jard asked.
“I’m getting something else,” said the scan officer.
“Darth Malgus,” said the communication officer. “Darth Angral insists I put him through.”
“Put him through,” Malgus said irritably, and slapped the comm button. He put a wireless earpiece in his ear so Angral’s words would be heard only by him.
“What is it, my lord?”
Darth Angral’s smooth voice carried over the connection. “Malgus, how goes the patrol?”
“I am in the middle of something, Darth Angral. I beg you to be brief.”
Before Angral could reply, the scan officer said, “Engines. Sir, I think there’s a ship hiding in the Dromo’s shadow.”
“That’s it!” Vrath said. “That is them!”
“Alert the shuttles,” Jard said. “Now.”
“Engines ready to burn,” Zeerid said.
The shuttles, perhaps a kilometer or two away, either spotted them or got word of Fatman’s presence. One peeled left, the other right. Fatman’s thrusters pushed it off the freighter. Zeerid engaged the ion drives and Fatman screamed through the space between the two shuttles. He throttled the freighter’s engines to full and headed straight for the next nearest freighter.
Aryn had flown with Zeerid many times but had forgotten what an instinctive flier he was. He seemed to consult his instruments only rarely, instead relying on intuition, experience, and his own reflexes.
A bit like Force-piloting without the Force, she supposed.
Fatman twirled a spiral as it closed on the nearest freighter and pelted along its exterior.
“Give me a hug,” Zeerid muttered.
Aryn gripped the armrests of her chair, expecting the red lines of the frigates’ plasma cannons to light the sky at any moment, but no fire came. She checked the scanner. No fighters yet, either.
“What are they waiting on?” she said.
Zeerid ran Fatman along
the bulkhead of the freighter, close enough that Aryn felt as if she could have reached out and touched it. She imagined the crew of the Imperial freighter ducking low as Fatman buzzed them.
“Too much traffic and we’re staying too close,” he said, whipping Fatman over and past the bridge of the freighter. “They don’t want to hit their own ships.”
Jard’s voice was tense with urgency. “That’s a Corellian XS freighter, my lord.”
Vrath nodded and pointed at the viewscreen. “That’s the one I told you about, Darth Malgus. Shoot him down!”
Malgus used a blast of power to throw Vrath against the far wall.
“Shut your mouth,” Malgus said to him.
“Are you speaking to me?” Angral asked in his earpiece.
Malgus had forgotten about Angral. “Of course not, my lord. Give me a moment, please.”
He muted the earpiece and eyed the viewscreen. He could not shoot the freighter down in the midst of the convoy. Valor’s armaments could inadvertently hit an Imperial ship. The frigates would be in the same situation. Their formation was designed to thwart attacks from outside the convoy, not attacks from within.
“Keep the ship on screen. Pursue at full and order the rest of the convoy to get clear.”
“Yes, my lord,” Jard said, and made it happen.
Valor’s engines fired on full and the cruiser lurched after the freighter.
Vrath climbed to his feet, favoring his side.
Possibilities played out in Malgus’s mind. With a Jedi aboard, shooting the freighter down could undermine the peace negotiations. Of course, the mere fact that a Jedi was inbound to Coruscant arguably undermined the peace process already.
Malgus stared at the viewscreen, watched the cruiser gain on the freighter. In moments he would get a clear field of fire.
The Empire needed war to thrive. He knew that.
He needed war to thrive. He knew that, too.
He had it within his power, possibly, to reignite the war.
He saw Coruscant in the viewscreen beyond the freighter and imagined it in flames.
The flashing light on his console reminded him that Darth Angral was waiting.
“Hail the freighter,” he said.
