Scourge

by Jeff Grubb

  Mander brought the lightsaber out, but had it backward. He could have easily flipped it in his hands, but instead he drove the butt-end of the device into his attacker’s belly. The air rushed out of his opponent’s lungs, and Mander, not stopping, brought the metal hilt of his blade straight up, connecting with the swooper’s jaw. Now it was the big thug’s turn to fall backward from the force of the blow.

  Mander looked up at the others. Reen had downed a second one, and Eddey had lost his chair, but one of the swoop gang was collapsed at his feet. Still, there were more swoopers than allies.

  The big one was struggling to his feet, the veins rich and dark on his face, a purplish crust at the corners of his eyes. Now Mander spun the lightsaber around in his hand, igniting it as he did so. It crackled to life like caged lightning. The bully brought himself up centimeters from the tip of the blade. The others, alerted by the noise, stopped fighting immediately. Everyone stared at the lightsaber glowing like a beacon in the darkened cantina.

  Fear drained the face of the lead swooper. He suddenly looked very pale in the light of the weapon.

  “I think you should go,” said Mander. He did not need to put the Force into his voice to make his point. “Now.”

  The lead swooper took a step back, then a second, and a third. Then he turned and bolted for the door, his still-conscious allies following him. There came the satisfying sound of swoop bike engines engaging, then fading into the distance.

  Reen motioned the barkeep over to discuss damages and what to do with the unconscious gang members. Eddey picked up the big swooper’s wide-brimmed hat and tried it on. It fit passably enough. Mander turned back to the Nikto, who was now awake and plastered in fear against the back wall.

  “Mika the Hutt,” said Mander softly. “We’re looking for him. I’ve been sent by his father.”

  The Nikto stammered something in Huttese, then gulped a deep breath of air and said in Basic, “Yes, yes. I will take you to him. He’s to the north, in Temple Valley.” He rose unsteadily to his feet and almost pitched forward.

  Mander helped the Nikto out of the cantina, and saw that three of the bikes had been left beneath the dead tree. He made for them, Reen and Eddey behind him. He set the Nikto behind him on one of the bikes while Eddey broke open the security system on the ignition systems.

  “That went well,” said Reen. “You know, I didn’t expect you to really try to talk him to death.”

  “I know,” said Mander, covering his own discomfort. “But you saw the dark blood vessels. The rage.”

  “I saw it after the fight started. Tempest.”

  “Well, apparently it interfered with my Jedi mind tricks.” Mander looked at Eddey, who bypassed the security on the last swoop bike and fired it up. The engine revved satisfactorily and the Bothan gave him a thumbs-up.

  “It interfered with your abilities. That’s a bad thing,” said Reen.

  “That’s a very bad thing,” agreed Mander. “Let’s get back to the cargo skiff. We can leave the bikes there for their original owners to find and take the skiff to Temple Valley.”

  By the time they had gotten back to the skiff, the Nikto had recovered enough to apologize to all of them for abandoning his post and being found drunk. He had been entrusted to watch over the office when Brave Young Mika chose to abandon the city. That was early on, when the deaths were rampant and people were blaming the outlanders. He had been living in the office after Mika left, until a mob broke in one night. He had escaped, but the place was ruined. So he had left a note as to where he could be found. Now that help had arrived, he would take them to Temple Valley.

  Temple Valley was one of the more pleasant locations on Endregaad, more rolling hills than sharp-walled arroyos. Still, great rock formations had erupted from the landscape like partially buried cathedrals, giving the region its name. The Nikto’s directions were exact, and they topped the last rise to see an unexpected sight.

  It was a crashed spaceship, its engines ripped from their mounts by the force of the impact. A shallow trench and debris field stretched from the ruins about a kilometer to the west, with large fragments dotting the landscape like metal altars to a forgotten god. The main body of the ship was cracked almost in half lengthwise, and the port side had plowed into the hillock.

  Beneath the starboard wing a small collection of tents had been set up against the heat, using the ruined ship and a parked luxury skiff as supports. As they approached, Niktos stirred from the shade of the ship—Red, Green, and Mountain subfamilies, all descended from a common stock. All of them were armed, but when they saw the Nikto with Mander, they set up a cheer.

  Eddey settled their skiff and they debarked, the Mountain Nikto explaining in rapid Huttese to the others what had happened. He was going too fast for Mander to make out everything, but the phrases “Wise Popara” and “Jeedai” were used a great deal.

  Mander looked over at the camp beneath the ship’s wing, and another large shape moved into the sunlight. This was a Hutt, smaller than the others he had seen, his flesh a pale yellow-green with a lighter underbelly. It was wearing an incongruous zerape made out of a large blanket, and had a broad-brimmed hat shielding its eyes. Mander stepped up to the Hutt, meeting it halfway.

  “I am Mander Zuma,” Mander said in Huttese. “If you are Mika the Hutt, I should tell you that your father is concerned.”

  “I am Mika Anjiliac,” said the young Hutt in educated, precise Basic. “My father has every right to have been concerned. Welcome to ground zero for the Endregaad plague.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  MIKA THE HUTT

  “When the plague came, we had no chance to get off the planet,” said Mika. “And to be frank, I had no desire to. I had been negotiating with the miners over a particularly rich substratum of geodes, and was shocked by how quickly they succumbed to the disease. We did what we could, but had precious little medicine with us. Even my Niktos were infected, though the survivors developed an immunity.”

  They were gathered beneath the wing of the ruined craft. The Nikto bodyguards had rigged up thick fabric tarps around them that kept most of the dust at bay, and appointed the quarters in comfort for their Hutt master. Brocaded cushions were strewn about on carpeting that may have come from the ship itself. Reen and Mander sat on the cushions, while Eddey, still wearing his broad-brimmed hat, wandered around the ship’s exterior, poking at the damage. Two Nikto guards followed him at a discreet distance.

  Another Nikto brought Mika a steaming bowl, and the Hutt poised his face over the rim, letting the hot vapor rise. Despite such ministrations, the Hutt’s skin was dry and cracking in numerous places. Other servants brought Reen and Mander thin glass flutes of scentwine. Even hiding in the wilderness, Mander thought, the Hutts still liked their luxury.

  Mika breathed deeply and continued. “Things quickly went from bad to worse in Tel Bollin. Effective civil authority collapsed, and the existing stocks of medicine were exhausted. Entire blocks would be infected overnight. Then the stories began to circulate that outworlders, traders, and aliens were responsible for the plague. Houses and buildings were burned.”

  Mika sighed. “It turns out that those blaming the outworlders were right, though not the way they thought. I tracked the spread of the disease through the region and discovered that it appeared first in the Temple Valley. When things became too uncomfortable in the city, I decamped with my entourage and came looking. I left Orgamon, here, back at the Skydove offices and charged him with getting word out, and waiting for help.” He looked at the now-sober Nikto, who was chatting quietly with his companions. “It sounds like he failed in the first case, but succeeded admirably in the second.”

  The Hutt turned back to the others, regarding them with wide, expressive eyes. “I confirmed that the first and most virulent cases came from this area, and once we arrived, we searched the region until I found this ship.” He looked up at the blackened and twisted metal. “From the weathering and exposure, this wrec
k is recent. I would guess two or three weeks before the epidemic hit Tel Bollin, at most.”

  “And whose ship is this?” asked Mander.

  “That is the thing of it,” said Mika. “I do not know.”

  “It is a YV-100,” said Reen. “Corellian Engineering Corporation model, but even from the remains it looks heavily modified. That’s not unusual for this type of ship.”

  “We know the make of it, but have no record of the owner,” Mika clarified. “Nothing on our registry or that of the Miners’ Guild in Tel Bollin matches it, and none of the onboard records survived the impact. We found the bodies of the crew—Corellians, by the way—and we burned the remains as best we could in accord with their customs.”

  “You could pull the inspection numbers off the engines,” suggested Reen. “They have customized serial numbers.”

  The Hutt paused for a moment, and then nodded at one of his guards. The Nikto immediately went over to one of the cast-off engines with a datapad. Meanwhile, Mika pointed to the west. “I assume they were smugglers—geode smuggling is fairly common here. Otherwise they would have landed at Tel Bollin. Nearly as I can reconstruct it, the ship came in at a very shallow angle from the west. I think it clipped one of the sentinel stones in that direction. Perhaps it was at night, or in a bad storm. Had the pilot been more capable, she would have been able to land the craft. Perhaps they were already affected by the disease.”

  “What was the ship carrying?” asked Reen.

  The Hutt shrugged, a full-body ripple that radiated down his back. “It was empty when my people found it. It could have been making a dead-head run. Traveling empty. Perhaps coming to pick something or someone up.”

  “Or someone else got to the wreck before you did,” said Eddey. Mander hadn’t realized that the Bothan had returned and had been standing there, listening to their discussion. Eddey crossed over to Mander and held out a cupped hand. “I found this near the remains of the cargo bay.” He carefully poured the contents into Mander’s palm.

  Eddey had given Mander a handful of sand. Mander looked closer, and saw that among the sand were bright crystals of purple.

  “Tempest,” said Reen, who was leaning in as well.

  “There’s not a lot of it, and it’s mixed in with the dirt and sand, but I think it came from the ship,” said Eddey.

  “Tempest?” said Mika, his eyes wide with curiosity.

  “A hard spice, very addictive,” said Mander, offering the tainted sand to the Hutt. Mika shrank back but waved for one of his Nikto servants to take it. A proper container was provided, and the Hutt stared at it, as if trying to divine its mysteries with his large, bright eyes.

  “There were some other purple splotches in the sand when we arrived,” said Mika at last. “I had thought it to be merely some lubricants that leaked out of the ship after the crash. It is a spice, then. But not one I have seen before.”

  “We’ve seen it before, and its effects,” said Reen. “It promotes sudden rage and discolored veins near the surface of the skin.” She raised her voice slightly at the end, obviously fishing.

  Mika frowned. “I think I saw some humans with those effects in town. My family does deal in spice on occasion, but not the harder varieties. My father would not hear of it. But it does help make sense of it all. If the ship was carrying a dangerous drug, they would have been making a rendezvous with a local contact out here. Something goes wrong and the ship crashes, and the contact finds the ship first.”

  “And brings the spice into town for resale, bringing the plague with him,” Reen finished.

  The Hutt nodded at the idea and added, “And if he hired local geode miners to help move it, that would be why they were infected first.”

  “I found the drug in Makem Te,” said Mander, “and crossed blades with some members of the Bomu clan—Rodians who were selling it. Then, when we hyper-jumped into the system, we were immediately attacked by a raider that identified itself as Bomu as well.”

  Mika leaned forward, intrigued. “So if these Rodians were involved in selling the spice, this ship may have been one of theirs. Or perhaps the raiders knew about the spice shipment and engaged the smugglers’ ship, and that is why it crashed in the first place.”

  “Possibly both the Rodians and the Corellians you found dead here work for the same operation,” said Mander.

  Mika leaned back and stroked what could have been, beneath the rolls of fat, his chin. “Your raider would have been in space because they couldn’t get to the surface and the shipment of Tempest.”

  “Or they had nothing to do with this shipment at all, and were just in space waiting for us,” said Reen. At that the Hutt’s wide eyes turned on her with a quizzical look.

  Mander said, “Rodians take vengeance very seriously, and we gave them good enough cause. And they may have been involved in the death of a … companion of ours.”

  The Hutt looked at Reen and recognition dawned. “You are a Pantoran, like the other Jedi. Toro, his name was?”

  “His name was,” said Reen, frowning. “He was killed.”

  The Hutt’s face fell in on itself. “I am sorry,” he said, and sounded like he meant it. “I met him only a few times, when he was negotiating with the family. He seemed very brave and honest.”

  “It’s one of the things we are looking into,” said Mander, and the Hutt turned back to him. “The Bomus may be after us because of the Tempest, or they may be after us because of the coordinates of the Indrexu Spiral.”

  “Ah,” said the young Hutt. “That deal went through, then? And that was how you got here. Yes, I’ve used the route myself.”

  “Was there anyone else interested in those coordinates?” asked Mander. “Or more important, was there anyone who would not want other people to have those coordinates?”

  “No,” said Mika, after a moment’s thought. “We … acquired … that hyperjump path about six standard months ago, and used it to speed our deliveries. But we also found it was a route better for light freighters than big ships. My father always said, Jopando ki fofon—information is like fruit. It is perishable, and can quickly go bad. As soon as you discover something, the chance that someone else discovers the same thing—or discovers that you have discovered it—goes up exponentially. The Bothans know this very well.” He nodded to Eddey when he said this, who touched the tip of his hat in recognition.

  Mika returned to the subject, saying “We put out word about the existence of the route, and were surprised when the most reasonable response came from the new Jedi Order. We figure it was a good sale, in that you would then distribute that information with less of an immediate profit, and we would benefit most from the situation. You can check with my father, but there were no other serious bidders that I knew of.”

  “That doesn’t mean that someone else wasn’t using the Indrexu Spiral, and hoping to keep others away,” said Mander.

  The Hutt thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Especially if they were using the Spiral for smuggling this hard spice, this Tempest,” said Mika. “They might be properly motivated to stop anyone who threatens to give away their secrets.”

  “Including the Anjiliacs—” Mander began, but he was interrupted from pursuing this tack further by sudden shouts from the Nikto guards. They were pointing up the hillside that led back to Tel Bollin.

  Mander rose and walked to the edge of the shade provided by the ruined wing to get a better look. The ridge was occupied by about two dozen humans, all mounted on colorful swoop bikes. The Jedi noticed that the three bikes they had liberated earlier and later abandoned were among their number.

  “Our friends are back,” said Mander.

  “Friends?” said Mika.

  “Swoop gang,” shouted Reen, pulling her blaster. “Tempest addicts.” Eddey had pulled his blaster as well, and was alongside her. Mander noted that his was a small, discreet weapon, and realized he had not seen him use it previously. The Jedi ignited his lightsaber, the blade coming alive with a harsh cra
ckle.

  Behind them a handful of Nikto closed over Mika, hustling him back to his larger skiff. The others were scrambling with their blaster carbines to find cover.

  The leader of the swoop gang—the large one without the hat—raised a hand and let out a war whoop. The wave of swoops surged down from the crest, their forward blasters firing.

  The opening volley caught a few of the Niktos in the open, cutting them down, but now about three others had taken up positions among the wreckage and were returning fire. A couple of the swoop riders fell, but the entire wave came on.

  One bike in particular, festooned with a gundark skull on the leading edge, bore down on Mander, weapons blazing. The Jedi deflected the blasterfire, then, as the bike was almost on top of him, he leapt upward.

  It was a good leap, and he cleared the gundark skull and the forward repulsor. He tumbled over the bike, dragging his blade beneath him as he spun. The rider tried to fall out of his seat, but moved too slowly, and his head and right arm struck the dirt separately. The unmanned swoop continued forward and caught an outcropping, toppling end-over-end into the crashed and ruined starship.

  Mander landed and winced at a sudden pain in his ankle. By that time, the first wave of the swoops had passed through the camp, and was now regrouping at the far side for another strafing run. Only about four had fallen, leaving more than a dozen. The leader gave another wave, and with a shout they surged back into the camp.

  Mander looked around quickly. There was no sign of Mika and his defenders. Eddey and Reen had hunkered down behind some crates and were returning fire, shot for shot. On closer inspection, Mander could see that most of the original Nikto defenders were down. The attackers had mobility and firepower, he realized. The best he could do to even the odds was to take out the chain of command.