He did perk up, though not visibly to the pilot, when the shuttle, in its final descent into Hapan airspace, came within sight of the cliffside approach to the palace of the Queen Mother. The entire cliff, towering as high as an office building, had been carved in the likeness of some long-dead Hapan noblewoman, down to the too-perfect features and intricately detailed jewelry.
His visible eye was alert, taking in every detail, as the shuttle entered the visitors’ hangar of the palace, incongruously through the mouth of the giant carving. Following space traffic controller directions, the pilot immediately turned to starboard, sending the shuttle along a series of bay spaces paralleling the giant queen’s left cheek.
Caedus calculated numbers of Hapan shuttles, crescent-moon-shaped Miy’til fighters, airspeeders, speeder bikes. He noted with satisfaction the continued presence of a StealthX starfighter, the one flown here by Tahiri. It was still awaiting transport back to the Jedi or the Galactic Alliance—doubtless still waiting for Hapes’s own allegiance to be resolved before it could be moved. The StealthX, with its odd, mottled fuselage covering—looking like a patch of starfield with illusory depth like a hologram—stood out, starkly dissimilar to the elegant and stylish Hapan vehicles.
Caedus’s shuttle, on repulsorlifts, cruised past many civilian workers and military personnel, the majority of them women. Then, directed by flickering landing lights, the shuttle maneuvered into a bay and set down.
The pilot, a white-furred Bothan male, turned to face Caedus. “Why don’t you inform our passengers they may…” Then he stopped, scrutinizing Caedus’s solemn, impassive expression and slovenly dress. His snout twitched. “Never mind. I’ll do that.” He rose and squeezed past Caedus into the main cabin.
Caedus half listened through the partially shut cockpit door as the pilot addressed the diplomat and aides who constituted all the passengers the pilot knew about. “…are cleared to leave the shuttle, but they do not confirm a meeting with the Queen Mother…be in for quite a wait…” Most of Caedus’s concentration was elsewhere, as he searched in the Force for the distinctive trace of his child.
This was risky. Opening himself up to the Force tended to make him easier to detect by Jedi. If Tenel Ka, the only other Jedi-trained individual he knew to be in the region, detected him, things would go badly.
Almost immediately he found Allana, a bright, joyous flare in the Force, not far away as the hawk-bat flew. But between the two of them were countless warriors and security measures.
In addition, just finding her through the Force wasn’t enough. He had to see her. He opened himself still further, hoping for a vision of his daughter.
He felt her presence grow stronger within his senses, and then he could see, as if through a long tube, her eyes and nose. He did not pour his strength of will into what he was doing—that Sithly impulse would not be helpful with this delicate task. He simply waited, became more still, focused on the image.
His point of view drew back and away. And there Allana was, all of her, seated on a chair in front of a broad table low enough for a child her size. Directly before her was a set of controls—a horizontal monitor screen divided into several subscreens, one showing a wire-frame image of something like a crude replica of a bantha, one subdivided into dozens of colors and textures. In the center of the table was a set of articulated tubes and spindly droid arms; the tubes exuded resins or blew hardening agents upon those resins, while the arms moved and reshaped them. It took Caedus a moment to realize that the controls allowed Allana to model a toy while the apparatus simultaneously fabricated it, instantly making it real.
I will buy her one, he thought, then pushed the notion away for the time being. He needed something else from this vision.
Allana’s hair, her clothes—her dark red hair was at the moment a wave of ringlets that swayed as she moved, and she wore a knee-length blue play dress and white shoes that showed no signs of scuffing.
Caedus breathed a sigh of relief. He had seen her wear that dress before, and it was one of the seven styles he’d had replicated for this mission. He relaxed, letting the vision slip away but maintaining his awareness of Allana’s location.
He was almost certain Allana was not with her mother. That was good. He didn’t want to confront Tenel Ka. If he did, he would probably have to kill her. That would pain him, and it would be even worse if Allana witnessed her mother’s death.
Caedus heard the main cabin’s exterior hatch open, heard the passengers descend the boarding ramp, heard the hatch close again. Through the forward viewport, he watched as the diplomatic party moved away from the shuttle. It was greeted and scanned by a half squadron of Hapan security officers. As the knot of them then moved toward waiting turbolifts, he could feel no one aboard—no one but himself, the pilot, and one other.
Finally the pilot came forward again. “I hope you’re a better card player than you are a talker.” He resumed his seat in the pilot’s chair. “We could be here for days or weeks.”
Caedus nodded. He reached into a tunic pocket as if to withdraw a pack of cards. Instead, he took out a small, expensive hold-out blaster. As the Bothan’s eyes began to widen, Caedus shot him in the chest.
The blaster was set to stun. The pilot’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.
Caedus stood and stepped away from the seats. He pushed the pilot over so that the Bothan slumped between the seats, no longer visible from the outside by passersby at floor level. Though the blaster was highly rated for effectiveness, Caedus put another couple of stun bolts into the pilot’s back to be sure he’d remain unconscious for hours. Then he pocketed the weapon again.
Yes, blasters were clumsy and random, to quote an oft-repeated saying Luke Skywalker had picked up from someone in ancient times, but they could be useful. For someone trying to avoid alerting a Jedi-trained opponent, stun bolts were far better than lethal attacks, lightsabers, or anything that manifested strongly in the Force.
He went aft, into the cargo area, and spent a few moments unloading baggage cases from atop a large polymer crate. He punched a number into the crate’s security keypad. The light beside it changed from red to green, and he lifted the lid.
Inside, a solemn-faced little redheaded girl looked up at him. Her voice was high and piping, but unafraid. “Your beard is nasty.”
“Isn’t it?” He stooped to lift her out of the case. She seemed in good spirits despite the hours she’d had to remain lying down, but the ready supply of snacks and availability of a game-laden datapad had doubtless helped. “Were you afraid, Tika?”
“No. I really have to go to the refresher. Really really.”
Caedus gestured forward, to the narrow door just on his side of the entry to the main compartment. “Go ahead. And when you’re done, we’re going to put you in a new dress and do your hair, then have some fun.”
“Good. I want to play.” She dashed to the refresher.
“You will.”
Elsewhere in the palace, levels above and many meters away from the visitors’ hangar, Queen Mother Tenel Ka stared into a mirror, seeing the worry in the gray eyes of her reflection.
A delicate chime sounded. Tenel Ka said, “Enter,” freeing the security measures on the door. It slid to one side, admitting her father, Prince Isolder.
A mature man once counted among the most handsome in the galaxy, he had grayed with an inevitable grace and dignity that made him a target of envious anger by anyone who had not aged so well. Had he been a common man, he could have earned a lavish income promoting exercise regimens and health supplements. But the loose-fitting, flare-sleeved blue tunic he wore cost more than a year’s such income.
He bent over Tenel Ka to kiss the top of her head. “You seemed to be anxious for privacy. As a good parent, of course I can’t accede to your wishes.”
She smiled despite her mood. “You’re still a pirate at heart. Disobedient, conceited, cocksure…”
“A lovely compliment. Thank you.” He moved to settle on a scarlet divan. �
�What has you so upset?”
She shrugged. “I think it’s this meeting with the GA representatives. I can’t seem to settle on the right amount of time to keep them waiting. It’s a harder choice than usual. It’s not just about queenly dignity or meeting the expectations of my court about royal prerogatives.”
In the mirror, she saw her father nod. “You want to see them when they are at their most desperate. When they are most likely to agree to your demands to have Colonel Solo removed from power.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re weighing that against the lives being lost every day in the war.”
“Yes.”
Isolder considered. Tenel Ka watched him. Normally she did not need or seek political advice. But her father offered a rare exception. He was not scheming to put himself or some other favorite on the throne. He had decades of political experience not only within the Hapes Consortium but also outside, in the galaxy at large. Political and—as she had reminded him—piratical, his decision making was grounded as much in the realm of bloody deck plates as in the rarefied air of Hapan noble maneuvering.
Finally he met her gaze again. “You’ve already made your demand of them. At Kuat.”
“I did.”
“Send these diplomats home. Today. Seeing them would only give them the opportunity to argue with you. Seeing them later gives them the hope that they can argue with you then. Ejecting them from Hapan space tells them that there will be no negotiation. That, more than anything, will increase their sense of desperation.”
She cocked her head, considering. “You’re right.”
Another series of chiming musical notes filled the air. This was not a door signal, but a communication indicating that the security alert level within the palace had just eased up another notch.
This was not an unusual event. Alert levels rose and fell with the frequency, and usually meaninglessness, of corporate stock values on Coruscant. Still, Tenel Ka had known the reason for the last one, an hour ago—the arrival of the GA diplomatic shuttle, with the usual security disturbances such an intrusion demanded. This one did not relate to any change of condition she knew of.
She pressed a button on the edge of her vanity table. “Lady Aros?”
A moment later, her chamberlain entered through the same doorway Isolder had used. A woman of that broad span of years, from their midfifties to midseventies, when Hapans devoted more and more effort to disguising their ages, and did so with considerable success, she had green eyes, a long, aristocratic nose, and features made for twisting into expressions of disapproval—though she directed only a look of concern toward Tenel Ka. Her gown, layers of iridescent synthsilk in gold and brown tones, was appropriate to a Hapan noblewoman, and scarves in the same material and colors bound up and concealed her hair. “Queen Mother?”
“Why the last alert change?”
“I will find out, Queen Mother.” Aros bowed and withdrew.
Isolder smiled, amused. “You are nervous today.”
“Yes, I am. So I have to hope something is actually going wrong. I don’t want to pick up the reputation of being…unwell.” She repressed a wince. Her mother, Teneniel Djo, had been unwell, sick in her mind, dissociated from reality, for a time before her death.
Teneniel Djo had not been able to stand up to the emotional shock of feeling, through the Force, the deaths of thousands of people slain by use of Centerpoint Station’s main gun during the Yuuzhan Vong War. Tenel Ka could not afford for anyone to think her similarly weak. It would be an invitation to another attack, another assassination attempt.
Aros reentered the chamber. “It was an automated elevation of the alert status, Queen Mother. When enough random events occur that the security computers register them, the programs do what is known, I believe, as ‘raising flags,’ simply indicating—”
Tenel Ka gestured to cut off her explanation. “What random events?”
“Small static interruptions in security holocam feeds. But none has lasted more than a few seconds. Security says that during intrusions, holocam interruptions last for much longer periods, a minimum of half a minute or a minute—”
“They’ve checked to be sure that the holocam views, once they resume, are current images? Not recordings?”
“Yes, Queen Mother.” Aros’s voice was endlessly, unnecessarily patient.
Tenel Ka frowned, not convinced, and opened herself to the Force. First she sought out Allana and found her—nearby, calm, sleeping. Then she broadened her perceptions, looking for anything amiss.
She felt it almost immediately, a short, distinct pulse in the Force.
Her eyes snapped open. “There is a Force-user in the palace.” She punched additional buttons on the keypad of her vanity, and her own image in the mirror suddenly faded, to be replaced by an overhead view of a child’s playroom.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Allana was there, undisturbed, sitting at her modeling table, head down as she worked intently at the controls. Her hair spilled around her face, obscuring it. The bantha that had been her newest creation now had four giant bulbous feet.
Then Tenel Ka frowned. A moment earlier, an instant earlier, Allana had been asleep.
She keyed in another location and the view changed to that of the door outside her daugher’s play chamber. It was closed, sealed, innocuous.
Except for the fact that the two guards who should have been on duty there were missing.
Coldness, hard as an ancient ice comet, froze her stomach. Tenel Ka stood fast enough to hurl her chair backward. It thumped down on the carpeted floor. She spun on Aros. “Alert security. Intruders in the palace. They’re making an attempt on Allana—” From beneath her robes, suited to an afternoon’s lounging beside an artificial waterfall, she pulled her lightsaber and dashed past Aros, her father behind her.
Security chimes were sounding as the two of them reached the main corridor accessing the secondary royal quarters. Rightward, it led toward Allana’s playroom. Leftward, it led to security stations that in turn gave way to less secure areas. Security agents dashed in either direction as noblewomen, pursing their lips in disapproval of the confusion, stayed out of their way.
Tenel Ka paused and extended her senses into the Force once more. It took only seconds—seconds that dragged on like hours—and then she felt her daughter again.
To the left, and down.
She spun in that direction and ran, allowing the Force to lend her speed, leaving her father far behind.
chapter six
It was as though an invisible thrill killer had been on a spree within her palace. Tenel Ka ran past a group of courtiers huddled around an open door; beyond was a uniformed guardswoman, her throat slit, blue eyes open and fixed, blood pooling beside her. A few meters past, in a nook frequented by lovers and conspirators, a musician held the curtain aside to reveal a male courtier lying on the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle.
Tenel Ka felt a ripple in the Force at the next nook beyond. She tossed the curtain aside. No scene of murder met her eyes, but there was a hole in the floor, roughly circular, a meter across, its edges smoking.
A security officer running in her wake panted, “Queen Mother, we must precede you!” Ignoring her, Tenel Ka dropped through the hole.
She fell ten meters. Drawing on the Force to soften the impact, she landed on the hard, uncarpeted flooring of a service corridor, a gray-walled, cheerless passageway she had never seen before. The plug that had been cut out of the ceiling above was beside her.
Up and down the corridor kitchen workers and food servers, the subdued colors they wore indicating their lowly status, stood as if paralyzed by shock. There was no sign of the assassin’s passage. But a serving boy of perhaps sixteen years, his eyes more alert than most of those around him, jerked a thumb back over his shoulder…then shielded his eyes from the sight of the Queen Mother racing past him.
Ahead, around a bend in the corridor, there were more workers circling and staring at the body of a cook
.
A minute later Tenel Ka took another ten-meter drop, this time to the roof of a stopped turbolift. She stepped into the access hatch and fell two meters to the turbolift floor.
The lift doors were open; beyond was the visitors’ hangar. Here, nothing as delicate as chimes indicated a security breach; shrill alarms screeched. Security and maintenance personnel ran toward her, away from her, some rushing to their alarm-situation duties, some just panicking.
At least two vehicles were active. Not far away, a shuttle painted in white, sporting the Galactic Alliance crest on its sides, had its repulsorlifts going. It was moving, but only to edge ever closer to the stone wall alongside its bay. A security team was in place behind stone and duracrete columns all around the shuttle; some were aiming at the vehicle with blaster rifles, while the leader, speaking into a field comlink strapped to her wrist, was doubtless broadcasting instructions to the pilot.
But Tenel Ka could not see a pilot through the shuttle’s forward viewports. She reached out toward the vehicle with the Force and detected something aboard, but that presence felt inert, nearly lifeless.
A diversion. She broadened her perceptions again, looking with increasing desperation for Allana.
There. Forty meters past the tableau with the shuttle, another vehicle had its engines running. It, too, was surrounded by a security team holding positions behind columns.
Tenel Ka raced past the shuttle, ignoring a salute from a startled-looking guardswoman, and got a good view of the other active vehicle.
Tahiri’s StealthX. The coldness in her gut intensified. She did not need to peer into the visor of the pilot’s helmet to know who had her daughter. It could only be Jacen.
She was halfway to the StealthX when she realized that while its repulsorlifts were being used at full strength, filling the air with what sounded like an animal scream, the starfighter was not moving. Its shields were up, too, though no member of the security detail was firing—Tenel Ka heard one of the guard officers shout, barely audible over the repulsorlift howl, “Hold your fire! He has the girl with him!”
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 5
