Apocalypse

by Troy Denning

  And when the Current turns, Thuruht said, it is the Force that suffers.

  Raynar felt sick. He and Jacen had become close friends at the first Jedi academy on Yavin 4. In fact, Jacen had been among those who helped Raynar and his father protect a lost arsenal of bioweapons from an anti-human terror group. And when Raynar’s father died, Jacen had been one of the friends who comforted him. So when Jacen fell to the dark side and became Darth Caedus, it had been hard for Raynar to accept. At first, he had refused to believe the betrayal was sincere, and then he had blamed it on the torture Jacen had suffered as a prisoner of the Yuuzhan Vong. But as the Second Civil War had raged on, Caedus’s actions had grown steadily more ruthless, and Raynar had finally understood that his old friend had become one of the most murderous of all Sith Lords. Now it seemed even that condemnation was not terrible enough. In his drive to change the vision he had seen, Darth Caedus had unleashed Destruction herself.

  Chaos, not Destruction, Thuruht corrected. Chaos brings destruction, but she also brings new energy and change.

  As Lowbacca and the others joined them, Raynar began to speak aloud, both so his companions would understand, and so C-3PO could record him.

  “Thuruht believes that a change in the Current caused Abeloth’s release,” Raynar said, summarizing for his companions. He turned back to Thuruht. “But the Jedi believe the future is always in motion. So I have trouble seeing why a change in the Current would release Abeloth.”

  “Is a river current not in motion?” Thuruht replied, also speaking aloud. “And will it not carry a boat to many different places, depending on how the riders paddle?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Raynar said, with some impatience. “But wherever they land, they do not usually free Abeloth.”

  “They do not ever free her, because they have not changed the Current,” Thuruht replied. “They have only ridden it to one of many different destinations. But if they wish to go where the Current cannot carry them, the current must be turned.”

  “And to do that, the river itself must be altered,” Raynar finished.

  “Yes,” Thuruht replied. “The Force guides the Current. It is impossible to turn the Current without also changing the Force.”

  “And that is what frees Abeloth,” Raynar clarified.

  “Yes,” Thuruht agreed. “The Force is in the dominion of the Celestials. When their power is usurped, the Bringer of Chaos comes.”

  Raynar waited while C-3PO translated the exchange for his companions. He was about to recap his suspicions regarding Jacen when Tekli arrived at the same conclusion.

  “Then Jacen freed Abeloth?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “By changing what he saw in his Force vision?” Tekli clarified.

  Thuruht clacked her mandibles in a Killik shrug. “We do not know what Jacen saw in his Force vision.”

  Tekli’s ears flattened in frustration. She looked to Lowbacca, who let out a sad groan and replied that even Tahiri had not known for certain. She believed the vision had to do with a dark man who ruled the galaxy, and that Jacen had been so disturbed by what he saw that he had turned to the dark side to prevent it.

  After C-3PO had translated Lowbacca’s explanation, Thuruht curled her antennae in the Killik equivalent of a nod.

  “Then, yes,” Thuruht replied. “If the dark man was the future Jacen wished to prevent, then it must be the future he changed.”

  With that, Thuruht turned and led the way up the corridor to the next set of reliefs—and Raynar saw why Thuruht was so confident he would remain to help the hive.

  The first panel showed a long, tubular space station still under construction. The skeletal structure was teeming with Killiks, all wearing thin suits and bubble helmets. And that was all. There were no jetpacks, no space cranes, not even any tether cables—just millions of Killiks, floating together in banks the size of small asteroids. In front of them, enormous durasteel girders appeared to be drifting into position with no visible means of propulsion.

  Raynar understood what he was seeing. Thuruht had used the Force not only to assemble the station itself—which certainly had the shape of Centerpoint—but also to move themselves about in space.

  When we build, we use the Force for all things, Thuruht confirmed.

  She directed Raynar’s attention to the next panel. It showed a band of Killiks using Force blasts to extract ore from a stony asteroid. They also seemed to be using telekinesis to move the ore into a smelting furnace, which appeared to be powered by another swarm using a ball form of Force lightning.

  To mine, to move, to smelt.

  Raynar understood why Thuruht needed to harness the Force. But even if he knew how to share it, he was not strong enough to share it with so many beings at once.

  Thuruht was amused by his confusion. By the time we are ready to build, you will be no more, she said. The Architects will be the Ones who give us the Force then.

  “The Architects?” Raynar asked aloud. They were once again drifting into an area of conversation the Masters would need to hear. “Who are the Architects, exactly?”

  The Brother and the Sister, Thuruht explained, still speaking inside Raynar’s head. Abeloth is the only thing capable of bringing them together. It angers them to see her destroy civilizations they have spent millennia cultivating.

  The Killik stepped to the next panel, where a pair of insects stood looming over a small swarm of Killiks who seemed to be assembling some sort of oversized fusion core. The first overseer was a luminous butterfly with large oval eyes and gossamer wings. Her companion was a powerful-looking beetle with heavy wings and a craggy head adorned by two raised stripes.

  Soon, the Architects will form a pact and emerge from hiding, Thuruht continued. And when they do, the hive must be ready to answer their call.

  “These are the Architects?” Raynar asked. He stepped closer to the panel and pointed at the two supervising insects. “You’re saying that the Brother and the Sister are insects?”

  Thuruht spread her four hands. They are to us.

  “Ah … of course.” As Raynar spoke, a torrent of memories flooded into his mind, of the Architects joining with Thuruht and dozens of other hives, of suddenly just knowing how to build wonders like the World Puller and Still Curtain and the Chasm of Forever, and he knew that Raynar Thul was no more. He nodded. “Now we understand.”

  When he turned away from the panel, he found Tekli and Lowbacca looking not at the crucial scene, but at him. Lowbacca’s muzzle was hanging half open, baring his fangs less in menace than in shock, and Tekli’s eyes had gone wide with alarm.

  “Raynar,” she said, “it’s time to leave.”

  That cannot be, Thuruht said, her words coming in a flash almost before Tekli had finished speaking. The hive must be ready when the Ones call—

  —and for that to happen, the hive needs a Jedi to help it grow. The agreement was reached in the time it took a thought to flash from one mind to another, and when Raynar turned to address Tekli, it was so quickly she did not even seem to realize that another, unheard conversation had taken place.

  “We agree,” he said. “The time has come to report what we have discovered to the Jedi Council.” He pointed at the two insects in the panel. “Tell the Masters that the Ones do not look like this to all beings. They take a form that suits their servants.”

  Lowbacca roared that he wasn’t going to tell the Masters anything, that Raynar was going to be the one doing the talking. He raised a furry claw, reaching for an arm, but stopped when his friend used the Force to gently push it down.

  “We are sorry, my friend, but we must stay,” ThurThul said. “And you must go. Raynar Thul is no more.”

  ARMED WITH AN IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE ID COURTESY OF JAGGED FEL, Tahiri had no trouble securing cooperation at the only spaceport on Hagamoor 3. She simply presented herself at the security commander’s office and demanded to see the file on the Mandalorian who had arrived a few days earlier. The officer—a grizzled
old captain—inserted her identichip into his decryption pad, then his face paled. He snapped to attention and offered a crisp salute.

  “Sorry, milady,” he said. “I wasn’t informed that Head of State Fel had reactivated the Hands.”

  The captain’s anxiety was understandable. Answerable only to the Imperial Head-of-State, the Hands were Force-sensitive operatives whom Palpatine had used as merciless instruments of his will, dealing death and threats to anyone who incurred his wrath. Tahiri knew better than to think Jag would ever employ them in the same ruthless manner—but he was certainly not above trading on the name.

  Ten minutes later Tahiri’s StealthX was under guard in a sealed hangar, and she was sitting in front of a vid display. On the display was a four-day-old surveillance vid that showed Boba Fett—or someone in identical armor, with a very similar gait—working his way down an inflatable pedtunnel.

  Unfortunately, Fett’s Mandalorian armor did not seem out of place in the tunnel. Hagamoor 3 was an open-access mining moon where claim jumpers, ore thieves, and every sort of swindler were on the prowl for victims, and it had a flourishing bodyguard industry. Every third person on the display was both armed and armored. To make matters worse, once Fett reached the business district in the main dome, the lanes were choked with riot troops facing off against pro-Daala protestors. Both sides were armored, of course. To track Fett, Tahiri finally had to resort to watching for his battered green helmet. With its T-shaped visor and distinctive rangefinder rising along one side, it was the easiest thing to follow from one vid archive to the next.

  Fett was taking care to stay close to other armored figures and avoid some of the security cams, but he couldn’t afford to be too obvious. Any conspicuous attempt to avoid surveillance in an Imperial population center—even one as rustic as Hagamoor City—only drew extra scrutiny. As Tahiri watched, the Mandalorian visited a succession of hospitality houses and supply businesses. The Imperial surveillance net did not extend to the interior of most facilities, but on one occasion she did catch a glimpse of Fett through a transparisteel door. A salesclerk was turning a data screen around so the Mandalorian could examine a list of sales.

  Fett was clearly hunting someone, and Tahiri was beginning to think he didn’t care who knew it. He could have disguised his purpose by buying a few supplies, varying the length of his visits, or emerging with a handful of sales flimsis. Instead he was simply moving from one business to the next as quickly as possible, staying only long enough to bribe or intimidate whoever happened to be behind the counter. It almost seemed as though he wanted his prey to know he was coming.

  Maybe he did. Hagamoor 3 was in Moff Getelles’s sector, and if Daala had anything to say about it, Getelles’s days were numbered. He had betrayed her—and played a crucial role in trapping her and her allies at Exodo II. So it stood to reason that Daala would want to make an example of Getelles to keep other would-be defectors in line. And what better way to make her point than by dispatching the infamous Boba Fett to handle the retaliation?

  Of course, Tahiri realized that Fett’s involvement was no guarantee that Abeloth would also show up on Hagamoor 3. Tahiri was still playing a hunch on that. Since they both had a connection to Daala—Fett had rescued Daala from Coruscant, and Abeloth had run the blockade at Boreleo to visit her—she was hoping that they would eventually end up in the same place. But even if Fett didn’t lead her to Abeloth, finding out what the mercenary was doing on Hagamoor 3 would be a good thing for Jag.

  Tahiri fast-forwarded through the next three days of surveillance, then finally spotted Fett entering a used-vehicle dealership. A short time later, a sealed landspeeder emerged through the dome’s rear air lock and headed off across the moon’s dusty surface. A comm call from one of the post’s security agents confirmed that the landspeeder had been purchased by someone wearing green Mandalorian armor. It also yielded the activation code for the vehicle’s emergency locator.

  Hagamoor 3 was in Imperial territory, so the security agent could activate the locator beacon without alerting the driver. Tahiri soon learned that the vehicle had stopped a kilometer short of the Moon Maiden, a subsurface mine that had been advertising heavily for new employees over the last two weeks. A check of the tax records, however, revealed no recent additions to the workforce, only a modestly sized crew that seemed to have a lot more technical staff than was warranted. A rather cryptic remark at the beginning of the tax file noted that the mine was owned and managed by Suarl Getelles, eldest daughter of the Moff. There was no mention in the file—or anywhere else—of what kind of ore the Maiden produced.

  The spaceport security commander was happy to arrange transport for Tahiri, and she quickly departed in a Mabartak G7 All-Environment Assault Sled. It took only a few hours to find Fett’s vehicle sitting, abandoned, just a couple of kilometers from the Moon Maiden. A few minutes after that, Tahiri was standing in the Mabartak’s cramped air lock, sealed tight inside an Imperial Security Special Tactics vac suit. Her best estimate placed her less than half a day behind Boba Fett—or whoever it was wearing his armor, she reminded herself. It seemed unlikely that she was chasing an impostor, but where Fett was concerned, it was unwise to take anything for granted.

  Which was why Tahiri decided not to use the vac suit’s integrated comlink. Fett could certainly detect it, even if he lacked the necessary software to decrypt the transmission. Instead, Tahiri opened her faceplate and depressed the Mabartak’s intercom key.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Cycle the air lock.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want an escort?” asked the vehicle commander—a handsome lieutenant about her own age. “The intelligence team keeps trying to find out what’s really happening in there, but they can’t get anyone inside. And now we have Boba Fett sniffing around the place? He’s not someone you want to mess with alone.”

  Tahiri almost smiled. “You’re sweet, but … no. I don’t need an escort.” She picked up the service pack she had assembled from the post’s armory. “Just be here when I return, Lieutenant Vangur. Maybe I’ll have a reward for you.”

  Vangur’s voice grew hopeful. “A reward, ma’am?”

  “Something for the intelligence team,” Tahiri said. Vangur had spent the whole three-hour journey from Hagamoor City trying to flirt with her, and the truth was that she had been happy to have the distraction. But now it was time to focus on her mission—and to get Vangur focused on his mission, too. She put a little edge in her voice. “I hope you don’t think I meant something else, Lieutenant.”

  “No, ma’am. The thought never crossed my mind.”

  Tahiri slung the bulky service pack onto her shoulders, then asked, “And what thought would that be?”

  “Any thought you might find inappropriate.” There was a note of amusement—almost mockery—in Vangur’s voice that suggested he was not all that intimidated by his passenger. “Ma’am.”

  “Never lie to an Imperial Hand, Lieutenant,” Tahiri warned. She actually found Vangur’s cockiness attractive, but she didn’t need attractive or cocky right now—she needed reliable. “It’s bad for your health.”

  “I understand, ma’am.” Vangur’s voice remained confident, but this time there was no humor in it. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” Tahiri said. “Just be here when I return, and we’ll both stay happy.”

  She closed her faceplate and waited. When the status light on the control panel turned green, she opened the hatch and stepped out onto the dusty surface of Hagamoor 3. Fett’s landspeeder sat on its struts a hundred meters away, resting at the base of a curving ridge that looked like the rim of a small impact crater.

  Knowing that any attempt to approach the vehicle was likely to set off a remote alarm that would alert Fett to the presence of a pursuer, Tahiri extended her Force awareness in the vehicle’s direction. When she didn’t sense anyone inside, she traversed up the slope toward a little notch, where Fett’s tracks skirted the crest of the ridge. In the moon’s weak
gravity, the climb was so easy that she did not even trigger the suit’s cooling system. But she had to use the Force to avoid kicking up a plume of dust that could have easily risen to thirty meters high. As she neared the top, she dropped to her hands and knees. Being careful to avoid any rocks that might rip her suit, she crawled the rest of the way, then pushed her head up above the crest.

  The interior of the crater was packed with hundreds of vehicles, most resting on their struts in neat, orderly rows. Trails of boot-packed dust led toward the mine’s entrance, a small permacrete portal with the name MOON MAIDEN across the top. Jutting out of the slope above and behind the portal was a squat durasteel office building with two transparisteel viewing bands. The lack of visible doors—or any hint of a trail ascending the slope beneath—suggested that the only way to enter the building was from inside the mine. Just beyond the crater rim, a cloud of hot yellow fume was boiling away into the void, no doubt rising out of an exhaust shaft not visible from Tahiri’s location.

  She could almost feel Fett’s bewilderment lingering in the Force. The number of vehicles parked in the crater suggested a workforce of thousands. But judging by the size of the portal and office building, the Moon Maiden was a small operation—so small that they hadn’t even bothered with a surface perimeter or security post. Nor did Tahiri see any equipment for processing, storing, or hauling ore. And if it didn’t handle ore, then the Moon Maiden was no ordinary mine.

  Tahiri activated her helmet’s reconnaissance kit. The electromag sensors picked up dozens of small emission sources arrayed at even intervals along the inner rim of the crater. They were almost certainly hidden security cams. When she viewed the durasteel “office” building at 20X magnification, it grew obvious that the walls beneath the transparisteel viewing bands were dotted with camouflaged weapons ports—many large enough to serve laser cannons. And the portal itself was sealed not by a standard air lock hatch, but by a blast door capable of withstanding a turbolaser strike.