The instant their thumbs popped the restraining flaps free from the butts of the holstered blasters, Leia drew her arms in. The blasters flew from the holsters, one to her hands, one to Han’s.
Without rising, Han switched his blaster over from blast to stun. Casually, he shot the naval officer to his left, traversed his weapon, and shot the one to his right. The secretary dived for the floor, thumping to the carpet behind his desk.
Leia spun, covering the door from the exterior hall into the waiting room.
Han smiled and waved his blaster in the direction of the other waiting dignitaries. “Nobody move. This is a holdup.”
“Han.”
“Oh, right, my mistake. Nobody move, this is a coup.” He aimed at the prostrate Bothan. “Especially you, Fuzzy. You twitch a finger or make a noise I interpret as a warning for your boss and I’ll fill you so full of stun bolts, you’ll be able to light a glow rod for the rest of your life.”
The office lights dimmed, and a low vibration rattled everyone’s bones.
A few seconds earlier, Senator Bramsin joined Senator Treen in the latter’s floating station in the Senate chamber. It was not floating now; it was firmly attached to its brackets against the curved wall midway between floor and ceiling. Together the old friends and conspirators watched the gigantic monitor at the chamber’s summit; the screen showed the image of Deggan Rockbender, sandy-haired Senator of Tatooine. The young man’s words floated down from the overhead speakers a fraction of a second after they emerged from the speakers at each station: “… expediency flies in the face of the principles that led to the foundation of the New Republic and the continuation of its ideals in the Alliance. An embargo against trade goods produced in territories where slavery is still permitted is an absolute ethical necessity, a declaration that we continue to be dedicated to the cause of …”
Treen sighed. “He does go on a bit.”
Bramsin nodded. He checked his chrono. “But think about it. In moments, Parova will break in and announce that the armed forces have arrested Daala. In the midst of Rockbender’s stirring speech about taking action against the forces of tyranny, Parova announces the deed’s done.”
Treen did think about it, and batted her eyes like a schoolgirl. “Rockbender’s stock will go up immeasurably, and not just with his constituents.”
“Correct.”
“Perhaps I should be in a position to talk to him immediately after Parova’s announcement.”
“Also correct.”
“Have you set up your priority override so you can take charge as soon as Parova is done?”
“Of course. The program’s in place, and with the touch of a button …”
The chamber’s lights dimmed. Treen felt her teeth rattle as a somber subsonic tone rippled through the assembly. On the big screen above, Senator Rockbender paused, looking around, confused. A data card on the desktop before Treen rattled under the vibration’s influence and began to slide toward the desk’s edge.
Bramsin gave her a puzzled look. “That’s not part of the plan.”
“No, indeed.”
“I’d best get back to my station.” He turned and left, moving faster than Treen had seen him walk since Palpatine had held the Imperial throne.
A few seconds earlier, R2-D2 tweetled, leaned back into tripod configuration, and rolled aft from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.
C-3PO hurried after him. “What message? I didn’t receive any message.”
The astromech ignored him. Reaching a specific point along the transport’s circular gangway, R2-D2 opened a port, extended his manipulator arm, and swung it out to bang against the floor three times.
“Now what are you up to—”
That section of metal flooring, and one next to it, rose.
“Oh, my.”
Master Saba Sebatyne stood up from the smuggling compartment revealed by the raising of the floor panel. Nearby, Corran Horn and Jaina Solo stood up from an adjacent compartment.
“Master Sebatyne, Master Horn, Mistress Jaina. If I’d known you were here, I could have brought you some caf.”
The three Jedi, climbing out of their compartments, barely glanced at the protocol droid. They replaced the hatch covers and raced to the top of the boarding ramp, then down into the hangar.
C-3PO could hear their progress. It was marked by the snap-hiss of lightsabers igniting, shouts, the crackle of blaster rifles firing, the sizzle of blaster bolts reflected into and extinguishing themselves against durasteel walls.
R2-D2 rolled after the Jedi, tweetling.
“What do you mean, accompany them? This is Jedi business, very dangerous. We have other orders.”
The astromech gave an assertive tweetle as he descended the boarding ramp.
“Well, yes, one of our orders was for me to follow your instructions, but that was the preposterous one. Unfollowable, when you think about it.” Yet curiosity and concern for the fate of his counterpart compelled C-3PO to waddle along in the astromech’s wake. “Oh, dear.”
The lights in the hangar dimmed.
The moment the lights dimmed across the Senate Building, a naval ensign loitering outside the entrance to the main security center entrance perked up. He tugged his cap low over his eyes and clutched his briefcase close to him.
As the subsonic tone began to rattle the bones of everyone in sight, yellow lights flashed atop the entryway. Galactic Alliance Security and Navy personnel outside the entrance crowded in through it. The diagonal leading edges of the blast doors there flashed green, signaling the start of a lockdown countdown.
The naval ensign crowded in at the back of a group of security officers. He made it through the entrance as the blast doors’ edges went from green to yellow, as the vibration became a modulated two-tone alarm.
The center was in chaos, a chaos that was only a few seconds old. Officers and troopers rushed to their duty stations. The level of noise, shouts for information, orders, the alarm tone, battered at the ensign’s ears.
The ensign took a good look around. Everything looked different from the holorecordings supplied by Seha’s attorney droid—the crowding and rushing of personnel made everything more difficult to comprehend.
But Bandy Geffer had studied the recordings for long hours. He knew the floor plan, could recognize the faces of many individuals, even knew the names and positions of some. He moved forward at a brisk pace, remembering to salute higher-ranking officers, catching no one’s eye. As he turned rightward down a side corridor, in his peripheral vision he saw the blast door edges flash red; then they slid closed with a bone-rattling thump.
A few steps more brought Bandy to his destination, the marquee cells—a high-profile cell block where prisoners could be temporarily lodged and displayed before being turned over to other authorities. Each of these small cells featured a large transparisteel viewport instead of bars, giving an unimpeded view of the cell’s contents—all but the refresher corners, which were screened off.
Seha Dorvald sat on the lower bunk of the third cell he came across. She watched the commotion outside her viewport with mild interest. As Bandy came into view, she waved.
Bandy set down the briefcase beside her gray durasteel door. He opened the case and pulled his lightsaber from it.
“Ensign, what’s your post?”
Bandy grinned over his shoulder at the security officer, a human woman, facing him. “Lieutenant Zeiers! You look just like your holos. Uh, my post is the Jedi Temple.”
“What did you say?”
He ignited his lightsaber. Its blue blade rose into shining coherence in front of his face. He looked at the door again and thrust the blade directly between the jamb and the numeric keypad beside it, cutting downward.
“Cell block alpha, we have an intruder!”
Bandy heard the words, heard the sound of a blaster pistol clearing leather. He spun, slashed upward, caught the pistol just forward of the trigger. The barrel flew free of the rest of the weapon.
Lieutenant Zeiers, unharmed but wide-eyed, stared at him. He returned his attention to the door. He heard her run off. Moments later his blade sheared through the bolt locking the door in place. After that, it took merely a wave of his hand and an exertion through the Force to slide the door open.
Seha stepped out, still hobbled by shackles. “Did you bring my lightsaber?”
“In the bag. Hands, please.” As soon as Seha extended her hands, Bandy sheared through the shackles restraining them.
“How about some real food? What they give you here—”
“Sorry, no. If you’re ever to have another good meal, we have to win this one.” Bandy stooped and cut through the ankle bindings, scarring the floor beneath them.
Seha dug around in the briefcase, then straightened up with her lightsaber in one hand, a few centimeters of metal cable still dangling from each wrist shackle.
Together they charged deeper into the security center. Word of their presence had spread. Security officers from two armed forces scattered, took up emplaced positions, and opened fire with blaster pistols. Seha took point—a full Jedi Knight, she was much better at batting back blaster bolts. Bandy caught those coming at them from troopers they’d already passed, those whose weapons they did not shear through in passing.
The Jedi reached their destination, the center’s armory. It stood resolutely shut and locked, the officers on duty not having had time to begin standard operating procedures on the arming of ready personnel.
Seha stood guard, catching and flinging back an ever-increasing barrage of blaster bolts. Bandy winced as he heard the occasional cry of pain. Seha wasn’t deliberately aiming the bolts back at firers, but there were so many bolts in this target-rich environment …
Bandy plunged his lightsaber into the door, dragged it around to create an aperture a meter and a half in diameter. When the two burned edges of his cut met, he kicked the center of the circle and it fell into the armory. He jumped through, careful to avoid contact with the jagged, heated edges of metal, and once inside he slapped the button to open the door.
It still worked. The door slid open. Seha backed in. Bandy hit the button and it slid shut again. Now blaster bolts came in only through the hole Bandy had made.
He turned to look over the chamber’s treasures. Stands of body armor, racks of blaster rifles, cases of grenades … “Gas masks … there they are.” He grabbed two sets of protective breathing gear and several riot-control grenades. He placed one mask on his own face and one on Seha’s, then began activating grenades and flipping them through the hole in the door.
So far, so good.
THE NOISE MADE BY THE CROWD PRESSING AGAINST LINES OF SECURITY troopers at the outer perimeter of the Senate Plaza changed. In a second it turned from angry, full of false bravado, to curious and confused.
Javon Thewles, new civilian, a few ranks behind the front, craned his neck in an effort to see over the heads before him.
The building’s doors—personnel entryways and hangar doors—were sliding shut, their movement simultaneous, clearly controlled by a central computer.
A tickle of alarm in his stomach killed his appetite. This could not be good. He pressed forward, shoving other onlookers out of the way. A security trooper, seeing his advance, gave him a close threat-evaluation look, but Javon drew to a halt at the barricade.
Now sections of permacrete at the base of the building drew aside and trapezoidal shapes of the same material rose into view. At the top of each was a cupola from which protruded a quad-linked laser array, quite sufficient to down starfighters, more than sufficient to annihilate scores of people with a single shot.
But Javon knew that the pillbox’s automatic fire systems, or occupants if staffed by the living, were authorized to fire only if fired upon or if potential enemies came within fifty meters. And surely no one was crazy enough to approach weapons pods bristling with lasers—
At a point where security troopers were overburdened with the effort of holding back the crowds, a swell of pressure from onlookers moved barricades back and a civilian charged through. This was a human male, his hair black and military-short. On his shoulder was a holocam, a professional rig—he was either a newsperson or an amateur who liked expensive toys.
The troopers holding the line had their hands full. None could go after the errant holocam operator, who continued slowly moving forward, recording.
“Get back!” That was a trooper, a corporal, a Quarren female, her facial tentacles twitching with agitation. She stood only five meters from Javon, on the other side of the barricades. “Back!”
“Shoot him.” Javon heard the words emerge from his own mouth, was surprised, and then realized they were absolutely the correct ones to shout.
The Quarren whipped around to look at him. “What?”
“He’s going to trigger those lasers in a few more steps, and dozens will die—maybe hundreds. Switch over to stun and shoot him, Corporal.” Javon put the full force of his command training into his voice, hoping the Quarren would respond to that and not to his civilian clothes.
The Quarren looked at him as if convinced that her tympanic membranes were playing her false. Then her fingers moved over the left side of her blaster rifle. She raised the weapon to her shoulder and fired.
The man with the holocam took the bolt in his side. He went down hard, his holocam shattering on the plaza’s permacrete surface, his body spasming. His eyes closed.
The crowd howled with outrage. Holocams immediately swung around to focus on the Quarren. But the surge in the line the unconscious man had emerged from retreated. The troopers there shoved against the line of barricades and straightened it.
The Quarren turned to glare at Javon. “It pains me that you were right.”
“Me, too, Corporal.”
Fifty meters farther along the line of barricades, a yellow-skinned humanoid female with an omnidirectional mike in her hand stared gaping at what had just transpired. “That was—that was Tuvar, wasn’t it? From Independent Voice News?” She looked back at her holocam operator for confirmation.
That individual, a Gamorrean male in permacrete-gray garments, held a holocam rig smaller and much less elaborate than that of the fallen man. It had a cradle for his shoulder, a diopter for his eye, and a trigger for on and off; everything else was automatic, making it an ideal rig for someone with a Gamorrean’s intellectual shortcomings. In answer to the yellow-skinned female’s question, he gave a porcine grunt of confirmation, but his attention did not waver; his holocam remained focused on his unconscious colleague, who was even now being approached by a security medic.
The female, lovely in a deliberately unthreatening fashion, made up to appear as though she wore no makeup, dressed in all-white to set herself off from most backgrounds when being recorded, turned to stare at the Senate Building. “I’d give a month’s pay to know what’s going on in there right now.”
“The Jedi have stormed the building.” The voice came from immediately to her left, pitched just loud enough to be heard over the crowd noise—from a distance of not more than five centimeters. The woman could feel the speaker’s breath against her ear. Something about the words sent a chill through her, but it wasn’t the speaker’s tone, which was low, neutral.
As if expecting to see a flesh-devouring monster, she turned. But the speaker was a human male wrapped up in traditional robes that could have been Jedi dress. The hood of his cloak was up, shadowing his face.
He drew back a few more centimeters to give her space. He was young, early thirties perhaps, decent-looking. “They haven’t admitted it, of course, the Jedi Masters, to the rank and file, but we know.”
She narrowed her eyes, looking him over. “What exactly do you know—hey, I recognize you, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Valin Horn. Jedi Knight. Still being sought by the authorities after being broken out of prison. Along with your sister.”
Valin jerked his head casually to his right
. The woman glanced that way. Standing beside Valin was Jysella Horn, her cloak hood also up, her expression dispassionate as she watched the Senate Building.
“I’m Kandra Nilitz, Landing Zone NewsNet.”
Valin bowed. “How do you do?”
“You can confirm that the Jedi have invaded the Senate? Hold on, let us get the holocam set up—”
Valin shook his head. “Not here. But if you can meet our terms, we’ll give you an exclusive. Facts nobody else knows.”
Kandra gave him a suspicious look. “What sort of terms?”
“Not wealth. Can you get hold of a hyperdrive-equipped transport or shuttle? And can you scan us for implanted transmitters? If you can, and if you can get the two of us up to where Fireborn blew up, we’ll give you a story no one else is getting.”
Kandra’s mind raced. “I … can. We have to get back to the studio.”
“We must go now, before the fa—before the Jedi finish their task inside.”
Kandra signaled her holocam operator, and the two of them led the Horns through the crowd. Kandra’s heart raced. This, perhaps, could propel her from location reporting of events picked up on comm scanners to anchor work with a real newsnet.
It was just that there was something odd in the manner of the Horn Jedi, something eerie.
Jaina’s lightsaber finished traversing a circle in the dark durasteel blast door. She withdrew the blade and held the weapon away from the cut. She gestured with her free hand. The durasteel plug flew away from her, shooting into the section of corridor the doors had been blocking.
Behind her, Saba and Corran stood side by side, lightsabers lit, casually deflecting blaster bolts fired by the security troopers thirty meters back along the corridor.
Jaina peered through the hole she’d made. “All clear this way.”
Saba glanced for a fraction of a second over her shoulder at Jaina, then returned her attention to the incoming bolts. “Get to the turboliftz. Give us accesz. We will hold here until that is done.”
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction Page 19
