Annihilation

by Drew Karpyshyn

  Perfect, Theron thought. Give me a nice clear shot of those pretty little peepers.

  To Theron’s surprise, Pressik turned away after a few seconds.

  “Sit down, Subjugate,” he said.

  Theron wasn’t sure why Pressik was backing down. Maybe he’d seen something in Theron’s eyes that made him realize this wasn’t the typical cowering victim he was used to bullying. Maybe his superiors, fed up with his off-duty altercations, had taken him to task and warned him to keep his temper in check.

  One thing Theron was sure about, however—he still needed more time for the scanner to do its job.

  “You’re the Suj-u-grate,” Theron spat out, fumbling over the word in his feigned drunken stupor. He reached out and shoved Pressik in the back as he walked away.

  Pressik wheeled on him, his right hand balled into a fist. He dropped low as he threw a powerful uppercut into Theron’s midsection. Theron saw it coming—it was a clumsy brawler’s punch. But he resisted his natural instincts to block or evade the attack. Staying in character as an inebriated civilian, all he could do was brace himself as the blow landed.

  The air whooshed out of him and his knees buckled. He staggered forward and wrapped his arms around Pressik in a bear hug, using the other man to support his weight so he could stay on his feet … and to keep him from stepping back and out of the scanner’s limited range.

  “Get off me!” Pressik shouted, struggling to shake him off.

  Theron grappled awkwardly with the bigger man, managing to tie up his arms and buying himself a brief respite from further punishment. The other officers rushed in from the far side of the bar to join the fray.

  Just a few more seconds, Theron thought, still holding on to Pressik for all he was worth.

  He felt the hands of the other soldiers seizing him as they tried to pry him loose from their friend. Someone was raining blows down on his neck and shoulders from behind.

  Four on one, Theron thought as he twisted and turned, doing his best to absorb the beating. The kind of odds the Empire just loves.

  They managed to haul Theron off Pressik just as he felt the scanner in his pocket vibrating to signify the download was complete. As Pressik stumbled backward, Theron went limp and collapsed to the floor.

  “Get him on his feet!” Pressik shouted, and two of his companions grabbed Theron under his armpits and yanked him to his feet.

  And now the big finale, Theron thought as Pressik wound up and launched a haymaker at his jaw.

  Everything went white as stars exploded in Theron’s vision. When the men holding him up let go, he dropped to the floor, semiconscious. He tried to keep from blacking out as someone grabbed his ankles and dragged him facedown to the door, his cheek scraping roughly across the dirty, sticky floor.

  His head was still spinning as they lifted him up into the air, rocked him back and forth a few times to gather momentum, then tossed him out onto the street. He landed awkwardly on his shoulder, re-aggravating the injury he’d sustained during his last job on Nar Shaddaa.

  Somehow he rolled onto his side, just in time to receive a hard kick from Pressik right in the ribs. The soldier leaned over and spit on him, then—laughing—he and his friends turned and headed back into the bar.

  Theron lay curled up in the fetal position on the street, evaluating his injuries. The inside of his lip was cut where Pressik’s punch had mashed it against his teeth, filling his mouth with blood. As he spit it out, he could feel a gap with his tongue where one of his teeth had been knocked out. The side of his face that had scraped along the floor was raw and stinging, and a sharp pain every time he inhaled was probably a sign of a cracked rib.

  Could have been worse, he thought, slowing his breathing and running through some basic mental exercises to help him deal with the worst of the pain. They could have curb-stomped me right into the nearest medcenter. Or the morgue.

  After a few minutes, Theron gingerly got to his feet and made his way slowly down the street toward the room he shared with Gnost-Dural, careful to keep up a lurching, drunken gait in case anyone was watching him.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this, Theron?” Gnost-Dural asked.

  “I’m fine,” Theron said, trying not to wince as he strapped on the backpack carrying the burned-out cipher core and all his other supplies.

  Three days had passed since he’d been pummeled at the bar. His face was still bruised and his ribs and shoulder were still tender, but the injuries weren’t worth delaying the mission over.

  He was wearing a black bodysuit and balaclava to conceal his face. Gnost-Dural’s outfit was more elaborate—a loose-fitting black robe with a heavy hood and a fabric mask to obscure his alien features. Theron made one last run through his mental checklist, making sure everything had been taken care of.

  “You’d better get going,” Theron told his Jedi companion once he had finished his final cross-check. “Give me thirty minutes to get in position before you kill the lights, and another ninety before you tip off the Empire. That should give me plenty of time to switch the cipher cores and get the explosives ready before they sound the alarm.”

  Master Gnost-Dural nodded. “I’ll be waiting for you at the rendezvous site when you’re done inside the ODCC,” he said. Just before Theron slipped out the door Gnost-Dural added, “May the Force be with you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  ZIOST’S ICY, UNRELENTING WIND buffeted Theron’s body as he huddled on the roof’s edge of the building across the street from the Orbital Defense Command Center. He had on his night goggles and had already anchored the tripod of his grappling gun securely. He’d even carefully selected his target—a spot just below the surveillance cams mounted on the side of the windowless ODCC building. Now he was just waiting for Gnost-Dural to do his part.

  The citywide blackout would temporarily disable the surveillance cams, but it would only take a few seconds for the auxiliary generators to ramp up and get them working again. Theron would have to act fast if he didn’t want to be seen breaking in; his adrenaline was pumping, his mind focused and alert, his muscles poised to spring into action. But he couldn’t do anything until Gnost-Dural knocked out the power.

  This is why I like to work alone, he thought, crouching lower to the rooftop as another blast of wind whipped across the surface.

  He trusted the Jedi, and his role in the mission was simple enough. But in the back of his mind he couldn’t help but wonder if his partner was up to the task.

  Guess I’ll know in a few minutes. Either the lights go out and the mission is a go, or I lose my fingers to a serious case of frostbite.

  Unlike Republic worlds where electricity was supplied by private companies, Ziost’s main power station was a government-controlled facility under military supervision. To defend it against orbital strikes, it had been built into a reinforced bunker twenty meters below the surface of the planet. The only entrance was a heavily defended turbolift, making it virtually impossible for someone to get inside without being seen.

  Fortunately, Master Gnost-Dural didn’t have to get into the main station to wreak havoc with Ziost’s power supply. The electricity generated in the heavily defended facility had to be dispersed across the entire city through a network of substations and transformers, which divided and subdivided to feed the millions of users plugged into the electrical grid. And though the network was designed with redundancies to reroute power in the event of damaged lines or substations, it was a logistical impossibility to fully guarantee uninterrupted service. That was why places like the ODCC had their own emergency generators.

  Vinn had provided them with blueprints for the electrical grid, allowing them to identify the three key junction points that needed to be taken out to kill the power supply for their target. By planting explosives at each location and detonating them simultaneously, they could cause a massive blackout that would take hours to restore.

  The first two locations were both small auxiliary substations; neither one was guarded, and
it was a simple matter for the Jedi to plant the detonite charges and set the timers. The third location, however, was one of the city’s five primary substations. It would have been prohibitively expensive for the Empire to replicate the near-impregnable defenses of the main power station at each of the substations, but it did take some precautions. The small building was surrounded by a three-meter-high, electrified chain-link fence. There were half a dozen guards stationed at the facility; every twenty minutes they took turns circling the perimeter in pairs while the others sat inside the substation’s tiny break room playing sabacc and trying to stay warm.

  Gnost-Dural could have easily used his lightsaber to slice through the fence and dispatched all six of the soldiers before they could call for help. But the iconic weapon of the Jedi left distinctive marks on both flesh and steel. Leaving behind evidence pointing to a Jedi’s involvement would blow apart the cover story that this was the work of a local anti-Imperial resistance group. Instead, he hid in the shadows and waited for the two guards on patrol to pass, then raced up to the fence. Using a pair of insulated wire cutters, he snipped open a hole just large enough for him to slip through without touching the deadly fence, then he raced up to the side of the building.

  Heading in the same clockwise direction as the patrolling guards, he circled the perimeter until he reached the building’s only entrance. Instead of the modern automatic security doors that slid open with the touch of a button, the building was fitted with an archaic metal plate that swung open on its hinges when the handle was turned.

  Pressing himself against the side of the door, the Jedi carefully turned the handle and eased it open a few centimeters. Light spilled out into the dark night, along with the conversation and laughter of the guards in the break room just on the other side. Crouching down, he rolled a small canister along the ground and into the room before pulling the door shut.

  Calling on the Force he warped, twisted, and snapped the handle off. A second later there were cries of alarm from inside as black, noxious smoke billowed out from the imperfectly sealed edges of the door. He heard running feet, followed by the sound of someone frantically struggling with the door’s handle on the other side, unaware it had been disabled. There was a loud bang as someone threw their body at the door, then a woman shouted “Stand clear!”

  Three blaster bolts pierced the door in rapid succession, ripping finger-sized holes in the steel. Then there was a loud thump as someone kicked at the door, once again to no avail. By this time the two guards on patrol had heard the commotion. Sill playing the part of an anti-Imperial terrorist, Gnost-Dural crouched on one knee, drew his blaster, and shot the first one as he came racing around the corner, killing him instantly.

  As he always did, the Jedi felt a twinge of sorrow at taking another’s life. But decades of war against a brutal and relentless foe had forced Gnost-Dural, like so many others in the Order, to come to grips with the moral ambiguity of killing an enemy in the pursuit of a peace that would save the lives of trillions.

  The partner of the guard whom Gnost-Dural shot managed to duck back behind the cover of the building’s edge. Gnost-Dural stood up and reached out with the Force, using it to pick the surviving soldier up and pull her out into the open. She flew several meters through the air before landing on the exposed ground; Gnost-Dural shot her before she could even get to her feet.

  Turning back to the door, he placed a thin strip of detonite along the edge, retreated to a safe distance, then set it off. The blast blew the damaged door open. It took several seconds for the poison gas from the detonator to clear the room and reveal the bodies of the four guards just inside the door. Gnost-Dural was reminded of the value of the Jedi teachings. Had the soldiers stayed calm during his attack, they could have retreated into the small control room in the back of the building to escape the smoke. But fear had clouded their minds, and in their panic they had congregated around the only exit to the outside world, dooming themselves.

  The Jedi stepped over the fallen soldiers and crossed the room to the door at the rear. It was locked, but another strip of detonite gave him access to the control room beyond. He set the explosives, syncing the timer to go off in three minutes—the exact same time as the charges at the other two locations. Then he turned and left the building, slipped through the hole he’d cut in the perimeter fence, and headed toward the rendezvous point where Theron would meet up with him later.

  Theron didn’t hear the explosions from the substations, but he knew exactly when they happened. Everything in an area of six square blocks went instantly and completely dark; a second later his night-vision goggles adjusted to the lack of illumination, allowing him to see everything through a hazy green filter.

  He fired his grappling gun, the three-pronged harpoon embedding itself in the permacrete side of the Orbital Defense Command Center five meters below the height of the roof Theron was perched on. He clipped a sliding pulley and handle onto the line and leapt off the edge, letting gravity pull him down the zip line.

  It took only a few seconds until he reached the end of the line. Clamping down on the pulley he slowed his descent to keep from smashing into the side of the ODCC. He made sure the pulley was latched on to the end of the grappling hook protruding from the wall, then released the line.

  The thin wire shot away from him, retracted at an incredible speed by the recoiling springs in the grappling gun anchored on the roof across the street. A second later the auxiliary generators kicked in and the ODCC emergency lights illuminated the night. He heard the soft whir of the surveillance cams sticking out from the side of the building a few meters above him as they resumed their automated pan-and-scan search of the surrounding area. But the cams weren’t positioned to look straight down; he was safe.

  Forced to dangle by one hand from the grappling hook’s pulley, he used his free arm to pull out a small tube of inert plasma gel. Squeezing the tube, he covered a one-meter-by-one-meter square on the side of the building with the pasty-white substance. Then he tucked the half-empty tube back into his belt and brought out a small rod tipped with a pair of electrical prongs.

  He waited a few seconds for the gel to set, then pressed the prongs into the gel on the wall and pulled the trigger. The rod hummed as it discharged a powerful current, catalyzing the inert plasma suspended in the paste.

  Theron turned his head to the side and closed his eyes as the substance began to smolder and spark. When he opened his eyes a few seconds later, the gel had burned a hole clean through the permacrete wall.

  Still hanging from the grappling hook, Theron hauled himself up so he could swing his legs through the hole before letting go. The effort aggravated his injured left shoulder, but it was more annoyance than inconvenience.

  He found himself in an empty office on the third floor of the ODCC. Theron slung the backpack off his shoulder and onto the ground. The soft glow of the building’s emergency lights made his night goggles unnecessary, so he stashed them in the pack, then peeled off the outer layer of his clothes. Underneath the black bodysuit he wore an exact replica of an emergency response team’s captain’s uniform, complete with an encoded ID badge like the one he’d scanned in the bar. From inside the backpack he pulled out a heavy assault rifle—more firepower than he probably needed, but it would fit the story of a militant terrorist group. He stuffed the discarded outer clothes into the pack before hoisting it up onto his back again.

  From the architectural diagrams Vinn had provided, he knew he was on the same floor as the minister’s office, though he was on the opposite side of the facility. Unfortunately, his access point had been limited by the surrounding buildings; there weren’t any structures tall enough on the other side of the ODCC for him to get high enough to use the zip line. With the facility still in lockdown, however, he didn’t have to worry about any guards patrolling the area.

  The door leading from the office and out into the hall was locked; he could tell by the blinking red light above the small access panel on the side. A
s he approached, the panel began to blink yellow as the security system automatically scanned his badge. He leaned forward, bringing his eyes only a few centimeters away from the panel to let it scan the contact lenses he’d slipped in before the mission. The lenses didn’t affect his vision, but they mimicked the retinal pattern of Captain Pressik.

  The light above the panel switched from yellow to green and the door slid open. Theron poked his head into the hall, looking both left and right but seeing no one. He stepped into the hall and moved quickly to the door at the far end that would lead him into the adjacent wing.

  Once again he let the system read his badge and scan his eyes, and the door’s status changed from red to yellow to green before it slid open. On the other side were two guards sitting casually on the floor of the hall, idly passing the time as they waited for the lockdown to end.

  They glanced up in surprise as Theron stepped through the door. Seeing his captain’s uniform, their first instinct was to scramble to their feet and stand at attention. But even though Theron was dressed like an officer, there were too many other things that didn’t add up. The lockdown was only a few minutes old; it was too soon for the emergency response team to already be on the third floor. Plus, he should have been coming from the other direction—working his way up from the main floor and the front entrance. Finally, Imperial officers carried blasters, not backpacks and assault rifles.

  All of this passed through their heads in a fraction of a second, and though they were already reaching for their weapons as they started to stand, the momentary delay gave Theron time to mow them down.

  As he stood over the bodies of the two soldiers, Theron knew he’d have to be more cautious from this point forward. At some point this pair would be expected to check in, and when they didn’t the other guards would know something was wrong. It was also possible someone had heard the sound of the shots, and though the lockdown kept them from investigating they’d be alert and on guard from this point on. He wasn’t going to come through any more doors to find his enemies lounging on the floor.