Bad either way. Utter failure. Not very Nihil. She could just imagine what everyone would say. “You remember that gal Dent? Screwed up the easiest job ever—a snatch-and-grab on some nowhere planet. Got herself and all her Strikes killed. What an idiot.”
She spared half a thought for the two Strikes she’d left back down on the planet, the ones she’d already written off. She guessed it was possible Egga and Rel were still alive down on the planet somewhere, fighting the good fight, two loyal Strikes doing as their Cloud ordered.
They were both so stupid—just went along with what she told them to do even though obviously she was sending them off to get killed to buy time for her, Mack, and Buggo to get off the planet with the cargo. No, those two idiots were dead, for sure. They hadn’t called in, and if they’d taken out the Jedi they would have asked for a pickup.
Ugh, she thought.
This was supposed to be the easiest job ever. She was so proud of herself for thinking it up. She’d heard that these four people had tried to go it alone in the Outer Rim, live “authentically,” cut themselves off from their rich family on Alderaan. It made her so mad. They had everything, these Blythes, and they threw it away to go dig in the dirt. But some people didn’t have a choice like that. They were born in the dirt and they’d die there—people like her. Until the Nihil, anyway. Lourna Dee had recruited her with a promise…they were all in it together, they were a family, a new family…it all sounded so good. And it was working, too. She’d made Cloud, and found Strikes of her own to command—it was all coming together.
And then when she’d come up with this idea to take the Blythes and ransom them back to their rich grandparents on Alderaan, and her Storm had liked it and taken it to Lourna Dee herself, and then she’d taken it to Marchion Ro and he’d liked it, too, and she’d gotten the Paths she needed to pull it all off. It was supposed to work out.
But then, Jedi.
“Boss! What are we going to do? Boss!”
Buggo, bugging her, like he did. She should have sent him up into the hills to ambush the Jedi. But he was her second cousin’s husband, which was family in a way, close as she had.
Laser blasts zipped past the cockpit—warning shots.
Mack was on the guns, returning fire, but she had no confidence in his ability to shoot down a Vector. They moved like ghosts, flipping and moving around and doing impossible things. Like the Jedi themselves, in fact.
Dent reached forward and tapped a few buttons on her control console. She wasn’t supposed to make contact while on a mission—signals could be tracked—but what did she have to lose?
A voice came over the comlink—her Storm, a funny, charming Ugnaught named Zoovler Tom.
“Dent!” he said, happy to hear from her, apparently. “What’s the good word? You got the packages we sent you to pick up?”
“Got ’em,” she answered, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “But we ran into trouble. Jedi, chasing us. Ship’s damaged. We won’t be able to make it to the transfer point before they get us. We need a new Path, right now. We’re still in atmosphere, so it’ll be a tricky one.”
“Jedi, huh?” Zoovler said, no longer so happy. “Path at such a low altitude…that’s gonna run into trouble with the planet’s gravity well. That’s a big ask, Ultident.”
Dent frowned. She’d told Zoovler her real name once, in a moment of booze-filled closeness at one of the rallies. Now he was using it, just like a weapon. Blasted little nothing man, thought he was so special, so superior because he was a Storm. He was just an Ugnaught. If she made it out of this she’d poison his drink next time, and laugh at him as his ugly little face turned black.
“Send me your coordinates. I’ll have to run it up the line,” the Storm said. “Don’t call again. Either you’ll hear from me with a new Path…or you won’t.”
The connection went dead.
Think, she thought.
It would take time for Zoovler to talk to the other Storms, then they’d have to decide whether to talk to Lourna Dee, and she’d make the call on whether to ask the Eye for another Path or just cut her loose. She was just a Cloud…the odds weren’t good. But she knew the Blythes were valuable, and if this whole thing could somehow be pulled out of the fire, everyone stood to gain—including Zoovler, including Lourna Dee, even including Marchion Ro.
That was the system. That’s why the Nihil worked. Everyone did things their way, lived how they wanted, took what they wanted…and everyone got a piece, so it was in everyone’s interest to keep the system going.
But if the Jedi caught them before all of that thinking and requesting happened, no one would get a damn thing. Especially Ultident Margrona.
“Mack,” she said.
“Yeah,” he answered, still firing at the Jedi chasing them, his shots hitting nothing but air.
“Take one of the kids,” she said. “The little girl. Throw her out the air lock.”
“Uh…” Mack said, doubt in his voice.
“What, now you got qualms?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t care, except that we already lost the adult human female. Now we lose another one, we’re cutting our return in half.”
You idiot, she wanted to scream. Who cares about money, when if we don’t get away there’s no profits, no credits, no life. We’ll be dead, you dumb Strike!
“The Jedi will try to save the kid,” she said, forcing a patient tone into her voice. “That’s what they do. Might give us a chance to get away.”
Mack grunted, and she heard him get up and head toward the back of the ship, where their three remaining Blythes were tied up in the cargo hold.
“Ride the storm, Dent,” she whispered to herself. “Just ride the storm.”
“So that’s what caused so much pain,” said Chancellor Lina Soh, from her offices on Coruscant.
She was looking at a hi-res holo projected by one of her comms droids, while Avar Kriss and others from the Emergences task force were watching a vidscreen in the Third Horizon’s briefing chamber—but the images were the same: the last thing the Legacy Run’s scanners saw before the ship tore itself apart.
That thing was a ship, blocky and ugly, with three bright, jagged stripes across its hull—exactly as described by Serj Ukkarian on the Panacea. Three lightning bolts, which Senator Noor’s people had confirmed as the insignia used by the Outer Rim marauders known as the Nihil. The vessel was moving through hyperspace, but not along the path of the swirling hyperspace tunnel, as had been the case with every ship Avar had ever seen. The Nihil ship was moving across hyperspace, at a right angle to the Legacy Run’s direction of travel, with strange red-and-gold turbulence rippling in its wake.
“I was given to understand something like this was impossible,” Lina Soh said, her left hand idly stroking the head of one of her two giant pet cats—Avar knew their names, Matari and Voru, they were famous throughout the Republic, but she didn’t know which was which.
The chancellor’s words were slightly delayed, a factor of the distance between Coruscant and the Outer Rim Territories. Senate-level comms were given the highest priority over the relays, but parsecs were parsecs. That would change, hopefully—improving the galactic communications network was one of Lina Soh’s planned Great Works—but not if they didn’t solve the issue at hand.
“It should be impossible, Chancellor,” Vellis San Tekka said, sitting at the table next to his partner, Marlowe, who nodded in agreement.
Avar sensed something there. Some unspoken communication between the San Tekkas. A careful choice of words.
Maybe Elzar was right, she thought. Maybe we should have pushed them a little harder.
Clearly he thought so. He was sitting across the table from her, and caught her eye. Nothing more than the tiniest glance, but she knew exactly what he was thinking, even without Force-related assistance.
She offered Elzar a tiny shrug. Whatever the San Tekkas knew, their help had been genuine and invaluable. Keven Tarr had told her there was no way he could have completed his navidroid array without their assistance. She didn’t know whether that was true—the Hetzalian engineer was clearly a genius—but the San Tekkas had certainly helped Keven finish the array more quickly, and speed was of the essence here.
The genius in question was on another screen, a comms droid projecting his holo against one of the briefing chamber’s other blank walls. Tarr had stayed on the Rooted Moon in Hetzal, and was using his array to process the data retrieved from the Legacy Run’s flight recorder. The massive, stitched-together computer brain had been completely repaired from the damage suffered when it first activated. In fact, not just repaired, but enhanced. Chancellor Soh had ordered Transportation Secretary Lorillia to provide Keven Tarr with as many navidroids as he needed. If he wanted a million, he was to get them, no matter the cost.
“Can someone summarize our conclusions thus far, please?” Lina Soh said.
Everyone looked at Avar. Somehow she had become the leader of the task force, despite sharing the room with an admiral, a senator, and various other high-level luminaries.
“We have learned that a group calling themselves the Nihil was directly connected to the catastrophe in Hetzal and the subsequent Emergences. They’re a low-level marauder operation working in the Outer Rim—raiders, basically. They’ve done some terrible things, but they’re a regional problem, handled by defense forces and security teams on a case-by-case basis. As bad as they are, they’re small time.
“It seems—though this is informed speculation—that whatever happened in Hetzal gave them the ability to predict Emergences, much like Keven Tarr’s navidroid array. They’ve used that ability twice that we’re aware of. First, in Eriadu, as part of a botched extortion attempt. And second, at the fortieth Emergence, where they attempted to prevent our teams from retrieving the Legacy Run’s flight recorder, as they knew it would tie all of this directly back to them.”
“That’s where we lost one of your colleagues, the Jedi Knight Te’Ami, and two brave pilots in a Longbeam—Marcus Augur and Beth Petters, correct?”
Avar inclined her head slightly in silent agreement. The chancellor considered for a moment, scratching behind her targon’s ear and getting an appreciative purr in response.
“Do we think these Nihil caused the Legacy Run disaster on purpose?”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” Elzar Mann said.
He gestured to the main vidscreen, which was still displaying the Nihil ship crossing through hyperspace, running on a loop.
“This is clearly a ship, and armed. If they wanted to destroy the Legacy Run, they could have fired their weapons. They didn’t. The Legacy Run just tore itself apart trying to evade this thing. Besides, as Master Kriss pointed out, this is a bunch of Outer Rim raiders. Opportunists, not planners. This all seems like a horrible accident.”
“An accident that they promptly tried to profit from at Eriadu,” Senator Noor said, pounding his fist on the table. “An accident that has cost the Outer Rim Territories dearly in lives, opportunity, and treasure. They must be held responsible.”
Behind him, his aide nodded, a blue-skinned Chagrian, slim, tall, and precise in dress and manner. Jeni Wataro, Avar recalled.
“They will,” Chancellor Soh said, holding up a hand. “First, we need to know whether it can happen again. San Tekkas…what is your view?”
Marlowe and Vellis glanced at each other briefly before speaking.
“We believe this was a tragic fluke, Chancellor,” Marlowe said. “We do not think there is an overarching issue with hyperspace. However, this”—here he pointed at the vidscreen, still displaying the brutish ship looping across the Legacy Run’s path, over and over again, trailing its strange red-and-gold wake—“suggests the Nihil have an understanding of hyperspace that is at best unique and at worst hugely dangerous. That should be investigated, and quickly.”
“Well, perfect, then,” Senator Noor said. “You heard the man, Chancellor. Hyperspace is fine. The Outer Rim is suffering—and I know you want the Starlight Beacon to come online. It’s time to reopen the lanes.”
“Not yet, Senator,” she said. “We know what happened, more or less—but just because it was an accident once doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done purposely in the future. It’s not such a leap for marauders to become terrorists. This threat has to be eliminated.”
Senator Noor began to sputter out a protest.
“Enough, Noor,” Chancellor Soh said. “I’ve made my decision. I know you’re concerned about the Rim. I am as well…but I’m responsible for the entire galaxy, and in case you’ve forgotten, hyperspace goes everywhere. If the Nihil can attack us in the lanes, nowhere is safe.”
She turned to look at Admiral Kronara, standing at the far end of the briefing room.
“Admiral, I want you to activate the defense provisions in the RDC agreements. Gather a fleet from the treaty worlds and hunt down the Nihil. I’ve read the reports—even if there really is no further danger to hyperspace, these are still dangerous criminals who should not be able to operate with impunity. Even if they confine their raids to the Outer Rim, we are all the Republic.”
“Very good, Chancellor,” he said, sounding pleased.
Then again, he was an admiral.
“Do you have any idea where the Nihil are based?” Chancellor Soh continued. “Their headquarters?”
“If I may, Chancellor,” Keven Tarr interjected, raising a hand. “I’ve already set my array to calculating the likely origin point of the Nihil vessel that caused the Legacy Run disaster. It originated in a spot near the Kur Nebula. I don’t know if that’s their base, but it’s a place to start.”
“Very good, Mr. Tarr,” she replied, then looked out across the Third Horizon’s briefing chamber.
“You have all done very well so far,” she said. “You discovered the cause of the Legacy Run tragedy. Now I give you a new assignment. You are to make sure it never, ever happens again. Whatever it takes.”
Chancellor Lina Soh leaned forward, and both of her giant cats lifted their heads, their ears flattening in a threat display as they sensed their master’s emotional intensity. Avar, despite herself, despite all her skill and training, found herself glad that half a galaxy separated her from this woman. She did not envy the Nihil, who now found themselves under the gaze of a person who had demonstrated the will to reshape an entire galaxy.
“I want these Nihil brought to justice,” the chancellor said. “Every last one.”
This is the moment, Marchion Ro thought. The new beginning.
He stood in the center of the huge platform that was the Great Hall of the Nihil, open on all four sides to the nothingness of No-Space. Unsettling multicolored lights flickered in the far distance, nothing interrupting them but the silhouettes of the vessels that had brought Marchion and the three Tempest Runners to this forsaken, desolate place. The hall was empty—no feast tables interrupted its expanse, and the four of them were alone and unmasked.
Marchion looked at these people—Kassav, Pan Eyta, and Lourna Dee. They resented him and they resented one another, and all believed they could do better than the rest. There was no unity. There was no purpose to the Nihil, other than a desire for profit and a shared love for taking from others, flouting the system. That had to change.
This was the moment.
“I heard from my spy in Senator Noor’s office,” Marchion said. “The Jedi and the Republic have accessed the flight recorder they got when Lourna Dee failed her mission.”
Lourna Dee blinked but didn’t say anything.
“They know we were responsible for the Legacy Run disaster,” Marchion continued. “One of Pan Eyta’s Clouds was returning from a raid, using a Path, and ended up almost smashing into the Run.”
“That’s not our fault!” Kassav said. “How were we supposed to know—”
“It doesn’t matter if that wasn’t our fault. Eriadu sure as hell was,” Marchion said.
For once, Kassav shut his mouth.
“So, it’s what happened in Hetzal, all the Emergences, Kassav’s idiotic move at Eriadu, and then Lourna Dee basically proved we’re involved when she tried and failed to get the flight recorder,” Pan Eyta said, his voice like rubble falling off a cliff. “We’re all over this. This is bad.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Lourna Dee said.
“They’ll hunt us down,” Pan said. “The Republic and the Jedi, too. We’re not just some regional raider crew anymore. We’re a threat to them. We caused the whole damn hyperspace blockade. They’ll want to make an example of us.”
“Look, we’ve had a good run,” Kassav said. “Everyone’s made money. It’s not like we have to do this. We can just…go.”
“And all those Storms and Clouds and Strikes in our Tempests? The ones who follow us, believe in us. What about them?” Lourna Dee said.
Kassav shrugged. “They can do whatever they want. They want to keep the Nihil going, keep riding the storm, that’s their business. Nothing saying we can’t ever retire. What, we gotta be Tempest Runners until the day we die? What about living off the spoils of a lifetime of hard work?”
Pan Eyta snorted. “You think they’ll see it that way? They’ll think we cut and run.”
Kassav shrugged again. “The Nihil are about freedom, right? Do what you want, when you want. Well, maybe I want to get the hell out of here before a Jedi pulls out their lightsaber and cuts off my head.”
“Didn’t you once say you wanted to fight a Jedi?” Marchion Ro said, his tone mild. “Get yourself a good story to tell?”
Kassav said nothing.
This is the moment, Marchion thought.
He punched Kassav right in his stupid, cunning, savage face. Marchion’s gloves were reinforced with armored plates and acceleration compensators; he could punch a hole in a durasteel wall and not feel a twinge of pain. He heard the sound as Kassav’s stupid, cunning, savage nose crumpled under his fist, and by the Path it felt good.
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