Refugee: Force Heretic II (11 page)

The highest of Nom Anor’s acolytes beamed with pride as he scurried off to do his duty. The self-styled Prophet buried a flash of irritation. Although part of him wished he had killed the fool when he’d had the chance, he had to acknowledge Shoon-mi’s usefulness. He was dedicated and resourceful, and Nom Anor felt he owed it to Shoon-mi’s sister, Niiriit, one of the first true believers of the Message, not to kill him. Kunra would be sure to remind him if he tried, he was sure.

That wasn’t the most irritating thing, though. Shoonmi’s willingness to work for nothing but praise stuck in Nom Anor’s throat like a bone.

The ex-warrior stood in silence by the door, watching him. Nom Anor had come to know Kunra well enough to realize when he had something on his mind.

“What is it?”

“You’d better see for yourself.” Kunra turned and walked through the hall’s main entrance and into the antechamber. From there, he led Nom Anor along a short corridor to the small cell in which Kunra slept. There, immobilized by blorash jelly, lay a female dressed in rags. Her cheek was heavily bruised, but her eyes were open and filled with defiance.

“She was carrying this,” Kunra said, offering Nom Anor the remains of a small, larva-like creature. Its leathery shell had been crushed and would have been barely recognizable had not Nom Anor seen such things many times before. It was a villip.

The female had obviously intended to bring it into the meeting so that the person on the other end could watch the Prophet in action. That in itself was not necessarily sinister; some of the acolytes had attempted to spread the Message via villips before—or so they had claimed. Nom Anor knew, however, that he couldn’t afford to take the chance.

“Does Shoon-mi know?” he asked, keeping his stare fixed on the female.

“No. I make sure to check all acolytes before they reach him. This one came alone and was out of the way before he had a chance to suspect anything.”

Nom Anor nodded his approval. It made things much simpler.

“I want the name of the person holding her master villip,” he said coldly. “Find out how much she knows about us while you’re at it—get the information any way you have to. Then kill her.”

Kunra didn’t argue. “I understand.”

The female started to struggle, her protests muffled by the gag in her mouth. Nom Anor ignored her. “I shall explain to Shoon-mi that we have to relocate again.”

“He won’t like it.”

He faced Kunra. “I’m sure he’d prefer it to dying.”

Without a further glance at the prisoner, he turned and walked away.

DESTINATION

The freighter came out of nowhere from hyperspace far too close to Bakura and going into an instant spin. Its drive units stuttered at random, which wasn’t helping the freighter’s situation, while its subspace was transmitting nothing but static—which to Jag Fel sounded a lot like the buzzing of angry insects.

He had spent a lot of time and effort memorizing the manufacturers and model names of both Republic and Imperial vessels, but he was having difficulty identifying this one. Its distinctive asymmetric design suggested something from the Corellian Engineering Corporation—possibly somewhere between the YT 1300 and the YT 2400—although he couldn’t be 100 percent certain. Either way, it was in poor shape, and that wasn’t likely to improve in a hurry.

He would have happily ignored it had it not been for the fact that whoever was flying it was coming dangerously close to where
Pride of Selonia
was stationed.

“Flights B and C, stand by.” Jag switched to a commercial channel. “Unidentified freighter, you are infringing upon our space. Change course immediately or we will be forced to take action.”

More static was his only reply.

He swung his clawcraft away from
Selonia
in order to meet the incoming vessel. His wingmate followed, S-foils opening smoothly on her X-wing.

“Bakura Orbital Control,” he commed on local channels, “has anybody given this freighter approval to occupy our orbit?”

“Negative, Twin One,” came the instant reply. “This flight is unauthorized. But we’ve certainly seen her before.”

“You have a registration listed?”

“Oh yeah. She goes by the name of
Jaunty Cavalier
and is owned by a Wookiee called Rufarr. In fact, I’m surprised to see him return here. He left owing me some credits.”

Not your usual Wookiee, then
, Jag thought as he watched the freighter tumble toward him.
And not your usual approach, either
.

“I think he’s got more to worry about at the moment,” Jag sent. “Requesting permission to nudge her out of harm’s way.”

“As long as you promise not to be too gentle,” Orbital Control quipped.

“Do what you have to, Twin One,” added Captain Mayn from
Selonia
. “Just make sure she gives us a wide berth.”

“Jaunty Cavalier,”
he tried again. “You have ten seconds to comply with my instructions or you
will
be intercepted. Please respond.”

Still nothing but crackling over the comm.

“Okay, we’re going in.” He applied power to his thrusters and brought his clawcraft alongside the tumbling freighter. “Flight B, come closer and add your shields to mine. We’re going to try to give her a little push.”

Two X-wings and another clawcraft joined him and his wingmate. With half of Twin Suns all working simultaneously, the freighter’s heading gradually began to change, but it required a redirection of all available power to both engines and shields from all ships. Jag kept a wary eye on the freighter, just in case she tried anything.

Five degrees would do it, he decided. That would take the freighter well past
Selonia
and clear of Bakura’s atmosphere—

He caught a flash out of the corner of his eye. At that exact moment a dozen instruments on his console spiked, and he realized that a spray of neutrinos had just washed over him.

“Did anyone else catch that?”

“Affirmative, Twin One,” the leader of Flight B replied. “Look at the drive units.”

Jag craned to look out the rear of his cockpit’s transparent canopy. The freighter’s engines were stuttering furiously now, thrust ebbing and fading in wildly erratic energy swings.

“I don’t like the look of this,” he mumbled under his breath.

The words had barely left his lips when the drive units emitted a particularly bright flash, then died completely.

“Break off!” he called over the comm. “All fighters, disengage immediately!” He was already wrenching the controls of his clawcraft up and away from the stricken freighter. “Full power to aft shields! Put everything you’ve got between us and that thing! She’s going to—”

There was a blinding white flash from behind him, then something picked up his clawcraft and spun it like a top around all axes. He clutched at the sides of his flight seat, hearing nothing but the scream of tortured matter over the comm.

Then the rough ride was over, and the stars reappeared.

Jag damped down his spin and checked on the four other starfighters. He was relieved to find them all present, if a little shaken by the experience. All that remained of
Jaunty Cavalier
was a jagged chunk of wreckage, possibly a section of the forward structural chassis. The rest had been blown to atoms by the drive failure.

“Bakura Orbital Control,” he said solemnly into his comm. “I think you can kiss your credits good-bye.”

“Don’t write it off just yet, Twin One,” came the voice of Captain Mayn. “We registered a launch from
Jaunty Cavalier
just before the detonation. It looked like a small pod of some kind.”

This surprised Jag. “An escape pod? Are you sure? I didn’t see anything.”

“I’m positive,” Mayn returned. “It was on the opposite side of the ship from you, which was probably why you didn’t see it.”

“Heading for Bakura, you mean?” Jag was still slightly disoriented from the shock wave, but he knew his up from his down. Every spacer did in a gravity well. “Does it have thrusters?”

“They’re firing, but it’s not enough. Reentry will be too steep. Want to go fetch it, or should we hand it over to Bakura OC?”

“Negative on that,” Orbital Control said over the open line. “We wouldn’t be able to get there in time. Sorry, Twin One, but it’s going to have to be you or no one at all.”

“Understood,” Jag said, silently hoping there’d be no more surprises in store for him.

He sent his clawcraft swooping around the growing cloud of wreckage, his engines on maximum burn. The pod appeared on his scope a second later, streaking downward. Its velocity was increasing, but it was no match for a clawcraft at full throttle. He decelerated cautiously alongside as it loomed large in his scopes. There were no obvious booby traps or triggers, just the blinking of an emergency beacon, bright and repetitive on the subspace channels.

Jag didn’t know exactly what sort of communications capacities the Corellian Engineering Corporation provided its escape capsules, but he didn’t imagine they’d be
much. Before locking on to the pod, he scanned the subspace channels looking for any transmissions from the kind of local comlink the occupant—if there was one—would probably be using. He picked up various low-power transmissions, including just about every navigational beacon for a light-month, before finally lucking onto a faint voice calling stridently:

“—n emergency!
Someone
answer me, please! I’m in need of assistance. Can anyone hear this? I’m—”

“This is Colonel Jag Fel calling the occupant of life pod—” He checked the ident number visible on the stubby cylinder as it rotated into view. “—one-one-two-V. Can you hear this?”

“Yes!” The reply was immediate and drenched with relief. “Yes, I can! Thank the Balance you found me! I was beginning to think my escape had all been for nothing!”

Jag fine-tuned his trim preparatory to coming in closer. The voice clearly did not belong to the Wookiee captain of the destroyed freighter. “Want to tell me what happened back there?”

“The drive failed in midjump and I didn’t know what to do to fix it. The navicomputer died in the energy surge following the engine failure. I was lucky that bucket of bolts made it as far as she did.”

“Are there any other survivors there with you?”

“Just me. The crew is dead—and good riddance to them, as far as I’m concerned. Murderous fiends, every one of them!”

Jag hesitated. “You killed them?”

“Only in self-defense.” The voice took on a more commanding tone. “Look, are you here to rescue me or ask questions?”

“I’m trying to ascertain
whom
I’m rescuing, that’s all.”
And what kind of monster you are
, he added to himself.

“You want to know who I am? I’m Prime Minister Cundertol, that’s who—and I’m ordering you to pull me up this instant! After all I’ve been through, I’m not going to let some rookie pilot fumble my rescue. You put me through to Orbital Control this instant or so help me I’ll have your license faster than you can—”

“I apologize, Prime Minister,” Jag cut in, biting down on the reply he would have preferred to give. “Bringing you up now.”

He pulled his clawcraft in closer to the pod. Magnetic clamps engaged, and he fired his thrusters only slightly more roughly than was necessary to bring the escape pod out of its headlong descent into the atmosphere. The roar of thrusters prevented further communication between Jag and his unlikely pillion rider, let alone Orbital Control. The Prime Minister was forced to ride out the long burn in silence, in whatever passed for acceleration straps among Corellian engineers. Although he probably had every reason to be impatient, if his use of words like
escape
and
murderers
was any indication of what he’d been through, Jag wasn’t going to let him off easily.

Rookie, indeed …

“… seven of them, four humans, two Rodians, and that wretched Wookiee captain of theirs. I resisted, of course, but they took me by surprise. Once they’d smuggled me out of the Bakuran Senate Complex, it was just a matter of getting me to the spaceport. No one stopped to question a group of traders carrying a crate of records—and not one person thought to scan the crate to make sure it contained what they said it did.” The Prime Minister shook his head gravely. “Someone’s head will roll for this, mark my words.”

Prime Minister Cundertol was a big, solid man with thinning blond hair and a pink hue to his skin. He held his age well, overpowering any hint of frailty with bluster
and exaggerated gestures. Safely recovered from the escape pod, he was sitting on a bench outside
Pride of Selonia
’s medical bay.

Jag and Captain Mayn sat with him. Mayn, as tall as Cundertol but half the weight, sat opposite him, her narrow features frozen in concentration. Only Jag, standing to one side, could see the tic pulsing in the skin beneath her shaved scalp.

“Go on, Prime Minister,” he encouraged. “What happened next?”

“They took me aboard their ship and knocked me out, that’s what happened next!” Despite his outrage, it was obvious that Cundertol was enjoying relating the tale. “When I woke up, we were in hyperspace. I had no idea where they were taking me. They’d stuck me away in an aft hold. Every now and then I would hear them talking, and it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t in fact a hostage at all—as I had first suspected. From the little I could glean from the snatches of their conversations, I was to be taken somewhere and interrogated—then I was to be disposed of. Luckily, though, they hadn’t fastened my bindings properly, so with a bit of effort I managed to work my hands free.”