Star Wars: Knight Errant (24 page)

Calician had harbored no compunctions about using what they wouldn’t. Within days of being appointed guardian of the twins, he’d arranged to have this first specimen—never known by any name other than “One”—brought in. The results had been so positive that he had worked to lure entire Celegian communities to Byllura. Thousands of the creatures had settled in the capital city of Hestobyll. But while One was old, it had proven itself unmatched at its job.

It was time for it to prove itself again. Calician raised his hand before the cylinder. “You will contact the defensive stations,” he said, hammering at One through the Force.

For a moment, the mass of gray and crimson sat, unresponsive, in the foggy soup. But then the Celegian’s chilly response echoed through the regent’s mind:
I will contact the defensive stations
.

“You will report the appearance of any strangers immediately.”

I will report the appearance of any strangers immediately
.

Calician shivered as he watched the tendrils beneath the creature beginning to stir. Violet blood pulsated through thin membranes on the creature’s pate. The being was coming to life, contacting the other minds in the facility. Its telepathy had a limited range—less than a kilometer—but that would reach all the intended parties on the island. And more.

The regent stared at the transparisteel container. Years earlier, he would have flinched, moving quickly to avoid seeing the repulsive thing in action. Now he couldn’t remember what it was he had once found so nauseating.

He watched idly for a minute—until, moving, he caught
a reflection of someone he didn’t recognize in the glass. He looked about for several seconds before realizing the image reflected was his own.

Facial tendrils drooping, he trudged back upstairs to his assigned place near the twins.

Rusher had said she wouldn’t find paradise. The brigadier had clearly never been to Byllura.

The capital city, Hestobyll, was constructed on a waterfall. No—it had been constructed
as
a waterfall, or more precisely, a river delta carved into a steep diagonal slope. Kerra had seen the remarkable formation on their approach from orbit. Byllura’s largest landform was a high plateau, separated from the sea by towering escarpments all around—everywhere but near the southern bay, where the drop-off to the ocean had been sculpted into terraces. A grid of canals cut in a hexagonal pattern broke each terrace up into hundreds of six-sided city blocks, with water cascading pleasantly down from one level to the next through dams. Raindrops from the tropical forests at the continent’s center, high above, thus completed their long journey into a rippling blue sound, lapping at the edge of the geometrical shore.

Kerra turned toward the pinkish sun and inhaled deeply. Fresh ocean air filled her lungs, reminding her of her Aquilarian home, years earlier. Avian creatures drifted lazily across the sea. There were no ships in the harbor—that seemed strange—but quite a few landing pads, like theirs, constructed on platforms above the gentle surf and connected to the city, behind, by bridges.

At this distance, she couldn’t see much detail to the
terraced city; Dackett had been called away before she could ask for a pair of macrobinoculars. Even as obviously engineered as the metropolis was, though, the shapes seemed in harmony with the surroundings. Low, featureless structures squatted on the hexagonal steps running up the embankment, with bridges running across the canals. Nowhere to be seen were the smokestacks of Darkknell or the mining pits of Chelloa.

The Sith didn’t build this
, she thought.
This was a Republic world
. She put it on her mental list of places to visit when they finally took it back.

The only thing marring the beauty of the scene was the mesa. A flattened mountain the same height as the mainland plateau perched in the middle of the bay, several kilometers from the shore. Kerra imagined it to be some granite remnant of erosion, or perhaps a chunk separated from the continent by whatever seismic event created the bay. There was something constructed atop it, she saw; almost a squashed dome, overhanging the mesa on all sides and making the formation resemble a giant balo mushroom. Occasional airspeeders buzzed back and forth from the mesa to the city. And there was something else, in the bay: buoys the size of starfighters, bobbing in concentric rings radiating from the mesa to the mainland.

Odd
. And odder still, no one had come to meet them.

“Jedi, I think you made out better than you could have hoped.”

Kerra turned to see Rusher at the bottom of one of the starboard ramps. Once it had become clear that no welcoming party was on the platform, she’d hit the surface first, followed by Novallo and her crews checking hull integrity. But Rusher had taken his time to emerge. “It’s quiet,” Kerra said.

“Nobody stopped us, anyway,” Rusher said. Strange-looking fighters in orbit hadn’t even moved when they
exited hyperspace. Nobody had even hailed them until they were on final approach, when a guttural voice came on the comm system directing
Diligence
to one of the platforms ringing the bay.

“And we know we’re not in Daiman’s space,” he said. The brigadier knelt and pointed to the tiled surface of the landing platform.
Diligence
was parked upon a colossal letter
aurek
, formed by chalk-colored hexagons. “No little flags. The alphabet’s normal here.”

“I don’t know,” Kerra said. “Maybe Daiman’s ‘revelation workers’ haven’t gotten around to stonework yet.” But she likewise doubted that this was Daiman’s territory. All those orderly rows of city blocks—and no holographic statues that she could see. Or real ones, for that matter.

And it definitely wasn’t Odion’s territory. There was still a city to see—even if she’d only seen a small number of figures moving about.

Rusher stretched, lifting his walking stick high into the air. “Well, it looks good to me,” he said, turning to face the cargo ramp. He cupped his hand to his cheek and yelled, “Deploy!”

At once, the other seven cargo ramps clanked open. Metal plating rumbled, as the first batch of refugees came thundering down the ramp behind Rusher.

Kerra leapt toward the foot of the ramp, nearly knocking the brigadier over. “Wait! Wait!” She looked up. Dackett was leading the exodus, with Beadle Lubboon nearly lost in the stream of bodies.

The tromping continued over her voice until she ignited her lightsaber and yelled,
“Nobody move!”

The puzzled crowd stopped in its tracks—although more students continued to descend the other ramps. Kerra shot an irritated look at Dackett. “So that’s where you got called away to.”

The master shrugged, nodding toward his superior’s back.

Lightsaber shining, Kerra pointed it toward the brigadier’s chest. “I told you, I needed to check the place out first!”

“I thought that’s what you were doing, down here,” Rusher said, looking down with annoyance at the glowing tip. “Were you just checking out the sea air?”

Kerra deactivated the lightsaber and stepped closer to him. “I need to do a proper recon,
Brigadier
,” she yelled. “Do you even know what that is?”

The man stared down at her, coolly. They’d played this game over the past couple of days on the way here, but he’d always chosen the battlefield. She could tell: bickering with the little Jedi girl was something that won him points with his soldiers. But he’d always had the upper hand, or been able to pretend what ever he was giving in about wasn’t important. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that now—even if she had to break him right here, in front of his top officers and all the refugees.

“I think,” Rusher said, speaking slowly, “that there’s shelter up in that city. Room for a lot more people than my ship has. And nobody’s shot at us for being here.” He counted on his fingers, ticking off the benefits of Byllura. “Shelter. Security. Sustenance. I win. Goodbye.”

He began to move, but Kerra blocked him. “We don’t know anything about the Sith that run this place! Why aren’t they here yet?”

“Maybe they’ve gone swimming,” Rusher said. “It’s a nice day for it. Look, I’ve told you. On a datapad, this place has everything you need.”

“These things are all theory to you!”

“Do I look like a theorist?” Rusher smirked.

Kerra saw he was playing to his crew again. She wasn’t going to allow it. “I think you don’t care. You haven’t even come up to see the refugees the whole time
we’ve been aboard.” She gestured toward the crowd of students, listening on the ramp. “Is that why you’re in artillery? So you never have to see who you’re attacking?”

Rusher exploded. “Now, you wait a minute!” Abruptly grabbing her shoulders, he turned her behind one of the ramp hoists, out of sight of most of the crowd. Startled by his sudden movement, Kerra looked up at him.

“You think this isn’t real to me?” The brigadier spoke quickly in Kerra’s face, trying to keep his voice down. “I may not see who I’m shooting, little Jedi, but I always see who gets shot. I’ve got kids your Sullustan’s age and younger that I’ve had to carry away from deployments in vials!”

Yanking a surprised Beadle from the line of escorts, he folded the kid’s ear back to reveal an embedded chip. “I’ve got comm-frequency tags on all my people so I know who’s where, and when,” he said. “I don’t leave anyone behind unless going after them is going to get more of my people killed than it saves. But when that’s the case—like on Gazzari—I go!” He straightened and looked back at the ramp. “Carrying your people is going to get my people killed.”

Kerra simmered. This was yet another side to Rusher—but it was clear he was serious this time.

Serious, she could deal with. “One hour,” she said.

Rusher looked toward the bridge to the city—and stepped back toward the cargo ramp. Ripping the comlink headset from Beadle, he pitched it to Kerra. “One hour.”

Kerra bolted across the tarmac toward the corrugated pathway. Rusher turned, gesturing to his troops to reboard the refugees. He was almost in their midst when he was interrupted by the Jedi, standing at the edge of the bridge and looking back.

“Oh, and Brigadier? Jedi don’t leave anyone behind, either,” she said. “It’s a good trait.”

She turned and ran toward the city.

The time was now!

Calician paced the perimeter of the circular penthouse, as excited as he had been in years. He could even feel the tips of his tentacles—without the animating power of Dromika’s commands. After eight years of plotting, eight years of banal arrangements made in the name of his dual masters, all was coming to fruition. And it all had to do with the new arrivals, down below.

The regent returned to the northern window to study the strange-looking warship again. “One” had reported its arrival from hyperspace first, passing on word from the orbital sentries. Now it was clearly visible on its landing platform, separated from the mesa and The Loft, atop it, by a few kilometers of seawater.

According to plan, the starship’s occupants had been allowed to debark without interference. Certainly, they would want to do so. Byllura was pleasing to the organic eye, even if Calician could no longer remember why. In the design he had implemented for his young charges, Byllura was the planetary equivalent of a Whinndorian gorsk-plant—a pretty flower with a paralyzing sting. Population, manufacturing output, military strength: all these things had grown steadily in the Dyarchy in the past eight years because when people came to visit, they stayed—whether they intended to or not.

And very soon, thanks to his efforts, Quillan and Dromika would export Byllura’s brand of welcome to the other worlds within their space, and beyond. Planets controlled by the twins today would hew even more tightly to their commands—clearing the way for the Dyarchy to expand.

And now, at last, Calician knew what direction they would expand in.

The Dyarchy had several Sith neighbors, ranging from the watchful Arkadianate to the pretenders of the Chagrasi Remnant. But no border was wider than the one the twins shared with the accursed Lord Daiman. Like their other neighbors, Daiman had been reluctant to either ally with or declare war on their Dyarchy. Calician had spoken with him several times, always by hologram. The narcissistic Lord of Presumption had never seemed to understand his younger rivals, and what Daiman didn’t understand, he dismissed. That was well, the Krevaaki thought; Quillan and Dromika lacked the forces for an all-out confrontation.

But now Daiman had made a critical error. A strategic move against Lord Bactra, in concert with his brother, Odion. Calician knew very well why they had done it; he had received the message on the special channel, too. But while the Dyarchy was too remote to share in the dismemberment of the Bactran territories, it did front a tantalizing number of systems in the Daimanate’s rear. A rear now unguarded. Daiman would expand into Bactra’s space only to lose his own.

The sorry warship below had been the harbinger. Word of Daiman’s move against Bactra had filtered in, but the appearance of the vessel—
Diligence
, the commander had called it—served as confirmation. When asked, the mercenary had even transmitted his reasons for visiting Byllura: delivering student refugees from the Battle of Gazzari. Calician knew that Daiman would never have allowed the escape of any portion of his workforce, so long as he had ships in the area to stop it.