Star Wars: Knight Errant (4 page)

Narsk looked behind him. He’d momentarily thought she’d landed on the vehicle, but there was no sign of her. Maybe she’d made a grab for the seat and slipped to her doom.
About time for it to inconvenience someone else
, he thought. Only, the speeder was still shimmying to and fro. Something was impeding his control. Narsk looked around again—

—and found her, behind and below, clinging to the end of six meters of chain still attached to the speeder. She’d looped a length of it around her arm, and was now riding it like a tether. By the blur of streetlights far beneath, Narsk could see her starting to climb toward him.

The Sith and their chains!

“That’s enough!” Finding his needler, Narsk locked his knees against the speeder frame and released the handlebars. With one hand on the chassis, Narsk reached behind and started firing. Darts lanced through the exhaust trail, just missing his stowaway, who angled her body to
avoid them. The projectiles’ paths terminated out of sight far below on the street.

Narsk swore. A needler was the wrong weapon—but he couldn’t very well bring a blaster to a spy mission. Scanning the dial, he found a setting he could use. The pulse-wave darts would detonate seconds after they cleared the barrel, delivering most of their force in her direction. She was nearly to the back of the speeder now, grasping for a handhold. Narsk reset his weapon, steadied himself …

… and gaped as his pursuer vanished into the darkness. Puzzled, Narsk squinted for a second—only to go flying himself, as the nose of the speeder caromed off a sturdy metal obstacle: another skybridge! The bottom of the speeder smacked the outer guardrail, throwing the entire vehicle end-over-end. Sky and bridge spun consecutively before Narsk’s eyes, before blending together in agonizing darkness.

She was human, after all. Narsk awoke to the sight of her as, lit by the burning wreckage of the speeder bike, the woman crossed the wide skybridge toward him. A young adult, dark-complexioned, with short-cropped black hair; a few odd wisps of it blew in the wind. Clad in a laborer’s tawny work shirt and dark canvas pants, she blended with the night—and unlike Narsk, she didn’t appear any worse for the landing. She hadn’t been trying to climb onto the speeder, he realized as he struggled to get to his knees. She’d seen the bridge up ahead, and had been readying to drop away to safety.

Now she strode confidently toward him, looking determined and holding her unlit lightsaber. Forcing himself to stand, Narsk fell on his hairy face. His right leg was sprained, perhaps broken.

And the needler was gone.

Narsk squirmed in panic as he heard the familiar hum from above. He clawed at the roadbed, desperate to avoid the moment he’d so often delayed. This had always been a danger; the risk that came with being special. All those jobs, and any one could have ended like this, with a flash of crimson—

Green.

Green!

Narsk’s eyes widened. The lightsaber was green.

“Jedi?” Narsk rolled over and looked at the woman’s eyes. Hazel. Wide, alert, focused—but on the right side of madness.

A Jedi
. He couldn’t believe his luck. A Jedi?
Here?

He’d heard a single Jedi had recently been on the loose in Sith space. One who had challenged Odion during the Chelloa affair—and who had lately given Daiman fits. Narsk had never met any Jedi, but he knew their reputation—and he knew he never could have hoped to have been discovered by anyone better on Darkknell.

“You’re her,” Narsk began. “Aren’t you? You’re
Kerra Holt
.”

The woman didn’t answer. Kneeling, she frisked him. In no position to resist, Narsk scanned her face more closely. Yes, it matched the images he’d seen. He licked his pointed teeth. He knew what to do.

“I’m on your side,” Narsk said. “I want to destroy Daiman, too.”

Ignoring him, the woman pawed at the stealth suit. Amazingly to Narsk—and seemingly so to her—the Mark VI had no rips, although it now had grit to go with its golden splotches. Stepping away with Narsk’s pouch, she found the datapad inside.

Eyes skimming the screen, she spoke. “You work for Lord Odion.”

Narsk was startled. Her voice was low and rough, not
much more than a whisper. “Odion?” he responded. “What makes you think that? Maybe I’m a revolutionary.”

“There are no revolutionaries on Darkknell,” she said, voice rising as she deactivated the datapad. “And if there were, they wouldn’t be stealing military secrets.” Holding the datapad where Narsk could see it, she casually flipped the device into the air and bisected it with a sudden flick of her lightsaber.

Narsk gulped.
All that work!

“All that work
for Odion
,” she said, catching his thought.

“Yes,” he said. No sense denying it now, he realized; he might as well hit her with some truth. “I
was
working for Odion. But I’m not an Odionite. It’s just a job.”

“That’s worse,” Kerra said, looking down. “You’re an
enabler
.” She nearly spat the word, causing Narsk to flinch. She yanked his bag from the ground and stepped back.

Narsk forced himself to stand, painful as it was. “Fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’ve denied Odion the knowledge. But the important thing is to deny Daiman the knowledge—
and
the warship he’s building. And we can do that. Look here, I can show you—”

Narsk stepped toward her and his bag, only to have her raise the lightsaber between them again. “I don’t work with Sith,” she said.

“I told you, I’m not Sith.” He gestured toward the pouch. “Look in the bag. You’ll see.”

The human deactivated her weapon and reached inside. Seeing her recognize the detonator control for what it was, Narsk flashed a toothy smile. “You see? We have the chance to do something important against Daiman.” He began to reach for the controller. “And all I ask is that I be allowed time to—”

“No.” In a single, liquid motion, the woman looked
back up Manufacturers’ Way, pointed the detonator, and pressed the button.

A flash and a rumble came from the far end of the avenue. Two kilometers away, the opaque skin of the Black Fang heaved for a split second before erupting outward. Metal shards ripped free from the structure, desperate to escape. Thunder followed fire, more than enough noise and light to wake all Xakrea.

Narsk brought a bruised hand to his long nose in horror.
They must have powered up the centrifuge again
, he thought. Fully armed and fueled,
Convergence
would have exploded in an outward spiral. He’d thought that was a possibility before he planted his explosives, but he had always planned to be aboard a freighter lifting off from Darkknell before pressing the button.

Not gawking like an idiot on a skybridge with a Jedi.

“You fool!” Narsk yelled. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

The woman regarded the blaze with mild satisfaction. “Yes.”

Narsk wilted, forgetting the pain in his leg. He looked to the rooftop plazas at either end of the skybridge. No authorities were here yet, but they soon would be. And still, the Jedi seemed pleased with herself.

Idiot
, Narsk thought.
No wonder the Sith ran the Jedi out of the Outer Rim
. He barked at her. “Is that it? Are we done here?”

“No,” she said, igniting her lightsaber and waving it in his direction.
“Strip.”

The woman neatly slipped the folded Mark VI back into Narsk’s bag—although neither suit nor bag was particularly neat anymore, smeared and stinking of paint. “You’ve really made a mess of this thing,” she said. “Is this stuff permanent?”

“I don’t know,” Narsk snarled. He didn’t care about
the suit anymore. The real authorities were out, screaming in their airspeeders toward the cauldron that was the testing center. And here he was: naked, but for his shorts, sitting in a garbage bin in a shadowy section of the plaza. The woman had marched him there, taken the stealth suit, and bound his wrists.

It was not where he wanted to be with Sith on the way.

“How can you do this? You
know
what they’ll do to me if they catch me!” Seeing her beginning to close the lid, Narsk grew more frantic. “You can’t do this! You Jedi are supposed to be about fair play and decency!
You’re supposed to be a Jedi!
”

The woman paused. “What?” Kerra Holt said, suddenly miffed. “I’m not
locking
it.”

The lid snapped shut above him.

“I declare the dawn.”

With Daiman’s words, the sun rose.

“I declare the dawn now, as I did, standing in the waters of darkness long ago.”
The voice grew louder as it wafted through the streets of Xakrea, beckoning to dayshift workers leaving for the transit hubs. Their liege had prepared another day for them.

Seventy meters tall, the image of Daiman looked down upon his works and smiled. Colossal holographic hands opened just as the first rays of Knel’char I crested the city skyline. Product of sixty-four holoprojectors—and easily the single largest nonmilitary consumer of energy on Darkknell—the sparkling image rendered the giant in surprising detail. Above were the confident, piercing eyes, blue and amber, just like the stars, and the short crop of fair, golden hair. Even the talons molded to the fingertips of his right hand appeared in shimmering relief. The imaging specialists had done their work well.

Seven marble statues depicting Daiman’s rise to power and prominence ringed the image’s base. Huge themselves—yet dwarfs next to the crackling titan above—each stone figure looked down one of Xakrea’s major avenues, radiating from the central plaza.
Daiman’s Rise
faced Celestial Way, gazing the long kilometers toward the palace.
Daiman at Chelloa
triumphantly faced
Mining Way, home to many of Darkknell’s processing plants. Daiman’s voice seemed to come from all the statues in unison.
“I have decided the sun will shine for twenty-three hours today, with nine hours of night to follow. The warmth of summer I give to you, and light from the heavens.”

Kerra Holt was impressed. She thought the display could have been more effective only had several of the city blocks not been burning to the ground as the holograph spoke.

Hood pulled over her head, Kerra slipped from one doorway to another as she made her way back home. It had been a mistake, allowing the chase with the Bothan to carry so far down Manufacturers’ Way. To get home, she had to pass what was left of the Black Fang. What had been a lopsided pyramid was now a tangle of molten girders, with blazes still raging on many levels.

“My cosmic eyes will rest upon the people of the southlands today, but know that I am with you always,”
Big Daiman said.
“You are The Encumbered. You are arms of my creation, extensions of my will. You know your functions.”
As far as Kerra could tell, those functions right now seemed to be running around in confusion and screaming at random passersby. At least, that’s what Daiman’s sentries were doing. Normally stern and forbidding agents of order were dashing back and forth across the plaza, unsure of what to do without divine guidance.

“Never forget, my will is …”

No one heard what Daiman’s will was, because the blazing research center chose that moment to tip completely over in an exhausted faint. By the time those around recovered their feet—and their hearing—the loudspeakers throughout Xakrea had gone silent.

They’d heard it all before. Kerra used to hear the spiel every morning on the way to her job at the munitions plant, before she moved to later shifts. On all the worlds
of the Daimanate, listeners were assured: Daiman controlled everything that happened in his realm.

Those listeners might be less sure if they were on the plaza this morning, Kerra thought. One of Daiman’s thugs was on fire. She recognized him. A terror in her neighborhood for as long as she’d resided there, now the hulking guard staggered about, screaming in pain. Kerra froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. Evil minion or no, the creature was suffering.

She stepped into the street, only to be knocked aside by the advance of three of his fellow sentries. Remembering her cover identity, Kerra began to exhale, relieved that someone else had gone to help him.

Nope, they shot him
. Seeing the thug fall dead at his would-be rescuers’ feet, Kerra rolled her eyes and retreated into an alley. Sith space was like this everywhere: a place of sudden violence—almost completely devoid of compassion or remorse. She’d never understand it. But she didn’t have to understand it to win her fight.

And now she had a stealth suit.

A cracked window heaved upward. Lithely, Kerra slipped back into her home of the past few weeks. The only things inside were a pair of bedrolls, her duffel, and a stand for the portable glow lamp she had to share with Gub Tengo’s young granddaughter. From the look of the crumpled blankets in the corner, Tan was already gone for the morning. The room wouldn’t have been big enough for a closet back in the Jedi academy, a place where the students were preparing to live with no possessions. Here on Darkknell, it had to accommodate two.