Star Wars: Knight Errant (40 page)

“What’s this?” Rusher’s eyes were still on the guards, disappearing down the long hallway.

“These coordinates will take you out of my space. Use them. Maybe the Chagrasi Remnant can use your services.” Arkadia spun to follow her detachment.

“What … what will happen to Kerra?”

Not looking back as she walked, Arkadia responded. “She’ll get the same treatment due any Jedi in Sith space.”

Rusher gulped. Seeing the Bothan’s attention fixed on the chair-bound teenager, he inhaled and headed down the hallway after the group. Kerra was out of sight now, somewhere in that mass of mayhem. The kid had been a problem, but she didn’t deserve the punishment of a Sith Lord. Few did.

“Listen, there’s no need for you to go to the trouble,” he said, searching for his best sales smile. “I can take her offworld with me.”

Arkadia whirled angrily. “And have her charging around demolishing things here, just like she did in the Daimanate? Thank you just the same,
Brigadier
.” Her
voice dripped venom. “She’ll be drained of her intelligence about the Republic and the other Sith Lords she’s seen. Then I’ll destroy her personally.”

Rusher’s arms slumped.

From behind him, the Bothan called out. “Lord Arkadia,” Narsk said. “For me to serve you, I require the return of some property from the warship. Something the Jedi stole.”

“Make it happen, Brigadier,” Arkadia said. “I don’t care how.”

Every bit of this was wrong, and Narsk knew it.

He watched as Arkadia and her coterie disappeared down the long hall. The brigadier stood up ahead, gawking. The human didn’t appear to know what to make of Arkadia’s actions. Well, neither did he. The Jedi had been condemned to die—but she shouldn’t still be alive in the first place.

Narsk looked down at Quillan, being pushed past him by Arkadia’s aide. There was no doubting what had happened in the museum. Kerra Holt had seen a Bequest, with all members of the great family present. She had to know about the
Charge Matrica
. Narsk knew the rules, shrouded in mystery though they were: Kerra should have been executed without delay in order to protect the family’s greatest secret.

That they are a family at all
.

With their states so far-flung, the descendants of Vilia had been largely able to keep their familial connections private. The deactivation of the Republic’s subspace communications relays had dried the interstellar ocean of knowledge, leaving many unconnected pools. Few knew the genealogy of their local Sith Lords in any detail—save perhaps for the subjects of Odion and Daiman, whose leaders’ kinship had been worked into their personal mythologies. To a large degree, the Charged, as Narsk
thought of them, had prospered from the secrecy. It had made coordinated stabs against outsiders like Bactra possible; it had also protected them against being seen as a common enemy by other Sith Lords.

The Jedi’s blood should be on the museum floor.

And now, his implant was buzzing again.

Narsk thought back on his codes. One long burst was
Call in
. Seven short bursts signaled an impending Bequest. What did alternating short and long pulses mean?

Beware your employer
.

Narsk staggered, nearly slipping on the icy floor. His superior had directed him to serve Arkadia. Now Arkadia was a threat, as seen—or, more precisely,
foreseen
—by those with resources far greater than his. Whatever Arkadia had in mind likely meant trouble for his true employer—and now the icy Sith Lord expected him to be a part of it.

It was, at once, a thrilling and terrifying place to be. Yes, he’d know her intentions firsthand. But what if he couldn’t stop them? Even if he had access to the comm systems in Calimondretta—which he didn’t—Arkadia might not give him the chance to get a warning out. What if he became trapped in her scheme, forced to be part of whatever it was with no way of getting out of it?

Beware your employer
.

“Are you coming, sir?” The bald-headed aide looked at him, searchingly.

“Lead the way.”

Narsk fixed his eyes on the aide’s boots as he walked. He had to have an exit strategy.

“This isn’t right.”

Looking up, Narsk saw the mercenary leader up ahead, muttering and seemingly looking for anyone to talk to. “This isn’t right,” Rusher repeated.

Narsk silently agreed. “Then you need to do something, Brigadier.”

“What?” Rusher asked as the aide went past, pushing the hoverchair. “I can’t risk everyone for one person.” He looked to the end of the empty hallway. “Even if she risked herself for all of us back on Byllura. I don’t have the right to put everyone else on the line.” He looked down at Narsk and straightened, composing himself. “Anyway, it’s not my job.”

Narsk looked at the human. Another specialist, saying things he could’ve said himself. He chose his words carefully, walking just slowly enough to allow Arkadia’s aide to edge out of earshot. “I understand that, Brigadier. But I think whatever happened in that museum may have changed things. Your crew could be in danger if you follow Arkadia’s orders.”

“Maybe. But they’ll
definitely
be in danger if I don’t.” Rusher shook his head. “I need more than that.” He swore under his breath. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. You’ve seen those tractor beam emitters. We’re not making orbit while they’re there—and I doubt they’ll let us just turn them off.”

Narsk nodded. The redundant stations were a kilometer apart and unconnected. Striking one, deactivating one, would do nothing. “It is a problem,” he said. “But there might be a way. We’re both in the same business.”

“What’s that?”

“Demolitions.”

Walking beside Rusher, Narsk quickly discussed ideas he’d had since first seeing
Diligence
from the bridge of
New Crucible
. At first, the redheaded general listened reservedly. But as Narsk continued, he could see the color draining from the man’s face. “Are you ill, human?”

“No, but
you
might be,” Rusher said. “These are some of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard of. What do you know of ships and munitions, anyway?”

“I worked for weeks in Daiman’s top testing center.”

“Well, you must have spent them in the ventilation
shaft,” Rusher said. He snorted. “I won’t have a ship left if I do what you ask.”

Narsk shrugged. “You may not have one if you don’t. And there’s another part,” he said, “one that can’t wait. It’ll require someone on your crew, completely beyond Arkadia’s suspicion.”

Rusher looked at him for a moment, calculating. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got that.”

“You have a comlink?”

Rusher produced one from his pocket and smiled. “Modern encryption and everything.”

“Yes, I cracked it on Byllura,” Narsk said, grabbing it. He worked the controls. “Use this channel, and no other. Arkadia shouldn’t be able to hear your transmissions to your ship.” Seeing the aide approaching a fork in the hallway up ahead, Narsk shoved the comlink in Rusher’s hand. “I have to go. You need to decide now.”

Rusher shook his head. “There’s nothing to decide, Bothan. What you’re talking about is crazy. And I can’t do all this for no reason.”

Narsk understood. The mercenary worked just as he did. There was only one way.

“Fine,” Narsk said. “I want to
hire
you.”

Rusher did a double take—and let out a belly laugh. “
You
want to hire
us
?”

“Is that so novel?”

“Our Brigade has only ever taken jobs from Sith Lords.”

“And you would be now,” Narsk said, “in a sense. And let me tell you about the payment …”

Gub Tengo’s apartment had only felt like a coffin. Now Kerra was actually in one—or its Sith equivalent. Arkadia wasn’t one for wasting space on prisoners.

While being marched deep in the icy depths of Calimondretta, Kerra had expected to see something like a
traditional detention block. But Arkadia’s facility looked more like a data-processing center, with tall rows of stacked horizontal metal cabinets rising into the chilly air. On approaching, she’d realized the contents of the cabinets were alive: prisoners, being fed air and nutrients through tubes. Kerra could see interrogator droids on floating platforms, mining data from the poor beings trapped in the boxes. It was a filing system for organics.

Hefted by the guards into one of the chambers, Kerra had wondered who else might be trapped in the pods around her. Surely, they couldn’t all be people Arkadia had captured from her neighbors’ territory. Was it a reconditioning area, too, for dissidents? Or, perhaps, a place to punish those who had failed in too many of their ever-changing jobs? Arkadia had never been clear about what happened to those who never measured up.

With the breathing mask strapped over her mouth, Kerra had been shut inside the case. But it had been dark inside only for a moment. Within seconds, the tiny confines had been lit from within by blinding strobes—and shrill, high-pitched sounds had replaced the silence. Either light or sound faded at irregular intervals, only to have the other increase in intensity. It was unpredictable, and meant to be that way. There was no meditation, no chance to reach out through the Force for anyone or anything.

Her only relative peace came in those moments when one of the droids came over the internal speakers, demanding answers about the Republic. Some of the questions she’d expected.
What were its most recent frontiers? What is the state of Republic warship technology today?
Others had surprised her.
What is the biology of the species closest to the frontier? How much has the Republic invested in toxicology studies?

She hadn’t answered any of their questions, of course, earning more punishment for her ears. At least she could
close her eyes, leaving her seeing nothing but the backlit blood vessels in her eyelids—and plenty of regrets. She’d been wrong to consider Arkadia’s “hospitality” for a second, just as she’d been wrong to think that Byllura could have been any kind of a haven. In both cases, she’d said to herself that she really wanted the students to leave Sith space entirely. But, in truth, she would have accepted a passable alternative in Sith space for Tan and the refugees, had one existed. Gub and all of the parents and guardians who placed their children with Industrial Heuristics and Rusher’s Brigade had hoped their children would go to a marginally safer place. She’d fallen into the trap of thinking a slight improvement was acceptable, just so she could get back to thwarting Sith Lords.

“Blowing things up is easy,” she had told Rusher earlier. “Mercy is hard.”

She’d been hard on him, she realized, in part to keep pressure on herself, to keep
her
from settling for less for the students. As Sith-serving mercenaries went, he really wasn’t that despicable. He definitely seemed to care about his crew. She envied him in that his job was finite. There were so many who needed help—her
personal
help—that she could barely conceive the scale of hers. There were seventeen hundred refugees aboard
Diligence
relying on her. But that wasn’t a seventeen-millionth of the number who would remain in jeopardy. Was it right for her to focus her efforts on making things perfect for a select few when there was so much more to do?

Yes
. Kerra only needed to recall the image of Lureia, the little girl with her missing sister’s headband. She—and so many of the others just like her—had suffered too long to merit only half measures. Yes, being the only Jedi Knight in the sector gave Kerra other responsibilities. But those didn’t absolve her of her duty to those who had put their faith in her. She was beholden. There
was no such thing as a “safer place” in Sith space. One way or another, she had to get them the blazes out of here!

The interrogators started in again, droning on about the number of Jedi and where they were stationed. Hearing their questions, Kerra realized she was learning more about what Arkadia knew—or didn’t know—than they were learning from her. The Jedi’s great trump card, their reputation, lingered after their departure, but many beings she’d met in Sith space seemed to know nothing about the Jedi at all. Rusher had admitted that his knowledge came mostly from his history studies. Even some of the Sith Lords she’d encountered seemed to have little idea how to deal with Jedi. Arkadia had thought Kerra could be bargained with. Odion, in the Chelloa affair, had thought Kerra could be persuaded to see suicide as a rational choice. The twins seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever of what she was.

Indeed, of all the Sith Lords and minions she’d encountered, only Narsk had seemed to immediately have a handle on what the Jedi were all about.
“You Jedi are supposed to be about fair play and decency!”

Kerra opened her eyes. The Bothan was right, of course.

But how did he know? Who
was
he?

Narsk stood patiently in the tiny round hangar. The place lacked one of Arkadia’s lofty names: Embarkation Station 7 was one of a cluster of domes on the surface of Syned, connected to Patriot Hall and the rest of the city through a long series of underground corridors to the south. But the small structure was, in its own way, Arkadia’s Black Fang—and the unique silver craft being prepared inside meant more to her efforts than all Daiman’s wild starship concoctions meant to him.