Star Wars: Knight Errant (46 page)

Kerra watched the man head to the door. For someone she’d thought a tool of the Sith, he’d surprised her. But that was the thing about tools. They could be used for another purpose. A better one.

“Rusher,” Kerra called. “When you get to the Republic—I’d stay there, if I were you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said, grinning. “You’re going to do what you came here to do—one system at a time.”

Kerra laughed. “Me and what army?”

“You never know, kid. Maybe I’ll cut you a rate.”

The garden stood on a grassy hilltop, overlooking a green sea that stretched beneath towering pink clouds. Nothing from the morning rain lingered beyond a cool breeze, rustling the fronds of the plants lining the walkway.

Scaling the stone steps to the piazza, Narsk paused to sip from a fountain. Even the water here tasted sweet. For all the harshness of its masters, Sith space held enormous beauty. It was hard to believe this was only one of several such retreats, prepared and tended by the dowager’s trusted orderlies.

The place was alive with natural sounds. Narsk could hear them now, through the prosthetics implanted in his ears earlier that day. Arkadia had secured the shuttle compartment against the dangers of space, but not the sound of the engines. Even activating the Mark VI hadn’t done any good against the sonic bombardment; the receptors overloaded, burning out the suit forever. Just another of the trade-offs in his line of work; Narsk thought his new ears would make him a more effective spy.

His nose twitched. A multicolored butterfly perched on it, before flitting dizzily to an exotic flower on the trellis.

Ahead, a withered hand cupped the blossom. “Welcome to my nursery,” the gardener said to the insect. “And you, as well, Master Ka’hane.”

At the top of the steps, Narsk knelt. “Thank you, Vilia Calimondra.”

He waited patiently as the snow-haired woman tended her garden. She always amazed him. Vilia Calimondra, the Evening Star. Conqueror of Phaegon and head of three houses. Bowed by time, but once tall and proud; what a warrior she must have been, Narsk thought. Hands that once held lightsabers were now mottled and wrinkled, well before their time—and yet, her golden eyes were still so alive. The Sith power did that, sometimes. The mind took a toll on the flesh.

Narsk had expected her to depart as soon as she learned of Arkadia’s plot in full. But Vilia had taken the news of her granddaughter’s plot calmly, and without surprise. Her seers had expected something, hence the brief warning he had received via his implant.

And if it had unsettled her in the least, she didn’t show it. Here she was, in her simple amber gown, tending to nothing but her plants—and now her grandson. Brought here since Narsk’s last trip up the hill, Quillan sat off to the side under a portable shade. No hoverchair this time; the bearers had carried the chair themselves.

Avian creatures soared over the ocean. Quillan grew animated, seeing past them to galaxies unknown. Head lolling against the chair back, he spoke syllables to the air.

“Yes, Quillan,” Vilia said, sitting down at a bench beside the boy. She folded his hands. “Grandmother understands.”

Narsk understood now, too. The teenager was the center of it all: everything that had happened since Gazzari. While Narsk had been on the battlefield, seeing to it that Odion and Daiman got her directive to attack Bactra, Vilia had grown concerned about someone else: Arkadia. Somehow, Vilia had learned of her granddaughter’s interest in seizing not just the Dyarchy’s territory—that was to
be expected—but also the twins themselves. Had Vilia learned of it through the Force? Or through other assets like himself? Narsk hadn’t asked. But Arkadia’s particular focus on the children had concerned Vilia enough that she’d assigned Narsk to look into it.

His reputation had earned him a position key to Arkadia’s plans on Byllura. It was sheer coincidence that the Jedi had gone to Byllura, too; it had certainly surprised him. But Vilia had known about it as soon as
Diligence
approached a populated world in the Dyarchy. Vilia had been able to track Kerra’s location ever since her initial theft of the stealth suit—because Vilia had been Narsk’s source for it. Her technicians had obtained the Cyricept system and modified it so that she could track Narsk—and, he imagined, whatever other minions she had given them to. The Mark VI may have been a hole in the spectrum while activated, but once a day while deactivated, it had silently pinged the secret communications network Vilia used to stay in touch with her family.

So Vilia had always known the Jedi would play a role in her future. She just hadn’t known what it was. Kerra Holt had, in fact, saved Vilia’s life by refusing to play assassin for Arkadia. Once Narsk learned exactly what Arkadia had in mind, he took the opportunity to free her. Vilia always liked her debts paid.

“You are here with news?”

“It should please you,” Narsk said. Two of Vilia’s other agents had used the moments of confusion in the Arkadianate to spirit Dromika away from Byllura. The girl would be kept far from her twin brother in the future—they had all learned that was for the best—but also out of the hands of opportunists who might exploit them, as Calician had. And Arkadia, for that matter.

There had been no communication from Arkadia. Another of Vilia’s kin might have sent a mawkish message, playing the innocent and probing to see what the widow
knew. Arkadia had remained silent to her grandmother. But she had spoken to Narsk, when he messaged pretending to be in hiding on a neutral world. From her, he had learned his spur-of-the-moment plan had worked better than he’d had any right to expect.

The damage done by
Diligence
had caused the floor beneath the hangar to collapse shortly after Narsk’s departure. All Arkadia had found in the icy rubble were fragments of the booby-trapped hoverchair and the bodies of several of her technicians. Realizing they’d been killed by nerve gas and not the cataclysm, Arkadia had concluded that her aides had somehow loaded the wrong chair aboard the shuttle in the excitement, only to have the tanks in the correct chair rupture during the bombardment. Last seen climbing into his hideaway, Narsk had been able to claim ignorance when he communiated with Arkadia. He was a victim, too, he’d said, arriving on Vilia’s world with the wrong hoverchair.

She’d responded curtly to that before cutting off the exchange. He knew she had other worries. Other sources had reported major damage to Arkadia’s capital, and the recall of significant forces from the Dyarchy. It would be some time before Arkadia could consolidate her hold over any new territory.

Vilia liked her debts paid—but she seemed willing to let her granddaughter live with the embarrassment. One didn’t want to be an outcast from
this
family.

“Chagras doted on the twins so,” she said, patting Quillan’s hand. “It was so hard, when he was taken away from them.”

Narsk looked to the ground.

Rising, she looked searchingly at the Bothan. “You have something to ask, I sense. You wonder if I had something to do with my son Chagras’s death,” Vilia said, “as Arkadia claims.”

“My lady, I had no—”

“You would as well ask if Arkadia had anything to do with it,” she said. “An ambitious daughter, fearful her father’s legacy would go to younger, more favored siblings? And an expert in nerve toxins, the very weapon that felled Chagras in his prime? You could construct a case against her as easily as you could against me, and it would be every bit as horrible.” Vilia looked back from the hedge. “So why would you want to? A family is defined by its shared illusions, as much as by its blood.”

Narsk shrugged. Gathering his courage, he straightened. “I have only had reason to doubt myself,” he said. “I freed the Jedi. She won’t leave Sith space—not if I know her. And now she knows about your family and the
Charge Matrica
. She could take that information to your enemies. Including the Republic.”

Vilia waved off his concerns. There were no mass media to disseminate that information in Sith space, no authorities that would be believed. And the Republic had authorities proven itself ineffective even when it had good, recent intelligence about the Sith. “For the moment,” she said, “young Kerra remains the only Jedi around.”

“She could still be a danger to you and your family,” Narsk said.

“I look on her as something else,” Vilia said. “She’s just like you, Narsk. She’s a
learning experience
. For all of them. One day, the Sith will again turn upon the Republic—and we again will be facing the full roster of Jedi Knights. My grandchildren need to at least know how to deal with
one
.”

Narsk had performed a dual role for years, she said. By serving her grandchildren, he was at the same time creating challenges for them. As far as Vilia was concerned, Kerra was just one more agent out there, testing her children’s children.

“I am sorry, dowager,” the Bothan said, looking down. “I know there are things that are beyond me. How does sowing discord strengthen your house?”

“You don’t have children, do you, Master Ka’hane?”

Wooden, Narsk managed to shake his head.

“Well, I have had many—and they have had many. You expect them to fight with one another,” she said. “I happen to expect them to fight well.”

She turned to the chair, where Quillan continued to stare vacantly at the sea. “You always want them to succeed at whatever it is they set out to do. To strive,” she said, stroking the boy’s hair, “and to thrive.” She smiled gently at the boy. “But when you see that some cannot, you pull them aside.”

“This … this is a Sith philosophy?”

Vilia laughed. “The Sith are ancient, Narsk, but there were grandmothers long before that. We have our own function. You could call it a philosophy—but it is part of being what we are.”

Seeing the woman return to her gardening, Narsk bowed and turned to depart.

“Oh, and Narsk?” Caressing a thorny flower, Vilia looked back and smiled. “If you do see Arkadia again, tell her I send my love. As always.”

Read on for a preview of
Star Wars
^™
: The Old Republic: Deceived
by
Paul S. Kemp
Published by Century

Fatman
shivered, her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantell’s atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighter’s cockpit.

He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.

He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky he’d encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when he’d carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.

You always hope to hit deep water
, they’d say.
But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock
.

Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didn’t matter, really. The effect would be the same.

“Coming out of the dark,” he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.

No one acknowledged the words. He flew
Fatman
alone, worked alone. The only thing he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He had his reasons,
but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.

He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.

“Deep water and it feels fine,” he said, smiling.

On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere he’d have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.

And those were just the people who ran the place.

Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-being’s-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.

And all that suited him fine.

Fatman
broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantell’s northern hemisphere filled out Zeerid’s field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on
Fatman
’s hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the water’s surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its north–south axis.

Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters
to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.