Star Wars - The Last Battle of Colonel Jace Malcom (2 page)

The Sith overseer was a different matter.

The Sith stood in the center of the bridge, a black cloud of dark robes with a metal armor core and the face of an etched brass mask. Jace didn’t wait for the mask to turn before running, boots slamming against the deck, directly toward his opponent.

There were no tricks to fighting Sith, Jace had explained to more officers and grunts than he cared to remember. Sith were powerful, and fast, and they broke just as easily as anyone else. You couldn’t afford to fear them—not even for a moment. The rest was just smart fighting.

The robed figure narrowed and twirled like a dancer, evading Jace’s blaster bursts as he closed the distance. She—was it a woman?—reached for the lightsaber at her belt even as Jace howled and crashed into her, letting the weight of his armor take them both down.

Jace felt something give beneath him—a robed arm twisted out of position or a rib broken somewhere—even as he slammed an elbow toward where the Sith’s head seemed to be. The hard impact of the deck told him he missed, and a second later a hand closed over his helmet and his vision turned white.

Heat stabbed at his face, lancing into his temples and trickling down his nose like sweat. He rolled, and blinked away spots in time to see the last arcs of electricity jump from the Sith’s hand toward him. Any longer, or without the helmet, and the Sith’s sorcery would’ve charred his skull.

Somehow, Jace had held on to his rifle. He tried to stand, unable to feel his legs, as the Sith reached for her lightsaber again—only to find it gone, dropped to the deck barely a meter away.

Jace squeezed his rifle’s trigger. This time, the bolts struck heart and lung, even as his helmet filters pixilated from the electrical damage. He heard a muffled sound from the Sith, some final command, as she died.

For an instant, as Jace heard the shouting, saw the officers run toward the exit of the bridge, he felt the rush of victory. The command ship was his. Kalandis Seven was going to the Republic. Immel and her team could win the whole blasted planet.

Then the voice came over the bridge speakers:

“Self-destruct initiated.”

The consoles ripped apart, metal and plastic and glass burning and streaking through the air. The transparisteel cockpit dome shattered, raining knives. Jace swore and fell, his body shaking as he tried to crawl forward over the trembling deck and away from the fire he felt at his back.

So damn close
, he thought.

His body reached the broken dome as the ship pitched forward, starting to hurtle toward the planet surface. He looked out into the endless fog and readied himself for the fall. No chute, no jump pack, no grav unit. There was comfort knowing what had to come next.

The ship shook, and Jace rolled out into the fog, falling free, looking down onto a rising shadow.

He hit surface fast—much too fast, much too close to be at ground level—and lay stunned for a few long moments. He realized he was hugging the wing of a Republic fighter, hovering near the plummeting mass of the Imperial command ship.

Painfully, he reached up to turn his comm back on. “Immel to Malcom,” he heard immediately. “Thought we could spare one fighter for you. Would’ve mentioned it if you hadn’t gone silent.”

“Thank you,” Jace said, and closed his eyes. He allowed himself to lie back on the wing and ache.

“Mission status?”

“Spaceport’s in burning little chunks. I’d feel pretty good if you weren’t showing off up there, blowing up command ships.”

“I was trying to capture it, Sergeant. We could’ve won the planet.”

He could hear the smirk in Immel’s voice, and he felt himself curl his lip in irritation. “Yeah, you really messed up—we’ll buy you a drink back at base, Colonel, but only the one. Bottom shelf stuff.”

Jace watched the fog drift around him, felt the surprisingly gentle thrumming of the wing beneath him, and crawled to the fighter’s upper hatch. The distant sounds of fire and tearing metal came from far below. Immel still didn’t understand, and this was his last chance to tell her. “No,” he said. “You won’t.”

“Repeat that?”

“I’ve been recalled, Sergeant. Right about now, there’s a transport arriving to take me to the Core Worlds.”

Jace heard Immel swear.

Then: “You SpecForce boys are all scum.”

Jace watched the ochre dot of Kalandis Seven retreat through the viewport of the starship
Frontier Justice
. The ship’s captain—a Jedi Knight whose name Jace hadn’t caught, who had fought through half a dozen blockades just to arrive at Kalandis on time—hadn’t complained when Jace arrived battered and late. It was one thing Jace liked about Jedi: They took things in stride.

“Any idea why they sent you?” Jace asked. The Jedi Knight didn’t spare Jace a glance as he tore half-melted wires out from under an engineering console.

“The Supreme Chancellor thinks you’re wasted out here,” the Jedi said. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”

An electrical popping sound emerged from the console, and the Jedi shuffled out before continuing. “My guess is you’re in for a promotion. Whole war is changing.”

“Not the first time I’ve been told that,” Jace said. He watched Kalandis Seven disappear into the star field, the ochre dot now indistinguishable from a thousand other distant worlds and distant suns.

“The troops down there won’t last long, now,” Jace added. “They don’t have the training to hold the place.” He rubbed at his cheek, rubbed at his scars, then spoke again. “They’ll be overrun within the month. Casualties’ll be heavy.”

The Jedi stood and turned to face Jace. “You don’t know that,” he said. Jace shrugged. “I don’t,” he agreed. They’d share the lie together. “Doesn’t matter now. The Supreme Chancellor orders you back to the Core Worlds, that’s where you go.”

Still, blast her for taking him off the battlefield. Forty years of leaving soldiers behind and losing people was enough of a burden to shoulder. As for a promotion? More responsibility never made anything easier; it only changed the scope of the job.

Jace excused himself and made his way to the guest quarters—a spartan barracks where he dropped onto a cot and took up a datapad, browsing over a list of his comrades on Kalandis Seven. Shanra Immel; Amden vor Keioidian; Vaskus Kayle; Yennir of the Green. Everyone he’d fought with. The team he’d been willing to die for. The team he’d done everything to try and save.

When he reached the end of the list, he deleted the names from his personal file and put the datapad away.

Time to move on to the next battle.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Annihilation by Drew Karpyshyn is out now.

More of David Rabbitte’s art can be seen at www.davidrabbitte.com

From Star Wars Insider 137 (11-12-2012)

11.6.18.15.14.5-1