Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan (4 page)

All of this, from Scourge’s first awareness of the speeder to confirmation of its hostile intent, took less than two seconds. Time enough for the speeder to close the distance and come bearing down on him.

Scourge leapt to the side as a barrage of blasterfire was unleashed from the vehicle. He hit the ground in a roll that brought him to his feet just in time to spring clear of a second series of bolts. Moving with the blinding speed of the Force, he raced across the courtyard, bolts ricocheting off the ground just behind him every step of the way. He dived behind the cover of the Emperor’s statue, his mind assessing the situation.

The speeder had to be equipped with an autotargeting blaster cannon; there was no other way the shots could have tracked him so closely on his desperate run for cover. Even a Sith Lord couldn’t evade that kind of firepower forever. He had to disable the vehicle.

The speeder was heading away from him, circling around for another strafing run. Before it could complete its turn, Scourge stepped
out from behind the statue and launched his lightsaber across the courtyard. The crimson blade went spiraling through the night, tracing a wide, looping arc. It clipped the back end of the speeder, sending up a shower of spark and flame, and continued on its trajectory to return to Scourge’s outstretched hand.

The hum of the speeder’s engine pitched into a screaming whine as it completed its turn. Black smoke, barely visible against the dark clouds, billowed out from the rear engine. The vehicle began to lurch and wobble, losing altitude rapidly even as it opened fire yet again.

Scourge ducked back behind the Emperor’s statue, pressing his back firmly against it as a shower of bolts rained down on him. A second later the speeder flew overhead, its angle of attack dropping so steeply it actually decapitated the statue he was hiding behind.

The heavy stone head toppled down toward him, forcing Scourge to break cover to avoid being crushed. At the same time, he saw the speeder slam into the ground. Emergency repulsor fields absorbed the impact, saving the vehicle from being smashed to bits, but it still hit hard enough to send a piece of the damaged engine flying.

Holding his lightsaber high above his head with both hands, Scourge charged the downed speeder. Two passengers scrambled from the wreckage, shaken but unharmed. Scourge was only mildly surprised to recognize the two red-clothed mercenaries he’d encountered on the speeder pad back near the spaceport.

The male was on the far side of the speeder, struggling to get his blaster rifle out of the wreckage. The female was on the near side, her blaster pistols already drawn. Scourge was less than five meters away when she opened fire.

He didn’t bother trying to block the bolts. Instead, he launched himself upward, his forward momentum carrying him in a high, somersaulting leap that arced over both the woman and the damaged speeder. The sudden move caught her off guard, and though she fired several hurried shots, none hit him.

Twisting 180 degrees as he flew through the air, he landed on the other side of the speeder, right beside the male mercenary just as the man was bringing his own weapon to bear. Before he could fire, Scourge slashed his lightsaber diagonally across his enemy’s torso.

As the man’s corpse toppled to the ground, Scourge turned his attention back to the first mercenary. By this time she had spun to face him, and as her partner went down she unloaded another series of shots, forcing Scourge to duck behind the speeder for cover.

This time several of her blasts found their mark. Scourge’s armor absorbed the worst of the attack, but he felt a searing pain in his shoulder as a small amount of the particle beam energy found its way through a joint in his armor to scorch his flesh.

He focused on the pain, transforming it into anger to fuel the Force for a savage counterattack. At the same time, instinctively, he drew upon his opponent’s fear, adding it to his own passion and further amplifying the power he was gathering.

Channeling his rage, he unleashed a concentrated wave of energy that struck the woman square in the chest. The impact lifted her off her feet and sent her flying backward through the air. Her journey was cut short when she slammed against the base of one of the abstract statues. The sudden stop jarred the pistols from her hands, leaving her momentarily defenseless.

Scourge placed one hand on the hood of the speeder and vaulted over it, rushing to close in on his prone foe before she could regain her footing. But the mercenary was quick: She scrambled to her feet and pulled out a short electrorod, its tip crackling with a charge potent enough to knock an opponent unconscious with even a grazing blow.

Scourge pulled up short. The mercenary dropped into a fighting crouch, and the two combatants circled each other warily.

Had he wanted to, Scourge could have ended the encounter right then and there. Without her pistols, electrorod or not, the mercenary had no chance against a Sith Lord with a lightsaber. But killing her wouldn’t get him what he really wanted.

“Tell me who hired you and I’ll let you live,” he said.

“Do I look that stupid?” she countered, feinting and making a quick lunge that Scourge easily sidestepped.

“You’re obviously skilled,” he told her. “I can use someone like you. Tell me who hired you, and I’ll let you work for me. That, or throw your life away.”

She hesitated, and for an instant Scourge thought she might drop
her weapon. And then the night was shattered by the sound of multiple blaster carbines. The bolts hammered the mercenary in the back, sending her stumbling toward Scourge. He saw a look of total bewilderment on her face as she sank to her knees. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. Then she fell facedown in the gravel, dead.

Turning, Scourge saw half a dozen guards standing in the courtyard near the door leading into the stronghold. Among them was a human wearing a commander’s uniform. He was short, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with close-cropped blond hair and a neatly trimmed blond beard that contrasted sharply with his dark brown skin. Scourge recognized him from the holo: Murtog, Darth Nyriss’s head of security.

Before Scourge could say anything, Sechel exclaimed, “About time you got here.”

He was still cowering against the wall, in nearly the exact same place Scourge had left him after the brief interrogation that had preceded the ambush.

“Get up,” Murtog told him, and the Sith lackey did as ordered.

“Clean this mess up,” Murtog snapped at his guards, who scrambled to obey.

Satisfied, the security chief slung his weapon over his shoulder and nodded in Scourge’s direction. “Darth Nyriss will see you now.”

AS MURTOG LED THE WAY
through the halls of the stronghold, Lord Scourge did his best to ignore the pain radiating from his wounded shoulder. Instead he focused on his surroundings, hoping to learn more of Lord Nyriss before they came face-to-face.

The interior architecture was typical of Sith aristocracy: a series of long, wide corridors with thick stone walls, vaulted ceilings, and countless imposing steel doors, all closed to conceal the rooms behind them. The halls were lavishly decorated in bold colors: red, black, and purple. Expensive woven rugs covered the floors, and the walls were lined with a collection of pictures, sculptures, and holoprojections worthy of any museum.

Murtog set a quick pace, giving Scourge little time to study the works. However, Sechel—trailing a few steps behind—provided a running commentary on significant pieces as they marched past.

“This is a bust of the infamous warlord Ugroth. He swore fealty to Darth Nyriss a dozen years ago when she led an Imperial force into his sector to subdue a potential uprising.

“This holoprojection was a gift from Queen Ressa of Drezzi to thank Darth Nyriss for her merciful treatment of the royal family when the Empire conquered their world. Her husband was executed, but the queen and her children were spared.

“This portrait commemorates Darth Nyriss’s victory during …”

Realizing he wasn’t going to gain any real insight from Sechel’s descriptions, Scourge tuned him out. Still, he understood and appreciated the overt display of opulence. Nyriss was a member of the Dark Council; she was one of the twelve most important and influential individuals in the Empire. The material treasures were a symbol of her own worth; a reminder to any visitors that she was a being of rank and power.

Numerous sentries stood guard throughout the halls. They nodded in acknowledgment as Murtog passed. Such a high number of guards stationed inside the stronghold was a bit atypical, but considering the recent assassination attempts it wasn’t unexpected. Scourge wondered if Murtog would increase their numbers, given the most recent incident … though Scourge wasn’t convinced it had actually been an assassination attempt.

The dark side fed on passion and raw emotion, but it was important to temper it with cold analysis and reason. Even as he marched to meet his new liege, Scourge’s mind was trying to piece together the parts of a puzzle that didn’t seem to fit.

The alleged assassins had struck in the courtyard, exposing their presence while still outside the secured walls and gates of the stronghold. Even if Scourge hadn’t stopped them, there was no chance they could actually have gotten inside the building to strike at Nyriss. Which probably meant she wasn’t their real target: He was.

But who had set him up, and why? Murtog seemed a likely candidate. Though only a human, he had risen to a prominent rank in Nyriss’s service—a position almost on par with Scourge’s own newly appointed status. The first lesson Scourge had learned during his time at the Academy was that your peers could be your most dangerous rivals, Force-users or not.

And Murtog had every reason to feel threatened. He had failed to find those behind the assassination attempts on his liege. Scourge’s arrival was a direct challenge to his competence as security chief. What better way to eliminate a potential rival than to expose his incompetence by killing him in a staged assassination attempt? That could explain why Murtog refused to let Scourge in when they’d first arrived, and why Murtog’s soldiers had killed the female mercenary just when she’d been on the verge of surrendering.

However, Murtog wasn’t Scourge’s only suspect. Sechel had similar self-preserving motives. If Scourge succeeded in his mission, he would likely be rewarded with a permanent position that would surely rank above the servile Sith adviser in Darth Nyriss’s hierarchy. Sechel had managed to find himself a niche in Sith society by clinging to his role as an adviser to Nyriss. It made sense to assume he would do anything in his power to remove an individual he viewed as a threat to his own position of power.

Scourge had witnessed Sechel speaking to the mercenaries at the spaceport earlier. At the time it had seemed he was shooing them away out of respect for a high-ranking Sith Lord newly arrived on the planet. Now Scourge wondered if he had been giving them last-minute instructions. The fact that Sechel had survived the battle in the courtyard was also suspicious. It was possible he was just lucky or had the highly evolved survival skills of a true coward, but it was also possible the mercenaries had been careful not to fire anywhere near him.

Murtog rounded another corner. The pain in Scourge’s shoulder was becoming more intense as his armor rubbed against the wounded flesh. Yet he kept pace with the stocky human, refusing to show any sign of weakness.

The hall came to a dead end against another imposing door. This one, closed like all the others, was flanked by Sith apprentices. He doubted Nyriss would have made the Sith answer directly to a human, so they were probably not under Murtog’s direct command. But based on the fact that they made no move to challenge the security chief as he approached, it was clear to Scourge that Murtog enjoyed a privileged position in Nyriss’s household.

Murtog stepped forward and rapped his knuckles gently on the door, then took a step back and stood at attention.

While they waited for an answer to the knock, Scourge realized there was a third possibility: Murtog and Sechel might have been working together to plan the attack in the courtyard. At the Academy, lesser students would sometimes conspire together to bring down a more talented individual. It wasn’t hard to imagine the same kind of thing happening outside the facility’s walls, as well.

For the moment it wasn’t possible to know which of his theories—if any—was correct. But Scourge knew he’d have to watch his back.

The door opened to reveal a young Twi’lek. She was clad in black robes, with Nyriss’s four-pointed star emblazoned in purple on both the chest and back, surrounded by a red circle. A shock collar was fastened securely around her neck, but even without it, her status would have been immediately obvious simply because of her species.

When the Sith had fallen into full retreat during the last days of the Great Hyperspace War, they had taken with them a number of prisoners captured during their early victories over Republic worlds. Those prisoners—mostly humans and Twi’leks—had been condemned to a life of slavery.

By the Emperor’s order, no slave could ever be granted his or her freedom, and the status of the parent would be passed down to the child generation after generation. Because of this directive, there was never any doubt about the role of any Twi’lek in the Empire—they were and always would be slaves, descended from ancestors too weak to save themselves from the Sith invaders.

The slave bent to one knee and kept her eyes to the ground as Murtog, Scourge, and Sechel stepped through. Then she closed the door behind them and retreated into a corner.

The well-lit room appeared to be a study or private library. The walls were lined with shelves, their ancient wooden frames warped by the weight of the treasures they bore.

Scourge couldn’t help but stare in wonder at the collection. During his days at the Academy he had seen only one physical manuscript—an ancient tome dating back more than ten thousand years to the arrival of the first Dark Jedi on Dromund Kaas. The book was considered a priceless artifact, one of the academy’s greatest treasures.