The Essential Novels Page 22

  Aryn’s emotions roiled, her mood as dark as the night. Ordinarily, the artificial lights of hundreds of thousands of businesses and advertisements lit Coruscant’s night sky. But the attack had knocked the power out over huge swaths of the planet, and the dark silence made the city feel like a mausoleum.

  Aryn picked her way through the black darkness and approached the Temple along the wide, stone-paved processional that once had led to the Temple’s grand main entrance. Malgus must have used the same approach, she realized, and it appalled her that the last person to walk the processional before the Temple’s fall had been a Sith. She found it obscene.

  She fancied she was retracing his footsteps, her boots effacing the wrongness of his passage.

  She slowed, steeling herself, as the rubbled structure materialized out of the darkness before her. The attack had turned the Temple’s once curved lines and elegant spires into a shapeless mound of ruin, a burial cairn for the Jedi Order.

  The sight of it scratched the scab from the wound of her grief. As she approached, the ghosts of her past rose out of the ruin—her time in the Temple as a youngling, as a Padawan, the ceremony when she’d been promoted to Jedi Knight. The Temple had been her home for decades, and her father had been murdered in it.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the final blow that had slain her master, as clear as if she were once more watching the vid in the Temple’s surveillance room. She saw Malgus spin, reverse his grip, and drive his lightsaber through Master Zallow. And once more she saw the look in Master Zallow’s face as the light went out of his eyes, the despair there. He had failed and he had known it. Maybe he had also known, as Aryn now did, that the Jedi Order had failed, too.

  The thought of her master dying with despair in his heart drove a hot spike of rage through the sore of her loss.

  And yet … she could not shake the look she had seen in his eyes in her dream. It had looked like concern, a warning maybe. He had wanted to tell her something …

  She shook her head. It had been but a dream, not a vision, just a projection of her own subconscious. She dismissed it.

  She would find Malgus and she would kill him.

  She reached the edge of the ruins, climbed the jagged chunks of stone. They still felt warm, still radiated the heat of their own destruction. She walked among them, the graves of dozens of Jedi, and wept through her anger.

  A feeling seized her as the strings of her Force sensitivity vibrated with a discordant note. The feeling took her by the shoulders, shook her, and emptied her of grief, leaving only anger.

  She knew the feeling’s origin.

  She activated her lightsaber and tried to pinpoint Malgus’s location.

  Malgus felt the signature of another Force-user, the uncomfortable pressure of the light side, and it pulled him to his feet. The pressure reminded him of how he’d felt in the presence of Master Zallow, and he knew that Aryn Leneer had come at last.

  “Take the shuttle down to fifty meters,” he said, adrenaline already coursing through his body. “And when I exit, you may leave.”

  “When you exit, my lord?”

  Malgus did not respond. Instead, he overrode the in-flight safeties and pushed the button to open the side hatch. As the door slid open, as the night air poured in, redolent with the stink of a ruined Temple and a burned planet, he let anger fill him.

  The ship descended to fifty meters. Below, the ruined Temple was dark, covered in the velvet of night. But he perceived the presence of Aryn Leneer as clearly as he would have under a noon sun.

  He stepped to the doorway, drew on the Force, activated his lightsaber, and leapt out into the dark.

  A roar, heavy with hate and rage, pulled Aryn’s eyes skyward. Malgus descended like a meteor. His cape flew out behind and over him, a comma of darkness, and he held his lightsaber in a two-handed grip. Power went before him in a wave of visible distortion. The shuttle out of which he had leapt flew off into the night sky.

  Aryn fell fully into the Force, raised her defenses, took a fighting stance, and parried Malgus’s two-handed overhand slash. Still, he landed in a cocoon of power, hitting the ground in an explosion of might that shattered the stones around them and turned them into a hail of shrapnel. Unflinching, Aryn deflected them with the Force as she parried another slash from Malgus. The force of the Sith’s blow made her arms quiver, but she gave no ground.

  Blades locked, sparking, their eyes met.

  Malgus’s dark eyes burned with a rage that knifed through her. The anger he radiated was tangible to Aryn, made the air feel greasy, polluted. But she felt something else in it, something unexpected, an odd ambivalence.

  “I know why you’ve come,” he said, his voice a hiss from behind his respirator.

  She forced words between gritted teeth. “You killed Master Zallow.”

  “And now I will kill you, too,” he said. “In the same place I killed him.” He leaned into his blade, pushed her back a step, and unleashed a Force-augmented kick at her ribs.

  But she was the quicker, and a flip sent her over his head and fifty meters away, deeper into the mountain of ruins where her Master had died. She landed in a crouch atop one of the broken columns sticking out of the rubble.

  “You will find that difficult,” she called, and answered his anger with a wave of her own. “I assure you of that.”

  Malgus gestured with his left hand, and the column she stood on began to shake. She leapt off it to another nearby, then another, then another, leapfrogging her way across the ruins, back toward Malgus.

  When she landed atop a large chunk of stone ten meters from the Sith, he made a cutting gesture with his free hand and two pieces of statuary rose from the rubble and rushed toward her from either side. She leapt into the air and they smashed into each other beneath her, spraying shards of rock. She landed atop the remains, lightsaber ready.

  Malgus growled, leapt through the air from his perch toward hers. She slid to the side of his downward slash and his blade split the stone at their feet. She unleashed a crosscut that would have decapitated him had he not ducked under it.

  She flipped up and over him onto another piece of rubble, fifteen meters away. Taking telekinetic hold of a large stone near Malgus, she flung it at him. He never moved, simply held his ground and split the incoming rock in two with his lightsaber. Red sparks and bits of stone rained down

  Aryn could not find her calm. She was fighting angry, but did not care. Snarling, thinking of her Master, she bounded across the hill of rubble, leaping from one chunk of rock to another, closing the distance with Malgus. He answered her charge with one of his own, the two of them jumping across the gravestones of the Jedi Order until they closed to within striking distance.

  Aryn stabbed low and Malgus slapped her blade out wide, reversed his motion, and unleashed a backhand swing at her abdomen. She leapt over it, pulling her legs in tight, and loosed a two-handed overhead strike as she came back down. Malgus parried crosswise with his blade and stepped into a Force-augmented side kick aimed at her ribs. She caught the kick with her free hand, closed her arm over his leg, spun, and flung Malgus twenty meters from her. He flipped in midair and landed atop the cracked face of the Odan-Urr statue that had once lined the processional approach into the Temple.

  She took the hilt of Master Zallow’s lightsaber in her off hand, crouched, and bounded into a leap toward him. He watched her come and at the apex of the leap’s arc, he thrust his left hand at her, roaring, and veins of Force lightning squirmed toward her.

  Ready for it, she activated Master Zallow’s lightsaber, used it to form an X with her own, and intercepted the lightning on the two blades.

  His power met her will. The lightning twisted around the glowing blades. The force of it stopped her downward descent and held her aloft in the air for a moment, suspended on a column built of the dark side.

  And then she overcame it. The lightning dissipated to nothingness and she, unharmed by it, fell straight down, landing on her feet atop a shif
ting pile of rubble and deactivating Master Zallow’s blade.

  The moment she landed, Malgus was upon her, his blade slashing, stabbing, spinning. He tried to use his superior strength to force her off the stone, off balance, but she answered his strength with speed, sidestepping his blows, leaping over them, parrying, unleashing her own flurries. The hum of their weapons through the air, the sizzle of crossed blades, merged into a single song of speed and power.

  Zeerid flew the speeder full-throttle at over a hundred meters in altitude. He watched an Imperial shuttle accelerate into the sky from the vicinity of the Jedi Temple. Thinking of Aryn, he felt his stomach flutter. He flew still higher, hoping to catch a glimpse of her near the Temple.

  And he did.

  She and Darth Malgus bounded across the ruins of the Temple, their blades flashing, locking, the speed of their duel so fast Zeerid could barely follow their movement. Despite himself, he found the combat beautiful.

  He slowed the speeder and T7 beeped a question.

  Aryn had done what she had come to Coruscant to do—she was facing Malgus.

  And Zeerid had seen what Malgus had done in the Temple. The Sith deserved death.

  But he worried over Aryn’s reasons. The line between seeking justice and seeking revenge was thin indeed, but Zeerid could see that Aryn had stepped over it. She wanted Malgus dead because she wanted revenge. And there would be no undoing it once it was done.

  He knew that better than most.

  He made up his mind and accelerated the speeder to full.

  Aryn and Malgus locked blades.

  “I am more than your match, Sith,” she said over the sparks of their joined lightsabers.

  “Your Master was not,” Malgus said, grunting, and shoved her with a telekinetic blast of such force that she flew backward and slammed into the rock and rubble. She used the Force to cushion the impact, but she still landed on her back and the impact blew the breath from her lungs.

  Malgus leapt high into the air, shouting with rage, his blade held high for a killing stroke. She rolled aside as he came down and his blade sank to its hilt in the rubble of the Temple. She leapt to her feet and unleashed a backhand crosscut at his throat. He got his blade free and vertical to parry it, but at the same time she pointed the blade end of Master Zallow’s lightsaber at Malgus and activated it.

  He must have sensed his danger at the last moment for he slid partially aside. Still, the green line of Master Zallow’s blade pierced his armor and side and elicited a snarl of pain and rage. Before Aryn could follow up, Malgus drove an open hand into the side of her face.

  She was unready for the blow. The Force-augmented impact exploded a spark shower in her brain and sent her cartwheeling away from Malgus; she slammed into a rock and landed on her side ten meters away. Adrenaline pulled her to her feet, though she swayed unsteadily. She spat a mouthful of blood and held both lightsabers at the ready.

  Malgus stood astride the ruins, his blade sizzling, eyeing the smoking hole in his armor, the furrow in his flesh.

  Seeing an opportunity, she did not hesitate.

  Using the Force to guide it, she hurled Master Zallow’s lightsaber at Malgus. The blade cut a glittering green arc through the air as it spun end over end toward Malgus’s head.

  Despite his wound, the Sith slapped aside Aryn’s Force-hold on the blade and snatched it out of the air, as quick as a sand viper. He deactivated the blade, held the hilt in his hand, studied it. He looked up and over at Aryn, his eyes burning. She imagined him smiling under his respirator.

  “This weapon did not avail him and it will not avail you.”

  The sound of an engine pulled Aryn’s head around. She whirled, her blade ready, and saw the Armin speeder roaring out of the sky like a comet, Zeerid in the driver’s seat. T7 sat in the rear. He came in too hard and the thrusters could not completely stop the speeder from slamming into the ruins. Metal creaked. Dust flew up.

  “Aryn!” Zeerid called. “Get in!”

  Zeerid looked past her to Malgus, seemed to consider unloading a blaster shot, but thought better of it.

  “Come on, Aryn!” Zeerid shouted, and T7 backed him up with an urgent whistle. “Please. You said you would help me.”

  She hesitated.

  Malgus looked at her, brandished Master Zallow’s hilt, a taunt to keep her there.

  She made her decision.

  She wanted to efface the smugness she’d heard in his tone, to see in his eyes what she had seen in Master Zallow’s. Killing him was not enough. She wanted to see him in pain. She just had to figure out how to do it.

  She leapt high into the air and landed beside Zeerid in the speeder.

  “Death is too easy, Sith,” she called to Malgus, the venom in her tone surprising even to her. “I am going to hurt you first.”

  The words left a bad taste in her mouth. She felt Zeerid’s eyes on her and dared not look him in the face.

  Malgus, too, seemed almost puzzled, to judge from his furrowed brow and the tilt of his head.

  “Go,” she said.

  Zeerid accelerated and started to turn the speeder.

  Anger went forth from Malgus. He reactivated Master Zallow’s blade and hurled it after them. Zeerid tried to wheel out of the way but the blade curled and kept coming at them. T7 beeped in alarm.

  Aryn watched the weapon spin, felt it, and before it reached the speeder, she reached out with the Force and snatched it from Malgus’s mental grasp. The weapon turned upward over the speeder and descended hilt-first into her hand as Zeerid rose into the night sky and sped away. She deactivated it.

  She looked back one last time to see Malgus standing atop the ruined temple, his blade in hand, his cape fluttering in the wind. He looked like a victorious conqueror.

  And she hated him.

  Zeerid flew low and fast through Coruscant’s streets, wheeling around buildings, careering down alleys, descending into the lower levels as he went. Soon, the sky was lost to the density of structures above them. They were in an industrial underworld, a series of metal-and-duracrete tunnels that covered the entire planet.

  “Anyone following?” he said.

  Aryn did not answer. She sat in the passenger seat and stared at her Master’s lightsaber hilt as if she’d never seen it before.

  “Aryn! Is anyone following?”

  “No,” she said, but did not look back.

  Zeerid shot a glance behind them, above them, and saw no one. He let himself breathe easier.

  “Blast, Aryn, what were you doing?”

  She answered in a tone as mechanical as a protocol droid’s. “What I came here to do, Zeerid. Facing Malgus. What were you doing?”

  “Helping you.”

  “I didn’t need help.”

  “No?” He stared at her across the speeder’s compartment.

  “No.”

  Zeerid thought otherwise. “Why’d you get in the speeder, Aryn?”

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt. And I said I would help you get offplanet.”

  “A lie,” Zeerid said. “Why not just stay there and finish it?”

  She looked away from him as she answered. “Because …”

  “Because?”

  “Because killing him is not enough,” she blurted. “I want to hurt him.”

  She hooked her Master’s lightsaber hilt to her belt and looked over at Zeerid. “I want to hurt him like he hurt me, like he hurt Master Zallow before he died.”

  “Aryn, I don’t have to be an empath to feel your ambivalence. Revenge—”

  She raised a hand to cut him off. “I do not want to hear it, Zeerid.”

  He said it anyway. He owed her as much. “This doesn’t sound much like you.”

  “We haven’t seen each other in years,” she snapped. “What do you know about me?”

  The sharp tone cut him. “Not as much as I thought, it seems.”

  For a time, silence sat between them like a wall.

  “I hired on with The Exchange for a good
reason, I thought. To provide a good life for my daughter.”

  “Zeerid—”

  “Just listen, Aryn!” He took a breath to calm himself. “And that one decision, that seemed so right, led to me running weapons, and then to running spice. One decision, Aryn. One act.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t like that, Zeerid. I know what I’m doing.”

  He wasn’t so sure but decided not to press further. He changed the subject. “I think I can get us into the spaceport. There are ships there, from Valor, and Imperial troopers, but I have a plan.”

  Without looking at him, she reached across the seat and touched his hand, just for a moment. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke, Zeerid. I’m not …”

  He shook his head. “No apologies, Aryn. I know you’re hurting. I just … don’t want you to make it worse for yourself. I know how that can happen. Are you … seeing clearly?”

  He felt ridiculous trying to provide an empath, of all people, with insight into her emotional state.

  “I am,” she said, but he heard uncertainty in her tone.

  “In the end, you have to live with yourself.”

  He knew well how difficult that could get.

  “I know,” she said. “I know. Now, what’s your plan?”

  He told her.

  She listened attentively, nodded when he was done. “That should work.”

  “Tee-seven can do it?”

  Aryn nodded, and T7 beeped agreement.

  “I will help you get in and get a ship,” Aryn said. “But … I’m not leaving Coruscant.”

  “I figured you’d say that,” he said, but in his own mind he had not yet conceded the point. He wrestled with whether to tell her about the Twi’lek.

  “You are holding something back,” she said.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, torn.

  In the end, he decided he owed her honesty, and he knew he could not make decisions for her.

  “The Twi’lek we saw in the vid at the Temple …”

  He trailed off. Aryn grabbed his forearm, squeezed.

  “Tell me, Zeerid.”

  He swallowed, feeling complicit in a crime. It wasn’t so much harm to the Twi’lek that concerned him, as it was harm to Aryn.