The Essential Novels Page 24

  She stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes fixed on something over Zeerid’s shoulder.

  He whirled around to see the Twi’lek descending the near shuttle’s landing ramp, a rucksack thrown over her shoulder. Two Imperial soldiers in plasteel breastplates flanked her to either side. Each had a blaster rifle slung over his shoulder. All three wore breathing masks. They had not left their ship when the alarm sounded, had instead just donned masks. Perhaps there was something on the shuttle they were unwilling to leave unguarded. Everyone froze, and for a moment no one moved.

  Then all at once everyone moved.

  The Twi’lek dropped her rucksack, her eyes wide behind the lens of her mask, and went for her blasters. The soldiers cursed in muffled tones, unslung their rifles, and tried to bring them to bear.

  Aryn ignited her lightsaber.

  Zeerid, one of his blasters still in hand, fired at the soldier on the right. Two shots screamed into the soldier’s chest. Armor ablated in a puff of smoke and the force of the impact knocked the man from the ramp, turned his mask sideways on his face. He hit the deck and lay there, scrabbling for cover. Zeerid fired again, and a hit to the man’s midsection made him go still.

  The Twi’lek got her blasters clear and fired two, four, six shots at Zeerid. Aryn slid before him and her blade deflected all of the shots, two of them back at the other soldier, which opened small holes in the soldier’s mask. He fell forward onto the ramp, dead.

  “Get out of here, Zeerid,” Aryn said over her shoulder. She started walking toward the shuttle, toward the Twi’lek.

  “Aryn,” Zeerid called, but she did not hear him. He imagined she heard only the voice of her dead Master now.

  Zeerid realized it was no longer his fight. He holstered his blaster and watched. There was nothing else he could do.

  Aryn strode toward the shuttle while the Twi’lek backed up the landing ramp, taking aim. Before the Twi’lek could fire, Aryn gestured with her left hand, and both of the blasters flew from the Twi’lek’s hands and landed at Aryn’s feet. The Twi’lek mouthed something lost in the muffle of her mask. Aryn stepped over and past the blasters.

  The Twi’lek, wide-eyed, turned to flee into the shuttle’s compartment. Again, Aryn gestured and a blast of power went forth from her, slammed into the Twi’lek’s back, and drove her hard into the bulkhead. She collapsed within the shuttle’s compartment, only her feet sticking out far enough for Zeerid to see.

  Aryn deactivated her blade. She stopped for a moment and lowered her head, thinking.

  Zeerid let himself hope, almost called her name again.

  But then she raised her head and walked for the landing ramp, stepping over the corpse of the soldier.

  Zeerid hung his head for a moment, saddened. It was her decision, her fight. He gathered himself, turned, and shouted at T7.

  “Get that Dragonfly open, Tee-seven. It’s time to go.”

  Vrath awoke to the sound of blasterfire, the high-pitched whine of sirens, and the voice on the port’s speaker system saying something about a fuel leak. He’d taken a sleeptab to put him out and it took a few moments for his head to clear. He’d fallen asleep in the cockpit. He checked his chrono. Almost dawn, or just after. He’d been out the better part of the night.

  Something thudded into Razor’s hull, a blaster shot.

  “What in the—”

  He undimmed the cockpit’s transparisteel canopy and looked out on the landing pad. Razor’s angle offered him a very small field of vision so he could see little, merely part of one of the Imperial shuttles docked near him. Strangely, he saw no workers, no Imperial soldiers, no droids.

  He heard a few more blaster shots from behind the ship. He had no idea what was going on and had no desire to find out. He did not yet have permission to leave Coruscant, but he would not leave his ship in dock in the midst of a firefight or whatever was happening out there. He figured he’d just take Razor into the air and stay in-atmosphere. He put the dull monotone of the spaceport’s automated announcement on his in-ship comm.

  “A hazardous substance spill has occurred in landing bay sixteen-B. There is significant danger. Please move rapidly toward the nearest exit. A hazardous substance spill …”

  On the wall near him, written in large black letters, were the words: LANDING BAY 16-B.

  He double-checked to ensure Razor was still sealed tight. It wasn’t. The rear door was open. He cursed. He swore he’d closed it. He hit the button to close it but it still flashed as unsealed and open. Something was keeping it open, or there was a malfunction in the circuit.

  He would have to close it with the rear switch or cargo would fall out as he flew. He started Razor’s auto-launch sequence, rose, and headed for the rear of the ship. Halfway there, he realized he’d left his blaster and blades in the cockpit. He’d stripped them off when he’d grabbed some shuteye.

  No matter. He wouldn’t need them.

  Aryn felt light-headed as she walked up the shuttle’s landing ramp. She held her lightsaber hilt in her hand, held anger in her heart.

  She slowed when the Twi’lek stirred, groaned, and turned over to watch her approach.

  Aryn held up her free hand and almost said, I won’t hurt you, but walled off the words before they escaped her mouth.

  She did not want to lie.

  The woman scrabbled backward crabwise, eyes showing no fear, taking Aryn in, until she bumped into the bulkhead. She slid up the wall so that she was standing. Aryn stopped two paces from her. They regarded each other across the limitless gulf of their respective understandings.

  Outside, the sirens howled. Aryn could no longer see Zeerid. More important, he could no longer see her.

  The Twi’lek’s eyes fell to Aryn’s lightsaber hilt. Aryn felt no fear radiating from the woman, just a soft, profound sadness.

  “You have come to kill me.”

  Aryn did not deny it. Her mouth was dry. She belted her own lightsaber, took Master Zallow’s in hand.

  “I see your anger,” the Twi’lek said.

  Aryn thought of Master Zallow and hardened her resolve. “You don’t know me, woman. Do not pretend that you do.”

  She ignited Master Zallow’s lightsaber. The Twi’lek’s eyes widened and a flash of fear cracked her calm façade.

  “I don’t,” the Twi’lek acknowledged. “But I know anger when I see it. I know it quite well.”

  A sad smile illuminated her face, overcoming the fear in her expression. She was thinking of something or someone other than Aryn and the sadness she radiated increased, sharpened.

  “Anger is just pain renamed,” she said. “This I know well, too. And sometimes … the pain runs too deep. Pain drives you, yes?”

  Aryn had expected resistance, a fight, a protest, something. Instead, the Twi’lek seemed … resigned.

  “You will kill me, Jedi? Because of Darth Malgus? Something he did?”

  Hearing Malgus’s name uttered stoked the heat of Aryn’s anger. “He hurt someone I loved.”

  The Twi’lek nodded, gave a single, short outburst that might have been a pained laugh. “He hurts even those he himself loves.” She smiled, and her soft voice sounded like rainfall. “These men and their wars. His name is Veradun, Jedi. And he would kill me if he knew I told you. But names are important.”

  Aryn had to work to keep hold of her anger. The Twi’lek seemed so … fragile, so hurt. “I don’t care what his name is. You were there with him. In the attack on the Temple. I saw it.”

  “The Temple. Ah.” She nodded. “Yes, I was with him. I love him. I fight at his side. You would do the same.”

  Aryn could not deny it. She would have done the same; she had done the same.

  The anger she’d carried since feeling Master Zallow’s death began to shrink, to drain out of her in the face of the Twi’lek’s pain and sadness, in the realization that her own pain was not the moral center of the universe. The loss of her anger startled her. Since his death, she had been nothing but anger. Without it, she f
elt empty.

  Pain by another name, the Twi’lek had said. Indeed.

  “Please be quick,” the Twi’lek said. “A clean death, yes?”

  The words sounded not so much like a challenge as a request.

  “What is your name?” Aryn asked.

  “Eleena,” the Twi’lek said.

  Aryn stepped toward her. Eleena’s eyes went to Aryn’s blade but she did not shrink from Aryn’s approach. She stared into Aryn’s eyes and Aryn into hers, each measuring the other’s pain, the other’s loss.

  “Names are important,” Aryn said. She flipped her grip on her dead Master’s lightsaber, deactivated the blade, and slammed the pommel against Eleena’s temple. The Twi’lek collapsed without a sound.

  “And I won’t kill you, Eleena.”

  In so many ways, Eleena was already dead. Aryn pitied her.

  She still felt compelled to avenge Master Zallow, but she could not murder Eleena to make Malgus suffer. Master Zallow would never have countenanced it. Aryn could not avenge him by betraying what he stood for. Perhaps he had failed. Perhaps the Order had failed. But both had failed nobly. There was something to that.

  She remembered the dream she’d had of Master Zallow, of him standing on the Temple’s ruins silently mouthing words at her that she could not then understand.

  She understood them now.

  “Be true to yourself,” he had said.

  Hadn’t Zeerid been trying to tell her the same thing all along?

  “I am sorry, my lord,” Kerse said as they hurried through the spaceport. “I assumed they had evacuated, and we had not yet had a chance to take a head count—”

  “Save your excuses, Kerse,” Malgus said and resisted the urge to cut the man in two.

  The long main corridor within the port felt kilometers long. Counters lined it, businesses, even vendor carts, all of them abandoned. Vidscreens sat dark on the walls of lounges and clubs.

  Smaller corridors branched off the main one, leading to commercial passenger pads, to lifts that led to the large craft staging areas, and to the small-craft pads.

  “Move,” Malgus said to them, and they did. To Kerse, he said, “Show me where you saw her last.”

  Kerse pointed to a side corridor far ahead, near the end of the main corridor. “It’s there, my lord. Pad 16-B. On the left.”

  Malgus thought 16-B was close to the launch doors he had seen open upon his arrival at the spaceport. He augmented his speed with the Force and blazed along the hall, leaving the soldiers far behind. The walls, signs, and floor were a blur to him as he sped toward the landing pad, toward Eleena.

  T7 had the rear hatch open on the Dragonfly and was still plugged into the control panel. Zeerid spent a few long moments turning his head from the Dragonfly to the Imperial shuttle where Aryn had disappeared with the Twi’lek, then back again. He finally started to head for the Dragonfly, but Aryn’s voice pulled him around.

  “Zeerid!”

  He turned to see Aryn emerge from the shuttle, carrying the still body of the Twi’lek in her arms. Zeerid could not tell whether the Twi’lek was dead or alive. He walked toward Aryn slowly, his eyes not on the Twi’lek but on Aryn.

  “Do I want to know?”

  He dreaded the answer.

  “I didn’t kill her, Zeerid. It was important to me that you knew that.”

  Zeerid let himself breathe. “I’m glad, Aryn. Then you’ll come with me, now?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tee-seven has the Dragonfly opened.”

  “I can’t, Zeerid, but I’m … all right now. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t, no.”

  Aryn opened her mouth to speak, stopped, and cocked her head, as if she’d heard something from far off.

  “He’s coming,” she said.

  The hairs on the back of Zeerid’s neck rose. “Who’s coming? Malgus?”

  Aryn knelt and laid the Twi’lek down as gently as she might a newborn child.

  The sirens suddenly stopped wailing, the sound cut off as if by a razor. The unexpected silence felt ominous. Zeerid eyed the open double doors of the landing pad. A dark corridor stretched beyond them.

  Aryn rose, closed her eyes, inhaled.

  “Go, Zeerid,” she said.

  “I’m not leaving,” Zeerid said, and drew his other blaster. He ran his tongue over lips gone dry.

  She opened her eyes and grabbed him with her gaze. “You are leaving and you’re leaving now, Z-man. Think of your daughter. Go right now. Go … be a farmer.”

  She smiled and pushed him away. He stared into her face, knowing she was right.

  He could not make Arra an orphan, not even for Aryn. Still, he was unwilling to leave her. He stepped closer to her, and her expression softened. She reached up and touched his face.

  “Go.”

  Driven by nothing more than impulse, he grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. She did not resist, even returned it. He held her away from him at arm’s length.

  “You are a fool, Aryn Leneer,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  He turned and headed for the Dragonfly. The feel of her lips lingered on his, a ghost of softness he hoped would haunt him forever. He only wished he had kissed her longer.

  He imagined her eyes on him and he dared not look back for fear of losing his will to leave. He thought of the holo of Arra he used to keep on Fatman, her smile, her laugh, thought of his promise to Nat that he would not take unnecessary chances.

  Hard as it was, he kept his back turned to Aryn Leneer.

  “Get aboard, Tee-seven,” he said as he walked up the landing ramp.

  T7 beeped a sad negative.

  “You’re not coming?”

  Again, a sad negative.

  Zeerid patted the droid on his head. “You are a brave one. Thank you for your help. Take care of Aryn.”

  T7 whistled an affirmative, followed that with a somber farewell, and wheeled away from the Dragonfly.

  The ship’s engines were already winding up. T7 must have started the launch sequence.

  Vrath picked his way through Razor’s narrow corridors until he reached the rear compartment, which he’d converted from troop carrier to cargo hold. Stacked crates magnetically sealed to the deck dotted the hold, forming a rats’ maze. He hurried through it to the rear door. The firefight outside seemed to have abated, so he allowed himself to relax.

  Zeerid watched T7 move away. He hit the control panel to close the rear door, and it began to rise. He waited until the latches sealed. Still thinking of Aryn, he put his hand on the cold metal of the door.

  The Dragonfly lurched as it rose on its thrusters. He needed to get to the cockpit. He could not have the autopilot flying the ship when the Imperials started shooting.

  He hurried through the converted cargo bay, made into a labyrinth by the many storage crates that dotted it. Rounding a corner, he nearly bumped into another man.

  It took a moment for recognition to dawn—the small frame, the neatly parted dark hair, the deep sockets with their dead eyes, the thin mouth.

  It was the man from Karson’s Park.

  It was the man who had betrayed Zeerid and Aryn to the Sith.

  It was the man who knew about Arra and Nat.

  “You!” Vrath Xizor said.

  “Me,” Zeerid affirmed.

  Aryn watched the Dragonfly lift off, missing Zeerid already. She tried to summon the rage that had brought her to Coruscant to face Malgus, but she no longer felt the same heat. She reached into her pocket, found the bead from the Nautolan bracelet, held it between forefinger and thumb.

  She would face Malgus. She had to. But she would face him as her Master would have wished, with calmness in her heart.

  She stood over Eleena’s body and waited. Malgus’s presence pressed against her as he drew nearer. His anger went before him like a storm.

  Malgus rushed through the large double doors and into the landing bay. Vrath Xizor’s ship, Razor, rose on its thrusters towar
d the open roof doors. Two Imperial shuttles sat idle on the landing pad.

  “Eleena!” he shouted, hating himself for his vulnerability but unable to contain the shout.

  He reached out with the Force as Razor continued its rise, tried to take it in his mental grasp. Its ascent slowed. He held forth both of his arms, made claws of his hands, and shouted with frustration as he sought to hold back the power of the ship’s thrusters.

  He felt a tightness in his mind, the string of his power being drawn taut, stretching, stretching. He would not release the ship. Its thrusters began to whine. He held it, teeth gritted, sweat soaking his body, his breath a dry rattle through his respirator.

  And then the string snapped and the ship flew free, lifting clear of the roof doors.

  He roared his rage as the ship’s engines fired and it headed for the heavens. Seething, he activated his wrist chrono.

  “Jard, the spicerunner’s drop ship has just left the Liston Spaceport. Eleena may be aboard. Secure it with a tractor beam and detain everyone aboard—”

  The hum of an activating lightsaber cut off his words. Another followed it. He looked across the landing pad and saw Aryn Leneer, a lightsaber in each hand, standing over the body of Eleena.

  The pure hate and raw rage pouring off Malgus struck Aryn like a physical blow. She braced herself against it as she might a hailstorm. She realized how strongly he felt for the Twi’lek, how he sublimated all of his emotion for her into hate and rage.

  He ignited his lightsaber and his eyes and the plates of his armor reflected its red glow. He reached a hand behind him, made a sharp, cutting gesture, and the doors to the hangar slammed closed. Another gesture and the emergency locks turned into place.

  “Just us,” he said, his voice as rough as a rasp. He had not taken his eyes from Eleena.

  Aryn indicated the Twi’lek. “She is alive, Sith. And I know your feelings for her.”

  “You know nothing,” Malgus said, and took a slow step toward her.

  “Let the drop ship go. Give the order, or I will kill her.”

  “You lie.”

  Aryn placed Master Zallow’s blade at Eleena’s neck.