The Essential Novels Page 4

  In appearance, Zallow was everything Malgus—with his pale skin, scars, and hairless pate—was not. With respect to the Force, Malgus was everything Zallow was not.

  The six Jedi Knights accompanying Zallow spaced themselves around Malgus and Eleena, to minimize maneuvering room. The Jedi eyed him cautiously, the way they might a trapped predator.

  Eleena put her back to Malgus’s. Malgus felt her breathing, deep and regular.

  Silence ruled the hall.

  Somewhere, a Padawan cleared his throat. Another coughed.

  Zallow and Malgus stared into each other’s eyes but exchanged no words. None were necessary. Both knew what would unfold next, what must unfold.

  The chrono on Malgus’s wrist began to beep. The slight sound rang out like an explosion in the silent vastness of the hall.

  The sound seemed to free the Jedi to act. Half a dozen green and blue lines pierced the dimness as all of the Jedi Knights ignited their lightsabers, backed off a step, and assumed a fighting stance.

  All except Zallow, who held his ground before Malgus. Malgus credited him for it and inclined his head in a show of respect.

  Perhaps the Jedi Knights thought the beeping chrono indicated a bomb of some kind. In a way, Malgus supposed, it did.

  From behind, another sound broke the silence. The whine of the hijacked drop ship’s approaching engines.

  Malgus did not turn. Instead, he watched the events behind him by watching the events before him.

  The Jedi Knights stepped back another step, looking past Malgus, uncertainty in their expressions. Eleena pressed her back against Malgus. No doubt she could see the drop ship by now as it roared downward, toward the Temple.

  Zallow did not step back and his eyes stayed on Malgus.

  The sound of the drop ship’s engines grew louder, more acute, a prolonged, mechanical scream.

  Malgus watched the eyes of the Jedi Knights widen, heard the shouts of alarm from throughout the hall, then the screams, all of them soon overwhelmed by the roar of the reinforced drop ship slamming at speed into the front of the Temple.

  Stone shattered and the Temple’s floor vibrated under the impact. Metal bent, twisted, and shrieked. People, too, bent, twisted, and shrieked. The explosion colored the hall in orange—Malgus could see it reflected in Zallow’s eyes—and the sudden flame drew the oxygen toward it in a powerful wind, as if the conflagration were a great pair of lungs drawing breath.

  Malgus did not turn. He had seen the attack thousands of times on computer models and knew exactly what was happening from the sounds he heard.

  The drop ship’s enormous speed and mass allowed it to retain momentum and it skidded along the Temple floor, gouging stone, trailing fire, toppling columns, collapsing balconies, crushing bodies.

  Still Malgus did not move, nor Zallow.

  The drop ship skidded closer, closer, the sound of metal grinding over stone ever louder in Malgus’s ears. More columns collapsed. Eleena pressed against him as the flaming, shredded vessel slid toward them. But it was already losing speed and soon came to a halt.

  Dust, heat, and smoke filled the hall. Flames crackled. Shouts of pain and surprise penetrated the sudden silence.

  “What have they done?” someone called.

  “Medic!” screamed someone else.

  Malgus heard the explosive bolts on the specially reinforced passenger compartment of the drop ship blow outward and hit the floor like metal rain, heard the hatch clang to the floor.

  For the first time, Zallow looked past Malgus, his head cocked in a question. Uncertainty entered his expression. Malgus savored it.

  A prolonged, irregular hum sounded as the fifty Sith warriors within the drop ship’s compartment activated their lightsabers. The sound heralded the fall of the Temple, the fall of Coruscant, the fall of the Republic.

  Malgus flashed on the vision he’d seen on Korriban, of a galaxy in flames. He threw back his hood, smiled, and activated his lightsaber.

  Zeerid let Fatman fly free and blazed away from Ord Mantell’s surface. He kept his scanners sweeping the area, concerned that the pirates might have allies in another ship somewhere, but he saw no signs of pursuit. In time, he let himself relax.

  The pink of Ord Mantell’s clouds and upper stratosphere soon gave way to the black of space. Planetary control did not ping him for identification, and he would not have responded anyway. He did not answer to them. He answered to The Exchange, though he’d never met any serious player in the syndicate face-to-face.

  Receiving his instructions through a handler he knew only as Oren, he flew blind most of the time. He got his assignments remotely, picked up cargo where he was told, then dropped it off where he was told. He preferred it that way. It made it feel less personal, which made him feel less dirty.

  He took care to return the emphasis on privacy, ensuring that The Exchange knew little about him other than his past as a soldier and pilot. As far as they knew, he had no friends and no family. He knew that if they learned of Arra, they would use her as leverage against him. He could not allow that. And were any harm to ever come to her …

  Once again, he realized that he was holding the stick too tightly. He relaxed, breathed deeply, and composed his thoughts. When he felt ready, he plugged in the code for the secure subspace channel he used to communicate with Oren. He waited until he heard the hollow sound of an open connection.

  Oren did not waste time with a greeting. “The drop went well, I presume?”

  From his voice, Zeerid made Oren as a human male, probably in his forties or early fifties, though he could have been using voice-disguising technology.

  “No,” Zeerid said, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “The drop was an ambush.”

  A moment of silence, then, “The purchaser’s agents ambushed you?”

  Zeerid shook his head. “I don’t think so. These were men I hadn’t seen before. Pirates, I think. Maybe mercs. I think they killed the purchaser’s men and commandeered the ship.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Anger bled into Zeerid’s tone. “No, I’m not certain. What’s certain in this work? Ever?”

  Oren did not respond. Zeerid lassoed his emotions and continued.

  “I’m only certain that the pilot I expected, a fellow named Arigo, was not there. But his ship was. I’m only certain that eight men with blasters and hostile attitudes tried to burn holes through me.”

  “Eight men.” Oren’s voice was tight. Not a good sign. “What happened to them?”

  Zeerid had the impression that Oren was noting everything he said, filing it away in memory so he could sift it for any inconsistencies later.

  “They’re dead. I sniffed out the attack before they sprang it.”

  “That seems … convenient, Z-man.”

  Zeerid stared out the canopy at Ord Mantell’s star and controlled the flash of temper. He knew that if Oren suspected him of double dealing, or just didn’t believe his story, a word from the man would turn Arra into an orphan.

  “Convenient? Let me tell you what’s convenient, Oren. Word is that lots of deals have been going sour because The Exchange won’t play nice with the other syndicates, including the Hutts. And nothing explains lots of deals going sour except a leak. That tells me The Exchange is venting Oh-two.”

  Oren did not miss a beat. Zeerid almost admired him. “If one of my fliers thought there might be a leak, he might also think it an ideal time to make a play for some goods himself. Especially if he had heavy debts. Make it look like an ambush of, say, eight men. After all, there’s a ready excuse at hand—this strife with the other syndicates you mentioned.”

  “He might,” Zeerid said. “But only if he was stupid. And stupid I am not. Listen, you gave me the drop coordinates on Ord Mantell. Send someone there, a surveillance droid. You’ll see what I left there. But do it quick. Someone is going to clean up that mess before long, I’d wager.”

  “So … how did you manage to kill eight men?”

  The dis
cussion was about to take a turn for the worse. “They were too close to one of the shipping containers full of grenades when it blew up.”

  Oren paused. “One of our shipping containers blew up?”

  Zeerid swallowed hard. “I lost it in the escape. The rest of the cargo is intact.”

  A long silence followed, an abyss of quiet. Zeerid imagined Oren flipping through the file cabinet of his mind, cross-referencing Zeerid’s story with whatever other pertinent facts Oren already knew or thought he knew.

  “This wasn’t my fault,” Zeerid said. “You find your leak, you’ll find who’s at fault.”

  “You lost cargo.”

  “I saved cargo. If I hadn’t sussed this out, the whole shipment would have been lost to pirates.”

  “It would have been recovered. It is difficult to recover exploded grenades. Do you agree?”

  “I would have been dead.”

  “You are replaceable. I ask again: Do you agree?”

  Zeerid could not bring himself to respond.

  “I choose to interpret your silence as agreement, Z-man.”

  Zeerid glared at the speaker while Oren continued: “At best, you will get paid only half for the job. The amount of the lost cargo will be set against that and added to your marker. It was already in excess of two million credits, if I remember correctly. The note on the ship and some loans against your gambling.”

  Oren always remembered correctly. The job would net negative for Zeerid. He wanted to punch something, someone, but there was no one in the cockpit but him.

  “This makes me look bad, Z-man,” Oren said. “And I very much dislike looking bad. You will make this up to me.”

  Zeerid did not like the sound of that. “How?”

  A pause, then, “By doing a spicerun.”

  Zeerid shook his head. “I don’t run spice. That was our understanding—”

  Oren’s voice never lost its calm, but the edge on it could have gouged armor. “The understanding has changed, contingent, as it was, on your successful completion of assignments. You owe us a large sum of credits and you owe me a large sum of face. You will make up both with a few spiceruns. That’s where the credits are. So that’s where you will be.”

  Zeerid said nothing, could say nothing.

  “Are we clear, Z-man?”

  Zeerid scowled but said, “Clear.”

  “Return to Vulta. I will be in touch soon. I have something in mind already.”

  I’ll bet you do, Zeerid thought but didn’t say.

  The channel closed and Zeerid let fly with a sleet storm of expletives. When he had finally vented, he cleared Ord Mantell’s gravity well and its moons, set a course for Vulta, and engaged the hyperdrive.

  “I’m a spicerunner, now,” he said, as the black of space turned to the blue of hyperspace.

  The treadmill under his feet had just picked up speed.

  Aryn felt dizzy. A rush of emotion flooded her. She could not name it, categorize it. It was just a wash of inchoate, raw feeling. She was swimming in it, sinking.

  “Something is happening, Syo,” she said, her voice tight. “I don’t know what it is, but it is not good.”

  Master Zallow and the six Jedi Knights near Malgus leapt back and up, flipping at the top of the arc of their leaps, and landed in a crouch twenty meters away.

  “May the Force be with you all,” Zallow shouted to his fellow Jedi, and lit his blade.

  Dozens more Jedi poured out of the hallway behind him and flowed down the staircase, the blades of their lightsabers visible through the smoke and dust, a forest of green and blue oriflammes. The Jedi did not shout as they charged, but the rumble of their boots and sandals on the floor sounded like rolling thunder.

  “Stay near me,” Malgus said over his shoulder to Eleena.

  “Yes,” she said, her blasters already in hand.

  Malgus’s Sith charged out of the carcass of the drop ship, their collective roar the sound of a hungry, rage-filled beast. The red lines of their blades cut the dust-covered air. Lord Adraas, a political favorite of Darth Angral and constant irritant to Malgus, led them. Like all of the Sith warriors save Malgus, a dark mask obscured his face entirely.

  Malgus used his distaste for Adraas to further feed his anger. He had requested that Darth Angral allow him to lead the attack alone, but Angral had insisted that Adraas lead the drop ship team.

  Discarding his cloak, discarding the remaining restraints on his rage, Malgus joined the Sith charge, taking position before Adraas. Emotion fed his power, and its swell fairly lifted him from his feet. He felt the power of the dark side around him, within him.

  Blaster bolts crisscrossed the battlefield from left and right as two platoons of Republic soldiers emerged from somewhere above and to the side and fired into the Sith ranks.

  Malgus, nested deeply in the Force, perceived the dozens of bolts and their trajectory with perfect clarity. Without breaking stride he whipped his blade left, right, angled it ten degrees, and turned three bolts back on the soldiers who’d fired them, killing all three. A soldier had exploded a grenade in his face in the Battle of Alderaan, so he enjoyed killing soldiers when he could. Behind him, Eleena’s twin blasters answered to the left and right with bolts of their own, picking off two more soldiers.

  The Sith and Jedi forces closed, Sith battle lust facing the calm of the Jedi, the floor of the Temple the arena where centuries of indeterminate strife would at last reach a conclusion. Those strong in the Force would survive and their understanding of the Force would evolve. Those weak in the Force would die.

  Malgus sought Master Zallow but could not make him out from the crowd of faces, dust, flames, and glowing blades. So he chose a Jedi at random from the crowd, a human male with a blue blade and a short beard, and targeted him.

  Waves of power distorted the air and dopplered sound as the Jedi and Sith forces crashed into one another and intermixed in a chaotic, roaring tangle of bodies, lightsabers, and shouts.

  Malgus augmented his strength with the Force, took a two-handed grip on his blade, and unleashed an overhand slash designed to split the Jedi in half. The Jedi sidestepped the blow and crosscut with his blue blade at Malgus’s throat. Malgus got his blade up in time, parried, and slammed a kick into the Jedi’s mid-section. The blow folded the Jedi in half, sent him reeling backward five paces. Malgus leapt into the air, flipped, landed behind him, and drove his blade through the Jedi. Roaring with battle lust, Malgus sought another opponent.

  A flash of lavender skin drew his gaze—Eleena. She ducked under a saber slash and dived to her side, firing half a dozen blaster shots as she did so. The Padawan who’d tried to kill her, a female Zabrak, the horns of her head gilt with colored pigments, deflected the shots as she closed in for another blow. Eleena flipped to her feet, still firing, but the Padawan deflected every shot and drew nearer.

  Malgus drew on the Force and with a blast of power drove the Padawan across the hall and into one of the towering columns of stone, where she collapsed, blood leaking from her nose. Eleena continued firing, her eyes darting here and there over the battlefield as she sought targets.

  The battle turned ever more chaotic. Jedi and Sith leapt, bounded, rolled, and flipped as red lines intersected with those of blue and green. Blasts of power sent bodies flying through the air, against walls, pulled loose rocks from the ceiling and sent them crashing into flesh. The hall was a cacophony of sound: shouts, screams, the hum of lightsabers, the intermittent sound of weapons-fire. Malgus walked in its midst, reveled in it.

  He watched Lord Adraas leap into the middle of a squad of Republic soldiers and punctuate his landing with an explosion of Force energy that cast the soldiers away like dry leaves.

  Malgus, not to be outdone, picked a Jedi Knight at random, a human female ten meters away, held forth his left hand, and discharged veins of blue lightning from his fingertips. The jagged lines of energy cut a swath through the battle, harvesting two Padawans as they went, until they caught up to the J
edi Knight and lifted her off her feet.

  She screamed as the lightning ripped into her, her flesh made temporarily translucent from the dark power coursing through her. Malgus savored her pain as she died.

  He caught Adraas eyeing him and gave him a mocking salute with his lightsaber.

  The high-pitched sound of Eleena’s blasters drew his attention. She bounded past him and over the slain female Jedi Knight’s corpse, a lavender blur firing rapidly. Putting her back to a column, she crouched and sought targets for her blasters. She met his eyes, winked, and signaled behind him. He whirled to see a score or more Republic soldiers rushing into the hall from a side room, blaster rifles tracing hot lines through the battlefield. Eleena answered with shots of her own.

  Before Malgus could dispatch the soldiers, the Mandalorian rose from somewhere behind them, her jetpack spitting fire, her head-to-toe silver-and-orange armor gleaming in the fire of the hall. Hovering in the air like an avenging spirit, she discharged two small missiles from wrist mounts. They struck the floor near the Republic soldiers and blossomed into flame. Bodies, shouts, and loose rock flew in all directions. Still hovering, she spun a circle in the air while flamethrowers mounted on her forearm engulfed another group of soldiers.

  Malgus knew the battle had turned, that it soon would be over. He glanced around, still seeking Zallow, the only opponent in the field worthy of his attention.

  Before he could locate the Jedi Master, three more Jedi swarmed him. He parried the chop of a human male, leapt over the low slash of an orange-skinned Togruta female, severed the hand of the third, a female human, disarming her, then grabbed her by the throat with his free hand and slammed her into the floor with his Force-enhanced strength.

  “Alara!” said the human male.

  Leaping high over the male’s cross-slash, Malgus landed behind the Togruta, who parried his lightsaber strike but could not defend herself against a Force blast that sent her skidding across the hall and into a pile of rubble.

  Malgus roared, the lust for battle so pronounced that he would have killed his own warriors were there no Jedi left to slay. He wanted, needed, to kill another and to do so with his hands.