فصل 43

Chapter Forty-Three

No-Space. The Great Hall Of The Nihil.

The Nihil stood assembled, a host of a few thousand people, masked and terrifying. They watched, silent.

The space above the Great Hall was a dome-shaped energy shield protecting the platform from the vacuum of No-Space. Ordinarily, it was invisible. But now images played across it, projected by hovering comms droids.

“For the Nihil!” came Kassav’s voice, loud and fierce, and then a response, shouted from a thousand throats, all dead now. “For the storm!”

The Battle of Kur began, displayed in a series of images ranging from tactical displays to shipcam points-of-view to wider shots assembled by comms droid processing algorithms. The Nihil watched, as did Marchion Ro from the raised table at one end of the hall, with Lourna Dee and Pan Eyta beside him. One seat at the high table remained empty, for the one who was lost.

The Eye and the Tempest Runners wore their masks, but Marchion’s was new. Ornate, with the suggestion of a crown, and the superstorm engraving subsumed within a circle of glowing red—the baleful gaze of a beast. Ro’s clothing, too, had changed. He now wore a heavy fur cloak, worn and ragged in spots. But the wear conveyed a sense of history, of battles survived and won. As it should—it was the cloak of Asgar Ro.

“Kassav believed he was taking his crews to save us all, to protect us, to keep the Republic from learning our secrets,” said the Eye of the Nihil. “It was a trap, a lie. You see how they came for him. The Republic and the Jedi hunted down Kassav’s Tempest like vermin.” Murmurs through the crowd as the Nihil watched ship after ship destroyed by Republic attackers, all flying under the same banner they wore on their masks, their clothes, their bodies.

“But look,” Marchion Ro said, pointing up at the battle raging above them. “Look what Kassav and his people did.”

“Show them who we are!” came Kassav’s voice again, and the next phase of the fight began as the Nihil began to use the new, aggressive tactics—radiation bombs and waste sludge and explosive escape pods.

“Our brothers and sisters refused to fight the way the Republic wanted them to,” Marchion Ro said. “They fought like the Nihil.” A roar of approval from the crowd. Not enough to shake the Great Hall, there was still too much uncertainty for that…but a start.

The Jedi entered the fight, and once again the tide began to turn against the Nihil, as the Vectors whipped through the battlespace, darting and firing their cannons.

Another voice echoed above the Great Hall, this time Marchion Ro’s.

“I am the Eye, and I will give you what you need to defeat our enemies. These are the Battle Paths, my friends, and with them…you cannot lose.”

The fight changed again. The ships of Kassav’s Tempest began to leap from place to place, impossible to hit, taking down Skywings and Longbeams and Vectors. Excitement rippled through the watching Nihil. This was something new. Something powerful.

“Yes,” Marchion Ro said. “The Paths make us strong—but Kassav’s numbers were too few, and there was only so much he could do, even with the gifts I gave him. But look what he did. Look what he and his people did.”

The Nihil ships began to smash into the Republic vessels, exploding, causing horrendous damage even at the cost of their own lives. Now a sense of alarm from the watchers.

“I did not expect this,” Marchion Ro said. “I don’t know if Kassav ordered this, or our fellows just decided they had enough of their freedom being taken, enough of the Republic telling us what to do, thinking they can control our planets and kill our people and…well.” He gestured up at the display.

“There is a point where every being breaks, and chooses freedom over tyranny. Kassav’s people did this for themselves. For each other.

And for us.”

The crowd had gone completely silent. Marchion gestured again and the battle froze.

“We are the Nihil,” Marchion Ro said.

A few weak cheers, quickly fading into silence.

“I am the Eye, Marchion Ro,” he continued. “I am the Nihil.

“And so…” he said, holding out his hands to his people, “…are all of you.”

This is the moment, Marchion Ro thought. Another step on the path.

“Kassav and his people died, so we could stay free. But that fight isn’t over. The Republic will come for us. And the Jedi. We are no longer Tempests, Storms, Clouds, Strikes. We are one thing.” Marchion Ro lifted his hands to his head and removed his mask. He stood there, looking out at the thousands of faces. His tool. His weapon. His army.

“We are all the Nihil,” he said.

Throughout the hall, more masks came off, only a few at first, but then a flood, the heavy things dropping to the floor with rattling thuds.

Marchion Ro let his gaze wash across all of them, seeing the eagerness, the understanding.

He turned to look at Pan Eyta and Lourna Dee. Their masks were still on.

“Now,” he said, quietly.

They glanced at each other. Marchion wondered if it would be knives, or if these two would get to live. He hoped for the latter. There was a great deal of work to do.

Slowly, the two remaining Tempest Runners took off their masks.

Pan Eyta stood stiffly, his huge, tusked head expressionless—not that Marchion was very good at reading Dowutini emotions. Lourna Dee feigned nonchalance, shaking out her lekku.

Marchion Ro turned back to the waiting Nihil. With a flourish, he lifted his mask into the air.

“For Kassav!” he shouted, and this time there was an answering cheer, a torrent of sound, a release of tension and anxiety. They thought everything was going to be all right.

None of them had ever seen his face before. It didn’t matter that they did now. None of them knew who he was. He wasn’t Marchion Ro, either. His name was…it didn’t matter. Where he came from was gone, other than the lessons it had taught him, and a few tools he had stolen from it when he left.

Marchion Ro lowered his mask, and as he did, a set of small servitor droids hovered up from behind the stage, each holding a metal bowl in its actuator arms.

They floated out above the assemblage, all but one, which stopped near Marchion.

“Kassav sacrificed himself to preserve the Nihil way of life, as did his Tempest,” Marchion said. “He showed us the way. Whatever we have been, our wealth, our power…it’s just beginning. Do you know why? Let me show you.”

Another tap of a control on his belt, and the display being projected by the comms droids changed. No longer a frozen shot of the final moments of the Battle of Kur, it was now a beautiful, complex image of the galaxy in all its breadth and splendor, a slowly rotating spiral filled with countless worlds, countless riches, countless opportunities.

“The galaxy. But when I look at it, I do not see only stars and planets. I see…a storm.”

The image began to spin faster, and now it did look like an enormous weather system, a hurricane rotating around a central eye.

“We are all the Nihil…we don’t just ride the storm. We are the storm.”

Understanding was beginning to dawn on their faces. Awe, even.

“Now we will own the storm,” Marchion cried. “We’ve kept ourselves to the Outer Rim—didn’t want to attract too much attention, didn’t want to spoil a good thing. That is over. We are going to go as hard and as far as we can, and we are going to take what we want.” Marchion gestured up toward the storm spinning above them all.

“The Nihil are going galaxy-wide.”

Now another cheer, no hesitation.

Marchion Ro began to pace back and forth across the stage, pointing at individual Nihil as he spoke, singling them out, watching them grin as he did, the looks of jealousy on their colleagues’ faces.

“I have an archive of Paths that will take us all across the galaxy,” Marchion said. “We can go anywhere we want, take anything we want.

Lina Soh and her Republic and the Jedi tried to destroy us, but Kassav’s sacrifice bought us time. Time to build, time to plan, time to grow our numbers. A day will come when we will teach the Republic that we cannot be destroyed. They will fear the Nihil. And if they try to take our freedom again, we will tear them apart.”

Marchion reached out to the servitor droid hovering nearby and dipped his fingers in the bowl it was holding. They came out red.

“By the blood of the one who gave everything for us…Kassav.” Marchion took three fingers and drew them down his face in jagged lines. Lightning. Blood.

The servitor droids swooped down into the crowd, and he saw the Nihil repeating his gesture, taking the blood and swooping it down their faces, three jagged lines.

Marchion Ro didn’t know if any of them were curious as to how one person could hold this much blood, or where he had gotten it if Kassav had died somewhere out in space…but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they would never ask those questions, because doubt could be perceived as weakness, and the Nihil stayed strong by removing what was weak.

Round and round it goes, he thought, looking up at the galaxy, gazing into the storm.

“Go,” Marchion Ro said. “Bring me more Nihil, as many as you can…”

He grinned.

“…and I will give you everything.”

Mari San Tekka was asleep. She looked peaceful, wrapped in a cocoon of wires and actuator arms and monitoring systems—all the equipment her medical pod required to keep the ancient woman alive.

“Get your rest, my dear,” Marchion Ro said, placing his palm flat on the pod, feeling the warmth emanating from the machine. “You have so much work to do.”

She looked fetal—tiny and wizened, on her side, her hands curled up against her chest. The whole pod was like a womb in reverse— though he wasn’t sure there was another human in the galaxy further from the womb than this woman.

Marchion had told the Nihil the truth. He did have an archive of Paths, thousands of them. Mari had spent the decades charting hidden routes all across the galaxy, and they were all stored in a database, able to be called upon at will. The Nihil could appear anywhere he wanted, even atop Chancellor Soh’s palace, if he chose.

He wondered how long Mari would last. Long enough, he thought.

He had found a supplier for the new miracle drug, bacta, which would probably help. It came from a world in the Hetzal system, which made Marchion laugh. He’d almost destroyed that planet.

Marchion Ro turned away from the sleeping Mari San Tekka. He left the chamber and descended three decks in his flagship. He walked through beautiful arched passageways, through large galleries, where once sermons were preached and dreams were built, and families worked and planned and considered a better way to live.

Until they didn’t.

Now, the Gaze Electric was empty. Haunted.

At last, after a long trek through the huge vessel, Marchion Ro arrived in an area with a very different feel from the tranquil, subtly lit room where Mari San Tekka whiled away her endless years.

Here the lights were bright. The edges were sharp. Everything was reflective. There was nowhere to look to gain peace, and even closing your eyes could only do so much against the glare.

The walls were metal, as were the floors. Eight cells. Seven held prisoners delivered to him by Pan Eyta—nobodies, snatched from a passenger transport headed to Travnin. Ordinary people who certainly did not deserve imprisonment on the Eye of the Nihil’s flagship.

Too bad. Life was rarely about what you deserved.

Seven of the occupied cells were wired to the ship’s electrical system, and programmed to shock their prisoners at random intervals and intensity levels. Between the shocks and the lights, sleep was impossible. Being placed in a cell on the prison deck of the Gaze Electric meant anger, pain, fear, and, eventually, madness.

And all of it designed specifically for the man in the eighth cell.

The Jedi.

Marchion Ro walked down the hall, passing the poor wretches in the torture cells, coming to the last. The Jedi looked up, his face calm —but his eyes were tired. He could act as serene as he liked, but the emotional turmoil he must be sensing from the other prisoners was clearly achieving the intended effect. He had to be in pain, too—he had a badly broken leg, and Marchion had made exactly none of the hightech medical facilities just a few decks up available to the man.

The Twi’lek moved quickly, lifting a hand with two fingers extended and speaking a single sentence.

“You will release us all,” he said.

Marchion felt the pressure of the Jedi’s intention washing across his mind. He wanted to do what the Twi’lek asked. Why wouldn’t he?

Because he was Marchion Ro.

He smiled.

“It’s not going to happen, Jedi,” he said. “My family knew all about you people. They told me what you could do, and how to resist it.” He gestured vaguely toward the other cells.

“They’re not getting out, either. If they die, I’ll just bring in more.

Their job is to fill this entire deck with pain and anger and fear. Makes it hard for you to think, doesn’t it? Hard for you to call on the Force.” He leaned back against a nearby wall and crossed his arms.

“My grandmother told me how to do it; she learned from hers. You don’t imprison Jedi behind bars. You do it with pain. I never had a chance to try it—but it seems like it works well enough.”

One of the other prisoners moaned—not even enough energy left to scream, Marchion thought. The Jedi did not look. His eyes never left Marchion Ro’s face.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “I don’t want to just keep calling you Jedi.”

“Loden Greatstorm,” the Jedi answered.

Marchion’s eyes went wide. He pushed himself off the wall.

“Loden…Greatstorm?” he said. “By the Path, that’s too perfect. It’s truly a great pleasure to meet you, my friend. I think we will accomplish wonderful things together.”

“What things?” Loden said. “Why are you doing this?”

Marchion laughed.

“You want my grand plan, Jedi? I don’t do that. Plans can fail, at any step along the way. I have a goal, and goals can be achieved in any number of ways. As long as you get where you want to in the end, the roads you took don’t matter. It’s all the same path.”

“Your goal, then,” the Jedi said.

Marchion thought for a moment, considered his words.

“When my father died, I inherited a disorganized, broken organization. The Nihil had power, but it spent most of its time fighting within itself. It could never reach its full potential, and it had to, if it would ever become the weapon I need. My father tried to change things, but he failed, and then he was murdered.”

Another moan from one of the torture cells. Marchion supposed the shock cycle had just triggered again.

“I almost didn’t want to try at all. For a long time, I just carried on the same role he had—the Eye of the Nihil, keeper of the Paths. I got rich doing it. It was fine. And then…you came.”

The Jedi’s eyes narrowed. Marchion chuckled.

“Oh, not you specifically, Loden Greatstorm. I mean the Republic, building its Starlight Beacon out in my territory. Invading, taking over, with all its rules and laws and particular brand of freedom that isn’t free at all. And you Jedi always just behind, absolutely convinced that every action you take is right and good. My family learned that to its cost, long ago.”

“But we have met before,” the Jedi said. “In a way.”

His face was very, very cold, his dark-green skin seeming to absorb the bright lights of the prison deck.

“I recognize your voice,” Loden said.

Marchion grinned. “There’s a homesteader family, about thirty kilometers to the southwest of town,” he said, his voice suddenly anxious, affected. “Two parents, two kids. You gotta go rescue them, Jedi, you just gotta!”

Marchion Ro slammed backward, hitting the bulkhead, hard. His head cracked against the durasteel. Nothing had touched him…but he knew it was the Jedi.

Loden slumped back—the effort to use the Force had clearly exhausted him.

“Not quite enough,” Marchion said, gingerly touching the back of his skull. “Try that again and I’ll kill one of the prisoners.” The Jedi did not respond.

“As I said, many paths, one goal. Hetzal was mine, too. I sent one of my ships to intercept the Legacy Run. A Stormship. They had no idea.

I just needed an accident, a disaster, something to put the Nihil on the Republic’s radar.”

“Why would you do that?” Loden asked.

“Everything and everyone is a tool,” Marchion Ro said, “I will use them however I need.”

He smiled. A predator’s smile…though this Jedi was dangerous, too, and he could not allow himself to forget it. His family had trusted the Jedi once, and it cost them everything.

“They will come for me,” Loden Greatstorm said. “My Order. And if I am dead…”

He tilted his head, and a little smile played around his mouth.

“…then they will come for you.”

Marchion Ro reached inside his tunic and pulled out an object of stone and metal, a rod, three hands long, carved and incised with symbols—screaming faces, fire, chains. It looked as if it had been melted once and re-forged. As his hand touched the object, it began to glow, a sickly purple color that somehow overpowered the star-bright lighting of the prison deck.

This thing was almost as fully to blame for what happened to his ancestors as the Jedi—but that was an old story, and this was a new time. He could accomplish what they had not.

The rod grew warm under his hand. It felt almost alive, breathing.

He showed it to Loden, whose eyes narrowed. In the purple light cast by the object, the Jedi’s face looked strange. Dead.

“I’m not worried about your Order. If they think they can take me…”

He smiled at this Loden Greatstorm, so brave, the perfect Jedi Knight. So unafraid.

“…let them come.”