فصل 31

Chapter Thirty-One

Deep Space. Republic Longmbeam Auropa III.

Pikka Adren stretched, feeling her muscles ease a little. She wanted to ask Joss to rub her shoulders, but the thirty-ninth

Emergence was set to happen soon enough that she didn’t want to risk him being out of the pilot’s seat when it happened. They still had a few minutes, but there was no reason to take a chance.

Her husband could give her a massage later. Assuming “later” ever actually arrived. Somehow, they’d been swept up in the efforts to solve all the backscatter from the Legacy Run disaster, and that was all well and good—they were getting hazard pay and doing something noble besides. But they were supposed to be on vacation. She had booked them a trip to Amfar once their shift helping to build the Starlight Beacon was over, and those days had come and gone. She’d lost the deposit, and had no idea whether the Republic would let her expense it, and—

Ugh. She was annoyed at herself for focusing on something so petty. She and Joss were literally saving the galaxy here. Or at least a good chunk of it.

But still. She was supposed to be on a beach right now, wearing something tiny, sipping something delicious, lying next to her handsome husband who was also in something tiny, thinking about later, when they would both ditch even those tiny things and think of inventive ways to make each other feel good.

“You ready, my darling?” Joss said.

He sounded excited. Clearly he wasn’t thinking he’d rather be on a beach. He lived for this stuff.

But really, she thought, so do I.

Couple of spanner-slinging contractors out saving the Outer Rim Territories, doing it together, doing it in style. Not so bad.

“Ready, my darling,” she said, putting her hands back on her console.

“I just checked with the rest of the team,” Joss said. “Everyone’s good to go. Whatever pops out, we can handle it.”

Pikka murmured in agreement, pulling her mind away from Amfar and back to the task at hand. Somehow the Republic had figured out how to predict where the Emergences were going to happen—she’d heard a story about some sort of mega-processor made out of tens of thousands of droids linked to the Force that could predict the future, but that surely had to be nonsense. In any case, they had identified three spots as the most likely candidates for where the Legacy Run’s flight recorder would emerge, and had set up a team to intercept them, one after the other.

Other teams were working to recover potential survivors from other Emergence sites—it was possible some could still be alive in passenger modules despite the length of time since the original disaster, and all efforts were being made to bring them home. Those missions were obviously hugely important, but the flight recorder was crucial—it would provide information about how the ship had been destroyed in the first place, and help prevent it from happening again.

The hyperspace blockade of the Outer Rim was still in effect, and Pikka knew that many worlds were hurting. She’d heard rumors of food riots in the sinkhole cities of Utapau, even though Chancellor Soh had authorized special aid shipments. And of course, Starlight

Beacon’s construction had finally been completed, but the dedication and official opening were on hold. As a matter of professional pride, that stung a bit. That place would be beautiful, and help so many people. She and Joss had worked hard on their little part of it, and she wanted to see it operational on time.

The retrieval team included four Longbeams and two Jedi Vectors —it was her old friends Te’Ami and Mikkel Sutmani, which made sense. After all, the four of them had devised the techniques used back in Hetzal that had saved the Fruited Moon during the original disaster.

They’d refined those ideas, and now, whatever happened, they’d be ready for it.

Pikka thought this Emergence would probably just be a piece of wreckage, nothing interesting about it. If so, they could just let it go.

They were in an uninhabited region of space, far from anything to which a chunk of former starship might pose a threat.

“Weapons hot,” she said. “Everything else is good to go, too— magclamps, fuel looks good, the whole deal.”

“Great,” Joss said. “As soon as we’re done here, we’ll have to zip away to the next Emergence spot. We’ll barely have enough time to get there.”

“You really think we might get in a fight?” she asked.

“I doubt it, but you know what happened at Eriadu. Someone else out there predicted an Emergence, too. Three, actually. We’re looking for a ship called the New Elite, a modified corvette. Admiral Kronara went over it at the mission briefing. We don’t know how they’re involved, but there’s at least some chance they might show up here, too. We need to be prepared for anything. If we get into a fight, we get into a fight.”

Privately, Pikka was planning to just let the Jedi handle it, if it came to that—she wasn’t afraid of a firefight, but she was basically a mechanic. She was more than happy to leave combat to the highly trained space wizards.

“Here it comes,” Joss said. “Thirty-ninth Emergence in five, four, three…”

“…two, one,” Belial said, from his post at the monitoring station.

“There it is.”

“Scan it, and tell me if it looks like the flight recorder,” Lourna Dee said.

She was standing with her arms crossed on the bridge of her flagship, the Lourna Dee, looking out at the little fleet the Republic had put together for their little mission. Bunch of heroes. Hooray.

Lourna Dee loved her ship, and that was why she had named it after herself. Anyone who had an issue with that was welcome to discuss it with her. So far, no one ever had.

Each of Marchion Ro’s Tempest Runners had a personal warship, a testament to its owner’s taste as well as the possibilities inherent in the Nihil as an organization. Work hard, hunt well, follow the Paths, and you, too, might someday own a customized battle cruiser. Kassav’s New Elite felt like the interior of a trashy nightclub. Pan Eyta’s ship, the Elegencia, was beautiful, with surfaces covered in soft leather, lighting designed to perfectly accent every lovely little tasteful design choice he made.

The Lourna Dee was unique in a completely different way.

The cruiser was outfitted with all sorts of devices and shielding that made it all but impossible to pick up on a scan. Heat baffling, ablative plating, double-sealed engines that recycled almost all of its exhaust signature into the ship’s life-support and weapons systems, and more.

It cost her a pile of credits, but it made her Tempest’s flagship nearly invisible to even the most powerful sensors.

Usually, an attack by the Lourna Dee went like this: The enemy pilot thought, Wait, where’d that ship come fr— and then they were blasted into vapor.

Here…well, it remained to be seen. The Lourna Dee packed enough punch to take out four Longbeams and a few wispy little Vectors, if she could take them by surprise and kept moving. But that could mean revealing her ship, and that was not on the menu for this operation.

The Tempest Runners were in rare agreement when they voted to approve this mission: The Nihil needed to avoid any suggestion they were connected to the Emergences or the Legacy Run.

There were two reasons for that. First, obviously, was Kassav’s massive screwup at Eriadu. His stupid attempt at extorting that planet, the one that had gone so wrong and was so obviously a shot at taking the entire proceeds of that job for himself, shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Nihil. The Eriaduans had splashed Kassav’s name and the specs of his ship all over the HoloNet. While there was no direct connection to the Nihil, that was still more heat than they wanted. And after that, Kassav had had the nerve to come crawling back to the Great Hall. He’d offered up the thirty million credits he said he’d made on the Eriadu job and asked for protection.

Pan Eyta and Lourna Dee had wanted to throw Kassav out of the hall right then and there—the hard way—but Marchion Ro had voted to keep him around, to give him a chance to fix his mess. Said something about how his experience might be useful, since he was an old-timer, and how his Tempest was so loyal to him…maybe it wasn’t a good time for unrest in the crews. Mostly, though, since Kassav didn’t get a vote it was her and Pan against Marchion’s two votes, and since by Nihil tradition ties went to the Eye…Kassav was still around.

The second reason this mission was so important was because of something Marchion Ro had learned from one of his Republic spies— the primary aide to that blowhard Outer Rim senator you always heard blathering on the HoloNet, Noor. According to the spy, the Republic investigation had turned up some pretty strong clues that the reason the Legacy Run blew up in Hetzal was because it encountered a Nihil ship in the hyperlane, traveling along a Path. Marchion had run some data, and it all seemed plausible. Pretty unwelcome surprise, that.

And now the Republic had built some kind of super-droid that could run high-level hyperspace analyses. It gave them the time and location of all the upcoming Emergences, including some where the Legacy Run’s flight recorder might show up. If the Republic investigators found it, they could probably use it to get definitive proof that the Nihil were connected to everything—not just Kassav’s botched job in Eriadu, which you could argue would have happened whether he was there or not, but also every death in Hetzal, the deaths in Ab Dalis, and the rest. Jedi had died in Hetzal. If they knew the Nihil were the reason…well, Marchion Ro seemed pretty wary of the Order, and

Lourna Dee didn’t much like the idea of them coming after her, either.

The whole Nihil operation could be at stake. The Republic could not be allowed to find that flight recorder. They had to destroy it, and there was really only one Tempest Runner for the job…Lourna Dee with her stealth-equipped battle corvette.

So here she was, lurking in the system Marchion Ro had sent her to via a Path, staying hidden, waiting to see if this Emergence would give her a target, or if she would need to move on to the next spot on the Eye’s list.

“It’s not the recorder,” Belial said, looking at his screens.

The Devaronian was just a Cloud, not yet a Storm, but Lourna Dee thought he’d level up pretty soon. The guy was smart, capable. Cool in a crisis. Unemotional. People like that fit right into her organization.

“Looks like one of the passenger compartments.”

“Huh,” one of her other lieutenants said, a human named Attaman.

“You think they’re still alive in there? They must have been traveling through hyperspace for weeks.”

Lourna Dee didn’t answer. She watched the little flares of light in the distance as the Republic team went into action, doing their heroic thing, working on a no-doubt heroic rescue.

She almost gave the order to fire. She wanted to.

A spread of missiles could maybe take out all six ships and the Legacy Run passenger compartment, too, so fast they wouldn’t even have time to realize they were dead.

But as satisfying as that would be, it might go wrong, and they already had enough heat on them. Marchion had been extremely clear, on the verge of actually trying to give her an order. “Don’t let them know you’re there unless you have to. Unless the flight recorder shows up, you just move on,” he’d said.

She’d need to put him in his place sometime soon. There was a hierarchy to be observed. Honestly, she wished she could just take him out of the picture entirely, and if there wasn’t such a good chance she’d just end up fighting Kassav and Pan Eyta, too, she’d probably take her chance. Win or lose, she doubted Marchion would blame her for it.

That was the Nihil way.

Maybe later, once all this heat from the Legacy Run situation died down.

“Set coordinates and get us out of here,” Lourna Dee said.

Marchion Ro had provided Paths for the whole operation, routes through hyperspace that ensured they’d get to the next location well ahead of the Republic team. And if that Emergence happened to be the flight recorder, well.

Maybe she’d get to kill someone today after all.

“That’s it,” came Joss Adren’s voice over the comm. “Scans confirm this fortieth Emergence is the bridge section that had the Legacy Run’s flight recorder built into it. I’ll be damned—I don’t know the Republic’s megadroid figured it out, but they nailed it. Everyone, get into position. We’re down a Longbeam, but we planned for this. We’ll run retrieval plan four—based on the fragment’s trajectory, that should work best. Just stay cool and do your part.”

Mikkel Sutmani pushed his control sticks forward, and his Vector surged ahead. He sensed Te’Ami doing the same off his starboard wing, somewhere out of range. He could see the three remaining

Longbeams up ahead, moving into position.

The fourth Longbeam in their original party had stayed behind at the last Emergence point to assist the Legacy Run survivors on the fragment. The traumatized settlers required medical and therapeutic assistance—a few of their number had died on their unimaginable journey, and the horror of that experience would not be easily resolved. They would be taken to the Panacea, relocated from Hetzal to a collection point near the Starlight Beacon site, where they could connect with other survivors and work with personnel now well trained in dealing with their particular issues. The situation was awful —but at least they were alive, and no longer hurtling through space toward a slow, excruciating death.

Mikkel put the survivors out of his mind, refocusing on the task at hand. Their role here was much the same as it had been in Hetzal during the original disaster—use the Force to slow the piece of the Legacy Run’s superstructure while the Longbeams latched on with magclamps and reeled it in. The fragment was still traveling at incredible velocity, but they’d all practiced the maneuvers many times.

What was originally almost impossible was now…well, not exactly routine, but doable.

“Let’s dig deep for this, eh, Te’Ami?” Mikkel said, switching to the Jedi-only comm channel, hearing his translator convert his native Ithorian speech into Basic so she could understand. “The Republic captain is confident, but we have one less Longbeam than we planned for. This might be more challenging than we expect.”

“Agreed,” Te’Ami said.

Their ships swooped down toward the speeding fragment, the same arc, the same velocity—as one.

“I was thinking, Te’Ami,” Mikkel said. “After the episode at Eriadu, it seems clear that the Republic and the Jedi will be working to hunt down this Kassav person. I was considering volunteering for that mission. It seems a good use of my skills. I was wondering if you might do the same? We work well together—that’s clear—and you’re a remarkable Jedi. I’d be proud to have you as a partner.”

“Why, Mikkel,” Te’Ami said, amused. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much at once. Have you forgotten your vows? We Jedi are not to form attachments.”

“I’m not attached,” he rasped. “I just think we could do good work together. Bring a little light to the galaxy. Our skills are complementary.”

“I think I’m going to report you to the Council,” she said.

“Whatever you think is appropriate,” he said, his voice stiff, both in reality and through the translator.

She laughed.

“I’m teasing you, Mikkel,” Te’Ami said. “I’d be very pleased to partner with you on a mission. If the Council agrees, we’ll get out there and scour every last corner of the galaxy looking for—”

The Vector’s threat display lit up. Missiles, from nowhere, a wide spread of them, at least a dozen, headed straight for the flight recorder fragment.

“What is this?” Mikkel said.

“They’re headed for the fragment,” Te’Ami said. “They’re trying to destroy the flight recorder.”

“Hnh,” Mikkel said. “Perhaps it’s Kassav again. Looks like we’ll get to work on that mission a little sooner than we expected, Master Te’Ami.”

“Seems so, Master Sutmani.”

Mikkel pulled his lightsaber from its holster and held it against the activation panel on his instrument console—his weapons display unlocked and went live, glowing green as it linked with the crystal in his lightsaber hilt.

On his screens, he saw that the Longbeams were also aware of the threat—the three ships were scattering, moving into a position to try to shoot down the missiles.

His systems tracked back to the projectiles’ point of origin to… nothing. Empty space. This many missiles implied a good-sized war vessel, but nothing like that showed up on his scope.

He put the question aside. The identity of their attacker could wait.

Protecting the fragment—that was the thing.

Mikkel began to fire, blasts whipping out from his Vector’s lasers toward the missiles. By this point, the Longbeams had begun to shoot as well—a combination of offensive and defensive systems deployed to either destroy or distract the missiles. It didn’t matter which, as long as none of the projectiles reached the flight recorder.

One of the missiles veered toward one of those defensive measures —a cloud of static-activated foil emitted by one of the Longbeams, designed to present an appealing false target to the weapon’s tracking systems. The Longbeam that had sent out the chaff held position, already shifting toward another target, clearly assuming the missile would explode automatically once it hit the foil. Instead, the weapon entered the shifting, spinning cloud…but no explosion. Mikkel sensed what was about to happen, but he was too far away. There wasn’t enough time. He reached for the Force, but there was not enough time.

The missile emerged from the other side of the chaff cloud, impacting directly against the Longbeam’s hull.

Now the explosion came.

“Blast it!” came Joss Adren’s voice over the comm.

Nothing else was said. The Jedi and the two remaining Longbeams went to work, not knowing the source of the missiles, not knowing if they would die at any moment—just doing the job they could do.

Lourna Dee watched as a few more of her missiles were shot down, or exploded harmlessly against Longbeam-deployed defenses. She still had five left in play, though, and only one needed to hit its target.

Victory was just a matter of time.

She had plenty more missiles in reserve, too, though she didn’t want to deploy another salvo unless absolutely necessary. The Lourna Dee had changed position immediately after firing, but the Republic crews knew she was out there now. There was a good chance they would lock onto the Lourna Dee’s signature immediately if she fired again.

The goal was to destroy the flight recorder and leap away. That was all.

Though if it came to it, she would happily destroy every last one of these ships and the flight recorder, too.

Happily.

Mikkel fired, and the missile he had targeted exploded, just seconds before it would have reached the fragment.

He exhaled, breath escaping from each of his mouths.

Just two projectiles left, and neither was in range for him. It was up to the others now.

He watched as Joss and Pikka Adren’s Longbeam fired out those magclamps they were always so proud of—a whole grand array, most likely every one their ship had, reeling out on their endlessly long, thin cables—and the missile changed course, pulled in by the attracting force of the clamps.

Ingenious.

The missile exploded, and while the magclamps had certainly been destroyed, there was still one more surviving Longbeam, and it could retrieve the flight recorder—the mission could still succeed.

One more enemy missile remained, and Te’Ami was headed toward it on an intercept course. Neither of the Longbeams was in position to reach it, or Mikkel himself—but Te’Ami could knock it down, no problem. She was a fantastic shot.

And indeed, a spread of laserfire shot out from the front of her Vector—off target but zeroing in…and then another missile appeared on Mikkel’s scopes, headed directly for Te’Ami. His targeting computer tried to resolve the location of their attacker. A vague, flickering outline appeared on his screens—and disappeared.

Whatever was shooting at them clearly had some sort of cloaking system—but that was not the primary issue.

“Te’Ami! There’s another missile! I can’t—”

“I see it, Mikkel. Quiet now. I have work to do.”

Mikkel Sutmani watched, his helplessness at the destruction of the Longbeam a few moments ago amplified a thousandfold. Te’Ami increased her Vector’s speed, trying to simultaneously outrun the missile racing toward her and catch the original projectile before it hit the flight recorder.

Her Vector bucked and wove, laser blasts shooting out, all misses, as she attempted to hit her target while evading what had targeted her.

Mikkel slammed his own Vector forward, knowing, once again, that he didn’t have time. He reached out with the Force, knowing that through it anything was possible, knowing he could reach the missile chasing Te’Ami’s ship and could cause it to veer off or detonate. He could sense its speed, its outline, the metal of its casing, the superheated exhaust gases shoving it forward toward his fellow Jedi.

“Got it,” came Te’Ami’s voice over the comm, satisfied, content.

Mikkel almost had the missile…he could feel it, almost as if it were gripped in his hand. He could destroy it. The Force was his ally, and a powerful ally it was. He squeezed the missile…and suddenly, in a blast of violent flame, it was gone. But not by any action of his.

It was gone.

And so was Te’Ami.

The loss hit him like a blast wave, no less intense than the one that had killed his colleague. Mikkel clenched his fists, searching his spirit for calm.

His Vector’s targeting scopes lit up with data—the full outline and location of the ship that had murdered Te’Ami, as well as detailed specifications of its armaments and defenses.

“Whoa, you guys seeing this? Target acquired—battle corvette… ugly-looking thing,” came Joss Adren’s voice. “Not the New Elite, another ship. Master Sutmani, how about your Vector and my

Longbeam go after it while Captain Meggal grabs the flight recorder?” Mikkel did not answer. He did not ask where this information had come from, or any questions at all, really. He just pushed his control sticks forward, as far as they would go, and his Vector’s engines roared in response.

I have work to do, he thought.

“Blast it!” Lourna Dee cried, more emotional than she generally preferred to be.

The cursed Jedi had shot down her last missile before it could reach the flight recorder. Yes, that particular Jedi had died, but Lourna still had not succeeded at the mission, and it seemed like she’d probably revealed her position, too. She had a Longbeam and a Vector headed straight for her.

“Do we fire more missiles?” Attaman asked.

“Yes,” Lourna said. “Send out the rest—everything we’ve got. We’ll kill these idiots, too, and then go after the fragment.”

The Lourna Dee shuddered slightly as the rest of its complement of missiles fired—another half dozen, trailing exhaust as they raced out toward the two growing dots of light headed toward her cruiser.

The Jedi…the blasted Jedi in that blasted Vector…shot down four of them. The other two were headed for the Longbeam, and it killed one with a laser blast and distracted the last with a flare.

“Who…are these guys?” Belial said.

He was worried. Lourna Dee could hear it. So, for that matter, was she. The Lourna Dee wasn’t designed for straight-up fights. It was built to strike from hiding, kill its target, and leap away. It was light on armor, light on shields, and didn’t have much in the way of laser cannons, either.

Could a Longbeam and a Vector actually take out her flagship? Just those two little vessels?

She decided she didn’t want to find out.

Kassav or even Pan Eyta might have tried, gotten into some sort of doomed last-stand situation, but she was smarter than either of them.

When circumstances change, you run the odds, you run the options, and then you pick the best choice you’ve got. And here, there was only one.

“Plug in the Path to get us out of here,” she said. “We lost.”