فصل 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

Elphrona.

A clang, and the vehicle shuddered. Bell heard Indeera curse under her breath, but they didn’t slow down. If anything, they moved faster, the engine’s roar increasing in pitch.

Ember stirred at Bell’s side, anxious, and he stroked the hound’s pelt, feeling the temperature variations across the creature’s coloration.

“It’s all right, girl,” Bell said. “Indeera just bumped into something.

We’re fine.”

They were riding in another vehicle custom-designed by Valkeri Enterprises for the Jedi—a Vanguard, the land-based equivalent to the Vector. It was also sometimes called a V-Wheel, even though the thing didn’t always use its wheels to get around. Every Jedi outpost had at least one as part of its standard kit, and the machine was engineered to operate in all of the many planetary environments in which those stations were situated. It could operate as a wheeled or tracked ground transport, or a repulsorlift speeder for ground too rugged for even tank treads. A Vanguard even had limited utility as an amphibious or even submersible vehicle, being able to seal itself off entirely as needed. It could do everything but fly, and that came in handy on Elphrona, where the planet’s strong magnetic fields made certain regions utterly inhospitable to flying craft.

The overall aesthetic was analogous to the Vectors—smooth, sleek lines, with curves and straight edges integrated into an appealingly geometric whole. Behind the seats in the driver’s cabin—currently occupied by Indeera Stokes and Loden Greatstorm—was a large, multipurpose passenger area, with space to store any gear that a mission might require. Vanguards were more rugged than Vectors, but were built with many of the same Jedi-related features as their flying cousins. The weapons systems required a lightsaber key, and many of the controls were mechanical in nature, so as to be operated—in an emergency—via an application of the Force rather than through electronics.

No Jedi would use the Force to accomplish something as easily done with their hand—but lives had been saved by the ability to unlock a Vanguard’s hatch from a distance, or fire its weapons, or even make it move. Bell didn’t think he could do it, and he wasn’t sure Loden could, either. Indeera…maybe. She was by far the most technologically minded of their crew. She usually drove whenever they took the machine out—today was no exception.

Indeera had chosen the most direct course to their destination, a straight shot through the landscape across a low-slung set of hills. A road did exist, running from the outpost to Ogden’s Hope and looping back out to the claim zones, but it was an indirect route. Using it would take time they did not seem to have, based on the emergency message they’d received. So the ride was bumpy, uneven…but it was fast, especially with Indeera at the controls.

The Vanguard crested the rise.

“Smoke,” Loden said.

Bell turned to look through the Vanguard’s windscreen and saw what his master was referring to—a wide column of dark smoke, far ahead and in their path, revealed now that they were over the hills.

“If that’s not the Blythe homestead, it’s right next door. Do you think…” Indeera said.

“I do,” Loden replied. “The Nihil, from what I’ve heard, are destroyers. They take what they want and wreck what’s left. They use gas attacks, too—that could be what we’re seeing.”

“Looks like a fire to me,” Indeera said. “Take the wheel, Loden. I’m going to run out a Veil, see if I can get a look at what we’re heading into.”

“And it gives us a chance at a multifront response if the Nihil are still there, or if they left any surprises,” Loden said.

Indeera nodded. She got up from her seat as Loden grasped the control wheel. The Vanguard slowed.

Indeera made her way back to the passenger compartment, moving past Porter Engle, who sat in silence, his single eye blank, staring at nothing.

Outwardly, the Ikkrukki was calm, but Bell sensed roiling energy in the man. Porter Engle, the kindly cook, inventor of ingenious dishes and dispenser of useful aphorisms, was being set aside. What was appearing in his place felt like a dormant volcano beginning to wake— simmering and ready, filled with unimaginable power. The ancient Jedi was summoning up a ghost: one of his former lives. A version of himself the Padawans told stories about. Someone the sort of people who attacked defenseless settler families should pray they never met.

“Are you all right, Porter?” Bell said.

“Yes,” the old Jedi answered without shifting his gaze.

Bell decided to leave it alone. He wasn’t afraid of Porter—they were both Jedi, after all. But…he wasn’t sure how he felt about meeting a ghost.

Indeera slipped past them to the rear of the vehicle, where its two Veil speeders were stored on racks, one above the other. Like all the Valkeri Enterprises gear built for the Order, they were designed for Force-users, and as such were delicate, highly responsive machines.

Little more than a seat strapped to a hollow duralium frame, with a single repulsor and four winglike attachments that sprang out from its sides, a Veil was basically a flying stick. But if you knew how to ride them, they were incredibly fast and maneuverable. A group of skilled riders, with lightsabers out and ready, could take down entire platoons of armored vehicles while sending blasterfire back at their attackers.

Veils were also incredibly fun, and Bell took one out to ride through the hills and valleys around the Elphrona Outpost whenever Loden gave him a rare hour off.

Indeera lifted one of the Veils off its rack, then kicked out at the switch that opened the Vanguard’s rear hatch. It flipped up, metalscented air roaring into the compartment.

“Be careful,” she said to Bell, and then Indeera leapt out, the Veil’s wings flipping open as she did. He saw her catch the wind and flit away, gone in a blink.

Bell pulled the hatch closed. He got up and moved toward the front of the Vanguard, passing Porter, who said nothing. He sat in the driver’s seat recently vacated by Indeera. Ember lay between them, and Loden reached down to pat the creature’s head without taking his eyes from what lay ahead.

Through the windshield, the source of the smoke column was revealed as a burning, two-story home, the centerpiece of what had once been a small, neat homestead—what looked like a mining operation.

Loden slowed the Vanguard to a stop a few hundred meters from the fire. He looked at Bell. “Do you sense any survivors?”

Bell reached out with the Force. Nothing. Cold emptiness. “No,” he said.

“Neither do I,” his master said. “But we need to check anyway. See if we’re missing someone—or if there are clues to what happened. We will find justice here, one way or the other.”

Loden opened the door on his side of the driver’s cabin and stepped to the ground. Bell followed suit, Ember slipping down after him.

Porter appeared a moment later, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his holstered lightsaber.

Bell realized he’d never seen the old man draw it. Not once.

Loden lifted a comlink and spoke. “We’ve arrived at the Blythes’ claim, Indeera. Looks like the Nihil burned the place. We’re going to look around. Do you see anything?”

“Nothing,” Indeera’s voice replied. “I’m on a rise about half a kilometer away. I can be there quickly if anything happens. I’ll let you know if I see anyone coming.”

“Good,” Loden said, and slipped the comlink back onto his belt.

“Let’s go, but slowly.”

He took a few steps ahead, toward the burning house. They passed a corral, where several terrified steelees rushed and stamped, their eyes huge, nostrils flaring. Porter lifted a hand.

“Easy, friends,” he said, and the beasts calmed immediately, sinking to their haunches, huddling together in their pen.

“Wrecked speeder,” Loden said, pointing at a smoldering pile of wreckage not far from the house. “Bodies, too. And a bunch of mining droids—taken out by blasterfire. My guess is the family tried to use the droids to defend themselves. Didn’t work, or not well enough.” Porter called out from over at the steelee corral, where he was squatting, peering closely at a patch of disturbed ground by its gate.

“The Nihil took some of the family’s steelees when they lost their speeder. I can see the whole story right here in the dirt. Six people, four captives.”

He stood, and his face seemed cold enough to extinguish the fire.

“Two of them are kids.”

Bell looked more closely at the house—there was something on the door. It looked odd, like writing, or…

He stepped closer. The door to the Blythes’ home had been marked by three jagged lines zigzagging from top to bottom. The edges were ragged, savage, as if carved by a vibroblade running low on charge.

“There’s something here,” he said, and took another step.

The lines looked like…lightning. Three jagged lightning strikes. The heat from the fire was intense, but the symbol was fascinating, in some primal way. He moved closer, needing to see it as clearly as he could.

Ember barked, a sound of sharp, unmistakable alarm.

Bell stopped and turned to look at the charhound.

“What is it, girl?” he said, and then he noticed why Ember was trying to warn him—four trails of raised dirt, moving toward him at incredible speed.

Mole mines, Bell had time to think, and then he did two things.

First, he pushed Ember with the Force. He tried to be gentle, but the point was to shove her back out of harm’s way. Whatever damage he did to her, it couldn’t be as bad as getting caught in an explosion.

Then Bell leapt, straight up, unholstering his lightsaber as he did.

The mole mines were designed to race toward their target just below the surface of the ground, and then shoot up into the air, exploding at roughly a meter high, sending out a ring of horizontal shrapnel along with a crown of intense heat and flame. They were deadly, and cruel—most people never even had a chance to recognize they were being attacked before they were killed.

Two of the mole mines popped out of the ground—dark-gray cylinders with grinding, gear-filled mouths at one end, the means by which they yanked themselves through the soil. As Bell reached the top of his leap, he seized both with the Force and flung them as far as he could into the air, a reflexive move he hoped would do the job.

The remaining two mines had not left the dirt, their primitive brains unsure where their target had gone now that he was no longer standing.

A huge sound, a whoomph, then a second a moment later, as both airborne mines exploded.

Bell felt a wash of heat—intense, but survivable.

He fell, seeing the endpoint of one of the mole mine trails just below him, and aiming himself toward it as best as he could.

Bell landed, stabbing his lightsaber into the ground, impaling one of the two remaining mines. The final explosive shot up into the air, and he reacted without thought, the Force as his guide, slicing it in half before it reached the apex of its leap.

The two halves of the mole mine, neatly bisected, fell to the ground, and Bell looked up.

He saw that Loden and Porter were dealing with their own attacks —each in their own way. Loden was using the Force to yank the mines out of the ground before they got anywhere near him, sending them flying high into the air to explode harmlessly over the rust flats. Porter was in a low crouch, his lightsaber out and lit, a bright-blue blade he held in a reverse grip.

He was simply slicing the mines in half as they popped out of the ground. One after another—the maneuver Bell had performed just once and didn’t even truly understand how he’d managed, Porter was doing again and again. The expression on his face never changed. His blade flashed, and the metal fell, and he remained untouched.

Both Bell and Loden were transfixed. They were both good swordsmen, and Loden had some claim to being great. But this was like nothing they had ever seen. Not at the Jedi Temple, not from Master Yoda or Zaviel Tepp, or even old Arkoff. Bell couldn’t imagine what it would be like to face Porter Engle in combat.

The display of skill was beautiful, and they could not stop watching, and so they did not see the mole mine that burrowed its way beneath the Vanguard, then shot up and destroyed itself in a paroxysm of joyful self-immolation. The explosion ripped the transport in half and shoved Bell and Loden to the ground in an impact they were barely able to cushion with the Force.

“You all right?” came Indeera’s urgent voice. “Loden! Porter!

Answer me! What the hell is going on down there? Everything just started blowing up!”

Loden groaned and rolled over onto his back. He pulled his comlink from his belt.

“We’re okay, Indeera,” he said. “Just a few surprises the Nihil left for us. Mole mines. Seems to be over now. But we lost the Vanguard.” “If they left mines, it means they thought they might be followed,” Indeera said. “Means they got away.”

“I think so, too,” Porter said, walking up, his lightsaber back in its holster. “My guess is they have a ship parked somewhere in one of the transit zones. The magnetic fields are rough around here, so they couldn’t just land by the house and take the family. They had to land, then speeder in. Then the family killed their speeder, so they stole the steelees and set out to ride back to their ship.”

“How are we supposed to catch them now?” Bell asked, pushing himself up off the ground. “The V-Wheel’s done.”

“Still got three steelees left,” Porter said. “I can saddle them up, and I can use the Force to convince them to work with us, to give us everything they’ve got to save their people. If we hurry, we can catch these monsters before they take the family offworld.”

“Do it,” Loden said, then lifted his comlink again.

“Indeera, we’re going after the Nihil—there are beasts here we can ride. You head back to the outpost and get a Vector. We might need it to follow them off the planet.”

“Got it,” Indeera said. “May the Force be with you.”

Loden replaced his comlink in his belt and walked toward the burning remains of their Vanguard. The vehicle’s two halves were now separated by several meters, shards of debris scattered amid the open space between them. He stopped near what was once the driver’s compartment.

“What are you doing?” Bell asked.

“The internal systems on the Vanguard are hardened against attack.

In theory, you can blast a thousand holes in one and the wheels will keep turning. Now, this poor V-Wheel isn’t going anywhere ever again, but maybe it can still make itself useful…”

He lifted his hand, and a long metal panel on the front of the wrecked Vanguard began to vibrate, lifting away slightly from the rest of the machine.

“Help me, Padawan,” he said. “This thing’s on tight.”

Bell lifted his own hand, and the blackened metal panel tore free, flying backward and skittering across the ground. Loden bent and peered into the Vanguard’s inner workings.

“Mm,” he said. “Looks intact.”

He gestured with his hand, closing it into a fist, and Bell heard the sound of metal bending and snapping from inside the engine compartment—little spangs as of thin clasps being stressed beyond endurance.

Loden reached into the machine and withdrew a metal tube about a meter and a half in length, with a sort of wire basket on one end containing a compact power module. Wires stretched and pulled as he lifted the assembly out, electronics connected to a flat metal panel dangling below the tube as he freed it from the Vanguard.

Bell watched as his master quickly wove the wires into a sort of strap and slung the whole thing over a shoulder. The tube’s ends protruded beyond his back at shoulder and hip.

“Oof,” Loden said. “Heavy.”

He looked at Bell, and noticed his Padawan’s questioning look.

“Just in case,” Loden said, and grinned.

Porter returned from the corral, holding the reins of the three silver-sided steelees, now saddled and ready.

“Connect with your mount as best as you can. These are good beasts, but we’ll be pushing them hard. You’ll need to explain to them how important all of this is.”

Bell wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but he assumed he’d either figure it out or be thrown from the steelee and left behind.

He put his foot in a stirrup and pulled himself atop his mount—not as smoothly as he might have liked, but the important thing was that he was aboard. The steelee whickered, sidestepping and shaking its head. It stamped a hoof, marking its irritation at having an obviously inexperienced rider, and sparks flew from where the metal hit stone.

“Which direction, Bell?” Loden said, already in his own saddle.

Bell reached out, looking for fear, pain, anger…and found it. Not as far away as he might have thought, either. They had a chance.

“That way,” he said, pointing.

They went.