Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (25 page)

Ax
dusted herself down.

Now,
Stryver.

She
had emerged in some kind of dormitory, with bunks lining two walls
and the rest crushed under the avalanche. The true extent of the
collapse was hard to measure. She could have fallen a dozen levels or
just one. Judging by the relative poverty she saw around her,
however, she guessed that she was a long way from the luxurious upper
floors. These were the beds of slaves, not valets.

Stryver
would be farther down, and he would want to go up. His ascent, no
doubt, would not be a quiet one.

She
closed her eyes and tuned out the screams, the settling debris, the
occasional blaster shot. She was looking for one particular sound out
of the multitude surrounding her. It would be faint, but it would
definitely be there.

The
whine of Stryver's jetpack.

There.

The
moment she had it, she swung her lightsaber in a circle around her
feet. The floor fell out from under her, and she arrived with perfect
poise in the middle of an attempt to rescue a Hutt slave driver's
tail from its squashed position under a fallen wall.

She
ignored everyone involved, crossed to the nearest wall, and slashed
an impromptu doorway through that in turn. This led to a torture
hall, where indolent or disobedient slaves were publicly punished in
order to serve as examples to others. Again, Ax didn't stop to admire
the techniques of the Dug in charge. She noted only that many of the
screams she had assumed to be caused by the collapse of the building
actually emanated from here.

Through
another wall, and Stryver's jetpack was definitely sounding louder.
She could also distinguish the dull booming of his assault cannon
from the welter of other sounds. Like Ax, he was using the weapons in
his arsenal to blast a way through the palace. Where doorways or
corridors didn't exist, he wasn't above making his own.

Ax
skirted the edge of a deep rancor pit. The massive beasts snapped and
roared at her, enraged by all the commotion. The handlers did their
utmost to restrain them, using chains, hooks, and heavy weights, but
the rancors' wild natures weren't so easily subdued. The truncated
scream of one of the handlers followed Ax as she Force- leapt across
the enclosure in pursuit of her quarry.

The
jetpack was close enough now that she could smell its exhaust.

Through
a junkyard, a cantina, and a Tibanna gas containment facility, at
last Ax had reached Stryver's trail.

It
was instantly recognizable. His assault cannon had blasted a tunnel
diagonally upward through every structure in his way. The series of
holes led through walls and floors in a perfectly straight line. At
the end of it, Ax could see a glimmer of bright light: the jetpack's
fiery wash.

Baring
her teeth in anticipation, she set off after him. Each leap took her
one step higher on the long ad-hoc staircase. The surfaces she landed
on were unreliable. Sometimes they crumbled beneath her; sometimes
they slipped, still molten from the heat of the cannon. Sometimes
people fired at her, made trigger-happy by the Mandalorian's violent
passage. Ax kept her footing and deflected every shot. She didn't
stop for anything or anyone.

Closer
and closer she came to Stryver. He didn't look behind him. His
attention was focused solely on going upward. Past the glare of his
jetpack she could see the transparisteel box clutched tightly in one
massive hand. The navicomp was still inside. She almost reached for
it through the Force, but held herself back. If she revealed her
presence prematurely, Stryver would have time to react. Better to
strike him in the back and take the prize from his dead hands.

Two
more floors. Three. She threw up a barrier to prevent the heat of the
jetpack from flaying away her skin. Four. Now she was so close she
could almost have reached out and tripped him. The pounding of his
cannon was deafening.

Now.

She
lunged for the navicomp just as Stryver burst through the roof of the
palace. A brown glare struck them, and Ax squinted as she struggled
for possession of the box. Stryver showed no surprise, although he
momentarily lost control of his jetpack. They spiraled and swooped
across the roof, while guards peppered them with blasterfire.

Stryver's
gloved hands let go of the box.

For
a fleeting instant, she felt triumph. She braced herself to kick away
from him.

Then
his left hand lunged out to catch her around the throat while his
right brought up the assault cannon and fired into her stomach.

At
point-blank range, the shot was like being hit by an aircar in full
flight. Had she not put a Force barrier in place, her entire
midsection would have been instantly vaporized. As it was, she was
blown backward out of his cruel grip and left sprawling, momentarily
insensate, on the roof.

Stryver
caught the box neatly, one-handed, and flew off into the sky.

Ax
watched dazedly, too stunned to feel anything other than curiosity.
Where was he going? His jetpack couldn't possibly have enough fuel to
get him far. Tassaa Bareesh would have a price on his head within the
hour-a price large enough to guarantee he would never leave Hutta.

Then
a sleek black shape swooped into view. A ship. She recognized the
angular foils of a Kuat scout but couldn't determine the model. It
dipped low to intercept Stryver, and then roared up into the sky.

Her
quarry was gone.

She
felt nothing.

A
blurry shape occluded her view of the muddy sky. She tightened her
focus. It was a Nikto guard. She was nudged by a business-like boot,
as though to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. Another Nikto
joined it, then a third. She watched them as though from the bottom
of a deep, dark well.

I
will kill you, Dao Stryver, or die trying.

Her
rage returned, like life itself. She had lost the navicomp, but that
didn't have to be the end of the world. She would find another way to
satisfy Darth Chratis and the Dark Council-and herself, too. It
wasn't really about Stryver and the navicomp, anyway. It was about
where they led. The mysterious rare-metal world. The fugitives from
Imperial justice. Her mother.

It
couldn't end here.

She
wouldn't let it.

She
was on her feet in a single eyeblink. The dozen or so guards
converging on her across the roof weren't going to be a problem at
all.

*
* *

Her
first step was to devise a new plan. Stealing the navicomp and
cracking its secrets obviously wasn't going to be possible now.
Stryver had it, and she had no illusions at all regarding the
likelihood of him sharing those secrets.

There
had to be another way. All she had to do was find it.

The
palace was in an uproar as she fought her way back to the site of the
battle with the droids-the "hexes, " as she had overheard
someone calling them. It made sense to return to the scene, since
only there lay any chance of learning anything about their origins.
She wasn't sure exactly what she hoped to find, though. Maybe the
smuggler hadn't told the Hutts everything he knew. Maybe she could
torture him to extract every last piece of information.

As
she wound through the palace's labyrinthine halls, she passed a
clutch of Gamorreans bearing the unconscious Jedi captive over their
heads. She smirked but didn't stop. It was good to see someone worse
off than she was.

When
she arrived at the ruins of the security air lock, she found it
sealed behind a dense press of guards wielding laser cannons. The
hole in the wall was protected by a bank of portable particle
shields. Getting in wasn't going to be as easy as getting out-and she
had no intention of crawling back up the avalanche of debris.
Fighting was an option, of course, but fatigue was beginning to take
its toll. Under better circumstances, she would never have let
Stryver beat her like that.

She
needed to be smarter, rather than stronger.

Retreating
to a quiet place to think, she examined everything she knew about the
hexes. It wasn't much. They were single-minded-but what did she know
about the minds they possessed? They refused to acknowledge any
authority beyond that of their maker. They killed everyone else with
impunity. Was there anything else she could say about them?

She
remembered the way they had tricked the Twi'lek into blowing an
escape route for them through the wall. That displayed
resourcefulness and cunning, qualities lacking in many droids, but
not all. It wasn't a unique feature of their design.

Something
niggled at the back of her brain. A thought stirred there, hesitantly
pushing itself forward for consideration.

Escape.

The
hexes had been trying to escape.

So
where were they trying to escape to?

Home.

But
how did they know where home was?

The
answer to that question burst into her mind with crystalline clarity.

The
navicomp isn't the only map.

Ax
was moving, circling the ruin until she found the path that the two
escaping droids had taken. No one stood in her way until she reached
the first of the bodies. It was cordoned off by Gamorreans, and she
let them be. The Jedi had made a real mess of that hex, spilling its
guts out in a mess of silver and red. The second, she hoped, would be
in better condition.

It,
too, was cordoned off, but she could see through the guards that the
body was intact, tangled up in a net like an animal caught in a trap.

Perfect,
she thought, bringing her lightsaber into play.

*
* *

When
she had the corpse safely slung over her shoulder, all she had to do
was leave. That was accomplished as easily as walking through the
palace to the spaceport, where the Imperial shuttle awaited her
pleasure. Palace security had been tightened in an attempt to stop
anyone from leaving. The attempt was doomed to failure.

Two
armed Imperial guards stood at attention by the air lock's inner
door. They saluted as she stepped through.

"Any
problems?" she asked them.

"There
was a guy sniffing around the Mandalorian's ship before it took off,
" said one.

"And
some nonhuman scum trying to get in here, " said the other. "We
sent him packing. "

"Very
good. "

She
strode confidently up the ramp and into the cockpit, where the pilot
sat waiting. He took in her dusty, battered appearance but didn't
remark upon it.

"We're
leaving, " she said. "Advise Darth Chratis of our imminent
rendezvous. I want a droid tech on hand the moment we dock. "

"Yes,
sir. But what about the envoy?"

"He's
no longer with us. "

The
pilot nodded uncertainly, obviously comparing his standing orders
with those he had just been given. A Sith always outranked a superior
officer. That was the only conclusion available.

While
the repulsors warmed up, Ax took the dead hex and stored it in the
secure hold that had been set aside for the navicomp. This cargo was
no less precious. The good thing about a droid was that, although
dead was indisputably dead, memory took time to fade. With the right
expertise, the location of the mystery world could be extracted from
the data stored in the carcass, and her success would be assured.

A
warm glow filled her, part relief, part pride, part exhaustion. She
was looking forward to sitting down. But there was something she had
to do first.

The
shuttle was lifting off when she returned to the cockpit. She gazed
through the viewports at the spaceport and its minuscule cluster of
ships.

"Which
ship did the Republic envoy arrive in?"

"That
one, " said the pilot, indicating a stubby, fat-nosed craft
resting on four wide-spaced legs.

"Destroy
it, " she said.

"Yes,
sir. "

The
shuttle's cannon fired, strafing the back of the defenseless ship. It
burst into a ball of flame so bright it outshone the sun.