Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (46 page)

"Nothing.
Just getting myself in the mood. "

"Our
platoons are assembled, " he said. "What am I going to tell
them?"

He
was as scared as she was. "Nothing but the truth, " she
told him, "that you'll kick them in the cargo hold if they make
us look bad. "

She
scooped up her helmet and followed him to the briefing rooms.
Hetchkee's was first in line. With a deep breath of his unique
atmospheric mix, he plunged inside. Larin's was third along, and she
had barely enough time to compose herself before getting there. She
was a lieutenant in charge of a vital mission, she reminded herself.
She had survived two encounters with the droids of Sebaddon before
this, and now she had also survived the most embarrassing romantic
encounter of her life. She was special-forces-trained. What could a
bunch of low- life grunts possibly do to throw her?

"Well,
well, " said a voice from the troops assembled in the room. "If
it isn't Toxic Moxla, the snitch from Kiffu. "

There,
in the front row, was the Zabrak who had challenged her on Coruscant.

Perfect,
she thought. Just fragging perfect.

*
* *

Ax
looked up as the Padawan entered the staging area. There wasn't
literally a cloud over his head, but there might as well have been.
His face was shadowed, overcast, on the brink of some kind of
internal storm.

She
moved out of the corner she'd found for herself, far away from the
Republic throng waiting for the shuttle to launch, and crossed to
him.

"You're
angry, " she said.

"Only
at myself. "

He
tried to shrug her off, but she wasn't letting him go so easily.

"That's
the first time I've seen you this way. It's an improvement. "

He
gave her a scathing look. "What are you talking about?"

"Anger
is a good thing, " she said. "It frees you, makes you
stronger. "

"That's
a lie. Anger is a path to the dark side. "

"You
say that as though it's a bad thing. " She drew him closer to
her. "You know, you fight pretty well. Imagine how much more
powerful you could be if you could shrug off the repressive ways of
your masters and..."

"Don't.
" He wrenched his arm free. "Your mother was angry, too,
and look where that got her. "

She
recoiled.

"What
did you plan to do to her when you found her?"

She
let the truth of that show on her face.

"Anger
and hate bleed everything dry. "

He
stalked off.

Ax
didn't smile until she was sure he wasn't looking. His disgust made
him beautiful, and that was reward enough for her.

*
* *

Shigar
put as much distance as he could between himself and the Sith girl.
She was pretty, but her face hid a foul heart. Best, he told himself,
to stay well away.

His
revulsion was inevitably entangled with feelings of regret for Larin.
How could he have handled that encounter so badly? He should have
been less astonished, gentler. Was this what Master Satele had meant
about being kind?

His
Master came up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He felt
instantly calmer, as though she had sucked the tension out of him.

"We'll
be descending in the same shuttles, " she said. "Imperials
and us alike. You will meet far worse. "

"I
know, Master. She just took me by surprise. "

"That
is ever their aim. When I was a Padawan..."

A
clang of metal on metal cut her off. The external air lock hissed
open. A squadron of Imperial soldiers marched in, matching the
Republic contingent one for one. This was clearly the squad that
would be joining them on the drop onto the island containing the
hexes' coordinating intelligence. They were human, hard-faced and
heavily armed. Their discipline was impeccable. Not a cheek twitched
out of place; not a lip curled.

Behind
them came a dark presence that turned Shigar's blood to water. A
tortured amalgam of flesh and metal, he stood a head taller than
anyone else and radiated a deep, bone-piercing chill. He had once
been a man, but the dark side had twisted every last drop of humanity
from him, leaving a husk that looked barely alive. Only his eyes
contained any genuine vitality. From them radiated boundless reserves
of loathing. He breathed in hurried gasps as though the air smelled
foul-or as though each intake might be his last. A long, thin staff
tapped in time with the heavy tread of his boots.

"I
am here, " Darth Chratis announced. "This operation can now
commence. "

"Envoy
Vii is awaiting only our personal assignments," said Satele
Shan, standing up to him as though he were any ordinary being. "When
we give them to him, he will issue the order. "

"Refer
to him as 'envoy' no longer. " The Sith Lord looked down his
twisted nose at her. "I will obey no servant of the Republic. "

"Director
Vii, then, of Independent Operation Sebaddon. " She folded her
hands patiently behind her back. "I will take my Padawan on the
first of two assaults from the..."

"No.
You will take my apprentice, and I will take yours. That is the only
way to ensure impartiality. "

The
words hung like icicles. Shigar wanted to beg his Master to deny
Darth Chratis this condition. Don't give in to him, he yearned to
say. Don't send me anywhere with that... creature. He'll kill me as
soon as your back is turned!

Master
Satele only smiled. "Of course, Darth Chratis. I'm happy to
accommodate your wish. Do you wish to divide the rest of our
personnel any particular way?"

"They
do not concern me. " He waved a hand in easy dismissal.

"Very
well. I will assign them randomly. Is that all?"

His
gaze narrowed. Her question made him sound like he was being
pedantic, and he clearly didn't like that. "The arrangements are
sufficient. "

Master
Satele typed rapidly into a datapad. Imperial and Republic comms had
been hastily married into one contiguous network, allowing orders to
be transmitted from the Auriga Fire via various command vessels.
Almost immediately a series of chimes and spoken commands divided the
two cohorts into two intermixed groups. Half would stay behind and
launch from the Commenor. The rest would return with Darth Chratis to
the Imperial shuttle.

Shigar
was in the latter group, and he watched with his heart in his mouth
as the troopers he would soon be leaving behind fell into their new
arrangement, spaced neatly if awkwardly across the staging area. In a
very short time, he would be cast adrift in the world of the
Imperials, in the clawed fist of Darth Chratis.

Master
Satele came up beside him. Once again, she correctly divined the
source of his disquiet, but this time there was no calming hand.

"I
agreed to Darth Chratis's request, " she said, "because I
cannot afford to trust him. I'm relying on you to make sure he sticks
to the arrangement. "

"I'm
no match for a Sith Lord, " Shigar said, aghast.

"Oh,
he won't kill you, " she said. "I'm sure he has something
worse in mind. "

He
understood, then. She was testing him-and if he failed, they might
never meet as Jedi again.

"I
won't let you down, Master. "

"The
Force will be with you. "

They
embraced and went their separate ways.

CHAPTER
33

"Shuttles
away. " said Jet.

Ula
fell back into the copilot's seat, watching the telemetry confirming
let's simple statement. The combined Imperial-Republic fleet had
obeyed his order to deploy. Their mad plan might actually work.

In
the next hour, four thousand people would converge on Sebaddon
singly, there to recombine as attack squads to take out primary and
secondary objectives. The Jedi and the Sith would lead the attack on
the equator while ordinary soldiers, including Larin, would attack
the master factory at the pole. Another two thousand would remain in
orbit, keeping the skies clear of hexes and providing occasional
bombardment of the ground below. The rest would provide vital support
from several distributed HQs, two of which were on the Commenor and
the Paramount.

All
reporting to him.

And
to Jet and Clunker.

The
smuggler had refused all offers of security details, comm officers,
and gunners, on the grounds that he didn't want a potentially
fractious crew. Choosing one side over another would be politically
fraught.

"Don't
we at least need someone to help defend us?" Ula had asked him,
slightly aghast at how vulnerable that would leave them.

"Not
at all. Clunker can operate the tri-lasers by remote from the bridge.
"

"So
what was all that on Hutta about needing a crew? Why have you ever
needed a crew at all?"

Jet
had smiled. "For the company. "

Ula
now wondered if it was for an entirely different reason: for a cover.
He had noted how silent Jet was most of the time. When he wasn't
playacting the role of a dissolute smuggler, he was watching and
listening to everything going on around him. And now, somehow, he had
inveigled himself into the center of everything. He was privy to
every order that came through the Auriga Fire. Every piece of
information on which Ula based those orders was filtered through
Jet's sensors. If Jet pulled the plug, the combined fleet would be
left leaderless.

Ula
reassured himself that this wasn't Jet's style, that if he were ever
to try to change the course of the battle, he would do so in a much
subtler fashion. Still, Ula would be on the ball for anything at all,
and had armed himself with a new hold-out blaster, just in case.

"Deploy
fighters, " he ordered the fleet. "Commence bombardment of
primary targets. "

Instantly
the dots in the main display began to shift. Four squadrons of mixed
Mk. VI Imperial interceptors and Republic XA-8 starfighters would
strafe the orbital shell of hexes with laser cannons and proton
torpedoes, creating holes in four crucial locations. Two of those
locations would allow the all-important troop transports access to
lower orbit, there to discharge the free-jumpers, Larin among them.
It was vital they weren't interfered with en route. The other two
orbital holes would provide critical windows for the bombardment from
Paramount, mainly by B-28s with Imperial pilots. In the first
engagement, 20 percent of the missiles launched at the planet had
been disabled during descent by interfering hexes. Every shot fired
now had to count.

The
interceptors and starfighters hit the shell of hexes. Space lit up
with explosions, sparkling almost delicately in the distance. The
Auriga Fire maintained a respectful distance from both main attack
forces and the combined Republic-Imperial fleets, stationed at a
point equidistant between the planet and its moon, but it wasn't the
only ship ranging freely across the battlefield.

"We're
receiving a hail from the First Blood, " said Jet.

"Put
him on. "

"I'm
noting an increase in subspace communications" said Dao Stryver
in miniature. His face was one of several at the bottom of the Auriga
Fire's main holodisplay. The crescent of his ship swept across the
battlefield in a silver streak. "Since the black hole warps all
attempts to communicate outside the system, I suggest that these are
all short-range messages, originating on Sebaddon. "

"The
hexes, " said Ula. "Could this be how they communicate with
one another?"

"It's
a strong possibility that this is the voice of the coordinating
intelligence. We've detected no other meaningful signals by radio or
microwave. "

"Can
you locate the source?"

"I'm
working on it. With two more ears listening, I'll be able to
triangulate. "

"Consider
it done, " Ula said, making a mental note to requisition the
resources from Colonel Kalisch and Captain Pipalidi.

"Launches,
" announced Jet.