Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (58 page)

A
junior officer of the Republic jogged from the craft that had landed
near them and saluted Larin. Keeping one eye closely on the swarm of
hexes that had engulfed Ax and Darth Chratis, the Adarian spoke
breathlessly: "We picked up the fringes of an Imperial
transmission calling for an emergency evac and followed it down. Is
everyone all right?"

"For
the moment, " said Master Satele, guiding him away. "What's
the situation in orbit?"

"It's
hard to explain. Our comms went haywire for a while, and now all our
data banks have been wiped. "

"By
who?"

"I
don't know, sir. Captain Pipalidi will till in you and Director Vii
when I get you back to orbit. "

"Ula
made it, too?" asked Larin.

"We
have him aboard right now, " he said. "Found him drifting
in a capsule, hollering for help, and picked him up on the way down.
Won't explain how he got there, but he seems healthy enough. "

"That's
good, " Larin said. "I'm glad he's okay. "

Shigar
glanced at the shuttle. Was that the envoy's face he could see,
peering out a viewport? He couldn't tell.

"About
the hexes, " the young officer ventured, glancing back over his
shoulder. "I mean, is it over?"

"I
don't think so, " said Master Satele. "Not quite. "

*
* *

Ula
watched from the safety of the shuttle. There was nothing stopping
him from leaving his seat. He wasn't under guard, or even under
suspicion. He could have walked out at any time, and thrown himself
to the hexes if he'd wanted to.

Jet's
betrayal of him still stung, though, so he stayed right where he was.

It
had started to go wrong before the skyhook had collapsed. After the
deflection of the Paramount's missiles, Jet had considered throwing
the Paramount itself down onto the target, in a desperate attempt to
thwart the hexes' plans. Ula had argued against it, unable to bear
such a waste of human life.

"A
thousand or so to save trillions, " Jet had said. "Isn't
that a fair exchange?"

"We
don't even know if it would work! And if it doesn't, we'll be even
worse off than we are now. "

"If
you're worried about destroying an Imperial ship..."

"Do
you really think I'd let that get in the way of doing the right
thing?"

Only
as he said the words did he realize that he meant it.

The
issue had become entirely moot when the skyhook had gone down.

"Looks
like someone's found a way to do what we can't, " said Jet. "In
which case, we're no longer needed. Out of the seat, Director Vii.
It's time for us to go our separate ways. "

The
announcement had taken Ula completely by surprise. "What are you
talking about? I'm staying with you."

"No,
you're not. " Jet had produced a blaster and covered him while
Clunker dragged him from the cockpit. The droid's strength was too
great to resist. "We've got business elsewhere. "

"Wait!"
Ula had clung to the lip of the air lock. "Take me with you,
please!"

Jet
had shaken his head, but not without compassion. "You have to
find your own place, mate, and I don't think it's going to be with
me. Say cheerio to that lovely lady-and stop faking it, if you ever
hope to have a chance with her. "

The
air lock had hissed shut, explosive bolts had fired, and Ula had been
flung out into the void. Had the passing shuttle not found him, he
might have fallen to the planet below-or even into the black hole-but
Ula didn't suppose that Jet would have left something like that to
chance.

Now
he was within waving distance of Larin, and he didn't know what to
do.

The
mass of hexes that had overwhelmed Darth Chratis retreated into the
lake, leaving just the young Sith behind. She turned to face the
lake, raised her arms above her head, and spoke to them. The hexes
responded, forming new agglomerations, turning their collective mind
to new tasks. Some descended back into the lake; others swarmed
toward several different places on the crater wall and combined their
pulses into powerful cutting lasers. Vibrations reached him even
through the walls and floor of the shuttle. He saw Larin and the
others shift on their feet, as though the ground was kicking beneath
them, too.

Master
Satele approached the young Sith. They exchanged a few words, then
parted. The Grand Master returned to Larin and Shigar and the officer
who had run out to meet them. Together, they hurried into the
shuttle.

"Recall
the rest, " she was saying as she mounted the ramp and entered
the main passenger hold. "If they can't make it here in time,
send another shuttle. "

"What's
happening?" Ula asked. "What's going on out there?"

Master
Satele had already left for the cockpit.

"I
don't know, " said Larin, smiling at him. The engines whined.
"But it looks like we're leaving. "

Shigar
acknowledged him with a nod, which Ula gravely returned. The Padawan
looked no less battered than Larin and Master Satele. The ground war
had obviously been just as grueling as that fought in the air.

The
shuttle's repulsorlifts pressed Ula back into the seat. He took one
last glimpse through the window and saw the crater walls collapsing
around the bloody lake. Fiery lava from the molten sea outside
crashed in, burning and destroying as it came. Clouds of smoke
thickened and curled, hiding the young Sith from view.

*
* *

"You're
going to destroy them, "said Master Satele.

Ax
didn't respond. It wasn't a question, but it demanded an answer, and
she was careful to keep it to herself. The hexes were streaming
downward to tear the flooded habitat to pieces. When they were done,
they would break into the geothermal shafts and keep drilling until
raw magma flooded in from below. What the real lava sea didn't burn,
the heat of the core would melt and turn to slag.

"What
about Lema Xandret?" Master Satele pressed. "There's not
much of that amniotic fluid left, but it could be saved. "

"Do
you think it should be?" Ax asked, thinking of her clone's life
in the tank, cut off from the Force, so insulated from the universe
around her that she didn't even know what the Empire was. Cinzia
could have stopped the hexes at any time, but she hadn't. Lema
Xandret's daughter reborn, and herself, mutated into a horrible echo
of motherhood, were more responsible for the damage than the hexes
themselves.

It
was all about control, she realized now. Xandret had tried to control
the cloned Cinzia, and had lost control of the hexes. Darth Chratis
had tried to control Ax, but she had turned on him. Anger wasn't
enough on its own.

She
could still hear her mother screaming.

"It's
not up to me to decide whether you should save her or not, "
Master Satele said, "but you did promise Cinzia. "

Ax
had promised many things, to herself, to Darth Chratis, to the Dark
Council, and ultimately to the Emperor.

But
that had been before. Before she had understood that she had choices.

You
can expect no mercy from me, Master, the day our positions are
reversed.

"I
lied, " she said.

The
Grand Master nodded. Ax didn't know whether she understood or not.
That she stopped talking was enough.

Ax
stood and watched the hexes at work while the others fled. The smell
of burning blood was sweet in her nostrils. The ash that gently
rained on her felt soft and warm, like feathers. Slowly, the voice
faded from her mind. She breathed deeply, feeling at peace. Only the
constant bleating of the shuttle's pilot disturbed her tranquillity.

She
stayed as long as she could. When the ground threatened to dissolve
under her and the sky lit up with shooting stars-orbital hexes,
falling to their doom-she turned to leave the home her mother had
made, forever.

PART
SIX

PREPARATIONS
FOR WAR

CHAPTER
46

Larin
had never met Supreme Commander Stantorrs before, and she barely felt
that she had met him now, even after half an hour of debriefing in
his office. There were so many aides hurrying about bearing messages
and sudden crises needing an instant decision that she rarely had his
attention for more than a few seconds at a stretch. Even when she
did, she found him very hard to read. Instead of watching his dour
Duros face, she concentrated on his long fingers. They tapped,
curled, folded, and rested in ways that, she hoped, gave her an
insight into what he was thinking.

"You
say you were followed there?"

"Yes,
sir, " she said. "The Hutts placed a homing beacon in the
Auriga

Fire.
"

"You
knew about that before you left Hutta. I seem to recall reading about
that somewhere. "

"That's
correct, sir. " This had all been in her report, and was no
doubt in numerous other reports about the incident, but she let no
sign of impatience slip through her guard. If he wanted to hear it
from her face-to-face, so be it. He was the Supreme Commander, after
all. "We thought the beacon left with Jet Nebula, but it later
turned up in the capsule he used to expel Envoy Vii. "

"This
'Jet Nebula.' Is he a real person?"

"Yes,
sir. His parents had a strange sense of humor, he says. "

"What,
yes?" An aide had pressed a datapad in front of him. His left
index finger stabbed at something on the screen. "That one, of
course. Was Tassaa Bareesh herself present in her expedition to
Sebaddon?"

"No,
sir. She placed someone else in charge, a deputy called Sagrillo. "

"He's
the one who claimed ownership of the planet and declared the
remaining joint forces trespassers. "

"Yes,
sir. At the time, he outgunned us. His mistress was taking no
chances. "

The
tips of the Supreme Commander's fingers joined to form a triangle in
front of him. "I can imagine his surprise when your
reinforcements turned up. "

Not
just our reinforcements, she wanted to say, but the Imperials' as
well. It had only been a matter of time before everyone else arrived.
The universe's usual freakish sense of humor had ensured that they
all came more or less simultaneously.

She
remembered those stressful hours very well, even though she hadn't
been on the bridge with the senior officers and the negotiators. She
had been down in the crew hold, exchanging stories with Hetchkee and
Jopp and the others who had survived the ground assault. They had
stopped to watch through the viewports as ships flashed in and out of
hyperspace around the black hole. There had been several clashes,
leaving wreckage to spin helplessly into the impossibly steep gravity
well, and several outlier ships had fallen afoul of the jets
themselves. They had waited with minds and bodies poisoned by
exhaustion for the call to arms, as it surely had to come. The
Republic ships left over from the original mission were going to be
pulled in eventually, and every available trooper would be
desperately needed.

Then
suddenly it had been all behind her. The Commenor had jumped to
hyperspace, leaving fresh ships and their commanders to sort out the
mess. And that was the last she had seen of Sebaddon and its hexes.
Every scrap of data from the campaign had been erased-by some kind of
exotic electromagnetic pulse, she had been told. All that remained
were confused recollections and reports like the one she had filed on
returning.

Very
few of them mentioned Dao Stryver. During the confusion the
Mandalorian had disappeared as though into the depths of the black
hole itself, never to be seen since.

"Do
you believe Captain Pipalidi acted responsibly in the ensuing
confrontation?" Stantorrs asked her.

Larin
chose her words with care. The matter of her reenlistment and
promotion was still very much undecided, and she didn't want to
jeopardize any chances that might remain.

"I
think she did her best in a difficult situation, sir. No one could
fault her for that. "

"The
service asks of us not our best, but the best possible. Is that what
Captain Pipalidi offered?"