Allegiance (44 page)

“Keep going!” Mara snapped, jamming her blaster back into its holster and igniting her lightsaber.

“Jade—” LaRone began.

“That’s an order,” Mara cut him off. Stepping out of the relative protection of their moving screen, she turned to face the incoming swoops.

To her surprise and chagrin, they ignored her completely. Instead they deliberately curved to stay on an intercept course with the stormtroopers.

Swallowing a curse, Mara snatched out her blaster again. Those cannons would make short work of even stormtrooper armor once they got close enough, and Mara had no intention of letting that happen. Thumbing the blaster’s setting to full auto to open the valve between the gas chamber and conversion enabler, she hurled it in a high arc toward the approaching swoops. Midway through its flight she stretched out with the Force and caught it in a firm grip, tweaked its trajectory, and guided it to a spot just in front of the lead swoop and directly into the blaster cannon’s line of fire.

The resulting explosion, as such things went, was fairly tame. The cannon’s next shot shattered the blaster’s gas chamber housing, blowing the rest of the weapon apart and igniting a brief fireball as the remnants of the shot then activated the expanding gas.

But if the explosion itself wasn’t particularly impressive, its precise placement more than made up the difference. The force of the blast slammed into the swoop’s nose, causing the vehicle to rear up and back like a crazed animal.

The rider, the bulk of his attention on the stormtroopers, didn’t have a chance. For that first crucial second the swoop thrashed wildly beneath him as he fought to bring it back under control. It slammed sideways against his partner, and now there were two out-of-control swoops flailing across the yard.

The second pair, coming up behind them, swerved hard to get out of the way. They were curving around to bring themselves back on track when Grave and his T-28 nailed them both. Two shots later he had taken out the two flailing ones, as well.

“You coming?” LaRone called back to Mara.

“On my way,” Mara said. She paused first to deflect a pair of blaster bolts, then sprinted after the stormtroopers. They had reached the door, and LaRone was blasting away at a surprisingly stubborn door lock, when she caught up with them.

“Get back,” she ordered, quickly ending the lock’s resistance with a slash of her lightsaber. “You four get inside,” she went on as she pulled the door open. Beyond it, she caught a glimpse of kitchen equipment and frantically retreating kitchen staff but—as yet—no blasters. “Anything from Brightwater?”

“He’s got the gate personnel pinned down, including most of their vehicles,” LaRone told her. “He apologizes for the swoops—no idea where they came from.”

“Just tell him to watch himself,” Mara said, looking back at the converging guards. “Get inside—I’ll take rear guard. Seal the door behind you if you can.”

“What? But—”

“You have your orders, Commander,” Mara said sharply. “If I don’t make it, carry out the mission.”

“Yes, ma’am,” LaRone said, this time with the proper professional tone. “Good luck.” With a final salvo at the approaching guards, he and the other stormtroopers slipped inside and closed the door behind them.

Mara put her back to the door and for a few seconds continued to deflect the incoming blaster bolts. But her opponents were getting closer, the decreasing distance sharpening their aim, and she knew that within seconds even the camouflaging effects of her cloak and combat suit and a Force-driven defense would be unable to handle all of them.

She gave it two more seconds anyway, stretching her margin to the limit to give the stormtroopers more time to seal the door. Then, pushing off the wall for extra momentum, she sprinted outward toward the forest strip and the perimeter wall beyond.

She got two steps before the guards reacted to the move, and managed three more before the blaster bolts were once again tracking toward her. She took two more steps and then jammed her feet into the ground, spinning around as she brought herself to an abrupt halt. Bending her knees, lightsaber at the ready, she stretched to the Force for strength and jumped.

For a second she soared above the fury of the blasterfire as the guards once again tried to react to her unexpected tactic. She was above second-floor height now, nearly to third, the wall rushing up toward her as she hit the top of her arc and started back down again. As she reached the wall she slashed her lightsaber in a wide ring
in front of her, cutting a circle through the stone. Tucking her knees to her chest, she slammed feetfirst into the center of the circle.

With a thunderous crash of breaking stone, the section of wall collapsed inward. The impact robbed Mara of her forward momentum, and for a heart-stopping second she teetered on the edge of the hole, fighting for balance. Then her free hand found a grip on the edge, and as the blaster bolts belatedly began to stab at her again, she pulled herself inside to safety.

She had ended up in the storage room Marcross had mentioned, empty except for two carts loaded with round fold-leg tables and three dollies stacked halfway to the low ceiling with ornate, high-backed chairs. A single door was visible at the far end. Closing down her lightsaber, she headed toward it.

She was halfway there when the hint of an odd smell twitched at her nose. Still moving, she started into her sensory enhancement techniques.

There was a sudden, loud splash at her feet. She looked down, rapidly cutting back on the enhancement to find that her last step had landed her in a pool of liquid. So far the pool was only a few millimeters deep, but as the edge flowed past her feet she could see it was getting deeper.

And that single enhanced sniff had left no doubt as to what the liquid was.

One of the two table carts was a couple of meters to her left. Instantly she leapt sideways up onto it, nearly braining herself against the ceiling as she did so. The tables rattled together as she hit them, and she had to grab a pair of the edges to keep from sliding off.

“Imperial agent? Celina, or whatever your real name is?”

Mara looked up, her eyes probing the darkened room. The voice had been muffled, which meant he was
outside the door. Considering the liquid rapidly filling the room, she reflected grimly, outside was a very smart place for him to be. “I’m here, Caaldra,” she called back. The edge of the pool had made it nearly to the back wall now, leaving her stranded in the middle of the room. “Better give maintenance a call—you’ve got a serious leak in here.”

“And just in time, too,” Caaldra said. “I was expecting you to come through a window into one of the meeting rooms, not right through the wall like you did. Looks like I’ve ruined a couple of carpets over there for nothing.”

“You’re going to ruin a lot more than that if this stuff goes up,” Mara warned. “What is it about you and fire, anyway? Were you burned as a kid or something?”

“Not at all,” he assured her. “I’ve just learned over the years that fire and water are the two things even professionals usually aren’t prepared for.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Mara promised.

“I’m sure you will,” Caaldra said. “And if you were thinking about jumping me when I came in with my handy igniter, don’t bother. The edge of the pool’s already seeped out into the reception area, which means I can touch off your private lake of fire without even opening the door.”

Mara grimaced. That
had
been the direction she’d been thinking, actually. Scratch that now. “Of course, you could have done that anywhere along the line, without nearly so much talk,” she pointed out. “From that I gather you want something.”

“Very perceptive,” Caaldra said approvingly. “I want to make a deal.”

Mara cocked an eyebrow. “I’m listening. Obviously.”

“Basically, I just want out,” Caaldra said. “
Completely
out. I leave Shelkonwa, you don’t file charges, no one comes after me.”

“And in return I get to leave here uncrisped?”

“That, plus I give you all the records you need to nail Chief Administrator Disra to the wall.”

“So Disra is in this, too?” Mara asked, looking around the room. No windows, no other doors, and the pool of flammable liquid was nearly ankle-deep now.

But there was the hole she’d cut in the outer wall. And there were those three stacks of chairs.

“He’s in it up to his neck,” Caaldra said contemptuously. “Actually, I think he’s been the head mover and shaker on this thing right from square one.”

“Really,” Mara said, stretching out with the Force to the topmost chair on the nearest stack. For a moment it stuck to the one beneath it, but then it came free. She floated it across the room and eased it to the floor about three meters from the end of her table cart in the direction of the hole. “I’m surprised someone like Governor Choard would let anyone else run his show for him.”

“
Choard
’s show?” Caaldra snorted. “You must be kidding. That big stupid idiot doesn’t know a thing about any of this.”

Mara smiled tightly. “Nice try, Caaldra, but I know better. It takes a moff or full governor to order Imperial forces around. Not even a chief administrator can do that.”

“Who said he could?” Caaldra countered. “We weren’t going to order either of Shelsha’s garrisons around—we were going for straight-out destruction.”

“Don’t be dense,” Mara admonished as she moved a second chair into position, three meters past the first one. “I’m talking about the
Reprisal’
s attack on Gepparin.”

“The
Reprisal
?” Caaldra echoed. “You
are
on the wrong file heading, aren’t you? That didn’t have anything to do with us—it was Captain Ozzel trying to
cover his own sorry tail. Trying to make sure you never lived to tell anyone about his deserters.”

Mara frowned. “His
what
?”

“His deserters.” Caaldra barked a laugh. “Oh, this
is
rare. Someone sets you up to get killed, and you don’t even know why?”

“Skip the gloating and enlighten me,” Mara growled.

“To put it in a clig shell, five of the
Reprisal’
s stormtroopers apparently killed an ISB major, stole one of their special ships, and made a run for it.”

Mara felt her breath freeze in her lungs.
Five
stormtroopers? “You know anything else about them?” she asked carefully.

“Only that ever since they took off they’ve been wandering around Shelsha sector poking their fingers into our plans,” Caaldra said with a snort. “First they spoiled a hijacking of some heavy blaster rifles we had our eyes on; then they knocked off a patroller chief we were positioning to lead the attack on an attack starfighter plant.”

And with that, the strange comment Brock had made in the BloodScars’ command room suddenly, horribly, made sense.
Did you already know about the deserters? Or is that what you were looking for in the
Reprisal’s
computer
?

Deserters. Stormtroopers. Five of them.

The Hand of Judgment.

“It makes for an interesting story, anyway,” she said, trying to keep her voice casual. “Where are these renegades now?”

“Probably off somewhere doing more good deeds,” Caaldra said. “The point is that Ozzel hadn’t reported their disappearance and figured his neck was for it after you interrogated his other stormtroopers or whatever it was you did while you were on his ship.”

“Actually, I tapped into his computer,” Mara murmured,
a horrible thought digging into her like a knife blade. It was the
Reprisal
’s attack on Gepparin, and
only
that attack, that had laid the burden of guilt squarely on Governor Choard’s shoulders. But if Caaldra was telling the truth, then Choard could very well be a completely innocent man.

An innocent man whom she’d just sent five stormtrooper deserters to kill.

She clenched her teeth. She had to get out of here, and she had to get out now. Lifting another chair from the stack, she added it to the line. One more, and she should have enough. “So what exactly is it you want?” she called, stalling for time.

“I already told you,” Caaldra said, a whisper of suspicion starting to creep into his voice. “I want a free pass out of this. What are you doing in there?”

“Waiting for you to spell out the details,” Mara countered, silently cursing herself. Preoccupied with her escape plan and even more so with the miscarriage of justice she’d set into motion, she’d completely forgotten that Caaldra had already presented his request. “I know people like you,” she improvised. “You’ll want everything done to your exact specifications.”

“Absolutely,” Caaldra said, the suspicion in his voice deepening. “I’ll be taking the
Happer’s Way
—we’ll need a quick repair job on the cargo bay first—and then you’ll provide me safe passage off Shelkonwa with enough fuel—”

“Wait a second,” Mara cut in as she set the final chair in line. Now all she had to do was figure out what she was going to do once she got outside. “You don’t really expect me to let you fly off with a ship full of military property, do you?”

“Consider it my reward for helping you break up a potentially disastrous political crisis,” Caaldra countered.
“Disra was all set to issue a declaration of independence and take Shelsha sector out of the Empire.”

“You must be joking,” Mara scoffed, moving another chair to the wall. Unlike the others, she didn’t set this one upright but laid it flat with its back sticking out through the opening. “Or else
Disra
must be joking. He’d have half the Fleet in orbit over his head inside of a week.”

“You really think Palpatine would take overt military action?” Caaldra asked. “You don’t think he’d cut a deal instead to keep it quiet?”

“Emperor Palpatine doesn’t make deals like that,” Mara said, lifting two more chairs from their stack and moving them to the hole. Setting one of them down temporarily out of the way, she maneuvered the other onto the lying chair’s legs, trying to hook them together so that the new chair would brace the one leaning outside.

“Not even if one of his own very special agents recommended it?”