Allegiance (52 page)

Uncurling, Narsk squinted through the pain and looked around. The place was what he’d thought it was. Incomplete speeder bike bodies dangled from pulleys on chains, swaying as they worked their way toward a shower of paint. The whole place reeked with the pungent lacquer, wafting in steamy sheets. Narsk saw droids on duty so covered with spray, they could barely move. Evidently, there
was
a place in the Daimanate too toxic even for his slaves!

Narsk struggled to stand. Where was the Corrector? Not above him, he saw. She hadn’t been dressed like the ones he’d seen in public. Did Daiman have some new kind of secret police? Why didn’t she follow him down?

Do they worry about getting messy
?

An idle and foolish thought—and one he paid for immediately as he lost his footing in the greasy runoff and planted his chin onto the floor. The junk was in his fur now: more of that blasted gilt Daiman liked to see on everything.

Rising, Narsk realized it was also covering a good part of the stealth suit. There was no sense activating it; it’d need to be wiped completely clean before it could fool anyone. But he’d had no choice. Craning his neck, he scanned the rafters for the reason he entered.

There it was, high in the rafters: a fully assembled speeder bike, glistening and dry, hanging from the end of a chain. Moving more carefully this time, Narsk pushed past a loader droid on his way to a gantry ladder. Looking up again—still no Corrector—he made for the top step and waited for the conveyer to bring it past.

A short jump—but slipping in the slop atop the ladder, Narsk nearly missed it altogether. Clawing frantically, he finally locked an elbow around the rocking frame and joined his hands, hoisting himself onto the seat.

Safely astride the vehicle, Narsk ripped the protective coverings from the control display. Yes, the speeder would operate, but it barely had enough fuel to make the edge of Xakrea. That didn’t really matter. The Corrector would definitely have brought in support by now; Narsk would reach safety in the next few minutes, or not at all. Opening his bag, he found the needler. It was right on top of his other goods, easily reachable. Narsk sighed.
Terrific
. Switching the hand-built weapon’s setting to fire acid-filled darts, he drew a bead on the pulley above and fired.

Moments later, bleary-eyed workers departing from the Personal Transport Assembly Shop looked up to see a golden blur rocketing through an open fourth-story window. Narsk tucked his body tightly against the speeder’s frame. The chain, still attached to the vehicle, whipped behind like a mosgoth’s tail, smashing against a nearby building as he turned for the main avenue.

No time to worry about that
. Narsk allowed the wind to replace the gunk in his lungs. He’d never considered Xakrea’s air to be fresh before now. Manufacturers’ Way stretched ahead, leading toward Little Duros and a thousand places where he could lose himself. The only thing behind him was the Black Fang, its outline lit by the twin stars above. Seeing no Corrector, he turned his attention back to the street ahead.

He should have looked up.

The woman hurtled down from a skybridge crossing the thoroughfare, far above. Seeing her falling, her arms and hands outstretched, Narsk instinctively mashed the throttle. A sudden
thump
jerked the speeder from behind, nearly causing him to slip off again. Seizing a single handlebar with both hands, Narsk forced the speeder bike out of its turn and angled back into the open.

Narsk looked behind him. He’d momentarily thought she’d landed on the vehicle, but there was no sign of her. Maybe she’d made a grab for the seat and slipped to her doom.
About time for it to inconvenience someone else
, he thought. Only, the speeder was still shimmying to and fro. Something was impeding his control. Narsk looked around again—

—and found her, behind and below, clinging to the end of six meters of chain still attached to the speeder. She’d looped a length of it around her arm, and was now riding it like a tether. By the blur of streetlights far beneath, Narsk could see her starting to climb toward him.

The Sith and their chains!

“That’s enough!” Finding his needler, Narsk locked his knees against the speeder frame and released the handlebars. With one hand on the chassis, Narsk reached behind and started firing. Darts lanced through the exhaust trail, just missing his stowaway, who angled her body to avoid them. The projectiles’ paths terminated out of sight far below on the street.

Narsk swore. A needler was the wrong weapon—but he couldn’t very well bring a blaster to a spy mission. Scanning the dial, he found a setting he could use. The pulse-wave darts would detonate seconds after they cleared the barrel, delivering most of their force in her direction. She was nearly to the back of the speeder now, grasping for a handhold. Narsk reset his weapon, steadied himself …

 … and gaped as his pursuer vanished into the darkness. Puzzled, Narsk squinted for a second—only to go flying himself, as the nose of the speeder caromed off a sturdy metal obstacle: another skybridge! The bottom of the speeder smacked the outer guardrail, throwing the entire vehicle end-over-end. Sky and bridge spun consecutively before Narsk’s eyes, before blending together in agonizing darkness.

She was human, after all. Narsk awoke to the sight of her as, lit by the burning wreckage of the speeder bike, the woman crossed the wide skybridge toward him. A young adult, dark-complexioned, with short-cropped black hair; a few odd wisps of it blew in the wind. Clad in a laborer’s tawny work shirt and dark canvas pants, she blended with the night—and unlike Narsk, she didn’t appear any worse for the landing. She hadn’t been trying to climb onto the speeder, he realized as he struggled to get to his knees. She’d seen the bridge up ahead, and had been readying to drop away to safety.

Now she strode confidently toward him, looking determined and holding her unlit lightsaber. Forcing himself to stand, Narsk fell on his hairy face. His right leg was sprained, perhaps broken.

And the needler was gone.

Narsk squirmed in panic as he heard the familiar hum from above. He clawed at the roadbed, desperate to avoid the moment he’d so often delayed. This had always been a danger; the risk that came with being special. All those jobs, and any one could have ended like this, with a flash of crimson—

Green.

Green!

Narsk’s eyes widened. The lightsaber was green.

“Jedi?” Narsk rolled over and looked at the woman’s eyes. Hazel. Wide, alert, focused—but on the right side of madness.

A Jedi
. He couldn’t believe his luck. A Jedi?
Here
?

He’d heard a single Jedi had recently been on the loose in Sith space. One who had challenged Odion during the Chelloa affair—and who had lately given Daiman fits. Narsk had never met any Jedi, but he knew their reputation—and he knew he never could have hoped to have been discovered by anyone better on Darkknell.

“You’re her,” Narsk began. “Aren’t you? You’re
Kerra Holt.
”

The woman didn’t answer. Kneeling, she frisked him. In no position to resist, Narsk scanned her face more closely. Yes, it matched the images he’d seen. He licked his pointed teeth. He knew what to do.

“I’m on your side,” Narsk said. “I want to destroy Daiman, too.”

Ignoring him, the woman pawed at the stealth suit. Amazingly to Narsk—and seemingly so to her—the Mark VI had no rips, although it now had grit to go with its golden splotches. Stepping away with Narsk’s pouch, she found the datapad inside.

Eyes skimming the screen, she spoke. “You work for Lord Odion.”

Narsk was startled. Her voice was low and rough, not much more than a whisper. “Odion?” he responded. “What makes you think that? Maybe I’m a revolutionary.”

“There are no revolutionaries on Darkknell,” she said, voice rising as she deactivated the datapad. “And if there were, they wouldn’t be stealing military secrets.” Holding the datapad where Narsk could see it, she casually flipped the device into the air and bisected it with a sudden flick of her lightsaber.

Narsk gulped.
All that work!

“All that work
for Odion,
” she said, catching his thought.

“Yes,” he said. No sense denying it now, he realized; he might as well hit her with some truth. “I
was
working for Odion. But I’m not an Odionite. It’s just a job.”

“That’s worse,” Kerra said, looking down. “You’re an
enabler.
” She nearly spat the word, causing Narsk to flinch. She yanked his bag from the ground and stepped back.

Narsk forced himself to stand, painful as it was. “Fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’ve denied Odion the knowledge. But the important thing is to deny Daiman the knowledge
—and
the warship he’s building. And we can do that. Look here, I can show you—”

Narsk stepped toward her and his bag, only to have her raise the lightsaber between them again. “I don’t work with Sith,” she said.

“I told you, I’m not Sith.” He gestured toward the pouch. “Look in the bag. You’ll see.”

The human deactivated her weapon and reached inside. Seeing her recognize the detonator control for what it was, Narsk flashed a toothy smile. “You see? We have the chance to do something important against Daiman.” He began to reach for the controller. “And all I ask is that I be allowed time to—”

“No.” In a single, liquid motion, the woman looked back up Manufacturers’ Way, pointed the detonator, and pressed the button.

A flash and a rumble came from the far end of the avenue. Two kilometers away, the opaque skin of the Black Fang heaved for a split second before erupting outward. Metal shards ripped free from the structure, desperate to escape. Thunder followed fire, more than enough noise and light to wake all Xakrea.

Narsk brought a bruised hand to his long nose in horror.
They must have powered up the centrifuge again
, he thought. Fully armed and fueled,
Convergence
would have exploded in an outward spiral. He’d thought that was a possibility before he planted his explosives, but he had always planned to be aboard a freighter lifting off from Darkknell before pressing the button.

Not gawking like an idiot on a skybridge with a Jedi.

“You fool!” Narsk yelled. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

The woman regarded the blaze with mild satisfaction. “Yes.”

Narsk wilted, forgetting the pain in his leg. He looked to the rooftop plazas at either end of the skybridge. No authorities were here yet, but they soon would be. And still, the Jedi seemed pleased with herself.

Idiot
, Narsk thought.
No wonder the Sith ran the Jedi out of the Outer Rim
. He barked at her. “Is that it? Are we done here?”

“No,” she said, igniting her lightsaber and waving it in his direction. “
Strip.
”

The woman neatly slipped the folded Mark VI back into Narsk’s bag—although neither suit nor bag was particularly neat anymore, smeared and stinking of paint. “You’ve really made a mess of this thing,” she said. “Is this stuff permanent?”

“I don’t know,” Narsk snarled. He didn’t care about the suit anymore. The real authorities were out, screaming in their airspeeders toward the cauldron that was the testing center. And here he was: naked, but for his shorts, sitting in a garbage bin in a shadowy section of the plaza. The woman had marched him there, taken the stealth suit, and bound his wrists.

It was not where he wanted to be with Sith on the way.

“How can you do this? You
know
what they’ll do to me if they catch me!” Seeing her beginning to close the lid, Narsk grew more frantic. “You can’t do this! You Jedi are supposed to be about fair play and decency!
You’re supposed to be a Jedi!
”

The woman paused. “What?” Kerra Holt said, suddenly miffed. “I’m not
locking
it.”

The lid snapped shut above him.

This is the era of the
Star Wars
prequel films, in which Darth Sidious’s schemes lead to the devastating Clone Wars, the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi Order, and the Republic’s transformation into the Empire. It also begins the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker, the boy identified by the Jedi as the Chosen One of ancient prophecy, the one destined to bring balance to the Force. But, as seen in the movies, Anakin’s passions lead him to the dark side, and he becomes the legendary masked and helmeted villain Darth Vader.

Before his fall, however, Anakin spends many years being trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi. When the Clone Wars break out, pitting the Republic against the secessionist Trade Federation, Anakin becomes a war hero and one of the galaxy’s greatest Jedi Knights. But his love for the Naboo Queen and Senator Padmé Amidala, and his friendship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine—secretly known as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious—will be his undoing …

If you’re a reader looking to jump into the Rise of the Empire era, here are four great starting points: