Apocalypse (38 page)

“Imperial Security.” She sent a surge of Force energy into the lens, creating a bright flash that would temporarily blind the cam. “Let me in … 
now
.”

“Sure thing, boss.” The reply was so static-scratched that it was impossible to identify the speaker’s species, but the voice sounded too thin and chirpy to be human. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

Tahiri felt a small ground shudder as one of the blast doors cracked open, creating a gap just wide enough for her to slip through. Half expecting the sentry to swing the door shut as she crossed the threshold, she slipped through the opening in a single quick bound. Inside, she found herself standing in an industrial air lock. It looked like a thousand others she had occupied, save that this one had a set of blaster cannons mounted high in the corners. She waved a finger at each of them, using the Force to push the barrels away—and to wreck the control system’s calibration.

“Hey!” came the scratchy voice. “Who do you think you are?”

“I told you,” Tahiri said. “Imperial Security.”

She stepped over to a man-sized hatch in the rear wall of the air lock and peered through a head-height viewport down a long, well-lit tunnel. It was lined by white plastoid panels far too clean to belong in a working mine. The sentry’s post, wherever it was, could not be seen.

“Are you going to open this air lock now?” Tahiri demanded. “Or am I going to blast through this hatch and decompress your whole operation?”

“You didn’t say you were in a hurry.” The blast door thumped shut behind her, and the voice said, “Just give the pressure a minute to—”

“No.”

Tahiri stepped away from the hatch, then used the Force to hit the emergency release and shove it open. A tremendous squealing became a tremendous roaring, and she was nearly swept off her feet as air blasted into the chamber. After a second, the blast faded to a raging wind, and she sprang through the hatchway.

A cold shiver of danger sense raced down Tahiri’s spine, and she spun around in time to see a weapons port sliding open in the door of a small sentry booth. With no face visible in the viewport above, she merely extended a hand toward the slot and
shoved
with the Force. In the next instant a line of blaster bolts stitched up the interior side of the viewport and began to traverse the ceiling.

Tahiri ignited her lightsaber and stepped over to the booth, then peered through the carbon-scorched viewport. On the floor lay a furry, meter-high rodent-like being holding a T-21 repeating blaster that was almost as long as he was tall. With oversized ears and big round eyes, he could have been described as cute—if he hadn’t been a Squib. Tahiri used the Force to release the door lock, then opened it from the outside and stepped into the cramped compartment.

She raised her faceplate. “You have a death wish?” She jerked the T-21 from his grasp with a Force pull. “I
said
Imperial Security.”

“Yeah, right. And I should take your word for it?” the Squib retorted. “Do I look like some sort of fuzzling to you?”

Tahiri studied his spotted fur and oversized ears, and then realized she had a pretty good idea of the Squib’s identity. Shortly after she had entered Jagged Fel’s service, the Solos had put the Head of State into contact with three Squibs—a female and two males. The trio had volunteered to test an experimental youth serum, which was being developed by none other than Moff Getelles. Test subjects who used the serum tended to develop overly youthful traits—like big ears and spotted fur.

After a moment, she nodded. “Actually, you
do
look like a fuzzling,” she said. “Which one are you? You’re male, so it has to be Grees or Sligh.”

The Squib narrowed his eyes. “Do I
know
you?”

“You know my superior, Jagged Fel,” Tahiri said. In truth, she was not quite sure how to describe her half-prisoner, half-Imperial-agent status. “You did an undercover job for him not too long ago—a job that was
supposed
to be over.”

“That deal
is
over,” the Squib said. He began to crawl backward on the floor—and promptly ran into the wall. “This is a different one.”

Tahiri shrugged. “Whatever you say …” She paused, as though she were using the Force the way Master Skywalker did—to pick people’s names out of their thoughts. Then she simply took a guess.
“Sligh.”

When the Squib’s ears went back in alarm, she knew she had guessed right. “Why don’t you tell me about this new deal of yours,” she said. “And remember, I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Sligh shook his head. “I don’t think so, Blondie.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell
you
,” Tahiri said, deciding to bluff. “You’re working for Daala now.”

“Wrong,”
Sligh said smugly. “Some Jedi you are.”

“I’m no Jedi—not anymore,” Tahiri said. She opened herself to the Force again and sensed the same boiling darkness she had felt from outside the portal—and the same outpouring of grief and anguish. “And you didn’t let me finish. You’re working for Daala through her agent, an Imperial lieutenant named Lydea Pagorski.”

Sligh’s gaze shifted away. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Tahiri replied. “Pagorski is in charge of Daala’s election campaign, if you call starting riots a
campaign
.”

Sligh shrugged. “It’s how they do things in the Empire. Who are we to judge?”

“You have a point,” Tahiri said. Shifting to a friendlier interrogation technique, she shut off her lightsaber and motioned for Sligh to stand. “What I can’t figure out is why Pagorski came here, to Hagamoor Three. This is Getelles’s territory, and Getelles is on Jag’s side.”

“What makes you think
we
had anything to do with it?” Sligh demanded. “We’re just contract agents.”

Even had she not sensed the Squib’s alarm in the Force, Tahiri would have known he was lying. “You brought Pagorski here—because you’ve been here before,” she said, quickly seeing how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. “The Moon Maiden isn’t a mine. It’s
the lab where Getelles was developing his youth serum—the lab where you were experimented on.”

Sligh only blinked and tried to look innocent.

“Pagorski was looking for a secret base of operations, one where no one would think to look for her,” Tahiri continued, watching the Squib closely. “And she needed it to be a place where a lot of people could disappear without being noticed. Because she’s not Lydea Pagorski anymore, is she? She’s something much more deadly. Something you don’t understand, and that you probably wish you had never gotten involved with. Right?”

Sligh’s quick drop of gaze was all the confirmation Tahiri needed.

“And then things got even worse, didn’t they, Sligh? Fett tracked you here—because
he
’s looking for the scientists who were experimenting on you.” The scientists who had developed the youth serum had also designed a nanokiller specifically attuned to Boba Fett’s genetic code—a nanokiller that the Moffs had released into Mandalore’s atmosphere, ensuring that Fett would never be able to return to his beloved world. “Fett’s not here because Daala sent him. He’s here because he wants your scientists. And you couldn’t stop him from going inside either. He’s already gone down the tunnel to find them—hasn’t he, Sligh?”

Sligh’s ears went straight back, and his hands flew up so quickly that Tahiri instinctively ignited her lightsaber again. But the Squib’s hands only went to the sides of his face, and then he spun away from Tahiri and began to whip his head from side to side so hard she feared he might break his own neck. Suddenly he turned and hurled himself at her feet.

Tahiri brought her lightsaber down, almost lopping off his head before she realized there was no aggression in his Force aura—only panic, terror, and confusion. She deactivated the blade at the last instant, then lifted one leg just in time to avoid being knocked off her feet as the Squib hit the floor beneath her.

He shot out of the sentry booth into the white corridor beyond. Then, still whipping his head from side to side, he looked back and called, “Stay out of my brain, witch!”

I
F THE
M
OON
M
AIDEN HAD EVER BEEN ANYTHING BUT A SECRET LABORATORY
disguised as a mine, Tahiri saw no hint of it in the primary access tunnel. At just two meters high by three meters wide, the passage was adequate for speeder traffic but too small for heavy equipment. It was also incredibly clean. Both the duracrete floor and the white plastoid liner had been carefully sealed to prevent the slightest ground infiltration, and even the glow panels were recessed behind transparisteel panes to minimize the number of joints where caulking might disintegrate. And every fifty meters, she passed through an ion curtain that captured any dust particles clinging to her vac suit.

Outside the second ion curtain, Tahiri came to a pair of loaded hoversleds parked along the wall, as though being held there until the cargo could be transported. Crates on both hoversleds had been broken into recently—no doubt by a curious Boba Fett—and Tahiri removed a poster flimsi from a crate on the first sled.

The flimsi showed an image of Admiral Daala in profile. Her eye patch was prominently displayed, and she had a noble, serious expression
on her face. Below the picture were the words:
NATASI DAALA. A TRADITION OF SERVICE AND SACRIFICE—FOR
YOUR
EMPIRE
.

As Tahiri looked at the image, she experienced a sudden surge of respect and confidence, and she found herself feeling like Daala might make a pretty decent Head of State after all.

Force suggestion
.

Tahiri recognized what was happening only because she felt the power of the Force in it, and even then the flimsi’s influence was difficult to resist until she crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

The second sled contained a stack of holosign projector pads. Rather than activate one and risk having a hologram of Daala pop up and start talking, Tahiri concentrated her Force awareness over the sled. There was a dark aura clinging to the projector pads, as though they had been imbued with a tiny amount of Force energy by a very powerful dark side Force-user.

Abeloth.

Tahiri started down the tunnel again, more concerned than ever. After the trouble Abeloth had gone to in running the blockade at Boreleo, it seemed all too likely that she had formed an alliance with Daala and was using her powers to boost Daala’s popularity in the Empire—and this discovery certainly supported those suspicions. But it also cast the campaign to elect the admiral in a whole new light. Tahiri could see only one reason for Abeloth to use her powers to guarantee Daala’s victory, and that was because she expected the admiral to become her puppet ruler.

Abeloth intended to take the Empire for her own.

And once Abeloth had the Empire, there would be no stopping her. The Empire would be an ideal base from which to expand, and against their combined powers, even the Galactic Alliance would not be able to oppose her for long.

As Tahiri continued to walk, the cleanliness of the tunnel began to fade. Three hundred meters in, dark spots of mildew began to appear along the walls. At four hundred meters, the plastoid had turned dark with growth, and the fungus was starting to form mounds. By five hundred meters, she was picking her way past stalks of meter-high fungi and ducking under dangling curtains of moss. Though she had never visited a world where Abeloth held sway, she had spoken to
enough Jedi to know what she was seeing—and how cautious she needed to be around the strange flora.

Tahiri was about six hundred meters down the tunnel when she came to a scene as puzzling as it was gruesome. A secondary passage opened out to the left, where it became a steep ramp ascending toward the surface building that sat above this part of the Moon Maiden.

At the base of the ramp, half a dozen human security guards lay scattered among the fungi stalks. Another half a dozen—probably the first to arrive—had made it into the main tunnel, where the plastoid walls were painted with blood and the floor was littered with bodies and weapons. A pair of guards had lived long enough to fling their blaster rifles aside and flee down the passage. Tahiri could see their corpses lying among the club mosses with huge char holes in their backs.

Probably Fett, Tahiri decided. The handiwork was certainly his style, and she knew from her interrogation of Sligh that the Mandalorian had come down the tunnel ahead of her. Not wanting to risk leaving a ruthless bounty hunter between her and the exit, she started up the ramp toward the surface building—which, given all the dead guards, she was now confident in calling a security bunker.

Tahiri had to travel only about thirty paces before realizing she had no need to worry about Fett. The bounty hunter was hanging in the center of the tunnel, upside down and motionless, trapped in a curtain of ropy moss like a flitnat in a spiderweb. Some of the moss-tendrils had worked their way into the seams of his armor and, presumably, penetrated the neoplas body glove underneath. Never having visited one of Abeloth’s strongholds before, Tahiri could only guess at the nature of the moss’s attack. Most likely it was some sort of acid or contact poison, though strangulation and allergic reaction were also possibilities. But the one thing she knew for certain was that if Fett had been expecting to be attacked by a plant, he wouldn’t have been captured—and perhaps killed—by one.