Apocalypse (5 page)

“Then perhaps we
should
try something else,” Kem suggested. “How would you like to be released from this cell?”

Wynn raised his head as high as was possible. “You must know how very silly that question is.”

Kem’s only response was a series of soft
click
s as the cuffs around Wynn’s wrists and ankles fell open. The tension vanished from his arms and legs, and when he tried to pull his pain-numbed limbs in toward his body, they actually moved.

More suspicious than surprised, Wynn struggled into an upright position and was finally able to get a good look at Kem’s companion. Dressed in the gray jumpsuit of a GAS prisoner, the woman had blond hair, narrow eyes, and a hard, familiar face that Wynn knew he should have recognized, but could not quite place in his current condition.

He shifted his gaze back to Kem. “Well, that was easy,” he said. “What’s the catch?”

“Catch?”
Kem asked. “Ah—what I want in return. That would be your help.”

“My help?” Wynn echoed, still trying to work out the second woman’s identity—and what she had to do with his own captivity. “To do what?”

“Help me rule,” Kem replied simply.

Now Wynn
was
surprised. “You want me to help you rule the Galactic Alliance?”

“You would help me run the government, yes,” Kem confirmed. “You would be saving lives, Wynn—a great many lives.”

Keenly aware that there had to be a trap—with Abeloth and her Sith, there was
always
a trap—Wynn fell silent and did his best to sort through priorities with his torture-raddled brain. His most important
goal was to protect the informal intelligence network he had been operating with Admiral and Eramuth Bwua’tu. By now, the two Bothans knew of his capture, and they had undoubtedly taken precautions to protect themselves. But the network itself would be vital to the Jedi when they returned to liberate the planet, and so far he had managed to avoid revealing its existence to Lady Korelei and her assistants.

But Wynn knew he could not put that off much longer. He had run out of unimportant details three sessions earlier and begun to feed his tormentors small scraps of more valuable information. Now they were beginning to put together a more complete picture of the secret workings of the Galactic Alliance government—a picture that was leading them closer to Club Bwua’tu all the time.

“Is it such a hard decision, Wynn?” Kem asked. “You can save lives and escape your torture. Or you can condemn thousands to die … and remain here to feed Lady Korelei’s appetites.”

Of course, it wasn’t a hard decision at all—and that’s what made Wynn hesitate. Rokari Kem—or Abeloth, or whatever she called herself—was not only the new leader of the Galactic Alliance. She was also the secret leader of the Sith, and Sith cared nothing about the lives they took or the harm they caused. They cared only about their own power. If Abeloth was willing to forgo the secrets that her torturers were slowly prying from his mind, then it could only mean she saw a more valuable way to use him—a way that would allow her to do even more damage to the Galactic Alliance.

But Abeloth didn’t know everything, and one of the things she didn’t know was that Wynn just needed to buy time—time for the Jedi to arrive
before
he broke. Finally, he looked up and met Kem’s gaze.

“You’d move me out of this cell?” he asked. “And keep me away from Lady Korelei?”

“Of course,” Kem assured him. “As long as you continue to serve me, you’ll be safe from Lady Korelei.”

“I won’t be your mouthpiece,” Wynn warned. His demands, he knew, would mean nothing to her—but he had to make them, or she would grow suspicious of his true motives. “And I won’t feed you the names of beings who stand against you.”

“I expect nothing of the sort,” Kem assured him, smiling broadly and warmly. “I have enough names to last a standard year.”

Wynn allowed his discomfort at the assertion to show in his face, but asked, “Well then, what
do
you expect from me?”

“Nothing but what you gave Chief Daala,” Kem said. “By all accounts, you’re an excellent administrator and a capable adviser.”

“You want
my
advice?” Wynn began to think he was hallucinating—that he had finally broken under Korelei’s attentions and lost his mind. “You can’t be sincere.”

“But I
am …
so very sincere.” Kem reached for the arm of the woman she had brought along, then pulled her forward to stand next to the cot. “I’m sure you remember Lieutenant Lydea Pagorski?”

Pagorski
—of course. She was the Imperial intelligence officer who had perjured herself at Tahiri Veila’s murder trial. Wynn nodded and turned to the woman.

“I do,” he said. “I’m sorry to see you here, too.”

Pagorski’s face grew even paler, and she cast a nervous glance toward Kem.

Kem merely rolled her eyes. “There’s no need to feel
sorry
for the lieutenant,” she said. “The Empire wants her returned, and I’d like to know whether to grant their request.”

“You’re asking me to make the decision?” Wynn asked, more suspicious than ever.

“To give me your opinion, yes,” Kem said. “You won’t be making any decisions yourself.”

Wynn began to feel a little better about the arrangement. Kem and her Sith were, after all, practically strangers to the galaxy at large. It made sense that they might need someone like him to help sort through the thousands of diplomatic petitions that came through the Chief of State’s office every day.

“What did the Empire offer in return for Lieutenant Pagorski’s release?” he asked.

Kem frowned. “Nothing.”

“Not even a task force port call?”

“Nothing at
all
,” Kem said. “I’ll deny the request.”

Wynn shook his head. “You should grant it.”

“I should grant it, when they offer nothing?” Now that the possibility of payment had been raised, Kem seemed offended that none
had been offered. “And if they
had
offered something, what should I have done? Taken only half?”

“No,” Wynn replied. “You should have refused to return the lieutenant at all, then moved her into a military interrogation facility before they could assassinate her.”

Kem looked truly confused. “Because the offer was an insult?”

“Because it would have meant that Lieutenant Pagorski was valuable to them,” Wynn explained. “And before you even considered releasing her, you would want to know the nature of that value.”

“And because they offer nothing, she has no value?”

“That’s right—the request is merely routine.” Wynn turned to Pagorski. “You have family on Bastion, don’t you? Someone important?”

Pagorski’s eyes widened. “My father is an admiral in Fleet Provisions,” she said. “How did you know?”

“He’s putting pressure on the diplomatic corps,” Wynn replied. “They made the request so they could tell him they’re doing something.”

“I can’t grant such a request,” Kem objected. “It will diminish my stature.”

Wynn shook his head. “You’re forgetting your public persona,” he said, surprised that the leader of the Sith would make such a mistake. “You’re supposed to be Rokari Kem, a wise and compassionate leader from B’nish—not Rokari Kem, a greedy and power-hungry Sith overlord.”

“Yes, I see your point,” Kem said, her eyes flaring at the terms he had used to describe her. She sighed and turned to Pagorski. “I cannot allow you to return to the Empire knowing my true—”

“I won’t tell
anyone
!” Pagorski interrupted, clearly terrified. “I give you my word as—”

“If your word had any value, you wouldn’t have been in a GAS detention center in the first place,” Kem retorted. “But there’s no need to kill you. I’m just going to use the Force to wipe away some of your memories.”

Relief flooded Pagorski’s face. “I understand,” she said, visibly relieved. “Feel free.”

“I wasn’t asking, Lieutenant.”

Kem placed her hands on the sides of Pagorski’s head, then looked into the woman’s eyes and locked gazes. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and Wynn thought the mindwipe might be as painless as it was mysterious.

Then the air between the two women began to shimmer. Pagorski’s eyes opened wide, and her face twisted into a mask of horror. Rokari Kem’s fingers grew long and thin, and suddenly her arms dissolved into gray slimy tentacles, and in the Sith’s place stood the hideous thing that Wynn had glimpsed on waking, a slender sinuate form with coarse yellow hair and a mouth so broad that it reached from ear to ear.

Abeloth.

Pagorski’s jaw fell open in a wordless scream. The tentacles shot down her throat, into her ears and nostrils, and began to pulse. Horrible gagging noises erupted from her mouth. Her entire body went limp and hung, convulsing, by the ropy tendrils that had been inserted into her head.

Finally, Pagorski’s expression went blank. Her complexion grew so pale and translucent that Wynn could see the tentacles throbbing inside her face, pumping something dark and viscous into her sinuses and her ears and down into her trachea. He began to scramble back, pressing himself against the wall behind him so fiercely it seemed to yield. The cell reverberated with a loud, growling howl that he did not recognize as his own voice until he found himself crouching in the corner, gnawing at his knuckles and banging his skull against the durasteel.

The thing turned its gruesome head toward Wynn’s corner, then fixed its blazing white eyes on him and smiled a grin as deep and dark as the Maw itself.

“Now that you’ll be serving me, you should know this about your Beloved Queen of the Stars,” Abeloth said. “She is
so
much more than a Sith.”

F
OR THE TENTH TIME IN AS MANY MINUTES
, B
EN
S
KYWALKER GLANCED
at the chrono hanging on the wurlwood panel across from him. The liberation of Coruscant was scheduled to begin … well,
now
, and he and Vestara were still sitting in the pages’ closet outside Senator Suldar’s office. Hovering before them was a float pallet bearing a large crate wrapped in glitterfilm, and in her hands Vestara held a silver tray bearing a small envelope addressed to
MY DEAR FRIEND KAMERON
.

“You have a hot date waiting?” Vestara asked in a taunting voice. Dressed in the dark blue robe of a Senate page, she was wearing a custom-built disguise that would convince even the most sophisticated facial recognition software in the galaxy that she was a Falleen adolescent. “The way you keep checking the chrono, she must be a real dazzler.”

Ben smiled. The only date he had was after the battle … with Vestara herself. “She’s quite beautiful—for a human.” Also dressed in the robe of a Senate page, Ben was disguised as a male Twi’lek. “But the party we’re going to, you can’t be late for.”

Vestara arched one brow. “Then maybe she should go alone. If you don’t like human girls, she’d probably have more fun without you anyway.”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said, still smirking. “She’s fallen for me pretty hard. I think it’s the head tails.”

Vestara rolled her eyes. “Typical male—one little smile, and you think it’s love.” She turned her gaze toward the back of the closet, where a tall man in the red cape and golden armor of the Senate Security Force stood next to a wurlwood door leading to the Senator’s inner sanctum. “In any case, watching the chrono isn’t going to change the Senator’s schedule. He’s the chair of the Galactic Alliance Senate, after all. He’ll see us as soon as he can.”

“I hope so.” Ben cast a meaningful glance at the crate. The battle for Coruscant would be won or lost in the next half hour, and the outcome could depend on getting that crate into Suldar’s office before the Sith knew they were under attack. “If we’re still here in five minutes, I’m going anyway.”

Vestara exhaled in exasperation. “Hold this.”

She passed the silver tray to Ben, then rose and walked to the security guard. The man was lean and good-looking, with a square jaw and the flawless grooming that Ben had learned to associate with the vanity of Lost Tribe Sith.

“Excuse me.” It was impossible to see Vestara’s expression because she was facing away from Ben, but he had heard that particular voice quiver often enough to know she would be flashing a smile that appeared more nervous than it really was. “Have you announced our presence?”

The guard glared at her for a moment; then his brows came together, and he glanced toward Ben. “I have.”

The nervousness vanished from Vestara’s voice. “And have you mentioned that the gift is a peace offering from Senator Wuul?”

The guard’s eyes widened just enough to suggest that he knew more about the feud between the Senators Suldar and Wuul than any true security guard should have.

Vestara leaned a little closer. “I mean, I’d hate to think of the Senator in there, trying to line up support for a Tibanna tax increase, when Senator Wuul is ready to give in.”

“You know this for a fact?” The guard’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

Vestara shrugged. “Pages have ears, the same as security guards,” she said. “We know a lot of things we shouldn’t.”

The guard considered this for a moment, then glanced back toward Ben. “Wait here.”