Inferno (11 page)

Finally, Alema found herself standing inside the foyer of Lumiya’s suite of chambers, her lekku prickling in anticipation of the wonders she would soon discover. Each of Lumiya’s traps had whetted her appetite for Sith technology, and each time she had defeated one, her expectations had risen. Whatever Lumiya had been trying to guard, it was obviously very important—and valuable. Alema began to have visions of a Sith megaweapon, something that might be able to bring the Galactic Alliance to heel with a single demonstration. Or maybe it was something more subtle, such as an artifact that allowed one to read an enemy’s thoughts from afar. Maybe she would find both—or a whole cache of strange new Sith technology. All those traps had been designed to protect
something.

Alema started by focusing on her Force-awareness, looking for any cold places or disturbances that might suggest a nexus of dark side energy—then quickly gave it up as hopeless. The whole asteroid was suffused with the dark side, so much so that she almost felt as though she were snug in the Dark Nest again, surrounded by the familiar presences of her fellow Gorog. It was a bittersweet sensation, one that threatened to undermine her safety by lulling her into a false sense of security.

Alema advanced to a careful reconnaissance of the quarters. With a handful of beige sleeping chambers, a keet-paneled study, a vaulted dining room, and a sunken conversation parlor, the suite was comfortable enough. But it was hardly grand or opulent, far from the kind of place that one would expect someone of Lumiya’s power and resources to call home. There was no artwork or memorabilia to make it feel inhabited, though the full-length mirrors on every wall did hint at Lumiya’s vanity.

Somehow, the mirrors always seemed to reflect Alema at the best possible angle, concealing her disfigurements and accentuating her still-svelte figure. She was enormously pleased—but that did not prevent her from cautiously checking behind each one to make certain it did not conceal a safe or hidden doors.

Unfortunately, she discovered no secret chambers behind the mirrors, or anywhere else in the suite. The only hint of a secure room was an ancient synthwood door tucked in back of an old-fashioned kitchen. The infrared ovens and particle beam cooktops were too clean to have been used anytime recently, but the door was the only locked portal she had found in the entire suite.

Alema checked for each kind of trap she had encountered so far, then for all the others she had been trained to identify. Finding none, she opened herself to the Force and ran her hand over the door’s surface, alert for the faintest prickle of danger sense.

She felt nothing. Whatever trap Lumiya had placed on this door, Alema could not find it. And that could only mean one thing: this was where the Sith treasures were hidden.

Alema stepped back, taking a moment to calm her pounding heart and consider how to attack the problem. There was no question of leaving the door unopened. To restore the Balance between her and Leia, she had to turn Jacen into what Leia hated most—another Emperor. To turn Jacen into another Emperor, she had to be able to control him, to stop him from doing foolish things like taking the Jedi academy hostage. And to control Jacen, she needed leverage—leverage such as the Sith artifacts hidden behind that door.

After a few minutes of calming exercises, Alema’s heart finally stopped pounding. She felt confident that she had considered the problem from every angle, and still she could not figure out how the door might be trapped. Her only resource was her knowledge of Lumiya.

The Dark Lady of the Sith had been a sophisticated and subtle woman, someone who planned in layers and took great pride in reading her prey. She would expect anyone who had made it this deep into her inner sanctum to be as cunning and complex as she was, and her trap would be designed with that type of person in mind. What she would
not
expect was an intruder who acted like a common thug, who took the easiest, most direct route to what she wanted.

Alema took a small concussion grenade off her utility belt, then used a dab of synthglue to affix it to the door over the lock. She retreated into the adjacent room and used the Force to activate the trigger. There came a silver flash and an earsplitting bang, and a cloud of black smoke rolled into the dining room.

Once the smoke had cleared, Alema braved a shower of fire-suppression foam to return to the kitchen. The door in back was hanging twisted and half open. In her excitement, Alema barely remembered to check for more traps, but she still didn’t find any—sprung or otherwise. She activated a glow rod and peered through the charred doorway into an old food storage closet.

The shelves were lined with cybernetic supplies—tools, fluids, replacement parts—all the equipment Lumiya might need to maintain her mechanical half. As far as Alema could tell, the little room did not contain a single Sith artifact.

Completely forgetting her own safety now, she slipped past the door. An overhead glow panel activated automatically, filling the chamber with soft white light. Along one wall, she found a huge stockpile of powdered mixes for the protein and vitamin drinks that had served Lumiya’s half-cyborg body as food. On a low shelf on the opposite wall, she found a few power cells and extra strands for the Dark Lady’s lightwhip.

“Spare parts?”
Alema felt herself swelling up with anger, the frustration and fear of the search stoking the fire inside.
“Protein drink?”

She swept half a dozen powdered protein canisters off a shelf, then kicked out in the opposite direction and sent flying a carton of sharpened Kaiburr Crystals.
That
felt so good that she ignited her lightsaber, then caused a sour-smelling cascade of hydraulic fluid by slashing open an entire row of plastoid jars.

“We want artifacts!” Alema swung again, cutting the supports from beneath a high shelf. “We want Sith treasure!”

A cybernetic arm came crashing down on her, battering her about the head and shoulders. She shrugged it off and started to bring her lightsaber around to hack the offending part into so much chaff—then noticed a finger-length datachip holder lying in the hydraulic fluid near the open end of the arm’s hollinium casing.

“Well…what have we here?” Alema deactivated her lightsaber and retrieved the datachip holder. “Could
you
be the reason Lumiya kept this door locked?”

She stared at the fiberplast case as though waiting for an answer—which, in a sense, she was. After a moment, she began to perceive a faint ripple in the Force, the barest hint of the last emotion she had expected to encounter: hope, perhaps even comfort.

“Interesting,” Alema said. “What
are
you?”

This time she did not wait for an answer—despite what Ship believed, she was not
that
broken. Instead, she looked for more datachips, first searching through the other cybernetic supplies, then the Kaiburr Crystals she had scattered across the floor and the other cartons of lightwhip parts. She ended by emptying every canister of vitamin drink and powdered protein into the growing mess on the floor.

There were no more datachips to be found, though Alema did discover over a million credits in generic chits hidden inside some of the protein canisters. She left the currency on the floor with everything else she did not want;
credits
she could get anytime, and stealing them was always so much more fun.

Convinced there was nothing else to discover in the food closet, Alema returned to Lumiya’s study and inserted the chip into a datapad. She expected to encounter a request for a password or some other form of security; instead, a hooded head appeared on the display and instantly began to speak.

“Our apologies for the brevity of your journey.” The speaker’s face remained hidden in the shadows beneath his hood, but the voice was male—and full of dark power. “Had we foreseen the speed of the invaders’ advance, we would have sent a more sizable escort. Should you survive and care to reach us on your own, the navigation string attached to this message will guide you…
once.
”

The figure appeared to lean away from the light, and the display went dark. Alema extracted the datachip, then sat back to consider. She had been taught as a young Jedi that only two Sith existed at any one time: the dark side drive for personal power always prevented them from establishing a larger Order. But Lumiya had once hinted—in the missile hold of the
Anakin Solo,
as she made preparations that might involve sacrificing herself to kill Luke Skywalker—that there
were
more than two Sith, and that their plan for the galaxy did not necessarily involve Lumiya’s survival. The figure in the message certainly supported this idea; at the least, he seemed to be part of a larger group.

Alema returned the datachip to its holder and started for the hangar. Clearly, she had set her sights too low. She did not need Sith
artifacts
to guide Jacen to success.

What she needed were the Sith themselves.

six

To the starboard side of the observation bubble hung a crescent of smog-shrouded world, its planetary defense shields dappled with gold overload circles, its legendary defense platforms reduced to flickering twinkles of flame. Balmorra was lost. Jacen was certain of that. But the Confederation would pay dearly for victory here, provided that the pilots of the Fourth Fleet lived up to their fearless reputation—and provided that he could finally bring his battle meditation into play.

When Jacen closed his eyes, he could see the Hutt armada—a motley swarm of vessels ranging from heavy marauders to fast corvettes—attacking Balmorra. He could see a flotilla of Commenorian Star Destroyers performing a screening action to keep the Alliance at bay. What Jacen could
not
see was the readiness of his crews: whether they were eager for a fight, whether their commanders were alert or distracted…whether they were loyal to the new government or considered it an illegal regime.

Jacen turned his attention to the Fourth’s new flagship,
Peacebringer,
then pictured Admiral Ratobo’s noseless face, the big eyes and huge bald head. The image darkened to gray-blue, and a pair of pensive creases climbed the Bith’s high brow. For a moment, Jacen sensed Ratobo’s distaste for the battle they would soon be fighting—and his anger at the politicians for allowing it to become necessary.

Then the image began to fade, the face became scaly and reptilian, and for the thousandth time Jacen found his thoughts returning to Mara’s funeral—to the lecture Saba Sebatyne had hurled at him. Who was
she
to chastise
him
? Who was
any
Jedi to criticize
Darth Caedus
? At least
he
was fighting to save the Alliance. All the Jedi ever did was dither and debate and balk at the necessities of this dirty war.

But Jacen knew the lecture was not the real problem. Saba’s eulogy might mean that she knew how Mara had died. And what if Luke’s words of reconciliation had been even more of a ploy than his own? Tahiri claimed the Jedi were still investigating Mara’s death, but what if the Masters were deliberately misinforming her? Or what if
she
was misleading him, acting as a double agent?

That was why Darth Caedus had “secured” the academy. The Masters would be reluctant to move against him while the students were under his control. When they tried to free the students, he would know they were coming for him. And even if the Masters did
not
know he had killed Mara, the maneuver would draw resources away from the investigation. It would buy him time—perhaps enough time to win this war.

Of course, Jacen would have some explaining to do when Tenel Ka learned of the takeover, but he wasn’t worried that it would affect her decision to lend him the Home Fleet. She would understand when he explained that he was only protecting the interests of the Alliance
and
the Jedi. Tenel Ka was the one person in this galaxy he would always be able to count on; she had proven that already.

The voice of a female comm officer came over the intercom. “Colonel Solo, holo for you on GAG channel bacta-two.”

Caedus scowled. The entire bridge crew had clear instructions never to disturb him when he was inside his observation bubble. “Not
now,
Ensign.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s
top urgent
priority,” the comm officer said. “And it’s
Lieutenant
Krova, sir.”

“Not anymore,” Caedus retorted, deliberately allowing his frustration over the failed battle meditation to creep into his voice. “What part of
never disturb
—”

“It’s Ben Skywalker, sir.” Krova’s voice was cracking with anxiety, but she pressed on. “He said to tell you he knows who killed his mother.”

Caedus’s heart suddenly felt like a cold, still stone. “He does? That’s…wonderful news.” He touched a pad on his armrest, and his heavy meditation chair slowly spun toward the tiny HoloNet transceiver tucked next to the bubble entrance. “Very well,
Lieutenant.
Transfer the signal.”

“Thank you, sir,” Krova said, obviously relieved that she had retained her rank. “And, sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“When you catch the dung-worm who killed her, don’t go easy,” she said. “Do a Habuur on him.”

“A
Habuur
?” Caedus echoed. Ailyn Habuur had died under his interrogation during the early stages of the war, when it had still looked like it might be possible to avoid a major conflict. He had not learned until later that she was the daughter of Boba Fett, the famous bounty hunter who had delivered his father to Jabba the Hutt frozen in carbonite. “Thank you for the suggestion, Lieutenant. I’ll keep it in mind.”

He tapped the control pad on his armrest, and a moment later Ben’s shoulders and head appeared over the projector pad. It was the first Caedus had seen of his younger cousin since Mara’s funeral, and the boy was holding up better than expected. Rather than red and puffy, his eyes were sunken, dark, and angry, and his hard expression suggested that sympathy was the last thing he wanted from anyone. It all pointed to how wrong Lumiya had been about him, to what a fine apprentice Ben still might make.