Inferno (15 page)

The Sith way was one of deep sacrifice, and only now was Caedus coming to understand that he had not sacrificed the ability to love—only the ability to be loved in return. Time after time, he would be forced to betray his family and friends for the good of the galaxy, and time after time they would hate him for it. Yet he could never shrink from making those sacrifices. To do so was to sow the seeds of selfishness within himself, and down that path lay the greed and power lust that had corrupted Palpatine—and so many Sith before him.

So Caedus would continue to do what was necessary. At the moment, that meant accepting the revulsion, malice, and even pity that flooded the meld as the Jedi detected his presence. He returned their feelings with nothing more than curiosity.

Once the meld had adjusted to his arrival, Caedus began to get a clearer picture of the Jedi purpose. They were here with what seemed to be a whole wing of StealthXs—over seventy craft, if the techs had managed to put all of them into action—and they seemed ready to fight. To his relief, the mental images he kept glimpsing were the sterns of
Imperial
-class Star Destroyers and Empire-era cruisers.

The Jedi were targeting Commenorian capital ships.

Caedus could not quite keep a smug feeling of triumph from seeping into the meld. The occupation of the academy was working even better than expected. He projected his pleasure into the meld, simultaneously welcoming the Jedi to the battle and inviting them to open fire.

The only response was stony displeasure, and no shadow bombs erupted in the sterns of the Commenorian capital ships. A sense of expectation filled the meld—the same sense of expectation he had been experiencing since the battle opened—and he had the sinking feeling that he finally understood its meaning.

Caedus punched a control pad on his armrest. “Open a channel to Admiral Darklighter, urgent priority. And
don’t
let his aide put you off this time. It’s important.”

Krova acknowledged the order, leaving Caedus to pound his armrest in frustration.
Anyone
could be surprised. He had learned that from Darklighter, and
still
he had advanced straight into a trap. Now the Fourth Fleet was committed to a costly attack that only the Jedi could turn into success, and Caedus had no doubt they would demand a very steep price indeed for their cooperation.

Darklighter’s voice came over the speaker a moment later. “Yes, Colonel?” In the background, Caedus could hear the rumble of discharging turbolaser batteries and the crackle of shields dissipating excess energy. “We’re pretty busy right now, so I hope this isn’t another message of congratulations.”

“It isn’t,” Caedus replied. “I wanted—I
needed
—to advise you that—”

“That help is on the way,” interrupted a familiar voice behind Caedus. “Be ready to exploit.”

“Is that who I
think
it is?” Darklighter gasped.

“Yes,” Luke’s voice replied. “Carry on, Gavin.”

Caedus was already spinning his meditation chair around, but the motor was far too slow for his comfort. As soon as he had a clear path into his day cabin, he dived over the armrest and rolled to his feet, lightsaber in hand. Luke stood about a meter away, dressed in a StealthX flight suit and staring at the weapon in Caedus’s grasp with a be-mused, slightly sad scowl.

“Is it still that bad between us?” he asked.

“You tell
me.
” Caedus continued to hold the lightsaber. “It wasn’t the Force urging me to press the attack, it was you.”

“And you think that was a setup?” Luke asked.

“I
know
it was.” Caedus allowed a bit of animosity to creep into his voice. “You tricked me into committing the Fourth Fleet to a dangerous attack, and only
you
can keep it from turning into a disaster. What is it you want in return?”

Instead of looking smug, Luke’s face fell. “Nothing, Jacen. We didn’t set you up.” He reached into the battle-meld and urged the Jedi to attack. “I just wanted you to know we
could
have.”

Caedus didn’t know whether Luke was ordering the Jedi to attack the Commenorians—or him. Then the Force shuddered with the stunned anguish of thousands of beings perishing in a surprise attack, and Caedus half expected to feel the
Anakin Solo
bucking and twisting beneath his feet.

But the deck remained reassuringly steady, and no damage sirens sounded, and Caedus finally began to understand that the Jedi threat had been an empty one. Their trick had been little more than a halfhearted attempt to intimidate him, to remind him they possessed both the courage and the means to destroy him—and the Alliance. But the very fact that they had warned instead of acting betrayed their bluff. As long as GAG controlled the academy grounds, they would never risk an assassination or treason. They were too frightened of his ruthlessness—of his brutality.

Caedus returned his lightsaber to his belt, then gestured to the small tactical holodisplay in the corner of his day cabin. “Shall we see how the battle is progressing?”

“Be my guest,” Luke responded. As Caedus crossed the cabin, Luke turned to watch, but did not follow. “I think you’ll be impressed, Jacen.”

When Caedus activated the holodisplay, he
was
impressed. Most of the identifier codes for the Commenorian capital ships were blinking in distress, their colors ranging from amber—for battle-impaired—to deep red for totally crippled. And Gavin Darklighter was taking full advantage. The forward elements of the Fourth Fleet were already moving through the enemy lines. Knowing that they stood no chance against Alliance Star Destroyers, the Hutt marauders and corvettes abandoned their landing force and started to withdraw.

As the battle continued to unfold, Luke kept his distance from Caedus, watching the holodisplay from over near the observation bubble. Caedus was just as happy to have the extra space between them; he remained suspicious of Luke’s presence and was glad for the reaction time.

After a minute, the Fourth reached turbolaser range and opened fire, targeting not the Hutts’ fleeing capital ships but the assault shuttles still dropping toward Balmorra’s surface.

Caedus punched a comm pad on the holodisplay’s console. “Open a channel to Admiral Darklighter—”

“Urgent priority,” Krova finished. “Right away, Colonel.”

A moment later, Darklighter asked, “What is it, Colonel?”

“Redirect your fire and pursue,” Caedus ordered. “Our first priority is the destruction of the Hutt fleet, not the landing force.”

“With all due respect, Colonel,” Darklighter said in a tone completely devoid of it, “we can’t abandon the Balmorrans to a Hutt occupation, and it’s a lot easier to destroy those shuttles now than to fight their passengers dirtside.”

“The Balmorrans will have to handle the occupation themselves,” Caedus said. “I want those capital ships
destroyed
—better to trap the Hutts on one world than let them occupy a dozen.”

Darklighter remained silent, and over the comm channel Caedus could almost feel him struggling with his decision.

“That’s an
order,
Admiral,” Caedus said. “I know it seems wrong, but we’re not going to defeat the Confederation by blowing up shuttles. We need to kill the big ships.”

Darklighter remained silent a moment longer, then sighed. “Very well, Colonel. Redirecting fire and pursuing.”

Caedus watched as the Fourth Fleet accelerated after the Hutt capital ships and began to hammer their sterns. When the first marauder designator turned red and faded into destruction, Luke’s voice sounded from where he had remained standing.

“You
planned
this. You sacrificed a whole planet—”

“I
foresaw
it,” Caedus interrupted, turning back to his uncle. “All I did was take advantage…of…”

He let the sentence trail off as he realized Luke was no longer standing there. Caedus frowned and extended his Force-awareness first to his entire day cabin, then to the entire
Anakin Solo.
He felt no sign of his uncle’s presence anywhere.

“Luke?”

SD-XX emerged from his security station and ran his electronic gaze around the perimeter of the cabin, then reported, “There’s no one here, Colonel.”

“What about Luke Skywalker?” Caedus asked. “I was just talking to him.”

SD-XX fixed his blue photoreceptors on Caedus’s face. “You were talking,” he said. “But there was no one here. I assumed your circuits were misfiring again.”

Caedus considered this, wondering whether his anxiety over being discovered might be making him imagine things. Then he remembered that Gavin Darklighter had not only spoken to Luke, but also reacted to his instructions.

“No, he was here.” Caedus opened himself to the battle-meld again and felt his uncle among the other Jedi, his presence filled with sadness and disapproval…and admonition. “I don’t know how, but he
was
here.”

nine

The target sat alone in his study, turned toward a transparisteel wall where the twinkling spires of the Senate District skytowers poked through a blanket of night clouds. An aura of bitterness and regret made the room feel chill and heavy in the Force, but Ben could not be sure whether the feelings were his own or Omas’s. Sitting slumped in his big chair, with disheveled hair and purple bags hanging low beneath his eyes, the disgraced chief certainly did not
look
like a man who was plotting a return to power.

Still, appearances could be deceiving, and Cal Omas had not held the Galactic Alliance together for so long by being naïve or principled. During the Dark Nest crisis, when the Jedi had angered him by insisting that the Chiss come to a fair settlement with the Killiks, he had been more than willing to use false bargains, political manipulation, and even unwarranted imprisonment to undermine the power of the Jedi Order. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think he had sanctioned the killing of Ben’s mother—or to expect Ben to
believe
he had.

Ben turned his attention to the big Tendrando Arms Guardian standing next to the Chief’s desk. With gray laminanium armor, thick weapons-packed arms, and a stern downturned vocabulator opening, it was basically a VIP version of the same Defender Droid that had served as Ben’s companion and protector during his childhood. Assuming this droid had the same internal design as his Nanna, he visualized the circuit breaker hidden beneath the neck armor and used the Force to trip it.

The Guardian’s photoreceptors dimmed for an instant; then there was a
click
as the breaker reset itself. The droid’s blocky head swiveled toward the entrance alcove where Ben stood watching.

“Blast!” Ben flipped the circuit breaker again—then heard another
click.
Clearly,
that
particular design flaw had been corrected. “Double blast!”

The Guardian raised an arm and swung it toward the entry alcove where Ben was lurking.

“Do not be alarmed!” the droid said. A stream of tiny flechettes began to fly from its fingertips. “Armed intruder. Take evasive action.”

It was speaking to Omas, but Ben was already diving. He landed in a forward roll and pulled a gauss ball—the equivalent of a stun grenade for droids—off his equipment harness and came up flinging. The ball splatted into the Guardian’s chest plate and flattened into a crackling mass of energy.

Instead of turning into the buzz-zombie Ben expected, the droid began to stagger about blindly, flailing its arms and spraying a line of energy bolts through the ceiling. Clearly, its mag-shielding had been upgraded beyond even military standards.
Blast and double blast!
So far
everything
was going wrong on this operation. Ben somersaulted toward the droid. It changed directions and crashed into a credenza along the adjacent wall, opposite Omas’s fancy desk.

Ben ignited his lightsaber then rolled to his feet, Force-sprang to the droid’s side, and swung at its cannon arm. The laminanium was so strong that his first strike cut only halfway through. The Guardian spun toward him, its other arm coming around like a club, its fingers spraying flechettes in random directions.

Ben stepped after the cannon arm and swung again, using the Force to guide his blow. He felt his lightsaber sink into the same cut as before and slice through, then turned toward the other arm and attacked the flechette-spraying hand at the wrist.

The hand clunked to the floor, but the forearm caught him in the head and knocked him into the wall. Ben slid to the floor with his skull ringing and ears spinning, but still conscious and alert—more or less. He deactivated the blade and grabbed the bottom edge of the droid’s chest plate, then pulled himself up and jammed the hilt of his weapon against its armpit.

Confused though it was by the gauss ball, the droid recognized its vulnerability and tried to pivot away. Ben held tight and reignited his lightsaber. The blade shot through the thick torso like a gamma ray, scrambling the processing core and burying Ben beneath an avalanche of armor as the ruined Guardian slumped down on top of him.

Was
anything
going to go right?

Ben used the Force to throw the Guardian off, then came up staring straight down the emitter nozzle of a Merr-Sonn Power 5 blaster pistol. To his great relief, the next thing he saw was not a flash of death-dealing energy, but Chief Omas’s puzzled face frowning over the barrel of the weapon.

“Ben?”

Ben flicked his hand and sent the blaster flying.

The chief watched it clatter into the wall, the confusion in his face changing to sorrow. Ben sensed no hint of comprehension or remorse in the Force to suggest that Omas felt any guilt over the death of his mother.

“Ah, Ben.” Omas stepped slowly back, holding his hands in plain view and sadly shaking his head. “I’m sorry it has to be you. This is a nasty business for someone so young.”

Taking care to keep his lightsaber between himself and Omas, Ben rose to his feet. “You know why I’m here?”

Omas dropped his head in acknowledgment. “I’m only surprised Jacen has taken this long.”