Star Wars: Knight Errant (16 page)

Time was running out. Kerra bolted into the open.

“Command, Recon Ripper-Two! Additional contact!”

“I see it, Rip-Two,” Rusher said, doing his best to track the lone female figure on the poisoned plain. The brown-clad woman was making a headlong run for the protean mass of transport passengers, a kilometer away—and Daiman’s thugs on the ridge were taking potshots at her. “I don’t know who she is—or what she’s trying to prove. But she’s not our problem.”

“Not on the surface, Brigadier! Additional contact in the air, sky-high!”

Reflexively, Rusher lifted the macrobinoculars to look up, before realizing he didn’t need them to see what was descending. It was the last thing he expected to see here. And the one thing he never wanted to see.

“Death Spiral!”

* * *

Everywhere on the crater floor, beings looked up in awe. That included Kerra, halfway to the groups of children, watching the shadow pierce the haze above.

The form falling through the clouds was a featureless truncated cone, several hundred meters in height. Braking rockets allowed the monstrous obsidian shape to settle on the surface just southwest of the crater’s center, equidistant from the transports and the big facility that had arrived before it.

Within a second of planting itself in the similarly colored surface, the towering cone shuddered. With a clatter drawing shrieks of surprise and horror from the mob of students, the device shed its outer casings, ejecting mammoth metal panels to the ground.

For it was a
device
that remained. Kerra recognized it immediately from the history holos.
A Death Spiral
. Developed by Lord Chagras years earlier, it had been conceived as a siege tower in reverse. From its base to its tapering top were more than a dozen concentric rings of blaster turrets and missile launchers, all able to rotate independently. Dropped in the middle of a location under siege, a Death Spiral—named for the rotating levels giving the illusion that the cone was screwing itself into the ground—was designed to fire in all directions at once.

The late Chagras had built several of the devilish devices on a smaller scale; Vannar had barely survived to tell of his encounter with one. Those towers had been controlled remotely. But Odion’s version was so large, Kerra saw, that there were actual crews on each level, operating the guns. The huge base, too, served as its own transport and armory, wide doors lower down opening to release scores of airspeeders, speeder bikes, and three-legged armored transports.

Above, Odion’s troop transports descended. Kerra
shuddered. It had been exactly like this on Chelloa: Odion, invading from the sky with a contraption of death. There was no mistaking it. This was nothing of Daiman’s. Odion’s symbol, imprinted on the transports, said it all. Seven chevrons in a circle, pointed outward, on a black field. Arrows reaching outward—but being swallowed from behind by an ever-expanding void.

With an ear-piercing groan, the Spiral’s turrets began to move and fire. The void was expanding.

“Quickfire, quickfire!”

Rusher gripped the railing as brilliant streaks erupted along the ridge on either side of him. In just a few minutes, the once-deserted crater floor had become a busy place. It was about to become a hot one, too. Laserfire from Rusher’s unit pounded the murderous pillar, towering to the southwest. Seconds later, the Nosaurian’s crew opened up from farther along the ridge. Rusher smirked. The Rushies were first on target again.

Some target
. Yulan had spoken of Death Spirals, but Rusher had never seen one. And no one had ever seen one like this. The tower must have kept the fabricators on The Spike busy for months. As the flashes dissipated, Rusher could see the Spiral’s rings continuing to move, firing at Daiman’s forces to the north.

That wasn’t good. “Sergeant Wenna’lah! Target damage assessment!”

Rusher barely heard the spotter’s voice over the din of another round of outgoing energy. “Damage zero, command.”

“Zero?”

“Energy shield went live the second the target landed.”

Rusher swore. They’d had a clear shot while the beast was descending, but Daiman’s signal had ordered them to hold their fire. The young lord was waiting for Odion to make his appearance. Now that he had, somewhere
out there in that swarm of transports disgorging his crack Thunder Guard troops, it was too late. Rusher’s most potent weapons were out of play.

“Ripper and Sat’skar! Projectile only, on the tower!” The two battalions had the largest number of proton mortar launchers.

“No shot from the north,” called a voice back. Ripper Battalion was on the upper flank, partially screened from the Death Spiral by the buildings of the arxeum.

“Aim high and lob ’em over!” Rusher rolled his eyes skyward. To clear the arxeum, they’d be firing into the clouds.
Looks like rain
. “Energy weapons crews, target Bad Brother’s vehicles and personnel. Rolling barrage—don’t let ’em cross!” Odion’s forces were moving, now, fanning out. The fliers would be the first across, reaching the arxeum, the transports, and the students if Daiman’s ground troops didn’t get there first.

The students!
Rusher urgently scanned the field. The adolescents had broken from the semi-orderly companies the minder droids had organized, and were stampeding as a crazed mass back toward the transports. The Death Spiral hadn’t begun firing in their direction yet, but he didn’t put it past Odion.

And Rusher’s employer had put them in this position.

And you went along, to save your neck
, Rusher thought.
Stars help them
.

To the south, the rings of the Death Spiral lined up, their guns unleashing their deadly potential. “Give me that blasted fire on the tower, now!”

Skrra-aakt!

Narsk folded his furry ears over and mashed his hands down upon them. Odion’s crew hadn’t bothered to supply him with a helmet, but this close to the Death Spiral, the Bothan found himself wishing for earplugs.

“That’s the way!” yelled Lord Odion, standing in the
open drop-gate of the hovering transport. Looking gleefully at the spitting tower, he pulled his cybernetically attached comlink closer to his lips. “Do it! Again!”

Another shrill, piercing scream from above—and to the north, Narsk saw another of the Industrial Heuristics transports explode. Shrapnel showered the ashen mulch for hundreds of meters around, just short of the mob of teenagers. With a third volley destroying another transport, the trapped students turned again in panic, flowing like mercury back toward the arxeum.

Field trip’s over, kids
, Narsk thought.
Sorry
.

Clinging inside the doorway, Narsk watched as Odion gave a booming battle cry and bounded to the surface. Other similarly armored members of the Thunder Guard followed, leaving only himself, Jelcho, and the command crew aboard.

“Look over there!”

Narsk turned to see flashes of artillery fire coming from hidden positions on the crater wall, far to the east. They weren’t Daiman’s regulars; those were all coming down into the fray from the northern ridge. He thought back to the mercenaries he’d passed on the way out.
Part of Daiman’s preparations, no doubt
.

Watching several Thunderers blown to pieces ahead of Odion, Narsk spoke his mind. “This is ridiculous! He knew what was down here. Why didn’t he just bombard the crater from orbit?”

“Lord Odion wanted to be sure of the Petulant One’s presence before dispatching him to the void,” Jelcho said. The Givin joined him at the edge of the transport’s tailgate, his bony knuckles clasped together excitedly. There was almost color in his freakish face, Narsk saw.
Almost
.

Narsk found the Givin noxious—and obnoxious. First among Odion’s death cultists, they seemed to have nothing in their skinless heads beyond a desire to finish de
composing, once and for all. “My people would prefer that our lord slew us, of course,” Jelcho nattered. “But we will happily accept reaching the void through the agency of Death’s brother.”

Narsk glared. “How about Death’s furry pal?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Narsk wished for something to hit Jelcho in the face with, if only to improve his appearance. But Odion had made Jelcho his babysitter for the duration; the wraith was the closest excuse Odion had to an aide-de-camp. Odion had the simplest power structure of any Sith Lord he’d met. There were no ranks whatsoever, and none of Daiman’s regimentation, either. Unlike Daiman, Odion knew others existed—and feared them. He kept potential rivals from rising by making sure everyone reported to him.

In practice, the result was chaos. Odion’s empire devoured worlds like a space slug, using neither finesse nor, often, good sense. The competent were neutralized or paralyzed. And those closest to Odion were the ones who cared least for their own survival, because so few survived around him very long.

That worked well enough for Narsk, as an outsider. It allowed him to treat Odion’s underlings any way he wished. None had any power over him—except to nauseate.

“Jelcho!” one of the pilots called from the back. “
Sword of Ieldis
just called. Daiman’s fleet just arrived from hyperspace! They’re engaging our forces now!”

So that’s the ploy
, Narsk thought.
Get Odion here, and don’t let him leave
.

The edges of Jelcho’s mouth curled, lending a macabre aspect to his anatomically permanent frown. He embraced the Bothan. “This truly is the day!” he trilled. “And you, Bothan spy, made this all possible.”

Narsk shrank from the insipid touch. “Would it be
all right if I had a blaster? I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

The Death Spiral spat again, demolishing the last Industrial Heuristics transport. Kerra slid in the muck, stopping just in time to avoid being struck by flaming debris.

It had been wrong to come this way. She’d hoped to herd at least some of the students aboard one of the transports, but Odion’s hateful machine hadn’t left them anything. The youthful gaggle had dispersed now, running pell-mell across the northern surface of the crater. At least Daiman’s warriors hadn’t charged the field yet, or they’d be caught in the middle.

Right now, Daiman was letting others do his fighting. Several cadres of battle droids rushed the valley from the east, engaging Odion’s Thunderers—and then there was that artillery. Running again, Kerra thanked the Force for whomever Daiman had on that eastern ridge. Intentionally or not, their shells were screening the fleeing refugees from Odion’s charge.

But it couldn’t last for long. Looking south, she saw that the Death Spiral had the eastern emplacements zeroed in. She wouldn’t have enough time to intercept the crowd unless—

Blasterfire suddenly raked the ground ahead of her. Kerra leapt to the side, tumbling in the greasy soil. The flanking edge of Odion’s first wave of swoop bike riders soared past, with three of the armored warriors breaking off to circle her. Parrying blaster shots with her lightsaber, Kerra closed with the nearest rider and pounced. Slashing the front control rods from the vehicle, Kerra twirled underneath, watching rider and vehicle plummet downward into an explosive crash.

She spun and spun again as the remaining riders closed with her, trying to get a bead on her while mov
ing. The first rider, a Rodian, lost balance when a deflected blaster bolt knocked him from his seat; the second lost her helmeted head to Kerra’s lightsaber.

Ignoring the departing wave of fliers, Kerra approached the fallen Rodian. Armored as one of Odion’s Thunderers, he gurgled in agony as Kerra stepped over his body to reach his stalled bike.

“Yeah, that’s bad,” Kerra said, righting the handlebars. “Trust me, you died for a reason.”

“Kellies inoperable, command!”

“Blast!” Lights were going off the board one after another. Now Rusher’s best battalion was without its strongest weapons. “Pull out the Gweiths, Tun-Badon—and join in on the tower!”

The leader of Serraknife wouldn’t take that well, he knew; the Gweith Brothers concussion missile launchers were some of the slowest-loading pieces in the arsenal, with a fire/disable rating in the planetary core. You could paint a peace mural on them between shots. But he also knew Major Tun-Badon would already be on the job.

Between blasts, word had come from the bridge that Daiman’s fleet had arrived and was engaging Odion’s forces in orbit. It couldn’t have mattered less to
Diligence
, doing its best to stay horizontal with all the impacts.

“We’re dialed in!” someone yelled over the comlink. Rusher couldn’t make out the call signal.

“Repeat! Whose battalion was that? Which battalion?”

Seeing the flares of energy lancing from the Death Spiral, Rusher realized the answer.

All of them
.

The signal was unmistakable. Even in the din of battle, Narsk had felt and heard it: a gentle buzz, in the back of his head.

It had been delivered by a tiny implant at the base of
his skull, hidden so well that Daiman’s scans had never found it. Narsk knew instantly what the signal meant.