Inferno Page 7

  “I can’t believe what my brother has come to,” Jaina said, “calling on the likes of you.”

  “You know what they say … desperate times and all that.” Serpa cocked his arm, and the hold-out blaster vanished into his sleeve. “Now perhaps you’d care to surrender your weapons?”

  “Not really,” Jaina said, resigning herself to working with the sociopath to capture Alema. “And I doubt you’d want us to, if you knew why we’re here.”

  Serpa frowned. “I’ll decide that.”

  “Fine,” Jag said. “Do you know who Alema Rar is?”

  “Of course—a Jedi Knight gone bad.” Serpa smirked again. “Imagine that.”

  “It happens,” Jaina said, fuming. “And she’s here somewhere. We don’t know what she’s up to, but you can bet it’s no good.”

  Serpa scowled in suspicion. “How long?”

  “Probably since last night,” Jag said. “We’re working off a set of vector plots that go all the way back to the Hapes Consortium, so we’re fairly sure—”

  “She came from the consortium?” Orame interrupted. “where in the Consortium?”

  “On the Terephon side, just outside the Transitory Mists,” Jaina answered. “A place called Roqoo Depot. Why?”

  Orame lowered the corners of her thin-lipped mouth. “I wonder if Roqoo Depot is between here and Kavan?”

  Jaina had a sinking feeling. She didn’t know Hapan astrometry well enough to know the answer, but she had heard that Kavan was where Mara’s body had been found.

  “I’d be very interested in the answer to that question,” Jaina said.

  Before Serpa could object, Orame tapped a string of commands into a control console. The image above the flight control holopad shifted to a map of the Hapan Consortium. Roqoo Depot’s approximate location was noted on the fringes of the map, on the side closest to Ossus. A few dozen light-years away, in the same system as Hapes, the planet Kavan sat at the far end of a hyperdrive route running straight past Roqoo Depot.

  “A straight shot!” Jaina gasped.

  “From what the astrometry files say, yes,” Orame replied. “And if Alema Rar was at Roqoo Depot—”

  “It’s too big a coincidence,” Jaina agreed. “If she didn’t do it, she was involved.”

  “You can’t jump to that conclusion yet,” Jag warned. “Remember, Alema didn’t chop up that freighter crew until after Mara died. Would she really have drawn attention to herself like that so soon after the murder?”

  Jaina gave him a don’t-be-stupid look and said nothing.

  “Okay.” Jag sighed. “We can assume she knows something.”

  “At the least,” Jaina said. Growing more worried about the young ones by the moment, she turned to Serpa. “Now do you want us to surrender our weapons?”

  “Actually, yes,” Serpa replied. “Your little play was very convincing, but Alema Rar isn’t on Ossus. My team has been in control of the flight room—”

  “Would you have seen her come down in a StealthX?” Jaina asked.

  She didn’t bother explaining that Alema had been flying something else, a vessel they didn’t quite understand but that nevertheless seemed to be as elusive as a StealthX.

  Serpa considered this a moment, then removed a comlink from his sleeve pocket and opened a channel. “Captain Tong, give me a status check on all stations. Note anything out of the ordinary—anything at all.”

  “As you wish, sir,” a clear female voice responded. “I’ll report back in a few moments.”

  Instead of clicking off and waiting for a paging chirp, Serpa held out his arm and stared at the comlink, smiling and nodding to himself each time a station reported everything normal. Jaina saw that she and Jag were going to have to be very careful how they dealt with the major, lest they prompt him to do something rash.

  As Serpa continued to listen to the reports, Jaina lowered her voice to a whisper and asked Orame, “What about the instructors? Why didn’t they try to stop him?”

  Orame shook her head. “The only Jedi here are the Masters Solusar and half a dozen new Jedi Knights stuck on patrol duty,” she said. “Everyone else went to the funeral on Coruscant.”

  “Imagine that,” Serpa said, looking up from his comlink. “Stripping the academy of its Jedi when terrorists are running rampant across the galaxy. It’s fortunate we arrived when we did.”

  Orame’s blue face darkened to purple. “The only reason your shuttle reached the ground in one piece was because you declared an emergency and requested medical assistance.”

  “Bombardment seemed rather extreme, under the circumstances,” Serpa said amiably. “After all, the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance Guard are on the same side.”

  “At least we’re supposed to be.” Though Jaina wasn’t really surprised by the depth of Jacen’s treachery, she was stinging from it. He had been such a gentle spirit as a teenager—such a caring brother—that she could never have imagined what he would become as an adult, how he would wound her and the entire Jedi Order. “Frankly, I’m beginning to have my doubts.”

  “You see?” Serpa asked. “That’s why the colonel sent me—to make sure we all stay friends.”

  “I’ve never cared for Jacen’s idea of friendship,” Jag said. “What did you find out about Alema?”

  “You know what I found out.” Serpa flashed him a sly grin. “That wherever she is, it’s not here.”

  “You can’t know that,” Jaina said. “Just because none of your security stations reported anything unusual—”

  “We have a lot of security stations,” Serpa interrupted. “I can tell you how many gokobs are sneaking potams from the kitchens.”

  “Alema is no gokob,” Jaina said. “She could walk right past one of your guards and he wouldn’t remember seeing her.”

  “My guards wouldn’t remember seeing her.” Serpa mimicked the monotone voice often used by targets of a Force suggestion—then rolled his eyes. “Pleeeaase! Colonel Solo has inured us to your Jedi mind tricks.”

  “This is no trick,” Jag said. “Alema Rar has the ability to wipe the memory of seeing her from even Jedi minds. It would be no challenge at all to deceive the witless sculags in your command.”

  “Witless sculags?” Serpa appeared to consider the term for a moment, then nodded and extended his hand toward Jaina. “You’re probably right. I’m afraid I’ll have to take your weapons and comlinks now—my sculags might mistake you for the enemy and get themselves killed.”

  “Not going to happen,” Jaina said. She nodded Jag toward the door, then started around the big holodisplay herself. “We’re going hunting for Alema Rar. Tell your people to stay out of our way.”

  “Sorry—that won’t work for me,” Serpa said from behind them. “As I said before, I’m not going to place this facility at risk by allowing unauthorized personnel to walk around with weapons—no matter who gets caught in the crossfire.”

  No prickle of danger sense ran down Jaina’s spine, but there was something cold in Serpa’s voice that made her stop and turn. “I hope you’re not threatening the young ones.”

  “I’m merely pointing out the danger you’ll be placing them in,” Serpa said evenly. “The rules have been established for the safety of everyone. I really must insist on having your comlinks and weapons … if you intend to stay on academy grounds.”

  Jaina frowned. “If we intend to stay?” She hadn’t really expected that Serpa would let them depart, but—compared with the young ones—she and Jag were relatively worthless hostages. “You’d let us leave?”

  “Colonel Solo does want this operation conducted under the strictest secrecy, but—” Serpa waved a hand at the battered squad of troopers still struggling to pick themselves up off the floor. “—does it look like I could stop you? If you want to leave Masters Tionne and Solusar here with only a handful of inexperienced Jedi Knights to, um, coordinate between my battalion of sculags and all those Jedi young ones … well, I’m enough of a realist to realize the choice is entirely
yours.”

  Jaina felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Serpa wasn’t exactly threatening the young ones, but he was pointing out how much danger they would be in if the situation between Jacen and the Jedi continued to deteriorate. Eight Jedi—especially when six of them were inexperienced—would not be enough to protect hundreds of children from an entire GAG battalion.

  Jag arrived at the exit and reached for the control panel to unlock the door he had secured earlier.

  Jaina motioned for him to stop. “Jag, hold on.” She could not believe her brother would actually order Serpa to harm the academy students—but Jacen had done many things lately that she could not believe. “I think we’d better turn over our weapons.”

  Jag scowled as though she were as unbalanced as Serpa. “Why in the six novas would we do that?”

  “Same reason Masters Tionne and Solusar did.” As Jaina explained, she was reaching out to Zekk in the Force, opening a battle-meld and urging him to forget about Alema, stay hidden, and wait until he was needed. “Because we can’t destroy an entire GAG battalion without getting a lot of kids killed, and because matters aren’t that desperate yet.”

  Serpa smiled. “I thought you might see it my way.”

  “You can be very persuasive.” Jaina opened her lightsaber and removed the focusing crystal. “I’m sure that’s why my brother entrusted you with this mission.”

  “One of many reasons.” Serpa came around the holodisplay and accepted her lightsaber and blaster pistol, then turned to face Jag. “Fel?”

  Jag removed the power packs from his blaster and vibroknife, then returned to Jaina’s side and held the weapons just out of Serpa’s reach.

  “I want to continue our search,” Jag said. “Whether you and your men realize it or not, Alema Rar is here.”

  “By all means.” Serpa waited until Jag placed the weapons in his hands, then said, “And if you find her, let me know. I’ll send someone to pick up the pieces.”

  five

  A sudden compulsion to hide welled up inside Alema’s chest. Worried that her pursuers had found her after all, she peered over the top of the study carrel where she was working. In the front lobby, she saw only the same two GAG troopers who had been guarding the library when she arrived. They were leaning against the front desk, talking softly and gazing into each other’s eyes. A faint voice droned over the woman’s comlink, but either the orders did not concern her or Alema’s Force suggestion had fallen on ground more fertile than she had realized.

  The compulsion to hide became an entreaty to wait, then a premonition of trouble, and Alema realized the sensations were coming from outside herself. Someone was projecting those feelings so powerfully they had overspilled a battle-meld and rippled out for just anyone to sense. Probably the academy’s GAG “protectors” were giving Jaina and her two lust-toads more trouble than they had Alema, and that was a relief. The trio had been hounding Alema’s trail since Roqoo Depot, and she had known it would only be a matter of time before they caught up and began to snoop around the academy.

  Alema stretched her Force-awareness toward the guards, then focused her attention on the drone coming from the woman’s comlink.

  “… and her escort searching academy grounds.” The voice was male and assertive, no doubt that of the mission commander. “Don’t interfere, but don’t let them … the hostages.”

  Hostages?

  Stunned to hear the term actually being used over a comm channel, Alema dropped back into her seat. She had known all along that the GAG troops were there to prevent the academy from being used to foment resistance to Jacen’s coup, but she had never suspected he would actually be foolish enough to take the young ones hostage. It was a bold move—but also a rash one, far more likely to provoke Luke than to contain him.

  Alema did not understand how Jacen could have made such a mistake. Until now, his stratagems had been nothing short of brilliant. He had won over the population of Coruscant and much of the rest of the Alliance with his tough-on-terrorists approach, and he had used his popularity to take personal control of nearly half the galaxy. So why had he made such a terrible blunder now? Why had he suddenly grown arrogant enough to believe he could threaten the Jedi Order and succeed?

  The answer, of course, was Lumiya. Jacen had not blundered until his mentor was killed, then—within days of her death—he had overreached himself. Obviously, the colonel still needed guidance … and Lumiya had clearly foreseen that he would. Why else would she have allowed Alema to follow her to her asteroid hideout? Lumiya had wanted to make sure that if she were gone, Alema would have the resources to carry on in her place.

  Alema linked her datapad to the archives computer she had been accessing, then downloaded the limited data she had found regarding the vessel she had inherited from Lumiya. According to Jedi histories, Ship—it refused to reveal its name, so Alema just called it Ship—was an ancient meditation sphere, a sort of thinking starship that had at one time been used by Jedi and Sith alike. From what little the records had revealed, the meditation sphere was a sort of Force-augmented control vessel, designed to amplify a commander’s battle meditation abilities while also concealing his or her location from the enemy.

  The datapad displayed a message announcing that it had completed the download. Alema deactivated the datalink and erased her access trail on the main computer, then tucked the datapad into its pouch on her utility belt and started toward the exit. The two guards were so taken with each other that they failed to notice her until she had passed the front desk and was halfway across the lobby.

  “What the kark?” the male gasped. “Where’d you come from?”

  The woman was quicker to recover from her surprise. “Halt!” she ordered. “Move those hands a centimeter, and I blast you.”

  Alema turned to find a big Merr-Sonn power blaster pointed in her direction. She raised her hand anyway, and the guard pulled the trigger.

  The weapon issued a single soft click, and now it was the female’s turn to gasp, “What the kark?”

  “There’s nothing to be concerned about.” Alema waved her hand, then pulled a pair of power cells from her robe pocket. “You gave these to us for safekeeping.”

  The woman scowled in suspicion. “Why would I—”

  “You remember.” Alema addressed herself to the man, who—as usual—was weaker-minded than his prospective mate. “We’re a friend of Jacen’s.”

  “It’s okay, Tiz.” the man said. “You remember. She’s a friend of the colonel’s.”

  Tiz’s scowl melted away, and she holstered her blaster. “That’s right.” She smiled at the man. “I remember now.”

  “Good.”

  Alema would have Force-tossed the power cells into Tiz’s head for letting a male make up her mind for her, but it was important to keep her visit to the library a secret. If Jaina and her lust-toads learned that she had come to Ossus to use the Jedi library, they would find a way to identify the records she had accessed, and then they would know as much about Ship as she did. Alema used the Force to float the power cells back to the lobby desk, at the same time backing toward the exit.

  “You two have fun,” Alema suggested. “The colonel won’t mind.”

  By the time she was out the door, the pair were pulling at each other’s utilities. Confident that her slippery Force presence would rob their minds of any memory of her visit, she worked her way through the academy gardens into the forest where Ship was waiting. The hike up to its hiding place wasn’t particularly difficult, even with Alema’s damaged foot and useless arm. But it was an unpleasant reminder of the time she had spent injured and marooned on Tenupe, of all that had been taken from her; every step into the night was a burning reminder of her duty to the Balance and her obligation to set matters even between her and Leia Solo.

  As Alema approached the ravine where Ship had concealed itself, the strong-willed vessel rose into view without waiting for a summons. It was fantastically hideous, a bloated orb with a web of raised vei
ns pulsing over an amber-colored hull that could be opaque or transparent depending on its mood. It held its four wings folded flat against the sides of its round belly, and as it spun to face her, it looked to Alema like a giant, disembodied brain—a very old giant disembodied brain.

  Ancient, Ship corrected. A two-meter section of hull melted into a ramp and extruded itself toward the bank where Alema was standing. And brainy enough to feel when the enemy is watching.

  The reproach in Ship’s thoughts was unmistakable, but Alema merely smirked and strolled up the ramp at her own relaxed pace. They had nothing to fear from these enemies, at least not at the moment. Wisely or unwisely, Jacen had given them something more important to worry about than Alema Rar.

  Ship was doubtful, but it waited until Alema was kneeling inside, then sealed itself up and awaited a destination.

  “Kanz sector,” Alema said aloud. “We assume you remember the coordinates of Lumiya’s asteroid.”

  Ship remained in the ravine, and the smoldering flame that seemed embedded in its bulkheads grew brighter and redder. It would serve as the Broken One’s transport because it had nothing better to do, but it had no intention of taking her to Kanz sector. Lumiya would not have wanted Alema rifling through her home.

  “Are you certain?” As Alema spoke, she was using the Force to push sideways against Ship’s resolve, trying not so much to challenge its decision as to merely shift its perspective. It was the same technique she had employed as the Dark Nest’s Night Herald, one that she had used many times to control UnuThul and his nest. “Lumiya wanted us to continue her work with Jacen.”

  Ship recoiled angrily from her mind-touch. It had served Masters more powerful than she could imagine. Did she really think it would not feel a simple thought veer? It was insulted beyond expression.

  Despite the protests, Alema could feel the vessel slowly yielding to her will. And why shouldn’t it? At its core, Ship was still a machine, and that meant it had been designed to serve. All Alema need do was prove herself capable of commanding it. She pushed harder against its resolve, this time forsaking subtlety for sheer power.