Allegiance (18 page)

With only one opponent left, Mara could afford a little finesse. Instead of returning his shot to head or torso, she deflected it into his right thigh.

He gasped with pain, stumbling as his leg collapsed beneath him. His blaster wavered out of line; taking a step forward, Mara twirled her lightsaber in a tight cone spiral and sliced the weapon neatly in half. Holding her left hand toward him, palm outward, she gave him a Force shove that staggered him back into the copilot’s seat.

“Stay there,” she ordered, stepping up beside him and peering out the canopy. The target ship was a large Rendili freighter, something high-class by the looks of it. Or, at least, it had been high-class once. With the pirate ship’s lasers pounding at its hull and engine section, it was rapidly losing that new-ship luster. Lowering her gaze to the board, she located the acceleration compensator control.

There were fail-safes built into the system to prevent anyone from easily turning it off, so she didn’t bother trying. Instead she stabbed her lightsaber into that part of the board, fusing the controls and sending a feedback surge through the system that she hoped would knock out everything in its path.

The compensator indicators went solid red. Mara closed down her lightsaber and put it away. “Better strap in,” she advised Tannis as she sat down in the pilot’s seat and fastened her own restraints. Peripherally, she noted that Tannis had stopped clutching his wounded leg and was doing likewise. A survivor type, clearly, and Mara tucked that bit of data away for future reference. Keying in the main drive, she fired a short forward burst.

An invisible hand shoved her hard against her seat back. Tannis gave a strangled gasp, a reaction Mara
could completely sympathize with. No one flew without compensators, and even though tight maneuvers could strain them enough to let a little of the acceleration through, even Mara hadn’t been entirely prepared for what their complete absence would feel like.

She keyed off the drive, and the backward weight vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. Bracing herself, she keyed the forward thrusters and fired again.

The invisible hand reversed direction, this time pushing her forward against her restraints. With the forward thrusters still firing she keyed in the starboard maneuvering jets, pressing her right hip against the seat’s armrest.

The firing from the weapons bay had ceased, replaced by howls and curses of protest from the comm speaker. Ignoring the complaints, Mara shut down all the thrusters, then fired the portside jets, followed by the forward thrusters, then the starboard jets, then the main thrusters, then the forward and starboard jets together. Then, shutting everything down again, she leaned forward and looked out the canopy.

There they were: ten vac-suited bodies, shaken or rattled or bounced straight out the front of the open weapons bay by Mara’s maneuvering, now floating and twisting and squirming helplessly through the void outside the ship.

Most of the complaints coming from the comm had ceased, replaced by a complete spectrum of somewhat dazed-sounding curses. Shutting off the chatter, Mara rekeyed the system. “Rendili freighter, this is the Corellian HT-2200 that’s been shooting at you,” she announced. “I’ve taken command and stopped the attack. Please identify yourself, your ship, and your cargo.”

There was a short pause. “Who is this?” a voice demanded suspiciously.

“The new master of this ship,” Mara countered.
“Right now, that’s all you need to know. Identify yourself, your ship, and your cargo.”

There was another pause, a longer one this time. Clearly, the man at the other end was trying to figure out what this new trick was his attackers were trying to pull. Just as clearly, he couldn’t figure out how it could possibly gain them anything. “I’m Captain Norello, commanding the
Happer’s Way
,” he said at last. “We’re a private freighter contracted out of Chandrila by the Imperial Army.”

So the cargo Caaldra had claimed as his was Imperial military supplies. Interesting. “And your cargo?”

There was another short pause. “Fifty AT-STs bound for the garrison on Llorkan.”

Mara felt her stomach tighten. The All Terrain Scout Transport was one of the army’s most versatile combat vehicles, suitable for use on nearly any terrain from rolling forest to crowded inner city. Properly deployed, fifty of them could lay waste to an entire district, or conceivably even capture and hold a small colony world.

What in
space
was Caaldra up to? “How bad is your damage?” she asked.

There was a snort. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

“I need a better estimate than that,” Mara said tartly. “Do you have any command-rank military personnel aboard?”

“We don’t have any military personnel at all,” Norello said. “We’re a civilian transport.”

“Yes, you told me,” Mara said, thinking hard. As Emperor’s Hand she theoretically had access to any personnel or resources she chose to commandeer. But as a practical matter such access required her to find someone she could prove her identity to. “Where’s the nearest Imperial capital ship?” she asked.

“How should
I
know?”

“You’re carrying a military cargo,” Mara countered. “That means you have an emergency call list.”

There was a moment of silence, and when Norello spoke again there was a subtle new respect in his voice. “Yes, ma’am, I do,” he said. “Nearest capital ship is the Star Destroyer
Reprisal
. I can give you the contact information.”

“I’d rather you call them,” Mara said. “Pirate ships are sometimes gimmicked to copy long-range communications to the main base.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Norello said. “What should I tell them?”

“Tell them I want to speak to the captain,” Mara said. “And
only
to the captain.”

“Understood,” Norello said.

The comm went silent, and Mara turned to Tannis. “Where were the AT-STs to be delivered?”

He measured her coolly, the pain from his injured leg a background simmering in his eyes. “What’s in it for me?”

“Your life?” Mara suggested.

Tannis shook his head. “Good start, but I think you can do better than that.”

Mara looked around the cockpit. The only obvious data cards were a set in a rack by her knee. Reaching down, she pulled them out.

“It’s not there,” Tannis said.

“What’s not here?” Mara asked, shuffling through them.

“The card with the attack data,” Tannis told her, a note of dour enjoyment in his voice. “Shakko never left stuff like that lying around where someone could find it. He transmitted the list to the Commodore, memorized our own target data, then destroyed it.”

“Then I suppose I’d better talk to the Commodore,” Mara said. “Where do I find him?”

“What’s in it for me?” Tannis repeated.

Mara stretched out to the Force. Even through all the pain and fear she could sense a rock-solid defiance. Tannis knew he had something she wanted, and he was ready and willing to put in all his chips on the chance that she needed it badly enough to deal. “You attacked a ship carrying Imperial cargo,” she said. “The penalty for that is death.”

“I know. And?”

“I can commute it to twenty years on a penal colony.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “No prison time.”

Mara raised her eyebrows. “You must be joking. Even if I could make that kind of deal, what makes you think your information is worth it?”

“Oh, you can make the deal, all right,” he said. “See, we got a message from one of our contacts—”

“You mean Caaldra?”

Tannis’s lip twitched. “Yeah, Caaldra,” he said, his eyes taking on a wary look. He’d probably hoped to deal her that name. “He told us there might be an Imperial agent sniffing around.” His eyes flicked to the bodies of his three dead comrades, lying in twisted heaps where Mara’s violent ship maneuvering had thrown them. “I’m guessing that’s you. So either you deal, or the trail evaporates.”

“A Star Destroyer carries a full set of interrogation equipment,” Mara reminded him.

Tannis swallowed. “That’ll take time,” he said, apparently not yet ready to give up on the bluster approach. “If we don’t deliver on schedule, the Commodore will know something’s wrong and pull out.”

He could be bluffing, Mara knew—his pain and overall nervousness made an accurate reading impossible. But if he wasn’t, and if the Commodore did indeed pull out, she could end up right back where she’d started.

And this mission was already way too interesting for her to risk that.

“Ma’am?” Captain Norello’s voice came from the speaker. “I have the
Reprisal
on comm.”

“Link me through, then turn off your speaker,” Mara instructed him. “I’ll flash my landing lights when you can come back on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was a click. “This is Captain Ozzel of the Imperial Star Destroyer
Reprisal
,” a gruff voice said through the speaker. “Who in blazes is
this
?”

“The recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis,” Mara said. “Do you need me to repeat that?”

“No,” Ozzel said, his brusqueness suddenly gone. “What is your—that is, what shall I call you?”

“Emperor’s Hand,” Mara told him. “You have our current coordinates?”

“We do,” Ozzel confirmed.

“Then break off your current activity and come here at your best speed,” Mara ordered.

“Acknowledged,” Ozzel said, stiffly formal now. “We’ll be there in approximately ten standard hours.”

“Good. Emperor’s Hand out.”

She waited for the click that meant the
Reprisal
had broken the transmission, then flashed her landing lights twice. “Norello,” Norello’s voice returned instantly.

“Do you have an estimate yet on repair time?”

“It looks like it’s going to take about thirty hours to get the engines back online,” the other said. “There are some bad hull breaches we need to fix first.”

“Get busy on the breaches,” Mara ordered. “The
Reprisal
’s on its way—I’ll get their engineers to assist when they arrive. What’s the smallest crew your ship can manage with?”

“Four,” Norello said, a fresh note of caution creeping into his voice. “Why?”

“I’ll let you know when the
Reprisal
gets here,” Mara told him. “And you might send out a boat to pick up those ten pirates floating around out there. I presume you have a secure place you can stash them?”

“We’ll find a place,” Norello assured her grimly. “You want them alive?”

Mara looked over at Tannis. He was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. Apparently rumors about the Emperor’s Hand had reached even into the Fringe. “Only,” she told Norello, “until we see whether we’ll need any of them.”

Captain Ozzel switched off his office comm and looked at the man seated on the other side of his desk. “The Emperor’s Hand,” he said, a shiver running through him.

“Calm yourself, Captain,” Imperial Security Bureau Colonel Vak Somoril replied sternly. “I heard nothing in that conversation that indicated she knows about our deserters.”

And if she did, Ozzel reflected bitterly, Somoril would certainly find a way to shove it off onto the
Reprisal’
s captain and not himself. “We should have reported it,” he growled. “I should never have let you talk me into holding it back.”

“Do you really want your superiors to know you allowed five stormtroopers to escape?” Somoril asked. “Especially with that one stormtrooper in particular among them?
And
that you even dropped out of hyperspace for their convenience?”

“It wasn’t
my
reputation you were worried about,” Ozzel countered tartly. “Your own second in command, murdered with his own gun? I’d love to be at the next budget session when the ISB reps start talking about their oh-so-professional personnel.”

For a long second, he was afraid he’d overstepped his
bounds. Somoril’s face hardened, a look of death in his eyes. Then, slowly, the look faded. “I think we both understand the situation, Captain,” Somoril said. “There’s plenty of potential damage here for both our careers. The question is what precisely we’re going to do about it.”

“For starters, we’re not letting her aboard the
Reprisal,
” Ozzel said. “This whole freighter-under-attack thing may be nothing but a pretext for an investigation.”

“I was thinking along the lines of a more permanent solution,” Somoril said. “How many people know about Major Drelfin’s death?”

“Too many,” Ozzel said heavily. “Commander Brillstow and some of the bridge crew during his shift, the entire stormtrooper contingent—”

“I said Drelfin’s death, not the desertion,” Somoril interrupted.

“Oh.” Ozzel thought a moment. “That would be the crewer who found the body, the medic who examined him, a couple of medical droids, Commander Brillstow, you, and me. Plus any of your group you may have told.”

“I told no one,” Somoril said, tapping his chin absently as he gazed toward a spot past Ozzel’s shoulder. “So: three others aside from us. How certain are you that the tech and medic didn’t tell anyone else?”

“Reasonably certain,” Ozzel said, wondering where the colonel was going with this. “I warned them to keep quiet, as per your instructions.”

“I
know
what I instructed,” Somoril said acidly. “I was asking how well those instructions had been carried out.” He took a deep breath, let it out in a carefully measured huff. “Very well. Captain, you are hereby authorized to add to your log the fact that the hitherto unexplained departure of the freighter
Gillia
was, in fact, a
secret ISB mission undertaken by Major Drelfin and five stormtroopers whom he commandeered from your shipboard contingent.”

Ozzel stared at him. “Are you
insane
?” he demanded. “We have Drelfin’s
body
down there!”

“Which will be gone within the hour,” Somoril said evenly. “Certainly before we arrive at our rendezvous with the
Happer’s Way
.”

“What about the tech and medic?”

Somoril’s lips compressed briefly. “You’ll also log the fact that Drelfin subsequently sent private word to you to have a tech and medic join the team.”