Allegiance (33 page)

A
BRUPTLY, THE AERIAL BOMBARDMENT FELL SILENT
. Still pressed against the big ground-mover, Mara stretched out with her senses. The air was filled with acrid smoke, and she could hear the crackle of flames coming from at least three places in the near distance. But the turbolaser fire from the sky had definitely ceased.

She didn’t know why, but with the respite came the chance to get moving. Stepping carefully over the piles of rubble around her, she headed for the corridor. The firetrap Caaldra had sprung on them had mostly burned itself out, leaving its own contribution of eye-stinging smoke drifting through the air. Blinking a few times, Mara crossed back to where she’d left Tannis.

He was still there, lying motionlessly on the smoking floor. “Tannis?” she said, shoving her lightsaber back into her belt and crouching down beside him.

There was no answer, but at least he was still alive. Mara took a moment to assess the damage—mostly burns from Caaldra’s firetrap—then made her way back to the wrecked command center to retrieve the room’s emergency medpac.

There was no time to deal with the burns themselves, not with their attackers presumably preparing for Round Two. Selecting a set of military-grade painkillers
and stimulants, she injected them into an undamaged section of Tannis’s arm. Within half a minute he was awake, blinking up through the smoke at her. “How do you feel?” Mara asked.

“Like I’m dying,” Tannis murmured, his voice sounding eerily dream-like. “What happened?”

“Caaldra left us a little surprise,” Mara told him, deciding for the moment to skip over the bombardment. “You feel up to a little walk?”

“I don’t know,” Tannis said. “How far are we going?”

“I thought we’d stop by your emergency bunker for a minute, then head back to the ship and get you to the medical capsule.”

“I can try,” Tannis said. Grimacing with the effort, he got a hand on the floor and tried to push.

“It’s okay,” Mara said, stretching out with the Force and raising him up. “All you have to do is point. I can do the heavy lifting.”

“I forgot,” Tannis said, smiling weakly. “Where are we again?”

“Outside the main control center.”

“Right.” Tannis peered around. “It’s that way,” he said, pointing down the corridor in the direction they’d been heading when Caaldra had sprung his trap. Pulling the injured pirate to her side, Mara got a steadying arm around his waist and they set off.

The base was a mess. At least five of the buildings had been completely demolished, a couple of them still burning furiously, the others nothing more than smoldering debris. There were plenty of bodies scattered around, too. Some of the pirates were fully dressed, but others seemed to have been asleep in their bunks when the attack came. At first Mara wondered about their lack of preparedness and sensor protection until it occurred to her that the three men Brock and Gilling had killed in
the control center had probably been the ones responsible for spotting trouble and sounding the alert. The two ISB men either hadn’t noticed the approaching attackers or else hadn’t particularly cared.

Or else had been expecting them.
If not, there’ll be others along to finish the job
, Brock had said back in the control room.

“There,” Tannis murmured, pointing ahead toward one of the demolished buildings.

Demolished except for a large room in the far corner of the lower floor that was still intact. “Okay,” she said, breathing heavily as she eyed the field of broken masonry ahead of them. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Tannis had apparently noticed the jagged debris, too. “Just leave me here,” he said. “Go get your data and come back for me.”

“Forget it,” Mara said, resettling her grip around his waist. The barrage could begin again any minute, and there was no way she was going to leave him out here in the open. Especially not with the safest place in the base barely fifty meters away. “Watch your step.”

They began picking their way through the rubble. Even with Mara handling most of Tannis’s weight, he struggled with the uneven ground, and eventually she had to use the Force again to lift him completely into the air, carrying him over the obstacles like a sack of fruit. She kept her eyes moving, hoping fervently that no one would take a potshot at them while she was too burdened and focused to react.

The corner room Mara had seen turned out to be merely the access air lock to the bunker itself, a much larger complex of rooms two stories underground. Clearly the Commodore had taken the possibility of enemy attack seriously.

Not that it had ultimately done him any good. His
shattered body was there, slumped in a seat by the comm panel. Dead.

“So that’s it,” Tannis muttered as Mara eased him down into one of the other chairs. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

“Looks that way,” Mara agreed soberly, looking around. The comm system would be a good place to start, she decided. Unless the Commodore and his shadow ally had been paranoid enough to conduct all their business face-to-face, there should be records of their HoloNet calls to each other. Going to the panel, she gently moved the chair and the Commodore’s body aside.

He’d been in the process of setting up a HoloNet communication, she saw, when his broken body had finally given out. The contact number and frequency were meaningless to her, but the destination system was not.

Shelkonwa. Shelsha sector’s capital.

“Hand!” Tannis croaked. “Tac display—there.”

Mara turned. The visual display was off, but the main tactical display above the defense console was up and running. On it were seven red triangles: enemy fighters, closing rapidly with the base. Round Two, apparently, was about to begin.

Only this time, unlike Round One, there would be
two
sides to the battle.

Mara crossed to the defense console and sat down, a quick glance over the controls showing her options. The main lasers could handle three targets simultaneously, and there were more of the BloodScars’ favored proton torpedo launchers waiting in reserve. The lasers were already on standby; bringing them fully active, she got a grip on the firing sticks and waited.

The attackers were nearly to optimal range when they suddenly split formation, fanning out like a Victory Day air show. Mentally, Mara shrugged. Optimal range
would have been nice, but then
optimal
merely meant
preferred
. Lining the double crossmarks on two of the attackers, she fired.

The lasers turned the targets into instant clouds of shrapnel. Mara shifted aim, a small corner of her mind wondering about this rival gang whose members were careless enough or overconfident enough to field fighters without even minimal shield capability. She fired again, and another pair of attackers went the way of the first.

Perhaps they were relying on their maneuverability to evade destruction, she decided as she again shifted aim. Certainly they had more than their fair share of nimbleness, twisting around madly as they tried to throw off the lasers’ computerized targeting lock. One of the banks of indicators, in fact, went a rapidly flickering red as they succeeded.

But Mara didn’t need the help of such technological toys. She had the Force, and all the maneuverability in the universe wouldn’t help her attackers now. Shifting the lasers to manual, she continued firing, coolly and methodically destroying the fighters one by one. In the distance she noticed that the sensors were picking up another incoming ship, this one freighter-sized, but the numbers showed it would arrive far too late to assist.

The last two fighters had turned to the attack now, and above her Mara could hear a crackling of laserfire as they made a final desperate strafing run against the bunker. Stretching out again to the Force, she felt the subtle anticipation of their future maneuvers and shifted her aim in response. She fired again, and now only a single attacker was left.

Once again she adjusted her aim … and paused. The fire control would be compiling all the relevant tech data on the attackers as the battle progressed, which she could take with her and study at her leisure. But a direct visual contact would be good to have, too. She shifted
her attention briefly away from the combat, recognizing as she did so the inherent risk involved in allowing an enemy even a brief breathing space, and activated the visual display.

The sensors had taken a severe beating during the earlier bombardment, and the image that appeared on the screen was dark and grainy and badly distorted. But it was good enough. There was only one fighter anywhere in the galaxy with that profile and architecture.

The pirate base was being attacked by Imperial TIE fighters.

She stared at the image, her mind refusing at first to believe the evidence of her eyes. It was impossible—the Empire’s attention was completely absorbed with the Rebellion and domestic instability and alien unrest. By direct order from the Emperor himself, pirates and other raiders had been reclassified as a local and system enforcement problem. This couldn’t be any sort of official operation against the BloodScars.

Unless it was against Mara herself.

She felt her face hardening as she turned back to her fire-control stick and blew the last TIE fighter away. So that was how it was. This wasn’t just about some grand scheme to unite Shelsha’s pirates into a single massive gang. It wasn’t even about a link between pirates and the Rebellion. This one went straight into Imperial territory. Straight to the top.

She looked at the tactical display. The unknown freighter was too far out to be a threat, but it was still coming.

Time to go.

Tannis was slumped in his seat, his breathing rapid and shallow. “You up to one more short walk?” Mara asked as she crouched down beside him.

“I can try,” Tannis said weakly. “You get what you came for?”

“Oh, yes,” she said softly. Stretching out to the Force, she lifted him from the chair as gently as she could. “Just a few more minutes,” she said as she carried him toward the door. “We’ll get you into the
Happer’s Way
’s medical capsule—”

She broke off as he groped at her shoulder. “If I don’t make it,” he rasped, his eyes half closed as he gazed into her face, “bury me in space. You hear me?”

“You’re going to make it,” Mara said, the lie coming automatically to her lips even as a surge of frustration ran through her. She’d been taught a dozen Force techniques for self-healing, but nothing that could be used on others.

But while there was still life, there was still hope. “Just hang on,” she said, heading up the stairs.

They were across the field of rubble and nearly to the shell that had once housed the main command room when Mara heard the distant roar of a sublight drive.

And as she watched, the
Happer’s Way
rose from the ruins of the landing area. It turned leisurely around, as if the pilot was surveying the damage around him, then turned again and headed for space.

Mara watched it go, her heart sinking. So that was it. Her freighter was gone; and from the fires she could see burning at that end of the complex it was clear that all the rest of the ships had been destroyed.

She and Tannis were marooned.

But there was still that other freighter-sized ship she’d seen making its cautious way toward the planet. If the pilot was actually foolish enough to land in the middle of all this devastation, she could commandeer the crew and get out of here.

Unless the ship represented Round Three of the attack against her. In that case, she would simply kill everyone aboard.

Beside her, Tannis stirred. “Why’ve we stopped?” he murmured.

Mara focused on him, his burned face and labored breathing. No, she couldn’t wait for the freighter. She had to get help to him
now
.

And then, finally, the obvious answer occurred to her.

Most of the command center building was in ruins, but the entrances to the three survey tunnels where Caaldra had taken refuge were still open. The dust from the attack had obscured any footprints he might have left, but a meter into the left-hand tunnel she found a recent handprint.

There was no lighting, but the floor was smooth enough and the tunnel itself angled down at a reasonably shallow slope. Two gentle turns later, perhaps a hundred meters from the entrance, they reached a dimly lit area and the emergency escape ship she’d hoped to find, a compact Starfeld Z-10 Seeker. The ship was already prepped—clearly, Caaldra had been planning to get out this way until he’d noticed the undamaged
Happer’s Way
and decided to take it instead. Getting Tannis into the medical capsule and keying for emergency treatment, Mara engaged the repulsorlifts and sent them moving cautiously down the tunnel.

The fires had mostly burned themselves out as Han and the others picked their way carefully across the rubble-filled base. “Nice to see the Empire taking some interest in pirates again,” he commented to no one in particular.

“This wasn’t about dealing with pirates, Solo,” LaRone said grimly. “This was about covering up a plot.”

Han scowled. He hadn’t really believed it was that simple, either.

“What kind of plot?” Luke spoke up.

“Someone’s been recruiting pirates,” Marcross said,
his voice even darker than usual. “Someone, as you can see, with high Imperial connections.
Very
high connections.”

“Who?” Luke asked.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” LaRone said. “Quiller?”

“Nothing moving, either above or below,” the pilot’s voice said from the comlink in Han’s belt. “That freighter we saw taking off on our way in must have been carrying the last survivors.”

“No sign of the
Falcon
?” Han asked.

“Not yet,” Quiller said. “I wouldn’t worry, though. He probably just wanted to make sure the
Reprisal
was well on its way before circling back.”

Han grimaced. Yes, that was exactly what the big, dumb Wookiee was probably doing. “Let me know the minute you spot him.”

“Will do,” Quiller promised. “LaRone, I’m reading some deep tunnels ahead of you, survey-sized and fully operational. There might be more people or weaponry down there that I can’t scan for.”