Allegiance (43 page)

“So what do we do about them?” Grave asked as they passed another of the quiet sentries.

“Nothing,” Jade said. “All they’re seeing here is a few more stormtroopers in a city already full of them. I doubt they’ll even bother to call it in.”

“We’ll need more than just familiar armor to get through the front gate, though,” Quiller warned.

“Fortunately, we’re not going in that way,” Jade said. “The governor’s built himself quite an estate over the years, with lots of ground and plenty of nooks and crannies. We’ll find our own way in.”

“Though the perimeter wall’s probably rigged six ways from Imperial Center,” Grave warned.

“Maybe even seven or eight,” Jade agreed. “Don’t worry—I’ve had some experience with these things.”

Beside LaRone, Marcross stirred. “There’s another way,” he said quietly. “We can use the governor’s emergency exit.”

LaRone looked at him in surprise. “He has an emergency exit?”

“All governors and moffs do,” Jade said with a touch of contempt. “How do
you
know about it, Marcross?”

“I grew up in Makrin City,” Marcross said. “I used to hang out with Choard’s son, Crayg, when we were teenagers. The exit’s in the northeast side of the wall, at the edge of the Farfarn District, one of the city’s working-class neighborhoods. There’s a door-sized section of the wall that opens up.”

“And Choard just let the two of you wander in and out?” Quiller asked.

“I don’t think he ever knew we were doing it,” Marcross said. “It’s pretty far from all the security at the main gate, and it leads into the edge of one of his garden areas. Mostly pools and fountains and trees, with lots of flagstones so you don’t leave any footprints. Crayg used to sneak out at night and hit the clubs and cantinas.”

“How did you deflect the security tags?” Jade asked.

“It wasn’t tagged,” Marcross said. “I think Choard was as worried about his own guards turning on him as he was about trouble from outside. He didn’t want anyone inside knowing about the exit. You
do
need a passkey to open it, though.”

“Not a problem,” Jade assured him. “Let’s take a look.”

Marcross’s chest plate expanded slightly as he took a deep breath. “Turn right at the next corner.”

His directions led them off the main road and into a
slightly marshy area crisscrossed by meandering creeks. The streets turned narrow and winding as they threaded their way through and between the creeks, and LaRone noticed that most of the houses were built up as much as a meter above ground level. Apparently flooding was a constant concern here.

“There,” Marcross said, pointing ahead. “Where the wall bows out a little and almost touches the edge of the street.”

LaRone took his foot off the accelerator, letting the speeder truck coast as he peered ahead at the spot framed in his headlights.

“Not very secure,” Quiller commented doubtfully. “If your enemies were smart enough to surround the grounds, you’d walk right into their arms.”

“There’s supposed to be a heavy long-range fighter prepped and hidden in that house over there,” Marcross said, pointing to a dilapidated house on the far side of the street from the wall. “There’s also supposed to be a force-field tunnel you can activate that’ll give you safe passage between the wall and the house. I never saw that work, though.”

“What are we going to do about a passkey?” Grave asked.

“We don’t need one,” Jade said. “We’re not going in that way. Keep driving, LaRone—I’ll tell you where to stop.”

“If we’re not going to use it, why did you want me to show it to you?” Marcross demanded as LaRone continued on past the secret door.

“Watch your tone, stormtrooper,” Jade warned. “We’re not going in that way because it’ll be the entrance of choice for the conspirators, and I don’t want us bumping into them until we’re ready. There—that section between the two trees. Pull over there.”

LaRone brought the speeder truck to a halt. “Everyone
out,” Jade ordered, pushing up her own swing-wing door. “Give me a perimeter.”

She strode over to the wall, lightsaber in hand. LaRone had formed the others into a standard, outward-facing guard-box formation by the time Brightwater glided his speeder bike back around and came to a halt beside them. “What are we doing?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” LaRone admitted, watching Jade out of the corner of his eye. She was leaning against the wall, her hands and one ear pressed against the cold stone. Slowly, methodically, she moved herself in a grid search pattern along and down the surface. “We’re going in, but I’m not sure exactly how.”

“Quietly and without casualties,” Jade said, stepping away from the wall. “Ever hear of cryseefa gas?”

“It’s an acidic poison,” Brightwater said. “Highly corrosive and lethal to most oxygen-breathing species.”

“Very good.” Jade tapped a section of wall. “There’s a canister of compressed cryseefa buried in the wall right here.
And
here—” She indicated another spot. “—and here, and here.”

“Ready to kill anyone who tries to punch through the wall,” LaRone murmured, a shiver of disgust running through him.

“Along with everyone for fifty meters around him,” Jade said. “A simple but very undiscriminating weapon.”

“And you can tell where the canisters are?” Grave asked.

“Walls like this collect a lot of sun heat during the day,” Jade explained, unlimbering her lightsaber. With a sizzling
snap-hiss
, the brilliant magenta blade burst into existence. “Stone and metal make different contraction sounds as they cool down. You might want to step back for this.”

None of the stormtroopers moved. Lifting the lightsaber horizontally, Jade pushed the blade’s tip gently
into the stone. For a few seconds she continued to force it straight in, then shifted to a sideways motion, carefully carving out a circle. She finished the circle and shut down the lightsaber. “Do you want us to get that out?” LaRone asked.

“No need.” Lifting a hand toward it, Jade inhaled slowly.

And with a muffled grinding sound of stone on stone, the cylindrical plug she’d carved worked its way out of the wall. Marcross stepped forward and caught the plug as it came free. Nodding her thanks, Jade reactivated her lightsaber and set to work on the next canister.

Five minutes later there were six stone cylinders lying on the ground beside the wall. “Is that all?” LaRone murmured.

“All we need to worry about,” Jade said, turning to face them. “Understand me now. When we step inside this wall, we’ll be in enemy territory. If you can get through without killing any of the guards, fine. But if you have to kill, you kill without hesitation.”

“Understood,” LaRone said for all of them.

A minute later, Jade had carved an opening through the safe parts of the wall big enough for them to get through. On the far side, LaRone could see some of the garden areas Marcross had described earlier. “Commander?” Jade invited as she closed down her lightsaber. “Deploy your troopers.”

LaRone nodded acknowledgment. “Brightwater, you’ll swing around toward the main gate,” he ordered. “I want to know what their security looks like, including how many men they’ll have available to draw on when the balloon goes up. Grave, Quiller: you’re on flank. Marcross, you’re on point. You’ll lead Jade to your best choice of entrance and get her inside. I’ll take rear guard. We close up as soon as Marcross gets us in and
re-form for quiet incursion. Grave, give Brightwater a hand with his speeder bike.”

Brightwater waddled his speeder bike to the wall, and together he and Grave maneuvered it through the opening. The scout trooper got on and took off with a subdued whine, heading to the left and the cover of the garden foliage. Grave and Quiller went next, branching to right and left, with Marcross behind them. LaRone took a step forward—

“A moment, Commander,” Jade murmured, putting a hand on his arm. “Sensible policy dictates that the second in command knows what the mission is.”

“Yes, ma’am,” LaRone said, feeling his heartbeat starting to pick up.

“Our target is Governor Choard,” she said. “He’s committed high treason, both in conspiring with pirates against Imperial shipping, and in sending the
Reprisal
to try to kill me on Gepparin. Those crimes have earned him the death penalty.”

“Understood,” LaRone said, a strange sense of unreality sifting into him like fine desert sand. It was one thing to sit out in space or at a pirate nest and talk about judgment and duty and principle. It was quite another to stand outside the palace of an Imperial governor and contemplate his execution in cold blood.

“Then let’s do it,” Jade said. Shifting her lightsaber to her left hand and drawing her blaster with her right, she slipped through the opening.

To defend the Empire and its citizens …
Making sure the safety on his E-11 was off, LaRone climbed through behind her.

G
OVERNOR
C
HOARD APPARENTLY LIKED HIS
gardens rough and primitive. Once they were through the wall and past a narrow brook that ran along the estate’s inner edge, they hit a wide patch of trees, closely spaced bushes, and reedy plants growing out of a ground cover composed mainly of flagstones interspersed with flakes of dead bark.

Oddly enough, for the first few minutes it seemed as if the enemy had completely missed their arrival. Mara saw and heard no one as they slipped through the trees and could sense no suddenly heightened alertness anywhere around them.

The patch of forest ran for about thirty meters, then abruptly gave way to a wide, grassy area, across which they could see a double row of comfortable outdoor chairs set up near the wall of the palace itself.

“That’s the game field,” Marcross said, pointing to the field. “That door behind the seats leads into a kitchen adjunct where refreshments can be set out for the players and spectators.”

“What’s past the adjunct?”

“The main kitchen,” Marcross said. “From there you can go to the first-floor private dining area, the formal dining room, or the main ballroom.”

“Stairs?”

“Closest set is behind the kitchen, off the service corridor,” Marcross said. “There’s a set of turbolifts there, too.”

Mara pursed her lips thoughtfully. It all looked very straightforward, as it was no doubt meant to. But as usual, looks were deceiving. The palace’s stylishly crenellated walls had been combined with careful placement of decorative colored lighting to create deeply shadowed indentations at regular intervals along the walls. Most of those nooks probably sheltered sentries—human, animal, or droid—with their eyes and other senses trained on the wide lawn she and the stormtroopers would have to cross.

But Mara still had a few tricks up her sleeve. A couple of minutes to surreptitiously move a small canister into place upwind, and an oddly persistent mist would begin drifting across the critical lines of sight.

LaRone muttered something under his breath and sidled closer to her. “Brightwater’s in sight of the main entrance,” he reported. “There are nearly fifty civilian landspeeders near there.”

Mara frowned. An emergency meeting of Choard’s fellow conspirators? “Could they be advisers in for a meeting?”

LaRone relayed the question. “The speeders are all too expensive for even high-ranking civil servants,” he said. “More likely Choard’s invited the city’s upper-class citizens to a dinner or party.”

“That could be awkward,” Mara said, peering again at the kitchen’s lighted windows. If Choard was feeding a roomful of guests, the kitchen might not be a good place to break in after all. “Marcross, what’s above the kitchen?”

“Directly above it is a storage area,” Marcross said. “Tables and extra chairs. Flanking the storage room are
meeting rooms that open into the reception area outside the main ballroom—”

Suddenly, without warning, a huge dark mass of vines rose silently from the garden floor behind them.

There was a single startled curse as the four stormtroopers spun around, their blasters tracking toward the apparition. “No!” Mara barked.

But the warning came too late. Even as she ignited her lightsaber, four blaster bolts lanced out, striking the creature dead center. With a crackling roar, the whole mass burst into flame.

And with that, the stealthy part of their incursion came to an end. “Inside,” Mara snapped, closing down her lightsaber and bursting out from the bushes onto the exposed grassland.

“What the hell was
that
?” LaRone demanded as he caught up with her.

“Nouland flare,” Mara ground out. Shadowy figures were starting to emerge from the concealed guard nooks, the firelight flickering off their blaster rifles as they moved to cut off the intruders. “They’re used some places to smoke out intruders.”

LaRone snorted. “Quite literally, I see.”

“Exactly,” Mara agreed tightly. “Nonsentient, not really dangerous, but big and scary and very flammable. Must have been installed sometime after Marcross stopped coming here.”

The closest pair of sentries opened fire, their shots sizzling through the air past Mara’s head. LaRone sent a precise pair of shots in return, and one of the sentries flopped to the ground and lay still. Quiller, on LaRone’s other side, fired a single shot that took out the other of the pair. “What’s the new plan?” he called.

“Same as the old one,” Mara told him, slowing her pace enough to let them catch up. “Give me a wedge.”

The four stormtroopers moved around in front of her, LaRone and Marcross taking dual point, Quiller and Grave a little behind and outboard from them. Mara set herself in the center of the formation, carefully and systematically targeting the scattered pairs of guards converging on them. The air was filling with blaster bolts now as more of their opponents reached optimum firing range, and Mara heard one of the stormtroopers grunt as a shot found a way through his armor. They were halfway to the kitchen door now, the bolts starting to sizzle ever closer.

And then fifty meters away around a corner of the building two pairs of swoops appeared. Driving hard toward the intruders, apparently with little or no regard for the guards between them and their targets, they opened fire with underslung blaster cannons.