Apocalypse (20 page)

D
OWN ON
L
EVEL
351
OF THE
J
EDI
T
EMPLE
, W
YNN
D
ORVAN STOOD
pressing himself into the corner of the computer core decontamination chamber. This was not because he objected to being misted with a dust fixative, but because he was trying to keep his Sith escorts from noticing his excitement. Directly ahead, the grip of a hold-out blaster was hanging out of the sleeve of a Sith Saber, as though the weapon were ready to fall from its secret holster.

The accessibility of the hold-out blaster was almost certainly a trap, of course, designed to test Wynn’s loyalties. But there was a slim chance that the weapon had simply been jarred loose, and that its owner did not realize it had become visible.

And Wynn was ready to take that chance. When he had suggested that Lydea Pagorski be released to build goodwill with the Empire, the Beloved Queen of the Stars had destroyed the poor woman and taken over her body. When he had tried to trick her into playing into Admiral Bwua’tu’s hands by suggesting that the Sith withdraw into the Temple, she had used her strange Force powers to anticipate the Jedi
battle plan and arrange a devastating ambush. Abeloth was something beyond Wynn’s understanding, a monster of unimaginable power and capable of unthinkable evil, and he had been a fool to think he could play her.

There had never been any hope of stopping her, Wynn could see that now. And there was no realistic hope of escaping her and the Sith alive, either. The best Wynn could hope for was to avoid the same fate Pagorski had suffered—to end his unwitting collaboration, one way or another, before the Beloved Queen of the Stars decided to push her tentacles into his head, too.

All he had to do was get his hands on that hold-out blaster.

The inner door slid aside, and the Beloved Queen of the Stars stepped out of the crowded decontamination chamber into some much cooler space Wynn could not see. He started to ease forward, angling toward the hold-out blaster—then had to draw up short when the entire group stopped just one step later.

“Chief Dorvan and I will be fine here alone,” the Beloved Queen said, speaking in the voice of her Roki Kem manifestation. “The rest of you may return with Lady Korelei to prepare the ambush.”

The Sith in front of Wynn—the one with the loose blaster—said, “Beloved Queen, allow me to stay, I beg you.” He turned to glance back at Wynn, his eyes smoldering with contempt. “There is something amiss with your adviser today. I can feel a lie in his aura.”

Wynn steeled himself to make a lunge for the hold-out blaster, but the Beloved Queen’s voice stopped him.

“That is of no concern, Master Tsiat,” she said. “I have no need to fear Chief Dorvan.”

Wynn felt the cold pressure on his face, and though he could not see past the shoulders of the Sith in front of him, he knew the Beloved Queen was looking in his direction.

“Do I?” asked the Beloved Queen.

“Not from me,” Wynn said. Even as he spoke, he felt sure that she knew he was lying—that she could hear it in his voice and sense it in his aura. “I’m simply not capable.”

“Everyone is capable, Chief Dorvan.” It was not the Beloved Queen who said this, but Lady Korelei, the Keshiri High Lord who had been Wynn’s torturer. “All one needs is courage.”

“I fear that’s one quality I lack,” Wynn said. His heart had climbed into his throat, but he was enough of a sabacc player to know the time had come to gamble everything. “I’m an administrator, not a warrior.”

“Then our Beloved Queen will be safe with you, I am sure.” A faint smile came to Lady Korelei’s lavender lips, and she motioned to the Sith standing between Wynn and the exit. “Let him pass.”

Wynn was more certain than ever that his captors were trying to test him, but he was determined to take his chances. Even dying would be preferable to what awaited him as Abeloth’s servant. He nodded to Korelei.

“Thank you.”

Wynn stepped forward, deliberately tripping over a nearby heel. He cried out and went sprawling, grabbing the first sleeve within reach to prevent himself from falling. Of course, that sleeve belonged to the Sith with the hold-out blaster, Master Tsiat.

Tsiat roared in rage and used the Force to fling Dorvan back into the corner. “Clumsy ugwum!”

Dorvan wailed and cowered, curling into a ball—to hide the little weapon he had just stolen. “It was an accident!” He slipped the blaster into the sleeve of his tunic. “I apologize!”

He heard a boot step toward him, and then Tsiat’s foot slammed into his ribs. “Apology accepted.”

The foot drew back as though to kick again, but Lady Korelei’s voice split the rising din. “You’ve made your point, Master Tsiat. I’m sure Chief Dorvan will be more careful in the future.”

Wynn felt himself rising off the floor, and he continued to rise until he was above the heads of the Sith. When he glanced back, he found Korelei’s oval eyes watching him with the same cold emptiness he had often seen in those of the Beloved Queen. His stomach began to churn with a queasy terror as a pair of silver flickers appeared in the depths of her gaze. Her smile grew as wide as her face. All her teeth suddenly seemed to be fangs, and a relentless tide of despair welled up inside Wynn. He knew what he was seeing.

The Beloved Queen of the Stars had taken a
third
body.

Now Abeloth had
three
manifestations—Roki Kem, Lydea Pagorski, and Lady Korelei. Wynn grew so cold that he started to shake, and he did not recognize the sensation as despair until he found
himself praying that he was hallucinating, that he had finally lost his mind under Korelei’s torture and escaped into the oblivion of insanity.

Because even madness would be better than three Abeloths.

Wynn stopped descending, and he found himself hovering in the air before the Roki Kem manifestation, fighting hard not to burst out wailing, too frightened to meet her gaze and see, written in the cruel truth of her face, the pitiful futility of his resistance.

“Chief Dorvan, will you please put your feet down?” the Roki Kem manifestation asked. “Or do you expect Lady Korelei to continue holding you there for the rest of the day?”

Wynn put his feet down and was a little surprised to feel a solid floor beneath his shoes. His fear had grown so strong that he was starting to doubt his own perceptions, and it occurred to him that perhaps this was how Abeloth invaded minds, by terrifying and confusing people so badly they finally went insane.

“Thank you,” said the Roki Kem manifestation. Waving a dismissive hand toward the others, she used the Force to pull Wynn a few steps forward. “Chief Dorvan and I will continue alone.”

Wynn heard the decontamination chamber hiss close behind him, and then he found himself standing in the Jedi Temple’s computer core, staring at Roki Kem’s back … at
Abeloth
’s back … with a hold-out blaster up his sleeve.

Wynn experienced no sudden wave of relief. The situation had the stink of a trap to it, like having a sabacc hand that was
nearly
the best possible and an opponent happy to call any bet. It felt too good to be true, and it probably was. The blaster might well have a depleted energy cell or a disabled XCiter chamber, but he was determined to play the hand he had—and that meant staying patient until he knew which card he was holding up his sleeve: the Legate or the Idiot.

So Wynn followed the Kem manifestation forward into the computer core. It seemed to be a vast, spherical cavity filled with drifting clouds of radiance and flashing streaks of light. He and the Beloved Queen were on a transparisteel service balcony that protruded about a dozen meters into the chamber. At the forward end of the balcony sat several banks of display screens and interface consoles. There was no sign anywhere of the systems administrators who had once used the equipment to communicate with the Temple’s computer core.

The Kem manifestation went to the primary equipment bank and took a seat in a swiveling chair, the middle of a trio.

“Don’t lag, Chief Dorvan,” she said. “You have no reason to be frightened. You’re still much too valuable for me to kill.”

“I’m not frightened, just confused,” Wynn lied. He continued forward until he was standing at the arm of the chair adjacent to the one the Beloved Queen now occupied. “Might I ask what am I doing here?”

“Remaining available,” she said. “I will need your advice again soon.”

“About what?”

“You will know when I am ready for you to know.”

“My apologies,” Wynn said. Either the Beloved Queen was lying about needing his advice, or she did not yet know what kind of advice she would be seeking. “I didn’t realize you were unaware yourself.”

A pair of silver points began to burn deep in the Queen’s eyes, and for a moment her arms seem to writhe like tentacles. “I said you were too valuable to
kill
,” she warned. “Now be silent.”

Wynn remained standing, confident that the blaster was no test. The Beloved Queen had a habit of covering her weakness with a threat whenever she felt vulnerable. And the only time she ever seemed vulnerable was when she entered one of her revelatory trances. He had no idea where her mind went during such episodes, whether she was flow-walking like Jacen Solo had done or simply spying on her enemies through the Force—but he did know that while she was away, she was oblivious to her surroundings.

Wynn waited as the Beloved Queen’s breathing turned shallow and her eyes grew distant and glassy. And then he continued to wait, counting to a hundred and watching for any movement that would suggest she was not deep in her trance.

When he saw none, he asked, “Beloved Queen?” He waited another twenty heartbeats, then spoke louder. “Beloved Queen!”

She remained motionless, her blue Jessar skin as smooth as stone and her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the chamber. Wynn stepped behind the chairs, then pulled the hold-out blaster from his sleeve and checked the energy cell.

Charged.

He checked the gas canister. Full.

He glanced over his shoulder at the decontamination chamber door. Closed. Wynn pointed the blaster at the chair, and the Beloved Queen did not stir. Was it really going to be this easy?

Wynn pulled the trigger, and an energy bolt screamed into the seat back. He pulled the trigger again. This time, the bolt shot completely through the chair and through her body, then vanished into the darkness above the equipment bank.

He smelled scorched flesh and began to hope that it really
was
that easy. He circled to the front of the chairs and saw the Beloved Queen slumped in her seat, her hands hanging over the armrests, her chin on her chest, and a smoking hole through the center of her torso. Clearly dead.

Still, better to be sure.

Wynn stepped closer and pointed the blaster at her head.

A low animal groan rumbled up from her chest, and then blood splashed his face and tunic. He heard someone screaming and realized it was him, and he pulled the blaster trigger again. A screaming bolt burned through her forehead just above the eyes. Her head rocked back, fell forward again, and then rolled to the side.

Wynn pulled the trigger one more time and sent another bolt burning into her head, this time through the temple. Her head did not move, and he stumbled back, away from the smoke and the smell and the oozing gore.

For a moment, he stood there. Waiting.

Nothing happened.

The Beloved Queen was dead, and Wynn had survived. He couldn’t really believe it.

He felt the equipment bank against his back and realized he was still backing away. He stopped and shifted his gaze toward the decontamination chamber, remembering the dozens of Sith who were setting up their ambush out in the corridor. He had no idea what to do about them. He hadn’t expected to survive the assassination attempt, so he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

A voice behind him, cold and familiar, said, “You will never slip past them, Chief. There is no escape.”

Wynn sprang away from the equipment bank, moving faster and
leaping farther than he would have believed possible, and landed beyond the chairs. He spun around, already knowing what he would see … and he saw it: a face of pure radiance, the size of a bantha and as wispy as a cloud, floating out in the darkness of the computer core. She appeared vaguely human, with a long cascade of coarse yellow hair and tiny, deep-sunken eyes that shone from their sockets like stars at the bottom of a well. She had a nose so small it was almost absent, and a large, full-lipped mouth so broad that it reached from ear to ear

Abeloth.

“Yes,” she assured him. “Your Beloved Queen of the Stars.”

Wynn shook his head. “You’re no queen of mine.” He raised the blaster pistol and pressed the emitter nozzle to the side of his head.

“And you’re wrong. There
is
an escape.”

He pulled the trigger in the same instant he felt his hand jerk. A blaster bolt screamed past above his temple. He felt searing heat across the top of his skull and smelled his own singed hair, and Wynn knew he had failed. He had survived.

“I am never wrong,” Abeloth said.

The blaster twisted free of Wynn’s hand and went flying. Then a blast of Force energy hit him in the chest, and he went flying, too.

“There is no escape … for any of you.”