Dynasty of Evil (32 page)

Zannah merely shrugged and began another slow, relentless advance. She paused for a moment when the sound of the alarms changed.

She knew almost instantly what had happened. They had only a few minutes to escape before the explosions buried them alive.

There were two options: break off the battle and run for the ship, or throw caution to the wind and take one last reckless charge at her Master. She couldn’t let Bane get away. She had to end this now!

As she gathered herself to charge, Bane fired off another bolt of lightning. She ducked to the side and it whizzed past her ear, striking the wall and sending up a shower of dust and stone flecks.

Despite missing her the first time, Bane followed it up with another blast on the exact same trajectory. Turning her head to follow the course of the misguided bolt, Zannah saw where the first had hit the wall. The stone had been disintegrated in a fist-sized hole, revealing something that looked like bright red plastic beneath it.

She recognized it as the casing of a demolition charge just in time to throw herself backward, using the Force to shield herself from the worst of the explosion. She was thrown clear as the entire wall blew out, sending huge chunks of stone spewing into the passage. The ceiling was shredded, tearing loose massive blocks that tumbled to the ground.

Choking on the cloud of dust and smoke, Zannah picked herself up. The passage in front of her was completely blocked by rubble and debris from the blast. She could feel Bane on the other side of the rocks; he had survived the blast, just as she had. But now they were separated by tons of impassable stone.

She walked slowly over to the collapsed section of the hallway and placed a hand on the edge of one of the massive stones blocking her way. Even using the Force,
it would take hours to clear a path. There was no way to deny the truth: she had him, and she had let him get away.

The vibrations of another explosion, this one far away in some deep chamber of the dungeon, rumbled up through the floor, reminding her she was out of time. Cursing her missed opportunity, she turned and ran back the way she had come, racing for her ship.

Overhead, the evacuation alarms continued to wail.

Bane had hoped his apprentice would be caught off guard by his unexpected tactic. There was a small chance she would actually be killed by the explosion, buried under the collapsing rock. But as he picked himself up in the aftermath, he could sense she was still alive. Despite the fact she had been trying to kill him, the knowledge brought him a small measure of satisfaction. He had trained her well.

The primary goal of the explosion hadn’t been to kill her, anyway. The desperate ploy was actually Bane’s last chance to escape a battle he knew he couldn’t win. In that he had been successful … though if he wanted to survive he still had to find a way out of the prison before the whole place came crashing down.

He had no real sense of where he was in the labyrinthine dungeon. Before Zannah found him, he had been following Caleb’s daughter, letting the Force guide him with no real conscious thought as to the path he was taking.

Reaching out with his mind, he sensed that the princess was gone now. But Bane had slaughtered more than a dozen guards during his escape; they had to have shuttles somewhere in the facility. And even if he didn’t know where to find them, he knew he could trust in the Force.

He broke into a run, darting left and right down passages
as they opened up without any thought or hesitation, doing his best to ignore the incessant howls of the evacuation alarms.

Throughout his life, even before he had known who and what he was, he had been guided by the Force. During his military career he had led a charmed life, somehow leading the Gloom Walkers virtually unscathed through some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns. He had simply considered himself lucky, or blessed with good instincts.

He skidded around a corner, his boots losing traction for a second. At the same time, he felt the shock wave of a massive explosion rippling up from chambers somewhere far below. He fought for his balance and managed to keep his feet, accelerating down the next hall.

It was impossible to tell if he was going in the right direction; the unadorned stone walls looked the same in every passage. He felt the reverberations of a second distant explosion, reminding him that he was running out of time. Yet the slope of the corridor was leading him upward, which encouraged him.

It was only after he had began his training at the Sith Academy on Korriban that he realized his incredible run of fortune had actually been a manifestation of the Force. Even before he was aware of its power it had acted through him, shaping the events of his life by guiding and directing his choices and actions.

Learning to harness that power—to take control of his destiny, rather than to let it keep controlling him—had allowed him to ascend to his current position. The Force had become a tool; its power was his to command and bend to his will.

But here, only minutes away from complete annihilation, Bane allowed himself to revert to the ways of his youth. Focusing on trying to find a way out would
require effort and concentration that would only slow him down. He couldn’t think and plan; he had to react and hope.

He wheeled around another corner, sprinted down a short hall, and charged out onto a steel balcony overlooking a massive, high-roofed chamber. He arrived just in time to see a shuttle with the Doan royal crest rising up and flying away. For an instant he thought the princess might be on board. However, when he reached out he felt a very different presence piloting the craft … someone with a powerful connection to the dark side. Bane couldn’t allow his attention to be drawn by the mysterious individual escaping in the shuttle, however: he had a far more pressing problem.

From his vantage point atop the balcony he could clearly see the Iktotchi who had led the ambush against him back at his mansion. She was dressed in the same black cloak, and she was standing beside a black and red shuttle.

She had been looking at the escaping vehicle, but as it sped away she turned to face Bane. Seeing him, an expression of satisfaction flickered across her features.

“I have been waiting for you,” she called out to him.

The last time they had fought she had bested him; this time he was unarmed and drained from his battle with Zannah. Yet he was still confident he could defeat her. Without the advantage of surprise and twenty mercenaries backing her up, she was no match for him one-on-one. And if she cut him with her poisoned blades again, he’d be ready to burn away the toxin before it overwhelmed his system.

Bane grabbed the railing of the balcony and pulled himself over, ignoring the tremor caused by another explosion from inside the facility.

His feet were already moving as he hit the floor below, driving him toward his foe. To his surprise, the Iktotchi
didn’t retreat as he bore down on her. She didn’t even draw her weapons. Instead, she dropped to one knee and bowed her head, holding her hands out palms up as if presenting him with an offering.

The unexpected reaction caused him to pull up short a few meters from her. At this distance he could clearly see she was holding the hooked handle of his missing lightsaber and what appeared to be his own Holocron in her hands.

“A gift, my lord,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him.

“You tried to kill me,” Bane said warily, not taking his eyes off her.

“I was hired to capture you,” she corrected. “It was just a job. Now that job is finished.”

Reaching out, Bane took the hilt from her hand. His fingers slipped around the familiar curved grip, and he ignited the blade.

The Iktotchi rose to her feet but showed no fear.

“Why are you still here?” Bane asked.

“I knew you had broken free,” she explained. “I hoped you might come here during your escape.”

“You had a premonition I would find you?” Bane was aware the Iktotchi were supposed to have precognitive abilities, but he had only the vaguest idea of how powerful or accurate their visions might be.

“Night after night I have seen you in my visions,” she answered. “Our destinies are intertwined.”

“What if your destiny is to die at my hand?” he asked, raising up his blade.

“Neither of us is fated to die in this place, my lord.”

As if in opposition to her words, another explosion from inside the facility rocked the chamber.

“What do you want from me?”

“Let me study under you,” she implored, seemingly oblivious to the rapidly mounting danger from the
collapsing prison. “Instruct me in the dark side. Teach me the ways of the Sith.”

“Do you realize what you are asking?” Bane demanded.

“My existence has no meaning,” the Iktotchi explained. “You can give my life purpose. You can guide me to my destiny.”

“What can you offer me in return?”

“Loyalty. Devotion. A shuttle to escape this prison before it collapses. And Caleb’s daughter.”

The next explosion was close enough that they could actually hear it echoing from down the hall.

“I accept,” Bane said, extinguishing his lightsaber after a moment’s consideration.

Less than a minute later they were aboard the Iktotchi’s shuttle, leaving the Stone Prison and the final, violent throes of its destruction behind them.

Zannah was retracing her steps, following the long route back through the dungeon and up to the small hangar where she hoped Set and her shuttle would still be waiting for her. Her entire body was infused with the Force, her legs propelling her along so fast the wind caused her hair to stream out behind her.

As she ran she could feel the tremors rising up from deep within the dungeon, each blast a little nearer than the one before it. The explosion Bane had caused had been a single charge set off by his crackling bolt of lightning. These explosions were far more powerful: eight or ten charges in close proximity all detonating at the same time, collapsing not a small stretch of corridor but rather an entire section of the facility.

By the time she crossed from the lit halls of the reopened areas of the dungeon into the darkened passages of the unused wing where she had first come in, the explosions were close enough for her to hear them as well as feel the vibrations through the floor. They were coming
more frequently now, too. Instead of every ten seconds, they pounded out in a steady rhythm.

She plunged into the blackness, not even bothering with a glow stick. Her breath was ragged and irregular, but her stride never faltered. Every muscle and nerve in her body was tingling with the power of the Force, her senses heightened to supernatural levels. She didn’t need to see to find her way: like a bat she could hear the alarms echoing off the walls, floor, and ceiling, painting a sonar image of her surroundings. The rumbling
boom-boom-boom
of the charges rang out in counterpoint to the wail of the alarms.

When she burst into the hangar where her shuttle waited, she was surprised by two things. The first was how bright the lights from her shuttle seemed after the total darkness of the subterranean passages she had been racing through. The second was that Set Harth was missing.

She’d always suspected he might cut and run, but she couldn’t think of a reason Set would disappear but still leave her shuttle behind. She didn’t have time to worry about it now, however. She heard the roar of another explosion, this one so close it actually made the walls of the hangar shake.

Jumping into the shuttle she fired it up as another detonation caused the entire vessel to rock back and forth on its struts. Fighting not to be thrown from the pilot’s chair, Zannah pulled back on the stick and the ship rose up off the ground. Banking sharply, she turned it toward the entrance and jammed her fist down on the thrusters.

The
Victory
sprang forward, hurtling through the cavern’s mouth as the final explosion set off the charges built into the hangar walls, collapsing the entire structure behind her.

Safely away, Zannah punched in a trajectory and activated the autopilot, letting the ship skim across Doan’s
surface as she tried to catch her breath. The mad dash to freedom had left her both mentally and physically exhausted. Her body was covered in sweat, and the muscles of her thighs and calves were quivering as she slumped in her seat, threatening to cramp up at any second.

She had survived, but she could hardly call the mission a success. She had let Bane slip through her fingers, and she had no doubt her Master had found a way to escape the Stone Prison’s destruction just as she had. On top of that, she had lost her apprentice.

She didn’t know if Set had escaped or if he had perished in the blast, and she had no easy way to find out. The connection she had forged with Bane over twenty years was strong enough to stretch across the breadth of the galaxy: she would feel his death no matter where or when it happened. Set had been her apprentice for only a few days. She would sense him if he was in close proximity, as she would any individual who possessed a powerful affinity for the Force, but there was no special bond between them.

But Set was the least of her problems. Bane was still out there, and as soon as he found another lightsaber he’d come looking for her … unless she found him first.

The problem was, Zannah had no idea where to begin her search.

24

T
he Stone Prison’s escape shuttle was small in size and lacked the luxuries of the princess’s personal ship, but it had been fitted with a Class Five hyperdrive and was well provisioned for interstellar travel. Theoretically, if there was ever a need to activate the dungeon’s self-destruct sequence, there was also a strong possibility that key members of the royal family or their staff might be forced to flee Doan.

In Serra’s case this was actually true. She could only imagine the political fallout she had caused. The king’s father had decommissioned the Stone Prison; officially it was still inactive. Its destruction would lead to a host of questions as to what exactly was going on in the complex beneath the royal family’s estate. Any investigations would turn up nothing, of course: the demolition charges had been carefully engineered to inflict maximum structural damage. Any proposed recovery operation would prove too expensive and impractical. Whatever secrets the Stone Prison held would be buried forever.