Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (5 page)

Leia pointed. “North. They’re somewhere north.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not exact, but at least it’s an answer.”

T
HE DOOR SLID SHUT BEHIND
J
AGGED
F
EL, SEALING THE
G
ALACTIC
Empire’s Head of State into his embassy quarters, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Alone. After a day of negotiations with representatives of the Galactic Alliance, appearances at public events, carefully managed interviews with the press, hypercomm exchanges with ministers and functionaries back home in what most people referred to as the Imperial Remnant, he could use some time alone. It was almost as relaxing, as energizing, as time with Jaina … but sadly, they could not spend every waking hour together.

He tugged at his dress uniform, popping the seal of the tunic all down the right side of his chest, and felt trapped heat ebb away from him. It was also good not to be in perfect form for the holocams. A well-muscled man of just under average height, he knew he was good looking; the press here and back home often said so. His dark hair and
close-trimmed mustache and beard helped give him a brooding look, though he seldom brooded. A lock of white hair emerging at his hairline, just where he’d picked up a scar in years past, gave him a touch of distinction. His choice of dark, militaristic dress clothes added to the impression of a vital leader with valuable wartime experience.

But it was all for show. He mostly wanted to be in a pilot’s jumpsuit, flying against an enemy he could shoot. Sadly, that was no longer his life.

He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, breathing slowly to settle and center himself, and reminded himself of the biggest single word in his life:
duty
.

His sense of duty, instilled in him by his father and every facet of the Chiss society in which he’d grown to adulthood, was with him always, but it was sometimes so devoid of a sense of accomplishment, of any sense of reward, that he felt hollow.

He was the most powerful individual in the Galactic Empire, and yet so often he merely … negotiated, taking, in turn, hundreds of people and trying to persuade each one to tilt his own individual balance a little away from self-interest and a little toward the needs of the Empire. It was often like trying to herd hundreds of greased mouse droids, each one programmed by a different maladjusted child. And at the end of the typical day, he usually felt as accomplished and successful as if he had, in fact, spent hours wallowing with those greased mouse droids.

He heaved a sigh, expelling the last of the day’s frustrations, and moved through his quarters—through the receiving room with its comfortable furniture, then into the antechamber that gave access to most of the rooms of his suite. He bypassed the door into his bedchamber and moved on to a smaller, narrower portal, one that only his voice could open. He addressed the hidden voice sensor at the top of the door. “Nek and nek.”

The door slid up, revealing a small chamber almost fully occupied by a black, ball-shaped apparatus the height of a human male: a starfighter simulator. A ladder was affixed to the side facing the door, and it led to an open hatch on top. Energy restored, Jag trotted up the ladder, his heels clanging on its durasteel steps, and dropped through the hatch into the pilot’s chair beneath.

This simulator was able to duplicate any model of TIE starfighter or similar craft produced since the original TIE fighter, but its default setting was one of Jag’s favorites, the Chiss clawcraft, and as he settled in place the front screens lit up, arranging their view into an accurate simulation of the clawcraft’s forward viewports.

“We’ll start with a mixed-squadron attack, give me sixty percent Y-wings, twenty percent X’s, twenty percent A’s …” Jag strapped on the helmet and reached for the face mask. “Range of pilot skills from green to elite, even distribution.” He pressed the face mask to his face.

It smelled odd, sweet.

Instinctively, he threw it from him, to his feet. “Abort, abort.”

The hatch, moving into closed position on its hinges above his head, did not hesitate or reverse direction.

From his boot holster, Jag drew a small, powerful blaster, something like the type referred to as a hold-out or throwdown weapon, but much more expensive, much more reliable. He fired once at each hinge. Blaster bolts flashed against the machinery, some of the energy ricocheting away; the rest imparted hundreds of degrees of heat, blowing away sections of metal, superheating the rest. The air in the enclosed space of the simulator became much warmer. The hatch stopped in a half-closed position.

The face mask began hissing. Jag scrambled to his feet and launched himself up through the narrowed exit, careful not to come in contact with the superheated portion of the hatch, and made it atop the simulator.

He dropped to the floor on the side away from the ladder. As he did so, the door into the chamber shot up and open. Jag peered around the circumference of the simulator to see a stormtrooper in full white armor step into the chamber. The man, unaware of Jag’s location, raised his blaster rifle, aiming it up toward the hatch.

Jag leaned out far enough to aim and opened fire. His first shot hit the trooper in the center of the chest plate, sending the man staggering back. His second hit the same spot; his third, the helmet. The trooper fell with a clatter of armor. “Lock open,” Jag said, and there was an obedient
clunk
from the door mechanism.

Jag had to think, and had little or no time with which to do so.

Gas in his simulator, probably sleep gas. The enemy goal, then, was
to capture him, but whether this was for ransom or just to kill him later was unknown. It probably meant the trooper’s blaster rifle was set to stun. Small comfort, that.

This was an inside job. Neither his outer door nor the door into the simulator chamber was forced, and no alarms had been triggered. It was reasonable to suppose that the entire sensor and alarm setup for his suite was disabled, meaning that he could shout forever without being heard. No help would come.

More kidnappers would, though. They’d want more than one conspirator to carry him out of his quarters. So …

He glanced up at the ceiling. He didn’t know what was situated directly above this room, but he was about to find out. He aimed at the ceiling and began pulling the trigger.

As shot after blaster shot hit the ceiling, one spot blackened, deformed, and gave way completely. Jag watched the energy meter on the blaster’s butt count down as he fired, but before the charge was quite depleted he was rewarded with the faint sounds of a shriek and a curse from overhead. Then the wail of an alarm filled the air.

Another stormtrooper appeared in the doorway, already aiming at Jag. Jag pulled back, putting the body of the simulator between himself and the newcomer, and the stun bolt, a wavering flash of blue, hit the side of the machine. Jag felt a tingle as the simulator’s skin conducted some of the energy into him, but only a fraction of the charge reached him.

The simulator, like the cockpit ball of a TIE fighter, was spherical, and Jag had something that no armored stormtrooper did: flexibility. He went flat on the permacrete floor, peering under the curve of the simulator hull, and had a clear view of the trooper’s legs up to the knees.

He fired once into each kneecap. With a howl, the trooper turned and fell flat on his face. Jag couldn’t hear whether there were more enemies coming—deafened by blaster shots and by the alarm, he wouldn’t have heard if an entire regiment of troopers was marching toward him. So it was a risk, but Jag scrambled forward under the curve of the simulator, reaching the downed trooper, and set his near-empty hold-out blaster down. He grabbed the man’s rifle and swung it around, aiming out through the door where he could now see about
a quarter of his antechamber and the first downed trooper, who was still unmoving. Jag switched the weapon from stun to kill.

Two more troopers moved into view, heading his way but separating as they came—Jag guessed they were part of a small formation fanning out as they approached. He fired at the one on the left, who would have had an easier time ducking out of sight. But Jag’s shot caught him in the unarmored inner thigh, spinning him down to the carpeted floor. The man’s scream choked off before he fell. The second trooper threw himself to the floor, narrowing his profile considerably, and opened fire. Jag rolled to position himself more fully behind the body of the nearest trooper, and that trooper’s body caught the one stun bolt that came near. Jag fired once, twice, three times, and the trooper in the next room lay still, his helmet a charred, smoking mess.

In a conversational tone, not loud enough to be heard over the alarm and through trooper helmets but loud enough for the nearest suite microphones to pick up, Jag said, “Door, unlock. Door, disengage all safety governors. Door …” He waited before issuing another command, and wriggled backward, dragging with him the trooper he was using for cover.

Two troopers appeared in the doorway, side by side, clearly having leapt into place from outside Jag’s field of view.

Jag said, “Shut.”

The door slammed down, hammering both troopers to the floor. The door, not meant for use as a weapon, bent and accordioned around its two victims.

Jag shot one trooper, then the other, in the neck. He said, “Door, open.” The ruined remains of the door rose, jamming in the up position with half its length still in view.

Then there was more blasterfire, a lot of it, and Jag could see the antechamber being illuminated as if by a fireworks display, but only a couple of blaster bolts entered the simulator chamber; one burned through the side of the simulator and the other ricocheted from the walls, flashing back into the antechamber.

The blasterfire stopped. The alarm cut out, leaving a ringing silence in Jag’s ears. Finally, he heard, “Sir? Sir, are you here?”

The voice, normally soft-spoken, now held both worry and rage. It
belonged to Ashik, formally known as Kthira’shi’ktarloo. Ashik was a Chiss who was Jag’s devoted assistant, attendant, and head of personal security. And who, no doubt, was probably more agitated at a possible failure of that last duty than Jag himself was.

“I’m fine, Ashik.” Jag stood, winced at the smell of burned flesh and armor, and smoothed his tunic. “Hold your fire.” He ducked and stepped through the doorway, blaster rifle in hand.

The antechamber was a ruin of eight or nine downed stormtroopers; blackened, destroyed furniture; and fumes. Still standing were Ashik and a complement of Imperial security men and women. Ashik’s blue face was set in anger; his piercing eyes were hard, and his full lips pressed together.

Jag nodded at Ashik. “Yes. I’d like some answers. Right away.”

Answers were slow in coming.

The first stormtrooper Jag had shot, the first of six he had killed, was no stormtrooper at all, but Lieutenant Oln Pressig, Ashik’s day-shift opposite number. The other armored intruders were also, in a sense, fakes; they had all seen active service with the Galactic Empire, some of them as long ago as before the Yuuzhan Vong War, and all had either been discharged dishonorably or had entered dubious professions after their tours. In the last few weeks, all had traveled to Coruscant on funds transferred to their accounts from a dummy company on Borleias, which had been in Imperial hands since the Second Galactic Civil War.

The guards outside Jag’s quarters were alive, felled by stun bolts. After recovering, they told Ashik that they had been approached by an armored trooper carrying and broadcasting proper credentials, and had been gunned down.

While Jag’s theoretically more secure embassy chambers were being cleaned and repaired, he relocated to the hotel suite he often engaged in order to spend time with Jaina. Jaina sat while Jag paced. “It’s all pretty much according to formula.”

On the sofa, maddeningly calm in contrast with Jag’s nervous energy, Jaina looked confused. “Whose formula?”

“Oh, there’s got to be a book or file somewhere.
Conspiracy, A
Methodology
, by Emperor Palpatine, annotated by Ysanne Isard, with a foreword by the Warlord Zsinj. The bestselling resource for plotters for the last three decades. Don’t you think?”

Jaina smiled. “Probably.”

“Chapter six, I’m sure, is all about covering your tracks in case the assassination attempt fails. Insulate cells of operatives. Make sure anyone acting as contact for two or more cells can be quietly killed or spirited away when things go wrong.” Jag stopped against an outer viewport, one that was mirror-reflective from the outside, and put his palms up against the cool transparent metal.

“You could be safer,” Jaina said. “This suite isn’t as secure as it could be. Neither is your embassy.”

“What, return to the
Gilad Pellaeon
? Hide out on my Star Destroyer? I have to project confidence and courage.”

“Well, then you need to strike back. But whom?”

“The Moffs. It had to be.”

“All of them?”