Star Wars: Knight Errant (13 page)

Era Daimanos
was Daiman’s flagship in the classic naval sense. Kerra had seen larger, more powerful vessels in the young lord’s fleet;
Era
was more a cross between a battleship and a pleasure yacht. But
Era
bore Lord Daiman, and that unlucky fact gave it its distinction.

It had been surprisingly simple for her to reach the ship before Daiman’s entourage. Giving up on navigating the labyrinthine palace, Kerra had found her way to the rooftop. It had been an easy traverse from there in the stealth suit. By the time the first train of bearers arrived with Daiman’s luggage, she was already safely on board, hiding in a service area beneath a deck grating.

The service tunnel was a close fit, but she’d found several passages branching from it to other areas of the ship. She’d been relieved to find one leading to an unused galley, as it meant she could take her time and pick her moment. And in the tunnel, she wouldn’t need the stealth suit every minute of the day. She hoped Daiman wasn’t bringing many adepts sensitive to feelings of hate, because she was coming to absolutely loathe the accursed suit.

Settling in near a grating, Kerra turned up the suit’s audio sensors. She could just make out Daiman and the Woostian aide, passing somewhere in the company of his sentries.

“—as my lord knows, the Bothan spy is missing,” she
said. “The Gamorreans left him as instructed. He was not there when they returned.”

“Your lord knows,” Daiman said to his aide. “I knew he’d find a way, once we left him alone. An intrepid little beast. Quite entertaining.”

Beneath the floor, Kerra pursed her lips. She’d thought the Gamorreans had loosened the Bothan’s bonds before they’d left him alone. It didn’t make much sense.

Hearing the engines of the vessel throttle up, Kerra strained to catch Daiman’s final comment before he went out of earshot: “All proceeds according to my design.”

Kerra looked at the explosives sitting inside her bag and smiled.
Just wait, Dark Lord. Let’s see you design your way out of this!

The tortured ground pointed up; turrets of Sarrassian iron pointed out, and down. Standing in the spotters’ nest atop
Diligence
’s hull, Rusher regarded the sight with pride, wondering if this was how gardeners felt.

Of course, he planted death, rather than life. But in Sith space, that seemed to fit.

Hours earlier, it had been a rusty ridge, untouched by organics. Now cannon barrels lined the eastern edge of the bowl valley, the weapons planted just inside the stalagmite line by his busy crews. Taking macrobinoculars from one of his aides, Rusher looked along the ridgeline. There were the Nosaurian’s long Brock-Eight cannons, just going in to the north. Lower down, Mak was positioning his droids as best he could, given the many crevasses in the landform.

Rusher had seldom deployed in such challenging terrain. The “valley” was actually an ancient crater several kilometers across; their ridge was part of the eastern wall, broken several times by tectonic action and meteor strikes. The curious stone shards rising from the ridge had made finding an elevated place to land
Diligence
difficult. Rusher guessed they came from acid rain, generated by the same volcanoes whose smoke gave Gazzari its low ceiling. Weather seemed to come in only two kinds here: rain, or ashfall. Watching blackened motes flutter by, he
was thankful they’d gotten here during the latter. Rain that could give a crater teeth was something he didn’t want to be out in.

Below, he saw what the combination of the two had wrought. The floor of the crater was a tarry slick, a featureless sheen stretching to the corresponding ridge far away. Daiman had perched his vessel on the northern crater wall; even now, his elite troops were setting up temporary structures down in the valley. Or trying to. The surface slurry looked ankle-deep. Rusher could see the Daimanites struggling in the terrain.

But the idea was pretty clever, Rusher thought. By raising decoy tents and depots there, Daiman stood a chance of convincing anyone landing that the terrain was manageable. Lost moments in the valley would give his irregulars the advantage. The planet looked as if it had been created specifically with an ambush in mind.

Of course, Daiman would say he’d done exactly that
, Rusher thought, rubbing his neck.

He turned his attention back to his own forces. Rusher treated deployments like a science, but visually they had the artistic appeal of a dance. They’d parked
Diligence
in a clearing behind stone spires a couple of meters high, just tall enough to screen their cargo operations. Landing on flat ground to permit easier unloading, they’d activated the precious hydraulic lifts to tilt the nose of the crew compartment downward, providing Rusher’s rooftop command center a better angle on the valley.

Now, before any enemies were even in the system, the real operation was under way. With the ramps on
Diligence
’s two cargo-cluster feet petaled outward, all eight battalions hit the ground simultaneously. Squads of rifle-toting troopers emerged first, setting a perimeter. Scouts followed on their speeder bikes, examining terrain and checking for mines.

Then the majors—Rusher always fancied the old Republic ranks—emerged with their headquarters units, conferring electronically about deployment zones with their spotter counterparts on
Diligence
’s roof. The big machines came last, wheeling out the bases of the larger pieces and bringing down the long barrels from their stowage spaces outside the ship’s hull.

There were no assembly workers in Rusher’s Brigade. No gunners, either, for that matter. As specialists went, Rusher was a committed generalist. Every laborer who built the weapons was also rated to operate them, and anyone who wanted the fun of firing one had to build the emplacement beforehand and tear it down after the party ended. Artillery pieces were complicated enough that an intimate understanding of them was necessary at every step, from assembly to use to retrieval. It was something he’d learned from old Yulan, back in better days. If a turbolaser blast took out half your people, you didn’t want to lose the only ones who knew how to shoot back. Or how to lift off in a hurry.

Still, there was the occasional irreplaceable component. Rusher saw his, perched down on the cargo support and screaming inaudibly at teams on the ground. Master Ryland Dackett was the reason things looked choreographed rather than chaotic. He’d spent his life helping Sith shoot Sith. Enough, Rusher imagined, to qualify as an honorary Jedi. He was getting results, as usual. Everything was moving nicely. Engineer Novallo was out giving
Diligence
’s clubbed feet a once-over. Tun-Badon, the creepy Sanyassan running Serraknife Battalion, was scaring the blazes out of his team; no wonder they were always the first to finish deploying. This could be done in record time, despite the terrain.

A light on the northern crater wall caught Rusher’s attention. He redirected the macrobinoculars to see Daiman emerging from
Era Daimanos
. Gone was the spectral cape
from days before. Today’s Daiman was downright demure, decked out in a royal blue flak jacket and leather leggings that tucked into knee-high boots.
Dressed for a fight
, Rusher thought.
Or maybe the weather’s just too rotten for the draperies
.

Scanning away from Daiman’s departing entourage, Rusher thought for a moment he spied movement beneath one of the flagship’s cargo ramps. Something seemed to stir there in the falling ash, almost like a frosted phantom.

Zeroing in, he looked again. Nothing.

Rusher rapped the macrobinoculars twice against the railing. “Get these checked,” he said, passing them to an aide. “If there’s one thing I’ll need today, it’s eyes that work!”

It had been the most frustrating journey Kerra had endured since arriving in Sith space. Hearing Daiman board his starship while on Darkknell, she’d assumed she’d be able to find him later just by looking for the biggest room. Not so.
Era Daimanos
lacked any lavish pleasure dome like the one in his Xakrean compound.

She’d heard a rumor on the work line that Daiman didn’t care for spaceflight. She couldn’t imagine him having a weak stomach; maybe the so-called creator of the cosmos simply felt inadequate actually seeing it up close. That was as good an explanation as any for the fact that there was no hint of Daiman in any of the major cabins with views to the outside. He didn’t seem the sort to cocoon himself in a meditation chamber, but after the third day and night, she’d actually begun searching rooms that small.

Again, no luck.
Maybe he stores himself in deep freeze to stay all shiny
, she’d thought.

Worse, while the service tunnels were both deserted and
extensive, the one place they
didn’t
seem to go was toward the reactors. Then again, that might have been for the best.
Era
was well fixed for kitchens, but it came up short in the life pod department. Evidently, Daiman’s life was the only one that mattered. There was no easy way to blow up the ship and escape.

So she’d waited. The baradium nitrite packs were swiftly becoming the most traveled explosives in the history of guerrilla warfare.

By the fourth day, when
Era
had groaned to a landing, Kerra was afraid Daiman wasn’t on the ship at all. It had been a relief, on finally reaching a cargo ramp, to see Daiman’s seven-tentacled sun standard hanging outside. Several hundred meters across Gazzari’s surface, another stood before a canvas dome erected in a forest of jagged pillars. Kerra had seen several of Daiman’s aides milling about—and, finally, the popinjay himself. The headquarters dome was well within the power of her explosives to destroy. Looking toward the eastern ridge of the crater, she’d seen several more ships parked in the highlands. Lots of options for escape. Things were finally breaking her way.

Or so it had seemed. Now, on the ground, Kerra realized the destination was more aggravating than the flight. The Mark VI, which had kept her alive throughout her exploration of Daiman’s Darkknell castle, was almost entirely useless here. The fine particles of volcanic dust drifting through the air found something to love about the suit. Or maybe about Kerra. For whatever reason, the ash only clung to her while the suit was activated.

It made the “stealth suit” nothing of the kind. After five minutes walking around on Gazzari, she’d look like a short Talz—covered with white dust instead of fur, and with a clipped mask instead of a weird proboscis.

I don’t care if they see me
, Kerra thought, ducking
beneath the cargo ramp.
I’m not going to die wearing this thing!

Crouching in the shadows after her impromptu wardrobe change, Kerra thanked the Force for her freedom. It was good to be back in her old brown-and-black outfit again, augmented with her gun belt and lightsaber. And something new: the bandolier she’d fashioned aboard ship for carrying the explosive packets. One wire running to a receiver triggered the whole thing. Folding the stealth suit into the now-empty pouch, Kerra strapped the pack around her shoulders and stood.

Her bones ached from days in cramped compartments. Her hair, once fine, was a dirty clump. She’d had to wear the Mark VI just to get to the refresher stations aboard ship. Food had been whatever she could abscond with.

It had to end.

She bolted from beneath the ramp into the open. Time to join the fight.

“How’re we doing, Dackett?” Rusher said, amused. It hardly seemed necessary to ask.

“We can’t get Kelli Two-Five out of the hold,” the ship’s master said, stubbing out a smoldering cigarra. “Some idiot loaded it wrong back on Whinndor.” Dackett slapped his datapad, jowls shaking as he did. He’d just climbed the six ladder flights to the rooftop without complaint, stopping only to relight. The man was a marvel.

Rusher was almost afraid to ask how old Dackett was. He knew the ship’s top noncom went all the way back to the days before Lord Mandragall, but “born during an artillery barrage—and conceived there, too,” was Dackett’s only line on the score. A pulse cannon was just a giant puzzle to him; he’d helped assemble his first ion cannon when he was seven, alongside his father and stepmother. Rusher didn’t know how many battles lay between then and his own first meeting with Dackett, but the brigadier
never would have gone into business for himself without him. They’d started with a single gun crew and “Bitsy,” a long-barreled heavy laser cannon salvaged from some old derelict. They could barely get her into the hold of their transport back then.

Now they ran a crew of nearly three thousand—and according to Dackett’s report, nearly everyone was in position, having constructed dozens of guns less than fifteen minutes after pads-down. “Still a few problems with the bulk loaders we salvaged,” Dackett said. “But, you know, the port hydro’s runnin’ like a dream. Your Duros boy’s folks came through.”

“You’re welcome,” Rusher said.

“Yeah, well, Novallo didn’t get everything on her list, now, did she?”

Rusher smiled. “Is it my fault the kid was an only child?”

“I’m wishin’ his parents had taken a vow of chastity.” Dackett gestured toward the starboard side.

Rusher pointed the new pair of macrobinoculars. There, beyond one of the cargo ramps, sat Beadle Lubboon in a tracked power-loader vehicle, hopelessly mired in the brackish mud. “I didn’t think there was any of that guck up here on the ridge.”