Star Wars: Knight Errant (31 page)

“You will kneel,” Dromika said, facing Kerra.

Kerra stumbled. She’d fended off attempts to mesmerize her all day, but this was on another scale entirely. The younger girl’s words stabbed into her brain, raking at her free will. Kerra’s brow furrowed, her mental shields going up too late.

“You will kneel!”
Dromika boomed, clenching her fists.

Kerra locked her knees together, fighting against the weight pushing down on her. It was more than simple suggestion. Dromika appeared to have mindlessly worked other forms of Force manipulation into her commands, acting out upon the physical world to force Kerra’s muscles and bones to comply.

Still, the Jedi fought. “I … will …”

“YOU WILL KNEEL!”

Kerra’s knees went out from under her. Hitting the floor with a painful thud, her hands struck the ground palm-first. Her weapon, extinguishing itself, clattered away.

Eyes tearing up, Kerra tried to crawl toward her lightsaber, just meters ahead of her. But immense pressure continued to bear down on her. The only way to keep from having the life crushed out of her …

… was to kneel.

“Regent-aspect,” Dromika said, much quieter. From the side, the Krevaaki glided toward Kerra, his quartet of mini lightsabers raised.

Sweat pouring, Kerra looked up and tried to speak.
Tried to move. Tried to do anything against the executioner now looming above her. Tentacles curled, bringing the four glowing instruments of death centimeters from her neck on all sides.

Feeling their burning presence, Kerra had a fleeting thought of all the close calls she’d escaped, through sheer cussed stubbornness.

Now, at the end, that will had finally failed her.

Calician looked down at the Jedi, completely at his mercy. It had been so long, he thought, savoring the moment. So much had been lost to him. But this moment would be
his
, and his—

The regent saw his limbs flexing before him, ready to plunge their weapons into his victim.

“No!”

At the last moment, Calician had realized
he
wasn’t the one bringing the lightsabers to bear. “Let
me
do it!” The regent looked back to see Dromika standing there, at the edge of the pillows, her hands raised, willing him ahead.

“You will destroy the Jedi!” the girl yelled. She jabbed with clenched fingers, trying to make Calician move.
“You will destroy the Jedi!”

Calician shuddered, the lightsabers pausing a hair’s breadth from the Jedi’s neck. “Yes—
I
will destroy the Jedi! Not you!
Me!
” He fought the force animating his tentacles. “Release me!”

The girl simply glared.

Incensed, the Krevaaki fought back, directing at his young master the psychic power he’d so often utilized in her name.
“You will release me!”

Seeing the Krevaaki hesitate, Kerra fell flat to the floor and reached through the Force. Her lightsaber clattered between the regent’s legs and into her hand. Before a sin
gle second expired, Kerra ignited it and rolled to the right, depriving the regent of one of the tentacles that gave him footing. The Krevaaki screamed, doubling over and dropping his weapons.

Momentarily freed from Dromika’s control, Kerra regained her feet and started running. The girl shifted, beginning to react. Kerra couldn’t allow that. Reaching forward, she swept with her left hand, scooping up the droid-debris in her path and blindly launching it toward the siblings’ roost. Dashing in a circle around them, she wasn’t going to be able to strike them with anything. But she wasn’t trying to spread destruction—just distraction. To enforce the twins’ wills, Dromika had to get her attention, or at least concentrate.

Kerra wasn’t letting that happen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the teenagers reacting to the sudden shower of scrap. Quillan clasped his hands together and let loose a mournful howl, while his sister stumbled around on the cushions, trying to keep her body in front of him as Kerra turned.

The Jedi widened her circle, dousing her lightsaber and snapping it to her belt in a single, smooth move. She needed both hands as she ran ever-wider circles around the pair. It felt to her almost like a game in a gymnasium as she yanked storage containers from the open closets, hurling their contents into the penthouse. Toys. Food. Clothing. It all came out, rocketing to her left as she dashed. Through the miasma of junk she could see the boy standing now, balancing on shaky legs and wailing while his sister yelled something inaudible at the floored Krevaaki.

The regent wasn’t going anywhere, Kerra saw—but now Dromika was on the move. Kerra saw the girl clamber off the pile of pillows and onto the floor, into the stream of the hurled objects. As canisters and utensils clattered past, Dromika raised her hands and mimicked
Kerra’s hand motions. Kerra skidded to a stop. Grabbing one of the nanny droids’ tubby abdomens from the floor with her hands, Kerra heaved, bowling it toward Dromika. Struck by the bouncing ball, the girl fell.

Quillan screamed—and as he did, Dromika leapt from the ground, reinvigorated. Kerra started running again, this time sweeping with the Force to rip window shards from the floor. She had to keep shifting strategies, keep them on the defensive. The twins’ only understanding of combat, physically or through the Force, came second-hand, through their minions. They couldn’t be accustomed to this kind of thing.

But she was quickly running out of things to throw. Changing tactics again, Kerra bolted across the diameter of the room, leaping onto and over the pile of cushions. Quillan lurched away, waving for Dromika to return. The girl moved faster this time, traversing the platform quickly. Kerra looked back, trying to find the turbolift she’d entered through.

That was a mistake. Dromika, running up behind her, reached out through the Force. Turning to run again, Kerra stumbled across an empty drawer from one of the cabinets she’d hurled. Falling before a shattered window, she reached instinctively for her lightsaber. But looking up, she saw the Sith girl, meters away and approaching with her hands raised. Dromika began to speak …

… and screamed, instead. Behind her, Quillan had seen something she hadn’t. Dromika’s head snapped to the right, looking out the window—and into the muzzle of a Kelligdyd 5000 cannon, racing toward her. The girl dropped as thousands of kilograms of Sarrassian iron stabbed through the window, driven by the movement of the warship outside.

Rolling away, Kerra looked back in surprise.
Diligence!

The warship lurched away from the building, with-
drawing the colossal makeshift battering ram and taking part of the window frame with it. Looking to see Dromika reviving, Kerra regained her feet and started running. Reminded, she reached for the comlink and yelled, “Is that you, mercenary?”

“Silly question” the response came.

Kerra couldn’t argue. To her left, she saw the Krevaaki trying to rise on his remaining tentacles. Only one of his lightsabers was lit—but looking back, she saw Dromika holding one of the others. Kerra winced. She should’ve put the regent down before this, she thought. And did the girl know how to use the lightsaber? She didn’t relish another confrontation.

Bounding across the room, Kerra looked back to see that
Diligence
was no longer hovering outside the window. Boots skidding on the rug, she heard the reason.

“We can’t get a ramp to you like this!” Rusher’s voice crackled. Kerra saw the ship bob outside the window and drop again. “We’re going to slip under where the building juts out. You’ll have to jump!”

When don’t I?
Kerra wondered. She looked back. The regent had foundered, unable to make his remaining limbs obey. But Dromika continued to advance, green eyes now an empty red, matching the weapon burning in her hand. Behind and to her right, Kerra saw Quillan meekly backing toward the window, hands raised to mimic Dromika’s motions.

Or was it the other way around?

Divide and conquer
, the Bothan had said. Kerra looked at Quillan’s eyes, as alive now as his sister’s were vacant.
Dromika’s not the puppeteer. She’s just another puppet—for Quillan!

“Stop!”
Dromika yelled, raising her free hand. Facing her, Kerra shuddered under the psychic command—

—and bolted, dashing straight between Dromika and the regent, heading straight for Quillan. The boy looked
at her in wordless panic, his hand raised just like his sister’s. Charging, Kerra saw Dromika wilt, no longer animated by her connection to her brother’s mind.

“Ngaaah!”
Quillan yelled. Tucking her head beneath his armpit, Kerra wrapped her hands around the boy and shoved toward the window where she’d seen
Diligence
last. With a mighty heave over the crunchy bottom of the pane, she carried Quillan over the side.

Tackle becoming a tumble, Kerra saw the lower levels of The Loft whisking by—and the luxury-cruiser-sundeck-turned-spotters’-nest of the warship rising up to meet her. Tucking her left leg under the terrified teenager, Kerra slammed violently into the hull. White heat shot from her ankle to her eyes in an instant.

Dazed, Kerra rolled, Quillan still partially on top of her.
Diligence
rolled, too, the harbor air currents pitching the vessel’s nose upward. Kerra and the boy slid backward, toward the deck-top railing and the bay, hundreds of meters below. Kerra clawed, desperately seeking a handhold.

A metallic hand grabbed her instead. “We’ve got her!” Master Dackett yelled.

“Move us out!” Kerra heard. Dragged along with Quillan by Dackett and two other troopers, she spotted Rusher standing, partially visible, in the hatchway.

“No,” she yelled, pushing futilely against her bearers. “Tan and Beadle are still down there!”

“We’ve got them,” Rusher called, making a hole for his crew members to pass her into the hatchway. He regarded Quillan, feebly pushing at the air. “You didn’t think we had enough kids along?”

Kerra fought to wrest away from those relaying her down the ladder. So Tan and Beadle had made it out. But they weren’t the only ones in jeopardy. The Celegians were back there, still living a life of unimaginable agony out in the buoys. And what of everyone else on Byllura?
In the whole Dyarchy? “We can’t leave!” she said, wincing as the crew set her down on the deck. “You don’t understand.
I
can’t leave.”

“Not a chance, Holt,” Rusher said, gesturing for the hatch above to be closed and speaking into his comlink. “Orbital velocity, now.”

“You can’t make me go with you!”

“The cargo I’m carrying is yours,” Rusher said, descending the ladder toward her. “Until it’s delivered, you go where we go.”

Feeling the sudden impulse driving the vessel forward, Kerra lay back against the deck, defeated. Rusher stepped past the medic tending to her and headed down the hallway. Kerra glared. “Leaving people behind again. This isn’t going to help your lurch ratio.”

“He’s just a kid!” Rusher rapped the head of his walking stick against the railing to the command pit. “And you’re telling me he’s Sith?”

“A Sith Lord,” Kerra corrected.

“Oh, well,
that
makes sense,” the brigadier said. “We didn’t have a Sith Lord in the collection. Glad you brought him on board!” He glared at the Jedi, sitting on the plush carpet of the bridge and nursing her wrenched thigh. Her attention was where his was: on the boy huddled in the nook, far forward. Rusher had posted armed guards to either side of the teenager, but it hardly seemed necessary. The kid was a mess. Since arriving with Kerra on the bridge, he’d alternated between fevered looks through the viewscreen at Byllura, below—and howling fits with his head tucked between his knees.

A Sith Lord in his pajamas
, Rusher thought.
I’ve seen it all now
. “He’s never been in space before?”

“Quillan’s never been out of his
room
before,” Kerra said, edging closer—and then back. She seemed to alternate, too: between sympathy and wariness. Rusher understood from her that, minutes earlier, the boy had been trying to kill her. But “Lord Quillan” didn’t look powerful. If anything, he seemed … mentally challenged.

Kerra looked around at the cosmos filling Quillan’s
sight on all sides. “It’s this blasted observation lounge of a bridge. Can’t you polarize the viewports, or something?”

“Not under attack, I can’t,” Rusher said, eyes sweeping the space from port to starboard. The Dyarchy battleships he’d seen leaving Hestobyll were all out there, part of a serious space force that included cruisers and snub fighters. He even spotted some troop transports in the mix, all clustered near the battleships. The Dyarchy meant business for someone.

But not
them
—at least not so far. Despite his words,
Diligence
wasn’t under attack. Since they’d reached orbit, the Dyarchy fleet had simply sat there, in between them and any hyperspace jump points. Leaving the Bylluran system for anywhere required negotiating this field of predators, poised to strike. And unlike Gazzari, Rusher didn’t figure the ships would suddenly leave on another appointment.

“You say this kid’s their boss,” he said, gesturing toward Quillan. “Is that why they’re not attacking?”