Star Wars: Knight Errant (45 page)

As usual, the ship’s master made sense.

Rusher sighed. He’d tried.

Kerra parried one lightsaber stroke after another, backing toward yet another doorway in the circular room. All the exits were locked from the outside, including the one she’d entered through. Arkadia had her trapped.

“You’re little more than a Padawan,” her opponent said, weapon whirling in her hands. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. You’ve never known!”

The ruby blade came down, streaking against the ice floor. Leaping, Kerra bounded past the holoprojector pylon, which now provided the only cover in the room.

“You’re not the first Sith I’ve faced,” she said, fighting for time. “You’re just another petty dictator, like the rest. You’re not special.”

“Don’t compare me with them,” Arkadia snapped. “Mine is an enlightened regime!”

Kerra laughed. “Well, it’s true then, what I’ve always heard. An ‘enlightened’ Sith would kill her own grandmother!”

Ignoring the taunt, Arkadia raised her weapon high over her head and charged. Kerra darted out of the way, causing the tip of the Sith Lord’s lightsaber to spark off the pylon.

“I’m just taking what’s mine. What
should
have been mine!” Pressing a control on her weapon, Arkadia detached the ends from the meter-long staff, dropping the ornamented bar to the floor. One weapon had become two.

Kerra leapt, only to be repelled by Arkadia’s gleaming defense. Incredibly, the woman seemed as coordinated with two lightsabers as with one, using the first to parry while preparing a counterstroke with the other. Forced back, Kerra fell, stumbling over the raised tiles set in the icy floor. Pressing her advantage, Arkadia brought both lightsabers forcefully against Kerra’s green blade.

Straining in the crackling battle of strength, Kerra looked into her atatcker’s eyes. The calculating intelligence remained, but anger was taking hold.

“I was a fool to expect you to help,” Arkadia said, mashing her lightsabers against Kerra’s. “Too smart by half. But it’s done. The assassin is on his way.” Shimmering red light danced across her face. “They’re
both
gone.”

Eyes transfixed on Arkadia, Kerra suddenly caught a feeling through the Force.
Both gone
.

“You … you sent Quillan to die. Didn’t you?”

Arkadia froze—and the world around her rumbled. The Sith Lord looked up to see a flash of light over the skylight. The stunted
Diligence
screamed overhead, releasing something from beneath. Kerra recognized it: the
port-side cargo cluster, fully a quarter of the ship’s mass, spiraling toward the surface.

Syned shook again, harder than before. The southern wall of the museum erupted, forced inward by the cataclysmic meeting of megatons of explosives and ice. Arkadia staggered with the impact. Kerra kicked out, taking the Sith Lord’s legs out from under her.

Abruptly, the floor itself fractured, two-thirds of the ice jutting upward. Forced to the northern wall, Kerra deactivated her lightsaber and clambered across the icy rubble, looking for an open passageway beyond the askew doors. Aftershocks and secondary explosions continued to shake the dome. Clouds of frost fell from above.

And there, in the snowfall, she saw Arkadia, bruised but advancing.

“How could you?” Kerra yelled, reaching in vain for some handhold to climb the wall. “You sent your brother to die—in a trap against your grandmother?
How could you?
”

Stepping over a crevasse in the floor, the Sith Lord waved her hands. Both lightsabers returned to her from the rubble. She ignited them. “There can be only one Sith Lord,” she said.
“And no Jedi.”
Arkadia leapt …

… and above, the sky ripped away in a blinding flash.

Kerra struggled to open her ice-crusted eyes. The top third of the dome was gone. Arkadia’s museum, shattered from above and below, was open to the stars and Syned’s deadly cold.

Hearing creaks as she tried to move, she couldn’t tell whether they came from the collapsed pit around her or her own bones. Fumbling in the ice, she found a metal bar and jabbed it into the snowy wall, using it to pull herself up. A tool, from what had once been a museum of tools. Slamming the makeshift piton into the wall again,
she scaled the frozen slabs, desperate to escape. Something was moving in the debris behind her.

With a heave, Kerra lunged onto the surface of Syned and inhaled. Frigid air, only barely laced with oxygen, stabbed at her lungs. Around her, she saw only devastation. Most of the buildings on the surface were gone, and majestic Patriot Hall was now a leaning frame of pillars. The tractor beam emitters were gone. The field once strewn with ships heaved, tossing and refreezing.

Hearing footsteps in the ice behind her, she tried to run, only to stumble and fall, choking at the cold.

Diligence
was gone. But she had seen it in the air, earlier. Was it escaping? Cheek against the ice, she decided to think that it was.

It had been a good fight. She’d done her part.

She closed her eyes.

The light of the medbay was warm and reassuring, everything one would expect from a classy spaceliner. Kerra blinked at the room through her oxygen mask.

“Looks like she’s thawing out,” a familiar voice said.

Stretching against the pillow, Kerra watched a medical droid remove her mask. The silver model stepped aside to reveal Rusher, leaning inside the doorway. Overcoat gone, the redhead wore a black shirt beneath a worn rust-colored jacket.

“What happened?” Kerra croaked, voice raw from exposure.

“You went for a walk outside without your space suit,” Rusher said, grinning.

Kerra struggled to sit up. “No, I meant to the dome. I was fighting Arkadia—and then half of it vanished.”

“Oh,” Rusher said, stepping inside the room. “Thank Bitsy for that.” He explained that while he’d been waiting to be picked up by what was left of
Diligence
, he’d spied a telltale knob alone on the ice out to the east. Catching the faintest trace of a signal from the tag on Kerra’s lightsaber, he’d sent his ship on a flyover to confirm it was the top of a deep and massive dome. Then the brigadier, along with Lubboon and the Rippers, had heaved the massive weapon onto a cargo sled behind
one of Arkadia’s trundle cars. One final shot across the tundra had leveled the dome.

“You thought I was in there—and you
shot
it? You could have killed me!”

“We’re a precision crew,” Rusher said. “We shaved it like hair off a bantha.”

Pouring himself a cup of something medicinal, he recounted how he’d tricked his way into Calimondretta with his remaining artillery pieces. He was fortunate that Arkadia had sent the icecrawler to get all the refugees in one trip; it had allowed him to put all of his munitions into action.

“We’d never deployed inside a building before, but we hoped if we got in there and shot enough stuff, they’d give you to us—or you’d scurry out somewhere.” He drank. “That’s how it worked.”

“How’d I get back to the ship?”

“I … arranged transportation.”

“You carried me?”

“Barely,” Rusher said. “You’re heavier than you look.” He smiled. “All muscle, I know.”

Kerra rolled her eyes. “What about that bad leg of yours?”

“Well, I had to keep my lurch ratio perfect this mission. And as has been brought to my attention, the walking stick was always just for show.”

“I’m sorry I broke your old one.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I like the new one you brought me better.” Rusher lifted something from a shelf, behind her.

Kerra recognized it with a start. “Arkadia’s lightsaber?” Looking again, she realized it was the detached, ornamental middle.
So that’s what the stick was that got me out of the museum
, she thought. “But it’s too small for a cane.”

“But dandy for a swagger-stick,” Rusher said.

Kerra rubbed her eyes. “The refugees?”

“All aboard
Diligence
, all safe. All twenty-two hundred of them.”

The Jedi’s dark brow furrowed. “But we had …”

“One thousand seven hundred and seventeen,” Rusher said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we picked up some more riders on our way out. A bunch of laborers found environment suits and dashed across the ice to us, begging to be taken along. Apparently, they weren’t as patriotic as Arkadia wanted them to be. You remember that Twi’lek—the supply-clerk-turned-metallurgist? Evidently it wasn’t much of a promotion.”

Rusher shared some of what they’d been told by the new arrivals, including details about Arkadia’s chemical weapons program. He smirked. “Sounds like we took part of that operation out during our little rampage.”

“By accident,” Kerra said. “You didn’t even know it was there!”

“I’m in artillery. Everything we hit, we hit on purpose—even if we don’t know what it is!” He patted the bulkhead. “Anyway, there was plenty of room here on
Diligence
for them, although we’re kind of back to being
Vichary Telk
. Only ugly. With the cargo pod clusters gone, the spaceliner was a spaceliner again, more or less.

“Might as well put it back to its service,” he said.

Kerra shook her head. “You tore apart your ship to save me?”

“My engineer isn’t very happy with me, but what else is new? Besides,” he said, reaching for Kerra’s arm and pulling up her sleeve, “you were carry ing our destination.”

Kerra looked at the numbers on her arm, scrawled there by the Bothan. She wondered what had happened to him. The last thing this part of the galaxy needed was him out there, working his mischief in his stealth suit. And yet, for some reason, he had helped her—and helped
Rusher. She wondered if Narsk knew the reason why, himself.

A thought struck her suddenly. “Your artillery pieces! You left them on Syned?”

“Well, we couldn’t very well bring them with us with no cargo pods. You know how it is with those things. Lightning-fast to deploy, forever to get moved out. And we were a little busy.”

“But they’re your whole business.”

“We’re going to the Republic, Kerra. Shopping is the official sport, from what I hear. I’m sure we can find a manufacturer willing to deal.” He looked to the walls. “And it’d be nice to get some new holos.”

“The Republic!” Remembering, Kerra slapped her knee enthusiastically—only to wince in pain. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “But I think you’ll like to hear this.”

Quickly, she recounted some of what she learned from Arkadia about the Sith family and the
Charge Matrica
. As she tried to recall every face, every name from the Bequest, Rusher leapt in with details, filling in the blanks. He seemed to brighten as the pieces fell into place.

“That’s astounding,” he said. He’d known about some of the relationships, but not all—and while there were a lot more would-be Sith Lords that weren’t in the family, Kerra’s find had made many of the encounters he’d seen make sense.

“Get a recorder in here. I’ll document everything,” she said. “You want to meet a real Republic Chancellor? I think you’re about to get your chance.” Kerra warmed inside. The first time she’d sent others back to the Republic, they’d had to convey the sad news about what had happened to Vannar Treece and his band. This wasn’t good news, but it was something direly needed in the Republic: light, shone into the darkness.

Rusher scratched his beard. “This does sound pretty valuable. You know, I’ve been itching to do a refit on the
old tub,” he said. “If this info’s worth knowing, maybe they’ll pay to give
Diligence
four cargo clusters, instead of two.” He watched her face. “What? Don’t they use the barter system there, too?”

Kerra smirked. “Don’t make me go with you.”

Rusher laughed. There was more laughter in the halls, she heard. The ship, morose after Gazzari, had been full of glee since the news of their destination spread, he said. Tan might never sleep again.

“She barely slept before.” The Jedi sighed.
Mission accomplished, Gub
. “I’m pretty sure Beadle will be happier in the Republic, too.”

“Actually, he wants to stick with us,” Rusher said. “A few of your kids, too, want to stay on as part of the new brigade when I come back. Don’t blame me—I didn’t recruit ’em. But with their folks still under heel out here, they’d rather stay here, doing something.”

I bet they won’t feel that way after they’ve seen the Republic
, Kerra thought.
Then again, maybe they might
.

“Sixty-three thousand,” she mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“Hmm?” She looked up, blowing a strand of hair from her eyes. “Oh. I was just adding up how many people I’ve sent back. Between Chelloa and what I’ve done since then, I’ve brought sixty-three thousand refugees to the frontier. About.”

“That’s a lot of traffic,” Rusher said.

“Especially when you’re not really trying to lead some exodus,” she said. “It just happens. Sixty-three thousand down, billions to go.”

Nodding, Rusher took his new swagger-stick and stood. “I guess you’ve got your own lurch ratio to worry about. That’s what I came up here to tell you. We’ve got a quick stop coming up in a few hours—Tramanos, I think. I’m sure there’s someone unpleasant there to keep you busy.”