Star Wars: Knight Errant (5 page)

Setting down the Bothan’s pouch, Kerra peeked through the open doorway into the main room. The old Sullustan was there, asleep in his chair again before a mass of documents. His arm stuck out at a right angle, his worn hand shaking as his fingers clutched an invisible pen.

Kerra edged into the room long enough to douse the glow lamp and push him back from the table. Flimsiplast cels fluttered to the floor. Kerra winced. Every part of Gub’s job was insane. Not just what he had to do—but how
much
of it he had to do. On other worlds with long rotational periods, societies made some allowances for species that were used to standard-length days. Not so for Daiman’s realm. The Sith Lord saw a day with thirty-two hours as a chance to get in another work shift.

Stealing back into her chambers, Kerra hung the ragged sheet that served as a door and reached for the gold-stained bag. For all the technology it contained, the Bothan’s bodysuit had folded up nicely. The label was just inside the seam.
CYRICEPT
.

Kerra hadn’t been gone that long from Republic space, but somehow, seeing something as simple as a familiar commercial trade name felt refreshing. And a stalwart firm, at that. As the Sith had advanced farther on the Outer Rim, other corporations had tried to deal with the new “locals,” usually to their ultimate regret. The more vital to Republic security a company was, the more the Defense Ministry usually had to cajole it to relocate. But Cyricept had repeatedly pulled its operations back from the frontier without being asked. Maybe it was because their whole stealth-systems business was about staying low and keeping out of trouble. What ever the reason, Kerra was overjoyed to see the suit now, even in its despoiled condition. Her supplies from the Republic were limited to the clothes she wore and the lightsaber in her knapsack.

That was never supposed to have been the case. Jedi Master Vannar Treece’s venture into Daiman’s space was supposed to have been a surgical strike: short and well supplied. An inspiring figure, Treece had led volunteers into Sith space several times, taking upon himself missions the larger Jedi Order could no longer perform. The
Sith in the outer reaches had grown so robust that the Republic, already weakened by the Candorian plague, had largely written off everything beyond an inner security cordon. It had even deactivated the interstellar relays that allowed communications with the outside. Whole swaths of space lay abandoned.

The Republic government and the Jedi Order weren’t against Treece’s raids. The need for them was obvious. But the woman who headed both bodies, Chancellor Gennara, knew well that her fearful people wouldn’t tolerate her sending large groups of Jedi Knights on offense when all were needed to protect the home front. Treece had cleverly found a way around that. Each standard year, Jedi Knights had been serving three months on law-and-order patrol and nine months at the frontier. But sixteen days were allotted for travel between those assignments, a figure that remained the same even as the boundaries of the Republic contracted. And, as in peacetime, the travel arrangements remained in the hands of individual Jedi Knights.

That had given Treece an opening. There were enough Jedi volunteers in transit at any moment that Treece could usually get a team of them to rendezvous at a jumping-off point. That allowed a few days for a quick raid—usually one where no casualties were expected—before the Jedi returned to their designated duties.

The results of Treece’s raids generally pleased the Chancellor. The morale boost came cheaply; all ships and munitions involved came from private contributions. It was a much different reaction than Jedi Knight Revan had received, centuries earlier, in his own extracurricular efforts against the Mandalorians. But the circumstances, Kerra recalled, were different. The Sith were evil; the Mandalorians just had an attitude problem.

The logistics were complicated, but Vannar Treece had someone he could rely on in Kerra. Vannar—she
had always been on a first-name basis with him—had rescued her from Aquilaris years earlier, just after that planetary paradise fell to forces led by the future Lord Odion. Vannar, sensing the child Kerra’s potential as both a Jedi and a motivated opponent of the Sith, became her sponsor and mentor. She had lost her family, but found a cause.

Kerra always wondered if he’d given her the work because he’d thought it would be therapeutic for her. No matter—it was. At twelve, she coordinated travel assignments for volunteers. At fourteen, she helped him raise donations. In the last three years, she’d taken charge of outfitting each group, making sure everything from blaster power cells to medpacs were aboard ship in abundance. In a short time, Kerra had learned everything necessary to run a volunteer paramilitary organization—all while working to become a Jedi Knight.

It had been a busy adolescence.

But she’d never joined any of the raids herself. Vannar had forbidden that while she was still a Padawan. Returning to Sith space was too emotional a mission for her, and Vannar knew it. So for years, she’d lived vicariously through him and his allies, taking some solace in the knowledge that she, in some small way, was helping the people she’d left behind.

When Kerra became a Jedi Knight the day before her eighteenth birthday, Vannar had remained reluctant to send her into action. But a dire warning from Sith space had taken that decision from him. Vannar called upon every Jedi available for a vital mission on extremely short notice. Kerra was available—and, as it proved, essential.

Kerra had found the addition of fieldwork to her duties enormously satisfying. All those forgotten, busy weeks preparing the way for others to strike at the Sith suddenly gained amplified meaning. Now
she
was the weapon, finally to be used in places she’d fled from when powerless.
If anything, she prepared even harder for the mission. With Vannar and the other volunteers at her side, she’d have everything she needed.

Today, on Darkknell, what she needed was
them
. And they were gone forever.

The mission at Chelloa had been a disaster. Everyone had been lost.
Everyone
. Daiman’s forces hadn’t even been the cause. Vannar’s team had become trapped in the madness that was Sith space. The problem with making only occasional forays into the region was they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Vannar had valued surprise in ensuring that his Jedi Knights got in and out quickly and safely. But he’d forgotten that
he
could be surprised, too.

Only Kerra had survived, with none of the weapons, medicine, or supplies she had so carefully gathered. They, and the starship they’d arrived in, had disappeared into a sea of fire. Kerra didn’t even know how to get home. She’d memorized the hyperspace route they’d taken into Daiman’s territory, but that terminated at the planet they’d raided, a place now under such heavy guard she could never return to it.

She’d been tempted to end her own journey soon afterward. Residents lived in constant despair, and meeting both Daiman and Odion confirmed for her that things could never improve. Death was better than survival for those living underfoot—and, perhaps, for a Jedi alone. Better to go down fighting.

It had taken making friends here—including one surprising, selfless individual—to change Kerra’s trajectory. “You’re no good to us dead,” Vannar had always told her. That applied, too, to the people living under Sith rule. She was no good to
them
dead, either. Suicide-by-Sith wasn’t the answer. She had to live.

In a curious way, Kerra’s change of heart had been like another Vannar Treece raid. It stabbed into the darkness
that had clouded her soul and offered hope. Defeating the Sith wasn’t the point; helping the people was. Fighting Sith was certainly one way the Jedi could help the downtrodden, but it wasn’t the only way. Yes, the people needed bold, dramatic acts of the Vannar variety, but they also needed more than gestures. They needed things that did immediate good: a tall order for a team of Jedi, much less one acting alone. She’d have to manufacture her own opportunities. That required a plan.

Planning, she was good at.

Kerra was already in Daiman’s realm; he became the first target. Her feelings against Odion were stronger, but for that reason she didn’t trust them. Anger over her childhood’s premature end had already led her astray once. Daiman was younger, and while he wasn’t as physically powerful as his monstrous sibling, he was, in his own way, just as much of a threat.

Daiman was a creature utterly without empathy. At the academy, Kerra had studied the notion of solipsism as it related to Sith teachings; none other than Darth Ruin had expounded upon it years before. Sith philosophy promoted the glorification of self and the subjugation of others. The young lord took it to a deranged extreme, declaring that existence was some game constructed by—what? Some version of himself on a higher plane, pitting Daiman’s mortal body against artificial obstacles it had dreamed up, like physics, and evil siblings. Daiman’s empire depended on the labor of others, but the lives of the others didn’t matter to him.

The parasite needed to be separated from the host. But first, its spread had to be contained.

Kerra found a good target in the munitions industry, which allowed Daiman both to wage war and to oppress people on multiple worlds at once. It was better than striking at the military directly. Even if she somehow found a way to land a devastating blow, her worry was
that Odion or another opportunistic neighbor might pour across the cosmic border, hurting more innocents still. Better to rot Daiman’s system from within, leaving the illusion of strength to his peers but an empty shell inside. By the time the regime collapsed, she hoped, most of the civilians would be out of harm’s way.

Her weeks since losing her Master on Chelloa had included strikes against weapons plants on a string of worlds. In some cases, she’d been able to free the slave laborers and their families, but those opportunities had grown less frequent as she’d approached the center of Daiman’s realm. In the metropolis, there was no wilderness into which freed natives could flee. But Darkknell was obviously her ultimate goal. By striking Daiman’s military research efforts here, she could still factories on a dozen worlds at once.

She’d arrived on Darkknell as she had on the other worlds, disguised as an itinerant laborer on assignment. She’d blanched at that more than once. Disguise wasn’t her forte. Persuasion, mesmerism, misdirection—these were skills for a Jedi who couldn’t master a lightsaber or blaster, not for an accomplished fighter like Kerra. Vannar had used those ploys only to achieve military surprise; Kerra could hardly stomach going through her daily life undercover. But she’d had little choice. Daiman might doubt her sentience, but he knew she was part of the great game he’d devised for himself—and his Force-sensitive Correctors would be able to sense her presence. She had to be on her guard at all times.

It had been happenstance that she’d spotted the Bothan while scouting the Black Fang herself, nights earlier. The spy was good, but he’d gotten too comfortable, selecting the same nearby rooftop to change into his stealth gear. She’d simply waited for her chance. His sabotage of the building was a terrific bonus, especially as it came at an hour when only Daiman’s true believers would be inside.
She was almost sorry to leave the spy to his fate, but no ally of Odion could be a friend of hers. Odion was both brutal and insipid. It was no wonder half his followers were suicidal.

Kerra scraped at the fabric of the stealth suit. Tiny raised lines crisscrossed its surface, leaving countless pits in between for its spectral baffles. Most of the paint clung to the ribbed fabric, she saw. It would be a problem. With his main military research lab in flames, Daiman would be doubly on his guard—enough so to make her next move impossible without artificial help. But the suit wouldn’t be much in the invisibility department without a proper cleaning.

She flipped the suit inside out. A manufacturer’s label, but no care instructions.
That would be too easy
, she thought. She was hardly in a position to call the manufacturer. Maybe she could ask someone at work, down at the—

“What are you doing here?”

Kerra yanked the fabric close to her chest as she recognized her host’s voice. “Just … just about to do some laundry,” she said, folding the suit over quickly and jamming it behind her bedroll. She turned to find Gub standing in the doorway, curtain clenched in his fist.
So much for privacy
. “What can I do for you?”

“I remembered I had a message for you,” Gub growled. His voice was a gravel road, aggravated by years with a tiny water ration. “But my granddaughter said you weren’t here.” Droopy eyebrows flared into a weak scowl. “You went
out
.”

He says that like it’s a bad word
, Kerra thought.
Well, maybe here, it is
. “I … was called for the wraithwatch,” she said. It was what they called it down at the munitions plant—the one shift with no daylight, whatever the season. During sharply tilted Darkknell’s winter
solstice, it was the morbid middle third of a twenty-four-hour night. “I had to go in.”

“That’s a lie!” Gub yanked at the curtain, ripping it free from the doorjamb. It fell to the duracrete floor.

Kerra edged backward, almost as wary of the little creature’s wrath as she was of any Sith Lord. They’d had their bad moments since she’d turned up here offering to tutor his granddaughter for room and board. She was desperate not to let this moment get out of hand. “Oh?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” he said, staring her down before finally kneeling to pick up the sheet. “I know that isn’t true, young human, because the message was from someone at your work—someone
on
the wraithwatch, asking you to come in this morning. You clearly could not have already been there.”