Star Wars: Knight Errant (9 page)

Having watched Sith slaves from Chelloa to Darkknell deal with their lives, Kerra began to think that was what was happening here, too. The people who lived in this sector were like the wretched quadractyl, being buffeted by one violent wave of Sith conquerors after another. Blow followed upon blow. And yet the people, like the animal, rode it out.

Some in the Republic felt that the people who lived under Sith rule didn’t deserve saving, because they hadn’t acted to free themselves. It was clear to Kerra those people had never seen Sith oppression up close, or they would have understood how wrong they were. The power imbalance between master and slave was just too great. There was no practical way for those under Daiman’s heel to band together—and in fact, gathering together had the effect of making them more vulnerable, rather than more powerful. No uprising was possible.

And yet, kneeling in the darkness of her soon-to-be-former room, Kerra wondered if she’d just seen resistance
in action. Parents in the Daimanate were willing to endure more hardship for themselves if it meant their children might migrate to a position that was marginally better. Decades of oppression had forced on them such a long view of life that even the smallest step was a mighty leap to freedom.

Maybe that quadractyl was where it was because it
had
acted—acted to send its chicks south. It just didn’t have anything left to save itself.

But Kerra had escaped once. And she wouldn’t stay now.

Peeking outside to confirm that Gub was at his desk, Kerra pulled the folded stealth suit from beneath her bedroll. It was pristine. She’d been given a solvent by one of her friends at work. Ostensibly intended to clean a piece of furniture, the fluid had worked marvelously on the Mark VI. It had taken meticulous effort, mostly after Tan had gone to sleep each night. But the suit was necessary. Essential, in fact, for realizing the value of what she’d gained through her
other
job on Darkknell.

Kerra pulled the drawstring on the duffel bag. Lifting her few personal items from the top, she emptied the sack onto her pillow. Pouches of glistening gel tumbled into a pile.
Baradium nitrite
. Enough explosive to send the universe’s would-be creator on a journey of discovery—through the stratosphere.

She’d brought the explosive out of the factory a little at a time, in disposable squeeze food packets. It had been easy enough; she was supposed to bring her own lunch and pack out her trash. In its fluid form, it was less prone to accidental detonation than other explosives, and she probably didn’t have enough to pull off what the Bothan had done at the Black Fang. But as a Jedi alone heading up against a Sith Lord, she knew it didn’t hurt to have backup.

She hadn’t known what to do with it all, before the other day. Daiman himself had given her the key, in his vain insistence that everyone hear his voice daily. On one other world, she’d heard his message declaring the sunrise. Listening again the last two days, she’d heard it again: the same phrasing as offworld, except for the parts about the day’s duration. Surely, he didn’t record different ones for every world he held—and she wasn’t aware of any communications network in Sith space that equaled the one that the Republic had deactivated on the Outer Rim. Both meant that Daiman’s voice was being simulated, and simulated locally on each world.

Obvious, really, but she’d never thought about the corollary. If Daiman vanished tomorrow, the rival Sith Lords whose rampage she feared might not find out about it for a long time. Daiman’s Correctors would want to keep their jobs, which meant they would pretend nothing had changed.

But in fact, something would have changed, Kerra thought as she refilled the bag and cinched it shut. Life wouldn’t improve dramatically, but a Daimanate without a Daiman would be something that would help many people at once.

Kerra took a last look around the room and stood to depart. Daiman
would
vanish tomorrow.

And it was about blasted time.

There were worse things than death.

Narsk’s aunt had told him that, raising him alone on Verdanth. Near the juncture of three sectors and situated on a major hyperspace lane, the planet was desired by many a petty princeling. Indeed, several had declared themselves Sith Lords immediately upon taking the green world, as if the title
conqueror of Verdanth
meant anything. It usually didn’t. Verdanth’s masters seldom
lived long. But they always survived long enough to do serious damage to the population of the world, a diverse patchwork of transplanted peoples.

The Bothan community on Verdanth had suffered less than others, if only because of the species’ penchant for intrigues. More stubborn races had refused to submit when the Sith first invaded; their survivors saw each successive wave as something to be resisted with all means. A noble thought. But ownership of Verdanth was changing almost annually. Defiance of all invaders earned only extinction. The Bothans, meanwhile, submitted freely to whichever Sith warlord they estimated had the upper hand. Their instincts were so good, observers said, that one could track the balance of power in the system simply by looking at who had the most Bothans in his or her camp.

Being on the losing side meant death. But that wasn’t the worst part, as his aunt had put it: it meant that you’d
guessed wrong
.

Understanding the relationships between others and accurate reckonings of power and where it lay: these were the things that made one a Bothan. Narsk’s aunt once described a tribe of feral Bothans, found untold years after a crash on a deserted planet. They had no spoken language, but they could rank with exactitude the numbers of various kinds of predators in their surroundings. To be a Bothan was to be always on the lookout.

Narsk had taken those lessons to heart. While a slave for successive Sith Lords on Verdanth, he’d managed to find chores that bettered his perceptions. The sloppy job of harvesting rimebats led to assignments tracking escapees. Those led to missions as a nonmilitary scout and, finally, a saboteur. All the time, he’d kept his eyes on the Sith players, in the best traditions of his people.

The quandary came when two particularly pugnacious rivals chose to settle the ownership of the planet in a duel
that left them both dead. The resulting power vacuum put many Bothans off kilter. There was no reason to expect Verdanth would stay free from Sith rule for more than a few weeks at most, and yet the planet-bound Bothans had no real way of gauging the relative strengths of powers yet unseen. The only real way to know which Sith Lord to back was to strike out into space personally and have a look.

Narsk did. And never returned.

He’d found a wondrously complicated political scene. A patchwork of dominions and dependencies, ruled by despots with secret connections and histories of betrayal. It could keep an industrious Bothan busy for a lifetime.

For Narsk, it had. And now, it was all over—because he wasn’t on the lookout.

The Jedi was a wild card, but he should’ve known she was there. He’d been on Darkknell a month, assessing the potential hazards. Even if only one person on Darkknell knew she was there,
he
should have been the one.

He noted, ironically, that he probably
had
been the first to know she was there. But that information had come too late to be useful. And now that Daiman had, through him, become the second to know, Narsk wondered why he was still alive.

He’d remained on the slab for days without food, tasting water when a torture session involved it. Daiman knew now that Narsk was an agent for Odion. Once Narsk realized that secret was gone, he’d relaxed his defenses, allowing the Sith Lord to see everything in his memories since his arrival on Darkknell. The assumption of the cover identity, the scouting of the testing center, the many forays inside. That was a tactic he’d been taught, too. Once a secret lost its value as a secret, it could be used to shield other truths. He’d flooded Daiman with details that didn’t matter anymore.

It seemed to have worked. Apparently satisfied, Daiman
had left him alone. Several times the young Sith had sensed the importance of a female human in Narsk’s memories—but from his remarks, Daiman had always assumed it was the Jedi. Daiman was no better than the sentries, Narsk thought.
They only see what they’re looking for
.

Now, though, Narsk saw only imminent death. He had nothing more to give—nothing he would give, anyway. His execution was at hand. Four Correctors entered the room, releasing him from the table and shifting his limp, half-clothed body to a circular metal frame. His feet and ankles were fastened to its perimeter, splaying his body across its width. The Correctors tipped the device on its side, wheeling Narsk down one of the narrow darkened hallways.

With nothing to support his neck, Narsk’s head hung backward as the frame rolled. Dizzily, he saw a blur of light ahead. His eyes adjusting, Narsk realized it was a wide indoor area with a skylight above. With a bump, the Correctors rolled his circular rack onto a small platform built to lift something in antigrav suspension.

Lofted into the air by an unseen force, Narsk saw the people in attendance and realized that his aunt had been right. He’d guessed wrong. It was not an execution. And there
were
things worse than death.

He had become a stage prop.

The young lord shimmered, resplendent in his plumage. Daiman’s preference for shining attire was well known—but today’s coppery cape had something extra going for it. Every time the Sith Lord stepped between his viewers and the skylight above, small prisms in the great folds of the garment refracted the noon sun, throwing brilliant-colored light all around the Adytum.

And here, in this enormous heptagonal shrine within the Sanctum Celestial,
everyone
was beneath Daiman. Seven crystal catwalks led to a suspended platform in the center, directly beneath the skylight. Each of the seven midair entrances sat in the middle of an alabaster column, curling upward toward the ceiling and forming, with the skylight, a replica of Daiman’s sun-and-tentacles emblem. The walls between bore ornate relief carvings of Daiman throughout history and prehistory. So did the floor, where those waiting attendance alternately looked up at their lord and down at their feet, to keep from tripping on the uneven surface.

Only Narsk was close to Daiman’s level, but the Bothan didn’t feel very honored. After the Correctors had used the antigrav generator to lift his circular prison several meters in the air, they’d done something to apply some spin. Now Narsk tumbled gyroscopically in the air meters above the others, in the space between two of
Daiman’s catwalks. It’d been like this all day: bouts of violent rotation punctuated by occasional slowdowns during which his body was right-side up. Narsk supposed it was to keep him from passing out. For the first time since his imprisonment, he was glad he hadn’t been fed.

The brief respites had given him a chance to survey the hall, though, and those inside. Daiman had stalked the catwalks for hours, seemingly brooding on some aspect of creation or another. Occasionally, he retired to the oversized plush mass, more a bed than a throne, resting in the middle of the suspended platform. Narsk thought he sat like a youngling, his legs curled up underneath as he idly kicked the ends of the cape.
No, not a child
, Narsk thought.
An adolescent
.

Beyond a few aggravated sighs, Daiman had said nothing at all. He had, however, vanished twice into one of the exits for a wardrobe change. Narsk figured something must be about to happen. The sighs were becoming more like groans, and each outfit had been more outrageous than the last.

There must be company coming
, Narsk thought.
I can’t believe this is what he wears around the house
.

The audience below had gotten no more attention from Daiman than Narsk had. There were Correctors there, and a few elite sentries. They stood, waiting silently on their master—as did a Woostoid woman Narsk took to be Daiman’s aide-de-camp. Narsk didn’t recognize her, but no spy could ever keep track of Daiman’s palace lineup. She certainly hadn’t been hired for her charm, he saw, every time he revolved to face her. Orange-skinned with bound magenta hair, the spindly thing looked like a black hole was sucking her face from within. All the engineering teams in the sector couldn’t construct a smile out of that raw material.

Narsk couldn’t figure it. Daiman seemed to prize beauty in his house hold. But then he had another
thought:
It must be this way when you’re in love with yourself
.

“I heard that, spy!”

Narsk’s frame whirled around long enough to give him a glimpse of Daiman at the edge of the platform, raising his talon-tipped hand. Seconds later all Narsk saw was blue pain, as Force lightning wracked his shaking body. As the attack subsided, rivulets of energy crackled off the side of the rack.

“You think you’ve hurt me, don’t you?
Don’t you?
” Cape billowing, Daiman stalked the edge of his platform. Below, several listeners on the lower floor stumbled, trying to keep up with him. “You haven’t hurt me at all,” he railed. “In fact, my little nothing, you haven’t changed my course a whit.”

Narsk found his mouth too dry after the attack to respond—but it was just as well. There was no right answer.

“No, you and the Jedi woman have given me
exactly
what I wanted. I just didn’t realize it at the time,” Daiman said, kneeling and eyeing Narsk. “I don’t always see the plan I started with until later—but I always do.”