Deceived Page 18

  Zeerid crawled over to her, cursing with pain throughout. He peeled off his mask and lay on his back next to her. They stared up at the sky together.

  “Is anything broken?” she asked him.

  He turned to look at her, shook his head, looked back at the sky. “If we get out of this, I’m becoming a farmer on Dantooine. I swear it.”

  She smiled.

  “I’m not joking.”

  She held her smile; he began to chuckle, louder, and the chuckle turned into a laugh.

  She could not help it. A wide smile split her face, followed by a chuckle, and then she joined him in full, both of them giggling hysterically at the dawn sky of a new day.

  VRATH’S HANDS SWEATED on Razor’s stick. Despite Malgus purporting to be a man of his word, Vrath felt certain the Imperial cruiser would shoot him from space after he exited the landing bay. For a moment, he considered veering off deeper insystem, accelerating to full to get out of Coruscant’s gravity well, then jumping into hyperspace, but he did not think he would make it.

  More important, he feared that even if he did make it, Malgus would hunt him down on principle. Vrath knew that Malgus would do it because Vrath would have done the same. He’d looked into the Sith Lord’s eyes and seen the same relentlessness he tried to cultivate in his own. He would not cross Malgus.

  He let the ship’s autopilot ride the coordinates provided to him by Valor into Coruscant’s atmosphere. It would put him down in one of Galactic City’s smaller spaceports, probably one commandeered by Imperial soldiers.

  Presently, the spaceport hailed him and sent him landing instructions. He affirmed them and sat back in his chair.

  He resolved that he would not leave Razor once he put down on Coruscant. He wanted no further interaction with conquering Imperials. He wanted only to wait until peace negotiations on Alderaan were concluded, however long that might take, and then get off Coruscant.

  MALGUS KNEW ARYN LENEER had somehow survived the destruction of her ship and he suspected she had survived the descent to Coruscant’s surface. He did not want Angral to learn of her escape. Such knowledge would be … premature.

  He would need to track her down. To do that, he needed to determine why she had returned to Coruscant in the first place.

  “I will be in my quarters,” he said to Commander Jard.

  “If anything requires your attention, I will alert you immediately.”

  When he reached his quarters, he found Eleena sleeping. Her blasters, tucked into their holsters, lay on the bed beside her. She slept with one hand on them. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, the half smile she wore even while sleeping. She had shed the sling on her arm.

  Staring at her, he acknowledged to himself that he cared for her. Deeply.

  And that, he knew, was his weakness.

  He stared at her and thought of the Twi’lek servant woman he had murdered in his youth …

  He realized that his fists were clenched.

  Shaking his head, he closed the door to the room in which Eleena slept and started up the portcomp at his work desk. He wanted to learn more of Aryn Leneer, so he linked to several Imperial databases and input her name.

  Her picture came up first. He studied her image, her eyes. She reminded him of Eleena. But she looked different from the woman he had seen on the vidscreen on Valor’s bridge. The change was in her eyes. They’d grown harder. Something had happened to her in the interim.

  He scrolled through the file.

  She was a Force empath, he saw. An orphan from Balmorra, taken into the Jedi academy as a child. He scrolled deeper into her file and there found her motivation.

  A picture of Master Ven Zallow stared out of the screen at Malgus, a day-old ghost.

  Aryn Leneer had been Master Zallow’s Padawan. Zallow had raised her from childhood.

  He scrolled back up to Aryn’s image. Back then, her green eyes had held no guile, no edge. He could tell by looking at her that she left herself too open to pain. Her Force empathy would have only increased her sensitivity.

  He leaned back in the chair.

  She had felt her Master die, had felt Malgus drive his blade through him.

  That was what had changed her, changed her so much that she had abandoned her Order and rushed across space to Coruscant.

  Why?

  He saw the faint reflection of his own face in the compscreen, superimposed over hers. His eyes, dark and deeply set in the black pits of his sockets. Her eyes, green, soft, and gentle.

  But not anymore.

  They were the same, he realized. They had both loved and their love had brought them pain. In a flash of understanding, he knew why she had come to Coruscant.

  “She is looking for me,” he said.

  She would not know she was looking for him because she had no way to know who had killed her Master. But she had come to Coruscant to find out, to avenge Zallow.

  Where would she go first?

  He thought he knew.

  He inhaled deeply, tapped his finger on the edge of the desk.

  She was hunting him. He admired her for that. It seemed very … unlike a Jedi.

  Of course, Malgus would not sit idle while she sought him out.

  He would hunt her.

  A SQUAD OF SIX IMPERIAL FIGHTERS, bent wing interceptors, zoomed overhead, the hum of their engines drowning out and throttling Zeerid’s and Aryn’s laughter. The bent panels of the fighters’ wings formed parentheses around the central fuselage.

  “That doesn’t look right,” Zeerid said. “Imperial ships over Coruscant.”

  “No,” Aryn said. “It doesn’t.”

  Zeerid looked higher up in the sky, trying to spot any sign of his destroyed ship. He saw nothing. Fatman had served him well and nearly gotten them away from the cruiser.

  He smiled, thinking that engspice addicts all over Coruscant would soon go through withdrawal. But after those few days of torture, they’d have freedom, should they choose it.

  Zeerid felt a peculiar sense of freedom, too. He had not delivered spice. That pleased him. In a way, the Empire had freed him from his treadmill, had destroyed it in a hail of plasma fire.

  Of course, The Exchange would try to kill him. He’d have that to contend with.

  “What are you thinking?” Aryn said.

  “I’m thinking about Arra,” he answered, as the weight of his situation overburdened the relief he felt at surviving a fall of fifty klicks.

  The man who had stood beside the Sith Lord on the bridge of the cruiser had been the same man that Zeerid had seen back at Karson’s Park on Vulta, the same man who had led the ambush on him and Aryn in the spaceport.

  Vrath Xizor, Oren had named him.

  Vrath knew about Arra and Nat.

  And if Vrath decided for some reason to share that information with The Exchange, Oren would order more than just Zeerid’s death. They’d make an example of him and his family.

  He sat up with a grunt. “I have to get back to Vulta. Now.”

  Aryn sat up beside him. She must have felt the fear in him. “Because of the man on the cruiser?”

  Zeerid nodded. “He knows about Arra.”

  “I don’t understand why—”

  “No one in my … work knows that I have a daughter, Aryn. They’d use her against me if they did. Hurt her. But now he knows. He saw me in the park with her. I talked to him.” He put his face in his hands.

  Aryn put a hand on his back. “Zeerid …”

  He shook it off and climbed to his feet. “I have to get back.”

  “How?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m going. I owe you for saving me. I won’t forget that, but—”

  She held up a hand. “Wait. Just wait. Think it through, Zeerid. They’re not going to let him leave, this man who knows about your daughter. No one has gotten off Coruscant since the attack. And no one will until the peace negotiations are concluded and the planet’s disposition decided. They’ll keep him on the
cruiser or ground him on the planet. He’s not going anywhere.”

  Zeerid considered the words. They made sense. His heart continued to pound, but slower.

  “He’s here, you think.”

  “Possibly. Maybe even likely. But he’s not returning to Vulta, at least not yet.”

  Zeerid knew that Vrath already could have told someone else about Arra, but he thought it unlikely. No one gave away leverage. It was like giving away credits. No, Vrath had kept it to himself. Maybe to sell to The Exchange, maybe to use later. But he hadn’t used it yet. He’d had to get to Coruscant from Vulta too fast. He must have left immediately after the ambush.

  “Why didn’t he use Arra against you back on Vulta?” Aryn asked. “Could’ve forced you to turn over the cargo.”

  Zeerid didn’t know. “Maybe he would have. Maybe that was him in the stairwell of the apartment complex yesterday. Maybe we frightened him off. Or maybe he didn’t have time. He had to follow me to ensure he could locate the spice. If he’d have grabbed Arra, he might have lost me, or I might have flown off with the spice without ever knowing he had her.”

  Aryn said nothing as Zeerid let his thoughts meander into the briar patch of the criminal underworld.

  “Maybe he just wouldn’t hurt a child,” Aryn said.

  “Maybe,” Zeerid said, but did not believe it. He hadn’t met many criminals who operated with any kind of ethical code.

  “Listen,” Aryn said. “I’ll help you get off the planet or find him here. But first I need to get to the Temple.”

  “You came here to kill someone, Aryn. I cannot spare that kind of time.”

  Her face flushed, and he saw some inner battle going on behind her eyes. “I can just identify him.” She said it as if trying to convince herself. “I can find him another time. But I must have his name. This may be my only chance.” She blew out a deep breath. “I would welcome your help.”

  “Been real useful so far,” he said.

  “You got me here.”

  “I got us blown out of space.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  “And here we are.”

  “Let me get a name and then I’ll help you get offplanet. Agreed?”

  He made up his mind, nodded. “All right, I’m with you, but we have to do this fast.”

  MALGUS WAITED FOR ELEENA TO AWAKEN, his mind moving through possibilities, still trying to square a circle. He was beginning to think it could not be done.

  Eleena emerged from the bedroom of his quarters, barely covered in a light shirt and her undergarments. As always, her beauty struck him, the grace of her movement. She smiled.

  “How long did I sleep?”

  “Not long,” he said.

  She poured tea for both of them and sat on the floor near his feet.

  “I have something I need you to do,” he said.

  “Name it.”

  “You will take several shuttles to Coruscant. Ten members of my security team, Imperial soldiers, will accompany you.”

  In his head, he had already picked the men—Kerse’s squad—men whose discretion he knew he could trust. He continued: “I will give you a list.”

  She sipped her tea, leaned her head against his calf. “What will be on this list?”

  “Names and locations, mostly. Some technology and its location.”

  He had pulled it all from the Imperial database while she had been sleeping.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find everyone and everything you can on that list and bring it to this ship.”

  She sat up straight, looked up at him. The question was in the pools of her eyes.

  “The people are to be made prisoners,” he said. “The technology confiscated as spoils of war.”

  The question did not leave her eyes. She gave it voice.

  “Why me, beloved? Why not your Sith?”

  He ran his hand over her left lekku, and she closed her eyes in pleasure.

  “Because I know I can trust you,” he said. “But I’m not yet entirely sure whom else I can trust. Not until things progress a bit further.”

  She opened her eyes and pulled away from him. Concern creased her forehead. “Progress further? Are you in danger?”

  “Nothing that I cannot deal with. But I need you to do this.”

  She leaned back into him, her arm draped over his legs. “Then I will do it.”

  The smell of her clouded his thoughts and he fought for clarity. “Tell no one else of this. Report it only as a routine transfer of cargo.”

  “I will. But … why are you doing all of this?”

  “I’m simply taking precautions. Go, Eleena.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  She rose, bent, and kissed first his left cheek, then his right.

  “I will see you soon. What are you going to do while I am gone?”

  He was going to disobey Angral’s orders yet again and return to Coruscant. “I am going hunting.”

  THE SMELL OF SMOKE and melted plastoid hung thick in the air. Aryn and Zeerid picked their way on foot through the streets and autowalks of Coruscant. Aryn was conscious of the fact that level after level of urbanscape extended into the depths below her. She realized that she had never put a boot to solid ground on Coruscant. Not really. Instead she, like so many, simply trod the network of walkways and duracrete streets on the surface level, unaware of most that went on in the lower levels. She had lived on the planet for decades but did not know it well.

  The sun pulled itself into the sky, slowly, as if it did not want to reveal the ruin. Her eye fell on a distant, isolated skyrise that leaned precipitously to one side, the attack having damaged its foundation. It, like all of Coruscant, like the entirety of the Republic, had been knocked off kilter.

  In the distance, the black dots of a few aircars and speeders populated the morning sky. Sirens blared from somewhere, rescue teams still searching the wreckage, pulling the living and dead from the ruins.

  Coruscant was coming to life for another day, the day after everything had changed.

  As they traveled, they encountered piles of rubble, streets flooded by broken water lines, shattered valves spitting gas or fuel. It was like seeing bloody viscera, the innards of the planet.

  A few faces regarded them from behind windows or from balconies high above, the uncertainty and fear in their eyes the expected aftereffect of unexpected war, but they saw far fewer people than Aryn might have imagined. She wondered if many had fled to the lower levels. Perhaps the damage was less severe there. If so, the underlevels must have been thronged.

  As the morning stretched, an increasing number of vehicles filled the sky. Medical and rescue ships screamed past. Swoops and speeders, bearing one or two riders to who knew where streaked over them.

  Due to her empathic sense, Aryn felt the dread in the air as a tangible thing, a pall that overhung the entire planet. It wore on her, weighed her down. The towers of duracrete and transparisteel seemed ready to fall in on her. She felt hunched, tensed in anticipation of a blow. The dread was omnipresent, an entire planet of billions of people projecting raw emotion into the air.

  She could not wall them out. She did not want to wall them out. The Jedi had failed them. She deserved to feel what they felt.

  “Aryn, did you hear me? Aryn?”

  She came back to herself to see Zeerid standing beside an open-topped Armin speeder. It was just sitting there in the middle of the street. His face twisted with concern when he saw her expression. His straggly beard and wide eyes made him look like a religious fanatic.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I’m fine. It’s just … fear is everywhere. The air is full of it.”

  Zeerid nodded, his lips pressed together and forming a soft line of sympathy. “I’m sorry you have to feel it, Aryn. Everyone on Coruscant knows what the Empire has done to some conquered worlds. But if they were going to do it here, I think they’d have done it
already.”

  “It’s only been a day,” Aryn said, but still she hoped he was right.

  A squad of Imperial fighters flew high overhead, the unmistakable hum of their engines cutting through the morning’s silence.

  Zeerid climbed into the speeder, stripped its storage compartment of four protein bars, a pair of macrobinoculars, and two bottles of water. He tossed a bar and bottle to Aryn.

  “Eat. Drink,” he said, and ducked under the control panel.

  “What are you doing?” Aryn asked him. She guzzled the water to get the grit out of her throat, then peeled the wrapper on the bar and ate.

  The speeder’s engine hummed to life and Zeerid popped back up from under the instrumentation.

  “I’m taking this speeder. We can’t walk all the way to the Jedi Temple. Get in.” He must have read the look on her face. “It isn’t stealing, Aryn. It’s abandoned. Come on.”

  She climbed in and strapped herself into the seat. Zeerid launched the Armin into the sky.

  They made rapid progress. There was little traffic. Zeerid flew at an altitude of about half a kilo. For a time, Aryn looked out and down on Coruscant, but the rubbled buildings, smoldering fires, and black holes in the urbanscape wore her down until it all began to look the same. When she realized she had become inured to the sight of the destruction, she sat back in her seat and stared out the windshield at the smoke-filled sky.

  “The Temple is ahead,” Zeerid said, coming around. “There.”

  When she saw it, her heart sank. A hole opened in her stomach and she felt as if she were falling. She extended a hand to the safety bar and held it tight, to keep from falling.

  “I’m so sorry, Aryn,” Zeerid said.

  Aryn had no words. The Temple, the Jedi sanctuary that had stood for millennia, had been reduced to a mountain of smoking stone and steel. The destruction wrought by the Sith on Coruscant generally had left her pained. The destruction of the Temple left her gutted. She had to remember to breathe. She could not take her eyes from it.

  Zeerid reached across the speeder and took her hand in his. She closed her fingers around his and held on as if she were sinking and he was a life ring.

  “I don’t think we should set down, Aryn. No data cards survived that.”