Deceived Read online

  A single glowing line formed on the monitor and expanded up and down until it filled the screen. Images formed on it. The main security cam had a view opposite the main doors of the Temple, so it could record those coming in or leaving.

  Aryn’s mouth was dry. She was afraid to blink for fear of missing something, though that was ridiculous since T7 could freeze, replay, and even magnify any image on the screen.

  They watched as a cloaked figure and a Twi’lek woman armed with blasters walked through the Temple’s enormous doors.

  “Does the Temple post guards?” Zeerid asked.

  Aryn nodded.

  Neither of them needed to say what must have happened to the guards.

  As the pair walked brazenly down the entry hallway, the cam showed people gathering on the balconies above, looking down.

  “They didn’t know what to make of him,” Zeerid said.

  Aryn nodded.

  “He is big,” Zeerid said.

  “Freeze on his face and magnify,” Aryn said to T7.

  The image froze, centered on the man’s hooded face, and magnified. She could make out nothing in the shadowed depths of his cowl except what looked to be the bottom of a mask of some kind.

  “Is that a mask?” Zeerid asked.

  “I don’t know. The Twi’lek, Tee-seven,” she said, and T7 pulled the image back, recentered on the Twi’lek, and did the same.

  The Twi’lek’s face filled the screen.

  “Skin color is unusual,” Zeerid said. He leaned forward in his chair, peering intently.

  She was beautiful, Aryn allowed.

  And she was a murderer. Or at least associated with one.

  “See the scar,” Zeerid said. He stood and pointed a finger at the screen, at the Twi’lek’s throat. There, a jagged scar cut an irregular path across her neck. “Between that and her skin, maybe we can identify her?”

  “Maybe,” Aryn said, and tried to swallow. She was less interested in the Twi’lek than she was in the hooded figure. “Continue, Tee-seven.”

  They watched as the two strode halfway down the hall. Aryn’s breath caught when she watched Master Zallow emerge from off cam to confront the Sith and the Twi’lek. Six other Jedi Knights accompanied him.

  “Freeze, Tee-seven.”

  The frame stopped, and Aryn studied Master Zallow’s face. He looked as he always had—stern, focused. Seeing him somehow freed her to grieve with something other than tears. She recalled some of their training sessions, how he had at first insisted that she fight with his style, but had later relented and allowed her to find her own path. The memory made her smile, and cry.

  “Are you all right?” Zeerid asked.

  She nodded, wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her robe. “Tee-seven, let me see the faces on the other Jedi.”

  T7 flipped through a variety of footage from recorders at different angles until it finally captured the faces of the other Jedi. Aryn recognized each of them, though she did not know them well. Still, she recited their names. She figured she owed them at least that.

  “Bynin, Ceras, Okean, Draerd, Kursil, Kalla.”

  “Friends?” Zeerid asked, his voice soft.

  “No,” Aryn said. “But they were Jedi.”

  “It’s not possible that this Sith and Twi’lek took down those Jedi and the Temple alone,” Zeerid said, though he sounded uncertain. “Is it?”

  Aryn did not know. “Continue, Tee-seven.”

  The footage started again. Master Zallow went face-to-face with the Sith. The other Jedi ignited their blades. Aryn stared at Master Zallow and the Sith warrior, seeing if they exchanged words, gestures, anything. They didn’t, at least as far as she could see.

  “Stang,” Zeerid breathed.

  “What?” Aryn said. “Freeze it, Tee-seven. What is it?”

  The image froze. She saw nothing unusual happening between Master Zallow and the Sith.

  “There,” Zeerid said. He bounced out of his seat again and pointed at something beyond the Temple’s tall entrance, something in the sky. Aryn did not see it.

  “What is it?”

  “A ship,” Zeerid said. “Here. See it?”

  Aryn stood and squinted at the screen. She did see it, though it was hard to distinguish against the sky through the slit of the Temple’s floor-to-ceiling open doors.

  “Note the silhouette,” Zeerid said. “That’s an NR-two gully jumper, a Republic ship. Like the kind I used to fly. See it?”

  Aryn did, but she did not understand its significance.

  “Magnify, Tee-seven,” said Zeerid, and the droid complied. The ship came into clear view.

  “No markings,” Zeerid said. “But look at its nose, its trajectory. It’s coming down, right at the Temple.”

  “You sure?”

  “It doesn’t look damaged,” Zeerid said thoughtfully. “Back out to normal magnification and play it, Tee-seven.”

  They watched in awed silence as the gulley jumper crashed through the Temple’s entrance, tore through the hall, collapsing columns as it went, a rolling mass of metal and flame, until it stopped right behind the Sith facing Master Zallow.

  Neither the Sith nor Master Zallow had moved.

  “Mid-section is still intact,” Zeerid said, “It must have been reinforced.” He looked over to Aryn. “There’s something in it. A bomb, maybe.”

  “Not a bomb,” Aryn said, beginning to understand.

  They watched as a large hatch on the center compartment of the NR2 exploded outward and dozens of Sith warriors poured out, glowing red blades in hand.

  Zeerid sat back in his chair. “Worse than a bomb.”

  Master Zallow ignited his blade, and many more Jedi rushed in from off cam to reinforce him. Aryn watched it all, her eyes fixed on the Sith. As the battle began, he discarded his cloak, showing his face at last.

  “Freeze it,” she said, and T7 did. Her voice was cold. “Magnify his face.”

  The image centered and grew to show the Sith. A bald head lined with blue veins, the scarred face, the intense eyes, and not a mask but a respirator.

  “That’s the same man from the cruiser!” Zeerid said.

  “Darth Malgus,” Aryn said, sudden tension forming at the base of her skull. “Darth Malgus led the attack.” She stared into Malgus’s dark eyes for a time, hardened herself for what she knew would be coming. “Continue it, Tee-seven.”

  She watched the battle unfold, trying to keep her passions in check. She imagined she could feel the emotions of the combatants pouring through the vid. Her entire body was tense, coiled, as she watched.

  The flow of battle separated Master Zallow and Malgus from the outset. Both fought their way through enemies, obviously seeking the other.

  “That’s a Mandalorian,” Zeerid said.

  Aryn nodded. A Mandalorian in full battle armor appeared amid the battle, flamethrowers spitting fire.

  “That’s hotter than some war zones I’ve been in,” Zeerid said.

  It was. Flames burned everywhere, piles of rubble littered the hall, blasterfire crisscrossed the battlefield, and everywhere Jedi fought Sith. It became difficult to track any individual actions. Everything bled into the anonymous chaos of battle. She kept her eyes locked on Master Zallow as he moved toward Malgus, and as Malgus moved toward him.

  As they closed on each other, she saw Malgus save the Twi’lek woman from a Padawan’s attack, saw him respond with even greater anger when she was hit with blasterfire.

  “I didn’t know Sith cared about anything,” Zeerid said.

  She, too, found Malgus’s response surprising, but had little time to consider it because Malgus and Master Zallow at last met in battle.

  She rose from her chair as the duel began to unfold, stepping closer to the monitor. She watched them trade flurries, each test the other’s skill. She watched Malgus throw his lightsaber, saw Master Zallow leap over it, saw Malgus knock him from the air in the midst of his leap and follow up with a leaping charge that Master Zallow avoi
ded at the last minute.

  Her heart was pounding. She kept hoping for something to intervene, to change the outcome she knew could not be changed. Barring that, she hoped to see a mistake from Master Zallow, or some treachery by Malgus, that would explain what she expected in moments—Master Zallow’s fall to Malgus.

  They engaged on the far side of the hall, Master Zallow loosing a torrent of blows. Malgus fell back under the onslaught, but Aryn saw that he was drawing Master Zallow in.

  And then it happened.

  Master Zallow slammed the hilt of his lightsaber into the side of Malgus’s face, driving him back a step. He moved to follow up but Malgus anticipated it, spun, and drove his lightsaber through Master Zallow’s abdomen.

  “That’s enough, Tee-seven,” Zeerid said. “We’ve seen enough.”

  “We haven’t,” Aryn said. “Play it again, Tee-seven.”

  The droid did.

  “Again.”

  “Again. He says something at the end. Close up on his mouth.”

  T7 did as she asked. Master Zallow’s blow to Malgus’s face had knocked his respirator aside and Aryn could see the Sith’s scarred, deformed lips. He mouthed words to Master Zallow as Master Zallow died. Aryn read his lips, whispered the words.

  “It’s all going to burn.”

  She found that she was holding her side as she watched, as if it were she that had been impaled on a Sith blade. She relived the pain she’d felt on Alderaan when she’d felt Master Zallow die. And overlaying all of it: anger.

  And now she had a focus for that anger—Darth Malgus.

  “Again, Tee-seven.”

  “Aryn,” Zeerid said.

  “Again.”

  “Not again, Tee-seven.” Zeerid turned around so that they were facing each other. “What are you doing? What more do you need to see?”

  “I’m not seeing it. I’m feeling it. Leave me alone, Zeerid.”

  He must have understood, for he released her and she turned back to the monitor.

  “Magnify Master Zallow’s face and play it again, Tee-Seven.”

  She watched his expression as he died over and over. His eyes haunted her, but she could not look away. Each time, before the light went out of them, she saw in his eyes what he was thinking the moment he died:

  I failed.

  And then Malgus’s words. “It’s all going to burn.”

  Whatever walls she had built around her pain collapsed as thoroughly as the Temple. Her eyes welled and tears poured freely down her face. Yet still she watched. She wanted to remember her Master’s pain, tuck it away and hold it inside of her, a dark seed to yield dark fruit when she finally faced Malgus.

  Before she killed Malgus, she desperately wanted him to feel the same kind of pain Master Zallow had felt.

  A gentle touch on her shoulder—Zeerid—brought her around. The monitor screen was blank. How long had she been sitting there, staring at a blank screen, imagining death and revenge and pain?

  “Time to go, Aryn,” Zeerid said, and helped steer her from the room.

  T7 whistled sympathy.

  “Are you all right?” Zeerid asked.

  She knew how she must look. Using the sleeve of her tunic, she wiped the tears from her face.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  He looked as if he wanted to embrace her, but she knew he would not take the liberty without her giving him a sign that it was all right.

  She gave him no such sign. She did not want relief from her grief, her pain. She simply wanted to pass it on to Malgus somehow.

  “Keep a copy of that footage, Tee-seven,” she said. “Bring it with you.”

  The droid beeped an affirmative.

  They walked back through the Works and to the surface in silence. By the time they returned to their speeder, Aryn had rebuilt the walls around her emotions. She managed the grief, endured the pain, but put it within reach, so she could call on it when she needed it.

  She and Zeerid lifted T7 onto the droid mount at the rear of the speeder.

  “I need to get up to that cruiser,” she said.

  Zeerid activated the magnetic clamp to hold T7 in place. “You can’t attack a cruiser, Aryn.”

  “I don’t want to attack it. I just want to get aboard it.”

  “And face him. Darth Malgus.”

  “And face him,” she affirmed with a nod.

  “And how do you think that plays out if you get aboard? Are you just going to walk through all those Imperial troops? Think he’ll just let you through and meet you in honorable combat?”

  She did not like Zeerid’s tone. “I’ll bring the cruiser down. With him on it.”

  “And you on it.”

  She stuck out her chin. “If that’s what it takes.”

  He slapped a hand in frustration on T7’s body. The droid beeped in irritation.

  “Aryn, you’ve been watching the HoloNet too much. It won’t work like that. You’ll get captured, tortured, killed. He’s a Sith. They flew a ship into the Temple, killed dozens of Jedi, bombed Coruscant. Come on. Think!”

  “I have. And I have to do this.”

  He must have seen the resolve in her eyes. He swallowed, looked past her, as if gathering his thoughts, then back at her.

  “You said you would help me get offplanet.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I can’t follow you to the cruiser. I have a daughter, Aryn. I just want to get off the planet and get back to her before The Exchange or anyone else gets to her.”

  The heat went out of her in a rush. “You’ve done more than enough, Zeerid. I wouldn’t let you come even if you volunteered.”

  They both stared at each other a long time, something unsaid hanging in the air between them. T7’s head rotated from Zeerid to Aryn and back to Zeerid.

  “You don’t need to face him,” he said to her.

  Grime from the Works stained Zeerid’s coat and trousers. Lack of sleep had painted circles under his brown eyes. He hadn’t shaved in days and black stubble coated his cheeks. His appearance once more struck Aryn as that of a mad prophet, though it seemed she was the one acting out of madness.

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  She reached out a hand and wiped away some dirt on his cheek. At first he looked startled at her touch, then looked as if he wanted to say something, but did not.

  “We go our separate ways here, Z-man,” she said. She sensed his alarm at the thought. “You keep the speeder and T7. I’ll figure something else out. Good-bye, Zeerid.”

  T7 uttered a doleful whistle as she walked away. Zeerid’s words pulled her back around, just as hers had pulled him back around earlier in the day.

  “Let me help you, Aryn. I’m not going at that cruiser, but I can help you get aboard.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you stow away on an Imperial transport heading for it.” He pointed at a distant black form moving across the afternoon sky. “They come and go regularly and always to the same spaceport. And I know that spaceport. I’ve parked Fatman there myself a few times. I’ll figure out a way to get you aboard a transport while I find a ship to get me offplanet. So no good-byes yet. I still need your help and you still need mine. Good enough?”

  Aryn did not have to consider long. She could use Zeerid’s help, and she wanted to keep his company for as long as possible.

  “Good enough,” she said.

  “And who knows?” he said as she climbed into the speeder. “Maybe you’ll come to your senses in the meantime.”

  ZEERID DROVE THE ARMIN SPEEDER LOW, hugging the urbanscape, until he reached a bombed-out apartment building. There was nothing particularly notable about it. It just seemed a decent place to hole up.

  The façade had fallen away from the building’s upper levels, exposing the interior flats and rooms. It looked as if the Empire had peeled the rind off the building to expose its guts. Zeerid supposed the Empire had done just that to all of Coruscant: they had vivisected the Republic.
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br />   The rubbled façade of the building lay in a heap of glass and stone at the building’s base, a pile of ruin intermixed with furniture, shattered vidscreens, and the other indicia of habitation.

  The interior remained largely intact, though the dust of pulverized stone coated everything. Shards of shattered glass like fangs hung from windows. A few live wires spat sparks. Water leaked from somewhere, formed a minor cascade pouring down from one of the upper floors. Not a single light glowed in the entire building. It appeared abandoned.

  “This should serve,” he said to Aryn and T7. He piloted the speeder around and through the rubble until he had it near one of the exposed lower apartments.

  “Serve for what?” Aryn asked, and T7 echoed her question with a beep.

  “I’m going to scout the spaceport. You both are going to stay here.”

  Aryn shook her head. “No, I should come.”

  “I work better alone, Aryn. At least when it comes to surveillance. Take some time—”

  “I don’t need time. I need to get to that cruiser.”

  “And this is the best way to do that. So take some time to eat and … pull yourself together.” He winced as he said that last, thinking she’d take offense, but it appeared barely to register. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He tossed her another of the protein bars he’d taken from the speeder’s console compartment.

  “Zeerid …,” she said.

  “Please, Aryn. I’m just eyeballing it. I won’t do anything without you.”

  She relented with a sigh and climbed out of the speeder. She unclamped T7 and lowered him to the ground.

  “I’ll return as soon as I can,” Zeerid said. “Keep an eye on her, Tee-seven.”

  The droid whooped agreement and Zeerid sped off.

  AVOIDING THE SEARCH-AND-RESCUE TEAMS working in the still-smoldering ruins, Zeerid made his way toward the quadrant’s port, the Liston Spaceport. He could see it in the distance, framed against the night sky, the curved appendages of its large craft landing pads raised skyward like the hopeful arms of a penitent. It appeared undamaged by the attack, at least from a distance.

  As he watched, the roof doors to one of the many small-craft landing bays opened in the main body of the port, a mouth spitting light into the dark air. He killed the speeder’s thrusters and pulled to the side.