Revenge of the Jedi/Part 38

"Cargo?" asked the docking agent.

"Droids, droid parts, and a metric ton of circuit boards." Tirien had not bothered trying to camouflage his Pantoran accent, but it was just different enough from Coruscanti that Raven thought it would squeak by, and even a Miraluka would have labored to see the Jedi Knight beneath his ennuied bearing. "Oh, and one we're supposed to talk to the dockmaster about."

The agent frowned. "I don't have that in my logs…"

Raven crossed his arms and shrugged. "Probably why we're supposed to talk to the dockmaster."

"Well…well, all right, I'll call him down for you."

"No need to trouble him," Tirien said, waving a hand. "Just tell us where to find him."

"There's no need to trouble him," the agent decided. "You can find his office over in Cresh Quadrant."

Raven lifted two fingers off his bicep. "Do you have an access code to give us?"

"I can give you the access code to the office suite. It's F11-191."

"Will there be anything else?" Tirien asked.

"Just your BoSS datapad."

Tirien extended it with one hand; when the agent took it, he waved the other and said, "You've entered the data."

The agent handed the datapad back unscanned. "I've…er…entered the data. Here you go…"

"You won't need to visit this docking bay again today," Raven said.

"I…I'll just…go…"

The agent shambled off, and Zaella muttered, "So you just reprogram him? Can you make him do a dance or something?"

Tirien rolled his eyes. "Too many mind tricks in too short a span can leave the recipient…frazzled."

"He'll be all right," Raven assured her. "But now we need to go meet the dockmaster."

Their arrival had been smooth enough; the full power of Gasald's war machine was on display, but other than a few fighter flights that swooped in for a closer look, no one troubled them. Tirien had made a face when he read Master Bnodd's reply to his message, but he had sent a simple acknowledgment of their arrival and pressed on. After much bickering, they had chosen Tirien, Raven, Zaella, and Bernius for the landing party—Tirien for his keen senses and his odds-and-ends training from his Sentinel master, Raven because the party needed a Human and everyone thought more of his capabilities than Jirdo's, Zaella for variety, and Bernius in case something—or someone—needed to be sliced.

They set off together across the docking bay. The deck was not as corroded or grease-stained as some Raven had encountered, but even after more than half a year of occupation, Allanteen Shipyards had not adjusted to the volume of traffic. Ventilation grates released cloying steam into the bays at regular intervals, and when Raven compared the clean deck spots just behind laboring maintenance droids to the rest of the station, he realized there were far too few for the task. Storefronts and holo ads illuminated the concourse as much as the industrial lighting far overhead. Sith troopers marched through the concourses in quartets—two with rifles, a team leader with a carbine, and a fourth with a disruptor—and inspection authorities and local police made their presence felt, but they were hopelessly outnumbered by the sheer volume and biodiversity of the civilian engineers and transient spacers. Raven's fellow Humans and their Near-Human cousins had the majority, but not by much, he thought; he saw Twi'leks, Rodians, Trandoshans, hovering Toydarians, Weequays, Bith, Sullustans, spindly Verpine technicians that reminded Raven achingly of Chancellor Phnyong, shifty Bothans striving to avoid being seen, and a pair of tailed sentients with beak-like noses Raven thought might be elusive Ryn, as well as creatures that fluttered, squirmed, slithered, and strode about their business for which he had no names, and droids of all varieties. He even saw a trio of blue-skinned humanoids with yellow facial markings.

"Tirien, forty degrees," he warned. "Pantorans."

Experienced enough not to give the game away, Tirien turned and said something to Zaella, then swept his gaze over the concourse, passing the trio without stopping. "Wroonians."

"You're sure?"

Tirien sighed. "Just trust me."

The Wroonians studied him as they passed, but only for a moment; Raven wondered if they could tell he was different too. Tirien wore his lightsaber in a shoulder holster under his short jacket, while Raven had his out of sight on his belt under his long duster. Zaella, by contrast, had stuck her lightsaber hilt right in the slot for a stun baton, but she wore a pistol in a cross-draw holster beside her belt buckle and a tank top cut so low that Raven knew no man who saw her would notice the lightsaber unless she ignited the blade—and, if they were anything like his cousin, perhaps not even then. Bernius had stuffed his baton in his satchel, the contents of which he refused to reveal even to Raven, and he clomped along behind them without comment.

As they passed through the Dorn Quadrant concourse, Raven felt a tingling in the back of his mind. "I think we've been made."

"I feel it also," Tirien said.

"Sith?"

"Impossible to know."

Impossible without the Force, anyway, Raven thought, and at the moment they came to the same thing; they had all agreed that calling too strongly upon the Force might give them away to any Sith who happened to be aboard the shipyards. The quick barrage of mind tricks to cudgel the docking agent into submission had been chancy, but necessary to clear their way. But trying to probe the mind of a Force-sensitive would be as good as walking around with a holo ad.

"Bernius?" Raven asked.

"There are too many overlapping gait patterns here to attempt to isolate any one," Bernius replied. "However, were I to attempt an ambush against us, this tunnel we're approaching would be an ideal spot."

Studying the access tunnel between Dorn and Cresh Quadrants, Raven thought he saw what the droid meant. The entire tunnel was probably wide enough to fly the Second Chance through with room to spare, but moving walkways herded spacefarers into two columns, and a floor-to-ceiling central display projected information from the shipyards and news from elsewhere in the Empire. Raven thought a blast could collapse the whole thing into a sparking obstacle, and if assassins took positions on either side of the moving walkway, they could turn the middle into a shooting gallery. Packed in among the civilians, the Jedi could not even swing their lightsabers in safety, let alone employ Forceful acrobatics to escape.

Raven slowed, but no one else broke pace, and he power-walked to catch up. Zaella looked at him behind Tirien's back. "Sneaking around isn't really your thing, is it?"

Opting not to reply, he asked, "Is there another way around?"

"Doesn't look like it," Tirien said.

"What if it's an ambush?" asked Zaella.

Raven remembered just in time not to send her soothing thoughts. "If the Force is with us, we'll be able to identify and neutralize the assassins before they can open fire."

"Yeah, and how about if the Force isn't with us?"

"Then we're going to kill them all," Tirien said, "and improvise from there."

She flexed her fingers as Raven loosened his duster to ensure quick access to his lightsaber. Tirien showed no outward signs of preparation, but his yellow eyes darted from one spot to the next, and Raven suspected he was employing some of the esoteric skills he had acquired from his Jedi Sentinel master to spot ambushers the conventional way. Bernius drew his baton from his satchel and said, "Scanning for weapon signatures above commonly-available sidearms…scanning…"

He was still scanning as they reached the tunnel, and there was nothing for it; lingering would be even more suspicious. Tirien went first, with Zaella and Raven side-by-side and Bernius bringing up the rear.

Raven's tension grew as they approached the information kiosk that would box them in, but he thought he was doing it to himself. "Bernius?"

"Still scanning, but no signatures acquired."

"Mines?" Tirien asked.

"Included in my scan, sir. Negative."

They were in the kill zone now; Raven hooked his thumbs around his belt buckle in what he thought resembled spacer swagger, though he just wanted a hand as close to his lightsaber as possible. Tirien's head turned back and forth like an oscillating fan; he might have been taking in the sights of new and unusual aliens, except that he regarded them just long enough to dismiss them as threats. Zaella leaned against the rail of the moving walkway—or at least she did until she started to tilt; the railing was moving more slowly than the floor—but both ends of her lekku shifted higher up her chest as their muscles tensed. Bernius rotated so he could glance behind them, still muttering, "Scanning…"

And then they were past the central display, with room to maneuver if it became a fight. All four of them looked on the holo terminal's other side, but Raven saw only a family of Aleena, all gibbering at once and gesticulating at the display and each other. He felt none of the tension that usually presaged danger; it brought a strange mix of relief and anticlimax.

"Why?" he breathed as they stepped off the walkway. "They'll never have a better opportunity."

"Unless they're still unaware of our presence," Tirien replied. "And if they are, so much the better. Hopefully they'll stay that way until we're back to the ship."

Raven stopped to consult a holomap of the concourse, so he missed Zaella's comment, but he turned back in time to hear Bernius say, "'Following' may yet be too strong, but moving in the same direction."

Raven started, "Who—"

"Don't look," Tirien cautioned. "Where are we going?"

"The dockmaster's office should be just up here," Raven said, pointing. After they passed a trio of Gran discussing the Republic's prospects at Denon, Raven asked just loudly enough to be heard, "Who may be following us?"

"Some Devaronian," Zaella said. "I saw him in Dorn Quadrant, then again on the walkway."

"Just one? Careless, even for a Sith."

"Only if they know we're here," Tirien countered. "If Captain Oraska was compromised, they may be looking for spies, not Jedi."

"Well, we're kind of both, so we're karked either way," said Zaella.

"Stay calm," Tirien said. "This is it."

The dockmaster's office had no guard, but a surveillance remote hovered nearby. While Raven and Zaella staged a discussion about where to eat, Bernius blocked Tirien from sight as Tirien pointed a finger at the droid. Raven felt a single dart of the Force like a blaster bolt, and the droid shuddered, then went bobbing off in a different direction, swooping in at spacers without warning and drawing a startled shriek from a Twi'lek wearing a slave collar; as a few passers-by laughed, her master sent a shock through her in punishment.

Raven felt Tirien's fury, and though he shared the sentiment, he reminded him, "Focus. Priorities."

A second later, Tirien was back in control. "Right. Come on."

He advanced toward the access terminal, but Bernius said, "Allow me, please, sir."

Tirien stopped, and Raven waved Bernius forward. Bernius raised a hand over the keypad, bracing his other hand against the lower console as if to support himself. "Please remind me of the code, sir. Slowly, please; one digit at a time."

"F-1—"

"Slower than that, please."

Only then did Raven notice Bernius had extended the scomp link from his other palm; it was plugged into a computer interface socket and rotating as Bernius worked to crack whatever data it accessed. Understanding, Raven said, "F…1…1…"

"Twenty-five degrees," Zaella muttered to Tirien. "That's the Devaronian."

"…1…9…1."

Bernius's index finger hovered over the final number, but he pulled his left hand away from the terminal and pressed the code the next second. The door slid open, and the droid went through first. "Security has an office here as well, though it is not their main office. I have looped security footage in this section for four minutes and twenty-five seconds.  Twenty-four…"

"There's no time to do this gently, then," Tirien said with a grimace. As he followed Bernius in, he said, "Raven, if anyone notices us, mind trick them. Zaella, try not to kill anyone.  Move."

"The dockmaster's office is down this hall, turn right, fourth door on the left," Bernius added.

They moved with purpose, but found little in the way of resistance; no security officers appeared to meet them, and deterring the few docking agents they encountered was as easy as a wave of Raven's hand. Bernius rummaged in his satchel as they turned the corner; they came upon a security remote, but Bernius pointed a pistol that resembled nothing more than a horn with a handle and a trigger. It produced no sound or visible effect, but Raven felt the hair on his closer arm stand up, and the remote dropped like a stone; Tirien caught it with the Force and set it on the ground.

"Ion pistol?" he asked.

"Yes sir, on a low setting. The remote will not be permanently damaged, but it should be incapacitated for our remaining three minutes and fifty-eight seconds at least."

The dockmaster's office door was locked and did not open at touch; Tirien pointed at it, then drew his blaster. Raven passed a hand over the panel and focused on the mechanism, smiling as he remembered the training in the manor. He could feel the potential energy of the electrical signals, the pathway of the conduit that might as well have said, U NLOCK . He pressed the Force into it, triggering the flow of energy, and the door slid open.

Only one being occupied the office—a humanoid of some type Raven had never encountered, with Humanesque facial features but larger hands and head than the Human norm, with a flatter nose and a great deal more hair everywhere but his palms and his face. He spun in his chair and his eyes widened. "What the—"

"Move and you're dead!" Tirien snarled, pointing his blaster at the dockmaster's face. As the man froze and Raven started, Tirien crossed the room and placed the barrel against the dockmaster's forehead. "Give me your code cylinder and your access code or I'll kill you."

Raven felt the dockmaster's terror, but he hesitated on the brink of intervening; Tirien could not be ignorant of it, and they were short on time…

"If I betray the Sith, they'll kill me!" the dockmaster moaned.

"Close the door," Tirien ordered. The moment Zaella complied, Tirien fired a shot two centimeters to the side of the man's head. The crack echoed in the confined space, and as the dockmaster cringed, Tirien said, "The Sith may kill you later; I will kill you now. Three…two…"

The dockmaster fumbled his code cylinder and dropped it; as Zaella darted forward and picked it up, he stammered through the code. Zaella plugged the code cylinder into a neighboring terminal, typed the code, and nodded. "We're in."

"Please…" the dockmaster said.

Tirien pointed the pistol at the dockmaster's chest, flipped a switch on the side, and pulled the trigger. Raven cried out, but cut himself off as he saw the blue light of the stun shot; at point blank range, it knocked the dockmaster back into his workstation, and he fell out of his chair and onto the floor. Tirien holstered up, knelt beside him, and called, "Time?"

"Two minutes, twelve seconds," said Bernius.

"Program in the Second Chance for a departure to the Kiss of Death."

As Bernius typed away and Zaella took up a position by the door, Tirien laid a hand on the dockmaster's heavy brow. Raven sensed him guiding the man deeper into unconsciousness—a Force-induced trance that would last longer than any stun shot. Crouching beside them, he asked, "Tirien…you weren't really going to shoot him, right?"

Tirien spared a second to give him a withering look. "Of course not. But he had to believe it; if he'd resisted, I would've had to pull it out of his mind, and that's straying too close to the dark side for my tastes."

Raven was not sure what that said about intimidation tactics, but Tirien stood before he could reply. "Bernius?"

"Logging the order now…done."

"Time?"

"One minutes, twenty-seven seconds."

"Let's go!"

They bolted back into the hall, Bernius locking the door behind them, and ran for it. Zaella rounded the corner first, but Raven saw her brake and back up. Tirien was beside her a second later, and Raven felt the chill breeze in the Force as he centered himself for combat. He reached beneath his coat as Raven hit the corner.

The Devaronian faced them—red-orange-skinned, demon-faced, and wearing a plain spacer's jacket over what appeared to be an armored breastplate. From only a few meters away, Raven could not miss the Force in him…and yet he sensed the Devaronian was not making any particular effort to conceal it. The man grinned and said, "Tirien! There you are."

Tirien hesitated, hand still in his coat and, Raven knew, clasped around his lightsaber hilt. "Who are you?"

The Devaronian rolled his eyes. "You don't remember me? I'm disappointed.  Guess I shouldn't be surprised, though, you spent all your time focused on Rhosa.  Well, her and—"

"—Master Shadeez," Tirien finished, eyes narrowed. "You were one of his Knights—you were there on Gizer Battlestation."

"That I was."

"…did Master Z'dar send you?"

"Ah, there's the brainiac I remember. By the Cold, I miss Rhosa…"

"Thirty-one seconds," Bernius warned.

"Until?" asked the Devaronian.

"Cameras come back online," Tirien said.

The Devaronian's whole expression changed; cool and businesslike, he stepped forward. "This way—there's a maintenance passage past the security office."

They parted for him and he swept past, but no one moved to follow. Bernius said, "Twenty seconds."

"What's the call, Tirien?" Zaella asked.

Tirien drew his curved lightsaber hilt, but he said, "Let's go."

They all sprinted for the maintenance door at the end of the hall; the Devaronian unsealed it with a keycard, and they flooded through, Bernius slamming the door shut behind them even as he said, "Three…completed with 2.701 seconds to spare."

"Too close," Tirien said before he looked hard at the Devaronian. "Remind me of your name."

"Jarkun'eir'saikal—you can call me Jarkun." Now that they were out of immediate danger, he had relaxed back into a casual smile.

Tirien introduced Raven, Zaella, and Bernius, then said, "You were there with Jylo and Arlya."

"And Farwel." The smile faltered. "I miss Arlya too…"

"You've been looking for us?" Raven asked. He gathered that both Rhosa and Arlya were Jarkun's fallen comrades, but there was no time to reminisce.

"Yeah." Jarkun's eyes came back from wherever they had been going. "Yeah, Master Z'dar figured you could use a hand, and boy, was he ever right."

Tirien and Raven looked at each other, and Raven said, "We got everything done there without being spotted…"

"Oh, I don't mean that. C'mon."

They followed him through winding maintenance passages and mechanical tunnels, dodging work crews and labor droids as needed. Raven glanced at Tirien, risking an inquisitive press with the Force. Tirien nodded and returned his lightsaber to its holster. As a rank odor assaulted Raven's nostrils, he was beset with a new host of concerns, but Jarkun strode down into a trash disposal facility. Two disabled droids lay on their sides, which Raven thought was why there had been no alarms about the corpses still sitting on the disposal pile.

One was clearly a Houk, though pieces of him had been cut away. The other was a Kowakian monkey-lizard…or at least the head of one. Raven could not see right away where the body had gone. He found his hand resting on the pommel of his own lightsaber, Tirien's endorsement or not.

"Know either of them?" Jarkun asked; if he noticed Raven's wariness, he did not comment. When they all shook their heads, he continued, "These are the last, I think; the disposal cycles every hour, it should be going any minute. They showed up a few hours ago, and I've been killing them since then."

"Who are they?" Zaella asked.

"Assassins—good ones, too." Jarkun pulled up his left sleeve to show a bloodstained bandage on his forearm. "Flechette—another two centimeters and it would've cut the bone in half."

"What did they want?" Tirien asked.

"You. All of you, I'm guessing, but they said your name.  I gotta admit, that's the only way I even caught them; their minds were so shielded I would've walked right past them otherwise.  Once I got one of them, though, I tracked the rest."

Tirien's face hardened, and Raven felt his presence strengthen in the Force as he actively stretched out with his powers. "They know we're here."

"Going to abort?"

They all shook their heads, even Zaella, and Tirien said, "If Gasald's on to us, we'll never get another chance."

Jarkun nodded. "Whatever we're gonna do, we need to do it now."

"'We'?" asked Zaella.

"You didn't think I came here just to be your bodyguard, did you?" Jarkun gave them a devilish grin. "Master Z'dar wanted me to help with the mission; I just stumbled across these guys by accident. Besides, Gasald's in with Darshkére, right?  And Darshkére is basically Lakalt Round Two, and we've got a score to settle with that whole tribe of bad guys."

"This isn't a revenge mission," Raven cautioned.

"But with that caveat, we'll take your help," Tirien added. "There are no accidents; the Force led you here—led you to them—to protect the outcome of this mission. And we need every capable Knight we can get."

Raven could not argue with any of that, and he did not understand his instinct to. As he tried to make sense of his feelings, Tirien said, "Our ship is in docking bay D-19. Is there a quick way back?"

"Follow me."

They did, taking catwalks and climbing ladders; Raven worried about Bernius, but the droid climbed, crept, and ran at pace with them. When Zaella asked, Jarkun said, "Took me a couple days to learn where all the cameras are. No helping the spy remotes, but not a lot of them come back here."

"How long have you been here?"

"A week? Seven days?  Something like that."

Raven felt more than he saw Tirien roll his eyes. "Z'dar said he couldn't send help."

"Yeah, he felt bad about that, but he didn't want to risk me if you were compromised. Guess like he wasn't just being paranoid, either."

"How?" Raven muttered. "How did they know?"

"Not everyone who knows about this mission is here," Zaella pointed out.

Raven narrowed his eyes at her back; most of those who knew about the mission and were not present were his family. Even as he felt a wave of anger, doubt unsettled him. Surely his uncle would not have—

Tirien put a hand on his shoulder in warning, then said aloud, "Even for those of us who are here, there's no knowing who we all told. I'm less concerned how they know than that they know.  If Gasald knows we're coming…"

"We need to get a move on, so we get to her before somebody realizes the death squad wound up on the wrong end of the dying," Jarkun finished.

They ran in silence from then on, until Jarkun opened a maintenance door into bay D-18. Four Duros stood around the bottom of their ship's boarding ramp, arguing in Huttese; Tirien drew his hand all the way across his body in a wave that might have been polishing an invisible ship. Raven sensed the Duros reeling from the mind trick, and he added his own powers to the effort; Jarkun evidently had the same idea, and the combined Force was so strong one Duros turned around and walked directly into a landing strut. They all sprinted across the bay and took the service hatch into D-19 before the effect wore off.

Harshee lurked under the Second Chance, playing her pipes. The notes cut off as they approached, but she asked no questions, only giving Tirien a look. When he returned it, she nodded and sprinted up the ramp ahead of them.

The others were not so accommodating, and a bevy of questions hit them as they closed the ramp; Tirien had to shout to make himself heard.

"NOT NOW! Yan, get us spaceborne; we're clear to the Kiss of Death.  Narasi, go help her transmit the codes.  ETA from takeoff to touchdown?"

"I've kept her on standby," Yan's voice called as Narasi pounded down the corridor to the cockpit. "I marked the Kiss of Death coming in; if they don't put us in a holding pattern, I'd say four minutes, tops."

Lord Wisté stared at Jarkun. "But Tirien, who is this—"

"He's Jarkun, he's a Jedi, he's with us, the rest can wait. We need to get ready."

He stripped off his spacer's gear with no trace of modesty, and when Zaella did likewise, Raven could hardly stand on ceremony. Lords Brascel and Wisté exchanged puzzled looks, but Amaani, Gaebrean, Kobold, and Jirdo all stepped forward to help them dress, their arms full of hideous masks and black robes.

It was time, Raven knew. Bracing himself, he said, "Bernius, I want you to go with Harshee and Jirdo."

No fewer than four beings all demanded "What?!" at the same moment, but Raven ignored the rest for Bernius's digitized complaint. "You have the slicing abilities to get them into the reactor, and combat skills in case they become necessary."

"Absolutely not," Bernius protested. "Your father—"

"My father told you to obey me as you would him," Raven said; he had noticed the slip on Pelagon, but here, far from Inimă Eserzennae, there was nothing his father could do to fix it. "He never told you to protect me."

"My master commanded me to protect you," Bernius answered, and Raven knew they were no longer speaking about Miklato.

"Speaking for the other half of the descendant demographic," Gaebrean said as he helped Zaella fix her tunic, "I'm all in favor of you going with them."

"You'll be protecting them if you go with Harshee and Jirdo," Tirien added; he was down to his underwear and pulling on black pants, but even though Raven had not had a chance to clue him into the plan, he suspected Tirien's quick mind had been at work since the first word. "You'll increase their chances of success, which means Raven and Gaebrean won't worry about the reactor team failing and be distracted during our fight. Distraction is death, Bernius."

Bernius turned his photoreceptors back to Raven. "I did not insist when my master went to Mizra without me, and I have regretted that since. Do not ask me to make the same mistake twice."

"If you'd gone to Mizra," Raven countered, "and he'd sent you to protect the Jedi battle meditator instead of Jeyvril and himself, how many more lives might you have saved?"

"We'd be happy to have your help," Jirdo said. Raven suspected he did not want sole responsibility for keeping Harshee safe.

"And you'll help us blend in," Harshee added.

Raven was nearly dressed by the time Bernius spoke again. "Please do not ask this of me, sir. Please."

Raven knew a moment of doubt. Bernius had been a friend and teacher to Raina and him since they were born—had helped train them and develop them into the Jedi they were. Even with nothing more than a hum of electrical activity in the Force around Bernius, Raven considered him a person, not a machine or an object, and he hated to betray a friend.

But Bernius's was not the first trust Raven had betrayed in coming to Allanteen…

"This is what I need you to do," Raven replied. "This is the mission. Tirien's said it all along, and he's right: Gasald has to die.  Nothing else matters, not even Gaebrean and me; the people who live under Gasald's shadow have a right to not live in fear."

"…as you wish, sir." Bernius gave a digital sigh, but as Raven reached for his mask, Bernius set a heavy hand on his shoulder. "For what it is worth, sir…my master would have been proud of you."

Raven smiled, but the moment could not last, for Yan called, "We're inbound now."