Loyalty/Part 14

"Galera!" Satir Solo shouted as Maik Todden all but dragged him away. "Galera!"

Corellians valued their families and never shied away from a good fight, so Maik's heart bled for him twice over, but she seized his collar with the hand not holding her blaster and pulled him another meter anyway. "We need to move, sir, now."

"We need to go back for my sister! Galera!"

"She's got Master Arodion—nobody's getting through her. But that Sith could kill Quoshu any second, and we're not prepared to fight somebody like that.  Let's go!"

She dragged him until he started walking on his own, Rasic and Ettero covering their retreat. Maik wasn't sure she could trust their retreat, but she was certain they couldn't stay put. Jedi Quoshu and his Padawan, Fulotin, had both seemed like decent, capable beings, even if they weren't Corellian or anything like Master Arodion, but Quoshu had looked far more evenly matched against the masked Sith than Maik was comfortable with, and if the scream from below was any indication, Fulotin was already dead, or at least in no position to help further. Maik was willing to bet Master Arodion could take them all on, but the Protective Service agents could make her job easier by removing one of the targets from the situation.

When they reached the emergency exit, Maik swiped her keycard over the locking mechanism, then sprang through the door and into a service corridor. She swept the corridor with her blaster, but it was deserted, so she beckoned over her shoulder without turning and led the way, hoping any maintenance workers had had the good sense to flee already—with members of the Royal Family in mortal danger and Sith agents in the mix, she had no intention of switching to stun.

Once they took a set of ferrocrete stairs down to the ground floor, Maik put Rasic on point, then took position beside Satir and raised her wrist comlink. "Green Leader to Green team, does anyone copy?"

Silence.

Maik swallowed. "Green Leader to Green team. Any CorSec agents still alive?"

A cough came over the comlink, then, "I'm here."

"Garee? Is that you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, but it's just me."

Maik grimaced, but she didn't break pace, and she prodded Rasic when he slowed. Satir squeezed her shoulder.

"Where are you?"

"Alternate escape route."

"Do you have the Solos?"

"Live channel," Maik snapped as a reminder; if the Sith could infiltrate the conference building, they could slice a secure channel.

"Do I need to go back or not?"

"Yes," Satir said, but Maik shook her head.

"Negative. We have Coruscant.  Councilor is with Prime Blade; there's nothing we can do there.  The Sith have infiltrated the main hall—"

"Yeah, I figured that out myself. Stand by, I'm on my way to you."

"We can't hold position, but we're nearly out. Catch up when you can."

"Roger."

When they reached a door to the exterior, Maik, Satir, and Ettero flattened themselves to the wall as Rasic pressed the door's release. He charged through the door, and Maik heard, "Hey, whoa, whoa! Don't shoot!"

Wa-zew.

At least Rasic had the courtesy to stun him. When he called "Clear!", Maik led Satir through to find a well-dressed Human unconscious on the ground. It was drizzling, though Maik would take damp ground over the glare of sunshine any day as she checked the surrounding rooftops for snipers. They started down the alley toward the speeder garage, where a subtly armored speeder waited for them, but they hadn't gone a hundred meters before Maik heard a shout behind them and saw Garee running full-out to catch up.

He was panting when he reached them, but gestured on without stopping, falling in with their jog and working to catch his breath on the run. He looked terrible; his nose and brows were both crooked, and his face was caked from brow to chin with blood.

"What happened?" Maik demanded.

"There was a fourth one," Garee wheezed. "He wiped out my team. I got a lucky shot in the neck, but I'm not sure I killed him."

"What species?"

Garee shook his head. "Near-Human of some kind.  Why, what were yours?"

"Humanoid, but I don't know more than that."

"That woman went toe-to-toe with a Jedi, but without a lightsaber," Satir observed. "If the others are Sith, she may be one of Darth Alecto's Anzati."

Maik considered it, then picked up the pace. Some sixth sense gnawed at her; she felt that, even outside the conference building, they were far from safe. She glanced again at the rooftops; Garee had said there was a fourth, so why not a fifth or sixth?

"Where are the Jedi?" Garee asked. "They're supposed to be—"

"I think Fulotin's dead," Maik cut him off. "Quoshu and Master Arodion are holding the others off."

Garee nodded, but he started to lag, breathing heavily. Maik dropped back with him and asked, "You all right?"

"That Sith smacked me around a bit, but I'll be okay—it's worse that it looks," he said. While Maik studied his bloody, distorted face with concern, he shook his head. "You said yourself, we can't hold position. We have to keep moving."

Maik frowned, her instincts still troubling her, but she couldn't deny the force of her own logic turned back on her. Returning to Satir's side, she said, "Ettero, contact Chasin City Police. We'll need a hovercade, and air support if they have—"

Crack.

Maik heard the report of the blaster over her own scream, but only just; an agonizing fire erupted in the center of her back, and as her legs turned to jelly, the ground rushed up to meet her. The blow on her temple added a dull throb to the fire, but she didn't pass out, so she heard Ettero's cry and the second crack that silenced it. She had landed on her dominant hand, and as she struggled to wriggle enough to free her blaster from under her torso, she saw Satir and Rasic both spin and raise their blasters. Just before they fired, a terrifyingly familiar snap-hiss sounded from somewhere close behind her.

A few shots collided with the lightsaber Maik couldn't see and went far wide. Her body jerked and she smelled burning flesh, but there was no pain where it had hit; she couldn't feel her legs. Satir fired again, but this time his own shot came back and blew off his left kneecap. As he dropped his pistol and collapsed, clutching his leg, Rasic strafed and fired as quickly as his finger could pull the trigger, but he was only delaying the inevitable, and eventually one of the deflected shots hit home and disintegrated his face.

Maik managed to jerk her blaster arm free as Garee strode forward, but he glanced at her and opened his free hand—the hand not clutching a scarlet lightsaber—and the pistol flew out of her grip. He cocked his lightsaber back to cut Satir down…then paused, looking around the alley. A thoughtful look touched his bruised, distorted face before he leveled Maik's blaster point-blank and shot Satir twice in the head.

Maik moaned, wishing she had brought a grenade so she could at least take the treacherous bastard with her. How could he do this? How could he have been a Sith sleeper agent so long, risen so high through the CorSec ranks, as one of the enemy?

But inside, she knew.

''He called the Solos by name on a channel that could've been sliced. He said there was a fourth one, but I never told him there were three. His face isn't just messed up, it's wrong. So much blood, but no wounds. Oh…oh no…''

She craned her neck enough to look up at the thing that had concealed itself in Garee's shape, and received the cold comfort of having her intuition confirmed too late—the man's slit-pupiled, vivid yellow eyes glared down at her where Garee's warm, dark brown ones should have been. Maik tried to reach for her wrist comm, to warn anyone who might have survived the chaos in the main hall, but the shapeshifter pointed her own blaster at her face. She saw right down the barrel for an instant—