Dusty Salvo/Chapter 2

Denon Iseno Sector Inner Rim 24 BBY

The afternoon brought wind from the south. It carried along a swirling cloud of dry, gray, metal-tinged dust. Filling the eyes with grit and the tongue with the brassy, industrial taste of girder and paving, this stale breeze made for miserable weather. Clinging to surfaces, absorbing static charge, it left a pale ashy coating on everything.

Anej positively hated what it was doing to his dress uniform. His first time wearing the thing in months, re-fitted and professionally cleaned just for the occasion, and any stylish impression he might make had been ruined by crumby leftovers blowing up from one of the nearby ocean districts. It was a kriffing disgrace; looking foolish. He kept almost catching the DCE boys giving him dirty looks in his peripheral vision, all of them laughing at the little soldier in his dust-stained dress whites.

He took some small solace that at least, unlike the pair of protocol droids complaining incessantly on his right, he wasn’t stuck holding a placard. He would never have managed to live that down. It was bad enough having to wait on a commercial liner in a public hangar as it was. Vast and open, with the outer edge filled by nothing but flickering magcon field and roofless, this cavernous space filled with noise and clutter. Poorly maintained environmental controls struggled to hold the temperature constant, leaving the soldier occasionally shivering in the thin clothes designed for parade-perfect conditions.

The annoyance of the wait was compounded by a seeming lack of need. He didn’t understand the situation at all. Didn’t Jedi Knights all have starfighters for gallivanting around the galaxy? Sure, it was a nice display of fiscal prudence and all to just hop a ride on one of the countless Coruscant-Denon flights, but it lacked any ability to impress. Everything he’d ever read or watched implied that whole humbler-than-thou bit was nothing but blown exhaust. He cursed his luck, getting stuck with one who actually practiced it.

Of course, Anej had to admit that, at least in part, he shared some of the blame for this dreadful outcome. He had seriously miscalculated his arrival time. He’d been ready and waiting fully twenty minutes before the liner was scheduled to arrive; a choice dictated by the now clearly absurd belief that there was a possibility of the ship being early. It was an eye-opening reeducation in the difference between military and civilian timetables, and one he would not soon forget. Accumulating a soft coating of particulate urban residue while staring at customs sipping kaf and watching holovids in their office until a good three minutes after the arrival was scheduled to occur served as a suitably searing reminder.

Five minutes after it was supposed to show, the liner managed to appear at last. It hovered outside the hangar and made a slow, dutifully careful landing on repulsors only. A by the book approach that traded efficiency for passenger comfort, it would never have been done by a military ship. The soldier tried not to take this personally. A quick scan of the pitted hull, flecked paint, and milky viewports eased his ire considerably. Even to his relatively untrained eye, the ship appeared to be easily twice his age.

When the liner finally touched down it triggered a flurry of activity. Maintenance droids sprang into action from their somnambulance in alcoves and power docks on the edge of the hangar, running hoses, wires, and lifters out to the ship as fast as churning servomotors would go. Their master, a man who was pushing one hundred and fifty kilograms and whose coveralls seemed to be equal parts grease and fabric, finally put down one of an endless series of sweet buns and began to bellow commands in a voice that would have served to wake the dead, or at least the comatose. His metallic minions, a horde of myriad sizes and shapes, scurried to obey, filling the air with whirring, whizzing, and the warbled squealing of droidspeak.

Moving at a far more leisured and deliberate pace, the team of DCE officers left their comfortable office and set up behind bland durasteel counters. Wearing sturdy, durable blue work uniforms, and with datapads and scanners at the ready, they awaited the oncoming traffic with hungry eyes.

Anej’s brief moment of elation at this display of progress was swiftly dashed as he realized he was now to wait yet again. Momentarily fuming, he fixed one of the nearby protocol droids, a target unable to resist, with a brutal disciplinary stare. Perplexed and unnerved, the silver-toned machine stumbled. It almost dropped its placard in unexpected panic.

Feeling slightly better, though shamefully petty, the soldier smiled and turned away. He looked instead to the people now emerging from the vessel.

The crew emerged first, a quartet of Sullustans in well-worn day-old uniforms. They flanked the entryway and muttered a long series of salutations to their departing passengers, only to be largely ignored.

Behind the crew came a rough of dozen beings in trim formal outfits, suits, robes, and even one pseudo-military uniform. All walked with the perception of permanent hurry common to mid-level businessmen, cogs in the corporate machine whose principle concern in life was attempting to become slightly more important cogs. Anej ignored them. He found those types utterly unappealing.

The ordinary passengers came out behind those wage workers, in a kaleidoscopic mix only a world like Denon was liable to see; business-people, traveling entertainers, sportsmen, refugees, and an Aleena couple who surely filled that rarest class of interstellar traveler, the ‘tourist.’ There were almost as many species as there were individuals, not surprising given the Sullustan crew. Though Anej would rather a committed alien family concern be operating any aged ship he happened to take passage on rather than some giant human-only corporate operation, he was aware that research had shown human passengers preferred human pilots.

The first passenger was not the Jedi, and neither was the last. She was in the middle, this position indicated that she had held to whatever seating assignment she’d been given and not bothered to push or prod through. Despite this, she was instantly recognizable, and not just because everyone else gave her a considerable cushion of empty space.

She moved differently than other people. Anej observed this even at a distance, when all he could really make out was a figure in indigo robes. Her motions somehow anticipated the steps and patterns of those around her, allowing her to glide smoothly through the crowd and up to the customs counter, seamless. She did not do this by means of intense observation, as the soldier had seen in special forces types, but naturally, not looking at the other passengers for the most part, instead studying the cargo bay, the DCE officers, even the many droids.

He got his first good look at her when she stepped up to the counter, and could not help but stare. The robes she wore were ordinary enough, though the very dark, deep sea blue color was not one he’d seen before on Jedi, even in holos. Trim and athletic, her figure was serviceable for a woman in her twenties, but nothing special, and mostly hidden by robes, boots, and gloves in any case.

No, the surprise was all in the face.

The hair drew the attention first. Red-black was the description in the file, but that did not do it justice at all. He had imagined, and taken from the stock holo, a sort of streaked appearance, similar to the trendy styles that cropped up periodically among some of the districts’ youth. It was nothing like that. She had completely two-colored hair, matte black and brilliant crimson, interspersed entirely independently. As her head moved in the fluorescent lighting of the hangar it would alternatively catch one color or the other, or sometimes both at once, so that it seemed to change and shift from red to black to black-red to red-black and back continuously, a different shade at each moment and angle. She wore it short, parted down the middle and flared wide down to the top of her ears, for which the soldier was grateful, anything more might have been overwhelmingly mesmerizing.

The Jedi must have noticed his attention, for she turned her head, peering past the customs man to stare him straight in the eye. Looking back down at her, the eyes revealed an essence even more compelling than the hair. Contrasted strongly against weathered, dry yellow skin, the orbs were dark, blue and black, shades mingled together just as they had been in her hair, a scattered, smeared streak of pigmentation that he could positively sink into, drowning in ocean depths. They perfectly fit the elongated, teardrop shape of those eyes, pulled back along her skull to their tips. Recognizing that he was staring, Anej managed to rip his gaze free, focusing instead on the hull of the liner, listening with one ear until the inspection was complete. Only perfunctory questions were asked of the Jedi, and the soldier was not deaf to the vague non-answers she mostly gave. He imagined customs had received insight from above to play nice, or that the officer on the spot simply had little idea what to do. The poor man asked the Jedi for the serial number of her lightsaber, of all things, and was treated to a quick, one-sentence response that the weapon was hand-crafted and had no such thing. Embarrassment brought a swift end to the interview after that.

As the Jedi was released, Anej turned back, and he took a single step forward. Rising up to his full height, he stood at attention, facing the woman. “Master Jedi,” he called clearly, deliberately ignoring all the heads that turned his way. Those liquid ocean eyes made it easy.

This succeeded in getting her attention, though she was already walking in his direction.

When she approached to within conversation range, Anej snapped his right arm up in a salute. “Welcome to Denon, ma’am!”

This drew a small smile from her thin lips, but also a raised eyebrow, flashing once crimson, then fading to black again. “Considerably more formal than my last planetfall, but thank you.”

“Lieutenant Anej Nytas, ma’am,” he continued, struggling to stay focused. “Denon Planetary Security Force. I’m here to serve as your liaison.”

“Yes, I did read the briefing,” there was the slightest hint of exasperation in her tone. “And you can drop the salute, I’m not a soldier. Shakvail will do.”

“As you wish,” it wasn’t exactly the soldier’s first choice, but when dealing with alternate cultures, and she was both a Near-human and a Jedi so it counted double, you went by their rules rather than risking offense. “Anej is fine.”

“But you would rather be called Lieutenant,” she spoke casually, as if that were a perfectly ordinary thing to know, not some way of reading him. “So I’ll go with that.”

“Um…” he stumbled in his quest for a proper response, feeling dreadfully off-balance. He’d always thought of Jedi as soldiers, or at least close enough, but this woman was, was…different. He knew he’d better figure out what she was, and fast, or be hopelessly outclassed. Looking down at those eyes, he realized that he had a good fifteen centimeters on her, but still felt small.

She looked up at him, somehow without seeming to look up at all. “So, I’d like to be sure about this, is it a parent, aunt or uncle, possibly a cousin? And what post, exactly?”

“Excuse me?” Anej struggled to keep up; he thought of Jedi as calm, serene individuals who spouted philosophy half the time, this rapid-fire query overshot everything. He felt unprepared; he hated that feeling, especially when he’d prepped carefully.

“You’ll discover that I can be rather frank, among equals,” Shakvail replied, not impatiently, not exactly, just, hurried. “So, I told you I read the briefing, and I did my own research. You are apparently a promising young officer, but even so, in the manner of these things, you’re far too young, and low-ranking, and from a rather obscure service, to be serving as my liaison, especially considering Denon’s vast array of other options. Ergo, this posting was granted via some form of nepotism, and I’d like to know the who and the how.” She paused momentarily before pushing on, even as Anej’s brain whirled; rapidly cycling through a series of recalculations as to just what he was dealing with here. “Not that I really mind, Lieutenant. In fact, I look forward to working with someone close to my own age for once, but I’d like the truth.”

The soldier swallowed. “I didn’t ask for this appointment you know,” he protested.

“But you’re taking it seriously,” she noted calmly, looking at his uniform. “Shame about the dust.”

Anej blinked; there was something unexpectedly warm and wholly natural about that comment. It broke through the strange wall of Jedi persona and snap-speak she’d just thrown up. He felt a fleeting glimpse of understanding, of how just as he felt rather absurd having to play the prim officer and serve as tour guide for an off-world dignitary, she felt equally so by being treated as one.

Feeling out possibilities, he decided to take a shot in the dark and offer the truth. “My uncle, my father’s elder brother, Celjen Nytas. He’s the Minster of the Treasury, and he’s head of the Denon Advancement Party’s steering committee.”

“I’m unfamiliar with this concept of political parties,” the Jedi’s lips compressed slightly. “Which position is more important?”

“The committee,” Anej replied, somewhat wearily. Talking about politics was such a burdensome affectation. “They influence section and district candidates, the ministries are planetary, so big nothing ever changes.”

“I see,” she smiled a little. “Well, I suspect working with me will not have the prospects anyone, you included, might expect, but it is liable to be exciting. The will of the Force leads to many things, but few are dull.”

“I’ll keep up,” the soldier promised, though his heart really wasn’t in it. Could ordinary people keep up with Jedi?

She appeared satisfied with this. “No reason to stand around here. I’m sure you have an itinerary of some kind…”

Anej looked at her, taking her presence in again, this time deliberately focusing on the mundane. “Don’t you have, well, luggage?” She had her robes, a utility belt with her lightsaber and a high-end datapad hanging from it, and a single small shoulder-carried bag. Considering that her stay had been listed as of indefinite duration on the travel plans, this seemed odd.

Tapping the bag once, Shakvail answered. “Krare, my scanner, a few blank datacards, one or two other tools, that’s about it.” Catching his eye and obviously reading the bemused expression, she chose to elaborate. “It’s actually cheaper to have new robes fabricated than to pay the shipping fees, at least on a planet like this.”

“Oh,” Anej muttered, trying to process the implications of this.

Shakvail, taking advantage of the pause, simply started walking toward the hangar exit, forcing the soldier to take a few extra steps to catch up.

“I have an airspeeder waiting,” he told her when they were even again. It was a weak comment, and he winced inwardly, but he had nothing better to say. Everything was awkward. “DPSF has secured an apartment for you, unless…” he hesitated, but she turned and looked sharply at him, so he rushed on. “Unless, of course, you’d rather have quarters on base.” Kicking himself, the soldier tried to commit the moment to memory, he had to remember Jedi could sense emotions.

“If I stay on base will I get access to the military network?” she asked, almost idly. “Ah, no,” Anej lapsed into civilian speak without even realizing it. “Only those with proper clearance have access to secure data systems are allowed to-“ she was staring at him, and his mouth clamped shut involuntarily. To the soldier’s surprise, this drew a bright smile. Feeling put-upon, and unfairly marginalized, he barked out a response. “Are you toying with me?”

Shakvail shrugged. “No,” she was casual about it, ignoring the accusation entirely. “And your earnestness is welcome. You are trying to understand a Jedi; most officials simply seek to exploit us. The former is, somewhat depressingly, actually far more difficult.”

This broke through some of the tension he was feeling. “So, the apartment then?”

“Yes, that will be-“

In the avalanche, of sound, spray, dust, and pressure that hit in the next moment, Anej recalled only one, key, thing. Shakvail turned toward the wave just an instant before they were hit, as if she’d been told it was coming.

Then he was on the ground, bruised and disoriented, blinking through a haze of gray spots and tasting metal on his tongue. “Kriff…” he tried to say, but the word came out matted with saliva and garbled into nothing.

A gloved hand pressed down on his shoulder, tapping softly, and Anej managed to turn his neck enough to see its source. It was the Jedi, Shakvail, blue-black eyes filled with urgent concern. “Are you alright?” the words were smothered, warped as if underwater, but somehow perfectly understandable all the same.

The soldier managed a nod, and shifted his right arm. He exerted his will to make his body obey; overcome the shock of impact. In the next motion he got the limb beneath him. With a brutal application of effort he managed to leverage back upright. “I’ll be fine.”

At this the Jedi nodded once, and then was gone. She dashed down the corridor with astonishing speed. It was a full second later before Anej’s brain managed to catch up. Slowly, laboring against jarring and pounding in his skull, it the revealed that she’d run towards the blast, not away.

“Sithspit!” He spat out more dust. The scream of spaceport alarms, multiple frequencies for the multiple emergencies they suddenly faced, blared in his ears.

Already up on one knee, Anej took a quick moment to check over his injuries. Mercifully, they were minimal, scrapes and bruises from the hard fall. his right thigh had acquired a finger-length gash from some little piece of shrapnel, but nothing serious beckoned.

Though he momentarily rejoiced at his good fortune, the soldier paused in the next moment, seriously unsure as to the next step. What should he do? Sure, he was emergency personnel, he’d had the training, it was flooding through his consciousness readily now, half-translated snippets of memory of planning and protocol, safe zones and containment and all the rest.

That was true. He might be able to do something. It was also true that this wasn’t his jurisdiction, or even a place he’d so much as visited before. He was a victim, stuck in his dress uniform without proper gear. He ought to wait for the proper authorities.

As he looked down the hallway, through the haze and the piles of disturbed gear thrown into chaotic jumbles, he caught a flash of crimson, fading to black.

“Kriff!” Anej spat out the last of the dust, and rose to his feet in a single motion. Pride stirred in him. You’re the liaison, a voice in the back of his head, one sounding annoyingly like his uncle, seemed to say. You represent all of Denon to guests. He wanted to punch that voice in the face, but he couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t let the Jedi show them up on the first day.

“Kriff,” he clenched his teeth. He took some solace that his formal attire included his service pistol; he drew it now. The stubby, boxy package of metals and plastoids brought a sense of security and readiness pervading up his arm and over to his breast and his fingers wrapped around the stock. Anej took strength from that. Little though it might be, it was a step above powerlessness.

Before charging in to follow the Jedi, he added one other piece of gear, a little half-circular thing deftly pulled out from underneath his oversized field hat. Placing it over his right eye, he pressed a tiny actuator, and it snapped into place, bonding up to his skin with powerful adhesives. It activated a little square screen, one that hung above his flesh.

Data spooled across his eye-screen, tabulating, collating, and running through a series of presentation sequences. He could control this datastream by twitching his facial muscles. A little wheel churned in the bottom right corner, and then blossomed out into a second layer of information, blue behind the green.

He was connected to the DPSF Network.

He was ready.

Anej was in excellent shape, and his long legs ate up ground swiftly, but his stiff, narrow formal boots hindered him, and it took the better part of a minute to reach the jagged fracture in the wall that had to be hiding the source of the shockwave.

The attack, and it took only a glimpse for the soldier to release that was the nature of the emergency, not any kind of accident, had blown through the whole partition between this access way and the hangar it abutted, creating an opening several meters in diameter where there had been nothing before.

It took only seconds for him to determine the nature of the blast, he’d seen too many scans of exact the same damage pattern; though always before on ship hulls, never a wall. “Concussion missile,” he spat, anger rising. That someone would fire off military grade naval ordinance inside a civilian spaceport pushed him all the way to the edge at one shot.

At a moment he was no longer satisfied just holding the pistol. He wanted something to shoot.

Others were already acting on that impulse.

The hangar beyond, a grand space now filled with concealing clouds of ash and debris, sparked and shone with erratic splashes of plasmatic energy, the telltale signs of blasterfire.

The soldier’s face twitched out a deliberate three-move sequence.

His display flickered and changed color, going yellow. The new overlay instantly removed the bulk of the opaque airborne barrier, modern imaging filtering it all.

Seeing it clearly for the first time, Anej observed a luxury yacht in the center of the hangar. The ship, once gorgeous and no doubt worth a fortune, was shattered, broken almost in half by additional missile strikes. A huge tear rent clean through the port hull, revealing gaudy internal suites.

Suites presently under siege.

Armored men, clearly military by their movements but without markings or identifiers, had formed a cordon around this impromptu entryway. They were steadily and brutally forcing their way closer under a hailstorm of blasterfire. A weak, sputtering counterfire opposed them, but even a novice tactician could see it was only a matter of time.

That was, until a lightsaber entered the fray.

The glowing blade was green, bright yet eerily almost transparent. It spun through the air, whirling through a terrible arc as it descended from a high cargo gurney like some terrible bird of prey. A clawed falcon, the weapon cleaved three men before they even noticed, then shot back up to the hand of its mistress, perched near the roof of the hangar.

The mercenaries, for Anej could not believe they were anything else, reacted quickly. Shouts of ‘Jedi’ went up from multiple throats, and men scattered, reorienting toward this new threat. Streams of fire swiftly converged on Shakvail’s position.

The soldier watched as the Jedi displayed her impossible gifts openly. The lightsaber writhed in her grasp, batting away blaster bolt after blaster bolt; none of those shots reached her.

Most did not require the intervention of the gleaming blade, for she had chosen her position well, with height and cover making it difficult for anyone to get a clean fire lane. To strike at her they would have to move into the open.

One of the mercenaries, braver or more foolish than his fellows, tried this. Three steps he charged forward before his arm snapped forward to launch a grenade.

The Jedi’s left hand shot out, gave a single errant flick.

The projectile splashed back at the feet of its owner with gruesome results.

Even as Anej observed, he moved. His body flowed to cover behind the carcass of an unfortunate load lifter, knowing the sturdy chassis, functional or not, would be protection. Yet he did not act, somehow he knew he must choose his moment with extreme care. Whether it was training, instinct, or something else he could not explain. Yet he recognized he would get only one chance and he’d better make it count.

Shakvail held her post strong. Barring some unexpected failure of her saber-work it seemed she could do so for some time. The solider took heart in this, but also saw its weakness. The Jedi was trapped, held on the defensive and unable to do more than keep her opponents at bay. Pinned down, she could not defeat them.

Security forces would arrive soon, Anej knew, droids, police, and the rapid response team DCE kept at every spaceport. It would be a few minutes at most.

The Jedi could hold on that long, he had no doubt, but could the people in the yacht?

As if in response to his thoughts, a hand rose up among the mercenaries. A red-armored glove, it clenched into a fist, and then shook.

Half-a-dozen men surged. Crouched as they ran they dashed from cover to cover behind this blood-colored leader as they broke free to overrun the yacht in one solid surge.

Assess. Assign. Attack.

They called it Triple-A. Nobody really knew who developed it. Everyone knew that it worked.

Six targets; impose a grid; assign numbers; then, fire when ready.

One. Two. Three.

Target one was a human male, brown-green armor, faded. Three shots to the center of the back.

Switch.

One. Two. Three.

Target two was female, species unknown, masked and helmeted, twenty degrees to the right. One shot in the back, one in the shoulder as she turned, the third went wide.

Switch.

One. Two. Three.

Target three was male, Weequay, ash gray armor, ten degrees to the left, five degrees upwards. One shot to the leg, one miss, final shot to the chest.

Switch.

The enemy was returning fire. Anej never noticed. He was locked-in, keyed to a precise pattern that maximized efficiency of motion, time to hit, and strike after strike. He cycled through the routine at blazing speed, body jerking; droid on a string. Everything else pushed aside, the little blaster chewed through the pattern without allowing hesitation, fear, or anything else to intercede.

Three shots, switch, three shots.

It was done in less than ten seconds.

When the sequence ended, the soldier dropped. His body pulled down. Tissue sheltered fully behind the smashed lifter, its metal carcass now hot and steaming from the impact of superheated energy blasts. Breathing once, Anej shifted his grip, feeling sweat bursting from every pore. Then he turned his body back up to the fight.

He sprayed fire wildly, not targeting enemies, seeking only a snap-assessment.

Five of his six were down, and the advance had stopped. Now they were holding, trying to kill him and close the flank.

He ducked back down for cover, barely in time, as a ruby bolt passed above; close enough to singe a line through the top of his ridiculous hat.

Then someone screamed.

Anej jerked upright, laying down blasts from his pistol, not aiming, just throwing energy in the general direction of his targets.

They were scrambling, running for the walls, as a massive fuel hose, half-a-meter wide and long as the hangar, whipped through the air. Heavy and powerful, some machine-snake fiend of forgotten legend, it slammed into bodies with merciless force. Bones shattered and organs burst beneath fractured armor platting as it rained down blows.

Jedi.

The word provided a rationale all its own. It came coupled to the breathing space the solider needed. Five mercenaries had broken from or been deprived of cover.

One. Two. Three.

Switch.

He didn’t complete the cycle this time. The last enemy, a Duros in brown fatigues, threw up his hands to surrender.

Unable to stop his momentum, Anej’s brain took an alternate path, and he thrust his body sideways, emptying the final shots into the hangar wall.

Other hands went up, weapons clattered to the floor.

“Hands on your head! On you head! On the floor!” The shouts came from somewhere, someone, and Anej belatedly realized he was charging from cover, pistol in both hands. “On the floor now!” Those powerful screams were his own.

Surviving mercenaries, a handful at best, obeyed rapidly. Dropped to their knees; paired arms crossed atop their skulls. Only one, the man in blood red armor, hesitated.

Pistol crosshairs fixated on him, but the man still held a heavy blaster rifle. Staring down this one, Anej saw his armor was a heavy duty battlesuit, expensive, serious, non-standard gear only elites would have, or a commander. His arms were shaking; the hormonal flood was sluicing through his system, the raw-red combat strength fading from his limbs.

Would the other man shoot?

“Do not be a fool,” a calm voice, stern and solid as mountains, announced from behind this mercenary.

A glowing green blade floated at the back of his neck.

Out of the corner of his eye Anej saw Shakvail. Fearsome in her placidity, she stood calmly to his right; hands clasped together before her.

The mercenary dropped his rifle and kicked it to the side in disgust. Slowly he went to his knees. His hands rose up to the back of his helmet. “Kriffing Jedi,” the man barked. His venom was diluted by the synthetic modulator used in his helmet. “Nobody said anything about kriffing Jedi.”

Shakvail’s lightsaber spun through the air, effortlessly returned to her hand.

There was a momentary silence. Anej dared a glance back to the hangar entrance. Where was DCE? He tried to cover the survivors with his pistol, but he had no binders, and there were blasters all over the floor. He remained nervous.

Then his eyes caught one of the mercenaries, and followed the gaze. The man, surely a hardened soldier who’d fought many engagements, was staring at Shakvail as if all the demons of the afterworld had come for him.

Anej dared to relax a little.

“So,” Shakvail’s voice rose, now clearly audible throughout much of the hangar. “Who’s in there?” She demanded of the broken vessel.

Heads peeked out, a trio of Humans in flight suits, and a green-skinned Twi’lek. No one said anything until an older man, wearing the rumpled remains of a once immaculately tailored suit, followed them from the ruin of the luxury suites. “Master Jedi,” he had an urbane, highly cultured voice and a Coruscanti accent. “Thank you very much for your timely assistance. I’m Morrow Reltherin.”

Anej eyes went wide, but Shakvail appeared unruffled.

Realizing that the Jedi might not even recognize the name, he tried to whisper to her carefully. “He’s the CEO of Merr-Sonn.”

“Thank you,” Shakvail acknowledged, though she kept her eyes on the corporate magnate. “And why is this man trying to kill you?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, I assure you-“ Morrow shook his hands wildly, dismissing the presumption.

Teardrop eyes narrowed. “Your would-be assassin thinks otherwise,” her words were cold. “And a man of your position should know better than to lie to my face.”

“Master Jedi, I must protest, I have no idea who this man is,” Morrow sputtered, but this time Anej could see his eyes retreat. He knew something, the Jedi was right. The CEO’s gaze darted to the entrance, where the customs response team had finally arrived.

Anej waved at the officers. “Binders!” he started pointing out the surviving mercenaries.

Men in blue uniforms spread through the hangar, but Shakvail’s gaze never left Morrow’s. “Let us see if your last claim was true,” she turned, looking straight at a surprised Anej. “Let’s get a look at our would-be assassin.”

“Right,” in that moment, locked into those steely blue-black eyes, there was no possibility of refusal.

Holstering his pistol, the soldier quickly moved behind the man in dark red. Not bothering to be gentle, he yanked the helm off in a single sharp pull. Three pairs of eyes stared at a brutally scarred human face, a crosshatched grill of lines across the whole surface. Anej looked at Shakvail, who was looking at Morrow, but there was only silence. He turned back to the mercenary. The man’s face was terrible to see, and he couldn’t hold his gaze there, but it gave him an idea.

Facial muscles twitched, and the screen shifted to a cool blue color. “Capture image.” He vocalized the command under his breath, knowing the audio pickups would catch it. “Run facial recognition.”

A lightning fast swirl of images passed over his eye. The protocol snapped through them in limitless series, before coming to an abrupt stop. “Laster Iringe,” Anej read, as the caption swelled to surmount the whole screen.

The world went red.



Shakvail caught the tremor in the Force the moment the name was spoken, and moved with every ounce of speed she possessed. Her lightsaber flared to life in her hand, and she tossed it, flipping underhand for greater speed, aimed at a point before the mercenary’s skull.

If she had been looking at Anej, and not Morrow, she might have been in time.

Her green saber spun through empty air milliseconds after the blaster bolt passed. Ruby red fire pierced clean through the mercenary’s head at the temple.

He pitched forward, unmoving.

Shakvail turned. She drew on the Force to recall her lightsaber without looking. Instead her eyes stared out to the edge of the hangar. A figure crouched there, extracting a sniper rifle. A helmet with a muzzled snout, fully masked, cloaked any features. Orange-brown garments sheathed the body, shielding and concealing everything beneath an armored sheen. Behind her eyes the Jedi observed in the Force, and found not the slightest hint of fear from this distant shooter.

The Jedi gathered the Force within, and launched a flying leap. With great, flaring hops she bounded across the hangar.

Almost casually, as if in no hurry, the assassin stood, turned, and jumped off the edge.

In that movement, closing in, Shakvail was able to see the armor in full detail. It revealed one key facet of the mysterious killer’s identity.

That was the armor of the Ubese. Shakvail reached the top of the wall, standing on a partition above a suspended magcon field. There was nothing beyond this edge, only a long, precipitous drop thousands of meters down, as the spaceport came to an end, opening out into one of Denon’s skyways. A long tether line was hooked at her feet. The Ubese could be seen screaming down that line, already hundreds of meters distant, diving across a gap between the towering buildings.

The assassin turned back, and Shakvail locked eyes to visor, as the woman, confirmed by the Force and the figure, dropped onto a passing airspeeder.

Shaking her head in frustration, the Jedi dropped back into the hangar.

“Shakvail!” it was Anej, his vision apparently restored from the damage unleashed by the assassin’s bolt.

She hurried over to the solider. “Escaped,” she informed the look in his eyes. There was no need to say more.

“Stang,” his eyes narrowed angrily, one more confirmation among many that this was a devoted man who actually believed in his duty. The Jedi now believed that his power-hungry uncle had done her a considerable service. “Any clues?”

“She’s Ubese.”

Anej did something funny with his face, an oddly distorting motion that made him appear almost ill. It took a second look to recognize that he must be commanding the quirky little eyepiece he wore. That particular device had already revealed an array of functions sufficient to incline Shakvail towards acquiring one if she ever had the chance.

“Not very helpful I’m afraid,” the soldier shook his head. “The last census estimate suggested a population of four-hundred and twenty thousand Ubese on Denon, and that’s just the locals.”

“A pity,” Shakvail compulsively glanced back, to the damaged section of hangar wall where the assassin had crouched. She must have been fearless, to crouch there, and the moment had been chosen with great care. “That one is dangerous.”

This drew a nod from the soldier, but there was nothing to be done about it, so Shakvail changed avenues. “Does your little optical wonder have anything on our dead mercenary?”

“Just the biometrics and an armed and dangerous BOLO,” Anej had taken off his rather ridiculous hat after being temporally blinded, and now crinkled the wide brim, his consternation seeping through the Force. “This datalink,” he tapped the eyepiece once. “Doesn’t qualify as secure, so I can’t pull anything else.”

“Something to remedy,” Shakvail decided. There was a distorted feeling about this whole episode. Beginning with the presence of a major corporate CEO in this spaceport at all, and expanding from there. “I would have liked to speak with our Merr-Sonn representative, but it seems he’s managed a convenient exit.”

“But he’s right over-“ Anej turned about, blinking. His face turned to a scowl a moment later as his eyes discovered what the Jedi had already sensed. “Sithspit!”

“Yes,” Shakvail rather liked having someone swear on her behalf, it was very satisfying without appearing un-Jedi-like.

“Must have promised the DCE boys plenty to get out of here so fast,” the solider continued, shoulders slumping. “Whereas we’re about to get the full on customs experience.” He pointed weakly to an advancing man in a deep blue uniform, one with stars on his shoulders.

This ranking officer, Shakvail was not familiar with the hierarchy sufficiently to determine specifics, had hard eyes and appeared ready to chew through what was left of the yacht’s hull. “Regrettably, I believe you are correct.” Feeling somewhat mischievous as the combination of disappointment and pessimism settled in place of the rush of conflict, she added. “What do you think, two hours? Three?”

“Three and a half, at least,” Anej failed to suppress a sigh.

Shakvail looked at the supervisor, then back to Anej. “Bet you dinner, it’s under three.” She tried not to giggle.

“No sabaac,” the soldier shook his head once. “I’d lose either way.”

“How’s that?”

“Well known fact in militaries across the galaxy,” he bit back a laugh. “There’s not a Jedi alive who can cook.”

Shakvail started to say something, then gave up the thought, and let the giggles come this time. She hated facing such truths, but sometimes the stereotypes were right.

It took some effort to be serious when the time came to answer questions.