Deez looked embarrassed. “Right. Of course, Lord Vader.”
“Please, my Emperor,” said the captain, gesturing down the central tunnel.
“He’s right, Master,” said Vader. “We should continue.”
“Agreed,” the Emperor said, and they turned and hurried into the winding central tunnel, which sloped downward, widening as they went. They’d covered maybe two hundred meters, moving ever deeper underground, when they heard the first sounds of the lyleks’ pursuit coming from behind them. Rock formations dotted the floor and thick clumps of crystal hung from the ceiling of the tunnel, but there was nothing that would have made for a defensible pocket. The chitters and hisses bounced off the stone, seeming to race ahead of them.
“They’re faster than us in this terrain,” Deez said. “We’re going to have to turn and fight.”
As the lyleks closed on them, the tunnel seemed to hum under the force of their tread. Soon Vader could hear the clatter of their exoskeletons as they ran over the stone.
“They are almost upon us,” he said. The captain fell back, taking station with Deez at the rear, between the Emperor and the horde. Vader ignited his lightsaber to provide at least some additional light.
“Here they come!” the captain said, and started firing wild one-handed shots over his shoulder.
“I see them!” said Deez, and started firing, too.
Lyleks squealed and hissed.
“You may use your grenades,” Vader said. The cavern was wide enough to endure the blast without collapsing.
Both guards immediately activated and tossed grenades; five seconds later the tunnel behind them reverberated with the sound of the explosions, lylek screams, and the rumble of falling stone. The blast wave roared from the confines of the tunnel. Vader and the Emperor used the Force to deflect the bulk of the wave from them, but the power of it drove the two Royal Guards face-first into the floor, their armor scraping along the stone.
Vader turned and used the Force to lift both guards to their feet. Deez was bleeding from the nose and looked stunned.
“We won’t slow for you again,” Vader said. “The horde is still coming.”
As if to make his point, the sounds of the pursuing lyleks rose up from behind, clicking, hisses, and squeals.
Vader took position beside his Master as the four of them continued down the tunnel. He sought a place where they could stop and hold their ground, but the tunnel went on and on, not narrowing, with its downward slope diving ever deeper into the planet.
Drawing on the Force as he ran, he gestured at the ceiling and took hold of several large chunks of crystal stalactites. He rocked them loose with his power, then let them dangle there, waiting for the vibration of the passing horde to cause them to fall.
The tunnel wound left and right as they descended, but Vader saw no side tunnels. Just the single tube continuing to burrow into Ryloth’s crust.
From behind came the boom of falling rock—the crystals Vader had loosened—and the squeals of crushed lyleks. Yet still they came, the horde seemingly unbreakable. And they were still closing.
At the end of a long, sloped straightaway, Vader let the rest of the group run on while he stopped to look back. His helmet reflected the meager light projected by his lightsaber and he saw the horde enter the far end of the tunnel, an ocean of legs, tentacles, and mandibles, saw them scrabble over and around the stalagmites that dotted the floor. The beat of their armored, pointed legs put small pits in the stone. Some of them clambered along the walls like giant arachnids, coating the surface of the tunnel behind them. Their tentacles waved as they scurried, jaws working as if already masticating flesh. Vader could not escape the feeling that he was being steered, perhaps by the lyleks, or perhaps by his Master.
He fell deeply into the Force and loosed a wave of power from his outstretched hand that filled the circumference of the tunnel. The blast slammed into the charging horde, cracking exoskeletons, shattering stalagmites, and driving a score or more of the lyleks in the lead backward in a shower of broken bodies and broken stone. They squealed and chittered and flailed, and the lyleks following after scrambled over the fallen and wounded, their eyes fixed on Vader.
Vader was prepared to meet them all, slaughter every one of them then and there, but his Master’s voice from up the tunnel pulled him around.
“Come, Lord Vader!”
He deactivated his lightsaber, turned, and hurried forward, using the Force to augment his speed and catch up with the other three.
“What happened?” Deez asked, but Vader ignored him. When he reached his Master’s side, he voiced his thoughts.
“Yes,” the Emperor agreed. “The beasts are herding us—unintentionally, I think.”
“Herding us to where?” Vader asked.
“We’ll soon know,” the Emperor said. “I think we should prepare ourselves.”
They hustled through the tunnel, which had finally started to narrow.
“There’s light ahead,” the captain said. “Look!”
Vader saw it, a dim, green glow coming through a circular opening about a meter and a half in diameter. Soon the tunnel gave way to a large cavern thirty meters across, a hemispherical cyst in the planet. They stood in the opening, five meters up on the wall of the cyst. Clusters of glowing crystal sprouted from the walls and floor—the source of the ambient light.
Hundreds of lyleks milled about on the floor of the cyst, all of them tending what Vader assumed to be the queen of the colony, a lylek with a bloated abdomen three times the size of the rest. Large, gray, leathery-looking sacs adhered to the walls in clumps of ten or twenty here and there—egg sacs. A dozen or more tunnel openings dotted the walls and ceiling, all of them about the same size as that in which the four men stood. For a moment no one spoke, and the only sound in the tunnel was the labored breathing of the guards and Vader’s respirator.
The queen lylek noticed them then. She swung her huge head in their direction, fixed her eyes on them, and hissed in alarm, the sound bouncing off the walls of the cavern, echoing. The rest of the lyleks in the cavern turned toward them, too, their movement causing a collective clicking. They hissed as one, their tentacles squirming in agitation. Down the tunnel behind the men, the pursuing lyleks continued to close.
“And now we know to where we were being herded,” the Emperor said.
Vader turned to Deez and the captain. “You two are to hold as long as you can here.”
The captain stiffened. “We will stay with our Emperor.”
“Do as Lord Vader commands,” the Emperor said.
“What are you going to do then?” Deez asked while he and the captain took grenades in hand, activated them, and waited for the pursuing lyleks to appear.
“We’re going kill them all,” Vader said, igniting his lightsaber.
The Emperor cackled, drew his own lightsaber, and activated the red blade.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Faylin called back from the cockpit. “Kallon’s almost in range. And…got him.”
Kallon’s voice sounded over Cham’s and Isval’s comm. “Cham, I’ve found the Emperor’s shuttle.”
“Where are you?” Cham asked, instinctively looking out the viewport of the escort boat, though he could see nothing but night.
A pause, then, “I’m on the ground near it. Listen, I know—”
Cham cursed. “I told you surveillance only, Kallon!”
“Scans showed no life so—”
“No life? Bodies?” After too long a pause, Cham added, “I can’t see you, Kallon, so if you’re nodding or shaking your head…”
“Right, right. Yes, there are three bodies, and one of them is a Royal Guard, which means they were here, Cham. The remains of a camp are here, too.”
“A camp? Kallon, they could come back. I want you to get on your ship and—”
“The remains of a camp, I said. And if they were anywhere near here, they’d have heard my ship and come back already. They’re gone, Cham, a
nd I think you need to get Goll down here.”
Cham felt his skin warm and his lekku perk up. “You think they’re on foot in the forest?”
“Goll will have to confirm, but I think so,” Kallon said. “If a ship had picked them up, they’d have taken the guard’s body, wouldn’t they? And I don’t see a sign of anything big landing nearby, anyway. I’m not the tracker, of course, but…”
“But you think they’re on foot. Remember that I can’t see you nodding.”
“Yes, I think they’re on foot.”
Cham barely managed to hold in a grin. Isval did not. She grinned fiercely and nodded.
“We’re coming down, Kallon,” Cham said. “Stay put. I mean it.”
Isval reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “They’re on foot, Cham. We’ll catch them. We will.” The narrow confines of the boat did not allow her room for her habitual pacing, so she just shifted from foot to foot. “They can’t have gone far. They don’t know the terrain. They could be wounded from the crash. Slow.”
“Or not,” Cham said, trying to curb her eagerness, though he felt it himself. “Set us down near Kallon, Faylin.”
Isval stopped fidgeting and looked Cham in the eyes, an expression of concern on her face. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right? Really all right?”
He nodded to reassure her. “I’m fine. Let’s do what we came to do.”
She looked skeptical but nodded in return and left him to take a seat next to Goll.
Cham watched her go, regretting his earlier words to her. He’d changed her with them. Unlike him, she had never had much of a life outside of the movement. He hadn’t appreciated how much she needed it, how much she needed him. He’d vented his own concerns and, in doing so, had undermined her foundation.
He should’ve kept his damn mouth shut.
—
Isval sat beside Goll, tiny beside his bulk. He smelled of sweat and oiled metal.
“How much of that did you hear?” she asked softly.
“I heard they’re on foot.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I make it a point not to listen,” he said, staring straight ahead.
She put a hand on his forearm; his flesh was lined with veins. “How much?”
He shrugged the mountains of his shoulders. “Enough.”
She nodded, sat quietly for a moment, then said, “He’s wrong. The movement isn’t just an idea. It’s also him.”
“I know,” Goll said.
She put out a fist. “Nothing happens to him, then. Agreed? We’re going to need to rebuild after today, and for that we’ll need him.”
He sniffed, then tapped her tiny fist with the callused boulder of his own. “Agreed. And how about nothing happens to any of us?”
“You think you can track them?” she asked. “Vader, I mean?”
“I can,” he said.
“Even in the dark?”
He turned and looked at her with an expression that told her to stop asking stupid questions.
“Good,” she said. “Good.”
Faylin’s voice came over the ship’s communicator. “We’re here. Setting down.”
Faylin lowered the escort boat through the forest’s canopy, tree limbs scraping the hull, and set it down on the surface.
“Stay here,” Cham said to Faylin. “Keep a scan live. Let me know if you pick up anything.”
Goll ordered his crew to stay aboard the escort for the moment, to minimize foot traffic near the campsite while he did his initial tracking. Then he, Cham, and Isval debarked into the humidity of the equatorial forest. Insects buzzed and clicked. Animals in the trees squeaked, bellowed, and squealed.
Kallon was waiting for them in the clearing, hands crossed over his ample belly, a grin on his face. The wreckage of an Imperial shuttle, still intact, lay in the clearing.
“Camp is there,” he said to Goll, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at some debris, the remains of a fire, and the shredded material of an all-climate tent. “I haven’t walked near it.”
“Good,” Goll said. “Bodies?”
“Inside the ship. Haven’t touched them, either. Just looked inside but didn’t enter.”
“Good,” Goll repeated, all business.
Isval walked over to the wreck with Cham, Goll, and Kallon. Goll was looking at the ground, the ship, the trees, and Isval could only imagine that he was drawing conclusions she couldn’t.
The shuttle lay on its side, sunk half a meter into the churned-up loam of the forest floor. A splintered tree limb had speared the cockpit glass. The hull was blackened from blasterfire and blistered from the heat of what Isval assumed to be a barely controlled reentry. Pieces of destroyed equipment lay scattered on the ground near the ship. Goll picked up a few fragments, walked a bit, picked up a few more.
“A generator and a portable comm array,” he said, dropping a piece of metal.
“Destroyed in the crash?” Cham asked.
Goll looked up at the night sky, then at the ground of the clearing. Slowly he walked toward the edge of the forest, stopping now and again to examine one of the holes in the turf. At last he turned to answer Cham’s question. “I don’t think so. These holes are from a ship’s blasters. Nordon?”
“Could be,” Cham said. “Nordon caught Vader and the Emperor in the clearing and fired on them. Makes sense.”
“Except the part about how Vader and the Emperor brought them down,” Isval said, to which Cham didn’t respond.
“Let me check the bodies,” Goll said.
“We need to be quick,” Cham reminded him. “They have a sizable head start.”
“Right.”
Cham, Kallon, and Isval watched as Goll climbed up the side of the ship and disappeared through a hole that appeared to have been cut through the bulkhead. While they waited, Isval looked out at the dark wall of the forest, knowing that Vader was out there somewhere, hoping that she could get to him before Imperial troops did. Finally Goll lifted himself out of the wreckage.
“Bodies are two pilots and a Royal Guard. Pilots died from blunt injuries, probably in the crash. The guard died from a blaster shot to the head. Let me see if I can find a trail.”
—
“I’ve got two vessels on scan,” Belkor said, checking the recon ship’s sensors. “No, make that three, though they’re all grounded.” The recon ship had such a keen sensor array compared with other ships that Belkor knew the vessels he’d picked up could not have seen him on their own scans.
“Mors could have picked up another ship,” Ophim said in an excited voice. “Sir, I can get two of the V-wings here quickly. We take Mors out now, maybe we end this whole thing quickly.”
“Hang on,” Belkor said, eyeing the readout in the heads-up display. He frowned.
Ophim was gazing at the data, too. “That’s an Imperial escort and some kind of native transport. The third ship is an Imperial shuttle, heavily damaged.” He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
It made sense to Belkor, of course. It was Cham or Cham’s people; it had to be.
Ophim looked over at him, eyes wide. “Sir, that could be Mors with the Free Ryloth traitors she conspired with. I’ll get the V-wings en route.”
He reached for the comm button, but Belkor stayed his hand. “Let’s get a better look first, Lieutenant.”
“But, sir, if they pick us up on their scans—”
“A better look, Ophim,” Belkor said firmly. “We…have to be sure.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ophim flew the recon craft at low altitude, virtually scraping the forest canopy below. As they closed, Belkor felt his skin warm. Sweat leaked down his sides, damp and clammy. He could smell his own stink. His heart was pounding. He knew what he might have to do, but the doing would come hard.
“Staying low, sir. That ought to keep us off their scans for a bit.”
Belkor nodded but couldn’t bring himself to speak. He waited until his craft was close enough to the gr
oup on the ground to overcome the jamming signal polluting the airwaves.
“I don’t think they can see us yet, sir,” Ophim said, unnecessarily—but no doubt instinctively—speaking in a whisper. “They’re on the ground. They may not even have an active scan going.”
Belkor took the encrypted comlink from his pocket and hailed Cham, half hoping he’d get no answer.
—
Goll started near the camp, using a dim red light that wouldn’t destroy his night vision while he studied the ground for signs. He carefully walked the area around and near the camp, sometimes looking off into the trees. Finally he stood, nodded, and looked over at Cham.
“I have them,” he said, and gestured with the block of his chin. “That way. Four of them.”
“You’re sure?” Isval asked, and received a withering glare in response.
“He’s sure,” Cham said. He gave a start when he felt the buzz of the encrypted comlink he carried in his pocket. He took it in hand, stared at it as if it were a foreign thing.
“What is it?” Isval asked. “Isn’t that…”
“Belkor.”
“How?”
He shrugged, then raised Faylin on his normal comlink. “Anything on scan?”
“All’s quiet, Cham.”
Not so much, Cham thought, and answered Belkor’s hail.
—
Cham’s voice carried out of the encrypted comlink.
“Belkor? Where are you? I don’t have anything on scan.”
Belkor ignored the Twi’lek and put on a show for Ophim, who could hear only Belkor’s half of the conversation. “This is Colonel Belkor Dray. You are to power down your ships immediately and surrender all aboard.”
“What are you talking about? If this is—”
“A wise decision,” Belkor said, and cut the connection. He put the comlink back in his pocket. To Ophim, he said, “I’ll take the stick.”
“Sir? Of course, sir.”
Ophim transferred control of the ship to Belkor.
“What is that?” Belkor asked, gesturing to nothing at all outside the bubble of the cockpit.
“What is what, sir?” Ophim turned to look out on Ryloth’s night. “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing on scan.”