Belkor drew his blaster pistol in a sweaty fist and shot Ophim in the back of the head. Gore splattered the glass of the bubble. For a moment Belkor felt dizzy and thought he might vomit, but he held it down.
He looked away from the blood, cursing, rationalizing, apologizing. His encrypted comlink buzzed in his pocket. He gathered himself before answering the hail.
“I’m in the air, Syndulla. Ten klicks south of your position.”
“How’d you find us? Why can’t I see you on scan?”
“Too long a story. You can’t see me because I’m in a recon bubble. That’s the Emperor’s shuttle? Tell me there are bodies aboard.”
“There are, but not Vader or the Emperor. They struck out on foot.”
“How do you know that?”
“We know.”
Belkor quieted the connection and cursed loud and long as he looked down on the unending expanse of equatorial forest stretching out in all directions. If Vader and the Emperor were on foot, finding them would be nearly impossible.
“We’re tracking them,” Cham added.
Belkor pressed the button on the comlink so hard it made his finger hurt. “How?”
“I have people who can do it. We’re from this planet, Belkor. We know it. Now, what do you have out here with you?”
“Nothing you can use. You’re on your own. Mors is out here, and I think she knows everything. I need to find her quickly.” Belkor looked over at Ophim, and his anger boiled over. “You should’ve killed her in space, Syndulla! You should’ve killed them all! I gave you the damn idents! This could all be over!”
Cham was silent for a beat, then said, “But it’s not, not yet. Is Mors on foot? Why do you think she knows everything?”
Belkor ground his teeth, blinked away a blurriness of vision. He was losing control of himself, he realized, the same way he’d lost control of events.
“Mors is on a ship with twenty stormtroopers from the Equatorial Comm Hub. And I think she knows because she came here instead of the communication center. She’s looking for Vader and the Emperor, too.”
“All right,” Cham said. “All right. Let me think a moment. Stand by.”
Belkor, strapped into his seat and unable to pace, instead fidgeted with his uniform, his hat, his hair. He imagined Cham consulting with his people, figuring out the best way to back Belkor into a corner. Finally Cham came back on the comlink.
“Listen to me, Belkor. You’re going to help us get Vader. Then I’m going to help you get Mors. Then this will all be over.”
Belkor was breathing hard, trying not to look at Ophim’s corpse.
“Do you hear me, Belkor? Now, what do you have out here with you?”
“I’m…alone in the recon ship, but I’ve got six V-wings checking the map grid for Mors. We’re set up in a communication ladder.”
“Can you trust the crew in the V-wings?”
A laugh slipped through Belkor’s teeth, and he heard the hysteria in it. “To kill Mors? Yes. I’ve made her out as the traitor who brought down the Perilous. But to kill Vader and the Emperor? No. To help Twi’lek terrorists? No, I can’t trust them to do that, Syndulla. No.”
“Right, so here’s what we’re going to do,” Cham said. “Keep your V-wings in the air looking for Mors. If you or your men see her ship, shoot her down. But keep them in the comm ladder in case you—we—need them. Throughout, keep within comm distance of me as we track Vader and the Emperor. Keep your communication ladder intact, because when I call for support, I’ll want those V-wings to come in hot.”
“They won’t help you! Did you not hear me? And they won’t fire on the Emperor!”
Cham’s voice finally lost its calm. “They won’t know, Belkor! Not in the dark! Not in this foliage.” The Twi’lek lowered his voice. “I’ll give you coordinates, and you’ll give them coordinates, and they’ll come in firing. And only if I need them. Only if.”
Belkor couldn’t keep a sneer out of his tone. “Always planning for every contingency. One day you’ll come up short, Syndulla.”
“Maybe, but not today, Belkor. Neither of us will. Not today.”
“I’m not putting my ships at your disposal, Twi’lek,” Belkor said. “Mors could leave the area and head back to the communication center. I could return there and find a security team waiting.”
“You’re not thinking it through,” Cham said. “She doesn’t know how deep the conspiracy goes, so she came after the only people she can be sure aren’t involved. Vader and the Emperor. She won’t go anywhere until she has them. Trust me, Belkor. Help me get the Emperor, then I’ll make sure you get Mors.”
Belkor heard the words, understood them even, but had no capacity to analyze them. He was exhausted, he knew. Too stressed to think clearly. He wasn’t thinking things through. He wanted to pull back, start the day over, make different decisions. He didn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Imperials aboard the Perilous. He didn’t want a corpse in the seat next to him. He should eat a blaster shot. He knew he should, but he knew he didn’t have it in him. Instead he stared out the cockpit bubble, drew in a deep breath, and screamed until his voice was hoarse and he was out of breath.
“Let’s just get his over with, Syndulla.”
—
Cham pocketed the encrypted comlink, frowning. He felt a measure of pity for Belkor. Cham had maneuvered him into a box and there was no way out. There was no other end for Belkor but death. The only question was whether he faced an Imperial Inquisitor first. He shook his head, his lekku waving.
“Faylin, you and Kallon are to hop along at half-hour intervals behind us. I’ll give you heading and distance. Don’t lose us. We may need you for an extraction.”
“Understood,” they both said.
“Belkor?” Isval asked him.
“He’s unstable,” Cham said.
“Yes,” Isval agreed. She checked the power packs on her blasters.
“He’ll trail us in the recon ship, and if we need the V-wings for a bombardment, we can call them in.”
“Vader downed two of our armed freighters and did it from the ground. I don’t know if—”
Cham interrupted her, his voice a bit sharper than he wished. “Do you have a better idea, Isval? I’m just doing what I can, using what resources I have. We’re better off with the V-wings than without, aren’t we?”
At first she recoiled from his tone, but her skin darkened and she stuck out her chin. “Yeah, we are.” She turned and walked away, and Cham watched her go. He seemed always to be watching her go.
“Goll, you ready?” Isval asked, holstering her blasters.
“Ready,” the big Twi’lek said.
“Cham and I are with you in the lead. The rest of your team in standard formation twenty meters behind. Let’s move, people”
“You heard her,” Goll called to his crew, and they nodded.
“We stay quiet, people,” Cham said. To have their best chance, they’d need to catch Vader and the Emperor unawares.
Isval, Goll, and Cham strode into the forest, Goll moving them along as quickly as he could while following Vader and the Emperor’s path. Only after they were deep among the trees did Cham wonder if catching Vader unawares was actually possible.
—
Mors flew the transport, with one of Steen’s officers copiloting. Half of the stormtroopers and four more of Steen’s men from the communications hub sat in the passenger compartment of the shuttle. Mors looked out on Ryloth’s night. Two of the planet’s moons had risen, ghostly crescents casting pale light on the carpet of treetops that swayed below. The dark expanse of the equatorial forest extended as far as Mors could see in all directions, broken often by clearings and deep ravines.
The terrain intimidated Mors. She flew a desk; she had no experience in search operations. Neither did Steen. Neither did any of them. With the aid of the navcomp, one of Steen’s young officers had put together a search grid as well as he could, but the search
area was vast and Mors wasn’t even entirely sure what she was looking for: a downed but mostly intact ship? A debris field? Survivors on foot? Bodies? So they searched slowly, with extra care, poring over the scan results and hoping to get lucky.
“Is that something?” the copilot asked, pointing at signs of life on the scan. The middle-aged officer had a paunch and ears so large they stuck out like sails from under his cap.
“Fauna,” Mors said, checking the scan. “Big one. A lylek probably. They’re everywhere in the forests, I’ve heard.”
The copilot sighed with impatience. “More than a thousand ships and pods went down from the Perilous. We haven’t seen any. And we haven’t seen any other search ships, either. You’d think we wouldn’t be able to fly ten kilometers without bumping into one or the other, even if just by accident.”
“You’d think wrong,” Mors said. “It’s a big planet and the blast wave from the explosion would have dispersed the pods widely. They’re scattered all over the western hemisphere. With communications down to line of sight, it’s like being in a boat and trying to find a thousand floating buoys scattered across an ocean. You could go days without finding anything or seeing another boat and probably would. Frankly, we’re just lucky to have a starting point.”
“I suppose,” said the copilot. He nodded out the cockpit. “Starting point or not, that’s a lot of space down there, ma’am.”
Mors could only nod—she knew she was looking at several thousand square kilometers of rough terrain that made scans slow and iffy.
For the tenth time since leaving the communications hub behind, she wondered if she’d made a mistake in going after Vader and the Emperor. She wondered if she should have taken Steen and the stormtroopers and flown to the communication center, arrested Belkor, retaken control of operations, and then gone after Vader and the Emperor.
Except that if Belkor’s conspiracy ran deep among the command personnel, Mors would be killed on some pretext long before she ever reached the communication center. Or she would retake command, but in the time it took her to do so, Vader and the Emperor would be killed by the rebels, who were also looking for them. No, her only course was to find Lord Vader and the Emperor first, then gather loyalist forces before attempting to move on Belkor.
But to find them, she was going to have be more lucky than skilled.
She rubbed her tired eyes, stared out at the moon for a moment, and returned to the work of studying the scan results.
—
Cham and Isval kept several paces behind Goll, letting the big Twi’lek do his work uninterrupted and without distraction. Goll worked fast and in silence, save for grunting to himself from time to time as he examined the ground, a tree, leaves, the underbrush. He wore a perpetual frown throughout, the crease in his forehead as deep as one of the forest’s ravines. He stopped with his hands on his hips, as though to think or study something on the wind, then moved on. Cham hailed Faylin and Isval and Belkor regularly so they could keep pace in their ships. He had one comm or another in his hand at all times.
“You might as well start juggling those things,” Isval said.
Cham smiled as he raised Faylin and Kallon again to give them his location. He’d ordered them not to stay in the air any longer than they had to, as it would make them easier to pick up on the scans of any Imperial ships that might be in the area. He just needed them to stay within communication distance.
Goll suddenly stood upright, big head cocked to the side. He ran a hand down his right lekku. He looked left, then right.
“What is—” Isval began, but Goll silenced her with a raised hand.
Signaling for them to wait, he walked ahead, his dim red light held close to the ground as he moved through the trees and underbrush. Isval had no idea what he was looking at, but his tension was obvious from the hunch of his shoulders. Isval was bunching her own shoulders, on edge, holding her blasters too tightly. She took a deep breath.
A soft whistle from Goll gave them the all-clear to proceed. Cham and Isval found him standing at the edge of a clearing with his hands on his hips, staring ahead.
“See it?” he asked when they stood at his side.
The clearing extended on past the limits of Isval’s night vision.
“I’m looking at a clearing,” she said. “What am I supposed to see?”
“It wasn’t a clearing a short time ago. See all the broken limbs? The churned soil? The toppled trees?”
Once Goll pointed them out, the features were obvious.
“A horde,” Cham said.
“Yes, it was,” Goll said softly. “And I’d wager they were after the Emperor’s group. Timing’s right.”
“Lyleks?” Isval said, awed by the number of them it must have taken to cut such a large swath out of the forest. They’d have trampled everything along their way. “How can we follow Vader now?”
“The horde obliterated the human tracks,” Goll said, “but once a horde is after you, it almost always catches you. So we just follow the horde.”
“And…what if we find it?” Isval asked. She’d never seen a lylek up close and had no desire to change that.
“Better question is, What if we don’t?” Cham said, leaving the implication dangling there.
Isval took his meaning. If Vader and the Emperor could handle a lylek horde, it was difficult to imagine a group of Twi’lek freedom fighters presenting much trouble.
“We’re in too far to stop now,” she said.
“Yeah, and that’s what I keep saying about Belkor,” Cham reminded her, and that brought her up short. “If we run into a horde, we’re all dead.”
Goll grunted agreement.
“Even so,” Isval said, thinking of Pok and Eshgo and Drim and everyone else who’d died at the hands of Vader and the Empire. “Even so.”
She stared at Cham, trying to will him to making the right call.
A long moment passed before Goll spoke again: “So what are we doing, Cham?”
“Following the horde,” Cham said, and gestured at the trail the lyleks had made through the forest floor. “We’re in too far to stop now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vader enveloped himself in the Force, let it saturate him, and through it magnified and channeled his omnipresent rage and hate. Beside him the Emperor, too, unbridled his power and sank into the Force. As one they leapt down from the mouth of the tunnel.
The moment they hit the floor the lyleks swarmed forward, hundreds of them, a wave of spiked limbs and clicking mandibles. They raised their upper bodies as they charged, freeing themselves to use their spiked front legs like spears. They climbed over one another in their eagerness to kill and feed.
Vader extended a gloved hand and loosed a blast of power that blew apart two of the lyleks rushing toward him, showering those behind with gore and chunks of carapace. At the same time, his Master unleashed a destructive wave of power that cast three of the huge creatures backward and into the wall, cracking exoskeletons and leaving them broken, twitching, dying.
Vader rushed forward, blade held high. He ducked a tentacle, sidestepped the stab of a spiked leg, and with a crosscut severed the head from a lylek as it lunged at him. Crushing the skull under his boot, he used the Force to propel the headless carcass into a trio of the creatures behind it, turning them into a knot of legs and tentacles and chittering.
Feeling danger behind, he spun and lopped off the two front legs of another lylek that was poised to impale him through the back. He leapt atop its flailing, skittering body, riding it for a time while his blade slashed and stabbed at its fellows. He ended the creature’s squeals of pain by driving his blade down and through its abdomen.
Bounding off its back, he rushed among the seething mass of lyleks, heedless now of their stabbing limbs and biting teeth, his lightsaber severing legs, tentacles, heads, mandibles, covering the floor in ichor-soaked body parts. Impacts from the tentacles and legs and hulking bodies barely moved him. None penetrated his armor, and what
little pain they managed to inflict could not surpass the pain he carried always within him.
A spiked leg caught him squarely, slammed hard into his side, and drove him sideways into the tentacles of another lylek, which immediately wrapped around his legs and lifted him upside down from the floor.
While he hung there, another lylek lunged forward, mouth open wide as though to snap off his head. He drove his lightsaber into its open mouth and out the back of its head, and it fell dead to the floor. The creature holding him drew him toward its own mouth, but he simply bent at the waist and severed the tentacle holding him. He flipped in midair as he fell, landed on his feet, spun, and severed the forelegs from a lylek before him. It collapsed, screeching and spraying ichor from the stumps, its huge body thumping into him in its pained spasms. The impact of its bulk knocked him backward, but he rode the motion into a spinning crosscut that bisected another lylek’s head. He’d killed dozens, a score or more, yet still they kept coming, the press of them restricting his movement, buffeting him, spiked legs slamming into the floor all around him.
Roaring, he dodged and jumped and spun through them, his blade slashing and stabbing, until a blow from a tentacle caught him flush in the chest and sent him careening backward. The creature that had struck him followed up, tentacles grasping, jaws clicking, the spears of its forelegs raised high. Meanwhile the spiked leg from another lylek slammed into his back. His armor prevented the limb from skewering him, but the impact drove him back toward the charging lylek.
Stumbling, Vader nevertheless held out a hand, channeled the Force, and loosed a blast of power that slammed the charging creature five meters backward into the wall. Wanting a moment to gather himself and check on his Master, he jumped high above the teeming mass of lyleks to a ledge five meters up on the wall, using the Force to augment his leap. The creatures he had just escaped gnashed their mandibles, waved their tentacles, and tried to climb over one another in their frustration as they scrabbled at the side of the wall.
From above, back near the tunnel mouth, Vader heard the shouts of the guards and the rapid whumps of repeated blasterfire. An explosion boomed—a grenade—causing the walls to vibrate.