Theron considered heading up to the crew quarters on C Deck. He could look for an untended cabin where he could switch his grubby uniform for fresh clothes, leaving him less likely to draw attention if he needed to move around the ship. He might even get a chance to swap his blaster for one that worked. But whoever’s uniform and weapon he borrowed was likely to notice if one or the other was missing, and that could reinforce suspicions about a stowaway on board. The last thing he needed to worry about was another round of security sweeps.
When the turbolift arrived, he realized he’d have more luck going to the laundry on E Deck. He could also try to sneak something to eat from the nearby food prep areas in the galley kitchens, and his sweaty, shoddy appearance was less likely to draw attention among crew who spent their days working around steam-belching laundry machines, smoking ovens, and splattering pots and cauldrons. Hitting the button, he took several deep breaths to get into character, mentally throwing together a number of potential excuses and explanations in case anyone caught him helping himself to a uniform or stealing some extra food.
Stepping off the lift, he saw he didn’t have to worry. E Deck was a hub of frenetic activity, the men and women assigned to the military’s essential but often forgotten service roles rushing back and forth with the energy and focus of a highly trained special ops team. Too absorbed in their own tasks to worry about a junior officer wandering through, none of them paid Theron any attention. In his earpiece he heard another update from the security team; by Theron’s estimate they were halfway done with their sweep through F Deck.
Making his way into the laundry, Theron snagged a pair of pants and a top that looked as if they would fit and tucked them under his arm. Careful not to act suspicious, he made his way over to a hidden corner by one of the washing machines, ducked behind it, and stripped off his grimy clothes. Once he had the new uniform on he was pleasantly surprised to see he had been promoted to captain. Given the harsh penalties for insubordination in the Empire, it was unlikely anyone below his rank would want to draw attention to themselves by confronting him.
If I could find a Grand Moff’s outfit I might just be able to walk onto the bridge and take command.
Though it was only a joke, the thought gave Theron pause. If he could somehow get his hands on some explosives, say from the armory, he could plant them in the engine room and wreak significant damage. As quickly as the idea came to mind, however, he dismissed it. Security around the armory would be much tighter than what he faced here, and even an officer requisitioning several kilograms of explosives was bound to raise questions he couldn’t answer.
Sticking with his original plan, he made his way into the kitchens, dumping his soiled uniform into a hamper half full of dirty laundry. As he’d hoped, the enlisted men and women did their best to avoid making eye contact with him as he marched past, his chest puffed out with what he hoped was the appropriate level of Imperial arrogance and privilege.
In the kitchen he resisted the urge to go after the hot food being prepared for the crew’s next meal, despite his grumbling stomach. Instead, he made his way into the storage lockers in the back and grabbed a pair of ration packs. A young man in cook’s garb gave him a curious look, but when Theron narrowed his eyes at the soldier, his gaze snapped down to the floor. Without saying anything, Theron marched out with his prize and back into the hall.
Another update in his ear informed him the security team had completed the sweep of F Deck and was moving on. Theron made his way back out into the hall and headed down the length of the ship toward the turbolift at the stern. As he reached it he heard another update from the security team.
“Engine room is clear. Moving on.”
He called the turbolift, stepped inside, and thumbed the button for G Deck to complete his circuitous route and return him to where he started.
The corridor was empty as he stepped off the lift; the security patrol had already moved on to the other side of the ship. The wheel on the access hatch turned easier this time, loosened up by its recent use.
Back inside the engine room, he stripped off the captain’s uniform, carefully folding it and setting it in the metal walkway just inside the hatch, along with his bent pistol, his slicer spike, and one of the ration packs he’d stolen. He took a few minutes to consume the contents of the second ration pack. By the time he was done eating he was already covered in sweat. He’d hoped the heat would be more bearable wearing only his underwear and boots. It wasn’t, but at least his new uniform wouldn’t end up covered in dirt and sweat stains.
Retrieving his slicer spike, he returned to the arduous task of learning everything he possibly could about the Ascendant Spear.
A jolt of excruciating pain jarred Gnost-Dural back to consciousness. It felt as if he were being cooked alive from the inside. His eyes popped open wide, adding to his suffering. Someone had removed his protective goggles, and the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the ship felt like acid on his pupils. Squeezing his tortured eyes shut, he let loose a scream, the sound muffled by his breathing mask.
“He’s awake,” he heard Darth Karrid say, and the burning agony suddenly stopped.
Though still unable to open his eyes, the Kel Dor was able to take stock of his surroundings. He was lying on a hard platform or table set at a forty-five-degree angle, his wrists and ankles tightly shackled so that he was spread-eagled against the surface. His robe and most of his clothes had been stripped away, leaving him almost naked.
In addition to Karrid, there were others in the room with him. He recognized the presence of the female Sith apprentice, though he couldn’t sense Karrid’s male follower anywhere close by. And there were two others. He couldn’t feel the dark side emanating from them so he assumed they were not Sith but rather Imperial soldiers: guards, or specially trained interrogators. He heard footsteps approaching, then the sound of Darth Karrid’s voice, much closer than before.
“We know the attack on Reaver Station was staged,” she said, her voice filled with an icy calm. “But I don’t understand why. What was the purpose of setting off a false alarm?”
The Jedi didn’t know what she was talking about, but he suspected Theron had something to do with it. Whatever his partner had been up to, he hoped it had worked—if Theron hadn’t successfully planted the virus in the Spear’s systems, Gnost-Dural’s plan was doomed to fail.
“Hit him again,” Darth Karrid said, tired of waiting for him to answer her question.
This time his body felt not heat, but a strange kind of internalized pressure. His lungs and stomach expanded, as if rapidly filling up with air; his arteries and veins engorged with blood; his arms and legs swelled with fluid, the restraints on his wrists and ankles biting hard into his swelling flesh.
His eyes bulged against his lids and every organ in his body felt stretched and distended, ready to burst or tear apart. Gnost-Dural screamed again through his mask. The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt before, the experience uniquely horrifying … and then suddenly it was gone. Gnost-Dural’s body went limp, like a partially deflated balloon. A second later he began to tremble, every muscle quivering involuntarily. The spasm lasted for several seconds before he was finally able to calm his mind and regain control of his physical body.
“Darth Mekhis was a true genius,” Karrid said with obvious admiration. “She understood that the normal methods of torture had little value against those who can draw upon the Force to sustain them. But even a Jedi Master is helpless against her remarkable machine.
“It attacks the mind and the spirit,” she explained, “but leaves the body intact. Any imaginable horror can be inflicted simply by stimulating the receptors of the brain. The pain will feel completely real, but the flesh is unharmed.”
Gnost-Dural understood the grim implications of what she was saying. Conventional torture would eventually surpass the limits of physical endurance; beyond a certain point the subject would perish. But with Mekhis’s infernal machine, no matter how much a victim suffe
red, the agony would never end.
Dwelling on the endless horror is another part of the torture, the Jedi reminded himself. Stay calm. Focus on what you need to do.
When he’d first regained consciousness, Gnost-Dural had no sense of how long he had been out. Despite Karrid’s torture, however, he felt his perception of time and space—an awareness born of being closely attuned to the universal power of the Force—returning. A little more than ten hours had passed since the confrontation in Karrid’s inner sanctum; the attack on Duro was still too far away. He needed to hold out for several more hours if his plan was going to work.
“You cannot break me,” he said, his voice cracking from the strain he had already been put through.
“We both know I can,” Karrid whispered from just beside him, running her long fingers seductively along the rough skin of the Kel Dor’s cheek. “But I don’t have to. I know you weren’t acting alone. A security sweep of the ship captured your friends. If you want to spare them this suffering, you will tell me what I want to know.”
Gnost-Dural had to admire the ploy, but he knew she was bluffing. It was possible Theron was somewhere on the ship—he hoped it was true—but he trusted his partner was skilled enough to avoid any kind of security patrol. And Theron was working alone. Karrid had said “friends,” plural, as if there were more than one.
“I know you’re lying,” he told her. “Because I came alone.”
Karrid pulled her hand away from his face in frustration.
“Again,” she said.
This time it felt like a million long, thin needles were impaling every centimeter of his body. They punctured his flesh clean through, sliding through skin, muscle, sinew, and bone before sliding out the other side. They pierced his internal organs; his eyes; even his skull, stabbing into his brain.
He fought against it, trying to summon the Force to ease his suffering. He opened his mouth to recite the Jedi Code to focus his mind and energy, but instead of the soothing words all that emerged was another endless scream.
The needles vanished, disappearing instantly just like the heat and the pressure. And once again, there had been no real harm done to his body, though the memories of the pain lingered.
“The Republic attack on Reaver Station wasn’t real,” Darth Karrid said, her voice finally betraying a hint of her impatience. “So what was the point of a false alarm? Is a real invasion coming next? One we will dismiss because we think it’s just another equipment malfunction?”
“Yes,” Gnost-Dural croaked. “That’s it. You figured it out.”
“Or was it a ploy to cause confusion?” Karrid continued, ignoring his obviously false confession. “A distraction so your allies already on the Reaver Station could set some kind of trap? Something that will be waiting for us if we return to port?”
“The dark side has made you paranoid,” the Jedi whispered. “It blinds you to the truth. Reject the teachings of the Sith and you will have clarity and understanding.”
“Clarity comes through suffering,” Karrid told him. “You will learn that lesson soon enough.”
He heard footsteps as she walked away from him, then heard her speaking to someone else—probably her pure-blooded Sith apprentice.
“Stay here with the interrogators. Watch the Jedi. Do not underestimate him, and beware of trickery through the Force.”
“As you wish, Master,” a female voice replied.
“We will speak again when I return,” Karrid called out to him. “After a few hours on the table has made you more cooperative.”
Gnost-Dural wasn’t aware of her leaving as the interrogators turned on the machine and his world became pain.
In the hall beyond the interrogation room, Karrid paused long enough to savor her former Master’s screams before continuing on. Her security sweeps hadn’t turned up any other stowaways, though she hadn’t expected them to. Sneaking onto her ship was a mission doomed to failure, as evidenced by Gnost-Dural’s capture. She felt it was far more likely his presence was a feint; a suicidal sacrifice to draw her attention away from the real threat.
She’d hoped the Kel Dor would break easily, but she hadn’t really expected that, either. Even Darth Mekhis’s wondrous device would need time to wear down a Jedi Master. But eventually he would tell her everything she wanted to know: who he was working with; how he had known to find her on Reaver Station; why they had staged the false Republic attack. Until then, she was going to keep the Ascendant Spear out on deep patrol, safely away from whatever plot the Republic had cobbled together to destroy her. But that wasn’t the only precaution she was taking.
She took the turbolift to A Deck, where the highest-ranking officers had their private quarters. There she found the newest additions to her crew ready and waiting for her arrival.
Lord Quux was a red-skinned pureblood; Lord Ordez was a dark-skinned human. They had come to Reaver Station to swear fealty to the newest member of the Dark Council, though Karrid had initially been reluctant to welcome them aboard her vessel for fear they might one day be tempted to try to take it from her.
However, Gnost-Dural’s attack had made her reconsider her position. Now that she was on the Dark Council, she had to expect there would be other attempts on her life—if not by the Jedi, then by rivals within the Empire. Realizing it might be wise to keep a pair of well-trained warriors by her side at all times, she’d sent a shuttle to the station to retrieve them.
“I trust your accommodations are to your liking?”
“Exquisite,” Lord Quux replied, while Lord Ordez only bowed his head to show he approved.
“Come with me,” she told them. “We must begin your training.”
“Training, Darth Karrid?” Lord Quux asked.
“If you want to serve me, you must learn to serve my ship as well,” she told them. “I promise you’ll find the experience … rewarding.”
CHAPTER 27
THE KNIFE WOUND ON TEFF’ITH’S SHOULDER barely bothered her as she worked the Prosperity’s controls, bringing the shuttle out of hyperspace just beyond the mass shadow cast by Coruscant’s gravity well.
The capital world of the Republic loomed before her in all its glory, a city world with almost a trillion people on the surface. The four moons orbiting the planet were almost lost among the artificial satellites swirling around it. Massive mirror stations collected and redirected light and heat from Coruscant’s sun to the poles, transforming every square centimeter of the surface into livable land. Ponderous habitation spheres slowly circled the world, swelling the official population by another hundred billion. And giant space stations directed the endless stream of thousands of ships arriving and departing.
Teff’ith just stared out the window of the cockpit. It had been almost two years since she’d last been here … not since her first run-in with Theron. She’d forgotten how overwhelming the galaxy’s most densely populated planet could be when seen from above. The incessant beep of the shuttle’s comlink finally snapped her out of her fog, and she reached out to open the channel.
“Prosperity, do you read?” a man’s voice crackled out. “This is Coruscant flight control station 473. Prosperity, please acknowledge.”
“This is Prosperity,” Teff’ith answered, realizing the shuttle’s auto-transponder must have transmitted the registration directly to the nearest space station for clearance upon her arrival. “What’s wrong?”
“Been trying to hail you for almost two full minutes. Might want to check your comm equipment.”
“Roger,” Teff’ith replied, not certain what else to say. She knew how to smuggle a ship onto Coruscant, but she had no idea what the protocols were for a legal landing on the surface.
“You looking for surface clearance?” the man asked her after a few seconds of silence.
“Roger,” Teff’ith agreed.
Another few seconds passed before the man asked, “Do you have your destination?” He was clearly getting annoyed.
“The Jedi,” Teff’ith blu
rted out. “Grand Master Satele.”
There was a long pause on the other end before the man replied, “You are cleared for landing at Diplomatic Spaceport 27-B. Transmitting coordinates now.”
“Roger,” Teff’ith said again.
“Over and out.”
Relieved to put an end to the awkward conversation, Teff’ith turned the ship over to the autopilot, allowing it to chart its own course down to the surface. She was surprised she didn’t have to wait in some kind of queue or touch down at one of the orbital space stations for some kind of verification before landing. But then she remembered whose shuttle she was flying, and she realized she had probably been given some kind of special priority service.
The shuttle plunged down into Coruscant’s atmosphere, the autopilot falling into the nearest officially designated flight path as it sped her rapidly to the surface. The ship rattled slightly as it came in, a result of the damage it had sustained crashing through the doors of the hangar during her escape from Jigani Port. But Teff’ith barely noticed, her attention focused on the unimaginable crush of buildings, speeders, and people on the surface.
Coruscant truly was a wonder of the galaxy. There were other worlds with endless cityscapes, like the Hutt-controlled moon of Nar Shaddaa, but none of them rivaled the Republic capital. The tallest, grandest buildings on the Hutt world would have been dwarfed by even the smallest of Coruscant’s skytowers. The general feel of Nar Shaddaa was one of claustrophobia: cramped and crowded. The effect of Coruscant was almost the exact opposite—the towers reaching up forever into the sky and the endless streams of traffic stretching off to disappear over the horizon made the world appear even larger and grander than it actually was.
The autopilot chimed softly, indicating she was nearing her destination. Teff’ith switched over to manual control when she saw the spaceport below her. She didn’t trust autopilots to bring a ship down smoothly at the best of times, and she feared the Prosperity’s damaged hull might throw its precisely calibrated systems off.