The High Republic: Midnight Horizon, page 24
There was a fuel line right beside the duct. It would take only one more twist to turn a mostly harmless blast into something much, much worse.
Ram thought about the smoke pouring out of Starlight, the way some people were still laughing, hidden safely behind their masks as Ram’s home once again burned, as his friends fought for their lives.
Rage rose in him, a pure fire, and suddenly Ram was a volcano, that wrath poised to explode and cover the whole city around him. A trembling reached from his core all the way to his fingertips—How dare they? a voice inside him thundered, sending the sky overhead into a dizzying spin. His voice, he realized. His rage. He knew it, recognized it. It had been hiding beneath all those layers of coldness he’d built. But now he knew its name, could sense its presence.
And Reath had given him the antidote. “Balance,” Ram whispered. He had a utility cart full of other emotions. Sadness. Love. And the eerie calm of that emptiness he’d been feeling for some time. He would need all of them if he was going to make it through this. They would keep each other in check. The sky slowed its spin, clicked back into place. Balance.
He refused to cause needless death. Not now. They still had no idea who was there, who was Nihil and who wasn’t. They barely knew anything. He held off, blinking back to the world around him.
“Nice,” Reath said, admiring Ram’s handiwork, probably totally oblivious to the fact that he’d once again come to the rescue. Then all three of them burst onto the rooftop, where the scattered raiders were already regrouping and making a break for the far bridge. A few people lay cowering still—hostages, Ram thought, but he kept his lightsaber extended. You could never be sure, not these days.
Crash’s bodyguards had kept a steady stream of chatter throughout the whole thing—checking on one another, reporting back about which clients were where. Ram had tuned most of it out, but now the big guy in the flier came on the comms with a gruff, “Listen up, Jedi.”
“We’re here,” Reath said.
“They’re heading toward the Finance Tower—it’s a little bit ahead of where you are now,” he reported. “There’s a covering of some kind on that rooftop, so I can’t make it all out, but it looks like there are more of them gathered there.”
Ram scanned the city around him, looking past where the Nihil were scurrying off on their new bridge.
One building had a makeshift tent erected on top and … yep, Ram could see the shifting of bodies in the shadows up there. He saw Reath notice the same thing. The sun dipped beneath a cloud bank, painting the sky with majestic crimson streaks as the last bits of day faded.
“We could chase these clowns on their own bridges,” Zeen said, looking off in a different direction. “Or we could go our own way.”
The boys followed her pointing finger. A hotel complex led up to the Finance Tower. The rooftops were just close enough together to be jumpable with some help from the Force, but definitely too far for most regular beings.
Ram nodded. “Let’s go.”
Laser blasts zinged against the small permacrete wall as Reath leapt behind it.
Another close one.
He wondered how long he’d manage not to get shot that day. From the look of things, he’d be providing plenty of opportunities for Nihil target practice in the hours ahead. Whatever was going on, they’d been planning it for a while, and it was probably connected to the attack on Starlight.
Or maybe there were attacks happening all over the galaxy. For all Reath knew, the Jedi of the Coruscant temple could be fighting for their lives, too.
He had to stay focused though. The most important thing was right in front him, as Master Sy often said. And right now, that was a wall that was keeping him from getting fried by another barrage from the Nihil.
“How we lookin’?” Ram asked, landing with a grunt in the gravel beside Reath.
“About the same as we’ve been looking since we landed on this planet,” Reath grumbled. “Completely in the dark and barely afloat. Where’s Zeen?”
“Oh, she kept going. I thought you saw.”
Reath poked his head up, then dipped back down as more blaster fire sang out from the nearby rooftop. The Nihil had figured out they were being outflanked pretty quickly and dispatched a few shooters to keep the Jedi busy.
Reath clicked on his comlink. “Reath to Air-Eleven.”
Fezzonk’s grizzled voice clicked through almost immediately. “Already on it.”
Something whooshed past them in the night sky—Reath barely caught a glimpse of it, the thing was so fast, and then a sudden splatter of laser fire sounded. A heavy boom rang out, echoing across the skyscraper canyons all around them.
“All clear,” Fezzonk reported. “Got a little scratched up but all good. Not sure how much more of this I can take though.”
“Let’s go,” Reath said. Then, into the comlink, “Thanks, Air-Eleven! Stay safe up there.”
They dashed across the open gravel area toward the far end of the roof.
Zeen crouched on the next building over, waiting out another Nihil attack squad.
The Nihil had taken up position on a rooftop adjacent to Zeen’s, and they were lighting up her spot with some kind of rotary cannon. Reath and Ram leapt to the Nihil’s building instead of Zeen’s. They landed with a thud and rolled out of the way as cannon fire shredded the permacrete they’d just been standing on. A scream rang out, and the cannon fell silent as both boys stood and dusted themselves off. Zeen had blasted the three Nihil away as soon as they’d turned their attention elsewhere.
She waved the Padawans over to her.
Reath and Ram stepped past the sprawled bodies and leapt across the gap to where Zeen stood waiting.
“I think we gotta go dark from here out,” Zeen said, leaning in. She’d gotten rid of the sheer gown—it had to be hell trying to fight in that thing—so she looked like some silver killer angel out of the holos in her bodysuit and tiara. Ram and Reath still had on their makeup and black bodysuits—the three of them together must’ve been quite a sight to behold. And hopefully, no one would. Zeen was right. The Finance Tower was one building over. It didn’t seem like anyone was paying attention to them, from what Reath could tell. Something worth all their focus had to be happening on that rooftop, and whatever it was, Reath and the others needed to know about it.
They ran to a smokestack, ducked behind it, then dashed to an electrical box with various antennas poking out. Finally, they skidded to a stop at the shoulder-high wall around the roof. Up ahead, a woman’s voice sounded, amplified by a speaker. Reath couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but she sounded pleased with herself.
“There,” Zeen said, pointing to a balcony on the floor just below the rooftop where the Nihil were gathered. Then she hoisted herself onto the wall and leapt. Ram went next. Reath glanced around, then lifted himself up, found his balance, and sprang out into the night between the two buildings. He aimed it so he came down just in front of the balcony railing, caught it, and flung himself over the top, landing beside his friends in a squat.
“. . . the galaxy forever!” the woman yelled. It was Sabata, Reath realized. No question. He’d heard enough holorecordings of her in intelligence reports to know that voice. “Tonight, there is no stopping us!”
The furious growl of an engine ripped suddenly out into the night. The whole Finance Tower shook. That’s what was going on up there, Reath realized—what they were concealing. It was a launchpad. What did they have? Whatever it was, it was taking off any moment. He climbed onto the railing and leapt straight upward, clutching the edge of the rooftop and then pulling himself up just enough to see what was happening.
The tent was being pulled away, and a massive troop transport vehicle began lifting up from the landing pad. It was shaped like an X—four huge sections pointing off at diagonals. Turbines on top of each side thwacked heavily against the air, speeding up to full power. Gun turrets covered the thing, each wheeling around as if hungry for something to blast out of the sky. Bulky and ungainly, this ship was clearly built to move large groups of people from one part of the city to another, and smash away anything that tried to stop it. That was about all it could manage; speed and distance were not part of its equation.
And Sabata Krill stood on top of the transport ship, arms stretched out, grinning wildly at the city she was about to bring to heel.
The Nihil really were everywhere, Reath realized. They were trying to take out Starlight, and they were there, too, a galaxy away, launching a full-fledged attack on a Core World.
And up until then, everyone had thought they were in retreat.
They would never stop until the Jedi stopped them. There was no sitting around hoping this would pass.
There was no waiting for a moment to pause and think. The Nihil had made sure of that. There would be no figuring out a path ahead for Reath, because the only path ahead led straight through the Nihil.
“Where you think they’re going?” Ram called from below.
“Only one way to find out!” Reath yelled. He pulled himself all the way up and ran.
Chaos.
And not the good kind.
Every job had a certain amount of it. That was a given. Crash knew it, both from Baynoo’s expert advice and her own experience. Storm patterns shifted; traffic snarled. A child stopping to play with a small morkat could cause a parade to bottleneck, trapping a client in an intersection with a hundred angles from which to take a shot and none open to a quick getaway. And just like that, perfectly laid plans got blown to hell, and all you had to show for it was a dead body and a sullied street rep.
Unless you were Crash and you moved with the chaos, became one with it.
That was what Baynoo had taught her, and at first they had just been words that sounded pretty, and badass in theory. But what did they mean in practice?
Improvise.
Plan ahead and improvise. Those were the two tent poles of things going smoothly. Every possible option had to be in the plan, even the unimaginable ones. It took thinking like a ruthless assassin to stop one, so that was what Crash did. That meant each intersection would be scanned, each tunnel cleared, and each balcony locked. As much as could be accounted for was, and everything else went into the realm of chaos.
Crash had learned to relish it—that challenge, the sudden need to spring into action and pull a hundred different threads. It would probably kill her one day, but she would die with a smile.
That was the good chaos.
This, though … this unfolding disaster and growing sense of doom—this was something else entirely.
Dizcaro lay in a pool of his own blood. Little plumes of smoke still curled up from the charred wounds on the back of his head and neck. No one had touched him—there was no point. He was clearly gone. Meanwhile, the room was still rocked by the sudden burst of violence, the revelation of the Starlight attack, the appearance of a City Father everyone had presumed dead, his rants about the Nihil, the shattered window. So much had happened in so little time.
Medics were bandaging up the people who’d been grazed by Tralmat’s blaster fire. They’d taken one look at Dizcaro and just shaken their heads.
Crash had never cared much for Dizcaro—he was messy and hungry in all the wrong ways, and he didn’t treat his operatives well, which was why they were so easy to poach from him. But he was decent in other ways, and for someone she was constantly going head to head with (and winning against), she didn’t despise him as much as she might’ve. And he had just been beginning to show signs of a moral core somewhere beneath all that sludge and ambition. But he knew what his job was, and when the moment every bodyguard wonders about came, Dizcaro did exactly what he was supposed to do, what the code said to do, what the job required, demanded, really.
And he’d done it for someone he clearly absolutely abhorred.
And that made it even more what the job demanded.
Would Crash do the same?
Dizcaro’s mouth was open, his eyes glassy. The bolt had torn through his scalp, shattered a portion of his skull, and left what could be seen of his brain sizzling scar tissue.
Was he proud when he died? Did it matter?
“Ah, Crash,” 10-K8 said. “We … you with us?”
Crash tuned back into the ongoing throb of panic in the room. How long had she been just standing there, staring at a corpse? “Yeah. Uh, yeah. I’m here.”
The blood was coming from his mouth. So much blood.
“The hotel security has asked that we keep everyone on scene for the moment while they secure the area.”
“Yeah, of course,” Crash said absently.
“Well, those who haven’t left already, of course.”
The holo news still spun in the center of the room, ongoing coverage of the attack on Starlight, but it was just talking heads repeating the same thing over and over from the safety of the Core: “No one knows anything yet. Stay tuned.” Stay tuned for hours of speculation and punditry with zero actual info, was what they meant.
Crash wanted to scream.
So much blood. Was no one going to come put a sheet over the guy? Life could be snuffed out so quickly. She’d seen her share of dead bodies, had even caused a few of them to get that way. But this felt different. Minutes before, he’d been talking to her, arguing with her. She’d … Svi’no! What if she’d been hurt somehow? What if that moment, which felt like the truest, purest thing that had happened in Crash’s life in a long, long time, was all they had?
Crash set her comlink to a private channel and pinged Svi’no.
“Here,” that sweet voice came back, speaking just for Crash. She wanted to unravel herself inside that voice and sleep for years.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Svi’no sounded surprised. “You?”
“Uh-huh. Just a little shook up.”
“I was laying low off to the side, you know. Just … whoa.”
“Whoa,” Crash agreed.
“I’m gonna keep an eye on everything from here. Stay okay for me, please. Okay?”
“I will,” Crash promised, and she meant it. “You too, please.”
“Ah, Crash?” Ram’s voice came over the general comms channel. “Small update for ya.”
She wrenched her gaze away from Dizcaro’s open mouth and dead, dead eyes and switched back over. “Go with it.”
“There’s a huge transport leaving from the roof of the Money Tower, or whatever it’s called. And Sabata Krill is on it.”
“The Er’Kit girl?” Crash almost yelled. Had no one thought to put a lightsaber through her as soon she showed her face? She hoped that was what the Padawans were in the midst of doing. “Air-Eleven?” she said, taking a step back.
“I was about to say just that,” Fezzonk said. “Most of the Nihil boarded.”
“Also, uh, Reath,” Ram put in.
“What? All by himself?”
“He just went running over there without telling anyone what he was planning, and by the time we realized it, the thing was up in the air!”
“That might be a good thing,” Fezzonk said. “That the others aren’t with him, I mean. Some of the Nihil didn’t board, either, and they’re peeling off. I won’t be able to keep eyes on them and track that transport.”
“Ram?” Crash said.
“We can follow ’em. Stand by.”
Nothing made sense.
Chaos was one part of the job that took experience to understand, to learn how to move with. But the other element, the one that most people avoided talking about, was death. And because folks kept quiet about it, the very notion of death seemed to lurk everywhere, in the negative spaces, the pauses of a conversation.
And now it was there in the room, a presence built from absence, an invisible form, yet undeniable in its weight and authority—nowhere and thus everywhere.
Crash glanced around the room. Those were real Nihil, the ones who had surrounded Tralmat like they were his bodyguard detail and charged for the window with him. Maybe a few people had decided right then and there that marauding around the galaxy was a good idea, actually, and what better time to join up than during the attack on a bastion of the Republic. But the real question was: Had any of the actual Nihil stayed behind to cause more problems or murder someone else?
“Where’s Orvus?” Crash asked.
10-K8 made a tiny head tilt, checking her memory banks. “He was escorted out by one of Dizcaro’s men—the big Lasat guy.”
“Powlo,” Crash said. She liked Powlo. He didn’t say much, but that was about right. He’d been next on her list of operatives to poach.
Technically, everyone who was a registered guest at the event was under Crash’s protection, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to choke Ovus or keep him safe. Of course, it didn’t matter what Crash wanted. Ovus was probably a target for the Nihil now that one of their local leaders had tried and failed to take him out.
Then again, he’d apparently had some part to play in the Nihil being on Corellia in the first place. If they were going to get to the bottom of that—and they were—they needed him alive enough to answer questions.
Crash made a mental note to track down Powlo and Ovus when things calmed down.
If things calmed down.
With CorSec and the Jedi gone, that might not be for a while.
“Weapons scan, please,” Crash said.
“On it,” 10-K8 chirped. The room was full of people Crash was supposed to keep safe. Suddenly, she felt very small, and the burden of their protection loomed over her, an impossible weight to carry. Any one of them could be involved in what had just happened. Should she protect the very people who would harm her and the others? Should she jump in front of the fire as Dizcaro had if the person being shot at wanted her dead?
There was a technical, professional answer to that question, and it was designed for simplicity of decision-making on the fly: yes.
And up until this moment, Crash would’ve said the same thing. But everything was different now. It had started when the Jedi showed up.
