The Eye of Darkness, page 6
Ghirra supposed the She’ar perfectly encapsulated everything that frightened her about Ro: his arrogance, his unpredictability, and his excessive propensity for extreme violence.
All qualities that made Ghirra’s job that much harder. And not just her job, her plans. She still harbored ambitions. She still craved power. And Ro’s instability put all of that at risk.
She watched as Thaya Ferr, the tall, thin human who served as both assistant and confidante to the Eye, approached the throne, flicking a glance at the She’ar out of deference. She stooped low, whispering into Ro’s ear.
Ro gave an almost imperceptible nod, and then turned his head to watch as Thaya walked away. His gaze seemed to land on something. Ghirra twisted, scanning the crowd of partying Nihil, a riot of flesh, tattoos, scrappy armor, blasters, masks, and waving limbs. Where once they had worn the three blue lines of the Nihil upon their brows, now each of them now wore the smeared eye of Marchion Ro, in an uneasy mix of tribute and fear. Ro had instigated the change almost as soon as the Stormwall had gone up. He always had craved adoration, even if it was only given on the wrong end of a blaster.
Ghirra’s eyes settled on the person that Ro had seemingly spotted in the crowd: the young woman Nan. The former protégée, now ousted from her favored position by Thaya. Still celebrated, of course, perhaps even promoted, in the eyes of most Nihil, to be one of the last survivors from Starlight Beacon. A true Nihil who’d escaped capture after helping to ensure the station’s demise. At least that was how the stories went. Ghirra thought the Nihil had probably written a song about her. It was also true that she still had Ro’s ear, too. Just…not as often as Thaya did.
Nan was staring after Thaya with murder in her eyes. That would amuse Ro. A rivalry for his attention. Ghirra made a mental note, repressing an unbidden flash of jealousy. Maybe she could use that information, somehow.
The music stopped. A ripple of annoyance passed through the gathered Nihil. Looks were exchanged. Frowns deepened. All eyes turned to Marchion Ro.
Who didn’t move. Not even to lift a finger.
A crackle came over the comm system. And then a familiar, echoing voice. A woman’s voice. Midway through a speech.
“…as to whether the Nihil plan to mark the occasion with another attack. Let me assure you now, the Republic Defense Coalition, along with our allies in the Jedi Order, are doing everything they can to ensure that is not the case. We will protect you. There will be no repeat of the horrors of last year. No one will be hurt.”
Silence. None of the Nihil seemed to know how to react to this sudden, bizarre interruption to their celebration. Here they were, invited to the grand feasting hall to revel in their triumph, to mark the anniversary of the destruction of Starlight Beacon, their greatest moment, this singular achievement.
And now this. The voice of their enemy, echoing through the fortress, assuring her people that the Republic and the Jedi would keep them safe.
The silence stretched until it was almost unbearable, like a crawling, excruciating itch that Ghirra couldn’t scratch.
All eyes again settled on Marchion Ro.
Just as he likes it.
Slowly, Marchion Ro stood, rising out of his throne like some elder king, ready to address his subjects. Ghirra half expected them all to fall to their knees, but then remembered—these were Nihil.
Ro reached up and removed his helmet, tossing it back onto the throne behind him with a dull clang. Stray hair fell across his shoulders. He turned his dark-blue face, taking in the hushed crowd.
“Well, it’s good to hear the Republic and their Jedi lapdogs are doing everything they can.” Ro’s voice boomed in the massive hall. “Which amounts to just about nothing.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd like an infection. They stomped their feet by way of applause. Close by, a tall, willowy Falleen named Selch, with dark reptilian flesh—one of Viess’s favored disciples—hooted loudly. She turned to glance at Ghirra, and smiled.
Ro waved them silent again. “And apparently, no one is going to be hurt.” He bared his teeth. “Well, I can assure you all, right here and now, someone is going to get hurt. And the entire galaxy will be watching!”
More raucous cheering and stomping of feet. Ghirra felt sick as she joined in.
Not more needless death. Please.
She had so much blood on her hands that she knew she’d never get them clean again. And she’d come to terms with that. She knew she’d made those choices and accepted what they meant. She’d pulled the trigger herself, felt the strange, ringing sensation that came with the knowledge that you’d just ended a person’s life. She’d acted out of defense, and rage, and fear, but most of all out of pragmatism. She’d done what she had to in order to thrive. To protect her daughter.
But Ro—he reveled in the death of his enemies. He enjoyed it. Especially the Jedi.
“Tomorrow, the Nihil will mark the anniversary of our greatest triumph, and it will serve as a reminder of what we are capable of.” More cheers. Ro seemed to lap them up, buoyed by the enthusiasm of his people. He threw his arms wide in an expansive gesture. “A reminder to those in Nihil space who would consider rising up against us! A reminder to the Republic of why we remain undefeated!” He gave a sly grin. “And a reminder to the Jedi of why they are weak and have failed as the protectors they claim to be.”
He lowered his arms, turning his head slowly from side to side. It left Ghirra with the disturbing impression that he was looking at each of the gathered Nihil in turn, his black eyes boring right through them. Herself included.
He raised his voice, bellowing now, raw and impassioned. “We shall show them what happens when they forget the lessons they should have learned a year ago, when their great beacon fell and the Jedi were finally brought low. We shall show them what happens when they try to impose order on the beautiful chaos of the Nihil!”
The wreckpunk erupted from the speakers once more, and the Nihil returned to their celebrations with even more vigor than before. Somewhere on the other side of the hall a fight broke out, drawing the attention of the nearby revelers. Ghirra imagined that at least four or five beings would die before the night was through. It wasn’t considered a good party otherwise.
She saw Marchion Ro making a beeline for the door and hurried to intercept him. His She’ar had fallen in behind him, and one of them—a tall male Pau’an—shot her a warning growl. She ignored the ignorant buffoon, shoving her way directly into Ro’s path. He saw her and stopped, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“Ghirra. Are you enjoying the party?”
She ignored his obviously baited question. “Eye. With the greatest respect, do you think it’s wise to go ahead with whatever lesson it is you plan to teach the Republic?”
“From your tone I would infer that you don’t, Minister?” He used the word like a curse.
It had been six months since Ghirra had reorganized the Nihil, naming the ministries and attempting to impose some sort of governmental order on the otherwise chaotic structure of Tempests and petty warlords. Ro hadn’t resisted the move, exactly, but had simply remained silent on the subject, unwilling to engage with the process as Ghirra had defined roles and responsibilities for each of the three ministers. The others, in turn, had taken his silence as tacit agreement, and had gone along with Ghirra’s orders. But Ghirra knew that Ro didn’t like it. And ever since he’d seemed more distant, colder—if that was even possible.
She tried to get a read on him now, but his expression remained fixed and unreadable. What was clear, was that whatever enthusiasm he’d roused in himself for the crowd had already seemingly bled away. If anything, he looked weary. “I just think another attack on the Republic would be…counterproductive,” she said. “We already know they take us seriously. We won. Now we have responsibilities. An entire region of the Outer Rim to govern. People to feed, and placate, and rule.” Her mouth was suddenly dry. She knew he wasn’t going to like what she said next. “I think it’s time to build bridges with the Republic. To send a delegate to their Senate. To force them to recognize us as a legitimate political body.”
Marchion Ro held her gaze until she began to grow uncomfortable and had to fight the urge to look away. She stared right back.
After a moment, he spoke, his voice low. “I do not need the recognition of the Republic”—he practically spat the word—“or their notions of legitimacy. The Nihil have proven themselves time and again. Be it on their own heads if they fail to understand that. We will build no bridges. And the subjects of Nihil space will soon come to understand the nature of our governance. You may have once been a politician, Ghirra, but now you are Nihil. Do not forget that.”
She stepped to one side as he continued on his way, brushing past her, his crimson cloak billowing around him as he walked.
Ghirra watched him leave, trailed by the She’ar. Now, more than ever, she was convinced that something was deeply troubling the Eye of the Nihil.
And that posed a danger to them all.
DAEDUS, INSIDE THE OCCLUSION ZONE
Porter Engle crouched in the gloaming forest, warming his hands over the pit of a small fire. He’d dug the firepit deep, to minimize the chances of being spotted in the gloom, and was keeping the flames low and smoldering to ward off too much smoke. He was also dressed head-to-toe in gray and black—pants, tunic, and poncho—which fitted snugly around his ample, muscular bulk. He wasn’t going to be easy to spot among the shadowy boughs of the trees.
Not that there were many out here in the wilds of Daedus to spot him. The small planet had always been sparsely populated, even before the arrival of the Nihil and the creation of the Stormwall. Porter remembered that from back in his youth when he’d accompanied Master Creighton Sun on a diplomatic mission to the sector. They’d visited this place. Or rather, their shuttle had been brought down here by the pirates who’d been raiding settlements throughout the sector. Porter grinned, remembering the look on Creighton’s face as they clambered from the twisted shell of the ship to find more of the pirates waiting for them.
That had been some battle.
Now the outpost stations on Daedus—built to monitor hyperspace traffic in and out of the Bentora system—were mostly abandoned, inhabited only by a band of Nihil raiders who’d decided to make the place their unofficial base.
It was funny how time had a way of folding back on itself, repeating the rhythms of the past.
Always someone who wants something for nothing.
He’d undertaken a brief reconnaissance of the closest outpost station soon after his arrival, two days earlier. He’d had to ditch his shuttle quickly—the swarms of scav droids patrolling the uncontrolled routes through Nihil space had latched onto him quicker than ever, this time. He’d only just managed to shake them off, and he was going to have to make some repairs on the shuttle’s engine housing before he could get the thing airborne again. And then there was nothing to say the swarm wouldn’t be waiting for him in high orbit.
The Nihil were nothing if not adept at controlling travel within the zone. All the approved hyperspace lanes—the ones used for supply shipments and the like—were subject to Nihil patrols, which made them too risky to travel openly, especially for a Jedi. And so Porter, and anyone else wishing to move around without attracting the Nihil’s attention, was forced to make use of the uncontrolled lanes instead. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that doing so attracted swarms of Nihil scav droids that quickly set upon any unauthorized ship and started tearing it apart.
The scav droids were appalling things, used in this context. They were originally designed for breaking up junk in scrapyards and orbital docks, and resembled large, metallic spiders, with squat bodies and powerful, bladelike limbs. They could clamp onto a vessel and strip it down to its constituent parts in a matter of minutes. If there were still beings inside…well, they’d get stripped, too. The Nihil had clearly found a means to manufacture them in bulk—probably from a seized construction plant somewhere else in the Occlusion Zone. And they’d programmed them to swarm upon any ship unable to provide the correct Path engine codes.
Codes that Porter didn’t have.
He was going to have to do something about that. Maybe make another attempt to take a Nihil ship and acquire the codes that would let him navigate more freely inside this forsaken Occlusion Zone. He supposed having the codes could get him out, too. Back to Coruscant and the others.
The thought did carry some appeal. But despite the ever-present danger from the Nihil Jedi-hunters that were inevitably still on his tail, he wasn’t ready to quit just yet. There were beings inside the zone—millions of them—that needed help protecting themselves from the Nihil. Porter couldn’t abandon them. No matter the cost. But he could keep trying to get word out to the others. To let them know how bad things had gotten in Nihil-controlled space.
The Nihil here on Daedus were typically ignorant. They were so arrogant, so self-satisfied, that they’d practically blinded themselves to the possibility that someone might be sneaking around right under their noses. This crew—led by a hulking Abyssin with a missing arm that, oddly, didn’t appear to have grown back—had clearly set up some kind of fiefdom of their own. Porter had gathered they would run the occasional raid or visit a neighboring settlement demanding tithes, then return here to wallow in their spoils.
Whether their superiors in the Nihil organization, such as it was, were aware of their activities, Porter could only guess, but presumably so long as the tributes kept coming and the uprisings remained at a minimum, the Abyssin and his followers were given latitude to behave in whatever way suited them.
Porter had carefully considered removing them from the picture. A night attack, catching them when they were drunk and unprepared—he had no doubt he could take them all out, pass through their base swiftly, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. But that wasn’t the Jedi way. That would have been cold-blooded murder. It would also likely have drawn the attention of whichever of the Nihil’s three ministers they worked for, which would in turn make things worse for the surrounding worlds.
Besides, Porter could do without drawing their eye. He had things to attend to. If he was going to get a message out to the Jedi beyond the wall, he had to find some way of bypassing the Nihil’s communications dead zone.
And for that, he had an idea. An idea he’d been working on for months.
That shuttle he and Creighton had once ditched here, all those years ago. Smashed into fragments and unsalvageable, it had been left where it fell. But there were components in that wreckage from the old days, from back when the Pathfinder teams roamed these regions, contacting worlds and species then unknown to the Republic of the wider galaxy. Making use of tools that had long been defunct.
Tools that Porter remembered and had been desperately gathering from any and all such sites he could find. Places he’d been, long ago. Worlds that he knew the Pathfinders had visited. Anywhere inside the Occlusion Zone where he might be able to salvage the components he needed to complete his task.
I’m old. Too old. Head full of memories.
It had taken him months of false starts, wasted journeys, and scores of battles with the Nihil, but now, back on his shuttle, he had the almost completed shell of an EX droid. These were the droids that the Pathfinders had taken with them on their exploration missions out to the frontier, in the days when the outlying regions still had to be mapped. The droids’ purpose was simple—the Pathfinders would establish contact with a world and people outside of the Republic, and then send the EX droid off into hyperspace to make contact with a communications team, who would then set up a series of beacons and relays, thus creating a primitive network of comms across the region.
What interested Porter, though, was the fact the EX droids used a proprietary system for making short, successive hyperspace jumps that—if he was right—operated in a different way from most ship-based hyperspace drives, and therefore might allow the droid to pass through the Stormwall without triggering the hyperspace disruption, much like the Nihil’s Paths.
It was a long shot, but it was the best one he had.
All he needed now was an intact memory core and a transit pod and the droid would be complete.
All. As if it’s that easy to find working droid parts that haven’t seen use for over a century.
Still, he’d made it this far already. He wasn’t about to give up now.
It had been Elzar who had given him the idea. The young upstart had always been good at thinking out of the box. Pushing for new ways of doing things. Only, he didn’t always realize how clever he really was. Didn’t always see through to the logical endpoint of his ideas.
Some months ago, Elzar had broadcast a message. A rallying call to all Jedi behind the Stormwall, all those trapped like Porter within the Occlusion Zone. A message to let them all know that they hadn’t been forgotten.
Knowing that the Nihil were jamming all transmissions into the zone, Elzar had—and now Porter was relying on supposition—transmitted the message on a broad spectrum of channels, hoping that one or more of them might find their way through.
The clever bit was that, instead of simply relying on the regular frequencies, Elzar had broadcast his message on a repeating loop, using all known methods and channels, including those that hadn’t been in commission for over a century.
And one of them had gotten through, using the old sublight relay system that the Pathfinders and communications teams had established all those years ago. Porter was probably one of the few alive who remembered it. He was surprised it still worked; most of the relays had probably been long destroyed. But the message had made it through, a clatter of pips and beeps and synthesized tones, transmitted across the gulf of stars, through the Nihil’s obscene barrier, and beyond.
