FORTY-THREE

I decided to build upon the excuse Elegos had fashioned for me by spending more time drinking—or, at least, appearing to be drunk. A little Savareen brandy spilled on a tunic will leave you reeking of the stuff, and if you keep swirling it around and are sloppy when you drink it—spilling more on yourself in the process—folks notice. The people I was spending my time around had no trouble believing I was three jumps from sober at all times.

Being drunk gave me far more freedom because, as long as I was not obnoxious, lost at sabacc, and was generous with Tavira’s money or gifts, I was everyone’s friend. People looked forward to seeing me, found it easy to ignore me, and even treated me as if I was not there on those occasions when I feigned sleep.

I chose the Survivors as my first targets. I knew them better than I knew anyone else, so I had an edge on getting into their minds. The Survivors were also the most disciplined of the Invids, so if I could break them, make them skittish, the nervousness would bleed over into the other groups. My move against them would be the prelude to my attacks on the other groups, so I wanted it to be especially chilling.

Elegos and I worked hard on it, programming it into my datapad, then projecting it out of the holoprojector pad in my suite. We ran it over and over again, allowing me to memorize it from every angle, and practice my part in it. I had to be careful and quick, but if it worked right, it would shake the Survivors to their core.

I took a seat in the Crash cantina at a table very much in the back. Captain Nive normally sat there, and not too long afterward he joined me. Jacob had not been paying me court as had the other pirate leaders—he trusted in the friendship we had built up during the time he commanded my squadron. I actually liked him and the way he managed the Survivors, but from the conversations we’d had, I knew he was not wholly comfortable with all he had done in his life. That confidence, expressed to me late one night, was about to come back and haunt him.

Jacob sat with his back to the corner of the room. I sat at his left, with my back toward a wall, but slightly exposed along my flank. Another chair sat across from him and could not be seen by most of the rest of the room because of a pillar. I had a bottle of Savereen brandy sitting in front of me, and a snifter in my right hand. Jacob drank lum, but never enough to get roaring drunk, just mildly suggestible. We sat there, chatting in low voices about the latest rumors concerning Shala the Hutt, when I pushed the empty chair out with my left foot, as if someone were drawing it back to sit.

I tapped the Force, letting it fill me, but turned my head toward the chair and away from Jacob. “You can’t sit here. This is a private table.” As I said that, I reached out with my senses and projected an image into Jacob’s brain.

Jacob’s head came up and he blanched. “Not possible.”

The figure he saw sitting down opposite him spat out a thick golden credit coin, that bounced once on the table. My left hand swept out to grab it, then I slapped down the credit I’d palmed. My left hand recoiled. “It’s cold.”

The figure across the table from Jacob wore an Imperial Captain’s uniform, albeit a bit too small, and had a mouse under his left eye. In fact, Captain Zlece Oonaar of the Crusader looked exactly the way he had after the Survivors had tried him and Jacob had ordered his execution. Jacob himself had stuffed the gold credit in his mouth, following the old superstition of buying off the evil things the dead would say about the living, then had him pitched out of the Backstab’s main airlock.

Zlece Oonaar looked directly into Nive’s eyes. “You can have your gold back. The dead don’t speak ill of the dead.”

I grabbed Jacob’s left wrist with my right hand. “What does he mean?”

Jacob’s mouth hung open. “I don’t know.”

Zlece nodded slowly. “You know. You know you should have died the day all your friends did. If you’d fought harder, they might have lived. You failed them, and now you will join them. Doom is coming to Courkrus. All your victims will be avenged.”

Jacob stood abruptly, tearing his wrist from my grip, and threw his mug of lum through the phantasm. I let the image fade into a bloody mist that drifted away as the mug shattered against the pillar. Jacob stood there, gape-jawed and trembling, then looked around at everyone else in the cantina. Their attention had been drawn to him when the mug exploded, but they had seen nothing prior to that.

Jacob pointed at the chair. “Did you see him?”

Other people started to shake their heads.

He looked at me. “You saw him, didn’t you, Jenos? You saw him.”

I shuddered and drained my brandy snifter. “I saw him. He was that guy we took, the one we tried.” I fingered the coin. “You put this in his mouth.”

Jacob snatched the coin from my grip and held it aloft. “Right, I put this in his mouth.”

“But we left him in space.” I poured more brandy into my snifter and looked up at Jacob, ignoring the tightening knot of people closing in on us. “What did he mean, ‘Doom is coming to Courkrus’?”

Jacob snatched my brandy away from me and swallowed it all in one gulp. “I don’t know.” He put the snifter down again and tapped the rim for a refill. “I don’t know, but it is not good. Not good at all.”

Within twelve hours the story of the visitation had spread all over Vlarnya and had taken on a life of its own. I had people tell me what they had seen and got to listen to them describing a vision I know they never saw. Even when I said that was different from what I’d seen, they told me I was misremembering because I’d been drunk at the time. They knew what the truth was, and it really seemed to scare the bone right out of their spines.

No one was quite certain what it was they’d seen. Some thought it was a ghost, pure and simple, come back to haunt Nive for killing him. Others took the warning into account and wondered why a ghost would warn when he could have just struck and killed us all—if a ghost could actually do that. The warning seemed to worm its way into the minds of many, which was my intent. I wanted them to have been warned so when things started to happen, they would link them back to the warning.

I was pleased the first effort had so grand an effect, but I knew I couldn’t do that sort of thing again. While I might be able to use an illusion to throw off pursuit, simple ghostly comings and goings were not going to convince the Invids that it was time to abandon Tavira. The palmed coin provided solid evidence that convinced a lot of people of the veracity of the visitation. Because of that I decided that the next actions I took required physical proof of something going on, and a coin wasn’t going to do it. It was time for something a bit more direct and painful.

I waited until after Timmser and Caet had dragged me home from Crash and turned me over to Elegos before acting. Mumbling how he hoped I wouldn’t vomit on the bedsheets again, the Caamasi hustled me off and the two of them escaped lest they be asked to help clean me up. Once they were away, I slipped into the Jedi uniform, donned a hooded cloak and slipped out into the night. Using the Force I was able to blank the short term memory of those hotel staffers who did see me, leaving them with an innocent eight-second gap in their memories that covered my passage through the lobby.

Using the Force both in Crash and in the lobby was taking a risk at detection by Tavira’s advisors, but I was fairly certain there were none on Courkrus. She’d never given us one before and she had no reason to assume there was going to be a problem on Courkrus. To leave one here “just in case” would be to provide any of these groups with a chance to learn her secret and strike out on their own. For that reason alone I felt very safe in using the Force as I hunted.

My previous sojourns into the city served me well as I moved through less populated alleys and byways to reach some of the seedier areas of the Aviary. I reached inside to tap the Force, so I could expand my sphere of responsibility and locate someone who needed help. My intention, of course, was to help that person and take the criminals involved out of the holograph. It was like being back in CorSec, making a sweep through Treasure Ship Row, just without all the lights.

The difference was, this time, I had the Force as my ally. My sense of the city and the area around me became acute, allowing me to register the various life sources. Had I wanted to, I could have taken a census of crunchbugs or feral tuskettes in seconds. I didn’t, though—other data drew me on into the night.

When on patrol for CorSec, I’d been a predator looking for prey, hoping I didn’t find it in sufficient quantity to kill me. With the Force, I almost felt like a super-predator. I sensed where everyone was, where their attention was directed. I could choose paths of confrontation that would keep things quiet, or would make for a big display. At the moment I chose something smaller and more intimate, but I knew the day for something more spectacular would come soon.

Even though I sensed where the three of them were, I heard her sobs before I ever saw them. Two drunken LazerLords had trapped an indig woman between them and hustled her into an alley. They backed her up against a wall, trapping her hands high above her head, and were covering her face and neck with the sort of sloppy kisses the totally inebriated seem to have mastered. Except for the look of terror on her face, their antics might have seemed comical.

I moved into the alley as silent as a shadow and grabbed the first man by the scruff of the neck. I whirled him over toward the right, across my body, and smashed his face into the opposite alley wall. Something crunched when he hit, then he slumped to the ground. A half step forward and I brought the pommel of my lightsaber up in my right hand, catching the second man with an upper cut. Impact with the heavy metal pommel cap shattered the man’s jaw and sent him reeling backward.

One hand went to his mouth and the other dug for the blaster holstered on his right hip. As he started to draw the weapon, I rotated the lightsaber’s hilt in my hand and ignited the silver blade. Its explosive hiss filled the alley, with the light painting the LazerLord’s shadow across the alley floor and up along the back wall. I arced the blade down, catching the rising blaster at barrel and grip, dropping pieces of it and two of his fingers to the ground.

A sidekick to his already broken jaw dropped him to the alley floor, then I spun and lunged at his rising partner. Before he could draw his blaster, my lightsaber stabbed through his shoulder, burning a very neat, button-sized hole through bone and flesh. The oily stink of overcooked meat filled the alley. His face went absolutely white. He stared down at the silvery energy shaft sticking out of his shoulder, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted.

I snapped the blade off before his falling body could tear itself free of the blade. I didn’t want him dead—I wanted neither of them dead. Two dead men would be statistics, but these men would have scars and would tell a wonderful tale. What the visitation had begun these two would continue.

I turned to the woman who cowered in a crouch. I extended a hand to her and she took it. The tremors in her flesh matched the waves of terror radiating out from her. I made my voice even and as reassuring as I could. “You have nothing to fear, child. They will not harm you any more.”

“W-who are you?”

I guided her to her feet and walked with her toward the alley mouth and the street light slanting into it. “It is enough that I am known to be here.”

I let her walk into the light, but I remained in the shadows as I let her hand go. “Just tell them that doom has come to Courkrus. Their victims will be avenged, and those who fear justice will never sleep securely here again.” Then I projected into her mind an illusion of my fading into nothingness while I slipped past her and moved further along the street. I shadowed her to make certain nothing else happened to her, then, when she found safety, I returned to my home.

The next morning, early, Timmser and Caet came to my suite and insisted Elegos wake me. I emerged from my bedroom looking rumpled and bleary-eyed, then sobered at the serious expressions on their faces. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

Caet growled, and Timmser provided a good translation. “Two LazerLords got badly mangled last night. Doom has come to Courkrus, and it brought a lightsaber with it.”