Darth Bane - Dynasty of Evil Page 11

  "Yeah, all right," he relented. "Maybe I can help. What do you need?"

  "A few days ago a man with long white hair arrived on Doan. Did he come through this port?"

  She already knew the answer: unless the man had some connection to one of the noble families, this was the only port for a thousand kilometers. But a basic tactic in negotiations was to get the other person to start giving you affirmative answers to simple questions. It made them more likely to agree with you on more important matters later on.

  "Oh, yeah. I remember him. Nice ride. State-of-the-art shuttle. Custom interior. Top of the line. Even nicer than yours."

  "How would you know what the interior of my shuttle is like?" Zannah asked suspiciously.

  There was a brief pause, then both Quano and Pommat burst out laughing.

  "Him smuggler," the Rodian explained when he caught his breath.

  "Not exactly," Pommat clarified. "It's just a little side racket I've set up. Something to help pay the bills, you know?"

  "No," Zannah said darkly. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me."

  "Whoa, you got a little fire in you, doll," Pommat said appreciatively. "Let me break it down for you. At night, I'm the only one working here. I can pretty much do anything I want. Including breaking into somebody's shuttle."

  "You're not worried about security systems?"

  "Never ran across one I couldn't slice," he said, puffing out his chest. "It's one of my many talents. Maybe if you're lucky, I'll show some of the others later on."

  "So you break into people's shuttles and steal from them?" Zannah clarified, ignoring his clumsy come-on.

  "Nah. That'd be stupid. People would notice if stuff was missing. They'd report it to my boss. Wouldn't take long to figure out who was behind it."

  "So what do you do, exactly?"

  "You're going to love this," Pommat said with a sly wink. "Once I'm inside, I slice into their nav computer and download all the info onto a datapad. It gives me everything: the owner, any planets the ship is registered with, commonly plotted hyperspace routes. I know who owns it, where they've been, and which world they use as a home port."

  "Clever," Zannah admitted. "But what use is that?"

  "This is where it gets good," he promised, obviously pleased with himself. "I've got an arrangement with a guy on Kessel. Every month he sends me a shipment of glitterstim."

  Glitterstim, or spice, was a powerfully addictive drug banned on most worlds. Doan, however, had no laws against importing it. And nobody at the spaceports to enforce the laws, even if they did exist, Zannah silently noted.

  "I don't sell the spice here," Pommat continued. "Nobody has any money except the nobles. And they won't deal with the lower classes. But I've got contacts at the spaceports on a bunch of other worlds here on the Outer Rim.

  "So let's say I slice into a ship's nav computer and I find out it's from Aralia. I reach out to my contact on that world, and I see if he wants me to send him a shipment. After we work out a price, I sneak onto the vessel while the owner's not around and I hide a stash of spice somewhere on board.

  "I tell my contact where I hid it, give him the ship's registration, and he tells one of his buddies at the spaceport to let him know when it returns to Aralia. Then he waits until the coast is clear, sneaks on board, takes the stash, and transfers the credits into my account back here on Doan. The owner never has a clue!"

  "Spice smuggling is a capital offense on Aralia," Zannah remarked.

  "That's the best part. If the customs officials ever decide to search one of these ships, the owner goes down for the crime, not us. It's foolproof!"

  The whole operation seemed rather petty and ill thought out to Zannah. She wasn't bothered by the fact that Pommat was willing to have innocent people suffer horrible fates just so he could make a handful of credits from time to time. What bothered her were the technical details. The operation had obviously been thrown together out of simple opportunity, but it struck her as inefficient and unreliable. But she wasn't about to ruin the rapport she had established by saying so out loud. "I didn't realize I was dealing with a criminal mastermind," she teased, bringing a cocky grin to Pommat's face. "So when the white-haired man left, you snuck onto his ship and copied everything from his nav computer?"

  "Got it all right here on my datapad," Pommat replied, patting his hip pocket.

  "So you know his name? You know where he's from?"

  "I do:but it's going to cost you."

  Zannah smiled, and tilted her head in acknowledgment. "Of course. Name your price."

  "Go big," the Rodian chimed in. "Remember, Quano get half."

  Pommat shot his friend a disapproving look before stammering out his opening offer. "Uh:four hundred credits?"

  She was in no mood to negotiate. "Deal." From the crestfallen expression on the smuggler's face, she knew he was suddenly wishing he had asked for a lot more.

  Reaching into her cloak, she produced four hundred-credit chips and handed them over to the young man. "Start talking."

  "Ship's registered to someone named Zun Haake," Pommat answered glumly as he flipped two of the chips to Quano and slipped the remaining pair into his pocket.

  "Haake's a Neimoidian name," Zannah pointed out. "The man I'm looking for is human."

  Pommat shrugged. "Maybe the shuttle's stolen."

  "I'm starting to think this information isn't worth what I paid for it."

  "The registered owner might be fake, but the nav data's real," the young man assured her. "That ship came from Nal Hutta."

  "You're certain?"

  "No doubt about it."

  "Just out of curiosity," Zannah asked, "is he carrying a shipment for you?"

  "No," he replied, almost regretfully. "I don't do any business there. The Hutts don't like small-timers cutting in on their action, you know?"

  "Probably a wise decision." Quano barked out a laugh.

  "What about my ship?" she asked, keeping her tone light. "Any hidden surprises on board?"

  "Nah. You're the first ship that ever came here from Ciutric," Pommat replied. "I don't have any contacts back on your world.

  "Unless you're interested in establishing a more long-term relationship?" he added, leering at her.

  Zannah answered by whipping out her lightsaber handle and igniting the red three-quarter-length blades protruding from each end. She moved with the blinding speed of the Force, her first vicious slash severing Pommat's outstretched arm at the elbow and carving a lethal furrow across his chest while the second cleanly removed Quano's head from his body. Both were dead before they even had a chance to register an expression of surprise.

  The deed done, she shut off her weapon, the twin blades disappearing with a low-pitched hum. She didn't kill without reason, but once Pommat revealed that he knew she was from Ciutric she had no choice but to eliminate both him and Quano. The Jedi might still come to investigate Medd's death, and she couldn't risk having them trace the shuttle back to her and Bane's estate. She didn't like loose ends.

  Crouching down, she removed the datapad from Pommat's pocket, along with the credit chips she had given him. Then she did the same with Quano before loading the bodies, along with the dismembered bits, onto a nearby hoversled used to move heavy baggage around the spaceport. If any Jedi did come snooping around she didn't want to leave any signs that someone with a lightsaber had killed the two men.

  Loading the corpses onto her shuttle, she took a last look around to make sure she hadn't left any witnesses behind. Satisfied, she made her way to the cockpit to prepare for liftoff.

  The remains of her victims could be jettisoned into Doan's sun just before she made the jump to hyperspace, leaving behind no physical evidence that could connect her to the world. After that, it was off to Nal Hutta, though whether she was going to eliminate a rival or recruit an apprentice, Zannah couldn't say for sure.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A soft beep from the console alerted Bane that the Triumph was at last approac
hing its final destination.

  The journey to Prakith had taken longer than he had anticipated. Travel into the Deep Core was always dangerous; the densely packed stars and black holes at the galaxy's heart created gravity wells capable of warping the space-time continuum. Under such extreme conditions, hyperspace lanes were unstable, shifting or even collapsing without warning.

  The last known route to Prakith had collapsed nearly five hundred years ago, and nobody had bothered to plot a new one since. This happened frequently with worlds in the Deep Core: if they weren't rich in resources or mineral deposits, the dangers of trying to find new hyperspace lanes simply didn't justify the effort.

  In the centuries since the collapse of the hyperlanes, Prakith had basically been forgotten by the rest of the Republic. Even travel from nearby systems was risky, and Bane expected to find a planet that had stagnated after being cut off from the rest of society. Interplanetary trade was the lifeblood of galactic culture; without it populations dwindled and technology levels tended to regress to varying degrees.

  Prakith's isolation had also allowed the Jedi to effectively purge all mentions of Darth Andeddu and his followers from galactic records, though Prakith itself was still mentioned in a handful of older sources. Bane had compiled all the known sources, including several hopelessly out-of-date navigational charts, in the hope of relocating the lost world.

  It wasn't impossible to travel through unmapped hyperlanes, but it was both slow and dangerous. Bane was forced to plot and replot his course multiple times, making hundreds of small jumps, moving from one star to its nearby neighbors, picking and choosing from a list of potential hyperspace routes generated by the Triumph's state-of-the-art nav computer.

  Despite being the best program credits could buy, the computer was far from foolproof. It operated on probabilities and theoretical assumptions derived from previously reported data and complex astrogational measurements made on the fly. There was no way to predict the stability or inherent safety of a given route until a ship charted it by going through; as a result each stage of the journey had the potential to end in disaster.

  Traveling through uncharted space was more art than science, and Bane relied as much on his instincts as the mathematical calculations of the nav computer. By sticking to shorter jumps he prolonged the journey, but he was able to minimize the risk of the Triumph being torn apart by an unexpected gravity well or being crushed out of existence by a collapsing hyperlane.

  This wasn't the first time he had braved the perils of the Deep Core. Ten years ago he had traveled to the lost world of Tython to reclaim the Holocron of Belia Darzu. The fact that he was now going to Prakith to retrieve another Holocron-this one created by Darth Andeddu-didn't strike him as mere coincidence, however.

  What the ignorant dismissed as chance or random luck was often the work of the Force. Some chose to call it destiny or fate, though these terms were far too simple to convey the subtle yet far-reaching influence it wielded. The Force was alive; it permeated the very fabric of the universe, flowing through every living creature. An energy that touched and influenced all living things, its currents-both light and dark-ebbed and flowed, shaping the patterns of existence.

  Bane had spent a lifetime studying these patterns, and he had come to realize that they could be manipulated and exploited. He had come to understand that as the power of the dark side waned, the talismans created by the ancient Sith tended to become lost. But in time the cycle would turn, and as the power of the dark side waxed full the chance for these lost treasures to be found again would bubble up to the surface. During these windows of opportunity, all that was required was an individual with the wisdom to recognize them and the strength to take action.

  Bane had mastered these talents, yet he was unsure if he could say the same of his apprentice. Zannah was smart and cunning, and her powers in the dark side might be even greater than his own. But did she have the vision to guide the Sith through the invisible tides of history as they rose and fell?

  He wondered how her investigation on Doan was progressing. He had hoped to return to Ciutric before her, but he had underestimated the difficulty of navigating through the Core. By the time he got back, it was likely she would already be there waiting for him. She would realize he had sent her away as a distraction, and she would be expecting betrayal on his return. The confrontation he had been anticipating would finally come to pass.

  The nav console beeped again, and the view outside the cockpit changed from the blinding white field of hyperspace to reveal the Prak system: a small red sun surrounded by five tiny planets. Taking manual control of his vessel, Bane descended on the third-a forbidding world largely covered by active volcanoes, burning lakes of magma, and dark fields of sulfuric ash.

  As he entered the atmosphere, the scanners picked up several small cities scattered across the inhospitable surface. The nearest was several hundred kilometers to the north, but Bane turned his ship in the opposite direction, heading for the vast mountain range that ran east-west along the planet's equator.

  He didn't know whether Andeddu's cult still existed or not, but from the moment he had come out of hyperspace he had been confident their stronghold still survived. He could feel its presence on the surface of the world-a nexus of dark side energy pulsing like a beacon from the heart of the mountains.

  As he drew closer, the ship detected a small settlement on the edge of the range. Surprisingly, an automated landing beacon was emitting a signal on standard channels. That meant there was still an active spaceport, though it was probably used by shuttles traveling from one location on the planet's surface to another, rather than visitors from offworld.

  Bane's theory was confirmed when he brought his shuttle in to touch down at the small landing pad on the edge of the settlement. The only other person on site was an old man sitting in a chair outside a small, dilapidated customs booth. He watched curiously as Bane emerged from the ship, but made no effort to rise.

  "Don't see too many visitors lately," he said as Bane approached. "You from Gallia?"

  From his research, Bane knew that Gallia was one of Prakith's larger cities. The man was assuming he was a native of Prakith; the idea that someone from outside their system would come to visit obviously hadn't even crossed his mind.

  "That's right," Bane said, seeing no reason to complicate the situation by revealing the truth. "I flew in from Gallia. I'm looking for information on Darth Andeddu's followers."

  The man leaned forward in his chair and spat on the ground. "We don't like to talk about them." He fixed Bane with a suspicious stare, spat again, then sat back in his chair and crossed his arms defiantly. "I got nothing else to say to you. Go back to Gallia. You aren't welcome here."

  Bane could have pressed the issue, but he saw no benefit in intimidating or torturing an insignificant, irritable old man. Instead, he turned away and began walking in the direction of the buildings on the horizon. He was confident that someone there would be willing to tell him what he wanted to know.

  * * *

  A few hours later Bane was back in his shuttle, armed with the information he needed. Despite the old man's declaration, he'd found people were only too eager to share what they knew about the strange, insular cult deep in the neighboring mountains.

  It was clear that Andeddu's followers were still active; occasionally some of them even came into the small town in need of supplies. It was also clear that the people in the mountain village regarded their mysterious neighbors with a combination of fear and loathing. Estimates of their numbers ranged from a few dozen to more than a thousand, though Bane suspected the truth was somewhere closer to the low end. Beyond that, everything else fell under the headings of wild speculation or illogical superstition.