Chapter 28 – Forms of Armor
Nomad Sentry, Renigh
Kalat Arm
Unknown Regions
1 BBY
"Okay Drado," Kamick told the Kyuzo. "Punch it, it's now or never."
The warrior gunned the engines, and the battered little pinnace rocketed upward, accelerating at full throttle.
So this is it, Kamick thought. Take the frigate, or die trying. He'd gotten a comlink burst only minutes past from Ji. Her battle was about to begin. So it's all going to happen at once. Somehow that didn't surprise him, it seemed like it was inevitable.
"I cannot believe this!" the duel knight Nicole whooped, her stern and stone-faced demeanor shattered by the thrill of flight. "It is unbelievable!"
"It would be better if we weren't rattling so much," Drado cursed dryly in Huttese.
Kamick couldn't help but agree, but he didn't say anything, let the nighten have their moment, there wasn't likely to be another one.
"Just keep your weapons ready," Kamick told her. "We're going to come in hot."
The atmosphere faded into the blackness of space, and the distant sliver of the frigate emerged.
"Okay Drado, it's all you, get us on board." Kamick gave one last urging, though the warrior needed no encouragement.
Eyes narrowed and focused, the Kyuzo's hands rested lightly on the controls, waiting for the Empire to make a move.
The turbolaser fire started at maximum range.
"Hold on," The deputy told the knights, as they awed at the incredible firepower of starship weapons.
Drado slewed the ship down and right, then back up again, a complex crisscross pattern to avoid the mighty batteries.
It gets worse, Kamick knew, the frigate had point defense lasers and tractor beams to use once they closed.
Nomad Sentry spun about like a top, a crazed and mad target, dodging flailing tractor operators who tried to grab the ship in place so it could be pounded to pieces. The Kyuzo's green hands dashed over the console, redistributing power, strengthening the shields as the point defense guns started to batter the little vessel.
"Hangar bay in sight!" Kamick pointed out their objective.
Drado grunted, working furiously.
They blasted towards it.
We're coming in awfully fast, Kamick thought. It doesn't do us any good to make it if we smash flat against the back wall.
At the last moment Drado swung the ship on its axis, and blasted the engines at a full power burst, slowing the vessel and blowing through the security field at the same time.
Nomad Sentry's engines gave everything they had, then sputtered and died.
Still too fast! "Brace yourselves!" Kamick shouted, grabbing hold of the seat with all his strength.
They struck, bounced, skidded, bounced again, went into a flat spin, and then slammed against the side of the hangar.
Kamick felt ridiculously dizzy; one of the shade knights vomited all over the mangled deck. The other clapped him on the back weakly.
"Everyone still breathing?" The deputy queried, shaking his head to clear the stars.
"For now," Drado answered grimly. The Kyuzo obviously liked their odds no better than the deputy.
"Then let's move," Kamick told the others. "They'll be coming."
The hatch was bent and warped, failing to open automatically, so he and Nicole kicked it open, crawling out into the darkened hangar bay, alarms blaring all around them.
Two crewmen, armed with blaster pistols, came running.
Kamick rolled away from the knight, firing as he went. One man fell, the other took a dagger to the throat.
"Nice," The deputy complemented the shade knight. Drado emerged next, the Kyuzo squeezing his tall body through the gap and immediately moving to secure the hangar door.
The deputy looked at one of the bodies. Techs, he realized, not soldiers. They are all on the planet, we've got a real chance at this. He grabbed a datapad from the dead man's coveralls. "Come on," He muttered. "Give me a layout, just one rutting image."
He brought up a maintenance schematic of the ship. There was a huge area in the center of the vessel blotted out. That's it, Kamick knew. The labs have got to be that. "Okay, let's move, this way!" he picked one of the halls and led them down, Drado at his side.
They ran down the halls, briefly unblocked, but security partitions slammed shut in front of them. "Damn!" Kamick had been afraid of this. He looked at the maintenance diagram again. "Okay, two corridors over is the emergency fire route, if we can punch in an alarm, all the doors should open."
It was an obvious move, and the imperials were not droids. Their commander positioned them accordingly. A squad of men rounded on the hall blocking their passage.
The first two jumped behind cover, firing rapidly.
Kamick reached into the Force, grabbing one man, hauling him into the open.
He took a fatal bowshot to the face.
Nicole slid past him, skidding on the smooth deck plating, coming in under the fire then twisting upright at the last moment to slice the man's throat open.
This gave Drado time to charge, hat leading, into the enemy formation. The Kyuzo jumped up, running on the wall, spraying one side, then leaping across the corridor to strike down the other. Six men fell in as many seconds.
Ji, I owe you one big time for letting him come along, the deputy breathed. He raced forward, looking for a fire control panel. Two ways to start an alarm, trigger the console, or start a fire. The imperial system was locked down, no time to override it. "Well, do it the hard way then!" He motioned for one of the shade knights to help him, grabbed a fallen imperial, and dragged the body over to the sensor. I'm going to hate myself in the morning for this, Kamick knew, and I should. He fired repeatedly into the body, until the energy bled over, and the man's clothes caught fire.
The blaring of the security alarms was joined by a high screaming warble as the fire alarms went off.
"Go! Go!" Kamick motioned, letting Drado lead the way.
They charged down the narrow hall, passing several secured turn-offs. Got to reach the emergency turbolift shaft. It's not far.
There was a flicker of warning from the Force. "Ambush!" Kamick blurted, though he saw nothing.
A pair of door opened on each side of the hallway, each concealing an armed Imperial.
There was a shade knight in the middle. The nighten reacted quickly, spinning and burying his fighting daggers in the nearest man. The other shot him in the back in the same moment Nicole pierced his neck with her blade.
"Rut!" Kamick cursed, there was no saving the warrior, it had blown clean through the armor in an instantly lethal hit.
"Mourn later," Nicole whispered. "More are coming."
"Right, let's go," He agreed. They'll be waiting at the turbolift, he knew.
And they were.
At least a dozen navy personnel, under the leadership of a lieutenant, stood behind hastily stacked crates. They opened fire the moment they had a shot.
Kamick ducked behind his shield, and everyone scattered in the brief clearing.
"Concentrate fire!" The lieutenant screamed his orders, firing his blaster pistol ruthlessly even when the man next to him took an arrow in the eye.
Kamick dropped to one knee, letting the Force guide his arm. There was no time to think about anything but shooting. Target, fire, and again. One man in the chest, the next in the head, then through the blaster.
Drado stood tall, running to the side heedless of enemy fire. The Kyuzo hurled his hat, bouncing it off the ceiling to throw three imperials sprawling. The shade knight was somehow there in the next moment, knives descending, ending the lives of three enemies.
"Resistance dogs!" The lieutenant shot the knight again and again.
The archer took a graze to the left leg, stumbling, but Kamick grabbed him with the Force, pulling him from the line of fire.
Drado surmounted the crates then, and knives rained from his hands, dropping the remaining Imperials to the ground. Nicole struck from the other side, slicing the lieutenant open and then piercing him through the breast.
"Are you all right?" Kamick demanded of their archer.
"I cannot stand," The man shook his head. "I will hold them here, give me one of their weapons."
No, I will not do this, the deputy refused to even contemplate it, and stood in silence while the knight looked at him pleadingly.
"It must be," Nicole put a gauntlet-covered hand on his arm. Her veteran's face was stern and uncompromising. "We cannot stop here."
Drado placed one of the E-11's in the archers hands. The Kyuzo quickly added a fresh power pack and disabled the safety. "Pull here," He mimed pulling the trigger. The warrior easily picked up the armored knight and lifted him to behind the boxes.
"Let's move," Kamick couldn't look back.
Drado fired his grapple onto a loading spar, then jumped down into the darkness of the turbolift column.
Once he heard the Kyuzo hit, the deputy and Nicole grasped the rope and slid down after him.
"Lab access should be beyond the partitions there," They had less than twenty meters of intersection to cross.
Footsteps rang out.
"Attack!" Nicole shouted, and they charged across.
The first trooper descended from an adjoining turbolift directly into the duel knight's blade. Kamick stuck with Drado, back to back with the Kyuzo as enemies raced to intercept them. He fired from behind his shield, dropping a pair of men as the warrior let into several turbolifts with his repeater, cutting all access off.
"Nicole, get back!" Kamick shouted as a trio of armed scientists, men in lab outfits, not uniforms, emerged when a repusorlift door sluiced open.
The duel knight paid no heed. "Franmare!" She shouted, and charged.
Novices with blasters, the first few shots went wide, and the expert blade sliced with brilliant speed. Two men fell.
Nicole spun, armor shining, throwing droplets of blood through the air, golden and deadly.
Her sword ripped the last man's stomach open.
Holding his belly in, the tech managed a wild shot. It missed, but the ricochet struck the knight in the back of the skull.
Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she clattered down to the deck plating.
"No!" Kamick shouted, blasting a final armed navy crewman with two quick shots. The whole team the Duke had sent, destroyed so quickly.
"Advance," Drado hissed from his side. "There is nothing else."
So they did, entering the laboratory of Arcane Lash.
This is an abattoir, Kamick's mind reeled from what he saw.
Tanks and tables, filled with nighten, all ripped apart by surgical instruments, consumed by the brutal demands of whatever cruelty had happened here. All to discover the secrets of their armor, he knew, so they could graft it onto those monsters Irina destroyed. What kind of sickening mind could even dream of such things?
The floor was stained with blood, and the metallic smell of iron filled the air.
Terrified technicians huddled here and there behind tables or cabinets, pleading to be spared.
Whatever they had done, Kamick was not going to raise his weapon against unarmed and non-resisting opponents, it went against everything he'd been trained to do.
Drado was not so discriminating. "This knowledge must be purged," The Kyuzo whispered as he conducted a precision campaign.
Kamick thought to tell the Kyuzo to stop, but simply could not find the words.
They advanced through the labs, there was no pursuit, perhaps the rest of the crew was occupied with essential duties, or it was simply taking time to gather a suitable kill squad. Kamick took heart in that. "We've got to find the files, the data in the central archive." While Drado had struck at living targets, he had blown apart terminals, datapads, stacks of datacards, even piles of flimsy, anything he thought would contain the secrets, but the deputy was sure that just like on Kratovas there was a central link.
We haven't found the black heart of this yet, he could feel it. There was something deeper, and it was waiting for them.
They came to the end of the lab, a doorway labeled 'Testing Chamber.'
This is it, Kamick thought for certain.
The door was sealed, but the key pad was relatively simple, designed to stop snooping maintenance droids and curious techs, not armed incursions. "I think I can hotwire it," The deputy offered. "Stand ready to blow through anything when it opens."
Drado nodded, and took up position with his repeating blaster at the ready.
Kamick ripped the panel off and switched the wires about. The door shuddered. Close, he tried another combination, keeping his blaster ready. There was no telling what awaited them, but it wasn't good.
The door flew open.
Drado growled, and Kamick turned to see the Kyuzo warrior's hand go to the trigger.
Faster than he could follow an arm shot out, smashing straight into the warrior's chest, hurling him back to slam into a cabinet with impossible force.
The Kyuzo warrior gave a single groan and slid to the floor, unconscious.
"Drado!" Kamick turned to his fallen ally, then felt the threat on his left.
He spun back, raising his shield and blaster in tandem, only to have them ripped from his arms.
"Really?" A voice filled the room with cold amusement.
Kamick's eyes focused upon a nightmarish horror.
It had a basic humanoid shape, but that was all it possessed. There were solid white-gray eyes, and a slim body that was a compact fusion of powerful muscle. The body was sheathed in shimmering black, moving to match every flex and contortion of skin and bone perfectly. The hands ended in narrow claws, sickeningly sharp.
At first the deputy though he was facing one of the myrmidon monstrosities Irina had defeated on Renigh, but this creature was different. It was clearly a man, not those androgynous beasts and the eyes held not a feral cruelty, but a dark, brilliant malevolence. Where those creatures had possessed a raw, pained aura filled with darkness, this thing was a black pulsar, giving off dark energy in precise, terrifying waves.
"A handful of primitives, a miserable alien, and one deluded human are all you though it would take to stop me?" Kamick watched as this man, for he felt an odd echo of humanity from it, though it had long forsaken everything he would consider properly human, took his blaster in one hand. He made a fist and crushed it to shattered parts as the deputy watched. Then he grabbed the shield at each end and pulled.
Horror building in him Kamick watched as the heavy reinforced plastoid armor was pulled apart before his eyes. "Clearly you are delusional fools," The man said in his dark voice.
Kamick burned at being mocked so. He reached out with the Force, grabbing Drado's hat and hurling it like a discblade with all his strength.
It smashed into the shining black coating and shattered, the much scarred plating buckled and spraying in all directions.
The twisted man's head did not shift even an inch.
"The armor..." Kamick felt a sickening blot in his stomach, horror, fear, and worse mixed together.
"Oh?" This appeared to amuse the man. "You managed to figure out what I was working on? How ingenious, you resistance people are smarter than I thought, no wonder you've managed to cause the Empire so much trouble." He shrugged, a casual motion that did not fit the compact power of the form. "Well no matter, nothing can alter the course at this stage."
"Who, what, are you?" Kamick struggled for some point of focus in the chaotic storm of emotion enveloping him.
"I am Doctor Livius Entrene," He said pompously, speaking for history, not Kamick's benefit. "You are standing before my completed vision, the ideal human specimen combined with invincible armor. A warrior without peer and unbeatable!"
"Nothing is invincible!" Kamick retorted. "We destroyed all the others!"
"Fool, those were the stage one designs," Entrene scoffed, clearly amused. "Useful as a development platform, but ultimately simply a stepping stone. The project is now complete, you are looking upon the final stage!" He proclaimed.
"You performed the experiment on yourself?" What madness was that?
"Of course, you whimpering idiot, I had to be sure I was prepared to control subsequent iterations," Entrene explained as if this should have been obvious. "Also, it is quite clear that many even within the Empire will oppose the realization of my perfect army. Taking steps to protect myself was clearly a necessary precaution, as you yourself evidence."
This is the man behind it all, Kamick understood then. It was his genius that put the pieces together, that solved the puzzle Cyc had proclaimed all but impossible to accomplish. The armor of the ancient desga, and the combined potency of dozens of races of their descendent progeny had been combined into a single, devastatingly powerful form. I have to destroy him, otherwise, even if all the records were erased, all data removed, he could recreate the process elsewhere. The Empire has the resources to churn out millions of these supreme warriors.
But how can I, he's invincible? He had no idea. Can the Force destroy him? Yes, it could, if only I could do what Irina did. She had channeled absolute zero, peeled back the laws of physics, that could shatter even this man. Kamick focused, trying to feel the power of the Force, to feel the movement of the cells, and to make everything stop.
All it left him was gasping for breath, sweat pouring off his brow.
"You are attempting something," Entrene noted, looking at him curiously. "Despite the impossibility of you accomplishing anything, it would be unwise to leave a loose end."
He raised a black-coated arm.
This is it, Kamick knew. The end of it all. He could see it in his mind's eye, the invincible legions marching across world after world, soulless, emotionless, killing machines worse than the droids of the Clone Wars, twisting everything they found into ideal and unresisting servants of the Empire. Doom, and because I'm too weak to stop it. My failure again.
Something inside dismissed that. No! The power is there! His armor's only on the outside, the Force can ignore that. I could reach out right now, Kamick recognized, and stop his heart. Crush it down to nothing, even reinforced as it is. That would put an end to this, and the Empire's plans for a perfect legion.
He reached out, raising his hand even as Entrene lower his, and prepared to end the life of this scientist, there was no way the man could stop it.
No armor could stop it.
Kamick's head bent down, and he saw a scrap of color there, bright, shining red, not the cold red of blood.
A piece of Chloe's scarf.
He looked up then, and saw his hand crush not Entrene's heart, but hers.
Armor is more than metal and plastoid, a voice in his head seemed to say, a wise and recognizable voice he'd yearned to hear. Shatter it, and you destroy more than just the covering.
Kamick lowered his hand, redirecting his focus, lurching back just in time to avoid Entrene's counterstroke.
The Dark Side.
He could still feel the desire to kill the scientist, to murder him. I have the best of reasons! He could save he galaxy!
And doom it, the cool, steady voice reminded him.
His mind raced down that path, and he saw it. Killing Entrene, but not destroying the research, taking it, giving it to the Discblade Alliance, after all they had paid such a heavy price for it. He would set safeguards, checks and balances, all sorts of things, but it would be given into the hands of people, and people are imperfect. In the end, the knowledge would cover the galaxy with competing perfect armies, tearing at each other and unable to die.
"I pledged to keep the outback safe," Kamick rose to his feet, ignoring the puzzled look on the doctor's face. "To keep it safe, that was part of the oath, and the worst crime a cop can commit, is to become a danger to those he serves."
"A cop?" Entrene laughed. "A member of the resistance dares to think he serves the law?"
"Law is not just what the emperor decrees!" Kamick shot back, remembering for the first time since being captured by the slavers just why he had decided to swear that oath. My parents worked hard for years, but without law, it could all be snatched away in an instant. The galaxy is full of monsters, and some has to stand between them and the people. "There are some laws that are given to us all, fundamentals belonging to everyone that can never be taken away!" The Force is part of it, he realized. The Force stands for everyone, for life itself, and the right of life to continue even when the universe tries to snuff it out.
"Enough prattling!" Entrene snapped. "I've wasted far too much time with you already."
The doctor launched himself at Kamick.
The deputy drew on the Force and jumped back, but barely in time.
"Ah, I see, you can use what they call the Force," The scientist concluded, rubbing his chin with one hand. "That is interesting, it makes for a suitable test. I assure you, my full strength and speed have not yet been reached."
I can't dodge again, Kamick realized. I need a weapon, something to stop him!
Entrene sprang carbonite-covered legs launching him with impossible power.
Kamick reached into the Force, letting his intuition take its course.
The shattered bodies of nighten lay all about the lab, not simply flesh and bone, but their armor as well.
Dozens of pieces gathered in Kamick's sweep, the steel darting through the air, flowing together, shifting linking, adjusting, wrapping about his arm in a solid rectangle.
A shield.
Kamick stepped into the attack, crouching down, blocking both hands, then lifting, snapping his left arm upward.
The doctor was thrown over his head, tumbling and crashing through the medical equipment.
"I am a Sheriff's Deputy and Zeison Sha! The Shield of the People!"
Without any input on Kamick's part a small scrap of metal shifted over to slide against his left breast. It held the shape of a badge, a shield, imprinted with a tiny rendering of a discblade.
Now you are ready, he heard Irina's voice clearly this time. Stand forth warrior, the hour is dark, and you are needed.
"A shield," Entrene rose to his feet unmarked. "How quaint, but whatever your tricks, you still have no weapon!" Arms out, carbonite nails like deadly claws, he charged.
Kamick blocked, spinning round, but Entrene planted his feet, sweeping wildly, forcing the Zeison Sha back.
"My shield is my weapon!" Kamcik threw out his arm.
Jagged shards of armor separated, an unleashed storm of improvised blades whirling around the doctor, slamming him again and again. He fell to the plating behind a pile of bodies.
Kamick pulled the shield back, even as he heard Entrene laughing.
"You fool!" the doctor cackled madly. "Your strikes do nothing but channel energy and make me more powerful! You cannot penetrate my armor."
"The Force can!" Kamick shot back, disguising his worry. He felt the Force all around him, clearer than ever before, but could he defeat Entrene? I have no choice but to try. "You are guilty of crimes so heinous they have no name, and I'm taking you down!" He advanced, stride quickening with each step.
"Try it fool, we'll see if the Force still has anything left," Entrene launched his augmented body right back.
They met it midair, claws against shield. Kamick kicked out, throwing Entrene to the plating, sending the strength of the Force along with the blow.
The man's internals were reinforced almost as much as the outside, he bounced back, and launched a flying back kick that hit Kamick in the side.
Thrown down, the deputy barely managed to rise in time before the monster was on him, claws everywhere.
The left hand came in too fast, ripping a burning gouge down Kamick's chest.
He burst the shield apart again, throwing the monster off, but it bought only a moment.
Punch, kick, counter, rip and tear, they clashed, Entrene growing poised and gleeful, more powerful by the minute, Kamick accumulating bleeding scratches.
He's going to bleed me dry! There's no way to stop him! He felt a moment of despair. The armor really was invincible.
No, Kamick shook his head. That's not right! I've seen it beaten, by the Empire itself!
Get it hot enough and it melts, he recalled Cyc had said those words. Sustained heat, that was the way. But how?
Entrene drove Kamick back, out of the lab and into the testing chamber, atop equipment clearly used for the transformation. It hummed and throbbed, great machines with massive amounts of electrical power.
The deputy flipped over the doctor, placing is back to the lab and earning a jagged laceration across his shoulder as a result. I can barely feel my left arm, I've got hardly anything left. How can I melt his armor.
Temperature is energy, Irina had said when she made ice.
That's right, cold is an illusion, its only the absence of heat. Heat is motion, a lot of motion. He looked at Entrene's machines.
Temperature is motion, motion is energy, and the Force can move energy.
He knew what he had to do, he just needed time.
Time I don't have.
Entrene was about to rip him apart.
He's too fast, too strong, I'll never get the chance. How do you beat the ultimate warrior?
Deception.
It had been Drado's advice, and there was no better warrior. Only now, when all the strength the Force could give him was not enough, did he realize what it meant.
"Stop!" The deputy shouted at Entrene. "Take one step forward and I'll destroy your machines."
The doctor stopped in mid-step. "And how would you do that?" He projected flippancy, but there was real concern.
"I'll rip out the capacitors with the Force, triggering an overload," It was garble, Kamick's focus wasn't on that, he wasn't even looking at Entrene. He was looking up, to the fusion engines powering the chamber, and watching the lights slowly dim. "Then I'll snap your carbonite containment, flood the whole lab with molten metal."
"You'll never get the chance before I take your head from your shoulders," Entrene hissed, but he sounded worried.
"Want to risk it?" Kamick taunted.
Entrene, whatever his madness, was a smart man. He was quick to sense the stall. "Yes, I can always rebuild the machines!" His muscles gathered power and he sprang with twice the speed and strength as before, impossible to block.
Except he didn't.
Kamick wasn't sure how he was doing it, he was mimicking a process he did not understand, a technique developed by engineers twenty millenniums before he was born, but he could feel the heat, the incredible energy gathering in him like the heart of a star. He was frozen in place, everything slowed to a crawl, all his focus demanded on this one singular, unique act, guided by the focus on the Force.
Entrene seemed to advance in slow motion, coming ever so close.
As he did Kamick's left arm moved, the shield settled in front of those outreached claws, absorbing the power of their assault.
"Do you know how the Nighten get rid of plague?" He asked the suddenly wide-eyed scientist. "They cleanse it with flame!"
Kamick slammed the shield to the deck. Energy poured out of him, a massive, tremendous gout of fire, expanding in a terrible fireball to sweep over Entrene and all his machines, his research, it ate through the hull below, blasting a circular crater in the side of the frigate.
There was nothing but a puddle of black to mark the fallen scientist.
Falling to the ground, weak and unable to even stand, the deputy realized he was looking out into open space, and felt the wind of decompression begin to tug at him.
A slow slid into the frozen void? He thought wryly. Fair enough, if that's what comes next, I guess it's the consequence of going so far.
He felt his vision dim a little from the combination of blood loss and declining oxygen levels.
Kind of an embarrassing way to go, Kamick thought. I'd have rather gone up in flames.
Shame I won't get to see Chloe again, sorry about that Ji. It was a regret, and it hurt, but even clawing at the deck plating with his fingers proved impossible, his body would not obey.
A green hand closed on his left bicep.
Kamick felt his body be lifted upright, and hauled like a tiny child back out into the lab, the door slammed shut behind them, rendering the danger of decompression distant. Then he was being sprayed with bandage, the sting of antiseptic made him cringe. "Drado?" The deputy was unsurprised to discover his voice was nothing more than a weak rasp. "You're alive? You saved me?"
"You broke my hat," the Kyuzo said in gruff Huttese. "Can't have you die until you find me a new one."
Kamick laughed, until it was broken up by pain.
"Time to go," Drado added when finished with emergency first aid. "Lingered here too long."
The Kyuzo slung him over one shoulder, so that if he bent his head he could see forward. They walked slowly back out of the labs. Kamick could tell Drado was hurt himself, fractured ribs he guessed from the warrior's wheezing, and perhaps other injuries. Can we find a shuttle like this? It seemed foolish, after what had just happened, to be afflicted with such mundane concerns, but they were very real.
So was the imperial officer who waited at the turbolift shaft. He had a pistol drawn at his hip, but projected no direct hostility. His uniform bore the three blue and red rectangles of a captain of the navy. This is the ship's commander, Kamick knew immediately. Where are his men?
"Stop," The man ordered, gesturing with his blaster pistol.
"Who are you?" The deputy demanded, suspecting that if this man had intended to shoot he would have done so immediately.
"Captain Temel Ruskar, Imperial Navy, and commanding officer of the Arcane Lash," The man said it with pained pride. "And you sir, have ruined my ship."
"It had to be done," Kamick wasn't about to apologize. "If you're going to start shooting, get on with it, Drado and I are rather tired."
"It had to be done," Captain Ruskar was a middle-aged man, and somehow he seemed wearier than Kamick himself was, as odd as that would be. "Yes, it did, it was necessary. Dr. Entrene's madness would have brought nothing but destruction and corruption. It was a mad dream, a dream unfit for the Empire."
Kamick didn't interrupt. He had a feeling this man intended to have his say, and there might be shooting otherwise.
"For destroying Entrene I owe you a debt," His eyes clouded, and he looked past them, to some space far distant, perhaps beyond the galaxy itself. "It should never have gotten this far. I could have stopped it long ago, and spared all the suffering the taint on the Empire's name, but I was not strong enough, I feared for my life, a foolish thing, and my career, a pathetic thing, so I went along with it. That is done with now, I have blocked Entrene's attempts to transmit his competed research data to Imperial center and erased all copies from the system." Kamick felt a great sense of relief, he had not even considered that possibility. This man had done an immense good. "But I will finish this with all debts clear."
There was a premonition of sadness, but strangely no regret behind those words. "What do you intend to do?"
"You have damaged my ship considerably," Captain Ruskar explained. "She is now trapped in the system and there are no men to repair her. Even if I kill you now, there are surely resistance members en route. They will try to take the ship. I will not allow that. Whatever perversions she was put through, this is a good ship, and she will not be turned against the Empire." The captain paused. He took a deep, slow breath before continuing. "My remaining men have been ordered to take escape pods and abandon ship. A single shuttle remains in the cargo hangar. As a discharge of my debt to you, and in return for the promise that all surviving Imperial personnel in this system will be given safe passage to Imperial hands I will allow you to take it."
"And if we refuse?"
"I will kill you here and now, and then I will set the turbolasers to auto-fire at random targets on the planet below for so long as power remains," He said solemnly.
"Then I guess we don't have much of a choice but to accept," Kamick admitted. He bet even if they somehow killed the captain he had programmed the ship's computer to carry out the threat automatically. "But what will you do after we leave? If the ship can't leave the system, what is to stop us from coming back and taking it?"
"The Arcane Lash will not serve any resistance against the Empire," Captain Ruskar said sternly. "Ultimately, we must triumph here. I suspect you can figure out the particulars. Now, get...off...my ship."
It was a long walk to the shuttle, one of the standard Lambda models. The vessel stank of fear and suffering, for it had been used to haul nighten from the surface, but it powered up cleanly under Drado's command and launched easily.
Kamick brought a rear monitor view as they left. As they began atmospheric re-entry, the Arcane Lash blew apart.
"So passes an honorable warrior," Drado whispered as they watched the results of the self-destruct. "A pity the Emperor has coerced so many to serve him."
The Zeison Sha could only agree, and rest quietly on the slow descent to the surface.
Chapter Notes
