Delusions of Grandeur Page 5

  out at the center of a star or at the edge of a black hole. I could be

  responsible for killing all of them."

  Lusa's body went rigid, and she shuddered at the memory. "I had never

  stopped to think exactly what I was willing to do for the cause I

  believed in. Was I willing to kill? And if so, what must the victim's

  crime be to deserve that death? Should I judge each one, or could I

  trust my leader to judge them for me?" She shuddered again and tossed

  her mane of glossy cinnamon curls. Her crystal horns glinted in the

  light.

  "I couldn't go through with it. I stopped the geologists and told them

  what I had done. I planned to surrender myself to the proper

  authorities. I was shocked when, instead of hating me, they were

  grateful. After their navicomputer was repaired, the geologists offered

  to take me anywhere I needed to go. I went with them to Coruscant. I

  was afraid to contact the Chief of State of the New Republic--or

  you--directly, but I recalled that Master Skywalker had suggested that I

  consider studying at the Jedi

  academy someday. I sent him an urgent message, and he came to Coruscant

  to get me." Lusa fell silent.

  Luke Skywalker nodded. "I think Yavin 4 will be a good place for you to

  recover and to get a sense of perspective, to let your mind heal."

  "You are welcome among us," Tenel Ka said.

  Jaina reached out to touch her friend's arm. "I'm glad you remembered

  we're your friends, Lusa," she said. "I'm happy you're here."

  Raynar said in a bemused voice, "I never knew anyone could hate us so

  much . . . just because we're humans."

  Jaina bit her lower lip. A memory tickled at the edges of her mind and

  she asked, "This group that you were a part of, Lusa--did it have a

  name?"

  The Centaur girl sighed. "A silly, idealistic name.

  One that sounds like it includes everyone. But that would be a false

  assumption." She shook her mane.

  "We called ourselves the Diversity Alliance."

  Jacen yelped. "Hey, Lowie's friend Raaba is part of the Diversity

  Alliance."

  Luke Skywalker looked at them in alarm.

  Jaina swallowed hard. "And Lowie left here with her. Alone."

  ZEKK BROUGHT THE Lightning Rod down through the atmosphere, confident

  that no one would disturb him . . . at least not here. This planet

  was the farthest place from anywhere he could possibly find.

  The charts called the bleak world Ziost. Glaciers covered much of what

  had once been a towering outpost of the fallen Sith Empire, so that only

  a few broken turrets still protruded from the landscape of ice. Frozen

  tundra crackled blue under the shimmering auroras dancing above in the

  sky.

  Ziost was too inhospitable to harbor any sort of colony and the Sith

  ruins too decayed to shelter pirates or other refugees who might seek to

  hide from the scrutiny of authorities.

  It was, however, a good place for Zekk to do his work, undisturbed and

  alone. Without risk of detection.

  The disguised man on Borgo Prime--whom Zekk was certain must be Boman

  Thul himself--had commissioned him to transmit a coded message to the

  Bornaryn merchant fleet. In the wake of Thul's disappearance and the

  kidnapping of his brother Tyko, the fleet had gone into hiding and now

  hopped at random through hyperspace to keep from being found.

  Zekk had to communicate with them somehow.

  His bounty depended on it. "Master Wary" had offered suggestions,

  places from which he might attempt to send his message--and Zekk

  intended to try them all. He would not give up easily.

  The Lightning Rod headed toward a broad shelf of ice under a twilit sky.

  Fissures ran across the frozen plain, and slushy water burst through the

  cracks, propelled by tidal pressure. Trusting his instincts, Zekk found

  a safe place to land and shut down all systems: he would leave no bright

  sensor traces for spying eyes, however unlikely their presence might be.

  Working in silence, he rigged up his transmitter, fed in power from the

  engines to give his signal a spectacular boost--and began sending Boman

  Thul's message.

  Zekk wasn't sure what the coded burst said, but now he could hazard a

  guess: Thul would most likely explain his disappearance, announce that

  he was still alive, or perhaps estimate when he expected to come home.

  He first sent the signal to the Bornaryn headquarters on Coruscant, on

  the chance that Aryn Dro Thul might check in for urgent news. It only

  made sense that she would have made arrangements to learn if her missing

  husband reappeared.

  Zekk didn't know why the man was so desperately hiding, but Thul was

  obviously frightened. He did understand why Thul might go to Shanko's

  Hive in disguise to hire a bounty hunter--a little known bounty hunter

  like Zekk. Since Thul had such a high price on his own head, he would

  be foolish to send the message himself. Any glory-seeking bounty hunter

  might spot the signal and race to its source fast enough to capture him.

  Being a bounty hunter himself, Zekk was paid to assume such risks.

  Even so, he did not intend to be easy prey for his competitors.

  Everyone in the galaxy seemed to be looking for Bornan Thul--including

  Zekk . . . until he had unwittingly been hired by the very quarry he

  sought. On the other hand, Thul had already set up another meeting with

  him, so perhaps when the time came, Zekk could capture the wanted man

  after all and take the whole bounty. Then he would prove himself a

  bounty hunter to be reckoned with.

  The ethical question was a hindrance, of course.

  Next he sent a duplicate message to other places 'where "Master Wary"

  thought the merchant fleet might pick up transmissions. Zekk couldn't

  be certain exactly how Thul's scheme worked, but the merchant might well

  have made plans for such a contingency. Their business had boomed, and

  successful traders always lived with the threat of being held for

  ransom.

  Leaning back in his creaking cockpit seat, Zekk transmitted the message

  to a fourth and final set of coordinates. He had fulfilled his

  obligation, everything "Master Wary" had asked him to do. Time to go.

  As he reached forward to power up the Lightning Rod, he felt suddenly

  uneasy in the cockpit. Were his rarely used Jedi senses sending him a

  warning?

  Or was his imagination just running away with him?

  He decided to leave Ziost as quickly as the battered old ship could

  carry him. Repulsodifts blasted, melting a crater into the plain of

  ice. Zekk let the ship hover as he contemplated his course.

  Next, he would begin his search for the abducted brother, Tyko Thul.

  The ship's rear sensors sounded an alarm. Zekk's hand flew over the

  control panels and spotted another ship fast approaching--a souped-up

  hunting craft made from new and old components pieced together.

  The intruder soared out of hyperspace without

  slowing, barreling directly toward the Lightning Rod. A warning tingle

  along Zekk's spine supplemented the flashing red lights on the control

  panels.

  The newcomer had al
ready powered up his weapons systems--and Zekk was in

  his sights.

  A gruff, phlegmy voice came over the comm system. "I have my targeting

  computer locked in on you, Boman Thul. Surrender--or I'll simply

  destroy your ship and take your remains for the bounty."

  The Lightning Rod protested as Zekk flew a rapid evasive maneuver.

  He shouted into the voice transmitter.

  "Wait, who is this? I'm not Thul, I'm a bounty hunter, just like you

  are! My name is Zekk!"

  After a pause, the bounty hunter's voice came over the speakers again.

  "Never heard of you, Zekk . . . but you've no doubt heard of me. I

  am Dengar. Now surrender your ship. I must interrogate you regarding

  Bornan Thul."

  Zekk streaked across the glacial plain, pushing the Lightning Rod's

  engines to greater speed. He certainly knew of Dengar, one of the most

  fearsome hunters in the galaxy.

  Shadowy circles surrounded deep-set eyes on Dengar's pasty face, giving

  him a skull-like visage.

  His head was wrapped in bandages to cover the scars and perpetually

  seeping wounds from a hideous injury long ago. Once a crack flier in a

  swoop gang, he had suffered a severe accident caused by a

  young Han Solo, and later his brain had been cybernetically enhanced by

  the Empire. Dengar was also one of the elite hunters Darth Vader had

  hired to track down the Millennium Falcon after the battle of Hoth.

  This was indeed a man Zekk did not want to cross--but neither did he

  want to surrender for a long and intense conversation with the bounty

  hunter.

  "I can't tell you anything about Bornan Thul," Zelc, said, still flying

  at breakneck speed. "By the Creed you can't fire on another bounty

  hunter unless I am obstructing your own target."

  Dengar replied, "I interpret your resistance as such an obstruction. You

  transmitted a coded communication for the Bornaryn fleet through relays

  to known rendezvous points. I planted numerous drone buoys to intercept

  any suspicious signals, then waited. You triggered my alarms;

  therefore, I intend to seize your data banks and study them for myself."

  Any other person might have laughed, but Dengar simply let the pregnant

  silence extend for several seconds. At last he said, "I will have that

  information, whether you give it willingly--or force me to rip it from

  you."

  Without waiting for a reply, the veteran bounty hunter fired a pulsed

  ion cannon, a disrupter that

  was as high-powered as it was illegal to own. Zekk had not imagined the

  device could be made with such devastating output.

  The ion blast brought down all of Zekk's shields.

  Luckily, the Lightning Rod's life-support and engine systems ran off of

  a separate protected power array and survived. The Lightning Rod was

  now defenseless, however. One more shot would cripple it completely.

  Zekk swerved upward from the base of a sheer cliff of ice that bristled

  with rock outcroppings.

  Dengar's ship howled close behind, demonstrating the bounty hunter's

  cybernetic reflexes. Zekk leveled off at the top of another frozen

  plateau and streaked along, low to the ground.

  Dengar launched a small concussion grenade, and Zekk braced himself for

  impact, knowing his disabled shields could offer no protection against

  the explosive. The detonation would destroy his rear engines and send

  him to crash and burn on this abandoned ice-age world.

  The grenade struck his starboard hull . . . but no explosion

  followed. He heard only a dull metallic thud, as if a hammer had

  smacked his cruiser. He breathed a huge sigh of relief at this

  incredible stroke of luck--Dengar had fired a dud!

  Master Skywalker at the Jedi academy had said there was no such thing as

  luck or coincidence.

  There was only the Force, which moved in mysterious ways . . . and

  Zekk wondered if he could subconsciously have used a trace of ]edi

  powers to deactivate the explosive.

  Before the bandaged bounty hunter could launch another attack, though,

  Zelck gritted his teeth and threw every possible ounce of his piloting

  skills into getting away. Right then: Dengar fired laser cannons, but

  Zekk intuitively knew what to do, knew how to react. He jinked the

  Lightning Rod to the left, then curved up in a loop, elbowing back to

  the right, zooming in a serperitin maneuver that neatly avoided the

  bounty hunter's pattern of strikes.

  Zekk felt the fluid instincts move through him, like a Jedi Knight using

  his lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts. The entire ship seemed a part

  of Zekk.

  He dodged and hopped, ducked and swerved, perfectly avoiding the

  rapid-fire attack. Like a Jedi. It simultaneously frightened and

  exhilarated him.

  "You may not have heard of me, Dengar," Zekk said, "but you will.

  One of these days, I'll rival even Boba Fett."

  In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, Dengar roared at him over the

  comm systems.

  The ice-bound plain swept beneath him, reflecting the booms from his

  high-powered engines. Zekk got an inspiration--a desperate idea that

  just might allow him to escape ....

  He powered up his forward laser cannons and

  deployed them in a wide arc, firing low and directly ahead. Using all

  of his weapons without slowing for an instant, Zekk strafed the frozen

  glacier field.

  His superhot lasers bombarded the snow and ice, slicing open a molten

  wound as he flew onward.

  The meltwater flashed into steam that billowed up in huge evaporating

  clouds and froze again into icy mist crystals. Fog swelled to fill the

  air behind him like an ever-expanding smoke screen. The cloud slammed

  into Dengar's ship, blinding him.

  Zekk pulled the Lightning Rod up, rocketing straight toward the edge of

  the atmosphere. Below, he left the befuddled bounty hunter's ship

  enveloped in condensing steam.

  Knowing he had only a few seconds, he let the Force flow through him and

  punched numbers at random into the navicomputer. He'd have to trust in

  his inordinate "luck" to select a course by chance that wouldn't take

  him through the core of a star or down the gullet of a black hole.

  As soon as he escaped the gravitational pull of the planet, the

  starlines of night elongated to welcome the Lightning Rod as it shot

  forward. The entire planet of Ziost shrank to a tiny pinprick behind

  him as the nothingness of hyperspace swallowed him up.

  Dengar would never know what had hit him or where Zekk had gone.

  ARYN DRO THUL stood on the busy bridge of the flagship Tradewyn, gazing

  out into space. She turned slowly to get the full 360-degree view of

  her fugitive fleet. A simple gown of midnight blue shot with silver

  draped around her like the star-dusted vista of space. Her fingers

  plucked absently at the material of her garment.

  Even surrounded by the entire Bornaryn fleet, .she felt alone.

  Her husband was missing, her brother-in-law kidnapped, her son Raynar

  returned to the Jedi academy.

  The merchant fleet looked to her for guidance and reassurance, but Aryn

  had n
o one to rely on but herself. As the wife of Bornan Thul, she was

  their leader, and she could not let them--or herself--down.

  She would not let them down.

  Aryn forced herself to stop fiddling with her gown. She excused the

  communications Officer

  from his post. Sitting down at the station, she quickly calculated the

  coordinates for sending a routine message to her staff on Coruscant,

  composed a dispatch, and set the message pod's origin memory to scramble

  as soon as it left the Tradewyn.

  Taking care of business details like these kept her busy, kept her mind

  off her own troubles.

  Aryn sent a similar message pod every few days to corporate headquarters

  on Coruscant. The reports were encrypted with a proprietary code, based

  on a complex combination of music, light, and speech, which Aryn and

  Bornan had devised together while they were still students at the

  university on Alder-aan, a long time ago.

  In this way, she managed to communicate with the fleet's administrative

  staff, who also sent out regular messages in encrypted scattershot

  packets, hoping that the fleet would intercept at least some of them. So

  far, Aryn had only obtained the messages numbered two, seven, and

  fifteen. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and