Light of the Jedi(105)

If there was any consolation—and it was small solace indeed—it was that Kronara was absolutely certain, without any doubt, that the Nihil was a threat that needed to come to an end. Now…it had.

Whatever the Nihil were doing here, whatever this group had been…it was over.





Lourna Dee looked at the Jedi’s lightsaber. It was pretty, sort of, but it made her nervous to even hold the blasted thing. It was magic, they said.

I’m holding a magic sword, she thought. What the hell is going on?

“Give it to me,” Marchion Ro said, holding out his hand.

She handed it over, happy to be rid of it. Marchion gave it his own look, then began to tap it against his mask, the eye right in the center.

Tap.

Tap.

“You sure you want to do that?” Lourna said. “I mean, if it turns on…”

“It won’t.”

Tap.

They were in a cargo hold on the Gaze Electric, where Lourna had brought the last Blythe as well as their captured Jedi. She hadn’t caught either of their names. They were both still passed out from the gas, which made sense. She hadn’t wanted to take any chances with Jedi magic, and had dosed them again on the journey back from Elphrona.



“They work like this,” Marchion said, holding out the hilt.

He twitched his finger and the blade hissed into life, throwing the hold into golden relief.

He swung it a few times, like an experiment, seeing how it felt, listening to the humming, buzzing sound it made.

“I’m going to keep this,” he said.

Lourna Dee took an involuntary step backward, hating herself a little for it. But Marchion Ro was no Jedi. She wasn’t sure what he was these days, actually. He’d always had an edge, but he knew his place. He was the Eye, and nothing more.

Now…all that was gone. He seemed…confident, in some new and deeply unsettling way. Like he had changed, grown, become something greater than he previously was.

Or, as she was beginning to suspect, this was always what he’d been, and he’d just decided to hide it from her and the other Tempest Runners. But they’d all known it, hadn’t they? Down on some instinctive level.

Marchion Ro was a predator.

He spun, swinging the lightsaber faster now, big, deadly sweeps. Lourna stepped back again. She didn’t care if he thought she was a coward. If it slipped out of his hand, that thing could cut her in half with no trouble at all.

“Kassav’s Tempest encountered a trap set by the Republic, Lourna Dee,” Marchion Ro said. “A huge battle fleet. It was tragic. They all died. What do you think about that?”

“About Kassav?”

“Yes.”

Swing. Swing.

Lourna Dee didn’t respond, not for a long time.

“I think your spy in Senator Noor’s office told you the Republic already had the location you sent Kassav to. I think you knew that battle fleet would be waiting, and sent him and his Tempest there to die. So what I think…is that you just killed a third of the Nihil.”



Marchion Ro stopped swinging the lightsaber, ending its arc so it was pointing directly at her.

“Look at you, Lourna,” he said, “Smarter than I would have guessed. The question is…what will you do now?”

Lourna Dee’s attention was completely focused on the tip of the lightsaber, hovering and humming just a few centimeters from her face.

“You could leave, I guess,” Marchion said, “but the Republic has all the specs for that beautiful ship of yours. Transponder signal and everything. You’d have to leave it behind, and you named it after yourself. That’d hurt, I bet.”

It took her a moment to understand the meaning of the words he’d just used. She shifted her gaze to look at his masked face, at the swirling storm carved into it. She knew he was smiling behind it. She could hear it in his voice.

“The flight recorder mission,” she said. “You gave the Republic the information on my ship. That’s how they found me. How they were able to attack me.”

“Technically, Jeni Wataro gave it to them—but I gave it to her.”

“You wanted me to fail. Why, Marchion?”

“The Republic needed the flight recorder so they’d figure out where to send their fleet to look for us. If they didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have been able to sacrifice Kassav’s Tempest. Now they’ll think they destroyed us. They’ll relax for a while. They’ll stop hunting us.”

Lourna Dee didn’t care that Kassav was dead. Not in the slightest. But the audacity of what Marchion Ro had done, the casual way he had just sent a third of the organization to certain death…who was this man?

“You think that’ll work?” she said, her eyes returning to the lightsaber blade. Maybe she could throw herself backward, get her blaster out in time. Maybe.



“It will, Lourna Dee. I’ve got it all figured out.”

He deactivated the lightsaber, and she said a silent prayer of relief. Not that he couldn’t just turn it on again. She knew she remained in extreme danger. What she was realizing was that she always had been, from the moment Marchion Ro—and his father, for that matter—had come to the Nihil.

“We are all the Republic,” he said, spitting out the words. “Whether we like it or not, eh?”