Light of the Jedi(35)
“We’re being boarded,” Captain Odabba said, his voice grim, staring at the alerts and threat indicators rippling across his screens. “I’ll open the weapons locker. We don’t have enough blasters for everyone. Anyone with military experience gets priority. Everyone else…find something to fight with.”
He moved away from the command console toward the bridge annex, where the freighter’s limited complement of weaponry was stored.
But before he could take two steps, the bridge hatch smashed open, as if kicked inward by a giant. It skidded across the deck, smashing into and presumably killing a member of Captain Odabba’s crew. The Klatooinian woman died without making a sound.
Three white canisters shot into the room from the exterior corridor. Before they hit the deck, they exploded, and the bridge was filled with thick, dense, blue-gray gas. It was instantaneous. One moment the air was breathable, the next it was like being lost in a fog…or a storm cloud, perhaps.
Larence Garello tried to hold his breath, but the shock of the events had left his heart racing, and he was not as young as he once was. He took in a gasp of air—but it was not air, and his system reacted near instantaneously to the poison.
He looked up to the hatchway, where the Nihil were entering the bridge. He saw them through swimming, fading vision, saw the masks they wore, and knew that whatever they were beneath, they wanted the galaxy to see them as monsters.
Larence Garello sucked in one final, burning breath, and knew he would not be one of those rare few to survive an encounter with the Nihil.
Lina Soh rested the palm of her hand on the rough surface of Umate, the tallest peak of the Manarai range. The mountain’s summit was some twenty meters above her head, and its base was somewhere 5,216 levels below, at the very bottom of the city-world that was Coruscant. This was the one spot left on the planet where its original topography could be seen. Farther below, the mountain’s structure had been incorporated into the city, becoming a sort of hive of tunnels and passageways and chambers surfaced by durasteel and permacrete, barely distinguishable from other parts of the planet. But here, a bit of wildness remained.
People from all over the Republic came to Monument Plaza to see Umate, and many did as Lina Soh had—felt its surface and took a moment for reflection. A darkened ring around the peak’s base served as evidence of the countless hands that had touched it over the generations. All those minds, all that sentience, all those many perspectives. Umate meant different things to different beings—endurance, the imperturbability of nature despite the efforts of sentient beings to remake the galaxy, even just the novelty of a natural thing in an artificial world.
To Lina Soh, chancellor of the great Republic that was bringing light to the galaxy’s many worlds, stitching them together into an enlightened union in which anything was possible, Umate meant…choice.
The city-world’s planners could have removed the mountain at any point in its millennia of history, but generation after generation had not. They had repeatedly made the decision—the choice—to preserve this one place, this one thing. Many political systems had claimed Coruscant in its day, from brutal empires to the purest democracies, but all had chosen to keep Umate as it was, Monument Plaza climbing upward century by century as new levels were added to the city’s surface.
Progress was inevitable and crucial, but was not the only goal. Mindfulness was also important. Choice.
Chancellor Soh stepped back from the mountain. She turned away. Matari and Voru lifted their great heads and stepped toward her, the huge, beautiful beasts sensing her mood and knowing she was ready to move on. The two targons—twins, a red male and a yellow female, both taller than she was with thick fur and tufted ears—took their accustomed stations at her side, keeping pace as she moved away from Umate. The giant cats accompanied her everywhere, acting as guards, companions, even sounding boards. She often spoke aloud to them as she worked through ideas or plans. The creatures did not understand her words, but targons had low-level empathic abilities, as unusual as that was in a predator species. Matari and Voru might not comprehend…but they understood. More than anything else, the creatures were utterly loyal. Lina worked in politics. Loyalty was the quality she valued above all else.
The surface of Level 5,216 surrounding Umate’s peak had been turned into a greenspace, with effort being made to replicate the original plants and trees that would have been visible at the mountain’s base untold millennia earlier when the planet’s surface was still accessible. No one really knew if the park designer’s choices were accurate, but it was certainly lovely enough.
Ordinarily, Monument Plaza was full of tourists, all waiting their turn to touch Umate, a long line stretching most of the way through the park to Senate Hill. Now, though, the area was empty, cleared by the Coruscant Security Force. Lina could have held this meeting in her offices, or indeed, almost anywhere on the planet, but she liked being here. More than any other spot, it was here that she felt connected to the rest of the Republic. It drove her security teams crazy, because she was theoretically vulnerable to aerial attack while out in the open (though she thought Matari and Voru might find a way to bring down a speeder, if push came to shove). Lina was not worried about an attack, aerial or otherwise. This was the heart of the Core, and the Republic was at peace, barring the occasional regional squabble. She was as safe in Monument Plaza as she was in her own bed.