Light of the Jedi(81)
Other teams were working to recover potential survivors from other Emergence sites—it was possible some could still be alive in passenger modules despite the length of time since the original disaster, and all efforts were being made to bring them home. Those missions were obviously hugely important, but the flight recorder was crucial—it would provide information about how the ship had been destroyed in the first place, and help prevent it from happening again.
The hyperspace blockade of the Outer Rim was still in effect, and Pikka knew that many worlds were hurting. She’d heard rumors of food riots in the sinkhole cities of Utapau, even though Chancellor Soh had authorized special aid shipments. And of course, Starlight Beacon’s construction had finally been completed, but the dedication and official opening were on hold. As a matter of professional pride, that stung a bit. That place would be beautiful, and help so many people. She and Joss had worked hard on their little part of it, and she wanted to see it operational on time.
The retrieval team included four Longbeams and two Jedi Vectors—it was her old friends Te’Ami and Mikkel Sutmani, which made sense. After all, the four of them had devised the techniques used back in Hetzal that had saved the Fruited Moon during the original disaster. They’d refined those ideas, and now, whatever happened, they’d be ready for it.
Pikka thought this Emergence would probably just be a piece of wreckage, nothing interesting about it. If so, they could just let it go. They were in an uninhabited region of space, far from anything to which a chunk of former starship might pose a threat.
“Weapons hot,” she said. “Everything else is good to go, too—magclamps, fuel looks good, the whole deal.”
“Great,” Joss said. “As soon as we’re done here, we’ll have to zip away to the next Emergence spot. We’ll barely have enough time to get there.”
“You really think we might get in a fight?” she asked.
“I doubt it, but you know what happened at Eriadu. Someone else out there predicted an Emergence, too. Three, actually. We’re looking for a ship called the New Elite, a modified corvette. Admiral Kronara went over it at the mission briefing. We don’t know how they’re involved, but there’s at least some chance they might show up here, too. We need to be prepared for anything. If we get into a fight, we get into a fight.”
Privately, Pikka was planning to just let the Jedi handle it, if it came to that—she wasn’t afraid of a firefight, but she was basically a mechanic. She was more than happy to leave combat to the highly trained space wizards.
“Here it comes,” Joss said. “Thirty-ninth Emergence in five, four, three…”
* * *
“…two, one,” Belial said, from his post at the monitoring station. “There it is.”
“Scan it, and tell me if it looks like the flight recorder,” Lourna Dee said.
She was standing with her arms crossed on the bridge of her flagship, the Lourna Dee, looking out at the little fleet the Republic had put together for their little mission. Bunch of heroes. Hooray.
Lourna Dee loved her ship, and that was why she had named it after herself. Anyone who had an issue with that was welcome to discuss it with her. So far, no one ever had.
Each of Marchion Ro’s Tempest Runners had a personal warship, a testament to its owner’s taste as well as the possibilities inherent in the Nihil as an organization. Work hard, hunt well, follow the Paths, and you, too, might someday own a customized battle cruiser. Kassav’s New Elite felt like the interior of a trashy nightclub. Pan Eyta’s ship, the Elegencia, was beautiful, with surfaces covered in soft leather, lighting designed to perfectly accent every lovely little tasteful design choice he made.
The Lourna Dee was unique in a completely different way.
The cruiser was outfitted with all sorts of devices and shielding that made it all but impossible to pick up on a scan. Heat baffling, ablative plating, double-sealed engines that recycled almost all of its exhaust signature into the ship’s life-support and weapons systems, and more. It cost her a pile of credits, but it made her Tempest’s flagship nearly invisible to even the most powerful sensors.
Usually, an attack by the Lourna Dee went like this: The enemy pilot thought, Wait, where’d that ship come fr— and then they were blasted into vapor.
Here…well, it remained to be seen. The Lourna Dee packed enough punch to take out four Longbeams and a few wispy little Vectors, if she could take them by surprise and kept moving. But that could mean revealing her ship, and that was not on the menu for this operation. The Tempest Runners were in rare agreement when they voted to approve this mission: The Nihil needed to avoid any suggestion they were connected to the Emergences or the Legacy Run.
There were two reasons for that. First, obviously, was Kassav’s massive screwup at Eriadu. His stupid attempt at extorting that planet, the one that had gone so wrong and was so obviously a shot at taking the entire proceeds of that job for himself, shone an unwelcome spotlight on the Nihil. The Eriaduans had splashed Kassav’s name and the specs of his ship all over the HoloNet. While there was no direct connection to the Nihil, that was still more heat than they wanted. And after that, Kassav had had the nerve to come crawling back to the Great Hall. He’d offered up the thirty million credits he said he’d made on the Eriadu job and asked for protection.