Light of the Jedi(85)

Kassav or even Pan Eyta might have tried, gotten into some sort of doomed last-stand situation, but she was smarter than either of them. When circumstances change, you run the odds, you run the options, and then you pick the best choice you’ve got. And here, there was only one.

“Plug in the Path to get us out of here,” she said. “We lost.”





Ultident Margrona—just Dent since she was a teenager, she hated the name Ultident, thought it sounded prissy—yanked off her mask and let it fall to the floor of the cockpit. She didn’t care if the stupid miners saw her face. She needed to breathe, needed air.

“They’re on us, Dent!” Buggo said. “Comin’ up fast!”

Dent knew that. The Jedi had landed a glancing blaster shot on their engines, and about 80 percent of top speed was the best they could manage. They had a Path from Lourna Dee that would let them get out of the system, but her ship’s Path engine needed to calculate the jump from a specific region within Elphrona’s gravity well—and that area was too far away to reach before the Jedi caught up. She’d heard stories about what these Vectors could do. They might look spindly, but those ships could take them apart, shot by shot. It wouldn’t even be a contest. They’d end up with their engines completely gone, floating in the void, and then it’d be a hostage scenario, and how would that work out?



You’re a Cloud, she told herself. You wouldn’t be a Cloud if you weren’t smart. You aren’t some stupid Strike. Think this through. Ride the storm.

If the Jedi disabled their ship, they could buy time by threatening to kill the two kids and the dad until…what? The Jedi wouldn’t let a band of Nihil kidnappers go. They’d board the ship eventually, and would probably kill Dent and her crew with their lightsabers right then and there, frontier justice. Maybe they’d get taken to prison on Elphrona instead.

Bad either way. Utter failure. Not very Nihil. She could just imagine what everyone would say. “You remember that gal Dent? Screwed up the easiest job ever—a snatch-and-grab on some nowhere planet. Got herself and all her Strikes killed. What an idiot.”

She spared half a thought for the two Strikes she’d left back down on the planet, the ones she’d already written off. She guessed it was possible Egga and Rel were still alive down on the planet somewhere, fighting the good fight, two loyal Strikes doing as their Cloud ordered.

They were both so stupid—just went along with what she told them to do even though obviously she was sending them off to get killed to buy time for her, Mack, and Buggo to get off the planet with the cargo. No, those two idiots were dead, for sure. They hadn’t called in, and if they’d taken out the Jedi they would have asked for a pickup.

Ugh, she thought.

This was supposed to be the easiest job ever. She was so proud of herself for thinking it up. She’d heard that these four people had tried to go it alone in the Outer Rim, live “authentically,” cut themselves off from their rich family on Alderaan. It made her so mad. They had everything, these Blythes, and they threw it away to go dig in the dirt. But some people didn’t have a choice like that. They were born in the dirt and they’d die there—people like her. Until the Nihil, anyway. Lourna Dee had recruited her with a promise…they were all in it together, they were a family, a new family…it all sounded so good. And it was working, too. She’d made Cloud, and found Strikes of her own to command—it was all coming together.



And then when she’d come up with this idea to take the Blythes and ransom them back to their rich grandparents on Alderaan, and her Storm had liked it and taken it to Lourna Dee herself, and then she’d taken it to Marchion Ro and he’d liked it, too, and she’d gotten the Paths she needed to pull it all off. It was supposed to work out.

But then, Jedi.

“Boss! What are we going to do? Boss!”

Buggo, bugging her, like he did. She should have sent him up into the hills to ambush the Jedi. But he was her second cousin’s husband, which was family in a way, close as she had.

Laser blasts zipped past the cockpit—warning shots.

Mack was on the guns, returning fire, but she had no confidence in his ability to shoot down a Vector. They moved like ghosts, flipping and moving around and doing impossible things. Like the Jedi themselves, in fact.

Dent reached forward and tapped a few buttons on her control console. She wasn’t supposed to make contact while on a mission—signals could be tracked—but what did she have to lose?

A voice came over the comlink—her Storm, a funny, charming Ugnaught named Zoovler Tom.

“Dent!” he said, happy to hear from her, apparently. “What’s the good word? You got the packages we sent you to pick up?”

“Got ’em,” she answered, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “But we ran into trouble. Jedi, chasing us. Ship’s damaged. We won’t be able to make it to the transfer point before they get us. We need a new Path, right now. We’re still in atmosphere, so it’ll be a tricky one.”

“Jedi, huh?” Zoovler said, no longer so happy. “Path at such a low altitude…that’s gonna run into trouble with the planet’s gravity well. That’s a big ask, Ultident.”

Dent frowned. She’d told Zoovler her real name once, in a moment of booze-filled closeness at one of the rallies. Now he was using it, just like a weapon. Blasted little nothing man, thought he was so special, so superior because he was a Storm. He was just an Ugnaught. If she made it out of this she’d poison his drink next time, and laugh at him as his ugly little face turned black.