The Emperor's Plague

19

The rocking explosion also caused Raynar to slip and stumble, and thus lose his grip on the delicate munitions he carried. Zekk reacted quickly. He sensed the instant danger and snatched the explosives from the Alderaanian boy’s hands, catching and cradling them before Raynar could drop them to the floor.

“I hope that wasn’t an accident from one of our team,” Bornan Thul said.

Raynar looked about, his face pale in its texture of fear.

“Maybe we’re under attack!” Zekk held the explosive pack carefully, trying to control his trembling. He shook his head. “That was Jaina. She’s all right, but something’s gone wrong.” He marched forward. “We’d better find Lowie quick and make sure he’s set the detonators in the plague chamber. Then we can all get off this rock before anything else happens.”

Raynar swallowed hard and followed him.

“Unless some disaster has already taken place.”

They dashed down the curving corridors from the munitions chamber back to the central room that stored the plague canisters, pausing only briefly to plant the last of their explosives at strategic points. Pressing his lips together in a grim line, Zekk fixed the linked detonation transponders so they could set off all the bombs at once. Zekk’s Jedi senses tingled. Despite his ordeals of the past, he was no longer entirely reluctant to use the Force, especially in a situation where those skills might mean the difference between life and death. He pulled himself up short and looked at Raynar; they could both sense danger around the corner.

Bornan Thul eased past them, taking the lead.

“We can’t waste any time.”

As soon as he turned the comer, though, Bornan Thul nearly ran into a lumbering Gamorrean guard, who appeared to be lost. The guard grunted at him in surprise and blinked stupid-looking eyes. Bornan Thul snatched out the blaster pistol he had taken from the munitions room and shot the guard twice before the piglike brute could make a move.

Raynar gasped.

“I can’t believe how fast you reacted!” he said to his father. “You protected us all.”

Bornan looked at the dead Gamorrean and sighed.

“I used to be a merchant lord. My entire battlefield was in trade negotiations. I was able to pull a faster trick than even the great Lando Calrissian.” He drew a long, heavy breath, and then shook his head. “At one time I thought I could sell sand to Jawas—look at how I’ve changed.”

Raynar put a comforting hand on his father’s arm.

“Maybe it’s because you’re concerned with more than just the Bornaryn fleet this time. Maybe you’re thinking on a much broader scale, and your priorities have changed.”

Thul looked at his son and smiled.

“That’s very perceptive, Raynar.”

Zekk looked down at the fallen Gamorrean guard and urged them to move again.

“I admire your reactions, Bornan Thul.” He tossed his long dark hair behind him. “This means we’re not alone on the asteroid. Nolaa Tarkona and the Diversity Alliance must be here already.”

They hurried along the corridors as rapidly and as cautiously as they could. They reached the plague chamber without incident, but they did not see Lowie when they surreptitiously peered through the transparisteel windows into the collection of plague containers. Instead, they looked down in astonishment to find Nolaa Tarkona standing triumphant in the middle of the chamber.

She held a control box, the central connector for all the incinerators and thermal detonators Lowie had dispersed among the plague cylinders. Her single head-tail thrashed, making the tattoos ripple. Flashing her pointed teeth and looking utterly confident, Nolaa disconnected the explosives. Bornan Thul watched with cold anger on his face. Raynar stifled a soft moan of despair.

Zekk gritted his teeth.

“Looks like we need to try something else then—if it isn’t already too late.”

Surrounded by hundreds of liters of concentrated death, Nolaa Tarkona experienced the thrill of long anticipation, the payoff of years of searching. At last she had a weapon to exterminate the human vermin for all time. Then alien races could be free. They could work together. They could reclaim their stolen worlds and live with all the glory they were meant to have. As she stood among the transparisteel containers, she breathed the oh-so-clean-smelling air, sterilized and disinfected. But she knew something was terribly wrong. The sealed door had already been opened, and her guards scoured the plague chamber, searching for evidence of sabotage. They had shouted in outrage when they found dozens of incinerators and thermal detonators strung together, planted at strategic points. Nolaa had moved to the center of the room and found the control box.

She could smell Wookiee in the air, and she knew that Lowbacca, one of the great traitors to the Diversity Alliance, had been here already. He wanted to destroy this stockpile in the war for alien freedom. With her rose-quartz eyes, she studied the control box now that she had disconnected the sabotage devices. Then she yanked out the remaining cables before tossing away the useless box. It made a resounding, satisfying clang on the metal floor. Nolaa glowered down at it, her sensitive head-tail twitching. The Twi’leks had an extensive but subtle language that depended on the movements of their head-tails. But she had only Diversity Alliance soldiers beside her, none of her own Twi’lek people to understand her thoughts and her emotions.

No race could truly comprehend the downtrodden hopelessness the Twi’leks had endured—centuries of slavery, technological inferiority, hellish environmental conditions, even treachery from their own race. Now that she had control of the Emperor’s plague, though, Nolaa could become the savior of aliens everywhere, and she relished that position. As she glanced at the various liquid solutions, Nolaa saw other test plagues, hideous viruses targeted to nonhuman species—the biological weapons Evir Derricote had developed and tested on those hapless alien prisoners they had found sealed in the small cells. These other plagues certainly had potential as well.

The Diversity Alliance could free all nonhuman races by spreading one kind of plague … but in the aftermath, she was certain to encounter further resistance, struggles against her benevolent rule by various commando groups from different species. She might have to deal with strongholds that resisted their own liberation, and these biological solutions would give her an edge against the Wookiees, the Calamarians, and other races that might prove troublesome. She had to take samples of these other plague organisms as well.

With the optical sensors mounted in the stump of her severed head-tail, she saw a flash of movement behind the transparisteel windows above. Someone spying on her. She set her sharpened teeth on edge. A part of her already knew who the intruders were. Nolaa took a deep breath and stifled the anxious twitching of her head-tail.

She was not worried. She had gotten here in time to secure the plague samples. She had plenty of soldiers with her, all armed with blaster rifles. The little Jedi saboteurs had been foiled in their plan, and Nolaa would bide her time. They would come to her. Then, with all the plague solution she would ever need, and with the human meddlers all dead, she could begin the great work of her life.