Chapter Twenty-Eight

Taylor took stock.

It was a damned good skill to have--being able to take in the room at a glace, to figure out where things were and what was going on. In the heat of battle it was too easy to misplace things, to fail to notice that someone was moving to a certain position. Half of what kept her alive after all this time was her ability to know what was going on around her.

HK-47 was near the centre of the room, using a pillar as cover while trading precise fire with two Mandalorians. He was alternating between the two, taking quick snap-shots whenever their helmeted heads moved out of cover.

Her battle droids weren’t faring as well. Three of them still stood, partially hidden by the stone plinths filling the room. They didn’t have HK’s accuracy, or his timing, but they were making up for it with a nearly non-stop barrage of blue blaster fire that filled the white-walled room like a mono-colored disco ball gone mad.

The Mandalorians were out of droids on their end. The few machines they’d brought with them were on the ground, smoking from holes in their chassis or--in the case of the droid by Taylor’s feet--sliced in half from hip to shoulder. A few had been taken out by her insects. In a surprising twist, they were easier to eliminate than the Mandalorians in their body-covering armour.

There were four of those left. One was laid out by HK-47, a lump of shiny blue armour that had crashed back into the ground. The others were at the far end of the room, all too willing to wait Taylor and HK out while withering whatever firepower they could bring to bear.

Taylor blinked. It had taken all of a millisecond to see everything in the room around her from the thousands of eyes of her relatively tiny insect swarm.

“HK!” she called out in English.

“Irritated Query: Yes?”

“I’m going to flank them,” she said.

“Sarcastic Statement: Oh, how very unpredictable. I’m certain these well-trained mercenaries won’t expect anyone foolhardy to try and flank them.”

Taylor winced as a stray shot cracked against the stone plinth she was hiding behind and send a cascade of pebbly dust raining down behind her. When she looked back up, HK was still talking.

“--the mines they placed certainly won’t stop you.”

“Mines?” Taylor asked.

She moved her swarm around, then cursed at what she found. A few black disks, conspicuously left along the sides of the room nearest the Mandalorians.

Her grip tightened around her new weapon, the warmth of the beam of plasma just an inch away from her hand somehow comforting. “Screw it,” she said. “Hk, cover fire!”

She sent some bugs down, some sort of larger fly thing she’d found in the city, and poked the nearest of the mines. They didn’t detonate.

Cursing Contessa’s name, she grabbed a few pieces of rock off the rock and gave them to a flight of passing bugs. They shot across the room, weaved around a passing blaster bolt, then came crashing down on the nearest of the mines.

Taylor grunted as her ears popped and a heavy wall of air slammed across the hall. Glass burst from the tops of the plinths surrounding her, and she heard an alarmed cry from one of the mercenaries.

She sent more bugs forward, shouting for more mines even as she jumped to her feet and started to run the long way around the room, lightsaber burning the air next to her and leaving a constant blue wash across her vision.

The moment she was on the far end of the room, where the Mandalorians were hiding, one of them spun around and brought a blaster pistol up.

Taylor had a bug on it already, she knew that his aim was true, that she was about to be blasted through the torso.

She twisted around and bright the saber up before her, even as she juked to the side.

A red beam lanced from the blaster, struck the lightsaber with a jolt so sudden and surprising that she almost dropped it, then bounced back and smacked the Mandalorian right in the wrist.

She didn’t have time to wonder at her luck that she was running forwards again, her robotic arm scrambling for one of the guns she had hidden on her.

Twenty steps became ten, then none.

Hk whistled a shrill note, and the room went silent, all except for the pitter-patter of stone crumbling, the hiss of hot barrels venting their warmth, and of course the musical hum of the lightsaber by her side.

Taylor panted, then let out a relieved chuckle. She had the Mandalorians in her grasp. “We’re good,” she called back.

“Congratulatory: Well done.” Hk-47 clunked over, tossing aside the rifle he had before he bent over one of the Mandalorians Taylor was controlling and graded their gun. Taylor allowed it. “Request: Please assist me in stipping these fleshbags of their armour. It is both valuable, and unfit to be covering such meaty beings.”

“Beskar, right?” Taylor asked. The Mandalorians started to remove their armour at her mental command, though she had to look around for some of the more hidden catches. For the most part, the Mandalodrians were normal humans. Well-muscled, certainly, and with the extreme paleness of people who didn’t get enough sun, but they were still essentially human.

“Affirmation: Indeed. Once we find someone who can work the metal it might serve as an acceptable upgrade to my chassis. Beskar is one of the few metals that can resist a lightsaber’s cut.”

Taylor nodded, then looked at the tube she still held onto. It took some fiddling to find out how to shut it off. She hesitated. The lightsaber wasn’t her sort of thing. Too lethal to replace one of the batons she was comfortable with. Still, the weight felt nice, and it had been handy. She hooked it to her belt and picked up a blaster from one of the Mandalorians.

The mercenaries didn’t seem the sort to cheap out on their equipment if even Hk-47 was willing to praise it openly.

Her remaining black and gold battle droids walked over, and Hk quickly stuffed the armour he was stealing into some of the bags they’d used for her bugs.

“CEO can’t be far now,” Taylor said.

“Assumption: It is likely that they are just in the next room over. I would suggest sending in the more expendable assets first.”

“Fair enough,” Taylor said. She gestured, and her broids--now slightly encumbered--walked ahead and into the next room.

There was a small lobby area, with lounge chairs and a large fishtank filled with glowing specimens. Beyond that was a desk, one bigger than the car Taylor and her current crew had taken to reach the tower.

The CEO was cowering behind it.

He had a pistol in hand, and was pointing it at Taylor, her droids, the floor, the ceiling, and the fishtank. It really depended on how shaky he was at any given moment.

“Tell him to drop that before he hurts himself,” Taylor said. “Then give him our demands.”

“Query: We have demands?”

Taylor paused, then tried to think back. The plan was...not initially for them to break into a moderately secure high-rise to attack the CEO’s office. The plan was to find a way to save all the enslaved people on the planet.

Somewhere along the line she had just... sort of assumed that things would naturally escalate to her attacking Czerka where it hurt, so she skipped all the middle steps and jumped to the part where she would attack the corp’s headquarters.

“Huh,” Taylor said.

“Assmused statement: Have you forgotten to think?”

“I guess so,” Taylor said. She pointed to the CEO again. “Take his gun away. Does that computer at his desk connect to the rest of the building?” At HK’s nod, she continued. “Then get Tattletale on the line. I think we’ll have to see what this guy’s reach on this planet is like. Maybe we can make a grand statement out of all of this.”

“Joyful Acknowledgement: Oh yes, I do like the idea of making an example of such a well-decorated meatbag. Shall we air his screams live across the planetary holonet?”

“No,” Taylor said. She had an idea. “But we can air his confessions live.”

***

The Jedi council didn’t always fully convene. It was difficult to coordinate as many masters as they had across as many worlds as they visited. Instead, there was always a core group of masters at the temple or one of the Jedi’s smaller facilities, ready to participate in any impromptu meeting.

Those were the important meetings.

Sometimes, there was no need to gather all that many masters to discuss something. This was one of those times.

Master Plo-Koon sat across from Master Saesee Tiin, with the venerable Master Yoda nearby. Master Windu. Master Kolar sat in his own seat, behind which Tan stood.

It was a great honour for a padawan to be able to even stand in one of these meetings. Had they not been interrupted mid-training, he probably wouldn’t be standing in the council room at all.

He certainly wasn’t going to protest. All the best gossip came from--and was about what happened--in this room.

“Shall we start?” Master Windu asked. He was leaning forwards, elbows on knees and brow drawn. He glanced around the room, and Tan felt it when the master’s gaze crossed over him. If he objected to Tan’s presence, he didn’t do so aloud.

A holorecording in the middle of the room hummed to life, and the unmoving image of three figures appeared. The first was a male human, maybe in his late forties. He was sweating, and was wide-eyed as he stared ahead.

The second figure was by his side, a lightsaber in hand held dangerously close to the man’s neck. A woman, Tan thought, though he couldn’t be sure. She had a hood on, obscuring most of her features, and a filtration mask.

The first figure was a large protocol droid, its hologram broken and fuzzy as it was out of frame.

“Who are we looking at?” Master Plo Koon asked.

It was Master Saesee Tiin who answered. He had a datapad in hand, though he wasn’t looking at it. “Nale Dudnam, the CEO of the Czreka operations on Anoat. The humanoid female behind him is unidentified, but her name comes up in the holo. The droid is of an unknown make and model, likely something from the fringes of the galaxy. Protocol droids offer a lot of customization with their appearances. I’ll have a padawan in the library look into it.”

“I think we can begin in earnest,” Master Windu said.

“This is skipped ahead, to the more important part,” Master Saesee Tiin added. “The holo was distributed across the local net on Anoat. Unencrypted, and across a few channels. It was meant to be seen by as many eyes as possible.”

Tan resisted the urge to shuffle on his feet.

Master Saesee Tiin gestured and the holo began.

“Ah- I’m very sorry for, ah, everything my company has done. Hiring--” Nale Dudnam grunted, neck straining as he tried to back way from the glowing blade before him. “The slave we took, the people we enslaved, that was wrong. We, ah, we shouldn’t have done that. Czerka didn’t need to do that. We’ll fix it though, I swear, we’ll fix it! Pay them what they’re due, and, and backpay, and a bonus! We’ll give them a bonus!”

The woman with the lightsaber spoke, a strange, ugly tongue.

“Translation: My Master, Darth Khepri, wishes for you to admit to some of the many crimes you have committed. After all, how else is she to punish you for the taking of so many slaves?”

Tan felt his blood go cold, and he wasn’t the only one who paled in the room.

“I will! I’ll admit to everything!” the man squealed.

Master Saesee Tiin gestured and the holo paused, with Nale Dudnam’s eyes as wide as saucers.

“Bad tidings, these are,” Master Yoda spoke. He opened his eyes and squinted at the hologram. “For someone to use the title, terrible. Investigate this we must.”

Tan had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.

***

Count Dooku closed the hologram, surveyed the room to ensure that he was alone save for the company of some magnaguards, then he allowed that joyous feeling in the pit of his stomach to escape.

It was but a single back of dark laughter, but it felt good to indulge himself with that much.

***