Invincible (35 page)

“The Moffs are in a bad state,” she warned him. “They’re scared—”

“Of course they’re scared,” Caedus said. “They think only of themselves, and they fear only for their own lives.”

Tahiri folded back the lapel of his outer cloak. “Actually, they’re just as worried about their assault fleet,” she explained. “They’re afraid we’re going to lose the war.”

“Lose?”
Caedus scoffed. “Haven’t they been viewing the intelligence briefings?”

“They’re more concerned about our situation here,” she said. “Actually, so am I.”

Caedus’s temper began to rise. Bwua’tu had already wiped out Niathal’s traitors and trapped
both
the Bothan and Corellian fleets at Carbos Thirteen. Admiral Atoko was neutralizing the Mandalorian nuisance by inflicting some sorely needed urban renewal on Keldabe—with just the
remains
of the Fifth Fleet. And yet, the Moffs were worried because they had run into some relatively minor resistance here. Did they really expect
Jedi
to be defeated as easily as Mandalorians and Corellians?

But Caedus did not let his anger take control of him. That would do nothing but divert his attention, and he could not afford to lose his focus now—not with Jaina on the loose, not when he was so close to victory that he had actually
seen
it.

“I appreciate the warning, Tahiri,” Caedus said. “I’ll be sure to reassure them.”

“That might prove difficult, my lord,” Tahiri said. “Even for you.”

She looked down at her feet, and Caedus could feel her gathering her courage.

“Tahiri, how long have we known each other?” he asked. “Tell me.”

Tahiri nodded, then met his gaze. “There’s something they’re keeping from us. I can feel it when I’m around them.”

Caedus smiled. “
Of course
they’re keeping something from us,” he said. “They’re Moffs.”

Tahiri would not be put off by his jokes. “They don’t trust your abilities yet—not really,” she said. “It might be better if we had never been ambushed.”

“It’s hard to argue against that,” Caedus said. “But I don’t see what it has to do with our situation.”

“
Fix
it,” Tahiri said. “I think that’s what it’s going to take to keep their faith.”

“Fix it how?” Caedus asked. “Are you under the impression I can change the past?”

Tahiri looked confused. “Well…yeah,” she admitted. “You did it for me.”

Now Caedus understood. “The kiss, you mean.”

“What else?” she asked. “You flow-walked me back to the battle on
Baanu Rass,
and I kissed Anakin. If you could do
that,
why not flow-walk back and warn someone about the ambush?”

The turbolift reached the auxiliary command center and stopped. Before the door could open, Caedus reached out and depressed the
HOLD
control. He knew why Tahiri believed he could do such a thing: because he had
allowed
her to believe it. Her obsession with Anakin had been a convenient tool for him; she had wanted—
still
wanted—to bring Anakin back so badly that Caedus had not even needed to imply the possibility. Tahiri had simply seized on the hope, and he’d used that to bend her to his will. But the time had come to disabuse her of that notion. With victory at hand, he needed to move Tahiri to the next stage, to help her develop into a true Sith Lady with aspirations of her own—and the cold ruthlessness to achieve them.

Caedus placed a caring hand on her shoulder. “Tahiri, I’m about to tell you something that’s going to make you very angry. I want you to feed on its power, because you’re going to need it before this last battle is over. But if you let it take control, you’ll be lost. You’ll never be any good to me again. Can you handle that?”

Tahiri’s confusion turned to distress. “What is it?” she demanded. “Are you telling me it wasn’t real? That when we flow-walked back to see Anakin, we were just—”

“The flow-walking was real,” Caedus interrupted. “We did return to the battle at
Baanu Rass,
and you
did
kiss Anakin. But the past didn’t change. It
can’t.
”

Tahiri’s eyes started to burn with denial. “That makes no sense,” she said. “If I really kissed him, then we changed the past.”

Caedus shook his head. “When you drop a pebble into a river, what happens? There’s a splash, and then the splash disappears. The splash is real, but the river doesn’t change. It continues on just the same.”

“But it
does
change,” Tahiri objected. “Maybe you can’t see it, but the pebble is still there, rolling along the bottom.”

“And the kiss is still there, too,” Caedus said. He reached out and gently tapped Tahiri’s temple. “In there. That’s where the bottom of the flow is.”

“In my
mind
?”

“In the way you
perceive
the past,” Caedus said. He was not surprised by the anger and disbelief in Tahiri’s voice. When the Aing-Tii monks had explained why he couldn’t stop Anakin from dying, he had reacted the same way. “We went back to the battle on
Baanu Rass,
and you kissed Anakin. What changed? The past—or your
memory
of the past?”

Tahiri shook her head, still not ready to let go. “What about Tekli and the rest of the strike team? You were worried about them seeing us.”

“About
remembering
that they had seen us,” Caedus corrected. “Just like Raynar remembered seeing me when he crawled out of the
Tachyon Flier.
But I wasn’t
there.
I was on Coruscant, being tortured by Vergere. What Raynar remembered is the splash.”

Caedus could tell by Tahiri’s crestfallen expression that she was beginning to understand—but she wasn’t quite ready to give up.

“What about being harmed?” she said. “If we’re just splashes, how come we had to be so careful about reacting to the past? A
splash
can’t be harmed.”

Caedus shook his head. “Tahiri, you
know
the answer. The mind is a powerful weapon—especially for Force-users. If we started to
remember
being harmed…” He released the
HOLD
control, and the door slid open. “I’m sure you understand.”

For a moment, Tahiri was speechless, her face red with fury, her eyes damp. She stepped out of the turbolift. “Oh, I understand, Lord Caedus. You’re the slime under a Hutt’s tail. Feed on
that.
”

Caedus smiled and calmly stepped into the vestibule, where two squads of black-armored GAG sentries stood at slack-jawed attention. Across from them, spilling down a long corridor servicing the
Anakin Solo
’s auxiliary intelligence and control cabins, was a platoon of gray-armored Elite Guard stormtroopers who served as the Moffs’ collective bodyguard.

Caedus stopped in front of the battle-seasoned GAG sergeant and gave a sigh of feigned exasperation.

“Apprentices,” he said. “They can be so touchy about criticism sometimes.”

The sergeant nodded sagely, and Caedus felt the tension drain from the Force as guards from both groups decided that the trouble between the two Sith was nothing they needed to worry about.

“It’s the same with all subordinates, my lord.” The sergeant glanced at a flat-faced Gotal with gray sensory cones and spotty cheek fuzz, then leaned closer and added, “Sometimes I feel like killing them myself.”

“It might be better if you let the enemy do that for us,” Caedus said, giving an appreciative chuckle. “Are you still in contact with Commander Berit?”

The sergeant’s expression turned grim. “Not since we were hit, my lord,” he said. “There hasn’t been any contact at all from Dark Deck. Our entire comm net has gone dead. So has surveillance.”

“I was afraid of that.” Caedus nodded, making the same assumption the sergeant obviously had: that Dark Deck—the nickname for Ship Security Headquarters—had been destroyed in the StealthX attack. “My sister has boarded the
Anakin Solo.
I need you to organize a search.”

“As you wish, my lord,” the sergeant said. “Do you have any, um, special insight as to where we should start?”

Caedus shook his head. “She’s hiding in the Force, so I can’t actually feel her presence.” Realizing the seasoned sergeant would be too disciplined to ask the logical follow-up question, he glanced at the ceiling and added, “It’s more like a
smell,
Sergeant…a smell that permeates everything.”

The sergeant received this with the calm composure of a man who had spent a lifetime accepting orders he didn’t understand. “Very well,” he said. “And when we find her?”

“Alert me,” Caedus said. “I’ll have to address this personally. Trying to handle her yourself will just get you and your people killed.”

“Thank you for your consideration.” The sergeant sounded more relieved than he should have, and a little surprised. “Then you think the
Anakin Solo
is going to survive this?”

The question caught Caedus off-guard—it had never occurred to him that the
Anakin Solo
might
not
survive. He considered his answer for a moment, expanding his Force awareness to all corners of the Star Destroyer, and was surprised by the amount of pain, confusion, and fear that he felt. But there was also the determination and focus of a crew well accustomed to desperate battles, of beings who understood that their best hope of survival lay in keeping their heads and performing their duties.

Caedus looked back to the sergeant. “It’s too early to know for certain—but I’ll share a secret with you.” He laid his hand on the sergeant’s shoulder. “It really doesn’t matter. We’ve
already
won.”

A touch of doubt and disappointment flashed through the sergeant’s eyes, and his expression quickly grew guarded and neutral. “That’s good to hear, my lord.”

Caedus shot him a knowing half smile. “It’s unwise to doubt me, Sergeant,” he said. “We
have
won. I’ve seen it.”

Caedus left the sergeant to his unspoken skepticism and entered the Auxiliary Command Center, where the personnel looked anything
but
confident of victory. The ship’s officers were sitting at their consoles at the far end, shouting into their mikes or at one another as they struggled to determine the extent of the
Anakin Solo
’s damage. The command staff were clustered around a mostly blank holodisplay near the chamber entrance, looking less harried, but worrying more—with so little reliable data to analyze, they had nothing else to do.

Tahiri stood off to one side before a bank of unoccupied assimilation stations. She was surrounded by a mob of thoughtfully frowning Moffs, speaking with their de facto leader—gray-haired, combat-trim Lecersen—in the concerned tones of someone facing a sad, unpleasant truth.

As Caedus approached, Lecersen abruptly stopped speaking and turned to face him. “Lord Caedus, how good to see you well,” he said. “I was just explaining to Lady Veila how worried we were about your welfare.”

“That’s true,” Tahiri said. “The Moffs seem
quite
concerned about your sanity.”

The Force boiled with shock and dismay, and several Moffs began to sputter denials, their eyes growing wide and afraid. Only Lecersen seemed unsurprised by Tahiri’s bold betrayal of their confidence; he watched her with equal parts hatred and admiration. Caedus allowed himself a small smile of pride; as angry as Tahiri was with him, she had clearly decided she was not going to be
anyone’s
tool.

After allowing the Moffs to sputter their denials for a moment, Tahiri turned to Caedus. With ice in her voice, she added, “I
tried
to tell them you’re just Hutt spawn, but for some reason they don’t seem to believe me.”

That Tahiri would speak to him this way seemed to shock even Lecersen. A dead silence fell over the group, and Caedus knew that how he handled the insult would determine not only how much authority he retained over
her,
but how the Moffs viewed him, as well. After glaring at Tahiri for a moment, he decided the best tactic was to exploit her outburst.

“Yes, well you know me so much better than they do.” He shifted his gaze to the Moffs. “The Moffs will learn, I’m sure.”

Lecersen and several others gave a nervous, testing laugh—which Caedus silenced with a scowl.

“Moff Lecersen, you’ll be kind enough to fill me in on the discussion you were having with my apprentice.” Caedus made it an order, deliberately pushing his authority to test the Moff’s willingness to challenge him. “Leave out the part where you suggest I’m insane. I really have no interest in your opinion regarding that.”

Lecersen started to deny he had made such a suggestion, then seemed to remember how difficult it was to lie to a Force-user and nodded.

“As you wish, my lord,” he said. “I was simply expressing our concern over the tactical situation and suggesting a course of action to change the tide of battle.”

“Suggestions are always welcome,” Caedus said. “In the future, bring them directly to me. There’s no need to trouble my apprentice with them.”

Lecersen inclined his head. “As you wish, Lord Caedus,” he said. “I was suggesting to Lady Veila that we might be able to save the Remnant assault fleet by disrupting the Hapan command structure at its highest levels. We do
that
with an attack on the
Dragon Queen.
”

Caedus couldn’t read Lecersen’s thoughts quite clearly enough to determine what kind of attack the Moff was suggesting. But he had no doubt about the real target. The
Dragon Queen
was Tenel Ka’s personal flagship. If the Moffs were talking about going after it, they were talking about going after Tenel Ka herself.

And Caedus wouldn’t have a problem with that, except that he had sensed another familiar presence aboard the
Dragon Queen
during his battle meditation. Just before the ambush, he had noticed
both
mother and daughter, hanging on the far side of the Hapan fleet.

At first, Caedus had been confused by the discovery, believing that Tenel Ka would never endanger their daughter by bringing her into battle. But then he had put himself in Tenel Ka’s place and realized she had no other choice. He had taken Allana once, and Tenel Ka was not the type of woman to let that happen twice. She was the kind of woman who would keep her daughter close at all times, even in battle. That way, she could be sure that if Caedus tried to abduct their daughter again, he would have to go through Tenel Ka first.