[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(118)

Another ship, corvette-size, was visible ahead of him as he rammed the stick home into the socket on the control panel.

The purge charge that jumped from the stick raced through the computer memories of the fighter, erasing every coherent bit. Its final stop was the R2 interface, where it passed to a shape charge under the droid’s sensor dome. The small explosion that followed was surprisingly loud and briefly lit the inside of the cockpit.

Glancing back, Taggar confirmed that the charge had completely and thoroughly decapitated the droid.

That left only one duty—the suicide needle now available at the other end of the purge stick, and the dead-man grip of the ship’s self-destruct trigger. Taggar looked out at the Yevethan warship, measuring the closing distance. He knew that he was taking a chance by waiting, especially after they’d seen R2-R blow its top.

But he also knew that the corvette would have to lower its shields to bring him alongside.

When the ship had drawn close enough to loom over the fighter, Taggar closed his left hand around the trigger and let his head roll to one side as though he were unconscious. Watching through slit eyes, he saw light spilling from the underside of the corvette, between the opening doors of the docking berth. There was no pinnace inside—the berth was meant for his fighter.

Gambling, he waited longer still, until the coupling lines grabbed the spoilers and drew the recon-X upward, until the doors began to close under him. Then he lifted his head, rubbed his thumb across the pilot’s wings taped to the console, and jammed the palm of his right hand against the end of the purge stick.

A few moments later his head lolled forward against his chest and the hand closed tightly around the trigger began to relax, his tired fingers yielding against the pressure of the springplate. Taggar was peacefully elsewhere when the destruct charge ripped the belly of the corvette open along the centerline, spilling a churning cloud of debris from both ships into space.

As bright fire enveloped Beauty of Yevetha, Nil Spaar averted his eyes from the sight, then turned and searched the chamber for the proctor of defense for the spawnworld.

“Kol Attan!” he bellowed.

His fighting crests shrunken almost to invisibility, Kol Attan shuffled forward. “Viceroy, I–” Nil Spaar silenced him with a glare and pointed at the floor. Trembling, the proctor lowered himself to one knee, closed his eyes, and bared his neck. The viceroy circled him slowly, flexing his right hand in a motion that brought the dewclaw curling out to its full length.

“You are a coward as well as incompetent,” Nil Spaar whispered at last.

“Your blood is not worth spilling.

It would be beneath me to touch you. I declare you to-mara, a shamed one. Go home and beg your darna for death.”

When the proctor did not move, Nil Spaar drew a deep breath that brought a flush to his crests, then sent Kol Attan sprawling with a vicious kick. “You will not provoke me into giving you an honorable exit,” he said through clenched teeth. “Go!”

As the proctor scrambled away on all fours, Nil Spaar turned his back to him. “Tal Fraan,” he said.

The nitakka came forward with strength in his strides and pride in his carriage. “Sir.”

“You anticipated that the vermin would violate the All in an attempt to know us. How is it you come to your prescience?”

“I have spent time with them, in the camps on Pa’aal, and aboard Devotion of Yevetha, where they serve us,” said Tal Fraan. “I have seen how they hunger to debase even the smallest mysteries, instead of embracing the mysteries as they present themselves. The pale ones, especially, seem to me driven this way.”

Nil Spaar nodded slowly. “You failed to anticipate that the vermin who came would choose death over captivity.

That failure has cost my fleet a useful vessel, and wasted Yevetha blood. “

Drawing a hard breath, Tal Fraan dropped immediately to one knee.

“Yes, darama. I know my error.”

“Rise,” Nil Spaar said, and the younger Yevetha complied. “I shall not hold you to account for the failure of Kol Attan to seize the hostage you brought to him.

Nor for the offense of the vermin in killing above their station.”

“You are gracious, Viceroy.”

“There are many kinds of vermin,” Nil Spaar said offhandedly. “Perhaps those that were sent here are more like Commander Paret, who at least had the courage to defy me when I took this ship from him, than they are like those we hold in service. Otherwise, I would have judged them as you do.”

“I do not deserve your mercy, darama.”

“No,” Nil Spaar said. “But you will help me think on how to answer the vermin for their boldness, and to strike at this one called Leia, for commissioning such sacrilege. And perhaps I will forget the other after a while, on such pleasures of revenge as you devise.”