The Forbearance dropped from hyperspace at the Garqi system’s outer marker on the close of the journey’s fourth day.
The yacht had been Allia Omek’s for the better part of three years, registered through one of the household’s commercial entities as a private vessel maintained for the principal’s travel. Its engines sat two grades above what the Daplona social register would have considered adequate for a Daplona aristocrat of her standing. The yacht moved faster than a smuggler’s vessel of comparable size. Planetary customs anywhere in the Inner Rim received it without scrutiny.
The Sullustan pilot at the forward bridge had been with the yacht since the household acquired it. He was told this was a freight-acquisition trip the new business required the principals to conduct in person. Operational confidentiality clauses prohibited him from inquiring about specifics or filing detailed travel records with the harbor authority on return. He had performed the trip with the professional opacity the household had selected him for at hiring.
Zannah was at the small library at the rear of the yacht.
The library was the smallest of the yacht’s named rooms — three meters by four, lined in dark wood paneling, fitted with a single chair and a small table beside it. The shelves held the volumes the cover required her to be seen carrying as Allia Omek’s reading. She had not opened any of them on the trip. She had been working interiorly through the Working she would deploy at Marvash’s office in the hours ahead.
The Working had taken nine months of private study. It had not been tested on a living target. Marvash would be the test. The cost, by her best modeling against the texts, would be substantial. Cognus and Tovek were positioned to handle what she would be unable to handle after.
The consideration closed.
The navigation board would register the rendezvous point in two hours.
✦
Cognus was at the secondary lounge in the middle section.
Cognus had sat there for the past hour without moving, her hand resting on the small leather pouch at her left hip. Bane’s saber lay inside it. She had not ignited the weapon since the ignition at the desk in the study three days before — the ignition that had filled the room with crimson and confirmed the inheritance. The discipline that had governed her carrying of the saber for the year and three months of her service still governed her now. The difference was that she was no longer waiting indefinitely. She was waiting until the moment the operation required.
The Drawn Breath ran at full state. The Quiet Hands operated beneath it. She had thought through her portion of the operation over the journey, the way she had thought through it during the planning conversation in the study.
The destruction of the office complex was hers. The bodies of the core team were hers. The signature would be carried in what she left at the scene.
The lounge’s interior lighting was warm and steady. The Forbearance held the cover the Daplona register expected.
✦
Tovek was at the forward observation gallery.
Tovek had been at the gallery for most of the journey. The viewport gave him a continuous read of the yacht’s approach to space ahead, and the read kept his operational state aligned with the journey’s tempo. He had his combat rig at his feet in the small case that had carried it from Daplona. A heavy blaster rifle in the primary compartment. A heavy blaster pistol with three spare power cells. A close-work blade in a forearm sheath. Four small concussion grenades distributed across the rig’s belt positions.
The rig was professional, not improvised. Tovek had acquired it through the channels his trade had given him access to over the past two decades. He had worn it before, in other configurations, for other principals he had served. He had not worn it during his service to Allia Omek before today.
The freighter would be at the rendezvous in seventeen minutes.
✦
The rendezvous point was an empty parking orbit at the outer edge of the Garqi system, eight light-minutes from the planet’s atmospheric boundary.
Tovek’s freighter had held the parking orbit since the previous morning. It was captained by an operator Tovek had retained for the duration of the operation. Cover identified the freighter as a small commercial vessel waiting for a delayed cargo manifest. The captain was a Mirialan female named Ress Tarrek, one of Tovek’s long-standing professional contacts. Her loyalty was purchased at the level the operation required. Her discretion was a function of her own trade.
The Forbearance came alongside the freighter at the marker.
The transfer took eleven minutes. Allia, Mr. Sennar Phael, and Allia’s aide crossed the umbilical from the yacht to the freighter with the small personal cases they had brought. The Forbearance’s pilot was instructed to hold the parking orbit until the freighter returned. The principals would re-board for the return journey to Ciutric. The pilot acknowledged the instruction. The umbilical sealed.
Inside the freighter Tarrek was at the bridge.
“Mistress Omek.”
“Captain Tarrek.”
“The atmospheric approach window opens in two hours and seventeen minutes. Landing coordinates are at the location Mr. Sennar Phael provided. The atmospheric exit window after the operation’s completion opens approximately forty minutes after the first ignition, and remains open for twenty-five minutes thereafter. I will hold the engines at high alert for the entire ground period.”
“Acknowledged.”
“The freighter will not produce a registration signature with Garqi planetary authority on this approach. The clearance documentation Mr. Sennar Phael provided will pass automated inspection. We will land at the prepared location without manual review.”
“Acknowledged.”
Tarrek did not say anything further. She returned her attention to her console.
In the freighter’s main hold the three principals prepared their equipment. Zannah’s saber-staff went onto her belt. Bane’s saber remained in Cognus’s hip pouch. Tovek’s rig went on across his shoulders and chest. The three of them changed from the merchant-class cover clothing they had worn on the yacht into the working clothes Tovek had prepared. Dark, unmarked, fitted to the work the operation would produce.
The freighter held the rendezvous for the remainder of the approach window. At the marker it broke parking orbit and began the descent toward Garqi’s atmosphere.
The crossing from the outer system to the planet took the better part of two hours.
✦
Garqi’s primary commercial district sat in the planet’s southern continent, in the city the planet had named for itself.
The city had served as a regional trade center for three centuries. It primarily handled agricultural exports from the surrounding cropland. It also supported a substantial secondary trade in commercial services — freight scheduling, intelligence brokerage, financial intermediation, and the kind of light manufactured goods the broader Hegemony consumed. Marvash’s office complex sat in the city’s northern quarter, three blocks from the central exchange building.
The freighter landed at a small private pad on the city’s eastern outskirts, registered under one of Tovek’s commercial covers, at twenty minutes past the local hour the operation’s window had begun.
The three of them moved through the city in the cover identities Tovek had prepared.
Allia Omek travelled as a Daplona freight broker visiting Garqi to evaluate potential acquisition targets for the restructured Drekka business. Cognus travelled as her aide. Tovek travelled separately, in the cover of a Daplona-licensed maintenance contractor with credentials authorizing him to inspect service infrastructure at multiple commercial properties in the northern quarter, including Marvash’s. The three identities did not connect on the documentation.
At the service corridor entrance at the rear of Marvash’s complex Tovek arrived first.
Tovek presented his credentials at the door’s manual interface. The reader registered the documentation and permitted entry without notification to internal security. Tovek had positioned a controlled source inside the complex’s service contractor scheduling in the past three weeks. The source had logged his entry as a routine maintenance call confirmed two days earlier. No one inside the building would register his arrival as unusual.
Two minutes later Allia Omek and her aide arrived at the rear by the side route Tovek had prepared.
The three of them assembled at the service corridor’s threshold inside the building.
Tovek inclined his head to his Mistress.
“The structure is as the picture described. Marvash is in his office at the front of the complex. The core team’s positions are confirmed at the four locations I identified. The middle section is currently occupied by three of the core team plus two contractors who have been brought in for what Marvash has been told is a routine commercial meeting. The contractors are not part of the core team and are not expecting violence. The core team is.”
Zannah’s left hand went to her saber-staff. Her right hand drew it free of its housing.
Cognus’s left hand unfastened the seal of the small leather pouch and lifted Bane’s saber out.
Tovek’s right hand brought the blaster rifle up from its position at his shoulder rig into firing carry.
“Begin,” Zannah said.
The saber-staff ignited.
✦
The first three operators were at the corridor junction twenty meters past the service entrance.
They was positioned there as a precaution against unauthorized service entry. The deception had not been expected to fail. Marvash’s core team had prepared for the contingency anyway. They were two human males and a Twi’lek female, all carrying mid-range blaster pistols, all positioned at the cover points the corridor permitted.
They saw the lights of the activated sabers before they saw the bearers.
The first human raised his weapon and fired. The shot was bright in the dim corridor. It did not connect — Zannah’s saber-staff had already deflected it back at him. The shot returned to him at chest height and put him on the corridor floor.
The Twi’lek and the second human began firing simultaneously.
Tovek’s rifle was up past Zannah’s left shoulder before either had completed their second shots. The rifle’s firing rate was set to the rapid mid-range configuration his rig permitted. The bolts moved down the corridor in a tight pattern. The Twi’lek took two bolts in the upper chest and one at the throat and fell.
The second human attempted to fall back to a defensive position at the corridor’s second junction. He did not reach it. Cognus had moved past Tovek at the right side of the corridor. Bane’s saber cut him across the torso. The crimson cut opened him from sternum to hip. He went down without sound.
The corridor was clear in eleven seconds.
The three of them moved past the junction.
✦
The middle section was at the next corridor’s end, twenty-five meters further into the complex.
The three core team members and the two contractors sat at a small conference table in a room off the corridor. The meeting Tovek’s deception had arranged was scheduled for the hour the operation’s window opened. The five of them had been in initial conversation about the cargo manifest the false meeting had been built around when the sounds of the engagement at the rear reached them.
The core team members were on their feet and moving toward the corridor when Zannah’s saber-staff came through the conference room door.
The first core team member — a Devaronian male, mid-career, blaster already in his hand — took the saber-staff’s leading edge across his neck before his weapon had cleared its rising arc. His head came away from his body and rolled across the conference table. The two core team members behind him began firing.
The shots ricocheted off the saber-staff’s defensive arc as Zannah held the doorway. Cognus came in past Zannah’s right hip and engaged the second core team member at close range. Bane’s saber went through the man’s blaster hand at the wrist, then through his torso at the diagonal across his ribs and abdomen. His firing arm and weapon fell to the floor. The man followed.
The third core team member tried to make the room’s far corner to access a panic switch at the wall. Tovek’s rifle bolt took him at the back of the head before he reached it. He fell across the table.
The two contractors had not moved. They were at the conference table with their hands visible. The wide-eyed shock of professional operators brought in for a meeting that was not what occurred held them where they sat. One was a Bothan male; the other a Rodian female. Both were armed but neither had drawn.
Tovek did not give them the time. The rifle came up and the rifle fired. The Bothan took two bolts at the chest. The Rodian took one at the head. Both fell.
The middle section was complete in nineteen seconds.
Zannah looked at Tovek across the conference room.
“Forward.”
The three of them moved through the conference room’s far door and into the corridor leading to the front of the complex.
✦
The corridor to the front had two additional core team positions.
The first was a single operator — a human female, mid-career, blaster rifle in her hand, positioned in a recessed alcove. She fired three bolts at the saber-staff’s leading approach. The bolts deflected into the alcove’s wall and back into her. She fell.
The second was two operators at the corridor’s end. A human and a Trandoshan, both with mid-range weapons, positioned to defend the approach to Marvash’s office. They opened fire as the team came around the corridor’s last turn.
Cognus engaged them.
Bane’s saber moved with the rhythms the Huntress had trained into her hands through the years. The curved hook-handled hilt produced wider arcs than her twin curved blades would have, and a longer reach than her physical frame would have permitted. The Trandoshan took the saber across the chest where his species’ thicker hide should have provided defense. The crimson cut went through hide and body cavity. He fell.
The human attempted to fall back into Marvash’s office. The office door at the corridor’s end was not yet sealed. He reached the doorway. Tovek’s rifle bolt took him through the back at the spine. He fell across the threshold.
The corridor was clear.
Marvash’s office lay beyond the human’s body, the door still open, the principal visible at the far end behind a heavy desk.
Zannah looked at Cognus and Tovek.
“Hold the corridor.”
Zannah stepped over the human and crossed the threshold.
✦
Marvash was on his feet behind the desk.
Gran, late middle-aged as Tovek’s picture had described. His three eyes took in Zannah at the door with the kind of attention an apex predator gave to a threat it had not anticipated. He wore the working clothes of a commercial broker — a dark coat over a pale shirt. A small holdout blaster was in his right hand at the desk’s edge. He had not yet raised it.
The the recognition completed in the half-second after Zannah crossed the threshold.
Marvash recognized her as a category. The saber-staff at her right hand. The dark working clothes that did not match the cover she had been operating under in Daplona. Her posture in the doorway. The small interior pressure his own minor Force-sensitivity had been picking up since the corridor engagement began. All of it consolidated. The recognition was Sith.
Tovek raised the holdout blaster.
Zannah did not extinguish the saber-staff. She did not move from the doorway. She extended her left hand toward him with the fingers half-curled.
Marvash’s weapon stopped moving.
His hand stayed at the desk’s edge. The blaster was raised partway to firing position. He could not complete the motion. The grip had taken his arm at the elbow and his hand at the wrist.
Zannah tightened the grip.
Marvash’s feet came off the floor.
He rose against the wall behind his desk to a height of perhaps thirty centimeters off the floor. His arms locked at his sides. The blaster fell from his fingers, hit the desk, skidded across, and fell behind it.
The grip at his throat tightened.
Marvash’s breathing stopped. His three eyes felt the choke. He attempted to speak. The choke held him silent.
Zannah crossed the office to the desk.
She stood at the desk’s far side and looked at him across the small distance the choke held him at. The saber-staff was still ignited at her right hand. The crimson light combined with the warm office lighting in the room Marvash could still see. He was conscious. He was held. He could not speak.
“You killed a man in my house,” Zannah said.
Her voice was quiet. The office permitted it.
Marvash’s vision held her. His three eyes did not blink.
“He was worth more than you.”
Cognus raised both hands.
“This is for him.”
Her eyes closed.
The focus the Working required came forward through the Force-grip and through the space between her position at the desk and Marvash’s position suspended at the wall. The focus found the inward seat the doctrine described — the location at the center of his matter where the practitioner’s will made operative contact. The focus established.
The hands came in.
Marvash caught the establishment of the inward seat as a small additional pressure beyond the choke. The pressure did not last. The hands came in past the seat and into the substance of his matter. The substance began to undergo the structural collapse the Working produced.
Marvash’s three eyes lost focus first.
The bleeding began. Blood produced at the corners of his eyes and ran along his face. The same production occurred at his nostrils and at his ear cavities. His cranium underwent the small distension the internal pressure produced. The choke remained at his throat. The grip remained at his body. The Working continued.
After the eighth second of the deployment Marvash’s body went limp.
The matter inside his cranium had completed its collapse. The brain that had carried the twenty years of resentment and the decade of patient construction and the engagement’s opening move at the Omek estate was no longer brain. It was the viscous matter the Working produced from brain at full application.
Zannah released the grip.
Marvash fell against the wall and slumped to the floor at its base. His body was intact externally. The bleeding at his face was the only external evidence of what had occurred inside him. A small pool of blood spread at the floor where his head came to rest.
Zannah extinguished the saber-staff.
Zannah stood at the desk and did not move.
The drain was everything the modeling predicted and more. Her hands at her sides were not entirely under her control. Her breathing was not entirely under her control. The Veiled Course had collapsed during the Working’s deployment and had not yet come back. The Drawn Breath had reduced to the shallowest configuration her continued operational state permitted.
The desk held her where she stood.
No call went to Cognus. No call went to Tovek. The drain pinned her.
After perhaps fifteen seconds Cognus came through the office door.
✦
Cognus took in the office in a single registration.
Marvash dead against the wall behind the desk. Zannah at the desk’s far side, on her feet, not moving. The state of her Master’s posture readable to Cognus’s now-trained attention as a practitioner who had deployed something the practice had not yet calibrated her for.
Cognus crossed the office to her.
She did not speak. She placed her left hand at Zannah’s right elbow. The contact landed as support, not intrusion. Zannah did not pull away. Operational command had moved to the apprentice, in the way the planning conversation had specified.
“Master.”
“Continue,” Zannah said. Her voice was reduced. “Complete the work.”
“Yes, Master.”
Cognus brought Zannah’s right arm across her own shoulders to support the Master’s standing weight. Her free right hand ignited Bane’s saber. The crimson filled the office. She called out to the corridor.
“Tovek.”
“Apprentice.”
“Hold the rear. The Master is supported. I will complete the destruction.”
“Acknowledged.”
Cognus walked Zannah to the corridor and placed her against the wall outside Marvash’s office, where the corridor turned back toward the rear. Tovek positioned at Zannah’s side, rifle up, watching both directions.
“Five minutes,” Cognus said.
“Acknowledged.”
Cognus returned to the office and to the work.
✦
The destruction took four minutes and forty seconds.
Cognus moved through the complex from front to rear with Bane’s saber active. She returned to each body she or Zannah or Tovek had killed. She cut the bodies into the configurations the doctrine required. The lightsaber wounds across the bodies were now multiple. The wounds carried the signature.
The conference room received additional damage at the table and at the walls. The structural elements were cut at the load-bearing positions. The walls would collapse inward within hours, completing the destruction of the middle section.
The corridor walls received the same treatment.
Marvash’s office she left as it was. The body at the wall. The blood at the floor. The desk intact. The signature was already complete in Marvash’s body. The office required no further attention.
Cognus returned to Zannah.
“Complete.”
“Acknowledged.”
Tovek inclined his head at the apprentice’s eye-line. The recognition between them passed in the small register the operation permitted. Tovek had caught, over the past five minutes, what had occurred in Marvash’s office and what had occurred in the apprentice’s response to her Master’s drain. He held both registrations behind the same professional opacity that had carried him through the engagement.
Cognus brought Zannah’s arm back across her shoulders.
The three of them moved toward the service corridor at the rear of the complex.
✦
The withdrawal took eleven minutes from Marvash’s office to the freighter.
They passed back through the corridors the engagement had produced bodies in. They reached the service corridor’s threshold. Tovek led them out at the cover position his rig had taken at the entry. The two of them followed.
The street outside the complex had three civilians. A vendor at his cart half a block toward the central exchange. A Twi’lek woman walking her child toward the market. An older man in the doorway of a shop opposite Marvash’s building. All three caught the team as the team emerged. The vendor and the older man looked away. The Twi’lek woman pulled her child behind her and did not move.
The team did not engage any of the three.
Cognus walked Zannah at the supporting pace. Tovek was at the rear, rifle now back at his shoulder rig. Bane’s saber remained ignited in Cognus’s right hand — she had not had a free hand to extinguish it. The crimson moved with them along the street. The three civilians watched them pass. The Twi’lek woman did not move until the team had cleared the block.
The freighter was at the small private pad where it had landed.
Ress Tarrek had the boarding ramp lowered when they reached the pad. Cognus walked Zannah up the ramp. Tovek followed. The ramp closed behind them. The freighter began its engines toward the atmospheric exit window.
The freighter cleared atmospheric boundary at twenty-eight minutes after the first ignition.
The team had made the window by twelve minutes.
✦
In the main hold of the freighter Cognus brought Zannah to the small berth at the rear and lowered her onto it.
The Master’s eyes had closed during the final stretch of the corridor. The drain had reached the point where her conscious control had been operating at the reserve below the level she normally maintained. Cognus had supported the appearance of her continued mobility. The mobility was an act of will the drain had begun to outpace.
Cognus placed her at the berth. She removed the saber-staff from her Master’s belt and set it on the small table beside the berth. She extinguished Bane’s saber and returned it to its hip pouch.
Cognus placed her hand at her Master’s forehead.
The skin was cool. The breathing was shallow and steady. The pulse at the throat was steady but operating at the reduced rate the drain permitted. The Master would recover. The recovery would take days, possibly longer.
Cognus inclined her head at her Master.
Cognus withdrew from the berth.
✦
The freighter held course toward the rendezvous point with the Forbearance.
Tovek was at the small forward observation gallery with Tarrek at the bridge ahead of him. He had stowed the rig. The rifle was at the case. The pistol was at the small holster at his hip. The grenades were no longer at the belt — two had been deployed during the engagement, two had been returned to the case. The close-work blade remained at the forearm sheath.
Cognus came to the gallery.
Tovek inclined his head at her.
“Apprentice.”
“Tovek.”
“The Master.”
“Drained. She will recover. The recovery will take days.”
“Acknowledged.”
Cognus stood at the gallery beside him for some moments and did not speak. The viewport showed the dark of the system’s outer space, the stars at their distant positions. The Forbearance’s small light at the rendezvous point lay ahead of them.
“The operation,” she said.
“Was as planned. The picture held. The principal is closed. The contractor network will require the additional work in the weeks ahead, which I will handle. The Garqi authority will report what the witnesses report. The signatures at the scene will produce the talk the operation was structured to produce. The talk will reach where it is intended to reach.”
“Acknowledged.”
She did not speak further. Tovek did not require her to.
After some minutes Cognus returned to the rear of the freighter and to her Master’s berth and took her position on the small chair beside it for the duration of the journey to the Forbearance.
The freighter held course.
The work was complete.
In the architecture inside Zannah, Bane was silent at a register different from the silences of the prior weeks. The silence was not refusal. The silence was the silence of a man who had caught a Working he did not have the doctrinal vocabulary to engage with. He had no language for what Zannah had done in Marvash’s office. He carried the absence of language. Zannah, even in the reduced state the drain had produced, noted the difference. She did not press. The pressing would come at the cadences her recovery permitted. For now she carried the new silence beside the others.
The freighter approached the rendezvous.
The Forbearance’s small light grew steadily larger in the viewport.
The household was returning.