Chapter Seventeen
Jedi Sentinel: Cult of Fear
Genti’s glass cathedral was utterly indefensible. The main entryway was open to the sky, for crying out loud! Two stately staircases spiraled around a gorgeous fruit tree — pink-and-white blossoms on graceful, pale branches — directly under a great, big hole right in the ceiling. The rich man had been inspired by a visit to The Wishing Tree, so in a way, this was all Skeeves’ fault.
Off to the right, the whole ground floor was an indoor-outdoor space, stone tiles from the patio flowing right into the living room without so much as a railing to deter intruders. The only solid wall was a fireplace that partially separated a game room in the back, couldn’t even keep out a breeze. Both rooms had been gutted of all their furnishings.
Coba Perge had hauled every last table, chair, and sofa up those arching staircases in order to barricade a sniper’s perch in the dining room. Under Xen’s direction, he’d stacked interlocking deck chairs, lounge chairs, and bar stools atop a foundation of benches, firepits, and that long dining room table. They wouldn’t stand up to a concentrated barrage, but they’d break line of sight and, when they collapsed, they’d make enough of a mess to slow any invasion. Ostia crouched behind it with a hunting rifle she’d found on the wall of Genti’s smoking lounge.
Another partial wall separated kitchen from dining. It held a glass display case full of fancy dinnerware. Fortunately, the rear of the building was already guarded by a sheer cliff, draped with thick vines, mere meters from the house. Doubly fortunate, because even Genti didn’t own enough furniture to barricade this entire, indefensible fishbowl of a home.
On the opposite side of the staircase, and the obnoxiously open ceiling, Genti and his family had taken shelter in the only sheltered place: the hallway connecting their many, many bedrooms on the second floor. Xen had just finished welding the doors shut, so there were no windows and only one point of access. Perge would be charged with protecting them, since technically Brigg was there, too.
Anyone who tried to come down through that hole, or in through the front door, would find themselves flanked by armed men in elevated positions. No fortress, to be sure, but Xen was pretty proud of himself, all things considered.
Genti was less impressed. “I understand all that,” he was telling Brigg, “but this Jedi lunacy is madness!” After his entreaties had fallen on Xen and Perge’s deaf ears, the rich man had repackaged them for the CEO. “Surely, if anyone can negotiate a peaceful resolution, it’s the great Daros Brigg!”
“You don’t know a thing about it, weekender!” Perge scolded Genti from the staircase railing. “We’ve been working on the Sabra problem for — “
Brigg silenced him with a wave of his many-ringed hand. “It’s fine, Perge. He doesn’t need the backstory. I promise, no harm will come to you or your children, Genti. I’d never have let things progress this far, were it otherwise. Just trust my men…”
“I don’t work for you,” Xen muttered into his welding.
“… and we’ll all come out of this unscathed. You have my word.” Then, as an afterthought, “And I will personally compensate you for the inconvenience.”
“D-Don’t be ridiculous,” Genti tripped over his tongue. “No compensation necessary. We’re just overjoyed to be of service to such an august and enlightened figure. Aren’t we, girls?” His daughters didn’t respond. They were huddled together in the darkest corner of the hall, trying to be brave. Xen regretted their involvement, but he’d protect them with his life.
“Hey, Jedi.” Perge was making a play for his attention. “You’re not a bad tactician, after all. This could work.” Xen didn’t know what to do with the compliment. He just turned it over and over in his mind, like an alien artifact. “I’m going to make one, last check of the doors downstairs,” Perge added. “Keep an eye on the civilians for a few minutes, will you?”
“Of course,” Xen agreed, still stunned, “but won’t you need this?” He tossed over Genti’s plasma torch.
Perge caught it in his meaty mitts. “Oh yeah, thanks.” Then he vaulted over the railing and dropped out of sight. Show-off.
Returning his attention to Genti, Xen put a reassuring hand on the rich man’s shoulder and gave him his final instructions. “I need you to think about your daughters, Genti. If Sabra gets her claws on any of them, or you, she’ll use you as hostages. She’s done it to her own people; I won’t let that happen to you or yours. Do you understand — “
“They’re coming across the yard!” Ostia raised the alarm from her perch in the dining room before taking her first shot with the rifle. Xen could hear broken glass hitting the patio tile, then a chorus of return fire.
“Stay here!” the Sullustan shouted over his shoulder as he sprinted down the hall and jumped down to the first floor. “Perge, you’re back on duty!” He didn’t wait for a response; if the Cathar could be counted on for one thing, it was doing his job.
A phalanx of security droids — the tall, beefy ones with chrome armor and pinprick eyes — were indeed marching across the yard, just as Xen and his merry band had done during dinner. Ostia’s sharpshooting had already taken out two of them, glowing holes straight through their CPUs, and a third fell as Xen ignited his lightsaber.
They opened fire on him without hesitation. Xen sent as many bolts back as he could, but Sabra had found heavy repeating blasters somewhere and even the Jedi was soon overwhelmed. He took cover behind the fireplace wall, along its narrow side. Crimson bolts flew past his shoulders like startled hummingbats.
His next move was risky. Xen had never excelled at the maneuver, but there was no better way to learn than by doing. Or dying. Xen hoped for the former as he hurled his laser sword sideways, toward the pool out front. He reached out through The Force and tethered it to himself, held it aloft as it looped back across the yard from right to left, emerald blade bisecting security droids at the waist.
It circled all the way around and landed in Xen’s hand as he stepped out from his cover. The onslaught was much more manageable now, the phalanx reduced by half. Ostia dropped another one from the sniper’s nest.
Xen deepened his stance, preparing for a melee with the remaining troops, but they broke off their charge and veered suddenly across the pool toward the front of the house. “Oh no,” the Sullustan gasped. The Force was howling at him. He took off after the droids, but not fast enough.
A red-clad mass of Sabra’s faithful swallowed Genti and his daughters. The mob had pushed through the main gate and oozed into the driveway, but Genti had clearly come out to meet them. The security droids took up positions along the wall and trained their blasters on the Jedi.
But they did not fire.
“What in the nine hells have you done to that poor man’s house?!” Sabra’s voice boomed over a loudspeaker held by one of her cultists. “Have you always been this terrible a guest, Jedi? Or do they teach you that on Coruscant? Go ahead and reply; I can hear you.” Surveillance droids aimed their sensor arms at him, hovering overhead.
“Hostages again, Sabra?” he bellowed. “Get some new material!”
“I learn from my failures, Sentinel. Do you? Because your escape attempt failed. You failed. Now, you’re only endangering innocent lives. Cut your losses, let me have Brigg, and you can still walk away from this. You and the girl. Persist… and I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety.”
“I told you, we’re not negotiating. If anyone’s harmed tonight, there will be consequences, counselor.”
“Duly noted.” Sabra’s amusement was audible, even through the electronic distortion. “Now go inside and prepare for the end.”
The cultist with the speaker, Sabra’s harbinger, melted back into the mob. Xen withdrew, too, walking backwards through the front doors with his lightsaber in guard position. What was left of the doors, anyway. They’d been knocked right out of the wall by some sort of battering ram. Where had Genti been hiding that?
Xen took the spiral stairs three at a time, fearing the worst, but Brigg and Ostia were right where he’d left them. So was Perge, standing guard at the end of the hall. All looked well, but The Force wouldn’t stop screaming.
Also, Perge wouldn’t stop grinning. His face was a forest of fangs. “What’s so funny?” Xen was about to ask when the Cathar lunged forward and swung some kind of glowing bat up from behind his legs, aiming for the Jedi’s chin. Pure instinct brought his lightsaber up to block, but a flash of light and a wave of force propelled him off the floor and over the stairwell, nearly out through the open skylight.
Instead, he crashed headlong through the kitchen, scaring the food preparation droid out of its wits. Mechanical arms flailed, making no attempt to catch the Jedi. Half-eaten meals exploded in his wake as Xen skidded across the center island and bounced off the breakfast nook’s barricaded window. “Turncoat!” he coughed, struggling to his feet. “I bet that wasn’t even an honest compliment!”
“You’re about as good a tactician as I am a mechanic,” the Cathar chuckled, sauntering toward Xen around the stairwell balcony. “How do you like this fun toy, huh? Had it ordered special after our last encounter. One of Sabra’s assistants just brought it to me. So thoughtful. I think it’ll make the rematch a little more fair, don’t you?”
Xen had seen a repulsorblade before. They were a real pain in the everything. A miniature repulsor engine inside the triangular blade pushed back against any force applied to it, even a lightsaber. And it pushed back hard. The Sullustan removed a soup spoon from his jowls and brushed a splash of stew from his floral print shirt. “Because any fight were I win can’t be fair?”
Perge advanced into the kitchen and rotated his wrist. The repulsorblade spun lazily, emitting a low drone Xen could feel in his stomach. A mask of hatred pinched Perge’s features, revealing all of his teeth. “What was fair about losing my kriffing feet?!”
The mountainous Cathar brought his blade down on the granite table like a blacksmith’s hammer. Where a lightsaber would have sliced it in two, the repulsorblade shattered it like a dry loaf of bread. The whole house trembled.
Xen didn’t let the outburst intimidate him; he’d already planned out his counter-move. He gathered The Force around him and pulled on every loose object in the room: skillets and saucepans; serving trays and salad bowls; wine flutes, caf mugs, shot glasses, and sippy cups for the younglings; mixing spoons, serving forks, and knives of every conceivable design. They all flew straight for Coba Perge.
He hid behind the repulsorblade, holding the handle against his forehead and angling the rest down to cover his body. Bubbles of force formed and popped like fireworks. Cutlery impaled the walls, cookware clattered to the floor, and a few choice bits even rebounded back at Xen, but the Jedi was already long gone. He dashed around the partial wall and into the dining room, waving at Ostia to run.
“Make sure Sabra doesn’t nab Brigg!” he ordered, not that Ostia usually took orders. This time, however, she acquiesced. She took a pot shot at Perge on the way, of course, but only managed to incinerate a tea kettle as it fell in front of his heart.
“Jedi!!!” The predator was on the hunt, now, smelling blood. Perge smashed a section out of the kitchen wall, obliterating the heirlooms displayed inside. He ignored Ostia, moving only to block Xen’s escape. His mechanical claws took bites out of the carpet. He rolled his rippling shoulders forward, preparing to pounce.
Xen dropped to the floor, face down and flat as a board with only one foot beneath him. The dining room table broke free from the barricade and shot over him toward Perge… who destroyed it with a single, downward stroke. The Jedi was right behind it, leaping inside the Cathar’s guard with his weapon held high. Somehow, the bigger man managed to bring his repulsorblade back up in time to block and the impact flattened Xen against the ceiling. Perge let him fall to the floor without pity.
“I gave you a chance, Jedi.” Perge towered over him like a wroshyr tree. “Though you didn’t deserve one. I gave you a chance and your half-baked escape plan failed. What else was I supposed to do? Put his life at risk so you could play out your heroic fantasy to the bitter end?!” He spat on the ground; Xen was satisfied to see a bit of blood in it. “Sabra offered me another way out and I took it.”
He brought his weapon down in another sledgehammer strike, but Xen rolled out of the way. The floor shook, buckled. Again and again, the Cathar pummeled the building, trying to end his enemy. Xen rolled and twisted away from each strike, then brought his legs over his head and flipped into a defensive crouch.
The dining room shuddered. A long, low groan gave them just enough warning to turn, but not enough to run. They fell through to the patio below atop a mound of ragged plasteel and ripped carpet. While they coughed and caught their breath, Xen summoned the blaster of a fallen droid into his hand and tried to perforate the turncoat, but Perge slapped the blaster to bits with his repulsorblade.
“I said a fair fight, Jedi,” Perge scolded him. “Stop trying to cheat!”
New terrain, new options. Xen faked left and broke right, skirting around the Cathar and diving headfirst through the freestanding fireplace. Perge demolished that, too, sending piles of obsidian stone cascading across the floor.
Xen was perched atop a heavy game table, out of harm’s way. He lifted his off hand and the rubble levitated, pushed his palm forward and pelted his nemesis with an avalanche of jagged stone. Perge curled up and absorbed the blows. Xen cursed the monster’s thick hide.
Before the dust could settle, Xen leapt with his lightsaber overhead and delivered a blow that would have cleaved a Rancor, but Perge was spry for someone his size. He rolled backwards and unfolded himself, parried Xen’s every attack. High block, low block, wing block, riposte. Waves of energy burst from each point of impact and wrenched Xen’s arms.
The Cathar was too strong, too fast, and too tough. There was nothing fair about this fight. Xen couldn’t beat him, not today.
Instead, he broke off his attack and raced across the foyer, past the pastel tree and graceful staircases, and sliced through the door to Genti’s smoking lounge. He threw everything inside — every hookah and armchair, every antique and trophy that Genti used to impress his fellow rich guys — against the open doorway to slow Perge’s pursuit.
Through to the garage, Xen jumped inside Genti’s best speeder and revved the engine, spun it around at full torque. Perge burst from the smoking lounge just in time to take the front bumper full in the chest. Not even his repulsorblade could counter that kind of force. Perge cratered the back wall, pinned between a plasteel beam and the landspeeder’s chassis, the wind knocked so far from his lungs, it may not find its way back.
Xen reached out a hand and the repulsorblade flew eagerly into it. He left it in the passenger seat. “Hey,” he gloated, crawling over the hood to inspect the damage, “I’m not too bad a tactician, after all.”
Perge had one of his prosthetic feet clamped around the engine block, trying to push the whole vehicle off him. Xen plucked the welding torch from Perge’s belt and, reaching around the Cathar’s ankle, used it to lock a very specific motivator in place. The claw spasmed and seized up. “I’m not a bad mechanic, either. Even if you push that thing off, you’ll be shackled to it until someone comes to help you.” He tossed the torch onto the passenger seat, too. “Good thing you have so many helpful friends.”
Xen left the turncoat to his fate.
Every part of his body berated him as the aging Sullustan hobbled down the back hallway, past the droid hole and around the smoking lounge. He could still feel the kitchen table in his neck and hip, the patio tile in his aching knees, and the thrum of the repulsorblade in his wrists.
The cliffside erupted from a row of meticulously pruned, miniature trees in what passed for Genti’s backyard. Xen longed for the life of a tree: the tranquility, the passive acceptance of whatever life threw at you, the complete absence of bruised ribs or a nervous system capable of experiencing pain. He wanted to plant his feet in the island’s black soil, stretch his arms toward the sky, and just let the universe move on without him. It was but a passing fancy and pass it did… the very moment Ostia opened fire from the floor above.
Sabra’s tin men had taken advantage of Perge’s treachery to rush the main entrance and swarm up the steps, taking a position opposite Ostia’s across the stairwell. She’d started a nice scrapyard on the first landing, piling the tin men high, but her weapon couldn’t fire fast enough to stop them all. It was only a matter of time until Sabra got her way.
The Force filled Xen’s aching limbs and gave them renewed strength. He dashed under the stairs and leapt through the branches of Genti’s tree, bursting through the foliage in a plume of pink and white. His emerald blade snapped back and forth, deflecting fire as he floated over the railing and landed in front of Ostia, acting as her shield.
Brigg sat cross-legged in the back of the hall, deep in the shadows, either meditating or preparing to accept death. “This a good enough ending for your book?” Xen asked Ostia over the cacophony of battle.
“It could stand a second draft,” the reporter replied, stone-faced. Her rifle kicked and another droid met its Maker. “I’d prefer one I can live long enough to publish.”
“I’ve survived worse,” the Jedi lied. He could already feel his sword arm slowing, losing precision. His lungs burned. If this was his end, he was ready to greet it.
The Force whispered in his ear and, for a moment, he thought it was welcoming him home. Instead, something strange happened: a slab of plasteel fell out of the sky, through the hole in the roof, and flattened Genti’s delicate tree.
“Was that an airlock door?” Ostia wondered aloud. Xen didn’t have an answer for her. Luckily, one presented itself.
A fan of blaster fire sprayed through the skylight and peppered the tin men, tore through them like hedge clippers. When it was done with the ones upstairs, it traced a line down the steps and into the foyer, scouring Sabra’s forces from the battlefield. Something exploded down below, shattering the front windows and sending a column of smoke into the night sky.
The Free Ticket circled into view through the skylight. Taos hung from the empty hole that was once her port side airlock, grinning madly behind the red-hot, spinning barrels of a rotary blaster cannon. “Who’s got one thumb and a brand new gun arm?” she bellowed. “This girl!”
“Why didn’t you just open the airlock?” Xen asked, missing the point by a parsec.
“Long story. You want a ride or what?”
“Yes!!!” screamed the CEO of a major corporation, suddenly animated. Brigg all but tramped his protectors on his way to the roof.
Xen and Ostia stowed their weapons and followed a moment later. They could hear Sabra’s faithful charging behind them, incoherent in their rage. Taos kindly lowered the ramp at the top of the steps and they ran right up. Xen staggered the last meter and fell to his knees. He tried to accept the pain and exhaustion as just something that was happening to his body.
And then he looked up. “Is that a bomb?!”
“You’re welcome,” his ex-lover smirked, “and it’s not real. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”
“You have my thanks, young lady.” Brigg had already poured himself a glass of something amber from the kitchenette. He offered Taos one of her own and they toasted. “And my thanks are worth something.”
“Remains to be seen,” Xen groaned, getting to his feet. “Make yourself at home, your highness. We’ll see what you’re worth in the morning.”
He slouched toward the cockpit, where Tooka was taking them up and Ostia sat in the copilot’s chair, feet on the dash. Xen looked out the viewport as they passed over the compound. There were lights everywhere: a vast audience of remotes, droids, and speeders full of wealthy gawkers. They watched as Sabra’s faithful razed Genti’s summer home to the ground.
“I wonder what they’ll make of that.” Taos commented over Xen’s shoulder. “Did I mention I have a gun arm now?”
Written by Daniel Bayn
Cover image by Midjourney
