There was a long silence before one of the mercenaries grudgingly looked up from the hand and answered, 'She didn't say. She just left.'
'And you let her go off alone?' Lucia demanded angrily.
'That Iktotchi was with her so we just…' the man answered, his voice trailing off under her withering glare.
She realized they were mere hired guns. They didn't care for anything but the credits they'd been promised.
'Lock the cell door,' Lucia spat out. 'If anything goes wrong, hit the alarm.' That should give me enough of a warning to get the princess out of here in time.
Two of the soldiers reluctantly got up and moved to obey her orders as Lucia climbed the staircase to the hall above.
She didn't care that when Des broke free he'd slaughter the guards. These men and women weren't her friends or colleagues. She knew they'd kill her without a second thought if the price was right. They were mercenaries; their lives meant nothing to her.
But she still cared about Serra. Despite what she had done, she was still loyal to her mistress. She was still sworn to protect her life. When Des broke free, she knew he'd come looking for the princess. When the alarms went off warning of the prisoner's escape, Lucia wanted to be there to help Serra get away to safety.
And if he catches us before we get away, she silently tried to reassure herself, maybe he'll remember me. Maybe I can convince him to let Serra live. First, however, she had to find her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Doan's scarred and ugly terrain rolled beneath them as the Victory sped low across the planet's surface.
In the cockpit Zannah braced herself as the sensors picked up a fierce sandstorm several hundred kilometers in the distance. Beside her Set was seated in his customary position: chair leaning back, feet up on the dash.
Making a slight change in her approach vector brought her on a collision course with the storm. She didn't bother to give Set any warning as the Victory was engulfed by the whirling vortex.
The stabilizers kept the ship from suffering any real harm, but the cabin bucked violently as the vessel was buffeted by the howling winds. Set was sent tumbling from his chair, but he managed to roll with the momentum as he hit the ground and came up on his feet.
'You did that on purpose,' he accused, using the back of his chair to steady himself in the turbulence.
'You need to be alert and aware of your surroundings at all times,' she instructed him. 'Always be on your guard.'
'I thought the information I gave you might have earned me a break from any more lessons today,' he grumbled as he sat back into his copilot's chair and buckled the restraints.
'You were wrong.'
Despite her words, Set had proved himself to be quite valuable. In addition to telling her about Darth Andeddu and his Holocron, he had actually come up with the most likely place Bane was being held.
'They probably took your Master to the Stone Prison,' he had declared shortly after they had begun their journey.
'The Stone Prison?'
'A dungeon built centuries ago by the nobility on Doan to house political prisoners,' he'd explained. 'I found all sorts of references to it in the historical archives.'
'What kind of defenses do they have?' she'd asked.
'Pretty standard. Anti-aircraft cannons. Armed guards inside. And they can set off a series of explosion to bring the whole place down as a last resort.'
Zannah had scowled. 'We'll have to avoid detection when we go in.'
'That might be easier than you think,' Set had answered with a smile. 'The Stone Prison hasn't been used for almost two generations.'
It all made sense to Zannah. A small team of elite guards or mercenaries could keep a single prisoner secured in the abandoned facility without attracting unwanted attention. All the infrastructure they needed-holding cells, interrogation rooms-would still be there. If they stayed deep inside the heart of the complex, nobody would even know they were there. Secrecy, as she well understood, was often the best protection from your enemies. But when your secrets were exposed, it could leave you vulnerable.
'They won't be expecting anyone to assault the prison, so I doubt they'll even activate the external defenses,' Set had continued, speaking aloud the very thoughts running through Zannah's mind. 'A small team couldn't spare the bodies to operate the stations, and powering the systems up would be like sending off a flare to alert everyone they were there.'
It was at that point that Zannah realized Set, for all his seeming overconfidence and carefree attitude, actually liked to be prepared. He wasn't afraid to improvise and adapt, but he had the sense to know what he was heading into:at least in the short term. The trick would be teaching him to apply the same kind of diligence to long-term plans, then have the patience to bear them out.
The Victory passed through the eye of the sandstorm and out the other side, continuing on toward the tall stone column looming far in the distance. Even though they were enjoying a smooth ride once more, Zannah was pleased to see that Set didn't lean back and put his feet up again.
He was learning, and he'd shown several flashes of real potential during their time together. Maybe there was hope for him yet:or maybe, Zannah had to admit, she was just so desperate to find an apprentice she was willing to overlook his flaws.
'There. That column up ahead. That's the one we want.'
Dusk had fallen and Zannah could just make out the silhouette of the massive stone pillar in the distance. From here it looked like an enormous candle: tall and straight, the top aglow with hundreds of lights from the royal family's estate that had been built on the wide, flat plateau at its apex.
Zannah brought the shuttle in low, skimming less than twenty meters above the ground to stay below the radar of the royal estate perched nearly five kilometers above them.
The Victory was picking up hundreds of life-forms when she scanned the column, but they were all concentrated in the buildings of the plateau. There was no evidence of life inside the pillar, but that was to be expected. The scanners wouldn't be able to penetrate the mountain of stone.
Reaching out with the Force, however, presented Zannah with a very different picture. She could feel something dark and powerful pulsing at the heart of the column. She recognized the presence of her Master, though from this distance it was impossible to get anything more than a vague sense that he was hidden somewhere inside.
'There should be hidden landing ports for the prison about halfway up the column,' Set assured her. 'They'll probably look like small caves. Easy to miss.'
The Victory was less than a hundred meters from the pillar when Zannah angled its nose sharply upward. The ship reacted instantly, arching into a steep ascent, the g-forces pinning the two passengers back in their seats. The shuttle steadied in a perfectly vertical climb less than ten meters from the rock wall, running parallel to its contours as Zannah looked for a place to land.
It was too dark for a visual, but the ship's sensors provided her with a digital topography of the pillar's surface racing beneath the hull. What from a distance had looked smooth and sheer was, in fact, rough and irregular. Wind and erosion had sculpted grooves and channels in the rock, and the face was pockmarked with thousands of small, irregularly shaped openings. Most were nooks or fissures that went less than ten meters deep. Others were actual tunnels that extended deeper into the rock. Only a handful were large enough to accommodate a shuttle, however.
'Hold on,' Zannah warned an instant before pulling hard back on the stick.
The Victory peeled away from the column into a backward loop. At the same time Zannah sent them into a half-barrel roll so that they finished right-side up, with the nose of the vessel pointed toward the opening she'd chosen. The landing thrusters fired at full force as the shuttle's momentum sent them rocketing into the mouth of
