Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [61]
In utter disgust Daala spoke, her voice low and heavy like a blunt instrument. “I didn’t want to rule. I had no intention of becoming a political leader. I wanted to crush the Rebels instead—but you give me no choice. I cannot leave the Empire in the hands of fools like you.”
Daala reached into the hip pocket of her olive-gray uniform and withdrew a translucent breathmask, which she placed over her mouth and nose. She activated the mask with a fingertip, and it sealed itself to her face, grafting its edges to her skin cells. Beside her, Pellaeon suddenly looked up in dawning comprehension. He grabbed for his own mask as Daala reached under the table again and pressed a button, triggering the nerve-gas systems she had programmed the worker droids to install. The air vents made hissing sounds, like serpents expelling venomous breath into the room.
In unison, the warlords howled at the treachery; Daala noted with amused irony that at last they had found a way to do something together.
Teradoc attempted to haul his bloated form to his feet. Daala presumed he would die of a heart attack if the nerve gas didn’t get him first.
Warlord Harrsk and three others didn’t waste time venting their rage but rushed to the door, pounding at the cyberlock, trying to trigger its release. But the timer had four minutes yet to run, and Daala knew the gas required only seconds to complete its fatal action.
Tall, skeletal Delvardus snatched at the insignia on his chest with an intent look of concentration on his face. He managed to clip several badges and medals together. He withdrew a strut from one of his shoulderboards, and when he had finished clicking the components together, Daala saw that he had assembled a wicked-looking, if primitive, knife.
On his long, bony legs Delvardus staggered toward her, raising the blade. His face grew splotchy with rose-colored eruptions of tiny blood vessels in his cheeks and eyes. He gasped.
Daala remained standing where she was, a ready target. She stared at him with polite interest. Delvardus had accepted the fact he would die, and he meant to slash Daala before the nerve gas caused him to succumb.
The warlords were falling right and left now, slumping atop each other. Some choked, clutching their throats; others vomited. Two sprawled across the table. Most had managed to make it to the floor.
Delvardus kept coming, one plodding step at a time, as if his limbs were sheathed in rapidly hardening duracrete. His eyes were a deep red, filled with blood from the inside as he strained, lifting his knife.
Daala watched him topple at her feet. The knife clattered on the floor plates.
Pellaeon looked shocked but resigned as he watched the unexpected carnage. Fat Teradoc continued to wheeze and cough. Daala was surprised to see that the obese warlord was the last to die.…
A few moments later Daala and Pellaeon stood like statues, the only two survivors, surveying the massacre of Imperial military commanders. Pellaeon blinked in shock. “It’s done, then,” he whispered, as if he still couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed.
Daala merely nodded grimly and said, “This is what had to be.”
Right on time, the cyberlock clicked, and the heavy door swung open, setting Daala and Pellaeon free.
CHAPTER 20
Admiral Daala’s consolidated fleet arrived in a threatening posture at the military outpost of dead Superior General Delvardus. She took an ample landing force as a show of strength when she went to parley with Cronus, Delvardus’s second in command.
The skeletal Superior General had chosen a small world on the outer fringe of the habitable band from its sun, an arid place of rusty sands, barren rocks, and labyrinthine canyons left over from ancient, long-dried floods.
From her newly commandeered Star Destroyers, Daala gathered a squadron of assault shuttles that looked like deadly beetles that streaked down in an impressive phalanx through the pale green atmosphere, homing in on the secret location of Delvardus’s fortress. She had taken the coordinates