Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [62]
The squadron cruised low over the broken and veined landscape, following the blistered cracks and fissures. Looming canyon walls cast thick shadows. As the ships penetrated the canyon network, the box-ended gorge stopped abruptly in an imposing facade—the personal fortress of Superior General Delvardus.
The assault shuttles landed in front of the huge stone gates, settling onto a dry wash as hard as duracrete. Daala and Pellaeon emerged, accompanied by half of her heavily armed stormtroopers. The remainder of her troops stayed inside the assault shuttles, manning the weapons. The Gamma assault shuttles hissed and ticked as their engines cooled, settling in for the siege.
She had no idea how Delvardus’s second in command would react.
Two of the stormtroopers opened the back cargo compartment and withdrew Daala’s most important show of force. “Vice Admiral Pellaeon and I will walk out front,” she said. “Two of you will carry the trophy, and the rest follow on either side as my honor guard.”
They marched up the paved wash to the towering edifice of the fortress, their boots making sounds like gunfire as they clomped across the ground. The arid wind issued a quiet moan. Daala saw no other movement.
The stormtroopers wrestled with a blocky frame on antigrav mounts, trying to keep it from jerking in the brisk breezes. Suspended in the middle of the frame, crackling and preserved in a high-powered force field, like a dead insect trapped in amber, hung the gangly, cleft-jawed body of Superior General Delvardus. His face was blotched and contorted in a grimace, his eyes squeezed shut from the effects of the nerve gas.
Daala glanced behind her, fiery hair whipping about in the cold gusts. Her lungs burned from the thin air, but she didn’t want to appear weak wearing a breathmask.
Pellaeon straightened his uniform and stood with Imperial demeanor. Daala held her head up and strode toward the massive doors five times her own height—Daala suspected the grandeur was mostly for show. Despite Delvardus’s proclaimed enormous military expenditures, she had seen virtually no armed presence around the entire planet, and she wondered if the second in command might be planning some sort of ambush.
Stepping apart so that all observers could witness the suspended body of Superior General Delvardus, Daala and Pellaeon stood before the towering stone doorway and waited. She spotted voice pickups cleverly concealed in crevices in the rocks.
“I have a message and a gift for Colonel Cronus,” Daala said in a normal speaking voice, turning her mouth toward the voice pickups.
With a sound like a disgusted sigh, the great stone doors cracked open by two meters, revealing an armed contingent of Imperial soldiers hiding inside. Daala did not permit herself to look the least bit ruffled. “Your Superior General has acted in a heinous and traitorous manner, putting his own wishes ahead of the future of the Empire.”
The guards looked as if they wanted to blast her for insulting their former master so blatantly, but they didn’t dare act in front of Daala’s stormtrooper escort and the heavily armed Gamma assault shuttles.
“Delvardus did not act alone, but continued a war of attrition, fighting other warlords to the detriment of us all. I present here”—she withdrew a holo cube from her pocket and set it in front of the sparkling frame that held the suspended body—“a recording of our entire détente council, so that you may see your general’s actions, as well as those of the other warlords. Then you will understand why it was necessary to take such a drastic step.
“These assault shuttles are merely a fraction of our forces, but they are sufficient to cause significant damage to your fortress. The rest of our fleet waits in orbit. Look over these items and decide whether to join us as part of a reunited Imperial force—or whether to be considered renegades like your former master. You have one hour to deliberate. If we don’t hear from