Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [120]
She slipped out from under his hand.
Still gloating, he sat down at his ivory desk and summoned a quartet of stormtrooper guards. “Soon, Imperial peace will reign on Bakura. A single pivotal troublemaker remains to be dealt with.”
She braced herself to leap before the stormtroopers could fire, but he raised a hand. “You overestimate your importance.” He touched his console and ordered, “Bring up the prime minister.”
Uncle Yeorg? “No!” Gaeriel exclaimed. “He’s a good man. Bakura needs him. You can’t—”
“He has become a symbol. I have tried to be lenient with Bakura, and it betrays my good intentions. I give up. I must operate like any other Imperial governor, branding the terror of the Empire on Bakuran hearts. Unless—” He stroked his chin. “Unless he, or another representative of the Captison family, would publicly ask Bakura to accept me as his successor. You could save your uncle’s life, Gaeriel. Tell me you’ll do so, within three minutes, and he’ll survive.”
Conscience jabbed her from both sides. She couldn’t allow Governor Nereus to execute Uncle Yeorg, but neither could she ask Bakura to lie down for Wilek Nereus. Again she braced herself to jump him. Two troopers raised blast rifles.
“Bodyguard training.” Governor Nereus smiled. “They’re watching you.”
Gaeri stared around Governor Nereus’s office, taking in plaques, tri-Ds, and crystals. Teeth, parasites, what other loathsome interests did he keep hidden? “You say you’d let him live. But would you? Or would you infect him with some parasite, like Eppie Belden? That’s not alive.”
“Orn Belden thought so.”
Another trooper entered, pushing her manacled uncle with the business end of a blast rifle. Yeorg stood straight-shouldered, looking taller in her eyes than Nereus could, for all the governor’s bulk.
“One offer, Captison, one minute to accept,” Nereus announced. “Get on the tri-D. Tell your people to lay down their weapons and submit to Imperial rule. To me, as your designated successor. Or die here with your niece watching.”
Yeorg Captison didn’t hesitate. He pulled his shoulders back, creating dignity out of an old, torn Bakuran uniform tunic. “I’m sorry, Gaeri. Don’t watch. Remember me bravely.”
“Gaeriel?” Governor Nereus licked his upper lip. “Will you make the broadcast? Perhaps I could sweeten the pot—”
At that instant, the trooper beyond Uncle Yeorg buckled and fell. A piercing electronic whine rose from all five troopers’ helmets. Gaeri leaped for the nearest incapacitated trooper, seized his rifle, and waved it in Governor Nereus’s general direction. Evidently he’d hesitated. His ornamental blaster remained in his crossdraw holster.
All five stormtroopers writhed. Even from a distance, the whine hurt her ears. What was going on? “Take off your blaster, Nereus,” she said shakily. Whatever this was, it looked like her chance.
“You don’t even know how to find the safety,” he answered, but he kept both hands on the ivory desktop. Clumsily, Uncle Yeorg seized another helpless trooper’s blast rifle with his fingertips. His wrist-bound grip looked ineffectual, but at least the trooper didn’t have the rifle any more.
Governor Nereus’s command console flashed and went black. The door slid open. Eppie Belden marched in with a spring in her step surprising for a woman of 132. Her round-faced caregiver, Clis, slunk behind. Eppie brandished a blaster with competent ease. “Hah,” she exclaimed. “Got ’em all.” She strode straight to Governor Nereus and lifted the blaster from his holster, then disarmed the other stormtroopers. “Clis,” she ordered, “get a vibroknife and cut Yeorg out of those binders.” Clis hustled out, pale and obviously ill at ease in a confrontation. Gaeri sympathized with Clis. It was Eppie’s bravura that startled her.
“You,” Eppie snarled at Governor Nereus. “If those hands move, you’re dead. Do you understand?