Apocalypse by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online

engaged the repulsorlift drive. A shiver of danger raced down his spine, and a single thought filled his mind:
Bomb!
    Vhool flung open the door and Force-leapt from the limo onto the nearest balcony. He landed in a diving roll and used the Force to counteracthis momentum, then returned to his feet, lightsaber in hand. He ignited the crimson blade and slipped into a combat crouch, eyes sweeping left and right.
    An instant later a fast-descending scaffold dropped from the floor above and crushed him flat.
    The maintenance man who had been operating the scaffold—a green-eyed human whose chin sported a tuft of graying beard—stepped off the scaffold and found nothing but a blood-soaked arm protruding from beneath the heavy equipment. He took note of the GAS insignia on the sleeve cuff, then checked for a pulse and found none. When he glanced down the skylane and saw the GAS limo decelerating, he hurled himself over the balcony railing.
    The maintenance man landed on the back of a two-seat swoop bike, piloted by a golden-eyed Arcona named Izal Waz.
    “Welcome aboard, Master Horn,” Izal called over his shoulder. “No surrender, I gather?”
    “Scratch target one,” Corran confirmed. “Let’s try number two.”
    Izal swung the swoop bike down an access lane and accelerated hard. Behind them, the limo never did explode.
    Kayala Fei was delivering BAMR’s midday newscast, halfway through a kicker story about Jedi healers conducting medical experiments on Chandrilan younglings, when a peculiar message appeared on her holoprompter: SURRENDER OR DIE. DECIDE NOW .
    Fei did not hesitate, did not even blink. She simply used the Force to send her chair rocketing away from the anchor desk, toward the holographic skyline being projected at the rear of the stage. The instant the chair began to tip, she was on her feet, her lightsaber flying into her hand from a holster concealed inside her stylish knee boots.
    The space her head had just occupied now had a stage light swinging through it. Affixed to the bottom end of a broken support batten, it had crossed the anchor desk and was coming toward her. She ignited her lightsaber and pivoted to the side, cutting the batten at head height to keep the heavy lamp from catching her on the return trip.
    But there was a broken cable snaking down behind her, and
that
Fei had no chance to avoid. By the time she identified the hot sizzle rushingthrough her body as electricity rather than her own danger sense, the cable was wrapping itself around her neck. Its bare end snapped down and caught her just above the heart, pouring so much current into her chest that a smoking hole appeared in her shimmersilk tunic.
    Fortunately, the relief producer was up to the emergency. She had been called in after the normal production crew had been served a bowl of spoiled thakitillo, and she was the type who kept her head. She typed a new message into the holoprompter, then activated the studio’s PA system and instructed Fei’s co-anchor to move to the auxiliary anchor desk.
    The new anchor, a jowly man with an oversized nose and a baritone voice, looked at the speaker above his head and asked, “You want me to go on?” He glanced toward the back of the stage, where Fei’s body was still hanging from the cable and continuing to convulse. “What about Kayala?”
    “The Emdee droid is on his way,” the relief producer said. A tall, dark-haired woman with a commanding presence, Jedi Master Octa Ramis knew how to take control of a chaotic situation. “And we still have four minutes of newscast to fill. Move! Read!”
    The anchor jumped up and raced ten paces to the auxiliary desk, then sat down and began to read from the holoprompter floating above the active cam.
    “Uh, we apologize for the technical difficulties we have just experienced.” His voice returned to its smooth baritone. “We are sorry to report that BAMR anchorwoman Kayala Fei has suffered an untimely death in a freak accident. The incident