Varin's voice reached her before the next junction did.
"We have heavy turret fire on us surrounding the palace. I want those guns silenced or turned on their own."
An impact swallowed the end of his transmission. Another followed before the channel cleared, then three more in quick succession. They lacked the weight of the artillery above. These were closer, fast enough that the walls never quite stopped trembling between them.
Sumire stopped at a maintenance display and laid Varin's coordinates over the palace schematic. His position sat beyond the artillery network she'd just hobbled, beneath a fresh knot of power demands around the governor's palace. Warning icons flashed across the western grounds as concealed housings opened and heavy automated turrets rose into firing position. The city's records still called them riot-control emplacements, a designation that had outlived whatever restraint the weapons once possessed. The feeds showed plasma bolts large enough to turn a speeder into burning wreckage.
Three Covenant signals were already moving left along the palace perimeter. Above them, the weapons covering the western approach all led back to a security-control station built into the palace wall. It sat one level above Sumire and only a short distance from the amber route toward the primary fire-control nexus.
She opened the channel.
"Maintain their attention. Western arc first."
Sumire closed the connection before Varin could answer and turned away from the amber line.
The maintenance corridor tightened around the palace foundations. New conduits had been fastened over older construction, their casings shivering whenever the turrets fired. She followed the vibration to a service stair cut into the inner wall. With every step upward, the impacts sharpened. Beneath them came the muted whine of weapons traversing somewhere beyond the durasteel.
The stair ended at the rear of the western control station. A reinforced service door barred the way, but whoever had designed it had also given maintenance crews a manual release in case a power failure trapped them on the wrong side. Sumire drew the mechanism back a fraction at a time.
Five presences waited beyond it.
The room was long and narrow, divided by a waist-high tactical console. Two operators sat at stations recessed into the right-hand wall. Their officer moved behind them, demanding firing updates and leaning over whichever display failed to answer quickly enough. A guard stood near the operators; another covered the main entrance at the far end. The alarm from the damaged artillery relay had reached them. Every few seconds, the nearer guard's attention returned to the service door.
Sumire eased it open.
The hinges made no sound. A status light on the officer's console changed from green to amber.
"Service door!"
The nearer guard fired with the warning still in his mouth.
Sumire's lightsaber cleared her belt and ignited. The shortened red blade caught the first bolt and threw it into the wall above the operators. They ducked as sparks rained across their stations. The guard fired twice more while the man at the main entrance turned toward her. Sumire batted one shot into the central console. The next crossed beyond the reach of her blade and struck her shoulder plate at an angle.
Heat punched through the armor. Her shoulder hit the wall, and the edge of the central console gave her cover before the guard corrected his aim.
Surprise had carried her through the door. It hadn't taken the room.
"Lock the station down," the officer shouted.
One operator slapped the emergency control. An armored cover dropped from the ceiling toward the entire bank of turret controls. Beside him, the second operator reached for the communications panel.
Sumire caught the descending cover with the Force. Its motor groaned. The plate stopped halfway down, leaving only a narrow band of displays exposed beneath it.
The guards moved before she could do more. The nearer man rounded the left side of the central console at a run. His companion left the main entrance and advanced along the right aisle, keeping the console between them as long as he could. The officer drew his sidearm and stayed near the operators, waiting for either guard to force Sumire into his line of fire.
The left-hand guard reached her first.
Her free hand swept one of the kamas from behind her waist. Its plasma edge remained dark as she caught his rifle beneath the hook and drove the muzzle toward the deck. He didn't fight the turn. He stepped into it, planted a shoulder against her breastplate and used the weapon between them to pin her to the wall.
Across the console, his companion found his angle.
"Clear!"
The first guard tried to wrench himself aside. Sumire held him close and tore his rifle across his body instead. The bolt from the right aisle struck its receiver. The carbine burst between their hands, spraying molten fragments across the wall. The guard cried out and recoiled, one gauntlet smoking.
Sumire ripped the kama free of the ruined weapon. Its hook caught behind his shoulder plate. She pulled him down and across, wrenching his arm away from his side. Her lightsaber passed through the seam beneath it. His weight left his legs, and he folded against the left side of the console.
The armored cover lurched downward.
Sumire seized it again before it closed over the control bank. The strain tightened behind her eyes. She tore the ruined rifle from the dead guard's hands and hurled it into the cover's track. The descending plate caught the weapon with a metallic shriek, crushed the stock flat and stopped. The exposed displays flickered beneath it.
On the right, the second guard had used the struggle to close the distance. He reached the near end of the central console and dropped behind its corner, bracing his rifle along the edge. His first burst chewed glowing pits across the surface in front of Sumire. The next struck the dead guard's armor and filled the left aisle with sparks.
The guard kept Sumire behind the console with another burst. Farther up the right aisle, the officer shifted along the operator stations until the narrow gap between the chairs and the wall gave him a second angle.
His first shot passed close enough for Sumire to feel its heat against her cheek.
She snapped her free hand toward him before he fired again.
The Force dragged the officer out from behind the chairs. His second shot crossed behind Sumire and vanished into the wall. He struck the central console chest-first, lost his sidearm and crumpled beside the operators. One shouted, "Sir!" and reached toward him. The other flinched away from the controls.
The right-hand guard saw her attention leave him and rushed the last few steps.
Sumire met him at the mouth of the aisle. His rifle discharged into the floor as her kama caught the sling near his shoulder and hauled the weapon across his chest. He abandoned it before the strap could take him down and reached for the compact blaster at his hip. The kama slipped from the sling and closed around his wrist. Sumire pulled his arm across his body before the blaster cleared its holster. The motion opened the seam beneath his breastplate. Her shortened blade entered there and vanished again. The guard sagged. Sumire turned with him, keeping his armored body between herself and the officer, who had recovered his sidearm beneath the operator's station.
The officer froze with the weapon leveled. For one breath, neither of them moved. The guard's boots dragged against the deck between them.
Then Sumire let the body fall.
The officer fired.
She pulled him forward with the Force as the kama's inner edge flared to life. His shot passed over her shoulder. The sidearm came between them; Sumire caught it inside the hook and ripped the kama sideways. The plasma edge sheared through barrel and emitter. Both halves struck the floor before the officer reached her.
His momentum carried him into the operator's station. The impact drove the breath from his lungs. Sumire followed him in and punched the kama's pointed head through the outer plate of his forearm guard and into the reinforced console beneath it.
The active edge hissed through armor and machinery. Sparks scattered over the deck. The sharper smell of scorched padding followed, and the officer's scream filled the station.
One operator lurched out of his chair so hard that it struck the wall behind him and rebounded into his legs.
The officer seized the kama's haft with his free hand. "Get it out!"
He pulled once. The inner edge bit deeper into the split bracer. Smoke curled from beneath it, and his scream collapsed into a strangled gasp. His fingers opened. He stayed rigid against the console, drawing short, uneven breaths, his free hand hovering near the weapon without daring to touch it again.
A green light winked across the communications panel.
Sumire tore its power conduit from the wall with the Force. The display died, but the signal had escaped while she fought. Reinforcements would be moving. That gave the two operators value and everyone in the room a finite amount of time.
Her lightsaber went dark. She returned it to her belt and took the officer's code cylinder from his uniform. One operator stood with both hands raised. The other remained frozen at the communications panel, staring at the two bodies on the floor.
"Manual control," Sumire said. "Western turrets."
"The lockdown sealed manual control." The seated operator's voice caught on the last word.
Sumire fitted the officer's code cylinder into the authorization port. The lockout warning disappeared. Above them, the armored cover shuddered and withdrew, releasing the mangled rifle from its track. It struck the deck between the operators with a clang. Both men flinched.
"Not anymore."
New controls opened across the display, replacing the automated firing solutions with a manual targeting grid.
Three active emplacements made up the western arc. All three were still pouring fire into the Covenant position at the palace approach. At the edge of one feed, a violet Togruta moved left through the barrage with two others behind her. The guns hadn't found them yet. Bright impacts walked across the ground they would have to cross once their cover ended.
Sumire selected the first emplacement and drew its targeting mark away from the avenue.
The operator stared at the new coordinates. "That's inside the perimeter."
"I know."
His hand settled on the controls. The first gun turned toward a battle-droid deployment bay opening in the palace grounds. Sumire gave the second gun a line on the neighboring northern emplacement. The third could reach the barricades guarding the western wall.
An authorization prompt filled the center of the display, demanding confirmation before the guns could fire inside the palace perimeter. The operator looked toward his officer. Pinned against the console, the man managed a tight shake of his head.
"Don't," he rasped.
Sumire shifted her grip on the kama's haft. The officer's breath stopped.
"Confirm."
The operator swallowed. His finger came down.
On the feeds, the western barrage stopped.
The first turret rotated inward, its servos whining as it abandoned the avenue it had been assigned to cover. A heavy plasma bolt crossed the inner grounds and burst among the droids emerging from their deployment bay. Fire filled the entrance. The first rank disappeared, and broken machines tumbled back into those behind them.
The second emplacement fired. Its bolt struck the northern turret beneath the armored housing. Metal peeled away in glowing sheets as the weapon tore loose and collapsed into the palace wall.
The third gun opened on the western barricades. Its first shot broke the position nearest the wall. Another struck the ground behind it, driving the defenders away from the gap they'd been holding.
The control station trembled with each discharge. On the feed, the impacts ahead of the three Covenant signals stopped. A clear strip opened between them and the western wall. The standing operator found those signals on the display and stared as they continued toward it.
Warning tones rose from the console.
"They're taking the guns back," the standing operator said. Red override requests multiplied across the display as palace command tried to reclaim the western arc.
"Sever the remote link."
The officer tried to object. Only a broken sound emerged. The operator reached under the control bank and turned the local-isolation switch.
The first override failed. A second followed it. The western guns remained theirs.
Sumire gave the emplacements one final firing cycle. Plasma tore through the deployment bay, the ruined northern housing and the barricades beside the wall. Then she turned the sector's master cutoff.
The three feeds vanished together.
Silence settled over the western side of the schematic. Fire from the palace's remaining defenses continued, but its rhythm had changed. One whole side of the structure no longer answered.
Sumire removed the cutoff key and the officer's code cylinder. The surviving displays still held the station's command history and the service routes connecting it to the palace network. She copied both, then erased the local record of the transfer.
Only after the data was secure did she return to the officer. Sumire extinguished the kama's plasma edge and pulled its head free of the console and his ruined bracer. He screamed once more, then slid to his knees with his injured arm clutched against his chest. She cleaned the weapon against his uniform and returned it behind her waist.
She stripped the commlinks from all three survivors and pointed toward the station's armored communications booth.
"Inside."
The operators moved first. One kicked the mangled rifle aside while the other caught the officer beneath his uninjured arm. He tried to remain where he was until the Force closed around his armor and dragged him after them. Sumire sealed the booth, engaged its manual lock and tore the external release from the wall. Three prisoners. Two bodies. No one left in the station who could interfere.
She reopened the Covenant channel Varin had used earlier.
"Western palace arc disabled. Turrets redirected against the inner defenses, then disabled. Western approach is open. Updated breach and defense routes attached."
Sumire transmitted the schematic and closed the connection.
The amber route toward the primary fire-control nexus remained on the display beside three Covenant signals closing on the western breach. Sumire considered both. Continuing alone would gain little with the first element already within reach. The nexus could wait. An inspection hatch at the rear of the station opened onto a narrow service ledge beneath the parapet. Sumire released it and stepped into the open air. The top of the wall stood several meters above her. She drew the Force beneath her and jumped.
Her boots struck the parapet between two silent turret housings.
The Covenant standard she had carried into the city resembled little more than a durasteel rod while collapsed. Sumire twisted the grip, locking its segmented shaft at full length as the banner unfurled above her. She slammed its pointed end into a seam in the nearest turret's armored shell. Metal buckled beneath the impact. The point buried itself in the machinery below and held, leaving the banner snapping above the opening the guns had made.
Below, the violet Togruta and her companions were closing on the wall. Sumire raised one hand in brief acknowledgment, then pointed toward the breach, eyes scanning for the next threat.
![center]](https://i.ibb.co/67Tn3xSd/BFCF5269-28-CC-46-BE-B801-9-A8768099140.png[/center])
