Free Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 01 - Precipice by John Jackson Miller

Chapter One
    5,000 years BBY
    “Lohjoy! Give me something!” Scrambling to his feet in the darkness, Commander Korsin craned his neck to find the hologram. “Thrusters, attitude control—I’ll take
parking jets
!”
    A starship is a weapon, but it’s the crew that makes it deadly.
An old spacer’s line: trite, but weighty enough to lend a little authority. Korsin had used it himself on occasion. But not today. His ship was being deadly all on its own—and his crew was just along for the ride.
    “We’ve got nothing, Commander!” The serpent-haired engineer flickered before him, off-kilter and out of focus. Korsin knew things belowdecks must be bad if his upright, uptight Ho’Din genius was off-balance. “Reactors are down! And we’ve got structural failures in the hull, both aft and—”
    Lohjoy shrieked in agony, her tendrils bursting into a mane of fire that sent her reeling out of view. Korsin barely suppressed a startled laugh. In calmer times—half a standard hour ago—he’d joked that Ho’Din were half tree. But that was hardly appropriate when the whole engineering deck was going up. The hull had ruptured. Again.
    The hologram expired—and all around the stocky commander, warning lights danced, winked, and went out. Korsin plopped down again, clutching at the armrests.
Well, the chair still works.
“Anything? Anybody?”
    Silence—and the remote grinding of metal.
    “Just give me something to shoot at.” It was Gloyd, Korsin’s gunnery officer, teeth shining in the shadows. The half smirk was a memento from a Jedi lightsaber swipe years earlier that just missed taking the Houk’s head off. In response, Gloyd had cultivated the only wit aboard as acidic as the commander’s own—but the gunner wasn’t finding much funny today. Korsin read it in the brute’s tiny eyes:
One close call is all.
    Korsin didn’t bother to look at the
other
side of the bridge. Icy glares there could be taken as a given. Even now, when
Omen
was crippled and plummeting out of control.
    “Anybody?”
    Even now.
Korsin’s bushy eyebrows flared into a black V. What was
wrong
with them? The adage was right. A ship needed a crew united in purpose—only the purpose of being Sith was the exaltation of self. Every ensign an emperor. Every rival’s misstep, an opportunity.
Well, here’s an opportunity
, he thought.
Solve this, someone, and you can flat-out have the blasted comfy chair.
    Sith power games. They didn’t mean much now—not against the insistent gravity below. Korsin looked up again at the forward viewport. The vast azure orb visible earlier was gone, replaced by light, gas, and grit raining upward. The latter two, he knew, came from the guts of his own ship, losing the fight against the alien atmosphere. Whatever it was, the planet had
Omen
now. A jolt, and more screams. This wouldn’t last long.
    “Remember,” he yelled, looking at them for the first time since it had started. “You
wanted
to be here!”
    * * *
    And they had—most of them, anyway.
Omen
had been the ship to get when the Sith mining flotilla gathered at Primus Goluud. The Massassi shock troops in the hold didn’t care where they went—who knew what the Massassi even
thought
half the time, presuming they did at all. But many sentients who had a choice in the matter picked
Omen
.
    Saes, captain of the
Harbinger
, was a fallen Jedi: an unknown quantity. You couldn’t trust someone the Jedi couldn’t trust, and they would trust just about anyone. Yaru Korsin, the crewmembers knew. A Sith captain owning a smile was rare enough, and always suspect. But Korsin had been at it for twenty standard years, long enough for those who’d served under him to spread the word. A Korsin ship was an easy ride.
    Just not today. Fully loaded with Lignan crystals,
Harbinger
and
Omen
had readied to leave Phaegon III for the front when a Jedi starfighter tested the mining fleet’s defenses. While the crescent-shaped Blades tangled with the intruder,