Wielding a blanket dipped in lake water like a flexible club, Han stayed near Leia and tried to keep the sparkflies off her. He’d been fairly successful. She had a burn mark on one bicep, and he had one on his forehead. She walked through the camp as if unaware of the sparkflies near her; her attention was on the larger clusters high in the sky. To Han, it seemed that the insects would make attack runs against targets on the ground, then rise into the air, regroup, and begin new runs. It was eerily similar to starfighter attack patterns. It didn’t remind him of insect behavior at all.
Where Leia watched, turning her attention from cluster to sparkfly cluster, the insects would waver and break formation. But she did not seem to be able to sustain this effort against them, and they would inevitably regroup.
She shook her head. “They’re under tight control. Very organized. I wish Valin Horn were here. He used to be very good at this sort of thing.”
“Keep them off me! I need help!” That was Carrack, still dividing his time between his armor and his flamethrower.
Han glanced at Leia, and she nodded. Together they trotted over to the big mercenary.
Carrack thrust his weapon, a long rod with a trigger at one end and a nozzle at the other, attached by tubing at the trigger end to a large metal bottle that was currently dragging on the ground, into Han’s hands. The big man had burn marks on both cheeks, but most of his armor was on. “I just need a few seconds.”
“You got ’em.” Han took the weapon. Not bothering to ask for advice or instructions—that would have been unlike him, after all—he aimed the nozzle up toward the nearest large cloud of insects and pressed the trigger.
A gratifyingly bright gout of flame erupted from the nozzle and shot into the cloud of sparkflies—into and through, jetting on for another fifty meters or more. It illuminated the camp from one end to the other.
Leia took Han’s blanket, rolled it into something like a lash, and cracked it like a whip, here swatting three sparkflies out of the sky, there one. “Maybe a little less, dear.”
“No, I like it this way.” Han let off the trigger, aimed, and fired again. Once more the camp was bathed in hues of red and orange as insects were vaporized out to a distance of fifty meters.
A broad grin spread across Han’s face. “Why haven’t I ever gotten one of these for myself?”
Leia shot him an incredulous look before returning her attention to keeping the insects off the three of them. “Because it would be like letting children play with thermal detonators.”
“I like it.” Han swung the nozzle around, causing the gout of flame to curve across the sky, sweeping insects away as it reached them. “I have a flamethrower.”
“Blast it, Carrack, see what you’ve done?”
Carrack jammed his helmet down. Han heard a sudden hum of machinery as the helmet locked into place and systems all over the armor booted into life.
Carrack picked up the oversized blaster that lay at his feet and began a slow turn, eyeing the distant fringes of the trees. “Infrared active. Han, don’t put the fire in front of me, you’ll blind me.”
Han, his grin unabated, swiveled so that his flame scoured the air mostly above and behind Carrack. “What have you got?”
“Stationary figures in the forest, deployed at positions thirty to forty meters apart. Women, all of them. I’ve got two males moving toward their line, but not straight toward any of the women. Oh, it’s the Skywalkers.”
Han saw more and more of the Dathomiri running into the lake, despite the chill of the water. They waded out until they could stand upright with only their heads protruding. The tactic did not seem to be working: sparkflies dived at them, settling on their scalps, stinging and burning them through their hair, and more were clustering out there by the hundreds with every passing minute.
He glanced at his wife. “You can use the Force like a big public address system, can’t you?”
“I can make myself heard, yes.”
“Tell the ones out in the lake to duck under the water at the count of ten. Then count down.”
“You in the water!” Leia didn’t seem to raise her voice above the Senatorial projection and volume she’d been able to employ since she was a teenager, but her voice somehow carried to all corners of the camp. “When I call ‘zero,’ go beneath the water! Ten … nine …”
Beside Han, Carrack raised his blaster rifle to his shoulder. He did not fire immediately, instead jacking a clip of what looked like small cylindrical grenades into the bottom. A rectangular optic screen flipped up over the weapon’s usual sights, and Han could see images displayed on it, human-shaped silhouettes in a light green. Carrack was murmuring, barely audible through his helmet: “Target one, one five seven point three meters.” He swiveled just a bit, and a new silhouette appeared on the display. “Target two, one three four point two meters.”
“Two … one … zero!”
Han saw the heads of the Dathomiri in the lake go under the water. He aimed down and swept his flame across the water’s surface. His blast incinerated hundreds if not thousands of insects, and smoke rising from the spot baffled and dissuaded more sparkflies descending in their wake.
“Away.” Carrack fired and immediately racked the grenade launcher attachment on his weapon. He adjusted his aim and fired again instantly. “Away.” He aimed. “Away.” He fired.
He got five shots off before the first shell detonated in the distance.
Even for a Jedi, Ben decided, running full-tilt through a forest in pitch blackness was a bad idea. He grazed off one tree, stinging his shoulder, and crashed through a thornbush before the first pain of scratched flesh registered on his nervous system. Ahead, Luke seemed to be doing better, but not well; Ben heard his father smack a low-hanging branch, and the man’s startled exclamation was a word that Ben would never have thought to hear him say.
Another few steps and Ben tripped over something that felt like a log made of meat. He hit the ground in a graceful roll and rose. “Stang.”
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.” Ben took a couple of steps back and reached out for the object that had tripped him. He had a bad feeling about it.
His hand encountered a face. Its skin was cold. “Dead body here.”
“Our adversaries are concealing themselves in the Force. A reversal of focus. The closer we come, the more diffuse my awareness becomes—oof!” With Luke’s exclamation came a thrashing of branches and a tremendous thud.
“Dad!” Ben charged toward the noise.
Then there was more noise, a lot of it. Fewer than thirty meters away, ahead and to Ben’s left, an explosive detonated. Instinctively, Ben went flat to the ground. A moment later another explosive went off, ahead and to Ben’s right.
Seven more explosives went off at intervals of about a second, each farther from Ben and Luke. When it was done, Ben raised his head. He could see a stand of trees burning not far away, another burning off to his right. “Dad?”
“I’m fine.” Straight ahead, the darkness was briefly interrupted as Luke’s lightsaber ignited at an altitude of about four meters. Ben saw it move, cutting through what looked like a series of vines. Then it, and presumably Luke, dropped to the ground. Ben didn’t hear Luke land, but the lightsaber stopped in its descent.
Ben got to him. “What happened?” In the lightsaber’s glow, he could see his father’s face. Luke looked unhurt.
Luke gestured with it up into the air. “Net trap. Big stone counterweight. There were also some spikes with a gummy substance on them, probably poison, in the netting, but I avoided them. The trip wire and net were set up where the trees were thinnest, right where someone running out from the camp would come.”
“Great.” Ben tried to focus his attention on the Force, but either he was too rattled or the enemies were farther away.
“They’re moving.” Luke’s tone suggested neither happiness nor disappointment. “I think this situation is done.”
CARRACK FIRED NINE TIMES. HALFWAY THROUGH TH
E SEQUENCE, the first shell exploded in the distance. When he’d fired his final shell and waited for it to detonate a few seconds later, he turned to Han. “One for each of ’em.” He raised his weapon and sighted in through the infrared optics. He swung the weapon in a slow, broad arc. “They’re all moving. Well, seven, anyway. So are the Skywalkers. I’d better hold off firing any more until things go stationary again.”
“Um.” That was Leia. She caught Carrack’s attention and pointed up.
Over their heads, in five separate groups, the sparkflies were clustering.
Carrack looked up. “Not good.”
“Not good for us.” Han gave the mercenary an injured look. “You’re in armor.”
“The armor has gaps. Gaps that are big doors for bugs.”
“Leia? Lake?”
She nodded and bolted toward the water’s edge.
Han followed. He pointed the flamethrower nozzle straight up and held the trigger down.
He needn’t have bothered. All five groups of sparkflies descended on Carrack.
Han skidded to a stop and swiveled, sweeping the sky over Carrack with his gout of flame. His aim was good. Perhaps two-fifths of the insects went away.
The rest swarmed Carrack, clustering upon him, adhering to him. The big man was suddenly alive with lights as every one of the insects, it seemed, tried to burn its way through his armor. Han heard the man yell in pain as sparkflies got through gaps in the joints.
Carrack wasn’t standing still, either. He’d bolted after Han and Leia toward the lake edge. Even now, with hundreds of thousands of the things on him, weighing him down and hindering him, he moved at a walking pace, but his speed was slowing.
“Han, get ready.” Leia threw her sleeves back and gestured toward Carrack.
Han let off the trigger and swung the nozzle around toward the lake.
He’d guessed right. Leia spun, exerting herself through the Force, and Carrack was suddenly airborne, on a ballistic trajectory toward the water.
The instant he hit, Han cut loose with the flamethrower. His gout of fire swept along the flight path of Carrack’s tormenters, not just catching the ones that had stayed with the big man all the way to the water but also incinerating those that lagged behind. In an instant the greatest population of attacking sparkflies was gone.
A moment later Carrack stood up in the water. He looked around, his movements stiff, and popped the helmet from his head. There were at least a dozen burn marks around his neck, and he looked miserable. “Medic.”
The remaining sparkflies dissipated into the night sky. The Dathomiri and offworlders began to assess damage and figure out what had happened.
Nobody had been stung enough to perish, but several were badly injured, Carrack the worst of them. The burns at his knees, elbows, armpits, and neck were enough to send him into shock. Yliri and a healer of the Raining Leaves tended him, wrapping his burns in clothes soaked in a plant infusion the Dathomiri said was good against burns.
Han looked over the wounds as Carrack was being bandaged. “He needs bacta.”
“That means the spaceport.” Dyon had one black burn spot on the tip of his nose, now bandaged, and another on his right forearm. “None of the clans has bacta reserves.”
Clan members straggling out of the forest reported that those who had headed off in search of the attackers had run into traps—nets, spikes, deadfalls, poisonous animal traps. It was there that the fatalities began to add up, two women of the Raining Leaves, three men of the Broken Columns.
And two Nightsisters. Luke went from the site of Carrack’s first grenade explosion to each one in turn. At the first two, he found bodies—fragmentary bodies—of Dathomiri women. Kaminne, Tasander, and other representatives of both tribes went out to look. Olianne identified the woman at the first blast site as Hacina of the Red Mud Potters, and no one could identify the other. By no stretch of the imagination was either supposed to be here, so far from her clan lands. “Which,” Dyon said, “means Nightsisters. I suspect that Carrack’s grenades killed these two before they even felt the danger. But the first couple of explosions alerted and scattered the others. The survivors sent the insects against Carrack for revenge.”
Ben led a search party back to the body he’d tripped over. In the light of Dyon’s glow rod and the torches of the Dathomiri, they recognized that body as well.
It was Tribeless Sha. She had a stab wound in her back, and her throat had been slashed. Her eyes were open, her expression vacant. Solemn, Luke stooped to close her eyes.
“She’s cold,” Ben said. “She’s been out here for quite a while.”
Kaminne’s expression was sympathetic. “She must have stumbled across some of the Nightsisters as they were setting up traps, and they killed her.”
Ben shook his head. “As good a tracker as she was? She comes out here, sees something odd going on, hunkers down to watch—and they sneak up on her?”
Luke shrugged, an It’s possible gesture. “They had the Force on their side, Ben.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But something doesn’t feel right.”
His father gave him a half smile. “Well, I’ve learned to listen whenever someone like Corran Horn said something like that. I’d better learn to do the same with you. Trust and follow your instincts, Ben.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
They returned to camp in time to hear Han and Leia react to beeps from their comlinks—beeps indicating a message received and recorded. Han pulled his comlink out and activated it.
Allana’s voice came over the miniature speaker. “Hello? Uh, this is Millennium Falcon. We need to talk to Han and Leia right away. Please? Anji’s hurt.”
C-3PO’s voice, faint, could be heard next: “Don’t forget to say ‘over,’ miss.”
Allana continued, “Please, over? Hello? Please call. He’s going to be coming for us soon.”
Han paled. The change to his complexion was visible even in the firelight. He activated the transmitter on his comlink. “Han to Falcon, Han to Falcon. Come in, Amelia. Over.”
There was no answer.
ABOARD THE MILLENNIUM FALCON, DATHOMIR SPACEPORT
“We could call the spaceport guards.” Allana kept her voice hopeful. There had to be an answer that would keep Monarg away from her, and she hadn’t exhausted the full range of adults-coming-to-her-rescue options yet.
C-3PO, now in the copilot’s seat, sounded less sure. “Analysis of recent events, local records, and other probabilities suggests that any involvement of local authorities will result in the Millennium Falcon being seized and you being held to compel the surrender of Master Han and Mistress Leia. The likelihood that local authorities know their true identities, and are merely waiting for some authorization or provocation to move, approaches a certainty.”
“Speak Basic, Threepio.”
Something moved into the field of Allana’s vision on the ground before the Falcon’s cockpit. It was Monarg, his expression clearly unhappy even in the limited light being cast through the forward viewports. With him were some broad-shouldered men in festive garments, likely friends of Monarg’s rounded up while dining or drinking in the spaceport’s limited facilities, and a rolling gantry—a mechanism that was half droid, half metal stepladder.
Monarg held up what was in his hand, an industrial-strength cutter-welder. He pointed at it, then pointed at Allana. Finally he walked around to the Falcon’s side, out of Allana’s sight, followed by his companions.
“Not good, not good, not good.” C-3PO sounded distinctly worried. “I calculate that even with the Millennium Falcon’s formidable armor plating, a tool like that, competently utilized, will allow him to cut his way through in a matter of minutes.”
R2-D2 rolled in, back from his errand retrieving Allana’s escape cable and sealing up the topside hatch through which she and Anji had made their exit. He tweetled.
“Artoo mentions that there is an antipersonnel blaster cannon situated very near the loading ramp, which is where tha
t scoundrel is preparing to make his assault on our armor.”
The astromech tweetled again.
“Oh. I was not supposed to convey that information to you. In no way was he recommending that you activate the antipersonnel weapon and annihilate our tormenter.” C-3PO turned toward the astromech. “Of course, we can’t use it, either, so why mention it at all?”
Tweetle.
“No, it’s not a part of my programming that I’ve ever endeavored to overcome.”
Allana looked over the ship’s controls, momentarily overwhelmed by their number and complexity. She looked for something, some button marked REPEL BAD MEN, anything that would get her out of this jam.
There was no such button, and when she looked out the cockpit canopy again, she saw two more figures running toward the Falcon—a tall broad-shouldered man and a female companion—and they were both wearing coats with hoods pulled up to cover their heads. Didn’t bad people always try to hide their faces?
Allana looked back at the control board. No, there was no single button that would help. But there was … all of them.
Allana was a very good student when the subject was interesting, and the Falcon was very interesting.
Tentatively at first, she began flipping switches in the ship’s power start-up procedure.
“Mistress Allana, what exactly are you doing?”
R2-D2 tweetled.
“I know that, you rolling trash collector, but I’m giving her the conversational escape route of plausible deniability. Mistress Allana, please don’t play with the power activation controls.”
“I’m not playing. Go get me some pillows.”
“Now is scarcely the time for a nap.”
“I need the pillows because I’m short. The chair is too big for me. Please go get me some pillows so I can save us and keep them from hurting Anji anymore. There are more bad guys coming—I saw them!”
“Yes, miss.” The protocol droid hopped up and waddled out of the cockpit with unseemly haste.
He was back in less than a minute and, under R2-D2’s direction, as Allana continued her distracted, meticulous series of switch and control activations, arrayed them behind her on the pilot’s seat so she could lean back against something solid while still handling the controls. “Artoo, we are all doomed.”
Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 17
