Rebel Stand

by Aaron Allston

  a second. I see some movement..."

  Then there was a new voice, a shout in the Yuuzhan Vong language from well

  beyond Face. The tizowyrm-a Yuuzhan Vong organic translator-installed in Luke's

  ear gave him the words in Basic: "Stop where you are! Tell me your name, domain,

  and mission!"

  Luke tossed the coil to Baljos. "Leave the packs here." He moved forward,

  Mara and Kell with him, and heard the running feet of Tahiri coming up from

  behind. The four of them were the only ones with much of a chance in direct

  battle with fully trained Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

  Both normally and through his helmet comlink, Luke heard Face's reply,

  shouted in the Yuuzhan Vong language, with to what Luke sounded like proper

  aggression and inflection: "I am Faka Rann. My mission is the destruction of

  abominations and the training of my warriors. Do not hinder me."

  As Luke, Mara, Kell, and Tahiri came closer to Face, they could see down

  the incline on the other side, where a party of Yuuzhan Vong warriors

  approached. Luke saw seven of them, most already holding amphistaffs in their

  hands. The serpentlike amphistaffs were currently stiff, m staff/spear

  configuration. Face was fiddling with the fake amphistaff wrapped around his

  waist, but Luke could see that he was actually freeing the cord.

  Luke came up beside Face and stood there, arms crossed, a stance of

  defiance and arrogance. Mara came to a stop beside him, Tahiri and Kell on the

  other side of Face. Kell unwrapped the false amphistaff from around his own

  waist and triggered it, snapping it into rigidity, an artful imitation of the

  use of the genuine weapons, though his would never stand up to the rigors of

  combat.

  The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten meters away and their leader

  looked at Luke and the others. "This is our designated zone," he said. "Who has

  commanded you to hunt here?"

  "No one has commanded us!" Face's tone was sharp and mocking, even through

  the tizowyrm's translation. "We are not on duty. We seek personal glory."

  "If you are not on duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way."

  Luke knew that no true Yuuzhan Vong warrior would respond well to such a

  command, and he sighed inwardly. There was going to be a fight. He moved his

  knee until he could feel his lightsaber where it dangled from his belt under the

  armor's skirt plates.

  "If you are on duty," Face said, "then your mission is less important than

  ours, for you hunt only at your superiors' orders, while we hunt because it

  makes us great. You make way."

  The enemy leader stared at Face. Then the brief stalemate ended as it had

  to; the leader charged, his warriors with him in two lines.

  Face dropped back, allowing the more skilled combatants to close the gap

  where he'd been. The enemy leader hurtled toward him as if to shoot between Luke

  and Kell to reach him anyway, whirling his amphistaff to slam Luke out of the

  way, but Luke went up and over the charge in a somersault made only slightly

  clumsy by his false alien armor.

  While he was inverted, he saw Kell catch the leader and spin him back and

  around, slamming him powerfully into one of the transparisteel panels on the

  side of the walkway. The panel held, but the metal restraints holding it failed;

  warrior and panel punched free of the walkway. The warrior screamed, flailing,

  as he dropped from view.

  Luke landed and brought his lightsaber out from beneath the skirt plates

  even as he heard the snap-hiss of Mara's and Tallin's blades igniting. His lit

  just in time to catch the thrust from an amphistaff. He shoved the deadly

  pointed tip of the weapon out of alignment, let it slide past him, and riposted.

  The warrior he faced caught the lightsaber blade on the amphistaff's upper end

  and the blade bounced away, leaving only the faintest of burn marks on the

  amphistaff neck.

  His opponent screamed, "Jeedai!" The cry was picked up and repeated by the

  other five warriors facing them - and then by other voices, farther back.

  Luke parried a thud bug hurled his way by one of the warriors in the second

  rank, then made a wild swing at the warrior in front of him. That fighter

  ducked, but he was not the true target; Luke's blow continued onto the arm of

  Tahiri's opponent to his right, hitting it at the unprotected elbow, severing

  it. That warrior roared, more, it seemed, in anger than in pain, as his arm and

  amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of the moment to

  kick him, propelling the warrior back into the second rank. Meanwhile, in Luke's

  peripheral vision, Mara deftly incinerated a razor bug hurled at her, then

  parried a hard swing from a front-rank amphistaff and a thrust from another in

  the second row.

  Then Luke could see them, more warriors running toward them from the

  building opposite. He couldn't count them; he thought there were at least

  twenty, and more were emerging from that walkway opening every second. Most were

  screaming, "Jeedai!"

  Kell Tainer turned and ran. Luke caught a glimpse of Tahiri's eyes,

  startled and betrayed, through her helmet faceplate before she ducked beneath

  the swing of her next opponent. Before she could straighten, a burst of blaster-

  fire filled the air above her. Most of it was absorbed or deflected by her

  opponent's vonduun crab armor, but one shot caught the warrior in the throat. He

  fell back, his throat smoking, and Luke could see Face standing directly behind

  Tahiri, blaster rifle in hand. Even as Tahiri rose, Face let off the trigger and

  took a half step left, out of Luke's peripheral vision, waiting for another

  target.

  Luke kicked the severed arm and its amphistaff up into the face of his

  opponent, then followed with a simple thrust to the head. That warrior was too

  canny or experienced for such a ploy; unflinching, he let the arm bounce from

  his helmet and deflected the thrust with his amphistaff.

  Then the next wave of warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too

  many amphistaffs, thud bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm

  against. Luke found himself forced backward step after step even as he parried a

  blow, incinerated a razor bug, plunged his lightsaber blade into a warrior's

  throat. "Fighting retreat!" he shouted.

  Something arced between Luke and Mara from behind. It looked like a flat

  black box, about the size of human hand, with glowing letters or numbers on one

  side. And Kell was once again in Luke's peripheral vision, this time with a

  blaster, holding it high over the head of the Jedi, pouring fire down into the

  Yuuzhan Vong. "Suggest we retreat fast" he shouted. "Ten."

  "What was that?" Luke asked. Instead of blocking the next amphistaff blow

  to come his way, he leaned forward before the blow began and whipped his

  lightsaber across his new opponent's wrist, severing the holding hand.

  "You know what it was. Seven. Six."

  Luke began to back away fast. Mara and Tahiri kept pace with him, and Face

  and Kell kept up the blasterfire, joined by an occasional single-shot blast from

  their allies behind.

  They'd almost backed into the opening to the building when
Kell's explosive

  charge detonated. Suddenly the walkway in the midst of the Yuuzhan Vong force

  was a wall of fire rushing toward them.

  Luke exerted himself, hurling himself backward with use of the Force,

  yanking Mara and Tahiri with him. They landed several meters back in the

  building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor bugs. Then the

  fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening Yuuzhan Vong and

  past the Jedi, momentarily blinding Luke, hammering him backward. Sure in his

  sense of where the other Jedi and Wraiths were, he whirled his lightsaber in a

  defensive motion he seldom used outside of practice, felt it hit something hard

  and unyielding.

  Then the heat and brightness were past. He found he was locked, lightsaber

  against amphistaff, with a warrior whose back was smoking. Three other warriors

  stood among him and his allies, though two were now dancing in concentrated fire

  from the Wraiths and Danni Quee. The last, in the middle of a quite elegant

  snap-kick against Mara, was receiving her lightsaber thrust up and under his

  skirt plates.

  Luke kicked out, catching his opponent in the center of the torso, sending

  him hurtling. The warrior staggered back to the walkway aperture... then dropped

  out of sight with a shout of surprise.

  The walkway was gone. Only smoke and the jagged edges where it had once

  joined the building suggested it had ever been there. Even with his ears ringing

  from the explosion, Luke could hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage

  descended three or four hundred meters to the boulevard below.

  They stood panting for a moment, Jedi, Wraiths, and scientist, staring at

  one another. Finally Luke said, "Anyone hurt?"

  "I got grazed by a thud bug," Danni said. "But it hit the armor. It only

  knocked me down."

  "Something of a disastrous encounter," Luke decided. "But at least we don't

  have any injuries."

  "It was a very successful encounter," Face said. "Very promising."

  Luke frowned. "How so? Now they know we're here. That Jedi are here."

  "No. First, I think they were all on the walkway. So no one alive knows

  that Jedi are here."

  "Until they find the bodies," Mara pointed out. "With distinctive

  lightsaber burns on them."

  Face shrugged. "You have me on that one. But second, more important, until

  those lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my

  extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzan Vong during the

  last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again."

  "Good point."

  Face's tone became professionally worried. "So, does that count as my turn,

  or do I have to check out the next walkway?"

  Luke grinned. "It counts as your turn."

  "The next one," Kell said, "will be twenty or thirty flights down. We'd

  better get to it."

  Bhindi slapped the back of Kell's helmet. "That one is going to have been

  hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up."

  His tone subdued, Kell said, "I knew that."

  Borleias, Pyria System

  Han Solo, upside down and up to his waist in machinery beneath the deck

  plating of the Millennium Falcon, heard and felt footsteps approaching. They

  were light, precise - Leia. That meant there would be a second set, the

  footsteps of Meewalh, Leia's Noghri bodyguard, but Han had never actually heard

  them.

  A desire to finish patching the coupling he was working on kept him

  inverted and incurious-that, and the fact that he knew that if Leia had a

  problem, her walking Pace wouldn't be normal. "Artoo, you want to hand me the

  electrical flow meter?" He extended a hand up into the air.

  R2-D2, Luke's astromech droid, responded with a series of cheerful whistles

  and bleats. Han heard the whine of a manipulator arm being extended, felt the

  meter being pressed into his hand. Then he heard his wife's voice: "Do you think

  if I poked him, he'd bang his head into the flooring?"

  R2-D2's blatted response sounded definitely affirmative.

  "You better hope she doesn't, Artoo," Han said. "I can't take revenge on my

  wife, so I'll have to take it on the nearest droid at hand."

  R2-D2 replied with a distinctly sour set of notes, then Han heard the droid

  whir away. "What did he say?" Han asked.

  Leia laughed. "I don't know. But if I were him, it would be, I'll go fetch

  See-Threepio, then."

  "Good point." Han clipped the flow meter to the wires he'd just installed.

  "You want to power up the holo-comm for me?"

  "Are you down there with your head in the holocomm power cables?"

  "Yes."

  "No."

  "I can't tell if the power flow is right if you don't."

  "Come on up out of there and leave the meter where you can see the readout.

  "

  Han growled. He knew, deep in his heart, that nothing could go wrong, that

  the Falcon would never hurt him while he was working on her. He knew this in

  spite of innumerable minor abrasions, contusions, and electrocutions he'd

  suffered over the years. But Leia remained stubbornly unconvinced.

  He also knew, from long experience, that Leia was not going to leave until

  she was sure he wasn't going to do something she considered foolish. He could

  either wait here upside down forever, or do it her way.

  So he situated the meter where he could see the readout from above. He

  shoved his way up and out of the access and turned an artificially cheerful

  smile on Leia. "Happy?"

  "Happy. You're very red."

  "That's what happens when you stay upside down for too long. Could I get

  you some caf? Something to read? For while you're here managing this repair

  operation, that is." Ignoring sudden dizziness brought on by the flow of blood

  back out of his head, he stood.

  Leia smiled, not at all put off by his snide comments. "Actually, I just

  came here to remind you that we need to see Tarc before we take off."

  "Yeah, I know. I just hate good-byes. Never could figure out how to make

  them happy."

  Leia lowered her voice to a whisper. "Speaking of which, do you have any

  advice on how we're going to tell Mee-walh she can't come along on this mission?

  That hovering around me to do bodyguard duties will compromise any disguises

  that we try to use?"

  Han matched her whisper for whisper. "How about persuading her to take a

  vacation?"

  "Han."

  "How about, just before takeoff, we send her out to pick up a bottle of

  brandy, and then leave while she's running the errand?"

  "You're not helping."

  He smiled and pulled her to him. "You're not fooling ' anybody. You know

  exactly what you're going to tell her. You just want me to be there when you do

  it. To hack 1 you up. Right?"

  She offered him an expression of mock outrage. "No fair peeking into my

  mind like that."

  "Right?"

  Leia sighed and settled against him. "Right."

  But her expression, though merry, wasn't entirely without worry, and he

  knew why. She couldn't be entirely free from concern with one of their sons

  recently lost to war, the other missing and pr
esumed by most to be dead, and.

  their only daughter elsewhere in the Pyria solar system on a mission with her

  squadron. Han wondered if there would ever be a time when Leia's expression was

  com-pletely at peace.

  Pyria System

  Well within the dovin basal minefield, Jaina and her Twin Suns Squadron

  caught up with Mon Motbma, which was executing a turn back toward Borleias

  while, in the distance, a Gallofree cargo ship, as pudgy and unlovely as a Hutt

  in the middle of diving into a pool, edged toward them. Tiny lights winking

  around the freighter hinted at the battle that still went on, but they were few

  in number-and ever fewer, as the sensor blips representing coralskippers

  gradually disappeared from the screen.

  "Twin Suns, this is Rebel Dream. Sensors show more skip squadrons incoming,

  but we think our payload will be out of the minefield and through with its last

  micro-jump before they arrive. It's going to be close, though, so please stand

  by."

  Jaina grinned at the please. Because of the game she was playing with the

  Yuuzhan Vong, the deception in which she increasingly identified herself with

  their Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla, she was a step or two outside Borleias's

  command structure, and all commanders had been privately instructed to treat her

  with the deference due a foreign dignitary. She sometimes wondered which of them

  were amused at playing along and which were irritated. This controller's voice

  held no evidence of annoyance. "Twin Suns Leader to Rebel Dream, copy."

  Jaina brought her squadron around to cruise along* side Rebel Dream and

  waited. As the cargo vessel's lines finally came into sharp focus with the naked

  eye, her name finally blipped onto her sensor board, Reckless Abandon, and she

  could see the nature of the starfighters protecting her-they were now organized

  into escort wings, all the fighting done. Most wore the white-and-dark-gray

  color scheme of Rebel Dream support craft, but one squadron, mixed A-wings and

  E-wings, was painted in glaring yellow with menacingly angular black stripes.

  "What the Sith spawn are those?" Jaina asked.

  "Twin Suns One, you have the Taanab Yellow Aces, Ace-One speaking." The

  voice was male, amused. "We're here to show the defenders of Borleias what