Reunion: Force Heretic III

by Sean Williams

  “You mean like building a couple of immense hyperdrives,” Hegerty said.

  “That,” Jacen said, “but also holding the surface together during long jumps—or bending magnetic field lines at will. Jumping in and out of systems must have been fairly traumatic; without something to keep heavy radiation and gravitational effects at bay, the surface of the planet could have been totally sterilized.”

  “What I want to know,” Mara said, “is where Sekot actually came from. If life on this scale can evolve naturally, then why isn’t every planet talking back?”

  There was no easy answer to that question.

  “Perhaps there’s something special about the Ferroans,” Hegerty suggested.

  “I’m not picking up anything radically different about them,” Luke said. The Jedi Master opened his eyes, looking at each of them in turn. “They’re naturally attuned to the life fields around them, but not symbiotically. That would happen to anyone born and raised in an environment as strong in the Force as Zonama Sekot.”

  “Perhaps it was just a random mutation,” Danni said. “If the odds are against something like this happening, then that might explain why it’s only happened the once.”

  Luke nodded thoughtfully. “It’s possible. I’m sure the Magister will be able to tell us more.”

  Jacen hoped so. When it came to Zonama Sekot, there were too many unknown factors for his liking.

  “Looks like you’ve made a friend,” Mara said, her voice whispering close to his ear.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She indicated the entrance with a nod. Turning, he saw that one of the little girls had returned and was staring in at him again. When she saw him look at her, she waved shyly and then quickly ducked out of sight with another giggle. Smiling, he went over to the doorway and looked around outside for her.

  The girl was standing near the base of a boras, ready to flee if she had to.

  “What happened to your friends?” he asked.

  “They’re scared,” she said.

  “There’s no need to be,” he said. He extended his open hands in a no-weapons gesture. “See?”

  She pointed at his belt. “What about your lightsaber?”

  Jacen was surprised by the girl’s knowledge of the weapon, but he tried not to let it show. “You know about these?”

  The girl nodded.

  “And do you also know that I’m a Jedi?” Another nod. “The older ones tell stories about the Jedi.”

  “What do these stories say?”

  She hesitated, looking around in a manner that suggested she was worried she might be seen talking to him.

  “What color is yours?” she asked.

  “Color?” Then, realizing: “Oh, my lightsaber? Would you like to see it?”

  She shook her head in a definite no. “They’re dangerous!”

  “Not in the right hands,” he said. “I would never hurt you, or anyone here.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “Jedi Knights have other ways to hurt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anakin killed the Blood Carver without a lightsaber.”

  That pulled Jacen up with a start, and for a few seconds he didn’t know what to say.

  Anakin killed the Blood Carver without a lightsaber.

  The words sounded strange, no matter how many times he rolled them about in his head. How could his brother have ever come to Zonama Sekot without Jacen knowing? There was only one possible answer, and for a joyous moment Jacen entertained the hope that Anakin had somehow managed to manifest himself here in ghostly form—as had his uncle’s teachers, Master Kenobi and …

  Then the hope died as a cold feeling blossomed in his gut.

  Anakin killed the Blood Carver …

  “Tell me,” he said, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice, the fear of what the truth might be. “What was the name of the other Jedi, who came here with Anakin?”

  “Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

  The child looked at Jacen as though he were an idiot, and he wondered if that was exactly how he should feel.

  “Tescia!”

  A woman’s voice rang out, and the girl jumped back with a guilty start.

  “Tescia, what are you doing? I told you to stay away from there!”

  With a fearful look, the girl fled, leaving Jacen standing alone in the doorway.

  He watched as the girl disappeared into one of the habitats with her mother urging her on. Then, with a heavy heart and a sense of foreboding, he returned inside to relate what to the others he’d just heard.

  Gilad Pellaeon surveyed the battle from the bridge of Right to Rule. It was going as well as could be expected. The chunk of the retreating Yuuzhan Vong fleet that he’d been chasing from Imperial Space had stumbled across Generis with eager destructiveness. He had been unsure what their intentions were until he consulted old intelligence reports and learned that Generis was a relay base for communications between the Unknown Regions and the Core. Given the Chiss’s isolationist stance, it had never been targeted for sabotage by the Empire. Taken by surprise, there had been little the Imperial forces could do for the relay base. Generis had fallen, and the Yuuzhan Vong had moved immediately on to Esfandia, to repeat the insult.

  Pellaeon didn’t consider it anything more than that. The commander in charge of the retreat, B’shith Vorrik, wasn’t a sophisticated strategist. There was little chance of a trap, or of there being a higher purpose to his strategy. The fact that Luke Skywalker had disappeared into the Unknown Regions on a secret mission just weeks earlier couldn’t possibly be connected to the attack. How could Vorrik possibly know of the mission? And if someone higher up did know about it, why should they even care?

  Pellaeon smiled to himself as the battle ebbed and flowed around him. The answer to the last question was probably the key to the mystery—if indeed there was one. Whatever Skywalker was up to, it was either totally irrelevant or absolutely integral to everything. There was no chance of anything in between, he was sure.

  And in the meantime lay the opportunity to return the insult …

  “Watch the northern flank,” he instructed one of his senior officers, indicating a section of the battlefield where the Yuuzhan Vong were managing to regroup. “Get a yammosk jammer in there now. I want that entire side as chaotic as possible.”

  He was under no illusions that they would win. All they had to do was hurt Vorrik long enough to make him reconsider his attack, and/or rescue the hardware and crew aboard the relay station. If they were alive down there, then he would make sure they were found. He wasn’t about to pull back until he knew for certain one way or the other.

  Pellaeon frowned, still concerned by the northern flank. Despite a large injection of TIE fighters and energy fire, the Yuuzhan Vong persisted in gathering there. He didn’t know what it was they were up to, but he did know he wanted it stopped.

  “Put me through to Leia Organa Solo.”

  “I’m afraid Millennium Falcon has dropped off our screens, sir.”

  “Destroyed?” He wasn’t sure what he disbelieved more: that such a thing could happen, or that he’d failed to notice it.

  “Gone to ground in the atmosphere, sir. Or so we suspect. It was last seen descending toward the southern pole.”

  This would have placed the Falcon on the side of the planet farthest from where the fighting was most intense, and therefore in the best position to be overlooked. He nodded, satisfied with the assumption that the Princess and her rough-and-ready husband had plans of their own.

  “Get me the commander of the Galactic Alliance frigate instead.”

  Within seconds, a flickering, colorless hologram of Captain Todra Mayn stood before him. “Your orders, Admiral?”

  A certain stiffness to the woman’s voice assured him that past enmities between the New Republic and the Empire hadn’t been completely forgotten. But she wasn’t obstructing him, and that was the main thing.

  “I have a mission for your strik
e group,” he said. “Can you spare three fighters?”

  She looked reluctantly at the displays before her. “We will if required to, sir.”

  “But you don’t wish to?” he asked.

  A flicker of uncertainty passed across her face. “To be honest, sir, we’re doing some damage on that warship. With just half a squadron to watch our back, I’m not sure we’d be able to effectively keep up the attack.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll make sure you get backup.”

  Pellaeon gestured to an aide and instructed her to assign a full TIE squadron to Pride of Selonia. Then he returned his attention to Mayn.

  “So, Captain, do you think Galactic Alliance, Chiss, and Empire can work together?”

  “I guess we’ll find out soon enough, sir,” she said. “I’ll instruct Colonel Fel to take his orders directly from you.”

  “Very good. Carry on, Captain.”

  The woman nodded a little less stiffly than before, and the transmission ended.

  Pellaeon turned back to the fighting.

  “Connect me to Colonel Fel,” he instructed his aide.

  “Twin One,” came the almost instantaneous reply.

  “Colonel, I have a mission for three of your best pilots,” he said. “The northern flank is proving resistant to our tactics. I’d like you to reinforce the message we’re trying to deliver.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s a yammosk in there somewhere. We haven’t been able to get close enough to find it yet, but we’re working on it. When we do locate it, I’d like you to keep it distracted. I want it out of the picture.”

  “Understood, sir.” There was a slight pause. “Any further instructions, Admiral?”

  “Such as?”

  “Approach vectors, rendezvous coordinates, attack runs—”

  Pellaeon smiled. “Why don’t you just surprise me, Colonel?”

  Jag frowned behind the controls of his clawcraft.

  “Surprise you, sir?”

  For a moment, Jag swore the Admiral was chuckling—but that simply couldn’t be possible. Grand Admiral Pellaeon—who had served under Thrawn, and who had almost single-handedly prevented the Imperial Remnant from flying apart in a thousand fragments—was not renowned for his sense of humor.

  “Do you have a problem with that, Colonel?”

  “No, sir. I just—”

  “Then carry out your orders. We don’t have time to debate the matter.”

  The line fell silent, and Jag was left shaking his head. Surprise me.

  Those two words were anathema to everything he’d been taught at the Chiss academy, and that the Imperials to a lesser degree espoused. Not only was it dangerous to identify personally with one’s role in a battle, but an orderly, coordinated offensive was the only way to ensure that such a large operation could work effectively. Let every pilot go rogue and follow his instincts, and the battle would quickly degenerate into chaos.

  But it wasn’t every pilot, he told himself.

  Surprise me.

  It was a challenge. His response wouldn’t prove just his own worth, but the worth of the Alliance and the Chiss forces as well.

  The legendary Grand Admiral Pellaeon had asked him for a surprise. He had an idea where to start:

  What would Jaina do?

  He pondered this while he got the basics out of the way, informing Captain Mayn of his decision to leave Twin Suns in Twin Seven’s capable hands. She confirmed her new role with a simple affirmative. With Twins Four and Eight trailing him, Jag swept away from the dogfights taking place in the vicinity of the Selonia.

  Telemetry flowed in from the Imperial forces. They were fighting on numerous fronts simultaneously, doing their best to keep the Yuuzhan Vong distracted from the relay base below. A large amount of wreckage—ranging from microscopic dust fragments in boiling clouds to drifting hulks, their biological systems spewing fluids and sweeping the space around them with strange gravitational storms as their dovin basals expired—had accumulated in the space around Esfandia. Some of it was already falling into the atmosphere, slashing the dark, icy sky with brilliant streaks. Jag only hoped the Falcon knew well enough to keep its head down.

  Surprise me.

  A Yuuzhan Vong corvette and a cruiser analog, hugging the planet jealously in a low orbit, dominated the northern flank. Presumably the yammosk was in one of those two ships. Swarms of coralskippers were gathering to them like nanja flies to a thawing corpse. Outnumbered four to one, Imperial TIE fighters did their best to keep the alien warriors from gaining a foothold. Once they got themselves organized, Pellaeon’s second Star Destroyer, Relentless, would become vulnerable on that side, as would the planet itself and the relay base with it. As it was, Pellaeon was only just managing to hang on and avoid the Yuuzhan Vong pinning him down, and ending the battle once and for all. And if the relay base was taken out, the battle itself would become altogether meaningless.

  Jag could see the importance of securing that section of the battleground. But sending three fighters against a cruiser, a corvette, and countless fighters was madness of the first order. What was he supposed to do? Ram the cruiser? He’d be lucky to get past the dovin basals! And even if he did, what would the momentum of one small starfighter do against a ship of that size?

  What would Jaina do? he asked himself again, forcing himself to think laterally.

  Then, unexpectedly, a creeping sense of unreality spread over him. An idea had formed in his mind. A crazy and reckless idea that seemed perfectly fitting. It certainly wasn’t the sort of tactic he’d have normally employed. It was, for all intents and purposes, surprising.

  “Jocell,” he called to Twin Four, deliberately dropping the formalities now that it was just the three of them. “You in the mood to pick a fight?”

  “Not sure exactly what you mean by that, sir,” she replied uneasily. “But I’m always ready.”

  “Not just any fight.” He scanned the region around the northern flank. There: a dead gunship, drifting like a lost asteroid, its biological systems slowly dying. Half the ship was black with fire; the other half radiated heat by the terawatt out into the sunless vacuum, chilling rapidly in the process. It was moving in an elliptical orbit that would take it in the direction he wanted. He nudged his vector minutely closer to it, and his wingmates obediently, and unquestioningly, followed.

  “Now all we need are some skips.”

  “I take it you have something in mind, sir?” asked Enton Adelmaa’j in Twin Eight.

  “I do,” he replied. He couldn’t quite believe it himself, so there was no point in attempting to explain it to them just yet. “Behave as normal, and don’t be surprised if I go into a spin for no reason. Just cover me, okay? Make sure nothing picks me off while I’m playing dead.”

  “What if you are dead? How will we tell the difference?”

  “In the long run, I think you’ll know.”

  He quickly double-checked the calculations. Yes, this could work. He wasn’t used to relying on chance, but he was prepared to make an exception here, and the idea of that gave him an unaccountable thrill. Not just because he would be surprising Pellaeon, either: it was also because he was surprising himself.

  As he angled his flight toward a knot of coralskippers harrying a nearby Imperial squadron, he sent his thoughts out to Jaina. He wasn’t Force-sensitive and he doubted she could hear him, but he was sure she’d understand.

  Wish me luck, Jaina.

  Then, gunning his engines, he swooped in to attack.

  Jaina struggled through blackness. She had never experienced a mind-meld like this before. It was as though she were trying to swim through mud. The normally bright center of Tahiri’s mind was muffled and distant, buried.

  “Tahiri?” She called her friend’s name as she searched for that bright center. Occasional flashes of memory and emotions lunged out of the blackness, startling her. She saw two figures dueling in a place that looked disturbingly familiar, glimpsed as though on
a fogged screen. Then she saw those figures running, possibly hunting, lightsabers slicing bright swaths through the fetid air. The light they cast confirmed her first impressions. Even with the prominence of shadows around them, she could tell where they were: it was the worldship around Myrkr; it was the place where Anakin was killed.

  Vast statues loomed over them, offering razor-tipped tentacles in return for devotion; deep shadows hid hints of voxynlike monsters, and the air stank of death and grief. The moment she’d melded with Tahiri’s mind and stepped into the young Jedi’s private torment, Jaina had been inundated with memories of the pain she’d felt when Anakin had died, and the grief she had endured afterward. The inner landscape reflected all of these dark emotions back at her; every craggy shadow seemed to emanate all manner of negative emotion: grief, anger, fear, betrayal, loneliness …

  These were all things she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by, though. She had to stay focused, to help as she could. She could play no role in whatever fantasy Tahiri was embroiled in, but she could offer strength.

  As another image flashed through the darkness, though, she wondered whom exactly she was giving strength to.

  Tahiri’s scarred, grim-faced mirror image had murder in her eyes. Although Jaina knew it to be Riina whom Tahiri was fighting, or hunting, she kept seeing Tahiri. The only way to separate them was by the hand that held the lightsaber: in the real world Tahiri was left-handed, while Riina held hers in her right hand.

  “Tahiri? Can you hear me?”

  Jaina wanted Tahiri to know that she wasn’t alone; that help was at hand if she needed it.

  Grishna br’rok ukul-hai, a voice snarled in her mind. Hrrl osam’ga akren hu—akri vushta.

  “I don’t understand,” Jaina said into the void.

  An image came of Tahiri’s face lunging out of the darkness, eyes glaring with hate. She flinched. Not for the first time, Jaina wondered if she was out of her depth. Psychic healing was Master Cilghal’s field, not hers. Her intentions were good, but that wasn’t enough.