The sharp-tipped end of a boras tentacle thudded heavily into the dirt beside him, then snapped back up into the air ready for another strike. That was all the incentive he needed. As Saba staggered back, flailing at a tentacle that had lashed down at her, Jacen straightened his posture and closed his eyes. Ignoring the rain on his face, shutting out the booming of thunder from the sky and the strange cries of the boras, he extended himself into the warmth of the Force, and went searching …
Up …
Past the Ferroans.
Higher …
Between the cracking tentacles and into the branches, where drenched birds and other animals huddled for shelter.
Higher still …
To the tops of the trees, where static electricity sizzled from the storm and wind whipped leaves in furious waves.
What he was looking for wasn’t there, though. He was thinking too much in human terms. He chided himself for taking anything for granted on a world like this and sent himself hurtling down the side of the nearest boras—along thickening branches as the trunk opened up to embrace the soil, and then into it, into darkness where strange small minds lurked, living among the knotted roots and dining on the remains of the surface world.
And it was there that he found what he was looking for: a knot of intense anger that was the heart of the malignant stand of boras. It wanted to kill those who had invaded its most sacred place; it wanted to crush them into fertilizer, grind their bones into the dirt, and seed their graves with scavengers to erase every last memory of their presence.
As tentacles rained down on the seeding ground, Jacen’s mind slid into the convoluted spaces of the outraged plant.
Violated! the primitive mind shrieked. Protect!
We’re not harming you, Jacen assured. We’ll be gone soon.
Even as he said it, though, he could sense that advanced concepts like future benefits would be beyond the creature’s simple understanding.
Bones make us strong!
You are strong enough, Jacen told it, trying to ease the anger of the plant-mind with suggestive thoughts.
Stronger!
Jacen plunged deeper into the boras’s mind and found a furious tangle. Pressure mounted around the tangle, forging a buildup of primitive frustration and rage. He tugged gently at it.
Isolation leads to stagnation, he whispered.
He teased the inflamed threads in new directions.
Stagnation leads to corruption.
The tangle slipped apart under his mental touch, prompting a surge of pent-up energies in all directions.
Corruption leads to death.
The mind of the boras exploded in a shower of bright sparks. Somewhere, seemingly far away, Saba Sebatyne roared.
Jacen’s eyes snapped open. Saba was standing over him and Danni, shielding them with her lightsaber. Above and around them was a tightly knit cage of angry boras tentacles, poised ready to attack.
Then, with a smooth, hissing sound, the tentacles retracted, sliding smoothly back up into the canopy, their pointed tips curling in on themselves so that they were no longer a threat. The mind of the boras had retreated into itself, to lick its wounds and examine its sudden relief.
But Saba wasn’t about to lower her lightsaber; the hunter in her simply wouldn’t allow it. The look in her slitted eyes suggested she wasn’t about to be lulled into a false sense of security.
“It’s okay, Saba,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. He felt her ropy, reptilian muscles relax under her thick skin. “It’s over.”
“And yet,” said a voice from behind him, “in a very real sense, it’s only just beginning.”
Jacen turned, unable to credit his ears. The sight before him caused his heart to race and his mind to reel.
“But you’re … dead!”
Vergere didn’t reply. She just stood in front of Jacen, smiling faintly as though waiting for him to understand.
Jaina tensed as the yorik-trema rose around her. The electronic hollering of Tahiri’s message was loud in her ears, blasting out of the transponder at close range. Her address to the commander was brief, its message simple and brutal.
“The cowering infidels await your vengeance, Great Commander. I give them to you as tribute. Crush them beneath your heel as you would a diseased dweebit!”
The yorik-trema was so close that Jaina was amazed she couldn’t see it through her enviro-suit visor. The sound of it made her teeth vibrate.
Then there was a bright flash and a sound like a peal of thunder. A powerful shock wave rolled over her and the others where they’d taken shelter in a small cave tunneling through a rocky spar. The yorik-trema, or one of its tsik seru fliers, must have run into a mine protecting the periphery of the transponder. The detonation acted as a signal to her speeder bikes. With a snarl of engines, they burst out of their hiding place and split up into groups of two, weapons armed and ready.
Jaina paired herself with Eniknar, the skinny Noghri her mother suspected was a traitor. He flew confidently and economically into battle, crouched low over his saddle to her right. The Klatooinian security guard and Enton Adelmaa’j peeled off to approach the Yuuzhan Vong from the far side. Gxin and Tahiri sped off together. Jaina expected them to separate before long, but didn’t mind. Together or apart, they would be capable of a great deal of damage.
Infrared blossomed ahead of her. She hunkered down and armed her blaster cannon when something large and dark loomed out of the smog. She raked it with fire before swooping up and over it and coming around for a closer look.
The yorik-trema had caught the mine on its underbelly, crippling it. Bodies spilled from a wide crack in its fuselage. Reptoid ground troops swarmed from a rear hatch, too confused to return her fire. She sent a dozen rounds into the breach and was gratified when something exploded with a solid crump from within.
“Fliers approaching,” crackled Eniknar’s voice over the maser comm.
Jaina took a second to check her tactical display. There were no blips on the display, so clearly the fliers weren’t friendly. She took another pass around the downed yorik-trema and joined the security chief in meeting the fliers head-on. A formation of seven tsik seru peeled apart in disarray as blasterfire cut hot lines between them. Jaina braked back in a tight turn, then came around again to play havoc with their rear vents. Any hope of maintaining order to the fight dissolved at that point. With visibility low, her sensors restricted to nonemitting radiation, and dozens of targets appearing and disappearing all around her, the skirmish dissolved into a furious free-for-all. Her blaster pounded beneath her, knocking chunks from alien coral and tearing reptoid troops limb from limb. Eniknar was nowhere in sight, but she didn’t have time to dwell upon that.
“Watch your rear, Jaina.” Jag’s voice came out of the fierce clamor of battle, startlingly clear over the comm. She looked over her shoulder and saw two tsik seru jockeying for attack position. She crouched low over her saddle to present a smaller target and led the two alien fliers on a harried chase. She dodged plasma fire and a rain of netting beetles while swinging wildly around the treelike ground features. Her face was locked in a grim smile as she rounded a steep rock shelf and gunned her speeder in a tight port turn, too fast for the fliers behind her to see or imitate. By the time they came wide around the same corner, she was pushing her speeder to its maximum acceleration in order to get as far away from the area as quickly as possible.
The explosion as the two fliers hit the mine picked her up and threw her forward on a blast of hot air. The world exploded with stars as her speeder clipped a rock formation and sent her flying.
Tahiri felt the growling power of the machine beneath her as it swept through the air toward the Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The Yuuzhan Vong part of her instinctively mistrusted something that wasn’t alive, and the Jedi in her could sympathize somewhat, too. The living Force that flowed through every biological thing was more potent and persuasive than any machine.
Sergeant Gxin shadowed her t
o where the yorik-trema had spilled its contents onto the deep cold soil of Esfandia, then peeled away to seek other, less obvious targets. Jaina had beaten them there and was already peppering the downed craft’s dying hull with fire. Tahiri didn’t see the need to duplicate her efforts, so instead followed Gxin’s example and went in search of more worthy prey. There was at least one other yorik-trema out there, and an unknown number of tsik seru, all converging on the signal she’d sent to Commander Vorrik …
Barely had she finished thinking this when three tsik seru swooped at her out of the gloom, disrupting her thoughts. Her new, joined self fought smoothly, instinctively. There was not the slightest awkwardness or hesitation in her actions. The Yuuzhan Vong part of her meshed with the Jedi Knight to create something truly deadly, something neither side had seen before—and she used that advantage to the fullest.
Plasma fire couldn’t be deflected by a lightsaber, but the nozzles that spewed it forth—deep pits just above and forward of the tsik seru intake vents—could be closed by the Force. She applied a Force-push at exactly the right moment, tweaking the alien sphincter muscles just as they clenched to fire, causing the plasma cannon to jam. The resulting explosion—a messy burst that tore a huge hole in the tsik seru’s triangular flank—sent it spinning out of control into a cliff face. The Yuuzhan Vong pilot was thrown free and landed with a bone-snapping crunch.
Satisfied with the result, Tahiri repeated the tactic on the remaining two fliers while dodging their attempts to cut her down. As the third tumbled like a broken-winged bird into the ground, a speeder bike buzzed across her path, wobbling precariously. Through the enviro-suit helmet, she recognized Droma.
“Having trouble?” she asked.
“Took a hit to a steering vane,” the Ryn replied.
“Will you be okay?”
“As long as no one gets in my way.”
A sharp twinge through the Force distracted her. She cast her mind out, seeking the source of the troubling sensation. Within a moment she had isolated it.
“Jaina’s down,” she said.
“Whereabouts?” Droma asked, tugging at the resisting controls of his speeder to bring it around.
She didn’t wait to answer him. She just headed off in the direction she felt Jaina to be.
“The coralskipper,” Tekli said, “it’s changing!”
“I don’t understand,” Mara said. “Changing how?”
“It’s changing shape, and its gravitic emissions are adopting a different profile.” The voice of the Chadra-Fan was unable to hide her exasperation with what she was seeing. “It’s much faster—and turning!”
“It’s coming back at us,” came the calmer voice of Captain Yage over the comlink. “Whatever it is, we’re ready for it.”
“You’re so not ready,” came a voice off to Luke’s right, “it’s almost funny.”
Luke turned at the new voice and found himself staring at a young boy standing in the entrance to the habitat’s upper floor. He was about twelve years of age with blue eyes. His face was round under sandy, short hair, and his expression was one of amusement.
“What is the meaning of this?” Rowel asked, scowling. “Who are you?”
The Ferroan glanced accusingly at Luke, as if the boy’s presence were somehow his doing. Which only went to show, Luke thought, just how little the Ferroans really knew about the planet they lived on.
He closed the distance between himself and the boy with a handful of cautious steps. The blue orbs of the boy stared back at him, full of confidence and power. They stripped every other concern from him, made him feel like he was falling. The mind behind those eyes shimmered in the Force, bright and potent as Jabitha’s had been when she had met them on the landing field.
There was only one person it could be behind those eyes—and it wasn’t really a person at all.
“Is that—?” Mara started, but was clearly unsure how to finish the sentence.
Luke crouched down before the boy, staring in wonderment at the ghostly image of Anakin Skywalker. “My father?” he finished for her. He shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s Sekot.”
The boy smiled broadly now, his eyes shining in a manner that suggested pride. “You are wise, Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Your father would have been proud of the man you have become.”
“Sekot?” This came from Rowel behind Luke. He emitted a choking noise, embarrassed by his initial response to the boy’s presence. “Forgive me, please.”
Neither Luke nor the image of the boy broke their stare to address the Ferroan. His awkwardness seemed irrelevant. Everything seemed irrelevant.
“Why have you taken this form?” Luke asked.
The boy shrugged, the amusement behind his eyes suddenly undercut with sadness. “Everyone with power faces a choice. It’s a difficult choice, and the choice is different for everyone. Only time reveals which choice is correct.”
The boy’s face assumed an expression of deep sympathy as he cupped Luke’s cheek gently in one small hand.
“This is how your father appeared to me many years ago,” Sekot said. “He and I faced the same choice. We are both still waiting to find out whether we chose correctly.”
Luke sensed Mara behind him radiating her love and sympathy out to him. He was transfixed by the boy’s blue eyes. The same color as mine, he thought. No, not just the same color; they were the same …
“That’s what Darth Vader looked like?” Hegerty’s was voice thick with amazement.
“He was a boy once,” Mara said softly.
“Master Skywalker,” came Captain Yage’s voice over the comlink, interrupting the surreal reunion. “The unidentified vessel is still approaching Zonama Sekot, and is refusing to respond to our hails. We’re on full alert and ready to intercept. You just have to give the order.”
Luke stood, pulling himself away from the vision of his father to address the captain of the Widowmaker. “Stand down, Arien,” he said. He was acutely conscious of everything around him: the humid air; the scent of waterlogged undergrowth; the breathless ring of Ferroans waiting to see what happened next. “That ship isn’t about to attack us.”
The image of his father moved to the center of the room. Luke faced him, feeling the pressure of the planet’s attention upon him. He shook his head, wondering why he hadn’t realized sooner what was going on.
“So, tell me,” he said. “Have we performed to your satisfaction?”
Sekot looked at him with the wisdom of ages from the eyes of innocence. “If I were to say that you hadn’t, what would you do then?”
Luke shrugged. “That would depend on the choices I had available to me.”
“You don’t have any.” The innocent face broke into a smile. “That’s what’s so wizard about it.”
“Then your question is meaningless,” Luke said.
“Perhaps,” Sekot said. “But the exercise wasn’t. Since your arrival I have learned more about why you are here than you probably ever intended to tell me. Maybe even more than you know yourself.”
“Then you know we came in search of an answer.”
“I do. But I have no easy answer to offer you.”
“Any answer at this point would be appreciated,” Mara said.
The image of the boy looked in silence at all of those standing around expectantly, then finally nodded. “Very well,” he said, gesturing for them all to be seated.
Luke did so gratefully. Ever since laying eyes upon the boy he had felt the tug of emotions that he hadn’t accessed in a long time—emotions that were leaving him weak at the knees, even though he knew it wasn’t his father before him.
When everyone was seated, Sekot began to speak.
* * *
Jag ducked as a tsik seru skimmed narrowly over his head, the tug of its dovin basal lifting him slightly from his seat. He dropped the power on his speeder as a large stone formation loomed out of the haze ahead, swinging around to give chase to the Yuuzhan Vong that had just buzzed him, only to
find the tsik seru already coming back for another pass. Its pilot’s face was all snarl and scars, partly obscured by a fleshy gnullith. Not obscured enough as far as Jag was concerned, though. He strafed laserfire in the small craft’s path, making the Yuuzhan Vong pilot bank sharply as he fired a cloud of netting beetles in retaliation. The tsik seru had almost matched speed and vector with Jag’s flier when something caught the pilot’s attention and he swept away, disappearing into the murky atmosphere.
Left in the turbulent wake, Jag wondered what had torn the Yuuzhan Vong from his prey. Something important must have come up.
Jag came around and set off after the flier. What his speeder lacked in full-body coverage, it certainly made up for in velocity. He caught up with the tsik seru just as it crested a sharp rise and dipped down the far side. He saw its plasma launchers flex in readiness, then suddenly explode in a ball of green flame. With a pained shriek, the living craft curved away and crashed into one of the stony “stalagmites” that littered the planet’s surface. With a loud whump, it exploded into a million red-hot fragments.
Only then did Jag realize what lay below.
Huddled against a boulder were three small, humanoid figures. They stood with their backs to the boulder, two of them firing repeating blasters or using lightsabers to keep two more tsik seru and a swarm of reptoids at bay. The third slumped against the stone and appeared to be having difficulty remaining upright.
Jag stitched a line of fire across the contracting line of alien foot soldiers. At least a dozen went down screaming.
“Jag, back here!”
The comm message was from Tahiri. She was warding off four reptoids, two of them armed with coufees. The other two were throwing thud bugs whenever they saw an opening. Jag swept in low across the fight and dropped a thermal mine in the middle of the reptoids, shooting at the two with coufees on his way out.
Reunion: Force Heretic III Page 28
