Reunion: Force Heretic III

by Sean Williams

  When the thermal mine went off, bits of reptoids were sent flying every which way. Something thumped against the side of his helmet, and he ducked in case more pieces were following. Guiding his bucking speeder around in a circle, he came back to check on Tahiri and the others.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Jaina took a fall,” Tahiri explained, getting up from where she’d dropped. She lent Jaina a hand as she climbed to her feet.

  Jag brought his speeder to a halt and jumped off to see if he could help. When Jaina spoke, her voice was thick and groggy. She was blinking her eyes too rapidly, as though trying to focus.

  “My feet are cold.”

  “Her suit is failing,” Tahiri said. “We have to get her out of here.”

  Jag tried to get her attention. “Jaina? Can you hear me?”

  “Jag?” Her gaze caught him and held on. She nodded in a delayed response to his question. “I’ll be all right. Just give me a second.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” Droma said, pointing over Jag’s shoulder, “but …”

  Jag turned and saw the reptoids getting up and regrouping.

  He went back to his speeder and collected his charric blaster.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Where’s Jaina’s speeder?”

  “Over there,” Tahiri said.

  Jag looked and saw the tangled wreck.

  “Okay, then, she can take mine and head back to the relay base,” he said. “It’s the only shelter we’ve got down here. I’ll hitch a lift with Droma.”

  “No, I’ll take her,” Droma said. “She shouldn’t fly alone. And besides which, I know the way.”

  Reluctant though he was to lose another fighter, Jag nodded in agreement. It made sense to have someone with her, to help her if she blacked out or got lost.

  “Get going,” he said. “We’ll cover your backs.”

  Droma helped Jaina to Jag’s speeder. She protested vaguely, but was unable to put up much of a fight. When she was safely on the saddle, the nimble Ryn climbed up in front of her and activated the engine.

  “Keep an eye on Eniknar,” he said.

  “We will,” Tahiri said.

  With a brisk wave, Droma sped off into the gloom.

  “So where are our speeders?” Jag said, firing his blaster at a knot of reptoids who looked about ready to charge.

  Tahiri pointed at a crater behind the line of reptoids. “A tsik seru took them out before I could take it out. We tried calling for help, but our line of sight is shot down here. We were lucky you came along.”

  He felt strangely like laughing, but doubted the approaching line of snarling reptoids would see the joke. “You’re back where you started!”

  “Not at all.” Tahiri’s grin was fleeting and joyful. “Now Jaina’s safe, I don’t have to watch my back.” She tensed. “Try and keep up, Colonel. We’re getting out of here.”

  With a powerful, Force-augmented spring, she somersaulted up onto the boulder they’d been sheltering in front of and began blasting the reptoids from above.

  * * *

  Leia paced nervously across the Falcon’s passenger bay, wishing there were something she could do. She’d felt the shock of Jaina’s sudden plunge into unconsciousness, and had endured an anxious ten minutes until she felt her daughter recover. The relief had been enormous, but did little to assuage the underlying frustration. Somewhere out there a desperate fight was going on, and she was too far away to be of any use.

  A bleeping from the cockpit came as a thankful distraction to her thoughts. She ran to find out what the instruments were reporting, and found new telemetry scrolling down the screens, courtesy of Pellaeon. The surface scans showed furious activity around the transponder site. At least five mines had blown, turning the normally frigid cloud patterns into relatively hot hurricanes. She only hoped the Cold Ones were keeping well away, as instructed.

  In orbit, things were beginning to change. Responding to the lack of rapid progress on the ground, Vorrik was moving ships into strike range for a bombing run. Pellaeon had responded to the threat by boosting his presence along that orbit. Leia had witnessed enough muscle flexing in the past to know that the situation was at flashpoint. Unless the ground troops delivered—or appeared to deliver, anyway—a decisive victory to the Yuuzhan Vong, things in orbit would soon get very ugly once again.

  At least the relay base was safe, though. That was a small comfort in the middle of such chaos and confusion. And she supposed she shouldn’t complain too much. She’d been hiding only a matter of hours, whereas Ashpidar and her crew had been evading the Yuuzhan Vong for days.

  Thinking of the base commander, she clicked open the comm to Ashpidar’s office.

  “Commander Ashpidar?” she said. “If you’re interested, I have new telemetry from Pellaeon.”

  There was no response.

  “Sekot!”

  Jabitha’s startled cry brought Jacen out of his stunned daze. He was gaping at the image of Vergere where she stood opposite Senshi, her diminutive figure commanding everyone’s attention. She was dressed in a brown robe, and her large, almost hypnotic eyes were fixed on him. The fringe of feathers and whiskers around her face were, despite the rain, completely dry.

  “You’re not Vergere, are you?” After so long, there was no way his teacher could have returned from the dead—and he could tell from the image’s presence in the Force that this was something much more than just a projection or an echo of someone who had once lived.

  “I come to you in this guise as someone we have both known,” the image said. “Someone who was close to you, someone you found trustworthy.”

  “Sekot does this,” Jabitha explained. “It appears as my father sometimes, or as your grandfather. Sometimes it appears as me, and that is the most disconcerting of all.”

  Jacen remembered something the real Vergere had told him. She had been present at the birth of the living planet’s consciousness, when Sekot had assumed the personality of its dead Magister and communicated with her and the Yuuzhan Vong. He had known about this all along and not realized …

  “Why now?” Saba asked, her voice a growl of puzzlement. “Why not before?”

  “It did before,” Jacen said, “when we arrived. That wasn’t the Magister Uncle Luke and Aunt Mara spoke to. It was Sekot in Jabitha’s form.”

  “That still does not tell uz why.”

  Jacen looked around: at Saba staring uncertainly back at him, at Danni still unconscious on the stretcher, at Senshi with his weapon pressed against Jabitha’s head … The image of Vergere watched him closely, waiting for him to answer the question for himself.

  “You’re testing us, aren’t you?” he said.

  Sekot shook its fringed head, smiling. “I’m testing you, Jacen Solo.”

  “And did I pass?”

  Instead of answering his question, Sekot faced Senshi. The elderly Ferroan immediately removed the lightning rod from Jabitha’s temple and climbed to his feet. The Magister sat up, rubbing at her neck where the kidnapper had been holding her. Sekot then glanced over the Danni on the other stretcher, and the young scientist stirred with a soft moan. Jacen went over to her, kneeling beside her in the mud.

  “Danni?” He could barely contain his relief.

  Danni opened her eyes slowly, blinking into the light rain falling across her face. She propped herself up onto her elbows, looking up at Jacen with confusion etched across her brow.

  “Where am I?” Her eyes widened as she looked around. “The last thing I remember is the roof coming down—”

  “It’s all right, Danni,” Jacen reassured her. “You’re safe now.”

  Her gaze fell upon the Ferroans standing around her, some with their weapons held loosely at their sides.

  “This would be the Solo definition of ‘safe,’ I’m taking it?”

  “You will not be harmed,” Vergere said, stepping up alongside Jacen.

  Danni’s eyes widened in surprise even
more at the sight of Vergere. “But—I thought—”

  “It’s not Vergere,” Jacen said.

  “It iz Sekot.” Saba finally extinguished her lightsaber. Jacen couldn’t tell if she’d decided that Sekot meant no harm, or that there was nothing she could do about it even if Sekot did.

  Danni turned back to Jacen, shaking her head as though the questions it carried were too heavy. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think I’m beginning to,” he said. “This whole thing was a setup designed to see how I react under threat. Do I fight or flee? Do I defend my loved ones, or do I use them as shields?”

  “Or do you attempt to take the middle ground,” Sekot said, “and allow both sides to win?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jabitha said. “I knew Sekot was going to test you, but I didn’t know how. I convinced it that it should, rather than trust you implicitly. I had no idea that your lives were going to be put in any danger.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Jacen said, standing again to face Vergere’s image. “It was Sekot who kept Danni unconscious, and who used Senshi to execute the kidnapping. Just as it used the boras here to threaten us.”

  “Actually, the boras were acting of their own will. They could not be controlled—only provoked or soothed. You had to solve that problem on your own. But the rest is true, yes. Does that fact make you angry?”

  Vergere was the perfect form for Sekot to take, Jacen thought. This was exactly the sort of mind-expanding trick she might have played on him during his brief apprenticeship to her.

  “No,” he said. “I just want to know why.”

  “I had to know what manner of warrior I was dealing with before responding to your request.”

  “I’m uncomfortable with the term warrior,” he said. “A Jedi stands for peace, not war.”

  “You do not believe in fighting for peace, for freedom?” Sekot spoke in a way that made Jacen feel he was being mocked.

  “I believe that there should be a way of achieving peace other than fighting,” he said.

  “Have you found it, Jacen Solo?”

  He looked down to the ground, reluctant to admit his failure to his former teacher—even though he knew in himself that it wasn’t really her. “No,” he admitted quietly. “No, I haven’t.”

  “But that doesn’t stop you looking.”

  He lifted his gaze again to meet Sekot’s. “As the real Vergere once told me, I have chosen my destiny. Now I just have to deal with the consequences.”

  “As must we all,” Sekot said. “As have those who came before us. We inhabit the galaxy that arose as a result of their decisions, just as our descendants will inherit the galaxy that will arise from our own. It is the responsibility of every generation to choose well.”

  “And what is your decision, Sekot? What sort of galaxy will you leave for future generations?”

  Sekot smiled. “Let me tell you a little about myself, Jacen Solo.”

  “No word from the ground as yet, sir.”

  “What about those bombers?”

  “Orbital insertion for surface run confirmed.” Pellaeon acknowledged the report with a nod. “Hit them hard.”

  His aide turned away to issue the orders. Relentless immediately fired its main engines and descended to a lower orbit. TIE fighters poured from its launching bays by the hundreds. Every turbolaser and heavy laser cannon targeted the bombers preparing to demolish the transponder on the surface of Esfandia.

  Pellaeon didn’t doubt that Vorrik would respond immediately, thereby ensuring an escalation in the battle, but that was unavoidable. As pointless as it was to defend a decoy, he had to make it look as though the effort was worth defending, at least, and therefore confirm it as a legitimate target. With any luck, Vorrik would spend entirely too much effort trying to get more firepower on the ground while Pellaeon picked at the commander’s forces from above.

  Fire flashed on all screens as Imperial fighters engaged the Yuuzhan Vong. As though that were the spark that lit the fire, conflagrations broke out within minutes in a dozen other locations. The massive warship Kur-hashan came about in a ripple of gravitic disturbances, every dovin basal on its hull and in its engine housings wielding arcane energies in order to prepare it for battle.

  “All ships,” Pellaeon ordered, “engage at will!”

  The first truly conscious thought Jaina had was that she couldn’t feel her left foot—and the sensation was slowly creeping up her legs. The second thought was that she was moving—and fast!

  Opening her eyes, she realized with a start that she was actually flying.

  “What—?” she called out, clutching the padded seat beneath her.

  “Hang on, Jaina,” said the figure sitting in front of her on the cramped speeder bike saddle. “Don’t rock the boat.”

  “Droma?”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Jaina looked around to see if there were any tsik seru nearby. There weren’t. “Like an idiot. I was downed before the fight even started!”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. This kind of thing can happen to the best of us, I’m afraid.” The Ryn’s fluting voice was full of sympathy and understanding. “I’m taking you back to the Falcon. Your suit is leaking.”

  “I know. I can feel it.”

  He leaned the speeder over as he skirted a copse of towering rock formations, and she leaned with him, trying to patch together the scattered memories of how she’d come to be here. She vaguely recalled Jag being with her at some point, and Tahiri, but it was mostly a blur.

  “Everything’s going according to plan,” he said, straightening the vessel. “You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  Jaina peered over his shoulder, just in time to see something dark and spiky loom out of atmospheric haze, coming right for them.

  “Duck!” she called.

  She grabbed the shoulders of the spindly alien and pushed him flat across the speeder. She scrunched down next to him, praying there wasn’t anything else directly in their path. A loud, rasping hum rose up around them, momentarily deafening her, and something fleetingly snatched at her back.

  Then the encrusted belly of the yorik-trema they’d grazed was past, and Droma attempted to bring the speeder back under control. It wobbled uneasily for a few seconds, then steadied.

  “Do you think they saw us?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder as the alien lander faded back into the haze.

  “I’m not sure,” the Ryn said.

  “Either way, we can’t afford to take the chance that they might follow us back to the base,” Jaina said. “Hang a right here.”

  Droma did as he was told. “You’re thinking we should loop around and distract them, aren’t you?” he said. “Or warn the others, right?”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  Droma’s helmet moved back and forth as he shook his head. “No, but I do have a problem with you getting frostbite.”

  “I’m not so keen on losing any toes, either—but that’s a chance we’re going to have to take.”

  “It’s too risky,” Droma said. “Besides, I doubt those Vong would be interested in us. We’re the ones fleeing the fight scene, after all.”

  Jaina glanced back over her shoulder. “You might want to tell them that, then.”

  Droma snapped his head back for a split-second look; then with a curse that would have made her father blush, he returned his attention forward. Jaina felt the engine surge beneath them as he pushed the speeder it to its max in an effort to outrun the pair of tsik seru that had locked on to their tail.

  Jaina felt the pockets of her suit. Thankfully the cold hadn’t affected her fingers yet, but it was still hard to feel through so many layers of insulation. She had her lightsaber, a repeating blaster, and two thermal detonators. She quickly withdrew one of the latter and activated it.

  “Take a turn when I tell you,” she said, arming one of the detonators.

  “Which way?” Droma called.


  “Any way!” she said, lobbing the device into their wake. “Now!”

  The detonator exploded with a flash of heat and light, almost blinding her through her visor’s light-enhancing systems. She couldn’t tell exactly which heading Droma had chosen until her eyesight returned, then saw that he’d slipped them into a narrow crevasse that dipped below the surface of the plain they’d been traveling across.

  “Did you get them?” Droma asked, his voice thin with the strain of following the crevasse’s bends.

  “One of them, I think,” she said as a shadow fell across them. One had survived, and it was now above them, attempting to match their speed.

  A clutch of netting beetles ejected from a hatch at them, and Droma braked heavily. They decelerated quickly enough to miss the bugs themselves, but there was no chance of avoiding the sticky threads the creatures left in their wake. Two attached themselves to Droma’s back, and one fell across her visor. On the ends of each fiber, grublike finger-length insects began to reel themselves in.

  Jaina tried to tug the threads from Droma’s back while he navigated the narrow crevasse, but the threads were strong and refused to break. Reaching into her side pocket, she produced her lightsaber and activated the blade. If she didn’t get the threads off in time, those bugs would soon wrap themselves around the two of them and bind them up for easy capture.

  The threads snapped under the bright fire of her lightsaber, and two bugs dropped away from Droma’s back. She followed the thread stuck to her visor and found the bug that was its source barely a meter away from her head, whipping along behind her. She snatched her hand away and sliced the thread in two.

  Three down, she thought, but there was no time for self-congratulations just yet. She didn’t know how many more there were. Her visibility at close quarters was poor through the visor, and her gloves weren’t sensitive enough to find them by touch. It would take just one to foul up the speeder’s steering vanes, or close Droma’s fingers together at the wrong moment.

  “We have to set down,” she said. “It’s the only way to make sure we’re clean.”