Jax had felt the tremors running through the ship as the Imperial stormtroopers worked at boarding her. He had assiduously not tried to locate Vader. He was working to keep his Force signature damped down. The weight of his lightsaber at his hip was some comfort, but he hoped he wouldn’t need it. If it came to using his lightsaber, that would mean he’d allowed Vader to get too close.
He sped aft in the suffocating gloom, slowing as he reached amidships. Was Laranth still up in the dorsal battery? Surely not. Surely she had abandoned her post on his order.
Or not. Laranth could be stubborn. He hesitated, peering into the gloom of the transverse passage.
But without power, he argued, and with the ship caught in the tractor beam like an insect in amber, she could no longer fire her weapon. She would have opted to protect Yimmon. She would have gone for the life pods. He moved forward again.
He caught up with I-Five as he stepped out of a stairwell onto the upper deck.
“Where are Den and Laranth?” he asked.
“Den is on his way,” said the droid. “And until they knocked out our systems, Laranth was still firing at the Imperials. I assume she’s been forced to flee.”
Jax frowned. Under normal circumstances, he would have simply reached out and found her through the Force, but he couldn’t chance that now, only comfort himself that she had not reached out for him. He looked forward along the starboard passageway. There was nothing to see. He turned his attention aft. “She’s probably already at the pods. Let’s go.”
There were five life pods in Far Ranger’s complement—two in the stern on each of her two decks, port and starboard—and one just abaft the bridge. Each was equipped to hold four people comfortably, five only if they were on very good terms. All of them now held the coordinates of the Antarian escort, but they wouldn’t by the time they were all finally deployed. Only the one Jax and his companions took—the one in which Thi Xon Yimmon awaited them—would rendezvous with their backup. He thanked the Force for Aren Folee.
They reached the aft transverse passageway and made their way along it to the first of the life pods. The locking mechanism glowed green—occupied. I-Five pinged Yimmon, who popped the hatch.
Yimmon was alone in the pod. No Laranth.
Jax tried his comlink. She didn’t answer. Which might mean nothing … or it might mean …
A slow creeping dread enveloped him. If he could only reach out. Just a tendril of thought. The merest thread … He closed his eyes, extended his feelings …
“Jax?” I-Five put a metal hand on his shoulder just firmly enough to arrest his attempt to reach Laranth. “What now? Do we wait or split up?”
Den was about amidships, nearing the intersection with the transverse passageway, when two things happened almost simultaneously: the emergency lights began to flicker on and off, and he stepped into a sudden pall of acrid smoke. He stopped, heart pounding, and peered into billowing clouds luridly lit by golden light and flickers of brighter incandescence from some point roughly at the center of the transverse passageway.
He choked—less on the smoke and more on the sudden realization of where it must come from—the dorsal weapons bay. He put himself in motion again, forcing himself to move through the smoke and intermittent light. He could hear the pop and hiss of fried circuitry, the ticking of cooling metal.
Please, Triakk, let her have gotten out. Merciful Warren Mother of all Sullust, I beg you!
He hurried toward the confluence of the transverse and fore-and-aft passages. As he’d feared, the source of the smoke was the weapons battery. It was also the source of a string of what could have been either curses or prayers delivered in a husky female voice. The litany ended with, “That’s it! Come on—come on—come on!”
Laranth!
Den reached the spot below the battery and peered up. The retractable ladder was halfway down, but Laranth was still up in the bay, working over a control panel that looked as if it had imploded. Her face was crisscrossed with cuts; her bare shoulders and lekku bled from numerous wounds.
“What’re you doing?” he demanded. “Get out of there!”
“Not yet. Not until I send Lord Vader one last message.” She was reaching for the firing mechanism—or what was left of it.
Peering up through the transparisteel cowl over her head, Den realized what she meant to do. The dorsal turbolaser cannon was aimed right into the belly of Vader’s ship at point-blank range.
“Laranth, no!”
But she was already committed. The emergency lights brightened as power surged; she fired.
The backlash was so intense it swept Den off his feet and tossed him down the fore-and-aft passage as if he were a leaf in the wind.
In the flutter of amber from the emergency lights, Jax surveyed the life pods. There was one to either side of an access tube that ran from where they stood down to the cargo deck and up to a scanner array. He considered sending I-Five and Yimmon off in the port pod, but if they split up it would severely complicate their escape plans. He’d opened his mouth to tell I-Five to join Yimmon in the pod when an explosion lit up the fore-and-aft passage. The ship bucked fiercely, throwing Jax to the deck. Rising, he felt sudden cold. It was as if someone had siphoned the freezing void of space into his soul.
He scrambled to his feet, peering forward along the fore-and-aft corridor. An acrid odor reached him, breathed out by the ship’s sputtering emergency life-support system. Through the flickering light, Jax realized his view of the forward section of the ship was obscured by smoke.
No.
Jax ran, vaguely hearing I-Five call his name.
The ship felt wrong beneath Den’s booted feet as he dragged himself upright in the choking swirl of smoke. It was bobbing like a cork, which made no sense. The A-grav field was either on or off. If it was on, the boson field generated mass and stability; if it was off …
He staggered back to the weapons battery and was scared witless when a large, solid figure flew out of the gloom, nearly knocking him down again. It took him a moment to realize that it was Jax. The Jedi reached up into the battery and hauled on the half-deployed ladder. The warped scrap of metal fought his attempt to pull it down fully.
Den heaved himself upward. He was just able to grasp the bottom-most rungs of the ladder and add his weight to it. He heard the sharp, guttural rasp of labored breathing but had no idea if it was Laranth’s or Jax’s or his own. He choked on the acrid vapors, blinked as dying circuitry spat sparks at him.
The ladder jerked downward and Laranth fell from the battery into Jax’s arms, her bones shattered, her life force flickering like the emergency lights that lit her ravaged face. Her left lekku was nearly severed, and a piece of shrapnel had pierced her neck, just beneath her jawline, nearly severing a cortical artery.
Den could only cling to the ladder and watch. He pulled his gaze from Laranth’s face and to Jax’s. That was far worse. He had to look away.
He turned his eyes aft and his breath stopped in his throat. I-Five had started toward them from the stern. Yimmon had left the safety of the life pod. Behind them, just climbing out of the stairwell …
“Jax.” Den’s voice was a raw whisper.
He looked back at Jax and Laranth, and caught the moment in which Laranth breathed something into Jax’s ear and then gave her soul back to the Force. It felt as if the entire universe paused to observe the moment before moving forward again.
Jax didn’t need to be told what Den had seen in the aft passage. Den could see that he knew. The knowledge was written in the sudden stiffening of his body, in the hard remoteness of his eyes as he laid Laranth’s broken shell gently on the deck and rose.
His lightsaber hummed to life, lighting the dim corridor with blue-green ambience. Jax stepped aft, the smoke eddying around him. Den watched, helpless, as the Jedi approached I-Five and Yimmon. The Whiplash leader and his droid protector were blocked from escape by a towering black figure flanked by a quartet of stormtroopers.
Darth Vader drew his lightsaber, as well, and took one long step toward Jax and his companions. His weapon thrummed to life, its blood-red radiance spilling up the bulkheads. The ship shifted again, the A-grav field flickering like the lights. One of the stormtroopers hastened to Vader’s side and spoke to him, gesturing upward, his voice too low to hear.
In answer, Vader made a sharp motion with one hand and the stormtroopers turned as one, leveling their weapons at Jax.
“Your dead comrade,” said Vader, his dark voice betraying no emotion, “disabled our stasis field—an act for which she has paid with her life. This ship is drifting into the matter stream between the stars, so you will forfeit that, as well. I have but one more thing to take from you.”
“My life?” Jax asked, his voice harsh and raw.
“No. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”
The stormtrooper nearest him turned his helmeted head. “But Lord Vader, the Emperor’s orders—”
Vader raised a gloved hand, fisted, and the trooper fell silent. “I am well aware of the Emperor’s orders. I execute them in my own fashion. What I take from you, Jax Pavan, is the very thing you have been so jealously guarding these many months.”
He turned his masked face toward Yimmon. The Cerean’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped against the bulkhead behind him. Vader reached out with his free hand and made a grasping motion that arrested Yimmon’s slide. Two of the stormtroopers moved quickly to grab his arms and lift him up.
Jax and I-Five leapt in unison, Jax’s lightsaber spinning. The stormtroopers fired and a burst of hard, particulate light flooded the passageway.
Den had no time to cover his eyes. He was blinded, utterly. When he was able to see again, Jax stood in the center of the passageway, his lightsaber raised defensively. The corridor was littered with debris. Vader and his troopers were gone, and with them, Thi Xon Yimmon.
The ship was dead in space, drifting toward oblivion. Laranth’s body lay broken on the deck. And I-Five …
Den tried to move and nearly tripped over something at his feet. He looked down. I-Five’s head, battered and blackened, lay on the decking before him.
Four
They had to leave now or they never would. He knew that Laranth’s body was just an empty shell.
He knew that. He was, after all, a Jedi. Death was no stranger to him.
And yet he wanted to linger within one broken vessel, cradling the other in his arms. Or, barring that, to take Laranth’s body with him into a life pod.
He shut the urges down.
There is no death; there is the Force.
Her last words.
He looked around for Den. The Sullustan was still alive, quivering against the bulkhead with I-Five’s head in his arms. Jax had to get Den off Far Ranger. And to do so, he had to leave Laranth behind.
He forced himself to move. He deactivated his lightsaber and put a hand on the Sullustan’s shoulder.
“Get to the life pod. The one to starboard.”
Den looked up at him through haunted eyes; Jax saw his own reflection in them. “Not … not without you.”
“Wait for me. Give me a minute—that’s all I’ll need. If I’m not there in a minute, take off.”
He sprinted for his cabin then—their cabin—trusting that Den wouldn’t try to follow him. It took him only seconds to dart in and get the miisai tree—all of Laranth that was left to him. He spent another second considering the idea of not joining Den in the life pod.
He shook his head. Stupid. He was being stupid and tragic. This was not the time to make life decisions.
Carrying the tree, he raced aft again, pausing only to sweep up one of Laranth’s blasters—the only one still in one piece—and to touch her ruined face. Her flesh was cold. Her house was empty.
The ship shuddered again, reminding him that he had limited time—not that he expected Den to leave him behind. Not really. He reached the life pod and swung inside, sealing the door behind him. Den was sitting in the copilot’s seat, working on I-Five’s head, reconnecting a few of the myriad wires that straggled from the droid’s neck. Jax thought he saw the droid’s optics flicker briefly, but the effect was too ephemeral for him to be sure.
He slid into the pilot’s seat—not that he’d be doing much piloting—strapped in, and hit the launch mechanism. Seconds later they were flying through the Twins’ tidal bore.
It took long, agonizing moments to win clear of the stars’ gravity, but they did at last. In the relative silence of the capsule, Jax swiveled his seat to look at Den. The Sullustan stared back, I-Five’s head pressed between his hands. His gaze was on the tree in Jax’s lap.
“She … um … she gave you that?” Den asked.
Den’s voice was so soft, Jax barely heard him. He nodded. “Stupid, I suppose, but …”
“No. Not stupid. Not at all.”
“You waited more than a minute.”
“You took more than a minute.”
“I ordered you to go.”
“He ordered me to stay.” Den hefted the droid’s head.
“Den …”
“I did order him to stay,” said I-Five succinctly. His optics flickered, unmistakably this time. “I’ve lost enough today, as it is. We all have. Losing you … not in my plans.”
Jax felt as if his bones were melting. His hands shook. He grasped the arms of the pilot’s chair to stop them—grasped them until his knuckles turned white.
“Choice is loss; indecision is all loss,” he murmured. “I choose Yimmon—I lose Laranth. I choose Laranth—I lose Yimmon. I hesitate—I lose both … and the ship and you.”
“Except that I’m still here,” I-Five said emphatically. “Though admittedly, I’ve lost a bit of weight.” After a pause, the droid added, “In some sense, Laranth is still here, as well. Remember your training, Jax. There is no death; there is the Force.”
Jax stared out the viewport at the void of space, aware that, behind them, the Far Ranger with her lonely cargo was diving into the starstuff—returning to the primal forge. It was easier to meditate on those words than understand what they meant. He’d lost his Master and understood them, he thought. He’d lost Nick Rostu and thought he’d understood them. But this—losing the woman who’d been his most intimate companion, the person who completed his sentences—this was not like those losses. He felt as if a piece of his own soul had been ripped away.
The piece that gave it light.
He wanted, desperately, to reach out through the Force and feel her there—to make certain the Jedi mantra was truth. He told himself he did not only because it would betray his continued existence to Vader.
But Vader knew. He had taken the Whiplash leader, almost casually blasted I-Five to bits when the droid had tried to stop him, and just as casually caused Jax’s muscles to lock in titanic spasm. Then he had turned and left with his troops, walking away with studied insouciance.
A loud ping sounded in the silence. A light flashed in his eyes. He looked through the tiny porthole, saw a ship hovering perhaps half a klick away. It was their Ranger escort, come to rescue them.
Or what was left, he thought. Two broken sentients and a broken droid.
Five
The Rangers’ small stealthy vessels—which they called darts—scooped up the life pod carrying Jax and his companions at the fringes of the Twins’ gravity well, docked with it, transferred them to Aren Folee’s ship, and carried them back to Toprawa.
Jax spent the entire journey in a state of mental lockdown. After that last explosion of anguish, he was a pit. A hole. A yawning gravity well into which light fell without effect. He watched the mouth of the abyss from a high, detached point within his mind—the invisible seethe of emotions at the bottom could not be allowed to rise to the surface, or to leak out.
Vader would believe him dead, broken down into free ions by the Twins’ plasmatic inferno, and he feared that even a whimper in the darkness of his soul would expose him.
He felt
Den’s gaze on him, and Aren Folee’s when she turned from the ship’s helm. He could even feel I-Five’s regard. He still hadn’t gotten used to that.
He relaxed his guard a bit when they reached Toprawa, even noticed when the ship dived straight at a rocky cliff and—at the point of impact—simply slipped through the holographic disguise and into a great, hollow cavern that was not entirely natural.
There were over half a dozen ships of various sizes ahead on the cavern floor. Overhead, the roof of the mountain disappeared into darkness punctuated by pale yellow lights. They twinkled in the mist of a waterfall that plunged like a ribbon of crystal from an unseen source down hundreds of feet to the cavern floor. Jax followed its silver path with his eyes—the group of ships ahead were on an island in the middle of a small lake.
“This is amazing,” said Den quietly. Then to Jax, “When you said they had an underground, I didn’t think you meant it literally.”
“Welcome to Mountain Home,” Aren told them.
She guided her dart expertly to the island and set down in the lee of a larger vessel that Jax recognized as a Helix-class interceptor. The small, armed freighters had been outlawed by the Empire because of their speed, maneuverability, and firepower. The first ships off the Arakyd assembly line had barely reached their new owners when the Emperor had commanded them to either strip the vessels down or get rid of them. Most had obeyed—apparently, some hadn’t.
This interceptor was fully armed and seemed to be undergoing repair.
As Aren Folee settled the dart to the sand, Jax emerged from dormancy enough to examine the other ships nearby. He recognized several: A Kuat Systems CloakShape fighter that was in the process of being fitted with new missile launchers, a Cutlass patrol fighter, and a third ship that couldn’t be what it appeared to be.
Jax took a deep breath. “Is that a Delta-7?”
Aren shut down the engines. “It is. Want a look?”
Want. That was an alien idea. He nodded anyway. They disembarked—Jax still carrying the miisai tree, Den carrying I-Five’s head—and the Ranger led them over to the sleek, wedge-shaped vessel. It was damaged—so badly scorched that the original color of the ship was almost obliterated. It had been red, which meant it had belonged to a specific Jedi. The Delta-7s—officially, the Aethersprite series—had been used by the Jedi so extensively most people had simply called them Jedi starfighters. Jax had never had the opportunity to pilot one.
The Last Jedi Page 5
