Inferno

by Troy Denning

  Jacen scowled. “What plan would that be?”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Come on. You’re always telling me to think ten steps ahead, and right now that means thinking about where the Alliance is going to get its Jedi after the war. Seems to me the academy is full of potential, just waiting for you to shape it in your own image.”

  Jacen actually smiled. “So you were paying attention.”

  “Some of the time,” Ben said. “But Dad’s desertion is going to throw a real hydrospanner in your plans, isn’t it?”

  “Eventually,” Jacen admitted. “But so far, your father is content to do exactly as you suggest—allow me to guard the academy while he stirs up trouble.”

  “Then we’d better move first,” Ben said, sensing an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Jacen. “I’ll handle it, if you like.”

  Jacen glanced at his chrono, then asked, “We, Ben?”

  “If you’ll take me back,” Ben said. “I’m sorry for what I said, but everything was so confusing—”

  “That’s no excuse, Ben,” Jacen said. “Any apprentice of mine needs to be the master of his emotions, not a slave to them.”

  “I know.” Ben thought he was doing a fairly good job of that now, forcing himself to appear humble when what he really wanted was to drop a thermal detonator at Jacen’s feet. “You taught me better than that.”

  “I’m glad you recognize that,” Jacen said. “But I’m not sending you to the academy to kill the Solusars and Jaina, if that’s what you mean by moving first.”

  Ben scowled. “You don’t think that will make Dad think twice?”

  “It might—but if you can’t handle an old man like Omas, how are you going to eliminate two Jedi Masters and Jaina?” Jacen shook his head to indicate that Ben wasn’t, then checked his chrono again and started toward the door. “I’m due at a staff meeting.”

  “What about me?” Ben asked. He could not sense anything in Jacen but distrust and disappointment. “Do I still have a place here?”

  Jacen did not even hesitate as he reached for the control panel. “I don’t know, Ben. I haven’t seen any reason to take you back.”

  Ben grew hollow and cold inside, not because Jacen was turning him down, but because he was asking for more—something that only Ben could give him.

  “Whatever you decide, there’s something you should know.” Ben told himself it really didn’t matter whom he betrayed right now, because Jacen wasn’t going to live long enough to make use of the information. “Dad told me to meet him on Kashyyyk.”

  Jacen’s hand dropped without touching the control panel. “Kashyyyk?” He sounded surprised—just not surprised enough to be hearing the information for the first time. “So he intends to join your aunt and uncle in asking the Wookiees to stay out of this.”

  Ben shook his head. “He’s a lot madder than that.” Suddenly he felt very dirty inside—even dirtier than he had after he assassinated Gejjen. “I think he wants them to help throw you out of office.”

  This time Ben did get the reaction he was hoping for—first confusion, then shock, then total red-faced anger. “He wants the Wookiees to move on Coruscant?”

  Ben shrugged. “He didn’t say, exactly—just that it’s time to put someone else in charge.”

  “Someone else?” Jacen punched the wall so hard that it triggered the opaque control, and the bustling Tactical Salon slowly appeared on the other side of the wall. “No one else can do this. No one else is willing to make the necessary sacrifices.”

  “I am,” Ben said, sensing that he was finally starting to make some progress. “I just did.”

  If Jacen heard Ben, he didn’t acknowledge it. His gaze was fixed on the tactical display outside, and he had that blank look he got when he was seeing something in the Force. After a moment, Jacen opened the door and went to stand at the holodisplay, shouldering aside a Duros lieutenant and a Mon Calamari commander.

  Ben followed and heard Jacen muttering to himself, saying the Confederation needed more members, that they couldn’t stand the attrition any better than the Alliance could. From what Ben could see, that was hardly news to anyone. The Battle of Kuat had been raging for over a week now, and both sides were losing several capital ships a day and suffering casualties ten thousand at a time. The holodisplay showed more derelict vessels than it did functional, and rescue beacons were glittering so thick they looked like electronic snow.

  Jacen turned to his aide, Orlopp. “Get me the latest report on the readiness of the Wookiee fleet.”

  “I am monitoring the situation—as ordered.” Orlopp pulled at the nose whiskers on his slender Jenet snout, then continued, “Military Intelligence hasn’t heard anything from our agents since the Solos escaped from jail, but the last report indicated that the Wookiees had just started lighting their reactor cores. We won’t be seeing their fleet for some time, I’m afraid.”

  “That may be a blessing,” Jacen said. “Prepare orders sending the Fifth Fleet to Kashyyyk. Tell Admiral Atoko that the Anakin Solo will be joining him there—and open a channel to Admiral Bwua’tu. I need to discuss a change of strategy with him.”

  “You’re going after Dad and the Jedi?” Ben gasped.

  “No—we’re going to Kashyyyk to hunt down a band of traitors and deserters.” Jacen waved Ben to his side, then added, “Welcome back, Lieutenant Skywalker. You’re going to help me make an example of these people.”

  fourteen

  Be ready. It was not an actual voice Jaina kept hearing in her dreams, not even words, but she recognized that this message came from Ben. He was terrified for her and the others, and he felt somehow responsible for … what? And suddenly her dream had her aboard her parents’ beloved Falcon at Hapes, turbolaser strikes slamming the old girl like a Nkllonian boulder storm, air whistling out through a breach in the central access core, Zekk lying wounded on the deck. Next to Zekk stood Ben, his face slack with horror and an ignited lightsaber droning in his hand, the children murmuring in confusion and pouring fear into the Force, her father telling her to take the kids and … the kids?

  There hadn’t been any kids aboard when Ben wounded Zekk. Yet Jaina heard them whispering just beyond the bulkhead, sounding frightened and confused and resentful, and she could feel them in the Force, reaching out to her, seeking direction and reassurance, and then her dream had her someplace where there really were kids, back in the dormitory on Yavin 4, where she and Jacen and Zekk had been students at her uncle Luke’s Jedi academy.

  All of you, be ready.

  Ben still had no voice, but Jaina knew it was him, which seemed very strange since he hadn’t even been born yet. Luke and Mara would not be married for another … Mara was dead. That fact came crashing down on Jaina like a falling star, and now she realized that her dream had her in the wrong academy, that she was actually sleeping in the dormitory at the Jedi academy on Ossus. Her brother had sent a battalion of Blackboots to secure the students—to hold them hostage, actually—and she and Jag and Zekk had been forced to call off their hunt for Alema Rar to stay here and help watch over the students.

  For a little over two weeks now, Jaina had been living with a group of the academy’s youngest students, acting as a dorm parent while Jag helped supervise the teenagers. Zekk continued to hide in the surrounding forest, a deadly surprise against the day it actually became necessary to defend the young ones against Jacen’s troopers. For the most part, it had been easy to believe that day would never come. The GAG commander, Major Serpa, was only mildly unbalanced, and as long as the academy remained orderly and under his control, he was content to leave the children to Jaina and the other adults and concentrate his efforts on planetary security. The Solusars had even begun to hold classes again.

  But it felt far too early for the morning lessons, and the young ones in Jaina’s charge didn’t usually try to sneak off to class without disturbing her sleep. Just the opposite. Usually, she was the one who had to get them out of bed, begging and threatening and enticing
until she had all twenty children at the refectory table playing with their breakfast.

  So why were they out in the hallway now, whispering and trying to slip past her door without rousing her?

  Jaina snapped awake—and found that her eyes remained closed. She sat up and discovered that her body was still lying in bed. She tried to roll onto the floor, then just to lift a leg. Her body remained fast asleep, and a dream-like quality began to creep in around the edges of her thoughts again.

  Coma gas.

  A long male face with sunken eyes and a blade-thin nose drifted across Jaina’s mind, and she began to understand what Ben was trying to tell her. Even deranged Major Serpa would need a reason to gas her; her brother had to have ordered him to do something bad, and he needed to keep her out of the way.

  Jaina grabbed hold of that realization, held on tight to keep from sinking back into sleep, used it to pull herself back toward wakefulness. Jacen was going to hurt the young ones; she had to fight through the gas and stop Serpa.

  Jaina began by expanding her Force-awareness, anchoring herself to the reality of the dorm master’s room where she was staying, locating first the desk, then the closet and refresher, the opaqued viewport and the door across from it. Just outside the door, she sensed a jittery male kneeling down near the floor. He seemed to be concentrating hard, his presence filled with worry and dark intent.

  He was the one spraying coma gas into her room.

  Jaina grabbed him in the Force, then hurled him against the far side of the corridor, slammed him into the wall twice, and pulled him back into the door. She felt him slip into unconsciousness and would have followed, save for the young ones reaching out to her, silently pleading with her to wake up. She found the door controls and used the Force to depress the slap-pad, then felt a welcome rush of air as the door whooshed open.

  For several seconds, Jaina could do nothing but listen to the hoarse whispers of the GAG troopers as they cursed and threatened their prisoners. Frightened as they were, the young ones seemed to be doing a superb job of making their captors’ jobs difficult, shuffling their feet noisily and forcing the troopers to repeat their instructions over and over again. Still, the sounds were fading rapidly as the children were herded out the far door into the Ossan night.

  Jaina filled her lungs with clean air perhaps a hundred times before her head finally began to clear. She opened her eyes to the dim illumination of the corridor’s night-light spilling through the open door. After a moment, she rolled off the bed and saw a GAG trooper sprawled across the threshold, a small canister with a slender delivery hose lying on the floor next to him.

  Jaina crawled toward him, rapidly growing more alert as the effort of moving began to circulate her blood and carry the toxins out of her brain. Despite a queasy stomach and throbbing head, by the time she reached the door she was strong enough to stand. She dragged the trooper into the room and gave him a lungful of his own coma gas, then took his comlink and slipped into her clothes. She would have taken his blaster, too, except he wasn’t carrying one.

  A muffled voice called down the corridor, “Got ’em all, Delpho. Time to go.”

  Jaina lowered her voice into the male range and, buckling her belt around her robe, grunted an acknowledgment.

  “Delpho?”

  Jaina cursed under her breath, then reached into one of her robe’s inner pockets and withdrew her only weapon, a spoon that she had laboriously sharpened into a knife over the last few days.

  “Delpho?” The voice sounded closer now, as though the speaker was entering the corridor. “Report!”

  Jaina stepped through the door, simultaneously dropping to a crouch and hurling her knife down the corridor. A trio of bolts flashed out of the dark lounge and ricocheted off the doorjamb. She used the Force to guide her weapon toward the voice, then heard the officer scream and crash to the floor.

  A second passed. When no more fire came, Jaina retrieved her boots and started down the hall. The dormitories on Ossus were small one-story structures with only twenty-five habitation cells per building, so she had no trouble hearing the wounded man groaning and thrashing against the lounge floor. All the doors she passed were open, and she didn’t feel any children hiding inside. In several of the rooms, activated lights revealed overturned beds and lockers emptied on the floor. In one, a string of red spatter marks ran up the far wall.

  By the time she reached the lounge, Jaina was convinced the dorm had been emptied of young ones. The only presences she felt were her own and the two GAG troopers she had disabled. She knelt beside the one she had wounded and quickly realized she would not be getting any answers from him. Her knife had caught him square in the throat, and he was suffering a slow, gurgling death. She pulled a hypo from the medpac on his belt.

  “A quiet good-bye is more than you deserve,” she said. “But Uncle Luke keeps telling me I shouldn’t hold a grudge.”

  As her words registered, the man’s eyes widened, and he clutched at Jaina’s arm, silently begging her to save him.

  “Sorry.” She placed the tip of the hypo to his arm and injected the painkiller. “I’ve got kids to look after.”

  Jaina took the time to pull on her boots and crush the dying man’s comlink beneath her heel, then stuck his blaster and spare power packs into her belt and went to the viewport. Outside, young ones ranging from Jaina’s five-year-old Woodoos to Jag’s fifteen-year-old Wampas were being herded toward the central exercise pavilion, where Major Serpa stood under bright lights with a squad of bodyguards.

  She saw no sign of the Solusars, who had—like Jaina—been acting as dorm parents. She reached out in the Force and sensed them in their own dorms, feeling angry and worried, probably kneeling at a viewport just as she was. She felt Zekk creeping through the jungle behind the complex. Jag seemed to be moving toward Jaina.

  As each squad of troopers arrived with their young ones, Serpa meticulously directed their placement. It soon grew apparent that he was arranging them in a circle around the pavilion, alternating groups of taller children with groups of shorter ones, being careful to keep them segregated by a line of guards.

  Once everyone had arrived and been directed to a location, the major returned to the pavilion and studied his work thoughtfully. After two full minutes, he left again and switched three groups, so that he had the Wampas flanked by a group of ten- to twelve-year-old Banthas on one side, and thirteen- to fourteen-year-old Veermoks on the other.

  Jaina watched all this impatiently, trying not to read any meaning into the major’s actions, The man was clearly unbalanced—an impression that had only grown in their dealings since their first meeting in flight control command. She and the Solusars had been debating whether Jacen had put Serpa in charge to keep the Jedi off-balance, or to have a ready patsy when he ordered retaliation against the academy’s young ones. Knowing her brother, he had probably done it for both reasons.

  Serpa returned to the pavilion and studied the assembly for another minute or so, then nodded approvingly.

  “Much better.” He spoke loudly, clearly intending to make himself audible to anyone eavesdropping from the dormitories. “This will give me a central focus, a place to begin.”

  The Force rippled with anger and alarm, but Jaina and the other Jedi dorm parents were too disciplined to show themselves before they knew Jacen’s game. Serpa pointed to a slender Codru-Ji female standing in the front rank of the Wampas, then to a frightened-looking boy in the second rank of Woodoos.

  “Her and him.”

  A pair of troopers left the pavilion and stood by the young ones, taking them by the arm. Serpa turned his attention to the Banthas and Veermoks next, selecting a female human from the first and a Rodian male from the second. He continued in this manner until he had chosen a child from each age group.

  Once Serpa had made his selections, he had the young ones escorted onto the pavilion one at a time, carefully arranging them in a circle around him, alternating between male and female, human and nonh
uman, and tall and short.

  By the time he had finished his strange ritual, Tionne Solusar was striding across the courtyard, her silver hair flying and her brow lowered in anger.

  “You had better have a good reason for this, Major,” Tionne said, stepping onto the pavilion. She was saying this, Jaina knew, more to assure the children she was in control than because she expected any reasonable explanation. “And for the trooper who died trying to gas me in my sleep.”

  Serpa looked at her over the young ones separating them. “You killed him?” He shook his head in disapproval. “That doesn’t seem very fair, does it? He was only trying to keep you out of the way.”

  Tionne stepped through the circle of children and stopped so close to Serpa that, from Jaina’s perspective, it almost looked like she intended to kiss him. “Out of the way of what?”

  “Nothing to be concerned about,” Serpa said. “Unless you Jedi fear truth as much as you do battle.”

  Tionne dipped her head, no doubt frowning and feigning confusion. With GAG suppressing all normal modes of communication to and from the academy, any admission that she already knew about the Jedi desertion at Kuat would expose their secret means of remaining in contact with the outside galaxy—namely Zekk.

  After a moment, Tionne replied, “Fear has no control over Jedi—and neither does anger, which is a good thing for you right now.”

  Serpa’s brow shot up. “Are you threatening me, Master Solusar?”

  “I’m making a suggestion for your own good,” she replied. “Return these children to their beds immediately, and your unfortunate timing will be forgiven.”

  Serpa studied Tionne for a moment, then nodded—more to himself than to her. “That’s a threat.” He turned back to his captive audience. “It might even frighten me, if I hadn’t heard how Luke Skywalker and his bunch of cowards ran at the Battle of Kuat.”

  The Force crackled with the outrage and disbelief of the young ones—who hadn’t heard about the Jedi desertion—but even the little Woodoos were too disciplined to betray their feelings outwardly.