by Greg Keyes
“Wow,” Leia said. “That could be a good countermea-sure against those voids.”
“Not really,” Han said. “It would only work if the hydrogen density was like it was—it was still semiliquid. In another few seconds, it would have dispersed enough that it wouldn’t have done anything. If the Sunulok had been moving, they would have whipped through it in a second. No, we had the perfect setup, and since I’m pretty sure the Sunulok survived, the Vong probably won’t let that happen again. Nice thought, though.”
Jacen was about to add something else when the Force blindsided him with agony. He must have cried out, because both of his parents looked at him at once.
“What is it, Jacen?” Leia asked.
“It’s Aunt Mara,” he replied shakily. “Something bad is happening to Aunt Mara.”
Aunt Mara! Jaina felt the pain and despair hit her like the heavy end of a hammer. She shook her head, not sure where she was. Had she blacked out?
Stars tumbled by, and her astromech chirped frantically.
Oh, right. She’d been flying into the Yuuzhan Vong superweapon, when it exploded.
Aunt Mara! The spike in the Force was fading, but the impression remained of Mara unraveling like a rotten philfiber.
Jaina balled her fists in frustration. Mara was hundreds of parsecs away, and here she was in a dead ship.
I can’t help her now, Jaina thought. Got to help myself first.
She and her astromech managed to kill the tumble, but they were still without engines. Far behind her she could make out the wink of laserfire through a cloud of gas that must be the debris of the Yuuzhan Vong weapon.
We did it!
She was drifting sunward, but was outside of the asteroid field and in no obvious or immediate danger. At least she didn’t think so until she noticed, ahead of her, a heart-shaped chunk of yorik coral. A big hunk.
After a few missed beats of her own heart, however, she saw it wasn’t under power. In fact, what it looked like more than anything was a dovin basal. Alone, unattached to a ship.
“You think it’s flotsam?” she asked the droid.
It whistled a noncommittal reply. It was too busy to care about space junk.
Curious, Jaina adjusted her sensors, and noticed something else strange. The dovin basal had a twin, about a hundred klicks away, in the same orbit. Inward, toward the primary, another pair—and another, and another. It was a sort of corridor of dovin basals stretching from the Yuuzhan Vong superweapon almost to the star in the center of the Sernpidal system.
“Oh, no,” she said. “No, Kyp, you didn’t. Not even you would …”
No, of course he would. And he had made her part of it. And she had brought in Rogue Squadron.
She wanted to throw up. If she hadn’t been in a sealed cockpit with limited room to do so, she probably would have.
The astromech informed her that it had managed to rig a new antenna. Jaina opened a channel.
“Rogue Leader, you out there?”
Static, and then Gavin Darklighter’s voice. “Jaina? Jaina, thank goodness you’re alive.”
“Copy, Rogue Leader. Can you send somebody to pick me up?”
“Absolutely. We’re finished here.”
“Colonel Darklighter, you might want to come yourself. There’s something here I think you should see.”
FORTY-THREE
Luke.
Luke awoke to his name and found Mara’s hand on his arm. Her eyes were clear, and her lips were quivering as if she were trying to speak.
“Mara,” he murmured. “Mara.” He had more to say, but he couldn’t get it out. I love you. Don’t die.
Her head inclined, very slightly. He took her hand and felt the pulse there, stronger than it had been in days, but irregular.
Now. We have to do it now.
“Do what? Mara, I don’t understand.”
Now. Her eyes closed again, and her pulse dropped away.
“No! Mara!”
When Darth Vader had suddenly realized that he had a daughter as well as a son, Luke had felt a desperation that was the palest reflection of this. He’d hurled himself at the black-armored figure that was his father, battering him with his lightsaber until he cut Vader’s arm off. In doing so Luke had taken a decisive step toward the dark side.
Now, though his body did not move, he hurled himself at Mara’s disease with the same blind, desperate fury, battering against it with the Force, trying to shatter the slippery, mutable compounds of which it was made. The electrifying strength of anguish drove him on, and the fact that he was trying to do the impossible meant nothing. He clenched his fists until the veins stood out on his arms, attacking something he couldn’t see.
That wasn’t there to see.
No. Luke, no. Not this way.
Luke fell away, trembling. “How then?” he shouted, maybe at Mara, maybe at the universe itself.
“Luke!” Cilghal was standing in the doorway. “I felt—”
“She wants me to do something, Cilghal,” Luke snarled. “She diverted some of her energy to wake me, and a little more to stop me from … What does she know, Cilghal?”
“I don’t know, Luke,” Cilghal said. “But you’ve been telling your students attack is not the answer. Trust yourself—you’re right. You need to calm yourself.”
A retort got hung just inside of his throat. How could Cilghal possibly understand?
But she was right, of course. It was easy to remain calm when nothing upsetting was happening.
“I know,” he admitted, his breathing evening out. “But I know I have to do something. Now, or she’ll die.”
“Let me try,” Cilghal said. “Maybe I can understand what she wants.”
“No. It has to be me. I know that.”
He calmed himself further, sloughing off his darkening emotions, cleansing himself with deep, slow breaths. Only when he felt truly centered did he reach out toward Mara again, probing her gently through the Force rather than attacking her disease.
Attack is not the answer.
But she was so far gone. There was nothing to defend, except …
And suddenly, he thought he understood. One part of Mara was well—better than well, free of all disease. That’s where he needed to be, not waging warfare, but strengthening, defending from the one fortress that still stood.
He reached out again, this time as lightly as one of Mara’s caresses, into the place where their child rested, and there he found his wife, wrapped around the baby like a dura-steel wall.
“Let me in, Mara,” he said aloud. “You have to let me in.” He laid his hand on her arm, squeezing gently. “Let me in.”
Skywalker?
“It’s me. I think I understand, now. I’ll do what I can. But you have to let me in.”
The wall wavered, but held. Had he guessed wrong? Had she herself already forgotten, her memory erased by the pain?
“I love you, Mara. Please.”
He trembled, still touching her arm. He couldn’t force her. He wouldn’t if he could. Come on, Luke.
The gate opened, and he felt another pulse, another life. He reached for his son.
The child stirred, as if recognizing his father’s touch. He reached back, and Luke felt little tickling thoughts, like waking laughter and amazement. It was a voice both familiar and infinitely strange. It was a voice becoming real.
“I love you. I love you both,” he breathed. “Take my strength.”
He and Mara joined like fingers twining, and like a tiny third hand, the unborn child linked with them as well. A human child. His child. Mara’s child.
The mutual grip grew stronger, but it wasn’t the desperate strength of combat or the raging power of a storm. It was a calm, enduring, and at the same time fallible, mortal embrace—the embrace of family long separated.
They mingled, each with the other, until Luke felt his identity blur, and he began to dream.
He saw a young boy with hair of pale red-gold, tracing lines in the sand.
He saw an older boy, kneeling by a river course, rubbing a smooth, round stone between his fingers and smiling. The same boy, perhaps ten years old, wrestling with a young Wookiee.
He saw himself, holding the boy, watching glowing lines of traffic move through the sky of some strange world—like Coruscant, but not Coruscant.
He did not see Mara, though he looked, and that brought a new note of discord to his thoughts.
Always in motion is the future, Yoda had once told him. Still, he reached farther, searching for Mara, farther along that uncertain, shifting path. The boy grew older; he was at the helm of a starship of strange design …
All futures exist in the Force, a familiar, impossible voice suddenly said. You do not choose the future so much as it chooses you. Do not look for answers there.
“Ben?” Luke croaked, stunned. It couldn’t be Ben, of course. That time was long gone, and his old Master was truly one with the Force, unreachable, and yet …
But it didn’t matter whether it was Ben, the Force, or a part of Luke himself that had just spoken. It only mattered that he had glimpsed what might be, and only the tiniest part of that, but it was only what might be. He couldn’t let it concern him—now was not the time for searching or speculation, for both were active manifestations of doubt, and he could afford no doubt right now. Doubt was more deadly than the Yuuzhan Vong disease. It was the only real limitation a Jedi had.
He let the images slide away, and felt again only the moment, three hearts beating, three minds becoming one.
Hi there, Luke. Glad to have you back, Mara seemed to say. And then they were expanding, extending outward in every direction, like a galaxy being born. Like anything being born. Like life itself.
FORTY-FOUR
“Wow,” Anakin said, when he saw the ship waiting for them in berth thirteen. They’d squeaked by two groups of ooglith-cloaked Yuuzhan Vong prowling the halls, apparently still searching for them, and had expected a fight when they reached the ship—if the ship was even still there. It was, and the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t.
“Maybe Nom Anor and his bunch got caught when the air went out,” Corran speculated.
“Wow,” Anakin repeated.
“Don’t gawk,” Corran said. “We don’t have time for it. It may take us some time to figure out how to work this thing. There is still a fleet out there, remember?”
“Right,” Anakin said. “Sorry.”
But it was hard not to be impressed. The Givin ship was simple, elegant, nearly all engine, about the size of a light transport. A bundle of spindly cylinders protruding from a relatively enormous engine torus made up the core of the ion drive, though three more extended on booms from the side of the main assembly. These last weren’t fixed, either, but could be maneuvered in a complete sphere. Forward of that was the hyperdrive assembly, and almost as an afterthought, it seemed, a crew section and cockpit that was nearly all transparisteel.
On board they found that only the sleeping compartment could be pressurized. The life support unit was thus commensurately underpowered, so they remained in their suits. The controls were a complete mystery until Corran pointed out they were laid out mathematically according to Ju Simma’s theorem. Once that was understood, the ship was weird to operate, but not particularly difficult.
Corran took the controls and unlocked the docking bolts.
“Here we go,” he said. “The pitiful laser this thing has won’t be of much use in a fight, so we’re just going to run, unless anyone else has a better suggestion.”
“But the station—” Tahiri began.
“Is doomed. And the best hope for the Givin is reinforcements from Coruscant.”
“I was thinking about Taan.”
“I’m sorry,” Corran said. “But the Yuuzhan Vong will probably retrieve her. If she’s lucky … Anyway, we’re out of this, just as soon as I can get us out. Let’s see, where would the inertial compensator be?”
Anakin pointed to a logarithmically scaled input. “I’m guessing that’s it.”
“We’ll see. Strap in and hang on. I hope this thing has the legs it advertises.”
It did. Anakin could barely restrain a whoop when they blew out of the dock. If he had been flying, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it in.
“An A-wing couldn’t touch this thing,” he said.
“It’s not all about speed,” Corran said.
“If you’re running, it is,” Anakin replied reasonably, as they streaked past a patrol of coralskippers. They turned late, like a herd of startled banthas, and began pursuit. Within a minute the skips must have been under top acceleration, but they looked almost as if they were standing still.
As Anakin studied the sensor readouts from the copilot’s station and began calculating a series of jumps, he began to feel less cheery.
“We’ve got some ahead of us, closing. Heavy cruiser analogs, two of them.”
“We’ll see how well the Givin build shields, then,” Corran replied.
Minutes later, Corran was juking and jinking through heavy fire. The shields held admirably well, but as predicted, the laser was useless. Corran cut the ship onto a course perpendicular to Yag’Dhul’s ecliptic plane, fighting for enough distance from the planet and its three massive moons for a safe jump, but they ran into trouble there, too, in the form of more Yuuzhan Vong ships.
“Thick as gluttonbugs,” Corran remarked.
“I can lay in a short jump,” Anakin said.
“In an unfamiliar ship? Very dangerous.”
“What choice do we have?” Anakin replied.
In response, Corran turned back toward Yag’Dhul, diving toward the thick of the fighting, where the delicate-looking Givin ships were taking on twice their number of Yuuzhan Vong vessels. To Anakin, it didn’t look like a very good place to be. “We should jump,” Anakin repeated.
“Anakin, I was flying when you were nothing more than a fight brewing between Han and Leia. Before that, even. Give me credit for knowing a thing or two.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Program the jump, just in case. But we’re not going to try it unless we run out of options.”
They whipped through the Yuuzhan Vong perimeter, shaving as near the big ships as Corran dared—which was pretty near—and dancing evasively through skips. Anakin took potshots with the laser, and though he never managed to get through the void defenses the ships generated, it still felt better than doing nothing.
“We’re going to make it,” Corran said. “The ships up front are too busy to—” He broke off as every single Yuuzhan Vong ship ahead of them suddenly turned and began accelerating in their direction.
“Sithspawn!” Corran sputtered, pulling up hard to avoid a coralskipper that appeared intent on taking them out with its own mass.
It dodged by them, not even bothering to fire. In utter confusion, Anakin watched the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet race past them, out toward interstellar space.
“The ones farther out are jumping,” he reported, studying the sensor readouts. “They’re running. I don’t get it. What could the Givin have done to light their jets like that?”
“It’s not the Givin,” Corran replied, his voice edged with astonished relief. “It’s something else.”
“Recalled?” Nom Anor spat, staring incredulously down at the villip and its portrait of Qurang Lah. “But we are near victory! Their defenses crumble.”
“Meanwhile, an infidel fleet desecrates and obliterates our primary shipwomb.”
“Impossible,” Nom Anor said. “Their ridiculous senate could not possibly have approved of such a strike without my knowing. Even if the military launched such a campaign without senate approval, my sources would have informed me.”
The commander snarled a sort of smile. “It would appear, Executor, that Yun-Harla has abandoned you. Opinion is that you are perhaps not as clever and useful as you make yourself out to be. You have been outmaneuvered by the infidels. They set a trap, and you led us into it for them.”
&nbs
p; “Absurd. If there is an attack on the shipwomb, it is unrelated to this mission.”
“Not unrelated at all, since you had us commit our reserves for this battle. Had they remained at the shipwomb, they would have been sufficient to repel the infidels. As it is, we have only a narrow chance of reaching the battle in time to salvage anything.”
“Then let us remain here. We have now demonstrated to the infidels that we intend to continue our conquest of their galaxy—unless we finish here, we will have nothing to show for that tactical loss.”
Qurang Lah showed his sharpened teeth. “The loss is yours, Executor,” he said. “You may be sure that the warmaster will hear a most complete version of how you’ve bungled this entire business.” His eyes narrowed. “Let me speak to Shok Choka.”
Nom Anor kept his face impassive. “He was slain by the Jeedai. All of your men were.”
The commander’s face pulled into an incredulous frown. “All of them? And yet you made it safely back to your ship?”
“I was separated from your warriors and the Jeedai when the Givin emptied their station of atmosphere.”
Qurang Lah held his stare for another moment. “Yes,” he said softly. “The warmaster will hear much from me.”
Before Nom Anor could begin another rebuttal, the villip cleared, leaving him to pace the decks of his ship in frustration.
Not to mention trepidation.
FORTY-FIVE
Jaina climbed out of her X-wing wearily, feeling far older than her eighteen years. She wanted to get in bed, turn the lights out, and stay there.
She wanted Jacen, and Anakin, and her mother and father. She wanted to hear C-3PO going on inanely, and she wanted to see Aunt Mara, to find out what was wrong with her.
What she got instead was Kyp Durron, climbing out of his starfighter, a grin smearing across his face as he walked toward her.
In a way, he would do.
She watched him come, with that stupid smile, until he was close enough. Then she slapped him, hard.
His smile faded, but otherwise he didn’t react.
