Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  An affirming twoweet filled the cockpit and the transceiver touch pad on Jaina’s control stick turned green.

  I UNDERSTAND, Rowdy scrolled, YOU ARE JUST TRYING TO MAKE THIS MISSION INTERESTING. COUNT ME IN.

  “Glad you approve,” Jaina said, wondering if the droid might be getting a little too brave. “Launch bomb three.”

  She felt a soft bump beneath her seat as a charge of compressed air pushed the shadow bomb out of the torpedo tube. Reaching out in the Force, she began to guide the bomb toward its target, then placed her thumb over the transceiver touch pad.

  “Attention, BDY crew skiffs: Turn away now,” she transmitted. “This will be your only warning.”

  During the two full seconds of silence that followed, the lead skiff swelled to the size of a bantha outside Jaina’s cockpit. She could see the flexible ring of a telescoping air lock affixed to the hull at the front of the passenger cabin, the band of the transparent viewport stretched across its wedge-shaped bow … and the flattened dome of a weapons turret, swinging its laser cannons in her direction.

  A gravelly female voice came over the cockpit speaker. “Turn away or what, Jedi Solo? We know—”

  The transmission dissolved into a stream of static as the shadow bomb detonated. Lacking any real shielding or armor, the shuttle’s crew cabin simply vanished into the silver flash of the initial explosion. The stern and bow spun away trailing bright beads of superheated metal; then the StealthX’s blast-tinting darkened, and all Jaina could see was a ball of white fire dead ahead. She pulled the stick back and rolled away, pointing her nose toward the hidden bulk of the mother ship.

  A soft chill of danger sense tickled her between the shoulder blades. She slipped her thumb off the transceiver pad and went into an evasive climb, juking and jinking so hard she felt the craft vibrate as Rowdy slammed into the walls of his droid socket. The crimson streaks of cannon bolts began to brighten the void all around, flashing past a lot closer than she would have liked. Even without a comm signal for their targeting systems to lock onto, the pirate gunners were doing a good job of keeping her in their crossfire.

  The gravelly voice came over the cockpit speaker again. “That wasn’t much warning, Jedi Solo.”

  Instead of replying, Jaina ordered Rowdy, “Get me a location on that transmission. Is it coming from one of the skiffs or the mother ship?”

  Before Rowdy could answer, the voice spoke again, “You didn’t even give me time to issue a recall order.”

  Space outside turned crimson as a cannon bolt glanced off the StealthX’s weak shields. Knowing the enemy would see the bolt’s change of vector and realize exactly where she was, Jaina instantly rolled into a spiraling dive … and cringed as space again turned red. Half a heartbeat later another bolt struck, then blossomed into a golden spray of dissipation static.

  An alert buzzer sounded inside the cockpit, and Jaina glanced down to see a message flashing on her display: SHIELD OVERLOAD.

  “No kidding.” She pulled her nose up and corkscrewed back toward the two shuttles, and the stream of fire quickly drifted away from her StealthX. “What about that transmission source?”

  THE SIGNAL ORIGINATED FROM THE MOTHER SHIP.

  “Thought so.” Jaina swung onto an interception course with the nearest shuttle, then said, “Arm bomb four.”

  She had barely spoken before cannon fire began to flash past again, turning the void as bright as a bonfire. She spun into an evasive helix and continued toward her target. The enemy continued to close in on her, the bolts streaking past so close that the canopy’s blast-tinting went dark and stayed that way.

  “Rowdy, are we still transmitting?” she asked.

  A negative chirp came over the speaker.

  “What about leaks?” Unable to see her target through the darkened canopy, Jaina dropped her gaze to her display and began to fly by instruments. “EM radiation? Fuel? Atmosphere?”

  Again, a negative chirp.

  “Keep checking,” Jaina ordered. “They’re tracking us somehow.”

  A message scrolled across her primary display, BY SILHOUETTE? ASHTERI’S CLOUD IS STILL BEHIND US.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, fully aware of the difficulty of tracking a distant speck of darkness by sight alone—especially one that was spiraling toward its target at thousands of kilometers an hour, with the gunners blinded by the flashing of their own laser cannons. “Not without the Force.”

  A soft ding announced that they had closed to launching range of their second target. With the canopy still darkened by the constant barrage of cannon bolts, guiding the bomb to its destination by sight was out of the question. So Jaina expanded her Force awareness in the direction of the shuttle until she felt the living presences inside. She was not surprised to sense a heavy taint of darkness in them, but she was shocked by how calm they seemed, by how focused and disciplined they appeared to be.

  Of course, that was about to change. “Launch bomb four.”

  Jaina felt the gentle bump of the shadow bomb being forced from the torpedo tube. She reached out for it in the Force—then grew distracted by the all-too-familiar bang-screech of a cannon hit. Alerts and alarms immediately filled her ears, and the StealthX went into an uncontrolled … twirl? It felt like she was in one of those thrill rides that spun around the central axis of the car, plastering their passengers against their seats. Jaina eased the stick in the opposite direction and slowly brought the starfighter back in line … then realized she had lost control of the shadow bomb, and her heart rose into her throat.

  “Uh, Rowdy?”

  YES?

  “Any idea where number four went?”

  IT DID NOT STRIKE THE TARGET, Rowdy reported. OR US … YET.

  “Not funny,” Jaina said. The extra velocity of the launch had probably carried the shadow bomb far enough away from the StealthX to avoid triggering the proximity fuse—but when it came to baradium warheads, probably wasn’t much of a safety margin. “No joking when there’s baradium involved.”

  YOU DID NOT WRITE THAT INTO THE APPROPRIATENESS ROUTINE, Rowdy complained.

  “Consider it an addendum.”

  Noticing that the canopy’s blast-tinting remained dark, Jaina checked her tactical display and saw that she had overshot her target by only a couple of kilometers. Despite her erratic course, both shuttles still seemed to know where she was, more or less, and they continued to pour fire in her direction. She banked into a turn, starting back toward the nearest craft, and found her stick heavy and slow.

  “Rowdy, what’s our damage?” she asked. “I’ve got a sluggish stick.”

  THAT IS HARDLY SURPRISING, Rowdy replied. THE VECTOR-PLATE POWER ASSIST IS OUT, AND WE HAVE LOST THE END OF OUR UPPER RIGHT S-FOIL.

  The attitude thrusters, of course, were located on the foil ends.

  “Great,” Jaina said. She checked the tactical display and saw that the remaining skiffs had closed to within a dozen kilometers of the Rockhound. That left time for only one more pass before the pirates reached the tug and began boarding operations. “Adjust the power levels to compensate, and arm bomb five.”

  OUR MANEUVERABILITY IS LIMITED, Rowdy warned. AND THE SHIELDS HAVE NOT YET REGENERATED.

  “No problem.” Jaina assumed a course parallel to her targets and began to overtake them, trying to align her interception vector so the nearest skiff would be directly between her and the farthest. “I don’t need shields to take down a bunch of pirates.”

  EXPERIENCE WOULD SUGGEST OTHERWISE.

  “That was just a lucky hit,” Jaina said. “Never happen twice.”

  Despite her words, the cannon bolts continued to come fast and close. Her blast-tinting was so constantly dark that the interior of the cockpit felt like a closet during a lightning storm, and she could not shake the feeling that those gunners were too good to be ordinary pirates. Maybe they were ex-military—something like retired Space Rangers or Balmorran void-jumpers, perhaps even a band of outlaw Noghri.

 
The interception vector on her display finally lined up with both shuttles, and the blast tinting grew semi-clear as the farthest stopped firing to avoid hitting the nearest. Jaina quickly swung in for a flank attack and accelerated, easing the stick this way and that, fighting to keep her interception vector aligned with both targets. As she drew near the first skiff, its cannon bolts grew brighter, longer, and closer, and again the canopy turned as dark as space itself.

  Jaina reached out in the Force, focusing on the dark-tainted presences ahead, and said, “Launch bomb five.”

  Again came the gentle bump of a shadow bomb being forced from its tube. She caught hold of it in the Force—and felt the StealthX jump as cannon bolts started burning through its light armor.

  “Stang!” she cursed. “Who are those guys?”

  A cacophony of alerts and alarms filled the cockpit. Jaina shoved the stick forward, diving for safety beneath the shuttle’s belly where, at such close range, the cannon barrel would not be able to depress far enough to target her.

  And this time, she did not release the shadow bomb. She kept her attention focused on the sinister presences inside the shuttle, pushing the bomb toward them even as her StealthX spiraled out of control. Rowdy tweeted and whistled, trying to draw her attention to the urgent messages scrolling across the display, and the second shuttle resumed fire, stitching a line of holes down the fuselage.

  Then a white brilliance filled the void, so bright and hot that it warmed Jaina even inside her vac suit, and she felt the searing rip of two dozen lives being torn from the Force.

  Afterward, everything remained quiet and dark inside the cockpit, and Jaina thought for an instant the detonation had taken her. Then her stomach grew queasy. The blazing blue of the Rockhound’s efflux tail flashed past above her, and she realized her shoulder was straining against her crash harness. Her ears were ringing with damage alerts and malfunction buzzers, and her throat was burning with the acrid fumes of system burnouts. She hit a chin toggle inside her helmet, then coughed into her faceplate as it slid down to seal her inside her vac suit.

  “Activate suit support.” She grabbed her stick and began to right her tumble, bringing the starfighter under control gently, in case the superstructure had suffered any damage. “Give me a damage assessment.”

  NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD BE, Rowdy reported. WE STILL HAVE TIME TO STOP THOSE LAST PIRATES—AS LONG AS WE SUFFER NO MORE LUCKY HITS.

  Jaina surprised herself with a grin. “I like your style, Rowdy.” She glanced down and found the last shuttle highlighted on her tactical display, less than a kilometer behind the Rockhound and already starting to climb toward its belly. “But I was wrong. Those weren’t lucky hits.”

  An inquiring beep sounded inside Jaina’s helmet.

  “Their gunners have been using the Force.” Jaina swung around and accelerated so hard that her battered StealthX began to wobble and pitch. “That’s why they hit us every time I launch a shadow bomb—they can find me in the Force.”

  PIRATES HAVE THE FORCE?

  “These pirates do,” Jaina said. The last skiff came into view and began to swell, four tiny circles of blue arranged around a boxy gray stern. “Arm bomb six.”

  Rowdy emitted a confirming tweedle, then scrolled a message across the cockpit display, IT HAS BEEN NICE FLYING WITH YOU, JEDI SOLO. THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME A SENSE OF HUMOR SO I WILL FIND THIS AMUSING.

  “Relax, will you?” The hair on Jaina’s neck stood up, and a stream of cannon bolts began to fly back over the skiff’s stern. “They have a blind spot.”

  Jaina pushed their nose down, and the stream began to fly past dozens of meters overhead. A moment later the skiff passed beneath the stern of the Rockhound and, dwarfed by the tug’s two-kilometer immensity, continued forward between the massive stabilizer legs.

  Knowing what would happen the instant the gunners felt her reach for their craft in the Force, Jaina hung back half a kilometer, then said, “Launch bomb six.”

  When she felt the charge of compressed air shove the shadow bomb free of its launch tube, she grasped it in the Force and pulled up hard. As she had expected, the skiff rolled on its back, trying to bring its weapons to bear before the bomb struck home. Jaina was already rising into its ion stream, nearly scraping her canopy on the Rockhound’s belly as she guided the bomb toward the four blue circles of the BDY’s thrust nozzles.

  Rowdy issued a shrill alarm tweedle, no doubt warning her about the dangers of remaining inside the skiff’s ion tail. The friction alone would be pushing the StealthX’s skin toward the combustion point, and Jaina could feel for herself how the turbulence was straining the starfighter’s battered frame. Still, she remained inside the efflux, her attention fixed on the bright blue circles until they finally swelled into the silver flash of a detonating shadow bomb.

  Half a second later the StealthX hit the bomb’s shock wave and Jaina slammed against her crash harness. The temperature inside her vac suit shot up so quickly, she thought her hair would burst into flames. The spatter of ricocheting debris rattled through the starfighter, and then there was nothing ahead but the dark-pocked sky of the Rockhound’s vast white belly.

  Jaina brought the StealthX under control. The starfighter’s superstructure was showing through the nose in a couple of places, and its fuselage was vibrating so badly that she feared it was coming apart around her. She began to ease away from the Rockhound’s underside.

  “Rowdy, how are you doing back there?” she asked. “Still with me?”

  There followed a short silence, then a single fuzzy beep finally came over Jaina’s helmet speakers.

  “Glad you made it,” she said. “What’s that mother ship doing?”

  A blurred message scrolled across the cockpit’s main display, TO DETERMINE THAT, WE WOULD NEED A FUNCTIONING SENSOR ARRAY.

  “Good point.” Jaina could see that the forward array had been melted completely off, so it made sense that the aft equipment had suffered heat damage, as well. “Can you open a channel to Captain Calrissian for me?”

  A scratchy beep sounded inside her helmet, and a moment later Lando’s static-distorted voice asked, “Jaina?”

  Jaina pressed a thumb to the transceiver pad on her stick. “In the flesh,” she said. “Do you have that mouse problem under control yet?”

  “Just blasted it myself,” Lando replied proudly. “Ornate will plot new jump coordinates as soon as you’re aboard.”

  “Tell her to start plotting now,” Jaina replied. She could see the hangar mouth’s dark rectangle only a few hundred meters ahead, and she wasn’t planning on making a gentle approach. “Jump the second she has them.”

  “Jump?” Lando echoed. “No way, not until ByTwoBee tells me you’re aboard and—”

  “Lando! Just make sure the barrier field is off.” The hangar mouth was starting to swell rapidly as Jaina approached, and Rowdy was filling her helmet with wave-off alarms and speed alerts. “If you wait for me to buckle down, the Rockhound will be taking cannon bolts up her thrust nozzle. The situation is worse than we thought. A lot worse.”

  “That’s hard to believe, considering how bad it was to start with.” Lando’s voice faded as he issued orders to RN8, then asked, “Okay, Jaina, worse than we thought how?”

  “Well, you were right—and so was I.” As Jaina spoke, floodlights began to shine down from inside the hangar. Ignoring a cacophony of alerts from Rowdy, she brought up the nose of the StealthX and streaked toward its gaping mouth. “They were pirates. Sith pirates.”

  The sweep bar on the Jade Shadow’s sensor display arced across the screen, slowly shading the region above the planetary horizon a deep blue. Once the entire area had changed hue, Ben authorized the reconnaissance drone to alter its course and start the next pass. To his surprise—and relief—the entire screen remained blue, and a message scrolled across the bottom: FINAL PASS. ALL CLEAR.

  “That’s it,” he said, swiveling around to face Vestara Khai. Ben was sitting on the main flight deck in the
copilot’s chair, and Vestara was seated across from him in the navigator’s chair. The Shadow remained on the river beach, below the volcano where Abeloth had kept her lair. “There’s nothing in orbit big enough to be a spacecraft. Agreed?”

  Vestara continued to study her display, slumped down in her seat with one arm in a sling, looking pained and exhausted after more than two days of sensor monitoring.

  Finally, she nodded. “No Rockhound, no ChaseMaster frigates …” She turned to face Ben, her brown eyes steady and appraising despite her wound and her fatigue. “But what about your cousin’s StealthX? That wouldn’t show up in a standard sensor sweep, would it?”

  Ben forced a smirk, trying to hide the little ache he felt inside. With Vestara, no question was ever innocent, no suggestion free of a hidden agenda.

  “You heard what it went through,” he said. “Do you really think even Jaina Solo could keep it in one piece for two days?”

  A slow smile came to Vestara’s lips, looking a bit like a sneer because of the scar at the corner of her mouth. “I guess I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “So, yes, I agree.”

  “That both sides have honored their agreement?” Ben clarified. “That all vessels, except our Shadow and Lord Taalon’s Emiax, have withdrawn from the vicinity?”

  Vestara let her breath out. “Look, you don’t have to get snarky. I said I agree.”

  “I just want to be sure,” Ben replied. “You Sith can be pretty slippery about your agreements.”

  “And that’s news to you?” Vestara retorted. “Your reactor is just running hot because we took you by surprise. Your father knew Taalon would try to take him out. He just didn’t expect it to happen before we finished Abeloth.”

  “Taalon was trying to capture Abeloth.” Ben took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. “Who’d expect a Sith High Lord to try something so … so stupid?”

  To Ben’s surprise, Vestara laughed out loud. “Good point,” she said. “That was a nork-headed move. But Taalon learned his lesson. And he knows he isn’t going to learn much about Abeloth’s true nature without your father’s help. So we’re all back to working together.”