by Kathy Tyers
Mara got a good look at the humans. The nearer one wore close-cropped hair and sat with his shoulders slumped. The other had a bizarre, distant look in one eye, probably a malfunctioning prosthetic. They openly wore the clasped-hand Peace Brigade insignia, one hand recognizably human, the other hand completely tattooed.
They always left off the claws.
“Good,” she said. She leaned both hands on the back of the nearest repulsor chair. “Admiral, I don’t know what you’ve been told about the chances of a second Yuuzhan Vong attack on this system, a final one, but we have reason to believe it’s imminent.”
“They are coming to take possession of the planet’s surface,” the slump-shouldered human said. “They have no interest in the Duros’ cities, and there is no reason we cannot coexist peacefully with them.”
Mara glared. “So you sold them what, half a million refugees to be sacrificed?”
He spread his hands. His bad-eyed friend slipped both hands under the tabletop.
Mara got a grip on her lightsaber, beneath her long tunic. “I know you’ve been told to believe they have no use for your orbital cities, and that they’ll leave them alone,” she told the admiral. “I assume you struggled with the decision to let them take hundreds of thousands of lives, down there, once this slime got to you. But your own people are your priority, and this is war. Am I close?”
The slumped one crossed his arms. “I think it’s time you left, Green Eyes.”
Mara shook her head. “We transmitted back to Coruscant,” she said. “We requested reinforcements. They turned us down.”
Again, the admiral’s glance flitted sideways. His large eyes narrowed, then he looked at her again. “Please make your point, Jedi Jade Skywalker.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t already seen it,” she said. “Have you heard how they destroy technology? Did you see that creature out there, chewing on Orr-Om? Don’t you realize they consider technology—all technology—to be an abomination, an offense against their gods? Can you really believe they would leave you your cities?”
“We have been given those assurances,” he answered. “It is as you say. My responsibility is to my people. Sadly, I cannot help evacuate your downside settlements. We did try to warn SELCORE against colonizing that surface. Duro swallows everything that touches it.”
“So get out of here,” Bad-eye said.
“I’ll leave when it’s time to go.” Mara watched his shoulders. If they twitched, she was ready. “First—”
The comlink on her belt toned, and from a distance she felt Jaina’s urgent concern. The girl’s timing was execrable.
“My apprentice is trying to rescue Ambassador Organa Solo, who has been taken prisoner down there,” she explained, raising the comlink left-handed. “Mara here,” she said. “I’m with Admiral Wuht.”
The instant she confirmed Jaina’s voice, she flicked the comlink, turning up the gain.
“Admiral, this is Jaina Solo. Gateway dome still has a GOCU link in the tunnels, and Mom’s people hooked it to an external rectenna array. Mom’s being held in the admin building, by a Yuuzhan Vong they’re calling warmaster. He has told her they’re going to destroy the Duros’ cities. All of them. She said it was urgent to warn you.”
Mara glared at Bad-eye, whose good eye had widened considerably.
“He said that verbatim, Jaina?” Mara asked. “Or was that just an inference? This is extremely important.” Mara held the comlink at arm’s length, making sure everyone in the room could hear Jaina’s reply.
“She took the time to quote him. He told her, ‘We will purify this world of the abominable machines in their orbits,’ ” Jaina confirmed. “And from here, they mean to take the Core. If Admiral Wuht can’t hear me, tell him one more thing. We found evidence that CorDuro Shipping has been working with the Peace Brigade for a long time, probably in exchange for a warning to get one city prepped to leave orbit. Sir, if you want to protect the Duros people, evacuate them to that habitat. Start building its momentum now, because you won’t get much time. There aren’t many of us who can help you insystem, but we’ll help the DDF fly cover for its getaway—” Static interrupted the transmission for several seconds.
“Go again, Jaina. We missed that last part.”
“Mom says to hit Gateway dome as soon as her people are out. This guy is high in their ranks. You’ve got to take him, kill him.”
“Can you get back to Leia?” Mara asked.
“Excuse me, Admiral. I’ve got to get personal.” Jaina’s voice sounded strained. “She ran me off, Mara. I went back for her, but—”
“She had to get us that message.” Mara stared at Bad-eye. His left shoulder was drawing back, just slightly.
“Jacen’s …”
Bad-eye’s blaster cleared the table. Mara used her lightsaber to deflect the bolt. She tried to aim it back at him, but missed by several centimeters.
He toppled anyway.
She backstepped, nearly bumping her escorts, and spotted a holdout blaster in Admiral Wuht’s right palm. Now he held it trained on Slump-shoulder.
“You, sir,” Wuht said, “are under arrest. Guards, deal with him. I need to speak with Jedi Jade Skywalker.”
To Mara’s deep satisfaction, two Duros from her escort squad carried Bad-eye out of the dining room. The other two escorted Slump-shoulder.
Mara fingered her comlink. “Jaina?”
No response. Jaina must have left the GOCU station.
Admiral Wuht clasped his knobby hands. “You were right,” he told Mara. “We have been betrayed. Somehow, we must cancel the stand-down without alerting the traitors.”
“And hurry your people to that other city.”
He nodded. “Urrdorf. My forces are shorthanded. How many Jedi have fighter ships insystem?”
Luke on the Shadow, shortly to be in an X-wing. Anakin, out on patrol. And herself. “Only three,” she admitted. “But Captain Solo has the Millennium Falcon planetside, and that’s quite a ship.”
Admiral Wuht’s eyes didn’t brighten much. “Then at least we might delay them,” he murmured, “and evacuate a few more of your people and mine.”
Anakin watched his sensors with half his attention, listening to the Force with the other half. He knew where his mother was, and Jaina, and his aunt and uncle. The Yuuzhan Vong battle group seemed to have lost interest in stray ships patrolling inside the roiling fringe of Duro’s atmosphere. His job was to watch for a second wave of attackers. He’d set his astromech, Fiver, to scan space.
He’d picked up the early model R7 droid, most advanced of all the astromechs, on a hunch. R7 droids were notorious for working poorly with any fighter but an E-wing, and it had taken Anakin five attempts and two weeks of tinkering, but now his backseater was as sleek and dependable as his uncle’s R2, but fully armored and capable of multitasking at blinding speed.
Anakin Solo would settle for nothing less.
His present course kept Orr-Om in view. The monstrous creature that coiled around it looked like a space slug, thick-hided for survival in vacuum, with a mouth easily eighty meters wide. A squadron of coralskippers escorted Orr-Om as it drifted lower in orbit. Anakin doubted he could do anything to help anyone still inside that habitat.
But if he could blast that creature off, he might keep it from feeding again, on Bburru, or Rrudobar, or any of the other orbital cities.
On the tactical frequency, he could faintly hear transmissions between some officer on board the Mon Cal Poesy, on Duro’s far side, and an E-wing patrol. They sounded just as frustrated by Admiral Wuht’s stand-down as he was.
They weren’t Jedi. They had to follow orders.
So did he, supposedly—but he was out here, and they weren’t. He had the Force and seven proton torpedoes. If he could neutralize the skips’ dovin basals, he might be able to hit the monster.
On his scanners, he spotted the wrecked hulk of that refugee hauler, dipping down into atmosphere. That gave him an idea.
Gi
ngerly, he pushed his throttle forward. “Fiver, give me a readout on that freighter’s structural integrity.”
Studying the visual display that appeared, he saw that the line of blast scars had elongated, leaving a slash along one side. Barely big enough to fly inside.
“Any life-forms on board?”
Fiver hesitated less than a second.
NEGATIVE.
Anakin’s hands tightened. That was terrible news, but it gave him an enormous bulk to work with, without fear of harming any living bystander.
“How ’bout its main reactor? Did it melt down yet?”
NEGATIVE. REACTOR LIVE.
Even better! Flying by scanner and Solo luck and instinct, he closed down his S-foils and maneuvered through the breach into a cavernous central hold. Something had detonated inside, melting through decks and bulkheads.
“Fiver, set up a slingshot pass. I’m going to put our nose up against an inner bulkhead and try to steer this thing.”
His droid pasted a string of question marks on the visual screen.
“I want to pull g’s around Duro and launch toward Orr-Om.”
More question marks.
“Just do it,” Anakin ordered. Even an R7 could be incredibly dense sometimes.
It took longer than he anticipated, first to calculate his course, then to pull down toward the roiling gas clouds and add every bit of acceleration Fiver could coax out of the X-wing’s engines. He dialed his inertial compensator down to 95 percent, getting the best possible feel for his awkward hauler-shell.
His heads-up chrono finally started ticking off seconds. By this time, the freighter had picked up substantial momentum.
“All right,” he said. “On my mark, decelerate.”
The seconds melted down to zero.
“Now,” he shouted.
He slipped down into the Force, letting it guide his hands on the control yoke, his feet on the etheric rudder. The X-wing’s blunt aft end bumped only once as it slipped out the horrible tear in the freighter’s side.
Obviously, the freighter didn’t have enough momentum to hit Orr-Om in high geosync. Anakin had allowed for that. He armed one of his precious torpedoes, got a lock on the freighter’s still-live reactor, and squeezed his right hand.
The torpedo arced away. Anakin waited for exactly the right moment, then maxed his shields. Facing directly into the inferno, his canopy went black for an instant. The Force guided his hand on the yoke, jinking back and forth, avoiding debris even while he accelerated, chasing a wave of destruction toward the doomed habitat’s coralskipper escorts.
He charged them, still accelerating. Cued by the Force, he dumped a torpedo as his targeting reticle bracketed one skip—then a second. White-hot debris had overloaded their dovin basal shields. Each of them exploded into thousands of coral shards.
He caught a third skip with blasts from his lasers. A fourth with torpedoes. Time blurred. Vision no longer registered.
A toothy black maw opened in front of him, and a gullet big enough to drive a whole squadron of X-wings inside. Anakin dumped one more proton torpedo, then snap-rolled away. He pushed his throttle forward and dived toward Duro. Two of the surviving coralskippers gave chase.
On his aft screen, he saw one more explosion—and the monster’s head vanished. The rest of it went limp, drifting off of Orr-Om.
Anakin smiled grimly. Now, he only had to deal with two coralskippers. He’d done that before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jacen heard weird, hypnotic music pass his hidden compartment, playing a melody full of death and despair. Several pairs of armored legs tramped up past him. His cheekbone twinged.
He imagined himself as Kyp Durron, blasting out of the compartment with his lightsaber blazing, destroying everyone who got in his way. Utterly rejecting the idea, he tried to imagine himself as his uncle, taking up the lightsaber when necessary, sparing life whenever he could. Then as Anakin, strong in the Force, unafraid to use it, but not yet mature enough to see all facets of each situation. As Jaina, a champion of her squadron, only beginning her own rise to glory.
Who was Jacen?
Again he had the overwhelming sense that the Force was about to shift. Something was ending, something beginning. He could crouch here until they found him, or he could commit himself back to the Force—utterly.
But what do you want? he begged.
Again he saw the galaxy sliding toward darkness, and this time, he realized that standing motionless at its center wouldn’t change the balance. Wouldn’t save anyone, including himself.
What if he’d caught that lightsaber Luke flung in his vision? He would be expected to strike, wouldn’t he?
He could do that—on his own. Without the Force.
Or else he could give himself utterly to something he was too small to understand. As Uncle Luke said, there was no middle ground.
He unhooked his lightsaber. He thought back to the times he’d beaten Anakin, to the old familiar feeling of letting the Force flow through him, so that even a Force-dark Yuuzhan Vong’s actions could be anticipated. It’d been like warm, living water flowing all around him. It was utterly tempting to go back.
No. He would not go back. He must go on.
Heavy footsteps approached. Leia backed away from the door.
Randa moaned, “This is the end. As night follows morning, as decay follows death—”
“Shut up,” she said firmly.
A warrior in black armor appeared in the doorway. He held a snake-headed amphistaff across his body. He pointed out into the room and said something unintelligible.
Maybe they didn’t have enough earworms to go around, not that it surprised her. She didn’t expect them to want real communication.
Another guard emerged from behind the door, holding the clawed, wrist-grabbing creature.
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “You don’t need to do this. I’m not going anywhere else.”
She winced as the claws closed on her hands anyway. The guard turned next to Randa, brandishing a glob of yellow-green slime. He applied it to the Hutt’s small hands, then pushed them against his globular sides and gave a guttural command. Randa wriggled his fingers. His hands stayed where the guard put them.
“Guvvuk,” the guard ordered, shoving Leia’s shoulder.
She obeyed, but she didn’t hurry. He directed her across the circular landing, back to her office, shoving and poking with his amphistaff. More guards followed them.
The warmaster stood in front of her window, looking out toward the research buildings. To one side stood Nom Anor, again wearing his tunic over black armor.
On the warmaster’s other side, a smaller, wrinkle-faced Yuuzhan Vong wore floor-length black robes and a hood that clung to her backswept skull. Flanking her, two lanky attendants held long-limbed crustaceans against their bare chests. Tattoos radiated upward and outward from their chests’ centers, resembling explosions in shades of red and orange. A third attendant cradled an enormous, double-skinned drum against her tunic. As Leia stared at the drum, two protrusions near its top opened momentarily, revealing a pair of green eyes.
Leia’s guards stopped at the door. Ignoring Randa, she resolutely walked forward.
“Good morning,” she said.
The warmaster turned slightly, showing half his disfigured face. Leia thought she saw a smile on the fringed lips.
“Come here,” he said.
She walked to the window. Between the research building and the construction barns, the new pit had been dug deeper. Down inside lay a jumble of machinery and construction droids.
“The gods give good portents today,” the warmaster said, nodding toward the black-robed female. “It is a good day to burn sacrifices.”
Leia gripped the window ledge with four fingers. “Wait! This is an enclosed dome. Open fires will deplete your own oxygen. You must—”
“Your expectations are false. The creatures who cleanse our shipboard air will purify it inside your buil
t monstrosity, as well. When waste gases increase, they simply multiply faster. Again, you see that technology is no match for life itself.”
“I agree,” she said firmly. “Life is vital. Living creatures are complex, matchless, and blessed with intelligence. So you must not—”
“All living creatures serve the Yuuzhan Vong,” he said. “And we serve the gods.” He nodded to the elderly priestess.
The priestess inclined her head, keeping her hands laced in front of her, both arms covered by long, full sleeves.
The warmaster turned back to the window. “Watch,” he said. “You must begin to understand the destiny that approaches you all, star by star, breath by breath.”
Several more warriors approached the pit, dragging another travois. Leia’s priceless mining laser, already smashed beyond usefulness, lay on top of it. The warriors maneuvered the travois into place, raised its end, and pitched the laser into the pit.
Then another black-robed priest led a procession toward the pit, including a second travois. Something that looked like a large tank was balanced on this. As the second travois tipped, a bulbous creature with six stubby legs scrambled out to the pit’s side. Leia had seen these fire breathers before. Big ones, at Gyndine.
This youngster trained its proboscis down into the pit and gushed out a stream of gelid flame. Leia glanced up and saw that the dome’s synthplas underside glistened with spots and splotches of red and white. As smoke rose toward the splotches, the white ones slowly reddened.
“Your biotechnology is marvelous,” she said dully.
“Do not call our servants technology,” he growled. “We serve the gods, and other living things serve us. This morning, we will return great honor to Yun-Yammka.” He stretched out one arm, pointing his clawed forefinger toward the pit. “Witness this.”
A line of Yuuzhan Vong guards circled around behind the refugees. At a signal given by one standing at a corner, each one let down an arm. Out of their sleeves slithered long black ropes. In a single, coordinated motion, they bent down for the ropes and brought up stiff, snake-headed amphistaffs. Then they drove refugees toward the fire pit.
“No.” As helpless as she’d been on the Death Star orbiting Alderaan, Leia turned to the warmaster. “No, you can’t do this. This is wrong.”
