by James Luceno
The coralskippers numbered in the hundreds, if not the thousands.
And they were acting as one, he sensed, he knew, joined by something that was like the Force, but that was not the Force.
He tuned in to the fact that his father and Lando were both screaming at him then, and so he went back to his guns.
The battle continued to deteriorate for the New Republic forces, and the primary target of the enemy, obviously, was Rejuvenator, with a swarm of coralskippers buzzing her, nipping at her shields, and stinging her hull beneath.
“We’ve got to get to Rojo,” Luke called in to Han. “We’ve got to get those fighters off him and buy him some time.”
“Great,” Han muttered sarcastically. “Now I’m running bodyguard for a Star Destroyer.” He turned a sly eye on Leia. “You see anything crazy about that?”
Jacen almost got a second Yuuzhan Vong right through the chest with his lightsaber, but the warrior was faster than he had anticipated and arched back enough so that the weapon barely nicked. And then the others circled the young Jedi, two producing thud bugs, the others pulling clublike melee weapons from their bandoliers.
Jacen sent out his blade in a wide-sweeping arc, forcing those closest back; seeing the opening, he leapt across the hole in the floor, forcing the Yuuzhan Vong to follow. Two loosed their thud bugs, the little, living missiles whipping out for Jacen.
His lightsaber flashed right, then down and left, picking them both off.
Four of the Yuuzhan Vong came rushing around the hole; the fifth reached for another living missile, but as he did, Danni leapt onto his back, clawing at his face. The alien warrior growled and drove his elbow hard into her gut, but she clenched her teeth against the pain and clawed on, her fingers working under the gnullith. But then the powerful warrior had her by the arm, stopping her progress in removing the mask.
Danni improvised, pressing her finger against the side of the warrior’s nose, the release point for the ooglith cloaker. As the peeling began, he released Danni, and she fell back, just a step, then lowered her shoulder and slammed him toward the hole.
In he went, head first, and though his breather remained somewhat in place, a rush of water slipped down his throat and into his lungs, and even worse for the warrior, his protective suit did not hold, the ooglith cloaker continuing its retraction. The freezing water sucked the heat out of the thrashing Yuuzhan Vong’s exposed body. He tried to turn about for the chamber, and did manage it, finally.
Too late. His arms wouldn’t respond properly; he remained disoriented, with one appendage of the gnullith out of place and obscuring his vision.
He clawed and scraped, and gained no ground back up toward the chamber, and the cold, cold water closed in.
Danni didn’t see it; another Yuuzhan Vong let fly a thud bug for her, and she couldn’t get away from it, and she couldn’t begin to block it. It caught her in the center of her chest, blowing away her breath and her consciousness, throwing her back and to the floor.
The Falcon’s cannons, top and bottom, thundered away. Most of all, it was Anakin in the top pod keeping the increasing number of coralskippers off of the Falcon. His work with the guns, spinning side to side, tracking and leading perfectly, proved nothing less than spectacular.
Beside the ship, the Jade Sabre, with better gun controls on the bridge, and those controls worked by the skilled Luke and Mara, and with newer, faster, and more maneuverable thrusters, had an even easier time of it, but still, the ship made little real progress in getting close to the swarmed Rejuvenator. And now Commander Rojo was calling out desperately for assistance through the almost-opaque shield of static, and one side of the Star Destroyer sparkled with hit after hit, inflicted by a continuing line of coralskippers.
Then a barrage of larger missiles roared up from volcanolike cones lifting up from the planet’s surface.
Rojo cried out one last time.
Then he was gone, his ship flaming and angling down past the fourth planet, a rush of internal explosions coming up to outdo even the continuing barrage by the deadly coralskippers.
It was purely overkill, for Rejuvenator was already dead.
Jacen blocked the swing of a club, spun about to bring his lightsaber in line to block a strike from the other side, and in the middle of the turn, snapped the lightsaber back, quickly and briefly, to intercept yet another thud bug.
Then he did make the block, and countered with a roll-and-thrust maneuver that sent the alien attacker leaping backward.
But another moved in to block, and Jacen couldn’t finish the move. And he had to turn back anyway, spinning fast to pick off two attacks, one up high, one down low, coming at him in superb coordination. He ducked, purely on instinct, and the next thud bug shot over his head—or almost over, for Jacen’s weapon tip shot up, skewering the thing even as it passed.
A series of several sharp twists and cuts picked off three more attacks from three different opponents.
A brilliant defense, but Jacen was working wildly and was making little ground against his enemies. These warriors were skilled; Jacen might be able to beat any of them one against one. Maybe, and maybe, with luck, he could defeat two.
But not four. No way.
He continued to spin and to slice, to fight completely defensively because to do otherwise, even within the grasp of the Force, would be to die. He chopped one club aside hard, then spun, expecting an attack from the other side.
And indeed, he did see the two aliens over there coming at him, and hard, and it took him a moment to register the truth of the attack, to see the human hand covering each face, tearing at the mask.
Miko Reglia drove on, accepting the punishment in exchange for getting his fingers into that all-important ooglith cloaker release point. And as he had the living suits beginning their retraction, the battered young Jedi dug in his heels and pushed on even more powerfully, bearing his surprised enemies into the hole and going in right behind them.
He felt the freezing water drawing out his life force, felt the thrashing, the punches, the kicks, but Miko Reglia, in this final act of defiance against the Yuuzhan Vong breaking, held on stubbornly, preventing the two warriors from scrambling back out of the hole, determined that he would not die before them.
Back in the chamber, one of the remaining Yuuzhan Vong made the mistake of lurching toward the hole in an attempt to catch his falling kin.
Jacen wasted no time, leaping ahead, lightsaber flashing, going for the off-balance alien and then, when that warrior’s companion came in to defend, turning the attack fast upon him, scoring a quick kill with a thrust to the chest.
His lightsaber cut through easily, coming out swift and sure, then swept behind the staff of the remaining warrior as he tried to get back to defensive posture and took the alien’s hand off at the wrist. A halt of momentum, a turn of the wrist, and Jacen poked his energy blade deep into that warrior’s chest, as well.
“Miko!” he only then heard Danni cry, and he turned to see her crawling for the hole. “Miko!”
Jacen glanced around, looking for solutions. “They brought an extra suit and mask for him,” he said to Danni. “Get into them!” And then he dived into the hole.
Danni, suited, went in a few moments later, bearing one of the lichen torches the Yuuzhan Vong had carried into the chamber. She nearly jumped right out of her ooglith cloaker when Jacen appeared suddenly before her, shaking his head gravely, indicating to her that Miko Reglia was dead.
He took her hand and pulled her along the underside of the ice crust, back to the waiting stylus ship, and somehow they managed to squeeze in side by side.
Stunned and horrified calls jumbled through the open channels on the bridges of both the Millennium Falcon and the Jade Sabre after the destruction of Rejuvenator, most prominent among them, Kyp Durron’s cry for a general retreat.
“Jump to hyperspace!” Kyp instructed. “All the way back to Dubrillion!”
“Do it,” Luke seconded across all channels
. “All haste!”
“Jaina on Merry Miner,” came the call. “Uncle Luke, Jacen’s still down there!”
Luke winced, not at her proclamation, but at the sight of another Ranger gunship blowing apart.
“We’ll take you in, Jaina,” he called back. “Get close between the Falcon and the Jade Sabre. We’ll take you in.”
The battle was disintegrating before them, New Republic starfighters, cruisers, gunships vectoring away from the ice planet, each with a host of coralskippers in hot pursuit. The other way, toward the planet, went the tight formation of three ships, laser cannons firing from the lead two. They dived down, holding their relative positions, into the atmosphere of the planet, an atmosphere thick with mist from the barrage of Rejuvenator before she went down.
They felt a tingling energy all about them, permeating their craft and their very bodies, felt the turbulence, the energy, and the gravity wells reaching up to grab at them, and even Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, reputably as fine a pilot team as could be found in all the galaxy, had all that they could handle in keeping the Jade Sabre steady and on track. Luke knew the coordinates he had fed into the iceborer’s nav computer, so he led the way. Jaina tried to call in, saying something as her voice broke apart about Jacen altering course near the planet.
It didn’t matter, Luke knew. He tried to reach out for Jacen with the Force, and at first nearly toppled with fear at hearing no response. But then he realized that it was this energy field interfering, extending even into that personal level of communication. He closed his eyes and reached in deeper, past the physical energy barriers, and he heard.
Coralskippers came down at them, or rose up to meet them, and the laser cannons thundered on. They kept their run straight and true, and all of them knew that they couldn’t keep this up for very long at all. The planet rolled below them; they drew closer.
“Lock in coordinates for hyperspace!” Luke called repeatedly.
“… not leaving him!” came a portion of Han’s reply.
Luke reiterated his instructions, in no uncertain terms. “We’ll jump as soon as Jacen blasts free,” he explained, but again, Han came back with a determined, “We’re not leaving him!”
Jaina’s screech followed. “I’m hit!” she explained.
“Jaina!” Leia cried.
“I can hold it,” she determinedly replied.
An explosion tore through the ice pack up ahead, and a narrow shape lifted into the air. Before either Han or Luke, Leia or Mara, could call out instructions, the Merry Miner swooped between the lead ships, rushing straight out to literally catch the leaping stylus ship with perfect timing, and before any of the four adults could offer any cry of congratulations, the Merry Miner disappeared, leaping to lightspeed with perfect precision.
On the bridge of the Jade Sabre, Mara glowed with pride and with awe.
Both pilots on the bridge of the Millennium Falcon were struck all but dumb, until Han finally managed to whisper, “The kid can fly.”
An explosion shook the Falcon, and then the ship dipped suddenly as a tractor beam from the surface nearly caught it, poignant reminders that it was past time to leave.
Coralskippers came at the two ships from every conceivable angle, missiles firing, and the surface batteries opened up, and the dovin basal gravity wells grabbed at them. But this was old news to the four pilots, particularly to Han Solo, and the ships went out past the reach of the Yuuzhan Vong and to hyperspace, Falcon first and Jade Sabre right behind.
They had escaped, barely, and so, apparently, had Jacen. Still, none of them were ready to call this day anything close to a victory.
As soon as the Merry Miner left the region, and then Jaina confirmed that the Jade Sabre and the Millennium Falcon had gotten out, as well, Jacen breathed considerably easier. He pulled off his breather, trying not to spit all over his close-quartered companion, then pressed the pressure point, releasing the invasive cloaker. Despite all the seriousness of the situation around him, all the grief and all the loss, he couldn’t help but be self-conscious as that skinlike covering peeled away from him, rolling down past his belly, sliding under his loose-fitting skirt, then lower, down his bare legs and feet.
Leaving him feeling quite naked, and leaving him, as Danni likewise released her mask and cloaker, conscious of the fact that she was in a similar state, wearing no more than a tiny loose-fitting shift.
Above that level of tension, Jacen noted that his companion’s shoulders bobbed with quiet sobs.
“We’re out now,” he said to her softly, and then he looked at her, really looked at her, and nearly lost his breath at the beauty he saw there. In truth, Danni was a mess, with bruises on her face and her curly blond hair matted and ragged. But Jacen didn’t see any of that as he looked hard and for the first time into her green eyes, into the pain he saw there, both the vulnerability and the inner strength, as he stared into her mind and her spirit, remembering that she, and not Miko Reglia, had been the one to put out the telepathic call, though she was not a Jedi Knight.
She could be, Jacen realized then and there, and a great one, at that.
He was conscious, too, of the press of their scantily clothed bodies together within the confines of the small stylus ship.
“You’re safe now,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, and he worked his hand up from his side, taking care as to where it brushed, then brought his fingers gently against Danni’s cheek.
“Miko,” the woman said quietly.
Jacen nodded that he understood—about Miko and about the ordeal this woman had apparently suffered on that cold planet. He dared to bring his hand around to the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her thick shock of hair, and he pulled her close.
Danni didn’t resist. She buried her face in Jacen’s strong shoulder and allowed the tears to flow.
As soon as the three ships came out of hyperspace, and still far from Dubrillion, Luke opened channels to the other two. Jaina piped it down to Jacen and Danni in the stylus ship, and Han moved to open it up to the rest of his ship—until he noted that Anakin and Lando were already entering the bridge.
And so it began, the analysis of what had just happened, the expressions of shock that this still-unknown enemy had so thoroughly routed such a formidable New Republic fleet.
Still unknown?
A hush engulfed the other eight when an unfamiliar voice piped in, Danni Quee beginning a long and thorough explanation of this enemy they now faced, the Praetorite Vong, from the time they had breached the galactic rim, to their journey to Belkadan, to her experiences under their control.
Only Luke interrupted her compelling story, just enough to explain to Danni the ultimate fate of Belkadan.
The woman swallowed hard, and seemed to swallow it away, going on with a determination that they could all hear in her voice, and that Jacen could see clearly in her eyes.
He joined in when she got to the end of her tale, the escape, the rescue by Jacen, the death of Miko Reglia. When the pair finished, there was near silence for a while, except that the people on the Falcon and the Merry Miner could hear Luke and Mara speaking quietly about something.
“Care to let us in on the secret?” Leia asked.
“We were talking about the creature Danni spoke of,” Luke replied. “The yammosk.” Then, his voice lowered and thick with meaning, he added, “The war coordinator.”
“Yeah, that’s what she called it,” Han said dismissively, missing any understanding of the gravity of Luke’s tone.
“That’s why they fought so well,” Anakin blurted.
“You think that yammosk creature was somehow binding our enemies together?” Leia asked.
“I know that they fought too synchronously,” Luke replied. “Too coordinated, and without any communication that we could hear, or even sense.”
“The Yuuzhan Vong were always talking about being joined together by the war coordinator,” Danni put in.
“You felt the power when we went down
into the atmosphere,” Luke added, and Mara, beside him, agreed.
“Absolutely,” Leia replied.
“I didn’t,” Han said. “I just know that my instruments were a bit whacky.”
“I felt it,” Jaina put in. “I felt it a long way out from the planet. But down near the surface, it was incredible, overwhelming.”
“So that creature is what turned our enemies into such a tremendous force,” Leia followed the reasoning. “That creature brought them together into a singular fighting unit.”
“Like me, Jacen, and Jaina in the belt,” Anakin put in.
“Then we have to destroy that creature,” Luke reasoned.
“You won’t get near it without an army of soldiers,” Danni said without hesitation. “Even if you can get back down under the ice crust, you’d be battling hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors.”
In fact, Luke was entertaining that very thought. If he could take the iceborer stylus ship back down and somehow work his way to the great yammosk …
“And the yammosk itself would stop you,” Danni added. “It’s huge, and that energy you felt about the planet pales in comparison to what it can do up close.”
“Uncle Luke is Jedi,” Anakin came back, somewhat indignantly.
“So was Miko Reglia,” Danni replied. “And the yammosk overwhelmed him, repeatedly.”
“Jedi Master,” Anakin retorted defiantly, but then Luke cut in, diffusing the tension and changing the subject.
“Can we rally enough firepower in here to take out the whole planet?” he asked, and the hesitation in his voice was an accurate reflection of the trepidation in his thoughts. How many ships would they need? And how many would be destroyed before they ever came close to accomplishing the task?
“That’d take half the fleet,” Han reminded.
“Or more,” Leia added grimly. “We hardly hurt them today, and what will we be left with for defense at the Core if we bring the fleet out here and lose?”
