Star Wars The New Jedi Order - Vector Prime - Book 1
Page 12
The Twi'lek kept her blaster holstered, but the other three did not; they moved with weapons out and ready, with Luther De'Ono, a rugged man in his mid-twenties, with coal black hair and dark eyes, diligently guarding the left flank; Bendodi Ballow-Reese, the oldest member of ExGal-4 at fifty-three, but a former barnstormer search-and-destroy agent with the Rebel Alliance, guarding the right; and Jerem Cadmir, a Corellian, watching the rear, practically walking backward as the group eased through the thick jungle. Jerem was obviously the least comfortable with his weapon. Not a warrior, the slender, gentle Jerem had been chosen to go out into the dangerous Belkadan jungle because he was the most knowledgeable member of the team with regard to geology and climatology. If the brewing storm Danni Quee had called back to warn about would truly pose a danger to ExGal-4, Jerem Cadmir would be the one to give the most accurate early warning.
"The most dangerous part will be the nights," Bendodi remarked late that afternoon. The team was making painfully slow progress through the tangles. "Redcrested cougars are night hunters, and they'll be thick about us, wanting to put a face to our strange scents." The others looked at Bendodi, at his ruggedly handsome face crossed by several scars he had earned in brutal combat, and found it hard to ignore the warning.
"We can use the flight packs once we clear the jungle," Tee-ubo offered.
"Then press on," Jerem urged nervously.
"It's still going to be two days of walking," Bendodi told them.
Tee-ubo eyed him unappreciatively. They had already fought out this debate, back at the compound. Bendodi and Luther had wanted to strap on a couple of flight packs and fly off from the compound wall, despite the unarguable calculations that showed they'd fast deplete their fuel in trying to leap over the towering trees, and might have to spend a week of walking after they had left the primary canopy behind.
Tee-ubo's plan, the sensible one, the one everyone at the station except for the two would-be warriors had agreed upon, called for traversing the jungle on foot, then strapping on the packs at the lip of the great basin about twenty kilometers south of the compound. Given the angle and the calculated winds, they could cross the three hundred kilometers of the basin for roughly the same amount of fuel that would have been used flying over the trees to the lip of the basin.
With such logic on her side, Tee-ubo had won the debate, but she had known from the first grumbling steps out of the compound that Luther, and particularly Bendodi, weren't about to let the matter rest.
So they pressed on, hot and sweaty in the steamy air, and as night descended, they found a thick nook high in a tree to call a campsite.
They got little sleep, for the jungle resounded with threatening sounds, low growls and hisses that seemed to come from right beside them. Despite the threat, though, they found no open challenge, but so disturbing were those sounds that the team set off early, determined to make the basin lip before the next nightfall. And they did, arriving at the rocky precipice on the edge of the jungle overlooking the huge valley with hours to spare.
Hours they would not waste. They quickly did some last-minute checks on the flight packs - like every other piece of terrain equipment at ExGal-4, the packs weren't in the best condition - and then lifted away from the precipice, opening wings wide to catch the gusting wind at their backs.
They flew on right through twilight and into the darkness, preferring the cold winds to the sounds emanating from the trees far below. There were no great flying predators on Belkadan, as far as they knew. Tee-ubo measured their progress by the hour, not the kilometer; given the minimum fuel burn gliding with the wind, she figured they could go for about four standard hours before exhausting the first half of their fuel.
When the time came to land, Bendodi fired a portable rocket flare into the canopy below, and the group used its guiding light to put down. They landed without incident, despite some very real and well-grounded fears propagated by the tumult of roars and shrieks in the region. A quick check of their positioning system confirmed that they had nearly crossed the length of the basin. If Danni's positioning had been correct, they should be able to find this brewing storm within a couple of days' march. Hopefully, they'd be able to get the needed measurements, mostly concerning wind speed, set their instruments, and be out of there quickly. Heartened, they settled in for a short night's rest.
It was shorter than expected.
Tee-ubo opened her eyes to the sound of coughing, a thick, mucus-filled hack. At first, she thought a thick ground fog had come up, but as the stench hit her, a noxious, rotten-egg smell, she realized that it was something else.
By the time the Twi'lek managed to sit up, she, too, was hacking and spitting.
"Go to enviro-suits!" she heard Bendodi cry. Hardly able to see, her eyes teary and stinging, Tee-ubo fumbled with her pack, finally pulling out the small hood and tank.
"Gloves, too!" Bendodi barked to all of them, his voice muffled by his enviro-suit. "No skin exposed until we know what this is."
A few moments later, her eyes still burning, the sickening stench still in her mouth, but with clean oxygen flowing, Tee-ubo inched along the limb tangle they had chosen for a campsite to join Bendodi and Luther. Jerem Cadmir had moved off along one branch with a light and seemed to be studying the leaves.
"Probably a volcano," Luther remarked. "That's what Danni saw from orbit. A volcano spewing fumes; we'll have to call back to ExGal and have them lock the compound down tight."
Bendodi and Tee-ubo nodded, not overly concerned. The compound could be made completely self-sustaining, able to hold back whatever fumes Belkadan could throw at them. Several of the other ExGal stations, with the same equipment as this one, had been situated on worlds far more hostile, one on a spinning lump of barren rock that was completely bereft of any atmosphere. If the cloud was indeed volcano formed, that would be good news, for likely there would be few, if any, potentially damaging winds.
"It's not a volcano," came Jerem's voice, and the three turned to regard him sitting on a branch and holding a leaf. "It's the tree," he explained.
That brought surprised expressions, and they moved over, one at a time, at Jerem's instructions, and lifted their hoods just long enough to take a sniff of the leaf he held.
"Let's get down from here," Luther remarked.
"No," Bendodi unexpectedly replied, even as the other three began to move for the main trunk. They looked to him questioningly.
"I can't think of a safer place to be," the scarred old warrior remarked. "We'll stay up here in our suits, and where no cougars will want to go."
The logic seemed sound; in the enviro-suits the fumes couldn't hurt them.
"How long to sunrise?" Luther asked.
Tee-ubo checked her chronometer. "Two more hours."
"Then sit tight," Bendodi said.
And they did, and when the sun came up, exploding brilliantly over the eastern horizon, they grew even more alarmed. For all the forest about them seemed to be on fire, sending greenish orange smoke up into the air. And all the green leaves had turned yellow.
It wasn't fire, they soon understood, but emissions, coming straight from the leaves, filling all the air with the noxious fumes.
"How is this possible?" Tee-ubo asked, and she, Bendodi, and Luther all looked to Jerem for an answer.
The man stood holding a leaf, staring at it wide-eyed and shaking his head. "A molecular change?" he mused.
"Luther, get up high, while the rest of us go down to the ground," Bendodi instructed, and he led the way out of the tree.
The air was just as thick and wretched at ground level, for the grasses, even the moss and flowers, were similarly emitting the thick fumes. Jerem quickly went to one small plant and dug it up, roots and all, and as he did, some curious beetles, reddish brown, scampered out of the hole.
On Jerem's order, Tee-ubo caught one of them and held it up.
"What is it?" Bendodi asked.
"Maybe nothing," Jerem replied. "Or maybe a clue."
"It's gone way past us," he explained, waving his arm back toward the north. "And it's rolling on - I could see the trees changing color and starting to smoke!"
"Let's get out of here," Tee-ubo suggested, and she popped the beetle into a belt pouch and pulled the lever control for her flight pack forward. Hardly waiting, she fired up the pack.
Or tried to.
It sputtered and coughed, even popped off enough once to jolt Tee-ubo into the air, a short hop and nothing more.
Then it went dead.
"It can't get enough oxygen," Bendodi reasoned.
Even as he spoke, they heard a rustle to the side. They all tensed - Luther and Bendodi reached for their blasters - as a redcrested cougar broke through the brush. They didn't have to shoot, they soon realized, for the great animal was gasping, its sides heaving in and out futilely, and if it even saw them, it showed no reaction. Right before their eyes, the creature staggered a few more steps and then fell to the ground, breathing its last.
"Let's get out of here," Tee-ubo suggested, staring at the poignant reminder. She started to take off her pack, but Bendodi stopped her.
"Keep it," he instructed. "We'll need them if we can get ahead of the -" He paused and looked at the others curiously. "- of whatever the hell this is," he finished.
Jerem Cadmir pulled out his comlink and tried to call out, but the static that crackled back at him was too thick for any words to penetrate.
Off they went, as fast as their feet would carry them. After an hour - and half their oxygen - they still could not see the end of the noxious fumes before them. Bendodi sent Luther up yet another tree, while he and the others took out their comlinks and spread out, trying to find some hole in the static.
Nothing. They rejoined at the base of the tree, and a dejected Luther came back down shaking his head, explaining that he couldn't see anything through the thickening gases.
Hopelessness descended upon them, as thick as the fumes.
To everyone's surprise, Bendodi Ballow-Reese pulled off his oxygen pack and tossed it to Jerem Cadmir. "Run on," he ordered. He sniffled, then crinkled his nose in disgust. "Run on. One of us has to get back and warn them."
Jerem stood dumbfounded, as did Luther and Tee-ubo.
"Go!" Bendodi insisted, and even as Jerem started to argue, the older man turned and sprinted into the brush, disappearing from sight - though the others heard his subsequent hacking coughs.
"He's gone crazy," Luther cried, and he rushed to follow. He barely got to the edge of the brush, though, before a blaster rang out and Luther tumbled backward, shot through the chest.
"Go!" Bendodi called from somewhere beyond.
Tee-ubo and Jerem rushed to Luther, but too late - the man was quite dead. Tee-ubo took his oxygen pack, grabbed the stunned and seemingly frozen Jerem by the arm and hauled him after her, breaking into a dead run to the north.
And then they heard another shot and knew that Bendodi, too, was dead.
After another hour, no end to the biological disaster in sight, Jerem had to change tanks. He motioned for Tee-ubo to check her level, as well.
The Twi'lek didn't move.
"Do you need oxygen?" Jerem asked her.
Tee-ubo tossed him her extra tank. "Run," she explained. "I've been slowing you down for the last hour. You're the only hope." Then she took off her belt pouch - the one with the beetle - and tossed it to the stunned man, as well.
"I'm not leaving you," Jerem declared, and there seemed no room for debate in his voice. The extra tank in hand, he started for the Twi'lek, but stopped fast as Tee-ubo's blaster came up, leveled at him.
"One of us has to continue with the remaining tanks," she explained. "You're faster, and - you're better trained - to figure out what's - going on, so I - made you the offer." Already, from the gasps she took between her words, it was evident that her oxygen was waning. "Last chance," she said, waving the blaster toward the north.
"Both of us," Jerem insisted.
Tee-ubo pulled off her hood and threw it far to the side. Then, to Jerem's absolute horror, she took a deep breath of the noxious fumes about them. Immediately, her eyes turned reddish yellow, and foamy liquid began running from her nose.
"You're wasting time," she said, coughing with each word. "And oxygen."
Jerem started for her, but her blaster came up and she fired a bolt right past his head.
He ran to the north, blinded by the horrid fog and his own tears. He had gone only a dozen strides when he heard the report of a blaster behind him.
On Jerem ran, desperately. He took some hope when he noted that the fumes about him were thinning somewhat, but at about the same time, he had to switch to the last oxygen pack. Soon after that, he came to a sheer wall, only about ten meters high, but one that he could not climb.
Nor could he afford the time searching for a way around it. On the very edge of desperation, Jerem pulled forward the controls of his flight pack. Before he fired it up, though, he hit upon an idea.
He pulled off his oxygen pack, tore the tube right from the side of his hood, and stuffed it into the intake valve on his flight pack.
He fired it up. It sputtered and coughed, but sure enough, he got into the air and up over the cliff, where he found the air even clearer, as if the stony barrier had somehow slowed the plague. But he took little hope when he climbed higher into the air and looked back, for there, in its full yellow-green glory, was the storm Danni had called about. Not a storm at all, but a huge cloud of noxious fumes, a cloud growing by the second, fanning out in all directions.
Flying on, Jerem glanced back several times to watch its progress. He figured it was spreading at about ten kilometers an hour.
ExGal-4 had less than two days before it hit.
Jerem pushed the flight pack full out and came out of the basin later that same day. He didn't land in the jungle and trudge through, but took his chances in the air, climbing above the tree-tops and soaring on. He did come down, and hard, when his pack ran out of fuel; he crashed through the branches and tumbled to the thick vegetation, losing his blaster in the process.
He was alone in the jungle, with no weapon, and with night falling.
He ran on.
It loomed before them as soon as they came out of hyperspace, the fourth planet of the Helska system, a gray ball of ice several thousand kilometers in diameter. No mist surrounded the planet, no clouds, no notable atmosphere. To the eye, it appeared quite dead.
Of course Danni Quee and the other two knew better than to trust simple appearances. Many systems boasted of living watery worlds beneath the seemingly dead facade of empty ice. Still, the surface of the planet, on this side at least, appeared perfectly smooth, with no sign of any recent, catastrophic impact.
"Maybe it missed," Bensin Tomri remarked.
"We travel halfway across the sector in this rattle-and-shake contraption, and maybe it missed?" Cho Badeleg sounded thoroughly disgusted.
Danni eyed Bensin hard, her look pointedly explaining that she didn't appreciate the man's sarcasm.
"I'm serious," Bensin retorted. "If the comet we saw hit that ball of ice, then why is it still here? It should have been blasted into a million pieces, with all of it hanging about in a floating maelstrom."
Danni looked back at the viewer. Bensin's words were true enough, she realized, and yet they knew from their observations on ExGal-4 that the incoming comet had indeed hit this planet.
"I am getting some strange signals from it," Cho Badeleg offered, working the controls of his sensors. He looked up at the other two, their expressions hopeful. "Energy."
"That could just be the reflection of the sun," Bensin pointed out.
Cho Badeleg shook his head. "No, it's different."
"How?" Danni asked, moving beside him.
"Different spect
rum than I'd expect from reflected sunlight," the man explained, and he shifted aside so that Danni could get a look at his indicators. They showed nothing consistent, more of a pulsating emanation, but indeed, in wavelengths she would not expect from a frozen ball of water.
"Organic?" she asked, and Cho only shrugged.
"Maybe the comet was just a ball of gas," Bensin Tomri reasoned. "That would explain a lot."
"How do you figure?" Danni asked.
"Well, the planet would still be here, as it is," Bensin remarked. "And a combination of gases could give us almost any reading."
"But how did it stay together, crossing gravity fields?" Cho asked.
"All right, almost a ball of gas," Danni put in, seeing Bensin's reasoning. "A small solid mass at the center."
"With enough gravity to hold together a ball of gases that large?" Cho asked doubtfully.
"Spinning superfast?" Danni asked more than stated, her voice thick with excitement. They all caught on fast enough, and their eyes lit up.
"Call it in," Danni told Bensin.
"I haven't been able to reach them," the man replied. "The tower must still be down."
Danni considered that for a long while. "Broadcast it generally, then," she said. "We're going to need help with this."
Bensin looked at her hard.
"By the time anyone gets out here, we'll already have the primary investigation done," Danni explained. "It's our find now, no matter if the entire New Republic fleet comes swarming. You keep an eye on the readings," she told Cho Badeleg, "and I'll bring us around to the other side."
Bensin smiled at that notion and opened his communicator to all channels, issuing a broadcast concerning their position and potential findings.
"What was that?" Danni asked a few moments later, when the Spacecaster slipped around the side of the planet and a swarm of small meteors moved just ahead of them and out of sight around the far side.
"I got them, too," Cho confirmed, his expression curious. "Hundreds."