A few moments before, Lumpawaroo had held the four corners of the cockpit doorway with both hands and both feet. He grumbled loudly at Han.
Han glared at the Wookiee over his shoulder. “I don’t care what Leia said, get back there and help her.”
Grumble.
“I’ll shut the cockpit hatch. If Alema gets back up here, she’ll have to cut through it, which will give the two of you plenty of time to get here.”
Grumble.
“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll look where I’m flying.” Han turned to face forward. “Not that there’s anything else up here! And the proximity alarms will let me know if—”
The proximity alarms shrieked an alert and the sky outside the cockpit viewports lit up so brightly that Han’s vision washed away to whiteness. He believed he could feel an instant sunburn on his face and hands. Waroo howled.
Shutting his eyes, Han snap-rolled to starboard. Waroo’s howl of complaint remained constant—the Wookiee hadn’t been torn free from the cockpit opening.
What had he almost flown into? Then Han knew. Lillibanca, in orbit, had begun her firebreak bombardment, and Han’s maneuvers had sent the Falcon straight toward the first blast.
But now which way could he go? He couldn’t see, and any direction might send him straight toward—into—the second blast.
Any direction but two.
He continued his spin into the tightest rightward arc he could manage, bringing the Falcon around 360 degrees so swiftly that the freighter’s struts and rivets groaned in complaint. Then, when only his pilot’s experience told him he was again on his original course, he pulled the yoke back and sent the freighter straight up once more.
Flying that way, he couldn’t move laterally far enough to hit the second beam. He was momentarily safe.
Waroo wasn’t. The Wookiee’s howl modulated from outrage to surprise. Han heard Waroo slam into the bulkhead of the cockpit access passage, then follow Alema’s earlier, bumpy path as he rolled down the corridor.
There was a momentary silence. Han winced as he visualized Waroo being catapulted into the main access corridor. In an instant would come a big bang of Wookiee on metal—
The Falcon’s spin pinned Leia against the corridor for long moments. She drew on the Force to help her push away from it, resisting centrifugal effect, but it took all her concentration—that, and the need to keep an eye on Alema and an ear on all the items of cargo, machinery, personal gear, and, for all she knew, personnel ricocheting off bulkheads all over the ship.
Alema was not as encumbered by the Falcon’s movements. The spin had pinned her for a moment to the ceiling, but now she rose as if its gravity were proper and steady.
She rose on two good feet, despite the fact Leia knew she’d lost half of one foot. Her features were as youthful and unblemished as when Leia had first met her fifteen standard years before.
Leia forced herself to keep her voice low and calm. “Finally invested in some prosthetics, did you?” And some vanity surgery to rid yourself of facial lines, sags, scars…
“Nothing so crude. We are simply ageless and eternal now, as we have always deserved to be.” Alema lifted her lightsaber in a traditional salute, a come-fight-me gesture.
The Falcon stood on her tail again. Leia, caught off-guard, hurtled toward the rear of the engineering bay—right past Alema, who didn’t budge.
Leia spun her lightsaber in a defensive arc, an attempt to block the blow she knew must come, but it didn’t. Alema merely danced aside. Leia crashed into the stern bulkhead, an impact that sent waves of shock through her back muscles, shoulder blades, spine…
For a brief second she was helpless, bent with pain. But Alema didn’t whip out her blowgun to send a dart her way—she didn’t even essay a lightning-quick leap followed by a maiming slash with her weapon. She advanced slowly, walking carefully down the ceiling toward Leia.
Recovering, Leia reached out, a flailing motion that sent a wash of Force energy toward her enemy. Alema merely rocked back on her heels and looked faintly amused. “Growing weaker? Perhaps it is the infirmity of age.”
There was a dull rattling noise and Waroo, spinning like a child’s toy, hurtled down at Leia from the main corridor.
Leia twisted aside and exerted herself upward through the Force, slowing Waroo’s fall. The Wookiee crashed into the bulkhead beside her, but softly, not hard enough to impair a being of his size and strength.
Alema’s smile broadened. In a movement that was curiously clumsy and unpracticed, she raised her lightsaber and charged to swing it down at Waroo.
Leia raised her own blade, catching Alema’s seemingly unpracticed attack; their blades met, sizzled, sparked. Waroo rolled away from the two of them and sat up, swinging his bowcaster off his back and aiming it at Alema. The weapon, built tough to Wookiee standards, did not seem to be damaged.
“No!” Leia lashed out with her foot as Waroo fired. She connected first, kicking Alema backward, and angled her own lightsaber to catch the bowcaster bolt; it sizzled out of existence against the blade.
Puzzled, Waroo offered an offended growl. He rose to his feet and hastily recocked his bowcaster. Leia got her feet under her and leapt toward Alema, positioning herself between the Twi’lek and the Wookiee. She caught Alema’s next strike, this one as suitably swift and ferocious as any Jedi’s, before it could sever her right arm, but she did not press her attack. “Waroo, don’t shoot. There’s something wrong. Trust me.”
Waroo offered a little grumble of complaint. He aimed but did not fire.
Leia strained against Alema’s blade, panting from pain and exertion. Their blades sparked and sizzled as they pressed against each other, slid along each other’s lengths.
Alema tried to disengage and strike, but Leia simply followed her step for step, staying close, fighting purely defensively. Alema struck a second time and a third, all shots toward one of Leia’s limbs, but Leia blocked two of the blows, dodged the third.
Alema’s smile did not fade, but after another moment her strength seemed to. She sagged back as Leia continued to push. “Fine.” Her tone was light, but there was a forced, brittle quality to it. “We will meet later.”
She leapt up and backward, landing on the main corridor wall above, her motion so light and graceful that it seemed she could not possibly be affected by the Falcon’s constant upward acceleration. Then she turned and ran toward the hatchways to the circuitry bay and crew quarters.
Leia and Waroo leapt after her, an effort for both Jedi and Wookiee. But, though Alema had been out of sight for only a few moments, though she could not have made it as far as either hatchway, she was gone.
chapter two
CHIEF OF STATE’S BRIEFING OFFICE, CORUSCANT
The adviser’s voice was like the droning of insects, and Darth Caedus knew what to do about insects—ignore them or step on them.
But in this case, he couldn’t afford to ignore the drone. The adviser, whatever her failings as a speaker, was providing him with critical data. Nor could he raise a boot to crush the source of the drone, not with Admiral Cha Niathal, his partner in the coalition government running Coruscant and the Galactic Alliance, sitting on the other side of the table, not with aides hovering and holocam recorders running.
To make matters worse, the adviser would soon wrap up, and inevitably she would address him by the name he so disliked, the name he had been born with, the name he would soon abandon. And then he would once again feel, and have to resist, the urge to crush her.
She did it. The blue-skinned Omwati female, her feathery hair dyed a somber black and her naval uniform freshly pressed, looked up from her datapad. “In conclusion, Colonel Solo—”
Caedus gestured to interrupt her. “In conclusion, the withdrawal of the entire Hapan fleet from Alliance forces removes at least twenty percent of our naval strength and puts us into a game of withdrawal and entrenchment if we are to keep the Confederation from overrunning us. And the treachery of the Jedi
in abandoning us at Kuat is further causing a loss of hope among the segments of the population who believe that their involvement means something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. That will be all.”
She rose, saluted, and left silently, her posture stiff. Caedus knew she feared him, that she had been struggling to maintain her composure all through the briefing, and he approved. Fear in subordinates meant instant compliance and extra effort on their part.
Usually. Sometimes it meant treachery.
Niathal addressed the other aides present. “We are done here. Thank you.”
When the office door whooshed closed behind the last of them, Caedus turned to Niathal. The Mon Calamari, her white admiral’s uniform almost gleaming, sat silently, regarding him. The stare from her bulbous eyes was no more forbidding than usual, but Caedus knew the message that they held: You could fix this mess by resigning.
Those were not her words, however. “You do not look well.” Hers was the gravelly voice so common to her species, and in it there was none of the sympathy that Admiral Ackbar had been able to project. Niathal was not expressing concern for his health. She was suggesting he was not fit for duty.
And she was almost right. Caedus hurt everywhere. Mere days before, he had waged the most ferocious, most terrible lightsaber duel of his life. In a secret chamber aboard his Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo, he had been torturing Ben Skywalker to harden the young man’s spirit, to better prepare Ben for life as a Sith. But he had been caught by Ben’s father, Luke Skywalker.
That fight…Caedus wished he had a holorecording of it. It had gone on for what had felt like forever. It had been brutal, with the advantage being held first by Luke, then by Caedus, in what he knew had been brilliant demonstrations of lightsaber technique, of raw power within the Force, of subtle Jedi and Sith skills. For all his pain, Caedus felt a swelling of pride—not just that he had survived that duel, but that he had waged it so well.
At the end, Caedus had lost a position of advantage—Luke had slipped free of the poison-injecting torture vines with which Caedus had been strangling him—when Ben had driven a vibroblade deep into Caedus’s back, punching clean through a shoulder blade, nearly reaching his heart.
That had ended the fight. Caedus should have been killed immediately. For reasons he did not understand, Luke and Ben had spared his life and departed. It was a mistake that would cost Luke.
Bearing dozens of minor and major wounds, including the vibroblade puncture, a lightsaber-scored kidney, and a fierce scalp wound, Caedus had been treated and resumed command of the Anakin Solo, only to experience more injury—emotional injury, this time. In Kashyyyk space, his Fifth Fleet had been surrounded by Confederation forces. Late-arriving Hapan forces could have rescued him…but the Hapan Queen Mother, Tenel Ka, his comrade and lover, had betrayed him. Swayed by the treacherous persuasion of Caedus’s own parents, Han and Leia Solo, she had demanded a price for her continued military support of the Alliance, and that price had been his surrender.
Of course he had refused. And, of course, he had battered his way out of the encirclement, leading the remnants of the Fifth Fleet back to the safety of Coruscant.
So when Niathal said he did not look well, she was correct. He keenly felt his worst injury. Not the vibroblade wound, not the scalp tear, not the kidney damage—all three were healing. All three were the kind of pain that strengthened him.
It was the wound to his heart that plagued him. Tenel Ka had turned on him. Tenel Ka, the love of his life, the mother of his daughter Allana, had forsaken him.
Niathal’s severe expression didn’t waver. You could fix this mess by resigning.
He gave her a tight smile. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m recovering quickly. And I have a plan. We’ll need to follow the recommended protocol of a fighting retreat for the next few days…at which time the Hapans will come back into the war on our side. Our job today is to figure out how best to employ them when they return to the battlefield. Since the Confederation thinks they are staying on the fence, we can utilize the Hapans for one devastating surprise attack. We need to decide where that attack will take place.”
“You are sure the Hapans will rejoin us.”
“I guarantee it. I have an operation in motion that will ensure it.”
“What resources do you need to carry it out?”
“Only those I already have.”
“Have I seen details of your operation?”
Caedus shook his head. “If I don’t forward a file, no one can intercept it. If I don’t speak a word of detail, no one can overhear it. Too much is riding on getting the Hapans back for me to wreck things by divulging details too freely.”
Niathal remained silent. A more incendiary personality would have taken offense at Caedus’s implied questioning of her ability to handle secret matters. Niathal chose not to recognize it as an insult. She merely turned to the next matter on her agenda. “Speaking of secrets…Belindi Kalenda at Intelligence reports that Doctor Seyah has been pulled off the Centerpoint Station project. Seyah reported that he had come under suspicion of being a GA spy.”
“Which, of course, he is. What’s his new posting, and can he get us any useful information from there?”
Niathal shook her head in the slow, somber way of the Mon Cals. “Kalenda ordered him out. He is already back on Coruscant.”
Caedus resisted the urge to break something. “She’s an idiot. And Seyah is an idiot. He could have stayed, weathered whatever investigation they brought against him, and begun feeding us information again.”
“Kalenda was certain that he would be arrested, investigated, and executed.”
“Then he should have stayed in place until arrested! Who knows what his cowardice has cost us? Even reporting on ship and troop movements could provide us with the critical advantage in a battle.” Caedus sighed and pulled out his datapad. Snapping it open, he typed a brief note to himself.
Niathal rose and leaned over so that her bulbous eyes could peer, upside down, at his screen. “What is this?”
“A note to myself to have Seyah arrested. He provided Kalenda with false information that led her to extract him from a danger zone, which is the equivalent of desertion under fire. He will confess. He will be executed.”
“Ah.” Niathal resumed her seat, but offered no protest.
Caedus appreciated that. Niathal was clearly growing to understand that Caedus’s approach was best—it kept subordinates motivated, kept deadwood out of the ranks. “What next?”
“Bimmisaari and some of her allied worlds in the Halla sector just announced they were defecting to the Confederation.”
Caedus shook his head dismissively. “Not a significant loss.”
“No, but it’s more unsettling as the possible first sign of a trend. Intelligence has detected more communications traffic between Corellia and the Imperial Remnant, and between Corellia and the worlds of the Corporate Sector, which may be nothing more than an increased recruitment effort by the Confederation. Or it may have been initiated by the other parties, a prelude to negotiations and more defections.”
“Also irrelevant.” Caedus felt a flash of irritation. Yes, these were matters that the joint Chiefs of State needed to address, but they would all be resolved when the Hapes Consortium came back into the fold. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
When the meeting was done and Niathal had departed, Caedus remained in the office. He stared at the blank walls. They soothed him. He needed soothing.
Inside, he was ablaze with anger, resentment, a sense of betrayal—all the emotions that fueled a Sith.
In the days since his fight with Luke, he had come to the realization that he was all alone in the universe. It was like the plaintive wail of a five-year-old: Nobody loves me. He could manage a smile at just how self-pitying it sounded.
But it was true. Everyone who had once known love for him now hated him. His fa
ther and mother, his twin Jaina, Tenel Ka, Luke, Ben…Intellectually, as he had embraced the Sith path, he had known that it would happen. One by one, those who cared about him would be peeled away like the outer layers of his skin, leaving him a mass of bloody, agonized nerves.
He had known it…but experiencing it was another matter. His body might be healing, but his spirit was in greater pain every day.
Everyone he had loved now hated him…except Allana. And he would not allow Tenel Ka to turn his daughter against him. He would cut down anyone who stood between him and his child.
Anyone.
SANCTUARY MOON OF ENDOR, ABANDONED IMPERIAL OUTPOST
Years earlier, before Jacen Solo had been born—before, in fact, Luke and Leia knew they were siblings, before Leia had confessed even to herself that she was in love with Han—Yoda had told Luke that electrical shocks, applied at different intensities and at irregular but frequent intervals, would prevent a Jedi from concentrating, from channeling the Force. They could render a Jedi helpless.
But Yoda had never told Luke that emotional shocks could do the same thing.
They could. And just as no amount of self-control would allow a Jedi to ignore the effects of electrical shocks on his body, neither could self-control keep Luke safely out of his memories. Every few moments a memory, freshly applied like a current-bearing wire on his skin, would yank him out of the here and now and propel him into the recent past.
Boarding the Anakin Solo. Finding Jacen torturing—torturing—Luke’s only child, his son Ben. The duel that followed, Luke against the nephew he’d once loved…the nephew who now commanded Master-level abilities in the Force, though he had not been, and never would be, elevated to the rank of Jedi Master.
And no pain Luke suffered in that fight was equal to Ben demanding the right to finish Jacen. That demand had brought Luke to where he was now, sitting cross-legged on the floor of an upper-story room of an abandoned Imperial outpost, staring through a wide transparisteel viewport at a lush Endor forest he was barely aware of, his body healing but his spirit sick and injured even after all these days.
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 2
