Star Wars®: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

by Troy Denning

  “Hi, Cousin Thrackan,” Jaina Solo called. “However did you know we’ve been looking for you?”

  “I wonder if you can remember when you held me prisoner,” Jaina said cheerfully.

  Thrackan Sal-Solo tried to fashion a smile. “That was all a misunderstanding. And long ago.”

  “You know…” Jaina cocked her head and pretended to study him. “I think you look younger without the beard.”

  General Tigran Jamira, the commander of the landing force, whirred up in his command vehicle, rose from his seat, and gave Thrackan a careful look. “You say this is the Peace Brigade President?” he asked.

  “That’s Thrackan all right.” Jaina looked at the black-haired woman who had been with Thrackan. “I don’t know who this is. His girlfriend, maybe.”

  Thrackan seemed a little indignant. “This is the stenographer the government assigned me.”

  Jaina looked at the woman and her cold eyes and bright white teeth, and thought that clerical assistants were certainly looking carnivorous these days.

  Thrackan approached the general and adopted a pained tone. “You know, there’s a family vendetta going on here.” He pointed at Jaina. “She’s got it in for me over something that happened years ago.”

  General Jamira gave Thrackan a cold look. “So you aren’t the Peace Brigade President?”

  Thrackan threw out his hands. “I didn’t volunteer for the job! I was kidnapped! The Vong were getting even with me for killing so many of them at Fondor!”

  Lowbacca, who had been listening, gave a complex series of moans and howls, and Jaina translated. “He says, ‘They got revenge by making you President? If you killed more of them, they’d make you emperor?’ ”

  “They’re diabolical,” Thrackan said. “It’s a very elaborate piece of revenge!” He jabbed a finger toward the small of his back. “They destroyed my kidney! It’s still bruised—you want to see?” He began pulling up his shirt.

  Jaina turned to the commander. “General,” she said, “I’d put Thrackan on the first landspeeder into town. He can guide us to our objectives.” She turned to her cousin and winked. “You’ll want to help us, right? Since you’re not Peace Brigade after all.”

  “I’m a citizen of Corellia!” Thrackan insisted. “I demand protection from my government!”

  “Actually you’re not a citizen anymore,” Jaina said. “When the Centerpoint Party heard you’d defected, they expelled you and sentenced you in absentia and confiscated your property and—”

  “But I didn’t defect! I—”

  “Right,” General Jamira said. “On the first landspeeder he goes.” He looked at Thrackan’s companion. “What do we do with the woman?”

  Jaina looked at her again, cogitated for a moment, and moved. In a couple of seconds she had the woman’s wrist locked and had relieved her of her hold-out blaster.

  “I’d put stun cuffs on her,” Jaina said, and handed the blaster to General Jamira.

  “How did you know she was armed?”

  Jaina looked at Dagga Marl and thought about why she’d made her decision. “Because she was standing like a woman who had a blaster on her,” she decided.

  Dagga, her wrist locked and her elbow hoisted above her head, snarled at Jaina from under her arm. Troopers came to cuff her and put her under guard.

  “Let’s get moving,” Jamira said.

  Jaina marched Thrackan to the first landspeeder and sat him in front, next to the driver. She herself folded down a jump seat and sat directly behind him.

  The operation was going better than she’d expected. Jamira had landed most of his force here, to drive on Peace City, but he’d stationed blocking forces on all routes from the capital to catch any Brigaders trying to flee. The fight in the atmosphere had delayed things a bit, but it had also wiped out the only Yuuzhan Vong ships in the system. Still, a wary alertness prickled along Jaina’s nerves. There was plenty that could yet go wrong.

  She turned to Thrackan. “Now, you be sure and let us know where your side’s first ambush is going to be,” she said.

  Thrackan didn’t bother turning to face her. “Right. Like they’d tell me.”

  The first ambush took place on the outskirts of the city center, Peace Brigade soldiers firing from atop flat-roofed buildings on the landspeeders below. Blaster bolts and shoulder-fired rockets sparked off the landspeeders’ shields, and the soldiers aboard returned fire from their heavy vehicle-mounted weapons.

  Jaina, crouched behind the bulwark in case something got through the shields, looked at her cousin, who was crouched likewise, and said, “Want to order them to surrender, President?”

  “Oh shut up.”

  Jaina ignited her lightsaber and sprinted to the nearest building, a two-story block of offices. Lowbacca was on her heels. Rather than burst in through a door, which was what defenders might expect, Jaina sliced open the shuttered viewport and hurled herself through the gap.

  There were no Peace Brigaders, but there was a mine set up to blast anyone coming in through the door. Jaina disarmed it with the press of a button, then cut the wire connecting it to the door for good measure.

  Lowbacca was already roaring up the stairs, his lightsaber a brilliant flash in the dark stairwell. Jaina followed him to the roof exit, which he smashed open with one huge furry shoulder.

  Whatever the dozen or so defenders on the roof might have expected, it wasn’t a Jedi Wookiee. They fired a few bolts at him, which he deflected with his lightsaber, then before Jaina even emerged they fled, dropping their weapons and crowding for the wooden scaffolding that supported a part of the building that was being reinforced. Lowbacca and Jaina charged them and were rewarded by the sight of several of the enemy simply diving off the building in their haste to escape. When Jaina and Lowbacca reached the scaffolding, with the eight or nine soldiers still clinging to it and lowering themselves to the street, Jaina looked at Lowbacca and grinned, and knew from his grinning response that he shared her idea.

  Swiftly the two sliced the lashings that held the scaffold to the building, and then—with Lowbacca’s Wookiee muscles and an assist from the Force—they shoved the scaffolding over. The Brigaders spilled to the ground in a splintering crash of wood and were swiftly rounded up by more of Jamira’s troopers, who had sped around the ambush to outflank it.

  Jaina looked up. Enemy on the next roof were still firing at the landspeeders below, unaware their comrades had been captured.

  She and Lowbacca had worked together so long they didn’t need to speak. They trotted ten paces back from the edge, turned, and sprinted for the parapet. Jaina put a foot on the edge and leapt, the Force assisting her to a soundless landing on the roof.

  The squad of Brigaders were turned away, firing into the street below. Jaina grabbed one by the ankles and tipped him over the edge, and Lowbacca simply kicked another over the parapet. Jaina turned to the nearest as he was reacting, sliced his blaster rifle in half with her lightsaber, then punched him in the face with the hilt of her weapon. He sprawled over the parapet unconscious. Lowbacca deflected a bolt aimed for Jaina, then caught the rifle with the tip of his lightsaber and flung it into the air. Jaina used the Force to guide the flying rifle to a collision with the nose of another Brigader, which gave Lowbacca time to heave his disarmed enemy into the street below.

  That took the fight out of them, and the rest surrendered. Jaina and Lowbacca chucked the captured weapons to the street, then turned them over to a squad of New Republic troopers who came storming up the stairs.

  The shooting was over. Jaina looked ahead to see the large, new buildings of the city center. She saw no reason to return to the landspeeder—she could guide the military to their objective from her vantage point on the rooftops. She leaned over the parapet and gestured to General Jamira that she would go ahead over the roof. He nodded his understanding.

  Jaina and Lowbacca took another run and leapt to the next roof, checking the building on all sides to make certain that no ambush lurked in
its shadows. They then sprang onto the next building, and the next.

  Across from this last was what was probably intended to be a wide, impressive boulevard, but which consisted at the moment of a muddy excavation half filled with water. The air smelled like a stagnant pond. Beyond were some large buildings that would be very grand when finished. Jaina knew from her briefings that a large shelter had been dug behind the largest building, the Senate house, and subsequently covered over by the plantings of what was supposed to be a park.

  The whole expanse was deserted. Smoke rose from several areas on the horizon. Jaina called the Force into her mind and probed ahead. The others in the Force-meld, sensing her purpose, sent her strength and aided her perception.

  The distant warmth of other lives glowed in Jaina’s mind. There were indeed defenders in the Senate building, though they were keeping out of sight.

  Sending thanks to the others in the Force-meld, Jaina clipped her lightsaber to her belt, hurled herself off the building, and allowed the Force to cushion her fall to the duracrete below. Lowbacca followed. They trotted back to General Jamira’s command speeder. There they found the general conferring with what appeared to be a group of civilians. Only on approaching did Jaina recognize Lilla Dade, a veteran of Page’s Commandos who had volunteered to lead a small infiltration party into Ylesia in the aftermath of the battle and set up an underground cell in the enemy capital.

  “This is your chance,” Jamira told her.

  “Very good, sir.” She saluted and flashed Jaina a grin as she led her team into the nearly deserted city.

  Jamira turned to Jaina, who saluted. “There are defenders in the Senate building, sir,” she told him. “A couple hundred, I think.”

  “I have enough firepower to blow the Palace of Peace down around them,” Jamira said, “but I’d rather not. You might see if you can get your cousin to talk them into surrendering.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.” Jaina saluted and trotted back to the lead landspeeder. “The general’s got a job for you, Cousin Thrackan,” she said.

  Thrackan gave her a sour look. “I’ll give diplomacy my best shot,” he said, “but I don’t think Shimrra’s going to give Coruscant back.”

  “Ha ha,” Jaina said, and jumped into the landspeeder.

  Jamira’s forces advanced on the government center on a broad front, repulsorlifts carrying them over the boggy, torn ground, their heavy weapons trained on the half-finished buildings. Starfighters split the sky overhead.

  The landspeeders halted two hundred meters from the building. Jaina looked at what she’d thought was a tarpaulin stretched over some construction work, and then realized it was the flayed skin of a very large Hutt. She nudged Thrackan.

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Never met him,” Thrackan said shortly. At Jaina’s instruction, he stood and picked up the microphone handed him by the landspeeder’s commander.

  “This is President Sal-Solo,” he said. “Hostilities have ceased. Put down your weapons and leave the building with your hands in plain sight.”

  There was a long silence. Thrackan turned to Jaina and spread his hands. “What did you expect?”

  And then there was a sudden commotion from the Senate building, a series of yells and crashes. Jaina sensed the soldiers around tightening their grip on their weapons. “Repeat the message,” she told Thrackan.

  Thrackan shrugged and began again. Before he was half finished the doors burst open and a swarm of armored warriors ran out. Jaina started as she recognized Yuuzhan Vong. Then she saw that the warriors had raised their hands in surrender, and that they weren’t Vong, just Peace Brigade wearing laminate imitations of vonduun crab armor. In their lead was a Duros officer, who ran up to Thrackan and saluted.

  “Sorry that took so long, sir,” he said. “There were some Yuuzhan Vong in there, intendants, who thought we should fight.”

  “Right,” Thrackan said, and ordered the warriors into the hands of the landing force. He turned to Jaina, his look dour. “My loyal bodyguard,” he explained. “You see why I decided to head out on my own.”

  “Why are they dressed in fake armor?” Jaina asked.

  “The real armor kept biting them,” Thrackan said acidly, and sat down again.

  “We need you to lead us to the bunker where your Senators are hiding,” Jaina said. “And to the secret exit they’ll use for their escape.”

  Thrackan favored Jaina with another bitter glare. “If there was an escape hatch from that bunker,” he asked, “do you think I’d be here?”

  The bunker turned out to have a huge blastproof door, like a vault. Thrackan, using the special comm relay outside the bunker to talk with those inside, failed to persuade them to come out.

  General Jamira was undeterred, sending for his engineer company to come down from orbit and blast the door off the bunker.

  Jaina felt time slipping away. None of the delays so far had been critical, but they were all beginning to add up.

  Maal Lah restrained the instinct to duck as another flight of enemy starfighters roared overhead. The villip in his hands retained the snarling image of the dead executor he’d used to try to command President Sal-Solo’s useless bodyguard, and whom the Presidential Guard had killed rather than obey.

  The cowards would be thrown in a pit and crushed by riding beasts, he promised himself.

  The damutek grown on the outskirts of the capital to house his troops had been destroyed early in the attack, fortunately after he’d gotten his warriors out. But since then they’d been forced to remain in cover, pinned down by the accursed starfighters that patrolled at low altitude overhead. Fighter cover had been so heavy that Maal Lah had been unable to move even a few of his warriors toward the city center to guard the Peace Brigade government.

  He gathered that the Peace Brigade fleet had surrendered—more candidates for the pit and the riding beasts, Maal Lah thought. His own small force of spacecraft had at least gone down fighting. And now, he suspected, Ylesia’s government was about to fall into the hands of the enemy.

  But even considering these developments, Maal Lah found himself content. He knew that the New Republic forces were about to suffer a surprise, and that the surprise should draw the heavy fighter cover away.

  And once he could safely move his warriors, there would be more surprises in store for the raiders of the New Republic.

  And many blood sacrifices for the gods of the Yuuzhan Vong.

  Jacen and Vale brought their limping X-wings aboard Kre’fey’s flagship Ralroost. By the time Jacen powered the fighter down he knew that the Peace Brigade forces had folded like a house of cards, both in space and on the ground, and that the New Republic forces were digging the last of the leadership out of their bunker.

  Those who had nothing in common but treason, he thought, had no reason to trust one another or fight on one another’s behalf. There was no unifying ideology other than greed and opportunism. Neither was likely to create solidarity.

  He dropped to the deck, breathing gratitude that the raid was a success. It had been his idea to capture the heads of the Ylesian government, and his fault that Jaina had volunteered to go in with the ground forces. If the mission had gone wrong he would have been doubly responsible.

  Jacen first checked out Vale to make certain she was all right, then inspected their X-wings. Both would require time in a maintenance bay before they would fly again.

  “Jacen Solo?” A Bothan officer, very much junior, approached and saluted. “Admiral Kre’fey requests your presence on the bridge.”

  Jacen looked at Vale, then back at the officer. “Certainly,” he said. “May Lieutenant Vale join us?”

  The Bothan considered the question, but Vale was quick to give her own answer.

  “That isn’t necessary,” she said. “Admirals make me nervous.”

  Jacen nodded, then followed the Bothan out of the docking bay toward the forepart of the ship.

  And then he felt the universe slow down as if
time itself had been altered. He was aware of how long a time it seemed to take for his foot to reach the floor, aware of the long space between his heartbeats.

  Something had just changed. Jacen let the Jedi meld that had been sitting quietly in some back room of his mind come to the fore, and he felt surprise and consternation in the minds of the other Jedi, a confusion that was soon replaced with grim resolve and frantic calculation.

  Jacen’s foot touched the deck. He took a breath. He was aware that a Yuuzhan Vong fleet had just entered the system, and that his plan for the Battle of Ylesia had just gone terribly wrong.

  “I think we’d better hurry,” he told the startled Bothan lieutenant, and began to run.

  The huge cutting beams of the engineers’ lasers were chopping the vault door into scrap. Jaina shrank away from the bright light and heat. She could sense panic through the vault doors, panic and flashes of desperate readiness from those preparing themselves for hopeless resistance. A few blaster bolts came spanging out of the torn vault, but the lasers were shielded and the blasters did no damage.

  Jaina looked at the troopers preparing to storm the Senate bunker, and she thought that was a lot of firepower to subdue a group who might be no more prepared to resist capture than their army or fleet. She found General Jamina and saluted.

  “Sir, I’d like to be first into the vault. I think I can get them to surrender.”

  Jamira took barely a second to consider the request. “I’m not going to tell a Jedi she can’t be the first into a tight spot,” he said. “I’ve seen what you people can do.” He nodded. “Just be sure you call for help if you need it.”

  “I will, sir.”

  She snapped the general a salute and trotted back to the vault door. The cutting was almost done. Melted duralloy had frozen on the floor of the anteroom in the shape of a waterfall. Jaina stood next to Lowbacca, who gave her a significant look as he unclipped his lightsaber. Jaina grinned. Without a word he’d shown he understood her plan, and approved.