Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I

by Aaron Allston

  “Time. Time to calm down, time to figure things out. Understanding that there’s nobody more suited than you are to stopping the enemy that menaces Ben, and there’s nobody better than me at watching your back.” She shrugged, then looked down into the face of their son.

  “Ultimately, it was figuring out that if I wait until Ben’s enemies are right in front of me before I kill them, I’ve already failed him.”

  Mara’s expression was so melancholy that Luke felt his throat constrict. “Listen, I’m about to go out into the jungle with Tahiri to plant a few gravitic sensors. Care to come along?”

  Mara nodded. “Do you think Leia would baby-sit for us?”

  “I suspect she’d be very happy to.”

  Luke, Mara, and Tahiri moved through the jungle a few hundred meters from the start of the kill zone. They’d entered the jungle, had gone through a series of steps to shake off any likely Yuuzhan Vong observers, and now reached the first of their target zones.

  Luke set down his backpack. From within it he drew a short-hafted heavy hammer. “Behold,” he told Tahiri, “the favorite weapon of Jedi before the invention of the lightsaber.”

  She frowned at him, green eyes confused beneath her bangs. “You’re kidding.”

  “Of course I’m kidding. C’mon. The Jedi sledgehammer?” Grinning, he turned to his wife. “Mara?”

  From her own backpack she drew a stake, two-thirds of a meter long, made of metal, very broad at the top. She obligingly set it point-first into the ground. “Go ahead. I’ve always thought that menial labor involving hitting heavy metal things with other heavy metal things was man’s work.”

  With quick, hard blows, Luke pounded the thing until its head was flush with the ground. Then he spread dirt and leaves over it.

  “And that’s going to transmit gravitic fluctuations?” Tahiri sounded dubious.

  “Uh-huh.” Luke replaced the hammer in his backpack, then picked the backpack up. It weighed less, several kilograms less, than it had when he set it down. He pretended not to notice, or to recognize that the ground beneath the pack was stirred up, when it had been smooth when he’d set the pack down. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Tahiri announced. Mara just nodded.

  As they moved from the site, Luke whispered, “Well?”

  “I think we were being watched,” Tahiri whispered back. “I mean, it felt right. From the Yuuzhan Vong perspective. But I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Luke said. “Couldn’t you feel the insect life go quiet just east, ahead of us?”

  “I …” Tahiri looked embarrassed. “I could have been able to if I’d thought about it. But I didn’t.”

  “Don’t feel bad. You were thinking Vong—”

  “Yuuzhan Vong.”

  “—Yuuzhan Vong instead of Jedi. I suspect it’s not easy to think both ways at once. Is it?”

  Tahiri shook her head. “They’re ahead of us, then. That won’t be the same group that was watching us, I expect. That group hasn’t had time to get into position ahead of us.”

  “Good work,” Mara said. “When do we expect it?”

  “They’ll wait until we can’t hear what the first group is doing back at the site we just left,” Tahiri said. “But they’ll be impatient. It’ll be pretty soon after that. Such as … now.” Tahiri thumbed her lightsaber on; its snap-hiss heralded the lengthening of its glowing blade just in time for that blade to intercept a thud bug. The thud bug flared into incandescence and disappeared with a crackling sound.

  Luke brought his lightsaber up but turned away from Tahiri. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Mara doing the same, turning the other way. The three of them stood back to back as the Yuuzhan Vong warriors came spilling out of the jungle.

  There were five of them, and the first, coming in at Luke, was moving too fast, committed to the charge, depending on the first thud bug to distract the Jedi. Luke spun his lightsaber to intercept his cracking amphistaff, then rolled over backward, propelling the Yuuzhan Vong warrior past him in an uncontrolled tumble. Yours, he thought.

  Barely looking, Mara brought her own lightsaber blade around, plunging it into the hurtling warrior’s face as he tumbled past.

  The next one in came at Tahiri, amphistaff rigid in a two-handed grip. She parried his first strike, his second, and kicked him in the knee, but the impact of her bare foot on his vonduun crab armor slowed him not at all.

  Two, timing it as a single attack, leapt out from a screen of dangling fronds at Mara. She reversed her lightsaber so that the butt of the hilt was next to her thumb, the blade oriented down, and directed it back and forth against their low amphistaff attacks, using the lightsaber as a defensive umbrella. As one went high to bring his weapon up and over her defense, she kicked out, a beauty of a full-extension kick that caught him under the jaw and tumbled him backward into the fronds.

  The last one came in at Luke. He was slower, more patient than his comrades. Luke struck, a feint, then began a reverse strike as he saw his opponent raise the amphistaff to parry … then something about the warrior’s pose and motion set off an alarm in Luke’s mind. Luke dropped to one knee and the poison spat by his foe’s amphistaff went harmlessly over his head.

  It wasn’t entirely harmless. Luke saw it arc toward Tahiri’s side. She withdrew a step, drawing her enemy forward, and the poison splattered against that warrior’s mask, dribbling through the eyehole. The warrior gurgled, clamping down on a shout of pain or dread.

  Luke rose to a crouching position and then continued the motion, leaping up and over his opponent, inverting as he went, swinging his lightsaber with blurring speed at his foe’s head. His enemy caught the blow on his amphistaff and was shoving the staff’s pointed tail at Luke even as the Jedi Master landed. Luke caught the thrust on his lightsaber blade, deflected it mere centimeters, and kept the energy blade scraping up the amphistaff’s length. His opponent jumped away before the lightsaber could sever his fingers.

  Tahiri’s enemy was down now, poison flowing from one eye socket and smoke rising from the other, and she moved into position just in time to intercept Mara’s second foe as he returned from the verge of fronds. Caught off guard by her flurry of attacks, the Yuuzhan Vong warrior allowed himself to be forced into retreat; both of them disappeared into the fronds.

  Luke’s foe flicked the serpent head of his amphistaff forward. Luke sidestepped and the poisoned thing snapped to full extension a hairsbreadth from his side. Then Mara’s hand closed around it, over the head, and yanked. Luke’s foe stumbled forward, off balance for one deadly moment, and Luke swung his lightsaber into the vulnerable gap beneath the warrior’s helmet. Flesh boiled and severed. The warrior fell.

  Luke spun. Mara was flinging the captured amphistaff into the face of her foe; the warrior contemptuously brushed it aside and raised his weapon.

  Luke flung his own lightsaber spinning toward the warrior, then added a deft touch with the Force to make its flight eccentric, unpredictable. The warrior batted it aside as well, but the distraction was too long; Mara drove in with her lightsaber, punching through the warrior’s right arm socket, shearing his arm completely off. As he fell, she followed through with a thrust to the face.

  Luke beckoned and his lightsaber, depowered, flew back into his hand. He snapped it on again. “Tahiri?”

  “Here.” She emerged from the screen of fronds, unhurt. “Look what mine was carrying.” In her hand was a metal stake.

  Luke frowned. “Is that the one we just planted?”

  “No, a different one.” Mara smiled. “Success.”

  “Let’s go,” Luke said. “Before any more decide to visit.”

  They headed on to their next planting spot. There, they’d hammer another stake in—a stake that did contain sensor equipment, but which was designed to be found and removed by the Yuuzhan Vong.

  For the real sensors were in Luke’s bag. Each was a little droid, the size of the ubiquitous little utility droids found all over capital ships. These conta
ined the same gravitic sensors as the spikes, but also burrowing motivators that allowed them to exit the slit at the bottom of Luke’s backpack and dig their way into soft soil. The Yuuzhan Vong might see every spike planted, might remove every one … but odds were good they wouldn’t detect a single burrowing droid.

  Luke had fought against many sneaky people, but was usually happy to have sneaky people on his side.

  As they executed kills on target after target, Jaina became more proficient at choosing targets Jag couldn’t anticipate; the time between Kyp’s shot and Jag’s grew until it averaged nearly half a standard second. Jaina felt she’d achieved a slight measure of victory. At least Jag couldn’t remain confident in his ability to anticipate her thinking. But the gap between Jaina’s firing time and Kyp’s remained about the same.

  “I have an idea on that,” Jag said. “About your Force coordination.”

  Jaina almost laughed. “Jag, you don’t know anything about the Force. You’re as Force-blind as your uncle.”

  “Yes, and my uncle would figure this out, too. I’m looking at your Force link as though it were some sort of neural interface between you and Kyp. Assuming it allows speed-of-light communication of impulses, we have your impulse to fire essentially triggering both your firing reflex and Kyp’s. Correct?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So perhaps the difference in your times is roughly the difference in your physical reaction times. You’re years younger than Kyp. Perhaps you should either hesitate—for as short a time as you can manage—once you’ve made the decision to fire, or you should let Kyp choose the targets and follow his lead.”

  Jaina looked over her shoulder, through the canopy, to where Jag’s clawcraft floated beside and behind hers, and gave Jag a dubious look. “All right, sure. Let’s give it a try.”

  On their next run, the difference between Jaina’s and Kyp’s shots was one one-hundredth of a second, still in Jaina’s favor.

  Kyp whistled. “Good thinking, Fel. Let’s do this a few more times …” His voice trailed off.

  Jaina felt it, too. She stared off into space, in the direction of the star Pyria.

  “What is it?” Jag said.

  “Something …” Jaina switched her comlink to fleet frequency and brought up her navigation program. She oriented her X-wing toward the source of her disquiet to give her a close reading on the course toward that distant point. “Twin Suns Leader to Control.”

  “Control here.” It was a man’s voice, decorated with a disinterested drawl.

  “Do you have anything going on in the spinward side of the system, say on an approximate course toward Arkania?”

  There was a delay of a few seconds. “Negative on that.”

  “Something’s up … my flight is going to head that way. Keep your ears open for us.” She switched back to her squadron frequency. “Come on, mortals.”

  “As you wish, Goddess.”

  Jag responded with a comlink click.

  TEN

  Borleias Occupation, Day 37

  Jaina and her pilots flashed across Pyrian space as fast as their thrusters would take them; they angled in close to the star Pyria, picked up a little gravitational momentum from that close passage, and flung themselves toward the source of disturbance Jaina and Kyp could both sense. That disturbance didn’t abate. If anything, it grew more clear, more strong.

  Within minutes, Iella Wessiri took over the comlink at Control. “What have you got?”

  “Not sure. Just a sensation in the Force.”

  “It can’t be Yuuzhan Vong, then.”

  Jag said, “It can be Vong-related.”

  “True.”

  Jaina said, “Can you direct your sensors along our course to see what’s out there ahead of us?”

  “Negative on that. There’s a little matter of a sun between us and your course. However, we’re maneuvering Rebel Dream into position to track you and anticipate your course. She should be coming on-station in—she’s on-station now.” Iella grew silent for a moment. “Rebel Dream reports one large signal, multiple smaller signals incoming. Gravitic anomalies suggest it’s Yuuzhan Vong. General Antilles requests that you take a look, but be careful.”

  “We’re on it.” General Antilles requests. Jaina shook her head. Wedge had been right. All this goddess deception was going to take some getting used to.

  Soon enough, the distant anomalies showed up as blips on her sensors, and then she began to pick them up on her visual sensors.

  Nearest was a Yuuzhan Vong frigate analog with a screen of coralskipper escorts. Behind it, some distance away, surrounded by a screen of Yuuzhan Vong capital ships …

  Jaina keyed her comlink. “Control, it’s a worldship, a big one even by Vong standards.” She felt her mouth go dry. This wasn’t the worldship that was in orbit around Myrkr, the worldship where Anakin and Jacen had died, but just seeing another of the vast living craft so soon made her feel sick.

  “Understood, Twin Suns Leader. Suggest you return.”

  “Negative.” Jaina made a slight course correction to put her flight on an intercept course with the oncoming frigate. “We need to see why they’re starting out with such a small probe.”

  Jag’s voice came over the squadron frequency. “That small probe includes a frigate. It’s big enough to cause us some trouble.”

  “Yes, but that’s where I’m feeling the disturbance in the Force.” The disturbance, she decided, didn’t have the feral hunger that was characteristic of a voxyn. No, it felt like pain.

  Then they could see the frigate and its escort. Three coralskippers, a quarter of the screen, peeled off from the formation to head their way.

  “Three?” Kyp sounded insulted. “They expect three coralskippers to be enough for us?”

  “No.” That was Jag. “They’re just supposed to slow us down. We can either ignore them and take some plasma cannon fire up the exhaust ports, or deal with them and let the frigate past.”

  “We deal with them,” Jaina said. “Then catch up.”

  The coralskippers came on, firing.

  “Let’s play with the new tactics.” Jaina extended her Force perceptions, found Kyp’s waiting for her like an outstretched hand. The three of them settled into their earlier formation, the two X-wings ahead, the clawcraft behind and between. Almost as one, they twisted, rolled, and sideslipped, always eluding the oncoming plasma cannon fire, the oncoming grutchins.

  Jaina chose their target, the coralskipper at starboard rear. Kyp chose the moment to fire. The skip’s dovin basal created its void directly before Jaina’s shot, but Kyp’s smashed into the coralskipper’s bow, annihilating the dovin basal. Then Jag’s lasers stitched their way along from the bow to the cockpit canopy, punching burning holes all the way. That coralskipper continued on a dead ballistic course as the others flashed past the Twin Suns pilots and looped around for another attack.

  Jaina looked at her sensor board, at Jag’s attack delay. “Three-quarters of a second! Jag, you guessed wrong.”

  “Rather, I’ve taught you to be a little more unpredictable.”

  She managed an amused smile. Trust Jag’s personal shields to deflect her criticism. “Let’s do it again. Maybe with fifty-fifty odds, Jag can guess right this time.”

  The Yuuzhan Vong frigate’s course took it close to the star Pyria, the reverse of Jaina’s outbound course, as it headed toward Borleias. Once Jaina, Kyp, and Jag finished with the three skips sent to delay them, they blasted along in the frigate’s wake, catching up rapidly.

  The frigate cleared the star’s orbit and began a straight-line approach to Borleias. Jaina’s sensor board showed Rebel Dream vectoring in on an intercept course; comm transmissions indicated that starfighter squadrons were launching both from planetside and from Lusankya. There was no way the frigate would get close enough to Borleias to do any harm.

  “Frigate’s slowing,” Kyp reported. “Vectoring. It’s changing course. It knows it’s a futile attempt.”

  �
��Wait, wait,” Jag said. “Put your visuals on its underbelly.”

  Jaina did, and saw a long slit appearing in the frigate’s underside hull. It was a moist-looking opening, as unlovely as a Hutt’s mouth that had been pressed shut and was slowly beginning to gape.

  As she watched, the gap began issuing shapes, tiny irregular things that spilled forth, streaming along the frigate’s original course.

  Jaina grimaced. The shapes were wiggling. More organic weapons. Probably worldshapers of some sort, if they were being released at this distance toward Borleias in general instead of at a military target in specific.

  Then she realized that the disturbance she’d felt in the Force was traveling with those shapes. She felt her stomach sink. She put more power into acceleration, roaring toward the cloud of wiggling shapes, ignoring the frigate and coralskipper escort as they vectored away.

  In moments, she could see what the Yuuzhan Vong had discharged.

  People. Mostly humans, the occasional Sullustan or Rodian or Devaronian. They were male and female, of all ages, naked—

  No, not quite naked. As she got closer, Jaina could see the transparent covering on their bodies, a transparent sac inflated over their heads. They were wearing some variation of the ooglith cloaker, the Yuuzhan Vong environment suit; doubtless it would give them a few more minutes of life as they soared through space. They might freeze to death, they might run out of air, they might reach Borleias’s atmosphere and burn up in reentry. But they were all minutes from death, a score of them or more.

  A Sullustan female saw Jaina’s X-wing approaching. The Sullustan twisted her head around and looked at Jaina, her eyes wide with fear, her expression imploring. Jaina could only stare back, helpless.

  She became aware that Jag was talking.

  “… ejected hostages. They appear to be in some sort of ooglith cloaker suits. They’re on ballistic approach toward Borleias. I don’t think the planet’s microgravity is perceptibly accelerating them yet. I can’t estimate the survival time their suits give them. I read twenty-two, repeat two-two of them. Standing by.”