Star Wars 390 - The Dark Nest Trilogy I - The Joiner King

by Troy Denning

  Impossible to know.

  Impossible, Jaina agreed. But maybe not a bad thing.

  Jaina and Zekk waited, expecting to feel Unu’s Will pressing down on them, driving them to act in the Colony’s best interest.

  But they were out of contact with the Taat mind—cut off from it by distance as well as by Unu’s anger—and UnuThul was too busy coordinating the overall battle to join their combat-meld. Jaina and Zekk’s mind was their own—for now.

  A hole appeared in the turbolaser net, and they accelerated toward it, aiming for a quartet of tiny blue circles that their R9 units assured them was a cruiser’s sublight drive. If they could sneak up close enough, they could slip into the heart of the Chiss fleet by hiding near its exhaust nozzles, where the glare would blind anyone peering in their direction.

  This feels wrong, Zekk said. Like we’re betraying the Colony.

  And UnuThul, Jaina added. But we’re Jedi.

  Jedi do what is necessary, Zekk agreed. To prevent war.

  To keep the peace.

  The cruiser was so close now that they could see the boxy outline of its engine skirt enclosing the bright disks of its four huge thrust nozzles. Turbolaser beams stabbed out all around them, but never close enough to suggest that the StealthXs had been spotted again. Jaina and Zekk continued to close the distance.

  Then another unhappy thought occurred to them. Welk.

  If UnuThul dies…

  The possibility was almost too terrible to consider. If UnuThul died, Welk—or Lomi Plo, if she had survived—might become the new Prime Unu. They did not know what that would mean for the Colony, but it would certainly be bad for the rest of the galaxy. The Dark Jedi would use the Killiks for their own ends, perhaps even to draw the entire galaxy into a single collective mind.

  Need to protect UnuThul, Zekk concluded.

  Better warn him.

  Jaina and Zekk were relieved. It was what they had wanted anyway. Maybe they had even convinced themselves it was the best thing when it was not, but their mind was made up. They reached out to UnuThul in the Force, urging him to open himself to their combat-meld.

  Unu’s will pressed down on them. Suddenly, rescuing Lowbacca seemed more important than stopping the Colony’s attack. If Jaina and Zekk did not rescue their friend quickly, he would perish along with his captors when the Great Swarm destroyed the Chiss fleet.

  Jaina and Zekk pushed back, but—being out of touch with the Taat mind—they had no way to explain the Chiss trap. All they could do was pour their alarm into the Force and urge UnuThul to join the combat-meld.

  Unu’s will grew heavier, and they began to believe it was not so important to reach UnuThul after all.

  Afraid we’re trying to trick them again, Zekk surmised.

  Only the knowledge that Unu was wrong gave them the strength to resist, to continue reaching into the Force.

  Finally, someone reached back—but it was Jaina’s mother, not UnuThul. Jaina and Zekk stretched out toward her, inviting her into their battle-meld, and the situation grew a little clearer. Leia and the others were under attack. An image of dozens of blue-black Killik soldiers appeared inside their mind, swarming up a dark tunnel, pouring electrobolt fire toward them.

  Jaina and Zekk were alarmed, but Leia did not seem frightened or worried. Why should she be? She and Han had been trapped in worse situations a hundred times.

  Now Jaina and Zekk were really worried—and confused. They did not know of any blue-black Killiks in the Qoribu system—nor of any nests with such gloomy walls.

  Kr, Leia explained. Secret nest.

  A nest could not be secret. Unu would know about it.

  Welk? Leia reminded them. Saba?

  Now Jaina and Zekk understood. Every time they had tried to investigate the assault on Saba, the Taat—and later UnuThul—had turned them aside. The Barabel had mistakenly attacked a Joiner, it was claimed, or she had fought a Chiss assassin.

  Perhaps UnuThul had been attempting to hide the secret nest all along. Or maybe he just did not want to believe it existed.

  Either way, the situation was worse than Jaina and Zekk had realized. They wanted to go to Kr to help Leia and the others, but if UnuThul died, the Dark Jedi would be close by, waiting to take over.

  Leia seemed to understand. She was already withdrawing from the meld, urging them to be careful, assuring them that Luke and the other Masters had things well in hand on Kr.

  When she was gone, Jaina and Zekk still felt no hint of UnuThul.

  Have to do this the hard way, Jaina said.

  Go back and make contact with Taat, Zekk agreed. Then the Colony will know what we’re thinking.

  Jaina and Zekk hesitated. Unu’s will was a bantha sitting on their shoulders, pushing them toward Lobacca, toward the heart of the Chiss fleet.

  Lowie can wait a few more minutes, Jaina said. We’ll come back for him.

  Lowie would understand, Zekk agreed. Lowie is a Jedi.

  Jaina and Zekk rolled into simultaneous wingovers and reversed direction, pointing their noses back toward the Great Swarm. Unu’s weight sank to their stick hands.

  Only one problem with this plan, Zekk observed.

  Jaina could feel Zekk fighting, as she was, to keep his controls dead center.

  Not really. Jaina released her stick. “Sneaky, take us in.”

  The astromech took control of the StealthX, then chirped a question.

  “To Unu’s squadron.” As Jaina spoke, Zekk was giving the same orders to his own astromech. The Taat were flying escort for UnuThul’s flag frigate, so all the two Jedi needed to do to was rejoin the swarm, and the Taat mind would know everything they did. “And that command is non—”

  “There is no need to desert our friend.” UnuThul’s gravelly voice reverberated over their comm speakers, but when Jaina and Zekk checked their reception meters, they discovered that their transceivers were not receiving a signal. “We will listen to your plea, but Unu will never let you stay. You have betrayed the Colony’s trust—”

  “It’s not about us.” Jaina was not quite certain what form of reply UnuThul could hear, so she simply spoke the words aloud. “We need to warn you.”

  “You’re flying into a trap,” Zekk added.

  They took control of their StealthXs again, turned back toward the Chiss cruiser they hoped to use for cover. Lowbacca would not have to wait after all.

  “This is about you,” UnuThul insisted. “You are trying to save the Chiss fleet. Again.”

  “We’re trying to save you,” Jaina replied.

  “It’s a Bothan fade,” Zekk added. “The Chiss are drawing you into the open.”

  “You studied battle tactics on Yavin,” Jaina said. “You know what’s going to happen when the fight moves beyond Qoribu’s gravity well.”

  The boxy outline of the cruiser’s engine skirt was again visible ahead. UnuThul remained silent as the brilliant circles of the thrust nozzles continued to swell in front of the StealthXs. Jaina and Zekk began to hope that they had convinced Unu of the danger.

  Then UnuThul said, “It must be a coincidence. There were no Chiss in our tactics classes.”

  Jaina and Zekk knew better than to waste time pointing out the flaws in Unu’s argument. Killik logic did not follow the same rules as that of most species—in fact, it did not follow rules at all.

  Instead, Jaina asked, “Can the Colony really afford to take that chance?”

  “When the Great Swarm reaches Qoribu’s south pole, take a minute to regroup,” Zekk suggested.

  “You remember what will happen if we’re right?”

  “Of course,” UnuThul said. “We have an excellent memory.”

  The comm speakers fell silent, leaving Jaina and Zekk feeling alone and shunned again, worried their pleas would go unheeded. The first tendrils of the cruiser’s exhaust tail began to lick at their forward shields. Jaina and Zekk dropped below it and closed to within three hundred meters of the ship’s stern. Their canopy tinting darkened t
o solid black, and they flipped their bellies toward the ion stream to protect the delicate sensor windows on top of the StealthXs’ nose cones.

  For the next thirty seconds, they remained on the fringes of the exhaust stream, following the cruiser toward the heart of the Chiss fleet. Jaina and Zekk tried to keep an eye on their tactical displays, but the ion interference rendered their screens almost unreadable. To discern anything, the R9s had to use a complicated algorithmic analysis to separate interference from true sensor returns.

  Jaina and Zekk were beginning to think Unu had ignored their warning when the R9s announced that the Great Swarm had slowed. The eyes of the two Jedi Knights went to their tactical displays, desperately trying to infer a picture from the static on the screens. The astromechs reported that the Chiss retreat appeared to be growing even more disorganized.

  Trying to tempt the enemy, Zekk observed.

  Hope Unu sees that. To Sneaky, Jaina said, “Give us a simple schematic—”

  Sneaky interrupted with a series of concerned tweets. Jaina looked out the canopy to see the cruiser swinging back toward Qoribu.

  Baiting the trap, Jaina observed.

  With our camouflage, Zekk complained. Too many eyes watching now.

  Better find something else to follow in, Jaina agreed.

  They dropped out of the exhaust stream. As their canopies grew transparent again, they found themselves surrounded by durasteel hulls ranging in apparent size from that of a finger to something closer to a Wookiee’s arm.

  Already deeper than we thought, Jaina observed.

  Yeah, Zekk agreed. The static began to clear from their tactical displays. But is that a good thing or—

  Blossoms of turbolaser fire lit the space around them. Jaina and Zekk surrendered their hands to the Force, and their StealthXs began to weave and bob, swinging wide before a strike exploded in front of them, climbing away from a beam even as it lanced out behind them.

  Jaina’s hand pushed the stick forward. The third StealthX—the one slaved to her controls—followed her into a dive and slammed into a blossom of fire behind her. Her R9 let out a sad whistle as it received the final data burst from its counterpart, then Jaina jinked starboard and Zekk juked port, and a trio of turbolaser strikes burst into a miniature sun between them.

  Our boyfriend means business, Zekk observed.

  Don’t know that it’s him. And it’s old boyfriend.

  Right. We’re so over him.

  We?

  Jaina and Zekk dropped the line of thought there. It was just getting too creepy, with Zekk sharing everything that Jaina still felt for Jag, and Jaina sharing everything that Zekk still felt for her, and it didn’t help matters that, at the moment, Jag was doing his best to kill them both.

  He’s just following orders, Zekk consoled.

  He has to, Jaina agreed. He’s Chiss.

  They continued to dodge through the barrage, angling first one direction, then another, always working deeper into the fleet. Despite the loss of the third StealthX, they could still rescue Lowbacca. Zekk’s storage compartment was filled with oxygen tanks, and there was an air feed running into the empty torpedo bay below his seat. Unfortunately for Jaina, she was the only one small enough to fit inside.

  The Chiss brought more ships to bear, stringing kilometer-wide screens of crimson energy ahead of the StealthXs, hoping the elusive starfighters would simply fly into a strike. Jaina and Zekk rolled away from one beam and found another crossing their noses. Jaina pulled up hard, her astromech screeching alarms as the inertial compensator strained to keep the ship together. Zekk dropped his nose and squeezed past underneath, his StealthX shuddering and bouncing as its shields crackled and overloaded.

  Enough! To her droid, Jaina said, “Sneaky, give us a one-second fuse and drop a shadow bomb…now!”

  The droid tweeted its alarm, but obeyed.

  Jaina gave the bomb an aftward Force shove, and a silver flash filled the space behind them. The shock wave hit an instant later, slamming both StealthXs forward and pushing their tails down. Jaina and Zekk did not right themselves. They simply poured on the power and shot away, doing anything they could to change course and location before the Chiss eyes tracking them recovered from the blinding flash of the shadow bomb.

  The Chiss brought even more turbolasers to bear—but well behind and below the StealthXs. Jaina and Zekk were close enough now to feel Lowbacca’s presence aboard a heavily armored Dreadnaught escorting the flagship. They closed formation and swung toward it, then finally had time to check their tactical displays.

  Unu had listened to their warning. The Great Swarm remained at Qoribu, spread out just beneath the southern pole, with the Hapans taking a supporting position behind the dartships. Meanwhile, the Chiss had given up trying to draw out the Colony and were smoothly dispersing into their own defensive wall, three layers deep and just out of Hapan turbolaser range.

  Could have timed this better.

  Going to be hot as a nova getting through that picket field, Zekk agreed.

  The Dreadnaught’s ion drives suddenly brightened, then Jaina and Zekk’s heart sank as the ship turned and accelerated away from the fleet. The Chiss were not fools. Having lost track of their quarry, they had decided to remove the bait.

  Could have timed this a lot better. Jaina’s vision blurred with welling tears, and she and Zekk reached out to Lowbacca, trying to reach him through the stupor in which his captors were keeping him, trying to assure him that they would find him, urging him not to lose faith.

  They felt a question struggling toward the top of Lowbacca’s mind, then anger; then the Dreadnaught vanished into hyperspace and they felt nothing at all.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The chamber was choked with dead Gorog, and still more came, pushing through the bodies and floating globules of gore to press their assault, their electrobolt rifles stringing the darkness with bright ropes of silver. Luke was tumbling through the rancid air, somersaulting over forks of crackling energy and spinning away from thrusting tridents, his lightsaber tracing a green cage around him as the blade moved smoothly from defense to offense, from diverting electrobolts to cleaving dark chitin. Mara was twisting along three meters behind him, connected by an invisible Force tether, firing her blaster with one hand and wielding her lightsaber with the other. They were sinking deeper into a battle trance, becoming one with their weapons, becoming the hands of death…and drawing ever closer to Alema Rar.

  Luke felt the warm prickle of danger sense and glimpsed a large band of Gorog gliding through the bodies to his right, the electrodes on their rifles already charged and glowing. Still rolling and twisting, fighting off attacks from every direction, he pointed at one of the membrosia givers on the ceiling and used the Force to pull it down—legs flailing and chest booming—into their line of fire.

  Alema tried to wrench the creature free, but her grasp was no match for Luke’s. The membrosia giver remained in the thick of battle, a shrill screech rising from its feeding tube, long gobs of membrosia shooting from its abdomen.

  Alema spat a Twi’leki curse and ignited her lightsaber. Luke’s chest tightened with cold anger—he had not thought her foolish enough to come for him—and he steeled himself to do what was necessary.

  But Alema went straight to the membrosia giver, stunning Luke by sinking her lightsaber deep into the insect’s thorax and dragging the blade along the insect’s entire length. The two halves of the huge body drifted apart, and a deafening volley of electrobolt fire lit the darkness.

  The Skywalkers ducked away, Luke protecting them with his lightsaber while Mara’s blaster added more dead Killiks to the shell of bodies already shielding them.

  “Getting dangerous…in here!” Mara observed.

  “Looks like.”

  “Time to carry the fight to them.” Mara stopped firing and reached for a fresh power pack. “Time to go after Welk.” She slipped the pack into her blaster and resumed firing. “And Lomi Plo.”

  Luke risk
ed a glance toward Alema, who was clearly in no hurry to engage the Skywalkers directly and was gliding back toward her tunnel.

  “Hoping to wear us down,” Mara observed.

  Luke shook his head. “Protecting something,” he said. “Or someone.”

  Take her, Mara ordered through their Force-bond. “I’ll cover.”

  Luke moved to intercept, no longer dodging or twisting, just shouldering past Killik corpses and going after Alema. He was shocked by her ruthlessness, but hardly surprised. The line she had crossed was an invisible one, a matter of degree and intention rather than principle. Had another Jedi Knight made a similar sacrifice pursuing a Jedi goal, Luke might have condoned the act, even tried to console the individual and reassure her that it had been the best choice available.

  And that made him wonder more than ever what the Jedi had become.

  A trio of Gorog warriors zeroed in on Luke, forcing him into somersaults until Mara took them out. He arrived at the cutoff point after Alema, but close enough on her heels that she had to turn and face him. She showed no emotion on her face or in the Force, but she raised her lightsaber into a middle guard—the best initial defense for an outmatched fighter.

  Luke continued to bat electrobolts aside, his lightsaber weaving a green cage around him, but he made no move to attack.

  “Alema, this doesn’t have to happen,” he said. “You still have a home with us. Gorog persuaded you to betray the Jedi, but we can forgive you.” Luke did not like what the war had done to the Jedi—what it had done to him—and he was determined to start undoing that right now. “Alema, reach out to me. I can help you find the way back.”

  “We don’t want to come back!” Alema sprang, flying at Luke behind a whirling onslaught of slash and backslash. “Stop…interfering!”

  Luke blocked and redirected her momentum, sending her tumbling into the body-choked darkness—and placing himself between her and the tunnel she had been guarding. He felt an inquiry from Mara, then glimpsed her pointing her blaster at the Twi’lek’s back. He shook his head.

  Be quick! Mara broke their Force tether, then launched herself into a wild gyre of sweeping blade-light and flashing blasterfire. Han and Leia…