by Troy Denning
“That’s what I love about you, farmboy,” she said.
“I always look on the bright side?”
“Not really.” Mara assumed a cynical tone. “You always know how to make a girl feel better.”
The tunnel finally opened into a large vault where the air was so humid and hot that their faces grew instantly moist. An eerie whine permeated the chamber, barely loud enough to hear above the pounding of her own heart, and the Force grew heavy with the pain of the nearly dead.
Mara followed Luke into the vault, and suddenly she forgot the eerie sound, the horrible smell, even her own fiery pain. The entire chamber was lined by large hexagonal cells, some sealed with a wax cap, some containing a paralyzed Chiss captive curled around a Gorog larva. Many of the prisoners were dead and mostly devoured, with the barbed mandibles of a nearly developed larva protruding half a meter above the cell walls. Just as many remained alive, groaning weakly as larvae gnawed at their immobile bodies.
“I’m beginning to understand the Chiss point of view,” Luke said. “I wonder if Raynar knows about this?”
“Maybe, on some—”
Mara’s neck prickled with cold, and she spun around to find the wrong end of an electrobolt rifle illuminated in her lamp beam. Behind it, sighting down the stock, was a blue face framed by a pair of Twi’lek lekku.
Rather than taking half a second to ignite her lightsaber and another half a second to block, Mara pointed and released the Force energy she had been using to keep herself going. Her body erupted into pain and muscle tremors, but blue lightning shot from her fingertips and blasted the rifle, driving the stock back into the Twi’lek’s mangled shoulder and crackling deep into the wound. Alema cried out and let the weapon slip from her hands, then went limp and floated away into darkness.
Mara felt a hint of uneasiness in Luke. “What?”
“Nothing,” Luke replied. Just thinking—
Luke’s lightsaber crackled to life and droned past Mara’s ear, blocking what sounded more like blasterfire than another electrobolt. She sensed a second attack coming and activated her own blade, sweeping it up behind Luke’s to bat away another string of bolts.
The blasterfire fell silent, but not before Mara could swing her helmet lamp toward its source. She glimpsed a hump-shouldered man with a half-melted face and one chitinous insect arm grafted to his shoulder; then he slipped out of the light.
“Force lightning.” The man’s voice was raspy and sharp. “We had thought Skywalker’s Jedi considered themselves above that.”
“We make exceptions.” Again, Mara sensed a certain apprehension in Luke. She ignored it and swung her helmet lamp toward the voice, and again the dark figure slipped out of the light. “Especially in your case, Welk.”
As Mara spoke, she and Luke moved apart, positioning themselves just within each other’s reach, where they could still take advantage of overlapping fields of defense.
A soft flutter sounded above Mara’s head.
“Hear that?” Mara asked.
“What?”
“I was afraid you didn’t.” Mara reached out in the Force but felt only a shadowy sense of danger, so vague and ambiguous she could have been imagining it. “There’s something flying around over here.”
“Welk?” Luke asked.
A string of blaster bolts erupted from Luke’s other side, directly opposite the fluttering. He brought his lightsaber around and sent the bolts tearing back toward the source.
“I don’t think so,” Mara concluded.
She brought her own blade up, slashing through the darkness above her head, finding only dank air. Another flutter sounded behind her. She spun to attack and suddenly found herself in the Force grasp of someone else, twirling across the room and accelerating. Mara reached out, searching for her attacker. She felt only the horror and anguish that permeated the entire room.
Then she came to the wall, and a piercing agony blossomed low in her back. She looked down to find ten centimeters of mandible tip protruding from her abdomen, and the pain spread across her entire belly.
“Rodddddder!”
The second mandible closed, driving a pair of barbs deep into the flesh above her hip.
“That hurts.”
Mara reversed her grip on her lightsaber, and a flutter arose in the darkness at her side. Suddenly the handle grew stinging cold, then the blade started to sputter, flicker, and fade. Mara attacked anyway.
The blade sank two centimeters and sizzled out. The larva began to shake its head back and forth, its mandibles tearing at her inside.
“Mara?” Luke had activated his second lightsaber—the one he had taken from Alema earlier—and was advancing on Welk, batting the Dark Jedi’s blaster bolts back at him. “Need the spare—”
“Fine here!” Mara returned her useless weapon to its clip. “Just take care of Welk.”
Welk broke into an evasive tumble, firing as he moved and seldom going astray. Luke deflected a chain of bolts, but finished with his blades out of position and had to somersault away.
Trying.
Mara drew her blaster and put a bolt into the larva’s head. It shook even harder, drawing an involuntary cry from her as a barb scraped something inside. She fired a second time, then heard a soft throb in front of her and brought her weapon around.
The handle grew icy cold, then a depletion alarm sounded. When she squeezed the trigger, she heard only the soft pop of a gas charge moving into the XCiter chamber.
“Neat trick,” Mara said to the darkness. “It isn’t going to save you.”
The air pulsed above Mara’s left shoulder. She swung her helmet lamp toward the sound and—as always—saw nothing. Then a prickle of danger sense raced up her spine, and she looked in the opposite direction. Gliding out of the darkness, just at the edge of her light, was a meter-high Gorog with thick chitin armor and overlong mandibles.
Even had she not seen the splint fused to its broken leg, Mara would have known that this was the assassin she had fought on Ossus. Much smaller than a typical Gorog warrior, it was coming at her in a fury, mandibles clacking, thorax drumming, crooked proboscis foaming.
Mara finally hesitated, confused, unsure, angry. The nest would be reaching out to Ben now, using the Force to share all that was happening here, to make him feel every Gorog death.
A puff of dank air brushed Mara’s face. Her helmet grew biting cold and the lamp dimmed to darkness, then a soft phoot sounded from the direction of the approaching assassin bug. A glob of caustic-smelling acid hit the front of her ragged vac suit, and her flesh erupted with a new kind of burning.
Ben would have to get over it.
Opening herself completely to the Force, using her resolve to draw it in, Mara lifted her hand toward the assassin bug and squeezed. It popped with a long, sharp crackle and the rotten smell of dissipating methane.
A pair of blue bolts flashed up from Welk’s direction and streaked into the smashed body. Mara had just enough time to push out with the Force and create a small bubble of protection before the assassin bug exploded.
In the orange light, floating just beyond arm’s reach, she glimpsed a pale oval with little to suggest a face, only a few dark areas where there might have been a mouth and nose and eyes. Mara swung her hand toward it, but the blast light faded and the apparition was gone.
Luke barely felt the heat of the explosion, but the shock wave sent him cartwheeling into darkness. He kept his helmet lamp fixed on Welk’s tumbling form and brought himself to a halt a few meters later. Welk slammed into a sealed cell and crashed through the wax cap.
Luke Force-plucked the blaster from Welk’s hand and started toward him. He could feel that Mara was wounded but, at the moment, no longer under attack. The best thing he could do was keep the enemy too busy to worry about her—at least until Han and Leia arrived with the rest of the team.
Luke was still five meters away when Welk pulled his twisted body free of the cell. His black armor was smeared in yellow pulp,
and the lipless slash of his mouth hung agape with what was either fear or disdain.
Luke reactivated his lightsabers.
The soft whiffle of wings sounded to his right, and the air suddenly grew as thick and heavy as water. He twisted toward the noise, but his body seemed to move in slow motion, and by the time he turned there was nothing to see but darkness.
A crimson blade ignited a few meters ahead, and Luke knew Welk was coming. He brought his lightsabers around in a cross guard and looked back toward the attack. Again, his actions seemed to take forever, and the glow of the crimson blade drew within striking range long before Luke was ready to defend.
The fight was about to get interesting.
Luke extended himself toward the glow, slamming his Force presence into Welk. It was like trying to push Qoribu out of orbit. Welk continued to come, bringing his blade around in a brazen full-reach attack.
Luke didn’t even try to block. The Dark Jedi was strong—even stronger than Saba had said—but great strength was like great power. It seduced those who had it, lulled them into relying on might when other tools were better. Luke reversed tactics, pulling his attacker toward him. Welk tumbled forward, his hoarse voice croaking in alarm, his scarred face dropping toward Alema’s silver blade.
The low throb of wings sounded overhead, and the hilt of Alema’s lightsaber grew painfully cold as the thing causing the sound—he wondered if that could be Lomi Plo—drained the energy from its power cell. The blade sputtered and died.
Welk slammed into Luke headfirst, sending them both into an uncontrolled tumble. The Dark Jedi’s crimson blade flashed past Luke’s leg and burned a gouge into his shin, sending a fiery shaft of pain straight to the heart.
Luke righted himself, but he was still moving in slow motion, and Welk was already coming again. Luke reached out in the Force, bringing his thumb and forefinger together.
Welk’s lipless mouth fell open. Dire gurgling sounds began to rise from his throat—and then Luke remembered Alema’s sacrifice of the membrosia giver. Had he grown that casual about killing? So accustomed to the power he wielded that he would use it to kill when he had other means to defend himself?
Luke opened his fingers and released Welk.
The Dark Jedi’s breathing returned to normal, but he stopped where he was, rubbing his throat and eyeing Luke in suspicion.
Skywalker! Mara’s voice was a screech in the Force, but when she spoke aloud, it sounded weak and pained. “Are you crazy? Finish him!”
“Not that way,” Luke answered. “The Force may have no light or dark side, but we do. We must choose.”
“Right now?” Mara asked.
“Especially now.”
Luke caught Welk’s gaze, then—still moving slowly—raised his remaining lightsaber to high guard.
“Are you ready, son?”
“We are not your son!”
The Dark Jedi sailed forward, bristling at the condescension, striking at the flank Luke had left open.
Moving even slower than was necessary, Luke pulled his guard around and rotated away. A soft flutter sounded behind him. The hilt of his lightsaber grew cold—as Alema’s had a moment earlier—and the blade died.
By then Luke had already released the weapon and accelerated to his best speed, slipping forward even as he twisted away from the attack. The sudden speed change caught Welk by surprise. Luke trapped the Dark Jedi’s wrist in an X-block and continued to pivot smoothly away, forcing those hands into a tight circle and driving the lightsaber back up into Welk’s stomach in one not-so-fast motion.
Welk let out a bloodcurdling scream and tried to deactivate the lightsaber, but Luke had his hand over the switch and now he was the strong one. He wrenched the handle free and ripped the blade out the Dark Jedi’s side, then turned to face the attack he felt certain would be coming from Lomi Plo—and went spinning out of control when the air suddenly grew light and thin again and he could once more move at normal speed.
Luke saw the wall flashing past, coming up fast, barbed mandibles protruding where he was about to hit. He deactivated the lightsaber, then reached out in the Force and jerked the larva from its cell, slammed into it in midair, and tumbled off in a new direction.
This time he managed to stop himself before he hit another wall. He reignited Welk’s lightsaber and spun around with the crimson blade swinging—then felt a jolt of alarm and sensed Mara approaching out of the darkness.
“Hey, it’s me!” Mara used the Force to push the weapon down. “Don’t you recognize your own wife anymore?”
Luke deactivated the blade. “Sorry.”
Being careful to keep the beam below her chin so he didn’t blind her, Luke turned his helmet lamp in Mara’s direction. Her Force aura had subsided to a mere blush, and the charred circles on her body reminded him of how much his own electrobolt wounds ached. But it was the jagged, triangular puncture wound in her right abdomen that he found most alarming. About the size of three fingers bunched together, it was smeared with grime and oozing dark blood.
“How are you feeling?”
“About as good as I look.” As Mara spoke, her eyes were searching the darkness around them. “But I’ll last until we can find Alema. Any idea where she’s—”
A series of dull thuds reverberated through the chamber, followed by the fading light and dying crackle of the thermal detonators that had just discharged inside a wall across the chamber. An instant later, a pair of Han’s YVH bugcruncher droids rode into the chamber on the blue-white tails of their propulsion thrusters and quickly swung toward the Skywalkers.
“Remain calm!” one ordered in its ultradeep, ultramale voice. “Remain stationary! Help is coming.”
FORTY-ONE
The bolt burns had been smeared with bacta salve, the puncture wounds were covered with actibandages on both sides, and there was enough stericlean in the air to disinfect half the nest. All that could be done in the field, Leia had done, and still she did not like how her sister-in-law looked. Mara had an ashy complexion and a hint of blue in her lips, and her eyes were so sunken they looked like crash craters.
“We’ll get you to the Falcon soon,” Leia said. They were back in the membrosia chamber, where the worst of the battle had taken place, waiting for a pair of fresh vac suits for Mara and Luke. “Bug four should be returning anytime now.”
“No hurry.” Mara squeezed Leia’s hand. “I’ve been hit worse than this.”
“It’s not you she’s worried about,” Han said. “If I don’t get out of this place soon…”
Han let his sentence trail off, and Leia turned to find him shining his helmet lamp into the haze-filled darkness. The beam extended only about ten meters before terminating in a wall of floating Gorog corpses.
“What, Han?”
“I don’t know.” Han pointed into the carnage, then swung his helmet lamp away to reveal a faint golden glow snaking through the corpses and floating blood globules. “Trouble, maybe.”
Leia reached out in the Force and felt a swarm of Killiks approaching in the company of three Joiners.
“It’s Jaina and Zekk!” she said. “With Raynar.”
“Like I said,” Han muttered. “Trouble.”
The golden glow resolved itself into a line of shine-balls being carried by a long column of Killiks in chitinous pressure suits of many different configurations. At the head of the procession came the hulking form of Raynar Thul, his vac suit helmet tucked under one arm, his scar-frozen face red with fury. Half a meter behind, Jaina and Zekk followed, looking more nervous than angry.
Leia waited as they approached, then bowed to Raynar. “UnuThul, I’m sorry we must meet—”
“So are we,” Raynar said. The battle-pitted form of Bug Four drifted out from among the mass of Unu following him. The droid’s photoreceptors were dark, the seams of his body shell were smeared with soot, and he was surrounded by the acrid stink of scorched circuits. “Your droid murdered Unu.”
Giving Leia no chance to
respond, Raynar floated around her to the sides of Luke and Mara, and several hand-sized Killik healers poked their tiny heads up past the collar of his pressure suit. Leia started to go after him, but was stopped by a gentle Force tug.
“Wait with us,” Jaina said from behind Leia. “Trying to explain now will only make Unu angrier.”
“Thank you for the advice.” Leia turned to face Jaina and caught the flash of several tiny eyes peering out of her collar, too. “Looks crowded in there.”
Jaina stared into Leia’s eyes. “Not really.”
“It grows on you,” Zekk said. He reached over and rubbed the backs of his fingers down Jaina’s cheek.
“To tell the truth, we kind of like it,” Jaina added.
“Oh,” Leia said. “I would have thought all that creeping inside your suit would feel, um, uncomfortable.”
Jaina and Zekk shook their heads in unison.
“Not at all,” Jaina said.
“It makes us feel whole,” Zekk added.
The trio spent an awkward moment looking at each other, Jaina and Zekk softly humming and clicking to themselves, Leia hiding her feelings behind a polite smile. Though she had already sensed in the Force what had become of her daughter and Zekk, actually seeing them behave like Joiners was almost more than she could bear. Her heart was dropping with every beat.
Finally, Jaina asked, “What are you doing here, Mother?” Little Killik healers began to crawl out of her suit and launch themselves into the darkness. “We thought you were going to open negotiations with the Chiss.”
“I had another idea,” Leia said. “One that might actually work.”
Jaina and Zekk waited patiently for her to elaborate.
“There’s no sense explaining it twice,” Leia said. “Let’s wait until Ray—er, UnuThul is available.”
A hurt look came to the faces of Jaina and Zekk. Leia felt a pang of regret, but she did not apologize. Too much depended on her plan, and she could not risk having the pair speak against it before she had a chance to present it to Raynar.
“What about Dad?” Jaina asked quietly. She glanced toward Han, who remained with Luke and Mara but was looking over at his daughter and Zekk. “Is he still going to cut our tether for staying?”
