The baton missed Jaina entirely and impaled Lowbacca, piercing him clean through the shoulder. The Wookiee roared and wobbled—like Jaina, blorash jelly had pinned him to the floor— and he fell into Tesar, who was in the act of drawing his blaster.
Little jets of air began to spurt from Lowbacca's wounds, crystallizing immediately in the vacuum and drifting to the floor as glittering snow.
Half deafened by the Wookiee roar she heard over her headset, Jaina hauled herself upright, aided by muscle and low gravity, her lightsaber glowing a soft violet off the cavern walls. Tsavong Lah seized an amphistaff from the weapons he'd strewn nearby and slashed the weapon at Jaina's head.
Jaina was frozen to the floor by blorash jelly, and Tsavong Lah was behind her. Her helmet cut oft" her peripheral vision, and the only way she knew she was being attacked was that she saw Tsavong Lah's madly dancing shadow cast by the powerful lights of the load-lifters. She dropped the point of her lightsaber behind her back to guard against Tsavong Lah's swing, and the impact almost wrenched her arm out of its socket.
Her heart thundered in her cars. She twisted as far to her right as possible in order to see her attacker and managed to parry the next furious series of strikes. Tsavong Lah shifted to her left, and Jaina twisted toward him and swung her lightsaber in a sweeping parry from high to low to catch any possible strike. Again the impact was massive, and nearly tore the weapon from her grasp. The warrior kept chopping at her, the amphistaff held in both hands, and she parried furiously. She had no chance to counterattack, and the impacts were numbing her arm. If something didn't happen soon, her weapon would be knocked from her hand.
The fight in the vacuum was in utter silence. Jaina could hear only her own rasping breath and the throbbing of her heart, and then the silence was broken, over the comm, by Lowbacca's bellow as Tesar yanked the baton out of his shoulder.
"It'z Tsavong Lah!" Jaina was startled by Tesar's words coming through her helmet phones. The warmaster's face was well known in the New Republic.
"Shoot him!" Jaina said. She didn't much care who he was; she only wanted him dead and her friends safe.
Tesar obliged by firing at the warmaster, the brilliant blaster bolts glancing off the rock walls, but the Yuuzhan Vong danced to Jaina's right again to put Jaina between himself and Tesar's blaster.
"This one must patch up Lowie!" Tesar said. "He'z losing air! You've got to hold off the Vong!"
"Thanks," Jaina muttered. She twisted to the right again, turning the movement into a cut. She chopped a chunk oat of the frozen amphistaff, and Tsavong Lah stepped out of range to pick up another weapon. When he came on again he lunged rather than slashed, and Jaina was able to slide her blade into a circular parry and bind. But in her twisted position she lacked the leverage of wrist and arm to force the disarm that followed the bind; instead her blade grated on the amphistaff and locked.
Only a meter away she could see Tsavong Lah's silent snarl of triumph. He kicked and drove his heel into Jaina's thigh.
An overwhelming jolt of pain shot through her thigh and knee. With a cry she lost her grip on her lightsaber and pitched forward.
In front of her Lowbacca crouched before Tesar, both nailed to the ground by blorash jelly. Lowie's hand pressed on his shoulder, trying to hold in his air, while Tesar worked frantically to apply a patch to the wound on the Wookiee's back.
Jaina snatched Lowie's lightsaber from his belt and triggered it as she pulled herself to her feet. Tsavong Lah had cleared Jaina's lightsaber from his weapon and lunged forward again, and his eyes widened in surprise as Jaina slashed two clawed toes from the radank leg he had implanted as an arm.
The warmaster stepped back as dark blood oozed from the wound and fell with a graceful lack of haste to the floor. Jaina kept the lightsaber on guard, pointed at his face. He glared at her, red murder glowing in his eyes.
"How's Streak?" she asked.
"He'z passed out. This one has patched the exit wound, but the wound at the front iz still venting."
Jaina watched Tsavong Lah take a grip on his weapon and dig his feet into the ground.
"Hurry," she said, "I think I just made him mad."
Tsavong Lah charged, the amphistaff a blur. He attacked to Jaina's right side, drawing her lightsaber out of line, then shifted to a vicious overhead cut coming in from the left. Jaina managed to block in time, but the impact bent her far over, the air going from her lungs in a whuff. Her head low, she could sec the soft violet radiance of her own lightsaber lying on the floor past the war-master's legs.
She sliced madly at the amphistaff as she straightened again, engaging the furious warrior in a long series of attacks and parries.
And then Jaina reached out with the force, picked up her lightsaber from the ground behind Tsavong Lah, and drove the violet blade point-first through his throat.
The warmaster fell. Jaina didn't spare him another glance, but turned to Tesar and Lowbacca. Tesar was just finishing the patch on the front of Lowie's vac suit. She could see the suit begin to reinflate, the Wookiee's muzzle snarling open as he drew in a breath.
Tesar looked up at her. "The suit is patched. But the shoulder is not."
"Force-meld," Jaina gasped. "Tell Uncle Luke we need another MD droid. And blood to replace what Lowie's lost."
"That is wise."
Tesar straightened, then looked down at his feet. He tried to move one foot, and the blorash jelly shattered like fine glass.
Apparently it didn't deal with vacuum well.
"'Now we can move," Jaina said. "Great timing, as usual."
* * *
Chapter 27
Five days after the Battle of Ebaq, Luke Skywalker met with Gal Omas. Cal had spent the weeks prior to the battle in isolation on the Super Star Destroyer Guardian, cruising safely between the stars. Now Guardian had joined Kre'fey's fleet at Kashyyyk.
"My heart was in my mouth," Cal said. "I was sitting there watching the battle and—I wanted to do something. I wanted to give an order!"
"Thank you for your restraint." Luke smiled. "That's been one of our problems—too many voices giving orders."
"Don't I know it." Gal frowned. "Will you sit?"
The Star Destroyer possessed an admiral's lounge that seemed half the size of a hoverbail field, filled with tasteful furniture and scented by the blossoms the ship's gardener cultivated and set in beautiful vases.
Cal and Luke sat in plush armchairs, and Gal rang for a steward to bring drinks.
"I've been thinking about the government and how to fix it," Cal said. "The war's sense of urgency has resulted in unity right now, but once the Senate decides we're going to win, they're going to want to figure out how to get their hands on the spoils."
Luke nodded. "What's your solution?"
"Persuade the worlds to elect more responsible Senators?" Cal suggested weakly, and then laughed at his own absurdity.
"You've got other ideas."
Cal nodded. "Confine the Senate to its proper sphere, for one thing. It should legislate and supervise, not try to run the administration from day to day. A truly independent judiciary would curb their more ambitious maneuvers. A new federalism that properly defines the boundaries between the Senate and the regimes on the various planets."
"You're talking a new constitution."
Cal gave a tight-lipped little smile. "I'm even thinking of names. federal Galactic Republic. Galactic Federation of Free Alliances." He frowned. "Do you think it's possible?"
"I think a Chief of State who's just won a war against an implacable enemy might have a lot of currency with the Senate and the people."
Cal's smile faded. "Guess I'd better get busy and win it, then."
Which brought them to the point of the meeting. Luke looked at Cal and said, "Win it with Alpha Red?"
Cal's look turned grim. "No," he said. "Not now. It's a last resort only."
Luke nodded. "Thank you, sir."
Luke was able to assure Jacen that Alpha Red had been put o
n hold as soon as he and his nephew could find time to be alone. Jacen had been rescued mere hours after the end of the battle, but he had spent the intervening time with his parents, and Luke had been too busy to question him.
Now Jacen had returned to his quarters on Ralroost, a ship filled with the sound of clattering pneumatic cutters and hissing welders, all busy repairing battle damage. Jacen seemed rested and fit—he had put on weight since his escape from the Yuuzhan Vong, and his eyes were bright and his short beard neatly trimmed.
"But Alpha Red will still exist," Jacen said. He had courteously given Luke his only chair and sat cross-legged on his narrow bunk.
"We can't put the knowledge back in its box," Luke said.
Jacen shook his head, frowned down at the floor. "Insufficient experience of depravity," he murmured.
"Beg pardon?"
Jacen glanced up. "Something Vergere once said. Implying that I had much to learn."
"Vergere," Luke said, "thought knowledge was the answer to everything."
"Was she wrong?"
Luke considered the question. "I value compassion over knowledge," he said. "But I hope never to have to choose between the two."
"I chose compassion as well," Jacen said. "Compassion for Jaina over the knowledge that my attempt to rescue her was almost certainly useless."
Luke listened carefully to Jacen's tone for a hint of bitterness. He didn't hear it. Jacen seemed to have accepted what had happened, accepted it somehow and dealt with it.
He reflected that Jacen was remarkable in his capacity for acceptance.
"And then Vergere chose compassion as well," Jacen went on. "Compassion for me. And she gave her life for mine."
"She thought your life was worth saving," Luke said. "And so do I."
Jacen looked up sharply. "I hope you won't have to sacrifice yourself for me," he said.
Luke smiled. "Let's just say that's another choice I hope never to have to make."
Jacen looked away. "Vergere said the old must give way to the new."
"You're the future of the Jedi order," Luke said. "You and Jaina and Tahiri and the others. In my time, I must make way for you as well."
Jacen looked thoughtful. "In your time . . ." he said. He scratched his brown beard, then looked in annoyance at his hand and returned it to his lap. He looked at Luke. "Do you think it's possible that the issues of this war are completely different from— from your war, from the war against the Empire?"
"How do you mean?"
A repair crew of droids clattered by outside the door, and Jacen waited for their sound to fade before continuing. "Your war was about light and dark. You and my mom versus Vader and the Emperor. But this war—" He hesitated. "For all the evil they do, the enemy aren't dark, exactly—the enemy are outside the Force entirely. So to fight them we need to ... to make the Force bigger. Bigger than light and dark, bigger than human and Yuuzhan Vong . . ." He shook his head, then gave a laugh. "I'm talking nonsense, aren't I? Make the Force bigger. The Force is already all living things."
"Perhaps it's not the Force that needs to be bigger," Luke said. "Maybe what needs to be bigger are our ideas about the Force."
Jacen made as if to laugh again, then stopped. His face turned serious. "Bigger ideas about the Force. How do we manage that?"
Luke rose from the chair, and on his way out of the cabin put his hand on Jacen's shoulder. "If anyone can do it, Jacen," he said, "it would be you."
Jaina left Ebaq 9 eight days after the battle. The interior of the moon was still hot, but she was saved from the radiation by being carried by a loadlifter in a lead-lined container box.
She insisted on being the last one out. She had reunited after the battle with the pilots she'd sent away down the side passage, and they'd spent the week in their oxygen tents.
In the tents there had been nothing to do but talk, play sabacc, and sleep. Occasionally the MD droid changed Lowbacca's bacta patches. Jaina rebelled at first against this unstructured life—she was used to long days of drill, study, and instruction. She wanted to do something.
But no meaningful work was possible, and eventually the tension began to ebb and she began to relax. She joined the other Jedi in meditation, at first to help Lowie heal, and then because it became her only connection to the universe that lay beyond the tents. Through the Force and the Jedi meld, she bade farewell to her friends as they left Ebaq's system—Kre'fey's fleet had been recalled to the defense of Kashyyyk, and Bel Iblis returned to Fondor. Soon the only friendly force remaining in the system was the Smugglers' Alliance squadron led by her father, the squadron that had lost half its ships turning the enemy squadron from her.
From her. So many had died to keep her safe. Her father's friends, Vale and three other Twin Suns pilots, Vergere . . . She didn't know how to think about them now.
And so she meditated, and slowly relaxed, and opened herself to the universe. To its glories and pleasures, and its griefs and sorrows as well. Sometimes, when she was laughing with the others, she felt a wave of heartache strike her, and she had to turn away, gulping tears.
There were so many to mourn. A whole war's worth.
The final indignity came when she was carried out in the lead-lined box, like a package to be delivered to her friends. When she emerged, she was in the Millennium Falcon's cargo bay, and the room was filled with applause.
The light dazzled her eyes. She stepped out of the box and wrestled the vac suit helmet off her head. Standing before her were her parents, Jacen, the eight surviving Twin Suns pilots, Kyp Durron, and old friends like Talon Karrde, Booster Terrik, and Lando Calrissian.
They all seemed inexpressibly dear to her. Jaina went along the room and embraced them one by one. As she touched Jacen she felt the twin bond roaring in her head, the memories and comradeship and love all singing in her heart like a chorus of concern.
Her father, himself blinking back tears, reached into a pocket and held out a pair of gleaming insignia. "Admiral Kre'fey's decided to promote you," he said. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Colonel!"
"Thank you." She focused on the insignia Han wore on his civilian vest, and snapped him a salute. "Thank you, General!"
Han returned the salute with a shamefaced grin. Then Jaina turned to her mother, who stood by Han's side with her arms open, and Jaina threw herself at Leia and buried her face in her mother's neck.
This is going to be really bad for discipline, she thought.
Leia stroked her hair. "Will you take a vacation now?she demanded.
Jaina laughed, but the tears burned in her eyes. "You know what?" she mumbled. "Being the Sword of the Jedi really stinks."
His body twitched to remembered pain. Images of needles and knifelike claws floated through his mind. He remembered the shriek of severed nerves, the grind of bone against bone, the way blood oozed slowly from a wound.
He shivered. Why had this happened? Why? He had never harmed anyone.
He opened his eyes at a sound, and there before him was the withered one, a sneer drawn across his crooked slash of a mouth.
"Your guests have arrived, Supreme One."
At the words Shimrra felt his power flow into him, his majesty and command and presence. He sat on his spiked throne in the Hall of Confluence with its white bone pillars, and his subjects waited outside the huge doors—he could detect them there, feel the subdued fluttering of their busy minds.
Shimrra looked at the disfigured being before him. Onimi. "Let the doors open," he said.
The four doors trembled open, and the four castes and their leaders entered and filed in silence to their places. Onimi sat on the lowest step of Shimrra's dais and adopted a sullen expression.
Shimrra could sense the deep foreboding in his inferiors, the sense that the great defeat at Ebaq had been a disaster from which the Yuuzhan Vong might not recover. Cowards, he thought. These fools must be strengthened.
He rose massively from his throne, stood before them in the flayed skin of Steng. He sent his p
resence out among his listeners and began to work on their emotions, to drive them into a frenzy.
"The gods test their servants!" he shouted. "They have permitted enemy treachery' to betray one of our fleets!"
One of the warriors flung himself to the ground. "Command us, Supreme One!"
"We must thank the gods for this chance to test our purity and resolve!" Shimrra roared. "Let the sacrifices be doubled! Let heretics be sought and punished! Let prayers rise to the gods from every temple!"
"So shall it be!" High Priest Jakan was on his feet, shaking a fist.
"Let the warriors redouble their vigilance! Any step backward is a betrayal! Let the commanders plan new offensives and new victories! Let them spill the blood of the infidels!"
The warriors bayed their approval, raising their amphistaffs.
"The traitor Nom Anor must be found!" Shimrra proclaimed. "Let him be slaughtered and his bones ground to powder!"
Afterward, after his audience filed out, Shimrra collapsed onto his throne. Onimi rose from his crouch and gave a sneering look at the far end of the hall.
"Fools," he said. "But what choice is there but to use them?"
Shimrra made no reply. His eyes were closed.
Onimi's voice was thoughtful. "We began this war, and now we must fight on and hope for the best." He gave a little shiver. "You've betrayed and used the gods—perhaps they now betray you in return."
Shimrra said nothing.
"Yet Nen Yim may yet fill the eighth cortex," Onimi mused. "She needs time. Perhaps her resources should be increased."
Shimrra remained silent, his torn nostrils flaring with each massive breath. Onimi cocked his swollen, misshapen head. "Do you not find it amusing, Supreme One?" he said. "We gambled and lost. And now we must double the stakes and gamble again, with the odds against us even greater than before. Is that not cause for laughter, Lord Shimrra?"
Onimi threw his head back and laughed, a full-throated shriek of amusement that rang from the room's high ceiling.
Shimrra drew in air and laughed, a huge deep booming that rattled his throne's coral spikes.
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