Star by Star Page 31

  “Report.”

  “Sir, we are fifteen seconds ahead of schedule. Two-Four-S was able to penetrate the hull with ten coma-gas canisters; effectiveness assessment currently unavailable. Three voxyn were detected in the stern hold and attacked with class-C thermal detonators; postblast sensor sweep detected no sign of surviving life-forms.”

  “And the vessel itself?” Anakin asked. Tekli appeared beside him, her pudgy Chadra-Fan snout twitching incessantly as she reached up to spray a pain-numbing antiseptic over his raw back.

  He nodded his thanks, but kept his attention fixed on 2-1S. “Were you able to do any internal mapping?”

  “Sir, we are aboard a corvette-analog picket boat, length one hundred twenty-two meters, estimated crew ninety-eight,” 2-1S said. “Ultrasonic soundings suggest a two-level design with back-to-back decks sharing a common floor, four main access corridors, three aft holds, forward-facing bridge in the bow, and a substantial network of nondiagrammed ducts.”

  Anakin groaned inwardly; the ducts would make it easy for the enemy to move around undetected. The Barabels came up behind him loaded with weapons, equipment, and bulky jumpsuits.

  “One-One-A fished these out of the flushlock,” Tesar said, passing Anakin’s lightsaber to him.

  As Anakin took it, the lambent crystal inside opened him to the presence of the Yuuzhan Vong, an indistinct fury somewhere forward in the ship.

  Bela pointed to a gob of frozen gunk on the handle. “Want that meat?”

  “Uh, not really.”

  Anakin knocked the garbage off the handle and clipped the weapon to the equipment harness Tesar was holding out to him. The Barabels exchanged expressionless reptilian glances, then Krasov retrieved the gunk and divided it into three even pieces. Anakin rolled his eyes and selected a blaster pistol and half a dozen stun grenades from the small arsenal Tesar was carrying, then called the rest of the group over while Tahiri, who had insisted on taking the duty over from Tekli, plastered his back with bacta bandages.

  Bela passed jumpsuits to those who were not yet dressed, and within moments everyone on the strike team was garbed in a simple brown uniform that made the Jedi Knights seem both efficient and intimidating. The jumpsuits were also light armor, for they were lined with the same alternating layers of molytex and quantum fiber that made the YVH droids’ laminanium armor so impenetrable. In a pinch, they could even serve as vac suits; they had been designed to work with the emergency suits worn back on Eclipse, but attached independently to the appendage pieces and could be made airtight in their own right.

  Anakin divided the strike team into two squads—assault and support—and outlined his plan. After allowing everyone a few moments to meditate and rejuvenate their anguished bodies through the Force, they opened their emotions to each other.

  As Jacen weaved the battle meld, Anakin sensed a certain reservation in his brother, some misgiving that sent unsettling ripples through the entire strike team. He immediately regretted not sending Jacen back with Lando, but swallowed his irritation and focused on the task at hand. The team would sense his resentment through their emotional bond, and such distractions were the last thing they needed now.

  Anakin fitted a breath mask over his nose and mouth, then affixed the attachable hood to his jumpsuit to protect his head. When the others did the same, he was so awed by the effect that he instantly felt better.

  “Astral!” he exclaimed. “Let’s go do this.”

  YVH 2-1S opened his elbow and fired a pair of flash grenades down the corridor, then stepped through the tattered door membrane. Thud bugs began to plink at his laminanium armor. He silenced the source with a flurry of blaster bolts, and the Jedi followed him forward. The interior of the ship looked oddly cavernlike and murky, with hazy circles of bioluminescent lichen clinging to the walls and clouds of coma gas swirling through the air and door valves sagging open every two meters.

  Anakin advanced with lightsaber in hand and blaster holstered. Behind him came Tesar Sebatyne, a big B-100 power blaster cradled in both arms, then Alema Rar and the rest of the assault squad. Jacen was in the middle with Tenel Ka, followed by an indignant Tahiri—she wanted to be in front with Anakin—and Bela and Krasov Hara. Last came 2-4S, who was tasked with covering Lowbacca while the Wookiee used a laser drill to insert flechette mines into the system ducts. Jaina remained behind with Ulaha and the support squad, covering the other corridors with powerful blaster minicannons.

  As Anakin and the others moved toward the bridge, it grew apparent that the coma gas had done its job well. Unconscious Yuuzhan Vong lay sprawled across sagging door valves, curled up in sleeping nests, slumped over duty stations in shielding nodules and weapon turrets. Several had fallen to the floor in front of gnulliths—the Yuuzhan Vong equivalent of breath masks—and one crew member had even managed to lay the thing on his face before falling prey to the neural effects of the coma gas.

  The strike team was attacked only once, when Anakin sensed a sudden flare of enemy anxiety behind a half-open door valve. By the time he turned to warn the others, a gnullith-masked warrior was flinging a pair of thud bugs into Bela’s shoulder. The projectiles smashed harmlessly against her jumpsuit’s armored lining, and she barely flinched before jerking her attacker from his hiding place and skewering him on her sister’s waiting lightsaber.

  As they drew near the bow, the assault team lost contact with the Force—no doubt because ysalamiri were near. Anakin lost his sense of the Yuuzhan Vong, as well—a hint that the lambent crystal was somehow connected to the Force. It was good to know, he supposed, but he really didn’t care as long as it worked when the Force returned.

  Ten meters ahead, the corridor ended in a vertical bulkhead, where an unconscious Yuuzhan Vong warrior hung as though pinned to the wall. The strange sight confused no one; like all good starship designers, the enemy made the most of shipboard space, utilizing their dovin basals to orient gravity in the most convenient direction. The bulkhead looked like a wall from the assault squad’s current perspective, but it would become a floor as soon as they crossed the open area and placed a foot on it.

  A gentle whumpf shook the corridor behind them, and 2-1S said, “Two-Four-S reports mine detonation in the main elimination duct. Ultrasonic soundings suggest the triggering agent was a voxyn, injured but not crippled.”

  “Voxyn?” Anakin demanded from behind his breath mask. “I thought Two-Four-S disintegrated them!”

  “There was a point zero eight chance of a single survival,” 2-1S pointed out. “Two-Four-S calculates the odds of a double survival—”

  “Don’t tell me,” Anakin said, raising a hand. “I really don’t want to know.”

  He used his comlink to warn Jaina about the voxyn and sent 2-4S back to watch ducts for her, then asked 2-1S for a see-through sensor sweep.

  “Eleven conscious warriors waiting on the deck below, in a cabin adjacent to the bulkhead ahead,” the droid reported. “Tactical analysis suggests the likelihood of an ambush.”

  “You don’t say,” Anakin said. “What about Ganner?”

  “Implant triangulation fixes Ganner Rhysode at five meters starboard and moving forward. Passive acoustics suggest the company of several guards. Vital readings satisfactory, heart rate and respiration indicate deep sleep.”

  “Coma-gassed, but moving,” Anakin surmised. “They must be cutting their way from one cabin to another, or Jaina’s squad would see them.”

  “And they have ysalamiri.” Alema Rar laid a hand on Anakin’s arm and spoke so quietly that he had to lean his ear toward her breath mask. “The Yuuzhan Vong believe we are soft. They will try to use him against us.”

  “Against us?” Anakin found himself staring almost hypnotically into Alema’s pale Twi’lek eyes. “As bait?”

  When she nodded, Anakin disengaged himself and ignited his lightsaber. Being careful not to penetrate all the way through, he plunged the blade into the floor and began to cut a circle. He had no real plan yet except to avoid the ambush,
but walking into a trap was not going to save Ganner, either. The yorik coral was easier to cut than durasteel, but it popped and cracked loudly as it melted, and Anakin worried that the enemy would not be as surprised as he hoped.

  Jacen stepped to Anakin’s side. “What are you doing?” The disappointment was evident in his face, and Anakin knew others could see it, too. “We should be going after Ganner.”

  “No, we must destroy the ambush party first,” Alema said. “This is better.”

  “Better how?” Jacen asked. “Anakin can’t keep sacrificing others to make his plans work. That way lies the dark side.”

  “Sacrificing others?” Anakin did not look away from his work. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ulaha, and now Ganner,” Jacen said. “You told Ulaha to attack the voxyn, and now you’re abandoning Ganner.”

  The accusations hit Anakin almost physically. His lightsaber slipped and cut a deep furrow across the floor, and he found himself glaring at his brother, sick with anger and hurt.

  “How can you think that?” he demanded. “Ulaha disobeyed orders. I wanted her to tell Duman Yaght the name of the base. I did not say to attack!”

  Jacen’s cheeks flushed, then his jaw dropped, and he stood speechless for a long time. Finally, he stammered, “Anakin, I-I’m sorry. When Ulaha attacked, I thought … I just assumed—”

  “I know what you assumed,” Anakin said. Though his brother’s regret was evident on his crimson face, no apology could erase the doubt he had expressed about Anakin’s character—nor the fact that he had been so quick to believe the worst, just as their father had when Chewbacca died. Anakin plunged his lightsaber back into the floor and continued to cut. “Get away from me. You’re holding things up.”

  Jacen started to reply, but Tenel Ka caught him by the arm and pulled him away. “This cannot be resolved now, Jacen. You must wait until later.”

  With Alema’s help, Anakin cut the circle to within a few millimeters of the other side, then activated his comlink to warn Jaina about what they were doing. She and 2-4S were busy keeping the wounded voxyn trapped in the systems ducts, but she paused long enough to warn Zekk and Raynar not to fire when figures started appearing in their corridor.

  Bela and Krasov kicked the circle out, then lay on their bellies and vanished, one after the other, into the floor. The muffled zing of their repeating blasters immediately came back through the hole. Alema went next, diving headfirst, then Anakin, lightsaber in one hand, concussion grenade in the other. On the other side, he slowed and landed feetfirst on what felt like the ceiling.

  The whine of blasterfire and drone-splat of striking thud bugs drove Anakin against the wall. Mind struggling to reorient, he thumbed the arming switch of his grenade. A trio of would-be ambushers lay at the end of the corridor, vonduun crab armor stitched with holes from the Barabel sisters’ repeating blasters.

  The thud bugs came from the open door of the ambushers’ cabin, and also from the bulkhead itself, where a pair of bridge guards wearing gnulliths were attacking through a jagged melt hole. He saw no sign of Ganner, but had not expected to.

  Anakin nodded across the corridor to Alema. She armed her own grenade, then they tossed the weapons into the ambush cabin. There were two bright flashes and a gut-deep jolt, and a tongue of flame shot into the corridor reeking of scorched flesh.

  Waving the others to follow, Anakin charged forward behind the fiery curtain. A line of thud bugs crackled along the wall, then one took him in the chest and slammed him down on his back. Bela and Krasov pounded past, pouring blasterfire into the bulkhead, and Alema came next, pausing to pull him to his feet. It hurt to breathe and he might have a cracked rib, but his jumpsuit’s armored liner had spared him any blood or deep pain. He activated his comlink.

  “Two-One-S, secure the bulkhead.”

  The droid appeared at the end of the corridor and dropped onto the bulkhead, now standing perpendicular to Anakin. The bridge guards swarmed him with thud bugs and magma pebbles, burning thumb-sized pits into his armor. He counterattacked with sensor-targeted blaster bolts and electrorays, and the enemy fire withered.

  A sporadic stream of thud bugs began to assail 2-1S from the deck where they had first located Ganner. The droid ignored this nuisance and dropped to his knees beside the melt holes, then fired into the bridge itself. Anakin sent Alema and the Barabel sisters to support the droid, then returned to the hole in the floor and dropped back through to the other side.

  Tesar and Lowbacca were in the forward cabin, already outlining a new doorway with elastic detonite. As Anakin approached, the pair pressed themselves flat against the wall and ignited the charge with the tip of Lowie’s lightsaber. There was a sharp crack and the clatter of spraying shrapnel, then smoke filled the air and the new door remained closed. Tesar stepped away from the wall and sprang into the yorik coral feetfirst.

  The slab flew into the adjacent cabin, slammed into something large, and drew a startled Yuuzhan Vong curse. Tesar silenced the voice with the staccato roar of his power blaster, then Lowbacca charged in behind him. Anakin ignited his own lightsaber and … heard the all-too-familiar burp of a voxyn expelling acid.

  Anakin’s thoughts leapt to Lowbacca—he could not bear the thought of telling Chewbacca’s family that another member had died with him—then the brown mucus came shooting out of the makeshift door and splashed against the far wall. From inside came a Wookiee growl and the shrill sizzle of a lightsaber straining to cut, then a ghostly squeal of pain that quickly modulated into the opening burst of a screech attack.

  Tesar’s power blaster roared again.

  The screech choked to an end. Anakin stepped through the doorway and found himself looking into a large wardroom, where a blaster-scorched voxyn was scurrying toward a lopsided hole in the rear wall. The thing was missing at least a tail and two rear legs, but remained quick enough to dodge a blaster bolt.

  Scattered across the floor were nearly a dozen coma-gassed Yuuzhan Vong, but two more stood behind the claw-scarred remnants of a ysalamiri tree, their faces half hidden behind gnulliths, amphistaffs held ready. Tesar disposed of the sickly looking ysalamiri with a quick shot from his power blaster, and the Yuuzhan Vong warriors rushed to do battle.

  Tesar brought his power blaster around and burned a hole through the chest armor of the first one, hurling him back against the wall. Anakin intercepted the second, freeing Lowbacca to make one last stab at the vanishing voxyn.

  The Yuuzhan Vong tried to pin Anakin against the wall, changing his amphistaff into whip form and flicking the fanged head at the Jedi’s eyes. It was a tired tactic, almost disrespectful. Anakin feigned a stumble and dropped into a crouch, catching the attack on his lightsaber’s fiery blade.

  The serpent recoiled. Anakin posted his free hand, whipped his feet around and trapped the Yuuzhan Vong’s knees, scissored his legs. The warrior yelled and hit the floor like a bag of rocks. The amphistaff struck again. Anakin blocked, flicked the thing away, brought his own blade down across the enemy’s throat.

  As the head rolled away, he spun toward the rear wall and was relieved to find Lowbacca holding yet another voxyn leg. The Wookiee’s disappointed growls left no doubt that the creature had escaped, but Anakin was happy enough to see him standing. He gathered his own feet beneath him and saw, as he had feared, no sign of Ganner in the room.

  Anakin noticed a chill along his spine and realized that his sense of the Yuuzhan Vong had returned, then he felt Jacen’s touch brush his mind. There was also another sensation, the familiar hunger of the voxyn, wounded and angry, lurking somewhere in the ducts. They would hunt it down later, after the vessel was secure. Waving his lightsaber out the door to avoid being blasted by a minicannon, Anakin motioned Tesar and Lowbacca after him and stepped into the corridor.

  Jaina’s voice came over the comlink. “What’s that I feel? It can’t be a voxyn. Two-Four-S and I killed it. I’m looking at its body right now.”

  “Just keep an eye on those duct
s,” Anakin said, resisting the urge to comm 2-1S about the odds of all three escaping the thermal detonator. “There’s another one.”

  He turned toward the bulkhead and found 2-1S kneeling over the shredded door valve, firing an intimidating but relatively harmless stream of nonlethal bolts into the bridge. There was no return fire, but the droid’s armor was pocked and smoking from head to foot, with several fist-deep craters where the Yuuzhan Vong had managed to concentrate their attacks. Anakin dropped down beside the droid and the rest of the assault squad. There was a definite Yuuzhan Vong presence on the bridge, but the feeling was too murky for him to tell how many or what condition.

  YVH 2-1S turned toward him. “Bulkhead secure, but the enemy is holding one captive—Jedi Rhysode—on the bridge.” His photoreceptors were shattered and smeared with thud bug juice. “Currently two minutes eleven seconds ahead of schedule.”

  “You expected something else?” Anakin had intended to sound cocky like his father, but the effect was ruined when a pang from his bruised ribs made him squeak out the last two words. He glanced onto the bridge, then said, “You don’t look so good, Two-One-S. We’ll finish without you.”

  “Affirmative,” the droid answered. “Sensor systems unstable.”

  Rather than risk a security trap by entering through the bridge’s battered entrance valve, Anakin dropped to his belly beside the melt holes and peered through. On the other side lay more than a dozen Yuuzhan Vong, most deep in a coma-gas sleep. Some had gnulliths fastened over their faces, no doubt placed there by well-meaning comrades who had not realized that an antidote agent would be required to awaken their comrades. A handful of warriors lay in the awkward positions of their death throes, their wounds still smoking from the heat of the fatal blaster strike.

  The cognition hood used to steer the vessel dangled a few centimeters above the comatose pilot’s blank face, while the neural interface gloves employed in regulating the ship’s systems lay draped over several different control consoles, usually with the hands of a dozing Yuuzhan Vong crew member still wearing them. Anakin was disappointed to find the command chair empty and no one lying within three meters of it; Duman Yaght had escaped the coma gas.