Star by Star Read online

  Though hardly blind to the disappointment that clouded Zekk’s face, Jaina was careful to maintain a neutral expression as she reached for the lasicutter. Her reaction was not because she lacked feelings for Zekk—in fact, a few years ago she had found it difficult to keep her thoughts off him—but over time her feelings had changed from infatuation to something closer to what she felt for her brothers. It was love, certainly, but nothing physical—nothing like the spark that had passed through her on the Tafanda Bay, when Jag Fel had ignored Borsk Fey’lya’s entire cabinet to introduce himself to her.

  That had made her stomach flutter … but she was being silly. She had no idea where Jag Fel was—probably not even in the known galaxy—and even less whether they were ever likely to meet again. If she insisted on waiting for a jolt like that again, she would be Mara’s age before she ever …

  “Jaina?” Zekk fluttered the detector film in her face. “Are you going to cut or not?”

  “Of course, but we need measurements.” Jaina turned away to hide her blush. “Where did I put that hydrospanner?”

  Only a few meters away, crawling on his belly through the black muck in the Exquisite Death’s central elimination duct, Tesar Sebatyne heard the hiss of a large creature drawing deep breath. He immediately raised his makeshift durasteel shield and used the Force to push it down the low conduit. There was a muffled burp and a loud sizzling as the acid struck, then a dull clang as the shield slammed into the voxyn.

  Sissing with laughter, Tesar used the Force to shove voxyn and shield down the duct. When the creature snarled and tried to push its snout through the holes its acid had eaten in the durasteel, the Barabel brought up his blaster pistol and loosed a single bolt. The creature’s nose exploded in a spray of black blood, filling the conduit with toxic fumes. Tesar sissed into his breath mask and fired again.

  The voxyn roared and, knocking the makeshift shield from its snout, vanished up the duct. Tesar pictured the beast and reached out to his hatchmates with an impression of movement in his mind, and of the creature growing larger.

  A moment later, Bela replied with an image of the creature’s body glow. Like most Barabels, she could see into the infrared spectrum and often tracked her prey by the heat of its body. She sent a sensation of impending danger, and Tesar knew he had to get clear. He retreated two meters and squeezed himself into a side feed.

  He counted three slow reptilian heartbeats before a series of whumpf-thumpfs reverberated through the yorik coral. The duct lit with the flashing brilliance of his hatchmates’ minicannons, arranged at right angles to each other at the next intersection, and he had to close his eyes. The voxyn’s shrill screech sliced through the dank air like a lightsaber, then dropped in tone and began to undulate.

  Had they missed? Tesar wondered. How could they?

  The irritation his hatchmates shot his way convinced him they had not. His earplugs detected a sudden redshift in the voxyn’s squeal and closed tight, sealing his ears against the disorienting impact of a compression wave. He experienced a deep, hard vibration in the pit of his stomach, but shared in the exhilaration of his hatchmates as they continued to pour bolts at their prey. By his cold blood, how he loved hunting with his hatchmates!

  Finally, the minicannons fell silent and his earplugs opened again. He flicked his tongue into the breath mask and smelled filter-scrubbed ozone and scorched yorik coral—and an antiseptic, coppery odor he recognized as detoxified voxyn blood.

  He sent a question-sense the sisters’ way, and received back only an impression of uncertainty. Though Tesar could not exactly feel his hatchmates’ actions through the Force, he had lived with them side by side all his life and intuitively knew they would be activating a glow stick to supplement their infrared vision. An image of smoking scales came to his mind, then of a voxyn’s blaster-scorched leg.

  Then Anakin’s voice came over the comlink. “Tesar! What’s going on back there?”

  The sound of clicking claws sounded from around the corner, and Tesar thought, Uh-oh. He worked a hand under his chest up toward the comlink clipped to his collar, at the same time worming his way backward down the duct. It was slow going, for the side feed was little larger than Tesar himself, and he was crawling against the lay of his scales. Even through his thick jumpsuit, the rough walls kept catching the tips and bringing his progress to a painful halt.

  The voxyn’s head appeared at the corner, a red heat silhouette barely two meters in front of him.

  “Tesar?” Anakin demanded. “What’s going on back there?”

  Tesar fired at the voxyn and saw his bolt ricochet off. He should have scales like that! The creature pulled its head out of sight, but pink heat-wisps of breath continued to curl past the corner.

  Tesar finally reached his comlink. “You told us to watch the voxyn.”

  “And?”

  “And to call for help if …” The pink wisps vanished ahead, and Tesar heard a sharp intake of air. “Uh, keep talking.”

  He ripped his comlink off and tossed it down the duct. Anakin’s distant voice continued to demand an explanation, but Tesar squirmed away as fast as he could. A mangled snout pushed around the corner and buried the squawking instrument beneath a weak stream of acid. Tesar stopped moving and, using the Force to project his voice down the duct, screamed as loud as he could.

  He sensed approval from Krasov and, through her, perceived Anakin’s panic. He had to be on the comlink, screaming for Tesar to answer.

  Bela found this funny; Tesar could feel her sissing. He knew without looking that she would be creeping down the main duct behind the voxyn, lightsaber in hand. Krasov was following along behind, a big T-21 repeating blaster pointed over her sister’s shoulder. The voxyn hauled itself around the corner, its claws digging into the yorik coral walls and pulling it forward. Tesar could not see its wounds in infrared, but the creature was definitely moving slowly and in great weariness. It paused at the small pit its acid had burned into the floor, then, not finding the expected body, raised its head and peered down the duct.

  Tesar resumed his retreat, firing blaster bolts into the creature’s head. Many ricocheted off, but many burned through the armored scales and failed to kill it. Wasting no time with another of its screeches, the voxyn pursued him down the duct, stubby legs pulling it forward faster than the Barabel could retreat. For the first time, Tesar’s scales rippled with fear; the beast learned from its mistakes.

  Big trouble, he thought.

  He sensed the alarm in his hatchmates and heard them begin to splash and rattle in the main duct as they tried to draw the voxyn’s attention. Too clever for such antics, the creature pulled to within a meter of Tesar and let out a burp, but either its acid was depleted or the efflux tube had been burned shut; nothing came out. Tesar fired point-blank and smelled scorched flesh.

  The voxyn lurched ahead, its mouth closing around the barrel of the Merr-Sonn blaster. Tesar squeezed the trigger—then snarled in pain as the safety circuits sensed a clog in the emitter nozzle and shut down the actuating module. Releasing the weapon into the voxyn’s mouth, he squirmed away, pressing his back against the duct roof in what he felt fairly certain would be a futile attempt to free his lightsaber.

  Bela’s white blade hissed to life somewhere behind the voxyn, but the creature filled the duct so completely that only a few stray rays of light showed past. The beast lunged; Tesar barely saved his breath mask by jerking away, then lashed out and felt his finger talons sink into the thing’s wounded snout.

  The voxyn continued to drag itself forward, its jaws snapping at the hand clawing on its muzzle. Tesar shoved its head against the wall.

  Tesar exuded triumph to his hatchmates. A heavy foot came forward to catch his elbow, its disease-tipped claws dimpling his jumpsuit’s molytex lining and nearly pushing through. To his sense of triumph, he added urgency.

  The drone of Bela’s blade grew louder—then vanished beneath the sharp crack of exploding detonite. An unexpected weight settled on Te
sar’s back, and suddenly the duct was filled with the soft green light of the bioluminescent wall lichen that illuminated the interior of the Exquisite Death. Tesar glimpsed the tangled mass of broken fang and scorched flesh that was the voxyn’s mutilated snout, then felt himself rising through the top of the duct as someone levitated him into the cabin above.

  The blaster-scarred voxyn scrambled past beneath him, whole chunks of body missing, the stumps of four rear legs dragging uselessly behind.

  “You bantha head! It escaped!” Tesar looked over and found himself staring into the blue eyes of Ganner Rhysode, one of the largest and—to judge by his own attitude, at least—most handsome of the human Jedi. “Now it will be twice as hard to kill!”

  “Hunting season’s over, my scaly friend.” Ganner lowered Tesar to the passage floor, then called into the hole. “Come out of there, girls. Anakin wants us on the bridge.”

  In the adjacent sleeping cabin, Raynar Thul awoke from his healing trance to find himself watching Eryl’s bare back as she sat up and stretched on the opposite side of a narrow walkway. Her skin was freckled and milky, with only the faintest hint of the acid scars and claw slashes he had come to know so well during the first voxyn watch. With the others deep in healing trances or busy learning to fly the ship, he and Eryl had spent a great deal of time talking and rubbing bacta lotion into each other’s wounds. He had a dim memory of a long lingering kiss just before they finally sank into their own bunks, but it seemed so hazy now it might have been only a dream.

  Eryl lowered her arms and, glancing over her shoulder, caught him looking. Instead of covering up, she smiled and asked, “How do I look?”

  Raynar’s teeth clacked as he snapped his jaw shut, then he managed to stammer, “Fine.” Maybe the kiss hadn’t been a dream after all. “J-just great, in fact.”

  Eryl frowned and craned her neck to look down her back, then laughed and, still not covering up, said, “I was talking about my scars, young man. Are they healed?”

  “Oh yes.” Raynar wanted to drop back onto his bunk and sink into a healing trance. “That’s what I meant.”

  Eryl looked doubtful. “Sure.” She reached for her jumpsuit.

  “But it’s okay. After all that bacta rubbing, I don’t think anyone on the strike team has any secrets.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Raynar said.

  Still, as he reached for his own jumpsuit, Raynar did try to hide his disappointment. Eryl might be only a year or two older, but being called a young man had disabused him of any wrong impressions about their relationship.

  Tekli appeared from a few bunks down, her brown fur tousled and gray eyes sparkling as she buckled her equipment harness.

  “Sleep well?” she asked.

  “Yes, very,” Raynar answered. “And you?”

  “Good.” She gave them a tight smile, then lifted her brow as the ship gave a subtle shudder. “We must be coming out of hyperspace.”

  Both Raynar and Tekli looked to Eryl, who closed her green eyes and reached out with the Force. When she opened them a moment later, she looked just a little younger and more innocent than before.

  “I’ll have to see some stars to be certain, but it feels right,” she said. “We’ve reached Myrkr.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  As the Exquisite Death sped insystem, shedding velocity and swinging into Myrkr’s gravity well, the planet swelled from a greenish pinpoint to an emerald disk the size of a thumbnail. Though Anakin did not recall the world having a moon, the pearly fleck hanging beside it was too bright to be a background star and too steady to be an optical illusion. He turned to the sensor station, where Lowbacca sat with his emergency vac suit pulled over his jumpsuit, his head buried in a cognition hood, and his huge hands squeezed into a pair of control gloves.

  “Lowie, anything?” Anakin asked.

  The Wookiee groaned a reply, which Em Teedee, hovering alongside, translated as, “Master Lowbacca continues to apply his best efforts and assures you he will inform you the moment he succeeds.”

  Anakin knew well enough what Lowbacca had really said, but he did not remark on the gentle editing or unnecessary translation. Not everyone knew the language, and Em Teedee insisted it was his duty to make certain the whole strike team understood Lowbacca as well as he did them.

  Lowbacca growled something short, and Em Teedee added, “He also wishes me to suggest that frequent requests for information only interrupt his concentration.”

  “I know,” Anakin said. “Sorry.”

  Though the strike team had quickly mastered most of the Exquisite Death’s systems—having studied all available data on Yuuzhan Vong vessels and even experimented with a captured assault boat—the sensors remained a problem. In contrast to the externally oriented observation technologies of the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong gathered information by analyzing the infinitesimal distortions that the gravity of distant objects caused in the ship’s internal space-time. Given that the galaxy’s finest scientists were still struggling to comprehend the basic science of Yuuzhan Vong sensors, it was no wonder Lowbacca was having difficulties operating them—even with Tahiri at his side translating and providing insight into how Yuuzhan Vong thought.

  When Anakin looked back to Myrkr, the planet had grown to a cloud-mottled circle the size of Ulaha’s head. The gray fleck beside it was now a tiny disk.

  “Definitely a moon,” Anakin said. At this distance, he could not expect to feel anything through the lambent crystal. But he knew what he was seeing. “A Yuuzhan Vong moon.”

  Lowbacca let out a victorious growl, and Em Teedee reported, “Master Lowbacca feels it is, indeed, a Yuuzhan Vong worldship.” Lowbacca grunted and yowled a few more times, and the translation droid added, “There are several corvette analogs in orbit around it, though the diameter is quite large for a worldship—approximately one hundred and twenty kilometers.”

  That was as large as the first Death Star. Anakin whistled softly to himself, then reached out toward the distant fleck with the Force. Not one to rule out the possibility of coincidence, he was nevertheless suspicious enough of it to inspect it carefully. He felt an all-too-familiar stirring, the feral agitation of a voxyn—but also something else, another presence full of terror and pain … and surprise.

  A clear, sharp presence, not hazy. Jedi, not Yuuzhan Vong.

  Anakin did not realize he had gasped until a hand took his arm and Alema asked what was wrong. Not answering, he continued to focus on the worldship. The presence touched him back, still full of pain and fear, but now also pity—not for itself, he thought, but for him. He filled his heart with comforting emotions, trying to project an aura of confidence and hope, though he knew the vagaries of the Force might not be capable of conveying the message he wanted. The presence at the other end maintained contact for only a moment longer before abruptly withdrawing, closing itself off to Anakin without any hint of whether it had comprehended what he was trying to communicate.

  Tahiri clasped his arm. “Anakin?”

  “There are Jedi there,” he said. “With the voxyn.”

  “Well, that puts Plan A right out the lock,” Ganner said. Plan A called for them to sneak as close as possible to the cloning facility and destroy it with a baradium-packed missile, then use the resulting confusion to confirm the queen’s destruction and escape. “We’ll have to try something else.”

  “That is very brave, of course,” Alema said. Standing beside the commander’s chair opposite Tahiri, she laid a hand on Anakin’s arm and turned to him with a look of entreaty. “But if we forgo our best plan, we stand to lose more Jedi than we would save.”

  Jacen emerged from the back of the bridge, his eyes rolling at the Twi’lek’s pouty tone. “Alema, I think Anakin knows what’s at stake here.”

  “I can handle this, Jacen,” Anakin said, doing his best to keep the irritation out of his voice. “And there is no need to remind me about the dark side. I understand the consequences of killing our own.”

  “Anaki
n, I only meant—”

  “Shouldn’t you be at your battle station?” Anakin asked, deliberately cutting Jacen off. He cast a meaningful look at both Alema and Tahiri. “Shouldn’t everyone?”

  Jacen’s face reddened, and Tahiri’s eyes narrowed, but all three retreated to their assigned places and left Anakin to his thoughts. This was one of those times Lando had warned them about, when any choice he made felt like the wrong one—but Lando did not have the Force to guide him, and Anakin still had a few minutes before he had to decide anything. If he waited, maybe things would work out for the better; they almost always did.

  Jaina swung the Exquisite Death into an approach pattern, and the edge of Myrkr’s enormous green disk began to slide across the port side of the bridge. From space, at least, there was no visible sign of Yuuzhan Vong planet-shaping; it remained the same steam-shrouded forest world depicted in holovids.

  The worldship was rapidly filling the viewing dome, swelling from a little smaller than a Kuati banquet plate to the size of a high command conference table. A thin halo of twinkling stars hinted at the escape of radiant heat, while blotchy circles of gray and brown began to define the planetoid’s pocked surface.

  Expecting the hailing villip in front of him to activate at any moment, Anakin waved Tahiri close, then used the holoshroud unit on his equipment harness to cloak himself in the prerecorded image of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. Whether the tattoos and scarrings were appropriate for the commander of a corvette-analog vessel was anybody’s guess; there seemed to be the right amount, but New Republic Intelligence was still struggling to learn the significance—if any—of individual patterns.

  Lowbacca moaned a warning from the sensor console, informing Anakin that a trio of Yuuzhan Vong corvettes had just appeared from the far side of Myrkr and were lining up for approach behind the Exquisite Death. Anakin ordered Jaina to continue as before. Though her face was hidden beneath the pilot’s hood she wore to interface with the vessel, he could feel her apprehension. Not knowing the proper procedure for entering a Yuuzhan Vong base, they had opted to try an open approach, trusting that procedural mistakes would prove less alarming than a furtive advance.