Star by Star Page 39

  The Barabel shot from the water like a rocket, plastering her body against a nearby tree trunk and scrambling for the top. Behind her came a voxyn’s flattish snout, its beady lips drawing open to spray acid. A flurry of blaster bolts converged on the creature’s head. Many hit scales and bounced harmlessly away, but several more burned through or buried themselves into the soft tissue around its eyes and ear slits. Ganner and Alema leapt forward and hacked off the smoking head with their lightsabers, leaving the neck stump to slide back beneath the surface.

  “Found it!” Bela called, dropping back into the swamp.

  The three Barabels broke into a fit of sissing inside their breath masks, then the mist curtain caught up to them and tiny droplets of black vapor began to melt into the water.

  “Alema, Welk—into the water!” Jacen yelled.

  Alema was already underwater by the time he finished, but, not being part of the battle meld, Welk was slower. He looked around in confusion for a moment, then finally grasped what was happening and threw himself beneath the surface—only to bob to the surface a few seconds later, limp and floating facedown.

  Lomi used the Force to summon him to her, then held him above the water while Tekli examined him.

  “His breathing is fine,” the Chadra-Fan said. “I think it’s only …”

  She let the sentence trail off as she—and everyone else in the battle meld—experienced a sudden surge of panic from Alema.

  “You think what?” Lomi asked, unaware of what the others were feeling. “Will he recover, or am I—”

  She was interrupted by the crackle of liquid turning instantly to vapor as Alema’s lightsaber ignited underwater. The Twi’lek shot out of the swamp in a cloud of steam, using the Force to somersault backward over Ganner.

  “Another voxyn!” Alema yelled, pointing. “It caught me by … the …”

  Her eyes closed before she finished, and she splashed into the water on her back. Ganner and Bela ignited their own lightsabers and began to back away, stabbing at the water as they moved. Jacen concentrated on muting the team’s negative feelings and keeping the battle meld efficient, and Anakin used the Force to lift Alema out of harm’s way and float her over to Tahiri.

  “Take her.” Anakin pointed back toward the murky forest where the coralskippers had found them. “Take Lomi and Tekli, wait for us on dry land.”

  “Me?” Tahiri let the Twi’lek sink half into the water before reaching out with the Force to keep her afloat. “Why do I have—”

  “Because Anakin asked you to,” Jacen said. He stretched a hand toward where Alema had fallen and summoned the Twi’lek’s lightsaber from beneath the water, then slapped it into the girl’s hand. “Now is no time for jealousy, Tahiri.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Tahiri snapped. “I just don’t like being sent off like some child.”

  With that, she motioned to Lomi and Tekli, then took Alema and retreated up the canyon. Jacen activated his own lightsaber and started forward to join the others searching for the voxyn, but saw the Barabels spreading across the channel with a handful of concussion grenades and realized they had a better idea.

  “Everybody back,” Anakin ordered, approving the plan even before the Barabels suggested it. “Watch those trees—we don’t want them falling on someone.”

  The Barabels began to throw their grenades in simultaneous trios, working inward from the farthest distance they guessed the voxyn could have traveled. With each column of water the explosions sent shooting into the air, Jacen felt a sharp concussion against his legs. On the second throw, three voxyn floated to the surface with glazed eyes and bleeding ears. Ganner and Lowbacca used their lightsabers to finish the stunned creatures.

  “That’s four.” Anakin deactivated his lightsaber. “The whole pack.”

  “Perhaps, but it would be wise to be sure,” Tenel Ka said, glancing in Jacen’s direction. “Do you feel any more?”

  Jacen reached out to see if he could locate any other creatures. It took a moment, but he finally located a large group of presences several hundred meters up the canyon.

  “There are more,” he reported. “A half a dozen, at least. They seem kind of stunned and wary.”

  “Good,” Tenel Ka said. “Then that will give us plenty of time to go the other way.”

  Anakin nodded, and the strike team turned to go. Twenty meters from the intersection, they found Tahiri and the others rushing back toward them.

  “No! Go that way!” Tahiri pointed up the canyon toward the voxyn. “Nom Anor and his bird are coming this way with about a hundred Yuuzhan Vong!”

  “What next?” Raynar complained. He slapped a hand to his forehead and ran it over his blond hair. “Can anything else go wrong?”

  Zekk glanced at Lomi, then turned away shaking his head as if to say this was what came of consorting with Dark Jedi. Jacen realized that he needed to speak with Zekk at the first opportunity about his impact on the battle meld, but Anakin seemed oblivious to the strike team’s growing sense of fatalism.

  Not seeming to hear Raynar, Anakin clapped a hand on Tahiri’s shoulder and flashed a brash Solo smile. “This is no problem,” he said.

  Lowbacca growled a question, which Em Teedee translated almost accurately as, “Master Lowbacca wishes to inquire if you have lost your mind.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Jaina answered, not quite laughing. “And if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, it’s just crazy enough to work.”

  Hoping to share with the others the positive emotional spark from which Jaina’s words sprang, Jacen reached out to his sister—and found only the same battle numbness as before. Trying not to let his concern show, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “Ambush,” Jaina said.

  Anakin nodded and pointed to four trees. “That will be our killing zone. We’ll close the Yuuzhan Vong off from behind and fire from adjacent sides, with high in the back covering low on the side.”

  The battle meld remained tight enough so that was all he needed to say. The firing teams rushed to their assigned places, the humans spreading out in the water along the canyon wall, while Lowbacca took Jovan Drark and the Barabels high into the trees and spread out across the channel. Tekli used the Force to lift Alema and Welk into the trees well outside the ambush area. Jacen placed himself at the corner of the angle, where he would be as close as possible to everyone in the battle meld.

  Lomi waded up to Anakin, who was standing in the water just five meters from Jacen. “Very impressive, young Solo,” she said. “Where would you like me?”

  “Out of the way. You have no weapon.”

  Lomi gave him a sarcastic smile. “A Jedi is never without a weapon, Anakin. Would you rather I use a blaster or the dark side?”

  Anakin sighed, then used his comlink to have Lowbacca pass down Alema’s G-9 power blaster and grenade belt.

  “Anakin, you can’t!” Zekk protested. He was so loud that Anakin could hear him even without using the comlink.

  “Not your choice, Bounty Hunter,” Anakin said. “This might get ugly, and she has a right to defend herself.”

  “Tell him that Welk and I will promise not to use the dark side—as long as we remain armed,” Lomi said, sneering. “That should calm him.”

  Anakin relayed the message.

  “I suppose you’ll be bringing them into the battle meld next,” Zekk said sarcastically.

  A warning click came over the comm channel, and the human Jedi lay down beneath the surface of the swamp, relying on their breath masks’ backup oxygen canister for air. It was not long before they began to feel the tension of those watching the enemy’s approach from the trees, though this sensation was all but overwhelmed by the qualms Zekk and several others felt at seeing an armed Dark Jedi in their midst. Though Jacen was not entirely happy about the matter himself, it seemed a better alternative than having her call on the dark side. He did his best to subordinate Zekk’s resentment and keep everyone’s emotions focused on the task at hand, bu
t the discord was hurting their combat effectiveness. He could feel it.

  Finally, the faint sloshing of wading Yuuzhan Vong came to his ears underwater, and an eruption of glee from the Barabels let everyone know it was time to attack. Jacen rose quietly out of the swamp and saw a mass of enemy warriors moving through the trees with far too much confidence—convinced, apparently, that even Jedi would not attack at an odds disadvantage in excess of five to one.

  Obviously, they had not done their research on the Solo family. Jacen armed the fragmentation grenade in his hand and threw it into the midst of the still-oblivious Yuuzhan Vong, then raised his T-21 repeating blaster and opened fire.

  The Yuuzhan Vong reacted like the well-trained warriors they were. Even with the swamp exploding into shrapnel and blaster bolts all around them, they did not panic or fall into helpless confusion. Their officers immediately began to shout orders—and were promptly picked off by Jovan Drark’s deadly sharpshooter blaster rifle—the “longblaster.” Jacen caught a glimpse of Nom Anor yelling into a shoulder villip near the back of the company and swung his G-9 power blaster in the executor’s direction, but could not bring himself to fire—at least not instantly. It was one thing to attack an impersonal foe in the necessity of battle, quite another to murder a much-despised enemy. Jacen had learned on Duro, when he had been forced to act to prevent Tsavong Lah from killing his mother, that a Jedi was free—no, obligated—to protect others from evil. But targeting a specific person out of anger still felt like murder—and using a battle as an excuse to commit such a sinister act still seemed like the way to the dark side.

  Before he could work the matter out, Vergere stepped out from behind a tree, inadvertently placing herself between Jacen and his target. Jacen raised his weapon, training his aim on Nom Anor’s head. Vergere glanced at him with her slanted eyes and briefly locked gazes, then grabbed the executor and pulled him to safety behind a tree. Jacen squeezed his trigger and watched the bolt flash harmlessly across the swamp, then swung his weapon back toward the battle.

  With their officers dead and vonduun crab armor shattering all around them, the Yuuzhan Vong warriors were seeking cover underwater. Someone called “concussion” over the comlink, and Jacen stopped firing to pull a grenade from his equipment belt—then realized that he had no idea who had spoken. Clearly, the battle meld was suffering.

  “Two-second delay,” Anakin commed. “Arm.”

  In the time it took Jacen to thumb the arming switch, the Yuuzhan Vong began to regroup, at least two dozen rising out of the water behind the cover of tree trunks or fallen logs.

  “Throw.”

  Jacen tossed his grenade into the center of the killing zone with everyone else’s, then raised his rapid blaster and began firing again. The swamp surface bucked upward, and several Yuuzhan Vong floated up bleeding from eyes and ears, staring vacantly at the sky.

  Steady streams of thud and razor bugs began to drone out from behind the trees where the survivors were hiding, and Jacen heard several Jedi groan as they took hits in their armor-lined jumpsuits. Somewhere down the line, a lightsaber snapped to life, and Ganner waded forward, slapping bugs from the sky.

  “Ganner!” Anakin commed. “What are you doing?”

  “Can’t let them pin us down,” Ganner replied.

  Lomi started forward, as well, her body weaving and pivoting as she dodged thud bugs, her power blaster filling the air with brilliant flashes as she shot incoming razor bugs out of the sky. If nothing else, her advance impressed the Yuuzhan Vong, who began to concentrate their fire on her.

  “Wait!” Jacen commed. He had no doubt that they could advance en masse and wipe out the patrol—but he did not think they could do it without taking losses. “I can flush them.” He sensed a query forming in Anakin’s mind, then explained, “The voxyn, I think I can use them.”

  “Think?” Anakin asked.

  “Can,” Jacen assured him.

  Anakin hesitated a moment, then said, “Let’s try it.”

  Ganner and Lomi retreated to cover, and Jacen reached out to the voxyn he had sensed earlier, calling on the Force to soothe them out of their shock, to lull them into thinking there was nothing to fear ahead.

  The voxyn responded almost too well. The entire strike team experienced a hungry stirring in the Force as the beasts reached out to locate them, then Jacen felt the creatures start down the canyon toward the ambush. The two sides began to trade fire more sporadically, the Yuuzhan Vong content to sit in cover in the mistaken belief that help would arrive soon, the Jedi content to let them. Jacen thought about comming Jovan to tell him to keep an eye out for Nom Anor and Vergere, then decided against it. He was treading as close as he cared to the dark side.

  Less than a minute later, a Yuuzhan Vong snarled in surprise, then gurgled horribly as a voxyn dragged him underwater. Several other Yuuzhan Vong cried out as the creatures brushed past, but only two let out screams suggesting they had been attacked. The voxyn, Jacen realized, were more interested in the Force wielders down the way.

  “Out of the water, now!” he commed.

  As his fellow Jedi used the Force to boost themselves into the trees, Jacen thumbed a fragmentation grenade active and tossed it into the swamp. While not as powerful as a concussion grenade, it would generate enough of a shock wave to serve his purpose. He waited until the grenade exploded, then reached out to the voxyn, encouraging them to blame anything in the water for the attack.

  Several more Yuuzhan Vong cried out. A few even stumbled from cover to be picked off by Jovan and the Barabels, but more than a dozen remained in hiding and continued to fling thud bugs into the trees. Climbing into a tree himself, Jacen dropped the battle meld—it was not working that well anyway—and focused only on the voxyn. He threw another fragmentation grenade and urged the creatures to attack anything in the water.

  The Yuuzhan Vong attacks dwindled as they turned to battle the attacking voxyn. A handful tried to scramble into the trees as the Jedi had done, but without the Force to boost them, they could not climb fast enough to escape their pursuers. Lowbacca and the Barabels took advantage of the distraction to leap through the treetops and attack from above. Soon they were shooting at nothing but voxyn, and a few concussion grenades brought the last of creatures to the surface.

  Jacen dropped back into the swamp feeling not exactly guilty about luring the creatures to their doom, but hardly noble either. Maybe Zekk was right; maybe Lomi’s mere presence was enough to taint the entire strike team. Jacen was still trying to work this out when Anakin waded over with Tahiri, both of them grinning ear to ear.

  Tahiri clasped Jacen’s arm and pulled herself up to kiss his cheek. “That was astral!”

  “Well done.” Anakin slapped Jacen’s on the back, and there was more warmth in the gesture than had passed between the two brothers since Centerpoint Station. “You saved a lot of Jedi today.”

  Jacen would have felt good about that, had the day been over.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Even with Han sprawled on the couch next to Leia, Ben gurgling in Mara’s lap, and the Wild Knights comparing notes with Rogue Squadron in the back of the room, the informal sitting chamber of the Solos’ Coruscant residence seemed all too empty. The five Solos had not been in this room together for more than a year, and Leia could not recall ever gathering here without the shadow of some faraway crisis hanging over someone’s head.

  Most of the responsibility rested squarely on Leia’s own shoulders. She had devoted her life to the New Republic, and, on its behalf, she had involved Han and Chewbacca and Lando and everyone else she knew in one dangerous mission after another. Even her children had spent most of their lives dwelling apart, first because they needed protection from the Empire’s kidnappers, and later because the New Republic needed them to become Jedi Knights. Now they were hundreds of light-years behind enemy lines, fighting a foe as ruthless and cruel as Palpatine himself, facing dangers she could not even guess at, but that she felt constantly through the Fo
rce. After fighting a lifetime to make the galaxy a safer place, she wondered if anyone would blame her for questioning her choices; given the danger her children were facing on the galaxy’s behalf now, she wondered if anyone would dare.

  Leia felt Han reaching out to her even before he touched her shoulder. “You’re sure you don’t want to be there with Luke?” Han glanced around the packed room conspiratorially. “There’s a hovercar hanging around the back platform, and I know your brother isn’t all that comfortable addressing the senate himself.”

  “Send the hovercar away, Han.” Leia put just enough sharpness in her voice to let him know she was serious. “I’m through with the senate.”

  Han rolled his eyes. “Where have I heard that before?”

  “It’s true, Han.” Leia allowed her apprehension for their children to show. “I’m thinking of other things now.”

  Han studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” He glanced across the room to Lando and Wedge and gave a slight shake of his head, then pulled Leia tight to his side. “All this waiting—it’s bad enough without feeling everything through the Force.”

  Leia squeezed his leg. “We’re not accustomed to being the ones left behind.”

  Izal Waz wandered into the room and stopped behind the couches. “Hey—look at this!” He used a voice command to change the holovid from the senate feed to a news channel. In the foreground, he was shown debarking the Wild Knights’ blastboat while a breathless Arcona newswoman explained that a member of their own species had participated in the daring Jedi rescue of the Talfaglion hostages. “I’m a hero!”

  Almost since their departure from the system, the HoloNet had been filled with news of the Yuuzhan Vong’s total defeat at Talfaglio. A Kuati network had even managed to obtain a hologram from a Star Destroyer holocam showing an enemy corvette exploding for no visible reason in front of a Jedi X-wing—the newscaster had identified the wing markings incorrectly as those of Kyp’s Dozen. Fortunately, the shadow bomb responsible could not be detected even with enhancement, but Luke had prevailed on the New Republic high command to censor all images of Jedi combat techniques lest another, better recording betray the secret.