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  “Lowbacca?” Jaina called. “What are you doing? Get out of there!”

  The Wookiee growled a garbled explanation about needing face masks, then dropped heavily to his knees and returned to his work. A long arm rose into view and clumsily piled a handful of hoses with the filter housings, then slipped down behind the console and did not reappear.

  “Oh my,” Em Teedee reported. “Master Lowbacca seems to be suffering a processor crash.”

  Using the Force to lift her the extra five meters in height, Jaina somersaulted off the chalk dune and landed lightly atop the cockpit roof, then nearly plummeted backward when Anakin and Zekk landed beside her. Anakin thumbed his lightsaber active and plunged it into the seam of the cockpit escape hatch. Jaina ignited her own blade and began to work in the opposite direction, while Zekk dropped to his belly and dangled over the front to peer in through the viewport.

  “I can’t believe it!” he said. “He’s still trying to get the face masks.”

  “Perhaps he is getting tired of carrying unconscious Jedi,” Lomi said, alighting next to the others. She pointed to two places on opposite sides of the hatch. “Cut there and there.”

  Jaina and Anakin did as she instructed, their lightsabers whining sharply as they burned through the hatch’s locking bolt and reinforced hinges.

  As they continued to work, Ganner’s voice came over the comlink. “Jovan’s alive, but dizzy and sick. Tekli thinks she can save him.”

  “Save him?” Anakin gasped.

  “You should see, Anakin,” Tahiri commed. “I didn’t know Rodians swelled up like that.”

  Anakin paled and said nothing, focusing all his effort on getting to Lowbacca.

  “Orders?” Ganner requested.

  “We must retreat and try another way,” Lomi suggested.

  Anakin shook his head firmly. “Never.”

  A muffled thud sounded from inside the cockpit, then Zekk said, “Hutt slime! He’s out.”

  Jaina’s lightsaber burned through the hatch bolt with a final acrid sizzle. She snapped the blade off and hung the handle on her equipment harness.

  “Anakin, maybe you should listen to her,” she said nervously. “If this is a trap, they’ll be coming for us.”

  “So what if they are?” Anakin’s knuckles whitened as he continued to cut. “We’re Jedi, aren’t we?”

  “The value of sacrifices has a limit even to Yuuzhan Vong,” Lomi warned. “They will kill us before allowing us to reach the cloning lab. We must go around.”

  “I thought that was why we came this way,” Zekk said over his shoulder.

  “They anticipated us,” Lomi said simply. “But there are other ways.”

  “And when they anticipate those?” Anakin demanded, cutting through the last centimeter of reinforced hinge.

  “Then we try another way, and another,” Jaina said. She knew their situation would only grow worse as time passed, but she also knew it would be fatal to let the odds pressure Anakin into a rash act. “Sooner or later, we may have to fight—but on our terms, not theirs.”

  The soft hiss of a breaking seal sounded from the hatch as it finally came free and settled deeper into its seating ring. Anakin deactivated his lightsaber and, still not responding to Jaina or Lomi, stepped away.

  “Anakin, there’s a dust cloud coming up the canyon toward us, and I don’t think it’s a New Republic landspeeder,” Ganner said. “How about those orders?”

  “In a second!” Anakin snapped. He let out a calming breath, then knelt beside the hatch and looked to Jaina. “Ready?”

  “Ready.” Even without the battle meld—perhaps even without the Force—she was close enough to her younger brother to sense what he wanted from her. “Watch yourselves.”

  Jaina levitated the heavy escape hatch out of its seat and moved it aside. A few flitnats drifted out of the opening, their wings emitting a barely audible buzz as they circled Anakin and began to land on his face. Paying no attention, he peered into the cockpit and used the Force to pull Lowbacca up into the hatchway. Even beneath his thick fur, the flitnats were visible on his face, teeming over his eyelids and swarming inside his black nostrils. His cheeks and lips were swollen to twice their normal size, and his breath came in strangled coughs.

  The Wookiee’s huge shoulders proved too broad to fit through the hatchway, and Anakin had to lower him back into the cockpit. The instant the opening was clear, clouds of flitnats began to pour out, lighting on Anakin’s face and drawing a hissed curse as they started to bite. He leaned into the AT-AT and grabbed Lowbacca’s arms, then pulled them through the hatchway first. Along with Zekk, Jaina dropped to her brother’s side and grabbed an arm so Anakin could concentrate on squeezing the unconscious Wookiee through the narrow space. Her hands and face exploded in stinging pain as the flitnats swarmed. Lomi stepped behind the others and made a feeble attempt to call up a Force wind, which failed to blow the insects away.

  As Lowbacca’s torso came through the hatchway, masses of blood-bloated flitnats began to drop from his sleeves. The skin on his hands had been chewed bald and was already erupting into purple lumps the size of Jaina’s fingertips.

  Anakin’s only reply was to pull Lowbacca the rest of the way through. A billowing cloud of flitnats poured out behind the Wookiee, prompting Jaina to turn for the hatch. The flitnat bites were already making her sick, and itching so madly she had to take a second to concentrate before she could levitate the heavy piece of steel. When she turned back around, it was to find Lomi summoning an armful of filter housings and breath masks through the hatchway.

  “Mustn’t forget these.” Lomi gathered the equipment into her arms and started toward the front of the cockpit, where Anakin was already lowering Lowbacca to the dune below. “The Wookiee did risk his life for them.”

  Jaina slipped the hatch into place, then felt Zekk’s hand on her arm. She was surprised to find herself stumbling as he pulled her off the front of the cockpit after the others. Though the drop was brief, it was long enough to draw a distracting rise from her queasy stomach. They landed hard between Anakin and Lomi, where Jaina fell to her knees and remained, at once choking on chalk dust, itching madly, and trying to keep her gorge down.

  Across her back, Lomi asked, “What do you think now, young Solo? Still determined to fight?”

  Anakin thought for a moment, then said, “Blaster bolts!” He pulled Jaina to her feet and sent her stumbling down the back side of the dune, then activated his comlink. “Ganner, let’s go. Retreat.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Ben cradled in one arm, Mara circled the Shadow’s hull, looking not for signs of abuse or carelessness—though she knew that was what Danni and Cilghal believed—but for signs of micropits and gas scouring. Such wear was an inevitable result of any journey through the mass-rich space around Eclipse, and she took as much pride in her vessel’s sleek appearance as Han did in the Falcon’s “character.” She found only a handful of items that needed attention, a sign of what must have been an oppressively slow final approach.

  Mara stopped at the rear cargo lift, where Danni and Cilghal were unloading the equipment they had taken to Borleias. “You took good care of her. Thanks.”

  “Thank you for trusting us with her.” Danni put something that looked like a giant teething ring with a black eyeball in the center onto the repulsor pallet. “We tried to fit everything in a blastboat, but—”

  “It’s fine, Danni,” Mara said. She and everyone else had still been awaiting Luke’s return from the senate when Danni and Cilghal contacted her to ask if they could take the Shadow to Borleias. “I’m sure I cringed when I realized you were already under way, but it was in a good cause.”

  “I only wish we had been more successful,” Cilghal said. She placed a blastboat gravity generator on the pallet next to the teething ring thing. “I was sure I understood the structure of the yammosk’s gravital resonator. Perhaps the freezing altered something.”

  Mara felt a rush of joy from Ben and did not
need to turn to know that Luke was leading Corran, Leia, and most of Eclipse’s leaders across the hangar toward them. “Get ready, ladies,” she warned quietly. “They spent the whole trip from Coruscant arguing about how Borleias’s defenses could be defeated so quickly.”

  “That is an easy question to answer,” Cilghal said. “The Yuuzhan Vong care less for their own lives than ours. They throw away ships—”

  The blaring roar of an assault alarm drowned out the Mon Calamari’s final words. Radiating fear and discomfort into the Force, Ben added his own voice to the din, and the hangar erupted into action as ship crews rushed to prepare ships for launch.

  The alarm fell silent and was replaced by the watch officer’s voice. “Attention all crews: this is no drill. We have incoming yorik coral vessels.”

  Danni and Cilghal looked at each other guiltily. Mara experienced a flash of anger at them for leading the Yuuzhan Vong here and endangering her child—then realized that was not possible. She had inspected the Shadow carefully enough to know there were no tracking barnacles attached to the hull, and it would have been impossible for even the Yuuzhan Vong to track a ship through so many hyperspace jumps without a homing device of some sort.

  “No way they followed you here, but that won’t make any difference when the bolts start flashing. We’d better take our combat posts.” Mara pushed her son into Cilghal’s arms, then, as Danni ran off toward the Wild Knights’ blastboat, kissed him on the head. “Go to the emergency shelter with Cilghal, Ben.”

  Ben gurgled uncertainly, then fluttered his arms and legs as Mara rushed off toward her X-wing. Though hardly one to panic in a crisis, she deliberately kept her thoughts focused on the task at hand and felt Luke doing the same. Uncertainty bred fear, and as strong as Ben was in the Force, she did not want him to sense any dark-side emotions in his parents.

  By the time she reached her starfighter, the mechs were already lowering her astromech droid—she called him Dancer for no particular reason—into his socket. She grabbed her flight suit off the side of the cockpit and pulled it on, listening intently as the watch officer updated the alarm over her comlink.

  “Sentry stations report a light-cruiser-analog task force inbound, in pursuit of a Mark II-class Imperial Star Destroyer, possibly the Errant Venture.”

  Corran Horn was instantly on the channel, demanding answers the watch officer could not provide. The Destroyer was not transmitting a transponder signal—not at all unusual for Booster Terrik—nor had it hailed the base. Mara’s bewilderment mirrored what she sensed in Luke. The Errant Venture was supposed to be hiding the Jedi academy students in the New Republic rear base at Reecee, not hazarding trips to Eclipse, and a light-cruiser task force was hardly the type of fleet the Yuuzhan Vong would send to assault the base of the hated Jeedai. Something odd was happening here—something that felt faintly connected to the Shadow’s presence at Borleias, and yet something that did not really follow from it.

  Mara stopped at the top of her cockpit ladder and glanced over at Luke, whom she sensed looking in her direction. She knew instantly what was troubling him. Corran Horn was still on the comlink, yelling at the duty officer to break base protocol and hail the Destroyer.

  Mara nodded, and Luke activated his own comlink.

  “Negative on hailing the Destroyer, Watch.”

  “Negative?” Corran’s voice was close to a shriek. “My kids are on that Destroyer—I feel them!”

  “Then we can assume it is the Venture,” Mara said. She empathized with his feelings; were Ben being chased by a Yuuzhan Vong flotilla, she did not doubt that she would be just as concerned—and a whole lot more dangerous. “We can also assume Booster has a good reason for staying quiet.”

  “The Star Destroyer is taking heavy fire,” Watch reported. “It’s possible that all sensor dishes have been destroyed.”

  Stang! Mara thought. Very helpful, Watch.

  Corran’s X-wing fired its repulsors and lifted off the hangar floor.

  “Commander Horn!” Luke barked. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Where do you think?” This from Mirax. The steady click of heels striking duracrete suggested she was in a corridor somewhere, walking fast. “To chase those rocks off the Venture’s tail!”

  Corran’s X-wing started toward the containment field at the mouth of the hangar. A handful of starfighters followed him. “Watch, request shield deactivation for combat departure.”

  “Too early,” Mara commed. She powered up her systems and had Dancer start running diagnostics to warm the circuits. “We’re not ready to form up, and we can take them by surprise if we wait.”

  “Easy to say when Ben is safe inside and you’re still worried about hiding Eclipse’s location,” Mirax countered. “Not so easy when the Venture might go up any minute, taking Valin and Jysella with it.”

  “Watch, acknowledge departure.” Corran’s voice had an alarming edge to it. “Deactivate this shield—”

  “Corran, Mirax, you’re not the only ones with children at risk,” Han said. Given the risk that his children were facing at the moment, his words made even Mara feel a little guilty for thinking only of Ben’s safety; Corran, they shamed into silence. “And neither of you is thinking very clearly right now. If Booster was in trouble, you can bet he’d be rattling this rock with concussion missiles.”

  “Contacts have entered visual range,” Watch reported. “Identity confirmed as Errant Venture.”

  They were coming fast. Mara activated her tactical display and saw the Star Destroyer streaking toward Eclipse’s star, its forward turbolaser batteries blasting a clear path through the enormous asteroid disk that passed for a planetary system even at the edge of the Deep Core. There were eight light cruisers and twice that number of frigate and corvette analogs on his tail, and they were all traveling far too fast to intend decelerating anywhere near Eclipse.

  “Corran, what’s happening?” Mirax commed. “Why aren’t you launching?”

  “Han’s right, Mirax. Booster has something up his sleeve.” There was a moment’s pause, then Corran added, “I apologize, Master Skywalker.”

  Mara was not sure whether the relief she felt was her own or Luke’s—or both.

  “I’m sure you’d do the same for me, Corran,” Luke said. There was no hint of irritation in either his voice or his emotions. “We’ll launch after they pass. Can I count on you to keep a clear head?”

  “It might be better if Han took Battle Control,” Corran admitted. “I seem to have, uh, seated myself in the wrong vessel.”

  Han did not argue. Like Mara and Luke and most others old enough to have fought in the Rebellion, he had engaged in enough heroics to last five lifetimes; now, he was content to go where he was needed and let the combat come to him.

  “The Venture has been hulled,” Watch reported.

  Somehow, Mirax managed to limit her outcry to a strangled gasp. Mara would have filled the channel with curses that would have made even Rigard Matl blush.

  “Venting debris now.”

  Mara looked to her tactical display and saw a cloud of flotsam drifting in Eclipse’s general direction as the Venture flashed past. The Star Destroyer swayed wildly from side to side, as though struggling to retain control after the hit, then suddenly cleared a new path with a volley from its port turbolasers. Turning as sharply as a Star Destroyer could, it angled for a dense mass of asteroids just in-sun from Eclipse.

  “He’s setting us up,” Han said. “Launch by—”

  “Wait!” Mara said, still watching the debris cloud descend toward Eclipse. “Watch, scan that flotsam for life-forms. Booster wasn’t hit—he threw that stuff at us.”

  Before Watch could comply, Corran said, “Mara, thank you. I can feel Jysella and Valin reaching out to me.”

  “Affirmative,” Watch said. “Those are escape pods.”

  “Leia, can you send Han up to Control and oversee the pod recovery in the Falcon?” Luke asked. “And you and Mirax can help her, Corr
an.”

  Corran was already setting his X-wing down next to the Falcon. “I’d like nothing better. Thank you.”

  “Everyone else, launch—carefully—by squadrons,” Luke ordered. “Watch, lower the shield. Sabers … three, two, mark.”

  Mara activated her repulsorlift and followed Luke’s X-wing out of the hangar, sweeping around an escape pod and waving at a pair of wide-eyed young Jedi students watching her through their viewport. By the time the other three squadrons had formed up behind them, the Star Destroyer and its pursuers were already out of visual range and, as they eased into the asteroid cluster, growing difficult to find even on the tactical display.

  Mara thought their approach might remain undetected—until a handful of frigates poked their noses out of the asteroid cluster and began to drop their skips.

  “They must want Booster pretty desperately,” Mara observed.

  “Or they don’t know who we are,” Luke answered. The asteroid cluster came into visual range now, the flash of the Star Destroyer’s sixty turbolaser batteries lighting up the interior like a tiny red dwarf star. “All X-wings, lock S-foils into firing position. Don’t be stingy with those shadow bombs.”

  “Farmboy, you’d better hold back a minute,” Han commed.

  “Hold back?”

  “Affirmative, hold—”

  Han’s voice dissolved into static as the asteroid cluster began to explode mountainous rock by mountainous rock, sixty of them in staccato succession, each one spraying millions of tons of superheated stone in every direction at several thousand meters a second. On her tactical display, Mara saw a boulder split one of the frigates down the spine and glimpsed a cruiser analog tumbling out of the cluster in three separate sections, then Luke was yelling “Break, break!” and ducking them behind the shelter of a city-sized asteroid.

  When Han’s voice returned, he was explaining, “… old smuggler’s trick. Shunt all engine power to the particle shields, then heat an asteroid behind them and wait for it to explode.” He paused a moment, then added, “Works really well with a Star Destroyer.”