TWENTY-SEVEN

Lightsabers clenched in two-handed grips, Kyp and Ganner approached the chamber in which Wurth Skidder was apparently being held. The absence of guards in the dark and humid corridor had Kyp thinking otherwise, but no sooner had his lightsaber coaxed the chamber’s portal to open than he caught sight of Skidder. And immediately he grasped what the captive—Roa—had meant by saying that Skidder wasn’t likely to be his old self.

Stripped naked, he was lying faceup on the floor with his legs bent backward at the knees and his arms extended beyond his head. Surrounding him—and plainly responsible for the cartilaginous growths that wedded him to the deck at knees, insteps, shoulders, elbows, and wrists—were a dozen or so crablike creatures, a few of whom managed to skitter to safety before Kyp’s and Ganner’s lightsabers could be brought to bear on them. The screeching others were cleaved and dismembered, their legs and pincers flung to all quarters of the hold.

Kneeling, Kyp wedged his hand under Wurth’s neck and gently lifted his head. Skidder groaned in agony, but his eyes fluttered open.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here,” he rasped.

Kyp made himself smile. “You think we’d let you execute this mission on your own?”

Skidder licked his lips to wet them. “How did you find me?”

“The Hutts got a message to us through one of their smugglers.”

Skidder’s eyebrows beetled in puzzlement. “I thought they’d joined the opposition.”

“I guess they’ve seen the light.”

“That’s good to hear,” Skidder said in genuine relief. He glanced at Ganner, then added, “I sensed you when you attacked the ship before it jumped.”

“That was at Kalarba,” Ganner said.

“Where are we now?”

“Fondor.”

Skidder showed them a startled look. “Why—”

“Fondor was always the target,” Kyp said. “The fleet has been caught by surprise.”

Skidder shut his eyes and nodded. “I tried to learn our destination—the yammosk’s destination.”

Kyp compressed his lips before replying. “We managed to cripple the ship before it made planetfall, but the Yuuzhan Vong are prevailing even without the war coordinator.”

“There are captives aboard,” Skidder said, as if suddenly remembering. “The plan was to familiarize the yammosk with our thought patterns—”

“We’ve got them,” Ganner cut him off. “Deak and some of the others are with them. Now we just have to see about freeing you.”

Wurth laughed, shortly and bitterly. “Chine-kal promised to break me, and he has.”

“Chine-kal?”

“The ship’s commander.” Skidder’s face contorted and he moaned in pain.

Concealing his hopelessness, Kyp took a closer look at the surge-coral protrusions that anchored Wurth to the pliant deck. “Our lightsabers should make short work of these,” he started to say, when Wurth shook his head violently.

“There isn’t time. You have to leave.”

Kyp looked hard into his comrade’s eyes. “I won’t leave you, Wurth. We’ll find a way to help you. The Force—”

“Look at me,” Skidder interrupted firmly. “Look at me through the Force. I’m dying, Kyp. You can’t help me.”

Kyp opened his mouth to reply, but instead loosed a resigned sigh.

Skidder smiled with his eyes. “I’m prepared, Kyp. I’m ready to die. But there are two things I need you to do before you leave this ship.”

Kyp nodded grimly and leaned his ear closer to his friend’s mouth.

“Randa and Chine-kal,” Wurth managed to say. “Find them.”

Alone in the Falcon’s cockpit, Han had one hand gripped on the yoke and the other on the servo that operated the dorsal quad laser. Triggering staccato bursts from the weapon, he blew away two approaching coralskippers. From somewhere behind the Falcon a third skip vectored in on a strafing run against the shipyard, but before Han could even swivel the gun turret, the enemy craft was pulverized by fire from one of the battered X-wings that flew with Kyp’s Dozen.

“Good shooting,” Han said into the mouthpiece of his headset.

“Thanks, Falcon,” the voice of the ship’s female pilot came back. “You soften them up, I’ll put them away.”

“Will do,” Han told her.

He brought the Falcon about to recon the Rimward side of the empty yard in which the Ruan refugees had been marooned. Below, Droma, the second fighter pilot, and some of the pirates were organizing the recovery, with the Trevee berthed where a construction barge or tender might have anchored if the facility had been operational. With the Yuuzhan Vong fleet continuing to encroach on Fondor, the Tholatin crew—reluctant rescuers early on—were suddenly desperate to wrap the mission and launch for clear space.

Noise crackled from the cockpit annunciators, and a grainy video image of Droma appeared on the comm display screen.

“Han, the Trevee is loading, but fifty or so folks are still unaccounted for. Apparently they figured they could escape detection by hiding out.”

Behind Droma, grinning broadly, were clustered some ten other Ryn, including the two he had introduced earlier as Gaph and Melisma. Melisma was now cradling a Ryn infant in her arms.

“You can’t hide from plasma,” Han barked toward the audio pickup.

Droma nodded. “We’ll search them out.”

“Yeah, well, don’t waste any time. Looks like a Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort has taken a sudden interest in the place.”

Droma nodded and signed off.

As the Falcon came full circle around the shipyard, the Trevee once more loomed large in the forward viewport. The transport’s hyperdrive was ruined, but the sublight drives were more than capable of moving the ship out past the enemy fleet—providing it got away in time.

Even as Han was thinking it, the Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort hove into view off to port, keen on targeting the shipyard with the projectile launchers concealed in its pitted starboard bow.

Han throttled the Falcon toward the intruder, firing steadily, but the escort was too resolved on destroying the shipyard to be bothered by a lone assailant. Just then, though, the X-wing appeared on the scene, succeeding in getting the escort’s attention with two well-placed proton torpedoes that impacted against its blunt nose.

Han banked harder to port, racing the Falcon through a storm of flaming projectiles to come to the fighter’s support, but he failed to arrive in time. Plasma gushed from the escort and caught the X-wing just as it was breaking off from its reckless run. Wingtip lasers and stabilizers melted like candle wax, and the pilot lost control. Trailing gobs of solidifying alloy, the fighter went into a crazed roll, splitting apart before perishing in a fiery explosion.

Han’s eyes narrowed in hatred. “Nobody takes out my wingmate.”

Whipping the Falcon around, he went for the escort with the quad lasers blazing. Chunks of yorik coral exploded outward from the ship, and a thick blade of flame streaked into space. The ship rolled to one side like a wounded beast. At the same time, the comm screen came to life.

“We’re away,” Droma said. “Aiming for clear skies.”

Han powered the Falcon through an ascending loop, then veered off to starboard, glimpsing the Trevee and its fighter companion just as they were accelerating from the threatened facility. The dying escort spotted them, as well. Missiles sought the fleeing vessels, but the escort reserved the bulk of its barrage for the shipyard itself. Punctured throughout by projectiles, the facility began to disintegrate, then it blew apart, unfurling flames that scorched the tail of the accelerating transport. Then the escort, too, disappeared in a flash of blinding light.

“You have my word that I will devote the remainder of my days to repaying the debt I have this day incurred,” Randa bellowed in Basic as he trailed Kyp and Ganner through the clustership, the slapping sounds of his muscular tail loud in the passageway.

“Thank Skidder, Randa,” Kyp said over his shoulder. “If it’d been up to me, I would have left you with your dead toadies.”

“Then I will repay the debt in honor of Skidder,” Randa said, unfazed. “You will see.”

As it happened, the two Jedi didn’t have long to wait. Rounding a corner in the passageway, they found themselves faced with a phalanx of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, into whose midst Randa charged, knocking half a dozen aside before any of those left standing could land blows against the Hutt’s mostly impervious hide. Kyp and Ganner followed up the brash offensive, felling their opponents with precise strikes to susceptible spots in the warriors’ armor.

The three of them fought their way toward an enormous maw in the bulkhead, from beyond which emanated a stench even more pungent than that given off by Randa. Inside the vast chamber, encircled by attendants who clearly had meager familiarity with the coufees they brandished, stood a Yuuzhan Vong commander, a long cloak hanging from his transmogrified shoulders and a villip communicator in his hands. Behind them, raised up on tensed tentacles in a circular tank of foul-smelling liquid, was a maturing yammosk, a large tooth glistening in its rictus of a mouth and its massive black eyes riveted on the intruders.

Again Randa rushed forward, flattening several of the attendants and whipping his tail around to whack the villip out of the commander’s hands. The attendants began what would have been a fruitless defense, but the commander ordered them to lower their weapons.

“I congratulate you on getting this far,” he said after two of the attendants had helped him back to his feet.

Kyp angled his lightsaber to one side, the blade extended in front of him. “Move out of the way and we’ll go the rest of the distance.”

Chine-kal turned slightly to glance at the yammosk. “Of course. The life of a yammosk for that of a Jedi. It strikes me as equitable.”

From off to Kyp’s left, Ganner hurled his ignited lightsaber square into the creature’s left eye. As the sulfurous-yellow energy blade struck, the yammosk shrieked and its tentacles flailed, generating waves that cascaded down over the yorik-coral retaining wall of the pool and washed across the deck. The yammosk reared up and began to sway from side to side. Gradually the tentacles stopped moving, and the creature sank down into the tank, dead by the time Ganner called the lightsaber back to him.

Chine-kal’s sadness endured for only a moment. “Well executed, Jedi. But you have doomed us all.”

A shudder passed through the ship even as the words were leaving his mouth.

“The yammosk controls the ship,” Randa explained. “The pilot dovin basals are now in the throes of death.”

Chine-kal grinned faintly. “No one gets out of here alive.”

Kyp returned the grin. “This won’t be the first time you’ve misjudged a situation, Commander.” He scanned the attendants, then set his gaze on Chine-kal. “Any or all of you are free to come with us.” When it was obvious that none of them were going to budge, Kyp shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”

He backed into the passageway, Ganner to one side, Randa to the other. Another death-throe spasm sent the three of them pitching against the bulkheads. Regaining his balance, Kyp started off the way they had come, but Randa stopped him.

“I know a more direct route.”

They had just entered an adjacent module when Kyp’s comlink toned.

“What’s your situation, Kyp?”

Kyp recognized Han Solo’s voice. “We’re outward bound. The ship’s destroying itself.”

“A splinter group of Yuuzhan Vong warships are on their way. Not much chance of our holding them off.”

“Then don’t risk it.”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that. Where are the captives?”

“They’re being moved to the module we punched through.”

“How many?”

“One hundred, give or take a few.”

Solo muttered something. “The Trevee is defenseless. We’ll have to cram everyone aboard the Falcon.”

“Can you bring the Falcon close enough to extend a cofferdam?”

Han snorted. “That’s the least of our problems.”

“There’s an airlock in the central module, but from the outside you probably won’t be able to identify it. Look for our signal flare. Otherwise, I’ll have Deak or someone lead you to it.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that,” Kyp said. “By the way, can you accommodate a Hutt?”

Solo launched a surprised laugh. “A Hutt? Sure, the more the merrier.”

“Then you’ll be glad to hear that one of the captives asked me to send his regards.”

“Who?”

“Roa.”

“Take the shot!” Sal-Solo hissed through his clenched teeth. “Take it!”

“For the Mrlssi,” a more plaintive voice added.

“For the sake of the New Republic,” the captain said.

“No, my boy, no,” Ebrihim and Q9 said.

As many voices vied for prominence in Anakin’s mind as in the control room. He heard the heartfelt words of his mother and father, the harsh voice of Jacen and the understanding voice of Jaina, the counsel of Uncle Luke …

Anakin ignored all of them and looked at Jacen. “Tell me,” he said.

Jacen responded quietly and calmly, almost as if he had subvocalized the response. “You are my brother, and you are a Jedi, Anakin. You can’t do this.”

Anakin took a deep breath and moved his hand away from the handgrip trigger. The tension in the room broke with a collective exhalation of disappointment. The technicians grumbled and the Mrlssi hung their heads in defeat. The next thing Anakin knew, someone had shoved him forcibly from the control seat.

“I’ll take the shot,” Thrackan Sal-Solo shouted angrily as his hand closed on the trigger.

Led by the Yald, the task force from Commenor decanted outside the orbit of Fondor’s outermost moon. Following them into realspace came the Battle Dragons and battle cruisers that made up the Hapan fleet, positioned to engage the Yuuzhan Vong armada at close range.

Commodore Brand had allowed Leia to join him on the bridge, where she stood just behind his command chair, gazing through the wraparound viewport at the reverting Hapan warships. Closer to Fondor, explosions flared in the night as vessels and shipyards succumbed to the enemy onslaught.

“Fleet command and control reports casualties in excess of 50 percent,” an enlisted-rating updated from his duty station. “Some of the shipyards are managing to defend against coralskipper suicide strikes, but the fleet has been unable to attenuate bombardment from the enemy warships.”

Brand swiveled his chair to study various threat-assessor displays and vertical plotting panels. “The Hapans will put the fear into those warships,” he assured in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the bridge.

Leia hid her trembling right hand beneath her cloak and cut her eyes from the viewport to the plotting panels. She reached out with the Force for Anakin and Jacen. Where earlier the effort had only increased the gravity of her distress, she now experienced relief. A transcendent calm enveloped her, and the apprehension she had known since Hapes was suddenly gone.

But the serenity was fleeting. Almost instantly something raw and uncontrollable flooded into her awareness. Again she reached for Anakin and Jacen, and at once realized that her concerns for them had dammed a deeper though less personalized fear, which suddenly rushed in.

She swung to the viewport to see the Hapan fleet forming up into battle groups and already beginning to close with individual enemy warships.

“You may fire when ready,” she heard Brand telling Prince Isolder, but as if at some great distance.

All at once, a flash of radiant energy illuminated local space. From Rimward of Fondor’s outermost moon, or perhaps gushed from hyperspace itself, came a torrent of starfire a thousand kilometers wide. Coalescing into a savage beam of focused annihilation, it tore into the midst of the dispersing Hapan fleet, consuming every ship in its path, atomizing some in the blink of an eye and holing others with spears of seething light. Weapons, superstructure, and antennae vaporized by the skewering beam, the ships exploded outward, vanishing in globes of brilliant mass-energy conversions. Even those ships outside the limits of the beam were hurled violently off course, slagged along their inward-facing sides, or thrown into collisions with one another. The mated saucers of the Battle Dragons broke apart and disintegrated, and the battle cruisers were snapped like twigs. Fighter groups vanished without a trace.

Leia was dumbfounded. Nothing in the Yuuzhan Vong arsenal had prepared her for devastation on so immense a scale. For a moment she was certain she was in the grips of another terrible vision, but it quickly became clear that the violence was real.

Her stupefaction deepened when the beam didn’t diminish as it punched through the Hapan fleet. Lancing deeper into Fondor space, the shaft of raging power went on to graze Fondor’s penultimate moon, effacing a portion of the cratered planetoid as a surgical laser might a tumor. Then it ripped unabated into the heart of the enemy armada, obliterating masses of coralskippers and pulverizing several of the largest warships. Finished with its work or not, the beam then shot past Fondor, singeing the northern hemisphere in its passing, perhaps to destroy some even more distant target.

All systems had failed on the bridge, and for a long moment, even as consoles and display screens flickered back to life under emergency power, everyone was simply too stunned to speak or cry out, much less make sense of what they had just witnessed.

“Some sort of repulsor beam,” a tech finally said in a stark disbelief. “Delivered through hyperspace.”

“Centerpoint,” Leia said, as if in shock.

Brand and several others turned to her.

She looked at the commodore. “Someone fired Centerpoint Station.”

Han embraced Roa as he came through the airlock in the Falcon’s port-side docking arm.

“Fasgo’s dead,” Roa said when Han let him go.

Han shook his head in dismay. “He could have been a friend.”

“As I was saying on the Jubilee Wheel, fortune smiles, then betrays … then smiles once more.”

Han ran his eyes over his friend and managed a grin. “You know, you don’t look half bad.”

“The half that does I’ll have repaired. Did my ship survive?”

“Waiting for you at Bilbringi.”

Roa loosed a sigh and turned to help a Ryn female out of the airlock. “Han, I’d like you to meet—”

“Any chance you have a clanmate named Droma?” Han interrupted.

The female looked surprised. “I have a brother named Droma.”

Han’s grin broadened. “You’ll be seeing him soon enough.”

Roa scratched his head. “Seems I’ve a lot to catch up on.”

“That doesn’t begin to say it.”

The clustership was already beginning to come apart. Han’s fear that he might have to separate prematurely from the trembling ship only made him work harder at getting all the rescued captives aboard. By the time the last of them boarded, the forward hold, bunk rooms, galley, and utility spaces were packed. Han could only hope that the Falcon’s air scrubbers would hold out long enough to sustain everyone through a jump to Mrlsst or elsewhere in the Tapani sector. Even assuming that life support continued to function, they were going to be a hungry, dehydrated lot when and wherever they ultimately touched down.

With the airlock resealed, Han, Roa, and two of the Ryn threaded their way to the cockpit. Han squeezed into the pilot’s seat and began to maneuver the Falcon away from the Yuuzhan Vong vessel. Through the forward viewport he could see what remained of Kyp’s Dozen launching through the hole they had blown in the ruined module.

Roa helped bring the quad lasers on-line as Han nosed the Falcon over the top of the spherical module, expecting to have to engage the enemy warships that had broken from the armada to render aid to the crippled yammosk vessel. Instead he was greeted by a sight that tugged a gleeful cry from him.

“Hapan Battle Dragons!” he said, glancing at Roa. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

He was about to add that Leia had more than likely been responsible for enlisting the Hapans’ support when an intense, white radiance blinded him. The Falcon died, then was tossed through an end-over-end ride that deposited her two thousand kilometers from where she had been.

The Yuuzhan Vong had coaxed Fondor’s sun to go nova, Han told himself. They had wiped out the entire system.

When his vision returned and the moans and groans of his tumbled cargo had died down, Han saw that three-fourths of the Hapan fleet and half the Yuuzhan Vong armada were gone.

On his helix flagship, Nas Choka recaptured enough of his self-control to keep some of the dismay out of the incredulous look he showed Malik Carr and Nom Anor. Against the backdrop of a razed moon, the villip-choir field showed the blackened skeletons and husks of untold numbers of Yuuzhan Vong and enemy ships.

“They killed most of their reinforcements to eliminate half of our force,” the supreme commander said. “Is such savagery commonplace?”

Nom Anor shook his head, as much in response as to clear it. “A mistake. It has to be a mistake. Their reverence for life has always been their weakness.”

“Then perhaps we’ve managed to bring out the primitive in them,” Malik Carr said in a stunned voice.

A herald appeared. The villip in his trembling hands bore the strained features of Chine-kal.

“The yammosk has been killed,” Chine-kal gasped through his communicator, “and the ship is dying. The Hutts betrayed our location to the Jedi. The Jedi captured on Gyndine will die with us, but two of his confederates and Randa Besadii Diori—the murderers of the yammosk—escaped. We—”

The villip fell silent suddenly, then everted to its featureless form. Chine-kal was dead.

Nas Choka turned away in disgust. “Recall all operational coralskippers,” he instructed his subaltern. “Order the rest to commit what destruction they can. All warship commanders will prepare their ships for departure. We have accomplished what we set out to do. Now we have a score to settle with the Hutts.”

Jedi Eclipse
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