CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“I copy, thanks, Range Lead.” Corran looked at the other half-dozen Jedi with him. “You heard that. General Dendo says they have taken the bait. Gavin’s flyby pinpointed the transport they’re using as a command center. Saddle up. We’re going in hot.”
Corran, clad as were the other Jedi in black combat suits, climbed aboard a speeder bike that had a brushed aluminum case strapped to the back of it. He punched the ignition but-ton and felt the engine thrum to life. A small holographic image of the darkened jungle popped up between the handlebars, painting in luminous details the trees hidden by darkness.
He smiled. Through the Force he could feel those trees and avoid them. This will just paint any Vong lurkers for me as the thermal bleed from their bodies will betray their presence even if they are hiding.
Corran looked around for a moment, then smiled at Jacen, swathed in shadow. “What are you looking at?”
The younger man pointed at the case. “That case. Kinda hard to miss.”
“It is, isn’t it.” Corran nodded confidently. “But then, having it be noticed is the purpose of this exercise. Shedao Shai is going to find himself in a fight, and with this, we can remind him once again what he’s fighting for.”
At Shedao Shai’s order, the Yuuzhan Vong ennead surged forward, breaking from the jungle to sprint across open ground at the Ithorian building. Red laser bolts began to burn out from the walls, with splinters of light streaking in every direction. Around Shedao Shai ran Chazrach, howling and barking. In their midst went Yuuzhan Vong warriors, longer and leaner than their minions, racing forward in a sea of bobbing heads.
The Yuuzhan Vong leader stalked forward, seeing his troops as silhouettes in the light of the enemy fire. Energy darts exploded through Chazrach chests, clipped limbs, spun the diminutive warriors around to drop them smoking to the ground. Some of the wounded mewed and writhed, others struggled to their feet to keep going. Shedao Shai did not waste the time to dispatch the seriously injured, instead granting them the grace of dying in pain to redeem their failure.
Concentrated though the laserfire was, the automatons controlling the weapons lacked the flexibility to shift their tactics as the situation evolved. All the variables they were given to consider changed constantly, so each second brought new calculations and spastic motions imperfectly mimicking the living enemy they faced. Different machines responded at different speeds, causing them to leave one vector open while doubling up on another that no longer presented a threat. Slaves to their programming, the machines could not eliminate the extraneous and concentrate on what was vital.
As a living creature has long evolved the capacity to do. Shedao Shai saw one of his warriors go down and reached his side in a heartbeat. He tore the amphistaff from the lifeless hands, began to whirl it over his head, then charged forward, letting his fury and outrage fuel his assault.
Yuuzhan Vong attack bugs filled the air around him. Some struck targets and exploded, crumbling walls, destroying computer-controlled gun mounts, and reducing automatons to shrapnel and sparking limbs.
A living foe would continue fighting, but not these things.
The Chazrach swarmed over the wall and raced up the ramps to the next level. From the roof towers more laser-fire poured down, though the guns failed to depress enough to rake the building’s upper terraces. Shedao Shai smiled grimly at that fact, since no living creature—no intelligent creature—would have made that mistake. A true warrior would hoist the weapons from their mounts and spray that lethal energy over us. These automatons are not even as intelligent as beasts.
Well-thrown explosive bugs blasted the top of one tower off, sending a triumphant shout throughout the Yuuzhan Vong host. The squeal of metal as amphistaffs were ripped from metal and the snap of sparks as coufees sliced cables wove themselves into a percussive symphony of destruction. More explosions split the night, and a second tower crashed down with enough force to shake the whole building.
Shedao Shai found himself shrieking victoriously with his ennead, but his cry died prematurely. He stepped back, a cold sense of dread seizing him as Yuuzhan Vong warriors and Chazrach flooded into the building. Something was not right, and not until he realized that the impact from so light a structure as the tower should not have been able to send more than a minor tremor through the building could he pinpoint what was wrong.
This is not a permanent structure. He looked around again, his eyes widened with growing horror. An orgy of havoc surrounded him. Chazrach were beating consoles into debris. Circuit boards were yanked from their middles, rainbow ribbons trailing out like colorful intestines. Even his warriors appropriated wires and gaskets, adorning themselves with relics of the vanquished.
His force had lost all its cohesion and discipline. The razing of the facility and the shattering of its technology continued deep inside, with shouts luring more and more of his troops into the white building’s heart. It is what they wanted, what they expected when they put their abominations here. They knew we would take offense and lose our minds.
Shedao Shai vaulted the low wall and began to back away from the building. He shouted for his troops to retreat and heard his call repeated. The Chazrach near him came away immediately, and more of their brethren began to flee, but none of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors. No, of course not. They would not take orders from Chazrach to leave off their sacred duty.
He started to use his villip to get the command center to issue a recall, but a rumble began to build, shaking the ground, and Shedao Shai knew it was too late.
The New Republic defenders, having long acknowledged that hitting a target was tough if there was no target, decided to provide the Yuuzhan Vong with something to attack on the surface of Ithor itself. They defended it with automated blasters and peopled it with droid shells, cobbled together from spare parts and just enough circuitry to allow the machines a little motion. They knew that using what appeared to be droids to defend the target would likely unhinge the Yuuzhan Vong and get them committed to a frenzy of destruction. Toward this end they constructed a building rather hastily, not worrying about a lot of internal support structures or a deep foundation.
Despite not providing a deep foundation to the building complex, the defenders did dig a hole beneath the building. This hole they filled with explosives and then laid the building slab over the top. The detonators for the explosives were wired to one of the computers stored in the heart of the building. Once General Dendo armed it by a comm signal, the detonation sequence would begin only if the computer shut down.
Having an amphistaff shoved into it and twisted accomplished this end rather nicely.
The resulting explosion shattered the slab and filled the basement with fire, consuming a half-dozen Chazrach that had wandered down there. The expanding fireball then vaporized the next floor, taking with it the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, his amphistaff, and the computer he’d destroyed. The blast cracked what few internal supports had been placed in the building, and as the fireball collapsed, the building collapsed in on top of it.
Walls buckled and the uppermost floor pancaked into the second one. The exterior walls cracked and sagged in, albeit unevenly, providing some room for survivors to hunker down. Smoke and dust poured out through broken viewports, with the wailings of the trapped and wounded following closely behind.
Shedao Shai picked himself up off the ground and snarled. The villip on his left shoulder started chattering, but the whine of blaster bolts tearing through the jungle on his right flank alerted him to his immediate problem. The fact that he heard nothing from his left flank displeased him even more. He snapped an order into the villip, ordering a withdrawal, and began to stalk back through the night.
How could I have allowed this to happen? His eyes tightened. Elegos! The Caamasi had been so open and peaceful, so intelligent and honest, that Shedao Shai had discounted the sort of cunning and guile such an ambush would require. They might have even anticipated what I thought of them based on my contact with Elegos. These people are not the Chazrach. Their conquest will not come easily.
Shedao Shai let an angry howl split the night. It will come, though, and it will be at my hands.
Mara heard Anakin’s call and the order he’d been given to head to the opal grove. She reached out with her senses and picked him up, then got flashes of trouble in the vicinity. She keyed her comlink. “Jade moving to intercept Twelve.”
Mara felt the Force flood through her. She’d been waiting deep in the Jedi formation, across the green strip from where Anakin had been stationed. The fighting on her side had not been fierce, so she’d not been asked to move up. As she raced along a walkway, then vaulted the balustrade to drop to the next level below, she found out why.
The Yuuzhan Vong had made a solid drive at the center of the Jedi formation. Kyp Durron and Wurth Skidder, both bleeding from numerous cuts, faced four of the warriors. Beyond them, coming down the walkway, Anakin had stopped at the top of a small rise. He’d set Daeshara’cor down and, with two lightsabers, was holding off a knot of the reptoids.
The idiots should have called for help! Mara thumbed her lightsaber to life, splashing a cold blue glow over the Yuuzhan Vong. She launched herself into a long, flying somersault, then ducked beneath the slash meant to open her from hip to hip. She stabbed her blade through the space between the Yuuzhan Vong’s legs, then cocked her wrist and stroked the blade against the back of his left knee. Tugging, she came up and through the limb, severing it completely.
Snarling, the warrior began to go down. Mara leapt above the weak return slash, then came down with a heel hard on the fallen Yuuzhan Vong’s wrist. Bones crunched and the amphistaff rolled free. Mara batted aside the warrior’s other hand, scattering fingers, then stabbed her blade through his throat.
Mara spun as Wurth shrieked. The man reeled back, his right forearm bent where no elbow existed, and bent in a direction that no elbow could take it. His lightsaber was nowhere to be seen. His Yuuzhan Vong foe whirled the amphistaff, sending a hum through the air, and pressed his attack. With the flick of a finger, Mara send a handful of dirt from a planter flying into the warrior’s face. The Yuuzhan Vong clawed at his eyes to clear them, giving Kyp Durron a chance to slash him across the belly.
That Yuuzhan Vong warrior sighed all too peacefully as he collapsed. Another warrior arced his amphistaff at Mara, opening a cut in her left shoulder. Mara parried the return slash, then spun and kicked the warrior in the chest. He pitched back, then caught his heels on his dead comrade’s body. As he went down, Mara disarmed him with a cut through the wrist, then stabbed him through the chest and melted his heart.
Kyp’s violet and white blade swept up in a mighty cut that sliced through the Yuuzhan Vong’s chest from right hip to left shoulder. The Yuuzhan Vong spun away from the blow and staggered several steps, clutching at his ruined middle. He held the cleaved breastplate closed as if that would save him, then sat back against a wall and slid to the ground in a pool of his own blood.
Mara jabbed her lightsaber toward Wurth. “Get him out of here. I see blood—it’s a compound fracture. Cauterize it with your lightsaber if you have to.”
Kyp’s eyes narrowed. “He’ll survive. I’m not going to leave you here.”
“I don’t need your help, Kyp. He does. Just go on while there’s still time. Do it.”
He stared at her through a mask of blood flowing from a scalp wound. “I know my duty.”
“Then do your duty toward your friend.” She snarled as she ran toward Anakin. “Get him clear!”
Up on the walkway, the twin lightsabers had allowed Anakin to hold off the reptoids, but the four of them were pressing him closely. Mara gathered the Force to herself to make the leap up to his level, but before she could launch herself, one of the reptoids shifted his grip on the amphistaff and swung it around at waist height. His blow bisected his target.
Then the reptoid lunged and caught the second of his comrades with a thrust to the chest. As the third looked on in amazement, Anakin lashed out with his purple blade, burning the surprise from that reptoid’s face. A quick lunge with Daeshara’cor’s scarlet blade killed the last reptoid, who thrashed out his last moments of life at Mara’s feet as she landed.
“What did you do, Anakin?”
“Nothing.” The boy smiled and looked past her. Mara spun and saw Luke standing there, all serene and calm in the midst of the chaos.
The Jedi Master waved them toward him with a hand. “Let’s go. Anakin, you lead.”
Mara extinguished her lightsaber, then tossed Daeshara’cor over her shoulders in an emergency carry. “What did you do?” She took great comfort in his presence.
“Swapped images of Anakin and the other reptoids in that one’s mind. Wasn’t much of a trick.”
“But an effective one.” She nodded. “You saw Kyp and Wurth.”
“Ahead of us. You can see the blood.” Luke touched his hand to the middle of Mara’s back. “You should have called me to help.”
“I figured you heard my comm and would come if needed.” She laughed lightly so he’d know she was smiling. “And I’m glad you did.”
“Thanks for saving Anakin.”
“I owed him.” Her smile broadened as she saw Anakin warding a corridor entrance with his twin blades. “Besides, a century from now, when Jedi are singing ballads about the great Jedi hero, Anakin Solo, I want to be known for being a bit more than the woman he saved at Dantooine.”
“Oh, I think, Mara,” her husband said quietly, “that won’t be a problem at all.”
Aboard the Legacy of Torment, Deign Lian saw the weapons on one of the infidel ships flash. Their golden-red bolts lanced down at one of the smaller ships in the Yuuzhan Vong formation and blew through the voids raised to intercept such weak shots. The energy projectiles boiled yorick coral on the hull, converting it from solid to vapor, which jetted back out into space.
Two shots that hit along the dorsal ridge exposed the living ship’s main neural channel to the cold of space. Tissue froze instantly, imposing an icy block that prevented data from flowing to and from the bridge and the forward part of the ship. The dovin basals there, being deprived of sensory data about incoming enemy fire, dropped into a standard wait state, positioning voids as best they could, to protect themselves and the ship.
Heavier shots poured down from the enemy ships. Some sank into the voids, but the rest punched past the defenses. They peppered the hull, walking in a line from prow to midship. Half-melted yorick coral panels broke off and whirled free. The front half of the ship disintegrated under the barrage. Agony’s Child twisted in flight, snapping off the skeletal structure that had been its front half, and began to orbit Ithor as a new, dead moon.
What is happening? We had a strategy. Deign Lian watched as another ship came under a withering assault. It began to glow white and spread out like ice on a hot rock. That can’t be happening!
In an instant, Deign Lian knew what he had to do. He issued an order to all ships, commanding them to pull back to the daylight side of the world. He concentrated his own fire on the smaller enemy ships, discouraging pursuit, and slowly let the world’s green disk eclipse the enemy force.
Seething, Deign Lian pulled his head from the cognition hood. He knew this would happen. That is why he is down there. He did this on purpose, to shame me.
The Yuuzhan Vong nodded solemnly. And he sent for reinforcements. He’ll not have them from me. I hope he is dead. If he isn’t, I might just have to kill him myself.
The Jedi jungle task force hit the Yuuzhan Vong command center hard. Jacen triggered two shots from the speeder bike’s blaster cannon. They struck a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, spinning his headless body around and smashing it against the hull of the crate. Other blaster shots killed reptoids, though several Jedi dismounted to finish the last few with their lightsabers. Jacen knew it was less because they wanted the kill than it was to prevent themselves from feeling so distant and insulated from the life they took.
Corran leapt from his speeder bike’s seat and tugged the case free of its bindings. With his lightsaber unlit in his right hand, he ran to the crate. Jacen followed close at his heels, and Ganner came right behind. Jacen pounded up the landing ramp with his lightsaber at the ready, but found Corran alone in the ship’s interior save for one cowering reptoid tucked down in a corner.
The elder Jedi stood before a bank of villips and studied them. Most bore the likeness of a Yuuzhan Vong, though Jacen could not really tell them apart. A few of the villips slackened and smoothed as he watched, leading him to assume the Yuuzhan Vong or villip paired with it was out of commission.
“How do you know which one to talk to?”
Corran had set the case down and had his left hand pressed to his mouth. “I’m looking for one who looks important. Chances of Shai being here are slender, but whoever is in command would have his . . . well, whatever the Vong have that passes for ears.”
Jacen shrugged. “Sort on ugly?”
“That might work.” Corran smiled suddenly. “It’s a good day for our team. Can’t forget that ugly face.” He reached out and slapped a particular villip none too softly. “Shedao Shai, this is Corran Horn. I own your command center, and it’s my people harrying your flanks. You have some regular New Republic commandos on your right, and Noghri on your left. Bet the left is real quiet.”
The Yuuzhan Vong villip visage hardened. “You have less honor than a ngdin.”
Corran glanced at Jacen, but the young man shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“I might not have any honor, but I do have a packet of bones here. I think you wanted these.”
“Their return does not mitigate your treachery.”
“They haven’t been returned yet, pal. I have a deal for you. You don’t agree, I send these bones into the sun.”
The Yuuzhan Vong’s eyes became slits. “Your deal is?”
“What we both want. You, me, our seconds: the bones against Ithor. You win, you get the bones. I win, I get the planet.” Corran’s voice took on an edge. “Our forces have a truce until we can fight this out. We each recover our dead, then you and I settle this.”
“You bargain like a merchant.” The villip’s lip curled into a sneer. “Elegos would have been ashamed at how low you’ve sunk.”
“Well, you’ve taken care to see we won’t ever know what he thought, haven’t you? You and me, Shedao Shai; the bones against Ithor.”
“How long until we meet?”
Corran hesitated for a moment. “A lunar cycle. I’m a Jedi. I want to fight under a full moon.”
“Remember the lesson of Sernpidal. I can make it so you will fight beneath a full moon. Two planetary cycles. There is a tabletop mountain west of here. We will do it there.”
“Two weeks.”
“Four days.”
“Ten.”
“I tire of this game, jeedai.” Fury poured through the words. “A week. No longer.”
Corran nodded. “A week.”
The villip’s face softened for a second, then sharpened. “Seven planetary cycles from now, a truce until then. It shall be done.”
“Good, very good. I’ll see you then.”
“Yes, you shall.” The villip’s voice sank to a gravelly growl. “Come prepared to die.”