CHAPTER TWENTY

Jacen looked at the digital readout on the sedative injector in his right hand. One dose left. The two captives had received enough of the drug to keep a small gang of men down for a week, and still they could move—though, not much, given how tightly the Noghri had bound them. Just how tough the Yuuzhan Vong’s creations were slammed into him, along with bloody visions of a long war against them.

He turned from the back end of the Best Chance, sidled past where Ganner sat with a reddened pressure bandage against his face, and slipped out the hatch. Jacen crossed quickly to where Corran stood talking to Rade. He nodded to the both of them, but waited for their conversation to end before he said anything.

The Garqian smiled wearily. “I appreciate the offer, Corran, but I’m not going to take up one of those open slots you have on the ship. I can’t abandon my people, and they’d refuse an order to evacuate. We’re here for the long haul.”

“I’m not being altruistic here, Rade. You’ve got great intel on the Vong, and we need it.”

“But what you need more is us being active here, making the Yuuzhan Vong think the whole Xenobotanical Garden fire was just a terrorist act.” The resistance leader clapped the elder Jedi on the shoulders. “Your coming here meant a lot, and we’ll get more information out to you. You have to go so you can find a way to turn our people back into our people. We need to be here to make sure there are some folks remaining to welcome the returnees back.”

Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “You’re not being abandoned, you know. We’ll be back to liberate Garqi.”

Rade’s smile broadened. “Better hurry back. We’re planning to do the job ourselves.”

Jacen held up the injector. “Our guests are down, but I’m not sure for how long. There’s one dose left. Can I give it to Ganner?”

“Did he ask for it?”

The young man shook his head. “He’s suffering, though.”

Corran thought for a moment, then nodded. “Ask him if he wants it. If he says no, give it to him anyway.”

“Are you joking?”

Corran shook his head. “He’s a Jedi and he’s in pain. I don’t want him twitching TK that breaks something. We can’t go until we get a signal, and I want us ready to sky when that happens. Our escape window here isn’t going to be that big.”

The idea that he should shoot Ganner full of a sedative against his will struck Jacen as a gross violation of Ganner’s privacy and dignity, and he almost suspected Corran gave him the directive because of the friction between the two older Jedi. But Corran’s reasoning made perfect sense, and his deliberation before telling Jacen what to do suggested he was searching for any way around adding insult to Ganner’s injury. The order, though it would be a blow to Ganner, would be for the sake of the mission. Clearly Ganner’s wishes, or those of anyone else, had to be secondary to what they were doing. Just as I should have left the courtyard when Corran ordered me to, regardless of the consequences.

All of a sudden Jacen saw the role of a mission leader in an entirely different light. Before, he’d always seen the leader as someone in power, and he could see how that position would be desirable. It meant a person had been deemed superior to his fellows. His orders were to be followed, his dictates were law. For someone as young as he was, becoming a leader seemed like a promotion to adult status, and he had not looked beyond that point.

The other side of being the leader and what that meant blossomed full in his brain. Yes, Corran could give orders, but he bore the full responsibility for the consequences of those actions. The success or failure of the mission was on his shoulders entirely. Jacen had no doubt that if required to, Corran would order suicidal assaults—the stand at the garden had been one such. And even though such orders could be justified in the name of success, Corran would still have to live with the consequences of his orders.

And Uncle Luke, too . . . Jacen turned back toward the ship and reentered. His uncle had an even greater burden to bear, and Jacen was suddenly relieved that such a mantle did not rest on his shoulders. Not only was it bone-crushing, but Jacen was fairly certain that having to shoulder it would deflect him from discovering the sort of Jedi he should become. Responsibility for others could blind me to my responsibility within the Force.

He ducked his head and passed through the hatchway. He smiled at Ganner. “Corran said I can give you this last dose of sedative, if you want it.”

“No, I don’t need it.”

Jacen nodded, then stabbed it toward Ganner’s thigh. The injector got within five centimeters, then stopped as if he’d been trying to drive it through transparisteel.

Ganner glared at him. “Don’t make me break the injector, Jacen.”

If he can focus that much, he’s not going to be twitching. “Sorry, Corran said—”

“Corran said what he had to say. I don’t want a sedative. Not yet, anyway.” Ganner turned his head and glanced at one of the Noghri. “Sirhka, your help, please.”

The Noghri unbuckled himself from his seat. “Ask.”

“The medpac has a Nilar field cauterizer.” Ganner peeled the bandage away from his face. “Use it to close the wound.”

The Noghri nodded and bent to retrieve the medpac from beneath Ganner’s seat. He slid it out and opened it. From the box he drew a sixteen-centimeter-long stylus that emitted a close-focus, low-frequency laser beam that would burn the wound shut. The Noghri stood again, and for the first time, Jacen realized that some of the patterning on the Noghri’s gray flesh was from scars—some of which he felt certain Sirhka had closed himself with a cauterizer.

“Wait a minute.” Jacen held a hand up. The wound on Ganner’s face ran from above his left eye, splitting the brow, down to his cheekbone and below, to his jawline. Blood bubbled in the lower part of the wound as Ganner breathed, and the amphistaff had clearly carved bone as it slashed his face.

“Wait for what?”

“We’ll get out of here. You can get into a bacta tank. If he uses that thing, you’ll have a scar.”

“I imagine I will.” Ganner looked at the Noghri. “You don’t have to be fancy, just close the wound.”

The Noghri nodded and reached out to pinch Ganner’s flesh together. He stroked the cauterizer against the wound’s seams, sending little puffs of white smoke into the air. The bittersweet scent of burning flesh got into Jacen’s nose, and he couldn’t snort it back out. As much as he wanted to walk away, though, he couldn’t do that either.

Ganner gripped the arms of the seat, and his muscles tightened with every brush of the cauterizer. Jacen could feel some pain coming off him, but it was considerably less than the disgust that rolled off the injured Jedi. It seemed to Jacen almost as if with each touch of the cauterizer, Ganner was reliving the cut that had opened the wound.

“Don’t worry, Ganner, you won’t be fooled by one of them again.”

Ganner said nothing until Sirhka dropped to a knee and began working on the wound on Ganner’s thigh. The Jedi accepted a dressing soaked in disinfectant and swabbed it over the side of his face, clearing up the blood. Most of the red went away, save the angry line from forehead to jaw. The flesh on the line was clearly tender, but Ganner washed it thoroughly nonetheless.

“You don’t understand, Jacen, the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t fool me. I fooled myself.” Ganner closed his eyes for a moment and sat back. He opened only his right eye. “Throughout this mission, since I first heard of the Yuuzhan Vong even, I wanted to prove that I was better than they were. I was furious that I did not get to engage a Vong on Bimmiel. The first one I killed this afternoon, I tricked into stepping into that hole. I knew he was a fool, and he died because of his stupidity. And somehow, I started thinking that I was a genius compared to the rest of them.”

Little wisps of white smoke rose like a curtain between Ganner and Jacen as the Noghri closed the other flesh wound. “It wasn’t a stretch for me to think I was brilliant compared to the Yuuzhan Vong. I’ve been thinking that for a long time compared to other Jedi. Your uncle, Corran, Kam—all of them—they aren’t of our generation of Jedi. They knew the Empire—they fought it or served it. They are older. They don’t know the Force the way we do, didn’t have the training we did.”

He nodded his thanks to the Noghri as Sirhka put the cauterizer away. “Krag Val made me pay for my arrogance in a way none of the others had. They could have. Your uncle could have broken me down. Corran could have been nastier, but I took their being nice as a sign of weakness. I mean, I teased Corran’s son. I was being an idiot, and Corran endured it because the mission we were given was more important than his feelings.”

Ganner sighed. “So, yes, I’ll have a scar, and it will be good. The old Ganner, he had a perfect face over a perfectly arrogant attitude. Not so anymore. Every time I look in a mirror I’ll be reminded that he died on Garqi, and I’m here in his place.”

The cold edge to Ganner’s voice sent a chill through Jacen. He wanted to protest that Ganner didn’t need a ruined face to remind him of the sort of person he should be. Jacen couldn’t bring himself to speak. As we grow up, we change physically. Maybe Ganner needs this change, not to remind him of who he should be, but as a mark of who he has become. My uncle lost a hand doing that. What will happen to me?

Ganner sighed. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

Jacen blinked. “What?”

“Sedative. I’ll take it now.”

Jacen frowned. “But you could have had it before to make all that easier.”

“I didn’t want it to be easier, Jacen; wanted it to be memorable.” He smiled, then closed his eyes. “Wake me when we’re safe again.”

Jacen touched the injector to him and pumped a full dose of sedative into Ganner. Jacen smiled as the man relaxed. Let’s just hope, Ganner, that there will be a point when we’re safe again.

Wedge Antilles stood with Admiral Kre’fey on the Ralroost’s bridge. They both stared at the forward viewport and the system’s brilliant spot that was Garqi. It seemed so far away, yet a simple jump through hyperspace could carry the ship there in an instant.

And might carry us into an ambush. Wedge slowly shook his head. “Think they’re waiting for us?”

The Bothan admiral shrugged uneasily. “There is still a great deal we don’t know about them, Wedge. We know that when we send a message from here to Garqi, it will take three and a quarter standard minutes to reach our people on the ground. We don’t know if the Yuuzhan Vong have means by which they can communicate faster. The message that came in from Corran requesting a pickup was sent over twelve hours ago. The Yuuzhan Vong could have reacted to their operation and have summoned support. Sithspawn, we don’t even know if the Yuuzhan Vong travel through hyperspace the way we do, or if they are faster than our ships are. Nor do we know how close they are to Garqi, or what their possible response time could be.”

“We live and learn.”

Kre’fey flashed fangs as he smiled. “If we live, we learn.” Without looking back, he growled a question. “Sensors, no anomalous system readings?”

“No, Admiral, all is within normal limits. Fine gravitational fluctuation readings do not indicate any increased mass hiding around moons or asteroid belts. If the Yuuzhan Vong are hiding ships out there, they must be very tiny.”

“Thank you, sensors.” The Bothan turned and nodded to a dark-furred officer at the communications console. “Lieutenant Arr’yka, send a message to Colonel Horn. Tell him we are here to pick him up. Request transmission of his intelligence reports as he comes up. Deploy a communications relay drone here to capture and send out the report in case we have trouble.”

“As ordered, Admiral.”

The snowy Bothan then looked over at Tycho Celchu at the flight operations command center. “Colonel, if you would be so kind as to put our fighters on alert.”

“Done, Admiral.”

Kre’fey came full around, his eyes narrowing. “It would seem a decision to advance would be difficult, but it’s really not. We made a bargain with Horn and his people. They go into danger, we get them out. I will uphold that bargain.”

“I think you should, though others may question your judgment if the Vong are waiting for us.” Wedge gave the Bothan a grim grin. “But then, hindsight criticism is always based on fantasy foresight. What we should have known will be touted as facts we chose to overlook.”

“If you think I’m overlooking anything, do let me know.”

“Yes, Admiral, I will.” Wedge nodded toward Garqi. “Right now the only thing I want to overlook is Garqi’s horizon and see a ship coming up to greet us.”

“I agree. Helm, execute primary egress-vector plot. Look alive, people. We have heroes to rescue.”

Jaina Solo, locked in the cockpit of her X-wing, didn’t so much feel the microjump into the interior of the Garqi system as much as she picked up sensations of uneasiness from crew members who didn’t like making jumps. As those impressions faded, she immediately got a launch authorization and jammed her throttle full forward. The fighter jetted down the launch tube and shot out beneath the belly of the Ralroost, between it and Garqi’s spinning sphere.

She brought her X-wing up on Anni Capstan’s port side and began to orbit. “Sparky, sensors at full, filter for Vong flight characteristics.”

The droid tootled an acknowledgment of the order.

Jaina resisted the urge to reach out through the Force to sense her brother. She’d been stung by the deception earlier, when the task force had been inserted into Garqi. Intellectually she understood the need for operational security, and she could remember the shock of everyone on board the Ralroost when the task force was believed dead. Gavin had been correct about the tragedy and subsequent revelation creating a sense of unity between the crew and the pilots. Not knowing made them all one, and using the Force now would violate that trust.

The latest briefing did say they had casualties, including a Jedi. She knew it wasn’t her brother; no matter the distance from her twin she felt certain she would know if he’d died. And she did acknowledge there was a huge difference between casualty and fatality, but somewhere in the back of her mind she’d imagined Jedi were somehow special and not the sort of heroes to fall in combat. Logically, and based on even the most recent history of the Jedi, she knew that wasn’t true, but the depiction of heroism in the Jedi tradition allowed her to accept the fantasy as true on an emotional level.

Right now the only possibility you should be dwelling on is vaping some Vong so the Best Chance can make it home. She checked her sensors, but they remained clean. “Nothing here, Lead.”

Anni Capstan, her wingmate, reported on the squadron tactical frequency. “Twelve here. I have one contact coming up from Garqi. Looks like our people.”

“Good, stand by.”

Jaina was about to ask Sparky to punch up Anni’s contact when the droid shrieked. Her primary sensor monitor lit up with one huge contact, then several smaller ones, all of which began leaking yet smaller contacts. She looked up through her cockpit canopy, and her mouth went bone-dry.

“Emperor’s black bones!”

The Yuuzhan Vong had arrived, and in force.