THIRTY

Gaunt and thin-lipped, with a much-broken nose and a black-pithed plaeryin bol glaring out of a restructured ocular orbit, Nom Anor was the most recognizable Yuuzhan Vong in the galaxy—at least to a Jedi Knight. The feathery creature hopping along beside him was another matter. Standing a little over waist-high on reverse-jointed knees, it had willowy ears, corkscrew antennae, and delicate whiskers fringing a broad simian mouth. Jacen had never seen a creature quite like this one, and yet he had the uncanny feeling he should know it.

Halfway to its destination—the ramp where Ganner had inadvertently insulted the Yuuzhan Vong at the rescue ship—the thing stopped and turned its head in his direction. Though it was gazing through two layers of window membrane and across a hundred meters of landing pit, it looked straight at him. It let its gaze linger long enough to send a cold shiver down his spine, then smiled slyly and fluttered forward to rejoin Nom Anor.

Beside Jacen, Ganner whispered, “It couldn’t have seen us!” Despite his assertion, he retreated deeper into the shadows. “It glanced over by chance.”

“It felt us,” Jacen said, lowering the electrobinoculars. “More than that, it felt our apprehension.”

He did not add that the creature had done so through the Force. The shock radiating from Ganner suggested he had already reached the same conclusion.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Jaina asked, joining them in the archway. “You feel like you’ve been hearing the Emperor’s voice! Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few Yuuzhan Vong.”

“There are more than a few.” Jacen passed the electrobinoculars to his sister. Her emotions felt oddly disconnected, as they often did when combat was imminent, but he could not criticize her performance. When the thud bugs started flying, she was always the steadiest, most levelheaded Jedi on the strike team. Ignoring the company of Yuuzhan Vong warriors forming up outside Nom Anor’s shuttle, he pointed at the bird thing. “But it’s Nom Anor’s pet that bothers me. I think it touched me with the Force.”

Jaina studied the little creature. “You’re sure?”

“Not sure,” Jacen clarified. “But convinced.”

“Me, too,” Ganner agreed. “That smile …”

“Hmm.” Jaina frowned in thought. “Does Feathers there remind you of anybody?”

“I keep thinking it should,” Jacen said. “But I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Sorry, I forget that New Republic Intelligence isn’t sharing with Uncle Luke these days,” Jaina said. “We’ve seen some interesting holograms in Rogue Squadron. That’s Vergere.”

“Vergere?” Jacen gasped.

Vergere had been involved in one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s first efforts to assassinate the Jedi, but she had also been the one who had given their father the healing tears that had first put Mara’s illness into remission. To this day, there remained disagreement over whether Vergere was a friend or foe of the Jedi, a mere pet of the assassin or an agent in her own right.

“It’s either Vergere, or another creature like her,” Jaina said. “And if she touched you through the Force, we can assume she was more than the assassin’s pet ‘familiar.’ ”

Ganner nodded. “She was there to point us out to the killer.”

“I’m not so sure,” Jacen said. “If she was part of the plot, why did she save Mara’s life? Why hasn’t she sounded the alarm about us yet?”

“Maybe we were wrong,” Ganner suggested. “Maybe she didn’t feel us.”

“I felt her,” Jacen insisted.

Their discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Anakin and the rest of the strike team. The two Dark Jedi, Lomi and Welk, were with them, now clothed in their own dark armor and swaddled in Tekli’s bacta bandages. Jacen was ashamed to find himself wishing the group had known the pair’s identity before his brother decided to rescue them; he felt certain they would still have made the attempt, but after killing the voxyn queen.

Ganner passed the electrobinoculars to Anakin at about the same time that Nom Anor and Vergere reached their destination. The unarmored Yuuzhan Vong who had challenged the strike team earlier appeared on the ramp and began to speak with Nom Anor. When Vergere intruded with a harsh comment, he stiffened and brought his fist to his shoulder in salute, then began to include her in the conversation.

Anakin turned the electrobinoculars toward the troops in front of Nom Anor’s shuttle. “How many—”

“Too many to fight,” Jacen answered.

Anakin ignored him and looked to Ganner. More disappointed by the slight than irritated by it, Jacen swallowed his pride and remained silent. After all, his brother had asked for information, not recommendations.

Ganner said, “I counted a hundred and four warriors—probably three platoons and an overseeing officer.”

Anakin’s expression did not change, but Jacen felt a rare surge of anxiety in his brother. Their first plan had already failed, and now their second was coming apart. He did his best to mute Anakin’s apprehension and prevent it from affecting the others through the battle meld.

Lomi stepped to Anakin’s side. “We can escape into the training course. There’s an exit into the laboratory complex.”

Jacen saw Welk’s face pale—and felt his terror through the Force.

“What’s the training course?” Jacen asked.

“It’s where the Yuuzhan Vong teach voxyn to hunt us,” Lomi explained. She narrowed her eyes, clearly resentful at being questioned. “It will be dangerous—but less so than the spaceport.”

“And we know the terrain better than the trainers do,” Welk said. Despite his fear, he was eager to support his master—perhaps because she frightened him more than the voxyn did. “The voxyn won’t be a problem, not for so many of us.”

“Unless Skywalker’s students do not live up to their reputations?” Lomi taunted Anakin with a sneer. “The choice is yours, young Solo.”

“We deserve our reputations,” Anakin said.

The unarmored Yuuzhan Vong with Nom Anor pointed down the colonnade toward the detention warren where the group was hiding.

“I don’t think he’s telling them how to find the refresher,” Ganner said. “Things are getting dangerous.”

“Not dangerous, just interesting,” Anakin replied. He backed out of the archway, then waved Lomi deeper into the detention warren. “Lead on.”

Zekk started after him. “Anakin, what are you doing?”

Jacen did his best to dampen the alarm and indignation pouring into the battle meld, but Zekk’s feelings were too powerful. They cascaded through the group, evoking enmity and resentment from Raynar and Eryl, and something more deadly from the Barabels.

Anakin glanced back at the landing pit, where Nom Anor and Vergere were waving to their troops. “We’ll never make it around the spaceport. We need to follow Lomi through the training area.”

“She’s a Nightsister!” Zekk continued. “You can’t trust her—you can’t even bring her.”

“Zekk, we don’t have any choice,” Jacen said. He was glad to have an opportunity to support his brother—maybe that would convince Anakin to forgive him for his mistake aboard the Exquisite Death. “Abandoning them would be the same as killing them.”

“Worse,” Lomi said, leading the way past the detention cells. “I doubt you have any spare lightsabers, but perhaps a blaster—”

“I said we need you, not trust you,” Anakin said.

Lomi smiled guilefully. “As you wish.”

She turned down a corridor lined so thickly with ysalamiri trees that Jacen felt as though he were traveling through the jungle floor back on Yavin 4. The battle meld broke briefly as they entered a deep region where the ysalamiri had not smelled the pheromone capsule, then the corridor entered a throat of yorik coral so narrow that even Tekli had to turn sideways. Had the walls not been covered with a slippery blanket of mildew, Lowbacca would not have been able to squeeze through at all.

On the other side, the passage opened into a sparse forest of bitter-smelling trees with drooping crowns and knife-shaped leaves. Through the spindly foliage, Jacen saw that they had entered a canyonlike passage perhaps a hundred meters wide and half that in depth, with a “sky” of brightly glowing lichen clinging to the ceiling above the treetops.

Lomi paused there. “Keep your weapons at hand. The trainers were working a pack when you arrived, and they pulled us out in a hurry. The voxyn could be anywhere by now.”

Jacen looked back through the narrow throat of yorik coral. “Why not the detention warren?”

“The fungus,” Lomi explained. “It prevents them from clinging to the walls, and the passage is too narrow for them to pass through otherwise.”

They paused long enough for Lowbacca and Ganner to plant a pair of detonite trip-mines in the corridor, then continued down the trail. Jacen reestablished the battle meld and was struck by the discord in the group. With events turning against them and everyone nervous about a voxyn ambush, emotions were running raw.

Lomi guided the strike team down the trail, then turned down an intersecting passage at a convergence Jacen had not even seen. The trees grew instantly darker and denser, their branches draped with long beards of quivering moss. They had traveled no more than fifty paces through this area when a muted crack sounded behind them, followed by the muffled roar of falling stone.

“Mine detonation confirmed,” 2-4S reported. “Casualty count unavailable.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” Tahiri said.

Lomi led the way around several more corners, Tahiri’s comments growing more frequent as the forest grew steadily thicker and darker. A pair of coralskippers flew over, then wheeled around just beneath the ceiling and dived toward the treetops.

“Presence detected,” 2-4S warned.

Lomi rushed the team down a swampy side rift with scaly trunked trees rising out of green water.

“Two-Four-S, secure the intersection,” Anakin ordered. “Affirmative,” the droid responded.

They were barely a hundred splashes into the swamp when the whumpf-whumpf of the droid’s blaster cannon reverberated down the canyon.

“Lead ship destroyed,” 2-4S reported over their comlinks.

The fire continued another second before it was joined by the roaring sizzle of a plasma volcano. Through the treetops, Jacen glimpsed the dark disk of a coralskipper swinging toward the canyon mouth, a fan of dark mist pouring from its belly.

“Breath masks!” he shouted.

Most members of the strike team were already pulling the masks over their faces, but the two Dark Jedi could only glance helplessly at the others. Lomi turned to Anakin with an outstretched hand.

“I need a mask.”

“Hold your breath,” Zekk said nastily.

“And who will guide us if she falls?” Alema demanded.

The Twi’lek tossed her breath mask across the swamp, using the Force to propel it into Lomi’s hands, then the roar of 2-4S’s propulsion rockets sounded from the intersection. Jacen glanced back to see the droid rising out of the swamp on a column of yellow flame, all weapon systems pouring fire into the nose of the coralskipper. The enemy pilot countered with a pair of plasma balls to the chest. YVH 2-4S vanished inside a ball of white flame, but still managed to steer himself into the oncoming coralskipper and trigger his self-destruct charges.

Coralskipper and droid vanished together in a brilliant flash. Jacen’s vision spotted, then the shock wave sent him stumbling backward through the water. He was caught by Tenel Ka’s strong hand. After steadying him, she said something he could not hear over the ringing in his ears, but the sentiment of which he recognized through the battle meld: His breath mask would do him no good dangling from his hand.

Jacen pulled the straps over his head, more than a little distressed by 2-4S’s annihilation. Not only had the droid been a valuable and respected comrade, but with both him and 2-1S destroyed, the entire strike team felt far more exposed, as though their protector had vanished and left them to fend for themselves.

When the spots cleared from his eyes, Jacen saw a cloud of oily smoke drifting down the canyon toward them. Beneath it hung the same dark mist that the coralskipper had been releasing when 2-4S destroyed it. He turned to warn the others and found Anakin already motioning the team forward—then he felt the familiar agitation of a voxyn somewhere ahead.

“Sith blood!” Tahiri put her lightsaber in one hand and her blaster in the other. “When does something go right?”

A forest of lightsabers snapped to life, and Anakin ordered, “Keep going—let’s stay ahead of that mist until it disperses.”

The Barabels inserted their earplugs, then dropped to their bellies and glided out across the water, their thick tails propelling them quietly forward. The rest of the strike team put in their own earplugs and waded after the hatchmates, some with blaster weapons in hand, others with lightsabers, some with both.

They advanced no more than twenty meters before a loud purling rippled through the trees ahead, and Jacen felt an outpouring of surprise from Bela. He pointed toward her side of the gorge and started to shout the alarm, but the rest of the team was already splashing in her direction.

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, but 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.