THIRTEEN

The Jedi pilots rounded the brightly striped mass of the gas giant Qoribu and found themselves staring into the turquoise brilliance of the planet’s huge star, Gyuel. Jaina blinked instinctively, and by the time her eyes opened again, her astromech droid had darkened the StealthX’s canopy tinting. She saw the hawk-winged silhouettes of four inbound defoliators sweeping in just meters above Qoribu’s dazzling ring system, racing for the gap between the moons Ruu and Zvbo on initial approach for a dispersal run. With a four-squadron escort of clawcraft, the Chiss were clearly determined to reach their targets this time.

Rather than break comm silence, Jaina opened herself to the battle-meld and immediately knew her wingmates had done the same. Sometimes they could hear one another’s thoughts through the meld, but more often they simply knew what their fellows were thinking…what they were doing. And the connection had only grown stronger since coming to Qoribu. During battles, they sometimes came perilously close to sharing minds.

Jaina focused her thoughts on the impending clash. The Chiss were coming hard this time. The Jedi had to disable those defoliators quickly and withdraw before the fight turned bloody.

Jaina sensed disapproval and knew that Alema favored a more forceful approach, one that would leave the Chiss with no illusions about the consequences of attacking the Colony’s food supply. And she was not alone. Others were outraged as well. Instead of attacking outright—a violation of the Ascendancy honor code, which prohibited an unprovoked first strike—the Chiss were trying to starve the Qoribu nests into retreat. Tesar, Tahiri, even Jacen believed that the Chiss were engaged in a campaign of species cleansing and deserved to get their noses bloodied.

Only Zekk did not agree. Jedi saw similar cruelties everywhere they were called in the galaxy. But it was their responsibility to remain dispassionate, to cut through the veil of obscuring emotion and find the core of the problem. If they allowed themselves to seek retribution rather than peace, how could they bring a lasting solution to any conflict?

As much as Jaina wanted to make the Chiss pay for the lives they were taking, she had to agree with Zekk. So far, this had remained a low-intensity conflict. But if the Jedi turned it into a killing fight, that would end. A simple border clash would erupt into all-out war, and the carnage would be staggering.

The Chiss task force entered the gap between Ruu and Zvbo. Two of the four defoliators left the main formation with their clawcraft escorts and turned toward the moons. They were met by clouds of defenders, from the Saras nest on Ruu and the Alaala on Zvbo. Too small to be visible at even this relatively short distance, the dartships were nevertheless numerous enough to spread hazy stains of gray across Gyuel’s blue face.

Jaina had barely formulated a plan to meet them before Tahiri shot ahead in the sleek little skiff that Zonama Sekot had grown for her. A living ship, its three-lobed hull glowed a deep, sea green against the star.

Jacen followed a moment later in his ChaseX, which, like Tahiri’s living ship, could not be concealed from the Chiss sensors. The Jedi all understood what Jaina intended. Tahiri, who was not subject to StealthX comm restrictions, opened a channel to the Taat dartships still swarming around Jaina and the other StealthXs.

“ReyaTaat, bring the dartships and follow us. We need to make this look real.”

“We are to create a diversion?” A Chiss Joiner who insisted on being called by both the nest name and her own, ReyaTaat freely admitted that she had been sent by Chiss Intelligence to spy on the Qoribu nests. Her allegiance had changed—she claimed—when the Taat discovered her hiding in near starvation and started to bring her food. “The stealth fighters will divide and strike the defoliators by surprise?”

“Something like that.”

Though all of the Qoribu nests seemed to have complete faith in Reya, the Jedi were less trusting, and Tahiri was not about to reveal their plan.

When neither the dartships nor Reya’s little scoutcraft started after her, Jacen added, “You need to come now. You’re drawing attention to the StealthXs.”

“Taat is not happy with this plan,” Reya said. “The Chiss have changed tactics, and the nest worries they are trying to lure the Jedi into a trap.”

Jaina’s suspicions about Reya began to deepen, and Tahiri asked, “The nests worry, or you do?”

“We speak for the nests in this,” Reya said. “And we know the Chiss.”

“You are the Chiss.” Tahiri’s skiff slowed, and she added, “Maybe you’re less worried about the Jedi than about your old friends.”

“We are Taat,” Reya insisted. “But we were Chiss once, and we understand how dangerous it is to underestimate them.”

The Saras dartships met the first defoliator and swallowed it in a cloud of gray, whirling slivers. The defoliator continued toward Ruu’s amber disk, engulfed in a halo of silver sparkles as the insect pilots hurled their tiny fighters against its shields. The Force grew heavy with anguish and admiration for their sacrifice, and Jaina was surprised to feel her own throat closing with emotion. Usually, she felt nothing when she entered battle, not fear or excitement or dread. Usually, she was too focused on the fighting to experience any emotions at all.

The Chiss clawcraft circled back and began to make runs along the length of the defoliator’s hull, driving the Saras dartships off and giving the larger vessel time to refresh its shields. The StealthXs had to make their move now, or they would never reach the defoliators in time. Jaina pushed her throttles forward and broke for the amber moon, Ruu. Tesar, the second best pilot on the team, started for Zvbo, while Zekk, Alema, and Lowbacca all began a high arcing maneuver that would drop them down on the last two defoliators.

“ReyaTaat, the Jedi are starting their run.” Jacen’s voice was sharp. “And we’re not going to be much of a diversion alone.”

There was a moment of silence, then a vague tide of alarm rose in the Force. “Slow down!” Reya commed. “The dartships can’t catch you!”

Jaina checked her tactical display and found a blue cloud of Taat dartships sweeping up from the bottom of the display, following Reya’s little scout-lancet after Tahiri. At the top of the screen, both Chiss defoliators were fully engulfed in swarms of Saras and Alaala, with the curved horizons of Ruu and Zvbo hanging high in the corners. The main body of the Chiss task force remained in the center of the display, the clawcraft escorts hanging back just far enough to make the last two defoliators an inviting target.

What were they up to?

Jaina’s astromech changed scale, and suddenly her tactical display was a mass of “friendly” blips—the Saras dartships—whirling around the defoliator she had targeted. The friendly blips were winking out by the dozens.

Jaina checked her estimated time to attack. Five seconds, but she sensed that Tesar needed seven. She armed two proton torpedoes, then added a sweeping curve to her approach and came in behind the battle.

Outside her cockpit, space was a tightly wound ball of orange rocket trails swirling around the blue glow of the defoliator’s big ion drives. A pair of dartships blossomed in scarlet as they exploded against the shields of an oncoming clawcraft, but a third collided with its wing.

The clawcraft pilot lost control and went corkscrewing into Ruu’s thin atmosphere. Assuming he survived the crash, Jaina knew, he would be taken into the Saras nest and treated as a welcome guest. Unless they were clearly being attacked, none of the Qoribu nests seemed to have any real concept of enemy.

Jaina tried to pick a route through the mad tangle of dartships, but it was like trying to avoid drops in a rainstorm. Two seconds from her launching point, a Saras bounced off her shields, and her canopy went black to prevent her from being blinded by the white flash of an exploding rocket.

By the time the tinting paled an instant later, three Chiss clawcraft were coming at Jaina head-on, pouring a steady torrent of cannon bolts in her general direction. She did a half-roll slip, taking two hits on her forward shield as she passed through the third fighter’s stream of fire, then loosed her first torpedo.

Nothing if not well trained, the Chiss adjusted their aim instantly, targeting on the weapon’s origination point. Jaina’s forward shields flared into a white wavering wall of heat, and shrieking overload alarms filled the cockpit. She released the second torpedo and jinked hard to port. More Chiss brought their craft to bear, barely grazing her with a blue inferno that was nevertheless enough to bring her shields down with a final, warning screech. The air grew acrid with the smell of fused circuits, and warning messages that Jaina could not read through the smoke began to scroll down her status display.

“Just keep the masking systems up, Sneaky,” Jaina ordered her droid, taking the StealthX through an unpredictable coil of reversing rolls. “If those guys get a sensor read on us, we’ll really be in trouble.”

The droid replied with a cynical whistle.

Jaina continued to maneuver until, a second later, the torrent of cannon fire ceased for an instant and she knew the Chiss had been momentarily blinded by her passing torpedoes. She pushed the stick up and to the left, circling out of the dartship tangle as quickly as she could and climbing for the stars, where her dark craft would not be silhouetted against Qoribu’s scintillating rings.

A pair of bright dots flared through the smoke in Jaina’s cockpit, and she leaned closer to her tactical display. Two shrinking circles of light indicated that her proton torpedoes had detonated where she intended, just behind the defoliator’s thrust nozzles. The big ship was already beginning to swing off course, rising into a tight banking turn that would carry it into Qoribu’s gravity well if the crew did not regain control soon.

Jaina allowed herself a moment of self-congratulation—just so her wingmates would know she had completed her assignment—then the Saras swarm began to drift back toward Ruu, leaving the crippled defoliator to recover control and flee. Even now, after two months of living and fighting with the Taat, Jaina was awed by the insects’ complete lack of spite. Once a threat had been turned away, they never attempted to cause it more harm.

Jaina’s admiration was mirrored in the Force by that of the other Jedi, and her thoughts turned to the other three defoliators.

“Give me an overall sitrep, Sneaky. And clean this smoke out of the cockpit.” Jaina finally realized that she was reflexively using the Force to keep from coughing. “I can barely see my display.”

A valve hissed open and cleared the air, then Jaina was hit by a wave of shock so sudden and powerful it reminded her of the time her X-wing had been blown from under her at Kalarba. She automatically began a systems sweep, but knew before her gaze reached the life-support readout that the alarm had come to her through the meld, from the three Jedi she had sent to stop the middle two defoliators.

The tactical display showed the other three defoliators also drifting dead in space. But a new vessel had appeared on the far side of the battle, well positioned to prevent the Taat—and Jedi—from returning to their home nest. It was simultaneously bleeding clawcraft into space and sweeping the area with tractor beams, gathering up dartships like flitnats in a net.

“Victory-class Star Destroyer.” Jaina turned toward the battle zone and poured on velocity. “Where did that come from?”

Sneaky let out a defensive tweet, then replayed a high-speed version of the last ten seconds of tactical record. The vessel had simply appeared a few moments ago, after the Jedi had disabled the defoliatiors. Jaina grew instantly cold and emotionless inside.

“Cloaked.”

She wasted no time asking herself why she had failed to anticipate the tactic—capable enemies always surprised you—but her thoughts did leap to the implications. Had the Star Destroyer been an escort, it would have revealed itself as soon as the nests moved against the defoliators. Instead, it had waited until the Jedi launched their proton torpedoes—betraying both their presence and their general location. It had come for them—using their own subterfuge against them.

It had been one of Jag Fel’s favorite tactics, when they had flown together against the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina reached out toward the Star Destroyer, searching for his familiar presence, but could not find him among all the beings on the vessel—at least not in the middle of the battle.

A burst of dismay swept through the Force, then a soft growl arose inside Jaina’s head. Lowbacca was caught in one of the tractor beams. She wondered how bad, then had a brief vision in which dartships were flying past in a black, swirling wall and the cockpit was filled with the screaming whine of overloaded fusial thrust engines.

Jaina felt Tesar reaching out to Lowbacca, urging him to hold on until he and Jaina could get there. They might be able to shut down the tractor beam if they could destroy its generators. But none of the Jedi knew what the tractor beam generators on a Chiss Star Destroyer looked like…or where to find them.

Lowbacca thought they were being foolish; that they would only get themselves captured by trying something so risky. The best way to help him was to avoid falling into the Chiss trap themselves.

A swell of anger rose in the Force. Jaina was still too far from the battle to see anything more than a hazy cloud of dartships silhouetted against Qoribu’s gleaming rings, but the tactical display showed more than a dozen clawcraft swarming Jacen and Tahiri, methodically herding them toward the Star Destroyer’s tractor beams. Supported by a throng of Taat, they were fighting back valiantly, opening one hole after the other in the enemy formation. The Chiss always managed to cut them off and drive them back toward the sweeping tractor beams.

Then a clawcraft designator vanished. Another turned yellow and spiraled through the ring system and out of the system. Jaina felt Alema and Zekk urging Tahiri and Jacen to accelerate through the gap. Two of three clawcraft moving to cut them off also lost control and flew out of the battle, then Tahiri and Jacen were free, pulling away from their pursuers and weaving a crooked path among the few enemy fighters still in a position to attack.

Tahiri’s gratitude flooded the Force, but quickly changed to astonishment when a clawcraft behind her exploded in a flash of static. A second one vanished an instant later, then a third turned yellow on Jaina’s display and broke into two parts.

Tahiri’s shock was overpowered by Alema’s glee, then almost instantly by Zekk’s righteous fury.

This is wrong! Zekk raged. He was furious with Alema; she was killing for revenge!

But Alema did not think so. She felt she was only killing to teach them a lesson, to make them understand there were consequences.

Jaina added her anger to Zekk’s. Alema had violated the unspoken rules of the conflict. She had killed without purpose. When the Chiss reviewed their battle vids, they would feel bound to retaliate in kind.

Alema didn’t care, and Taat seemed to agree. The hundreds of dartships not yet swept up in the tractor beams began to coalesce in tightly knit balls, moving with eerie precision into the path of oncoming clawcraft. Chiss fighters began to explode as though they were crashing into asteroids. The conflict was turning into an all-out battle.

Sensing Jaina’s alarm, Tahiri opened a comm channel. “Reya-Taat, call off the dartships! Our last attacks were mistakes.”

“They did not feel like mistakes,” Reya countered. “They felt good.”

“This battle is getting out of hand,” Tahiri responded, echoing Jaina’s feelings. “Reya was Chiss. She knows what will happen if you continue.”

Reya fell silent, but the dartships continued to attack. Jaina found her frustration with Alema growing. The Twi’lek was a fine pilot, but she was too wild, too quick to surrender to the pearl of hatred that had been accreting inside her since the death of her sister, Numa. Now Alema’s anger would spread across the Gyuel system like a nova blast.

When the Taat continued to attack, Jacen said, “ReyaTaat, the Chiss will return with bigger ships. They’ll attack the nests directly, and Taat will be destroyed. All the Qoribu nests will be destroyed.”

“What difference does it make? Our nests are already dying.” Reya’s voice grew icy. “But Lowbacca must not be captured.”

The Force resonated with agreement—none of the Jedi wanted to see their friend captured—but Lowbacca was calling the shots. He was the one in trouble.

“Lowbacca can take care of himself,” Tahiri said. “And if he is captured, what the Taat are doing now will only hurt him.”

“Lowbacca won’t be captured,” Reya said. “The Colony does not wish it.”

The Taat continued to place themselves in front of their enemies, but instead of pursuing Tahiri and Jacen all the more ferociously, the clawcraft peeled away, giving them a clear route to freedom. Jaina exhaled in relief. At least Jag—or whoever was commanding this task force—still had the sense to back off before the conflict escalated.

Then a new tractor beam shot out from the Star Destroyer, capturing Tahiri, Jacen, and—judging by their surprise and anger—Alema and Zekk. Jaina cursed at the same time she heard Tesar’s irate hiss in her ears. It was not easy to lock on to a wildly dodging spacecraft visually, but if a beam crew knew the comm frequency being used by the target, they could follow the carrier wave straight to their victim. And while Reya had not initiated the contact with Tahiri, she had kept the young Jedi talking until the clawcraft dispersed.

Jaina was close enough to the battle now that she could see the laser cannons flashing inside the whirling cloud of dartships. Four waving fingers of darkness marked the areas where the tractor beams were sweeping the Taat out of space, slowly pulling them toward the Star Destroyer. The vessel itself resembled a gray version of the Empire’s old Victory-class Star Destroyers, save that it was a little sleeker, longer, and narrower, with a conical hull that gave it a menacing, needle-like appearance. It was impossible to tell where the bridge was located—it was not in the Chiss nature to reveal such a crucial detail just for the looking—but a dome-shaped bulge amidships probably housed the cloaking equipment that had masked the vessel’s approach.

Jaina dropped the nose of her StealthX and started a fast approach toward the bow of the Star Destroyer, then felt Tesar’s excitement starting to mount as he initiated his own run. An image of his view of the ship appeared in the back of her mind. He seemed to be approaching from the opposite end, more or less head-on toward Jaina. They would have to be careful to avoid a collision.

“Sneaky, give me a ten-mag view of the area around the root of the nearest tractor beam,” Jaina ordered.

Risky or not, she could not let the Chiss reel in four Jedi.

Over the comm, Reya said, “We will have you free in a minute, friends.”

Not kriffing likely, Jaina thought. Half of the Taat were already being sucked toward the Star Destroyer’s capture bays, and the rest were too busy hurling themselves in front of clawcraft to disable any tractor beams.

“Help is coming.” Reya’s voice was reassuring. “The Mueum are almost here.”

The timely assurance raised the hair on the back of Jaina’s neck. Recalling Taat’s uncanny ability to sense what foods she and the other Jedi were longing for, she began to wonder what else Reya could sense.

Tesar began to think Reya was a better spy than they had thought. Projecting his thoughts openly into the battle-meld, he wondered if he should eliminate her.

Jaina had the mental image of Tesar selecting Reya’s lancet as a primary target, but realized instantly that the Barabel was only trying to test whether Reya knew what was happening in the battle-meld. He was passing over the stern of the Star Destroyer and could not have targeted her if he wished.

When Reya did not fall for the ploy, Jaina checked her tactical display and found a blue storm of Mueum dartships cascading down from the direction of Eyyl and Jwlio—just as promised.

“Sneaky, do an EM sweep of the hull,” Jaina ordered. She still did not see how the arrival of the fresh swarm was going to save Lowbacca and the others. “We might get lucky and locate an energy output that will tell us where those generators are.”

Sneaky whistled an acknowledgment, then the image on her display switched to a rectangular portal set into a field of gray durasteel. The tractor beam itself was invisible, save for a few distortion ripples that suggested it was a very powerful beam indeed—one designed to drag in unwilling ships. As Jaina had feared, the portal was protected by a grid of blue energy—a repulsor screen designed to prevent someone from disabling the beam by dropping a piece of ordnance into it. The Chiss were far too good to overlook something that obvious.

“Go to five mag,” Jaina ordered.

The beam portal grew small in her display, and the white cave of a capture bay appeared beneath it. Jaina could see a pair of weapons turrets flanking a transparisteel viewing panel set high in the innermost wall, but no hint of the tractor beam generator.

Sneaky piped a warning, and Jaina looked up to see the Star Destroyer stretched out before her like the long gray plain of an empty speeder lot. The beam cannons, big and small, remained silent in their sunken firing pits—a sure sign that the gunners still had not detected the approaching StealthXs.

“Anything on that EM sweep, Sneaky?” Jaina asked.

The droid tootled a negative, and Jaina sensed that the same was true for Tesar. It was beginning to look like they would have to do this the hard way. The Jedi would have to eject and destroy their ships.

Tahiri did not want to leave her living ship. It was a gift from Zonama Sekot…and it was a friend.

But her only other choice was to let herself be captured—and Jaina forbade that. She would go EV with Jacen and everyone else. Ten seconds.

Lowbacca did not have ten seconds. Five—if he was lucky.

Three, then.

“Give us eight!” Reya pleaded. No doubt now about whether she could read their emotions in the Force. “The Mueum are almost here.”

Sure—enough time for your friends to capture Lowbacca’s StealthX, Jaina thought. Two seconds.

Tesar urged Jaina to wait. The Mueum were attacking.

Jaina glanced at her display and saw a single, tightly packed arrow of Mueum designators driving through a screen of Chiss clawcraft like a blaster bolt through a tunic. The Star Destroyer opened up with all bearing batteries, hitting the mass with a devastating fusillade that would have torn a minor moon in half.

The Mueum did not even slow down. Long furrows of dartships vanished into fiery nothingness, and the swarm simply flowed into the open spaces, shrinking a little, but continuing toward the Star Destroyer amidships.

“No, Reya!” Jaina ordered. “Stop them!”

Lowbacca went EV, and Jaina lost all hope of bringing the conflict back under control. The Mueum took another volley of laser cannons and continued on as before, coalescing into a single black harpoon aimed at the heart of the Chiss Star Destroyer. Lowbacca’s StealthX detonated in the mouth of the capture bay, taking with it fifty square meters of deck and several dozen dartships, but doing nothing whatsoever to interrupt the tractor beam.

Jaina rolled away from the Star Destroyer and started firing, trying to force as many clawcraft as possible away from Tahiri and the other captured Jedi. Tesar dropped in behind Jaina, firing to kill as a string of brave Chiss pilots jumped on her tail.

Finally, the Mueum reached the Star Destroyer. On her tactical display, Jaina glimpsed the lead dartships crashing into the vessel’s particle shields, vaporizing themselves in an ever-broadening circle of light and fire. She thought for one moment that the suicide attack would come to no more than that; that the entire Mueum swarm would simply smash itself against the powerful Chiss shields.

Then the shields crackled, flashed, and fell. The Mueum assault smashed into the hull in a conflagration of rocket fuel and fire and burned through within seconds. Bodies and equipment began to tumble from the breached hull, but the swarm continued to pour through, streaming through the inner hull and spreading along the corridors to all the hidden corners of the vessel. Within moments, long tongues of flame began to lick out of the gun turrets, and towers of white fire started to shoot from the discharge vents.

A wave of explosions shook the Star Destroyer, and the hull began to come apart. Jaina was shaken by an all-too-familiar wave of anguish and fear, then a rip seemed to open in the Force as the huge vessel began to disintegrate from the inside.

The tractor beams sputtered into nothingness, and a sense of relief permeated the Force as Tahiri and Alema and Zekk finally regained control of their craft. A Chiss fighter appeared in front of Jaina, coming at her head-on and pouring angry streams of blaster bolts more or less in her direction. Jaina returned fire automatically, and she did not notice how her hand was shaking until after the clawcraft exploded.

Jaina reached out for Lowbacca and felt him drifting away, frightened and awed and lonely.

We’ll find you! she promised. But he would have to stay open to the meld, he would have to help them find him.

She’ll be doing well, Lowbacca thought, just to save herself.