ELEVEN

The convoy was only minutes from the Verpine capital, arcing over the distant yellow dot that was the Roche system’s sun, on final approach to the glow-speckled lump of asteroid Nickel One. With their underpowered ion drives and puffed-wafer silhouettes, the Slayn & Korpil Gatherers looked more like a long line of returning foragers than a deadly assault force. Mara could sense only a dozen presences aboard each ship, but some of those presences were a little too diffuse to be Verpine, and there was an electric hum in the Force that reminded her of one of those hot jungle nights when all creation seemed ready to erupt into war. There was definitely something wrong with that convoy.

She slid her StealthX into attack position behind the last vessel in line, then waited patiently as Luke and Jacen worked their way forward, using the Force to redirect the attention of the belly gunners as they passed beneath the ungainly Gatherers. Despite the diffuse presences they sensed aboard the transports, Luke was pouring caution into the battle-meld, urging Mara and Jacen to show restraint.

The holo the Solos had sent warning of a massive insect coup had been so flickering and distorted that even R2-D2 could not confirm that the voiceprint was Leia’s. Luke and several other Masters had immediately suspected that the message was a forgery, designed to trick the Jedi into attacking legitimate convoys. Luke had decided to dispatch a team to each insect culture belonging to the Alliance, but with strict orders not to engage in battle unless it grew clear that the Killiks were indeed staging a coup.

That was why Mara was so confused when a flash of white brilliance erupted at the front of the convoy. It looked like a shadow bomb detonation, but there had been no warning from either Luke or Jacen, nothing on the tactical display to suggest that a coup was actually under way.

The convoy began to cluster—standard procedure when the leader wanted overlapping defenses—then continued toward the asteroid.

“Nine,” Mara asked her astromech droid, “is there any sign of a battle down there?”

The droid reported that a very large baradium explosion had just destroyed a light transport on final approach to Nickel One.

“I saw the shadow bomb,” Mara said. “I mean, is there anything on the surface…”

The meld suddenly stiffened with shock, then abruptly collapsed as Luke withdrew. Mara could feel his anger through their Force-bond, a searing pressure that meant he had already answered the question she had been about to ask her astromech. There was no hint of a battle on the surface of the asteroid.

Jacen had attacked without provocation.

Mara looked down to find a long list scrolling up her display: SHIELD PROJECTORS, AIR LOCK ENTRANCES, BLASTER CANNON EMPLACEMENTS, DEFENSIVE BUNKERS, TRANSPARISTEEL VIEWING PANELS, GUIDANCE LAMPS… everything her astromech could identify on the surface of the asteroid.

“That’s enough, Nine,” Mara said. “I think I have my answer.”

She reached out to Jacen and found him filled with impatience, determined to stop the Gatherers before they reached Nickel One.

Mara urged him to withdraw.

Another shadow bomb detonated at the head of the convoy, spraying specks of flotsam and torn hull in every direction.

Mara grew so angry that she had to break off contact. Anger was too dangerous to share during a battle. It corrupted the discipline of everyone it touched, tainted their judgment and made the killing personal.

A Verpine belly gunner caught a glimpse of Mara’s StealthX and began to stitch the surrounding darkness with cannon bolts. She rolled away without firing and sensed Jacen trying to establish the meld again, reaching out to her and Luke in confusion and frustration. One of the StealthXs’ drawbacks—and the reason only Jedi could fly them—was that the rigid comm silence protocols prevented actual conversation. Instead, pilots had to communicate using the combat-meld, which relied on emotions, impressions, and the occasional mental image.

The convoy had pulled into a tight, three-dimensional diamond formation and was continuing to approach Nickel One, its gunners firing indiscriminately toward the surface. Whether the gunners were trying to suppress the asteroid’s defenses or were simply reacting to Jacen’s attack was impossible to say. Like Luke, Mara kept her own weapons silent.

A moment later, she felt Luke opening himself to the battle-meld again, and Jacen’s relief flooded the Force. He renewed his call to the attack, sharing his alarm and fear through the meld. Luke responded with disapproval and condemnation, urging Jacen to withdraw.

A sudden spark of understanding flashed through the meld, followed by a sense of hurt and indignity. Mara guessed that Jacen had finally realized that his wingmates doubted his judgment, that they did not believe an attack was appropriate simply because he initiated one.

The thought had barely flashed through Mara’s head before the gaping rectangle of a hangar entrance appeared in her mind’s eye. The turbolaser batteries in its four corners all sat quiet, their turrets ripped open by internal blasts. A single Gatherer sat on the asteroid surface next to the hangar, with a line of pressure-suited Killiks streaming out of its air lock.

“Nine!” Mara was practically shouting. “Didn’t you tell me there were no signs of battle on the asteroid?”

The droid replied that there were no signs of a battle.

“Then what about those turbolaser batteries?” Mara demanded. “And the Killiks?”

Nine reported that the turbolaser batteries were nonfunctional. And the Killiks appeared to be debarking, not attacking.

“Never mind.” Mara felt at once relieved and ashamed—relieved that Jacen had attacked for good reason, ashamed that she and Luke had allowed their reservations—which now seemed unjustified—to compromise the team’s effectiveness. “Select targets by expediency, Nine.”

The droid illuminated a transponder symbol near the back of the convoy, and Mara swung in behind the Gatherer it represented. She launched her first shadow bomb and immediately peeled off, accelerating toward the next target. An instant later, space brightened behind her, and her tactical display filled with static. She launched her second shadow bomb without even bothering to glance back and check the damage caused by the first. The light transport had not been built that could withstand a direct hit by a Jedi shadow bomb.

More shadow bombs detonated near the middle of the convoy as Luke joined the battle. The StealthXs swirled around the Gatherers, attacking from all directions. Unable to catch more than a glimpse of the darting Jedi ships, the convoy’s gunners set up rolling walls of laserfire. The Jedi, in turn, let the Force guide their moves, slipping around and under these barrages until they had obliterated another half a dozen vessels.

Finally, the convoy pilots seemed to recognize they were fish in a barrel. They dispersed, each Gatherer continuing toward a different corner of an imaginary square. As they fled, their gunners continued to blindly spray bolts into space, and now many of Nickel One’s surface batteries joined in, trying to provide safe lanes of approach for their surviving “friends.” That was the beauty of a coup: confusion worked in favor of the attacker.

Mara took out two more Gatherers and felt Luke destroy another one, then realized that she had lost track of Jacen. She could still feel him in the meld, but his presence had become cautious and furtive. She reached out to him, curious and concerned. His response seemed at once cocky and defiant, as though he was daring her to doubt him again.

“Whatever you’re doing, hotshot, just don’t screw up,” Mara muttered aloud. She was counting on Jacen to keep nurturing Ben’s interest in the Force, but that was not going to happen if her nephew continued to behave like a rogue Jedi. “Too much depends on you.”

Jacen seemed puzzled by the sentiment, then a sea of turbolaser fire flowered between Mara and her next target, and her astromech began screeching for her to evade. She juked but continued toward her mark, then took a glancing strike on her flank and lost all her shields at once.

“Shhhhubba!” she hissed, still unwavering from her course.

Nine began to bleep and whistle frantically, filling the display with all manner of dire warnings about what would become of them if she failed to withdraw from combat at once. Mara ignored him and launched her last shadow bomb.

The attack caught the Gatherer just above its wing and punched through the shields in a blinding eruption of white. The StealthX’s blast-tinting darkened, and she felt a terrible ripping in the Force as the vacuum tore the crew from its ruptured ship.

The StealthX shuddered as something large thumped into its canopy. Mara cringed and held her breath, half expecting to hear the curt whoosh of a catastrophic vacuum breach. But when the blast-tinting returned to normal a moment later, the only thing wrong with the canopy was that the exterior was so smeared with bug guts, that she could not find the nose of her own starfighter.

Mara immediately felt Luke reaching out to her in concern. She assured him she was fine, then switched to instrument flying and was relieved to discover she was telling the truth.

“Nine, can you do anything to clear the canopy?”

The droid promised that he would activate the defogger.

“Don’t you dare!” Mara ordered. “That stuff is disgusting enough without having it run all over!”

Mara checked the tactical display and saw that only three Gatherers remained, two on Luke’s side of the asteroid and one on hers. She swung her StealthX after the nearest target, trusting the Force to guide her safely around the faint streaks of color that were flashing past her blurry canopy. Her astromech droid posted a polite but urgent message on the display, reminding her that they had lost their shields.

“Relax, Nine,” Mara said. “I never take more than one hit per sortie.”

The droid chirped doubtfully, then asked if she usually flew blind.

“I’m not blind,” Mara reminded him. “I have the For—”

Nine interrupted her with a shrill whistle, reporting that they were receiving a desperate message from the Nickel One hive mother.

“Then put it on the comm speaker,” Mara ordered.

Nine replied that the message was not coming in over standard comm channels. Instead, it was being transmitted via radio frequencies that the Verpine used to communicate organically.

“Fine. What’s she saying?”

A message appeared on Mara’s display. HELP! THE HEART-CHAMBER IS UNDER ATTACK BY OLD ONES AND VERPINE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS!

“Old Ones?” Mara asked.

Nine believed the hive mother was referring to Killiks.

“Tell her to lock herself in,” Mara said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Almost instantly, a question appeared on her display. WHO?

“Just tell her we’re Jedi,” Mara replied. “The ones who have been attacking the convoy.”

The droid tweeted an acknowledgment, and the hive mother’s reply appeared on the display half a second later. THE HIVE ASKS THAT THE UNSEEN JEDI HURRY. THE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS HAVE ALREADY INVITED THE OLD ONES INTO THE HEART-CHAMBER, AND THE MALES-WHO-DIE-FOR-THE-HIVE-MOTHER ARE ALREADY IN BATTLE.

Nine added a message of his own, noting that the ground emplacements were now targeting the Gatherers and suggesting that the Jedi would only get in the way if they continued to attack the same targets.

Mara checked her tactical display; the Verpine weapons emplacements did finally seem to be attacking the convoy—what was left of it, anyway.

“This had better be legitimate, Nine,” she said. The R9 series was notorious for self-enhancing their preservation routines. “If you’re altering data just to get me to turn back, I’ll schedule you for an op-system reinstallation faster than you can count to a million and ten.”

The droid reassured her that he was only reporting the truth, and as evidence, he pointed out that the salvos had stopped exploding around their vessel. Realizing that Nine was probably right—at least, she could no longer see any streaks of color flashing through the thick gunk on her canopy—Mara decided to believe him. She reached out to Luke, calling him to her side.

“Okay, Nine,” she said. “Tell the hive mother we’re coming in.”

The hive mother’s reply appeared on the display almost instantly. YES, YOU ARE VERY FAST. WE CAN SEE YOU NOW, CUTTING THE OLD ONES DOWN WITH YOUR CRYSTAL-FOCUSED BLADE.

“She can see us?” The reason occurred to Mara as soon as she had voiced the question. “Jacen!”

The happy swell of pride that suddenly filled her Force-bond with Luke told Mara that her husband had reached the same conclusion. While the two of them had been fretting over Jacen’s trustworthiness and nearly blowing the mission, Jacen had been doing what needed to be done—and preventing the coup. He was already in the heart-chamber.

Jacen was, indeed, a very good Jedi.

“Ask the hive mother if it looks like we need any—”

Mara was interrupted by the chime of an arrival alarm, and the transponder codes of a Galactic Alliance task force began to appear on her tactical display. Nine ran a message across the screen, informing Mara that he was not altering this data, either.

A moment later, a familiar age-cracked voice came over the speaker in Mara’s cockpit. “This is Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon aboard the Galactic Alliance Star Destroyer Megador, advising Nickel One that we are here on a peaceful mission. Please acknowledge.”

Mara’s droid reported that the hive mother was acknowledging, though it might take the Megador a moment to realize this, since she was still using Verpine radio waves.

“This is Supreme Commander Pellaeon aboard the Megador,” Pellaeon continued. “I repeat, we are here to aid you. We have reason to believe that a hostile force may attempt to overthrow your government.”

It was Jacen’s voice that answered, sounding over his personal comlink. “Consider your suspicions confirmed, Admiral Pellaeon,” he said. “But there is no reason for alarm. The Jedi have matters well in hand.”

“The Jedi?” Pellaeon asked. He sounded relieved, perturbed, and not at all surprised. “I should have known.”

Mara felt Luke’s curiosity pour into the meld, and Jacen asked, “Why’s that?”

“Because I’ve been getting reports that there were Jedi waiting almost everywhere that the Killiks have attacked so far.”

This time, Luke did not even have to pour his curiosity into the meld. Jacen simply asked, “Almost?”

“I’m afraid so, Jedi Solo,” Pellaeon said. “I am speaking to Jedi Jacen Solo, am I not?”

“And the Masters Skywalker,” Jacen replied. “We’re here together.”

“Yes, that’s what Master Horn reported,” Pellaeon said. “Regretfully, our garrison intercepted his team before they could prevent the Killiks from landing on Thyferra.”

The meld filled with alarm, though Mara could not say whether it was hers or Luke’s or Jacen’s, and Jacen asked, “You don’t mean to say—”

“I’m afraid I do,” Pellaeon replied. “The Killiks have taken control of our bacta supply.”