SIXTEEN

The Chiss survivors had withdrawn to a chain of islands in the great river, a defensible position but not an impregnable one. For days, the defoliated jungle had been reverberating with the crashing of the Colony’s field artillery. The trebuchets were flinging rough-edged boulders, the catapults hurling waxes filled with hanpat incendiary. Every now and then, the Killiks even sealed a few thousand of their smaller fellows into a flight of wax balls and cast them onto one of the islands.

Nothing shook the Chiss. They remained hunkered down behind their breastworks, smothering the flames, tending to the wounded, picking off any Killik foolish enough to show itself outside the soilworks that shielded the field artillery. The Chiss still numbered nearly a hundred thousand, more than enough to prevent an assault across the river’s swift current. After so many weeks of constant, raging battle, even the Colony was beginning to run low on soldiers, and Jaina knew that any attempt to seize the islands would end in the destruction of her army.

But a Chiss relief force might be arriving at any time, and UnuThul was growing impatient. He remained out of mind-touch with the ground forces and did not understand what was preventing the final push. His Will had become a constant dark pressure inside Jaina’s breast, urging her to press the attack and force the enemy’s hand. Soon, she feared, he would grow weary of waiting for her plan to work and simply exert his Will over the Killiks. She needed to find a way to dislodge the Chiss now.

Jaina slipped a few meters down the muddy embankment, then spun around so she was facing the trebuchet it protected. Several dozen meter-tall Sotatos Killiks were crewing the piece, working the windlass with such coordination that the firing arm looked as though it were being retracted by a power winch. The weapon was being supplied with boulders by a long line of Mollom, who were quarrying the stones from a rare outcropping of stone, then carrying them two kilometers and loading them directly into the trebuchets. Despite being from two different nests, the two groups were so well coordinated that the trebuchet never sat idle, and no Mollom ever had to stand waiting to load a boulder.

Jaina’s fragile Wuluw communications assistant joined her when she reached the bottom of the embankment. “Rubbur bu uubu,” she reported. “Urr buur rrububu.”

“Tell Rekker to unmass,” Jaina ordered. “Even if they can jump over to the islands, now is no time for a leap-charge. We can’t get anyone there to support and exploit.”

“Bur u buuur rrub,” Wuluw objected.

“I am doing something!” Jaina snapped. “These aren’t Imperials we’re fighting, they’re Chiss! They’re not going to fall apart just because we throw a few million bugs at them!”

A sudden silence fell over the jungle, and Jaina realized that every Killik in sight had turned to stare at her.

“Blast it!” Jaina shook her head at the temperamental insect ego. “Don’t be so touchy—we’re fighting a war!”

She went into the jungle behind the trebuchet, then slid down a muddy bank into a shallow stream beside the emplacement. Wuluw followed behind her, landing on all six limbs and never breaking the surface of the water.

“Ruburu ubu?”

Jaina started downstream, circling back around the trebuchet toward the Chiss islands. “Doing something.”

An approving drone arose in the jungle, and Wuluw skated along on the surface of the stream beside her.

“Ubu?”

“Don’t know yet,” Jaina answered. “But it’ll be good.”

As Jaina waded through the water, she was careful to keep her eyes level with the terrain next to the stream, her gaze always turned in the direction of the islands. The jungle floor was piled high with shriveled foliage and splintered mogo wood. Thousands of dead Killiks—perhaps tens of thousands—lay in the detritus, sometimes in twisted pieces and sometimes with their thin limbs reaching toward the sky, always stinking in the jungle heat, always with their insides spilling out through a huge burn hole in their body chitin.

Finally, only a narrow spit of jungle floor separated Jaina from the great river. The Chiss islands lay on the other side of a fast-moving channel, beneath the still-constant hail of boulders and burnballs from the clacking catapults and booming trebuchets of the Killiks. At this distance, Jaina could barely make out the barricade of felled trees that the enemy had erected at the edge of the river. The island was too flat and smoke-swaddled to see the terrain beyond the breastworks, but Jaina knew the Chiss well enough to be certain that there would be a second and a third line of defense beyond the first—probably even a fourth.

Still being careful not to show her head above the streambank, Jaina brought the electrobinoculars to her eyes and found a mass of red eyes and blue faces peering out from between the mogo logs, scanning her side of the river for any hint of Killik activity. Here and there protruded the long barrel of a sniper rifle, surmounted by the dark rod of a sighting sensor. She continued to study the breastworks, wondering if Jag was out there somewhere, reaching out to see if she could sense his presence. She was not sure why she cared.

Wherever he was, Jagged Fel certainly hated Jaina for taking the Colony’s side in this war—and for starting it in the first place. And truthfully, she could hardly blame him. Had he led a team of Chiss commandos against the Galactic Alliance, she would undoubtedly have hated him. That’s how humans—and Chiss—were. Only Killiks fought without hate.

Jaina continued to study the Chiss defenses. She was not sure what she hoped to find—maybe someplace where the defensive lines did not have a clear view of the river channel, perhaps a cluster of mogo trunks that could be brought down atop the heads of the defenders. Twice, she thought she spotted weaknesses where the Chiss did not have clear fields of fire. They turned out to be traps, one designed to channel the attackers into a large expanse of quicksand, the other protected by the few pieces of field artillery that the Chiss had managed to salvage during their retreat.

Jaina’s gaze reached the end of the first island. She turned her attention to the near riverbank, this time looking for a natural place to launch a crossing—then felt somebody looking back at her.

“Cover!” Jaina warned.

She pulled the electrobinoculars away from her face and dropped down behind the streambank—then saw a pair of bright flashes explode into the slope in front of her. The attack was coming from behind her.

Jaina dropped underwater. Her ears filled with a fiery gurgling as blaster flashes lit the muddy stream around her, instantly superheating liters of water and sending it skyward in a thin cloud of steam. She pulled herself along the silty creek bed, moving upstream and reaching out in the Force in the direction of the attack.

She felt two presences, both very familiar. Squibs.

Blast it! Couldn’t those two wait until after the war to try killing her?

When Jaina judged she had traveled far enough upstream to be out of the Chiss line of fire, she yanked the lightsaber off her utility belt and rose out of the water. The air around her immediately erupted into a storm of flashing and zinging, but she had already activated her lightsaber and brought it up to block. She batted half a dozen bolts aside, several times narrowly escaping injury when her blade had to be in two places at the same time.

After a couple of moments of frantic parrying, Jaina finally sorted out the source of the attacks and realized the Squibs had her in a crossfire. She began to redirect their bolts toward each other, forcing them to worry about their own cover as well as attacking her, and it was not long before she found the chance to extend a hand and Force-jerk one of her attackers out of his tree.

The Squib’s alarmed squeal was followed by a soft thud—then by a shrieking storm of maser beams as the Chiss sharpshooters reacted to the disturbance in the manner of most soldiers under stress: by shooting at it. Fortunately for the Squib, their angle was poor and he was far enough from the river to be well protected by the trees, but the attacks did at least force him to keep his head down.

Jaina used the Force to wrench his blaster away, then flung it into the jungle and turned her attention to the second Squib. She batted five or six blaster bolts straight back into the tree root behind which he was hiding, and when a big chunk of wood flew skyward, he finally stopped firing. Then she Force-jerked him out of his cover and pulled him straight to her—not minding that the Chiss sharpshooters did their best to pick him off as he passed between trees.

As the Squib approached—it was Longnose—he tossed his repeating blaster aside and reached for a thermal detonator hanging from his utility harness. Jaina flicked her fingers, and the silver orb sailed away before he had a chance to arm it.

Longnose’s shiny eyes widened in surprise, then grew squinty and hard. “It don’t matter what you do to me, girlie. You’re—”

“If you had any brains, you’d watch who you called girlie,” Jaina said. She dumped the Squib into the muddy water, then held the tip of her lightsaber so close to his nose that it melted his whiskers off. “Don’t move—don’t even breathe.”

Longnose’s eyes crossed as he focused on the tip of Jaina’s blade, and she slowly let him sink.

“C-c-can I t-t-tread water?”

“If you can do it with your hands over your head,” Jaina said.

Longnose’s hands went over his head, then he sank so far into the stream that he had to tip his head back to keep his chin above water. Satisfied, Jaina turned her attention back to Scarcheek and was relieved to find him firmly in the grasp of a handful of Mollom, threatening and flailing as he tried to free himself.

Jaina turned to tell Wuluw to have the Squib brought over—and found the little Killik floating a few meters downstream, bobbing lifelessly in a slick of gore and shattered chitin.

Longnose tipped his head. “Sorry.”

Jaina eyed the Squib sternly. “Jedi can sense when you’re lying, you know.”

Longnose’s ears went flat. “Hey, it’s not our fault!” he protested. “We were aiming for you.”

Jaina risked sticking her head above the streambank long enough to call the Mollom over with the second Squib. As the Killiks dashed from tree to tree, dodging maser beams, she pushed Longnose up onto the bank. She unbuckled his utility harness and tossed it—and the hold-out blaster and vibroknives hidden on the underside—back into the water.

“Hey!” he demanded. “Those are my clothes!”

“It’s warm,” Jaina retorted. “We’re on a jungle planet.”

She studied Longnose for a minute, touching him through the Force to make him uneasy, then deactivated her lightsaber and leaned in close.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” she demanded.

“I’m not talking,” Longnose retorted.

“Are you sure about that?” Jaina asked. She used the Force to press him into the muddy bank. “Because you and your friend get to live if you answer my questions.”

“You’re bluffing,” Longnose said. “You can’t kill us in cold blood. You’re a Jedi!”

“You’re right—but there’s no time to watch you, either.” Jaina cast a meaningful glance toward the approaching Killiks. “So your fate will rest in Mollom’s hands. What do you want me to tell them?”

Longnose’s lip curled into a sneer. “You wouldn’t dare. I know about the dark side. If you…”

Jaina made a pinching motion with her fingers. Longnose’s mouth continued to work, but his voice fell silent.

“If you’re not going to say anything useful, there’s no use in your talking.”

Jaina turned her attention to Scarcheek, whom the Mollom were bringing down into the stream. The Killiks had been none too gentle with their prisoner, tearing off an ear and leaving him half bald. They deposited him in the mud next to Longnose, then took up encircling positions and stood there clacking their huge mandibles.

Jaina snatched Scarcheek’s utility belt off him and tossed it into the water with Longnose’s. “How about you?” she asked. “Feel like answering a few questions?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” Jaina said. “Because if you do, you leave here alive. Otherwise, I’ll let Mollom deal with you.”

Scarcheek glanced at his Killik tormenters and could not suppress a little shudder. Then he shrugged and tried to appear unintimidated. “Depends on the questions, I guess.”

“Fair enough,” Jaina said. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Dumb question,” Scarcheek retorted. “ ’Cause we took a contract. What do you think?”

Longnose rolled his eyes and began to shake his head.

“Don’t listen to your buddy,” Jaina said. “He’s got a death wish.”

Scarcheek nodded. “Goes with the business.”

“Who put out the contract?” Jaina asked.

Longnose continued to shake his head, now drawing his finger across his throat.

“Why not?” Scarcheek demanded of her. “Nobody said nothing about keeping quiet. They just want her dead.”

“You see?” Jaina gave them both a little Force-nudge, then locked eyes with Scarcheek. “Who wants us dead?”

“The Directors,” Scarcheek said. “And it’s just you. They said to leave your boyfriend out of it, unless he got in the way.”

“Zekk isn’t my boyfriend,” Jaina said. “And you haven’t answered my question—not really. Who are the Directors?”

Longnose rolled his eyes again and tried to speak, but could only choke.

“Ready to say something useful?” Jaina asked. When he nodded, she released his vocal cords. “Let’s hear it.”

“It’ll go bad if you make them send someone else,” Longnose said. “You’d be better off just letting us do you now.”

“Yeah,” Scarcheek agreed. “We’ll make it real painless.”

“I’ll take my chances with the next crew,” Jaina said. “I’m sure they wouldn’t be any better than you.”

Longnose perked his ears in pride. “You’re a smart girl, Jedi. We like that in a target.”

“Then how about telling me who these Directors are?” Jaina made a pinching motion with her thumb and forefinger. “Or is your partner the only one getting out of this alive?”

“I guess there’s no harm—it’s not like you’re going to live long enough to go after them,” Longnose said. “The Directors are the head of the family—our great-great-great-grandparents.”

“Grees, Sligh, and Emala,” Scarcheek finished. “Your parents had some dealings with them on Tatooine.”

Jaina nodded. “I’ve heard about that. Why do they want me dead?”

Longnose shrugged. “Didn’t say.”

“You owe them money?” Scarcheek asked.

Jaina shook her head.

“Your parents owe them money?” Longnose asked.

“I doubt it,” Jaina said.

The two Squibs glanced at each other, then Longnose nodded. “Well, you’re costing them money somehow. That’s the only reason the Directors ever put out a contract.”

“Or maybe your parents are,” Scarcheek added. “If they ignored a warning.”

Longnose nodded enthusiastically. “That’s usually what it is when they send us after the kids.”

“Dad never heard a warning he took seriously, so that part makes sense.” Jaina was more mystified than ever. “But I still don’t know how my parents could be mixed up with your, uh, the Directors. What business are they in?”

“What business aren’t they in?” Longnose snorted.

“But right now it’s a lot of war stuff,” Scarcheek said. “Double-billing supplies, gouging for fuel deliveries, vouchering meals that were never served—”

“You know: the usual stuff,” Longnose continued. “War is always good for a few billion credits in off-the-book profit.”

“Okay—now it makes sense,” Jaina said.

If she knew her parents—and her uncle Luke and the rest of the Jedi—they would be working to end this war as quickly as possible. And if their efforts had upset these “Directors” enough to put a hit on a Jedi, then whatever they were doing was effective. Maybe her parents actually had a chance of stopping the war.

Jaina shifted her gaze to the hit-Squibs’ Mollom guards. “Get these two out of here. Turn them loose.”

“Burrub?” boomed several of the Mollom together.

“A deal’s a deal,” Jaina said. She shifted her gaze to the Squibs. “But your contract is finished, you understand? If we see you again—anywhere—you’re speeder-kill. Okay?”

The Squibs’ muzzles fell open in surprise, and they both nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Whatever you say, doll.”

“And don’t call me doll,” Jaina hissed. She motioned to the Mollom to take the Squibs away. “Tell Wuluw I need a new—”

“Bu.”

Jaina turned around to see a new Wuluw communications assistant standing on the water behind her. She smiled at the little Killik.

“What took you so long?”

Wuluw flattened her antennae in apology. “Urru bu, urbru, uu bu ru—”

“It was a joke,” Jaina said. “Don’t any of your nest’s Joiners have a sense of humor?”

“U,” Wuluw answered. “Bu urb r urubu bubu ur burbur?”

“No, that was serious,” Jaina said, feeling guilty about the number of Wuluws she had lost. “I’ll—we’ll try to do a better job of protecting you this time.”

Wuluw rattled her mandibles in gratitude, then asked if Jaina had a plan to exterminate the Chiss on the islands yet.

“The plan’s coming along,” Jaina exaggerated. “We—just need to check out a few last details.” She started down the stream, waist-deep in water and crouching to keep her eyes level with the top of the streambank. “Stay low. Those sharpshooters are good.”

Wuluw splayed her limbs, lowering herself to within a few centimeters of the water, and followed close behind. The banging of the catapults and trebuchets continued unabated, filling the jungle with the simmering pressure of a star waiting to go nova. When the enemy islands came into view, Jaina stopped and lifted the electrobinoculars to her eyes again.

This time, she was doing more thinking than observing. After hearing about the trouble her parents had been causing the Squibs, she found herself wondering whether she really did need to develop a plan. If her parents were close to ending this war, perhaps the best thing to do would be to stall. The lives she saved would number in the millions—and that was Killiks alone.

But if Jaina was wrong about the reason the Squibs had put a hit on her—or if her parents failed to move quickly enough—a relief force would arrive to spoil UnuThul’s trap. The Chiss would grow even bolder and attack deeper into Colony territory. Trillions of Killiks and millions of Chiss would die, and the war would continue more ferociously than before.

Fortunately, Jaina had a way to find out. She reached out to her mother in the Force and felt a jolt of happy connection—not as clear as a battle-meld, but stronger and more permanent. She filled her mind with thoughts of peace, then added curiosity. Her mother seemed at first relieved, then puzzled, then worried.

Clearly, Leia did not understand at all. Jaina tried again, this time filling her mind with hopefulness. Her mother seemed more confused than ever, and Jaina gave up in exasperation. Some things never changed.

She felt Leia touching her through the Force, urging patience, and suddenly Jaina had the feeling that she would be seeing her parents again soon.

That was all she needed to know.

Jaina lowered her electrobinoculars and turned to Wuluw. “Have the trebuchets start dropping short, into the water,” she ordered. “We’re going to fill that channel with boulders—and we mean that literally.”

“Burubr?” Wuluw demanded. “Ubru urb uburb!”

“Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we?” Jaina said.

Actually, Jaina thought it would take even longer than a week to fill the channel with stones. But if she could make it appear to Wuluw and the rest of Great Swarm that she was preparing a foolproof attack across a broad front, she hoped UnuThul would sense the swarm’s confidence and be patient.

But the banging of the trebuchets continued to echo through the jungle. Boulders continued to sail over the channel onto the Chiss islands, and the pressure inside Jaina began to grow more powerful. She found herself on the verge of ordering an all-out assault. Her plan had created more impatience in the Great Swarm than confidence, and now UnuThul was warning her to get the assault going—or he would.

Jaina took a moment to perform a deep-breathing exercise, gathering herself to oppose UnuThul’s Will.

Her meditations came to an abrupt end as a series of high-pitched squeals echoed down from the treetops. At first, she thought it might be a missile or a bomb dropping from orbit, but then she realized that the squeals were moving across the sky, flying from the direction of the Killik trebuchets toward the Chiss islands.

Jaina spun around in time to see a pair of spread-eagled forms spinning through the air toward the Chiss islands.

“What are those?” Jaina demanded.

“Burru.”

“I know they’re Squibs.” Jaina watched as the two figures arced down toward the island and landed about thirty meters inside the Chiss breastworks. “Why did they fly across the sky like that?”

“Ruru bu rur,” Wuluw reminded her.

“Trebuchets!” Jaina gasped. “I didn’t mean get them out of here like that. Wait here.”

Jaina climbed out of the stream and started up a mogo tree, staying on the back side where she would be protected from Chiss snipers. When she judged she was high enough to see over the breastworks, she used the Force to stick herself in place, then raised her electrobinoculars and cautiously leaned out to peer around the trunk.

To her surprise, Jaina found both Squibs back on their feet, staggering around, wiping their eyes and spitting something dark from their mouths and nostrils. She thought for a moment that both rodents had suffered grievous internal injuries when they landed—until a squad of Chiss came staggering up to take them prisoner. The soldiers were smeared head-to-foot with mud, and every time they took a step, they sank knee-deep into the wet ground.

The island was practically underwater.

A circle of coldness suddenly formed between Jaina’s eyes, and she pushed off the mogo, launching herself into a backflip just as a maser beam scorched past the trunk. She sensed more beams flying in her direction and dropped the electrobinoculars, snatching her lightsaber off her belt and activating it in the same swift motion.

Jaina’s wrists flicked three times, intercepting and redirecting three maser beams in less than a second before she splashed feet-first into the stream. The sniper attack stopped as abruptly as it had started, and suddenly it sounded as though a tremendous wind were blowing through the jungle, rustling leaves that no longer hung on the trees. Jaina had to listen a moment before she realized that she was hearing the clicking of millions of stick-thin legs.

The Great Swarm was on the march.

“Wait!” Jaina turned to find Wuluw.

The insect was floating down the stream, pressed flat to the water with a huge dent in the chitin where the electrobinoculars had bounced off her delicate thorax.

“No!” Jaina used the Force to draw the wounded insect back to her, then rubbed a forearm along her antennae. “We’re sorry!”

Wuluw tried to thrum something and succeeded only in pumping a long gush of insect gore into the water.

“Don’t try to talk.” Jaina started back upstream. The rustling had become a murmur now, and she could see the first Rekkers springing through the trees toward her. “We’ll get you some help, but first you have to stop the Swarm. Attacking now is a terrible mistake!”

Wuluw managed a barely audible mandible tap, and the murmur of the Swarm’s advance rose to a drone.

“I have a plan!” Jaina cried. “A good one.”

All six of Wuluw’s limbs stiffened and began to tremble, and a milky tint appeared deep inside her eyes.

“Hold on, Wuluw—tell the others we’re going to dam the river.” Jaina began to pour Force energy into the insect, trying to keep her alive long enough to complete the message. “Tell them we’re going to flood the Chiss off those islands!”