TWENTY-TWO

High above Tenupe, Fell Defender was still shuddering from the Killiks’ opening salvo when a grim calm came to the battle-meld, and Leia understood what Jaina and Zekk were about to do.

“We can’t waste any more time being sneaky,” she whispered. Alema Rar had just joined the meld. Leia could sense the Twi’lek in the atmosphere below, hovering behind Jaina and Zekk, calculating and resolute and slightly amused by the idea of using them for bait. “We need to board the Falcon now.”

Tarfang chortled something that sounded a little like “impossible.” He was the only one in the group who could stand upright in the oily-smelling conveyance tunnel, and he took advantage of the fact by bracing his hands on his hips and vehemently shaking his head as he chittered.

“Tarfang is right.” Juun pointed into the bustling hangar, toward an out-of-the-way corner where about fifty Chiss troopers in black deflection armor stood in a tight cordon around the Falcon. “They know we’re coming. That security platoon is clearly waiting for us.”

“Ssso?” Saba rasped. “Maybe they will give us a good fight—for a change.”

“Yeah, maybe too good,” Han said. He was looking out across the gleaming vastness of the Star Destroyer’s hangar, studying what had to be an entire maintenance brigade rushing to launch the Defender’s starfighter wing. “We can probably take the security platoon, but those maintenance guys are all carrying—”

“Han, Alema Rar has joined the battle-meld,” Leia said. “I think Jaina and Zekk are going to serve as her decoys, to pull the escorts off—”

“What are we waiting for?” Han raised the T-21 repeating blaster that Cakhmaim and Meewalh had liberated from the detention center’s contraband vault—along with the rest of the group’s weapons—then started to duck-walk out of the conveyance tunnel. “Let’s go get my ship back.”

Saba used the Force to stop Han in his tracks. “A plan would be good.”

“You want a plan?” He pointed at Saba and Leia. “Okay, you two make a distraction. Cakhmaim, you and Meewalh sneak aboard and take out the squad I’m sure they’ve got waiting to ambush us. Tarfang, you and I blast anyone who even looks our way.” He glanced back to Saba. “How’s that for a plan?”

“Good,” Saba said.

“It’s vague and incomplete!” Juun objected.

“So?” Han demanded.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Juun demanded.

“Keep up,” Han replied. “ ’Cause the Falcon’s not waiting around for anyone.”

“Of course not,” Juun replied. “In Spy Primer, Kyle Katarn makes it clear that every member of an espionage team…”

Leia stopped listening as Cakhmaim and Meewalh crept out of the conveyance tunnel. They slipped behind an empty missile rack waiting to be sent back up the tunnel for reloading, then began to work their way along the wall toward the Falcon. They were so adept at camouflaging themselves that even Leia lost sight of them within five steps.

Saba pointed at one of the overhead storage gantries where clawcraft were moored before they were prepped for flight. One of the starfighters began to sway in its suspension rack, then suddenly came loose and fell to the floor with a deafening crash.

All eyes in the hangar turned toward the sound, and Leia led Han and the others out of the conveyance tunnel at a sprint, dashing between empty armament racks, crouching behind parked utility carts, hiding behind portable diagnostic units. Saba’s distraction proved so dramatic that work came to a standstill as astonished technicians, pilots, and even the security platoon guarding the Falcon watched the emergency response team rush to investigate.

By the time the officers recovered from their own shock and began to fill the echoing hangar with shouted commands to return to work, Leia and her companions were kneeling behind a self-portable laser-cannon charging tank. The Falcon was only about twenty meters away, the security cordon about half that distance. She could feel the Noghri hiding somewhere in the shadows on the other side of the ship, waiting for their opportunity to slip aboard.

Leia signaled the others to be ready, then used the Force to create a loud creak in the storage gantries directly above the security platoon. The troops immediately looked up, already suspicious enough to raise their charric rifles.

Leia Force-grabbed a clawcraft hanging over their heads and began to swing it back and forth. The troops immediately began to back away from the Falcon—until their female officer started barking commands at them. In the next moment the officer was sliding across the deck with her arms flailing, still screeching orders in a panicked voice and gesturing at the gantries.

The soldiers stared after her in confusion, or looked up into the gantries and scowled. None of them noticed the slender, chest-high forms of two Noghri appearing out of the shadows behind them, then slipping up the Falcon’s boarding ramp.

Saba thumped her tail on the deck and began to siss uncontrollably.

“Quiet, Master!” Leia whispered. “You’ll give us away!”

“Sssorry!” Saba replied. “She is juzt so funny, telling her soldierz to stay while she goes.”

“Yeah, she’s a laugh a millisecond,” Han grumbled. He turned to Leia. “How about getting the rest of ’em to move so we can get out of here?”

Leia gave the swinging clawcraft a violent twist, and it came free of its mountings. The security platoon shouted the alarm and dived for cover, many of them zinging blind reaction shots into the gantries as they moved. An instant later the starfighter crashed down in their midst, scattering cannon arms and pieces of armor plating in every direction.

Leia and Saba were already leading the rush toward the Falcon, lightsabers in hand but not ignited. For a moment, the security troops continued to focus their attention overhead, thinking their attackers must be up in the gantries. Then one of them noticed Leia and the others racing toward the ship and shouted the alarm.

Leia and Saba Force-jerked half a dozen charric rifles out of troopers’ hands and sent the weapons skittering across the floor. Han and Tarfang began to lay suppression fire, but that did not prevent the security platoon from launching a counterattack.

Leia and Saba activated their lightsabers and began to weave an impenetrable shield of light, synchronizing their movements through the battle-meld so that one blade was always in position to block without interfering with the other. Unlike blaster bolts—which carried little kinetic energy—each maser beam struck so hard that the blow nearly knocked the lightsaber from Leia’s hand. Sometimes she called on the Force to reinforce her grasp and batted the beam back at her attacker, and other times she redirected the energy, using it to move her blade into its next position.

But no attacks penetrated their shield, and soon Leia and the others were all backing up the boarding ramp into the Falcon. Han raised the ramp, then winced at the sound of the maser bolts pinging into the ship’s hull.

“Now that’s just uncalled for,” he said.

A pair of metallic feet came clanking down the corridor behind them, then C-3PO said, “Thank goodness you’re here! They’ve been tearing the ship apart!”

“Who?” Leia asked.

“Lieutenant Vero’tog’leo and his subordinates,” C-3PO replied. “They reactivated me and kept demanding that I tell them where the smuggling compartments were. When I explained that I wasn’t authorized to reveal that information, they threatened to pour acid into my lubricators!”

“Where are they now?” Leia asked.

“Waiting with Cakhmaim and Meewalh in the aft hold, I believe.”

Leia turned to Han. “Saba and I can handle that. You take Jae and get us out of here.”

Han nodded and turned to go—then suddenly stopped. “Where is Jae?”

Leia looked around the boarding area and did not see the Sullustan anywhere. “Tell me we didn’t leave him outside!”

Tarfang jabbered something angry.

“It’s not her fault,” Han said. “I warned him to keep up.”

Tarfang chittered something else and pointed forward, and suddenly Juun’s voice came over the intercom.

“Initiating emergency cold-start procedures,” he said. “Secure all hatches.”

They all let out long sighs of relief, then Han motioned to Tarfang. “Come on. We’d better get up there, or he’ll still be doing circuit tests when the Chiss bring up their laser cannons.”

Han and the Ewok started up the corridor at a run, and Leia and Saba went aft. As C-3PO had said, Lieutenant Vero’tog’leo had torn the Falcon apart, emptying stowage cabinets, disassembling the medical bay, even opening the service panels in the ceiling. By the time they reached the hold, Leia was mad enough to stow the lieutenant and his squad on the wrong side of a soon-to-be open air lock.

But when she saw how battered and bloody the Chiss already were, she decided that Cakhmaim and Meewalh had punished them enough. Leia herded the limping and slumping squad onto the cargo lift and simply off-loaded them.

The lift was still retracting when the Falcon rose from the deck and swung toward the hangar mouth. Chiss being Chiss, Leia was fairly certain that Vero’tog’leo had hidden a tracking device, a bomb, or both somewhere aboard. She sent Cakhmaim and Meewalh to do a security sweep, then she and Saba hurried to the turrets to engage the quad cannons.

Leia had barely buckled into her firing seat before Han had the Falcon shooting toward the hangar mouth. A handful of security troops pelted the hull with maser beams, but there was no question of anyone trying to stop them by sealing the barrier field. With the Killiks attacking, the Chiss had more important things to worry about than escaping prisoners. The Defender was gushing clawcraft as fast as she could, and the deck master was not going to interrupt the launch for anything.

Before venturing out into the tempest of energy erupting just beyond the Defender’s shields, the starfighters were using the shelter of her expansive belly to form up by squadrons. Han simply dropped the Falcon’s nose and dived, leaving Leia—whose turret happened to be facing aft—staring up into the flashing madness of the battle above. The sky was at once black with smoke and descending dartships and dappled with the blue brilliance of blossoming turbolaser strikes, and already the flaming hulks of two Chiss Star Destroyers were plummeting groundward in an uncontrolled gyre.

The Falcon suddenly veered out from under the battle, and Han announced, “Got ’em.”

Leia checked her targeting display and saw that the Falcon was about five kilometers above a pair of Chiss defoliators and closing rapidly. The defoliator escorts were badly out of position, bunched up in front of the two craft as they fired at unseen targets that Leia assumed to be Jaina and Zekk. She could feel them through the battle-meld, grim and determined, driven by Raynar’s Will and still focused on destroying the defoliators. She could also feel Alema—close by and just as determined.

Leia spun her turret around and touched Jaina and Zekk in the Force, urging them not to sacrifice themselves. Help was on the way. All they had to do was drop back into the clouds and wait.

But Alema Rar had never been patient. She continued to pour impatience into the meld, demanding that Jaina and Zekk keep attacking. Raynar’s Will continued to weigh on the two Jedi Knights, and they began to exchange cannon bolts with the escorts.

Then the blinding dots of two torpedo detonations flared about three kilometers ahead the Falcon, and when the static cleared from Leia’s targeting display, the trailing defoliator was gone.

“Han, get us there now!” Leia ordered over the intercom.

“Sure.” The Falcon accelerated, and long tongues of flame began to lick past the turret canopy. “What’s a little entry burn?”

By the time the second set of torpedoes detonated, they were close enough to see the thick cloud of clawcraft swarming around Jaina and Zekk’s StealthXs—and to see how clumsily both craft were handling as they dived for the clouds. Even if Leia had not been able to feel it through the Force, she would have known just by looking that her daughter and Zekk were in desperate straits.

And there was no sign of Alema going to help them. The Twi’lek had vanished from the battle-meld as soon as she destroyed the second defoliator, and now she was doing nothing to help her decoys.

“Anybody see what happened to Alema?” Leia asked. “I’d like to send a few cannon bolts her way.”

The Falcon shuddered as Saba opened up with the belly cannons. “Sssorry! This one misssed,” she hissed. “She was on my side, diving for the cloudz.”

“It looks like she’s going after something,” Han said. “And so are the Chiss.”

Leia checked her targeting display and saw that eight clawcraft had entered a power dive, chasing something big and slow with an erratic flight pattern. “What is it?”

“A wing!” Juun was silent for a moment, then added, “With two huge bombs attached to it!”

Leia had a sinking feeling. “How close are they to the battle zone?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Han said. “This time, my daughter comes first. What do I care if her creepy friends get wiped—”

“Han!” Leia swung her turret around and began to pour laser bolts toward the clawcraft harassing Jaina and Zekk. “You do know StealthXs can eavesdrop on intercom transmissions at this range?”

“They can?”

“The StealthX’z primary mission is spying,” Saba reminded him. She opened fire, too, and some of the clawcraft began to disperse and come after the Falcon. “But maybe they’re not listening.”

“Who cares?” Han asked. “Jaina knows I’m just worried about her.”

“She also knowz that you know she can take care of herself,” Saba said. “And that you would never let the Chisz rupture one of those parasite bombz. Even a few eggz might be enough to kill her friendz’ species.”

Han sighed. “You’re saying we have to recover that wing, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” Leia said. The cold ache of disappointment in her stomach was only partially relieved by the feelings of encouragement and approval coming from Jaina and Zekk through the meld. “But nothing says you can’t edge a little closer on the way past. Saba and I would enjoy some target practice.”

The Falcon rolled into a dive so steep that it sent all the unstowed equipment and supplies flying around the interior of the cabin and holds. Leia ignored the crashing and banging and continued to fire. She also ignored the clawcraft now pouring cannon bolts after the Falcon. Instead, she used the Force to target the craft that continued to harass her daughter and Zekk, far below.

Even at that distance, even in an atmosphere, the Falcon’s powerful quad cannons were more than a match for the light shielding of a clawcraft. She sent one tumbling toward the clouds. Another burst into a ball of flame as it seemed to simply fly into a stream of Saba’s bolts, then Leia hit a third starfighter with a series of glancing shots that forced it into an uncontrolled spin.

And finally, the two StealthXs had a clear lane down into the clouds. Jaina and Zekk dived into it, smoking and fluttering, with a dozen clawcraft hanging on their tails, but still in one piece. The meld grew warm with their gratitude; then the turret lights dimmed as the nearest clawcraft began to take a toll on the Falcon’s shields.

Han rolled again, causing even more crashing in the cabin, and the entry burn grew so intense that Leia could no longer see through the flames. She swung her cannons toward the clawcraft, then forgot about the targeting display and allowed the Force to guide her hand as she squeezed the triggers. The synthetic rumble of the fire-control computer announced one hit, then two, then one more, and suddenly she sensed no more targets.

Leia checked the display and found the thermal blossoms of a dozen dissipating explosions. Incredibly, for every starfighter she had destroyed, Saba had taken out two.

“Rodder!” Leia gasped. “Maybe I’ll be able to do that when I’m a Master.”

“Maybe?” Saba began to siss uncontrollably for some reason no one but a Barabel would ever understand. “Leia, now is no time for your jokez! This one must focuz.”

The entry burn paled as the Falcon entered the clouds, then faded away altogether as they emerged into a downpour so fierce that Leia could barely see the freight-handling mandibles at the front of the ship. The targeting display showed the eight clawcraft that had followed the defoliator wing down. They were firing at the wing—which was catching updrafts and flittering back and forth so wildly that even Saba would have had trouble hitting it. They were also shooting at an empty area behind the wing, which Leia assumed to be Alema’s StealthX. She felt no shame in wishing them good luck with the latter target.

C-3PO’s voice came over the intercom. “How helpful!” he announced. “The Chiss appear to be shooting at their own bombs. Perhaps we should withdraw.”

“They’re not just shooting at them, chipbrain,” Han said. “They’re trying to detonate them.”

“How odd,” C-3PO replied. “Won’t they detonate on impact anyway?”

“Only if they’re armed,” Leia interjected. “And obviously they’re not. The pilots weren’t on-mark yet when their defoliator was hit.”

The fire-control computer began to designate targets in order of threat level, and Leia and Saba opened up with their quad cannons again. A trio of clawcraft erupted in flames before three of the others finally stopped attacking Alema and the wing and rolled out to come after the Falcon.

Saba switched to the Falcon’s attackers, leaving Leia to stop the other two from rupturing the parasite bombs. Her targets were clever, positioning themselves between the Falcon and the tumbling wing, so that she could not fire on them without running the risk of hitting the bombs. She looked out into the blinding rain and found one of the starfighters in the Force, then focused only on that and released all conscious control of her hand.

Leia felt the turret shudder as her quad cannons fired, then the fire-control computer announced the target’s destruction with a synthetic rumble. She reached out to the other clawcraft in the Force—and was astonished to feel the familiar presence of Jagged Fel in the pilot’s seat.

“Han,” Leia said over the intercom. “That last clawcraft, it’s Jag!”

“What? How do you…” Han caught himself. “Right—forget I asked.”

Leia could tell by Han’s tone that he was no more eager to kill Jagged Fel than she was, but they did not seem to have a lot of options. Saba was still exchanging cannon bolts with the clawcraft she had not yet killed, and they all knew that it would not be long before the squadron that had chased Jaina and Zekk into the clouds gave up their search and rushed over to help with the wing.

“I guess the shoe is on the other foot,” Han said. “What are you going to do? We’ve got to shoot him down.”

“I know,” Leia said. “But give me a hailing channel.”

“Go ahead, Princess,” Juun said.

“Jagged Fel, I’m sure you know who this is.”

“Princess Leia?” Jagged did not seem surprised. “I told them it’s impossible to hold Jedi prisoners.”

“Well, they know now.” Leia placed her finger on the triggers. “If you can eject, I suggest you do it fast.”

Jagged sighed. “I’ve been hearing that from a lot of Solo women lately.”

Leia barely heard him. She was already deep in the Force, focusing all her attention on his starfighter.

She felt her finger twitch, and said, “Good-bye, Jag.”

The turret began to shudder and did not stop. Leia felt her hand moving, following Jagged’s evasion attempts, but he might as well have been trying to dodge light. She followed his juking and jinking through the Force for a moment, then began to anticipate him, and an instant later she heard the synthetic rumble of the fire-control computer.

But Leia did not feel the shock of his death.

She dropped her gaze to the targeting display and saw the fading blossom of his clawcraft explosion, but the image was not fine enough to determine whether some of the debris she saw fluttering away was an EV unit.

“Han, did he—”

“I don’t know,” Han cut in. “I might have seen an ejection flare before you fired, but we’ve got other problems right now.”

A green blur, as vast as a planet, appeared out of the rain ahead, and then the Falcon pulled up, hard. Leia spun her turret around and glimpsed what was clearly a jungle canopy dropping away behind the ship’s stern.

“Han, are you telling me—”

“Afraid so,” Han said. “The bombs are down there somewhere.”