Jacen extended the foils into the X-position, hoping to shake it free or slow it down, but without success. Instead he felt, rather than heard, a crash as the grutchin’s head drove like a metal punch into his engine cowling.
Better do something, he thought. He threw the cockpit latch; as the cockpit depressurized, force fields snapped into place around him, preserving his air. The sound of flight vanished, though he could still feel the vibration of his craft sounding up his spine. Red lights were flashing on his engine displays. He nudged the controls to the cockpit servos, lifting it slightly open. When he felt no turbulence he opened the cockpit all the way.
He summoned the Force to guide the fighter’s controls as he stood in the cockpit and pulled his blaster from its holster. As he leaned out of the cockpit he saw the upper left foil fly away spinning, eaten away at the root. There was a flash of fire in the engine and it died.
Surely, he thought, the flameout was enough to cook the grutchin. He leaned farther out, bracing one arm on the cockpit coaming, and thrust out the blaster.
The grutchin’s beady eyes stared back at him with malevolent purpose. And then the creature’s wings extended, and Jacen’s heart gave a lurch as he realized the grutchin was going to leap straight for his face.
He fired while mentally rehearsing the move necessary to snatch his lightsaber with his free hand in case the blaster didn’t do the job. He fired again, and again. The grutchin reared, its clawed forelegs pawing the airless space between them, and Jacen fired twice more.
The grutchin’s head tumbled away into the emptiness. The rest of the grutchin then followed.
Blasters work, Jacen reminded himself as he eased back into the cockpit and sealed the canopy.
His astromech droid had already prepared a damage report. Rear shields down, both port lasers gone along with the port upper S-foil; the other port foil damaged, and one engine destroyed.
Jacen thumped a frustrated fist on the cockpit coaming. The X-wing’s aerodynamics had been wrecked—if he went into the atmosphere to aid Jaina now, his craft would go into a spin that would end only when he hit the ground.
He had come here to aid Jaina, to make certain that she would never be without his support. Now he was leaving her in a desperate fight with the enemy.
But once he had time to listen on Twin Suns’ comm channel, it appeared that Jaina no longer needed his aid. She was ordering her squadron to regroup.
“Twin Leader, this is Twin Thirteen,” he said. “The grutchin’s dealt with.”
Jaina was all business. “Twin Thirteen, what’s your status?”
“I’m going to need to get a new fighter before I can rejoin. What’s your condition?”
“The fight’s over. Kyp and Saba came to help us. We’re regrouping to hit the spaceport and cover the landing.”
“And the Brigaders’ fleet?”
“Surrendered. That’s how Kyp and Saba were free to join us.” There was a pause. “Twin Thirteen, Twin Two has lost an engine. I need you to escort her to rejoin the fleet.”
“Understood,” Jacen said, “though considering the state of my fighter, Vale may end up escorting me.”
He heard snickers over the comm. Through the meld Jacen felt his sister bearing the humor with patience.
“Just get her there, Twin Thirteen,” she said finally.
“Understood,” Jacen said, and rolled his fighter so that he could spot Vale approaching from the planet below.
“Inertial compensators,” Thrackan said as he contemplated the wreck of his landspeeder. “What a good idea.”
It had taken Thrackan and Dagga Marl longer to escape Peace City than he’d expected, largely because so many others were fleeing on foot and had gotten in the way. Barely had they emerged from Peace City’s ramshackle limits than a colossal spiraling chunk of yorik coral had come tumbling down out of the sky like a grayish green lump and impacted on the road just ahead of them.
The explosion had thrown the landspeeder off the road and spinning into a patch of trees, where, between tree trunks and flying chunks of yorik coral, it had been comprehensively destroyed. But the deluxe landspeeder—built originally for a young Hutt, to judge by the fittings—had been equipped with inertial compensators, and these had failed only after the vehicle had come to a complete halt. Thrackan and Dagga emerged from the wreck unscathed.
Thrackan turned to look at the shattered Yuuzhan Vong frigate lying in fragments beneath a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
“I don’t think Maal Lah’s forces are doing very well,” Thrackan said. There was a horrific smell of burning organics, and he remembered that the frigate had actually been alive, that something akin to blood had pulsed through its hull.
He turned to Dagga. “You wouldn’t have private means of getting us off the planet, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Or knowledge of a landspeeder anywhere nearby?”
Dagga shook her head. Thrackan shrugged.
“That’s all right. One will come along in a minute, stop to work out how to get around the wreckage—and then we’ll steal it.”
Dagga flashed him her shark’s grin. “Boss, I like the way you think.”
They crouched for some time in the trees by the road, but no landspeeder came. The explosion, with its cloud of smoke, had discouraged anyone from fleeing in this direction.
Thrackan shrugged. “I guess we walk.”
“Where are we walking to?”
“Away from the city that’s about to be pounded into gravel.” Thrackan began picking his way through the debris field. There was relatively little left to burn—most of the frigate had been rock—and the smoke was dissipating.
He and Dagga fled back into the cover of the trees as a flight of fighter craft howled out of the sky and shrieked along the road toward Peace City. The fighters were distinctive, with ball cockpits and weird jagged pylons on either side. Thrackan was annoyed.
“TIE fighters? We’re being attacked by the Empire now?” He glared. “I call this excessive!” He shook his finger at the sky. “I call this overkill on the part of Fate!”
He waited a few minutes, then rose from his crouch among the bushes and scanned the sky carefully. “I guess they’re gone. But let’s stay in the trees and—“
Dagga cocked an ear to the sky. “Listen, boss.”
Thrackan listened, then ducked into the bushes again. “This is outrageous,” he muttered. “Haven’t these people anything better to do?”
Another squadron of fighters—X-wings this time—blasted along the road, their wakes sending the last of the debris smoke swirling out to the sides in huge corkscrew whirls. Then out of the smoke came a phalanx of whining white landing craft that settled onto the huge scar created by the falling frigate. The last wisps of smoke were flattened by the repulsorlift fields as the landers neared the ground, and then the great forward hatches swung open and whole companies of armored soldiers floated out on military landspeeders that bristled with armament.
“Right,” Thrackan said as he and Dagga tried to dig themselves into the turf. “We wait till they’ve gone on to the city, and then we steal one of the transports and head for home.”
Dagga gave him a look. “Home had better be pretty close. Those transports won’t have hyperspace capability.”
Thrackan ground his teeth. This was not working out.
The soldiers briskly secured a perimeter, and more craft whined to a landing. It looked as if the soldiers had landed in at least regimental strength.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Dagga said.
The soldiers’ perimeter had expanded as new craft landed, and troopers were now quite close. An officer with a scanner had spotted the two life-forms in the trees, and at his command a pair of landspeeders swung toward the wooded area where Thrackan and Dagga were hiding.
“Right,” Thrackan said. “We give ourselves up. First chance you get, you break me out and we steal a ship and head for freedom.”
&
nbsp; “I’m with you there,” Dagga said, “right up to the point where I take you with me. I don’t think you’re going to have access to a weekly kilo of spice after this.”
“I’ve got more than spice,” Thrackan said. “Get me to Corellia, and you’ll find I’m stinking rich and willing to share—“
His words were interrupted by an officer’s amplified order.
“The two of you in the woods. Come out slowly, and with your hands up.”
Thrackan saw Dagga’s cold eyes harden as she calculated her chances, and his nerves leapt at the thought of being caught in a crossfire. He decided he’d better make up her mind for her. “Darling!” he shouted. “We’re saved!” And then, as he scrambled to his feet, he whispered, “Leave your weapons here.”
He pasted a silly grin to his face and came out of the trees, his hands held high. “You’re from the New Republic, right? Bless you for coming!” The officer approached and scanned him for weapons. “We saw those TIE fighters and we thought maybe the Emperor was back. Again. That’s why we were hiding.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Fazum,” Thrackan said promptly. “Ludus Fazum. We were part of a refugee convoy from Falleen, got captured by the Peace Brigade and enslaved.” He turned to Dagga, who was walking carefully out of the trees with her hands raised. “This is my fiancée Dagga, ah—“ He coughed, realizing Dagga might have a warrant out for her. “—Farglblag.” He gave her a grin. “Whaddya think, darling?” he asked. “We’re rescued!”
She managed a smile. “You bet!” she said. “This is great!”
Dagga was scanned and came up clean. The officer gave them a searching look from under the brim of his helmet. “You look pretty well fed for slaves,” he said.
“We were house slaves!” Thrackan said. “We just did, ah . . .” His invention failed him. “House things.”
The officer turned to look over his shoulder. “Corporal!”
Thrackan and Dagga were marched to an open area under the guard of the corporal. The area, gouged dirt scattered with hot, crumbling yorik coral, had been reserved for captured civilians, but Dagga and Thrackan were, for the moment, its only two occupants.
“Farglblag?” she grated.
“Sorry.”
“How do you spell it?”
Thrackan shrugged. He looked at the troopers in their white armor, ready for an advance on Peace City, and wondered what they were waiting for.
The answer came in the form of a pair of X-wings that hovered to a stop right over their heads, not knowing the large open space had been reserved for civilians. Thrackan and Dagga were forced to move to one side as the two craft settled onto their repulsorlifts. Thrackan spoke under cover of the engine whine.
“You’ve got a hold-out, right?”
“Sure. I always carry a weapon that’ll get past a scanner.”
The engines whined to a halt, and the cockpits lifted. A ginger-haired Wookiee stood in the cockpit of the nearest and lowered himself to the ground. “Good,” Thrackan said, lowering his voice. “It’s a Wookiee. They’re not very bright, you know. What happens now is that you clip the Wookiee, then we both hop in the fighter and rocket out of here.”
Dagga raised an eyebrow. “You can fly an X-wing?”
“I can fly anything Incom makes.”
“Won’t it be a little crowded?”
“It’ll be uncomfortable, yes. But it won’t be nearly as uncomfortable as prison.” He gave her a significant look. “You can take my word on that last part.”
And if the cockpit seemed to be too small for them both, Thrackan thought, he’d just leave Dagga behind. No problem.
Dagga gave the matter some thought, then nodded. “It’s worth a try.”
She turned to examine the situation more closely just as the second pilot stepped around the Wookiee’s craft. Thrackan saw the slim, dark-haired form and felt all the color drain from his face. He turned away abruptly, but it was too late.
“Hi, Cousin Thrackan,” Jaina Solo called. “However did you know we’ve been looking for you?”
“I wonder if you can remember when you held me prisoner,” Jaina said cheerfully.
Thrackan Sal-Solo tried to fashion a smile. “That was all a misunderstanding. And long ago.”
“You know . . .” Jaina cocked her head and pretended to study him. “I think you look younger without the beard.”
General Tigran Jamiro, the commander of the landing force, whirred up in his command vehicle, rose from his seat, and gave Thrackan a careful look. “You say this is the Peace Brigade President?” he asked.
“That’s Thrackan all right.” Jaina looked at the black-haired woman who had been with Thrackan. “I don’t know who this is. His girlfriend, maybe.”
Thrackan seemed a little indignant. “This is the stenographer the government assigned me.”
Jaina looked at the woman and her cold eyes and bright white teeth, and thought that clerical assistants were certainly looking carnivorous these days.
Thrackan approached the general and adopted a pained tone. “You know, there’s a family vendetta going on here.” He pointed at Jaina. “She’s got it in for me over something that happened years ago.”
General Jamiro gave Thrackan a cold look. “So you aren’t the Peace Brigade President?”
Thrackan threw out his hands. “I didn’t volunteer for the job! I was kidnapped! The Vong were getting even with me for killing so many of them at Fondor!”
Lowbacca, who had been listening, gave a complex series of moans and howls, and Jaina translated. “He says, ‘They got revenge by making you President? If you killed more of them, they’d make you emperor?’ ”
“They’re diabolical,” Thrackan said. “It’s a very elaborate piece of revenge!” He jabbed a finger toward the small of his back. “They destroyed my kidney! It’s still bruised—you want to see?” He began pulling up his shirt.
Jaina turned to the commander. “General,” she said, “I’d put Thrackan on the first landspeeder into town. He can guide us to our objectives.” She turned to her cousin and winked. “You’ll want to help us, right? Since you’re not Peace Brigade after all.”
“I’m a citizen of Corellia!” Thrackan insisted. “I demand protection from my government!”
“Actually you’re not a citizen anymore,” Jaina said. “When the Centerpoint Party heard you’d defected, they expelled you and sentenced you in absentia and confiscated your property and—“
“But I didn’t defect! I—“
“Right,” General Jamiro said. “On the first landspeeder he goes.” He looked at Thrackan’s companion. “What do we do with the woman?”
Jaina looked at her again, cogitated for a moment, and moved. In a couple of seconds she had the woman’s wrist locked and had relieved her of her holdout blaster.
“I’d put stun cuffs on her,” Jaina said, and handed the blaster to General Jamiro.
“How did you know she was armed?”
Jaina looked at Dagga Marl and thought about why she’d made her decision. “Because she was standing like a woman who had a blaster on her,” she decided.
Dagga, her wrist locked and her elbow hoisted above her head, snarled at Jaina from under her arm. Troopers came to cuff her and put her under guard.
“Let’s get moving,” Jamiro said.
Jaina marched Thrackan to the first landspeeder and sat him in front, next to the driver. She herself folded down a jump seat and sat directly behind him.
The operation was going better than she’d expected. Jamiro had landed most of his force here, to drive on Peace City, but he’d stationed blocking forces on all routes from the capital to catch any Brigaders trying to flee. The fight in the atmosphere had delayed things a bit, but it had also wiped out the only Yuuzhan Vong ships in the system. Still, a wary alertness prickled along Jaina’s nerves. There was plenty that could yet go wrong.
She turned to Thrackan. “Now, you be sure and let us know where your side’s firs
t ambush is going to be,” she said.
Thrackan didn’t bother turning to face her. “Right. Like they’d tell me.”
The first ambush took place on the outskirts of the city center, Peace Brigade soldiers firing from atop flat-roofed buildings on the landspeeders below. Blaster bolts and shoulder-fired rockets sparked off the landspeeders’ shields, and the soldiers aboard returned fire from their heavy vehicle-mounted weapons.
Jaina, crouched behind the bulwark in case something got through the shields, looked at her cousin, who was crouched likewise, and said, “Want to order them to surrender, President?”
“Oh shut up.”
Jaina ignited her lightsaber and sprinted to the nearest building, a two-story block of offices. Lowbacca was on her heels. Rather than burst in through a door, which was what defenders might expect, Jaina sliced open the shuttered viewport and hurled herself through the gap.
There were no Peace Brigaders, but there was a mine set up to blast anyone coming in through the door. Jaina disarmed it with the press of a button, then cut the wire connecting it to the door for good measure.
Lowbacca was already roaring up the stairs, his lightsaber a brilliant flash in the dark stairwell. Jaina followed him to the roof exit, which he smashed open with one huge furry shoulder.
Whatever the dozen or so defenders on the roof might have expected, it wasn’t a Jedi Wookiee. They fired a few bolts at him, which he deflected with his lightsaber, then before Jaina even emerged they fled, dropping their weapons and crowding for the wooden scaffolding that supported a part of the building that was being reinforced. Lowbacca and Jaina charged them and were rewarded by the sight of several of the enemy simply diving off the building in their haste to escape. When Jaina and Lowbacca reached the scaffolding, with the eight or nine soldiers still clinging to it and lowering themselves to the street, Jaina looked at Lowbacca and grinned, and knew from his grinning response that he shared her idea.
Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Ylesia Page 6