Dark Tide 2: Ruin

by Michael A. Stackpole

  On Garqi, waiting in the Wlesc neighborhood, just east of the Pesktda Xenobotanical Garden, he had plenty of time to let the terror sink in. He and the others had been deployed in underground tunnels that used to allow service droids to pass unseen beneath the streets. The conduits themselves carried fiber-optic cables that formerly allowed for communications between buildings through normal comm channels. Images were collected by surveillance holocams and so on, though the Yuuzhan Vong had destroyed as many of those as they could.

  The Yuuzhan Vong lack of understanding of technology hurt them and helped the resistance fighters immeasurably. While the invaders had destroyed many holocams, they’d not ripped up the cables. By simply attaching a new camera to a cable, then plugging into the line through the conduit, or hooking a comlink into the line so the images could be pulled remotely, or using any of dozens of other methods, Rade Dromath and his people had been able to collect and archive hours and hours of Yuuzhan Vong war games.

  Corran had ordered virtually all of the holovid duplicated and stored in the Best Chance. After studying the most recent exercises, he formulated their plan for pulling out samples of the breeding program. The Yuuzhan Vong had appeared fairly ruthless in how they dealt with the prototype soldiers, so everyone agreed that if they could get only parts, they would get parts. Preferably, however, they would capture a live soldier and see if they could smuggle him off the world, so others could work on him and perhaps redeem him.

  On Belkadan Jacen had encountered beings that the Yuuzhan Vong had enslaved; through the Force, he had gotten a disturbing sense of them. It most closely equated to hearing static on a comlink channel. It wasn’t right, and was definitely wrong, and it seemed to get stronger the longer the slaves existed. Jacen felt certain that whatever the growths were that the Yuuzhan Vong grew on their slaves, these growths were killing them.

  By the same token, he’d also fought against the little reptoid slaves on Dantooine, but he hadn’t sensed them dying. It was as if their implants entered into a symbiotic relationship with them. There had been ample evidence that the Yuuzhan Vong were able to exert some remote-control capabilities over the slaves, since their discipline remained terribly strong despite a slaughter, until Luke had destroyed what passed for a Yuuzhan Vong command vehicle.

  What Jacen found disturbing, as he waited in the darkness at the base of an access tunnel, was that the modified humans in the streets above felt less like the Belkadan slaves than they did the reptoids. Both had diminished senses through the Force—he felt as if he was sensing them at great distances even though he knew they walked not five meters above him. From the humans he could sense muted emotions, including fear, but also a lot of pride and determination. Some even exuded confidence, and those around them seemed calmer.

  He adjusted the holovision goggles he was wearing, and his gloved fingers brushed the tiny scar under his right eye. When he’d been captured by the Yuuzhan Vong they had tried to implant something beneath his flesh. They’d even succeeded, but his uncle had it out of him in minutes, so it had not begun to grow. If it had . . . He shuddered.

  The feed into the goggles came from a holocam secreted in a second-story window, looking down to the access hatch cover beneath which he waited. The cam itself was immobile, but by switching to other cams, he could expand the view of the plaza above him. The expanse of ferrocrete was dotted with fountains and benches. Planters divided it, making it into a simple maze that showed burn marks and bloodstains from previous battles. According to the fighting they’d watched, things usually funneled into this place toward the end of the exercises, with chaos reigning. At the appointed moment, the resistance forces would move in, eliminate as much as they could of the Yuuzhan Vong force, and hustle a sample or two out.

  The virtue of a simple plan was that there was very little that could go wrong, but entering a battle pretty much guaranteed that wrong was what was happening already. It seemed apparent to Jacen that cleaning up after the battle would have been preferable, but Corran insisted that battle-damage assessment teams would probably be swarming over the place the instant hostilities ceased.

  But there was something more in his planning. Jacen had watched Corran and found him constantly walking a thin line. Clearly the resistance force wanted to hurt the Yuuzhan Vong and hurt them badly. It seemed to Jacen that Rade wanted Jedi sanction for whatever he planned to do, less to absolve himself of any guilt for excess than to know that someone who was supposed to be able to handle problems was agreeing with his plan.

  Ganner, too, seemed to be itching to engage the Yuuzhan Vong. The older Jedi had never come out and asked Jacen how it felt to kill a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, but he’d given Jacen ample opportunities to describe his fights against them. Ganner would smile at him and say something like, “Well, you’re the expert here. How will you go after them?” Ganner seemingly sought reassurance that he could stand against them.

  What am I looking for here? Jacen shivered. He remembered the frustration and humiliation of his defeat by a Yuuzhan Vong warrior on Belkadan. Later, on Dantooine he had succeeded in killing warriors, but he knew they were young and not terribly seasoned. Then the Yuuzhan Vong had sent the reptoids against them, and Jacen had not so much fought them as he’d butchered them. If there had been any doubt in my mind about the ignoble nature of killing and warfare, that erased it.

  Yet there, on Dantooine, he had been doing what Jedi of legend had been doing for generations without end. All the songs, all the stories, pointed to Jedi defending the helpless, defeating the tyrannical, and restoring order. On Dantooine he had fulfilled the role everyone expected of him, and done it well. While the Jedi may have had their detractors in the New Republic, none of the survivors of Dantooine were among them.

  They all saw us as glowing examples of the Jedi, but is that what I want? He’d long wrestled with the paradox of the Jedi. His uncle had been made into a weapon and directed at the Empire. Luke Skywalker had redeemed his own father from evil and had destroyed the fount of evil in the galaxy. He had continued to oppose evil up to and including the final battle with the Empire and even beyond that. As nearly as he could tell, Jedi were meant to be warriors.

  The problem was that Luke Skywalker’s training had been incomplete. The Emperor’s drive to eradicate the Jedi had been so thorough that what information about them did remain seldom included any good instructional material. Much of what seemed to be solid was left behind by the Emperor with deliberate errors in it. Following those paths would lead one to the dark side and might even usher in a new age of the Sith.

  Jacen knew, in his heart, that there was something more to being a Jedi than being a warrior. In his uncle he saw glimmerings of it, though Luke had so many demands on him that trying to focus on anything aside from problem solving was impossible. And watching Corran balance between sanctioning a bloodbath and planning an operation that would certainly take lives, Jacen also saw something more than just a warrior. Corran insisted again and again that everyone focus on the objective, which was gathering data. If Yuuzhan Vong got in the way and had to be killed, so be it, but the job was one that would help others, not quench a thirst for blood.

  In them, and others, Jacen saw hints of philosopher and teacher. He appreciated that because it suggested to him a different course, but he wasn’t sure that was for him either. I keep seeing the paths I don’t think I want to take, but all that does is leave me in one spot. He shrugged. There has to be another path.

  A double-click sound came through his comlink, calling him to preliminary alert status. He played out the cable to his goggles and climbed the ladder rungs sunk into the ferrocrete tube. He climbed to within a meter of the access hatch and waited. Clinging there, he reached down and touched the hilt of his lightsaber. At least, for now, being a warrior is a good thing.

  Through the goggles he watched a mixed force of reptoids and Yuuzhan Vong warriors enter the plaza through the south end. The reptoids hurried forward, crouching behind planters a
nd benches, wading through fountains. Anxiety pulsed from many of them, and several clearly had been wounded. At least one stumbled while running forward and never got back up, though a thin ribbon of dark blood raced on ahead of him.

  The Yuuzhan Vong warriors, by way of contrast, strode into the plaza with the air of soldiers on parade. Only three of them came—one for every twenty of the reptoids—but they looked magnificent in their armor. Silver highlights flashed from the edges of the black armor as they marched forward. They had small villips on their right shoulders and turned their heads to speak at them. The other warriors nodded in response or spoke back, then issued orders to their reptoid charges.

  Suddenly a mixed cadre of what once had been humans attacked from the buildings surrounding the plaza. Manyran normally, but those more heavily armored loped along awkwardly, sometimes on knuckles as well as feet. All of them uttered inarticulate war cries, and many, though carrying blasters, brandished their weapons as if they were no more useful than clubs.

  As crude as the human ambush had been, it proved effective initially. The Yuuzhan Vong right flank broke, pulling back, and would have fled had the warrior in their midst not whirled his amphistaff and used it to behead the first human within reach. As that twitching body hit the ground, the little fighters regrouped and counterattacked. They drove the humans back to a line of planters, then engaged them with their own amphistaffs.

  On the right the human attack faltered, then the reptoids charged. The humans fell back, drawing the reptoids deep into their lines—lines that consisted of the most recent cadre of humans. Though more bestial in form than the other groups, they also appeared to be more cunning. As the reptoids forced a salient into their line, the wings folded in, cutting the enemy off and falling upon them savagely.

  Jacen shifted to a holocam view that took him farther from that knot of breaking bodies, then a tone ripped through his comlink. He tugged the cord from his goggles, killing the images, then summoned the Force and blew the hatch cover up and away. He scrambled to the surface and ignited his lightsaber.

  All around the plaza the resistance ambush closed on the Yuuzhan Vong. Blasterfire from snipers in the building splashed the various villips posted to study the war games. Red bolts burned through the fleshy communications pods, bursting them like overripe fruit. A couple of snipers tried to shoot the villips from the Yuuzhan Vong warriors’ shoulders, but succeeded only in hitting the warriors themselves, spinning them around, but not putting them down.

  Ganner rose through a conduit just as Jacen had, but did it by force of telekinesis alone. He looked magnificent, popping up there, at the rear of the Yuuzhan Vong formation. The hatch cover, a heavy metal disk, whirled around him and crushed the first reptoid to get close. The disk clanged to the ferrocrete and rolled around in a lazy circle, drawing a line after as it passed through the blood pooling from the broken reptoid.

  The centermost Yuuzhan Vong warrior spun and snapped an order that parted the reptoids heading toward Ganner. Bringing his amphistaff up with two hands, he pumped it in the air. He said something, and Jacen was certain, from the tone, that it was a challenge. The warrior began to twirl his amphistaff, waiting.

  Ganner thumbed his lightsaber to life, producing a sulfurous-yellow blade over a meter in length. With his free hand he waved the warrior in. Contempt masked Ganner’s face while his movements appeared casual, almost sloppy, compared to the tightness of the Yuuzhan Vong’s approach.

  The Yuuzhan Vong warrior flew at Ganner, smashing his amphistaff down with terrific force. Ganner blocked the blade high, then smashed his left hand up into the warrior’s face mask. He caught the edge of it with the heel of his hand, spinning the warrior away, then Ganner laughed loudly, and some of the humans hooted a chorus of ridicule after him.

  The Noghri moved against the Yuuzhan Vong slaves like rancors through Jawas. Fists and feet blurred as they struck, crushing bone and pitching their reptilian foes to the ground. Jacen had seen Noghri fight before, and had even sparred against some, but never had he seen them attack without holding something back. Here they were pure killers, and the ease and economy of their motions belied their lethal power.

  A trio of reptoids closed with Jacen. He parried a slash from a staff, then riposted his green blade through the reptoid’s chest. Two blaster bolts from snipers burned hot and red through a second reptoid. Jacen shoved the reptoid on his blade off, letting the rolling body trip up a third reptoid. When that one fell at his feet, he slammed the dark end of his lightsaber against the reptoid’s skull, knocking him out.

  The Yuuzhan Vong warrior fighting Ganner had recovered and tugged his face mask back into place. His amphistaff spun into a blur. The warrior came in fast, attacking low and high. Ganner blocked some cuts, ducked back from others, then one grazing slash opened a red line on his left thigh. Ganner snarled, and the warrior yelled and increased the violence of his assault.

  Ganner leapt back, limping, his leg faltering. Jacen saw him go down, falling back on his haunches. Ganner raised his lightsaber in a weak defense as the warrior charged forward, amphistaff raised for a two-handed blow that would crush Ganner’s skull.

  Blaster bolts sizzled through the air, but none touched the Yuuzhan Vong warrior. Jacen glanced at the hatch cover, gathering the Force to hurl it and shield Ganner, but there was no time. He hoped a bolt might catch the warrior, or Corran might be able to project an image into his brain to save Ganner, but that did not happen.

  Ganner had already saved himself.

  The Yuuzhan Vong warrior, in his furious, headlong rush, stepped into the hole from which Ganner had emerged. His right leg sank into it up to midthigh, then his leg got trapped, and Jacen could hear it snap halfway across the plaza. The warrior’s torso smashed into the ground. His helmet and faceplate bounced off, then Ganner’s backhand slash carried away his head from the eyes up.

  One of the other Yuuzhan Vong warriors shrieked aloud, shattering the momentary silence that marked the other warrior’s death. In an instant the knotted balls of humans fighting reptoids separated. Humans and reptoids sorted themselves out. They appropriated new weapons from the dead.

  The Yuuzhan Vong warrior screeched another command.

  The human thralls turned, snarling, and galloped toward the resistance members. Malice burned in their eyes, replacing any vestige of humanity that might once have been there.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Luke rose from the chair he’d been occupying in the office of the director of the University of Garos library and paced out into the outer office before answering his comlink. He left Mara and Mirax behind to deal with the director’s questions. The director was a bureaucrat who took great pains to explain every procedure she was doing as she went along, reducing her work pace to something slower than that of a wet tauntaun on Hoth.

  If she’d just let Artoo jack into her system, we’d be done in no time.

  “Skywalker here. What is it, Anakin?”

  “Greetings, Master Skywalker.”

  “Daeshara’cor?” A jolt ran up Luke’s spine. He sought through the Force for a sense of her or Anakin. He found them, but very distant and small, as if they were actively trying to diminish their presence in the Force. “Anakin had this comlink frequency.”

  “He is fine. A bit sore, but unharmed.” Static ate at her voice, erasing traces of stress. If there is any. Luke realized she’d dialed down the signal power to make it more difficult to trace. If she keeps with training, this conversation will be short, then she will move.

  “Daeshara’cor, we need to talk. What you are doing is not right. It will not help the situation.”

  “Master, if I thought you could understand, I would have spoken to you. I know you cannot and it is not a failing of yours.” She hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “You’ll be blocking access to the information I need, so I propose a trade. The data I want, for your nephew. Think about it. Daeshara’cor out.”

  “Blast!” Luke wasn’t really awa
re he’d yelled out loud until Mara and Mirax both came out of their chairs and into the antechamber. The anxiety rolling off them reached him before he focused on its mirror on their faces. “Daeshara’cor found Anakin, somehow, and took him.”

  Mara’s green eyes narrowed to malachite slits. “How could she? Do you know she has him? Perhaps she just nabbed his comlink.”

  “I can’t get a good feel for him through the Force. Her, either. She’s definitely hiding, and he’s holding himself close, much as he did when you two were running on Dantooine. Her getting his comlink means he’s out and about somewhere—and that somewhere has got to be with her.”

  Mirax snapped a comlink into a socket on her datapad, then frowned as words scrolled up on the screen. “Whistler says Chalco talked Anakin into checking out local information sources. Says it’s a standard investigative technique, though Whistler’s got the old CorSec disdain for amateurs playing detective. They left the Skate about an hour ago, and Whistler’s not heard from them since.”

  Luke closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. He felt Mara’s hand stroke his back and smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  The Jedi Master opened his eyes and sighed. “Daeshara’cor wants to trade Anakin for data files relating to the Eye of Palpatine or anything else, I suspect. Now, if what little I’ve understood from what the director is telling us is true, there are no such files. So, no exchange.”

  “That’s one problem.” Mara scowled. “The second is that Daeshara’cor can’t let Anakin go, since she knows we won’t let her get away and continue this search. She has to keep him. She may not have figured that out yet. She will, though, and she isn’t going to like it. She’ll know we have to move against her.”

  “But without data to trade, we can’t even get close.”

  Mirax held up a hand. “Look, negotiations and trading are what I do. We could dummy up a data card and stuff it full of reports and things that only the swelled brains here can understand. We slice a few to have key phrases she can scan for, and she’ll think it’s all legitimate at first glance. That’s all we need to draw her out. Do you think she would put Anakin in a life-threatening situation?”