Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Force Heretic I - Remnant - Book 17

by Sean Williams

  "Where to now?" Kunra asked, standing in a position that favored his good leg.

  "Up," Nom Anor stated flatly, glancing into the darkness overhead. "I have some business to attend to there."

  Saba's comlink clicked at the same time Danni said "Wait, Saba! Look!"

  Through the remaining scarab's senses, Saba saw one of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors at the controls of the slaveship slip to his knees, then slowly slump over to one side. The second was having troubles of his own. Going to the aid of his fallen comrade, he lost his balance and fell forward, striking his head on the control console. He regained his footing just long enough to stand up again, then he, too, went down in a heap.

  "The poison worked!" Danni's words were carried on a barely suppressed and incredulous laugh of relief. "It just took a little longer than we expected it to."

  "It doesn't change anything," Saba said soberly. "We're still drawing away from Bonecrusher."

  The Barabel drew her lightsaber at the same time she opened a comm channel. There seemed no point maintaining a communications blackout any longer.

  "Jacen, this iz Saba," she said urgently. "Our cover has been blown. Please acknowledge."

  His reply was muffled by the layers of the people and blorash jelly packed in around them. "I hear you, His-ser," he said. "And we already guessed as much. We have contacts closing in across the board, moving in to p ick you up right now. Will you be able to get out okay?"

  Danni's expression had quickly gone from elation to one of dismay. Like Saba, she knew the only way out would be to cut through the hull, and that would result in the almost certain deaths of all the captives they'd come to rescue.

  But maybe there was a way, Saba thought. It was risky and went against virtually every spacer instinct in her body, but it just might work.

  She had sworn not to let such a thing happen again...

  "Jacen, empty the flight deck," she said hurriedly. "Keep Jade Shadow in dock and tell Mara to have the tractor beam ready."

  Danni's eyes grew wide in the reddish darkness. "Saba, you're not?"

  "We truly have no other choice," Saba shot back sharply. "Now, hang on to something."

  Saba pressed the business end of her lightsaber flat against the fleshy wall of the slaveship interior. The sound it made on ignition was horrific as it boiled through flesh to the vacuum outside. The ship quivered as she dragged the blade along the wall, turning a hole into a slit one meter long, then two meters. The tissue resisted parting even when the lightsaber had moved on, cauterizing the edges and killing nerve endings. A great bulge developed as muscles pushed in from all sides, resisting the pressure differential by fighting to keep the lips of the hole together. But Saba kept cutting, bracing herself as best she could against the ribbed flesh, readying herself for the inevitable.

  When the rent in the belly wall reached five meters, Saba felt the muscle tremble and give way. The slit peeled open, emptying the contents of the slaveship out into the vacuum in one thick stream

  "Saba, what are you doing?" The exclamation came from Mara. "Those people are going to freeze to death out here!"

  "No they won't," Saba replied, fighting the current that was trying to pull her through the gap also. The people bumping into her as they were sucked through the hole only made her task that much harder. "The insulation from the blorash jelly should hold for several minutezlong enough for you to get them into the flight deck."

  "And what are they supposed to do for oxygen in the meantime?"

  "The gnullithz, of course."

  "Saba, the gnulliths won't work in a vacuum!"

  "They won't be in a vacuum; they'll be in the blorash jellywhich iz where they've been getting the oxygen in the first place." She grunted heavily as a couple more bodies collided with her on their way out. "Trust this one, Mara. Get them to the flight deck az soon as possible and everything will be all right." / hope, she added silently to herself. Mara chuckled nervously. "This is a crazy idea," she said. "One only a Barabel would attempt!"

  Saba sissed softly to herself, taking Mara's words as the compliment they were intended to be. With both hands on the pommel of the lightsaber, she widened the hole as far as she daredtoo much would send the slaves spraying across the sky in an arc too wide for Mara to catch them all; but too small a hole would mean the slaveship wouldn't empty fast enough, giving the Yuu-zhan Vong reinforcements time to arrive. After a few moments she snapped off her lightsaber and crawled around the hole to where Danni was clinging desperately to the command bulge.

  "Time to get out of here," Saba told her, wrapping around the woman's shoulders an arm that was almost as long as Danni was tall.

  "About the only thing going for this plan of yours, Hisser," Danni said, "is that it can't be anywhere near as bad as the way we came in."

  "Here we come, Mara," Saba said over the comlink. Clutching Danni close to her chest, she let go and was instantly swept up by the current and sucked unceremoniously out into space. Limbs from the other captives continued to batter her as they flew out, so she tucked herself around Danni to protect her. Then the slight acceleration she had felt through the slaveship was gone and she was spinning in space, two living people in a clump of about forty held together by the blorash jelly. The stuff stiffened around her as though setting, keeping the pressure in.

  "We're out," she said shortly. "Keep talking," Jacen said. "It'll give us a trace." "Nogetotherz" But that was all Saba could manage. The blorash jelly was continuing to set, pressing at her chest and making it almost impossible to breathe, let alone talk.

  Trapped and with little else to do but wait, she stared out through the translucent jelly at the galaxy spinning idly around her, wondering if this would be the last thing she ever saw. She thought back to how her own people had spilled from the slaveship above Barab I. Had any of them been conscious to ask similar questions? Or had they been like all the rest of the captives here, unconscious and oblivious to the danger they were in?

  As she continued to drift through space, Saba noticed several lights that were brighter than the other stars. The biggest of these was Borosk's sun, spinning lazily around them, while others she imagined to be TIE fighters that had been launched by Bonecrusher to make room for the people rescued from the slaveship. As yet there was no sign of attack from the Yuuzhan Vong, which was fortunate.

  "Beautiful," Danni ground through a clenched jaw, her eyes fixed on the view of the massive globules of solidifying jelly drifting nearby. The reddish spheres were glittering in the sunlight, spinning around them in a lengthening spiral with its starting point in the side of the rapidly deflating slaveship.

  Saba didn't have the breath or the energy to comment. All she could do was stare, and morbidly wonder what would happen to them when the jelly set completely. ..

  But the thought was broken when the bubble that contained them jerked suddenly, bringing their gentle roll to a complete and abrupt halt. A sense of falling swept over her, and with immense relief Saba realized they had been picked up by Jade Shadow's tractor beam. Their bubble-along with a dozen or so otherswas slowly being drawn down into hold of Bonecrusher.

  "Got you," Jacen said. There was no hiding his relief. "Are you two okay in there?"

  "I'mhere," Danni said with effort. "Not sure aboutSaba."

  Danni seemed to be coping with the solidification of the jelly better than Saba was. Maybe, Saba thought as the tightening across her chest worsened, it had something to do with the smaller lung capacity of humans. A Barabel would find it much harder to breathe in higher pressure since it took more energy to inflate the larger rib cage. Danni and the other humans, though, could survive more readily on small, rapid breaths.

  Theorizing was all very well. Knowing the problem didn't help her find a solutionespecially when she could feel darkness closing in around the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes so she didn't have to think about blacking out, concentrating instead on Jedi breathing techniques to conserve her energy.

  This
was disrupted when another rough jolt sent them tumbling end over end. Saba thought she could hear Jacen talking, but he sounded far-off and vague. Soon she heard other voices, and she thought for a second that they might be the droid brains joining in on the discussion, but again she couldn't be sure. Everything was too hazy.

  Flashes of light coincided with a faint and distant tapping sound, and she knew instinctively that Braxant Bonecrusher was taking hits to its reactivated shields. She should have felt relief that she had been rescued, but all she could think of was the other people in the blorash jelly. She just hoped they had been rescued before the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived.

  A thrill of fear rushed through her when the flashing abruptly intensified. Surely the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be that close? But no, she thought numbly. These flashes were from laser light, not plasma.

  With some effort, her eyes flickered open and she looked around to see what was going on.

  "No, Saba," Danni panted from close by. "Keep them shut. It won'tbe long myscaly friend."

  Despite Danni's reassurance, though, it was hard to maintain a Jedi calm with all the flashing going on, as well as the jelly solidifying around her like ferrocrete. But she tried to stay focused just the same.

  Her ears detected a faint sizzling-crackling sound that gradually grew louder. The mass of jelly shook violently. She felt the pressure across her body ease slightly, and then a few seconds later ease some more. Soon Danni was squirming out of her grip, and she realized with great relief that she could breathe properly again.

  Saba opened her eyes and the world flooded back in. Between flashes of automatic cutting lasers and robot manipulators grabbing at her, she heard droid brains announcing that the release had been achieved with "optimal efficiency," while TIE fighters reported on the defense of the Dreadnaught. And there was Jacen standing above her, tearing chunks of jelly from Danni's jumpsuit, then helping Saba do the same. The Barabel's mind was still fuzzy, and her hands were stiff and unwieldy as circulation gradually returned. It took her several minutes before she could fully comprehend the scene around her. She was on a landing deck. More than fifty rough spheres of solidified jelly filled the confined space almost to its limit. From the spheres protruded arms and legs, along with the occasional head of the unconscious human captives. Cutting lasers were beginning to work on several of the spheres, releasing the people so they could be treated. She could feel them through the Force all would need medical attention to reverse the effects of the drugs supplied by the gnulliths, but it looked very much like the majority of them would live.

  She laughed out loud as Jacen and Danni helped her to her feet. Danni threw her arms about the Barabel in a show of both relief and gratitude, while Jacen slapped her shoulder plates in a congratulatory gesture. An immense feeling of satisfaction rushed through Sabaso stro ng was it, in fact, that for a moment she was afraid that her legs would fold beneath her.

  "Initial jump locked in," the droid brains announced over the pounding of turbolasers.

  "Take us out of here," Jacen said as he turned away from Saba and Danni to return to his disabled TIE cockpit to oversee Bonecrusher's escape. Saba watched him go with a strong pounding in her chest. She could sense Jacen's pride in her. To him, this was what it meant to be a Jedi to save lives, to protect freedom, to resist evil. She was glad, in a war with so many horrors, to have been able to give himand herselfsomething to be proud of.

  How better could they be remembered?

  Saba opened her mouth fully, sucking in a lungful of the sweetest air she had possibly ever tasted.

  "This is Captain Syrtik of the Galantos Guard," announced the leader of the approaching Y-wings.

  Blunt-nosed and older than Jag Fel by several decades, the clumsy fighters followed a strictly controlled flight path out of Galantos's gravity well. Their ion engines were outdated but still powerful enough to overtake Pride of Selonia on its way to reinforce Twin Suns Squadron. The

  frigate's turbolaser batteries tracked the Y-wings as they passed, ready for any sign of hostility.

  "State your intentions, Captain Syrtik," said Captain Mayn.

  "We're here to help." The leader of the incoming fighters sounded grimly determined. "Just tell us who to defer command to and we'll do whatever we can." "Councilor Jobath finally saw reason, eh?" Mayn said.

  There was a slight hesitation before Syrtik's reply "Actually, Captain, I'm proceeding without orders."

  This time it was Mayn's turn to hesitate. "Very well," she said. There was no hiding her surprise. "Link up with Twin Suns Squadron for instructions. We'll be with you as soon as we can."

  "Captain Syrtik, this is Twin Suns Leader," Jag said over the comm a second later. "Switch to channel twenty-nine for those instructions."

  Jag closely surveyed the battle through his monitors. The two slaveships had closed together to make a smaller target while the reorganized coralskippers maintained a tight defense. The armored blastboat analog was still hanging back, protected by a trio of determined skips.

  He changed to the new channel. "Our priority up to now has been to knock out the slaveships," he said. "But that situation has changed. Those scarheads are getting themselves together, so we're going to need to take out that last ship. Whatever's doing the thinking for them, it's in there."

  "A yammosk?" Jaina asked.

  "I think so," Jag said. Then, for the benefit of the newcomers, he added, "We have jammers in Selonia. Until they arrive, though, we'll have to make do on our own."

  He paused, frowning at the screen. He had noted the absence of the Falcon, but the significance of it hadn't sunk in at first. The battered freighter had quietly looped back to Galantos once the Y-wings had appeared, almost as though it had other business to attend to. It was probably nothing, but he couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. Tahiri was aboard the Falcon . . .

  He pushed the thought down. He had enough to contend with as it was without adding more to his plate.

  "We're going to divide you into three," he told their new allies. "One squadron will come with me to take out the rear ship. Twin Two has already made some progress on the slaveships so she'll keep that up, with help of the second squadron. The remainder will provide distractions as needed."

  "You have no specific instructions at this time?" asked a new, slightly tremulous voice.

  Jag rolled his eyes as he remembered how precise and organized the Fia liked to be. He had assumed that the fighters would be piloted by species more suited to the interior of a Y-wing cockpit; presumably they had made substantial alterations to the standard couches to accommodate their bottom-heavy physiques.

  "You'll be fine," he said. "Just follow our lead, okay? Right, now let's split up." He picked one of the squadrons at random from the rapidly approaching trio. "Blues, you're with me."

  "That's Indigo, actually," Captain Syrtik corrected him.

  "Sorry, Indigo. Twin Two will take Red."

  "Cerise."

  Jag shook his head irritably. "All right, then that leaves Green for"

  "Reseda," he was corrected again.

  "Okay, then that leaves Reseda Squadron for the general approach. Is everyone clear on their part?"

  A chorus of affirmatives sounded out over the open line.

  "Right, Indigo Leader, switch to frequency seventeen and we'll begin our run."

  As the new arrivals swept into the battlefield, Jag took a second to reprogram the diagnostic displays in front of him. The number of ships had more than doubled, and without any idea of how well the Fia could fly, he needed all the technical backup he could get.

  "Are you okay with this, Sticks?" he asked on a private channel.

  "A-okay," Jaina replied. Her X-wing peeled off to lead her new flock in a tight loop around the slaveships, herding a pair of cautious skips before her. "But let's hope this will be over soon."

  "I hear you," he said. "I'm afraid the Fia's pedantry might turn this into the longest melee we've ever been involved in."

 
"Not what I was hoping to hear, Jag," Jaina said tiredly.

  The obvious fatigue in her voice concerned him. He still didn't know the full story of what had happened at N'zoth, but it would have to wait until the immediate problem was dealt with.

  He guided his new wingmates around the slaveships and along a rolling strike path toward the blastboat analog. Skips immediately swooped in to deter them, dividing the Y-wing formation into quarters. Two of the old boats stayed with Jag, but they only managed to keep up because he showed restraint and kept his maneuvering to a minimum. As soon as the first of the skips appeared in his targeting reticle, however, he let his instincts take over.

  The skip danced across his scopes, narrowly avoiding the stutterfire he sent arcing toward its coral-armored back. Dovin basals snatched energy out of the vacuum, greedily absorbing everything he threw at them. His two wingmates added to the barrage, but they hadn't yet picked up the new techniques. Their input was little more than a distraction. Nonetheless, he appreciated all the help he got.

  "Like this, guys," he said, hugging tight to the skip's tail and sending pulses of energy waves at it, then quickly launched a proton torpedo down the throat of the overloaded dovin basal. The coralskipper exploded into highly energized dust particles that peppered his cockpit as he passed through the remains of the ship.

  "Got it?" he said when he was sure there was nothing else on his tail.

  "An ingenious technique," one pilot said. "But does the efficacy increase in direct proportion to the irregularity applied to the?"

  "We don't have time for that, Indigo Five," said another pilot. "We can discuss those kinds of details later."

  Jag breathed a sigh of relief as he sent a wave of laser-fire arcing into the side of the blastboat. His wingmates did the same, dodging plasma bolts sent in return.

  Around Borosk, triumphant battle reports from Fleet Group Relentless were more than overshadowed by the terrible losses endured by Protector and Stalwart. For every battle group that came close to the yammosk-bearing vessel identified by the Galactic Alliance, five more failed and were destroyed. It was a grueling, frustrating situation to watch, and Pellaeon couldn't help but wonder why this was the case. Was it because of an inherent mistrust of the Jedi who had brought these techniques to them, or simply an inability to follow new tactics quickly?