Star Wars 396 - The Dark Nest Trilogy III - The Swarm War

by Troy Denning

  “B-b-bu?”

  “Really,” Jaina said. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

  Wuluw flattened her antennae doubtfully. “Buur urbu ruub u.”

  “I mean it this time.” Jaina fluttered her hand, using the Force to whisk away a bank of insecticide drifting their way. “Just keep climbing…and do your job! The other nests need that report.”

  Wuluw expelled air through her respiratory spiracles, then turned her head around and resumed climbing. A moment later, she began to drum her chest, relaying the other nests’ pleasure at how well the battle was progressing. Kolosolok would be attacking the perimeter soon.

  They finally climbed above the vapor layers into the remains of the jungle canopy. All the foliage was gone, of course, leaving the great mogos scratching at the rain clouds with the crooked fingers of their naked crowns. The artillery barrage had opened surprisingly few holes in the gray expanse, and there were even a few confused birds still circling low over the wet treetops.

  To Jaina’s relief, thousands of Rekkers had survived the dangerous climb from the jungle floor. They were already advancing through the rain, springing from treetop to treetop with a power and grace that even Wookiees would have envied—had they been able to overlook the Rekkers’ six limbs, antennae, and long pendulous abdomens.

  The Jooj were advancing somewhat differently, winding across the treetops in huge sinuous blankets, circling gaps in the canopy or creating long boiling bridges out of their own bodies. The Chiss artillery continued to savage the jungle below, occasionally sending the crown of a mogo plummeting into the poisonous tangle while panicked Killiks leapt to safety in adjacent treetops.

  But mostly, the Colony’s advance was unhindered. Rekkers and Jooj continued to rise into the canopy behind Jaina, and as far as the eye could see ahead, an unstoppable tide of insects was boiling across the jungle top toward the Chiss lines.

  Jaina turned to Wuluw. “How good are you at jumping?”

  “Bub bu,” the insect admitted.

  “That’s what we thought,” Jaina said. She turned her back to the Wuluw. “Hop on.”

  The Killik leapt up and wrapped all six limbs around Jaina’s body.

  “What about you two?” Jaina asked the Squibs.

  They folded their wet ears flat. “Don’t worry about us, doll,” Scarcheek said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  “Sorry—didn’t mean to insult you,” Jaina said. She nodded them toward the Chiss lines. “Why don’t you lead the way?”

  They fixed their dark eyes on her for a moment, then slung their repeating blasters across their backs and scampered away on all fours. When they came to the end of the limb, they spread their arms and glided nearly twenty meters into the crown of the next tree.

  When they stopped to wait for Jaina, she paused to speak over her shoulder to Wuluw.

  “What do the nests know about those two?”

  “Urubu bubu rbu,” Wuluw answered.

  “I know they’re Squibs!” Jaina said. “What are they doing here?”

  “Bubuu urrb.”

  “Besides killing Chiss,” Jaina said.

  “Ruubu bu,” Wuluw answered. “Ub rur uru.”

  “It’s not enough,” Jaina said, exasperated. “People don’t cross most of the galaxy just to fight in someone else’s war—especially not Squibs.”

  “Urub r buur.”

  “What thing sent them?” Jaina demanded.

  “Urub u ur r Buur.”

  “Just The Thing?” Jaina asked. “We’ve never heard of The Thing.”

  “Rburubru uburburu buu,” Wuluw explained. “Urb u?”

  “Okay.”

  Jaina clicked her throat in irritation, but knew there was no sense in interrogating Wuluw any further. Insects had unsophisticated motivations, so if a trusted transacting partner offered to send someone to help fight the Chiss, the Killiks were not likely to ask a lot of questions. She warned Wuluw to hold on tight, then began to Force-leap after the Squibs.

  They were perhaps halfway to the MetaCannons when a descending whine broke over the jungle. Jaina looked toward the sound and saw the dark flecks of an AirStraeker squadron approaching through the rain.

  “Son-of-a-Sith-harlot!” Jaina cursed.

  Zekk and his swarm had visited a battering on the AirStraekers during the initial landing, so she had not expected the Chiss to risk what remained of the wing in the middle of a downpour.

  Jaina pointed at the center of the formation, then reached out in the Force and began to shove one of the AirStraekers toward a wingmate. The second evaded, and the first aircraft began to struggle against her grasp. The rest of the squadron opened fire a second later. A wall of smoke erupted in the jungle canopy and began to roll toward her.

  “Tell Zekk to get the Wing Swarm down here, now!” Jaina said over her shoulder.

  “Bb.”

  “No?” Jaina screeched. “We’ve got fireflies!”

  Wuluw explained that UnuThul’s orders had been clear. The airborne swarm was not to attack until the Chiss began to evacuate.

  “The Chiss aren’t going to evacuate if we don’t stop those AirStraekers!” Jaina protested. “They won’t have any reason to, because all that’s going to be left of the Great Swarm is a jungle full of maser-popped bugs!”

  “Rruub uru bubub,” Wuluw reported. “Ubbuburu buub.”

  “I don’t care if the Kolosoloks are attacking,” Jaina said. “That’s not going to do us much good up here, is it?”

  “Urbuubur, buubu ururbu.”

  “Oh.” Jaina was quiet for a moment, still struggling to Force-shove the AirStraeker into a wingmate. “When you look at it that way, maybe we are expendable.”

  A fireball erupted over the jungle canopy as Jaina finally succeeded. With any luck, one of the AirStraekers she had downed had been the commander, but she knew better than to think that this would throw the squadron into disarray. The Chiss were far too organized to let a little thing like casualties disrupt their plans.

  Wuluw began to tremble on Jaina’s back. “Uuuu buuuu…”

  “Ah, don’t be that way,” Jaina said. The squadron was so close now that she could see the droop-winged silhouettes of individual AirStraekers. “Maybe it’s not that bad.”

  “Bu ubu ru—”

  “Look, you shouldn’t believe everything we say,” Jaina said.

  “Urbur?”

  “Really,” Jaina replied. She fixed her gaze on the AirStraeker squadron, then reached out to Zekk, concentrating hard and trying to make him feel her alarm through the battle-meld. “Humans do exaggerate.”

  Wuluw stopped shaking and remained curiously quiet for a moment, then reported, “Burubu rurburu.”

  “He is?” Jaina gasped, feigning surprise. “Well, Zekk’s StealthX isn’t going to give anything away, is it? The Chiss can’t even see that.”

  “Ur!” Wuluw clacked her mandibles in delight, then began to rub her antennae over Jaina’s face. “Burrb u!”

  “All right! That’s enough!” Jaina laughed. “If we’re going to get out of this, I still need to see.”

  Wuluw folded her antennae back immediately.

  As soon as her view was clear again, Jaina realized that she had lost sight of the Squibs. Probably, they had dropped back into the jungle as soon as the AirStraekers appeared, preferring to take their chances with the MetaCannons. There was no time to worry about it. She could see the AirStraekers sweeping back and forth now, spraying a wall of maser beams ahead of them and setting aflame a kilometer-wide swath of jungle canopy.

  Jaina reached out and tried her Force shove again, but the Chiss learned quickly. Her target simply peeled away from the squadron and climbed, fighting against her Force grasp until he entered the clouds and she lost sight of him. Thinking that disruption was as good as destruction, she began to Force-shove the rest of the squadron. They all vanished into the clouds—then dropped back into view a few moments later, in perfect formatio
n and closer than before.

  “Hurry, Zekk!” Jaina said under her breath.

  “Ubr?”

  “I said we need to keep pressing the attack,” Jaina replied, not wanting to alarm her Wuluw again. “Let’s see if we can find a good observation post.”

  Jaina Force-leapt into an especially tall mogo, then used the Force to make herself light and ascended high into the smallest twigs until she had clear view all the way to the mountains. Through the tangle of barren tree limbs, several MetaCannons were visible on the jungle floor, about half a kilometer ahead. Jaina retrieved her electrobinoculars and saw that the crews were busy changing the configuration of their weapons, replacing the ballistic barrels with fan-tipped beam emitters more suited to close-in fighting.

  “Have the Rekkers jump those MetaCannons now!” Jaina instructed Wuluw. “If they don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, those maser fans will tear them apart.”

  “Ru.”

  Jaina checked on the progress of the AirStraekers and found them so close now that she could see the underwing emitter fans flashing individual maser beams—and she could hear the wood cracking as mogo trees burst into flame. She tried her Force-shove attack again, and again she succeeded only in sending the entire squadron into the clouds for no more than three seconds.

  Jaina reached out to Zekk again, urging him to hurry. In response, the meld filled with reassurance.

  Jaina returned the electrobinoculars to her eyes and began to scan the rest of the battlefield. Five kilometers beyond the MetaCannons, the Chiss perimeter shield was glowing through the battle smoke, a golden wall that flickered and flashed as the Colony’s hordes attacked with catapults, magcannons, and other primitive field pieces. The Chiss were responding with maser cannons mounted on armored personnel carriers, directing most of their fire at a line of about fifty moss-covered hillocks that seemed to be ambling slowly forward.

  Kolosolok was attacking.

  Jaina watched in awe. More than fifty meters long and ten meters high, the enormous insects resembled freightersized spider-roaches, with broad, slightly humped carapaces that covered their entire backs. Their heads were slightly beetle-like, however, with a thicket of stiff black antennae that looked more like horns.

  Though the Kolosoloks appeared sluggish and torpid, they were covering so much ground that the throngs of Killik soldiers following in their wake were having trouble keeping pace. Maser cannons were useless against them. The beams ricocheted harmlessly off their thick head chitin, or blasted craters three meters deep into the green, spongy moss that covered their thoraxes. And when a cannon strike did penetrate their chitin, the brief geyser of brown blood seemed to go unnoticed—at least by the victim.

  The crackling of the fires in the jungle canopy became a building roar, and Wuluw began to tremble on Jaina’s back again.

  “Rurb u brubr ub.”

  “Can’t leave yet.” Jaina did not lower her electrobinoculars. “Those MetaCannons should be opening up with their maser fans about—”

  A tremendous roar erupted down in the jungle, shaking Jaina’s tree so hard that she had to Force-stick herself to the limb on which she was sitting.

  “—now!” she shouted. “Hold on!”

  A flurry of loud, long crashes began to sound from the area near the MetaCannons, and ancient, hundred-meter mogo trees began to drop to the jungle floor, their bases heat-blasted from beneath them.

  Jaina continued to study the perimeter shield. That was the key, the place where the battle would be won or lost. The Chiss defenders changed tactics, standing atop their personnel carriers to launch gas grenades and vape charges. The gas grenades seemed to sicken the Kolosoloks, causing them to shudder and stumble when one actually struck them. The vape charges opened gaping holes in their chitin, sometimes resulting in a flood of blood and organs large enough to drop them to their bellies. Even then, the huge warriors continued to crawl forward.

  The Chiss weapons were simply too light to stop Kolosolok. More than half of the nest reached the perimeter alive and began to butt into the curtain of energy, snapping at the relay pylons with their mandibles, clawing huge pits into the ground, serving as siege towers for the rivers of Killik soldiers who streamed up their backs.

  A cold prickle rose in the middle of Jaina’s spine. She lowered the electrobinoculars and spun on her heel, staring down into the jungle toward the spot that seemed to be the source of the feeling. She saw nothing but shadow. She started to stretch out in the Force, but then the whine of an approaching AirStraeker became a scream and the heat of the burning canopy began to warm her face, and she knew Zekk had not made it in time.

  Jaina spun back toward the sound and found herself looking through the canopy bubble directly into the red eyes of a Chiss pilot. There was no emotion in the woman’s face as she twisted her control stick, swinging the maser fans in Jaina’s direction.

  Wuluw screeched, and Jaina felt her own hand rising as though to ward off a blow. But instead of turning her palm toward the emitter fans, she flicked her fingers sideways, reaching out with the Force to bat the AirStraeker’s control stick out of the pilot’s hand.

  The Chiss’s eyes widened in surprise. She lunged after the rebellious stick, and Jaina did not see what the woman did after that. The AirStraeker simply dipped into the jungle canopy and vanished, and an instant later an orange plume of fire boiled up through the trees. Jaina felt a gush of heat in the soles of her feet, and Wuluw shrieked again and clung to her even more tightly.

  The rest of the squadron roared past, spraying crimson curtains of death fifty meters to either side, filling the Force with the anguish of thousands of dying Killiks, instantly turning the air so hot that Jaina’s throat stuck closed.

  Then the prickle between Jaina’s shoulder blades became a cold shiver. She leapt without taking the time to look and found herself dropping through the smoke-filled jungle with no idea what lay below—no idea beyond the danger that she sensed. She was in someone’s sights, and she knew it.

  A flurry of blaster beams began to stitch the air around her, forcing Jaina into an ungainly Force tumble that sent Wuluw flying. She twisted around, reaching out to draw the Killik back to her…and saw Wuluw’s thorax shatter as a blaster bolt tore through it.

  Jaina felt the Killik’s death as though it were her own. A terrible fire blossomed inside her and began to crackle on her fingertips, longing for release, for vengeance. A mogo limb appeared out of the smoke below, and she reached for it in the Force, pulling herself over to it and lighting on it as gently as a feather.

  A handful of blaster bolts tore into the tree’s trunk, then abruptly stopped when her attackers realized she was protected. Jaina snapped her lightsaber off her belt and Force-leapt to the branch above, then crept close to the trunk and peered around it, toward the source of the blaster bolts. As she had suspected, Longnose and Scarcheek were crouching in a trunk notch in the next tree, their large dark eyes scanning the area where she had disappeared.

  Jaina scowled. Hit-Squibs.

  She began to scan the surrounding branches, planning a route that would take her behind the two assassins, unsure in her anger whether she meant to capture them or simply take her vengeance.

  That was when Zekk touched Jaina through the meld, wondering if she was hurt, urging her to focus. Vengeance was not important—it was never important. The battle was all that mattered now. She had a responsibility to the Colony.

  Jaina glanced skyward. The smoke was so thick that she could barely see the green rain clouds above, but they were still there, still pouring water down onto the burning jungle.

  Jaina wondered what had taken Zekk so long to reach her, and the image of attacking clawcraft filled her mind. Of course—the Chiss would never attack without top cover. She returned her lightsaber to her utility belt, then used the Force to snap a small branch about thirty meters behind Longnose and Scarcheek.

  The two Squibs leapt out of their hiding place and started down the tree h
eadfirst, moving so fast that Jaina wondered if they were falling. Once the pair had vanished from sight, she whispered after them, using the Force to carry her hard-edged voice.

  “We’ll finish this later,” she said. “If you stay alive that long.”

  A pair of startled screams echoed up through the smoke.

  A moment later, the hum of a StealthX’s repulsor drives passed by overhead. She looked up to see a black streak flashing after the AirStraekers, its laser cannons ripping the sky open.

  The MetaCannons were continuing to chew through the jungle, but now Jaina could hear other sounds, too—the wail of enemy voices, the pinging of shatter gun pellets on metal armor, the chain-thunder of exploding ammunition. The Rekkers had reached the Chiss lines.

  Seeing that the lower levels of the jungle—at least in the direction of the fighting—had erupted into a solid wall of flame and smoke, Jaina returned to the canopy. She could see Zekk’s StealthX in the distance as it hunted down the AirStraekers, but not much more.

  Jaina retrieved her electrobinoculars, then used the Force to clear a hole through the smoke. The MetaCannons had cut a trench three hundred meters into the jungle. A solid wall of smoke and steam was pouring out of this trench, while thousands of Rekkers and millions of Jooj were swarming into it. Clearly, the situation at the MetaCannons was under control.

  The battle at the perimeter was going more poorly. The Chiss had massed opposite the Kolosoloks, flinging vape charges and gas grenades at the great insects and firing their charric rifles from the roofs of their personnel carriers. The Killik tide pressed the attack, pouring shatter gun pellets over the shield or simply leaping into the horde of defenders.

  The Chiss were too disciplined to panic and too well trained to break. Support units poured in by the squad, by the platoon, by the company. Bodies, both insect and Chiss, began to lie three and four and then ten deep. Personnel carriers exploded or became so riddled with shatter gun fire that the crews could be seen lying in pieces inside. The Kolosoloks were butting the shield, filling the air with golden sprays of discharge sparks, recoiling stunned and unsteady, then hitting it again and again…and still the perimeter held.