by James Luceno
Kyp turned to Ganner, who nodded in affirmation, then he thrust the blade of his lightsaber into the center of the portal. When he retracted the blade, air rushed noisily through the hole into the space beyond, and the portal irised open. Inside, scattered across a pliant floor fouled by sweat and more, sprawled a mixed-species mob of captives. Dressed in ragged robes and tunics, they were a gaunt lot, but alive. Gradually they began to stir as the hold filled with oxygen.
Kyp approached one of them—a gray-haired human who had probably started with a good deal more weight than some of the others. Near him lay two Ryn males and a female.
The man’s rheumy eyes blinked open and played across Kyp’s face, focusing finally on the deactivated lightsaber in his right hand.
“They’re holding him on the deck below this one,” the human said weakly. “Next module aft. But be careful, Jedi. He may not be the Wurth Skidder you remember.”
Several of the more technically minded of the hoodwinked and now marooned Ruan refugees had succeeded in getting some of the orbital facility’s systems on-line, so anyone who wished was able to watch the fall of Fondor in full color.
Most of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet was still dispersed in a broad arc out past Fondor’s outermost moons, but a dozen or so carriers, heavily reinforced by escort craft, had moved Coreward. Like siege weapons of old, the carriers had flung their coralskippers against any targets that presented themselves, destroying New Republic warships and construction barges alike. But having thrown the First Fleet into disarray, they were now being more systematic about attacking the shipyards and pounding distant Fondor with flaming projectiles and streams of plasma.
Gazing at the chaos through an observation blister, Melisma decided that the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t likely to spare even an empty shipyard, which—at the present rate of destruction—meant that the Ruan group had less than an hour to get their affairs in order. Most of the refugees had already come to grips with this and were off by themselves, crying quietly or praying to whatever gods they worshipped. But others were shrieking in fear and anger, insisting that efforts be made to alert Fondor command to their plight or, failing that, surrendering to the Yuuzhan Vong, even though that would mean sacrifice or captivity.
True to the fatalism they embraced as a creed, the Ryn were singing. The fact that they were capable of going to their deaths with grace and dignity had actually managed to impart a sense of calm to some of the distraught.
Melisma turned from the viewport to listen to the melodious lament R’vanna was leading. “If these folks realized that our forgeries are what got them into this situation, we’d be dead already,” she told Gaph.
Her uncle only shrugged. “Even without the documents we provided, the pirates would have found some way. Remember, child, these people paid to leave Ruan.”
“Is that your way of absolving us of guilt?”
“We’re guilty of getting ourselves into this mess. But that, too, is the Ryn way. If it’s not others abusing us, we’re abusing ourselves.”
Melisma sighed. “Do we deserve this then—for not accepting Ruan’s offer to work in the fields?”
“No one deserves to die this way, no matter what they have done. But listen, child, we’re not dead yet, and until we are, we should enjoy the moment.”
Melisma glanced out the viewport. “I don’t know that I have any song left in me, Uncle.”
He laughed. “Of course you do. There’s song even in a final breath.”
She forced a smile. “You begin.”
Gaph smoothed his mustachios in thought. His right foot began to tap, and he had his mouth open to sing when a Sullustan stationed at one of the data consoles shouted for everyone’s attention.
“The Trevee is returning!”
The singing and crying ceased, and groups of folks began to crowd around the console and into the observation blister. Someone off to Melisma’s left pointed to a sleek shape, weaving its way toward the abandoned facility between missiles and plasma discharges.
“It’s definitely the Trevee!” the Sullustan confirmed.
Hopeful exclamations gushed from all sides.
“Maybe they had a change of heart.”
“Impossible. They got caught up in the battle and are looking for a place to hide.”
“Someone learned what they did to us.”
“That is the probable explanation,” Gaph said in an authoritative voice. He gestured in the direction of the approaching transport. “I can’t imagine where that YT-1300 freighter joined the Trevee, but I’m certain that the other two ships are New Republic starfighters.”
* * *
Anakin’s enabling the Centerpoint Station’s interdiction field and starbuster capabilities was momentarily forgotten in the wake of the devastating news the New Republic colonel brought to the control room.
The Yuuzhan Vong had launched a sneak attack on Fondor.
Real-time images of the battle received over military channels and HoloNet feeds had fomented panic among the Mrlssi, whose home system bordered Fondor in the Tapani sector. For everyone else in the control room the images prompted a curious mix of relief and desperation. Here was Centerpoint, all dressed up and nowhere to go.
Thrackan Sal-Solo broke the mood.
“There is something we can do.” He whirled on Anakin, a wild look in his eye. “We have the time-space coordinates of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet.” He hurried to a console and called up a star chart. “Their warships are clustered Rimward of Fondor’s fifth and sixth moons. We can target them by focusing Centerpoint’s repulsor beam.”
“We have no authority to take such actions,” a technician said, loud enough to be heard over a dozen separate conversations that broke out. “We could miss and hit Fondor or even its primary. We can’t assume the risk.”
“We must assume the risk,” a Mrlssi argued. “Fondor is lost if we do nothing.”
The New Republic colonel glanced at Sal-Solo, who shook his head. “I can’t promise that we’ll hit our target.”
Everyone turned to Anakin.
And Anakin looked at Jacen and Ebrihim, who had his hand clamped over Q9’s vocoder grille.
Jacen wanted to say something, but all words fled him. He had a sudden memory of Anakin from months earlier, practicing lightsaber technique in the hold of the Falcon.
“You keep thinking of it as a tool, a weapon in your war against everything you see as bad,” Jacen had told him at the time.
“It’s an instrument of law,” Anakin had maintained.
“The Force isn’t about waging war,” Jacen had said. “It’s about finding peace, and your place in the galaxy.”
He set himself boldly between Sal-Solo and the console at which Anakin sat. “We can’t be a part of this,” he announced.
Thrackan peered around him at Anakin. “The First Fleet is being decimated, Anakin. The task force launched from Bothawui can’t possibly arrive in time to help.”
“The Tapani is our home sector,” a Mrlssi said. “You must take the risk for our sake—as a Jedi must.”
“It’s our only chance to score a decisive victory,” the colonel urged. He cut his eyes to the joystick Anakin had conjured. “It bears your imprint, Anakin. It answers to you and no one else.”
“Anakin, you can’t,” Jacen said, wide-eyed. “Step away from it. Step away from it now.”
Anakin glanced from his brother to the controls before him. Not through the Force but through Centerpoint itself, he could sense his distant targets. He felt as wedded to the repulsor as he often felt to his lightsaber, and he knew with the same conviction precisely when and how to strike.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lightsabers clenched in two-handed grips, Kyp and Ganner approached the chamber in which Wurth Skidder was apparently being held. The absence of guards in the dark and humid corridor had Kyp thinking otherwise, but no sooner had his lightsaber coaxed the chamber’s portal to open than he caught sight of Skidder. And immediately he grasped what the captive�
��Roa—had meant by saying that Skidder wasn’t likely to be his old self.
Stripped naked, he was lying faceup on the floor with his legs bent backward at the knees and his arms extended beyond his head. Surrounding him—and plainly responsible for the cartilaginous growths that wedded him to the deck at knees, insteps, shoulders, elbows, and wrists—were a dozen or so crablike creatures, a few of whom managed to skitter to safety before Kyp’s and Ganner’s lightsabers could be brought to bear on them. The screeching others were cleaved and dismembered, their legs and pincers flung to all quarters of the hold.
Kneeling, Kyp wedged his hand under Wurth’s neck and gently lifted his head. Skidder groaned in agony, but his eyes fluttered open.
“You’re the last person I expected to see here,” he rasped.
Kyp made himself smile. “You think we’d let you execute this mission on your own?”
Skidder licked his lips to wet them. “How did you find me?”
“The Hutts got a message to us through one of their smugglers.”
Skidder’s eyebrows beetled in puzzlement. “I thought they’d joined the opposition.”
“I guess they’ve seen the light.”
“That’s good to hear,” Skidder said in genuine relief. He glanced at Ganner, then added, “I sensed you when you attacked the ship before it jumped.”
“That was at Kalarba,” Ganner said.
“Where are we now?”
“Fondor.”
Skidder showed them a startled look. “Why—”
“Fondor was always the target,” Kyp said. “The fleet has been caught by surprise.”
Skidder shut his eyes and nodded. “I tried to learn our destination—the yammosk’s destination.”
Kyp compressed his lips before replying. “We managed to cripple the ship before it made planetfall, but the Yuuzhan Vong are prevailing even without the war coordinator.”
“There are captives aboard,” Skidder said, as if suddenly remembering. “The plan was to familiarize the yammosk with our thought patterns—”
“We’ve got them,” Ganner cut him off. “Deak and some of the others are with them. Now we just have to see about freeing you.”
Wurth laughed, shortly and bitterly. “Chine-kal promised to break me, and he has.”
“Chine-kal?”
“The ship’s commander.” Skidder’s face contorted and he moaned in pain.
Concealing his hopelessness, Kyp took a closer look at the surge-coral protrusions that anchored Wurth to the pliant deck. “Our lightsabers should make short work of these,” he started to say, when Wurth shook his head violently.
“There isn’t time. You have to leave.”
Kyp looked hard into his comrade’s eyes. “I won’t leave you, Wurth. We’ll find a way to help you. The Force—”
“Look at me,” Skidder interrupted firmly. “Look at me through the Force. I’m dying, Kyp. You can’t help me.”
Kyp opened his mouth to reply, but instead loosed a resigned sigh.
Skidder smiled with his eyes. “I’m prepared, Kyp. I’m ready to die. But there are two things I need you to do before you leave this ship.”
Kyp nodded grimly and leaned his ear closer to his friend’s mouth.
“Randa and Chine-kal,” Wurth managed to say. “Find them.”
Alone in the Falcon’s cockpit, Han had one hand gripped on the yoke and the other on the servo that operated the dorsal quad laser. Triggering staccato bursts from the weapon, he blew away two approaching coralskippers. From somewhere behind the Falcon a third skip vectored in on a strafing run against the shipyard, but before Han could even swivel the gun turret, the enemy craft was pulverized by fire from one of the battered X-wings that flew with Kyp’s Dozen.
“Good shooting,” Han said into the mouthpiece of his headset.
“Thanks, Falcon,” the voice of the ship’s female pilot came back. “You soften them up, I’ll put them away.”
“Will do,” Han told her.
He brought the Falcon about to recon the Rimward side of the empty yard in which the Ruan refugees had been marooned. Below, Droma, the second fighter pilot, and some of the pirates were organizing the recovery, with the Trevee berthed where a construction barge or tender might have anchored if the facility had been operational. With the Yuuzhan Vong fleet continuing to encroach on Fondor, the Tholatin crew—reluctant rescuers early on—were suddenly desperate to wrap the mission and launch for clear space.
Noise crackled from the cockpit annunciators, and a grainy video image of Droma appeared on the comm display screen.
“Han, the Trevee is loading, but fifty or so folks are still unaccounted for. Apparently they figured they could escape detection by hiding out.”
Behind Droma, grinning broadly, were clustered some ten other Ryn, including the two he had introduced earlier as Gaph and Melisma. Melisma was now cradling a Ryn infant in her arms.
“You can’t hide from plasma,” Han barked toward the audio pickup.
Droma nodded. “We’ll search them out.”
“Yeah, well, don’t waste any time. Looks like a Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort has taken a sudden interest in the place.”
Droma nodded and signed off.
As the Falcon came full circle around the shipyard, the Trevee once more loomed large in the forward viewport. The transport’s hyperdrive was ruined, but the sublight drives were more than capable of moving the ship out past the enemy fleet—providing it got away in time.
Even as Han was thinking it, the Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort hove into view off to port, keen on targeting the shipyard with the projectile launchers concealed in its pitted starboard bow.
Han throttled the Falcon toward the intruder, firing steadily, but the escort was too resolved on destroying the shipyard to be bothered by a lone assailant. Just then, though, the X-wing appeared on the scene, succeeding in getting the escort’s attention with two well-placed proton torpedoes that impacted against its blunt nose.
Han banked harder to port, racing the Falcon through a storm of flaming projectiles to come to the fighter’s support, but he failed to arrive in time. Plasma gushed from the escort and caught the X-wing just as it was breaking off from its reckless run. Wingtip lasers and stabilizers melted like candle wax, and the pilot lost control. Trailing gobs of solidifying alloy, the fighter went into a crazed roll, splitting apart before perishing in a fiery explosion.
Han’s eyes narrowed in hatred. “Nobody takes out my wingmate.”
Whipping the Falcon around, he went for the escort with the quad lasers blazing. Chunks of yorik coral exploded outward from the ship, and a thick blade of flame streaked into space. The ship rolled to one side like a wounded beast. At the same time, the comm screen came to life.
“We’re away,” Droma said. “Aiming for clear skies.”
Han powered the Falcon through an ascending loop, then veered off to starboard, glimpsing the Trevee and its fighter companion just as they were accelerating from the threatened facility. The dying escort spotted them, as well. Missiles sought the fleeing vessels, but the escort reserved the bulk of its barrage for the shipyard itself. Punctured throughout by projectiles, the facility began to disintegrate, then it blew apart, unfurling flames that scorched the tail of the accelerating transport. Then the escort, too, disappeared in a flash of blinding light.
“You have my word that I will devote the remainder of my days to repaying the debt I have this day incurred,” Randa bellowed in Basic as he trailed Kyp and Ganner through the clustership, the slapping sounds of his muscular tail loud in the passageway.
“Thank Skidder, Randa,” Kyp said over his shoulder. “If it’d been up to me, I would have left you with your dead toadies.”
“Then I will repay the debt in honor of Skidder,” Randa said, unfazed. “You will see.”
As it happened, the two Jedi didn’t have long to wait. Rounding a corner in the passageway, they found themselves faced with a phalanx of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, int
o whose midst Randa charged, knocking half a dozen aside before any of those left standing could land blows against the Hutt’s mostly impervious hide. Kyp and Ganner followed up the brash offensive, felling their opponents with precise strikes to susceptible spots in the warriors’ armor.
The three of them fought their way toward an enormous maw in the bulkhead, from beyond which emanated a stench even more pungent than that given off by Randa. Inside the vast chamber, encircled by attendants who clearly had meager familiarity with the coufees they brandished, stood a Yuuzhan Vong commander, a long cloak hanging from his transmogrified shoulders and a villip communicator in his hands. Behind them, raised up on tensed tentacles in a circular tank of foul-smelling liquid, was a maturing yammosk, a large tooth glistening in its rictus of a mouth and its massive black eyes riveted on the intruders.
Again Randa rushed forward, flattening several of the attendants and whipping his tail around to whack the villip out of the commander’s hands. The attendants began what would have been a fruitless defense, but the commander ordered them to lower their weapons.
“I congratulate you on getting this far,” he said after two of the attendants had helped him back to his feet.
Kyp angled his lightsaber to one side, the blade extended in front of him. “Move out of the way and we’ll go the rest of the distance.”
Chine-kal turned slightly to glance at the yammosk. “Of course. The life of a yammosk for that of a Jedi. It strikes me as equitable.”
From off to Kyp’s left, Ganner hurled his ignited lightsaber square into the creature’s left eye. As the sulfurous-yellow energy blade struck, the yammosk shrieked and its tentacles flailed, generating waves that cascaded down over the yorik-coral retaining wall of the pool and washed across the deck. The yammosk reared up and began to sway from side to side. Gradually the tentacles stopped moving, and the creature sank down into the tank, dead by the time Ganner called the lightsaber back to him.