by Troy Denning
Leia drew back the yoke again. It was a bit sluggish, but the Falcon had stopped vibrating, and she quickly brought the ship under control.
Discovering that she was still looking at Han, she asked, “What happened?”
“Looks like a glancing strike to the starboard aft.” His voice was steady but determined, and his gaze was fixed on the control board. “I don’t think we even have the number three and four vector plates anymore … and maybe you’d better back off those throttles. We lost another coolant line.”
Leia dutifully throttled back, then realized the turbolaser attacks had stopped. “Han, that’s not what I mean. We’re still alive.”
Han finally looked up, smirking at the surprise in her voice. “Sure we are,” he said. “You’re a Jedi—remember?”
“Very funny,” Leia replied. She checked the tactical display and saw the reason no one was shooting at them. Bwua’tu’s fleet had finally rounded Megos and opened fire, ripping a hole in the flank of the usurper fleet that left no doubt about the final outcome of the battle. “But true. We just might survive this thing.”
Of course, that was when the proximity alarm blared to life again. Ribbons of color danced across space ahead, then blue halos began to wink into existence and swell into the backlit forms of an oncoming fleet.
“Another one?” Han gasped. “What is this, a war?”
On the journey back from Terephon, the Rover had managed to beat the Ducha to Hapes by shaving safety margins and pushing hard between jumps. But Ben was still bringing up the comm systems when the Galney fleet slid out of hyperspace beside them and began to accelerate toward the battle. At this distance, the conflict was little more than a smudge of radiance flickering against the planet’s jewel-colored face, but Ben could feel it tearing at him inside; could feel all those lives fluttering out. It reminded him of why he had tried to hide from the Force when he was younger—of the constant sensation of anguish that was all he remembered about the war with the Yuuzhan Vong.
Except now Ben was older. He knew it was not the Force causing all that pain; it was people. He knew that people could be selfish and frightened and noble and brave, and when all those things got mixed up together, wars got started. That was why the galaxy needed someone like Jacen: to straighten things out so there wouldn’t be so much suffering.
The comm system finally completed its postjump diagnostics, and Ben started to set it to Tenel Ka’s command channel.
“Jedi Skywalker!” Ioli snapped. She turned her noseless face toward Ben. “What are you doing?”
His hand hovered above the input pad. “If Tenel Ka lets the Ducha come in behind her—”
“The lieutenant knows what will happen, son,” said Tanogo, the chief petty officer who operated the snoop station behind Ben. “She asked what you were doing.”
Ben glanced over his shoulder at the huge-headed Bith. “Opening a comm channel?”
“With the enemy so close we can read the names on the sides of their ships?” Tanogo riffled his cheek folds. “We wouldn’t last ten seconds.”
“But we’ve got to warn Tenel Ka!” Ben turned back to Ioli. “And we’re not going to reach her before the Ducha does.”
“Can’t you do something with the Force?” Ioli asked.
Ben shook his head. “It wouldn’t be specific enough. She’d know there was danger, and she might even sense I meant there was treachery. But it’s still just a feeling, and in the middle of a battle—”
“She’ll be feeling those concerns anyway.” Ioli let her breath buzz out, then said, “Very well—but we’ll do this with a voice recording. And bear in mind we’ll be sending it over the hailing channel.”
Ben frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“We have to be sure it gets to her,” Tanogo said from behind Ben. “And since the traitors may still have someone close to the Queen Mother intercepting messages—”
“—we want everyone to hear the warning,” Ben said, nodding. “It’s the recording part I don’t get. Why can’t I just—”
“Jedi Skywalker, do you really expect me to explain my orders?” Ioli demanded. “Tenel Ka is running out of time, so make your report brief and to the point.”
Ben cringed—more from the anger in her presence than the sharpness in her voice.
“Okay—sorry.” He opened a recording file, then spoke into the comm microphone. “This is Jedi Ben Skywalker with an urgent warning for the Hapan Royal Navy. Ducha Galney is a verified traitor coming to launch a sneak attack on the Queen Mother. Repeat urgent warning: Ducha Galney is a traitor. Take all precautions.”
Ben finished and looked over for Ioli’s approval, but found her returning the intercom microphone to its cradle.
She hooked a thumb toward the rear of the skiff. “The others are getting ready to go EV. Join them.”
“Copy.” Still stinging from the last time he had questioned Ioli’s orders, Ben unbuckled his crash webbing and rose—then realized what she intended to do and stopped between their seats. “Wait a minute—we have six people and only four suits.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she asked.
“Yes—I mean no,” he said. “I know you do. But there has to be another way.”
She looked at him with an expression that seemed more impatient than hopeful. “You have one?”
Unable to think while he was looking into her eyes, Ben let his gaze drop to the deck. Both she and the chief seemed so calm and focused, but he could feel their fear in his own stomach, a fluttering ball of Force energy that made him want to throw up.
When Ben did not answer quickly, Ioli said, “I didn’t think so.” She checked the chrono on the control panel. “The chief says I need to send your message in two minutes and twelve seconds to give the Queen Mother a fighting chance. It’s going to take you three to put on that suit.”
“What about a message beacon?”
“Great idea,” Tanogo said. “If recon skiffs carried message beacons.”
“Go, Ben.” Ioli pointed aft. “And that’s an order.”
“I can’t just leave you to die,” Ben said, remaining where he was. “I’m a Jedi.”
“You’re going to be a dead Jedi, because I am going to send this report in exactly—” Ioli checked the chrono again. “—one minute and fifty-two seconds.”
Tanogo grabbed Ben’s arm. “We’re scouts, son. This sort of thing goes with the shoulder patch.” He pulled Ben out of the cockpit and pushed him aft. “Go on, now. We’ll swing back and pick you up if we don’t get vaped.”
Ben stumbled aft, feeling guilty and confused, thinking it should be him and Jaina staying behind while the rest of the crew went EV. But after so many days sitting beside Ioli in the cockpit, he knew without asking that she would view any such offer as an insult to both her and her crew. Even with the Force, he and Jaina would not be able to handle the unfamiliar skiff as well as Tanogo and Ioli could. Besides, the Rover was their ship, so it was their duty to send the report—and in Admiral Niathal’s new military, an officer simply did not hand off her duty to someone else.
Ben reached the back of the cabin, where Gim Sorzo, the Rover’s Twi’lek gunner, was just sealing his neck ring. Jaina and Zekk—who had already been Force-hibernating inside evac suits to avoid straining the Rover’s limited life-support systems—were buttoned up and waiting outside the evacuation cabinet, where the last suit hung open and ready.
Ben stepped into the legs and shoved his arms down the sleeves, and Jaina depressed the emergency tab on the shoulder. As the suit sealed itself, Zekk slipped the helmet over Ben’s head and closed the neck ring. Less than a minute later, the helmet speaker chirped to confirm the suit’s spaceworthiness, and the three Jedi crowded into the air lock with Sorzo.
Ben had just closed the inner hatch when his own voice began to come over the helmet speaker. “This is Jedi Ben Skywalker with an urgent warning—”
“Line up,” Jaina’s voice cut in. “Blowing the hatch in three … two …”
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br /> As she counted, they hooked their tether lines to one another and arranged themselves for an emergency exit, with Jaina in front of the hatch and Sorzo behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Ben stood beside the Twi’lek, holding on to a grab bar with one hand. Zekk stood in the corner beside him, clutching the bar with both hands.
“One.”
Jaina hit the emergency release, and the outer hatch tumbled away in a cloud of smoke and escaping atmosphere. Jaina and Sorzo were drawn out of the lock directly behind it. Ben’s hold on the grab bar delayed him for the half a second it took Jaina and Sorzo to clear the exit; then his hand came free and he was sucked out the hatchway. His visor fogged instantly, and he felt the tether jerk as Zekk was pulled into the void behind him.
His stomach began to turn somersaults as they left the Rover’s artificial gravity behind, but all sensation of motion ceased. Ben listened as his own voice continued to come over his helmet speaker, urging Tenel Ka to “Take all precautions.” Then a soft click sounded as the suit’s comm receiver automatically switched to the Rover’s intercom channel.
“Watch your eyes,” Ioli’s voice warned. “Rover moving off.”
“Thanks,” Jaina said. “And may the Force be with you.”
“Same to you,” Ioli replied. “Rover out.”
The skiff’s ion engines flared to life, brightening space so intensely that Ben’s eyes hurt even through a darkened visor and closed lids.
The glow diminished a couple of seconds later, and Ben opened his eyes to find the fog cleared from his visor. The star-dappled void was whirling by at dizzying speed, and every once in a while he caught a glimpse of battle flash, or of his companions twirling around on their tether pivots.
Ben activated his suit thrusters and brought his own tumble under control, then spun himself toward Hapes. The Ducha’s fleet had already opened fire on Ioli and Tanogo, concealing the planet behind a wall of streaking energy. He could barely make out the Rover, a finger-length sliver of darkness trailing an efflux helix as Ioli tried to spiral her way to salvation.
A stripe of turbolaser fire touched the head of the spiral and blossomed into a boiling ball of flame. Ben could not tell whether the anguish he felt was in the Force—or in him.
chapter twenty-three
In the Command Salon holodisplay, it all looked so neat and orderly. The planet Hapes loomed at the back of the projection, a bulging wall of light with dull green islands scattered across basic blue ocean. The battle itself was an arrow-headed column of blue “friendly” symbols driving through a block of red “hostiles.” The friendlies were trying to reach an amorphous mass—identified in blue as the HAPAN ROYAL NAVY—that was swarming a pair of ovoid symbols designated UNKNOWN. A reinforcing fleet labeled GALNEY was racing in from the periphery of the Hapan gravity well, its designator colors changing from friendly blue to hostile red as it traveled.
But Jacen knew what the battle was really like. He could feel it in the hundreds of life-presences winking out every second, in the waves of anguish rolling through the Force ever more powerfully. Most of all, he could sense it in Tenel Ka, in the carefully controlled anger he perceived when he reached out to her, in the fear and sadness she felt over the outcome. Was this what he had been fighting to protect all his life, a civilization that devoured itself? Was this the higher purpose Vergere had shaped him to serve—a society that sent assassins to murder children?
A subtle pressure in the Force drew Jacen’s attention to his aide, Orlopp. He turned to find the Jenet just looking up from the datapad in his hands.
“Yes?” Jacen asked.
Orlopp’s big snout twitched uneasily. It always disconcerted him to be anticipated, but Jacen didn’t care. Orlopp was monitoring two crucial situations on his datapad, and he had orders to interrupt immediately if the status of either changed.
When Orlopp took too long to compose his thoughts, Jacen snatched the datapad from his hands. “I can’t wait all day, Lieutenant.”
Jacen’s eyes went first to the left corner of the display, which showed an image of his cabin, where Allana sat on the floor playing with a pair of simple rag dolls. Scattered around her was a GAG special assault squad with orders to kill anyone attempting to enter the room. The other corner of the display showed Aurra Sing lying unconscious on the floor of a durasteel cell, secured at the wrist and ankle by stun cuffs and fastened to the wall at three points by heavy chains.
Only then, once he was sure that his daughter was safe and her attacker was still incapacitated, did Jacen read the message on the lower part of the display.
“What’s this about Alliance rescue beacons, Lieutenant?”
“The Signals Deck started to pick them up as soon as we reverted, sir. They’re about … here.”
Orlopp extended a finger into the holodisplay, indicating a position on the far side of Galney’s reinforcement fleet. But Jacen’s mind had wandered again, his gaze drifting back to the fight above Hapes. After the attack on his daughter, and with her mother in danger now, he was finding it hard to concentrate on his command duties. He wanted to be in a starfighter whisking Allana to safety on some anonymous world where this kind of danger could never find her.
But that would not save Tenel Ka. She was down there in battle, probably aboard one of the five Battle Dragons fighting from a standoff position at the rear of the Royal Navy.
“Colonel?” Orlopp flicked his finger, drawing Jacen’s attention back to the question of the rescue beacons—which were located squarely on the opposite side of the Galney reinforcement fleet from the Anakin Solo. “I was debating whether to bother you with this at all, since any rescue vessel we dispatch will probably be destroyed. To retrieve the stranded personnel, we’d have to divert the entire fleet.”
“Obviously.” Jacen continued to study the hologram, wondering what could have caused an Alliance crew to go EV so far from the main battle. “Any idea who—”
“Colonel Solo.” The interruption came from Major Espara, the pale-skinned woman Tenel Ka had sent along to serve as a liaison officer to the Royal Battle Dragons in his task force. “I hope you’re not even going to consider diverting this fleet to rescue a handful of your people. The Queen Mother is already in danger, and if you allow Ducha Galney’s reinforcements—”
“I assure you my understanding of the Queen Mother’s danger is far clearer than yours,” Jacen replied, rather sharply. He returned his attention to Orlopp. “Have the Signals Deck place a tracking lock on the beacons. We’ll attend to them after the Queen Mother is safe.”
Orlopp punched a button on his datapad, sending an order that he had obviously prepared in anticipation of Jacen’s decision.
When the Jenet did not look away, Jacen asked, “Is there something else, Lieutenant?”
“There is,” Orlopp replied. “The message dinghy you dispatched to Roqoo Depot was waiting to be taken aboard when we reverted from hyperspace.”
Jacen frowned. “And?”
“And the hangar chief is suspicious, Colonel,” Orlopp said. “The pilot is requesting an immediate audience with you, and there’s some question as to how she could have known our reversion coordinates.”
“Commend the chief on his caution,” Jacen said. “And tell him to get that pilot up here now.”
For someone like Lumiya, foreseeing the Anakin’s reversion coordinates would have required only a little guesswork and some Force meditation. Jacen was far more surprised that she had returned at all, since he had felt nothing in the Force to suggest that either Luke or Mara had been killed.
It occurred to him that Lumiya might have foreseen his trap and avoided the confrontation entirely. He wondered briefly if her return ought to worry him, but—despite the reservations she had expressed recently about his ability to make the necessary sacrifices to bring order to the galaxy—he was well aware that Lumiya needed him more than he needed her.
In the holodisplay, the Galney fleet began to glow more brightly as the Anakin Solo
closed to within range of its new, long-distance turbolasers. The usurper reinforcements continued toward Hapes at maximum acceleration, clearly convinced they could reach the battle and kill Tenel Ka before Jacen’s task force caught up to them.
Jacen used the Force to depress a button on the wall, activating an intercom microphone. “Commander Twizzl, time to grab their attention. Attack at your discretion.”
Twizzl’s voice came over the speaker. “Very good, Colonel.”
A few moments later the Anakin’s long-range turbolaser batteries unleashed a salvo, causing the lights to flicker and the ventilation fans to slow. In less critical parts of the ship, the effects would be even worse, plunging corridors into temporary darkness and forcing electronic systems to switch to battery power. The new turbolasers were cutting-edge technology, but they required so much power that they were unlikely to become standard armament anytime soon.
A moment after the first volley, one of the Galney Battle Dragons started to flash with damage. The lights in the Command Salon flickered again, and then the vessel vanished from the holodisplay. Apparently, the Anakin had caught the target with her shields still balanced forward.
“Well done,” Jacen said. He turned to Espara. “Would you give the Queen Mother’s Battle Dragons clearance to open fire, as soon as they’re within range?”
“Of course, Colonel.”
As Espara spoke into her comlink, Jacen took the opportunity to glance over Orlopp’s shoulder and confirm that Sing was still in her cell. Her door had been welded shut, she had not been given the antidote to Allana’s paralyzing drug, and a constant stream of sleep-inducing coma gas was being piped into her cell, but Jacen had to be sure. She had already demonstrated that she understood the value of timing an attack, so if she was going to attempt an escape, it would be soon.
“Sir?” Orlopp asked.
“Just checking.” Jacen glanced at the image of his cabin and found Allana still playing on the floor. “You can’t be too careful.”
“No, sir, you can’t.” Orlopp’s tone was routine, but he was pouring concern into the Force. “I’m keeping a very close eye on the situation, Colonel … you don’t have to worry about that.”