by Troy Denning
Anakin’s earplugs sealed themselves against the disorienting blast of a voxyn screech attack. Such assaults came so regularly now that they were no longer startling. Anakin simply pushed his breath mask into place and started forward to where a mob of slaves was staggering away from a convergence of blasterfire.
A lightsaber flashed, sending the tip of a severed voxyn tail tumbling over the crowd, then the creature itself rose into view as Tenel Ka used the Force to lift it out of a street hatch. Ganner and the Barabels set on it instantly, hacking it apart with their molten blades before Anakin could reach them. Killing voxyn was becoming almost routine; the strike team rarely traveled more than a few kilometers without being attacked by at least one of the things.
Anakin reached out with the Force to search for more. There seemed to be no others lurking beneath the street, but he did perceive someone in anguish lying inside the growing cloud of toxins released by the creature’s noxious blood. Slipping past the fighting, he found a mucus-coated slave curled into a fetal ball, so badly acid-burned that only his raw nerve cones identified him as a Gotal.
Anakin called Tekli forward. She should have felt the need on her own, but the battle meld was so full of discord that it served as little more than confirmation that everyone was still alive and conscious. As the Chadra-Fan knelt beside the dying Gotal, Lomi and Welk came up, now wearing the breath masks Lowbacca had risked so much to retrieve. They watched Tekli’s ministrations not with the disdain or detachment Anakin had expected, but with visible outrage. He knew better than to think they were empathizing with the slave’s suffering; they were simply using the anger it engendered to feed their dark-side power.
“I don’t like coming through here.” Anakin eyed the growing number of slave residents stumbling away from the toxic fumes. “We’re endangering them with our presence.”
“They are already in danger,” Lomi said. “And you are the one who wishes to try the voxyn warren. This is the only way to reach it.”
“You know you’re going to get us killed?” Welk asked. “Even Yuuzhan Vong don’t go down there.”
“Which is why we must,” Anakin said. Whether Nom Anor intended to or not, he was wearing the strike team down, steadily depleting its munitions and draining its vigor. “We need to break through soon, or we never will.”
“If this doesn’t work, we may have to accept never,” Lomi said. “There comes a time when we must think of our own lives.”
“Yeah, like after we’ve vaped the queen.” Tahiri stepped to Anakin’s side. “There is no try, only do.”
Lomi flashed Tahiri a condescending smirk. “Very impressive, child. You have memorized Skywalker’s maxims.” She looked back to Anakin. “Seriously, if this does not work, you must signal your extraction team. I won’t throw away my life.”
“There’s more at risk here than your life—or ours,” Anakin said.
Lomi rolled her eyes. “I know—the Jedi themselves.”
“The Jedi are the galaxy’s best hope of survival,” Anakin replied. “Otherwise, the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn’t be working so hard to destroy us.”
Lomi ran her eyes down Anakin’s figure, her expression almost seductive. “You are so very earnest, Anakin. It is really quite adorable.” Her smile turned icy. “But I did not see Skywalker sending his Jedi Knights to save the Nightsisters when the Yuuzhan Vong captured Dathomir. I will show you to the voxyn cave, but if we cannot fight through, you must call your extraction team.”
Anakin hesitated a moment, wondering how earnest she would think him after he lied to her—and then he realized there was no need. He returned her smile with one just as icy.
“Extraction team?” he asked. “What extraction team would that be?”
Lomi’s eyes narrowed, and she reached out to test Anakin with the Force. “Do you think you can …” When she encountered no resistance, her jaw fell, and she let the probe drop. “You are on a suicide mission?”
“It’s no suicide mission,” Tahiri said. “We’ve walked rockier trails than this, lots of times.”
Lomi ignored her and continued to stare at Anakin.
“The warmaster anticipated our plans,” he explained. “We lost our ship coming in.”
“And your backup plan?” Lomi asked. “Surely, you have a backup plan?”
Anakin nodded. “Kill the queen and destroy the lab, then hope we can steal a ship in the confusion.”
“I see.” The anger in Lomi’s eyes grew more intent. “There is no try …”
“Only do,” Welk finished, his voice mocking. “If that doesn’t blast my bones!”
The acid-burned Gotal finally died, and the strike team started up the street again. As soon as they left the toxin cloud, the mob closed in, begging the Jedi to free them, thrusting children out for rescue, volunteering to fight. There were thousands of slaves—Ranats, Ossan, Togorians, even some species Anakin could not name, all cognizant of their fate, all desperate to escape their coming doom, the very people who needed the Jedi—the weak, the downtrodden, the defenseless. Anakin’s heart grew heavier each time he was forced to say he could not help, that his mission here was too vital, that he had no way to get them off the worldship. Soon, it grew too painful to explain that much. He simply apologized in a quiet and calm voice, using Jedi persuasion techniques to comfort those in despair and to redirect the wrath of those who were angry.
Lomi started down a cramped alley-canyon that would not have felt out of place in Coruscant’s underlevels. Barely three meters wide, the lane descended at a steep angle beneath a network of balconies and catwalks, then vanished into the dank-smelling murk ahead. The windows and doors that pocked the walls to both sides were sealed behind curtains of living membrane. An odd double pathway worn into the dusty ground was spaced about right for the wide-set legs of a voxyn. Noting that the slave residents showed no desire to follow them into the alley, Anakin stopped three steps in.
“Stay sharp, everyone. We need to make this work.” He turned to his brother. “If you can do something to keep the voxyn quiet, now is the time.”
Jacen paled. “I’ll do my best, Anakin.” He started forward. “But these aren’t normal animals. I can’t just reach—”
Anakin did not hear the rest, for the general haze of Yuuzhan Vong presence suddenly grew strong and almost distinct. He turned to scan the crowd and found a group of humans shoving toward Jacen. All five were large men with swarthy faces and blank expressions, men so similar they could have been clones. Four reached for their belts. The fifth tossed a thumb-sized capsule at Jacen’s feet, and a thin coat of greenish gel spread across the street.
“Blorash jelly!” Anakin burned a blaster hole through the jelly thrower’s throat, then used the Force to pluck his brother off the ground. “Watch the crowd!”
A dozen lightsabers came to life and formed a dancing cage of light around the rear half of the strike team. Anakin put Jacen down in the alley mouth. Someone took a heavy blow, and a tide of darkness swirled through the battle meld as they struggled to stay conscious.
“Jaina!” Jacen yelled.
The mob roared and scattered, trampling each other in their panic. The impostors flung more blorash jelly, capturing slaves and Jedi alike, turning the street into a tangle of confusion. Lowbacca roared, his bronze lightsaber flashing down, cleaving something Anakin could not see. Tenel Ka yelled for support. Alema cursed in Ryl, her silver blade burning through a soft body. Eryl cried out as green gel spread over her foot. She hacked the stuff apart, and the second piece bound her other foot to the ground. She reached into her equipment pouch for a more potent defense.
A razor bug flew out of the crowd, caught her below the nose, and slashed her face in two. Her eyes rolled back, and the lightsaber slipped from her hand, and she fell and began to convulse.
Shock burned through the battle meld like an ion blast. Doubt and resentment gave way to anger, blame, guilt—none of it helpful. The emotions only added to the chaos, blurring Anakin’s awar
eness. He felt just one thing clearly, the black gauze threatening to engulf his sister.
Anakin stepped out of the alley and heard an amphistaff hiss. He caught the snakish head on his lightsaber, then spun around, driving a back kick into his attacker’s midsection and bringing his molten blade around in a neck-high sweep. The impostor collapsed, head tumbling from his shoulders.
Tahiri somersaulted under Anakin’s lightsaber and sprang to her feet behind her blade, driving the tip up through the torso of a Duros male. Seeing no amphistaff, Anakin thought she had made a terrible mistake, then sensed Yuuzhan Vong pain and saw a gablith masquer peeling off the Duros’ face.
Anakin jerked her behind him. “Careful!”
“You’re one to talk!” she snapped.
Tahiri pulled a handful of arsensalts from her equipment pouch and sprinkled them on a blorash jelly sliding toward their feet. The stuff drew back, then began to divide itself into oblivion. Anakin circled past and first sensed, then saw more impostors, three human and two Duros, shouldering their way out of the crowd.
He pushed Tahiri at Ganner and the Barabels and ordered them to secure the alley entrance, then sprang into the air and called on the Force to carry himself over the charging Yuuzhan Vong. As he somersaulted past their heads, he dragged his lightsaber across one impostor’s skull and split it down the center. He landed behind the group and thrust-kicked another onto Tesar’s waiting blade.
The Barabel ducked a whistling amphistaff, then trapped the arm that had swung it and pulled the elbow into his sharp-toothed mouth. With the odds in the alley now firmly in the strike team’s favor, Anakin turned to find Raynar pulling Eryl’s limp body into his arms, his face streaked with tears and seemingly unaware of the blorash jelly binding his knee to the ground. Anakin sprinkled some salts on the blob.
Raynar looked up, eyes wide. “I can’t feel her, Anakin. She’s not in the Force.”
Anakin shared his shock. Before, Nom Anor had seemed intent on recapturing the strike team alive. So why were Yuuzhan Vong hurling razor bugs now? Because, suddenly, the strike team had a good chance of reaching the cloning labs, that was why. He pulled Eryl into Raynar’s arms, then pushed them both toward the alley.
“I’ll send Tekli.”
Anakin rushed forward into a mad riot of shrieking slaves. Some lay dead and many were bleeding, but the battle had already drifted out into the street, and most were screaming only because they were trapped. He hurled a few sprinkles of arsensalts as he passed, then met Tenel Ka coming in the opposite direction, levitating Jovan Drark. Tekli was kneeling astride the Rodian, her hands buried to the wrists inside his open chest.
Anakin touched him through the Force and immediately felt sick and hollow inside. Jovan had only the faintest glimmer of life, and even that was fading.
“Jaina’s in trouble,” Tenel Ka said. “They’re trying to—”
Anakin was already racing forward, leaping the bodies of groaning slaves and fallen Yuuzhan Vong, flinging arsensalts at the few remaining patches of blorash jelly. He should have anticipated this, should have realized Nom Anor would use the slave city to ambush them. Now Eryl was dead, Jovan dying, Jaina about to be taken—and the strike team had yet to reach the cloning labs.
He found Jaina pinned against a building, a blob of blorash jelly binding her along one side, blood pouring from a head wound. Despite it all, she was holding two Yuuzhan Vong impostors at bay with a one-handed lightsaber defense. Lowbacca and Zekk were fighting toward her through a half-dozen still-masqued warriors. Alema Rar crouched behind a crashed hovercar, using Jovan Drark’s longblaster to delay a company of reinforcements. Anakin gathered the Force to him and charged, somersaulting into the air as he had a few moments before.
Zekk’s opponents broke off, stepping back to hurl their am-phistaffs like spears. Anakin batted one aside—then felt a hot pain in his abdomen when the second pierced his jumpsuit’s armored lining.
As he finished his tumble, the shaft swung away, the head pivoting inside his abdomen. He heard himself scream, then he was coming down, landing on his feet and hammering the butt into the ground. Cold anguish filled his belly. His knees tried to buckle, but he would not let them—could not let them.
“Anakin!”
Guided by her screaming voice, Anakin flung a handful of arsensalts in Jaina’s direction, used the Force to carry them to the jelly.
Then he grabbed the amphistaff and jerked it from his body.
The agony was crushing.
Anakin shunted it aside, used his Jedi training to prevent his suffering from crippling him. He was injured, but not mortally so. One of Jaina’s attackers spun to attack, changing his amphistaff to whip form in midswing.
Anakin batted the fanged head aside, leapt forward, feigned a slash. The impostor tried to step inside—had to try. Anakin slipped a foot behind his foe’s heel and swept the leg. The Yuuzhan Vong went down, rolled, then opened his own throat on Anakin’s downturned lightsaber.
Now free of her blorash jelly, Jaina was driving her foe back with a wild web of lightsaber slashes. Calling on the Force for strength, Anakin stepped over and slashed his blade across the Yuuzhan Vong’s knees. Jaina opened the warrior’s chestplate before he hit the ground, then turned and grabbed Anakin by the elbow.
“By the Sith, Anakin! Why’d you do something like that?”
“Like what?” he asked.
Jaina glared; they both knew his rescue had been rash.
“We lost two … and I wasn’t going to …” The words caught in Anakin’s throat, and he had to try again. “You were in trouble.”
“And now you are.” Jaina tried to wipe the blood from her eyes and failed, then started toward the alley. “Anakin, this was really … Are you ever going to learn?”
As they turned, Anakin found himself looking at a wall of Jedi, with Lowbacca and Zekk flanked by Jacen, Ganner, and everyone else he had ordered to stay in the alley. The last of the Yuuzhan Vong impostors lay on the ground behind them, their masquers and vonduun crab armor hacked into smoking pieces. Zekk went instantly to Jaina’s side. Tahiri beat Lowbacca and Jacen to Anakin’s. She tried to pull his hand away from the wound, but he wouldn’t allow it. He lifted his chin toward Alema, who was still crouched behind the hovercar burning holes in Yuuzhan Vong chests.
“Call her off,” he said. “Let’s go before someone else gets killed.”
Paying no attention, Tahiri continued to tug at his arm. “Anakin, how bad is it? Let me—”
“Tahiri, stop.” Anakin pushed her arm down. “It’s just a little cut.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“You call this a shortcut?”
“Trust me.” Han looked away from the starless swirl of black nebula gas outside and smiled at his wife. “If the Vong who jumped Booster were protecting something, we’ll find it at the end of this run. This is the only way they could have reached the Core region without tripping a picket mine.”
“And we aren’t going to trip a picket mine why?” Leia asked.
“Because there aren’t any,” Han said. “The New Republic doesn’t know about this lane. Nobody does.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, Lando knows.” Han returned his gaze to the long-range sensors and began to scan for dangerous mass centers. “And Chewbacca, he knew—so did Roa. And, of course, Talon Karrde always knows.”
“So, basically you’re saying that every smuggler or gambler who ever had a reason to slip into Reecee undetected knows this shortcut?”
“Yeah,” Han said. “Like I said, nobody.”
They had already made five jumps in as many hours, and now they were flying the Falcon into the inky heart of the Black Bantha. Listed erroneously on most charts as a Gamma Class navigation hazard—which usually meant an unlocated black hole—the Bantha was actually a protostar, a small cloud of relatively cool gas slowly contracting to become a star. In a few million years or so, it would contract enough to start fusing hydrogen, but for now its core emitt
ed nothing more dangerous than a vague aura of infrared heat. A good pilot could fly straight through it at near lightspeed, so long as he stayed clear of its dust ring and avoided the uncharted gamma-ray pulsar on the other side.
An alert chimed once, twice, a half-dozen times, then became a steady bell. A field of dark shapes appeared on the display, ahead of the Falcon and a little below, each with a set of numerical readouts below it.
“Han,” Leia asked. “What are those?”
“Asteroid cluster,” Han said. “It’s supposed to be farther out, but it must be drifting toward center.”
“Really?” Leia sounded doubtful. “Standard rock-iron asteroids?”
“That’s right.” Han glanced at the readouts and immediately saw her point. The contacts were too uniform to be asteroids—and not nearly dense enough. He put the Falcon into a hard turn, then shut down the ion drives to avoid illuminating their position. “I said we’d find them here.”
“At the end of the run.”
“It looks like this is the end of the run.”
Dark shapes continued to appear on the display as they drifted across the protostar. Leia activated a data record and began to run an analysis. Han activated the rest of the passive sensors and kept a wary eye on the dark shapes as they slowed and began to deploy pickets. So far, they did not seem to realize they were being watched, which did not really surprise him—the Falcon’s sensors were the equal of any reconnaissance ship, and the New Republic’s one small advantage in this war seemed to lie in surveillance. Still, it would be not be long before the picket ships drew near enough to sense their presence.
“Okay, Leia, I think we’d better go.”
“Not yet. This is too big,” Leia said.
“That’s kind of the point.”
“No, Han—I mean really big. Isn’t the New Republic getting ready to jump to Reecee?”