by Troy Denning
“She recovered quickly.” Balancing Ben on a hip, Leia reached out to squeeze the woman’s hand. It was the first time since Anakin’s death that she had felt sorry for someone other than herself, and in a self-centered sort of way it was almost a relief. “I’m so sorry about Ran. There’s too much of that these days.”
“Thank you, Princess.”
“Leia, please.” Leia touched the shoulder of the boy who looked so much like Anakin. “I’m sorry about your father, young man.”
The boy nodded and looked uncomfortable. “Thanks.”
“This is Tarc, I’m Welda.” The woman smiled at the child in Leia’s arms. “The gossip vids haven’t said anything about you being pregnant, so I assume this beautiful boy is Ben Skywalker?”
“Actually, we’re trying to keep that quiet,” Leia said. She cast a meaningful look around the crowd. “You understand.”
“I’m sorry.” Welda’s tone was abashed, but she did not blush. “How foolish of me.”
A loud clunk sounded from five meters up the Byrt, and a cloud of vapor shot into the air as the boarding hatch broke its seal and opened. Although the boarding ramp had not yet been lowered, the crowd immediately began to compress forward.
“It looks like they’ve worked out the artificial gravity alignment problems.” Welda looked at the still-growing crowd, which now had to be closer to twelve thousand than ten. “I hope there’ll be room for us all.”
Han looked behind the woman’s head and raised his brow at Leia. She nodded. They would be taking as many refugees with them as the Falcon could carry anyway, and she had no intention of leaving this pair behind.
Han smiled crookedly and leaned close to Welda’s ear. “Actually, that won’t be a problem.”
The boarding ramp came down. The crowd started to ascend rapidly, each group being detained at the hatch long enough for an epidermal scan to ensure they were not Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators.
The Noghri took advantage of the movement to start easing the group toward the Falcon’s berth. There were a few angry glares and muttered comments about pushy Solos, but the presence of a war droid and the fact that the group was not cutting forward limited the objections to the nonphysical kind. Leia was careful to keep Tarc and Welda close at hand, and the group reached the entrance to Docking Bay 3733 intact. Now came the tricky part—getting inside without being trampled by desperate refugees. Han quietly stationed YVH 1-507A in front of the durasteel door and reached for the security pad.
“If you’re trying to slice the security, save yourself the bother,” a gravelly voice said. Leia turned to find a horn-headed Gotal in a gaudy scintathread tunic speaking to them from within the crowd. “Whoever owns that junk heap couldn’t afford the berthing fees. The umbilicals are all disconnected.”
“What?” Han cupped his hands to the viewing panel and peered inside. “You’ve got to be kidding! There’s containment fluid all over the floor.”
Even after sitting idle for several days, the Falcon could be cold-started in only a few minutes—but not without a fully charged fusion containment unit. Too devastated to ask the helpful Gotal what he had been doing looking at the Falcon— she had no doubt he had considered trying to slice the security panel himself—Leia turned to apologize to Welda.
The woman was no longer beside her.
Something metallic hit the floor a couple of meters away, and Leia glimpsed Tarc pushing through the crowd. She switched Ben to the other hip so her weapon hand would be free, then YVH 1-507A clanged past toward the sound, his powerful arms batting people aside as gently as possible.
“Remain calm and please seek shelter,” he intoned. “There is an active thermal detonator in the area.”
Of course, the crowd did anything but stay calm. Determined to board the Byrt at any cost, someone kicked the detonator and sent it skittering across the floor, and the mob began to push toward the boarding ramp even more urgently.
“Do not kick the detonator,” YVH 1-507A ordered. “Remain calm and step away.”
Someone booted it back at the original kicker, and the droid skidded over a family of Aqualish trying to change direction. Incredibly, the crowd continued to shove forward, between the Solos and to both sides of them. Determined to avoid becoming separated from Han, Leia snapped her lightsaber from beneath her jacket and turned back toward the berth. She found Welda blocking the way, raising a small hold-out blaster and pointing it at Leia’s chest.
The weapon remained there for about half a second before Adarakh, still holding the luggage he had been carrying, sank his teeth into the woman’s arm. There was a sickening crunch, and Welda’s hand fell open and let the blaster fall. The Noghri used a bag to knock her feet out from beneath her, and then he was on her, tearing at her head with both hands. Even this did not stop the desperate mob from pressing forward around the fight.
Far too accustomed to assassins and kidnappers to waste time wondering who had sent them or why, Leia positioned her body between Ben and Welda and started to push her way around the fight. Han was two steps away from her, holding his blaster in one hand and using the other to punch the admittance code into the security panel.
“See-Threepio, where’s Meewalh?” Leia asked.
“She went after Tarc, mistress.” Still holding her blast-scorched ladalum, the droid was following Leia around the fight. “I do hope the boy set a long fuse on that thermal detonator! One-dash-Five-Oh-Seven is so terribly clumsy.”
The soft drone of a vibroblade sounded behind Leia. Surprised that Adarakh had not finished the fight already, she turned to find a powershiv rising in Welda’s good hand. The Noghri blocked easily, then countered with a slash that caught the woman beside the ear and lifted her entire face off. The woman’s scream was nowhere near as ghastly as it should have been. Her face squirmed in Adarakh’s hand like a thing alive, and neither Leia nor the Noghri understood for an instant what they were looking at.
That was all the time Welda needed to drive the powershiv into Adarakh’s ribs. The Noghri’s eyes grew wide with shock and his mouth fell open, then Leia felt the life leave his body. All of the disappointment and sadness she had been feeling since Anakin’s death turned instantly to anger. She thumbed her lightsaber active and, still holding Ben, stepped forward to attack.
Welda hurled Adarakh’s body into Leia’s knees, knocking her legs from beneath her and rolling away. Leia was barely quick enough to catch herself with the Force and avoid landing on Ben. A pair of blaster bolts zinged overhead from Han’s direction, forcing her attacker back and eliciting an even louder uproar from the panicked crowd. Leia gathered her feet beneath her in a fighting crouch and found the assassin mirroring her position from two meters away, a wide-eyed Ho’Din family squeezing past behind her.
Even with every pore still oozing blood where the ooglith masquer had been forcibly ripped away, the slender face across from her was unmistakable.
“Viqi Shesh,” Leia said. Ben finally had enough and began to cry, but Leia was too outraged to pay attention. “I would’ve thought you’d be down in the grotto levels waiting for your masters with the rest of the granite slugs.”
“Leia—always the proper word for every occasion.”
Shesh flicked her wrist, hurling the powershiv at Ben. Leia blocked easily with her lightsaber, then cursed inwardly as Han chased the traitor off by zinging another pair of blaster bolts over her head.
“You’re a better shot than that, Han!” Leia snarled, although she knew he had only been trying to avoid hitting innocent bystanders. She thrust Ben at C-3PO. “Put that tree down and hold him.”
“Me?” The droid dropped the pot and cupped his metallic hands under the child. “But, Mistress Leia, you had my child-care module wiped after that time—”
“Wait on the Falcon,” Leia ordered.
“Of course, Princess, but I must remind you …”
The droid’s objection was lost to the general din as Leia pursued Shesh into the crowd. She heard Han call her
name, but did not turn back for him either. The traitor would not escape, not after betraying the New Republic, selling out SELCORE, and no doubt arranging the deaths of a great many Jedi. Perhaps she had even had a hand in Anakin’s.
The whine of a pair of repulsor-enhanced legs echoed through the docking facility girders and YVH 1-507A bounded over the crowd toward Gate 3700.
“Make a hole! Thermal detonator coming through!” The droid crashed down on a hoversled loaded with priceless sculptures and immediately bounded into the air again. “Remain calm and—”
The command ended in a deafening crackle as the detonator ignited, taking with it five hundred cubic meters of docking facility, sentient biomass, and durasteel substructure. As the sizzling sphere contracted on itself, a long metallic groan reverberated through the docking facility, then a large section of floor suddenly began to sink toward the now-nonexistent Gate 3700.
The crowd roared and somehow began to run at the Byrt, half pushing, half carrying those in front up the boarding ramp. Leia found herself being carried backward by the crowd and had to use the Force to stay in place. Her quarry was nowhere to be seen, but she did spy a blood-smeared Rodian rushing in her direction. She pushed through the crowd and planted herself in his path, raising her inactive lightsaber to stop him.
He buzzed an objection at her in Huttese.
“Everyone is trying to board that ship.” As she spoke, Leia gestured at him with an open palm. “And I’m sure you’ll make it that much sooner, if you just take the time now to tell me where the woman who smeared this on you went.”
The Rodian repeated her suggestion, then pointed to Docking Bay 3732—the next one after the Falcon’s. Leia let him go and fought her way fifty meters up the corridor, her fury growing with every step. The damage Viqi Shesh had done to the New Republic was immeasurable, the pain she had caused the Solos unforgivable. Leia owed it to Anakin—and to all of the millions of others who had given their life defending an ideal—to repay her in kind.
Leia reached the bay to find it already secured. Not bothering to try the control button, she ignited her lightsaber and jammed the blade into the seam, slicing through the durasteel locking bolt as though it were so much tin. The security alarm that began to blare both inside the berth and outside did little to add to the general commotion in the docking facility. Following close behind to shield herself from attack, she used the Force to push the durasteel door open—and was surprised to find blaster bolts already ricocheting around the launch bay’s dreary interior.
In the center of the bay sat a sleek KDY staryacht, the pilot peering through the cockpit viewing panel as he powered up the repulsor drives. Viqi Shesh was about a third of the way around the circle, holding her mangled arm and dodging for the boarding ramp while Han fired at her through a hole that someone had recently cut through the durasteel wall separating Docking Bay 3732 from Bay 3733. He was being fired on, in turn, by a pair of crew members trying to cover their employer from the well of the boarding ramp.
Leia started across the bay after her quarry, only to hear the ominous whir of the yacht’s roof-mounted weapons turret revolving in her direction. She barely had time to hurl herself to the floor before the weapon depressed and fired, burning a fifty-centimeter hole into the durasteel beside her head.
Leia rolled and came up with her blade ignited.
“Leia, are you crazy?” Han yelled, forgetting himself and rising up in front of the hole. “You’re not that good with that thing!”
The crew members poured a flurry of blaster bolts through the hole, forcing Han to dive for the floor and giving Shesh a clear path to the boarding ramp. The turret laser fired again, but Leia was already dodging across the floor—if a bit awkwardly, at least fast enough to keep from getting hit. She stumbled and nearly fell, then heard a blaster rifle off to one side. She turned toward the sound and found Viqi Shesh rushing under the yacht toward its boarding ramp.
Trying to ignore the blaster bolts pinging off the durasteel all around her, Leia locked her lightsaber on and hurled the weapon at the traitor, using the Force to keep it spinning toward its target. The turret laser fired again, as did the crew members at the top of the boarding ramp. Leia gave her body over to her instincts and continued to focus her mind on the attack, trusting to the Force to move her arms and legs in the correct manner.
Shesh hurled herself down on the boarding ramp. Instead of cutting her in half, the blade slipped along her back, burning away her clothing and a thick layer of skin and bone. She screamed and collapsed, then reached up with her arms and began to pull herself toward the interior of the ship. The ramp rose, and the last thing Leia saw of the traitor was a pair of male hands pulling her aboard.
Leia did not even realize she was also being dragged out of harm’s way until she heard Meewalh say, “Lady Vader, you must get down!”
Leia allowed the Noghri to pull her to the floor just as another cannon bolt tore through the wall above her. When the yacht’s repulsor engines whirred to life and a second bolt did not follow, she reluctantly raised her head, her heart already bursting with the news she would have to give Meewalh.
But instead of the Noghri, she found herself staring at Anakin’s twelve-year-old face.
“Do whatever you want to me,” Tarc said. He was sitting with his back to the wall and his hands bound by a pair of Meewalh’s plasteel restraining cuffs. “At least my mom and sisters are safe.”
“Safe?” Leia could only shake her head. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I know.” The boy tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling, where Shesh’s yacht was being forced to wait until the docking master cleared it for departure by opening the dome. “They’re on the Wicked Pleasure right now.”
Leia was already reaching for her comlink when Han came running up.
“Forget it,” he said, displaying his own comlink. “I tried. Shev’s not holding vessels for anyone.”
Leia nodded. It hardly mattered what Shev said; with its big laser cannon, the yacht could blast out of the bay anyway.
Han held out her deactivated lightsaber. “Feel any better?”
“Not really,” Leia admitted. She stood and took the lightsaber, hanging it inside her jacket again. “How about you?”
“Worse,” Han said. He pointed at Tarc. “What are we going to do about him?”
The last thing Leia wanted to do was take this particular child along on the Falcon, but she was certainly not going to abandon a twelve-year-old boy on Coruscant. She grabbed him by the wrist restraints and pulled him to his feet.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Han frowned, then looked expectantly toward the door. “What’d you do with See-Threepio and Ben?”
“They’re supposed to be with the Falcon.”
Han’s face fell. “Not likely. When you ran off, I secured the door to keep the mob out.”
A low rumble shook the berth as the dome irised open, and they looked up to see the Byrt rising on a pillar of ion efflux. The Wicked Pleasure slipped out of the bay and followed it skyward, then C-3PO’s voice came over the comlink.
“Master Han? Mistress Leia?”
Leia and Han activated their comlinks together. “Where are you?”
“This isn’t my doing!” the droid said. “The berth was locked, and I was helpless to defend us.”
“See-Threepio!” Leia said. “Are you telling me you’re aboard the Byrt?”
“I’m afraid so, Mistress Leia,” he said. “And they’re threatening to put a restraining bolt on me!”
FIFTY-TWO
The skips were stacked like the stones in an ancient Massassi wall, each craft hovering above the gap between the two below, every gap covered by interlocking fire from an inner ring of corvettes. Behind the corvettes waited frigates, and somewhere behind the frigates was the cruiser bearing the yammosk. Luke and his shield mates launched another volley of shadow bombs and watched the weapons veer into shielding singularities. The three Jedi
continued on vector long enough to taunt the Yuuzhan Vong pilots with a fusillade of cannonfire, then broke off amid a storm of hot plasma and angry grutchins. Though all three were careful to present inviting attack angles as they turned, none of the enemy coralskippers abandoned station to pursue. The warmaster had finally learned how to protect his yammosk, and woe to the warrior who broke formation.
Luke opened a channel to Orbital Defense Headquarters, to whom they had been passed off as the battle drifted closer in to Coruscant. “Zero on the chasers, Gambler. That yammosk is in the battle for good.”
“Copy, Farmboy. No reason to be disappointed,” Lando replied. “You’ve forced them to take half a fleet out of the fight.”
“That’s something.” Luke had no idea how Lando had come to be General Ba’tra’s special operations commander, but he was glad to have someone of such composure serving as their battle coordinator. Judging by the static and booming on the channel, the ODH itself was under heavy attack. “Let’s try a wave attack. Maybe we can just punch through.”
“Negative,” Lando said. “Stand by for a planetside comm patch.”
Luke felt Mara grow instantly apprehensive. Han and Leia should have been off Coruscant an hour ago, but it could not be anyone else.
Han came on the channel. “Can you break free up there?”
“You know we can,” Mara answered.
“You need to catch the starferry Byrt.” As Han spoke, the tactical display shifted scales. A targeting square appeared a quarter of the way around the planet, on a 200-meter transport rising into space. “C-3PO is aboard with your package.”
“It’s my fault.” Leia’s voice was as brittle as a glitterstim web. “Viqi Shesh ambushed us in the docking bay, and I was so furious—”
“Leia, don’t worry,” Mara said. There was only resolve in her voice, no blame or worry. “We’ll get him back.”
“Okay.” Han sounded relieved. “We’re stuck planetside until we find some containment fluid. The senator did a job on our feed lines and umbilicals.”