Dark Tide: Ruin

by Michael A. Stackpole

  That satisfaction I can forgo. It is a sacrifice I offer to the gods. He smiled broadly, confident they would find the sacrifice pleasing. By Shedao Shai’s command, it would be a month until the battle for Ithor. A month more to endure humiliation.

  A month before I assume the office that long ago should have been mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Luke found Mara standing at the large viewport in the suite they’d been given on the Tafanda Bay. He caught a bit of surprise from her as he entered the cabin, but the spike leveled quickly as she recognized him. She’d been hugging her arms around herself as she looked out at the Mother Jungle below, and let them slacken slightly, but Luke laced his fingers through hers and hugged her from behind.

  He kissed her neck. “How are you doing?”

  Mara nodded confidently. “Good, very good. High Priest Tawron stopped by and graciously performed with me the ritual he did for the Jedi and others. I felt ashamed that I’d not been there with the Jedi, but—”

  “It’s okay, Mara. We would have loved to have you there, but we want you rested to be at your best.”

  She leaned her head to the right, gently touching her temple to his. “I know, and that’s very sweet of you, Luke, but there are times I feel like a malingerer. In some ways Ithor seems so peaceful that maintaining an edge is tough for me. It’s not so much that I like strife, it’s just that I’ve been trained to deal with it. I’m at my best doing that.”

  “And you’re one of the best doing that.”

  “ ‘One of’?”

  Luke laughed lightly. “Let me amend that. The best at dealing with strife.”

  She turned her head and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. Mind if I just relax here in your arms for a while?”

  “Sure, we have time.”

  “A day or two?”

  “Well, sure, but standing here for a couple of days will be a bit much, don’t you think?” Luke smiled. “We could get faint from hunger.”

  “Oh, good point, husband mine. Perhaps we should go lie down.”

  “Definitely like the way you think, Mara.” The Jedi Master hugged her just a bit tighter. Outside the viewport a flock of triple-clawed manollium birds took off in a brilliant gush of color, to whirl and dive in a rainbow arc back down to another roost. “Wow. With all the planning and everything that has been going on, I have had little time to stop and see what it is we’re fighting to protect.”

  “I’ve been watching for hours and there is always more to see.” Mara turned within his arms and brought her arms up and around his neck. “Relal Tawron was very good for me. He told me that while the Mother Jungle is a peaceful place, it is not without violence and hostility. He noted that predators and prey are all part of the natural cycle. A predator kills prey and eats it, then bugs and microbes devour what remains, nourishing plants that provide food and shelter for the prey.”

  “And he likened you to a predator?”

  Mara shrugged. “Actually he likened me more to a firestorm burning a huge swath through the jungle during the dry years.”

  “Hmmmm, didn’t think they got that much news out here.”

  “Oh, Jedi sarcasm. I’m wounded.”

  They both laughed aloud, and Luke kissed her again, on the lips and tip of her nose. “He gave you a bit of perspective with which to view your role in the upcoming battle?”

  “Yes, one that allowed me to reconcile my nature with that of the Mother Jungle. And that’s really the key: the Mother Jungle embraces it all because it is part of the natural cycle. What is unnatural about the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, about war, is that it’s not for natural reasons. Politics, avarice, greed, jealousy—all of these things cause wars but are pretty much unrecognizable in nature. They occur when creatures try to divorce themselves from nature.”

  Luke smiled at her and hugged her very close. “That’s one of the things I like the most about you, Mara. You’re always on the move, always getting better and better. You continue to grow when so many would be content with sitting back.”

  “I can’t sit back, Luke, especially now.” Mara slipped from his arms. “There are so many things I want, and with the invasion, with my illness, I don’t know if I will ever be able to—” Her lips flattened into a thin line, then she took his left hand in hers. “Maybe it’s just all the talk of nature, but right now I really wish that we had . . . that I was carrying our child. I mean, I look at you and love you so much, Luke, and to even think that we might not be able to—”

  She looked away from him, her other hand curling into a fist.

  “Mara . . .” He kept his voice soft as he closed with her, letting their joined hands rest on her belly. He brushed a tear away with his thumb, then kissed her moistened cheek. “Love, we will get through this. I would love for nothing more than creating new life with you. One child, two, four . . .”

  She pressed a fingertip to his lips. “I know you have a lot to do right now, but I need you to be with me, just for a bit, please?”

  “As long as you need, Mara, as long as you desire.”

  A smile traced her lips. “We both know there isn’t that much time in the universe. I’ll take what I can get now. We complete each other, we complete our connection with nature. And from there, we trust in the Force to guide us into doing what has to be done.”

  Corran handed the last duraplast container up to the bald, heavy-set man helping to load the Pulsar Skate. “Looks like that’s it.”

  The man nodded. “I’ll secure the hatch and see to the passengers, then. Thanks for the help.”

  “No problem.” Corran turned from him as the hatch irised closed, and walked over to where Mirax was checking off the last of her passengers against the list in her datapad. All around them the docking bay on the Ithorian city-ships bustled with activity. Countless ships, large and small, were loading refugees and equipment on as fast as they could. Once they cleared the bay, other ships would come and take their place. Throughout the city, and on all the other city-ships, similar evacuations were taking place.

  The Jedi sidled up to his wife. “Got them all?”

  “Uh-huh.” She snapped the small device closed and slipped it into a thigh pocket on her cargo pants. “We’re fueled and about ready to go.”

  Corran reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his left hand. “You know I don’t want you to go.”

  “I know, but you don’t want me here, either.” Mirax smiled and jerked a thumb at the freighter behind her. “I’m rolling this team out to Borleias. Climate there isn’t quite optimal for Ithorian plants, but they think they can make changes.”

  “I’m sure it will work.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “You going to be okay with this Chalco guy crewing the ship?”

  “From what I’ve seen so far, I think he’s worth trusting. We deliver the cargo, then I drop him back on Coruscant.” She leaned her head against Corran’s shoulder. “Then I’m coming back here.”

  “Mirax, don’t.”

  She turned to face him, pressing her hands against his chest. “Hey, listen up, Corran. The last time you went off and fought the Yuuzhan Vong you barely escaped, and the time before that you were more dead than alive when they brought you back.”

  “Mirax, having you here isn’t going to keep me safe.”

  “Maybe not, but I can certainly kill whoever it is who gets you.”

  Corran rested his hands on her shoulders. “First, I’m not planning on dying.”

  “Very few people do.”

  “True.” He sighed. “Mirax, I don’t want you here. The fighting is going to be nasty. What you’re doing now, taking Ithorians and their botanical bounty away, that’s more important than anything I’m likely to accomplish here. You’re going to be doing what you do well, and so will I.”

  Her brown eyes narrowed. “The chances of my being killed are rather slender.”

  “I know, and I like that.” He gave Anakin Solo a quick nod as the youth went running up th
e Skate’s landing ramp, then touched his forehead to his wife’s. “My grandfather died when my father was young, and I know you lost your mom young. I don’t want that to happen to our kids, but the only thing worse would be if both of us die here.”

  “If we both die, Booster will take care of the kids.”

  “Now there’s a comfort.”

  She lifted his chin with her hand. “Think of it as motivation to stay alive, Corran.”

  He ducked his head to kiss her hand, then looked up, his smile carrying all the way from his mouth to his green eyes. “I have motivation, love, and look at the record. The first time, they nearly killed me. The second time, I escaped in pretty good shape. Momentum and trajectory I’ve got—it’s the Vong who should be worried.”

  Mirax smiled grudgingly. “You know, that cockiness of yours really drives my father nuts.”

  “But you love it.”

  “Well, when you were a pilot it was attractive.” She shrugged. “In a Jedi Knight, well . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the Yuuzhan Vong should take it as a warning.” Mirax kissed him once, softly, then her kiss hardened. Corran let his hands slip down and around her back to draw her into a tight embrace. In her kiss, in her body, he felt an urgency and intensity, fueled more by love than any sense of loss or fear. “I will miss you, Corran, so much.”

  “Me, too, Mirax.” He clung to her fiercely. Through his mind flashed scenes from their life together. The first time he ever saw her, her face as she slept peacefully in the wake of passion, the tears and smiles after the birth of their children, and even that spark of pain hidden behind an impassive mask as she watched a child try and fail, knowing that she could not make the failure right. “I love you, Mirax. Always will.”

  “I know.” She kissed him again, then smiled. “You know, I’d love to take the next twelve hours to say good-bye to you properly, but they need the ship berth.”

  “Bureaucrats have no romance in their hearts.” Corran kissed her again. “Whatever you were thinking for us to say good-bye, figure that’s how we’ll say hello again, and take a week doing it.”

  “You have yourself a date.” She kissed her fingers, then pressed them to his lips. “Be careful, Corran. I know you’ll be brave.”

  Anakin found Chalco tightening the restraining straps on a couple of the Ithorians in the Skate’s lounge. “You weren’t going to tell me you were leaving?”

  Chalco patted the young Ithorian on the shoulder, then turned to face Anakin. “You’ve been busy doing Jedi stuff. I didn’t want to interrupt. Mirax needed some help, and one thing flowed into another, you know?”

  “That explains why you’re here, but not why you didn’t say good-bye.”

  The man frowned. “Always said you were a smart kid. It’s like this, Anakin.” Chalco leaned down, resting his hands on the youth’s shoulders. “Going after Daeshara’cor, I kinda wanted to be a hero, and you saw how that turned out. I went to rescue you, and you turned around and rescued me. I guess I figured, well, I’m not really hero material.”

  Anakin frowned at him. “Hey, you did rescue me. As you said, if you’d not brought the blaster, I’d not have taken Daeshara’cor down. And, you know, what you’re doing here, helping these people escape, is heroic.”

  “Sure, maybe, but not the sort of heroism you’re going to need.” Chalco patted him on the cheek. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy I met you. Proud, in fact, to know a Jedi like you. I mean, we’re friends, right? I’d like having a Jedi friend—and more important, I’d like having you as a friend.”

  “We’re friends, Chalco.”

  “Good. Then, look, my friend, the reason I’m getting my sorry carcass off this world is so there will be one less person that needs rescuing, okay?” He smiled and straightened up. “And I was planning to comm you, you know. Leave you a message or something, so we wouldn’t get weepy and all.”

  “I believe you.” Anakin smiled, then looked to his right as a comlink on a shelf started to beep. “Should I?”

  Chalco nodded. “It’s Corran’s.”

  Anakin picked it up and answered. “Anakin Solo here.”

  “Anakin, where’s Corran?” Wedge Antilles’s voice was easy to recognize even over the comlink. “I thought I was connecting with his comlink.”

  “You did. He’s outside with his wife. I can get him.”

  “It’s okay. Tell him to wait there. I’m on my way to that docking bay anyway.”

  Anakin frowned. “What’s the matter?”

  “A Yuuzhan Vong cruiser showed up at the edge of the system and dumped out a shuttle. Its ID transponder registers as the one Elegos A’Kla took out to meet with the Yuuzhan Vong.” Wedge’s voice became lower. “All we’re getting is a recorded message, playing over and over. It’s from Elegos, to Corran, conveying to him the compliments of a Yuuzhan Vong commander.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jaina Solo watched the auxiliary landing bay on the Chimaera from the pilot’s ready room. From her vantage point she was able to look down on the bay and the Lambda-class shuttle situated between two X-wings. She and Anni Capstan had been scrambled to recon the shuttle, then a Remnant shuttle had tractored it and dragged it to where the Chimaera’s bay tractor beams could haul it in.

  On her first recon pass she had recognized the shuttle for what it was, but only just barely. The landing gear were extended and the wings locked up. Because the shuttles were never seen in flight that way, it seemed out of place drifting there.

  That impression was aided by the fact that all sorts of growths covered the shuttle. Jaina made runs close enough for visual contact—to see if there was a pilot at the controls—and the growths reminded her of algae and barnacles, just crusty things spreading over the shuttle’s hull. A fairly thick concentration of them covered the landing ramp’s outline, leading Jaina to wonder how the recovery team would open it.

  Once the shuttle was pulled into the landing bay, the X-wings were ordered to land, then technicians in biohazard suits had hustled Anni and her from the bay. The both of them got scanned for alien life-forms, were pronounced clean, and allowed to wait in the ready room or head into one of the galleys to get something to eat. Anni ran off, and Jaina was fairly certain she’d have found a sabacc game somewhere and in no time at all would be stripping crew members of whatever the Remnant used for credits.

  Jaina decided to stay and watch. She remembered Elegos well from traveling with him, her mother, and Danni before she joined the squadron. The quiet calm he possessed amazed her. It didn’t seem so much that he ignored the outside world, or was able to override emotions through logic, but that he looked at any problem, saw the core of it, and dealt with that instead of getting detoured by distractions.

  In flying recon on the shuttle she’d heard the continuous looping of Elegos’s voice. It sounded normal and even happy, but something about it disturbed her. She was hoping she’d see Elegos at the controls, or be able to sense him on board the shuttle, but nothing. Of course, before the appearance of the shuttle, she’d not known about Elegos’s mission to the Yuuzhan Vong, and she was pretty certain that part of her shock at learning about it was what was tainting her feelings about the shuttle.

  “What they have done there is unusual.”

  She turned as Jag Fel entered the pilot room. He wore a black flight suit with red stripes on the sleeves and legs. He wasn’t as formal as he had been at the reception, but neither did he seem casual. Looking at him, she would have refused to believe he was Wedge’s nephew if not for the resemblance around the eyes and nose.

  “Pretty much everything the Yuuzhan Vong do is unusual, as far as I’m concerned.” Jaina folded her arms across her chest and looked back at the deck. “They’ve spent an hour scanning the thing. I can’t imagine there is much more they can learn without cracking it open.”

  “There isn’t. That’s not what they are doing.” Fel came and stood beside her, his reflection easily visible in the transpa
risteel over the viewport. “They don’t know what is in there, and they’re just making sure that if it’s harmful, they don’t get blamed for releasing it.”

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing to be cautious.”

  He shook his head. “They know they cannot be certain of what is in there. All they can do is reduce uncertainty to statistically insignificant levels. What they are wasting is time. We are at war. There is no absence of risk. There are times when one just has to do what needs to be done to win.”

  Jaina turned and looked at him. “In theory you’re only two years older than me, but you’re talking like you’re old enough to be my dad.”

  He nodded once. “Forgive me. I was judging you based on your accomplishments, not your age.”

  She blinked and felt anger spike. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  The flesh around Fel’s eyes hardened. “You are a Jedi. You are a superior pilot in an elite squadron. The dedication and skill required for these things are well known. I made the mistake of assuming too much about you.”

  Jaina frowned. “I’m reading your tracking data, but still don’t have a lock on your target.”

  Jag Fel sighed. “In Chiss society, there is no adolescence. Chiss children mature early and are given adult responsibilities very quickly. Those of us humans living with them were raised as they were raised. Intellectually I knew things were not the same here in the New Republic, but—”

  “You think I’m a child?” Jaina gave him an icy glare. “You think I’m soft or something?”

  Fel broke eye contact, and she noticed a blush rising on his cheeks. He raised a hand to ward off her comments, then shook his head. In doing that he peeled off a decade or two and seemed, to her, for the first time to be someone his own age.

  “Not soft, no, not at all. You have determination and courage, but you lack—”

  “Lack what?”