a second. I see some movement..."
Then there was a new voice, a shout in the Yuuzhan Vong language from well
beyond Face. The tizowyrm-a Yuuzhan Vong organic translator-installed in Luke's
ear gave him the words in Basic: "Stop where you are! Tell me your name, domain,
and mission!"
Luke tossed the coil to Baljos. "Leave the packs here." He moved forward,
Mara and Kell with him, and heard the running feet of Tahiri coming up from
behind. The four of them were the only ones with much of a chance in direct
battle with fully trained Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
Both normally and through his helmet comlink, Luke heard Face's reply,
shouted in the Yuuzhan Vong language, with to what Luke sounded like proper
aggression and inflection: "I am Faka Rann. My mission is the destruction of
abominations and the training of my warriors. Do not hinder me."
As Luke, Mara, Kell, and Tahiri came closer to Face, they could see down
the incline on the other side, where a party of Yuuzhan Vong warriors
approached. Luke saw seven of them, most already holding amphistaffs in their
hands. The serpentlike amphistaffs were currently stiff, m staff/spear
configuration. Face was fiddling with the fake amphistaff wrapped around his
waist, but Luke could see that he was actually freeing the cord.
Luke came up beside Face and stood there, arms crossed, a stance of
defiance and arrogance. Mara came to a stop beside him, Tahiri and Kell on the
other side of Face. Kell unwrapped the false amphistaff from around his own
waist and triggered it, snapping it into rigidity, an artful imitation of the
use of the genuine weapons, though his would never stand up to the rigors of
combat.
The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten meters away and their leader
looked at Luke and the others. "This is our designated zone," he said. "Who has
commanded you to hunt here?"
"No one has commanded us!" Face's tone was sharp and mocking, even through
the tizowyrm's translation. "We are not on duty. We seek personal glory."
"If you are not on duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way."
Luke knew that no true Yuuzhan Vong warrior would respond well to such a
command, and he sighed inwardly. There was going to be a fight. He moved his
knee until he could feel his lightsaber where it dangled from his belt under the
armor's skirt plates.
"If you are on duty," Face said, "then your mission is less important than
ours, for you hunt only at your superiors' orders, while we hunt because it
makes us great. You make way."
The enemy leader stared at Face. Then the brief stalemate ended as it had
to; the leader charged, his warriors with him in two lines.
Face dropped back, allowing the more skilled combatants to close the gap
where he'd been. The enemy leader hurtled toward him as if to shoot between Luke
and Kell to reach him anyway, whirling his amphistaff to slam Luke out of the
way, but Luke went up and over the charge in a somersault made only slightly
clumsy by his false alien armor.
While he was inverted, he saw Kell catch the leader and spin him back and
around, slamming him powerfully into one of the transparisteel panels on the
side of the walkway. The panel held, but the metal restraints holding it failed;
warrior and panel punched free of the walkway. The warrior screamed, flailing,
as he dropped from view.
Luke landed and brought his lightsaber out from beneath the skirt plates
even as he heard the snap-hiss of Mara's and Tallin's blades igniting. His lit
just in time to catch the thrust from an amphistaff. He shoved the deadly
pointed tip of the weapon out of alignment, let it slide past him, and riposted.
The warrior he faced caught the lightsaber blade on the amphistaff's upper end
and the blade bounced away, leaving only the faintest of burn marks on the
amphistaff neck.
His opponent screamed, "Jeedai!" The cry was picked up and repeated by the
other five warriors facing them - and then by other voices, farther back.
Luke parried a thud bug hurled his way by one of the warriors in the second
rank, then made a wild swing at the warrior in front of him. That fighter
ducked, but he was not the true target; Luke's blow continued onto the arm of
Tahiri's opponent to his right, hitting it at the unprotected elbow, severing
it. That warrior roared, more, it seemed, in anger than in pain, as his arm and
amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of the moment to
kick him, propelling the warrior back into the second rank. Meanwhile, in Luke's
peripheral vision, Mara deftly incinerated a razor bug hurled at her, then
parried a hard swing from a front-rank amphistaff and a thrust from another in
the second row.
Then Luke could see them, more warriors running toward them from the
building opposite. He couldn't count them; he thought there were at least
twenty, and more were emerging from that walkway opening every second. Most were
screaming, "Jeedai!"
Kell Tainer turned and ran. Luke caught a glimpse of Tahiri's eyes,
startled and betrayed, through her helmet faceplate before she ducked beneath
the swing of her next opponent. Before she could straighten, a burst of blaster-
fire filled the air above her. Most of it was absorbed or deflected by her
opponent's vonduun crab armor, but one shot caught the warrior in the throat. He
fell back, his throat smoking, and Luke could see Face standing directly behind
Tahiri, blaster rifle in hand. Even as Tahiri rose, Face let off the trigger and
took a half step left, out of Luke's peripheral vision, waiting for another
target.
Luke kicked the severed arm and its amphistaff up into the face of his
opponent, then followed with a simple thrust to the head. That warrior was too
canny or experienced for such a ploy; unflinching, he let the arm bounce from
his helmet and deflected the thrust with his amphistaff.
Then the next wave of warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too
many amphistaffs, thud bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm
against. Luke found himself forced backward step after step even as he parried a
blow, incinerated a razor bug, plunged his lightsaber blade into a warrior's
throat. "Fighting retreat!" he shouted.
Something arced between Luke and Mara from behind. It looked like a flat
black box, about the size of human hand, with glowing letters or numbers on one
side. And Kell was once again in Luke's peripheral vision, this time with a
blaster, holding it high over the head of the Jedi, pouring fire down into the
Yuuzhan Vong. "Suggest we retreat fast" he shouted. "Ten."
"What was that?" Luke asked. Instead of blocking the next amphistaff blow
to come his way, he leaned forward before the blow began and whipped his
lightsaber across his new opponent's wrist, severing the holding hand.
"You know what it was. Seven. Six."
Luke began to back away fast. Mara and Tahiri kept pace with him, and Face
and Kell kept up the blasterfire, joined by an occasional single-shot blast from
their allies behind.
They'd almost backed into the opening to the building when
Kell's explosive
charge detonated. Suddenly the walkway in the midst of the Yuuzhan Vong force
was a wall of fire rushing toward them.
Luke exerted himself, hurling himself backward with use of the Force,
yanking Mara and Tahiri with him. They landed several meters back in the
building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor bugs. Then the
fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening Yuuzhan Vong and
past the Jedi, momentarily blinding Luke, hammering him backward. Sure in his
sense of where the other Jedi and Wraiths were, he whirled his lightsaber in a
defensive motion he seldom used outside of practice, felt it hit something hard
and unyielding.
Then the heat and brightness were past. He found he was locked, lightsaber
against amphistaff, with a warrior whose back was smoking. Three other warriors
stood among him and his allies, though two were now dancing in concentrated fire
from the Wraiths and Danni Quee. The last, in the middle of a quite elegant
snap-kick against Mara, was receiving her lightsaber thrust up and under his
skirt plates.
Luke kicked out, catching his opponent in the center of the torso, sending
him hurtling. The warrior staggered back to the walkway aperture... then dropped
out of sight with a shout of surprise.
The walkway was gone. Only smoke and the jagged edges where it had once
joined the building suggested it had ever been there. Even with his ears ringing
from the explosion, Luke could hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage
descended three or four hundred meters to the boulevard below.
They stood panting for a moment, Jedi, Wraiths, and scientist, staring at
one another. Finally Luke said, "Anyone hurt?"
"I got grazed by a thud bug," Danni said. "But it hit the armor. It only
knocked me down."
"Something of a disastrous encounter," Luke decided. "But at least we don't
have any injuries."
"It was a very successful encounter," Face said. "Very promising."
Luke frowned. "How so? Now they know we're here. That Jedi are here."
"No. First, I think they were all on the walkway. So no one alive knows
that Jedi are here."
"Until they find the bodies," Mara pointed out. "With distinctive
lightsaber burns on them."
Face shrugged. "You have me on that one. But second, more important, until
those lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my
extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzan Vong during the
last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again."
"Good point."
Face's tone became professionally worried. "So, does that count as my turn,
or do I have to check out the next walkway?"
Luke grinned. "It counts as your turn."
"The next one," Kell said, "will be twenty or thirty flights down. We'd
better get to it."
Bhindi slapped the back of Kell's helmet. "That one is going to have been
hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up."
His tone subdued, Kell said, "I knew that."
Borleias, Pyria System
Han Solo, upside down and up to his waist in machinery beneath the deck
plating of the Millennium Falcon, heard and felt footsteps approaching. They
were light, precise - Leia. That meant there would be a second set, the
footsteps of Meewalh, Leia's Noghri bodyguard, but Han had never actually heard
them.
A desire to finish patching the coupling he was working on kept him
inverted and incurious-that, and the fact that he knew that if Leia had a
problem, her walking Pace wouldn't be normal. "Artoo, you want to hand me the
electrical flow meter?" He extended a hand up into the air.
R2-D2, Luke's astromech droid, responded with a series of cheerful whistles
and bleats. Han heard the whine of a manipulator arm being extended, felt the
meter being pressed into his hand. Then he heard his wife's voice: "Do you think
if I poked him, he'd bang his head into the flooring?"
R2-D2's blatted response sounded definitely affirmative.
"You better hope she doesn't, Artoo," Han said. "I can't take revenge on my
wife, so I'll have to take it on the nearest droid at hand."
R2-D2 replied with a distinctly sour set of notes, then Han heard the droid
whir away. "What did he say?" Han asked.
Leia laughed. "I don't know. But if I were him, it would be, I'll go fetch
See-Threepio, then."
"Good point." Han clipped the flow meter to the wires he'd just installed.
"You want to power up the holo-comm for me?"
"Are you down there with your head in the holocomm power cables?"
"Yes."
"No."
"I can't tell if the power flow is right if you don't."
"Come on up out of there and leave the meter where you can see the readout.
"
Han growled. He knew, deep in his heart, that nothing could go wrong, that
the Falcon would never hurt him while he was working on her. He knew this in
spite of innumerable minor abrasions, contusions, and electrocutions he'd
suffered over the years. But Leia remained stubbornly unconvinced.
He also knew, from long experience, that Leia was not going to leave until
she was sure he wasn't going to do something she considered foolish. He could
either wait here upside down forever, or do it her way.
So he situated the meter where he could see the readout from above. He
shoved his way up and out of the access and turned an artificially cheerful
smile on Leia. "Happy?"
"Happy. You're very red."
"That's what happens when you stay upside down for too long. Could I get
you some caf? Something to read? For while you're here managing this repair
operation, that is." Ignoring sudden dizziness brought on by the flow of blood
back out of his head, he stood.
Leia smiled, not at all put off by his snide comments. "Actually, I just
came here to remind you that we need to see Tarc before we take off."
"Yeah, I know. I just hate good-byes. Never could figure out how to make
them happy."
Leia lowered her voice to a whisper. "Speaking of which, do you have any
advice on how we're going to tell Mee-walh she can't come along on this mission?
That hovering around me to do bodyguard duties will compromise any disguises
that we try to use?"
Han matched her whisper for whisper. "How about persuading her to take a
vacation?"
"Han."
"How about, just before takeoff, we send her out to pick up a bottle of
brandy, and then leave while she's running the errand?"
"You're not helping."
He smiled and pulled her to him. "You're not fooling ' anybody. You know
exactly what you're going to tell her. You just want me to be there when you do
it. To hack 1 you up. Right?"
She offered him an expression of mock outrage. "No fair peeking into my
mind like that."
"Right?"
Leia sighed and settled against him. "Right."
But her expression, though merry, wasn't entirely without worry, and he
knew why. She couldn't be entirely free from concern with one of their sons
recently lost to war, the other missing and pr
esumed by most to be dead, and.
their only daughter elsewhere in the Pyria solar system on a mission with her
squadron. Han wondered if there would ever be a time when Leia's expression was
com-pletely at peace.
Pyria System
Well within the dovin basal minefield, Jaina and her Twin Suns Squadron
caught up with Mon Motbma, which was executing a turn back toward Borleias
while, in the distance, a Gallofree cargo ship, as pudgy and unlovely as a Hutt
in the middle of diving into a pool, edged toward them. Tiny lights winking
around the freighter hinted at the battle that still went on, but they were few
in number-and ever fewer, as the sensor blips representing coralskippers
gradually disappeared from the screen.
"Twin Suns, this is Rebel Dream. Sensors show more skip squadrons incoming,
but we think our payload will be out of the minefield and through with its last
micro-jump before they arrive. It's going to be close, though, so please stand
by."
Jaina grinned at the please. Because of the game she was playing with the
Yuuzhan Vong, the deception in which she increasingly identified herself with
their Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla, she was a step or two outside Borleias's
command structure, and all commanders had been privately instructed to treat her
with the deference due a foreign dignitary. She sometimes wondered which of them
were amused at playing along and which were irritated. This controller's voice
held no evidence of annoyance. "Twin Suns Leader to Rebel Dream, copy."
Jaina brought her squadron around to cruise along* side Rebel Dream and
waited. As the cargo vessel's lines finally came into sharp focus with the naked
eye, her name finally blipped onto her sensor board, Reckless Abandon, and she
could see the nature of the starfighters protecting her-they were now organized
into escort wings, all the fighting done. Most wore the white-and-dark-gray
color scheme of Rebel Dream support craft, but one squadron, mixed A-wings and
E-wings, was painted in glaring yellow with menacingly angular black stripes.
"What the Sith spawn are those?" Jaina asked.
"Twin Suns One, you have the Taanab Yellow Aces, Ace-One speaking." The
voice was male, amused. "We're here to show the defenders of Borleias what
Rebel Stand Page 2