by Greg Keyes
“I remember you flying into a sweeper storm.”
“Hey, how was I to know? For that matter, how did you know?”
“I’m from here,” she growled.
“Bonadan?”
“No, this cave. Yes, Bonadan. I grew up on this miserable hole.”
“Hey, everyone has to grow up somewhere.”
“Yes, but they don’t have to go back. I did, worse the luck.”
“Why?”
“You and your questions. Are you a pilot or a reporter?”
“A pilot,” Uldir said.
“And where’s your ship?”
“I -- ah, I don’t know.”
“Not much of a pilot then, are you? Looks like its up to me to get us out of here.”
“Well, it is your planet.”
“Don’t remind me.” She started toward the entrance, then froze.
“What?”
“Come here,” she whispered. “Be quiet.”
He went with her to peek through the cave entrance. Beyond was the gully that they’d both nearly drowned in the night before. It was dry now, silted with fresh alluvium, and they could see about half a klick down it. Near the bend, up toward where the flier had gone down, he could see eight figures on foot, moving down the arroyo in their direction.
“Search party,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “See that one third from the left?”
“I’m not blind.”
“I am, where he’s concerned,” Klin-Fa replied. “I can’t feel him in the Force. That can only mean one thing.”
Uldir nodded. “Yuuzhan Vong,” he said. “Things just got a whole lot worse.”
As if to underscore the remark, he heard the whine of fliers overhead, several of them.
CHAPTER II:
Dark Tidings
“WHAT A NICE START to the day,” Klin-Fa Gi commented, cutting her dark eyes at Uldir. Her sarcasm wasn’t lost.
“At least we’re alive,” he said. “That was anything but a given last night.”
Klin-Fa’s mouth settled in a thin line. Uldir wondered if he would ever see the young Jedi smile. She was pale, her short brown hair matted and full of silt from the flood they had survived the night before, and the bump on her forehead had gone a shade of purple he’d heretofore seen only in certain nebulae. Still, he felt if she smiled, she’d be pretty.
Annoying, almost insufferable, but pretty.
“Yes, we’re alive,” she admitted. “Bravo. Terrific job. Now if you’ll just take care of that search patrol and the -- what? Eight enforcement fliers? Maybe I’ll forget that if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be in this mess at all.”
That was a little too much. “CSA was chasing you before I ever laid eyes on you,” Uldir said. “Without me they’d have you by now.”
“Doubtful,” Klin-Fa retorted. Then she sighed. “Also irrelevant. Do you have any weapons?”
“No. I lost the blaster.” My hands were full saving you from drowning, he silently finished.
“At least I still have my lightsaber.”
“Yeah,” Uldir said, eyeing the ever-nearing search party coming down the arroyo toward the cave where Klin-Fa and he were hiding. “Look, I’ll admit you’re pretty handy with that thing, but against these odds -- “
“The Force can prevail against any odds,” she insisted firmly. “Anyway, it’s not like we have a choice. They’ll find us soon enough. Unless you have a plan.”
“I do, as a matter of fact. Sit tight until the rest of my outfit shows up. They’re bound to be here soon. If you want to use the Force, try to project the thought that we’re in a different direction.”
Klin-Fa’s mouth twisted as if she’d just chewed a sour thom, but she eased her head in a reluctant half-nod. “That might work -- even at this distance, I might be able to project a suggestion. But it won’t fool that Yuuzhan Vong down there.” She lifted her chin toward one of the members of the search party. Even from this distance, Uldir could make out the scars and tattoos that marked him as a member of the extragalactic invaders bent on conquering the galaxy -- and doing a more than competent job of it so far.
“True,” he admitted, “But he doesn’t know where we are. He’ll have to trust his local guides.”
Klin-Fa grunted what he guessed was agreement, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She reached out her arm, and the fingers of her right hand fluttered slightly. Uldir felt the Force in motion, which had the affect of deepening his frustration with the whole situation. He’d studied at the Jedi academy but left it a failure, having no natural aptitude for the Force. The most his training had left him with was a slight ability to sense Jedi when they worked with the Force, and what some would say was an uncommon sort of luck. Still, the experience had taught him something important -- sometimes it didn’t matter how hard you wanted something, you weren’t going to get it. You lived with what you did have and took pride in your real assets, not the ones you wished you possessed. He’d thought he was over useless self-remonstration at his failure, and he had been. He really had -- at least until Klin-Fa Gi had bounced off the center of his table in a local cantina, pursued by law enforcement officials of the Corporate Sector Authority. Her attitude had managed to wake the old resentment in him. Why did someone like her have such strong affinity with the Force, while he could only hear it whisper?
It wasn’t fair, which made him even angrier, because he knew the universe wasn’t fair.
But it ought to be balanced. That was what the Force was all about, right? And there was something very unbalanced about Klin-Fa Gi. When she had used the Force to cushion the crash of their atmospheric flier, he’d almost thought he sensed something dark.
Her eyes were still closed, and Uldir studied her. She didn’t look evil, in her tattered yellow skirt and black leggings. She looked young and intent.
Ah, what do I know? Uldir asked himself. I couldn’t tell a Sith from Master Yoda himself, not with my puny senses.
She’d said she was on a secret mission for Master Skywalker. He’d believe her until proven wrong. Anyway, she was Jedi, and Uldir’s job was to rescue Jedi from the Yuuzhan Vong and their agents. He might not be able to use the Force, but no one had ever said he wasn’t good at his job. There wasn’t a better rescue pilot in the business.
Of course, right about now it would be nice to have something to pilot.
The group of searchers was pointing up the other side of the arroyo. He heard shouting, and then they broke into a trot.
“You did it,” Uldir breathed.
“Yep,” she said. “It won’t fool them for long.” She started forward, out of the cave mouth.
“Hang on,” Uldir said, waving vaguely upward. “There’re still the fliers to consider.”
“You consider them. You’re the pilot.”
“No. We should wait on my people, or make some kind of plan.”
She pushed a straggling lock of hair from her face. “Hey, you had a good idea, jets. Don’t spoil it by thinking too much.”
“Now, listen -- hey!”
Too late. She’d already sprinted from the cover of the cave and was starting up the arroyo slope in the opposite direction in which she had sent the search party.
“Vaping Moffs!” Uldir snarled, and did the only thing he could do, the thing he’d been doing from the start of this whole mess -- he started after her.
He came over the lip of the ravine in time to see her vanish down into another one. Bonadan had lost most of its natural life forms to the brutal industrialization of the Corporate Sector, and without roots and rhizomes to hold them in check, erosion had fast furrowed the highland soils outside of the spaceport, peeled back their planetological history, and turned them into a badlands.
Somewhere, Uldir heard the whir of fliers, but he didn’t see them. They were probably conducting some sort of grid search. They likely had satellite intelligence, too. The broken nature of the terrain gave them a chance, but only a small one.
&n
bsp; He caught up to Klin-Fa Gi as she hit the bottom of the next ravine at a dead run. “Where do you think you’re going?” He snapped, trying to keep his voice down and match her pace at the same time.
“Away,” she said. “Away from the Vong.”
He got it then. “You’re scared of them. The Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Scared? No. I’m scared of nothing. But my Jedi powers are useless against the Vong. If I fight, I might lose, and I can’t afford that. The galaxy can’t afford it. My mission cannot fail.”
“Hey, I’ve dealt with Yuuzhan Vong before,” Uldir chuffed. “They aren’t invincible.”
“It’s great you feel that way. Why don’t you go hold ‘em off for me?”
“Maybe I’ll just do that,” Uldir snapped. “It’s better than -- down!” He yanked her against the wall of the ravine, just as the shadow of a flier moved across their feet. The steep angle protected them, mostly, but Uldir still held his breath.
The shadow moved on.
“That was too close,” he said. “Next pass we might not be so lucky.”
“Fine,” she said. “What do you think we ought to do? Your friends don’t seem to be showing.”
“I can signal them,” he said, indicating his comlink.
“You’re just now thinking of that?”
“No,” Uldir said reluctantly. “I called them last night.”
“Last night? They’re taking their time.”
“Our ship’s in dry-dock. It might have taken them all night to get it out. Besides, it’s not like I had exact coordinates to give them.”
“Maybe you would have if you hadn’t had the stupidity to fly into a sweeper storm,” she reminded him.
“Me?” Uldir growled. “I was just trying to make the best of a bad situation, and you were no help. Maybe if you weren’t so closed-mouth about what it is you’re up to . . .”
“Uh-uh,” she said. “I can’t trust you.”
“Not even now?”
“No.”
“That’s just great.”
“Why don’t you stop whining and call your shipmates?”
“I could do that, but those fliers would get a fix on us. If my friends aren’t around, we’ll only get caught faster.”
Klin-Fa slowed to a halt and gave him a glance as hard as durasteel. “Fast or slow, makes no difference,” she said. “Either your crew found some way out here or not. Either we’ll get caught or we won’t. What, do you have a cushy retirement planned?”
Uldir returned her glare, but she was right. He keyed on the comlink.
“This is catchhawk one,” he said. “Catchhawks, do you copy?”
Static drizzled for a moment, then the voice of his second-in-command, Vega Sepen, answered him.
“I hear you boss-boy. You’re still alive, I guess.” There was nothing in the tough Corellian woman’s tone that suggested she’d been worried about him.
“I’m in a bad spot, two, right between a supernova and a black hole. Did you manage to find some legs?”
“Ah . . . sort of,” Vega replied.
“Great. Got a fix on me?”
“Sorry. Don’t have that sort of equipment on board, I’m afraid.” There was a background gabble he couldn’t quite make out -- Vega talking to someone else -- and some sort of music. Then Vega’s voice came back. “Vook thinks he can triangulate with our comlinks. Can you keep sending?”
“Sure,” Uldir said. “Asyui-ln.”
“Understood. We’ll get you boss-boy, sit tight.”
“What’s that music?”
“Nothing.”
“What in the Force are you flying, two?”
Vega didn’t answer.
“If you keep sending, they’ll be able to track us,” Klin-Fa snapped.
“Shh.” He laid the comlink under a nearby rock. “I know that.”
“But your friends -- “
“My friends know that asyui-ln means ‘not’ in Dug.” Uldir replied. “They’ll look in a radius around the signal. Now, come on.”
“Wait,” she said. In the next instant, she bounded up the side of the ravine, just as Uldir noticed the sound of the flier returning. Klin-Fa reached the lip of the chasm as the patrol vessel came over. Blaster fire kicked up dust around her feet, but she dodged lightly, and her lightsaber was suddenly on. In the next instant it was a whirling disk of brilliance, shearing through the nose of the flier. More blaster fire from somewhere else made a spectral bridge over the arroyo top, but by then, Klin-Fa had dropped back below the rim, the deadly lightsaber returning to her hand and extinguished.
“Carbon flush!” Uldir breathed. Then she was rushing past him.
“Move!” She shouted.
They ran down the arroyo, cutting over a low rise into the next, then doubling back.
Right into a patrol, four humans with enforcement blasters and a Yuuzhan Vong. They were less than two meters away.
“Hey!” One of the humans shouted.
Uldir didn’t think. He hurled himself low and hard at one of the humans, feeling the heat of blaster fire scorch his back. He hit the man in the waist and they went down. Uldir hoped the others would be reluctant to shoot for fear of hitting their comrade. The two men rolled, and then rolled some more as Uldir suddenly realized that his mad tackle had taken them down yet another slope. Rocks dug angrily at his back as his opponent tried, with moderate success, to club him with the butt of his blaster. Fortunately, the blows were glancing, and by the time they fetched against a stone large enough to stop them, Uldir had managed to get one of his hands free for a sharp uppercut. He felt teeth snap together, and the officer went limp.
Blaster fire cracked the stone that had arrested them. Frantically, Uldir dove away, at the same time searching for the officer’s weapon. He found it a meter away, rolled and caught it up, then trained it back up the slope. Another shot dug into the sand centimeters from his knee. Uldir fired, missed, scrambled to his feet and ran up the slope shooting. His third shot hit an officer in the sternum and kicked him back out of sight.
By the time he reached Klin-Fa, she had taken out the remaining officers and was in a swirl of motion with the Yuuzhan Vong. Like all of his kind, the warrior disdained the use of mechanical contrivances -- he fought with an amphistaff, a living weapon that resembled a snake, at turns rigid and sharp and flexible and whip-like. Klin-Fa was having a hard time countering the furious, complex attack. Uldir raised his blaster to change the odds.
At the same moment, another flier came over the ridge, blasters pumping. Swearing an Ettian curse he’d never quite understood but liked the sound of, Uldir dodged into cover behind a shelf of rock and fired back. His bolt ricocheted off of the side of the flier, and the answering shots pulverized his shelter. He could see the pilot grinning through the windscreen. Snarling, he broke out at a run, firing as he went. He couldn’t get a proper bead, and his shots all either went wide or glanced off the tough metal of the flier. The pilot was having no such trouble aiming -- hovering, his front-mounted blasters followed Uldir like a pair of fiery footsteps, getting closer. One bolt hit so close it caused him to stumble, and in a strange moment the world seemed to go entirely still. Uldir felt his finger depress the trigger a final time, and then the weapon went flying from his hand as his face smacked against the ground. He spat out the taste of blood and metallic dirt, waiting for the inevitable.
The inevitable didn’t come. Warily he glanced back up. The flier was still hovering, but the pilot wasn’t smiling anymore -- he was slumped sideways in his seat, and there was a neat hole in the windscreen.
“Wow,” Uldir breathed. Sometimes his luck surprised even him. He picked up the blaster and turned toward the sounds of combat, fearing what he would see.
Klin-Fa was in his line of fire, but as he watched, she ducked beneath the whipping amphistaff and swept her leg at the Yuuzhan Vong warrior’s foot. She clipped it, putting him slightly off-balance. He took a long retreat to correct for it, but Klin-Fa leapt high into the
air, flipped over her opponent’s head, and struck down at the same time. To his credit, the warrior caught the blow in a behind-the-back parry and spun to riposte. Klin-Fa, however, landed in a split, and the blow whistled over her head as she drew her blazing weapon through the Vong’s midsection. He gaped and fell in two cauterized halves.
He still took another swing at her, but the Jedi was back on her feet, dancing out of range.
“For Yabeley,” she snarled. Uldir wondered who or what Yabeley was.
The Yuuzhan Vong watched her go, black eyes glittering with hatred.
“Jeedai,” he growled. “Your days are drawing to a close.”
“Not as quickly as yours,” she said. Her voice was colder than night on the dark side of an airless moon.
The Yuuzhan Vong spat blood. “Your blow was skilled,” he said. “I salute you. But you will die. All of your kind will die. Even your own kind has turned against you.”
Klin-Fa gestured contemptuously at the downed officers. “These cretins are not my kind,” she said. “I don’t claim kinship with anyone foolish enough to believe the Yuuzhan Vong will stop their conquest of our galaxy simply because they turn Jedi over to you.”
The warrior smiled strangely. “It is not your galaxy,” he said. “You have merely infested it for a time. We have come to end the infection, in the name of glorious Yun-Yuuzhan.”
“Our galaxy,” Klin-Fa repeated, firmly. But the Yuuzhan Vong did not hear her. His gaze had wandered beyond the stars.
Klin-Fa extinguished her saber and clipped it to her belt.
“Hey,” Uldir said. “Nice moves. But we’re not out of this yet. I hear more fliers coming.”
“Let them come,” Klin-Fa said, grimly.
They did, three of them, and soon Klin-Fa was acting as a living shield, deflecting bolts as Uldir tried to hit the fliers or their pilots at some critical point. These pilots didn’t hover, however, but began spreading out to encircle them. When that was done, it would be all over. Klin-Fa couldn’t block fire from every direction.
A bolt sang through her defenses and scorched Uldir’s ear. Klin-Fa gasped as a second scored along her thigh, and the fliers tightened in for the kill. Uldir and Klin-Fa stood back-to-back.