by Troy Denning
Caedus turned to meet her with his good arm forward and his wounded shoulder behind. Jaina struck high with the lightsaber and low with the beskad. Caedus slipped back, allowing both blades to pass, then sprang forward and counterthrust, trying to impale her with her own momentum.
Jaina was already spinning past his crimson blade, pivoting on a dead stormtrooper’s chest plate as she brought Vatok’s beskad around at neck height. But Caedus had anticipated her once again, leaning away to take the blow on his wounded shoulder rather than across his throat.
Jaina did not even feel the beskad cleaving bone. She simply heard a voice—Jacen’s voice—cry out in shock and pain; then an arm landed on her boots. In the next instant Caedus was whirling away, screaming and flapping a red stump, and something hot and wet splashed across Jaina’s face and throat and began to burn like acid.
A part of her—the part that had grown up with Jacen and trained with him on Yavin 4 and traded snowballs at Coruscant’s polar playgrounds—was too horrified to act. That part wanted to stand paralyzed in shock, to pretend this was just some terrible nightmare from which she would shortly awaken. The other part—the part that had actually asked for this mission—knew what would happen if she let herself freeze.
Jaina launched herself after Caedus. The loss of an arm did not seem to faze him. He simply turned to meet her attack, his yellow eyes blazing with pain and fury, and their lightsabers met in a brilliant explosion of color. Jaina brought the beskad around again, striking low for his thigh … and knew she was in trouble when Caedus did not even try to block.
Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and let it drop between them. Jaina felt the beskad begin to bite, then her brother’s palm sank deep into the pit of her stomach. In the next instant she was riding a bolt of Force lightning across the chamber, her muscles cramping, her teeth grinding, her ears roaring with the fiery sizzle of burning synapses.
A full second later, she slammed into a durasteel wall and felt a terrible popping in her ribs, then dropped to the floor, still holding her lightsaber and the beskad. The Force lightning had died away, but her muscles remained useless aching knots, and the stench of scorched flesh was so powerful she wanted to retch. Instead, she tried to rise—and succeeded only in sparking a dozen different kinds of pain.
Across the chamber, her brother was in little better shape. He sat slumped in a half-collapsed chair, his remaining hand clamped over the stump of his missing arm, his thigh wound dripping blood onto the floor. His yellow eyes were staring at Jaina more in confusion than rage, and his head was cocked as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing.
“You?” he gasped. “Jaina?”
Jaina managed to raise her throbbing head. It hurt—a lot—and her vision was starting to blur.
“I haven’t changed that much, Jacen,” she said. With her muscle control beginning to return, she pushed herself into a kneeling position. “And I hope you know how much this Sith nonsense is steaming Mom and Dad.”
If Caedus heard her wisecrack, he did not show it. His yellow eyes began to dart around the chamber, searching for something Jaina did not understand—but maybe that was just because her head was throbbing so bad. The pain was beginning to muddle her thoughts.
Somehow, Caedus forced himself back to his feet. That would have been impressive—if it weren’t so kriffing scary.
“Where’s Luke?” he demanded.
“Right behind me,” Jaina said, also standing. The effort sent pangs of anguish shooting through her lungs, and she realized she had a few broken ribs to go with the lightning scorch on her chest. She squinted in his direction, trying to keep him in focus so she could kill him. “Come over here, and I’ll show you.”
That brought Caedus’s gaze snapping back toward her, and Jaina realized she might have overplayed her hand. She still had both arms, but the fact that her brother remained standing at all proved how much greater his Force powers were than her own. She tossed the beskad aside and summoned a fallen stormtrooper’s power blaster to hand.
Then Jaina sensed someone watching her from the direction of the antechamber where the Moffs had fled. She looked up to find a pair of gray blurs dropping into firing positions in the doorways. She loosed a burst of suppression fire toward the two troopers, then Force-flipped up into the cover offered by the ruined projection booth, landing backward so she would be facing her enemy and in a position to defend herself.
Jaina’s boots had not even touched the floor before the stormtroopers opened fire. She dropped the power blaster and used her lightsaber to deflect their bolts, angling them down toward her brother. If she kept him busy enough, he wouldn’t be able to hurl another lightning attack her way. His lightsaber snapped to life and began to weave a crimson shield in front of him.
Then Jaina experienced an abrupt draining as her Force energies returned to their normal level. Suddenly she felt cold, tired, and in pain, and she barely had the strength to hold her lightsaber as it flicked back and forth, batting away blaster bolts. She retreated deeper into the projection booth, stumbling over combat debris that she normally would have sensed without any conscious thought. When she reached the wrecked control panel, she could finally drop behind cover.
Caedus’s voice sounded out in the forum, still deep and booming and strong. “Not her! Skywalker is the dangerous one.”
Skywalker?
Was Jaina beginning to hear things now, too? Or was Caedus beginning to imagine them?
The blasterfire shifted away from the projection booth and grew more erratic. Jaina poked her head up, peering over the scorched control panel through what remained of the projectionist’s one-way viewport.
Her brother was limping up toward the anteroom, finally starting to look a little weak and dizzy himself. His good hand was still holding the stump of his severed arm. But his yellow eyes were round with fear and his brow was furrowed with anger, and he was looking toward the far corner of the chamber, which Jaina could not see from her vantage point.
“There, you fools!” he yelled. “Blast him!”
The two stormtroopers seemed to study the corner for a moment, then obediently opened fire again. Energy bolts quickly began to ricochet back into the seats, but whether they were being deflected by a lightsaber or merely bouncing off the walls was impossible to guess.
Jaina did not have the energy to investigate. She dropped back to her haunches and opened herself completely to the Force, drawing it into her exhausted, battered body from all sides. The muffled crumphs of door-breaker charges began to sound somewhere out in the forum as the rest of the Elite Guard began to blast their way into the battle area. She knew that her mission had just gone from difficult to impossible, but when was she ever going to get a better chance? Caedus was wounded and weak, and if she could just catch up to him, she might be able to finish him.
An urgent clatter began to build out in the forum as stormtroopers poured through the entrances they had just blasted open. Jaina rose and ignited her lightsaber, but before she could step back into the breach, she sensed a nervous insectoid presence studying her from the far end of the booth.
Jaina turned to look. The technician who had helped her earlier was poking his head through a melt hole in the rear wall.
“Jedi Solo, are you ready to depart?” the Verpine asked.
“Depart?” Jaina frowned; what a foolish idea. “Hardly. Caedus is still alive.”
The Verpine nodded. “Yes, my hive mates report that he is being rushed to the infirmary,” he said. “And your extraction team will meet you at SurfaceHatch TenCrater.”
“Can’t.” Jaina shook her head, then nearly lost it as she tried to peer out into the forum and drew a volley of blasterfire. She whirled around and looked back toward the Verpine, who was crouching just outside the melt hole, trembling. “Can you get me into the infirmary?”
“No!” the Verpine replied. “You are too damaged to fight. I am worried you can’t even make it to TenCrater on your own. I may have to carry you.”
Jaina waved him off. She couldn’t let Caedus regroup. She had already lost the advantage of surprise, and the one thing she knew for certain was that if she let him recover—
“Your extraction team is in a precarious position itself.” The Verpine was having to yell to make himself heard above the blasterfire. “They insist you come now.”
Jaina felt her mother reaching out to her in the Force, calling her back. She could sense not only the fear her mother felt for her, but also the teeth-grinding terror of combat—and a certain sense of demand that carried with it the hard edge of an order.
Jaina sighed. She had promised the Council to obey orders. “Okay, okay.” She made a dash—more of a stumble—for the exit. “Tell them we’re coming!”
What do Jawas have that no other creature in the galaxy has? Baby Jawas!
—Jacen Solo, age 14
Ben could remember a time when his cell had been dark. That was how he knew his head was clearing. Most of the time, it seemed as though the illumination panel in the ceiling had always been on, that he had spent his whole life manacled to his durasteel bunk, that the only mental state he had ever experienced was a smoky delirium so nightmarish he never quite knew whether he was asleep or awake. He remembered blurry dreams in which he was visited by a glossy black droid, a tall thin unit that looked like a scaled-down version of a YVH battle droid, with blue photoreceptors set in a gaunt, skull-like face. The droid—it had introduced itself as Double-Ex—was really curious, always asking questions about who had sent Ben, who had been with him, where he had come from.
The last question, Double-Ex had asked a lot. It wanted to know
that more than anything, because it was desperate to discover the location of the secret Jedi base. And Ben was sure he never answered—not even with a lie—because the droid was always complaining about how stubborn Ben was, telling him that he was only hurting himself.
But it was Double-Ex who really did the hurting. The droid had an astonishing array of needles, probes, and electrodes hidden inside its fingers. Whenever Ben refused to answer, it would open one, jab him in the arm or thigh or bare chest with whatever tool was inside, then ask its question again, endlessly repeating the process with the eternal patience of a machine.
But how those sessions ended, Ben had no idea. He supposed he simply reached the limits of his physical tolerance and passed out. It would not have surprised him, though, to learn that Double-Ex simply depleted its batteries asking the same question over and over.
The one thing he knew for certain was that he had never revealed the location of the Jedi base. Jacen had taught him how to resist interrogation by placing a Force block inside his own mind, and that had been the first thing Ben had done when he awakened in a GAG cell. The rest of his captivity was a blur, but he remembered doing that.
The door hissed open, admitting a puff of air just warm enough to remind Ben how cold his cell was—especially lying manacled to his bunk wearing only his underclothes. He purposely did not raise his head or even turn to look; interrogator droids were programmed to identify the significance of such minor gestures, and he did not want to betray the hopefulness he felt now that he was alert.
But there was no hint of servomotor in the steps that approached his bunk, and the smell that came to his nose was too pleasant and feminine to be a droid’s. Suddenly self-conscious about his near nakedness, Ben turned to look.
“Hello, Ben,” Tahiri said.
She was dressed in the typical black GAG jumpsuit, but on her it somehow looked like so much more. It was tight in all the right places, with a satin sheen that highlighted the suppleness of her build. And she must have just come from a workout—or at least from somewhere a whole lot warmer than Ben’s cell—because the front was open clear down to her solar plexus.
“How are you feeling?” she purred.
Ben quickly raised his gaze and saw that she looked far healthier than she had when she had captured him. Her blond hair was full and silky, sweeping across her brow in a way that almost hid the three scars on her forehead, then dropping down to her shoulders in a wavy cascade. Her cheeks actually had some color in them, and her lips were full and red. Even her eyes, which had seemed so sunken and tired before, appeared larger and more animated.
When Ben failed to answer, Tahiri shot him a knowing half smile. “Sorry—I forgot. You’re the man who tells us nothing.”
She stepped over to his bunk, and Ben saw that she was carrying a canister of bacta salve in one hand—and a remote in the other.
“I actually admire that.” She placed the bacta salve on the edge of his bunk, then displayed the remote. “I need to free one of your arms and legs so I can roll you on your side. You aren’t going to make me use this, are you?”
Ben studied the remote and realized that it probably had an activator switch for the stun circuits in his manacles. “I guess that depends on what you do to me.”
“He speaks.” Tahiri smiled, then pressed a pair of buttons, and the locks on his left wrist and ankle clicked open. “Don’t worry—it won’t be anything you object to.” She flicked her fingers at him. “On your side.”
Ben rolled up on his side—and smothered a cry of pain as the pressure sores on his back pulled free of the bunk’s sanisheet cover. The bunk settled as Tahiri sat on the edge and opened the canister of bacta salve, and he realized that there was a hint of musk to her odor—a nice hint, one that he found vaguely intoxicating, but not something he remembered smelling on her before. An instant later, he felt her fingertips on his shoulder, and ripples of warm relief began to radiate outward from where she was touching him.
“See?” Tahiri asked. “Not so bad.”
“Except for the part where you caused them in the first place,” Ben said. He had to remind himself that she wasn’t really being kind. “How long have you had me lying here?”
Tahiri moved to a different sore, then said, “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”
Ben sighed. “It was worth a try. Can you at least tell me if Captain Shevu is okay?”
“Same offer,” Tahiri replied sweetly. “But I am sorry about these sores. They’re not part of the program. We just can’t afford to take chances with big, strong Jedi Knights.” She ran her hand down his bare shoulder and biceps—and let it linger there. “I’m sure you understand.”
“I guess.” What Ben did not understand was what her hand was doing kneading the muscles on his arm. He didn’t have any sores there—at least not that he could feel—but he didn’t want her to stop, either. “You’re making a mistake, you know.”
Tahiri stopped kneading, and her fingers moved to a sore down near the middle of his back. “Oh?”
“You can’t trust Jacen,” he said. “He’ll turn on you in the end—just like he turned on my parents and me.”
Tahiri’s touch grew a little more tense. “His name is Caedus now,” she said. “Darth Caedus. And who says I trust him?”
“Then what are you doing with him?” Ben asked. “Don’t tell me you think he’s right?”
“What I think doesn’t matter,” Tahiri replied, “not any longer. We all make choices in our lives, Ben. You should have stuck with yours. You wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in—and this war might be over.”
Her hand moved lower on Ben’s back and began to work on a sore under the waistband of his shorts. He found her touch there a little disconcerting, but he didn’t stop her. The sore did need to be dressed, after all.
Ben tried to focus on their conversation—on helping Tahiri see the mistake she was making. “Stick with the man who killed my mother? Have you been breathing coolant fumes?”
“Your mother did attack Lord Caedus first,” Tahiri pointed out. “She threatened him in the lobby of the Senate.”
“Because he’s a Sith,” Ben replied. “Because he was working with Lumiya.”
“Whom your father murdered in cold blood,” Tahiri replied. “I understand family loyalty, Ben—I eve
n admire it. But you need to see that the Sith aren’t necessarily the criminals here. Isn’t that what a Jedi does? Weighs the facts objectively?”
“My father made a mistake,” Ben protested. “You’re twisting things around.”
“Really?” Tahiri said. “Then why don’t you enlighten me, Ben? I’m listening.”
“Okay,” Ben said. She sounded sincere, but he sensed a trap—and he knew that he wasn’t going to persuade her on the basis of right and wrong. As far as he could tell, nobody in this war had any claim to the moral high ground. “Look, whatever it is you want—whatever it is that you think Jacen can give you—you’re not going to get it.”
“You’re sure?” Tahiri asked. Her hand remained beneath the waistband of Ben’s shorts, but began to drift up toward his hip. “What is it that I want, Ben?”
Now Ben was really beginning to have trouble concentrating. “Uh, Tahiri?”
Her hand reached his hip bone, and her fingers began to drift over. “Yes?”
“You wouldn’t be trying to seduce me, would you?”
“Ben, that’s a terrible thing to say.” Tahiri’s hand remained beneath the waistband of his shorts. “You’re only fourteen. Still a boy, really.” She lifted her finger, raising the waistband. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m a Jedi Knight,” Ben countered. He twisted his hip, trying to pull it out from beneath her hand—and failing. “And I don’t have any pressure sores up there.”
“So you don’t.” Tahiri used a fingertip to trace a circle on his flesh. “Okay, let’s say I am trying to seduce you. You have to admit it’s a lot nicer way than torture to, um, inquire about the coordinates of the Jedi base.”
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with that.”
“So?” Tahiri slid her hand down his hip. “What do you think? Could it work?”
Ben closed his eyes. He truly wanted to say yes—and not just for the obvious reasons. He was really, really tired of being tortured, and he knew as well as anyone that all those truth drugs Double-Ex kept pumping into him were not doing his brain any good. There was every chance that, sooner or later, the droid would miscalculate a dose, or push an ear probe in a little too deep, or fail to notice the pool of sweat he was lying in when it jacked up the electroshocker, and he would die.