Invincible

by Troy Denning

  But Ben already knew that the droid’s efforts were going to fail. Tahiri couldn’t use a dead man to coerce someone into telling her anything, and Ben knew his friend well enough to realize that Shevu would rather die than be used to help Darth Caedus secure his hold on power. So when Tahiri pushed things a little too far, Shevu simply let go of living.

  “Stop it,” Ben said. He couldn’t bear to watch Shevu being abused any longer. “You can’t bring him back. This is just beating up the body.”

  Tahiri glowered at him. “You can tell that from over there, Ben?”

  The MD stopped working. “The prisoner is correct,” it said. “Magnetic imaging confirms that Prisoner Nine-Zero-Three-Two-Bee-Tee suffered a stress rupture of the aorta.”

  Tahiri’s jaw fell, and her Force-aura grew cold with horror, and that was when Ben knew she did not like what she was becoming, that she was serving Caedus for the same reasons Ben himself had followed Jacen so long—because she was confused and ashamed and desperate. She could not allow herself to see what a monster Caedus had become because that meant seeing what a monster she was becoming, too.

  But none of that made any difference to Shevu now. And it was going to make even less difference to his wife, Shula, whom he had married just a couple of months earlier—then promptly sent home to Vaklin because he had known that something like this was going to happen.

  “You should be proud, Tahiri. Now you’re just like your Master.” Ben was saying this not only because he was angry, but because it was true—and because if he could make Tahiri see just how true, then maybe she would come to her senses. “Jacen tortured Ailyn Vel to death, and now you’ve done it to Shevu. I guess you are a Sith.”

  To Ben’s surprise, Tahiri did not whirl on him. She did not even seem to see him. She merely stepped back, staring at the MD’s feet and slowly shaking her head.

  “You’re wrong. I didn’t kill him.”

  “The prisoner was already in a weakened condition,” the MD said, neatly dodging the question. It pointed a finger at the security pad on the side of Shevu’s bed, and the limb restraints clicked open. “If you won’t be needing the body, I’ll send it down for processing.”

  “Processing?” Ben didn’t know what he had expected, but the thought of his friend being sold to a bioparts dealer turned his stomach—and filled him with a sick, hollow feeling that was half anger, half guilt. “You can’t—”

  “I can’t what?” As Tahiri whirled on him, the MD was lifting Shevu from the bed. “This is your doing, Ben. All you had to do was answer one simple question.”

  She depressed a row of buttons on the remote, and Ben’s entire body clenched in electric agony.

  “Where is the Jedi base?” She stepped closer, cocking her arm to backhand him. “Answer me!”

  Ben glanced over at Shevu, who was being carried toward the processing chute, and shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Tahiri brought her hand down across Ben’s face, striking him so hard that it rocked the hoverchair—and that was her mistake. Ben threw his weight in the direction of the tilt, tipping the hoverchair over on its side. Simultaneously, he was Force-hurling Tahiri into the two confused guards standing at his back.

  By the time the trio crashed into one of the empty beds behind him, Ben was already reaching out with the Force, depressing keys on Tahiri’s remote. His leg shackles snapped open instantly, but he managed to shock his arms senseless before he finally hit the proper key and released the stun cuffs.

  Ben rolled out of the chair and spun around to find his captors rapidly disentangling themselves. Tahiri was already reaching for her lightsaber, and one guard was swinging his stun rifle around to fire. Ben gave the barrel a Force shove, pushing the muzzle toward Tahiri just as a white bolt of electricity shot out.

  Tahiri gave a strangled cry, then her eyes rolled back and she dropped to the floor, twitching and shuddering. Ben summoned Tahiri’s lightsaber to hand, barely activating it in time to bat a bolt from the second guard’s stun rifle into the MD droid—which was holding Shevu’s body in front of the processing chute, apparently waiting for the guards to bring the prisoner under control before proceeding.

  The bolt struck the droid over its primary processing unit, and it stumbled back into the wall and dropped to the floor with Shevu’s limp body in its arms. Ben used the Force to rip the stun rifle from the first guard’s grasp, at the same time leaping at the second one. He deflected another stun bolt, then brought the lightsaber down on the weapon’s barrel and quickly snapped the blade back up to within a centimeter of the trooper’s chin.

  “I’d really rather not have to kill you both,” Ben said. “But it’s your choice—and I don’t have a lot of time for you to decide.”

  “Not k-k-killing is fine, L-L-Lieutenant,” Wyrlan answered. His helmet turned toward the other guard. “Right, Garsi?”

  “Fine with me,” Garsi said, raising his arms. “Thanks for the choice.”

  “Don’t make me regret it,” Ben warned. He glanced up at the corners of the room and noted that the status lights on all four of the security cams were dark. “How come those monitors aren’t active?”

  Wyrlan and Garsi turned their helmets toward each other, then Garsi said, “You saw what was going on in here. Would you want someone sneaking a holo of that to HNE?”

  Ben considered this, recalling how Tahiri had locked the door behind them, and realized there was a very good chance that central security did not know he had just freed himself.

  “I see your point.” He motioned at the processing chute. “Would someone alive survive a trip through there?”

  “Sure,” Wyrlan said. “It’s just a repulsor track that carries bodies down to the collection docks.”

  “But they have escape safeguards,” Garsi warned. “It wouldn’t be smart to try leaving that way.”

  “And I won’t be,” Ben said. He motioned at Tahiri. “Put her in the stun cuffs and drop her down the chute.”

  The two troopers obeyed, then Wyrlan motioned at Shevu’s body. “What about him?”

  “He’s leaving with me,” Ben said. “Take off your armor.”

  A LONG TIME AGO …

  Jaina Solo and her brother Jacen are wandering through the shadowy halls beneath the Jedi academy on Yavin 4, keeping to the musty subterranean passages where no one else ever goes. They are fourteen, and they are walking because their friend Tenel Ka has just lost her arm in a lightsaber accident, and they have to do something, even if walking is all they can do. They are in pain, and they wish it could be the same pain their friend is feeling. Maybe if they could share it with her, it wouldn’t seem so horrible. Maybe it would feel like things hadn’t changed so much after all.

  But Jaina knows that can’t be true, because Uncle Luke has promised to call when Tenel Ka is ready to see her friends, and they have been walking for hours. Still, there has been no summons. They can only keep wandering, alone together, trying not to be overwhelmed by their shock and despair. And Jaina senses through their twin bond that Jacen has other, more painful emotions. He is filled with shame and self-loathing because it was his lightsaber that removed Tenel Ka’s arm—because he was so intent on proving himself to her that he failed to notice when her blade blurred with static, and half a second later her arm was lying on the ground.

  So Jacen has lost something, too. And all Jaina can do is walk with him, to let him know through their twin bond how she sees him: a kind, thoughtful young Jedi who would never hurt a friend deliberately—a brave, resourceful brother whom she would rather have at her side than anyone …

  What time is it when an Imperial walker steps on your chrono? Time to get a new chrono!

  —Jacen Solo, age 14

  The stain ran across Jaina’s jaw and neck down to her shoulder, a line of crimson ovals where she had been splattered by her brother’s blood. She had tried to wash it off with soap and water, with surgical sanitizer, even with the enzobleach Hapan orderlies used to keep the Loyal Dragon’s
infirmary spotless. Now she was using a Relephonian sarsestone, literally trying to scour the spots away—but she might as well have been trying to rub off a blaster scar. Her efforts only seemed to make the stain brighter and redder.

  A soft hiss sounded behind Jaina, and in the mirror above her sink, she saw the privacy partition at the front of her convalescence bay sliding aside. Before she could put the sarsestone down, her mother was coming through the opening, her thin brows arching in surprise.

  “What are you doing up?” Leia demanded. Her mouth was frowning with reproach, but her brown eyes were sparkling with relief. “You should be in a healing trance.”

  “I have been.” Jaina set the sarsestone on the sink and began to rinse the grit off her hands. “For a week now, I think.”

  “Yeah, well you need another one—and maybe a whole lot more,” her father said, following Leia into the cramped bay. “Luke didn’t look this bad after the wampa tried to eat him.”

  “Gee, thanks, Dad.” Jaina shifted her gaze to her father’s reflection and didn’t think he looked much better. The lines in his brow had grown so deep that his face had gone from ruggedly handsome to haggard; the bags beneath his eyes were so big they belonged on a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, not Han Solo. “That’s just what a woman standing in front of a mirror wants to hear.”

  “I’m your father.” He slid the partition closed behind him. “It’s my job to be honest.”

  “Okay, but do you have to be so good at it?”

  Jaina smiled at his reflection, then wet a cloth and began to wipe the sarse grit off her neck. She couldn’t remember much about her extraction—or the last half of the fight—because that big ugly split above her right eye had come with a nasty concussion. She had hazy memories of a long aching run on legs so filled with shrapnel they rattled, of always being short of breath because it was impossible to fully expand her lungs with four broken ribs.

  The next thing she remembered was stumbling into the hangar with a company of stormtroopers on her tail, then Jag, Zekk, her mother, and about half a dozen other Jedi—okay, Jag wasn’t a Jedi, but he had fought like one—coming out of nowhere to drive them off. And she recalled her uncle warning the others about her injuries as they rushed to help her, how he had seemed to know every blow she had taken without having to even glance in her direction.

  But the thing she remembered most was the fear in her father’s face as they loaded her aboard his blastboat, how his head had somehow seemed to turn around 180 degrees to look over the back of his seat—how the color had drained from his face at the sight of the blood oozing from her red-soaked robes.

  “Sweetheart, you can’t wash them off,” Leia said. She had come to the sink without Jaina realizing it, and now she was standing at her side, reaching for the cloth. “They’re burns.”

  “No.” Jaina studied the little ovals in the mirror again. She could see why her mother might mistake them for spatter burns—they were certainly bright enough, and the edges were distinct—but her mother hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen how those spots were made. “It’ll come off. It’s a bloodstain. His blood.”

  Jaina felt the bottom sink out of the Force, and her mother pulled the cloth away.

  “Jaina, they’ll fade as soon as we can get you into a bacta tank,” Leia said, turning her back toward her bed. “And if they don’t, we’ll have the skin repaired.”

  “Mom, I’m not in battle shock,” Jaina insisted. “It’s blood! I got splattered when I cut off Ja—er, Caedus’s arm.”

  “Okay, take it easy—we believe you.” Han came around the bed, then took her arm and started her back toward it. “But it’s not coming off. I’ll ask Luke if he’s got any special Sith-blood solvent.”

  “Sith-blood solvent?” Jaina allowed him to sit her on the bed. “Dad, please. I’m not inventing this. I remember getting splashed.”

  “Really?” This from her mother, whose doubtful tone suggested she was at least going to treat Jaina like a not-too-brain-addled adult. “It’s interesting how you remember that, but not much else about the fight.”

  Jaina frowned. “You think he brain-rubbed me?”

  Leia shook her head, then pointed at the wound on Jaina’s throbbing brow. “I think that brain-rubbed you. It scrambled your memories, and you may not be remembering things exactly the way they happened.”

  “Like what?” Jaina asked.

  Leia didn’t even need to think before she answered. “Well, do you remember what happened with Jag and Zekk?”

  Han bit his lip to keep from smiling, which only made Jaina frown harder.

  “They helped with the extraction,” Jaina said. “They both fought very well. I remember that.”

  “We’re talking about later,” her father said. “As they were loading you into the blastboat.”

  “I, uh …” Jaina paused, trying to grab hold of a hazy image floating at the edges of her memory—one of Zekk’s big snowy smile, and Jag’s durasteel eyes doing something they hardly ever did—widening in surprise. “I thanked them?”

  “I guess you could call it that,” her father said. He pulled a chair out from the wall beside her bed and dropped into it smirking. “You asked them to bunk with you.”

  “Bunk with me?” Jaina asked. “Both of them?”

  “Well, what you really proposed was taking quarters together,” Leia corrected. “All three of you.”

  Jaina caught the twinkle in their eyes and realized what they were trying to do. “Very funny, guys, but I’m serious.” She tapped her throat. “These aren’t burns.”

  “You think we’re making this up?” her father asked.

  “Of course,” Jaina said. “You’re running a classic Zeltron Shift—embarrass the spoilsport.”

  “We could be, except we’re not,” her mother said, chuckling. “See-Threepio filed the whole conversation in his memory. Do you want to hear it? He’s right outside.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jaina said. Her parents were both great bluffers—which meant they never tried to pull one when calling it would be easy. She swung around and leaned against the headboard, then asked, “So … did they say yes?”

  Her father’s brow shot up, then he shook his head and ran a hand down his chin. “You’re not ready for that,” he said. “You don’t have the patience.”

  Jaina laughed and ran a finger over the spots on her neck. “If these are burns, how come they’re not sore? And why isn’t my skin dry?”

  Her father closed his eyes in exasperation, but her mother said, “You have been in a healing trance, Jaina.”

  “Which means they would be healed by now,” Jaina replied, “if they were burns.”

  Her father opened his eyes, then reached up and took her hand. “Look, it was a tough fight,” he said. “And Luke’s pretty sure you’re remembering right about the arm. It’s natural to feel a little guilty.”

  “I don’t feel guilty,” Jaina objected. She felt her mother’s gaze on her, then realized she wasn’t being entirely honest. “Not much, anyway—not enough to make me imagine things.”

  “Okay, we’ll ask Cilghal to take a look,” Leia said. “There could be another explanation.”

  “There is.” Jaina could tell that her mother didn’t believe another explanation was needed, but her reply was utterly reasonable—the kind designed to cut an unnecessary argument short. “The Force might be trying to tell me something.”

  Her father fidgeted and began to look more uncomfortable than ever. Her mother nodded as though she believed that were a possibility, then sat on the foot of her bed.

  “Okay,” Leia said. “Any ideas what that would be?”

  “Maybe.” Jaina didn’t know how her parents were going to take this next part, because she wasn’t sure how she felt about it herself—whether she was just looking for an easy way out of a dirty job she had left undone, or whether she had given up on her brother too soon when she decided to kill him. “I can’t be sure that I’m remembering this right, but I
wasn’t the only one who was confused at the end of the fight. After I cut off his arm, Caedus seemed surprised that it was me.”

  “What?” Han asked. “He didn’t think a girl could do it?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Jaina said. “He didn’t seem to realize he had been fighting me until after we stopped—and when he did, he stopped attacking.”

  “Well, he was missing an arm,” Leia pointed out.

  “But there were a couple of stormtroopers trying to blast me,” Jaina explained. “He ordered them to redirect their fire.”

  Her parents looked at each other for a moment, then Leia asked, “And you think that has something to do with those marks on your neck?”

  “I think it might.” Jaina took a breath, then said, “What if we’re wrong? What if Jacen is still in there somewhere?”

  Her father’s face grew hard. “He isn’t.”

  “But he let me go.”

  “That’s not the way it looked when you entered the hangar with all those stormtroopers behind you,” her mother said. “As for what happened after you cut off his arm—he was probably in shock. You said yourself that he seemed as confused as you were.”

  “That’s true,” Jaina agreed. “And my memory isn’t clear. But these stains—”

  “Could mean anything—even if they are stains,” her father interrupted. “And if Caedus did let you go, it’s not because he felt bad about getting into a fight with his sister.”

  “Your father’s right,” Leia said. “You’re about the only one in the family he hasn’t been trying to kill. It would be a mistake to assume that’s anything more than an accident of circumstance.”

  Jaina knew they were right, of course. Even if Caedus had hesitated, it didn’t excuse what he had done in the past—and it didn’t mean he would hesitate again. But he had directed fire away from her. A part of Jaina wanted to believe that meant there was some hope of redeeming Jacen. The other part remembered that Caedus had been grievously wounded at the time, and he had thought he was seeing Luke somewhere else. That had made no sense to her at the time—it still didn’t—but what made more sense? That a Sith Lord had suddenly turned soft, or that he had been making a tactical choice based on a shock-induced hallucination?