Invincible

by Troy Denning

  Ben felt the gut-punch shock wave of an all-too-close detonation, then his goggles went momentarily dark as the optics were overwhelmed by the blast flash. He cowered behind the kolg trunk with Taryn as it was pelted by falling sand and brush.

  In the next instant the forest erupted into screaming bolts of blasterfire. Ben poked his head up over the tree and saw a column of sand dropping back toward the ground—and into it, where an enormous sinkhole was draining into the tunnel or shaft or whatever it was that Tahiri and her men had just opened.

  To the left of the sinkhole, a dozen of Tenel Ka’s Select Commandos were charging through the trees, exchanging blasterfire with the startled Imperials. Behind it, two troopers were dragging the litter with the big baradium warhead toward the hole, defended by the whirling blade of Tahiri’s lightsaber.

  “I’ll take the troopers out,” Taryn said, thrusting her blaster rifle into Ben’s hands. “You keep the Jedi busy.”

  “She’s not a …”

  Ben let the sentence trail off as Taryn plucked a trio of fragmentation grenades off her equipment harness and thumbed the arming switch on the first one. He propped the barrel on the tree and opened fire on Tahiri, switching from one corner of her body to another so she would have to move her blade across the greatest distance to defend herself.

  But Tahiri was as quick as she was precise, batting Ben’s first bolts back into the tree behind which they were hiding, then deflecting them up toward the grenade that Taryn had just sent arcing her way. The third bolt she deflected struck home, and the grenade detonated harmlessly above the newly reopened mine shaft.

  Taryn thumbed the arming switches on her last two grenades. “I said keep the Jedi busy!”

  Ben jumped up and began to fire—not at Tahiri, but at the baradium warhead, forcing her to dive into position to protect the bomb. Taryn sent both grenades flying across the shaft just as Tahiri dropped into a cartwheel. The Hapan whooped in delight as the maneuver carried Tahiri past the warhead—and out of position to defend the troopers dragging it forward.

  The grenades detonated to either side of the litter, shredding the stormtroopers’ armor and hurling their torn bodies aside. Tahiri was caught by the shock wave and hurled out of sight into the trees. The warhead dropped to the ground unharmed.

  “Good job.” Taryn took her blaster rifle back and clambered over the log. “Now let’s go finish—”

  She let the sentence drop and opened fire into the woods. Ben snatched up his lightsaber and jumped over the log, then saw Tahiri charging back out of the trees, bloody and battered but still swatting Taryn’s blaster bolts back at her. He activated his own lightsaber and stepped forward to defend the Hapan—then watched in amazement as Tahiri deactivated her lightsaber and launched herself in a high arc toward the shaft, one hand stretching toward the warhead.

  “Uh-oh.” Ben opened himself to the Force and reached out for the warhead, grasping for it with his mind … saw it rising off its broken litter, starting to float toward the shaft. “Blast!”

  He raced forward, gathering himself to spring, and heard Taryn calling behind him.

  “Ben? Ben, wait. No!”

  But Ben was already somersaulting after Tahiri, dropping down into the shaft above her. As they fell, she whirled around and brought her blade up, slashing at his neck—but not quickly enough to prevent him from blocking. He countered with a snap-kick to the spine that drew a pained grunt and sent her sailing into the wall.

  Still falling, she came tumbling back at him, double-slashing at his midsection, then planting a boot in his ribs that drove the wind from his lungs and sent him slamming into the rocky wall. He tumbled out of control for an instant, plummeting through the darkness, then used the Force to bring himself under control.

  How deep was this hole?

  Tahiri’s blade came weaving at him out of the murk, and Ben realized he had lost his night-vision goggles. He blocked, blocked again, then realized he had left his stomach wide open … and still managed to get his blade down a split second before Tahiri pressed her advantage.

  Gasping in relief—she’d had him, but she had been too slow again—he kicked off her hip and hit the wall behind him, then used the Force to stick himself against it, hard. It was a hot, painful way to slow his descent, but it was better than the alternative.

  Ben saw a glow above him and looked up to see Tahiri doing the same thing on the opposite side of the shaft, a dark figure behind a bright blade, glaring down at him with bright eyes. He pressed harder, slowing his descent more so she would not have the altitude advantage—then heard a loud splash below as the warhead reached the bottom.

  Water. Great.

  Tahiri pushed away from the wall, dropping toward him behind a wild cyclone of kicking boots and slashing blade.

  It was a foolish attack. All Ben had to do was guard high, then parry and take her legs off at the knees. He raised his blade to do just that—then finally realized what he was seeing and parried without countering.

  Tahiri dropped past, her face not showing relief, but screwed into a mask of surprise and rage, and Ben realized that she really didn’t want to kill him. Maybe she didn’t even want to survive.

  She splashed into the water, then screamed and went silent.

  Ben hit half a second later, letting out his own scream as his knees were driven up to his chin. Cold, dark water poured over his head and began to rush down his throat. He coughed into the water, sucked in more water, and finally regained control of his reflexes and closed his mouth.

  There was water in his ears, and he could feel his hair swirling around him, but he had no idea how far under he was. He looked up and saw steam rising past the tip of his lightsaber, so he knew he couldn’t be that deep. So why wasn’t he rising to the surface?

  Ben tried to kick himself up—and immediately realized the problem. All that sandy soil that he had seen dropping into the sinkhole had to go somewhere, and now he was buried to the waist in it. Still fighting not to cough and gulp down more water, he grabbed the slick rock beside him, wiggling his legs and trying to drag himself forward, slowly opening a cavity around his hips.

  After a few seconds, Ben managed to pull himself free and half scramble, half float to the surface—where it took him a few more seconds to realize that only about half of the gasping and coughing he heard was his own. He turned and found the silhouette of Tahiri’s head and shoulders about three meters away, her lightsaber between them but not attacking, her free hand stretched toward a line of lights blinking in the distinctive three-red-two-yellow-one-green pattern of the baradium warhead.

  “Tahiri, you don’t want to do that.” Ben tried to stand and immediately sank back to his knees in the wet tailings. “I know you don’t, because you’re no better suited to being a Sith apprentice than I was.”

  Tahiri glanced over, but kept her hand stretched toward the warhead. “Stay out of it, Ben.” Her face was plunged into shadow, but he could still see her hair and eyes, both gleaming silver in the blade light reflecting off the water. “You don’t have to get hurt.”

  “See? That’s what I mean.” Ben gave up trying to stand and simply knelt, using his shins to spread his weight across the wet pile. “If you were Sith material, you wouldn’t care whether I got hurt. You wouldn’t have gotten so mad when you killed Shevu.”

  “I don’t like killing anyone, Ben,” Tahiri said. She switched her free hand to her lightsaber, so that now she was holding it in a powerful two-handed grip. “That doesn’t mean I ever hesitate.”

  Ben snorted. “You’re not even a good liar.” He started to knee-walk toward the warhead. “I’d have thought Caedus would have taught you that much.”

  Tahiri held her blade in front of Ben’s chest. “I’m not lying, Ben.”

  “Then you’ll have to prove it,” Ben said. He brought his own blade up and pressed it against Tahiri’s, forcing it aside. “I’m going to go over there to take the detonator charge out of that warhead. There’s only one
way to stop me—and you won’t do it.”

  Tahiri switched off her lightsaber—then switched it back on so fast that Ben barely had time to lean out of the way before the blade extended where his throat had been a moment before. But the follow-through never came, and Ben’s head remained firmly attached to his shoulders.

  “Close—I’ll give you that.” The way Ben’s heart was hammering, he felt like he might die of fear even if Tahiri didn’t kill him—but he was willing to take that chance. He leaned around the blade and started knee-walking toward the warhead again. “But not close enough. When you come back to the Order, we’ll get Uncle Han to teach you a few things about bluffing.”

  Tahiri sighed, then switched off her blade. “I’m not coming back to the Order, Ben.”

  The tension left Ben’s body so fast that his hands began to shake uncontrollably. She was giving up.

  “No? Then what are you going to do? Become some kind of bounty hunter?” Ben reached the warhead and began to dig it out. “Because you know Caedus isn’t going to take you back.”

  “Yeah, but I’m done with him,” she said bitterly. “I’m done with all Solos.”

  Tahiri hung her lightsaber on her belt, then removed a glow rod and shined it up the water-filled tunnel. “Is anybody going to be looking for me down here? I’d rather not get killed trying to sneak away.”

  “You won’t, if you help me with this,” Ben said, grunting as he struggled to turn the warhead so that he could reach the access panel. “They forgave me.”

  “Yeah? Well, you were just a kid. And you still are.” Tahiri knelt in the water next to Ben, then used the Force to spin the warhead so the access panel was facing them. “It’ll be different for me.”

  “Probably,” Ben allowed. “It’ll take time, and you’ll have to answer for your actions. But they will forgive you—I promise.”

  “I’m not sure that promise is yours to make,” Tahiri said.

  Before Ben could answer, a loud splash sounded nearby, and Ben looked over to see a rope dancing next to him.

  “If you’re going to run, you better do it now,” Ben said. “I’ll tell them you drowned and floated away or something.”

  Tahiri’s brow rose. “You’d lie for me?”

  “If you want me to,” Ben said. “And don’t worry—I’m a lot better at it than you are. That’s one thing Jacen taught me that I haven’t forgotten yet.”

  Tahiri turned on the glow rod again. Her face was solemn but resolute. “I think it’s time to leave the lies behind,” she said. “It’s time to leave a lot of things behind.”

  For a moment, Ben wasn’t sure whether she meant to come back with him—or just to get herself killed.

  Then a bright light began to shine down on them, and Taryn’s voice echoed down from above.

  “Move, and you’re a dead woman,” she warned. “Ben, get away from her.”

  Ben looked up to see the Hapan rappelling swiftly down the shaft, holding the rope in one hand and her blaster rifle in the other.

  “It’s okay,” he called up. “She’s with us.”

  A LONG TIME AGO …

  It is during the truce at the battle of Ithor, and Jaina is an X-wing pilot with the legendary Rogue Squadron. She is lying on her bunk aboard the Ralroost, trying to get some much-needed rest before the Yuuzhan Vong renew their attack. But the bunk on the other side of the cabin is empty, and sleep won’t come because of that. She has just lost her friend and wingmate Anni Capstan, and she cannot close her eyes without seeing Anni’s face.

  Jaina is filled with emotions she does not know how to control, and all she wants is to make them go away. The strongest is guilt—guilt that she survived when Anni did not, guilt that when Colonel Darklighter asked her to record a message for Anni’s family, she did not even know their names. They had been flying together and bunking together for months without talking about their lives back home. Now it is too late for Jaina to ask, and that makes her feel more guilty than anything.

  Then the place in Jaina’s heart that belongs to her brother Jacen begins to warm, and she knows he is standing outside her cabin. She doesn’t wait for him to knock. She simply opens the door and crawls back into her bunk and says nothing.

  Jacen comes and sits on the edge of her bed. He doesn’t need to ask what’s wrong, because he knows—because he is her twin, and he feels it, too.

  So Jacen just strokes her hair until she starts to hurt a little less and finally falls asleep. He stays with her through the night because he knows that if he leaves, she’ll wake and won’t be able to sleep again.

  And Jaina hears him whispering to her in her dreams, telling her that no one you love really ever has to die—not if you don’t want them to … All you have to do is hold a place for them in your heart.

  What’s the difference between an Ewok and a Wookiee? About two hundred kilos!

  —Jacen Solo, age 15

  If you were a gag commando posted to the Anakin Solo, the last thing you wanted to see right now was a wing of Jedi StealthXs storming the already battle-torn hangar you were assigned to defend. Han was pretty certain of that. And he was absolutely certain you didn’t want to see the Millennium Falcon following them in—not after the announcement Tenel Ka had just made … not when some of the mudcrutches you were protecting were Imperial Moffs.

  With the StealthX wing cannons blasting away and GAG defenders returning fire from every hatchway and corner, the hangar was already one big eruption. But that didn’t keep Han from firing a rackful of concussion missiles into the control booth, or stop Leia from turning the Falcon’s blaster cannon on anything wearing a black uniform.

  The conflagration quickly faded as Han and the Jedi eliminated the defenders’ heavy weapons. As one, the StealthXs dropped to the deck and popped their canopies. Out came a dozen Jedi Masters leading fifty Jedi Knights, all leaping and whirling as their lightsabers batted a hail of blaster bolts back toward their attackers. Han kept the Falcon up high so that Leia and their two cannon gunners—Jagged Fel and a senior apprentice named Derek—could provide covering fire.

  Luke and the other Masters led the way toward the back of the hangar. The driving tip of the Jedi wedge, they were Force-hurling and Force-blasting any GAG trooper foolish enough to send a bolt their way. A squad of sharpshooters began to lay fire from the smoking ruins of the control booth; Saba Sebatyne raked a taloned hand through the air, and they came flying down to the deck headfirst. A late-arriving E-Web opened fire from inside a ventilation grate; Kyp Durron made a tapping motion with his finger, and the barrel sagged, causing the weapon to misfire and explode. A platoon of black-armored GAG commandos rushed through a hatchway, streaming fire from T-21 repeating blasters; Luke glanced at a nearby shuttle and sent it tumbling into their line.

  Behind the Masters followed the much larger body of Jedi Knights, fanning out in teams of two and three, securing hatchways, disarming—sometimes literally—tenacious fighters who refused to surrender, seizing control of vital components including the containment field and ventilation system. Within moments the Jedi controlled the hangar, and the few GAG commandos who had not already died or surrendered were either fleeing or tossing their weapons aside.

  Han set the Falcon down, then unbuckled and turned to Leia. Her eyes were already fixed out the forward viewport, focused somewhere beyond, and she had The Look. Han’s heart dropped—his entire being dropped. He had seen that look only twice before, once when Anakin had died and once when she had thought Luke was dead, and he had spent every minute of Jaina’s hunt terrified that he was going to see it again. And he didn’t know if they could stand it—if even he and Leia were strong enough to handle the loss of their last child.

  Unable to sit still, and unable to bring himself to ask Leia, Han turned to his missile control panel and began to enter a new set of specifications.

  “Threepio, go load the baradium missile.”

  “The baradium missile, Captain Solo?” C-3PO asked from the navigator’s
station behind him. “I don’t believe Master Skywalker’s plan calls for a baradium missile.”

  “It doesn’t,” Han said. “You heard Tenel Ka’s announcement. They killed Allana. If Jaina is gone, too, nobody who was a part of it is leaving this …”

  Han felt Leia’s hand on his arm and let his sentence trail off, but he didn’t look over. He was just too afraid.

  “Han, we need to hurry.” A click sounded from the copilot’s seat as she unbuckled her crash webbing. “Jaina’s still alive.”

  Han’s throat tightened. “Still?”

  He didn’t know whether to let his breath out or hold it until his heart started to beat again, but he rose to leave—and that was when he saw that Leia still had The Look.

  “Leia?” he asked. “What—”

  “It’s Jacen.” Her voice cracked, and her hand slid down his arm to grab his. “Jaina got him.”

  When the disposal pit door opened, Jaina was sitting on the floor where shadow became light, holding Jacen’s head in her lap and whispering that he wasn’t really dead—that he would always have a place in her heart, now that she could finally feel their twin bond again.

  Except that Jaina wasn’t actually whispering the words. She wasn’t even thinking them, really. Imagining might have been a better way to describe it, or experiencing. She was more a witness to her thoughts than their author, lost in that hazy netherworld of anguish that existed only in the narrow margin between wakefulness and death.

  So when Jagged Fel rushed into the disposal pit and began yelling that he’d found her, that they needed to hurry, she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing. She thought maybe he had come to join her and Jacen, and that made her a little sad, though she couldn’t quite figure out why.

  Then Jag knelt at her side and tried to pull Jacen away, and that made her angry. She Force-hurled Jag away, yelling what she had meant to be Don’t touch him, but came out as “Doonguchem.”