Rebirth: Edge of Victory II

by Greg Keyes

  It wasn’t going to happen. Coralskippers contracted around the ship in a sphere, and the shields flared with the effort of absorbing the energy of the constant plasma bombardment. All too soon, the shields failed, and the next round of hits were to the drive.

  “So long,” Corran said. Then the Lucre was an expanding fury of superheated helium and metal fragments.

  “Wow,” Tahiri breathed. Her voice sounded tinny in the helmet of Anakin’s vac suit. “That didn’t take long.”

  “No,” Anakin said. It had only been minutes since they set the ship off on its preprogrammed suicide course and launched themselves from the hatch under cover of a barrage of laser and missile fire. In the five minutes it had taken them to reach the asteroid’s surface, the Lucre’s brief solo career had begun and ended.

  “No gawking,” Corran said. “There’s a fissure over there. Let’s move toward that. They might get the bright idea to search here at any moment.”

  Tahiri took a step in the desired direction and was suddenly floating away from the surface. She yelped, flailing her arms.

  Corran caught her foot, and her momentum pulled him off his feet. Anakin grabbed them both with the Force and brought them back to the asteroid’s surface.

  “Don’t walk,” Corran advised. “The gravity here is negligible, just enough to give your inner ear a sense of up and down. Don’t let it fool you—the escape velocity of this rock is about five kilometers an hour, if that. Pull yourselves along.” He maneuvered himself so his body was parallel to the surface and began doing just that, grasping at the uneven stone. Tahiri and Anakin followed his example, as silly as it felt. Anakin glanced often at the space around them, but none of the Yuuzhan Vong ships seemed to be moving in their direction.

  They reached the fissure, a cleft that dropped slantwise into the asteroid for about twenty meters. Because of the angle, at the bottom of it they could see only a narrow slice of starscape. That was good, because it meant only a small slice of the starscape could see them.

  “Now what? Anakin asked.

  “Now we wait.” Corran carefully shrugged off the metal case he’d worn like a backpack. “With the survival kit, we can hold out for maybe three days. Hopefully the fleet will move out before then, and we can activate the emergency beacon. Given considerably more luck, a ship will happen by and pick us up.”

  “That’s a lot of luck,” Anakin remarked.

  “Well, if nothing else, maybe this will teach you that luck isn’t the bottomless well you seem to think it is,” Corran said.

  “We might have tried to run for it,” Anakin said peevishly.

  “You saw what happened.”

  “I can fly better than a computer.”

  “Not that much better,” Corran said.

  “But now we’re stuck here. This fleet must be the danger Kelbis Nu was trying to warn us about. If we wait for it to leave, it’ll be too late to warn Yag’Dhul.”

  “Well, you have a blaster and a lightsaber,” Corran said dryly. “Given your opinion of yourself, you might as well take on the fleet with those.”

  Anakin felt Corran’s sarcasm like a physical blow, and it stung. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “No doubt,” Corran replied.

  “Captain Horn,” Tahiri said suddenly, “if it weren’t for Anakin trying to do the right thing, your kids would be Yuuzhan Vong captives right now. In fact, along with me and the rest of the candidates, they would basically be Yuuzhan Vong. He got us out of that; he’ll get us out of this.”

  Corran was silent for a moment. “You know I’m grateful for what you did on Yavin Four, Anakin. Tahiri’s right. But I’m afraid you learned the wrong lesson there, and Tahiri along with you. You can’t stroll up to every reactor going supercritical and walk away again. You aren’t immortal, and you aren’t invincible. So far your quick thinking and strength in the Force have just barely managed to counterbalance your recklessness. But one day, the fraction is going to tip on the other side of the line. Maybe it already has. If you don’t come to terms with that, you’re going to get a nasty surprise.”

  Anakin thought of Chewie, of Daeshara’cor, of Vua Rapuung, the Yuuzhan Vong who had saved his life. All dead now. “Everyone gets a nasty surprise someday,” he said. “I’d rather get it standing up than lying down.”

  “Getting killed isn’t the only danger, Anakin. You rely heavily on the Force. It informs your every action. Just now you pulled Tahiri and me back to the surface of the asteroid with it, when you might have done so with your hand.”

  “And I might have drifted off with you. It was easier, more certain.”

  “And you made that decision reflexively, without thinking. In emergency situations, in battle, you make a lot of decisions like that. If you make the wrong one—”

  “I’ll go to the dark side,” Anakin said. “So I keep hearing.”

  “Being cavalier about it won’t help.”

  “Captain Horn, I’ve thought about the dark side for most of my life. My mother named me after the man who became Darth Vader. The Emperor touched me through her womb. Every night I had nightmares that ended with me in my grandfather’s armor. With all due respect, I think I’ve probably thought a lot more about the dark side than anyone I know.”

  “Probably. Inoculation doesn’t make you immune.”

  “It does in medicine,” Anakin said.

  “I’m guilty of a bad analogy then. I do not stand corrected on the point.”

  “This is going to be a fun three days,” Tahiri said.

  A standard day passed, though of course they only knew that by their chronometers. The asteroid wheeled slowly, about once every four hours. Anakin spent much of his time watching the fleet through the narrow window the fissure left them, trying to estimate how many ships there were. With electrobinoculars, he managed to reckon at least four capital ship analogs and as many as thirty smaller warcraft. That wasn’t counting coralskippers, of which about one-third were at any given time flying patrol. The rest remained docked to their larger brethren.

  Anakin drew his lightsaber and closed his eyes, concentrating, trying to feel the Yuuzhan Vong ships through the blade’s lambent heart. They were there, a faint presence, with none of the clarity offered by the Force. On the other hand, the Force offered nothing at all where the Yuuzhan Vong were concerned.

  “You can feel them,” Corran’s voice burred.

  Anakin turned. Corran was pulling himself gingerly along the fissure wall.

  “Yeah. A little.”

  “I wonder if we can get our hands on a few more of—what did you call them?”

  “Lambents.”

  On Yavin 4, the crystal in Anakin’s lightsaber had been destroyed by a close brush with the singularity of a dovin basal. Pretending to be a slave, working the fields that grew various sorts of Yuuzhan Vong greenware, he’d been assigned to work a field of lambents. The plants produced small living crystals that the Yuuzhan Vong used for hand torches and valence inputs. The crystals were controlled via a telepathic bond formed when the crystals were harvested. Anakin had bonded with a lambent and used it to rebuild his lightsaber, with the unexpected result that he could now occasionally sense the Yuuzhan Vong and their living servants. It had given him the edge he needed to survive Yavin 4 and rescue Tahiri.

  “Right, lambents. If we could build more lightsabers like yours, it could be a big help to us.”

  “I don’t know. Uncle Luke examined mine. He couldn’t get the lambent to react to him at all when he turned the lightsaber on.”

  “Because it’s bonded to you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Anakin replied. “The Yuuzhan Vong use lambents attuned to other Vong. You’d think my lambent would react to other humans, since I attuned it. Anyway, to get more, we’d have to stage a raid on some Yuuzhan Vong ag planet. That would probably be too aggressive, for Jedi.” He fought and failed to keep an ironic tone from the statement.

  Corran had r
eached him now. The mirrored faceplate of the vac suit still gave back only stars, but he could feel the older man’s serious expression.

  “Anakin, switch to a private channel.”

  “Hey!” Tahiri broadcast, from somewhere.

  “I need to talk to Anakin alone,” Corran said. “It won’t take long.”

  “Better not. It’s spooky enough out here without you guys getting all secretive on me.”

  They changed frequencies. “Look, Anakin,” Corran began. “I was a little hard on you back there. But I want you to understand that it’s not just about you. You may not know it, but all of the younger Jedi and a lot of the older ones look up to you. The buzz is you’re the next Luke Sky-walker, at the very least.”

  “I don’t encourage those rumors,” Anakin said. “I don’t like them.”

  “I believe that. It’s also irrelevant. They’re starting to emulate you. Tahiri, back on Eriadu and on Yavin Four—classic Anakin. On Yavin Four, Sannah and my son, Valin, were trying to be like you when they pulled their foolish stunt. All the candidates want to be like you, but the fact is, most of them can’t. They don’t have the raw strength or the talent to pull themselves out of the kind of scrapes you get into. Part of being a Jedi is setting an example.”

  “I know that,” Anakin said.

  “And believe it or not, you can still learn a thing or two from your elders.”

  “I know that, too, Corran. I’m sorry if I’ve been disrespectful.” He paused. “And I’m sorry I led Valin into danger. I didn’t mean to. It never occurred to me that he would follow me.”

  “But he did,” Corran said gently. “He’s lucky you were there to get him out of it. As Tahiri was lucky on Eriadu.”

  “Yeah. Corran?”

  “Yes?”

  Anakin deliberated a moment before continuing. “About Tahiri.”

  “You’re worried about her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to explain why?”

  Anakin almost did, but then he shook his head. “I want to think about it some more. And I want to talk to her.”

  Corran chuckled softly. “Well, we’ve got nothing but time. I’m sure you’ll find an opportunity soon enough. Just give me the sign if you want me to switch channels.”

  “Thanks. And Corran?”

  “Yes?”

  “I do respect you. But you flew with Rogue Squadron. Weren’t you ever the least bit reckless?”

  Corran’s mirrored face stared back at him. “Yes,” he said. “And one day, hopefully, you’ll be able to understand something about what it cost me.”

  It didn’t take long for Tahiri to come over, curious as to what he and Corran had been discussing.

  “Why are they just sitting there?” she asked, waving a gloved hand at the visible stripe of stars and ships above them.

  “Any number of reasons,” Anakin replied. “They may be waiting for more ships, or for some sign from their gods.”

  “Yeah.” She stepped forward a little too hard and bounced up. She steadied herself against the slanting stone. “Are we going to make it through this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Anakin said, without hesitation.

  “I thought so.” She nevertheless sounded a little scared.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She moved until they could touch.

  “Switch off your comm and touch your helmet to mine.” It’s not that he didn’t trust Corran not to listen, but after all, the man had been in espionage most of his life.

  Tahiri did as he said, and their helmets met with a soft thunk. He couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine it there, centimeters from his own. He could almost see her eyes.

  “What’s the big secret?” she asked. Coming through two layers of alloy, her voice sounded distant and metallic.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Do we need to talk about what happened back on Eriadu?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Anakin hesitantly pushed on. “That was a Yuuzhan Vong battle cry. When you broke in to rescue me.”

  “I know. It just sort of … came out. Anakin, all of the words they put in me are still there. The other stuff faded, or most of it. But their language—I still hear it. Sometimes I think in it.”

  “It, um, worries me.”

  “It shouldn’t. I’m okay.”

  He wound up his courage a little tighter. “I should have told you this a while back,” he said. “I waited because you already had enough to worry about, after we got off Yavin Four.”

  “What?”

  “I had a vision about you. At least I think it was a vision.”

  “Go on.”

  “You were grown up. You were, umm, scarred up and tattooed like Tsavong Lah. You were Jedi, but dark. I could feel the darkness radiating from you.”

  “Oh.”

  “It worried me.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this? You didn’t think I should know?”

  “When you killed the shaper, I saw the look in your eyes. The look she had.”

  “By she you mean me, of course. The she I might have been if you hadn’t rescued me.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You don’t think … you don’t still think that could happen to me? That I could end up like the me in your vision? How could I? You saved me from them, stopped them before they finished.”

  “I thought so. Think so. But when you came through that door speaking Yuuzhan Vong—”

  “It’s nothing,” Tahiri insisted. “It’s just words. And I would never hurt you.”

  That rang strange. “Who said anything about you hurting me?” Anakin asked.

  “I just assumed, in your vision, I was threatening you.”

  “No,” he said, a little suspicious but not willing to push it. Had she had a vision, too? She somehow didn’t sound surprised at his. “No,” he continued, “it was like I was looking through someone else’s eyes, not my own. I don’t think I was there. But whoever was—you said something about them being the last. Just before you killed them.”

  “Anakin, I’ll never join the Yuuzhan Vong. Believe it.” Even through two helmets, her voice rang with utter conviction.

  “Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you. I thought you ought to know.”

  “Thanks. Thanks for not keeping me in the dark.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Their helmets were still touching, and she didn’t say anything else. He was glad he couldn’t see her face, because he would have had to look away.

  And yet he wished he could see it.

  Her gloved hand came up slowly. He took it and felt something almost like an electric jolt. They stood that way for a long time, until Anakin felt suddenly very … awkward.

  He was about to let go when the asteroid suddenly began to vibrate, a faint tactile buzz coming from everywhere. At the same time, Anakin felt weight, dragging him not toward the surface of the asteroid, but against the wall of the fissure.

  “What?” He suddenly thought to switch his comm back on.

  “… under acceleration!” Corran was shouting.

  It took only an instant for the implications of that to sink in. Then Anakin flicked on his lightsaber. The blade limned the stone around them in purple light.

  Anakin sliced through the stone, five strokes that set a chunk of nickel-steel floating to butt against the new “down” of the fissure wall.

  The stone went down only about twenty centimeters. Below that was yorik coral.

  “This is a ship, too!” Corran shouted.

  To prove him correct, the g forces continued to mount.

  NINETEEN

  Jaina was awakened by a blaring horn and the arrhythmic thumping of running feet. She sat up, trying to remember where she was.

  The walls, ceiling, and floor were of blue-black ice. She’d been sleeping in her flight suit inside a thermoskin. Right, she had it now. Kyp’s hideout.

  The
other two people sleeping in the chamber—a human female named Yara and a disheveled Bothan whose name she had forgotten—were clambering to their feet. Jaina shrugged on her parka and followed them into the corridor and down to the command center.

  Kyp was there, calmly giving orders. He saw Jaina and smiled, and she felt that funny little twist in her stomach again.

  “Good morning,” Kyp said. “Sleep well?”

  “Not bad, considering my bed was a block of ice,” she replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Yuuzhan Vong recon just popped into the system. Not much of an outfit, but I don’t want them to find us here. If we hurry, we can jet out the back way before they’re any the wiser.” He locked his gaze on her. “That means I’m going to have to ask for your decision—now. If you won’t take this to someone in the military, I’ll have to do it alone. I’ll never convince them, but I have to try.”

  His sincerity and urgency burned fiercely in the Force. Jaina remembered the column of sunfire, creeping toward the Yuuzhan Vong weapon. It wasn’t as if Kyp didn’t have proof. She at least owed his evidence a hearing, didn’t she?

  “I’ll go to Rogue Squadron with it,” she said. “It’s the only place I know where I might still be welcome, and Colonel Darklighter will know what to do. But I’ll need your data.”

  “Packed up and ready to go. And I’m going with you, just to make sure you get there.”

  “That might not be a good idea. If Uncle Luke isn’t safe on Coruscant, I can’t imagine you would be.”

  “Or you, for that matter,” Kyp added. “After all, you were last seen fleeing with them. I was hoping you could arrange a rendezvous someplace else.”

  Jaina hesitated. “We could try that—I could send a message to Colonel Darklighter. But what if the Yuuzhan Vong or the Peace Brigade traces the communication?”

  “You’re a smart young woman. I’m sure you can think of someplace you and Darklighter know that you can refer to obliquely.”

  “Sure, probably.”

  Kyp’s grin expanded again. “Good.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bay. “I took the liberty of refueling your X-wing and giving it the once-over. I’m afraid there’s no time for you to give it a personal inspection. We’ve gotta haul jets.”