Conquest: Edge of Victory I

by Greg Keyes

  “Sometimes I don’t think I worry enough.”

  “Worry?” Mara said softly. She took his hand and placed it against her belly. “You want worry? Listen.”

  Once more she enfolded him in the Force, and once more they merged toward one another and the third life in the room, the one growing inside of Mara. Tentatively, hesitantly, Luke reached in to touch his son.

  The heart was beating, a simple beautiful rhythm, and around it drifted something like a melody, an awareness both alien and familiar, sensations like taste and smell and sight but not like them at all, a universe with no light but with all of the warmth and security in the world.

  “Amazing,” he murmured. “That you can give him that. That you can be that for him.”

  “It’s humbling,” she said. “It’s worrisome. What if I make a mistake? What if my sickness comes back? And worst of all—” She paused, and he waited, knowing she would get to it in time. “It’s easy, in a way. To protect him now, all I have to do is protect myself, and I’ve been doing that my whole life. Right now, my life is his life. But after he’s born, it will never be like that again. That’s the part that worries me.”

  Luke wrapped his arm around her and hugged. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “I promise you.”

  “You can’t promise that, any more than you can hold the young Jedi inside of you or keep them safe. It’s the same. It’s the same fear, Luke.”

  “Of course,” he replied. “Of course it is.”

  They sat and watched the skies of Coruscant, and spoke no more until someone came to their door.

  “Speak and they will come,” Luke murmured. “It’s the Solo children.”

  “I can send them away.”

  “No. They need to talk to me.” He raised his voice. “Come on in.”

  He stood and brightened the lights. Anakin, Jaina, and Jacen entered.

  “Sorry we left the meeting,” Jaina said.

  “I knew what you were doing, and I thank you for trying. Kyp—Kyp must walk his own path for a while. But that’s not why you came, is it?”

  “No,” Jacen said. “We’re worried about the Jedi academy.”

  “Right,” Anakin joined in. “It occurred to me that if I were Peace Brigade, and wanted to catch a bunch of Jedi all at once—”

  “You’d go to Yavin Four. Good thinking.”

  Anakin’s face fell visibly. “You already thought of it.”

  Luke nodded. “Don’t feel bad. It was only a few days ago that we had enough reports to spot the trend and realize just how seriously the warmaster’s promise has been taken. Trying to deal with all the local fires, trying to find government support to put a stop to this or at least slow it down, I didn’t realize that there are no longer enough mature Jedi in the system to maintain the illusion we were projecting.”

  “So what do we do?” Jacen asked.

  “I requested the New Republic send a ship to evacuate them, but they’re dragging their heels. They might continue to for weeks.”

  “We can’t wait that long!” Jaina said.

  “No,” Luke agreed. “I’ve been trying to find Booster Terrik. I think the best thing for the moment would be to not only evacuate the academy but keep the kids on the move, in the Errant Venture. If we just move them to another planet, we don’t really solve the problem.”

  “So they’re with Booster?” Anakin said.

  “I can’t locate him, unfortunately. I’m still working on it.”

  “Talon Karrde,” Mara said softly.

  “Perfect,” Luke said. “You know where to find him?”

  “What do you think?” Mara said, smirking.

  “But what if the Peace Brigade is already at Yavin Four, or on the way?” Anakin asked.

  “It’s the best we can do, for the moment,” Luke told him. “Besides, the danger is still hypothetical. The Peace Brigade might not even know about Yavin Four. And even if they did, Kam and Tionne and Master Ikrit are there. They aren’t exactly defenseless.”

  “It’s not the best-kept secret in the galaxy,” Jacen said. “And with the illusion gone, what could Kam do against a warship? Let us go.”

  “Out of the question,” Luke replied. “I need you all here, and with the bounty on our heads—especially your head, Jacen—it’s too dangerous for you to go off alone. Your parents would never forgive me if I sent you into that with them away.”

  “Ask them, then,” Jaina said.

  “I can’t. They’re out of contact now, and could be for some time.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least go check on the praxeum?” Jaina persisted. “We could just hide at the edge of the system until Karrde shows up, keep an eye on things, run back here to report if things go wrong.”

  Luke shook his head. “I know you’re all restless, especially you, Jaina. But your eyes still haven’t fully healed—”

  “Not to Rogue Squadron specs, maybe,” Jaina protested, “but I can see well enough to fly.”

  “Even if your vision were fully restored,” Luke went on, “I still don’t think sending any or all of you to Yavin Four is the most productive course. There’s important work to do here. Weren’t you just telling Kyp that, Jaina, Jacen?”

  “Yes, Uncle Luke,” Jacen said. “We were.”

  “Anakin? You haven’t said much.”

  Anakin shrugged. “There isn’t much to say, is there?”

  Luke detected something a bit dangerous in that, but it quickly passed.

  “I’m glad the three of you are thinking about the situation. We agree that the academy is one of our most vulnerable spots. Help me find the rest. Don’t think for a second I’ve thought of everything, because obviously I haven’t. And don’t forget, we’ll reconvene the meeting tomorrow morning.”

  The three of them nodded and left.

  When they were gone, Mara clucked. “They might be right.”

  Luke sighed again. “They might be. But I have a feeling that whoever goes to Yavin Four must go in force, or they won’t be leaving it again. I’ve learned to trust feelings like this.”

  “You should have told them that, then,” Mara said.

  He flashed her a sardonic smile. “Then they would have gone for sure.”

  Mara took his hand. “No rest for the weary. I’ll contact Karrde.” She touched her belly again. “Meanwhile, Skywalker, find me something to eat. Something big and still bleeding.”

  Anakin checked over the systems indicators.

  “How do we look, Fiver?” he asked quietly, studying the cockpit readout display.

  SYSTEMS WITHIN OPTIMUM VARIANTS, the R7 unit assured him.

  “Good. Just hang on while I get clearance. Meanwhile calculate the first jump in the series to get me to the Yavin system.”

  That took a certain amount of finagling, including forging a code that would allow him to fly without a check that might alert Uncle Luke or anyone else who would try to stop him.

  Because Uncle Luke was wrong, this time. Anakin could feel it in his very center. The Jedi trainees were in grave danger; Talon Karrde would not get there in time. It might already be too late.

  It was strange that Uncle Luke still insisted on thinking of Anakin as a child. Anakin had killed Yuuzhan Vong. He had seen friends die and caused the deaths of others. He was responsible for the destruction of countless ships and the beings who crewed them, and that only scratched the most recent skin of the matter.

  It was a blind spot the adults in his life had, an ambivalence and a denial. They didn’t understand who he really was, only what he appeared to be. Even his mother and Uncle Luke, who had the Force to help them.

  Aunt Mara probably understood—she had never really been a child, either—but even she was blinkered by her relationship with Uncle Luke; she had to take his feelings into account, as well as her own.

  Well, there would be anger. He could explain to Uncle Luke about the feeling he had in the Force, but that might only alert the Master to Anakin’s certainty in this matter. Even if U
ncle Luke could be convinced to send someone now, it might be someone else, someone older. But Anakin knew it had to be him, he had to go. If he didn’t, his best friend was doomed to a fate much worse than death.

  It was the only thing in his life he was really sure of right now.

  “Cleared for takeoff,” the port control said.

  “Power it up, Fiver,” Anakin murmured. “We’ve got someplace to be.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  When the stars rushed back into existence, Anakin put his XJ X-wing into a lazy tumble and cut power to everything but sensors and minimal life support. Ordinarily he wouldn’t play it so cautious; after all, someone would almost have to be watching for the hyperwave ripples of an X-wing entering the system to have any chance of detecting it. But given the feeling in his gut, there might just be someone doing that.

  The roll and yaw he’d put the X-wing in wasn’t random, but was designed to give his instruments a full accounting of the surrounding space in the least possible time. While the sensors did their job, Anakin reached out with the sense he trusted most—the Force.

  The planet Yavin filled most of his view, its vast orange oceans of gas boiling into fractal, elusive patterns. Its familiar face had marked the days and nights of much of his childhood. The praxeum—his uncle Luke’s Jedi academy—was located on Yavin 4, a moon of the gas giant. He could remember watching Yavin in the night sky, a colossal mirage of a planet, wondering what could be there, pushing his evolving Force senses to explore it.

  He’d found clouds of methane and ammonia deeper than oceans, hydrogen so stressed by pressure it became metal, life crushed thinner than paper but still thriving, cyclones heavier than lead but faster than the winds of any world habitable by humans. And crystals, sparkling Corusca gems climbing those titan winds, spinning in an ancient dance, capturing what light they could find in the thinner upper atmosphere and gripping it tight in their molecules.

  He saw none of this as one might with eyes, of course, but over the nights, through the Force he had felt them, and with references to the library gradually understood them.

  In his imagination he had seen more. Pieces of the first Death Star, which had met its end in these very skies, pounded into monomolecular foil by fierce pressure and gravity. Older things, relics of Sith, and species even more lost and distant in time. Once a planet like Yavin swallowed a secret, it wasn’t likely to give it up again. Given the other secrets that had turned up in the Yavin system—and the Sun Crusher Kyp Durron himself had once managed to pull from the belly of the orange giant—that was for the best.

  Just beyond the vast rim of Yavin, a bright yellowish star winked—Yavin 8, one of the three moons in the system blessed with life. Anakin had a friend there, a native of that world who had trained briefly at the academy and returned home. He could feel her, very faintly. Yavin 4 was just around the rim, where he had other friends. In a way, the whole system was like a familiar room to Anakin, the sort he could walk into and immediately know if something was out of place.

  And something felt very out of place.

  In the Force he could feel the Jedi candidates, for they were all strong with it. He could feel Kam Solusar and his wife Tionne, and the ancient Ikrit, not students but full-fledged Jedi. These were seen as through a cloud, suggesting they were at least trying to maintain the illusion that hid Yavin 4 from the casual eye.

  But even through that, one presence shone brilliant, made brighter by familiarity and friendship. Tahiri.

  She felt him, too, and though he could not quite hear any actual words she might be trying to send, he did feel a sort of rhythm, as of someone talking quickly, excitedly, without pause for breath.

  One corner of Anakin’s mouth turned up. Yes, that was Tahiri, all right.

  What felt wrong was a little nearer and much weaker. Not Yuuzhan Vong, for they could not be felt in the Force, but someone who shouldn’t be there. Someone slightly confused, but with a growing sense of confidence.

  “Hang on, Fiver,” he told his astromech. “Get ready to run or fight in a hurry. It might just be Talon Karrde and his crew here ahead of schedule, but I’d sooner bet against Lando Calrissian in sabacc than to count on it.”

  AFFIRMATIVE, the display blinked.

  They tumbled into sensor range, and his computer built a silhouette from the magnified image.

  “That’s not so bad,” he murmured. “One Corellian light transport. Maybe it is one of Karrde’s bunch.” Or maybe not. And maybe there were a hundred Yuuzhan Vong ships on the other side of the gas giant or Yavin 4, invisible to his Jedi senses and hidden from his sensors. Whatever the case, waiting around wasn’t going to improve matters. He powered up, corrected his tumble, and engaged the ion engines.

  He activated his comm system and hailed the stranger. “Transport, acknowledge.”

  For a few moments, he got nothing, then the audio crackled. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Anakin Solo. What are you doing in the Yavin system?”

  “We’re Corusca gem miners.”

  “Really. Where’s your trawler?”

  Another pause, then words underlined with a bit of anger.

  “We can see the moon now. We knew it was here all along. Your Jedi sorcery has failed you.”

  THE TRANSPORT IS ARMING WEAPONS SYSTEMS, Fiver noticed. Anakin nodded grimly as the other vessel swung toward him.

  “I’m only warning you once,” Anakin said. “Stand down.”

  For an answer, he got a blast from a laser cannon, which at that distance he managed to avoid as easily as he might deflect a blaster shot with his lightsaber.

  “Gee,” Anakin muttered. “I suppose that says it all.” He opened his S-foils. “Fiver, give me evasive approach six, but I still want the stick just in case.”

  ACKNOWLEDGED.

  He dropped toward Yavin 4 and the transport at full thrust, spinning and dancing as he went, and when he felt his target firmly enough in the Force, he sliced the night of vacuum with ruby red. The transport returned fire and began its own evasive maneuvers, but that was like a bantha trying to dodge a mace fly.

  They had good shields, though. As Anakin completed his first pass, his opponent was still essentially untouched. To make matters more interesting, four winks of blue flame and his instruments agreed that the transport had just fired proton torpedoes at him. Anakin had been preparing to turn for another pass; instead he continued his noseward plunge toward the moon.

  “Four proton torpedoes. These guys really don’t like us, Fiver.”

  THE TRANSPORT SEEMS HOSTILE, Fiver acknowledged. Anakin sighed. Fiver was a more advanced astromech than R2-D2, but he missed his uncle’s droid’s personality at times. Maybe he ought to do something about that.

  Two laser blasts hit his shields in quick succession, but they did their job. On his tracker, the proton torpedoes continued to close as Anakin met resistance from the atmosphere. He plunged on, and the ship began to vibrate faintly. His nose and wings were starting to heat up from the upper atmosphere. If he didn’t time this exactly right, he would scatter all over the jungle kilometers below.

  When the lead torp was almost on him, he cut his engines and yanked the nose up. The atmosphere, still thin, was nevertheless able to give the XJ X-wing a good strong slap, hurling him away from the moon. Servos whined and something somewhere made a startling ping. Using the momentum from the atmospheric skip, Anakin turned further spaceward, blood rushing from his head as the g’s mounted, then he kicked in the engines again.

  Behind him, the proton torpedoes didn’t fare as well. They tried to turn after him, of course. Two didn’t make it, and continued plunging moonward. The other two skipped along wildly different courses than Anakin and would never find him again before running out of fuel.

  “Nice try,” Anakin said grimly. Now he was climbing uphill, out of the gravity well, his lasers pumping a steady rhythm. He took another hit from the enemy’s more powerful gun, and for an instant the lights dimmed in the coc
kpit. Then they flared back to life as Fiver rerouted, and Anakin took a hammer to the transport. Their shields faltered, and he slagged their primary generator. Looping around them nose to tail, he drilled laser turrets, torpedo ports, and engines.

  Then he tried the comm again. “Ready to talk now?” he asked.

  “Why not?” the voice from the other end replied. “You can still surrender if you want.”

  “That’s—” Anakin began, but Fiver interrupted.

  HYPERSPACE JUMP DETECTED. 12 VESSELS HAVE ARRIVED, DISTANCE 100,000 KILOMETERS.

  “Sith spit!” Anakin muttered, bringing his sensors to bear.

  They weren’t Yuuzhan Vong ships, he saw that immediately, just a motley collection of E-wings, transports, and corvettes.

  They were hailing him. He opened the link.

  “Unidentified vessel, this is the Peace Brigade,” a voice crackled. “Stand down and surrender, and you won’t be harmed.”

  They were too far away to hit him. Soon they wouldn’t be. Anakin closed his S-foils, rolled, opened the throttle, and raced toward the distant viridian of Yavin 4.

  Anakin vaulted from the cockpit of the X-wing into silent near darkness. A twilight line of illumination in the distance was the entrance he had flown through into what had once been a part of an ancient Massassi temple complex, much later the central hangar for the Rebel fleet, and which now saw little use at all, since most ships landing at the academy set down outside.

  Anakin’s flight boots scuffed the ancient stone surface, and the sound grew around him into the hushed beating of enormous wings. He smelled stone and lubricant and more faintly the musky jungle outside.

  Someone was watching Anakin from the darkness.

  “Who is that?” a voice asked, each word stretching to fill the abyss.

  “It’s me, Kam. Anakin.”

  A faint glow appeared, and then a bank of light panels came on. Some ten meters away Kam Solusar stood, hooking his lightsaber back into his belt.

  “I thought it felt like you,” Kam said. “But there’s been an unknown ship in orbit for several standard days now. We’ve been trying to keep them confused.”