by Greg Keyes
Anakin came to with the taste of blood on his tongue. He didn’t know if he had been out for seconds or days, and a glance at the controls didn’t help. Through the cockpit transparisteel he could see only crushed vegetation.
“Sannah! Valin!”
“They’re okay,” Remis Vehn said from behind Anakin. “A little battered, but no worse for the wear.”
Anakin twisted in his seat and found himself confronting the muzzle of a blaster. He blinked, then looked up at the young man’s cool gray eyes.
“You want to put that down, don’t you?” Anakin asked, pushing with the Force.
“Well …,” Vehn considered.
“You’ll put it down,” Anakin commanded.
“Sure,” Vehn replied. “I’ll put it down.”
“Great.” Anakin unfastened himself from the flight harness. He took the blaster and stuck it in his belt.
“Vaping moffs!” Vehn swore. “You Jedi are sorcerers.”
“Keep it sealed,” Anakin warned him, turning to Sannah.
Sannah was unconscious but breathing evenly. Valin was awake, but the hull near him had crimped in such a way that Sannah’s harness was stuck. Anakin sliced through it with his lightsaber. The Melodie girl moaned softly.
“Vehn, carry Sannah out,” Anakin told the Peace Brigader. “The ship may have a few surprises for us yet.”
“My ship,” Vehn said. “I can’t believe what you did to my ship.”
“Your buddies did it,” Anakin said. “The same buddies who just murdered a Jedi Master and took my best friend captive. Don’t expect me to cry any tears for you.”
“First of all,” Vehn said, “they aren’t my buddies. I was strictly in this business for the money, and I thought we were taking on adult Jedi, not little kids. Second of all, I don’t expect you to get all weepy, but without my ship, how do you plan to get off this snarly jungle?”
Anakin didn’t answer Vehn, but examined Valin instead. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Can you walk?”
“I’m fine,” Valin answered.
“Good. I want you to go outside and find cover in the trees. Be careful—the jungle isn’t exactly safe, though the crash probably scared most everything off.”
He then examined Sannah. She was bruised, but he didn’t sense anything seriously wrong with her.
“Take Sannah out,” he repeated to Vehn. “I’m right behind you.”
On his way out, he picked up the stun cuffs.
“This isn’t right,” Remis Vehn complained. “You just finished talking about how dangerous the jungle is and you not only won’t give me a weapon, you’ve restrained me. What if something comes along wanting lunch?”
“It would have to be a carrion eater to stomach the likes of you,” Anakin replied.
“Very funny. I helped you.”
“You really think you’re going to get thanks from me?” Anakin snorted. “You were saving your own skin, nothing more. Now, quiet.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Valin asked, staring down at Sannah.
“I think so.” Anakin touched the Melodie girl’s forehead and very lightly brushed her with the Force, strengthening her where she was weak, gently tugging her toward consciousness.
With a faint sigh she opened her eyes, blinked at Anakin, then started violently.
“Tahiri!” she gasped.
“Shh,” Anakin said. “We crashed. You’re banged up, some. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been poisoned by a purella and hung up in its web. Is Valin okay?”
“I’m right here,” Valin answered.
“We’re all okay,” Anakin assured her.
Tears started in the girl’s yellow eyes. “No, we’re not. Master Ikrit, and Tahiri …”
“Master Ikrit sacrificed himself for us,” Anakin said, around the gall in his throat. “He wouldn’t want us to grieve. He’s one with the Force now. Tahiri—”
“She’s dead, too, isn’t she?” Valin asked.
“No.” Anakin shook his head. “I can hear her in the Force.” Calling me, he added. He could feel her fear, mixed liberally with anger. He didn’t get the sense that she was in immediate danger.
Anakin turned toward Vehn, who sat a few meters away, his arms cuffed around a young Massassi tree. “What will they do with her, Vehn? Where were you supposed to take the children you kidnapped?”
“I told you, I didn’t know our targets were children,” Vehn said sullenly. “And I don’t know where we were supposed to take them.”
“But you were supposed to turn them over to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
Vehn studied the leaves above his head. “Yes,” he said at last.
“Where? Where is the rendezvous?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Look—”
“I can make you tell me,” Anakin warned. “You won’t like it.” It occurred to him that his brother, Jacen, wouldn’t approve of that sort of threat, nor would Uncle Luke. At the moment, Anakin didn’t care.
Vehn fidgeted, but said nothing. Anakin suddenly surged to his feet and stalked toward the Peace Brigader.
“Hold it! Just wait a second, Jedi. Don’t slag my brain! I don’t know much, but I can tell you something I overheard. Something I wasn’t supposed to hear at all.”
Anakin took another step, then squatted until his ice-blue eyes were millimeters from Vehn’s dark gray. “Well?” he prompted.
“I’m not supposed to know this, but—the Yuuzhan Vong were planning to come to this miserable hole already. The Peace Brigade decided to head ’em off, capture you guys before they arrived.”
“What, to save them the trouble?”
“Exactly. A present, of sorts. These Peace Brigade guys, they’re serious. They really think everyone in the galaxy is doomed unless we give the Vong what they want, and then some.”
“Why do you say ‘these Peace Brigade guys’ as if you aren’t one of them?”
“They hired me to pilot. That’s all.”
Anakin frowned, but let that pass. “What will the Peace Brigade do now that they’ve botched the job?”
“How do you know they’ve botched it? They figured out you hid the other kids someplace. They have some pretty good trackers and search equipment with them.”
“They won’t find anyone,” Anakin said. “What will they do? The Yuuzhan Vong might assume the Brigade really came here to hide the kids. At the very least they’ll be upset that you were so inept you let thirty or more Jedi slip through your fingers and caught only one.”
Vehn looked thoughtful. “They might cut and run. They might try to bluff it out with their one captive. I don’t know them well enough to say.”
“Anakin,” Sannah said softly. “You and Tahiri saved my people. I can’t let anything happen to her. I can’t.”
“Why didn’t you think of that earlier?” Anakin snapped. “You three should have gone with Kam and Tionne. You thought this was all some sort of game. It isn’t.”
“Anakin!” Sannah’s eyes widened further, then dropped. “You’re right,” she whispered. “It is our fault. My fault. I could have told Kam, and none of this would have happened. Master Ikrit would still be alive.” Tears streamed down her face, and for a second Anakin was happy she was crying, satisfied she finally saw how stupid she had been. He wanted to agree with her.
Grinding his teeth, he quickly stood and walked into the woods.
He didn’t go far, but leaned against the bole of a giant tree, breathing heavily, composing himself. Then, when he thought he could do it, he want back into the clearing, where Sannah sat, still crying. Valin was wiping his own silent tears.
“That was wrong of me,” he said quietly. “None of you is to blame. You were only trying to help. The Peace Brigade is to blame. The Yuuzhan Vong are to blame. You guys aren’t. Feeling guilty isn’t going to help us right now. There are plenty more ships on this planet. For all we know they have a perfect lock on us already, so we
need to get ready. If they don’t, we need to figure out how to get this ship running again.”
Remis Vehn vented a bitter laugh.
“We have parts from three ships here,” Anakin said evenly. “We ought to be able to cobble something together. Besides that, help is on the way, so maybe all we really have to do is hold out for a little while. Valin, I’m putting you in charge of taking inventory of what food and medicine we have. Vehn, you’ll tell him where to find it on your ship—all of it. Sannah, I’m giving you the blaster. I want you to watch the camp, while I go do recon at the other wreck sites. If you hear anything—I mean anything—coming from the sky, you both hide and stay hidden. Understand?”
“Yes,” Sannah replied. Valin nodded dutifully.
“Good. And ignore everything Vehn says. Don’t touch his restraints, don’t go near him. I’ll be back soon.”
CHAPTER TEN
Karrde didn’t black out, but time stretched weirdly as his harness tried to cut him in half and his ship spun madly, power blinking on and off, finally settling on off before minimal emergency systems kicked in. The inertial compensator started up, and gravity reasserted itself, but the screen was a confusing jumble.
“Report!” he snapped. “What’s going on?”
H’sishi looked up reluctantly. “Minimal damage to the frigate,” she said. “We took a pretty hard bounce, and we’re limping a bit.”
“Limp away from them, at least,” Karrde said. “Head for the outer system.”
“The hyperdrive core took some of the worst damage,” Dankin pointed out. “I don’t think we can jump.”
“Well, we certainly can’t here, not in the hole Yavin’s dug for itself.”
“The big ships we can still outrun, at least for a while. The frigate will catch us eventually, but we’ve got a lead it will take them at least an hour to cut down. We’ve got a couple of E-wings that will be harassing us shortly.”
“Good luck to them,” Karrde grunted.
“We do have some weak points in the hull, now,” Shada pointed out.
“That’s why we’ll shoot them out of space, Shada my dear,” Karrde answered.
“And our shields—”
“Will hold up long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” Shada said. “Without hyperdrive—”
H’sishi suddenly grated out a yowling snarl.
“What’s the matter, H’sishi?”
“I can give you something better than a working hyperdrive, Captain,” the Togorian said.
“And what might that be?”
Her toothy grin nearly split her head in half. “The rest of our fleet, sir.”
“You asked what I was waiting on, Shada? Don’t ever doubt that the gods favor me. How far out are they?”
“Umm, urr.” H’sishi was suddenly more sober. “Two hours at least, sir.”
“Well,” Karrde said cheerfully. “Then I’m taking suggestions on how to stretch the—it’s what, eight minutes now? Into the two hours we need.”
The hull suddenly rattled.
“E-wings on us, sir,” Dankin reported.
“Well, don’t keep them waiting. Show them what this helpless old transport has in store for them. Shada, you have the bridge.”
“You’re leaving in the middle of a fight?”
“It won’t be a long one. When that capital ship catches us, give me a call. I need to talk to Solusar.”
Four hours later, a weary Imsatad appeared on Karrde’s screen.
“You’re a fool, Karrde,” he opined.
“What does that make you, Captain?” Karrde replied. “In any event, our positions are now reversed. I have considerably more firepower than your little flotilla.”
“And yet, as you once observed of me, you’re still here, which means you aren’t finished,” Imsatad said. “What do you want?”
“By my count, four of the young Jedi are still missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t.”
Karrde stood and locked his hands behind his back. “I can be a very serious man, at times, Captain Imsatad. This is one of them. I gave my word to deliver the Jedi students and their teachers safely from the hands of scum like you, and I intend to do that. Not in part, but in full.”
“You’re endangering our work here,” Imsatad said. “The Yuuzhan Vong will not stop until they have all the Jedi. If we do the work for them, show our good faith—”
Karrde cut him off with a mordant chuckle. “The Yuuzhan Vong have conquered half of our galaxy in an unprovoked crusade. What about this obligates us to show them good faith?”
“Listen, Karrde. I was at Dantooine, with the military. I saw what they can do. We can’t stop them. We can’t. This is simple self-preservation. Besides, they weren’t unprovoked. It was the Jedi who started this war, and it’s the Jedi who continue to provoke it.”
Karrde sighed and returned to his seat. He tapped his fingers on the armrest. “I don’t know if you really believe that sump muck, and I don’t care. But it’s good you bring up self-preservation, because you are now faced with a crisis in that department.”
Imsatad lifted his chin defiantly. “If you suppose I have your missing Jedi, you won’t destroy my ships.”
Karrde gestured, and Kam Solusar strode into view.
“Let me introduce you. This is Kam Solusar, one of the teachers at the Jedi academy whose curricula you have so rudely interrupted. He is a Jedi, and they can sense one another. Did you know that?”
Imsatad’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two. “I’ve heard such things.”
“None of the children are on your ship, Captain,” Solusar said in a voice that could saw through bones. “Nothing prevents us vaping you.”
Imsatad blinked, twice. “I do what I do for the good of the galaxy,” he said.
“Yes, you’ve said that already,” Karrde said. “Personally, I think you might best serve the galaxy as star food.”
Imsatad massaged his forehead. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.
“I want all of your ships grounded so I can conduct a ship-to-ship search.”
Imsatad shrugged. “I don’t have the children you seek. You may search my ships. Give me eight hours to get them all on the ground.”
“You have five.” Karrde signed for the connection to be severed.
“He’s hiding something,” Solusar said. “I can’t sense what.”
“He doesn’t think he’s beaten?”
“No, that’s the strange thing. He feels utterly defeated. But he is being deceptive about Anakin and the others.”
“You really think they’re still alive?”
“Anakin is, I’m certain of that much. And Tahiri. If they are alive, Sannah and Valin must be. After all, the Peace Brigade didn’t come here to kill them, but to capture them.”
Karrde nodded thoughtfully. “I’m going to have the Idiot’s Array come alongside. She’s a corvette and her captain is one of my best. I want to get these children we have aboard safe on Coruscant, now.”
“An excellent idea, though they won’t be safe on Coruscant, not for long.”
“No. Luke Skywalker has another plan in the works for that.”
“I’m staying until we find the rest,” Solusar said.
“I imagined you would. And Tionne?”
“The children need one of us.”
“Very good. I’ll arrange the transfer, now.”
Solusar nodded and held out his hand. “I didn’t thank you before. I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”
Karrde grinned wryly and took the proffered hand. “The perfect gift for the perfect occasion, that’s you, Solusar.”
“Sithspawn,” Shada snarled from across the bridge.
“What? What is it?”
“Karrde, if you’re going to get those children out of this system, I suggest you hurry.”
“What? More Peace Brigade?” He stared at the long-range sensors. B
lips were appearing—lots of them. “H’sishi, what do we have there?”
The tactician looked up grimly. “Yuuzhan Vong, sir, lots of them. At least two warship analogs and a whole lot of smaller ships.”
Karrde gripped the back of his chair until his knuckles turned white, cursing inwardly, trying to keep his face calm.
“How long?”
“No more than an hour, sir.”
“Long enough to get the Idiot’s Array away. Do it now, and have the Demise run with her.”
“What about us?” Shada asked.
“We can’t fight them head-on,” Karrde said.
“Anakin and the rest are still down there,” Solusar snapped. “If you’re thinking of leaving them—”
Karrde cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’m thinking of no such thing. If we leave this system, they’ll button it up so tight only the New Republic Fleet could get in here. But our tactics will have to change. And we need reinforcements. Shada, I want you on the Idiot’s Array. Bring back whatever it takes.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving you here.”
“We’ll be fine. It’s a big system, and we’re not without resources. If the Yuuzhan Vong plan on occupying Yavin Four, we can makes things very unpleasant for them. You ought to know by now, Shada, that if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s surviving. Now go. We have no time to argue about this.”
“I’ll be back,” Shada promised.
“Of course you will. And I’ll be here to meet you. Now get going.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Anakin watched the distant dots buzzing around the crash site. They’d been there for hours, but in the last few minutes they’d been leaving, one by one. He felt a constriction in his belly. If he had one of those fliers, he could get back to the temple and find Tahiri.
And do what? Leave Valin and Sannah with Vehn and a sky full of flitters? Try to drag them all along on another aerial battle and then a rescue?
No. He couldn’t pin all of their hopes on that.