by Kathy Tyers
“Wow,” Jaina muttered. “I take it you’re back to using the Force.”
Jacen slid one arm around his mother’s shoulders and slipped his other arm under her bloodied legs, already wondering if using the tourniquet was wise. If he cut off her circulation completely, for long enough, she could lose both lacerated legs.
It might come to a choice between saving her legs and saving her life. “You’ve got to run interference,” he told Jaina. “If I use the Force to control her arterial blood flow, I can’t concentrate much on where I’m going.”
“And you’re bleeding, too.”
“Not serious,” he insisted. “Not like—this.”
Jaina raised her lightsaber again. “Follow me.”
She led to the stairway, paused only a moment, and then vaulted over the railing. Jacen jumped next, slowing his landing as well as he could so not to jostle Leia. Hurry, he told himself. Hurry. In his mind, he saw Anakin’s haunted eyes, his dad’s horrible grief for Chewbacca. Again he plunged deep into the Force.
Tsavong Lah struggled to his feet, then tumbled sideways. Besides the crushed armor scales along his side, his left foot would not hold his weight.
He made it up onto his knees.
Three warriors, on guard outside this built-thing, rushed up to him. Two averted their eyes, afraid to observe his humiliation. The third glanced up at the window, tightening his lips.
“You were attacked, Warmaster? We will avenge you. Take my life as offering, and make it certain.”
Nodding at the perfectly appropriate offer, Tsavong swept out his baton. The warrior knelt, bowing his head. Tsavong swung, putting all of his fury into the gesture.
The underling collapsed lifeless.
“All glory to you, warrior.” Tsavong wiped spittle from his fringed lips, then motioned for the two others to remove the fallen one’s body to the burning pit.
Four more warriors arrived on the run. Deep, grinding pain jabbed up from Tsavong’s wounded foot as they steadied him in a standing position.
“Bring Tu-Scart and Sgauru,” he ordered, “and take down this built-thing.” He ordered another, “Divert the outflow from the deep well underneath it. Flood the tunnels.”
Nom Anor hurried up to his side. “They will not escape,” he assured the warmaster.
Tsavong Lah glared at the executor, who had fled while the others fought. “Hope that Yun-Harla favors you today,” he said through clenched teeth. “Your—”
“I was forced to retreat.” Nom Anor interrupted before Tsavong Lah could lay the charge of cowardice. “The watchers still indicated another Jedi’s approach.”
Two massive shapes slithered up the street, driven by handlers with heavy amphistaffs, and Tsavong brushed Nom Anor aside. Serpentlike Tu-Scart looped the built-thing with his coils. Chitinous Sgauru attached herself to him, raised up, then let her powerful head fall against the windowless lower story.
Duracrete blocks crumpled like pveiz twigs. Sgauru’s maw closed on a cascade of them, feeding with delirious joy. Then she took a second swing.
Han sank down on the Falcon’s captain’s chair. “Get up here, Goldenrod,” he shouted. “Move, move!”
The droid sashayed into the cockpit. “But, sir—”
“Sit,” Han ordered, “or I’ll replace you with a pair of clamps.”
Han flipped a row of power switches. For once, the old bucket didn’t whine and die.
“Buckle in,” he muttered. “This won’t be one of our smoother runs.” Why had he sent Droma off on the refugee ship? C-3PO was the worst possible copilot!
He fired the repulsors. The freighter rose bare centimeters into the air.
“Sir, what do you want me to do?” C-3PO pleaded.
“Cover the comlink.” Jaina had sent coordinates for the tunnel’s nearest exit point. As soon as she signaled again, he’d have to move.
Jacen tried not to jolt Leia as he leapt one more fallen warrior. The physical world seemed foggy, less real to him than his invisible struggle to save his mother.
“This way.” Jaina gripped her lightsaber in one hand. She led off the bottom flight of stairs into the storeroom and flung open the tunnel door.
A rush of foul-smelling water cascaded out. Jacen turned sideways and let the first flood wash past him, then waded forward. Leia’s head slumped against his shoulder. She seemed unbelievably light.
Water would wash away any chance for blood clotting. He couldn’t worry about saving her legs anymore. Only her life. With the Force still flowing through him, he virtually stopped the blood flow into her major arteries. The garrote creature, its masters’ unintelligent servant, clung tightly, blocking surface bleeding.
He struggled past the gushing water source. At least the flood would push them and their scent downstream, so the Yuuzhan Vong couldn’t send tracking creatures after them.
Ahead, Jaina’s lightsaber gave off a soft violet glimmer.
Jaina eyed her datapad map. Where this tunnel joined the old mines, the map showed a major drain hole, a vertical shaft. They were traveling toward it with this flow. It would suck them down unless she established an anchor point.
“I’m going ahead,” she told Jacen. “Watch for me.”
Then she extinguished her lightsaber, hooked it to her belt, and plunged into foul, icy water. It tugged at her mask and made a sickening taste on her lips. She took strong strokes, barely sensing the walls that rushed by. Reaching ahead with the Force, she sensed the deadly tug from ahead as waters poured down the shaft.
She turned about and thrust her feet forward. Then she thrust them down, bouncing herself sideways, out of the strongest current. Each bounce took her just a little farther left. She couldn’t see at all, but she’d learned to navigate half-blind. Her Force sense told her when she’d nearly reached the tunnel wall.
Giving one more powerful bounce, she flung herself up and almost out of the water. She scrabbled for a finger-hold on the rock, fell back into the water—and went under. Fear coiled around her, colder and deadlier than the flood.
She fought it aside, got her head up, gasped for air, then bounced herself clear again.
This time, she caught hold of a scratchy outcropping. She unhooked and lit her lightsaber, and saw that she’d missed the deadly shaft by only two meters. She jammed her lightsaber’s pommel into a crack in the wall, like a lantern in a sconce, then yanked off the utility belt she’d scammed from the Jade Shadow.
Mara had taken Shadow on a long sweep out, watching for new hostiles, so she saw them first.
She slapped her transmitter. “Jade Shadow to Duro Defense Force,” she called. “Big coral at four-five mark oh-six. Look out, Poesy.”
A Yuuzhan Vong fighter-carrier had appeared at roughly forty-five degrees south, plainly targeting the Mon Cal cruiser. Waves of coralskippers flew off the big carrier’s arms. Larger objects followed—maybe attack craft, maybe creatures—not that it mattered anymore.
Mara swooped back toward Bburru, searching her tactical display for Luke’s and Anakin’s X-wings. E-wings and Dagger-Ds poured back off Bburru and the other cities around Duro’s inhabited ring. This time, shields went up on all the orbital cities except Orr-Om. Several explosions had shaken it while Mara patrolled. Its lights had gone dark. It had drifted down almost to blue-line. Or brown-line, in Duro’s case.
She’d lost all sense of Leia.
Another Yuuzhan Vong battle group appeared out of hyperspace near Duro’s north pole. This group split into four squadrons. Mara’s sensors showed each squad with twenty or so coralskippers out front, followed by … something bigger, unidentifiable … and then more skips.
“Attention,” the now-familiar alien voice thundered on her comm unit. “Defense forces, stand down. Go to ground at one of the onplanet settlements, and your lives will be spared. Resist and you will be destroyed. Settlement dwellers, remain where you are. Choose peace, not destruction.”
A second voice, a Duros voice, spoke. “Evac ships, vectorrr so
uth. Repeat, vectorrr south. The enemy is coming in from roughly north. Duro Defense Force ships will coverrr any escape shuttle we can.”
Mara adjusted her headset and spoke on the private link. “Luke, where’s Han? What’s keeping him?”
“I’m not getting anything from him.” Luke’s voice sounded strained.
Another battle group appeared, diving toward a second sector of the orbiting arc. The first group’s coralskippers skimmed the first habitat in their vector, blasting away at its defenses. Then the larger ship creature swooped in. It launched something at the city. Mara’s sensors went berserk.
“Dovin basal,” she exclaimed. “A monster.”
Seconds later, that city’s shields flickered out. A dovin basal with that kind of appetite could pull down the city, just like Sernpidal’s moon.
Small craft popped off the other cities like flak-ants. The first wave of attack craft ignored them. A few evac ships winked out, vanishing into hyperspace. The Yuuzhan Vong’s second attack wave caught the lag-behinds. Again, the voice ordered evacuees to go to ground.
Hardly any did.
With the second attack wave came corvette analogs that peppered the cities with asteroid-sized debris. Atmosphere jetted off into space. Here and there something exploded, lighting the city surfaces.
Orr-Om fell faster now, sinking visibly, starting to glow at its edges. Mara blinked. An entire city …
Coralskippers and defenders swarmed Poesy. Now and then its big lasers picked off a coral ship. Mon Cal cruisers’ shields were legendary—almost invincible—but as one of the dovin basal launchers vectored in, and a flight of E-wings tried to divert, Mara guessed even Poesy wouldn’t last long.
Then a third wave of attack ships appeared. If the warmaster meant to show the New Republic exactly how much force he could command, he was doing a fine job. The number of coral ships appalled her, assembling here for their strike at the Core.
And there’d be no help for Duro from Centerpoint or Coruscant.
Disk-shaped Urrdorf gathered momentum, driving obliquely out of orbit. Admiral Wuht had pulled most of his fighters in toward this quadrant, since Urrdorf was the only Duros city with any real chance of survival. Among its defenders, Mara spotted two X-wings.
“Party time,” she muttered, vectoring in to join them.
Jacen heard Jaina calling as he fought the current, trying not to get sucked toward that thundering drain hole. Her presence drew him to the left. Then he saw her by pale violet light, crouching beside a stack of stones, dangling a utility belt’s cable. She flung it. He grabbed it, hooked it to his waist, and braced himself against the current, helping her reel him in.
Then he sank onto the stones, chilled and exhausted, getting his strength back.
Jaina leaned toward Leia, touched her face. “She’s alive,” she murmured, “but barely. Can you go on?”
Jacen’s legs ached as he pressed upright. “Go,” he answered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She paused to snatch her lightsaber off the wall and thumb her comlink. “Dad, can you read?” No answer. “This way, Jace. I’ll get out where I can transmit.”
Han held his position, waiting. He couldn’t grab for orbit until he heard from—
“Dad!” Jaina’s voice called out of the console. “I’m out, and Jacen’s coming with Mom.”
Han hit the main engines. The freighter soared out of concealment and swooped away from Gateway dome. Glancing down, he counted nine bristly landing ships, an infestation of gigantic seashells near the dome’s north side.
“Go, Droma,” he ordered over the comm. “All shuttles, vector south. We’ll be right behind you.”
Seconds later, the overloaded cargo ship blasted out of its haystack. Beyond the dome, one blocky hauler and a pair of YT-1300s clawed for space.
“There, Captain Solo!” C-3PO pointed at the sensors. Far below, a lone figure waved something like a glimmering violet candle.
“I see her.” He feathered the main engines and swooped down.
“Oh, no,” C-3PO moaned. “Those must be coralskippers, coming in at four—”
“I see ’em, I see ’em.”
Han set the Falcon to hover and dropped the boarding ramp. To his satisfaction, a second figure followed Jaina, staggering out of the hillside tunnel entry.
Then he saw Leia in Jacen’s arms, and the blood staining their legs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The planet was lost. Far below, its dirty brown clouds swallowed Orr-Om. A cruiser-sized, multicolored hunk of coral was closing fast with one of the unshielded cities. Oddly, it wasn’t launching its fighters.
Mara realized it just as Luke cried out over the comm unit, “It’s going to ram!” Mara vectored aside, keeping one eye on her sensors. The massive alien ship slammed into the top of the helpless city, which already was caught by the downward pull of the dovin basal launched into its heart.
The coral ship bounced away. Its smooth, lower surface showed no sign of stress, but the city lit it with a dazzling display of sparks and cascading gases. Mara’s sensors also showed an ominous, downward vector shift.
Urrdorf was pulling away, but not fast enough. Another flight of coralskippers vectored in. There seemed to be thousands of them.
Luke veered off, and she followed. Yet another battle group had appeared out of hyperspace, and this time, it came from the south, springing the trap on refugee ships that had fled the initial phase of this attack. Three cruiser-sized vessels, their broad red and green arms already deploying showers of coralskippers, were escorted by a dozen or more midsize craft that looked like gunships.
Luke pushed his X-wing back toward the smaller flurry that was Urrdorf’s remaining defense force. Mara couldn’t help watching behind, though. Urrdorf still had its shields. Coralskippers soared in, splashing it with plasma.
A Yuuzhan Vong force circled Bburru. The city hadn’t taken a dovin basal amidships yet, thanks to Admiral Wuht’s defenders. Mara’s practiced eye spotted another X-wing among them.
A gunship-sized object separated itself from the Vong attack force, coming in low, spraying the city with gouts of brilliant plasma.
“Breaking port,” she called. “My sensors show a civilian shuttle launch off Bburru. I’ll escort.”
Luke soared off toward Anakin. Mara skimmed the city’s surface, back toward the dock she’d left so unceremoniously. Someone had a lot of courage, launching this late in the show.
Three small shuttles took off simultaneously, holding together in a row.
“Shuttles,” Mara transmitted, “this is Jade Shadow. I’ll escort you to jump.”
“Negative, jump,” a voice crackled from her console. “We’re headed planetside.”
“That’s suicide,” Mara exclaimed. “They only want you for slaves, or sacrifices. Come around to—”
The shuttles’ pilots held to their course. Then Mara saw the triangular CorDuro Shipping insignia on the shuttles’ aft surfaces. It looked as if CorDuro, having done all it could to weaken Duro’s defenses, was defecting to the Yuuzhan Vong en masse.
In that case, they deserved what they had coming. Mara vectored aside, found herself facing a flight of coralskippers, and went to work.
* * *
Jacen bent over the Falcon’s narrow first-aid bunk. Though the deck bucked and tilted, Jaina applied a pair of Sluissi grav-press bandage cuffs to Leia’s legs, just above the knees, then connected them with the Falcon’s medical data bank.
“That should hold her until we can find a bacta tank. I don’t know about her legs, though—”
Leia’s eyes fluttered open. “Jaina,” she murmured. “Heard your voice. Thanks.”
Jaina tucked a thermal blanket around Leia’s shivering shoulders, then uncoiled a fluid drip and applied it to her bared arm. “Jacen did the hard part,” she said gruffly.
Jacen adjusted the bandage cuffs. Finely tuned micro-repulsor fields were already compressing the damaged arteries, even while they enh
anced peripheral circulation to his mother’s lower legs. Something just as invisible as the field, but warmer, flowed between his sister and mother. A deep understanding, a living connection.
“No. What you did,” Leia managed. “Harder. Furious with me, but … came back.”
Jaina made a wry face, then bent to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Lie still. We’ll get you out of here.”
“But … Duro … Basbakhan …”
“We’re evacuating,” Jacen said. What had happened to her other Noghri? “Basbakhan?” he asked.
Leia’s eyelids fell shut. Jacen looked up at Jaina, worried.
“There’s a sedative in that drip,” Jaina explained. “Otherwise she’d roll down, crawl to the quad guns, and bleed to death.” In her voice, Jacen heard heartfelt respect.
“Right,” he said. If Basbakhan was alive on Duro, he pitied the Yuuzhan Vong. “Then it’s you and me for the guns.”
“Take a quad,” Jaina exclaimed, flinging herself away from the bunk. “I’ll join Dad. Coralskipper derby, three-way!”
“Mara, Luke? Duro Defense Force? This is the Millennium Falcon, escorting a big hauler. Last ship out of Gateway, coming up at you.”
Mara eyed her sensors. Vectoring south, accelerating ponderously, came a big block of a hauler, a smaller freight ship, and three YT-1300s. The lead freighter, the one that reflected no light, wove back and forth in a very unfreighterly fashion.
Luke’s voice: “Han, is she all right?”
Han sounded tense. “She’s hurt bad.”
No surprise there, either. If Mara had felt it through the Force, Luke must’ve, too.
“The kids are taking care of her, but—what?” Han’s voice faded momentarily, then came back. “Can’t talk. These haulers could use a few more escorts, though.”
“On our way.” Mara snapped off the comm and studied her sensors. Whether by skill or by Solo luck, Han had herded his charges onto the vector that was seeing the least action.