Jaina nodded. “Nice. Slow as a teenager taking her first speeder parking test…but nice.”
Han shot her a dirty look. “Now we just have to find the perfect time to make our run for it.”
chapter eighteen
Jag and Zekk were just strapping themselves into couches in the yacht’s den—plush, embarrassingly comfortable couches—when Alema Rar emerged from the hatch to the stern refresher. Her smile was all innocence. “Hello, boys. Does Han Solo have a moment for us?”
Zekk was up in an instant, his lightsaber igniting with a snap-hiss. Alema raised her own from beneath her black robes and ignited it.
Unbuckling and rising, Jag turned toward the cockpit. “Trouble! Alema!” Facing Alema again, he did not bother drawing his blaster. He knew the futility of that, at least while she had him in sight. Instead he reached for the large travel bag at his feet, rummaged through it, and brought out a helmet. It had a large visored slit over the eyes rather than a full faceplate, and was an undecorated, burnished gray in color.
Swathed as Alema was in her robes, it was hard to tell whether this was the maimed Twi’lek he had followed for years or the miraculously cured one Han, Leia, and Waroo had faced on Kashyyyk, but her face—unblemished, no sign of muscle damage or old breaks to the cheekbone—suggested that it was the latter.
He caught Zekk’s eye and shook his head. Then Jag slipped on his helmet, powering up its internal system with a flick of the switch under its collar.
Alema attacked, lunging at Zekk with speed surpassing that which her Jedi training should have allowed her. The tall Jedi parried, trying to bind Alema’s blade with his own.
But her attack was not in earnest. Alema’s movement carried her past him in a rolling dive that would have sent her over his most likely counterstrike had he thrown one. She hit the compartment’s carpeted floor past him, rolled to her feet, and, speed undiminished, charged into the narrow passageway leading to the cockpit.
Jag heard the buzz and crackle of lightsaber striking lightsaber. Alema immediately backed into the compartment again, Leia following her, the two of them exchanging lighting-fast blows with their weapons.
But where Alema was genuinely striking at Leia’s neck, waist, and limbs, Leia looked like a stage performer—her blows designed to connect with her opponent’s blade and nothing else. Even Jag, no swordsman, could see Leia pass up an opportunity to cut the Twi’lek down.
Jag cycled through the helmet’s suite of sensors, looking at Alema for a few seconds with each. Primary sensors showed everyone present as a fuzzy image—flesh did not reflect sensor pings as well as hard surfaces—but Alema was even fuzzier than the others. Under infrared, where Leia was varied shades of green, clothing and different areas of the body showing up as slightly different intensities, Alema was a homogeneous color, the same exact hue from head to foot—except for her lightsaber blade, which radiated far more brightly.
Experimentally, he launched a sonar ping. Registering higher than the range of hearing of most species, it was not audible, but it returned an image about as crude as that of his radar set. And Alema was nowhere on that image.
Jag smiled.
As she danced before Leia, alternately advancing and retreating, Alema failed to guard her back from possible assaults by Zekk. The tall Jedi stood inert, as though he were not tempted. When Alema’s retreat theatened to run her into him, Zekk merely stepped aside, giving the two women room to maneuver.
“How gallant.” There was contempt in Alema’s words as she left off hammering at Leia to glare at Zekk. “Well, we will simply have to kill you one at a time instead of all together.” She looked among them. “Unless Han Solo wishes to come out and save you trouble by dying nobly, of course. Who will be first?”
None of them moved—none but Jag, who gestured toward the stern. “Air lock’s that way.”
“Fight us!”
Leia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alema. We’re just not that bored.”
Alema gaped at her, then realization dawned. “You know. Who told you?”
Jag shrugged. “Lumiya, of course. She hated you, you know.” He tried to make the lie sound casual, offhand.
“Liar!” Alema sprang at him, her anger and speed catching Jag flat-footed.
But Leia was there first, interposing her blade, catching Alema’s attack and blocking it, a dismissive expression on her face. “If you just want some more sword training, Alema, come back to the Order. Luke will whistle you up a youngling to practice against.”
Alema glared at Leia, her expression suggesting that an entire thesaurus of expletives was flashing through her mind.
Then she wavered. This was not the waver of a person who was tired. It looked instead as though Alema were painted onto a sail that had just caught the first gust of morning wind—she rippled at her waist, and the ripple spread in both directions to her head and her feet.
Then she was gone, as if she had never been there.
Jag took a deep breath. “Thanks, Leia.”
She deactivated her lightsaber. “You might think about learning to dodge…did you get anything useful?”
He grinned. “Lots.”
The StealthXs of Red Sword Flight—Luke, Kyp, Corran, Tyria Tainer, the Rodian Twool, and Sanola Ti of Dathomir—dropped out of hyperspace and were confronted with the vista of the Galactic Alliance task force drawn up in tight formation, the Confederation task force approaching it in some sort of suicidal, spread-out array, and a furious screen of starfighter dogfights raging between them.
Luke frowned, considering. The engagement zone, not yet the sort of chaotic battlefield he was used to with capital ship engagements, was certainly not going to provide the Jedi with much cover for their run on the Anakin Solo.
Luke felt a distraction, something drawing his attention away from the engagement zone toward an empty area of space far to the port side of the GA capital ships. It took him a moment to recognize the source of the distraction—Twool, whose StealthX carried fewer armaments but better sensors than the other vehicles of Sword Flight.
Twool, whose job it was to detect Jacen Solo’s tracking device with those sensors.
Twool had to be tracking Jacen now, and Jacen had to be at the point toward which Twool had directed Luke’s attention.
Luke felt, and quickly attempted to quell, a sense of excitement, even celebration. If Jacen was out on some sort of joyride, perhaps observing the capital ship engagement from a safe distance, then the Jedi might be able to ignore several levels of Jacen’s defenses that they had prepared for. The cargo compartments of their StealthXs were loaded with equipment especially chosen and crafted for this mission—which originally entailed having the squadron creep up close to the Anakin Solo as it waited in space, then launching a salvo of engine-crippling proton torpedoes and having most of the Jedi divert retaliatory attacks and starfighters while Luke and Kyp, laden with equipment, secretly boarded and tried to reach Jacen.
If Jacen really was hovering away from the Anakin Solo, though, Luke’s squadron could conceivably just fly over to him and compel his surrender…or shoot him.
But how would Luke convey a complicated revision in orders to the others while they observed comm silence?
He thought about it, then relaxed. He wouldn’t have to. The standing orders he had put together for this mission would suffice even in this new situation.
The other Jedi were to follow Luke in toward the Anakin Solo. He would initiate the Jedi battle-meld, not used before then so that Jacen would not be forewarned, and all Jedi present were to begin accomplishing their respective assignments.
But with this new situation, Luke merely needed to give the others a sense, in the Force, of his new direction and begin heading toward the spot Twool had pointed out to him. As they all neared Jacen, their own passive sensors, less sensitive than Twool’s, would pick up the signal from the tracking device Seha had placed on Jacen’s cloak. When they were near enough, Luke would open fire on Jacen’s
vehicle and simultaneously initiate the battle-meld. No additional communication was necessary.
With the faintest of follow-me nudges to his comrades through the Force, Luke banked toward the distant target.
Each of the three Masters had a Jedi Knight as his wingmate, and Luke’s was Sanola. Because she was the youngest Jedi Knight on this mission, she was paired with the most experienced Master, which bothered Luke neither intellectually nor emotionally…except that he was reminded, approximately three times per second, that it should have been Mara’s StealthX pacing his own.
Though not actively seeking her in the Force, he could feel Sanola trailing behind him, close enough that she could keep tabs on him visually, far enough back that a moment’s inattentiveness would not cause her to collide with him. She was a good, studious Jedi and, though young, had inherited the piloting skill that characterized her aunt Kirana. Luke did not need to worry about her.
A glance out the port side of his canopy showed him that the Confederation capital ships were nearing the starfighter engagement zone. Streamers of dueling vessels were now flowing away from the zone; it appeared that the outmatched Confederation starfighters were fleeing, pursued by their vengeful GA counterparts.
Luke frowned. He felt no sense of panic from that direction. But that was not his concern.
A red target blip appeared on Luke’s sensor board, identified as the signal from Jacen’s tracer. Luke eased off his thruster and coasted the last few kilometers, open to the Force but not expressing himself through it.
The white crosshairs representing his StealthX neared the target zone. Patient, Luke waited for the other Jedi to arrive.
He could feel them, faintly, nearing his location…
It was time. Luke reached out for the other Jedi and felt his awareness merge with theirs, combining into the battle-meld that made them so effective in group missions. Simultaneously, not bothering to work with targeting computers, blips, and brackets, he swung his snubfighter’s nose a trifle to starboard, located his target by feel, and fired. Four lances of red light leapt from his StealthX and converged on a distant point in space.
Caedus felt the change a moment before he understood what it meant. One instant he was floating in space with a crying little girl, distraught because he could not charm or coax away her tears. The next, he was expectant, hopeful, ready for a fight—
They weren’t his emotions. He had been enveloped by a Jedi battle-meld. Even Allana felt it. Her head came up, her distress momentarily forgotten.
With a curse he had not intended to utter in front of his daughter, Caedus grabbed the Blur’s control yoke and hit the thrusters.
Not fast enough. The inner surfaces of his solar arrays flashed red and his Blur kicked as it was hit from behind by a full-strength laser shot. The Blur spun from the impact, then the thrusters kicked in and he was hurtling away from that spot in space, executing one more tumble before he could gain complete control over his prototype TIE.
Use shields or continue to use stealth technology? Each choice was equally good, equally bad. He decided on the latter, hoping that his sudden burst of speed had taken him out of direct view of his attackers.
He could begin to make out the identity of his ambushers now. Luke, the shining presence. Kyp Durron. Corran Horn. Two or three others he didn’t know well enough to recognize.
Three Masters this time. They’d learned their lesson at the Senate Building when he’d finished off Kyle Katarn.
Both times they’d attacked when he was in the company of his daughter. His anger grew, ready to fuel his powers.
He felt his enemies seeking him, felt them turning after him. He made himself smaller in the Force, reducing his presence to nothingness. He would give them nothing to work with.
Lasers erupted behind him, missing by meters. He veered to starboard. The laser burst tracked his movement, clipping his port solar array wing before the burst ended.
Caedus growled. They were doing a fine job of tracking him. Either the Blur was not all it was cracked up to be, or they had some other means of determining his location.
Then Allana started crying again, and Caedus knew he had his answer.
They were homing in on Allana’s Force presence, they had to be. They were using her to target him. Hypocritical opportunists—for all their talk of protecting the innocent, they were now going to use a blameless little girl, shredding her life to get to him.
His anger grew, consuming him, casting everything he saw within the cockpit, every star outside the viewpoint, in a haze of redness. So great it was that he could no longer contain his presence in the Force—his anger flowed through him, through Allana, through his pursuers, through everything in tune with him or the Force.
The Love Commander waited, clamped by magnetic landing gear to the stern of the Anakin Solo, Han and Jaina staying alert for an opportunity to launch when the ship’s gunners were likely to be distracted. The opportunity had not yet come. The Star Destroyer’s complement of starfighters had launched, joining the engagement between the capital ship fleets, leaving none behind to harass the yacht, but the instant the yacht moved away from the vessel it would come within sight of its turbolasers and ion cannons.
Leia, seated in the captain’s chair, grew more restless…and then was hit by a wave of hatred. Redness and heat swamped her—hatred for the Jedi, hatred for Luke, for the Confederation, for lasers and explosives and chaos. She gasped, her back spasming from the overload of emotion. In the starboard seat ahead of her, she saw Jaina jerk, but her daughter was less affected than she had been.
“Sweetheart? Leia! What’s wrong?” In an instant Han was by her side, gripping her flailing hand, helpless concern on his face.
“It’s Jacen. He’s out there.” She gestured to starboard, well away from the Anakin Solo. “He’s…I don’t know. I’ve never felt him like this.” She shook her head to clear it. “Luke’s there, too.”
Han’s expression shifted from concern to grim determination. “All right. We’re going now, turbolasers or no turbolasers. Time to prove that I can fly a sand bucket through an ion storm.” He returned to his seat, strapped himself in.
Jaina’s voice was a rebuke. “That we can.”
“Right. We’ll argue over who’s second best when we’re out of here.”
chapter nineteen
Luke felt the wave of hatred flow through him. It was so strong it felt like a kick in the gut, and he wondered for an instant if Jacen had perfected some new Force attack.
But no, the undercurrent was of frustration, helplessness, even fear. It was no attack. It was like a man in his last seconds of life, recognizing that fact.
And Luke…did not hate. He fired again, his laser cannons chipping away at the top of Jacen’s fuselage as his target, through brilliant evasive flying, kept his attacks from striking a more vital portion of the starfighter.
Luke remained calm, reactive, ready to defend, ready to kill. He felt the other two StealthX wing pairs approach his position. Soon, they would be in firing range. Soon, this would be over.
Shields, then.
Caedus disengaged the electronic countermeasures and activated his shields. Since he could not evade detection by his enemies, he would have to elude them for a while.
Nor was there any need to maintain comm silence. “Solo to Anakin Solo. Am under starfighter attack. Get me some starfighter support here now. Bring the Anakin Solo, as well.”
Tebut’s smooth, controlled voice answered him. “At once, sir.”
Caedus heeled over to commence a sprint back to the capital ship formation. But he could feel Kyp and Corran vector to place themselves in his path, while Luke remained close behind.
Caedus stifled a curse. Blast, but they were good, herding him away from his safe haven. If anything, his rage grew.
And with each increase in his anger, Allana’s sobbing grew louder, her body shaking against his.
He could not comfort her. To comfort her now would be to d
ie.
Juking and jinking, his own skills and Force insights making him an unpredictable target, he moved away from the Alliance formation, driven by his pursuers, his maneuvers eating up so much of his speed that he had no chance of outdistancing them. Luke’s lasers, sometimes joined by Kyp’s or Corran’s, came perilously close to him, occasionally brightening his shields and rattling his Blur.
He became lost in time, lost in his rage, existing in the moment. He could not have remembered his name, only that he had to fly, that he had to protect his daughter. Sweat poured from him. His flight suit had ceased absorbing his sweat long ago. Now it pooled in his boots and drenched his pilot’s couch.
Then there was…intrusion. More presences. Kyp and Corran were suddenly farther away, reducing the number of inbound attacks.
Caedus hazarded a glance at his sensor board. It showed a changed battlefield.
He was now far away from the Alliance formation. In fact, it no longer was an Alliance formation. The Alliance and Corellian capital ships had merged into a single formation, one in which the antiquated Corellian vessels were taking a horrible beating but fighting on. Most of the engagement’s starfighters were away from that zone, the Corellians leading the Alliance away in the distance.
Closer, there were Alliance-marked starfighters in Jacen’s vicnity, trading fire with the StealthXs, tracking them by their laser emissions.
As Caedus watched, the StealthXs ceased laserfire. Now they would rely solely on shadow bombs, launched with use of the Force and therefore undetectable by ordinary sensors.
Not Luke. He stayed on Caedus’s tail, still pouring laserfire at the Blur, as did Luke’s wingmates. But a trio of Alliance starfighters—two XJ7 X-wings and one of those ungainly round-nosed Aleph starfighters—now harrassed Caedus’s pursuers.
Some distance away, a red blip representing an enemy the size of a small transport was inbound. Its transceiver signal showed it to be the Love Commander. Beyond that, the Anakin Solo was also inbound.
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 15