Star Wars: Dark Nest 1: The Joiner King

by Troy Denning

  Han was vaguely aware of Leia turning toward Juun’s voice— but only vaguely. The blue teeth had become the interior of a white-veined mouth, and most of his mind was busy trying to figure out what to do next.

  “You’ve flown into a nebula before?” Leia asked Juun.

  “Of course—many times,” Juun assured her. “But usually I disengage the hyperdrive and fly right back out.”

  “Not an option.” Han eased the hyperdrive control lever back until he heard the first hint of a whir. It didn’t take much. “We’ll blow that bad coolant line when the shutdown temperature spikes.”

  “I thought you fixed that!” Juun complained.

  “So did I.” Han glanced up at Juun’s reflection in the canopy. “Someone unfixed it.”

  If Juun noticed the fear in Han’s voice, he hid it well. “Well, you can’t just keep going. The gas friction will distort the continuum warp.”

  “Distortion won’t kill us,” Han said. The Falcon’s stabilizers would probably keep their warp within safe parameters. “It’s the dust shell I’m worried about.”

  “Oh, yes.” Juun’s voice was forlorn. “The dust shell.”

  “How long?” Leia asked.

  She was too good a copilot to need to ask what would happen when a vessel traveling through hyperspace tried to punch its way through the striated layers of dust and debris that hung inside an expansion nebula.

  “That depends on how old the nebula is,” Han said. Two-meter circles of white began to flash ahead of the Falcon as the first dust particles blossomed against her forward shields. “But not long enough.”

  “This is a young one,” Juun agreed. “A very young one.”

  The whir finally went silent, and Han eased the control lever back until he heard it again. He was only prolonging the inevitable, but sometimes stalling was the only move you had.

  “Han.” There was a tremor in Leia’s voice, and she was staring straight out the forward viewport. “Tell me the truth—are we going to die?”

  “Can you do that fog-parting trick you used on Borao again?” Han asked. “And extend it to about twelve light-years?”

  “I doubt it,” Leia said.

  “Then, yeah, we’re probably gonna die.”

  “What a pity Tarfang isn’t here!” Juun said.

  Han scowled into the canopy reflection. “I thought you liked that mattball.”

  “Very much!” Juun exclaimed. “And I’m sorry his name won’t be listed among those who died with Han Solo.”

  “Not so fast,” Leia said. The dust particles were blooming fast and furious now, turning hyperspace almost solid white with microscopic novae. “If we’re going to die anyway, there’s nothing left to lose.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Juun said. “But—”

  “Watch and learn,” Leia said.

  She activated the Falcon’s attitude control system, then— before Han could stop her—spun the ship around so that it was traveling backward through hyperspace.

  The white blossoms vanished, and for a moment, the Falcon felt as though she were simply traveling through hyperspace backward.

  Then the nebula turned red and started to spiral away from the viewport. Han’s stomach turned somersaults faster than a Jedi acrobat, and the Falcon’s hull began to wail and screech like a rancor in full rut.

  “Ke . . . b . . . ff!”

  Han could not understand Leia above the terrible clamor, but it was easy to guess what she was yelling. He eased the lever back another centimeter. There was no question of listening for the humming coolant line, so he decided to count to thirty and do it again. What did it matter? They were going to die anyway.

  Then Leia did something really foolish . . . she fired the sub-light drives.

  The shrieking and wailing stopped at once, and suddenly it was the Falcon spinning instead of space. Han felt as though his heart were going to fly out between his ribs, and he lost his last three meals.

  But incredibly, he was still alive to know how bad he was feeling. He realized he had lost his count and eased the control lever back some more.

  The whir returned. It occurred to him that the Falcon had fallen otherwise silent—which meant they weren’t being pelted by dust particles, which meant the sublight drives were blasting a hole through the dust shell. Han looked over to congratulate Leia. Her face was a meter wide and five centimeters tall.

  Nice try, he said. It came out yiiiiirt eeeeeciiiiN in his own head. He doubted he would ever know how it sounded to Leia.

  The whir vanished. He eased the control lever back. Leia’s face went to a meter tall and ten centimeters wide. Something big exploded against the Falcon’s rear shields and the ship shook so violently that Juun—who had not strapped himself in— ended up splayed against the forward viewport.

  Han eased the control lever back and took a long deep sniff, smelled only the sour barf of five different species—maybe a hint of verbobrain actuating gas—and eased the lever farther.

  Leia’s face shrank to half a meter on the diagonal, and Han said, I love you, Princess, even if you drive like a . . .

  He didn’t finish. The words came out Eeeyyyyeeee wooooobe ooooooo, which wasn’t half bad, considering.

  Han eased the control lever back again, and Juun slid down the canopy and disappeared behind the instrument console.

  Then the proximity alarm went off, and the color outside the canopy went from blue to red to blue to whirling stripes of silver. Suddenly, Leia’s face was the proper size and shape—still far too green, but at least oval and no more than twenty-five centimeters from chin to hairline—and Han felt even sicker than before.

  That was when C-3PO came tumbling up the access corridor. “Doomed!” He crashed to a halt behind the navigator’s chair, then fell to the deck, flailing. “We’re doomed for sure!”

  Han immediately knew they were going to make it. He took control of the Falcon and began to fire attitude thrusters, slowly bringing their spin under control. There was just a hint of coolant sweetness in the recycled air—enough to mean they would have to decontaminate the ship, but not so much they would die before they had a chance.

  A pair of small hands appeared at the top edge of the control panel, and Juun pulled himself up to peer over the edge. “Real space?”

  “Yeah.” Han glanced out the viewport and saw nothing but the veined, red sky of a still-cooling nebula. “I think.”

  “It is,” Leia said. “The proximity alarm dropped us out of hyperspace.”

  “And we survived?” Juun sounded almost disappointed. His sunken eyes swung toward Han. “That wasn’t in any of the history vids. Did you teach her that?”

  “No,” Leia said. “And it hasn’t worked yet. There’s still one tiny problem.”

  “As long as it’s tiny,” Han said, eyeing the white static on his sensor screen.

  “Well—not really tiny.” Leia used the attitude thrusters to spin the Falcon around, bringing into view the green, rapidly swelling disk of the planet they were about to crash into. “It was big enough to drop us out of hyperspace.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  JACEN DROPPED OUT OF the tik tree to discover that even here, in the muggy heart of her private jungle garden, Queen Mother Tenel Ka was not alone. Seated in a small sunken courtyard with her rust-colored braids hanging down the back of her sleeveless frock, she was surrounded by twenty courtiers—mostly male and attractive, all attired in absurd, hand-tailored imitations of the Queen Mother’s rustic fashion. Tenel Ka could have that effect on people.

  Jacen crept up silently behind a camouflaged sentry who was patrolling the musky foliage along the garden wall—the last of the palace’s many layers of security—and grasped the man’s neck. The fellow tried to spin and yell the alarm, but went limp as Jacen sent a paralyzing jolt of Force energy through his spine.

  Still alert to her Jedi instincts, Tenel Ka felt the disturbance and turned on her bench, revealing a classic profile even more stunning than
the one in Jacen’s memory. He expanded his presence in the Force so she would not be alarmed, then lowered the unconscious sentry to the ground and stepped out of the shrubbery.

  Several courtiers cried out and sprang forward to shield Tenel Ka, and three more sentries emerged from the foliage along the garden wall. The two guards with clear angles zipped blasterfire in the intruder’s direction, while the third called for help. Jacen deflected the bolts with his palms, then reached out with the Force and jerked the blaster rifles from their hands.

  “Cease fire!” Tenel Ka ordered, a bit late. “Stand down!”

  The guards, already rushing Jacen with their hand blasters half free of their holsters, reluctantly obeyed. The nobles complied far less reluctantly.

  Once Tenel Ka was satisfied her orders were being followed, she leapt onto the courtyard wall and, smiling warmly, opened her arms. Jacen was not surprised to see that the right one still ended at the elbow. After the sparring accident that had claimed the limb, Tenel Ka had refused an artificial replacement, keeping the stump as a reminder of the arrogance that had led to the mishap.

  “Jacen!” she cried. “Welcome!”

  “Thank you.” It warmed Jacen’s heart to find such an enthusiastic reception. “It’s good to see you again, Queen Mother.”

  As Jacen stepped forward to receive her embrace, half a dozen burly Hapans blocked his way. One of them, an icy-eyed noble with neck-length blond hair and no left hand, glanced back at Tenel Ka. “This man is a friend of yours, Queen Mother?”

  “Clearly, Droekle.” Tenel Ka pushed between Droekle and an even larger noble missing an entire forearm. “Would I wish to hug him if he weren’t?”

  She pressed herself tightly enough to Jacen’s chest for him to tell that a lot had changed in the last five years—all for the better. Jacen hugged her back and, noting the noxious glowers from her male courtiers, tried not to smirk.

  “I apologize for entering this way,” Jacen said. “But your social secretary refused to announce me. He kept telling me you were unavailable.”

  Tenel Ka released him and took a step back, her expression darkening. “Which one? I must see that he’s corrected.”

  “No need.” Jacen allowed himself the hint of a smile. “He has been.”

  “Is that so?”

  Tenel Ka waited for him to elaborate. When he did not, she shrugged and took his hand, then jumped into the sunken courtyard to face her slack-jawed courtiers. Jacen was astonished to see that more than half had lost parts of their arms.

  “Jacen is one of my oldest friends.” She squeezed Jacen’s hand, then looked up at him with a mischievous grin. “He was the boy who cut my arm off.”

  Though Jacen and Tenel Ka had long ago come to terms with that terrible accident and had developed a friendship bordering on romance, even he was taken aback by the bluntness of the announcement. The courtiers were left stammering—which was exactly what he sensed Tenel Ka wanted. Pulling him toward the far side of the courtyard, she slipped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “I would like to catch up with my friend,” she called back. “Please amuse yourselves.”

  She guided him onto a stone path that wound its way through the jungle alongside a small stream. Though the lush foliage and gurgling water made it seem as though they were alone, Jacen could sense the guards shadowing them in the brush— and the courtiers following them down the path, just out of sight one curve behind.

  Guessing this must be the normal state of affairs for Tenel Ka, Jacen said, “Thank you for taking the time to see me, Queen Mother.”

  “No—thank you for coming,” Tenel Ka said. “You cannot know how refreshing it is to speak with someone who is not trying to win my hand or coax something out of me.”

  Jacen felt instantly guilty. “Actually, I did come to ask a favor. A big one.”

  “I know.” Tenel Ka squeezed his arm and leaned closer to him. “That changes nothing I said. Hapan nobles never ask. They arrange or contrive or—if I am lucky—merely persuade. You would not believe what they do to curry favor.”

  Jacen raised his brow. “The amputations?”

  “Fencing accidents.” Tenel Ka snorted. The path came to a jungle pond, complete with a waterfall and a small island rising out of the green water. “To judge by the number of limbs being preserved in Hapan cryovats, most of my idiot nobles have no idea which end of a sword to hold.”

  They stopped at the edge of the pond, and Jacen leaned down so that his voice would not carry up the path. “You do know we’re not alone, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Tenel Ka turned and raised her voice. “Be gone—or I will ask Jacen to take your other arms.”

  The nobles retreated quickly, but Jacen could sense the sentries continuing to lurk in the bushes.

  Tenel Ka sighed. “There are some things even a Queen Mother cannot order.” She slipped off her shoes, then turned toward the island. “Would you like to get your feet wet?”

  “Why not?” Jacen eyed the twenty-meter distance to the island. “Only our feet?”

  “Trust me.” Pulling him along, Tenel Ka stepped out onto the water. Her feet sank only to the ankles. “Walk only where I walk, or it will be more than your feet.”

  Jacen did as she ordered and found himself standing atop a stone pier concealed just beneath the surface of the murky water.

  “The Secret Way,” Tenel Ka said. “It is an ancient Hapan defense—and it leads to the only place I can ever be truly alone.”

  “Why do you put up with them?” Jacen followed her along a jagged pathway of sharp, seemingly random turns. “Those idiot nobles, I mean?”

  “They have their uses,” Tenel Ka said. “I allow one to sit at my side, then watch to see who seeks him out.”

  “And that tells you what?” Jacen asked. “Who wants something from you?”

  “Everyone wants something from me, Jacen.” They reached the island and stepped onto a mossy path that, Jacen suspected, was rarely trodden by any feet but Tenel Ka’s. “But the families who don’t change alliances when I change favorites—I know those are the advisers I should listen to.”

  “It seems very . . . intricate,” Jacen said.

  “Calculated,” Tenel Ka said. She led the way into a shielding copse of paan trees, then sat down on one end of the only bench. “It is the Hapan way, Jacen. There is a use for everyone.”

  Knowing it would not be proper etiquette to assume, Jacen did not sit on the other end of the bench. “Including me?”

  Tenel Ka looked away. “Even you, Jacen.” She patted the bench beside her, then said, “Now the houses of my suitors will be united against you. It would be wise to watch what you eat while you are here.”

  “Thanks,” Jacen said. “But I won’t be staying.”

  “Of course not.” Tenel Ka continued to look away, but Jacen sensed tears in her voice. “What is it you need from us?”

  “You felt Raynar’s call?” Jacen asked.

  “Yes. In the end, I had to keep myself locked in the palace. I didn’t know who it was from. I thought maybe . . .” When Tenel Ka turned to face him, her gray eyes were clear and steady, but she had not bothered to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks. “I have heard that a colony of Killiks is threatening Chiss space.”

  In that moment, the entire weight of the last five years’ loneliness fell on Jacen’s heart, and he wanted nothing more than to take Tenel Ka in his arms and kiss her.

  Instead, he said, “It’s a complicated situation.”

  Jacen went on to recount his journey into the Colony, from his arrival at Lizil to his exploration of the Tachyon Flier to joining Jaina and the rest of the strike team on Jwlio. Tenel Ka’s gaze never strayed from his face, and he described his slowly dawning awareness that the Killiks shared a collective mind, what Raynar had become, and Cilghal’s theories about how the pheromones altered the Joiners’ minds. This drew a cocked brow from Tenel Ka, and for a while she seemed a young Jedi Knigh
t again, her thoughts consumed by adventure and mystery rather than intrigue and politics. Jacen ended by reporting the mysterious attacks against his parents and aunt and uncle, and by noting that the Killiks claimed to have no memory of Lomi or Welk.

  “The two of them just disappeared after the crash,” Jacen finished. “The Killiks insist Raynar was the only one aboard the Flier, even though I know he dragged both Lomi and Welk out of the fire.”

  Jacen did not say exactly how he knew. There was no reason to go into the subtleties of Aing-Tii flow-walking right now. Tenel Ka sat in deep silence for several moments, then swung around, straddling the bench, and faced him.

  “What became of Em Teedee?”

  “Lowbacca’s translator droid?” Jacen asked.

  “He was on the Flier when it was stolen,” she pointed out.

  “I think he was destroyed in the fire,” Jacen said. “I found a melted lump of metal that kind of looked like him.”

  Tenel Ka sighed. “Too bad. He could be a very annoying droid, but I know Lowie would have liked to have him back.” Their gazes met, and neither hurried to look away. “So, you’ve come to ask me to leave here and help track down Lomi and Welk, before they create a whole legion of Dark Jedi?”

  Jacen’s heart leapt. “You could do that?”

  Tenel Ka smiled, but her eyes turned sad. “No, Jacen. It was a joke.”

  “I see,” Jacen said, also growing a little sad. “Am I required to laugh?”

  “Only if you wish to avoid offending the Queen Mother.”

  “Never.” Jacen laughed dutifully, then added, “You still have a lot to learn about jokes.”

  “So you say.” Tenel Ka raised her hand and made an elaborate wave skyward. “Everyone here seems to think my jokes are quite funny.”

  “And you trust them?”

  “Only the ones who don’t laugh,” Tenel Ka admitted. She swung her leg back over the bench and assumed a more regal pose. “All right, Jacen. I confess, I cannot guess. What is it you require of us?”

  “A battle fleet,” he said. “For the Colony.”

  Tenel Ka’s face did not show the surprise that Jacen sensed from her in the Force. “That is a great deal to ask. The Hapes Consortium is a member of the Galactic Alliance.”