Star Wars®: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

by Troy Denning

  “You dream big, Skywalker,” Mara said, shaking her head. “But it’s not going to happen this time. For better or worse, Raynar is entwined with the Colony. I doubt that they can be separated.”

  “You’re probably right,” Luke said. “But something here feels wrong.”

  “Define wrong,” Mara ordered. “Something to do with Raynar?”

  “Maybe. It frightens me when Jedi become emperors.”

  “The galaxy had a bad experience with that,” Mara admitted. “But Raynar is hardly another Palpatine. He seems very concerned about his, uh, people.”

  “For now,” Luke said. “But how long before power becomes the end instead of the means?”

  “So it’s your job to set it right?” Mara asked. “We have enough to worry about in the Galactic Alliance.”

  “The galaxy is larger than the Galactic Alliance.”

  “And the Jedi can’t be responsible for all of it,” Mara retorted.

  There was a long silence while they continued the discussion on a deeper, more intimate level, wrapping themselves around the other’s viewpoint, trying to understand completely, but also searching for a way to consolidate what seemed to be opposing opinions. Such moments were one of the secret buttresses of their marriage. They understood how they fit together, how each had strengths and insights that complemented the weaknesses and blind spots of the other, and they had learned early in their relationship—during a desperate, three-day hike fleeing Imperials in a vornskyr-filled forest—that their future always looked brighter when they relied on each other.

  But this time there seemed no way to reconcile their concerns. Jedi resources were already stretched too thin to try separating Raynar from the Colony, even if Luke could convince the rest of the council that it was the right thing to do. Yet he could not escape the feeling that something important had fallen out of balance; that his Jedi Knights were busy plugging vac holes while their ship flew down a black hole.

  “Life was a lot simpler when we could just draw a lightsaber and cut the bad guy down to size,” Luke said.

  Mara smiled. “Simpler—not necessarily easier.”

  They were close enough to Qoribu now that its moons had begun to resolve into colored shapes, from twinkling yellow specks to creamy fist-sized disks. Luke counted twenty-five different satellites glimmering in the penumbral grayness to either side of the gas giant’s murky face, and the navigation display revealed another thirty hidden in the complete darkness of umbra.

  Luke reached out in the Force. A diffuse insect presence blanketed six different moons, all currently clustered together near the penumbra’s outer edge. Jaina and most of the other Jedi seemed to be on a moon near the center of the group, and—to his great relief—they exhibited only a hint of the Joiner double presence. But Lowbacca was floating a little behind the group, just inside Qoribu’s pitch-black umbra, frightened and alone amid a mass of Chiss presences.

  One of the Jedi in the main group stirred beneath Luke’s Force-touch, then extended a welcoming embrace.

  Luke recognized Jacen’s presence, but before he could respond with his own feeling of warmth, his nephew’s voice sounded inside his head.

  Hurry.

  Jacen seemed more concerned than alarmed, and Luke had the clear impression that things were about to get crazy. He raised a hand to point toward the moon with their Jedi, but Mara was already swinging the Shadow’s nose toward it. He would have liked to open a hailing channel and raise Jaina on the comm, but there were certain to be Ascendancy listening posts all over the system—and the less the Chiss knew about who was approaching, the better.

  “Faster.” Saba’s voice came over a vessel-to-vessel tight-beam channel that would be difficult for the Chiss to intercept; she was aboard the XR808g serving as Juun’s copilot until Tarfang recovered. “It feelz like our Jedi Knightz are preparing a battle rage.”

  “You heard him, too?” Luke asked. “Jacen?”

  “Yes.” Saba’s breathing began to grow heavy and deliberate. “It felt like they were about to go crazy. They must have found a great evil, or Tesar would never awaken the Hungry One.”

  “The Hungry One?” Mara echoed. “Take it easy, Saba. I don’t think crazy means the same thing to humans as to Barabels.”

  Saba’s breathing slowed. “No?”

  “It just means unpredictable,” Luke said, amazed at how little he still understood Barabels. “A bit out of control.”

  “Unpredictable?” Saba’s voice returned to normal. “What a relief. This one does not like to set her mind aside.”

  Grimacing at the thought of a Barabel robbed of all restraint, Luke brought up a tactical display and found a trio of frigates drifting in unpowered orbit near Lowbacca’s presence. They were being tended by a swarm of rescue craft, with a shield of clawcraft fighters hovering between them and the Killik-occupied moons. Floating just above the ring system were several massive chunks of flotsam that gave Luke a very bad feeling.

  “Artoo, give me a composition analysis on that debris in the middle of the Chiss task force.”

  R2-D2 tweeted an listless acknowledgment, and a moment later the analysis appeared in an inset on Luke’s screen. The flotsam was metallic, irregular, and mostly hollow. Starship pieces. Luke started to comment that there had been a battle, but stopped when he heard a pair of small feet slapping onto the flight deck behind him.

  “Hurry!” Ben cried from the door. “Jacen needs us!”

  Luke turned to find his son charging forward in his night tunic, his red hair still pillow-mussed and his eyes bleary with sleep.

  Luke opened his arms. “You heard Jacen?”

  Nanna clomped onto the deck behind him. “I apologize. He woke and jumped up before I could get to him.” She extended her hand, saying to Ben, “Come back to bed. It was only a dream.”

  Luke motioned her to wait. “It wasn’t.” He hoisted Ben onto his knee. “We heard Jacen, too.”

  Ben’s mouth dropped open. “You did?”

  “Yes,” Luke answered. “Through the Force.”

  This brought a flash of alarm to Ben’s eyes.

  “It’s okay, Ben,” Mara said in a soothing voice. “There’s nothing to be scared of. You touched the Force all the time, when you were younger.”

  “During the war, I know.” Ben stretched his arms toward Nanna. “I wanna go back to bed.”

  Luke didn’t lift him toward the droid. “You’re sure? We’re coming up on Qoribu now.”

  Ben’s face lit briefly in delight when he glanced forward, but he quickly turned back to Nanna. “I’m still tired.”

  “Really?” Luke frowned inside, but passed Ben to the droid. “We’ll wake you when we see Jacen and Jaina.”

  “Okay.” Ben buried his cheek on Nanna’s synthflesh shoulder and looked away.

  After the droid had taken him off the flight deck, Luke said, “He’s afraid of it.”

  “Clearly.” Mara’s voice was sharp, but Luke sensed it was only because she was worried about Ben. “Maybe he thinks the Force is why his cousin and so many other Jedi died?”

  “Maybe,” Luke said. “It would be nice to have a reason we understood.”

  “But you don’t think that’s it.”

  “I guess not,” Luke said. “When it comes to anything else, he’s just too adventurous and confident, sometimes even reckless.”

  Noting that the Falcon was already drifting into a standard defensive formation while Juun’s XR808g continued to speed ahead, Luke opened a tight-beam channel to both vessels.

  “Not so fast, Exxer,” he said. “Until we know what that battle was about—”

  “There was a battle?” Juun gasped.

  “Check your readouts,” Han commed from the Falcon. When he received only dead silence in response, he added, “You do have the standard reconnaissance suite?”

  “We have two pairz of electrobinocularz,” Saba informed them, acting as the XR808g’s copilot. “And only one of us is small enough to use
them.”

  As Han chided the Sullustan for this lack, Mara said to Luke, “Heads up. What’s that?”

  Luke checked his tactical display and found a torrent of Killik dartships streaming out of Qoribu’s shadow. Frowning because he had not sensed any nests in that area, he turned to ask R2-D2 to double-check the readings—and found the little droid leaning against his interface arm, slowly twisting the information buffer back and forth in the socket. Alarmed at how the droid seemed to be deteriorating, Luke promised himself that he would schedule some maintenance time and looked out the forward viewport instead.

  It took only a moment to see the sensors were not mistaken. An elongated oval of tiny white flecks was pouring into the gray shadows of the planet’s penumbra, moving to position itself in front of the six moons where Luke had sensed Killiks.

  “This isn’t standard procedure,” Juun said. The XR808g continued toward the Killik moons. “They must be nervous because of the battle.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Han asked. “Shouldn’t we slow down?”

  “The sooner they see us, the better,” Juun said. “Once they realize we’re only flying transports, they’ll return to their usual routine. Insects are very advanced. They always follow standard procedure.”

  Luke wasn’t so sure. He reached out to the dartships and sensed…nothing definite, only the same vague uneasiness that he had felt before the tower collapsed on Yoggoy. He knew that Mara felt it, too.

  “Captain Juun, I think you should come back,” Luke commed. “We can’t feel those pilots in the Force.”

  “You place too much faith in your ancient sorcery, Master Skywalker,” Juun said. “In Running the Blockade: Escape from Yavin, Captain Solo clearly illustrated the value of a confident approach.”

  “What’d I tell you about those history vids?” Han warned. “The Force isn’t just some hokey religion. This stuff works.”

  “So does procedure, Captain Solo,” Juun said. “That’s why you’re paying me the big credits. Let me do my job.”

  The dartships continued to stream out of the umbra, gathering in a wall of swirling, flickering orange between them and the Killik moons. The XR808g accelerated.

  “Captain Juun, I think you should reconsider.” Though Luke spoke more forcefully, he resisted the temptation to tell Saba to take control of the XR808g. The Jedi may have developed a ruthless streak during the war, but they still stopped short of fomenting mutiny. “After the attack on Yoggoy—”

  “What attack?” Juun asked.

  “The building collapse,” Saba rasped.

  “But that was determined to be an accident.”

  “Not by us, it wasn’t,” Han answered.

  The XR808g’s running lights began to flash in ancient blink code. Luke looked to his display, but instead of the translation he had expected, he found only the blip-storm of approaching dartships.

  “Artoo!”

  R2-D2 emitted a surprised clunk, then trilled a short question.

  “The Exxer’s blink code, that’s what!” Luke said. “How about a translation?”

  R2-D2 droned wearily, and the translation began to scroll across the screen.

  This is the XR808g, flagship of JuunTaar Commercial, with two sister ships bearing supplies for the Jedi warriors. Please signal your intention to provide safe escort.

  “JuunTaar Commercial?” Han complained over the comm. “Flagship? I didn’t think Sullustans had that much imagination.”

  Luke looked back to R2-D2. “Any answer from the Killiks?”

  R2-D2 tweeted a sharp no.

  The dartships began to stream toward the XR808g, bleeding a swath of orange rocket flame through Qoribu’s shadow.

  “Juun, get out of there now!” Han’s voice made the comm speakers pop. “Time to cut and run…or you’re fired!”

  Juun was already swinging around, but the dartships put on a burst of speed and shot across the last few kilometers in an eye-blink, engulfing the XR808g in a whirling cloud of rocket light and splinter-shaped hulls. Luke felt a sudden spike of Sullustan fear and Barabel anger, then bursts of silver light began to erupt around the transport.

  Juun’s voice came over the S-thread emergency channel. “Urgent, urgent.” His voice was terrified but steady. “This is Captain Jae Juun of the XR-eight-oh-eight-g requesting immediate assistance. We are under attack just off Qoribu in the Gyuel system, coordinates—”

  “Enough procedure, already!” Han said over the normal comm. “We know the situation.”

  “Copy,” Juun said. The channel crackled as the XR808g’s shields fell, then the comm erupted into a steady, deep rumble. “Uh, we just lost our drives. Request plan update.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Han commed. “Just sit tight.”

  “Cop—”

  The signal disintegrated into a series of loud bangs, and the Falcon started forward.

  “We’ll take this one, Shadow,” Leia commed. “Hang here and cover our stern.”

  “Why don’t you cover our stern?” Mara suggested. “You’re better armed.”

  “Because the Shadow has yacht-class drive units,” Han said. “If you latch onto that transport, it’ll take you a week to get moving.”

  “You have us there,” Mara admitted.

  The XR808g’s blaster cannons began to fire indiscriminately, blowing whole swaths clear of dartships, and the anger that Saba had been pouring into the battle-meld turned to hunt-glee.

  “We’re going in,” Leia commed. “Just keep your ion drives hot. We may have to scoot out of here in a hurry.”

  “Copy.” Luke was just as worried about Han and Leia as he was about Juun and Saba. The Falcon packed a powerful punch and boasted military-grade shields, but her legendary speed would not be available if she was dragging along a transport almost as large as she was. “Just be as fast as you can.”

  “Check that,” Mara said. “I think you’re scaring them off.”

  Luke glanced at his tactical display and saw that the dartships were swinging away from the XR808g, leaving the Falcon a clear path to rescue Juun and Tarfang.

  “Maybe those guys aren’t as homicidal as we thought,” Luke said. “Could this be a communications problem?”

  “It wasn’t a communications problem when that tower fell,” Mara said. “And I don’t like the way those dartship pilots feel.”

  “Shadowy,” Luke agreed. “Like they’re hiding in the Force.”

  The dartships hooked around and began a ferocious acceleration on a course opposite the Falcon’s, back toward the pitch blackness of Qoribu’s umbra.

  “They’re sure in a hurry,” Luke said.

  He switched scales, searching for any sign that the Chiss were moving against the Killiks, or the Killiks gathering for an assault on the Chiss. Everything looked quiet on both fronts. The dartship swarm split into two groups, one accelerating at twice the rate of the other.

  “I didn’t know methane rockets could provide so much thrust,” Mara said. “None of this makes sense.”

  R2-D2 beeped, then scrolled a message across their displays.

  These Killiks are flying hydrogen rockets.

  By the time the Falcon’s tractor beam had caught hold of the XR808g, a two-kilometer gap had opened between the two sets of dartships. The swarms continued to accelerate toward the planet’s umbra until the faster one was past the Shadow, then both groups pivoted around and came shooting back for a flank attack.

  “Look sharp!” Luke warned. “They’re coming back for us.”

  “See ’em,” Leia replied coolly. “Thanks.”

  The Falcon began to accelerate, but hardly with her usual speed. She was dragging the XR808g along, drawing it in slowly because the two transports were so close in size. Working any faster, Luke knew, meant risking the tractor beam’s grasp—or smashing the derelict into the Falcon.

  The dartships continued to close, and it quickly grew apparent the Falcon could not outrun them without setting the XR808g adrift.
Luke started to suggest that they let Juun and Saba go EV so the Shadow could pick them up on the way past, but the slow swarm suddenly stopped and began to form a wall between the Shadow and the Falcon. The second, faster swarm continued to pursue the Shadow from behind.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Mara said. “Artoo, start plotting escape vectors.”

  The droid tweedled an acknowledgment and went to work.

  “They drew us in,” Mara said. “I’m ashamed.”

  “They’re going to a lot of trouble to get us,” Luke said. “What I want to know is why.”

  That was the question he held in his mind as he reached for Jacen and Jaina in the Force. Raynar had been unwilling—or unable—to discuss the Yoggoy attack honestly, but Luke felt sure his niece and nephew would prove much more open.

  In reply, he received only an impression of confusion.

  “Same story as on Yoggoy,” Mara observed. “Nobody knows anything.”

  R2-D2 tweeted an announcement. The Shadow lacked enough current velocity to escape unscathed. No matter which way they turned, the fast swarm would have a thirty-second window of attack—and that assumed the Shadow suffered no damage to her drive units.

  Nanna’s voice came over the intercom. “Shall I take Ben to the docking bay?”

  “Not yet,” Mara said.

  “I really think you should take Ben and flee in the StealthX, Master Skywalker,” the droid insisted. “The Shadow’s odds of survival are—”

  “Certain,” Mara growled. Her gaze slid across the mirrored canopy toward Luke. “Right?”

  “Right,” Luke said. They had rehearsed just this situation many times. “We’re fine.”

  Closing his mind to external distractions, Luke began a focusing exercise, breathing in through his nose, filling his belly diaphragm with air, then exhaling slowly out his mouth. He barely felt the Shadow shudder as the first dartships began to pelt her shields with balls of primitive chemical explosives, and when Han’s voice came over the comm, he heard the words only with his ears.

  “Uh, why aren’t you on an escape vector? Is Artoo on the blink again?”