As Luke, Mara, Kell, and Tahiri came closer to Face, they could see down the incline on the other side, where a party of Yuuzhan Vong warriors approached. Luke saw seven of them, most already holding amphistaffs in their hands. The serpentlike amphistaffs were currently stiff, in staff/spear configuration. Face was fiddling with the fake amphistaff wrapped around his waist, but Luke could see that he was actually freeing the cord.
Luke came up beside Face and stood there, arms crossed, a stance of defiance and arrogance. Mara came to a stop beside him, Tahiri and Kell on the other side of Face. Kell unwrapped the false amphistaff from around his own waist and triggered it, snapping it into rigidity, an artful imitation of the use of the genuine weapons, though his would never stand up to the rigors of combat.
The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten meters away and their leader looked at Luke and the others. “This is our designated zone,” he said. “Who has commanded you to hunt here?”
“No one has commanded us!” Face’s tone was sharp and mocking, even through the tizowyrm’s translation. “We are not on duty. We seek personal glory.”
“If you are not on duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way.”
Luke knew that no true Yuuzhan Vong warrior would respond well to such a command, and he sighed inwardly. There was going to be a fight. He moved his knee until he could feel his lightsaber where it dangled from his belt under the armor’s skirt plates.
“If you are on duty,” Face said, “then your mission is less important than ours, for you hunt only at your superiors’ orders, while we hunt because it makes us great. You make way.”
The enemy leader stared at Face. Then the brief stalemate ended as it had to; the leader charged, his warriors with him in two lines.
Face dropped back, allowing the more skilled combatants to close the gap where he’d been. The enemy leader hurtled toward him as if to shoot between Luke and Kell to reach him anyway, whirling his amphistaff to slam Luke out of the way, but Luke went up and over the charge in a somersault made only slightly clumsy by his false alien armor.
While he was inverted, he saw Kell catch the leader and spin him back and around, slamming him powerfully into one of the transparisteel panels on the side of the walkway. The panel held, but the metal restraints holding it failed; warrior and panel punched free of the walkway. The warrior screamed, flailing, as he dropped from view.
Luke landed and brought his lightsaber out from beneath the skirt plates even as he heard the snap-hiss of Mara’s and Tahiri’s blades igniting. His lit just in time to catch the thrust from an amphistaff. He shoved the deadly pointed tip of the weapon out of alignment, let it slide past him, and riposted. The warrior he faced caught the lightsaber blade on the amphistaff’s upper end and the blade bounced away, leaving only the faintest of burn marks on the amphistaff neck.
His opponent screamed, “Jeedai!” The cry was picked up and repeated by the other five warriors facing them—and then by other voices, farther back.
Luke parried a thud bug hurled his way by one of the warriors in the second rank, then made a wild swing at the warrior in front of him. That fighter ducked, but he was not the true target; Luke’s blow continued onto the arm of Tahiri’s opponent to his right, hitting it at the unprotected elbow, severing it. That warrior roared, more, it seemed, in anger than in pain, as his arm and amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of the moment to kick him, propelling the warrior back into the second rank. Meanwhile, in Luke’s peripheral vision, Mara deftly incinerated a razor bug hurled at her, then parried a hard swing from a front-rank amphistaff and a thrust from another in the second row.
Then Luke could see them, more warriors running toward them from the building opposite. He couldn’t count them; he thought there were at least twenty, and more were emerging from that walkway opening every second. Most were screaming, “Jeedai!”
Kell Tainer turned and ran. Luke caught a glimpse of Tahiri’s eyes, startled and betrayed, through her helmet faceplate before she ducked beneath the swing of her next opponent. Before she could straighten, a burst of blasterfire filled the air above her. Most of it was absorbed or deflected by her opponent’s vonduun crab armor, but one shot caught the warrior in the throat. He fell back, his throat smoking, and Luke could see Face standing directly behind Tahiri, blaster rifle in hand. Even as Tahiri rose, Face let off the trigger and took a half step left, out of Luke’s peripheral vision, waiting for another target.
Luke kicked the severed arm and its amphistaff up into the face of his opponent, then followed with a simple thrust to the head. That warrior was too canny or experienced for such a ploy; unflinching, he let the arm bounce from his helmet and deflected the thrust with his amphistaff.
Then the next wave of warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too many amphistaffs, thud bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm against. Luke found himself forced backward step after step even as he parried a blow, incinerated a razor bug, plunged his lightsaber blade into a warrior’s throat. “Fighting retreat!” he shouted.
Something arced between Luke and Mara from behind. It looked like a flat black box, about the size of human hand, with glowing letters or numbers on one side. And Kell was once again in Luke’s peripheral vision, this time with a blaster, holding it high over the head of the Jedi, pouring fire down into the Yuuzhan Vong. “Suggest we retreat fast,” he shouted. “Ten.”
“What was that?” Luke asked. Instead of blocking the next amphistaff blow to come his way, he leaned forward before the blow began and whipped his lightsaber across his new opponent’s wrist, severing the holding hand.
“You know what it was. Seven. Six.”
Luke began to back away fast. Mara and Tahiri kept pace with him, and Face and Kell kept up the blasterfire, joined by an occasional single-shot blast from their allies behind.
They’d almost backed into the opening to the building when Kell’s explosive charge detonated. Suddenly the walkway in the midst of the Yuuzhan Vong force was a wall of fire rushing toward them.
Luke exerted himself, hurling himself backward with use of the Force, yanking Mara and Tahiri with him. They landed several meters back in the building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor bugs. Then the fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening Yuuzhan Vong and past the Jedi, momentarily blinding Luke, hammering him backward. Sure in his sense of where the other Jedi and Wraiths were, he whirled his lightsaber in a defensive motion he seldom used outside of practice, felt it hit something hard and unyielding.
Then the heat and brightness were past. He found he was locked, lightsaber against amphistaff, with a warrior whose back was smoking. Three other warriors stood among him and his allies, though two were now dancing in concentrated fire from the Wraiths and Danni Quee. The last, in the middle of a quite elegant snap-kick against Mara, was receiving her lightsaber thrust up and under his skirt plates.
Luke kicked out, catching his opponent in the center of the torso, sending him hurtling. The warrior staggered back to the walkway aperture … then dropped out of sight with a shout of surprise.
The walkway was gone. Only smoke and the jagged edges where it had once joined the building suggested it had ever been there. Even with his ears ringing from the explosion, Luke could hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage descended three or four hundred meters to the boulevard below.
They stood panting for a moment, Jedi, Wraiths, and scientist, staring at one another. Finally Luke said, “Anyone hurt?”
“I got grazed by a thud bug,” Danni said. “But it hit the armor. It only knocked me down.”
“Something of a disastrous encounter,” Luke decided. “But at least we don’t have any injuries.”
“It was a very successful encounter,” Face said. “Very promising.”
Luke frowned. “How so? Now they know we’re here. That Jedi are here.”
“No. First, I think they were all on the walkway. So n
o one alive knows that Jedi are here.”
“Until they find the bodies,” Mara pointed out. “With distinctive lightsaber burns on them.”
Face shrugged. “You have me on that one. But second, more important, until those lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzan Vong during the last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again.”
“Good point.”
Face’s tone became professionally worried. “So, does that count as my turn, or do I have to check out the next walkway?”
Luke grinned. “It counts as your turn.”
“The next one,” Kell said, “will be twenty or thirty flights down. We’d better get to it.”
Bhindi slapped the back of Kell’s helmet. “That one is going to have been hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up.”
His tone subdued, Kell said, “I knew that.”
Borleias, Pyria System
Han Solo, upside down and up to his waist in machinery beneath the deck plating of the Millennium Falcon, heard and felt footsteps approaching. They were light, precise—Leia. That meant there would be a second set, the footsteps of Meewalh, Leia’s Noghri bodyguard, but Han had never actually heard them.
A desire to finish patching the coupling he was working on kept him inverted and incurious—that, and the fact that he knew that if Leia had a problem, her walking pace wouldn’t be normal. “Artoo, you want to hand me the electrical flow meter?” He extended a hand up into the air.
R2-D2, Luke’s astromech droid, responded with a series of cheerful whistles and bleats. Han heard the whine of a manipulator arm being extended, felt the meter being pressed into his hand. Then he heard his wife’s voice: “Do you think if I poked him, he’d bang his head into the flooring?”
R2-D2’s blatted response sounded definitely affirmative.
“You better hope she doesn’t, Artoo,” Han said. “I can’t take revenge on my wife, so I’ll have to take it on the nearest droid at hand.”
R2-D2 replied with a distinctly sour set of notes, then Han heard the droid whir away. “What did he say?” Han asked.
Leia laughed. “I don’t know. But if I were him, it would be, I’ll go fetch See-Threepio, then.”
“Good point.” Han clipped the flow meter to the wires he’d just installed. “You want to power up the holocomm for me?”
“Are you down there with your head in the holocomm power cables?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I can’t tell if the power flow is right if you don’t.”
“Come on up out of there and leave the meter where you can see the readout.”
Han growled. He knew, deep in his heart, that nothing could go wrong, that the Falcon would never hurt him while he was working on her. He knew this in spite of innumerable minor abrasions, contusions, and electrocutions he’d suffered over the years. But Leia remained stubbornly unconvinced.
He also knew, from long experience, that Leia was not going to leave until she was sure he wasn’t going to do something she considered foolish. He could either wait here upside down forever, or do it her way.
So he situated the meter where he could see the readout from above. He shoved his way up and out of the access and turned an artificially cheerful smile on Leia. “Happy?”
“Happy. You’re very red.”
“That’s what happens when you stay upside down for too long. Could I get you some caf? Something to read? For while you’re here managing this repair operation, that is.” Ignoring sudden dizziness brought on by the flow of blood back out of his head, he stood.
Leia smiled, not at all put off by his snide comments. “Actually, I just came here to remind you that we need to see Tarc before we take off.”
“Yeah, I know. I just hate good-byes. Never could figure out how to make them happy.”
Leia lowered her voice to a whisper. “Speaking of which, do you have any advice on how we’re going to tell Meewalh she can’t come along on this mission? That hovering around me to do bodyguard duties will compromise any disguises that we try to use?”
Han matched her whisper for whisper. “How about persuading her to take a vacation?”
“Han.”
“How about, just before takeoff, we send her out to pick up a bottle of brandy, and then leave while she’s running the errand?”
“You’re not helping.”
He smiled and pulled her to him. “You’re not fooling anybody. You know exactly what you’re going to tell her. You just want me to be there when you do it. To back you up. Right?”
She offered him an expression of mock outrage. “No fair peeking into my mind like that.
““Right?”
Leia sighed and settled against him. “Right.”
But her expression, though merry, wasn’t entirely without worry, and he knew why. She couldn’t be entirely free from concern with one of their sons recently lost to war, the other missing and presumed by most to be dead, and their only daughter elsewhere in the Pyria solar system on a mission with her squadron. Han wondered if there would ever be a time when Leia’s expression was completely at peace.
Pyria System
Well within the dovin basal minefield, Jaina and her Twin Suns Squadron caught up with Mon Mothma, which was executing a turn back toward Borleias while, in the distance, a Gallofree cargo ship, as pudgy and unlovely as a Hutt in the middle of diving into a pool, edged toward them. Tiny lights winking around the freighter hinted at the battle that still went on, but they were few in number—and ever fewer, as the sensor blips representing coralskippers gradually disappeared from the screen.
“Twin Suns, this is Rebel Dream. Sensors show more skip squadrons incoming, but we think our payload will be out of the minefield and through with its last microjump before they arrive. It’s going to be close, though, so please stand by.”
Jaina grinned at the please. Because of the game she was playing with the Yuuzhan Vong, the deception in which she increasingly identified herself with their Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla, she was a step or two outside Borleias’s command structure, and all commanders had been privately instructed to treat her with the deference due a foreign dignitary. She sometimes wondered which of them were amused at playing along and which were irritated. This controller’s voice held no evidence of annoyance. “Twin Suns Leader to Rebel Dream, copy.”
Jaina brought her squadron around to cruise alongside Rebel Dream and waited. As the cargo vessel’s lines finally came into sharp focus with the naked eye, her name finally blipped onto her sensor board, Reckless Abandon, and she could see the nature of the starfighters protecting her—they were now organized into escort wings, all the fighting done. Most wore the white-and-dark-gray color scheme of Rebel Dream support craft, but one squadron, mixed A-wings and E-wings, was painted in glaring yellow with menacingly angular black stripes.
“What the Sith spawn are those?” Jaina asked.
“Twin Suns One, you have the Taanab Yellow Aces, Ace-One speaking.” The voice was male, amused. “We’re here to show the defenders of Borleias what flying is all about.”
Jaina winced. She’d forgotten that she had switched over to the general New Republic military frequency to respond to Rebel Dream. But despite the fact that the mistake was hers, she couldn’t let a jibe like that go by. “So you’re the masters at flying out of an engagement zone?”
“Ooh,” Ace-One said. “Don’t say engagement. Unless you’re volunteering, that is.”
“Ace-One, Reckless Abandon. Do you suppose you could confine your courtship rituals to groundside?”
“Copy, Reckless. Twins Leader, look me up when we’re on the ground. Ace-One out.”
Jaina switched back to send out only over squadron frequency. “Arrogant little monkey-lizard.”
“I agree.” That was the mechanical voice of Piggy, Jaina’s Gamorrean pilot and tactics expert. “I know him.”
>
Borleias
Creatures moved within Tam Elgrin’s field of vision. He couldn’t seem to hold his eyes open enough for visual clarity, so most of the time they were mere blobs of white or orange, walking back and forth before him, speaking in muted tones.
He was content with that for a while, even content to understand that he wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t remembering, but eventually curiosity got the better of him and he forced his eyes open wider, forced himself to focus.
He could see now that the traffic was beyond the bed he lay on. A clean sheet in a soothing blue covered his large, ungainly frame. Beyond his feet was the metal footboard of a bed, and beyond that was some sort of pedestrian traffic lane; the blobs of color he had seen were people, humans and the occasional Twi’lek or Rodian or Devaronian, most in medical whites, some in pilot jumpsuit orange, moving past his field of vision, paying him no mind.
To either side of his bed were hung opaque curtains of that same offensively inoffensive blue, so patently obvious a measure to provide him with privacy from two directions and suggest calm that he finally understood that he was in a hospital.
That realization was enough for now. He didn’t need to know why he was here. The fact that his brain worked well enough to process information again was sufficient.
But a moment later, a figure left the traffic lane and moved into his curtained cubicle. It was a Mon Calamari; Tam’s long experience with nonhumans suggested that it was a female. She wore medical whites, and her skin was a deep, appealing pink. “You are awake,” she said, her tone suggesting that it was a minor achievement, something for which everyone should be at least slightly pleased.
“Um,” he said. It was supposed to have been yes, but it came out um.
Rebel Stand: Enemy Lines II Page 2