Then he heard voices approaching from the tunnel's other end—voices and footsteps, some of them ringing heavily on the tunnel's metal floor. Ben sprinted back the way he'd come, to the lip of the vertical shaft.
There he hesitated. If he leapt for one of the cables and rode it back down, his presence would be detected—the whir of the winch, the swinging of the cable would give him away.
Instead, he moved to the side of the tunnel and swung over the lip of the vertical shaft, holding on by one hand, his other hand on the lightsaber at his belt. Four motionless fingers would be much less likely to be detected than a swinging winch cable.
He held his breath while the footsteps, seemingly more and more numerous, approached. They halted meters away, though—at Jacen's hatch, he assumed.
A woman said, “Set up here. Keep your eyes on the entire corridor. The Jedi have a nasty habit of cutting through walls where you don't expect them. Nine-two-Z, position yourself here.” That command was followed by heavy, clanging footsteps.
Ben dared to pull himself up and peer over the lip.
A detachment of armored CorSec soldiers was set up outside the hatch. There were two unliving things with them—Ben recognized YVH combat droids, machines of war designed to fight the Yuuzhan Vong. Shaped roughly like humans but taller and thicker in the chest, they packed immense firepower and combat programming.
These two also carried backpacks huge enough to hold a full-grown human male. One of them, approaching, came to a stop before the CorSec woman at the door. She continued, “All right, troopers. At the first sign of intrusion, draw back to form a firing line and open up on the enemy. Nine-two-Z, at the first sighting of a Jedi, approach it. When you've gotten as close as you think you can get, trigger your load.”
The droid nodded. “Acknowledged,” it said, its voice artificial, emotionless.
The woman continued, speaking to the others: “You hear that? You see the droid go into motion, run. Once it's detonated, return and mop up.”
Ben lowered himself below the lip again.
This was bad, bad, bad. 'That backpack had to be full of explosives or something worse. And the woman's instructions meant that if the droid detected Jacen or Ben, it would attack. Ben didn't think he could take out a YVH combat droid—certainly not before it detected him and blew up.
He let go of the lip of the tunnel.
With the Force, he pressed himself up against the wall of the vertical shaft, the friction of his cloak on the metal slowing his descent. He slid almost noiselessly back down the forty meters he'd so recently ascended. As he approached the last five meters, he let go completely and dropped naturally, going into a tuck-and-roll as he hit, rolling away from the shaft. Now he'd be out of sight if any CorSec soldiers heard something and came to investigate.
He was on his own now. He had to try to complete the mission by himself.
He'd just abandoned his teacher, his cousin. A sort of numbness tried to creep its way into his thoughts. He shook it off and ran back toward the hatch to the repulsor train tunnel.
CORONET, CORELLIA
Jaina stood over the injured and unconscious body of Zekk, her lightsaber lit and in a ready position. Four YVH combat droids, situated behind crashed CorSec airspeeders, poured near-continuous blasterfire at her. She'd been able to deflect it all, mostly into the permacrete or back toward the firers, but none of her return shots had done them any significant damage, and the high intensity of their blasters and rapid rate of fire were tiring her. She needed just a second of rest to compose herself, to sweep the droids away—but they weren't giving her a second.
Then a line of concentrated blue light leapt into existence behind the most distant of the combat droids. Jaina saw it flash around in an arc, and the combat droid's head leapt from its shoulders with a shower of sparks.
The other combat droids turned to look. Jaina took the opportunity to move forward, a little to the side, and could see Kolir. The Bothan Jedi, incongruous with her party-girl dress, her lightsaber combat stance, and the blood streaming from the right side of her mouth, kicked the droid's remains off its feet and turned to face the other three.
Their blasters swung around—but Jaina had had her second of composure. She reached up and tugged at a large cargo drone, causing it to gain a few meters' altitude, then to plummet—right onto two of the droids. It smashed down on them with the weight of tons of cargo. Jaina had a brief glimpse of plastic and metal crates leaping up from the drone's cargo bed, spilling out in all directions. Not all the drone's momentum was down—it continued bouncing forward, and then, its computer programs demonstrating considerable skill, became airborne again. It roared away from the scene at full speed, three-quarters of its cargo still skidding and rolling along the avenue.
Jaina launched herself forward. An impact like that would kill most living beings—might kill an armored bantha—but would only delay YVH droids. In midair, she twisted aside and missed being hit by a veering blue airspeeder; as she did, she saw Kolir advancing on the last upright YVH as it fired at her.
She landed beside a permacrete crater that had been the last location she'd seen one of the combat droids. As she came down, she saw that it wasn't a crater; it was actually a hole punched through into sewers or storm drains beneath.
The YVH droid came leaping up through it, facing her. Jaina flashed her lightsaber across its midsection as it rose. She felt the considerable drag that the droid's combat armor caused even to a lightsaber blade, but the blade emerged from the other side and the droid crashed to the pavement in two pieces.
One of those pieces was still dangerous. It rolled over and began to bring its blaster rifle up. Jaina stepped in and whipped her blade across the blaster, cutting it in two just forward of its power supply. Then she drove her blade into the crippled droid's chest, dragging it around to wreak as much damage to the droid's internal weapons systemry as possible.
Another YVH head landed a meter from her feet. She chalked that up as a second Kolir kill and spun toward the last known location of the fourth YVH droid.
It was rising, its back to Jaina, so much permacrete adhering to it that it appeared to have a new layer of badly installed armor. Jaina glanced over her shoulder, saw another high-mass drone speeder approaching—this one, she noted with satisfaction, a small tanker carrying a load of uncured duracrete. She yanked at it through the Force and brought it down atop the last droid, driving and grinding it forward along the avenue. She saw pieces of the droid severed by the high-mass attack—here an arm, there a leg. Once it was well past her, there was a muffled boom from beneath the nose of the airspeeder as something in the droid's chest exploded.
Jaina spared a glance back at Zekk. He lay unmoving where she'd left him. A passerby, a man in green business dress, was kneeling over him, but his intent did not seem hostile; he was reaching for Zekk's wrist as if to check his pulse.
Jaina turned to Kolir. “What's your status?”
“My teef are looshe on the right shide.” With each word Kolir spoke, more blood dribbled from her mouth and down her side, but she seemed unconcerned. “There'sh Thann.” She pointed with her lightsaber.
The Falleen Jedi was indeed headed their way, bouncing from speeder to speeder in the oncoming traffic lane like a hyperkinetic insect.
And no wonder—blasterfire from two streaming sources was dogging him. Jaina saw him ducking under one stream, batting the other away, the second stream moving him laterally because he was in mid-leap when it reached him.
From her position, Jaina could distantly see the second YVH droid. The duracrete tanker she'd used to crush her last opponent was still moving forward, even picking up speed as it tried to get clear of the combat zone. Jaina reached out for the tanker again and diverted it from its intended flight path; it came down hard on top of the combat droid, grinding it to pieces as efficiently as it had the previous one.
Kolir's tactic was similarly subtle. She picked up the blaster rifle of the first combat droi
d she'd destroyed. It took her a moment to swing the weapon, oversized and ungainly for her small frame, into line; then, bracing herself, she fired off a stream of blasterfire at the second distant combat droid. Jaina saw at least two of the blasts hit the droid and glance off
But the assault was enough to get the droid's attention. It swung around and focused on Kolir. Thann dropped from the sky to land beside it, severing its legs at the knees, then hacked at what remained until it was in too many pieces to do anyone any harm.
Moments later, running at Jedi sprint speed, the Falleen warrior rejoined them at Zekk's side. The passerby who'd taken Zekk's pulse took a look at the three lightsabers and stood up and away from Zekk, his hands half raised. “I didn't do anything.”
“I know,” Jaina said. “You'd better go.”
He turned and was gone. Jaina knelt beside Zekk, put her hand on an unburned portion of his neck. He still felt strong.
“This operation's a bust,” she said, “and from the looks of things, the guards down by the gates are massing for a run at us. Let's deprive them of the opportunity to get themselves killed. Thann, secure us some transportation.”
“Done.” The Falleen pulled something from a belt pouch. It was an identicard in the same basic gold tone as CorSec investigators carried, though it correctly identified him as a member of the Jedi order. He stood and walked toward oncoming traffic, one hand holding the identicard high and the other raised to encourage someone to stop.
And as he walked his skin rippled in color from its near orange to a deeper, huskier red.
Jaina's pulse quickened, and not just from an intellectual recognition of what Thann was doing. The Falleen had tremendous control over emission of pheromones, chemical cues that dictated many types of emotional response, chiefly affecting members of the opposite sex. Thann was using both the Force and his pheromonal powers to attract, confuse, and overwhelm someone in the oncoming traffic lane, probably also using the Force to make his identicard look like something of local significance .. .
In her peripheral vision, Jaina saw Kolir sway. The Bothan Jedi reached out and Jaina caught her hand, steadying her. “He shouldn't do that while I'm injured,” Kolir said.
A red groundspeeder, its driver a dark-haired human female wearing red-tinted racing goggles, pulled up beside Thann. Her features, angular and distinct, relaxed into a blank lack of expression. “Is there a problem, Officer?” she asked.
Thann's voice was as smooth as that of an actor in a holodrama. “Two of my fellow officers are hurt,” he said. “We need to get them to medical care and to chase some bad guys. Can we borrow your speeder?”
“You can borrow my speeder,” she said.
Thann waved Jaina and Kolir forward. “You'd better hop out,” he told the driver. “This is going to be dangerous.”
“I'll hop out.” The driver exited the speeder on the sidewalk side. “And don't tell anyone who you are or the details of your speeder. They're all spies trying to catch us,” Thann said.
“I won't tell anyone.”
Jaina exerted herself and Zekk floated up a meter into the air. In moments she had him laid out faceup in the backseat, his head in her lap, while Thann and Kolir took the front.
Thann blew a kiss to the dazed driver, then set the speeder into motion, fearlessly merging with traffic. “Control acknowledged my transmission,” he said. “But Team Tauntaun didn't. I suspect they ran into a trap.”
“Right.” Jaina rapped her knuckles against the speeder's side. Nothing had gone right, and now the three Jedi of Team Tauntaun -- Tahiti Veila, Doran Tainer, and Tiu Zax—were incommunicado.
“You shouldn't do that, you know,” Kolir said.
Thann spared her a glance. “Do what?”
“Use Jedi mind tricksh and pheromonesh at the shame time. Not fair.”
Thann shrugged. “I should perhaps use the mind tricks alone and maybe fail?”
“Well, no.”
Thann changed the subject. “How's Zekk?”
Zekk said, “Ow.” His eyes opened.
“Better,” Jaina said.
Chapter Eleven
ABOVE CORELLIA
LIKE'S HARDPOINT SQUADRON MADE A HIGH ORBITAL CROSSING over to Corellia's day side and then a fast descent into the atmosphere. The squad's speed was hampered by its having to shepherd the shuttle Chandrila Skies, an Uulshos space-capable light assault vehicle. Not much longer than an X-wing, the LAV had a horizontal chisel-shaped bow and was much broader across the fuselage than a starfighter, giving it enough interior room to carry a dozen or so passengers .. . making it a good choice for the extraction of the teams of Jedi now operating down in Coronet.
Despite the fact that the Corellian fleet continued to pace and, by its very presence, taunt the GA fleet, no units had moved out against Luke's X-wings. But now Mara's voice came across squadron frequency: “We've got some distant activity, looks like fighter swarms rising to meet us from Coronet.”
Luke checked his own sensors. They did show a couple of fuzzy signals from ahead, but to his eye they could have been two cargo craft launching, or a swarm of airspeeders punching up above approved travel routes. Mara, designated sensor officer for this mission, had a more capable set of sensors than Luke did.
Mara's voice came back: “Confirmed two squadrons. Probably some class of TIE, based on their movement patterns. We'll be within maximum laser range in two minutes.”
A pity. Luke looked off to port, down at the planetary surface. Here, it was all green forest separated from blue sea by thin lines of sandy golden beach. Such a pretty world. It was a shame that they had to send flaming starfighters and their pilots crashing down onto it.
A new voice came across the comm: “Attention starfighter flight approaching Coronet from course three-five-seven. This is Corellian Defense Force Headquarters in Coronet. You are classed as a hostile. Identify yourself or return to space.”
Luke switched his comm unit to broadcast on the same frequency. “This is Hardpoint Squadron of the Galactic Alliance Second Fleet, Luke Skywalker commanding. If your transponder hasn't recognized US as a legitimate GA unit by now, it's faulty. I'm transmitting you our ID . . . and your orders. Stand down.” He switched off the speaker and added, “Artoo, send the package.”
Artoo wheetled, the sound emerging from the cockpit speakers, acknowledging that the data package was away.
The land below was becoming less forest, more irrigated fields. Luke could see sailing craft, excursion boats, out on the water.
The Corellian comm officer's voice came back after a moment. “I'm sorry, but Corellia does not recognize the authority claimed in these orders. Turn back or be fired upon.”
Luke shook his head and did not reply; he reset his comm board to squadron frequency. On his sensor board, squadrons of incoming craft were clearly visible, arriving from two different vectors. Ahead, he could see the near edge of the city of Coronet . . . and, above it, the two units of incoming fighter craft that looked like Corellian attack fighters. He counted eighteen of them on his sensor board, and that just wasn't enough to pose a serious threat to a squadron of ten Jedi pilots.
Then the incoming squadrons turned aside, one to starboard and one to port, at right angles to Hardpoint Squadron's course.
Luke felt a trickle of alarm. “Roll out!” he shouted, and followed his own orders, snapping his X-wing into a port roll. He was aware of Mara keeping close to him, just behind and to starboard.
An explosion shook his snubfighter and rattled his teeth. R2-D2 howled but immediately began putting diagnostics up on Luke's data screen.
Luke ended his roll a quick kilometer lower than his original position. Explosions continued to batter at his eardrums, but nothing as close as the first one. He glanced between his sensor board and the skies above.
The skies were filled with puffy gray clouds. They looked benign, but each was the lingering evidence of an explosion—results of a ground-based antispacecraft barrage.
Lu
ke counted ten X-wings still flying. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then his breath caught. There should be eleven craft. “Chandrila Skies?” he asked.
“Took a direct hit,” Mara said. “She's gone.”
The skies ahead of Hardpoint Squadron began to fill up with gray clouds, and beyond them two squadrons of Corellian attack fighters danced around, waiting.
“Three, inform Dodonna of our situation,” Luke told his communications specialist. “See if they have updated orders to offer. Meanwhile, we're going in. If we can't get another shuttle, we'll bring our Jedi off Corellia if we have to land one by one and stuff them into our cargo hatches.”
“We have telemetry on CEC-One,” Fiav said to Klauskin, giving this operation's designation for the nearest of the Corellian Engineering Corporation's orbital shipyards. The course followed by Dodonna and the rest of her group would eventually bring her up on CEC-One. “It's protected by a large number of starfighters and a handful of frigates. And there's the likelihood that, as we approach, units from the main Corellian fleet will close.”
“Acknowledged,” Klauskin said. He kept his attention on space dead ahead, where, eventually, CEC-One would be close enough for him to make visual contact.
Fiav paused, as if waiting for a more comprehensive response, then continued. “Corellian starfighter squadrons are crowding our squadrons. They're just jockeying around, but eventually somebody's going to cut loose with a laser shot and it's going to be a fight.”
Klauskin nodded briskly. “Understood.”
Fiav paused again, then finally said, “Luke Skywalker reports that his squadron has been fired on, and that their shuttle has been lost. They request an additional shuttle, but he also says he'll extract his ground team individually in the X-wings if he has to.”
“All, good. I'm glad he has a plan.”
Fiav's voice sounded pained. “Sir, do you have any order revisions?”
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