Despite the wall she had built around her heart, Jaina sensed that Tekli was not grieving only for Anakin, but for her as well.
Harrar set aside the villip and glanced up at the young warrior, who was pacing the room like a thwarted thunderbolt seeking room to strike.
“The Jeedai has broken contact,” Harrar said.
Khalee Lah touched two fingers to his forehead. “I have given my blood oath to bring her in, but I swear before you and all the gods that she will spend her last days in pain, and die without honor!”
The priest dismissed this vow with an impatient wave of one hand. “Did you mark her words? It seemed to me she implied that in naming the ship Trickster, she might in fact be employing the practice of naming ships for their pilots.”
“Do you think her capable of such subtlety?” Khalee Lah scoffed.
“She is a twin. Surely that means something even where infidels are concerned, or the gods would not be so eager for this sacrifice.”
“She is both Jeedai and twin,” the warrior agreed, “but take care, Eminence, not to subscribe to the heresy that attributes too much power to these Jeedai. This female is not even a pale shadow of Yun-Harla.”
“Of course not,” the priest agreed. Still, a strange doubt lingered. “Attend me,” he said, and strode off to consult with his yammosk keeper.
They made their way to the chamber that housed the monstrous battle leader. “You have made contact with the Ksstarr?” he demanded.
The keeper bowed. “We have, Eminence.”
“I would confirm this.”
“Of course!” The keeper moved aside, allowing Harrar to place one hand on the writhing, many-tentacled thing.
After a moment, Harrar lifted his gaze to the keeper’s face. “The link is confirmed. Have you not found it peculiar that the Ksstarr has sent no return communication whatsoever?”
“It is ailing,” the keeper ventured.
“It is silent!” Harrar snapped. He turned to Khalee Lah and then waited for the warrior to grasp the significance of this.
Horror crept over the scarred face. “It is not possible,” he said, his voice dulled by shock. Despite his lesser stature and the demands of protocol, he elbowed the priest out of the way and placed his own hand against the neural sensors.
“This is impossible,” he repeated, despite the truth the yammosk revealed. “Somehow Jaina Solo has blocked the yammosk: information is flowing to her, but not back to the priestship!”
Harrar drew him aside. “You advised me against equating this human with our great and devious Yun-Harla, and rightly so. But perhaps you should consider the possibility that she is somewhat more than you thought possible.”
Khalee Lah stood for a moment, his bearing proud, his scarred face conflicted. Then he inclined his head in a chopping nod.
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
ELEVEN
Jagged Fel eased his clawcraft into a long, spiraling descent over Ithor, searching the lifeless sphere for some remnant of the once verdant world he’d fought to save.
The dark, rocky planet bore a distressing resemblance to a Yuuzhan Vong ship. Dry riverbeds gouged the surface like the scars on the faces of their warriors. It was said that the invaders believed themselves created in the image of their gods. Apparently they were determined to pass along the favor.
Jag’s comm crackled. “What do you hope to find here, Commander?” inquired a low-pitched female voice.
“A reminder,” he said softly. “This is why we’ve come, Shawnkyr. This is why the enemy must be stopped.”
He pulled his ship into close formation with his wingmate, close enough to see into the TIE fighter ball cockpit of the Chiss craft. Shawnkyr Nuruodo’s pale blue face was composed, showing neither grief for Ithor nor condemnation of Jagged Fel’s unorthodox views.
Jag wondered, briefly, what Shawnkyr really thought of their “scouting mission.” A Chiss warrior did not strike first—this was not only tradition, but a matter of honor. Yet she had followed him to Ithor before and showed every indication of following him now regardless of the path he chose.
“Next coordinates?” she inquired, as if in response to his thoughts.
Jag consulted the navigational computer—a feature newly added to his clawcraft—and gave Shawnkyr the end points of a minor hyperspace route.
“That is in the Hapes Cluster,” she observed.
“Yes. The queen of Hapes has opened the Interior Region world to refugees. If the Yuuzhan Vong follow their pattern, they will attack this system.”
“House Nuruodo will wish to hear of this attack, if it occurs.”
Jag heard the unspoken words. Shawnkyr was a member of the powerful House Nuruodo clan, which commanded the Chiss military. Shawnkyr’s advice would carry considerable weight with the official Chiss military. This scouting mission would influence the path taken by the Chiss under General Fel’s command, but it had potential for an even greater impact.
Until then, however, Jag and Shawnkyr were on their own. They could expect little from the desperate people they’d recently abandoned, and could offer them nothing but their own best efforts.
They fell silent as they prepared for the hyperspace jump. Their new clawcraft boasted navigational systems and hyperdrives far superior to their accustomed ships, as well as enhanced weapon systems. Jag had no intention of starting trouble, but he intended to walk away from any fight that found him—after winning it, of course.
The growing pressure of sublight acceleration pushed him back into his seat. He settled in as darkness enveloped the ship, intending to snatch a short rest during the hyperspace flight.
Sensors prodded him awake in what seemed like moments. Shawnkyr’s ship emerged as a blur on his port side, like a nebular haze against the sharper starlines behind. The warning sensors on Jag’s console awoke also, but as if from a nightmare: abruptly, screaming.
Jag’s eyes focused on the slack, terror-stricken faces of two human pilots, clearly visible through the transparisteel dome of the freighter headed straight at him.
He threw his clawcraft into a sharp starboard turn, rising above the larger ship with only meters to spare. Shawnkyr peeled off in the opposite direction—a smoothly executed evasion honed by years of shared flight.
Jag flicked on the comm. “Regroup and pursue. Something must have prompted them to set these coordinates.”
“Stupidity?” Shawnkyr suggested.
His lips twitched, even though he knew full well that his wingmate intended no humor. Shawnkyr held a typical Chiss disregard for “lesser races.” He’d learned long ago not to take offense.
They sped off, tracing opposite sides of a wide circle, intending to meet in the center and fall into their accustomed side-by-side formation. Their regrouping point exploded into a flare of molten gold.
Four coralskippers, visible now in the wake of their shining missiles, advanced in diamond formation, focused upon the fleeing freighter. Again the Chiss vessels peeled away, this time coming back around to flank the attacking ships.
Jag veered sharply away from an incoming plasma bolt and then brought his clawcraft screaming up over the tight formation. He held position, and his fingers danced over the controls as he hurled a seemingly random barrage at the Yuuzhan Vong ships. But he observed carefully which laser bolts disappeared into blackness and which slipped past the enemy’s organic shields.
The answering fire taught him even more. For several moments he evaded plasma bolts, and planned next steps.
“The enemy is compensating for damage,” he informed Shawnkyr. “Wing ships have weapons and shields only on their outer sides. The aft ship has no weapons at all—shields only—and the point vessel is pouring everything into attack.”
“A suicide squadron,” she concluded. “The freighter is an important target.”
“Or perhaps these coralskippers are damaged beyond repair. The leaders figure they’ve got nothing to lose but the pilots. Maybe the pilots made the decision to
go out fighting.”
The Chiss female received this in silence, as she had all of Jag’s attempts to describe the Yuuzhan Vong’s apparent philosophy. There was nothing in Shawnkyr’s culture that could help her find logic in the notion of a “glorious death.”
“Point ship first,” he said, coming around into firing position.
Jag fired a concussion missile at the lead vessel. Shawnkyr followed with a barrage of laserfire, exploding the missile just short of the alien’s shielding, and right in the path of the diamond-shaped wedge.
The lead skip pulled up sharply, but the leading edge of the explosion caught it and sent it tumbling wildly. Jag fired a second missile. The out-of-control ship exploded. Shards of black coral streaked across the sudden brightness, the opposite image of starlines against the blackness of space.
“Regroup right under the shield ship, and slightly behind,” Jag suggested. “Stay with it, and stay together.”
“As ordered. But they won’t hesitate to fire upon one of their own.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. Get right in close, just beyond its shielding range.”
The two clawcraft dipped under the rear coralskipper and sent a syncopated barrage of laserfire at the inner sides of the damaged wing ships.
With astonishing agility, the coralskippers dipped and crossed paths. They changed places and rose back into formation, so that the viable weapons and shields pointed at the clawcraft. As Shawnkyr anticipated, the skips returned fire. The rear skip absorbed each of the plasma streams, swallowing one after another.
The trio of coralskippers moved in astonishing unity, dipping and twisting in an attempt to shake their Chiss shadow. But Jag and Shawnkyr held their positions, and each bolt of plasma disappeared into the guard ship’s singularities.
“They may sacrifice this skip to take us out,” Jag said. “The first time plasma hits your shield, get away, fast. Full power. If the rear guard skip isn’t shielding, it could generate a gravity pull like a tractor beam.”
The skips kept firing. Their coral hulls paled to translucency under the continued Chiss onslaught. Huge chunks of the skips ripped away and hurtled toward the stubborn clawcraft.
Jag yawed sharply to avoid a piece of the vessel nearest him. The body of a Yuuzhan Vong pilot shot from the wreckage of the other ship, aimed directly—and probably deliberately—at Shawnkyr’s clawcraft.
A blue streak shot from Shawnkyr’s vessel and reduced the once living projectile to a grim nebula. Jag tried to ignore the splatter on his cockpit viewer. He squinted up through it toward the underside of the sole remaining coralskipper. Its hull was also thinning. Heated coral paled to a ghostly translucence.
“Break!” he shouted as he leaned his ship sharply away.
Coral erupted into the sky, pushed along by a brief, bright explosion. Volcanoes were nothing new to him—one of the planets in Chiss territory had an extremely volatile geology. But seeing a living thing erupt in similar fashion made the Yuuzhan Vong seem at once more familiar and more unknowable. Jag doubted he’d ever be able to witness a volcanic eruption again without viewing it as the death throes of a mountain.
It didn’t occur to him to share this thought with Shawnkyr. Long experience with the Chiss had taught him to keep fanciful notions to himself. Instead he switched his comm to hailing frequency.
“This is Vanguard One, a Chiss scouting vehicle. New Republic freighter, please identify yourself and tell us how we can further assist you.”
There was a moment of silence, then the comm crackled. “This is the Blind Mynock. We have no valuables aboard, no passengers. There’s no profit in boarding us.”
Jag sent a sidelong glance at his wingmate. An expression of grim outrage had settled over the Chiss female’s features. “We’re not pirates,” he said flatly. “If you require an escort, we will accompany you to Hapan space.”
“We’ve no need of whelp-tending,” the pilot blustered. “The Mynock has plenty of speed and firepower.”
Jag’s patience began to fray. “If you had weapons, you would have returned fire in the hope of protecting your nonexistent cargo and paying passengers. This sector has a history of piracy, so I understand your caution. On the other hand, it also has a demonstrated Yuuzhan Vong risk. If you’d rather take your chances with them, say so plainly and we’ll respect your choice.”
The comm crackled promptly. “They fried our navigational computer,” a different voice said, “which is why we came so close to wearing your ship as a hull ornament. We’ll have to input the jump coordinates manually. Problem is, we don’t know them offhand. If you could see your way clear to giving us directions to Hapes, we’ll be on our way.”
Jag named the coordinates and watched as the freighter lumbered off, then lurched into sublight acceleration.
“Shall we follow them?” Shawnkyr asked.
“They don’t seem eager for company,” he observed. “But let’s report to Hapes, see what information we can gather there. Maybe even pick up a few more pilots.”
“A new squadron, Commander? You asked for a Chiss phalanx and were refused. Do you intend to build a substitute?”
“We could scout more efficiently with more eyes,” Jag argued.
“True enough. And when this scouting squadron encounters the Yuuzhan Vong, it will be able to engage them more efficiently than could a pair of Chiss clawcraft.”
“You make it sound as if we’re on an offensive mission.”
The female’s clawcraft edged closer so that their wingtips were nearly touching. “Not at all, sir. Our mission is to scout out enemy activity, not to initiate battle through first-strike tactics. It is manifestly clear, however, that the Yuuzhan Vong have no such compunction. Once the first shot is fired—and it will be—we are obligated to defend ourselves.”
Jag sent a startled glance at his wingmate.
“I know why we’ve come, sir,” the Chiss said softly. “And so do you.”
For once, Jag had nothing to add. “To Hapes, then,” he said, and began to prepare for the jump.
TWELVE
The young Jedi gathered in the cockpit of the ship Jaina had named the Trickster, watching in silence as their stolen craft moved steadily toward a large Hapan ship. The vessel was moving steadily away from Hapes.
“Well, this ought to be interesting,” Tahiri murmured.
Jaina silently agreed. “Are you sure they’ve got Tenel Ka?”
“She’s been picked up, all right. The ship is mechanical, not organic. That’s good news.”
“But no guarantee of safety,” Ganner added. “For all we know, they could be Peace Bri—”
He broke off abruptly, and the expression on his face suggested that someone had just hit him between the eyes with a hydrospanner.
Before Jaina could make sense of this, white-hot pain exploded through her senses. She ripped off the cognition hood, but the agony didn’t lessen in the slightest. Dimly she realized that it came not from the ship, but from the other Jedi aboard. She felt them all, and all of them formed a single thought:
Jacen.
The surge ended abruptly, and the sensation disappeared.
For a moment Jaina sat frozen, stunned beyond speech. Jacen had appeared in the Force—but not to her.
Jaina could accept that her own grief and anger blocked Jacen’s ability to contact her. But as Jaina looked from one stunned face to another, she saw a different, darker truth. Her brother’s death was written on Lowbacca’s furred face and in Tekli’s rodent-black eyes. It was in the sorrow that flowed from all of them.
Jaina was dimly aware of Zekk nudging her aside and taking over the pilot’s chair. She slumped against the rough wall. Her whirling thoughts screamed denial, rejecting a truth she could neither sense nor accept.
Then a second storm hit her, a searing frenzy that was barely recognizable as Tenel Ka. Jaina felt the other woman’s emotional storm, the rawness in her hand from beating against the walls of the escape pod.
&
nbsp; But why could she feel nothing of her own?
Tenel Ka’s grief turned to rage. Jaina experienced this, too, and with the same benumbed detachment. One part of her was startled by the depth and intensity of Tenel Ka’s reaction. She’d been troubled by her father’s response to Chewbacca’s death, but Han’s denial and detachment made more sense to Jaina than her friend’s heartbroken frenzy.
Maybe her family wasn’t a reliable measure of such things. The Skywalkers and Solos were no strangers to conflict, and they’d all stepped up at an early age. In matters of relationships, however, every one of them seemed a little vague on the coordinates. Her mother, conditioned through training and experience to hold the New Republic paramount, had nearly accepted Prince Isolder’s offer of marriage. Leia had known that Han loved her, but somehow she’d misplaced the access codes to her own emotions. Had Jacen done the same thing? Had he loved Tenel Ka and never fully realized it?
Yeah, Jaina decided numbly. That sounded like Jacen—forever thinking about everything under a hundred distant suns rather than focusing on what was right in front of him.
As she herself was doing. With great effort, Jaina pushed herself away from the wall.
“Tenel Ka is still out there,” she said in a cool, steady voice. “We need to focus on her.”
For a moment every eye fixed upon Jaina. A symphony of emotions ranging from incredulity to anger to pity washed over her.
Ganner was the first to pull himself together. He threw himself in the gunner’s chair. “You got it. Let’s hunt them down.”
Tesar hissed his approval and scuttled off to his station, his armored tail rasping against the rough coral floor. The rest of the Jedi set to work or strapped in for the pursuit.
As they neared the Hapan ship, they noted the small flight of Hornet Interceptors that followed it. These scattered and fled at the approach of the Yuuzhan Vong frigate.
“They’ve got the escape pod,” Zekk confirmed. “Just pulled it through the hatch.”
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