Chapter 35

Though the skyway balcony was always the grandest entrance to any society apartment, Viqi Shesh had long believed that the interior approach revealed more about the occupants' station in life. The Solo apartment sat in a sanibuffed cul-de-sac as wide as a speeder avenue, with a floor of milky larmalstone - a costly nonfabricant available only from the Roche asteroid field - and rare red ladalums blooming in rounded wall niches between pillars of white marde. A barrel-vaulted ceiling of custom-made glow panels infused the area with cloudy light, and a smiling Serv-O-Droid greeter - no doubt with the full tatdetale security package - stood patiently outside the crystasteel door.

The Solos had certainly come down in the world since Leia's days as chief of state. Upon learning that they had quietly traded their prestigious Orowood hideaway for something in the more affordable Eastport administrative district, Viqi had at first been inclined to doubt her informer. One did not expect to find two of the Rebellion's most acclaimed heroes and power brokers living among the bureaucrats - much less at an address nearly three hundred meters down from the top of a not-very-tall tower - but the ladalums convinced her. Unique to Alderaan, the shrubs yielded red blossoms only if their line remained pure to their planet of origin. Given the vicissitudes of disease and cross-pollination, they were, like so many things Alderaanian these days, gradually dying out.

That was what happened to those who lost power, Viqi supposed. They withered slowly away, until one day they were just gone. Like Mon Mothma, like Admiral Ackbar, like Leia Organa Solo - like Viqi herself, after being undone in the senate by Luke Skywalker and his Jedi tricks.

Not wishing to draw attention to herself by staring too long at the Solos' apartment, Viqi looked casually away and continued past, just another Eastport bureaucrat heading home on personal business in the middle of the day. Dressed in a fashionable high-collared overcloak and swank slouch hat, she certainly looked the part - well enough to have fooled the young Jedi trailing her when she and an assistant exchanged clothes in the refresher station of a crowded transit hub. She followed the corridor around the corner to a lift bank and stepped into a tube, removing her hat and overcloak as she rose to the rooftop.

Now garbed in the conservative business tabard of a money watcher, she stepped out onto the sky-shuttle landing pad, deposited the clothing in a disintegrator chute, and crossed to another lift bank. After giving the proper visitor authorization for an apartment on the same level, she descended to the Solos' floor and started back toward the apartment, trying to think of how she could insert the sensislug without being observed. Entering the cul-de-sac, even on the pretext of examining the beautiful ladalums, was out of the question. The greeter droid would be very polite and solicitous, but it would also be scanning her image and voiceprint for a data match.

Viqi approached the entry head-on this time, strolling along and peering over the top of a sheaf of flimsiplast documents she had brought as a prop. There was simply no way to enter the cul-de-sac without being seen by the greeter droid, which meant she would have to find some other way to insert the sensislug. Her contact had assured her that the creatures were capable of finding their own way inside once they had been targeted, but the Yuuzhan Vong understood even less about cleaning droids than she did about sensislugs. Having already lost half a dozen of the insects trying to slip just one into the NRMOC committee room, she felt reasonably certain that the instant the sensislug came within twenty meters of a ladalum, some little pest hunter would zip out to destroy it.

Viqi was starting to consider other options - food deliveries or using a third party - when she heard the solution marching up the corridor behind her.

"... is hardly the time to go sight-seeing, dear," Han Solo was saying.

"It's exactly the time," Leia countered. "They had a reason for trying to keep the capture of Reecee quiet, and that reason will be all the more pressing now that we know about it."

Still pretending to be absorbed in her documents, Viqi quietly slipped one hand into her pocket and palmed what felt like a thumb-sized leech in her fingers. In place of a head, it had a huge compound eye. She turned the eye toward the Solos' crystasteel door and squeezed the creature until she felt its body grow warm with understanding. Han and Leia veered toward the center of the corridor as they came up behind her. Some creature in their party gurgled softly as they passed, and two pairs of metallic feet clanked on the floor behind them.

"Besides, we know the reason," Han argued. "Bilbringi."

"That's the obvious reason," Leia countered. "When have you ever known the Yuuzhan Vong to be obvious?"

The Solos swept past Viqi without a second glance, both dressed in rumpled flight suits. Han cradled an infant in one arm. Viqi was hardly an authority on babies - when the time came to bear one, she intended to have a staff and a telbun to care for the thing - but she did know the Solos' offspring to be adults now - or nearly so. This had to be the Skywalker heir.

The couple's famous golden droid came clumping after them, a four-armed TDL nanny droid traveling smoothly at its side. Viqi turned a little more toward the wall. The two humans would not see through her disguise, she knew, because this was the last place they expected to find her. The droids were a different matter. Droids scanned and analyzed and did not let their expectations lead them astray, and she felt fairly certain that the protocol droid, at least, would have her face committed to its memory banks.

The droid seemed more concerned with the discussion between its owners than who she might be. When Han did not answer his wife's objection, it said, "Forgive me for intruding, but I am quite certain that when Master Luke and Mistress Mara said Ben would be safer on Coruscant, they anticipated that we would be staying longer than fifty-seven minutes."

Leia shot a look over her shoulder that would have melted lesser droids. "You let me worry about that, Threepio."

"Yes, Princess."

Viqi guessed from the presence of the Skywalker baby that they had to be coming from the secret Jedi base. Tsavong Lah was still trying to discover its location - that was one of the reasons he had assigned her this task - and, given what Skywalker had done to her in the senate, she was eager to see the warmaster pleased. She waited a moment longer to make certain there was no one else in the Solos' party. Then, as they approached the intersection in front of the apartment, she flicked the sensislug at the protocol droid's back.

The worm hit in absolute silence and slithered down toward the waist coupling, but the droid suddenly paused at the corner and swiveled its head around to look behind it. Viqi hid her face behind her documents and turned the corner - then ran into something barely as high as her chest and cried out in surprise, flinging her flimsiplast props in all directions.

A wispy voice below her rasped, "I beg your forgiveness."

She looked down to see a little bug-eyed alien with gray skin and a mouthful of sharp teeth, gathering her documents in his long-taloned fingers.

The Noghri passed the documents back to her. "I apologize."

Viqi allowed the alien to place the props in her hand, then sensed the Solos watching her. She had taken care to disguise her appearance by coloring her hair drab ash and making liberal use of an NRI disguise kit, but at the moment, she could not help wishing that she had accepted her contact's offer to give her an ooglith masquer. Unable to resist looking, she glanced over at the Solos and found them both staring.

Han's expression grew concerned. "You okay? Would you like to come inside for a minute?"

Viqi's heart jumped into her throat. She mumbled something indecipherable, then scurried off shaking her head.

 

Chapter 36

Anakin could feel nothing through the battle meld except doubt and resentment, so he was as surprised as anyone when the crack-crackle of a thermal detonator reverberated through the street behind him. Raising his lightsaber to high guard and thumbing the activation switch, he pivoted around to discover a ball of blue-white light contracting between Raynar and Eryl, obliterating everything in a five-meter radius and opening a deep crater in the street. Subsurface service ducts began to spew water and sewer gas, filling the hole with steam and flame.

Over the course of several dozen attempts to reach the cloning facility, the Jedi had crossed replications of nearly every environment where voxyn might be sent to hunt them - replications of agritracts, robofactories, swamp farms, even an automated cloud mine. Now they were pushing through the slave city itself. With tiers of windows and balconies built directly into the walls, the metropolis reminded Anakin of the pictures his mother had shown him of Crevasse City on lost Alderaan. In addition to a dozen different species of slave residents, the artificial city contained turbolifts, slidewalks, even droid-operated hovercars.

Anakin stepped past Tahiri and Tekli and peered over Raynar's shoulder into the flaming crater. Nothing remained of whatever had prompted the attack.

"Voxyn?" he asked. Since their retreat from the walker, the voxyn attacks had been coming with increasing frequency.

Raynar shrugged. "I didn't see."

"It came out of the street hatch," Eryl explained from the other side. Her green eyes flickered briefly in Raynar's direction, then she added, "There was no time to do anything but toss a detonator down its throat. Sorry for the waste."

Anakin thumbed his lightsaber off. "I don't know that I'd call it a waste." The team was down to a dozen thermal detonators - now eleven - and perhaps twice that many grenades, but at least they had not lost anyone since Ulaha. "Raynar is probably worth the price of a detonator."

"Probably?" Raynar objected. "If there's any question, the House of Thul will gladly reimburse the Jedi for all detonators used on my behalf."

"You're sure?" Eryl asked doubtfully.

She circled around the burning crater, then pinched Raynar on the cheek and laughed. Behind her came Zekk and Jaina - like Anakin and Lomi, now completely recovered from their encounter with the flitnats. Even Lowbacca and Jovan had nothing worse to show than a bad rash, thanks to Tekli's quick realization that the insects had been engineered to promote a debilitating allergic reaction.

Anakin's earplugs sealed themselves against the disorienting blast of a voxyn screech attack. Such assaults came so regularly now that they were no longer startling. Anakin simply pushed his breath mask into place and started forward to where a mob of slaves was staggering away from a convergence of blasterfire.

A lightsaber flashed, sending the tip of a severed voxyn tail tumbling over the crowd, then the creature itself rose into view as Tenel Ka used the Force to lift it out of a street hatch. Ganner and the Barabels set on it instantly, hacking it apart with their molten blades before Anakin could reach them. Killing voxyn was becoming almost routine; the strike team rarely traveled more than a few kilometers without being attacked by at least one of the things.

Anakin reached out with the Force to search for more. There seemed to be no others lurking beneath the street, but he did perceive someone in anguish lying inside the growing cloud of toxins released by the creature's noxious blood. Slipping past the fighting, he found a mucus-coated slave curled into a fetal ball, so badly acid-burned that only his raw nerve cones identified him as a Gotal.

Anakin called Tekli forward. She should have felt the need on her own, but the battle meld was so full of discord that it served as little more than confirmation that everyone was still alive and conscious. As the Chadra-Fan knelt beside the dying Gotal, Lomi and Welk came up, now wearing the breath masks Lowbacca had risked so much to retrieve. They watched Tekli's ministrations not with the disdain or detachment Anakin had expected, but with visible outrage. He knew better than to think they were empathizing with the slave's suffering; they were simply using the anger it engendered to feed their dark-side power.

"I don't like coming through here." Anakin eyed the growing number of slave residents stumbling away from the toxic fumes. "We're endangering them with our presence."

"They are already in danger," Lomi said. "And you are the one who wishes to try the voxyn warren. This is the only way to reach it."

"You know you're going to get us killed?" Welk asked. "Even Yuuzhan Vong don't go down there."

"Which is why we must," Anakin said. Whether Nom Anor intended to or not, he was wearing the strike team down, steadily depleting its munitions and draining its vigor. "We need to break through soon, or we never will."

"If this doesn't work, we may have to accept never," Lomi said. "There comes a time when we must think of our own lives."

"Yeah, like after we've vaped the queen." Tahiri stepped to Anakin's side. "There is no try, only do."

Lomi flashed Tahiri a condescending smirk. "Very impressive, child. You have memorized Skywalker's maxims." She looked back to Anakin. "Seriously, if this does not work, you must signal your extraction team. I won't throw away my life."

"There's more at risk here than your life - or ours," Anakin said.

Lomi rolled her eyes. "I know - the Jedi themselves."

"The Jedi are the galaxy's best hope of survival," Anakin replied. "Otherwise, the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't be working so hard to destroy us."

Lomi ran her eyes down Anakin's figure, her expression almost seductive. "You are so very earnest, Anakin. It is really quite adorable." Her smile turned icy. "But I did not see Skywalker sending his Jedi Knights to save the Nightsisters when the Yuuzhan Vong captured Dathomir. I will show you to the voxyn cave, but if we cannot fight through, you must call your extraction team."

Anakin hesitated a moment, wondering how earnest she would think him after he lied to her - and then he realized there was no need. He returned her smile with one just as icy.

"Extraction team?" he asked. "What extraction team would that be?"

Lomi's eyes narrowed, and she reached out to test Anakin with the Force. "Do you think you can ..." When she encountered no resistance, her jaw fell, and she let the probe drop. "You are on a suicide mission?"

"It's no suicide mission," Tahiri said. "We've walked rockier trails than this, lots of times."

Lomi ignored her and continued to stare at Anakin.

"The warmaster anticipated our plans," he explained. "We lost our ship coming in."

"And your backup plan?" Lomi asked. "Surely, you have a backup plan?"

Anakin nodded. "Kill the queen and destroy the lab, then hope we can steal a ship in the confusion."

"I see." The anger in Lomi's eyes grew more intent. "There is no try ..."

"Only do," Welk finished, his voice mocking. "If that doesn't blast my bones!"

The acid-burned Gotal finally died, and the strike team started up the street again. As soon as they left the toxin cloud, the mob closed in, begging the Jedi to free them, thrusting children out for rescue, volunteering to fight. There were thousands of slaves - Ranats, Ossan, Togorians, even some species Anakin could not name, all cognizant of their fate, all desperate to escape their coming doom, the very people who needed the Jedi - the weak, the downtrodden, the defenseless. Anakin's heart grew heavier each time he was forced to say he could not help, that his mission here was too vital, that he had no way to get them off the worldship. Soon, it grew too painful to explain that much. He simply apologized in a quiet and calm voice, using Jedi persuasion techniques to comfort those in despair and to redirect the wrath of those who were angry.

Lomi started down a cramped alley-canyon that would not have felt out of place in Coruscant's underlevels. Barely three meters wide, the lane descended at a steep angle beneath a network of balconies and catwalks, then vanished into the dank-smelling murk ahead. The windows and doors that pocked the walls to both sides were sealed behind curtains of living membrane. An odd double pathway worn into the dusty ground was spaced about right for the wide-set legs of a voxyn. Noting that the slave residents showed no desire to follow them into the alley, Anakin stopped three steps in.

"Stay sharp, everyone. We need to make this work." He turned to his brother. "If you can do something to keep the voxyn quiet, now is the time."

Jacen paled. "I'll do my best, Anakin." He started forward. "But these aren't normal animals. I can't just reach -"

Anakin did not hear the rest, for the general haze of Yuuzhan Vong presence suddenly grew strong and almost distinct. He turned to scan the crowd and found a group of humans shoving toward Jacen. All five were large men with swarthy faces and blank expressions, men so similar they could have been clones. Four reached for their belts. The fifth tossed a thumb-sized capsule at Jacen's feet, and a thin coat of greenish gel spread across the street.

"Blorash jelly!" Anakin burned a blaster hole through the jelly thrower's throat, then used the Force to pluck his brother off the ground. "Watch the crowd!"

A dozen lightsabers came to life and formed a dancing cage of light around the rear half of the strike team. Anakin put Jacen down in the alley mouth. Someone took a heavy blow, and a tide of darkness swirled through the battle meld as they struggled to stay conscious.

"Jaina!" Jacen yelled.

The mob roared and scattered, trampling each other in their panic. The impostors flung more blorash jelly, capturing slaves and Jedi alike, turning the street into a tangle of confusion. Lowbacca roared, his bronze lightsaber flashing down, cleaving something Anakin could not see. Tenel Ka yelled for support. Alema cursed in Ryl, her silver blade burning through a soft body. Eryl cried out as green gel spread over her foot. She hacked the stuff apart, and the second piece bound her other foot to the ground. She reached into her equipment pouch for a more potent defense.

A razor bug flew out of the crowd, caught her below the nose, and slashed her face in two. Her eyes rolled back, and the lightsaber slipped from her hand, and she fell and began to convulse.

Shock burned through the battle meld like an ion blast. Doubt and resentment gave way to anger, blame, guilt - none of it helpful. The emotions only added to the chaos, blurring Anakin's awareness. He felt just one thing clearly, the black gauze threatening to engulf his sister.

Anakin stepped out of the alley and heard an amphistaff hiss. He caught the snakish head on his lightsaber, then spun around, driving a back kick into his attacker's midsection and bringing his molten blade around in a neck-high sweep. The impostor collapsed, head tumbling from his shoulders.

Tahiri somersaulted under Anakin's lightsaber and sprang to her feet behind her blade, driving the tip up through the torso of a Duros male. Seeing no amphistaff, Anakin thought she had made a terrible mistake, then sensed Yuuzhan Vong pain and saw a gablith masquer peeling off the Duros' face.

Anakin jerked her behind him. "Careful!"

"You're one to talk!" she snapped.

Tahiri pulled a handful of arsensalts from her equipment pouch and sprinkled them on a blorash jelly sliding toward their feet. The stuff drew back, then began to divide itself into oblivion. Anakin circled past and first sensed, then saw more impostors, three human and two Duros, shouldering their way out of the crowd.

He pushed Tahiri at Ganner and the Barabels and ordered them to secure the alley entrance, then sprang into the air and called on the Force to carry himself over the charging Yuuzhan Vong. As he somersaulted past their heads, he dragged his lightsaber across one impostor's skull and split it down the center. He landed behind the group and thrust-kicked another onto Tesar's waiting blade.

The Barabel ducked a whistling amphistaff, then trapped the arm that had swung it and pulled the elbow into his sharp-toothed mouth. With the odds in the alley now firmly in the strike team's favor, Anakin turned to find Raynar pulling Eryl's limp body into his arms, his face streaked with tears and seemingly unaware of the blorash jelly binding his knee to the ground. Anakin sprinkled some salts on the blob.

Raynar looked up, eyes wide. "I can't feel her, Anakin. She's not in the Force."

Anakin shared his shock. Before, Nom Anor had seemed intent on recapturing the strike team alive. So why were Yuuzhan Vong hurling razor bugs now? Because, suddenly, the strike team had a good chance of reaching the cloning labs, that was why. He pulled Eryl into Raynar's arms, then pushed them both toward the alley.

"I'll send Tekli."

Anakin rushed forward into a mad riot of shrieking slaves. Some lay dead and many were bleeding, but the battle had already drifted out into the street, and most were screaming only because they were trapped. He hurled a few sprinkles of arsensalts as he passed, then met Tenel Ka coming in the opposite direction, levitating Jovan Drark. Tekli was kneeling astride the Rodian, her hands buried to the wrists inside his open chest.

Anakin touched him through the Force and immediately felt sick and hollow inside. Jovan had only the faintest glimmer of life, and even that was fading.

"Jaina's in trouble," Tenel Ka said. "They're trying to -"

Anakin was already racing forward, leaping the bodies of groaning slaves and fallen Yuuzhan Vong, flinging arsensalts at the few remaining patches of blorash jelly. He should have anticipated this, should have realized Nom Anor would use the slave city to ambush them. Now Eryl was dead, Jovan dying, Jaina about to be taken - and the strike team had yet to reach the cloning labs.

He found Jaina pinned against a building, a blob of blorash jelly binding her along one side, blood pouring from a head wound. Despite it all, she was holding two Yuuzhan Vong impostors at bay with a one-handed lightsaber defense. Lowbacca and Zekk were fighting toward her through a half-dozen still-masqued warriors. Alema Rar crouched behind a crashed hovercar, using Jovan Drark's longblaster to delay a company of reinforcements. Anakin gathered the Force to him and charged, somersaulting into the air as he had a few moments before.

Zekk's opponents broke off, stepping back to hurl their amphistaffs like spears. Anakin batted one aside - then felt a hot pain in his abdomen when the second pierced his jumpsuit's armored lining.

As he finished his tumble, the shaft swung away, the head pivoting inside his abdomen. He heard himself scream, then he was coming down, landing on his feet and hammering the butt into the ground. Cold anguish filled his belly. His knees tried to buckle, but he would not let them - could not let them.

"Anakin!"

Guided by her screaming voice, Anakin flung a handful of arsensalts in Jaina's direction, used the Force to carry them to the jelly.

Then he grabbed the amphistaff and jerked it from his body.

The agony was crushing.

Anakin shunted it aside, used his Jedi training to prevent his suffering from crippling him. He was injured, but not mortally so. One of Jaina's attackers spun to attack, changing his amphistaff to whip form in midswing.

Anakin batted the fanged head aside, leapt forward, feigned a slash. The impostor tried to step inside - had to try. Anakin slipped a foot behind his foe's heel and swept the leg. The Yuuzhan Vong went down, rolled, then opened his own throat on Anakin's down-turned lightsaber.

Now free of her blorash jelly, Jaina was driving her foe back with a wild web of lightsaber slashes. Calling on the Force for strength, Anakin stepped over and slashed his blade across the Yuuzhan Vong's knees. Jaina opened the warrior's chestplate before he hit the ground, then turned and grabbed Anakin by the elbow.

"By the Sith, Anakin! Why'd you do something like that?"

"Like what? "he asked.

Jaina glared; they both knew his rescue had been rash.

"We lost two ... and I wasn't going to ..." The words caught in Anakin's throat, and he had to try again. "You were in trouble."

"And now you are." Jaina tried to wipe the blood from her eyes and failed, then started toward the alley. "Anakin, this was really ... Are you ever going to learn?"

As they turned, Anakin found himself looking at a wall of Jedi, with Lowbacca and Zekk flanked by Jacen, Ganner, and everyone else he had ordered to stay in the alley. The last of the Yuuzhan Vong impostors lay on the ground behind them, their masquers and vonduun crab armor hacked into smoking pieces. Zekk went instantly to Jaina's side. Tahiri beat Lowbacca and Jacen to Anakin's. She tried to pull his hand away from the wound, but he wouldn't allow it. He lifted his chin toward Alema, who was still crouched behind the hovercar burning holes in Yuuzhan Vong chests.

"Call her off," he said. "Let's go before someone else gets killed."

Paying no attention, Tahiri continued to tug at his arm. "Anakin, how bad is it? Let me -"

"Tahiri, stop." Anakin pushed her arm down. "It's just a little cut."

 

Chapter 37

"You call this a shortcut?"

"Trust me." Han looked away from the starless swirl of black nebula gas outside and smiled at his wife. "If the Vong who jumped Booster were protecting something, we'll find it at the end of this run. This is the only way they could have reached the Core region without tripping a picket mine."

"And we aren't going to trip a picket mine why?" Leia asked.

"Because there aren't any," Han said. "The New Republic doesn't know about this lane. Nobody does."

"Nobody?"

"Well, Lando knows." Han returned his gaze to the long-range sensors and began to scan for dangerous mass centers. "And Chewbacca, he knew - so did Roa. And, of course, Talon Karrde always knows."

"So, basically you're saying that every smuggler or gambler who ever had a reason to slip into Reecee undetected knows this shortcut?"

"Yeah," Han said. "Like I said, nobody."

They had already made five jumps in as many hours, and now they were flying the Falcon into the inky heart of the Black Bantha. Listed erroneously on most charts as a Gamma Class navigation hazard - which usually meant an unlocated black hole - the Bantha was actually a protostar, a small cloud of relatively cool gas slowly contracting to become a star. In a few million years or so, it would contract enough to start fusing hydrogen, but for now its core emitted nothing more dangerous than a vague aura of infrared heat. A good pilot could fly straight through it at near lightspeed, so long as he stayed clear of its dust ring and avoided the uncharted gamma-ray pulsar on the other side.

An alert chimed once, twice, a half-dozen times, then became a steady bell. A field of dark shapes appeared on the display, ahead of the Falcon and a little below, each with a set of numerical readouts below it.

"Han," Leia asked. "What are those?"

"Asteroid cluster," Han said. "It's supposed to be farther out, but it must be drifting toward center."

"Really?" Leia sounded doubtful. "Standard rock-iron asteroids?"

"That's right." Han glanced at the readouts and immediately saw her point. The contacts were too uniform to be asteroids - and not nearly dense enough. He put the Falcon into a hard turn, then shut down the ion drives to avoid illuminating their position. "I said we'd find them here."

"At the end of the run."

"It looks like this is the end of the run."

Dark shapes continued to appear on the display as they drifted across the protostar. Leia activated a data record and began to run an analysis. Han activated the rest of the passive sensors and kept a wary eye on the dark shapes as they slowed and began to deploy pickets. So far, they did not seem to realize they were being watched, which did not really surprise him - the Falcon's sensors were the equal of any reconnaissance ship, and the New Republic's one small advantage in this war seemed to lie in surveillance. Still, it would be not be long before the picket ships drew near enough to sense their presence.

"Okay, Leia, I think we'd better go."

"Not yet. This is too big," Leia said.

"That's kind of the point."

"No, Han - I mean really big. Isn't the New Republic getting ready to jump to Reecee?"

"In about -" Han glanced at the instrument panel chronometer. "- three hours. Unofficially, of course."

"I don't think they're going to find anything. There must be a thousand vessels already."

Han started to ask Leia what she wanted him to do about it, but realized he already knew. The crooked hyperspace lane behind them zigzagged all the way through the Colonies to the edge of the Core region. From there the Yuuzhan Vong would have a clear path to both Eclipse and Coruscant - and Han did not think even Tsavong Lah was sending a thousand vessels to attack the Jedi base.

"I don't want to do this." They had been in the right place at the right time too often in their lives already. It wasn't fun anymore. "I really don't want to do this."

"I'll ready a message," Leia said.

"Send it to Adarakh and Meewalh," Han said. "We may get only one try, and they're in a better position to make sure the news reaches Wedge and Garm."

"Already thought of that."

"And tell them to find Lando," Han added. "The fleet's gonna need a guide."

"Thought of that, too," Leia said.

"And tell Luke -"

"Han!"

"Hey, coming out here wasn't my idea," Han said. "I'm just trying to help."

Leia gave him a glare that suggested he get on with it.

Han risked a subspace imaging scan and located the real field of asteroids where he had expected, just inside the dust ring down on the protostar's plane of spin. He plotted a short-burn course that would carry them away from the Yuuzhan Vong at an oblique angle and bring them in behind the asteroid cluster. Once they were safely established there, they would be able to monitor the entire gas cloud with long-range sensors and feed the data to the New Republic fleet as it arrived - providing, of course, it did arrive. There was always a chance that Fey'lya or some other bureaucrat would panic and decide to keep the fleet at home.

"We'll have to risk an ion glow," Han said. "I don't think anyone will see it in this cloud, but if they do -"

"I've already plotted an emergency hop," Leia said. "It won't be long, but it should buy us some time to come up with something better. The data dump is ready to go."

"Hold on tight," Han said. "We'll be slam-pivoting straight to vector."

"Wonderful. Something to look forward to."

Leia grabbed the arms of the big copilot's chair and nodded grimly. Han clenched his jaw, then activated the ion drive and hit the attitude thrusters. Though the acceleration compensator was dialed to maximum, the Falcon slued around so sharply that the crash webbing crackled from the strain. His hands nearly came off the yoke and he had the sensation of tumbling sideways, then his stomach rebelled and he had to clench his jaw to keep from embarrassing himself.

The acceleration compensator caught up as they began to travel in a straight line again, and Leia opened a subspace channel to Coruscant. It took only a few seconds for the signal to find a route through the relay maze to their Eastport apartment, but Han used the time to check the sensor displays and spied a pair of skips peeling off to investigate. The Yuuzhan Vong would have dispatched an entire flotilla if they had seen an ion glow, so it seemed likely the pair were only chasing the wake the Falcon was punching through the nebula. Hoping to muddle enemy readings and give his ship the tumbling signature of a rogue asteroid, Han began to cycle power to the particle shields in a top-bottom pattern and deployed the emergency gas scoop - the ship's reactor could fuse raw hydrogen if necessary.

Meewalh's voice finally came over the subspace, a little scratchy due to signal loss inside the absorption nebula. "Lady Vader, we were not expecting to hear from you. All is well?"

"For now." Leia began the data dump. "See that this information reaches -"

Leia gasped and let the sentence break off, one hand rising to her chest, her expression growing pained and distant.

"Lady Vader?"

"Leia?" Han reached over to touch her arm, but she signaled him to wait.

"Here, Meewalh." She closed her eyes and seemed to collect herself, then continued, "I need you to see that the data package I sent reaches Wedge Antilles and Garm Bel Iblis in Fleet Command - at once; do what you must to succeed. Send copies to Luke and to Lando Calrissian, along with my suggestion that they offer their services to Admiral Sovv. This could mean the war for us."

"Lady Vader, it will be done."

Meewalh's tone was so flat she might as well have been promising to tell a neighbor the Solos would not make it home for drinks after all. But if she had to fight her way into Fleet Command, Han pitied the poor sentry or bureaucrat foolish enough to deny her access. Fortunately, the Noghri were as creative as they were stealthy, so she would probably just surprise the generals in the refresher or something and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

Minuscule as friction was even inside a gas nebula, the drag created by the hydrogen scoop was enough to require an extra two seconds of ion glow. Han watched nervously as the Falcon's vector converged with that of the investigating skips, trying to guess when the light of his ion drives would give them away, but the coralskippers continued as before until the burn finally came to an end. When he saw that they were slowing to swing in behind him - a standard safe approach for any unknown contact - and that their vector would not cross the Falcon's until after it reached the asteroid cluster, he exhaled in relief. They still did not know what they were looking at.

Han found Leia staring out the viewport, her face the color of pearls, her expression distant and guarded. Recalling her unexplained gasp earlier - and her diplomat's habit of not showing her emotions until she had won control of them - he started to ask what was troubling her.

She cut him off before he spoke. "Later, Han." There was an alarming catch in her throat, but also that unyielding edge that he had learned was about as flexible as durasteel. "Pay attention to your flying."

A variation alarm sounded as they passed a straggler from the asteroid cluster large enough to exert its own gravitational pull. Han touched the alarm silent and plotted their new trajectory without making the suggested correction. Any such change would instantly alert the approaching skips of the Falcon's, true nature and ruin all hope of the New Republic catching the fleet unprepared.

The new trajectory pointed the Falcon out toward the dust ring, where Han would be forced to retract the gas scoop to avoid clogging the intake filters. He was still struggling with how to accomplish that without altering their flight signature when the variation alarm sounded again and another asteroid pulled them back toward the cluster.

Han plotted the new trajectory and saw they would hit - and soon. This was a big one, large enough so that its own gravity would shape it into a rough sphere, and it was bending their vector ever more sharply. Han saw only inky swirls of nebula gas beyond the transparisteel, but the asteroid was out there, off to their left, yet drifting toward the center of the viewport and looming larger every moment.

And it was just what they needed.

Han turned to the navigation computer and began to input blast radii and acceleration rates. The answer came back higher than he liked, and he had to concentrate to keep from cursing aloud.

"Leia, you know that trick Kyp is always doing with Jedi shadow bombs?"

"Define know," she said.

"About a kilometer a second," Han said. "I can get some initial acceleration by pressurizing the missile tube -"

"The missile tube, Han?"

"- then blowing the hatch," he finished. "But we'll be right behind it when the warhead detonates, and even Han Solo isn't that fast."

Leia's face paled. "You're not going to -"

"We don't have much time here," Han said, arming the missile. "Can you do it?"

Leia closed her eyes. "Which one?"

"Port tube."

Han instructed the computer to open the rear of the tube, then deactivated the missile's ion engine and overrode the launch safeties. By time he had completed all this, a deeper darkness had begun to emerge from the swirling nebula fog, a certain stillness that left no doubt about its solid nature.

Han depressed the launch trigger and heard a soft pop as the hatch cover swung open. Sucked from its tube by the sudden decompression, the missile drifted out from between the Falcon's cargo mandibles and seemed to hang there.

"Now would be a good time," Han urged.

"I'm trying!"

The missile moved forward, picking up speed - but gradually.

"Well, it was a good idea," Han said, prepping the ion drives for a blast start. Leia was no Jedi - she had never had time for the rigorous training - but she could control the Force, and he had seen her move things heavier than the missile. Maybe the nebula interfered with the Force or something. "Nice try, but -"

The missile shot away, then vanished into the darkness.

"- that'll work," Han finished.

He moved his hand to the repulsorlift drives and waited. In the sensor display, the coralskippers omitted the detour caused by the first asteroid and cut straight for the one ahead. They would have a clear view of the impact - though hopefully not so clear they would see the matte-black Falcon silhouetted against the flash.

As soon as the first pinpoint of light caused the cockpit blast-tinting to darken, Han activated the repulsorlift drives and swung away, decelerating and turning almost as sharply as his earlier slam-pivot. The coralskippers would be in scanning range by now, but repulsorlifts were not nearly as conspicuous as ion drives, and he was betting the energy burst from the concussion missile would wash out whatever the skips were using for sensors.

They were around the horizon before the impact flash had begun to fade. Flying in the total darkness by sensors and instruments alone, Han slipped the Falcon into a deep stress rift, orienting it nose-up and using the landing gear to wedge it against the walls so the efflux nacelles would not be damaged.

"Now what?" Leia asked.

"We wait until they're done searching."

"You think they'll search?" Leia asked. "That concussion missile had to leave a pretty convincing crater."

"Yeah, but that's a big fleet," Han said. "They'll search - then they'll search some more."

Han shut down any of the Falcon's systems that might leak so much as a photon of energy, then he and Leia lay back and stared into the darkness. He had purposely selected a rift facing the interior of the Bantha, so even the stars were too shrouded in nebula gas to count. It reminded Han of being frozen in carbonite - except that he had not been conscious of time in carbonite.

"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" Leia asked.

"Longer than we like." Han had a bad feeling about her gasp earlier and wanted to ask about it, but knew better than to press. "We'll know."

"How?"

"We'll get tired of waiting."

They were silent some more, then Leia just said it. "Anakin's been hurt."

Han's heart collapsed like a black hole. "Hurt?"

He began to depress actuator buttons and toggle circuit switches. Even with so many systems shut down and cool, the Falcon's start-up sequence was remarkably short. They would be launched and on their way in less than three minutes.

"Han?" There was frailty in Leia's voice. "Where are we going?"

"Huh?" Han primed the ion drives and began a twenty-second countdown. "Where do you think we're going?"

"I have no idea," Leia said. "Because I know you'd never have let Anakin go through with that hypercrazed surrender plan if there was some other way to reach Myrkr."

The count reached fifteen, and Han's finger automatically swung over to the actuator and hovered there waiting for twenty. Then he finally grasped why Leia had waited for the Falcon to cool down before telling him, and stopped counting.

"There's not another way." He deactivated the primers and began to shut down the rest of the systems, then found the strength to ask, "Is it bad?"

Leia's only response was a nod.

Han wanted to do something - protect Anakin or help Leia with what she must be feeling through the Force - but how could he defend a son from a thousand light-years away? Or assume Leia's burden, when he could not even sense the Force, much less feel Anakin's wound through it?

"At least he's not alone." Han reached over to her and noticed that his hand was trembling. He laid it on her arm anyway. "Jaina's there."

"And Jacen."

"Yeah, and Jacen." Given Jacen's recent moral dilemma over using the Force, Han was not accustomed to thinking of his oldest son in the role of a Jedi warrior, but on Duro it had been Jacen who faced Tsavong Lah and saved Leia's life. "The twins will look after him."

"That's right." Leia nodded absently, her thoughts already back on Myrkr a thousand light-years away. "He has the twins."

The last glow faded from the cockpit displays, and they sat in the dark, alone with their thoughts and still close enough to hear each other breathe.

After a time, Han could stand it no longer. "I wish I hadn't said those things when Chewbacca died," he said. "I really wish I hadn't blamed Anakin."

A warm hand found his. "That's over, Han. Really."

They waited in silence, pondering the same unanswerable questions - how serious? how did it happen? was he safe now? - for what seemed an eternity. Once, Han saw a glimmer of purple cross over the rift, but it was so faint and fleeting that he thought it more likely to be a trick of his light-starved eyes than the glow of a Yuuzhan Vong cockpit. For the most part, they just sat and waited, not even able to confirm that the New Republic would be sending an attack fleet, since the Falcon's subspace transceiver antenna was shielded by several kilometers of iron asteroid.

With the sensor dish pointed into the heart of the Bantha, the one thing they could do to occupy themselves was periodically risk a passive scan to update their data. Eventually, it grew obvious that the Yuuzhan Vong were drawing vessels not just from the flotilla that had grabbed Reecee, but from active duty stations all over the galaxy. Most of the arriving vessels went straight to the heart of the fleet and lined up to nurse food and munitions at the big ship tenders. Han was relieved to see that the Yuuzhan Vong were only marginally faster at the process than his own fleet had been when he was a general. At the rate the enemy was reprovisioning, even the cumbersome New Republic Fleet Command would have time to make a decision; he only hoped they would bring enough ships.

The first hint of action came when a sensor sweep showed two skips - almost certainly the pair that had followed them to the asteroid - streaking toward the heart of the Bantha. Shuddering at how many times they had discussed leaving their hiding place, Han activated all passive scanning systems and plotted the results on the main data display. The screen looked as though someone had blasted a nest of killer stingnats, with frigate- and corvette-analog yorik coral vessels boiling out toward the protostar's opposite rim and more than a hundred cruiser and destroyer analogs moving to the heart of the formation, forming a sphere of protection around the enormous ship tenders.

"It certainly doesn't look like a jump configuration," Leia commented.

"No, that's their 'taken-by-surprise' configuration," Han said. "Store this for analysis - it's not a formation the New Republic has seen before."

Han cold-started the repulsorlift drives and lifted the Falcon out of the rift. They had barely cleared the rim before the voice of a communications officer came over the tactical comm unit.

"- hailing the Millennium Falcon." The energy-absorbing effects of the nebula gas rendered the young woman's voice thready and full of static. "Repeat, this is the New Republic scout vessel Gabrielle hailing the Millennium Falcon. Please respond on S-thread six zero niner."

"The coordinates don't match the bearing to the battle," Leia said. She tapped the data display, indicating a position a quarter of the way around the circle from where the corvettes and frigates were headed - and on the Reecee side of the Bantha. "Could the Yuuzhan Vong be pulling a Friendly Hutt?"

"If some traitor told them we were out here, why not?" A Friendly Hutt was an old Imperial tactic in which they tried to trick their quarry into giving away its position. "But we have to take the chance. This is no time to be a coward - not with the war hanging in the balance."

Han did not add "and not when our children are risking their own lives," but Leia heard him just the same. As he started to bring the rest of the Falcon's systems on-line, she activated the subspace transceiver and entered the coordinates provided.

"This is the Millennium Falcon -"

"Thank the Force!" Wedge Antilles exclaimed. "We've been trying to raise you for an hour. I thought something unfortunate had happened."

Han and Leia glanced at each other, but said nothing about Anakin. "We had a couple of skips sitting on us." Leia's fingers flew across the computer input. "Here's the data we promised."

As she spoke, the first bursts of battle static appeared on the sensor display. The assault fleet itself was too distant to be detected through the nebula gas even with active sensors, but Han could tell by the fire that there were only a few hundred vessels attacking. Still, scores of Yuuzhan Vong frigates and corvettes vanished into stars of dispersing energy before they could organize themselves into a picket wall. The Falcon was too distant from the battle to detect anything as small as a starfighter, but Han knew they were present by the sparks of explosion static that appeared all too frequently between the Yuuzhan Vong vessels.

By now, the New Republic fleet had its own surveillance craft watching the battle, but Han and Leia held their position and continued to relay data to the oddly placed command post. In a conflict this size, information was more valuable than ships, and both combatants placed a premium on destroying, blinding, or misleading enemy reconnaissance vessels. That made the Falcon, as an undetected observation asset, more important to the attack than any three Star Destroyers.

Slowly - painfully - the Yuuzhan Vong frigates and corvettes overcame their initial disorganization and started to hold the starnghters at bay. With this threat brought under control, the big capital ships left their places in the heart of the formation and went forward to support their smaller companions. As they drew into range of the New Republic's own capital ships, bright bars of energy began to flash back and forth across the data display, at times lighting it up so brightly Han could not see anything else. Eventually, the battle began to drift in the wrong direction, and Han knew their long wait had been for nothing.

He activated the subspace microphone. "Wedge, are you getting this?"

"We are, Han - but you're the only asset still showing the situation in the heart of the protostar. Please stay on station."

"What for?" Han grumbled. "Sovv didn't bring enough ships. Tell him to break off and save what he can."

"Negative, Han." Wedge did not sound nearly upset enough. "We can't do that."

A Yuuzhan Vong destroyer analog pressed the attack too hard and erupted into a two-second flare of light, and frigates and corvettes continued to vanish at a steady rate. But the battle continued to drift in toward New Republic lines. Soon, a discernible gap appeared between the capital ships participating in the attack and those that had remained behind to protect the huge ship tenders. In a gesture of what had to be the ultimate disdain for the New Republic commanders, a quarter of the big ships redocked with the supply vessels and continued to reprovision.

"Now, that is just too arrogant," Wedge commented. "Admiral Sovv needs to teach them a lesson."

"I hope he scolds better than he counts," Han muttered.

"Han ..." Leia cautioned.

Han ignored her and continued bitterly, "Our message said there were a thousand ships - and more arriving every minute!"

"But I had only nine hundred ready for action," a pinched Sullustan voice said. "And your message also said to hurry."

Leia closed her eyes and let her chin fall. "Admiral Sovv, please excuse my husband's impatience."

"No apology is necessary," Admiral Sovv said. "We'll be out of contact for eight minutes, but I'm sending you our order of battle. Can you have a tactical update ready when we make contact again?"

Instead of answering, Leia turned to Han with an expectant expression.

"Uh, sure thing," Han said. When Leia scowled, he added, "Admiral."

"Good." This from Wedge. "And we have a request from Eclipse. They'll be looking for the yammosk and would appreciate any guidance you can give them."

"Tell them we'll try to narrow the possibilities down to no more than a hundred ships." Han rolled his eyes as Wedge and the admiral signed off, then turned to Leia. "I guess Luke must have found his boarding harpoons."

"Or had someone make them," Leia said. "I only hope they work on yorik coral."

Used legally and illegally across the galaxy by security forces, pirates, and anyone else who wanted to storm a ship, boarding harpoons were a recent development. Basically giant hypodermics filled with coma gas, they melted through a target's hull with a megaheated tip, then lodged themselves in the hole, extended a flexiglass membrane to seal the vacuum breach, and injected the gas. Depending on a ship's size and recirculation system, everyone aboard could be rendered unconscious in anywhere from a minute to a quarter hour. For the sake of the Jedi who would be using them, Han hoped it would be closer to a minute.

They spent the next few minutes scanning the heart of the protostar, identifying high-priority targets, calculating ranges and hit probabilities, estimating how quickly the capital ships on the front line would be able to disengage and return to the heart of the protostar. In less than five minutes, they had a situation report that clearly suggested it would be wise to attack cautiously and conservatively, despite the advantage of surprise. It was not exactly the decisive blow Han had hoped for, but there was no arguing with facts.

Then Leia frowned, said something didn't "feel" right, and began to work the computer again. Han scanned and rescanned the entire Bantha and stared at the data display without blinking. Everything felt right to him. He even managed to narrow the likely yammosk ships down to three destroyer analogs and half a dozen big cruisers.

Leia was still working the computer, muttering softly to herself and taking notes in a datapad, when New Republic contacts began to blizzard onto the sensor display, jumping almost directly into battle because of the protostar's dispersed mass shadow. By the time Admiral Sovv's flagship emerged from hyperspace, the lead vessels were already bleeding starfighters and pouring turbolaser fire into the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships.

The communications officer quickly established a comlink, and Leia sent the tactical update on an encrypted data channel. While they waited for Wedge and Admiral Sovv to digest the new information, Han was surprised to see the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships remaining close to the ship tenders instead of rushing out to engage the incoming fleet and buy time for their comrades to return from the forward battle.

He opened a voice channel. "Wedge, maybe you should have your forward elements hang back. Those rocks are hiding something."

"Yes, they are," Leia said, finally looking up from her datapad. "But don't hang back. Those ships haven't provisioned yet. That's what they're hiding."

Admiral Sovv was on the channel at once. "Are you sure?"

"I am, Admiral. Our computer issued an identifier to each contact, and I just ran a full history of each one. None of them has docked with the tenders."

"I see," Sovv said. "Your recommendation would be?"

Before answering, Leia looked to Han. If her analysis was right, the tactics that followed from their report would be too conservative, perhaps even give the enemy a chance to disengage and escape. But if she was wrong ... she was not. Han could feel it.

He nodded.

Leia smiled at him, then she said, "Go for sabacc, Admiral. Our recommendation is bet the fleet."

"I see." Sovv was barely able to choke out that much; Sullustans were seldom happy gamblers. "An unusual way to put it, but ... thank you for your suggestion."

Han winced, then checked to make sure they weren't transmitting. "That's what's wrong with putting Sullustans in command. They're more interested in building careers than winning battles."

"Not this one, I think."

Leia pointed at the display, where the largest part of the New Republic fleet - including all of the Star Destroyers and most of the cruisers - were peeling away from the ship tenders and fanning out toward the far edge of the Bantha. Their turbolasers were already flashing, pouring bolts into the rear of the Yuuzhan Vong battle line. Several cruiser analogs and two destroyer-sized vessels began to break up instantly. Others quickly followed when they turned to meet this new threat and were assaulted from behind by a now-lethal decoy force. The two walls of New Republic ships began to come together, smashing the disorganized Yuuzhan Vong between them.

In the core of the protostar, a swirling cloud of smaller vessels swarmed the tenders and their escorts. The Yuuzhan Vong held their attack until the enemy was almost upon them, then loosed a wave of fire so intense that Han and Leia could actually see the glow, lighting the heart of the Bantha like the star it would one day be. The sensor display required nearly a minute to clear, and when it did, a full quarter of the New Republic contacts had simply vanished.

Leia closed her eyes. "Han, did I -"

"They're Yuuzhan Vong, Leia," he said. "You know they're going to fight back - with rocks, if need be."

They watched in apprehension as the tender escorts continued to lace the heart of the Bantha with plasma balls and magma missiles, sometimes taking whole frigates out in single volleys. Finally, though, the fire began to dwindle, and the destroyer analogs started to take hits. Whole squadrons of New Republic starfighters darted past the lumbering vessels to pelt the defenseless ship tenders with proton torpedoes and concussion missiles. It took only a few minutes of this bombardment before the core of the protostar lit up again even more brightly as one supply vessel after another disintegrated in the heat of its own detonating cargo.

A few minutes later, Luke's voice came over the comm unit. "Han, can you come down here? We've got some cargo we need you to drop off at Eclipse."

"Live cargo?" Leia asked. Danni Quee had been trying to capture a live yammosk since before Booster had told them about the fall of Reecee.

"That's affirmative," Luke reported.

"Sabacc!" Han said. "Pure sabacc!"

 

Chapter 38

Anakin's anguished body was screaming for a stop, a trance, any kind of escape. But that was not possible, not with Nom Anor and his company coming up the passage. The Yuuzhan Vong were hanging behind now, just far enough so even the Barabels had lost their sound, but Anakin could still feel the enemy through the lambent, a cold aura of anger and malice pressing the strike team onward, always pushing, always threatening.

The Yuuzhan Vong had been back there since the slave city, harrying the Jedi whenever their pace lagged, assailing them with bug attacks and provoking them into firing their weapons. Though the assaults had escalated, Nom Anor had not changed tactics. He was still beleaguering the strike team, still wearing it down, still trying to take a few prizes alive.

And Anakin had given the one-eyed spy no reason to try anything else. He had avoided the trap at the AT-AT, only to wander into the ambush in the slave city like some dustkicker straight off a moisture farm. Distressed by the plight of the inhabitants, he had allowed Nom Anor's impostors to sneak up on the strike team. Now Eryl and Jovan were dead. Anakin should have remembered Nom Anor's predilection for subterfuge and foreseen the attack, should have at least kept the crowd away from his Jedi. He should have been more careful. He -

Jaina thumped him behind the ear. "Stop that."

"What?" Anakin rubbed his ear, then his concentration slipped and pain roared through him in waves of fire. "And thanks for caring."

"You can feel sorry for yourself," Jaina said. A thin line stretched diagonally across her forehead where Tekli had sealed the gash over her eye with synthflesh. "You were reckless, Anakin, and you paid the price - and that's not the point. You need to stop blaming yourself."

The distant rustle of Yuuzhan Vong feet came up the passage. Anakin tried not to let it weaken his concentration and asked, "Who should I blame?"

"The war," Jaina said. "Do you think Uncle Luke sent us here to train? This is important. If people die, people die."

"That's a little cold."

"I'll cry at home." Jaina hazarded a glance over her shoulder, then said, "Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you didn't. But start focusing on the mission, or more people will die."

Jaina held his eye for a moment, then the distant rustle of feet grew louder, and they concentrated on running. The strike team passed one of the waist-high tunnels that descended into the warrens of the "feral" voxyn. According to Lomi and Welk, the ferals were creatures the trainers simply lost. Eventually, the beasts found their way to the slave city - the only consistent source of prey in the training maze - and laired in these caves. With an irregular shape, acid-pocked walls, and an overpowering stench of decay, the tunnel certainly seemed like something the creatures might have excavated. Everyone except the Barabels donned their breath masks.

Anakin wore his for perhaps a thousand steps before he pulled it off and discovered that, while the air was fresher, his breath came no easier. He began to feel feverish and realized that his pain was creeping up on him, eating through his Force defenses. Something serious was wrong.

Clearing his mind as he ran, Anakin opened himself completely to the Force. Though hardly a talented healer, he knew his own body well enough to follow the ripples of disturbance down into his wound, to feel that something had come loose inside. He reached under his equipment harness and touched a wet bandage. When he withdrew his hand, his palm was crimson.

"Anakin!" This came from Tahiri, who was, as always, running alongside him. "What's that?"

"Nothing."

Anakin concentrated on the tear inside, tried to use the Force to draw the edges together - and was too weak to concentrate. He stumbled and would have fallen, had not Tahiri reached out with the Force and levitated him.

"Need help!" she cried.

The strike team slowed, Jaina and several others crowding around even as Anakin protested he was all right.

"Neg that!" Tahiri ordered. "You're not all right - not even close."

The sound of the Yuuzhan Vong feet swelled to tramping. Tekli emerged from somewhere under and between Ganner and Raynar, who were sharing the burden of carrying Eryl's body.

"Keep him levitated!" Jaina ordered. She plucked Tekli off the ground and set the Chadra-Fan astride Anakin's legs, then grabbed his wrist and started up the passage. "Everyone, move!"

Anakin tried to insist that he needed no help, but managed only a gurgle. One of the Barabels dropped a flechette mine to delay the Yuuzhan Vong, and the strike team broke into a hard run. Tekli began to undo bandages, her weight barely noticeable on his Force-supported legs. The Chadra-Fan tossed the blood-soaked bacta gauze aside and placed her hand over the wound. The Force flowed into Anakin, yet his strength continued to fade.

"We must stop," Tekli said.

"No." Anakin's voice was barely a whisper. "Can't let ..."

Tekli ignored him. "He has internal bleeding. I need to see what's happening."

"How much time?" Jaina asked.

"That depends on what I find," Tekli said. "Fifteen minutes, maybe twice that."

The tramping of Yuuzhan Vong feet grew steadier, and the Force stirred with the familiar hunger of voxyn on the hunt. These were not the free-roaming beasts that had been harassing the Jedi so far, but well-trained creatures kept on leashes by experienced handlers. The strike team had killed three already; if the pack was typical, there would be only one more.

Everyone hoped it was a typical pack.

Alema stared back down the passage toward the approaching threat, then turned to Jaina. "I can buy us fifteen minutes." Her voice sounded strangely distant. "I need half a dozen concussion grenades."

Dimly, Anakin heard Ganner say, "Do it," and saw him flip something to the Twi'lek. She danced over to the Barabels, then all four sprinted up the passage ahead of the strike team.

Anakin slipped closer to delirium and began to lose his sense of the others in the Force. He could always feel Tahiri at his side, telling him he was going to be fine. He believed her, but could not muster the strength to say so and squeezed her hand instead.

Time passed - it couldn't have been much - and the hum of a lightsaber filled the passage. They passed close to Tesar, and Anakin glimpsed Alema sitting on his shoulders, pushing her silver blade into the ceiling. Behind her, Bela was on her sister's shoulders, using Jovan Drark's longblaster to tamp a wad of cloth into a similar hole.

Alema took a grenade from Tesar and reached up to push it into the hole she had made, then Tahiri pulled Anakin around a corner and he lost sight of what was happening. He heard - clearly - one of the Barabels rasp "six seconds" and knew Tekli was stabilizing him, perhaps even bringing him back.

Anakin lifted his head and saw Alema and the Barabels come racing around the corner behind the rest of the team, then heard an all-too-familiar drone coming up the passage. A pair of thud bugs splatted into Alema's back; they failed to penetrate her jumpsuit, but sent her sprawling. Tesar caught her on the run, pulling her into his grasp and continuing up the passage without breaking stride.

An instant later, a shock wave jolted Anakin, and his earplugs sealed themselves against the roar of falling yorik coral. Dust billowed off the passage walls, and as the cloud overtook the team, Tekli pushed Anakin's breath mask over his face.

The Jedi continued another thirty paces and stopped. Tekli had Anakin lowered to the floor and gave Jaina a tube of stinksalts to rouse Alema, then pushed her small hands into Anakin's wound and up under his rib cage. He tried not to scream and failed. She continued to work, issuing half-whispered instructions to Tahiri. Anakin looked down once and found Tekli's small arms immersed to the elbow. Darkness closed around the edges of his vision, and he did not look again.

The sound of blasterfire began to drift up the passage from the cave-in. Anakin tried to raise his head, only to have his brother push it back down.

"Don't worry," Jacen said. "Everyone's well covered."

"Alema ... hurt?" Anakin gasped.

"Angry." Jacen waved in the direction of the battle line. "Already blasting Yuuzhan Vong - and enjoying it."

"Good reason!" Anakin retorted. "After -"

"Easy!" Jacen raised his hands in surrender. "I'm not being judgmental."

Anakin winced as a sharp needle pierced something inside. Then he forced up a doubtful brow.

"Really, I'm not," Jacen said.

The intensity of the blasterfire at the cave-in increased, then Lowbacca roared the announcement of a voxyn kill.

Jacen glanced toward the joyful sound uneasily, then said, "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure. This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect. But I can't push others down my path. Everyone needs to choose for themselves. Centerpoint taught me that much."

"Fooled me."

"Fooled myself," Jacen said. "I thought I was the only one who knows the difference between right and wrong. I realized that wasn't true - actually, Tenel Ka pointed it out - after what I said on the Exquisite Death. I've been trying to apologize to you since."

"Really?" Anakin grimaced as one of Tekli's tiny hands brushed an organ that did not like being brushed. "Didn't know."

Jacen flashed a lopsided Solo grin. "I figured."

The zipping sound of blasters gave way to the snap-hiss of lightsabers, and Anakin raised his head. Atop the rubble pile, a solid line of colored blades was dancing against the darkness beyond.

"Got to go!" He pushed himself to his elbows. "Not getting anyone else killed."

"Except yourself, if you don't let me finish!" Tekli snapped. She nodded to Tahiri, who promptly pushed Anakin back down. "We can leave in a few seconds."

Anakin dared to look and found the Chadra-Fan coating the interior of his wound with salve. He was alarmed to discover he no longer felt her working.

"You numbed me?" he asked.

"To help with the pain." Tekli took a pad of bacta gauze from Tahiri and packed it into the wound. "But I can only do so much. You need a healing trance."

Anakin nodded. "When we're done."

Tekli looked up, her flattish nose twitching. "Sooner. Much sooner."

"Sooner?" Tahiri echoed. She glanced back toward the fight on the rubble pile. "But healing trances take hours - even days!"

Tekli ignored her and continued to speak to Anakin. "Your spleen was punctured." She looked back to her work, joining the edges of the wound with thread instead of synthflesh in case she needed to reopen it. "I closed the hole, but it will continue to seep until you enter a trance and heal it yourself."

"How's he going to do that?" Tahiri demanded. "We can't stop, not with the Yuuzhan Vong so close!"

There was an uneasy silence as the situation grew clear. Jacen tightened his lips to keep them from trembling and reached out to Anakin through the Force, trying to reassure him. Tahiri grabbed Tekli by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Do something! Use the Force!"

The Chadra-Fan laid a comforting hand over the one holding her arm. "I have."

"We must start with what's possible," Jacen said, pulling Tahiri away. "Maybe we'll find a way to buy enough time."

"Not by staying here," Anakin said. He felt more guilty than frightened; it was his wound placing the mission - and his companions' lives - at risk. He rolled to his elbows and sat upright, grimacing when Tekli's bacta numb proved weaker than he had expected. He activated his comlink, then said, "Prepare to break off. Buy some space."

Parrying with her one arm, Tenel Ka used the Force to pluck a fragmentation grenade from her harness and activate the thumb switch, then sent it hurling past her opponent. Two seconds later, it exploded with a brilliant flash, and the battle din quieted to a rumble.

"Lowbacca, Alema, Ganner, Lomi, Raynar - you first," Anakin commanded.

The five Jedi leapt backward off the rubble pile, flipping through the air and landing safely out of the reach of their foes. Anakin assigned Alema, Lomi, and Ganner to cover the others, then motioned Lowbacca and Raynar up the passage to gather their dead, Eryl and Jovan.

"Where?" Raynar demanded. "Eryl's body isn't here! Neither isjovan's!"

"What?" Anakin glanced back to find Raynar and Lowbacca standing over a pair of bloodstains. "They're gone?"

Lowbacca rumbled indeed they were, then squatted to inspect some marks on the floor. He rumbled something more.

"Master Lowbacca wishes to inquire whether the feral voxyn might have taken them?" To this fairly accurate translation, Em Teedee added his own opinion. "I must say, it hardly seems possible - not from beneath our very noses."

Anakin turned to Jacen, who had already closed his eyes and reached out to the ferals through the Force.

"There are four - no, five - moving up the passage ahead of us. They seem, uh, excited."

"Excited?" Alema asked, turning her attention forward. "How?"

The cacophony atop the rubble pile grew suddenly louder, and Anakin looked up to see Yuuzhan Vong silhouettes clambering into the gaps between his friends.

"Later, Alema," Anakin said. "Keep covering." He activated his comlink. "Break off, everyone!"

As the rest of the Jedi battle line stepped off the rubble pile, Anakin grabbed his brother's arm and pulled himself to his feet - and instantly collapsed. It was as if a lance had pierced his heart, and he screamed so loud his voice echoed back to him a dozen-fold. Then Jacen and Tahiri had him under the arms, dragging him half a dozen steps down the passage before they levitated him into the air.

Bugs swarmed down from the top of the rubble pile, drawing angry curses as they splattered against the strike team's armored jumpsuits. Someone thumbed a remote, triggering the mines planted on opposite sides atop the rubble pile, and the bug storm fell silent. Anakin glanced back to see the area clouded in blast shrapnel, the fragments burying themselves two millimeters deep in bare flesh, vonduun crab armor, or even yorik coral before detonating again. The Yuuzhan Vong literally vanished in a fog of detonite fume and blood spray.

The anguish in Anakin's chest subsided, and was quickly replaced by a different kind, coming to him through the battle meld - a heavier, sadder pain that could be described only as sorrow. He swung his feet around, breaking Tahiri's Force grip, and began to run alongside the others. A large Barabel body was floating between her hatchmates, being pulled along by her arms. The amphistaff that had felled her still wagged between her shoulder blades.

"Bela!" Anakin half turned toward Jacen. "Is she ..."

There was no need to finish the question. He could feel that she was dead, knew that the amphistaff buried in her back was the source of the pain that had driven him down earlier. He had let another Jedi die - worse, had not even noticed until she was gone. Yet again, he had failed his strike team.

Nom Anor's muted voice shouted an order somewhere on the other side of the rubble heap, and a muffled clatter rolled up the passage as warriors began to clamber over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Jacen took Anakin's arm. "Let Tahiri lift -"

"No." Anakin jerked free. "Not again. It was my wound. I forced us to stop."

Lowbacca triggered a second set of mines, and again the rubble pile quieted. By now, the strike team was around the corner, out of sight of their pursuers and opening a substantial lead. Anakin drew heavily on the Force and made himself keep pace. He was weakening - and he knew by his friends' anxious glances how obvious it was - but he would not let Tahiri tire herself for him. Not anyone. No more Jedi were going to die because of him. Not even Dark Jedi.

It was not even a minute before Anakin felt the Yuuzhan Vong gaining ground again. There was no ambush, no trap that would delay them. Nom Anor just kept coming, forcing the Jedi onward, soaking up munitions with his warriors' bodies and drawing down power packs with their lives. And the Jedi could do nothing to slow him, could only keep running.

A sour stench began to fill the passage. Everyone but Tesar and Krasov donned their breath masks. They rounded the corner and saw Eryl's red hair disappearing into a low jagged tunnel on the right. Raynar raced forward and dropped to his knees, screaming for the voxyn to release her, reaching inside its acid-melted lair.

Anakin stretched out with the Force and plucked him back into the main passage.

"Hey!" Raynar yelled, flailing.

A low burping sound erupted from the lair, and a spray of sticky acid shot out into the passage. Raynar stopped struggling.

"Uh, thanks." He glanced over. "Anakin, you can put me down. I'm not going in there."

"Are you certain?" Alema went over to the tunnel and - cautiously - stooped in front of it, peering inside. "This is exactly where we need to go."

"You've gone space happy," Welk said.

"Twi'leks do not go space happy," Alema replied mildly.

The distant sound of Yuuzhan Vong feet began to rustle up the passage.

Alema held her palm over the tunnel entrance, then pulled it away and looked up the main passage. "Has anyone else noticed that we have been circling around something?"

Anakin shook his head with the others. "We'll have to trust your instincts on that," he said. As a Twi'lek, Alema's sense of direction was undoubtedly more accurate than that of anyone else; her species inhabited a vast warren of underground cities on the inhospitable planet Ryloth. "What are you thinking?"

"This hole is breathing." Eyes twinkling, she took Anakin's hand and held it in the steady breeze that carried the foul stench from the voxyn tunnel. "It goes somewhere big, and it bisects whatever we're circling around. It could be a shortcut."

"Not one we can use," Jacen said. "The voxyn are protecting something down there. I'm trying to make them think they need to stay with it."

The sound of tramping began to roll up the passage. They all glanced back toward their unseen pursuers.

Ganner said, "Then you make the voxyn leave instead." He turned to Anakin. "We've got to do something."

Even before Anakin turned to ask if what Ganner suggested was possible, Jacen gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Anakin looked to Lomi. "What's down there?"

The Dark Jedi shrugged. "Voxyn, I am sure - but the snake-head may be right. It could be a shortcut. There are more tunnels like this one near the gate."

"Gate?" Anakin was already imagining the difficulty of fighting through a company of gate guards with Nom Anor rushing them from behind. "A guarded gate?"

Lomi nodded. "You can be certain."

Anakin began to feel sick. There was no way, no escape.

The tramping grew louder.

"Anakin?" Ganner asked.

"There's no choice," Jaina said, inserting herself between the two. "We need time for your healing trance."

"We are unlikely to buy much time in a cavern full of voxyn," Tenel Ka observed. "Quite the opposite, I am sure."

Anakin glance guiltily in Bela's direction. He knew what he wanted to do, but he had been wrong so many times on this mission, and every time, someone fell. Now he had to choose again. No matter what he decided, more Jedi would die. Maybe they all would.

"Young Solo?" Lomi inquired. "We are waiting."

Anakin turned to Jacen. "What do -"

"Thanks for asking," Jacen interrupted, not quite hiding his surprise. He took a thermal detonator from his equipment harness and dropped to his hands and knees in front of the foul-smelling tunnel. "But you know what we need to do. I think we all do."

 

Chapter 39

The smell was more sweet than rank, at least to Tsavong Lah, whose limb was the one rotting. The radank leg with which the shapers had replaced his arm was overbonding to his elbow, the aggressive linking cells attacking and killing his own tissue well above the amputation point. Scales and spines were already emerging as high up as his swollen biceps, and above that his arm swarmed with the diptera maggots seeded by the shapers to eat away his dying flesh.

If the alteration stopped at his shoulder, he would be accorded the respect of one who had sacrificed much and risked more in his devotion to the gods. If it continued onto his torso proper, or he lost the arm itself, he would be excused from his duties and shunned by his caste as a Shamed One, disfigured by the gods as a sign of their displeasure. Tsavong Lah suspected that where the alteration stopped would depend on how long he allowed the loss of his Reecee fleet to delay the capture of Coruscant - and that, in turn, depended on how long it required Nom Anor and Vergere to capture the Solo twins. With half his assault force now gone, and the possibility - no, likelihood - that the Jeedai had captured a live yammosk, he did not dare attack until he had secured the blessing of the gods.

His mind made up, the warmaster grasped a villip resting beside him and began to tickle it awake. Though he was sitting naked in the purifying steams of his private cleansing cell, Tsavong Lah did not bother to cover himself. The villip in his servant's possession would show only a head.

After an irritating wait of nearly a minute, the villip everted into the likeness of a huffing Nom Anor. Giving the executor no opportunity to apologize for making him wait, Tsavong Lah scowled.

"I trust you are chasing the Jeedai, Nom Anor, and not fleeing them."

"Never," the executor assured him. "Even as we speak, I am leading the Ksstarr's Two Scourge in pursuit."

"Will you catch them?"

"Yes," Nom Anor said. "We are taking casualties, but Three Scourge is waiting in ambush at the end of this transit. There is no escape this time."

The casualties did not interest Tsavong Lah. He had already heard how many vessels the Jeedai had destroyed above Myrkr and how they had slain the Ksstarr's first company - One Scourge - to a warrior, and he would have considered twice the losses insignificant.

"You will not harm the twin Solos." It had to be the fourth or fifth time Tsavong Lah had given the order, but, now more than ever, he wanted Nom Anor to understand. "Your warriors understand the fate awaiting the one who kills either of them?"

"As do I, Warmaster," Nom Anor said. "The twins are forbidden targets. I have also commanded Yal Phaath to have his own troops stand off - though he bristles at my authority. It would be wise of you to underscore the order."

"As you suggest," Tsavong Lah agreed, ignoring for the moment his servant's audacity in telling him what to do. "I need those sacrifices, Nom Anor. Our situation is deteriorating while I wait for you."

"You will not need to wait much longer, Warmaster," Nom Anor promised. "My plan is an excellent one."

"That would be healthy for you," Tsavong Lah warned. "I expect to hear from you soon."

He pressed his thumb into the villip's cheek, causing it to break contact and invert. The warmaster set this one aside and picked up Viqi Shesh's, considering whether the time had come to expend this particular asset. Since her removal from the New Republic's military oversight committee, she had been working doubly hard to prove her usefulness to the Yuuzhan Vong - less out of greed or power lust, Tsavong Lah thought, than a simple thirst for vengeance. Such weapons tended to be very explosive - which could be good or bad, depending on when they were detonated.

The steam-cell door spiraled open behind him, admitting a cool draft that wafted pleasantly across his naked back. Without turning around, he snapped, "Did I not say I was cleansing? How dare you disturb me."

"My life in payment, Warmaster." The voice belonged to Seef, his female communications assistant. "But the choice was not mine. Lord Shimrra's villip has everted."

Not bothering to cover himself, Tsavong Lah stood and turned, already reaching for the coufee Seef held ready for him. Except in circumstances involving breeding, it was forbidden for a subordinate to look upon his naked body and live - but when he saw her eyes flickering away from the suppurating flesh above his graft, he left the weapon in her hand. If he killed her now, the gods might well believe that he was simply trying to keep the condition of his arm a secret.

Tsavong Lah studied the communications officer a moment, pushed the coufee away, and narrowed his eyes in a way that left no doubt about his intentions. "You will prepare yourself."

"Yes, Warmaster." Her face betraying no hint of whether she considered this a better fate than death, Seef returned the coufee to its sheath and inclined her head. "I will await you in your chamber."

After she stepped aside, Tsavong Lah left his steam cell and draped a cloak over his shoulder hooks, taking care to keep the sleeve well above his elbow so that the condition of his graft would be visible to all. He found Lord Shimrra's villip set out on the table, its features cloaked in obscurity beneath the cowl-like protrusion of an epidermal mane. The warmaster touched his breast in salute and placed his palm and new talon on the table in front of the villip, then pressed his forehead to the back of his hands.

"Supreme One," he said. "Forgive the delay. I was cleansing."

"The gods value the pure." Shimrra's voice was a wispy rumble. "But also the triumphant. What of this fleet you lost?"

"The gods have reason to be displeased. The loss was total - six clusters."

"An expensive feint, my servant."

Tsavong's throat went dry. "Supreme One, it was no -"

"I am sure your plan warrants the sacrifice," Shimrra said, cutting him off. "That is not why we are speaking."

"Indeed?" Tsavong did not try to correct Shimrra; if the supreme overlord declared the fleet's loss a feint, then it was so. The warmaster's mind leapt immediately to the problem of shattering Coruscant's formidable defenses with only a single-pronged attack - perhaps a variation of the mine-sweeping moon he had intended to use at Borleias, or something involving refugee ships. Refugee ships would be good - the furor over the hostages at Talfaglio had proven how vulnerable to such techniques the New Republic really was. As the rough outline of an idea began to take shape in the warmaster's mind, he said, "I assure you my plan is an excellent one, Supreme One, but I am honored to speak with you regarding any matter."

Before continuing, Shimrra hesitated just long enough to express his displeasure without speaking it, then said, "The success of your new grafting is in doubt?"

"It is so," Tsavong Lah answered. He did not ask, even of himself, how Lord Shimrra knew of his troubles with the radank leg. "I fear my arm may have offended the gods."

"It is not your arm, my servant. I saw nothing of that."

Tsavong Lah remained quiet, desperately trying to work out in his own mind whether Shimrra's vision was the reason they were speaking or merely the excuse.

"It is the twins, my servant," Shimrra said. "The gods will give us Coruscant, and you will give them these twins."

"It will be so, Supreme One," Tsavong Lah said. "Even now, my servants are running them to ground."

"You are certain?" Shimrra asked. "The gods will not be disappointed again."

"My servants assure me their plan is an excellent one." It did not escape Tsavong Lah's notice that Nom Anor's words had been much the same as his own to Lord Shimrra. "There is no escape."

"Let it be so." Shimrra was silent for a moment, then said, "See and be seen, my servant."

Tsavong raised his head, but said nothing. He had been invited to look, not speak.

"Know this, Tsavong Lah," Shimrra said. "In allowing your villip tender to live, you have kept for yourself one who should belong to the gods."

Tsavong Lah went cold inside. "Supreme One, this is so, but it was not my intention -"

"It pleases the gods to let you keep her. Do not insult them by explaining what they know." Shimrra's villip began to invert. "Use her well, my servant. All things are forgiven in victory."

 

Chapter 40

Tattooed sparsely beneath his sagging eyes and bearing no mutilations except a hole beneath his lip that looked like a second mouth, the Yuuzhan Vong was clearly a raw recruit, probably assigned to point duty for the sole purpose of drawing fire. Praying that the shadows in the tunnel were deep enough to hide her, Jaina used the Force to press her back more tightly to the ceiling. She held her breath as the warrior crawled another meter into the cave. Holding an activated lambent at arm's length, he used his amphistaff to prod the floor beneath Jaina. She could see the weapon's snakish shape and knew her own silhouette had to be just as visible, but the Yuuzhan Vong did not look up. He merely gagged on the stench of the place and retreated. When he reached the entrance, he rose and yelled "fas!" and continued up the main passage.

Jaina remained where she was, watching vonduun-crab-armored legs march past, desperately hoping the next thing to peer inside would not be a voxyn. Though they had already killed four of the beasts - Lowbacca had blasted the last one at the cave-in - the possibility that Nom Anor had brought more than the standard number was the one weak point in strike team's plan. The Yuuzhan Vong could be expected to miss the Jedi's detour, but a voxyn could not. A voxyn would feel the change of direction.

A second Yuuzhan Vong, this time with the fringed earlobes and heavily branded face of a veteran, thrust his lambent crystal into the jagged tunnel. Like most of the Jedi on the strike team, Jaina had toyed with the idea of capturing one of the crystals, but it was certainly not worth the risk. Anakin's bond to his was unique, no doubt because of his role in growing it, and even he doubted that he could re-create the feat. Certainly, no one in the Eclipse Program had even been able to figure how the things reproduced. This time, the warrior searched the ceiling as well as the floor, but he rose and continued up the main passage without crawling inside.

Finally allowing herself a full breath, Jaina removed the flechette mine from her equipment harness. She set the signal feature to their comlink frequency and attached it to the ceiling in front of her. She did not activate it. Once she set the detonation selector to "motion," she would have only three seconds to leave sensor range, and she could not risk moving until all the Yuuzhan Vong had gone by.

The company seemed to take forever to pass. Without their pet voxyn to warn when Jedi were near, they moved warily, keeping a five-meter interval and looking for booby traps. Despite everything, the strike team remained alive, mobile, and - with a little help from the Force - capable of destroying the queen. Were Anakin in one piece, Jaina would have considered that a victory in itself.

She alternated between being scared for her brother and furious with him. She could not really blame Anakin for coming to her rescue - she would have done the same for him or Jacen - but she did. It had been a reckless and typically Anakin thing to do, spectacular, rash, effective - foolish. Tekli had made clear what would happen if they didn't find time to let him heal, and Anakin had made it just as clear that they were to place the mission above his life. Jaina was determined to do both, but if she had to make a choice ... well, she had only two brothers, and she did not intend to leave either one behind.

Jaina felt Jacen reaching out to her through their twin bond and knew that, somewhere deeper in the tunnel, the others had encountered the first of the feral voxyn. She opened herself to the battle meld and was relieved to discover that Anakin's wound had drawn the group back together, though Zekk remained resentful about the Dark Jedi, and the others were distracted by concern for Anakin. Worried that any battle sounds from behind her would reverberate into the main passage, she summoned to mind the stillness of a Massassi temple and used the Force to expand this silence outside herself, creating - she hoped - a sphere of quiet between her companions and the Yuuzhan Vong.

Another set of vonduun-crab-armored legs passed the mouth of the tunnel. A pair of thin, re verse-articulated legs arrived next. They paused, folded down on themselves, and lowered a feathered torso into view. Jaina had to calm herself for fear that her pounding heartbeats would break the sphere of silence. A simian face with slanted eyes and delicate whiskers appeared atop the featherball and peered into the tunnel.

Vergere, or some being like her.

An alien presence touched Jaina's mind, startling her so badly she lost her concentration and dropped a hand's breadth before she regained composure and lifted herself back to the ceiling. She leveled her blaster pistol at Vergere's face.

A wry smile crossed the odd being's lips, and Jaina knew Vergere had touched her on purpose. But how - through the Force? It didn't seem possible. If Vergere was a Force-wielder, then the voxyn would hunt her, as well. Wouldn't they?

A thicket of vonduun-crab-armored legs gathered outside the tunnel. The silence barrier prevented Jaina from hearing whether the Yuuzhan Vong were speaking, but she did not doubt that Vergere knew of her proximity - even if she had not actually seen her. The alien presence was still touching her, taunting her, almost daring her to attack.

Jaina activated the flechette mine, then pushed herself back out of sensor range. Vergere's smile changed to a smirk, and the alien touch faded from Jaina's mind so quickly she began to wonder if she had felt it at all.

Vergere spoke to someone behind her. Jaina thumbed off her blaster safety lock, but her target turned and hopped up the passage before she could fire. The Yuuzhan Vong followed, and then even the memory of the alien touch dwindled away.

Jaina lowered her blaster and, shaking so hard she had to use both hands, reengaged the weapon's safety lock. She did not understand why she was so frightened. The creature had not even known she was there.

 

The other end of the voxyn tunnel opened into a grand corridor, six or seven meters high and wide enough to be a hovercar lane, but still dank and foul-smelling. Even in the small area lit by Jacen's glow stick, it curved away noticeably but gently, vanishing into darkness at both ends. The wall opposite the strike team's hiding place was breached by a pair of archways, set about twenty meters apart and each large enough for a rancor. Between these arches stood Wookiee-sized alcoves containing sculptures of the Yuuzhan Vong's bulbous-headed, many-tentacled god of war, Yun-Yammka. Above every alcove hung another alcove, empty and upside down, with the top pointing at the floor.

Once, Lomi had explained, the giant worldship had spun on an axis, generating artificial gravity through centrifugal force just as smaller versions did. Sometime during the journey between galaxies, the central brain had lost its ability to control the spin, breaking off the vessel's spiral arms and destabilizing the whole system. The shapers had switched to dovin basal-induced gravity, forcing the entire worldship to reorient its concept of up and down. There were a few places, such as this, where signs of the transition remained.

Through the archways whispered the ceaseless rustling of scales and - occasionally - the belch of an angry voxyn. Jacen could feel more than a dozen of the creatures lurking in the darkness just beyond the light of his glow stick, as patient as spice spiders and far more deadly.

"Looks like the outside of an arena," Anakin whispered. He was lying on the tunnel floor next to Jacen. "A really big one."

"Or a temple," Lomi said. She and Ganner were squatting on their haunches above the brothers' feet, with Tesar and Krasov stooped behind them, and everyone else waiting deeper in the cramped tunnel. "If Jacen can use his power to keep the grand corridor clear, perhaps we can sneak -"

"We can't," Anakin interrupted. "One way or another, we have to fight. How many, Jacen?"

"Too many."

Jacen could not perceive individual creatures well enough to make an accurate count, but he could sense them hiding in the cavity of darkness beyond the archways, scattered along the slopes of a bowl-shaped depression that felt easily a kilometer across. He recognized in most of the creatures the same determination to defend their territory that he had sensed in many species, but there was something fanatic about it, the suggestion of a familiar kind of selfless devotion.

"Nests!" The outline of a plan began to form in Jacen's mind. "They're defending their nests."

"Nests?" Lomi demanded. "What do clones need with -"

Anakin silenced her with a raised hand. "Let him concentrate."

"Not too long," Ganner said from somewhere in back. "Sooner or later, even Nom Anor will notice we've slipped away."

Jacen focused on the voxyn across the way and sensed not protectiveness, nor even hunger, but something closer to longing. One by one, he reached out to the other creatures beneath the arches and, perceiving a similar craving, knew he had guessed right. He backed deeper into the tunnel and faced Tesar and Krasov.

"I have an idea -"

"Do it," Tesar rasped. "Bela will be honored."

"Do what?" Welk demanded, looking from one Jedi to another. "How come nobody around here ever finishes a sentence?"

"No time," Ganner said. "Let's go. The Yuuzhan Vong have got to have noticed we're gone."

Jacen ignored him and asked Krasov, "You understand -"

"She gave her life to the Jedi," Krasov said. She and Tesar squeezed aside, then levitated their hatchmate forward in between them. "Her body is nothing."

They rubbed their muzzles briefly against hers, then removed Bela's equipment harness and vac suit pack. Tesar set the timer of a class-A thermal detonator to four minutes, then secured it deep within her reptilian throat. Krasov affixed her sister's lightsaber in hand with synthflesh, and they exchanged places with Lomi and Ganner and floated Bela's body into the grand corridor.

Choking back tears - and wondering if he could have done the same thing had it been Anakin's body - Jacen watched in horror as more than a dozen feral voxyn rushed into the light of his glow stick. The creatures filled the corridor with sonic screeches, and his earplugs activated. Tesar used the Force to ignite Bela's lightsaber and slice the muzzle off the first voxyn to reach her body. The second bit the arm off at the shoulder. The third bowled the corpse over and straddled it.

The other voxyn hurled themselves into this one, snarling and snapping at its legs. Several together caught hold and dragged the beast down the corridor, where the battle erupted into a vicious acid-belching melee that reduced the combatants to smoking heaps of scales. The rest continued in a more restrained manner, each trying to straddle Bela's body, the others fighting to unseat the current possessor, slowly dragging her down the corridor toward one of the archways.

The battle moved into the darkness, and the strike team was left to listen as the snarling and hissing grew more distant and muffled. Finally, the crackle of a thermal detonator shattered the quiet, and a brilliant glare flashed through an archway far down the corridor. Jacen reached out to the voxyn with soothing thoughts, trying to reassure them the light would not come again. The surviving creatures - and it felt like there were plenty - greeted his efforts with sonic squeals and clattering claws, but gradually settled down and returned to their nests.

Jacen checked to make sure no voxyn lurked in ambush, then led the way out into the grand corridor. The stench was so bad that even his breath mask could not filter it out. He reached out to summon Jaina and felt her already approaching, apprehensive and baffled, but not panicked.

Anakin joined the Barabels and began to speak with them quietly. Though Jacen knew Tesar and Krasov would be more unsettled by an apology than gratified by it, he kept his distance. Anakin needed his talk with the Barabels; maybe they would do for him what Jacen could not.

Jaina arrived and, at Ganner's insistence, the team set off up the corridor. Anakin reluctantly allowed Tesar and Krasov to assume their usual position in front, though only because they appeared insulted by the suggestion that it was someone else's turn at point. Every thirty meters, another archway led into the rustling darkness. Though Jacen never perceived more voxyn lurking in these openings, the Barabels took no chances. They always leapt onto the wall and, extending their claws to hold themselves in place, peered through the opening to be certain.

Jacen stepped to his sister's side. "Everything okay back there? You seem uneasy."

"Fact," Tenel Ka said, joining them. "You have more furrows between your eyebrows than a Hutt's purser."

"Thanks," Jaina said. "I saw Vergere."

Jacen waited, then finally asked, "And?"

Jaina's eyes went vacant. "And nothing ... she left." She pointed her chin ahead. "How's Little Brother doing?"

Jacen looked forward to where Anakin was keeping pace with Lowbacca's long stride. Their brother was so powerful in the Force that it was difficult to tell how much pain he was burying, or how much strength he was burning, but Jacen could feel the fatigue nipping at the edges of Anakin's carefully maintained facade of vigor.

"Hard to know," he said. "I'm scared."

Jaina fell quiet, then surprised Jacen by grasping his arm. "Don't be. We're not going to let anything happen to him."

Tenel Ka took Jacen's other arm. "Fact."

 

Anakin followed Tesar and Krasov up the grand corridor. Every time they leapt onto a wall to peer around the haunch of an archway, he cringed. His efforts to explain how sorry he was about Bela's death had only bewildered them, prompting the pair to apologize to him for the strike team's other casualties. He had ended up feeling more guilty than before, and the Barabels had seemed vaguely affronted by the idea they might need comforting. Reminding the hatchmates to be careful was out of the question, but the Force in the immense chamber beyond the arches was full of brutish agitation, and he kept expecting a mass of brown bile to blast one or both of them.

Instead, he felt a sudden surge of primal longing. Anakin ignited his lightsaber and, along with everyone else, shouted. A pair of open jaws darted into view. Krasov hissed and pulled back - not quickly enough. A tooth snagged her breath mask and tore it free.

Anakin jumped forward, slashed the voxyn under the jaw, reversed strokes and cut off the muzzle. The creature reared, then Tesar and Krasov swung down in front of him and severed its swiping claws.

What remained of the voxyn's jaws began to open. Krasov dragged her white blade across its throat, then staggered back, her face covered in gummy acid. Tesar used the Force to hold the reeling voxyn upright as Anakin drove his lightsaber into its chest and spun away, pulling his purple blade through its body. The voxyn went limp and hung suspended in the air.

Krasov's face was masked by rising fumes, but the sizzle of melting keratin left no doubt about what was happening to her. "Tesar!" she gasped. "My eyes ..."

"Here, Krasov."

Leaving the voxyn to fall, Tesar pulled her out of the archway.

A loud clatter sounded from the darkness beyond. Anakin pulled a thermal detonator off his harness and threw it well down into the room. There was a familiar sizzle and a bright flash, but no shock wave or heat blast. Precision was what made thermal detonators so useful. Everything within the blast radius was utterly disintegrated; everything beyond remained completely untouched.

When Anakin sensed no more voxyn charging the door, he turned to call Tekli and found her already guiding Krasov to a seat against the wall. The Chadra-Fan began to scrape off the sticky bile with the blade of a multitool. Too many scales came with it.

Anakin looked away, said nothing. Every decision cost someone something. Their mission began to seem distant and impossible.

"Trouble coming!"

Anakin barely heard Jacen's words. He did not want to make any more decisions, cause any more casualties.

"Anakin?"

He felt Jacen probing, checking to see if the battle had caused his wound to open. It had not. The pain remained bearable, and the Force gave Anakin strength.

A muffled rustling came down the corridor from both directions.

"Sith blood!" Jaina cursed. "He's cracking."

Someone fired a blaster. Someone else fired in the other direction. The Force became permeated with primal longing, and voxyn poured into the grand corridor to both sides of the strike team. The blasterfire grew deafening. Anakin drew his own weapon. It would be easier this way; no decisions to make. All he had to do was aim and fire.

Anakin started forward, and Lowbacca clamped hold of his shoulder and pointed toward the arch at their backs and groaned a question.

Anakin shook his head. "Tahiri can keep watch. I'm fighting with everyone else."

"Better if you watch," Tesar rasped. He pushed Anakin toward the arch. "For Krasov."

"I'm not hurt." Anakin followed the Barabel toward the battle line. "I can still fight."

"Anakin! Will you stay?" Jaina pointed her blaster into the arch. "Get yourself together."

Though spoken softly, the words struck Anakin like a fist. His own sister did not want him fighting at her side. Had he bungled things that badly?

Jaina joined the others on the firing lines. Anakin squatted behind the dead voxyn and stared into the rustling darkness, alert to any change in sound or in the Force that meant more creatures coming. Though hardly as sensitive to the beasts as Jacen, he could tell that most of the creatures on the other side of the archway were bloodthirsty but defensive - and almost stationary.

"You don't have to let them push you around," Tahiri said, dropping to her knees and almost yelling to make herself heard over the battle roar. "You're still team leader."

"Some leader," Anakin said.

Tahiri waited almost a full second before demanding, "What's that mean?"

"I keep getting people killed."

"People are getting killed. Who says it's your fault?"

"I do." Anakin glanced toward the battle. "They do."

"Neg that! They just want you to get us out of here." A concussion grenade shook the corridor and was answered by a dozen sonic screeches. "So do I. Think of something - fast."

Tahiri kissed him and turned toward the battle, her blaster drawn. So far, the bolt storm was holding the voxyn at bay, but that would change. It would change soon. Several Jedi were already drawing down their last power packs, and eventually the voxyn would mount an attack through Anakin's archway - unless the strike team left first.

Tesar rasped a curse, hurled his minicannon at a voxyn, and summoned Krasov's weapon to hand. His target sprang at his head, claws lashing. Raynar Thul caught the creature on a hissing lightsaber, opened a three-meter slash down its belly, then leapt away - into the path of its lashing tail.

The barb penetrated. Raynar winced and retreated into the Jedi ranks, severing the tail a meter from his jumpsuit and leaving the stump to hang. Anakin spun to call Tekli and found her scurrying forward, antidote in hand.

They had to move, they had to move soon.

Anakin turned his glow stick to maximum and tossed it through the archway, catching it with the Force and holding it high in the air. The voxyn belched acid at it, but settled down as they grew accustomed to the radiance. Anakin glimpsed many dozen creatures - probably not a hundred - spread over the tiers of a vast stadium. Most were squatting over the corpses of slaves they had dragged in from the city, glaring and ruffling their neck scales at each other.

No way to levitate across that. Jedi could not fly, after all, and the distance had to be more than a kilometer. Maybe if they used their Force acrobatics ...

Jacen came to Anakin's side and, sensing the drift of his thoughts through the battle meld, peered into the arena. "We don't want to startle them. They won't leave their, uh, nests unless they feel threatened. I might be able to keep them from attacking at all."

"Good," Anakin said. "It'd be nice if something went right."

He turned to find Ganner pointing toward an acid-melted voxyn tunnel just up the corridor and yelling that they had to make a run for it. Afraid he wouldn't be heard over the battle roar, Anakin activated his comlink.

"Right idea, Ganner, wrong direction." He pointed through the archway. "This way."

"The arena?" This from Jaina. "You can't heal -"

"I'll heal when this is done," Anakin interrupted. What he wouldn't do was hole up in some voxyn tunnel and get everyone trapped. "This way."

Tesar Sebatyne was the first to nod. "As you order." He laid a barrage of covering fire. "Fall back!"

Lowbacca did the same for those facing the opposite direction, and Jacen led the way into the arena, dropping the battle meld so he could concentrate on soothing voxyn. The closest creatures ruffled their scales and scratched furrows into their tiers. They also remained in their nests and did not attack.

Anakin let out a breath and turned to Krasov. Though her face was covered by Bela's breath mask, plenty of bones and teeth showed around the rim. Anakin caught Tekli's eye and raised his brow.

"Not thiz time, Little Brother." Krasov's voice was barely a croak. "Allow this one to cover your ... departure."

"No," Anakin said. "We'll toss a detonator back -"

"Too late." Krasov opened her hand to reveal a thermal detonator, fuse set to ignite three seconds after her thumb left the trigger. "This iz better."

Alema Rar slipped past, pulling a stuporous Raynar Thul along. His condition was due to the antidote, not the poison. Anakin sent Tekli after the pair and laid covering fire for Lowbacca.

"Krasov, secure that trigger," Anakin ordered. Half a dozen voxyn came boiling down the corridor. He dropped the leader with a bolt to the eye. "Krasov?"

"Krasov iz gone." Tesar tossed a concussion grenade into the rest of the pack and, as the blast rocked the corridor, kneeled to press his cheek to Krasov's. He held it there until the residual acid began to make his own scales smoke, then rose and pointed to her thumb, now barely holding the trigger. "This one thinkz we should hurry."

 

Chapter 41

Anakin ducked through the arch into the arena, Tesar close on his heels. The rest of the strike team was already three tiers below, lighting their way with glow sticks and nervously snaking past a nesting voxyn. The two Jedi started after them, circling around a forty-meter crater that Anakin had made moments earlier with a thermal detonator.

A tumult of snarling and bellowing rumbled through the arch behind them, prompting Anakin and Tesar to launch themselves headlong down the tiers. The thermal detonator Krasov had been clutching when she died would go off three seconds after the ravaging voxyn knocked it from her lifeless hand. Something tore inside Anakin's wound and sent a half-numbed pain shooting up through his belly. He ignored it and completed his somersault, then landed dead-legged two tiers below and tumbled over the edge.

Two things happened next. First, the voxyn that he had disturbed took offense and opened its mouth to spew acid. Second, the thermal detonator went off above him, flashing a fan of white brilliance across the arena and disintegrating a forty-meter length of wall, and bringing untold tons of yorik coral crashing down into the arena.

Anakin was a lot more worried about the angry voxyn. Fumbling for his lightsaber, he rolled away and leapt to his feet - only to find the beast scratching at its own throat, mysteriously choking on its tongue and dribbling brown acid out the side of its mouth. A dark shiver raced down his spine, and he turned to find Welk standing behind him, one hand curled into a strangling claw, his face contorted into an angry mask of concentration.

"Jacen needs everybody down!" Tenel Ka's hushed voice came over the comlink. "Stay low and silent!"

Anakin obeyed quickly, Welk less so, and Anakin watched in silence as the Dark Jedi used the Force to strangle the life out of the creature. Certainly, neither Anakin nor anyone else on the strike team would have used the Force to kill directly - calling upon its power to extinguish the very life that sustained it was a certain path to the dark side - but Anakin would have been hard-pressed to call it immoral. Had the situation been reversed, he would not have hesitated to use a blaster or lightsaber to save Welk.

As the rumble of falling yorik coral faded away, the voxyn continued to snarl and scratch at the yorik coral beneath their feet. Anakin felt Jacen reaching out with the Force, soothing the beasts with reassuring thoughts, working to persuade them that this was the last of the disturbances. Given the commotion of the last hour, the task was difficult, but the voxyn were so eager to remain on their nests that they calmed.

"It is okay to move slowly," Tenel Ka advised. "But do nothing threatening. Under no circumstances must anyone attack."

As Anakin rose, a wave of dizziness made him brace himself against the wall, but no one noticed. All eyes were focused on Zekk, who was marching over to Welk with fury in his eyes.

"You used the dark side!" he hissed.

"Better to let the beast kill young Solo?" Lomi asked, placing herself between the two.

"You broke your promise," Zekk said.

"He saved my life." Anakin stepped to Zekk's side, then glanced pointedly around. There were no live voxyn closer than twenty meters, but all of the beasts within the range of their glow sticks were ruffling their neck scales and staring at the strike team. "And if we can feel your outrage, so can the voxyn."

The heat went out of Zekk's expression. "Sorry, Anakin." He glared at Welk and Lomi, then said, "Don't use the Force again - not around me."

With that, he spun on his heel and started down the tier after Jacen and Jaina. Anakin watched him go, suddenly too weary to concern himself over Zekk's rigid view of the dark side. His legs shook from the mere effort of standing. He took a moment to concentrate, using the Force to muster his strength, then waved Welk and Lomi forward and fell in behind.

"By the way, thanks for saving my life," he said to Welk.

"Then you do not feel tainted by the dark side?" Lomi asked.

"I'm not afraid of it, if that's what you mean," Anakin replied. "But Zekk's right, you did break your promise."

"Don't worry," Welk said, not looking back. "I won't do it again."

They descended the tiers in a zigzagging course as Jacen gave the widest possible berth to the nesting voxyn. Even through the breath masks, the stench grew ever more unbearable, and they saw bodies in all states of decomposition, the hopeful mothers still standing guard over the food they expected to nourish their sterile eggs. In a few cases, the voxyn herself had starved to death and collapsed on top of her nest's bare bones. The sight struck Anakin as morbidly sad, though it did not really surprise him. He knew from his studies - and from Jacen's endless discourses during long space voyages - that many creatures faced death to bring forth the next generation. This willingness - and the fact that in some species it was even necessary - was tangible evidence of the eternal nature of the Force, Jacen said.

About halfway down, they came to a ten-meter drop, which proved to be another tier of arches similar to the ones out of which they had come. Rather than risk drawing any more nestless voxyn through these portals, they began to circle the arena - or whatever it was - clambering up and down tiers in order to avoid voxyn nests. The effort quickly began to tell on Anakin, even when he used the Force to assist himself. It was not long before his knees were trembling and his belly burning.

Tahiri, of course, noticed right away. "Anakin, you're shaking."

Anakin nodded. "The smell is getting to me."

"The smell makes no one else shake," Tesar noted, coming up behind Anakin. "This one will carry you."

Before Anakin could object, the Barabel scooped him up in his arms. Tahiri insisted on reporting Anakin's condition to Tekli, whose examination came to an abrupt end when an angry voxyn stuck its head over the tier above and belched acid in their direction. Fearful of agitating the rest of the beasts, the strike team resumed its march, with Anakin cradled in Tesar's scaly arms.

As they continued around the arena, Anakin saw that the tiers below were better appointed than those through which he and his companions were traveling. The walls were decorated with statues of Yun-Yammka, many showing the god tearing off his own limbs or draining his blood. A few showed Yuuzhan Vong warriors being devoured by the god or emerging whole again from among its tentacles. When he began to glimpse long spikes and sharp hooks protruding from the walls surrounding the arena floor, Anakin thought this was probably a stadium where the Yuuzhan Vong had once entertained themselves by pitting slave gladiators against each other.

Then Anakin noticed the series of ramps extending from the lower tier onto the arena floor and realized he had it wrong. The Yuuzhan Vong had been the ones who fought here - or at least those lucky enough to sit in the privileged lower tier. Viewed in that light, the statues of Yun-Yammka took on a religious tone, and he began to imagine the arena as an enormous church. He could almost see the place filled with Yuuzhan Vong faithful as the worldship hurtled through the darkness between galaxies, the most prominent citizens and celebrated leaders down on the arena floor, honoring their gods with their blood, by their deaths assuring the Yuuzhan Vong of a new home in the distant galaxy of the New Republic.

"Put me down," Anakin said. Warriors like those would not be defeated by someone who had to be borne into battle in another's arms. "I won't be carried, not in here - not until this is done."

Tesar returned Anakin to his unsteady feet.

Lowbacca groaned, then moaned a question.

"Then how do you expect -"

"Tesar can help me," Anakin said, interrupting Em Teedee's translation. He turned to the Barabel. "When Ulaha was being tortured, you gave her strength."

"It will not be as much," Tesar warned. "There were three then."

"I'll take what I can," Anakin said. "I just want to finish this on my feet."

The Barabel showed his needlelike teeth. "Then this one would be honored."

Anakin felt Tesar make contact through the Force, then experienced a peculiar reptilian chill as the Barabel brought them together emotionally. The world turned strangely crimson, and Anakin felt his weakness pouring into Tesar, and Tesar's strength flowing into him. With it came a strange sense of loneliness, not quite sorrow as humans knew it, but two aching absences that would never be filled.

Without realizing that he had closed them, Anakin opened his eyes. "I - it isn't quite what I expected."

"No?" Tesar rasped. "You wanted scales?"

Astonished to discover he actually understood the joke, Anakin chuckled and started after the others. His connection to Tesar felt similar to the battle meld, save that now it was the Barabel's strength that was being shared.

A few minutes later, Alema announced that they had circled around the arena to a point opposite their entry arch, and the team began to ascend the stairs. Anakin was able to climb under his own power, but Raynar was still suffering from the effects of the poison antidote and had to be lifted from one tier to the next with the Force. They were only one tier from the exit when Raynar, waiting for Alema to climb up after him, pointed ten meters down the tier.

"Look!" His tongue was so thick that Anakin did not understand him at first. "Eryl!"

Raynar turned and started to stagger in the direction he was pointing, drawing a warning neck rustle from a nearby voxyn. Alema pulled herself up in one swift motion and rushed after the disoriented Jedi, while Anakin and several others reached out with the Force and jerked him back.

The voxyn belched acid and missed, then lunged forward and slashed Raynar twice. The first attack tore through his armored jumpsuit, the second opened four deep gashes. Leaving the wounded Jedi to his companions, Anakin jerked his lightsaber off his harness and activated the blade.

"Anakin, no!" Jacen warned. "Let it go back to its nest."

Anakin deactivated the blade, but kept the weapon at high guard. Tesar floated Raynar's babbling figure over to Ganner and Alema, who quickly disappeared behind the edge with him. The voxyn continued to glare down, its beady eyes fixed on the lightsaber in Anakin's hands.

"Need help, young Solo?" Lomi asked. "I can kill it, but there is that promise -"

"Keep your promise," Anakin said. He slowly lowered his lightsaber and backed away. "You really don't want to see Zekk angry."

"Do not be so sure," Lomi said. "I hear he is very powerful when he is angry."

The voxyn retreated to its nest. Anakin dared to breathe again, then he and the others scrambled up the last tier to the exit. Alema and Zekk were already on the other side with Tekli and Raynar, but Jacen and the rest were waiting just inside the arch.

Anakin stepped through and peered at Raynar over the Chadra-Fan's small shoulder. Four deep gashes ran diagonally across his chest, but the bleeding was not severe and no bone was showing.

"How is he?"

"Well enough for now," Tekli said, filling the wounds with cleansing foam. "But much will depend on how Cilghal's anti-disease agents work."

Anakin continued to stare at Raynar. Another casualty, this one a close friend of Jacen and Jaina - but they had made it across the voxyn warrens. He felt both sorrowful and relieved, but not guilty. He had chosen as well as he could.

Though Raynar was probably too incoherent to notice, Anakin kneeled down and patted his shoulder. "Can he be moved?"

"Have someone levitate him," Tekli said. "I'll ride."

Zekk had the patient in the air before Anakin could give the order. Alema was beside him, holding Tekli's medpac, her face distressed. Anakin gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, then gently took the medpac from her and passed it to Tahiri.

"We need you to navigate," he said to Alema. "Lomi's never been outside the training course, and everyone else is lost down here."

Alema thought for a moment, then guided them down the passage in what seemed the opposite direction they had been traveling. This corridor resembled the one they had followed into the arena, save that it lacked acid-scarred caves connected to a parallel tunnel. Eventually, the team passed an intersection that had been blocked with a yorik coral plug, presumably to discourage voxyn from escaping onto the rest of the worldship. Alema passed by the first, then the next, and finally stopped at a third.

"It feels like we're very near the surface here." A shudder ran down her lekku as she spoke. "I'm guessing we are far from the gate they were herding us toward. Maybe we can finally take them by surprise."

Jaina checked her comlink. "Maybe we can. They still haven't tripped the flechette mine."

Anakin gestured at the barricade. "Who wants the honors?"

Lowbacca and Tesar ignited their lightsabers simultaneously and set to work. The yorik coral was much harder than that aboard the Exquisite Death, and it required nearly twenty minutes to cut through the meter-deep plug. Anakin spent much of the time in meditation, doing what he could for his injury, but Tekli did not want to open it again. Even if a stitch had popped, there would be nothing solid to reattach it to.

Finally, Ganner levitated the last block out of the intersection. Ahead of them, a large access tunnel ascended toward the surface at a shallow angle. About fifty meters distant, it ended in a transparent wall of membrane and an air-locked valveway that opened into one of the deep-walled service routes they had seen from space. This travelway, however, was obviously no longer in use. It was crammed with captured equipment - landspeeders, utility lifts, hovertaxis, even a SoroSuub cloud car - all of it no doubt being stored out of sight until it was needed in the training course.

And there, sitting cockeyed in the middle of the tangle with hatches sealed tight and one landing gear only half extended, was a battered light freighter.

"Well," Anakin said. "It looks like the Force is finally with us."