Remnant: Force Heretic I (32 page)

The others ducked and ran for cover as another wave of blasterfire came from a building across the landing field. Tahiri sent a telekinetic punch to bring down a wall in front of the new threat, and their path was temporarily clear again.

“This way!” Han shouted, leading them from cover across the flat field.

Tahiri noted that where it had been empty before, there were now several small spacefaring vessels in various stages of warming up. Ground crews watched nervously as they ran among the ships, fleeing new shouts from behind. The occasional bolt of energy bounced off armored hulls, sending innocent bystanders diving for cover.

“This is all too much,” C-3PO complained, the sound of the servomotors that moved his limbs a constant whine as he hurried to keep up.

Amid the confusion on the landing field, Tahiri’s attention was drawn to one man who appeared to be pursuing them. A lean, vaguely nonhuman figure dressed in a dark blue flight suit, with a breath mask obscuring his face, he tagged them closely as Tahiri and the others dodged between the other vessels. He kept up with them easily enough, too, unencumbered as he was by the need to avoid pursuit or ambushes. He simply followed along, with his easy, loping strides, casually monitoring their progress.

When they were within a sprinting dash of the
Falcon
, Tahiri peeled away from the others to intercept their pursuer. She had no idea if he meant them harm or not, but she had no intentions of leaving her back exposed to him.

“Tahiri!” Leia called out. Han had the boarding ramp already lowered and they were all about to run in.

Tahiri ignored the calls; she had only about three minutes before the
Falcon
would be ready to launch, so every second counted.

The mysterious figure didn’t run away as she approached. Quite the opposite, in fact. Waving, he indicated for her to join him behind the curved hull of a small
yacht. She did so, realizing as she did what it was about him that had drawn her to him.

“It was you,” she muttered breathlessly as a tingle of recognition ran through her, courtesy of the Force, first, then via her nose: his smell was strong and familiar. “You’re the one who killed the guards and let us out!”

He nodded. “And one good turn deserves another, wouldn’t you say?”

Tahiri’s eyes narrowed, wondering what he was getting at. “You want our help?”

“I’ve been looking for a way off this rock ever since the Fia made their deal with the Brigaders.”

“You want to come with us, is that it?”

“Not quite,” he replied. He patted the hull of the yacht they were standing beside. “I want you to use your powers of persuasion to get the air lock of this thing open for me. After that, I can do the rest.”

Tahiri was naturally wary of using her Force powers to help a complete stranger steal a ship. “Why should I do that?”

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” the masked being said. “I’m one of the ones who brought you here. That must count for something.”

“Yeah, thanks a whole bunch.” She glanced over her shoulder at where the
Falcon
was prepping up. Princess Leia called urgently to her from the ramp, an edge of something more than concern creeping into her voice.

“I can explain everything later,” the stranger said, “if I survive. Right now there simply isn’t any time.”

Tahiri vacillated only for a moment, curiosity warring with caution. Then she reached out through the Force, feeling for the yacht’s pilot. It was a Fian woman, and she was rushing through her preflight checks with terrified haste. A quick glance, however, told Tahiri that the
pilot had missed a crucial stage in her engine warm-ups; the first atmospheric punch would overload the yacht’s repulsors and cripple them forever. With that in mind, she felt more reassured that intervening with the Force in this instance was acceptable. If it meant saving this pilot’s life, then that had to be a positive thing, surely?

Tahiri implanted a thought in the pilot’s mind; she had forgotten to secure the tail hatches and needed to do it manually, and the only way to do it was to unseal the air lock. Cursing, the pilot smacked her forehead and came through the yacht to fix the problem.

Tahiri faced her masked companion evenly. “The rest is up to you,” she said.

Her mystery man bowed slightly. “My thanks, Tahiri Veila.” He moved around to the air lock, waiting for it to open.

“When—” she began.

“We will speak again when I reach orbit,” he shouted, waving her away.

There was no time to argue with the stranger; she could already hear the rising wail of the
Falcon
’s engines. Han would be cursing her if she held them up any longer. Taking a deep breath, she gathered the Force around her like an invisible shield and braved the empty space between her and the unlikely-looking freighter. She ignited her lightsaber to build a wall of energy between her and the Fian security forces, moving the lightsaber in graceful, confident arcs around her, easily deflecting the blaster bolts as she backed her way toward the ramp. The joy of the fight rose within her, as she reveled in her skill with the blade and the failure of her enemies.

I am a Jedi Knight
, she thought.
I am invincible!

Then a strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her onto the ramp just as the
Falcon
lifted from
the ground. There was a rush of air around her as the ramp lifted.

She collapsed onto the metal decking, her lightsaber’s energy beam retracting with a crackle.

“Tahiri,” Leia said, edging aside her bodyguard and leaning over her. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“I had to help someone escape,” Tahiri managed breathlessly, surprised just how quickly the feeling of invincibility gave way to exhaustion. “The person who helped us with the guards outside the room.”

Leia frowned dubiously. “Who was it?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted with a shrug.

“But you’re sure it was the same person?” Leia asked.

Tahiri nodded. Her confidence came more from gut instinct than anything else; she could
feel
that he was the one. And then there was the smell, although she still couldn’t identify the source. “He said he would contact us from orbit.”

“That’s fine, if we make it to orbit.” Leia looked forward, concerned. “I’m going back to the cockpit. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Never been better,” Tahiri said, pulling herself up to a sitting position. And it wasn’t a lie. She had helped Anakin’s family escape capture on Galantos. Whatever her other failings were, she could be proud of that, at least.

Leia nodded uncertainly as she made to leave.

“I am all right, too, Princess Leia,” C-3PO chirped as Leia passed him, his photoreceptor eyes watching her back as she hurried off to the cockpit. “In case you were wondering.”

The Noghri guards left to follow Leia, leaving Tahiri alone with C-3PO. The golden droid let her use him as a counterweight to help her get to her feet, then staggered
back as some sort of energy weapon discharged against the ship’s shields.

“Goodness,” he exclaimed. “Will this fighting never end?”

I hope not
, part of her thought, but she was too frightened of what that meant to say it aloud.

Jaina brought her X-wing around in as tight a turn as it could manage. Although charred by the self-destruction of the Yevetha’s ship near N’zoth, her X-wing still had enough maneuverability to run down the alien fighter she had clipped on her first pass. Stuttering her lasers, she trusted her instincts to tell her when its dovin basals were close to overload. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she issued a proton torpedo to dispatch the Yuuzhan Vong ship along with its pilot to oblivion.

Fighting off exhaustion, she targeted another skip, this one daring to come in too close behind Twin Eleven. A dozen warning shots were enough to change its mind, although her follow-up torpedo failed to reach its mark. She gladly gave up the chase when her R2 unit warned that her stabilizers were overheating again and advised that she pull back for a while. The brief respite gave her a chance to observe the battle from a distance, a luxury she couldn’t afford when she was down in the thick of it.

Twin Suns Squadron was outnumbered three to one, but holding well against an enemy that hadn’t expected such determined—if indeed
any
—resistance in the system. Although both sides had been taken by surprise, Jaina was pleased to see that it was the Galactic Alliance and Chiss pilots who were adjusting the quickest. That made sense; with the Yuuzhan Vong’s yammosk suffering attempts to jam it while it dealt with the unexpected development, the individual pilots weren’t trained to think independently, and therefore floundered.

The two larger, circular ships were not designed for war, but they weren’t easy picking, either. Their yorik coral shells were tough, and the five long tentacles that dangled from their sterns were strongly muscled, lashing out with surprising speed at anything that came within reach. At the end of each serpentine arm was a toothless maw that opened and closed in the vacuum as though attempting to suck in passing ships.

Although Jaina had never seen anything quite like them before, the sucking tentacles—each several meters across—put her in mind of something her father had described seeing at Ord Mantell. He and Droma, the Ryn who had served briefly as his copilot after Chewie’s death, had almost been sucked into the mouth by just such a giant tentacle.

“Slaveships,” she said, voicing her thoughts.

“Empty or full?” asked Todra Mayn on
Selonia.
The frigate was slowly breaking orbit to lend its twenty quad laser cannons to the task of knocking out the incoming coralskippers.

“They’re heading in toward Galantos, so empty would be my bet,” Jag said as he pulled his clawcraft out of a tight roll. “After all, you wouldn’t send a household droid in to clean a place with its waste-storage bin already full, right?”

She had to agree that it made sense. There was a world full of Fia down on the planet that was barely in a position to defend itself. The entire planetary defense force consisted of five squadrons of old Y-wings, none of which had yet even managed to reach vacuum. But for Twin Suns Squadron and
Selonia
, the planet’s major cities would already have been under attack. Once this line of defense was gone, the entire population would become easy targets for those slaveships.

“How many people do you think they’d fit in one of those things?” Twin Three asked, swooping around the back of the nearest slave freighter and peppering its trailing tentacles with laserfire.

“Hundreds of thousands, maybe more,” Captain Mayn said grimly, “if they packed them in tight enough.”

“Enough for a disposable army,” Jaina said, revolted by the thought. “If this is what came for the Yevetha, it’s hardly surprising they decided to fight to the very end.”

Cappie bleeped to inform her that her stabilizers were back in working order. Ramping her inertial compensators down another notch, to give her flagging reflexes as much information as she could, she immediately powered to join Three, whose insistent pounding of the slaveship had resulted in one of its tentacles being completely severed. She was doing her best to cut through a second, all the while avoiding the sucking maws of the others. It was like attempting to dodge three amphistaffs all at once.

There was no time for talking, then, as she concentrated on helping maim the slaveship. It was a cumbersome vessel, clearly relying on its escort for defense and not intended for combat. Although it was equipped with dovin basals capable of absorbing enemy fire, she suspected that the primary function of these was to enable the large mass of the ship to hover over a city while it ingested its prey. When it was full, it could return to wherever the slaves were being processed, dump its load, and head out for another.

It was a typically revolting biological solution to a problem she knew the Yuuzhan Vong were suffering from. They were short of warriors, and they needed replacements. No one had imagined that they had been preparing for a wave of mass enslavement for so long. They should have, though. It was exactly the sort of fate
Tsavong Lah would have gleefully imposed on the infidels: divide and conquer had always been his modus operandi, closely followed by enslave and murder. That Lah was no longer around to see the results of his vile plan was little consolation.

A voice crackled over the open subspace link. “Anyone looking for reinforcements?”

“Dad?” Jaina peeled away from a wildly flailing tentacle, too tired to concentrate on two things simultaneously. “Is that you?”

“None other,” he announced cockily. “Hey, I hope you’ve saved some of those Vong ships for us.”

Jaina felt a wave of relief wash a heavy weight from her shoulders as she spotted the battered, black disk of the
Millennium Falcon
rising rapidly from Galantos. She was suddenly battle-ready again as a new energy rushed through her.

“I’m glad you made it out okay,” she said. “How did you swing it?”

“We had a hand,” he said simply. “Hang in there, kid. Help’s on its way.”

A quick scan of her telemetry confirmed that there was still no sign of the Galantos defense force. There were a few hot spots on the planet indicating isolated launches, but these were mainly from the major cities. Private craft, she assumed, probably taking the rich and the prestigious away from the Yuuzhan Vong attack.

Like mynocks fleeing a disintegrating asteroid
, she thought ruefully.

There was one ship, however, that didn’t immediately break orbit for the nearest hyperspace jump point. A small yacht of Corellian manufacture, it seemed to be hanging back as if waiting for something. The
Falcon
abruptly changed course to intercept it, and together they vanished around the back of the planet.

Odd
, she thought. Jaina had no time to ponder it any further, though. The coralskippers were gradually getting themselves organized, and
Selonia
was still some distance away. Twin Suns Three was forced to withdraw from the slave freighter whose tentacles she was harassing, and Jaina found herself the target of a trio of determined skips. She ducked and wove through the wildly disorienting tangle of fighters, ion washes, and particulate debris, hoping that the slightest distraction to the skips would afford her some breathing space until some help arrived. But no matter what she did, they doggedly stuck to her tail, until soon her stabilizers were beginning to overheat again. Frustration and anger welled within her and she fought them as grimly as she fought the Yuuzhan Vong: being tired and uncomfortable was no excuse to give in to the dark side.