Star by Star (60 page)

“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 is Jovan’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?”