Star by Star (65 page)

“Then they’re smart enough to avoid helping us,” Danni said. She shook her head wearily. “For every step forward …”

Luke’s comlink buzzed, then Mara’s.

Mara got to hers first. “Mara here.”

“Everything’s fine, but Leia thinks you should know we just had a little excitement here.” Han’s voice was tinny and scratchy, a result of the relay from Eclipse’s comm center being split between two comlinks. Luke turned his off, and the voice sounded more like Han. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Luke and Mara looked at each other, then Mara demanded, “What do you mean there’s nothing to worry about? If there was nothing to worry about, would you be comming us to say there was nothing to worry about?”

“Viqi Shesh paid us a visit,” Leia said. “She had a squad of infiltrators with her.”

“They were after Ben?” Luke asked.

“That’s how it looks,” Han said. “Adarakh and Meewalh took them in the foyer. The Yuuzhan Vong are either dead or on their way to an NRI interrogation facility.”

“And Viqi?” Mara asked.

“She jumped off the balcony,” Leia said.

“She didn’t fall far,” Han added. “She had a delivery sled one floor below. NRI is tracing it now.”

“But it won’t take long to find her,” Leia hastened to add. “Within the hour, every voice scanner on Coruscant will be trying to match her print.”

Luke and Mara looked at each other again, then Mara shrugged.

“So who said I was worried?” Mara asked. “If anyone in the galaxy knows how to deal with kidnappers, it has to be Han and Leia Solo.”

This drew a laugh from both Han and Leia, who had almost lost count of the number of times their children had been abducted.

“But you two stay put,” Mara ordered. “No more sneaking off on secret reconnaissance missions when you’re supposed to be watching my son.”

“ ’Firm that,” Han said. “I could use some time on the couch.”

After they clicked off, Luke could still sense a lingering uneasiness in Mara. He waited until they had stepped into the frigid corridor—Eclipse’s heating system was again performing below specifications—then spun Mara around and zipped her thermasuit to her throat.

“It isn’t easy being here,” he said. “Not with the Yuuzhan Vong after Ben on Coruscant.”

Mara managed a smile. “And with everything so quiet right now …”

“You could probably take a few days. Ben might like to see his mother, too.”

“And his mother would like to see him,” Mara said. She fell silent, considering, then shook her head. “But she also wants to protect him, and the only way to do that is to keep the Yuuzhan Vong away from Coruscant. With all those refugee convoys disappearing from Ralltiir and Rhinnal, this is more than just quiet.”

Luke nodded. “I feel it, too.” He took her hand and started toward the hangar caves, where Corran Horn wanted to show him a supplemental targeting system being installed on the XJ3s. “This is the dark before the nova.”

“Good news—Master Lowbacca wishes to report that the
Tachyon Flier
will be ready for launch before you attack the queen.”

Horrified that Em Teedee’s sharp voice would carry down the dusty slopes to the grashal’s protective thorn hedge, Anakin and several others fumbled for their hanging earpieces. They were studying the cloning lab from more than a hundred meters distant, but the air in this part of the worldship was so still that even soft sounds carried.

“He’s reinserting the reactor cores now,” Em Teedee said. “We’re going home, Master Anakin. You’re going to survive after all!”

“Affirmative.” Anakin’s voice was barely a whisper. Earlier, Jacen had felt a single voxyn presence inside the huge grashal, so it seemed likely they had at last reached the queen. Now all they had to do was kill her before the Yuuzhan Vong realized they were here. “Maintain comm silence.”

“Comm silence?” Em Teedee’s voice was quieter now. “Does that mean you’re in—”

The question came to an abrupt end as the droid was switched off, then Lowbacca acknowledged with a comm click. Anakin responded with a double click and continued his reconnaissance. The cone-shaped grashal stood in the heart of what had once been a vaulted dome, but which had become an immense basin when the shapers reoriented the worldship’s gravity. As the strike team had seen from the other side of the spaceport, the peak of the huge structure protruded through the outer shell of the worldship and—judging by the number of patching membranes
—provided some much-needed support for the makeshift ceiling.

Whether Nom Anor understood that this was where his prey had gone was impossible to say, but Anakin felt an urgency in the Force. The strike team had escaped through the voxyn lair over an hour ago, so the executor certainly realized by now that his quarry had disappeared. Provided he knew a shorter route, he might even be waiting inside. Someone should have been able to help with this question, but Anakin could not think who. Alema? Tahiri? Both had experience with Yuuzhan Vong bases, but their knowledge of this complex was no more specific than anyone else’s. He shook his head. There was someone else, but for the life of him he could not remember who …

Inside the
Tachyon Flier
, a battered but serviceable Corellian Engineering Corporation YV-888 light freighter, Lowbacca tightened the last shielding bolt to its proper torque, then initiated a self-test. The instrument panel broke into a flurry of dancing lights as the reactor brain checked its circuits. Finally, bright green steam began to rise behind the shielding door’s observation panel. When none of it appeared to be seeping through the seal, he authorized a pressure check, slipped the hydrospanner into his equipment belt, and started forward to check on his patient. Tekli had assured him that the dose of tranqarest would keep even a Jedi quiet until long after the others returned, but Lowbacca wanted to be sure. He had already been forced to secure Raynar in crash webbing after the feverish Jedi Knight thrashed his wrist against the bunk’s safety rail.

As Lowbacca passed the air lock, he heard someone banging on the outer hatch. He went to the security panel and activated the external monitor. The vidcam was so dust-caked he could see only the vague shape of a small vac-suited human, hammering at the durasteel with the butt of a minicannon. He activated his comlink and started to ask what was wrong, then recalled Anakin’s request for comm silence and stepped into the equalization chamber. He sealed his vac suit, then shorted two wires dangling from the control box.

As the outer seal broke, he experienced a sudden ripple of
danger sense and snapped his lightsaber off his belt. The hatch opened, and Lomi Plo’s voice came over his personal channel.

“There’s no need for that.” She tossed the minicannon at his waist, forcing him to lower his arms to catch it. “Come along—the scarheads have your friends cornered.”

She turned and started down the boarding ramp, unslinging her own T-21 repeating blaster as she ran. Pausing only to clip his lightsaber on his harness, Lowbacca rushed after her.

The Wookiee was already at the bottom of the ramp when he sensed another human behind him, lurking somewhere beneath the
Tachyon Flier
. Instinctively bringing the minicannon up, Lowbacca spun around to find Welk stepping out from behind a landing strut, a blaster pistol aimed at his chest. Needing no further evidence of the pair’s treachery, Lowbacca squeezed the minicannon’s trigger.

The power pack did not even contain enough energy to activate the depletion alarm. Struck by the depth of the betrayal, Lowbacca lowered the minicannon and switched to Welk’s personal channel, then growled a one-word question.

“Because your friends are going to get themselves and everyone with them killed, that’s why,” Welk answered.

He fired, catching Lowbacca full in the chest with a blue stun bolt. The Wookiee choked out a pained growl and dropped to a knee, drawing on the Force to keep himself conscious. He hurled the minicannon at Welk and reached for his lightsaber, then rolled over his shoulder and came up on a knee, molten bronze blade slashing toward the Dark Jedi’s waist.

Stun bolts began to pour in from behind.

“Play nice, Wookiee,” Lomi said. “We could have set our weapons to kill.”

Anakin had almost finished explaining his plan when a blue glow shone down through the transparent ceiling patches. He lifted his gaze and saw the
Tachyon Flier
shooting into the green sky, its efflux nacelles glowing brilliantly as the ion drives flared to life.

“Lowie?” he gasped.

Jaina and the others were instantly on their comlinks, trying to
raise Lowbacca and find out why he was leaving. They received only static in return.

“Strange,” Tesar Sebatyne rasped. “This one has always heard that nothing is more loyal than a Wookiee.”

“That’s right,” Jacen said. “And Lowbacca is more loyal than most. Something’s wrong.”

“Fact,” Tenel Ka said.

The strike team stared at each other blankly while Anakin tried to raise Lowbacca again. When that did not work, Jaina switched channels and sent an activation signal to Em Teedee.

“—danger?” the droid asked, finishing the question that had been in his circuits when Lowbacca shut him down. “Oh dear, when did we launch?”

“Em Teedee, what’s Lowie doing?” Jacen asked. “Why’s he leaving?”

“Leaving? Why, Master Lowbacca is doing nothing of the sort. He’s right here with …” The droid let the sentence drift off, then screeched, “Help! They’re stealing me!”

“
Who
?” Anakin asked.

“Who?” Em Teedee echoed. “Lomi and—”

The explanation ended in a crackle of static.

“Welk,” Zekk finished, his voice hard and angry. “Lomi and Welk.”

As soon as he heard the names, Anakin recalled the Dark Master who had guided them through the training course—and whose last sentence to him had been something along the lines of “We were never here.” He had seen her hand rise and felt the Force behind her words, but Lomi was as subtle as she was powerful. He could not even remember if there had been time to resist.

Ganner might not have been the first to realize what the ship’s theft meant for Anakin, but, as usual, he was the only one bold enough to say it. “Anakin, I’m sorry. Once we found out they were Dark Jedi, we should never have—”

“Yes, we should have,” Anakin said. He was surprised to discover how calm he felt, how focused he was on the duty at hand. “Without them, we wouldn’t have made it this far—and I would have died in the arena anyway.”

“Not
anyway,
” Tahiri insisted. “We’ll find another way off this rock.”

“First things first,” Anakin said softly. Though Tekli was still working on him, reaching into his wound with the Force to repair his torn organs, he could feel his strength fading and his pain rising. “Let’s concentrate on the mission.”

The blue dot of the
Tachyon Flier
’s ion drives blinked completely out of sight, then a flight of coralskippers streaked across a patching membrane and shot into space. A moment after that, the dark shape of Nom Anor’s frigate floated over the horizon, also pursuing the YV-888.

“I hope the scarheads catch them,” Alema Rar said, her voice full of bitterness. “I hope they dump ’em in a voxyn pen.”

“I do not.” Tenel Ka displayed her comlink, which was already pulsing static as the first plasma balls battered the
Flier
’s shields. “Our friend Raynar is still aboard.”

The sinking feeling in Anakin’s chest was all too familiar. He activated Lowbacca’s comlink remotely and found it completely silent.

“But not Lowie,” he said. “And if he had been killed, I’m pretty sure we would have felt him die.”

When no one said anything, he looked up from his comlink and found everyone else studying him. There were tears welling in Jacen’s and Jaina’s eyes, and Tahiri was wiping her cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve.

“We’d better do this now,” Anakin said, not wanting to lose focus. He disengaged from Tekli, then took Raynar’s G-9 power blaster off his shoulder and raised the long-range sight. “Jaina, keep a channel open to Raynar. Maybe we’ll hear what becomes of him.”

And maybe they wouldn’t, Anakin knew. In war, people sometimes just disappeared. No one ever found out what had happened to them, leaving friends and family with lifetimes of longing and uncertainty.

When no one moved to ready themselves, Anakin said, “
Now
might be nice.”

Spurred into action, the strike team readied their weapons and opened their emotions. Despite the lingering outrage—and some
feelings of blame—over the Dark Jedi’s betrayal, the battle meld felt the tightest it had been since the detention warrens. Anakin knelt a few meters from the passage mouth and took aim at one of the dark shapes visible through the thorn hedge. When he felt the others also find their targets—two to each guard—he fired.

Eight streaks of color fanned down the dusty slope and tore through the hedge into the four dark shapes beyond. None of the bolts missed. No Jedi would bungle such an important attack, not with the Force to guide his aim. But only two shots burned through. Six ricocheted off the guards’ vonduun crab armor, blasting dust columns into the air or burning pits into the grashal wall.

The surviving guards dropped and crawled for cover. Half the strike team was already rushing down the slope, firing as they ran, their T-21 repeating blasters keeping the Yuuzhan Vong pinned and clearing the hedge for the more powerful weapons behind.

Anakin and Jaina fired again. Prone to deflection and straying at that distance, their power blasters could only flush the guards. One warrior fell to Alema’s longblaster. The other was staggered by Tesar’s minicannon, then finished by the T-21s as they reached effective range. Now the second wave was up and running. Despite the strength Tesar was sharing, Anakin could not keep pace. Tahiri, Jaina, and Tesar dropped back to stay with him.

“Go! I’ll catch up.”

“When Jawas swim!” Tahiri shot back.

“Anakin, you’re in no condition,” Jaina said. “Go back to the equipment pit and locate Lowie. Maybe if you find a safe place to hole up and go into a healing trance—”