Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (14 page)

“Only,” the sullen Garth echoed sarcastically. “And cold and windy up at the top.”

“We may be fortunate enough to find a redcrested cougar waiting for us at the base,” Yomin Carr went on, but Garth Breise wasn’t smiling. “It would save us the climb.”

That disturbing notion in mind, Garth Breise paused at the outer perimeter control tower and redirected the nearby spotlights to brighten all the area around the base of the tower. Then he took a blaster from the weapons locker, securing it on his belt, and pulled out another one, offering it to Yomin Carr, who politely declined.

They exited the compound, closing the door behind them, and started for the tower. As they approached, both noticed movement around the base of the tower, almost as if the very ground had come writhing to life.

“What the heck are these?” Garth Breise asked, bending low to inspect the source of the strange movement: a swarm of reddish brown beetles.

“Perhaps the cause of our transmitter problems,” Yomin Carr offered.

“The cable was chewed by something bigger than beetles.”

“But if some of them climbed inside after it was broken …,” Yomin Carr said, and he left the thought to Garth’s imagination. He knew that wasn’t the case, of course, or at least, not the only source of the comm trouble, but Garth did not—and if some of the beetles actually
had
crawled inside, the damage to the cable could be complete.

“I didn’t see any out here when I found the break,” Garth said.

Yomin Carr looked up, up, up. “Do you still think it worth the climb?” he asked. “Or should you first inspect the length of cable?”

Garth paused a long while before answering, and Yomin Carr thought he had convinced the man to abandon the climb. “Up,” Garth said, pulling the coil from his shoulder. “Let’s get it over with.”

Yomin Carr started to argue, then stopped. It might indeed be better for the mission to dissuade Garth from going up now, but personally, Yomin Carr was growing more agitated, more eager for action, by the minute. He wanted to make this climb.

And so they did, hand over hand, securing each foothold, securing each length of rope, and then climbing on to the next level. It was still dark when they made the top, Garth Breise leading the way.

“There you have it,” he announced, grabbing the disconnected junction box. “The wind.”

Yomin Carr stepped up beside him. “Perhaps,” he agreed.

A thunderous roar from behind signaled that Danni and the other two were on their way, and the pair looked about to see the Spacecaster soaring into the dark sky, her fiery plumes blotting out the stars.

“I’d rather be up here than up there,” Garth noted.

“But a threat up here are you,” Yomin Carr said.

“What?” Garth asked, turning about, his expression curious.

Yomin Carr stole that look, and stole the man’s breath, by
stiffening two fingers and stabbing them hard into Garth’s windpipe. The man gasped and grabbed at his throat with one hand, and Yomin Carr, with those same two fingers, struck him a blow on the wrist that broke his grasp on the tower.

Garth flailed wildly, trying to catch a hold, but Yomin Carr’s hands were always in the way, deflecting him, keeping him at bay. And then, out of nowhere it seemed, the Yuuzhan Vong warrior produced a small, shining blade and thrust it menacingly at Garth’s face. That was only to pull the man’s arms in, though, for Yomin Carr fast reversed his attack, slashing the sharp blade upward, catching the taut rope right where it looped over one of the tower cross poles.

Garth’s arms worked in wild circles as he tried desperately to hold his balance. “Why?” he gasped.

Yomin Carr could have finished the task with a simple push, but he held back, thoroughly enjoying the look of the sheerest horror on the man’s face, the frantic and futile efforts.

And then the scream as Garth Breise tumbled over backward, plummeting down the side of the tower, striking one cross pole and launching into a somersaulting fall.

Yomin Carr was glad that Garth had redirected all the floodlights—they gave him a better view of the final descent and the bone-smashing impact. Because you gave me an excuse, the Yuuzhan Vong silently answered desperate Garth’s last question.

He had one moment of regret: when he considered that Garth might have crushed some of his pet dweebits.

Already far, far away, Danni Quee looked out her rear viewer at the receding Belkadan, and her expression fast changed from wistful to curious. “Bring us about,” she instructed Bensin Tomri, who was at the controls.

“The straighter the line to Helska, the better,” Bensin replied, obviously unsure of the craft’s condition. “I was about to make the jump to hyperspace.”

“No, you have to see this,” Danni replied.

The third member of the team, a short, dark man with hair the consistency of wool, Cho Badeleg, came up beside her. “Heck of a storm,” he remarked, seeing, as Danni had, the roiling clouds on the edge of Belkadan’s rim.

Bensin Tomri gasped when he brought the Spacecaster about; then all three stared in horror when they noted the scope of the storm, and the greenish yellow tint of it, something that reminded Danni of the sunsets she had been witnessing of late.

“Call the compound and tell them to secure everything,” she instructed.

“The tower’s not likely fixed yet,” Cho Badeleg reminded her.

Danni pulled out her portable communicator. “Bring us in close,” she instructed, and Bensin Tomri agreed, though they all experienced some second thoughts when he skipped off the edge of Belkadan’s atmosphere and the Spacecaster shook so violently that it seemed as if it would fall apart.

“Tee-ubo?” Danni called, and she winced at the amount of static on the normally clear communicator. “Can you hear me?”

“Danni?” came a broken reply, and then Tee-ubo said something. The three thought they heard mention of Garth Breise, but they couldn’t make it out.

“There’s a storm south of you,” Danni said slowly and distinctly. “A big one. Did you hear?” She repeated it several times, and Tee-ubo replied as much as she could, though only single words, sometimes only single syllables, came through the increasing static.

“Probably from the storm,” Cho Badeleg remarked, and Danni gave up and clicked off the communicator.

Danni let her questioning gaze fall over each of the other two.

“You want to go back,” Cho Badeleg reasoned.

“If we go back down there, we probably aren’t coming back up anytime soon,” Bensin Tomri put in. “Especially if
that storm rolls in. We’re lucky this thing broke orbit in the first place.”

Cho Badeleg spent a long moment staring out at the spectacle of the storm. “It doesn’t seem well developed,” he noted. “No noticeable swirl, no defined eye.”

“You think they’ll be all right?” Danni asked.

“Once we get away from this static, we can relay the information with the ship’s communicator,” Bensin Tomri offered. “You’ve got to make the decision. Do we go on, or go back?”

Danni thought long and hard on that one. In the end, though, she was a devoted scientist, and certainly it seemed to her as if she and the other two were taking a greater risk than any of those they had left behind. “Tee-ubo said something about Garth,” she reasoned. “He’s probably got the tower fixed.”

“On we go, then,” Bensin Tomri said, and he turned the Spacecaster about and started again to make his calculations for the jump to lightspeed.

As they left the planet far behind, Danni went to the ship’s communicator and gave a detailed report of the storm in the west, then waited a moment to see if a reply would be forthcoming. When no call came back, she hoped that they had heard her, and that the repairs on the tower simply hadn’t been completed to the point where they could respond.

Nom Anor’s eyes twinkled with the reflections of the plumes trailing the missiles launched toward the enemy city of Osa-Prime, an extraplanetary attack he’d been planning for weeks. Tamaktis Breetha had opposed the strike, knowing it would lead to open warfare between the planets, but when several high-ranking Rhommamoolian officials had been found murdered, the former mayor had found little support for his arguments.

Nom Anor hoped that the
Mediator
wouldn’t detect the launch in time to get its starfighters away to intercept the missiles, but that, too, had not been left to chance. For hours and
hours, the executor and Shok Tinoktin had studied the planetary courses and the positioning of the New Republic ship and had launched the missiles from a point where the initial explosive liftoff and subsequent burn would be most difficult to detect. Once they broke orbit, the missiles would all but shut down, seeming as insignificant specks, and by the time their rockets fired again, entering Osarian’s atmosphere, it would be too late for the
Mediator
to get at them.

To further the probability of success, Nom Anor had spent hours that morning talking to Commander Ackdool, acting conciliatory and explaining that, now that the meddlesome Leia Solo was gone, he and the commander might strike a deal to bring an end to the conflict. They had even scheduled a meeting on the
Mediator
between Nom Anor and his delegates and a diplomatic party from Osarian.

Commander Ackdool liked the thought of scoring such an unexpected diplomatic victory, Nom Anor knew. It was said that Ackdool had been given the ship primarily because he was a Mon Calamarian, who, with the retirement of Ackbar, were underrepresented among the fleet. Ackdool had heard the quiet murmurs of discontent concerning his appointment, of course, and that would make him all the more eager. Furthermore, the commander was so secure about the overwhelming power of his ship compared to the meager power of the people on the two planets that he would never suspect the ruse.

Of course, the fallout from this attack would be great and would likely force Nom Anor to flee Rhommamool altogether. But that was fine with him, for his mission here was nearly complete, and if those missiles hit Osa-Prime and brought the war to full conflagration, then he would happily move on. His job now was distraction, to keep the New Republic so concerned with the explosions near to the Core that they didn’t get a chance to turn their eyes outward.

The longer Prefect Da’Gara could operate in obscurity, the
more entrenched Nom Anor’s people would become, and the more worldships they could get into place.

Three hours later, Nom Anor received the outraged call from Commander Ackdool. Missile plumes had been detected in Osarian’s atmosphere.

Nom Anor took full responsibility, justifying the attack in response to the assassinations of several officials—officials he had secretly ordered killed. Then he curtly cut Ackdool off.

He and Shok Tinoktin focused on the video screen, tuned to an Osarian broadcast channel. They heard the frantic reporter in Osa-Prime detailing the confusion and panic and then, after a pause, solemnly reporting the sight of the missile trails.

The holocam turned up in time to catch the descending lines of fire streaking through the night sky.

Other missiles and scores of starfighters went up to meet them.

But they couldn’t get them all.

Moments later, Osa-Prime was in flames.

Nom Anor thought it a particularly glorious day.

“You fought with Anakin again,” Luke remarked to Jacen when he found his older apprentice sitting on the wall surrounding the
Millennium Falcon
’s current dock, an open courtyard on the planet Reecee. Han and Chewie had flown here from Coruscant, explaining to their passengers, Jacen, Anakin, C-3PO, and Leia, only that they needed to make one stop before bouncing out to the Outer Rim. Leia had managed to elude Bolpuhr on Coruscant, leaving the Noghri behind in a den with his kin. She didn’t want his overprotectiveness—especially now, when she honestly felt that she needed a break from the layers of intrigue and bureaucracy that her standing had forced upon her. Bolpuhr, despite his good intentions—and the good intentions of the Noghri in general—toward her, could be more than a bit smothering. Getting away from Bolpuhr was a small personal victory for her, a symbol that she was breaking free of her station and responsibility, if only for a little while.

The
Jade Sabre
, with Mara and Luke aboard, had just put down in the bay next to the
Falcon
, and all of them were now awaiting the arrival of Jaina, who, to her absolute delight, was flying Luke’s personal X-wing, along with R2-D2.

“I found him practicing with his lightsaber,” Jacen replied honestly. “He wanted to see how far he’s come, and so did I.”

“I’m not talking about the sword fight,” Luke explained. “Though I don’t think that your father would be happy to hear that you two were wrestling with lightsabers in the main compartment of his ship. I’m talking about your war of words.”

That caught Jacen by surprise, and he stared at his uncle, his mentor, looking for some sign concerning Luke’s feelings on the subject.

He couldn’t read the man at all.

“An honest difference of opinion,” Jacen said, turning away. “That’s all.”

“Concerning the role of the Jedi,” Luke said.

“Concerning the role of the Force,” Jacen corrected, turning back to face him.

“Do you think you could enlighten me?” Luke asked. There was no trace of sarcasm in his voice, nothing mocking at all about the way he phrased the question.

But Jacen, too awed by his uncle’s seeming omnipotence, didn’t see it that way. He sighed and shook his head, and turned away yet again.

Luke hopped up to take a seat on the wall beside him. “You know the decision I face,” he said.

“I thought you had already made up your mind,” Jacen replied.

Luke conceded that with a nod. “Almost,” he said. “But if you’ve got something to tell me, some insight about why I shouldn’t reconvene the Jedi Council, then now is the time to speak.”

Jacen looked long and hard at his uncle and was surprised to find honest respect staring back at him. He was a sixteen-year-old kid—so often at odds with the adults around him that he wasn’t used to being valued by them. Even Luke, whom he admired so much, was in place in the role of teacher—and a teacher of often harsh lessons.