The Joiner King (72 page)

Jaina let out a tense breath. “Too—”

“—close!” Zekk finished.

By the time she brought the cloud car back around, the last two balloons were following the tug up into a dark, churning cloud. Jaina raised their nose and sent another burst of ionized energy streaming after the tappers, but Zekk did not reactivate the beam.

They agreed—the capture attempt had looked realistic enough. Now the quarry needed room to run. Jaina backed off the throttles, and they began a slow spiral up after the thieves.

A moment later, a fuzzy pinpoint of yellow appeared deep inside the cloud, rapidly swelling into a hazy tongue of flame that came shooting out into clear air almost before Jaina could bring the ion guns around. She pressed both triggers and began to sweep the barrels back and forth. She was not trying to hit the missile—that would have been impossible, even for a Jedi. Instead, she was simply laying a blanket of ionized energy in its path.

Zekk reached out and found the missile in the Force, then gently guided it into one of Jaina’s ion beams. Its electrical systems erupted into a tempest of discharge lightning and overload sparks, then failed altogether. Once the tempest died down, Zekk used a Force shove to deflect it from the extraction platform. The dead missile plunged past, barely a dozen meters from the edge of the storage deck, then vanished into the seething darkness of the Squeeze Zone.

Jaina frowned. “Now, that was—”

“—entirely uncalled for,” Zekk finished.

With all that supercooled Tibanna pouring out onto the storage deck, even a small detonation would have been enough to blow the entire platform out of the sky. But that had probably been the idea, Jaina and Zekk realized: payback for calling in Jedi—and a warning to other stations not to do the same.

“Need to get these guys,” Zekk said aloud.

Jaina nodded. “Just as soon as we know who they’re working for.”

Judging they had allowed the thieves a large enough lead to feel comfortable, Jaina and Zekk stretched out into the Force in an effort to locate them. It was not easy. Even at these depths, Bespin was surprisingly rich in life, from huge gasbag beldons to their mighty velker predators, from vast purple expanses of “glower” algae to the raawks and floaters that scavenged a living from extraction platforms like BesGas Three.

Finally, Jaina and Zekk found what they were searching for, a trio of presences exuding relief and excitement and more than a little anger. The three thieves felt insect-like, somehow more in harmony with the universe than most other beings. But they remained three distinct individuals, each with a unique presence. They were not Killiks.

And that made Jaina and Zekk a little sad. They would never have changed the decision that had gotten them banished from the Colony. It had prevented the outbreak of a savage war, and they did not regret it. But being apart from Taat—the nest they had joined at Qoribu—was like being shut off from themselves, like being cast aside by one’s sweetheart and friends and family without the possibility of return. It was a little bit like becoming a ghost, dying but not departing, floating around on the edges of the living never quite able to make contact. So they
did
feel a little sorry for themselves sometimes. Even Jedi were allowed that much.

“Need to get these guys,” Jaina said, reiterating a call to action that she felt sure was more Zekk than her. He had never had much use for regrets. “Ready?”

Silly question. Jaina accelerated after the tappers, climbing up into a storm so violent and lightning-filled that she and Zekk felt as if they were back in the war again, fighting a pitched battle against the Yuuzhan Vong. After a standard hour, they gave up trying to maintain a steady altitude and resigned themselves to having their stomachs alternately up in their throats and down in their guts. After three hours, they gave up trying to stay right-side up and concentrated on just making forward progress. After five hours, they emerged from the storm into a bottomless canyon of clear, still air—only to glimpse the tappers entering a wall of crimson vortexes where two bands of wind brushed against each other in opposite directions. Amazingly, the tug still had both siphoning balloons in tow.

Jaina and Zekk wondered whether the tappers knew they were being followed, but that seemed impossible. This far down in the atmosphere, Bespin’s magnetic field and powerful storms prevented even rudimentary sensor equipment from working. Navigation was strictly by compass, gyroscope, and calculation. If the tug was going through that wind wall, it was because it was on its way to deliver its stolen Tibanna.

Jaina and Zekk waited until the tappers had vanished, then crossed the cloud canyon and carefully accelerated into the same vortex. The wind grabbed them immediately, and it felt as if they’d been fired out of a turbolaser. Their heads slammed back against their seats, the cloud car began to groan and tremble, and the world beyond their canopy became a blur of crimson vapor and stabbing lightning. Jaina let go of the control stick, lest she forget herself and tear the wings of their craft by attempting to steer.

An hour later, Jaina and Zekk sensed the tappers’ presences drifting past to one side and realized they had made it across the Change Zone. Still keeping her hand off the stick, Jaina pushed the throttles to full. The cloud car shot forward screaming and bucking; then the vapor outside faded from crimson to rosy, and the ride grew suddenly smooth.

Jaina eased off the throttles until the cloud car’s repulsor drive finally fell silent, then began to circle through the rosy fog at minimum speed.

“Well, that was—”

“—fun,” Zekk agreed. “Let’s never do it again.”

Once their stomachs had settled, Jaina brought the cloud car around and they crept back through the pink fog, unable to see a hundred meters beyond their noses, still using the presences of the tappers to guide them. It felt like they had overshot the thieves by a considerable distance, but it was impossible to say whether that distance was a hundred kilometers or a thousand. The Force did not have a scale.

After a quarter hour, they began to suffer the illusion that they were simply floating in the cloud, that they were not moving at all. But the instruments still showed their velocity at more than a hundred kilometers per standard hour, and it felt as if they were closing rapidly on their quarry.

Jaina wondered where they were.

Zekk said, “The gyrocomputer calculates our position as three-seven-point-eight-three north, two-seven-seven-point-eight-eight-six longitude, one-six-nine deep.”

“Is that in—”

“Yes,” Zekk answered. They were about a thousand kilometers into the Dead Eye, a vast region of still air and dense fog that had existed in Bespin’s atmosphere at least since the planet’s discovery.

“Great. Only nineteen thousand kilometers to the other side,” Jaina complained. “Do the charts show—”

“Nothing,” Zekk said. “Not even a marker buoy.”

“Blast!” This, they said together.

Still, it felt like they were catching up to the tappers quickly. There had to be
something
out there.

“Maybe they’ve just stopped to—”

“No,” Jaina said. “That gas was already—”

“Right,” Zekk agreed. “They’ve got to—”

“And soon.”

The stolen Tibanna gas had already been spin-sealed, so the tappers had to get it into carbonite quickly or see it lose most of its commercial value. And charts or no charts, that meant there was a facility somewhere in the Dead Eye. Jaina eased back on the throttles some more. It felt as if they were right on top of the thieves, and in this fog—

The corroded tower-tanks of an ancient refinery emerged from the pink haze ahead, and Jaina barely had time to flip the cloud car up on edge and bank away. Zekk, who was just as surprised but a lot less busy, had a moment to glance down through the open roof of a ruined habitation deck. The rest of the station remained hidden in the fog beneath, showing just enough ghostly corners and curves to suggest the lower decks had not fallen off … yet.

Focusing on the presences of the three Tibanna tappers, Jaina carefully spiraled down around the central tower complex while Zekk looked for ambushes. Much of the outer skin had long since rusted away, exposing a metal substructure caked and pitted with corrosion. Finally, the ruins of the loading deck came into view. Crooked arms of pink fog reached up through missing sections of flooring, and the docking berths were so primitive that they were serviced by loading ramps instead of lift pads.

A berth close to a missing section of floor held the conical tug Jaina and Zekk had been chasing. The vehicle was standing on three struts, with the boarding ramp lowered. The two siphoning balloons lay on the deck behind the tug, empty and flattened. There was no sign of the crew.

Jaina and Zekk circled once, then landed near the empty siphoning balloons. At once, they felt a rhythmic quiver—the station’s repulsorlift generator was straining.

The hair rose on the back of Jaina’s neck. “We need to make this fast.”

Zekk had already popped the canopy and was leaping out onto the deck. Jaina unbuckled her crash webbing and followed him over to the tug, her lightsaber held at the ready but not ignited. The repulsorlift generator was in even worse condition than she had thought. The quiver was cycling up to a periodic shudder, and the shudder lasted a little longer and grew a little stronger every time it came.

Jaina and Zekk did not like the sound of that. It seemed odd that it should fail now, after so many centuries of keeping this station afloat. But perhaps power was being diverted to the carbonite freezing system—since that was clearly what the tappers were using this place for.

When they reached the tug, it grew apparent they would need to rethink that theory. They could feel the tappers inside the vessel, listless, far too content, almost unconscious. While Jaina stayed outside, Zekk ascended the ramp to investigate, and she received through their shared mind a complete perception of what he was finding.

The ramp opened onto an engineering deck, which—judging by the debris and nesting rags strewn about the floor—also doubled as crew quarters. It felt like the tappers themselves were on the flight deck, one level above. The air was filled with a cloying odor that Jaina and Zekk both recognized all too well, and the floor was piled high with waxy balls containing a dark, muddy liquid filled with stringy clots.

“Black membrosia?” Zekk asked.

There was only one way to be certain, but Zekk had no intention of tasting the stuff. After a brush with the dark side as a teenager, he held himself to a strict standard of restraint, and he never engaged in anything that even hinted of corruption or immorality.

So, after a last check to make sure nothing was creeping up on them out of the fog, Jaina ascended the boarding ramp. She picked up one of the balls and plunged her thumb through the wax, then withdrew it and licked the black syrup. It was much more cloying than the light membrosia of their own nest, with a rancid aftertaste that made her want to scrape her tongue … at least until her vision blurred and she was overcome by a feeling of chemical euphoria.

“Whoa. Definitely membrosia.” Jaina had to brace herself against a wall, and she and Zekk were filled with a longing to rejoin their nest in the Colony. “Strong stuff.”

Jaina could feel how much Zekk wanted to experience another taste—even through
her
mind—but the dark membrosia was almost narcotic in its potency, and now was hardly the time to have her senses dulled. She pinched the thumb hole shut and set the ball aside, intending to retrieve it on the way out.

“Bad idea.”

Zekk used the Force to return the ball to the pile with the others. He could be such a zealot sometimes.

The image of a vast chamber filled with waxes of stringy black membrosia came to Jaina’s mind, and she recalled where black membrosia came from.

The Dark Nest had survived.

“And we need to know—”

“Right.” Jaina led the way up the ladder to the flight deck. “What Dark Nest membrosia is doing
here
.”

“Yes—”

“And what it has to do with Tibanna tapping.”

Zekk sighed. Sometimes he missed finishing his own sentences.

On the flight deck, Jaina and Zekk found three Verpine slumped at their flight stations in a membrosia-induced stupor. The floor surrounding all three tappers was littered with empty waxes, and their long necks were flopped on their thoraxes or over their shoulders at angles unnatural even for insects. The long fingers and limbs of all three were fitfully jerking, as though in a dream, and when the pilot managed to turn his head to look toward them, tiny sparkles of gold light appeared deep inside his bulbous eyes.

“Won’t get any answers here for a while,” Jaina said.

“Right,” Zekk said. “But they didn’t unload those siphoning balloons themselves.”

Jaina and Zekk left the tug and returned to the siphoning balloons, then followed a new transfer hose over to a section of missing deck. The line descended through the hole and disappeared into the fog, angling down toward the top of the unipod—where the carbonite freezing facilities were usually located.

Jaina and Zekk looked at each other, silently debating whether it would be better to slide along the hose or work their way down through the central hub of the station … and that was when the repulsorlift generator finally stopped shuddering.

They felt their stomachs rise and hoped that they were just reacting to the sudden stillness—that the sudden silence was not the bad sign they feared.

Then the blue glow of a large repulsor drive flared to life below.

“Rodders!” Jaina cursed.

The blue glow of the departing vessel swung around, briefly silhouetting the hazy lance of the station’s unipod, then quickly receded into the fog.

“They shut the generator down!” Zekk said.

Jaina and Zekk turned to race to their cloud car, then remembered the tappers and started for the tug instead.

Their knees buckled as the deck suddenly lurched upward beneath them; then a strut collapsed beneath the tug, and it tumbled across the platform. Jaina and Zekk were too confused to react—until they noticed that they were also starting to slide.