The Unseen Queen (35 page)

“Go!” Bwua’tu pushed Leia up the corridor. “There should be an access terminal ahead, outside the hatch!”

Leia spun and cut her way through a soldier-insect that had been winning a grapple-and-shoot fight with two Alliance ensigns. An orange light flashed behind them as Grendyl’s grenade detonated, rumbling off the walls and filling the corridor with acrid fumes, then Leia stepped out of the fray into empty corridor.

Ten meters away, a cluster of much smaller Gorog soldiers—lacking carapaces and only about shoulder height—were rushing out of a side corridor to block a security hatch marked
CAPTURE
BAY
ACCESS
. With them was a slender Twi’lek female armored in blue chitin so closely formfitted that it looked like a body stocking. One arm was hanging limp beneath a sagging, misshapen shoulder—a result of her fight against Luke a year earlier at Qoribu—and as soon as she saw Leia, her full lips twisted into a contemptuous sneer.

“Alema Rar!” Leia said. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Leia reached back and caught one of the last standing Unu soldiers in a Force grasp, then brought her arm forward and hurled the insect sideways down the corridor. She followed a few steps behind, using its body as a shield, listening to shatter gun pellets drum into its carapace.

A couple of moments later, she heard the
snap-hiss
of an igniting lightsaber, then a blade so blue it was almost black sliced the insect in half. Leia pressed the attack, leaping between the body halves as they dropped away, hitting Alema with a Force shove and bringing her own blade around in an overhand power strike.

Alema barely got her guard up in time, and sparks filled the air as the two blades met. Leia brought her foot up in a driving stomp kick that rocked the Twi’lek back on her heels, then rolled her lightsaber into a horizontal slash at. Alema’s limp arm.

Alema had no choice except to pivot away and bring her weapon around in a desperate block that left her sideways and out of position. Leia swung her foot around in a powerful roundhouse kick that caught the Twi’lek behind the knees and swept both legs.

Alema landed flat on her back, her mouth gaping and her green eyes wide with alarm. Leia allowed herself a small smirk of satisfaction—recalling how lopsided the combat had been in Alema’s favor the last time they fought—then blocked a desperate slash at her ankles and slipped into a counter, angling the tip of her blade toward the Twi’lek’s heart.

Before Leia could drive the thrust home, a thrumming mass of blue chitin hit her in the chest and bowled her over backward. She tried to bring her lightsaber up and found her arms pinned to her chest, then her attacker pressed the
muzzle of a shatter gun to her ribs. She used the Force to push the weapon away, but then the insect’s mandibles were clamped around her head, its needle-sharp proboscis darting toward her eye.

Leia shot her free hand up between its mandibles, catching the proboscis between two fingers and continuing to shove until it snapped. The Gorog let out a distressed whistle and bore down with its mandibles, and the edge of her face exploded into pain. But by then she was shoving at the insect with the Force, opening enough of a gap so she could bring her lightsaber up and slice her attacker in two.

Leia started to spring up—until a storm of blaster bolts streamed past overhead, tearing into a trio of Gorog at her feet. Half a dozen crew members rushed past and crashed into the wall of insects in a deafening cacophony of blows and small-arms fire, then Bwua’tu appeared at her side, reaching down to help her up.

“Princess! Are you—”

“Fine!” Leia brought her feet under her, automatically raising her lightsaber in a high block. “Get ba—”

Alema charged out of the melee, her lightsaber already descending for the kill. Leia caught the attack on her blade, then delivered a Force-enhanced punch to the Twi’lek’s chitin-armored midsection.

It was like hitting a wall. She felt a bone snap in her hand, and she did not even drive Alema far enough away to buy space to stand. The Twi’lek brought her knee up under Leia’s chin, snapping her head back with such force that her vision went black for a moment.

Leia lashed out with her free arm, hooking it around the knee that had just struck her, then launched herself into a back roll. Alema had to sprang in the opposite direction, executing a backflip, and they both came up on their feet facing each other. Leia’s hand throbbed, but not so badly
that it prevented her from grasping her lightsaber handle with both hands.

Bwua’tu and the rest of the crew members were behind Alema, pressing the attack on the Gorog and driving them back toward the capture bay. On the other side of the hatch, Leia sensed Saba and the Noghri, struggling to override the security system so they could join the battle. Coming down the corridor behind her, working their way through the smoke left by the Grendyl’s grenade, Leia heard the distant drone of the surviving assassin bugs.

Alema studied Leia with narrowed eyes. “You’ve been practicing.”

Leia shrugged. “A little.”

“It won’t matter,” Alema sneered. “You’re too old to start being a real Jedi now.”

Leia raised her brow. “I think I need to teach you some manners.”

Leia sprang forward, once again attacking the side with Alema’s crippled arm. This time, the Twi’lek did not make the mistake of underestimating her opponent. She gave ground quickly, pivoting around so that her crippled side was protected.

Their blades clashed time and again, each Jedi augmenting their lightsaber strikes with Force shoves and telekinesis attacks, each trying to take advantage of the other’s weakness. Leia’s face had become so swollen that she could barely see out of one eye, and Alema kept circling to find a blind spot. As Alema tried to protect her weak side, Leia kept slipping toward it, forcing the Twi’lek to retreat toward the security hatch. All the time, the drone of the assassin bugs drew nearer.

Then Bwua’tu and the
Ackbar
’s crew began to overwhelm Alema’s company of insect-soldiers, forcing them past her toward the access terminal. Though the Twi’lek’s back was
now to the main fight, as the admiral and his followers drew closer to the terminal, the knowledge came to her through Gorog’s collective mind. Her eyes flashed with alarm, then she sprang back, locked her blade on, and hurled her lightsaber at Leia’s legs.

Leia had no choice but to block low and pivot away, and in that second Alema pointed at Bwua’tu’s spine and let loose a crackling stream of Force lightning. Leia started to grab the admiral in the Force, intending to jerk him out of the way, but his aide Grendyl was already leaping to protect him.

The lightning caught the woman full in the chest, hurling her back into Bwua’tu and knocking him to the deck.

Leia leapt at Alema, striking for the shoulders. The Twi’lek spun away … and launched Leia into a wall with a whirling back kick to the ribs.

The blunt clang of skull against durasteel sounded inside Leia’s head. Her mind turned to gauze and she thought for a moment that the bloodcurdling howl assaulting her ears was her own. Then she noticed the meter-long segment of amputated lekku flopping around on the deck like a baagalmog out of water.

Leia looked up and found Alema trembling and screaming in pain, the cauterized stump of one nerve-packed head-tail ending just above her shoulder. But the Twi’lek’s pain did not prevent her from releasing another stream of Force lightning—this time into the access terminal itself.

The unit exploded into a spray of sparks, pieces, and fumes. The security hatch gave the telltale hiss of a breaking seal, and Bwua’tu cried out in frustration.

Leia sprang to her feet and started toward Alema.

The Twi’lek was already stretching her arm up the corridor, calling her lightsaber back to hand. Leia heard the sizzle of the blade growing louder behind her and dropped
into a deep squat as the weapon spun past overhead, then stabbed for Alema’s heart.

The Twi’lek brought her blade down and blocked easily, then brought her foot up in a side-snap kick that caught Leia in the base of the throat. The blow was more painful than harmful, but Leia dropped to her seat, coughing and choking and trying to make it sound as though her larynx had been crushed. She could hear the drone of the assassin bugs only a few meters behind her and knew the time had come to end this fight—and she could see by the unreasoning fury in Alema’s eyes that the wounded Twi’lek was primed for a mistake.

Leia rolled her eyes back in her head and let herself collapse to the floor. She heard Alema slide forward, then felt a knot of anticipation form in her stomach as the time approached to bring her blade slashing up through the Twi’lek’s abdomen—and that was when Leia felt a surge of relief from Saba and the Noghri. A loud grating sounded from the security hatch, and she knew her Master and bodyguards had finally forced it open.

The pulsing whine of Meewalh’s T-21 repeating blaster echoed down the corridor, then Alema’s blade began to hiss and sizzle as it batted blaster bolts away. Leia opened her eyes to find the Twi’lek dancing along one wall of the corridor, just beyond reach and retreating into the droning cloud of assassin bugs.

When their eyes met, Alema’s brow shot up in surprise. She flicked her lightsaber up in a brief salute, then gave Leia a spiteful sneer and fled out of sight.

Leia locked her blade on and spun around to throw her lightsaber, but the Twi’lek was nowhere to be seen.

Leia felt herself sliding across the deck, then realized Saba was using the Force to draw her away from the approaching cloud of assassin bugs. Cakhmaim and Meewalh
appeared at her sides, spraying the corridor with blasterfire.

“Jedi Solo,” Saba said. “Why are you lying on the floor at a time like this?”

Leia deactivated her lightsaber and stood with as much dignity as she could manage, considering how much her hand was beginning to hurt and how swollen her face was.

“I was laying a trap.”

“Laying a trap?” Saba shook her head and began to siss hysterically. “You are beginning to sound just like Han.”

The shadow bomb had opened a velker-sized hole in the hull of the nest ship, but the blast had penetrated only as deep as the second deck, where Luke now stood amid a tangle of devastation. The Force was too filled with ripples to tell where Lomi Plo had gone, but he knew by the cold knot in his stomach and the ache in his limbs that she was somewhere nearby, watching and waiting for the right moment to attack again.

Luke could sense Tarfang about thirty meters ahead, slowly moving away. Hearing the Ewok was even easier. Tarfang was chattering angrily into his suit comm, though it was anyone’s guess whether he was cursing his captors, or Luke and Han.

Then Han’s voice came over the comm as well. “All set here, Luke.”

Luke looked up and saw Han and Juun two stories above, dimly silhouetted against the star-flecked void of space. C-3PO and R2-D2 were nowhere in sight; Han had left the damaged droids on the exterior of the ship, where they would be easy to retrieve on the way out.

Luke grasped Han and Juun in the Force and lowered them through the hole, being careful to keep them well away from any jagged edges or sharp protrusions.
DR919a
’s escape pod vac suits were about as flimsy as space suits
came; one tear would be the end of the person inside. Once they were down, Mara’s StealthX appeared in the breach and descended on its repulsorlifts, slowly spinning in a circle.

Luke kneeled at Juun’s side and touched helmets so they could converse. “Did you see Lomi Plo up there, when she tried to sneak up on me?”

“I aw
omeding
,” Juun said. Sound waves never carried well through helmets, and his nasal accent made the situation worse. “I did na know it wah
her
until you had the lisaber fight.”

“Good enough,” Luke said. He stood and turned toward Mara’s StealthX, now settling onto the deck next to them, and activated his comm unit. “We’re a little short on weapons.”

Mara nodded inside the cockpit. A moment later the canopy opened, and she passed Luke the E-11 blaster rifle from the survival kit attached to her ejection module.

“What about destroying the hyperdrive?” she asked over her suit comm. “We can’t let this nest ship leave the Choke.”

“I know,” Luke answered. “But we have to get Tarfang back first. I dragged him into this, and now I have to drag him out.”

This drew an affirmative Ewok yap over the suit comm.

“We don’t have much time,” Mara warned. “And we’re only going to have one chance to hit that thermal vent you and Han found. I’m down to my last shadow bomb, and the
Falcon
can’t do this.”

Luke nodded. He had felt Leia’s relief as she and Saba escaped the
Ackbar
’s captors aboard the
Falcon
, and now they were on their way to the Gorog nest ship to retrieve him, Han, and the others. But the
Falcon
’s concussion missiles would not be accurate enough to reach the nest ship’s
hyperdrive—or powerful enough to destroy it even if they did.

“What about Kyp and all the other Jedi I sense out here?” Luke asked. “Maybe I should call them over to help.”

“You could,” Mara said. “But you’d have to countermand Admiral Bwua’tu’s orders. He has them targeting the hyperdrives of the other nest ships. This one is my responsibility.”

Luke raised his brow. “
Kyp
has been helping with this blockade?”

“Hardly,” Mara scoffed. “It’s complicated, but it all started when Leia and Saba were captured by the
Ackbar
on our way back to Woteba.”

“An Alliance vessel arrested
Jedi
?”

“It gets worse,” Mara said. “From what I’ve been able to pick up eavesdropping on comm traffic between the
Ackbar
and the
Mothma
, the Chiss have been holding the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance responsible for the Killiks’ return to their border. Chief Omas tried to appease them by blockading the Utegetu nests, and to keep the Jedi from interfering, he placed Corran Horn in charge of the order.”