Dark Nest_ The Joiner King Part 18

"Wait!" Han leapt to the control panel and punched in the override code. "Just be patient."

The door slid open to reveal Meewalh and Cakhmaim holding the XR808g's two crew members. With one of Meewalh's arms clamped around his throat and her other hand covering his mouth, Juun was at least still conscious. Tarfang was another matter. Still casted and bandaged from his fight with the Yoggoy guide, the Ewok was lying unconscious in Cakhmaim's lap, with a freshly swollen eye and two new bare patches of fur.

"It's not what you think," Han said. "I can explain."

"That won't be necessary, Captain Solo." Raynar made a humming sound deep in his throat, then turned and fixed Han with his unblinking gaze. "Just tell us why you are suddenly in such a hurry to leave."

"Uh..." The truth was the last thing Han could tell him, but he knew how good Jedi were at detecting lies-and whatever Raynar was now, he had started out a Jedi. "What makes you think we're in a hurry?"

Raynar's noseless face grew stormy, and Han began to feel a dark weight pressing down on him inside.

It was Leia, as usual, who came to his rescue. "We have no wish to insult the Colony," she said, "but we don't feel safe here."

Raynar turned to her, and the dark weight lifted.

"You are safe. We promise."

"We don't believe you," Han said. That much was completely true.

"Either you're lying-"

Leia's face paled. "Han-"

Han raised a hand, then continued. "Or you have no idea what's happening. Either way, we're out of here."

Raynar's eyes grew so soft that they made Han think of the poor, confused kid whom the other Jedi trainees used to heckle for dressing so funny.

"Very well. You have always been free to come or go as you wish."

He turned toward the Noghri, who were still holding Juun and Tarfang captive. "The same applies to Captain Juun and his copilot. Will you be leaving with Captain Solo?"

Meewalh glanced at Leia. When she nodded, the Noghri removed her hand and arm from Juun's mouth and throat. The Sull.u.s.tan bustled to his feet and, glaring at Han, brushed himself off.

"I'll have to think about it," he said. "Tarfang doesn't care for being kidnapped."

Han's stomach turned cold. Without Juun and his datapad, their chances of finding Jacen and the others before they turned into a bunch of Joiners went way down. Their only recourse would be to make their way to the Chiss frontier and start jumping from system to system.

Luke stepped toward Juun. "We weren't trying to kidnap you." He spoke in a soft monotone. "We were just-"

One of the bristly Killiks slipped forward to block Luke's way, and Raynar said, "It would be better if Captain Juun made up his own mind, Master Skywalker."

"Look, we were worried about him." Han addressed Raynar, but he was watching Juun out of the corner of his eye. "We thought you were trying to kill us, and since he and Tarfang were the ones who helped us find this place-"

Juun's small mouth dropped in alarm. "Don't remind him!"

"Sorry-honest mistake," Han said. He felt guilty about forcing the Sull.u.s.tan's hand, but Juun's days running Colony cargo had come to an end when their guide found the transceiver that had helped the Falcon follow him to Yoggoy. "We were kind of worried about you. But if you want to stay here-"

"I'm not leaving without the XR-eight-oh-eight-g," Juun said. He looked at Tarfang, who was still unconscious. "And you'll have to lend me a copilot until Tarfang's better."

Han faked a scowl. "Getting kind of pushy there, aren't you, fella?"

"You owe it to me," Juun said. "Item twenty-two in the Smuggler's Code."

Han sighed, then turned back to Raynar. "There you have it," he said. "I guess we're stuck with 'em."

THIRTEEN.

The Jedi pilots rounded the brightly striped ma.s.s of the gas giant Qoribu and found themselves staring into the turquoise brilliance of the planet's huge star, Gyuel. Jaina blinked instinctively, and by the time her eyes opened again, her astromech droid had darkened the StealthX's canopy tinting. She saw the hawk-winged silhouettes of four inbound defoliators sweeping in just meters above Qoribu's dazzling ring system, racing for the gap between the moons Ruu and Zvbo on initial approach for a dispersal run. With a four-squadron escort of clawcraft, the Chiss were clearly determined to reach their targets this time.

Rather than break comm silence, Jaina opened herself to the battle-meld and immediately knew her wingmates had done the same. Sometimes they could hear one another's thoughts through the meld, but more often they simply knew what their fellows were thinking... what they were doing. And the connection had only grown stronger since coming to Qoribu. During battles, they sometimes came perilously close to sharing minds.

Jaina focused her thoughts on the impending clash. The Chiss were coming hard this time. The Jedi had to disable those defoliators quickly and withdraw before the fight turned b.l.o.o.d.y.

Jaina sensed disapproval and knew that Alema favored a more forceful approach, one that would leave the Chiss with no illusions about the consequences of attacking the Colony's food supply. And she was not alone. Others were outraged as well. Instead of attacking outright-a violation of the Ascendancy honor code, which prohibited an unprovoked first strike-the Chiss were trying to starve the Qoribu nests into retreat. Tesar, Tahiri, even Jacen believed that the Chiss were engaged in a campaign of species cleansing and deserved to get their noses bloodied.

Only Zekk did not agree. Jedi saw similar cruelties everywhere they were called in the galaxy. But it was their responsibility to remain dispa.s.sionate, to cut through the veil of obscuring emotion and find the core of the problem. If they allowed themselves to seek retribution rather than peace, how could they bring a lasting solution to any conflict?

As much as Jaina wanted to make the Chiss pay for the lives they were taking, she had to agree with Zekk. So far, this had remained a low-intensity conflict. But if the Jedi turned it into a killing fight, that would end. A simple border clash would erupt into all-out war, and the carnage would be staggering.

The Chiss task force entered the gap between Ruu and Zvbo. Two of the four defoliators left the main formation with their clawcraft escorts and turned toward the moons. They were met by clouds of defenders, from the Saras nest on Ruu and the Alaala on Zvbo. Too small to be visible at even this relatively short distance, the dartships were nevertheless numerous enough to spread hazy stains of gray across Gyuel's blue face.

Jaina had barely formulated a plan to meet them before Tahiri shot ahead in the sleek little skiff that Zonama Sekot had grown for her. A living ship, its three-lobed hull glowed a deep, sea green against the star.

Jacen followed a moment later in his Chas.e.x, which, like Tahiri's living ship, could not be concealed from the Chiss sensors. The Jedi all understood what Jaina intended. Tahiri, who was not subject to StealthX comm restrictions, opened a channel to the Taat dartships still swarming around Jaina and the other StealthXs.

"ReyaTaat, bring the dartships and follow us. We need to make this look real."

"We are to create a diversion?" A Chiss Joiner who insisted on being called by both the nest name and her own, ReyaTaat freely admitted that she had been sent by Chiss Intelligence to spy on the Qoribu nests.

Her allegiance had changed-she claimed-when the Taat discovered her hiding in near starvation and started to bring her food. "The stealth fighters will divide and strike the defoliators by surprise?"

"Something like that."

Though all of the Qoribu nests seemed to have complete faith in Reya, the Jedi were less trusting, and Tahiri was not about to reveal their plan.

When neither the dartships nor Reya's little scoutcraft started after her, Jacen added, "You need to come now. You're drawing attention to the StealthXs."

"Taat is not happy with this plan," Reya said. "The Chiss have changed tactics, and the nest worries they are trying to lure the Jedi into a trap. "

Jaina's suspicions about Reya began to deepen, and Tahiri asked, "The nests worry, or you do?"

"We speak for the nests in this," Reya said. "And we know the Chiss."

"You are the Chiss." Tahiri's skiff slowed, and she added, "Maybe you're less worried about the Jedi than about your old friends."

"We are Taat," Reya insisted. "But we were Chiss once, and we understand how dangerous it is to underestimate them."

The Saras dartships met the first defoliator and swallowed it in a cloud of gray, whirling slivers. The defoliator continued toward Ruu's amber disk, engulfed in a halo of silver sparkles as the insect pilots hurled their tiny fighters against its shields. The Force grew heavy with anguish and admiration for their sacrifice, and Jaina was surprised to feel her own throat closing with emotion. Usually, she felt nothing when she entered battle, not fear or excitement or dread. Usually, she was too focused on the fighting to experience any emotions at all.

The Chiss clawcraft circled back and began to make runs along the length of the defoliator's hull, driving the Saras dartships off and giving the larger vessel time to refresh its shields. The StealthXs had to make their move now, or they would never reach the defoliators in time. Jaina pushed her throttles forward and broke for the amber moon, Ruu. Tesar, the second best pilot on the team, started for Zvbo, while Zekk, Alema, and Lowbacca all began a high arcing maneuver that would drop them down on the last two defoliators.

"ReyaTaat, the Jedi are starting their run." Jacen's voice was sharp. "And we're not going to be much of a diversion alone."

There was a moment of silence, then a vague tide of alarm rose in the Force. "Slow down!" Reya commed. "The dartships can't catch you!"

Jaina checked her tactical display and found a blue cloud of Taat dartships sweeping up from the bottom of the display, following Reya's little scout-lancet after Tahiri. At the top of the screen, both Chiss defoliators were fully engulfed in swarms of Saras and Alaala, with the curved horizons of Ruu and Zvbo hanging high in the corners. The main body of the Chiss task force remained in the center of the display, the clawcraft escorts hanging back just far enough to make the last two defoliators an inviting target.

What were they up to?

Jaina's astromech changed scale, and suddenly her tactical display was a ma.s.s of "friendly" blips-the Saras dartships - whirling around the defoliator she had targeted. The friendly blips were winking out by the dozens.

Jaina checked her estimated time to attack. Five seconds, but she sensed that Tesar needed seven. She armed two proton torpedoes, then added a sweeping curve to her approach and came in behind the battle.

Outside her c.o.c.kpit, s.p.a.ce was a tightly wound ball of orange rocket trails swirling around the blue glow of the defoliator's big ion drives. A pair of dartships blossomed in scarlet as they exploded against the shields of an oncoming clawcraft, but a third collided with its wing.

The clawcraft pilot lost control and went corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g into Ruu's thin atmosphere. a.s.suming he survived the crash, Jaina knew, he would be taken into the Saras nest and treated as a welcome guest. Unless they were clearly being attacked, none of the Qoribu nests seemed to have any real concept of enemy.

Jaina tried to pick a route through the mad tangle of dartships, but it was like trying to avoid drops in a rainstorm. Two seconds from her launching point, a Saras bounced off her shields, and her canopy went black to prevent her from being blinded by the white flash of an exploding rocket.

By the time the tinting paled an instant later, three Chiss clawcraft were coming at Jaina head-on, pouring a steady torrent of cannon bolts in her general direction. She did a half-roll slip, taking two hits on her forward shield as she pa.s.sed through the third fighter's stream of fire, then loosed her first torpedo.

Nothing if not well trained, the Chiss adjusted their aim instantly, targeting on the weapon's origination point. Jaina's forward shields flared into a white wavering wall of heat, and shrieking overload alarms filled the c.o.c.kpit. She released the second torpedo and jinked hard to port. More Chiss brought their craft to bear, barely grazing her with a blue inferno that was nevertheless enough to bring her shields down with a final, warning screech. The air grew acrid with the smell of fused circuits, and warning messages that Jaina could not read through the smoke began to scroll down her status display.

"Just keep the masking systems up, Sneaky," Jaina ordered her droid, taking the StealthX through an unpredictable coil of reversing rolls. "If those guys get a sensor read on us, we'll really be in trouble."

The droid replied with a cynical whistle.

Jaina continued to maneuver until, a second later, the torrent of cannon fire ceased for an instant and she knew the Chiss had been momentarily blinded by her pa.s.sing torpedoes. She pushed the stick up and to the left, circling out of the dartship tangle as quickly as she could and climbing for the stars, where her dark craft would not be silhouetted against Qoribu's scintillating rings.

A pair of bright dots flared through the smoke in Jaina's c.o.c.kpit, and she leaned closer to her tactical display. Two shrinking circles of light indicated that her proton torpedoes had detonated where she intended, just behind the defoliator's thrust nozzles. The big ship was already beginning to swing off course, rising into a tight banking turn that would carry it into Qoribu's gravity well if the crew did not regain control soon.

Jaina allowed herself a moment of self-congratulation-just so her wingmates would know she had completed her a.s.signmentthen the Saras swarm began to drift back toward Ruu, leaving the crippled defoliator to recover control and flee. Even now, after two months of living and fighting with the Taat, Jaina was awed by the insects' complete lack of spite. Once a threat had been turned away, they never attempted to cause it more harm.

Jaina's admiration was mirrored in the Force by that of the other Jedi, and her thoughts turned to the other three defoliators.

"Give me an overall sitrep, Sneaky. And clean this smoke out of the c.o.c.kpit." Jaina finally realized that she was reflexively using the Force to keep from coughing. "I can barely see my display."

A valve hissed open and cleared the air, then Jaina was. .h.i.t by a wave of shock so sudden and powerful it reminded her of the time her X-wing had been blown from under her at Kalarba. She automatically began a systems sweep, but knew before her gaze reached the life-support readout that the alarm had come to her through the meld, from the three Jedi she had sent to stop the middle two defoliators.

The tactical display showed the other three defoliators also drifting dead in s.p.a.ce. But a new vessel had appeared on the far side of the battle, well positioned to prevent the Taat-and Jedi-from returning to their home nest. It was simultaneously bleeding clawcraft into s.p.a.ce and sweeping the area with tractor beams, gathering up dartships like flitnats in a net.

"Victory-cla.s.s Star Destroyer." Jaina turned toward the battle zone and poured on velocity. "Where did that come from?"

Sneaky let out a defensive tweet, then replayed a high-speed version of the last ten seconds of tactical record. The vessel had simply appeared a few moments ago, after the Jedi had disabled the defoliatiors.

Jaina grew instantly cold and emotionless inside.

"Cloaked."

She wasted no time asking herself why she had failed to antic.i.p.ate the tactic-capable enemies always surprised you-but her thoughts did leap to the implications. Had the Star Destroyer been an escort, it would have revealed itself as soon as the nests moved against the defoliators.

Instead, it had waited until the Jedi launched their proton torpedoes-betraying both their presence and their general location. It had come for them-using their own subterfuge against them.

It had been one of Jag Fel's favorite tactics, when they had flown together against the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina reached out toward the Star Destroyer, searching for his familiar presence, but could not find him among all the beings on the vessel-at least not in the middle of the battle.

A burst of dismay swept through the Force, then a soft growl arose inside Jaina's head. Lowbacca was caught in one of the tractor beams. She wondered how bad, then had a brief vision in which dartships were flying past in a black, swirling wall and the c.o.c.kpit was filled with the screaming whine of overloaded fusial thrust engines.

Jaina felt Tesar reaching out to Lowbacca, urging him to hold on until he and Jaina could get there. They might be able to shut down the tractor beam if they could destroy its generators. But none of the Jedi knew what the tractor beam generators on a Chiss Star Destroyer looked like... or where to find them.

Lowbacca thought they were being foolish; that they would only get themselves captured by trying something so risky. The best way to help him was to avoid falling into the Chiss trap themselves.

A swell of anger rose in the Force. Jaina was still too far from the battle to see anything more than a hazy cloud of dartships silhouetted against Qoribu's gleaming rings, but the tactical display showed more than a dozen clawcraft swarming Jacen and Tahiri, methodically herding them toward the Star Destroyer's tractor beams.

Supported by a throng of Taat, they were fighting back valiantly, opening one hole after the other in the enemy formation. The Chiss always managed to cut them off and drive them back toward the sweeping tractor beams.

Then a clawcraft designator vanished. Another turned yellow and spiraled through the ring system and out of the system. Jaina felt Alema and Zekk urging Tahiri and Jacen to accelerate through the gap. Two of three clawcraft moving to cut them off also lost control and flew out of the battle, then Tahiri and Jacen were free, pulling away from their pursuers and weaving a crooked path among the few enemy fighters still in a position to attack.

Tahiti's grat.i.tude flooded the Force, but quickly changed to astonishment when a clawcraft behind her exploded in a flash of static. A second one vanished an instant later, then a third turned yellow on Jaina's display and broke into two parts.

Tahiri's shock was overpowered by Alema's glee, then almost instantly by Zekk's righteous fury.

This is wrong] Zekk raged. He was furious with Alema; she was killing for revenge!

But Alema did not think so. She felt she was only killing to teach them a lesson, to make them understand there were consequences.

Jaina added her anger to Zekk's. Alema had violated the unspoken rules of the conflict. She had killed without purpose. When the Chiss reviewed their battle vids, they would feel bound to retaliate in kind.

Alema didn't care, and Taat seemed to agree. The hundreds of dartships not yet swept up in the tractor beams began to coalesce in tightly knit b.a.l.l.s, moving with eerie precision into the path of oncoming clawcraft. Chiss fighters began to explode as though they were crashing into asteroids. The conflict was turning into an all-out battle.

Sensing Jaina's alarm, Tahiri opened a comm channel. "ReyaTaat, call off the dartships! Our last attacks were mistakes."

"They did not feel like mistakes," Reya countered. "They felt good."

"This battle is getting out of hand," Tahiri responded, echoing Jaina's feelings. "Reya was Chiss. She knows what will happen if you continue."

Reya fell silent, but the dartships continued to attack. Jaina found her frustration with Alema growing. The Twi'lek was a fine pilot, but she was too wild, too quick to surrender to the pearl of hatred that had been accreting inside her since the death of her sister, Numa. Now Alema's anger would spread across the Gyuel system like a nova blast.

When the Taat continued to attack, Jacen said, "ReyaTaat, the Chiss will return with bigger ships. They'll attack the nests directly, and Taat will be destroyed. All the Qoribu nests will be destroyed."

"What difference does it make? Our nests are already dying." Reya's voice grew icy. "But Lowbacca must not be captured."

The Force resonated with agreement-none of the Jedi wanted to see their friend captured-but Lowbacca was calling the shots. He was the one in trouble.