Dark Nest_ The Swarm War Part 1

Star Wars.

Dark Nest Trilogy.

The Swarm War.

by Troy Denning.

PROLOGUE.

The bomb lay half buried in the red sand, a durasteel manifestation of the brutality and unreasoning fear of its makers. It had fallen from orbit in a long fiery tumble, then planted itself tail-first atop the dune opposite the nest. Its heat shield was still glowing with entry friction, and the casing was so carbon-scored that the marks emblazoned on its side could not be read. But Jaina and Zekk needed no identifiers to know they were staring at a Chiss mega-weapon. The thing was the size of a beldon, with a bulge on its nose that could house anything from a baradium penetrating charge to the triggering laser of a planet-buster warhead.

When it grew clear that the bomb was not going to detonate-at least not yet-Jaina finally let out her breath.

"We need a better look at that thing," she said.

Along with Jacen, Zekk, and the other three Jedi on their team, she was standing in the mouth of the Iesei dartship hangar, gazing up three hundred meters of steep, sandy slope toward the bomb. Every couple of seconds, a turbo-laser strike would crack down from orbit, melting a rontosized crater of pink gla.s.s into the dune and raising a ten-story plume of dust that often obscured their view.

"We need to know what the Chiss have up their sleeves," Zekk agreed.

"We need to get out of here," Jacen countered. "Or am I the only one who still feels the Force-call?"

"No-" Zekk said.

"-we feel it, too," Jaina finished.

The call had arisen a few hours earlier, in the middle of a StealthX a.s.sault that had failed to turn hack the Chiss task force. The summons was coming from the direction of the known galaxy, a sense of beckoning and urgency that was growing more powerful by the hour, calling the Jedi Knights back toward Ossus, demanding they return to the Academy at once.

"We all feel it," Tahiri said. She furrowed her scarred brow, then turned to Tesar and Lowbacca. "At least I think we do."

The Barabel and the Wookiee nodded in agreement. "It iz hard to ignore," Tesar said.

"And we shouldn't try," Jacen replied. "Something bad must be happening for my uncle to summon us all like this. Even Luke Skywalker can't pull on the Force that hard without suffering for it."

"Maybe not," Jaina said. "But it will only take a few minutes to look at that bomb. I think we have time."

"It must be some kind of secret weapon," Zekk added.

"We'll need an R-nine unit-"

"And some testing equipment," Tesar finished. He and Lowbacca started toward the interior of the near-empty hangar, where a few dozen Killiks with rosy thoraxes and green-mottled abdomens were bustling over the team's battered StealthXs-repairing and refueling, but not rearming. The StealthXs had run out of shadow bombs the previous day, and they had depleted the nest's store of actuating gas that morning. "We will collect it and catch up."

Jacen quickly moved to block their way. "No."

Tesar's neck scales rose and Lowbacca's fur bristled, and they glared down at Jacen without speaking.

"Think about it-they're Chiss," Jacen said. "It could be a trap. Maybe that bomb isn't meant to detonate until we're out there trying to examine it."

Tesar and Lowbacca clucked their throats and looked over their shoulders toward the bomb. They were not yet Joiners, but Jaina and Zekk could sense their thoughts well enough to know the pair were being influenced by Jacen's argument. And so was Tahiri, of course. She did not need to be a mindmate for Jaina and Zekk to know she had fallen under Jacen's sway. She was always rubbing her forearms over him, and whenever he looked her way, she suddenly had to blink.

Zekk let out a grudging chest rumble, then Jaina said, "We wish your thinking had been this clear at Supply Depot Thrago."

"We don't know that my thinking was unclear," Jacen said. "Not yet, anyway."

Zekk frowned. "Our raid was supposed to delay the war-"

"-not start it," Jaina finished.

Jacen shrugged. "The future is always in motion." He looked away, then added, "It's too late to undo what happened after the raid. We should respect Uncle Luke's summons and return to Ossus at once."

"And abandon Iesei?" Zekk asked. Jaina and Zekk had not been with Iesei long enough to join its collective mind-in fact, living with a nest other than Taat seemed to be weakening their own mental link-but Iesei felt like a sibling to them, and they were bound to it through the Will of the Colony. "With the Chiss preparing to land?"

"We won't save the nest by staying," Jacen said. "It's better to leave while we still can."

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Jaina asked.

When Jacen's only reply was a flash of anger, she tried to sense the answer through the Force-bond they shared as twins, but she felt nothing. And neither did Zekk, who still shared most of what she thought and felt. Since the raid on Thrago, Jacen had been shutting them both out-perhaps because Jaina and Zekk had grown so angry with him when he took a reckless shot and nearly turned the raid into a ma.s.sacre. Or maybe Jacen was hiding something. Jaina and Zekk could not tell. They only knew that his withdrawal from the twin bond was one of the biggest reasons they no longer trusted him.

After a moment, Jacen finally replied, "I'm in a hurry because it's prudent. If we stay, all we can do is kill a few dozen Chiss-and what good would that accomplish?"

Jaina and Zekk had no answer. They knew as well as Jacen did that Iesei would be wiped out to the last larva. The Chiss a.s.sault force was just too large and well equipped to be stopped.

But there was still the bomb. If they could find out what it was, there was no counting the number of other nests they might save.

"Jacen, no one is keeping you here," Jaina said. "Leave whenever you want."

"We're going to look at that bomb," Zekk added.

Jaina turned to Tesar. "Give us a one-minute head start. If Jacen is right about this being a trick-"

-we will know soon enough," Tesar finished. "Go."

Lowbacca added a groan a.s.suring them that he and Tesar would be close behind.

Jacen finally opened their twin bond, flooding the Force with his alarm and concern. "Jaina! Don't-"

Jaina and Zekk ignored him. Jacen only opened the twin bond when he wanted something, and right now what he wanted was for them to leave the bomb and start home. They turned away, springing out of the hangar mouth and dropping five meters down the slope of the nest-dune. Almost immediately it grew apparent that the bomb was no trick. A ripple of danger sense p.r.i.c.kled their necks, then a barrage of turbolaser bolts crashed down from orbit and pelted their faces with hot sand. They dived away in opposite directions and somersaulted down the slope half a dozen times, then rose to their feet and Force-leapt across a five-meter trough onto the opposite dune.

The turbolasers followed, filling the air with the fresh smell of ozone. The slope of the dune turned into a churning ma.s.s of sand, half spraying through the air while the rest growled down the slope in a series of eerie-sounding avalanches. Now working against gravity, Jaina and Zekk began to ascend toward the bomb in sporadic Force leaps. Sand scratched their eyes and filled their noses and throats, but they remained within the roiling cloud, trying to hide from the Chiss sensors and make themselves more difficult to target.

They were barely halfway to the bomb when they felt Jacen, Tahiri, and what remained of the Iesei nest racing up the slope behind them. The intensity of the barrage abruptly decreased as the Chiss gunners began to spread their fire, and the silhouettes of hundreds of Iesei appeared in the surrounding haze. The insects were scurrying up the hill on all sixes, their antennae waving as they overtook Jaina and Zekk.

A moment later the silhouettes of Jacen and Tahiri emerged from the sand cloud and came to Jaina's side.

"So the bomb isn't a trick," Jacen said. "This is still a bad idea."

"Then what are you doing here?" Zekk asked from behind Jaina.

"Looking after you two," Jacen said. "Uncle Luke won't be very happy if I go back without you."

Jaina frowned and started to protest; then a deafening bang echoed across the desert. The dune gave way beneath their feet, and the Jedi found themselves being swept down the slope in a giant sandslide.

For a moment Jaina and Zekk thought the Chiss gunners had finally hit the half-buried bomb. Then they heard the distant roar of engines and realized the bang had been a sonic boom.

Jaina waved her hand, using the Force to clear a hole in the dust cloud. A black plume of entry smoke was blossoming against the yellow sky, descending from the dark sliver of the Chiss a.s.sault cruiser that was raining fire down on them.

"Drop ship!" Jaina shouted. "Be ready!"

"Iesei, take cover!" Zekk added.

An instant later, an endless string of silver flashes erupted from the head of the smoke plume. The Killiks pushed their heads into the sand and began to dig, while the Jedi used the Force to pull themselves free of the sandslide and yanked their lightsabers off their utility belts.

A blue cascade of cannon bolts began to sweep across the dune, its deep thump-thumping an almost gentle counter-point to the crashing roar of the turbolasers. Jaina and Zekk stood expectant for what seemed an eternity. There was no use trying to run or take cover. Drop ship weapons systems were designed to spread a carpet of death around their landing zones. Often, they laid fire as thick as twenty bolts a square meter.

An eerie chorus of squeals arose as the cannon strikes found the buried swarm of Iesei, and the haze grew heavy with the bitter smell of scorched chitin. More bolts began to sizzle down all around Jaina and Zekk, raising chest-high sand geysers and charging the air with static. They raised their lightsabers and yielded control to the Force, then started to whirl and dance across the dune, dodging incoming fire and deflecting it into the ground beside their feet.

Zekk took a cannon blast full on his blade and was driven to his knees. Jaina spun to his side and tapped two more bolts away, only to find herself badly out of position as a third dropped toward her head.

Zekk's lightsaber swept up just centimeters from her face, catching the bolt on the blade tip and sending it zipping across the dune. Jaina spun away from another attack and glimpsed Jacen and Tahiri standing back-to-back, Jacen holding his hand above their heads, cannon fire ricocheting away as though he held a deflector shield in his palm. That was something Jaina and Zekk had never seen before.

Then the fusillade was past, leaving in its place a slope of churned sand strewn with pieces of smoking chitin and flailing, half-buried Killiks. Jaina and Zekk started toward the crest again, but it was clear they would never reach it ahead of the Chiss drop ship. The sandslide had carried them to the bottom of the dune, and with most of the Iesei dead or dying, the turbolaser gunners were once again beginning to concentrate their fire on the Jedi.

Tesar and Lowbacca arrived from the hangar, Tesar floating an R9 unit behind him, Lowbacca carrying a rucksack full of equipment over his shoulder.

"This one does not like this," Tesar rasped. "Why do the Chisz send a drop ship instead of a fighter? Would it not be easier to hit the bomb with a missile than to recover it?"

"A concussion missile would leave pieces," Jaina said.

"And we can still learn a lot from pieces," Zekk added.

"If they want to protect their secret, they need to keep the bomb out of our hands completely," Jaina finished.

Lowbacca rowled another thought, suggesting that maybe the a.s.sault cruiser had run out of missiles. It had used thousands just fighting its way to the planet.

The drop ship completed its attack pattern, then stopped firing as it descended below the effective alt.i.tude for its fire-control apparatus. The vessel itself was a fiery wedge of ceram-metal composite at the tip of the smoke plume, no more than forty meters long and perhaps half that at the base. Jaina and Zekk and the others continued to ascend the slope in Force leaps, but there was no sign of any healthy Killiks-either the laser cannons had gotten them all, or the survivors were staying hidden.

The turbolaser strikes continued to come, obscuring the Jedi Knights' vision and slowing their progress, but failing to stop them entirely. It was difficult enough to hit moving targets from orbit, without those targets having the Jedi danger sense to warn them when a strike was headed their way.

The team was halfway up the slope when the turbo-laser barrage suddenly ended. Jaina and Zekk would have thought the drop ship was landing, except that the roar of its engines continued to build. They used the Force to clear another hole in the dust cloud. The drop ship was much closer than it sounded, but that was not the reason the barrage had stopped.

High overhead, above the dispersing column of entry smoke, the tiny white wedge of a Star Destroyer was sliding across the sky toward the a.s.sault cruiser. Small disks of turbolaser fire were blossoming around both vessels, and a pair of flame trails were already angling down toward the horizon where two damaged starfighters had plunged into the atmosphere.

"Is that an Alliance Star Destroyer?" Tahiri asked, coming to Jaina's side.

"It must be," Tesar said, joining them. "Why would the Chisz fire on each other?"

"They wouldn't," Jaina said.

She and Zekk reached out to the Star Destroyer in the Force. Instead of the Alliance crew they had expected, they were astonished to feel the diffuse presence of a Killik nest.

A familiar murk began to gather inside their chests. Then Zekk gasped, "Unu!"

Lowbacca groaned in bewilderment, wondering how a nest of Killiks had come by a Galactic Alliance Star Destroyer.

"Who knows? But it can't be good." Jacen stopped at Jaina's side. "Maybe this is why Uncle Luke is trying to call us home."

"Maybe," Jaina allowed. The murk inside began to grow heavy, and the mystery of the Star Destroyer's arrival began to seem a lot less important than the bomb. "But we still have to find out what that bomb is."

"We do?" Jacen demanded. "Or UnuThul does?"

"We all do," Zekk said.

Jaina and Zekk continued toward the top of the dune. Without the barrage churning up sand and dust, the air was beginning to clear, and they could see the crimson wedge of the drop ship descending the last few meters to the sand. Its nose shield was still glowing with entry heat, and the multibarreled laser cannons that hung beneath the wings were hissing and popping with electromagnetic discharge.

Then the drop ship's belly turret spun toward the Jedi and began to st.i.tch the slope with fire from its twin charric guns. Jaina, Zekk, and the others raised their lightsabers and started to knock the beams back toward the vessel. Unlike blaster bolts-which carried very little kinetic charge-the charric beams struck with an enormous impact. Several times Jaina, Zekk, and even Lowbacca felt their lightsabers fly from their grasps and had to use the Force to recall the weapons.

The Jedi Knights continued up the dune in sporadic leaps, taking turns covering each other, seeking the protection of craters or mounds of sand when they could, but always advancing toward the crest of the dune and the bomb. When it grew apparent that the turret guns would not be enough to hold them at bay, the drop ship dipped its nose to give the laser cannons a good firing angle. The blue-skinned pilot came into view through the c.o.c.kpit canopy. Sitting in the commander's seat next to him was a steely-eyed human with a long scar over his right eye.

Jagged Fel.

Jaina stopped in her tracks, so astonished and touched by old feelings that a charric beam came close to sneaking past her guard. She had been the one to end their romance, but she had never quite stopped loving him, and the sight of him now-commanding the enemy drop ship-filled her with so many conflicting emotions that she felt as though someone had tripped her primary circuit breaker.

Fel's gaze locked on Jaina, and a hint of sorrow-or maybe disappointment-flashed across his face. He spoke into his throat mike; then Zekk's large frame slammed into Jaina from the side and hurled them both into the gla.s.sy bottom of a turbolaser crater.

Before Jaina could complain, Zekk's fear and anger were boiling into her. Suddenly she was rebuking herself for trusting Fel, then she and Zekk were wondering how she could have been so foolish . . . and how their minds could have come unjoined at such a critical moment.

Sand began to rain down from above. They felt the crater reverberating beneath them and realized the drop-ship's laser cannons had opened fire.

"You're-we're----supposed to be over him!" Zekk said aloud.

"We are over him," Jaina said. She could feel how hurt Zekk was by the tumultuous emotions that seeing Fel had raised in her, and that made her angry-at Fel, at herself, at Zekk. Did Zekk think she could make herself love him? "We were just shocked."

Zekk glared at her out of one eye. "We have to stop lying to ourselves. It'll get us killed."

"I'm not lying," Jaina retorted.

She rolled away from Zekk, then scrambled up the crater's gla.s.sy wall and peered over its lip toward the drop ship. As she had expected, a squad of Chiss commandos had dropped out of the vessel's belly. Dressed in formfitted plates of color-shifting camouflage armor, they were racing along the crest of the dune toward the unexploded bomb. Instead of the recovery cables or magnetic pads that Jaina had expected, they were carrying several demolition satchels.

Zekk arrived at Jaina's side and peered up the slope. They wondered for a moment why the Chiss would go to the trouble of landing a parry to blow up the bomb. A few hits from the drop ship's laser cannons would have done the job more than adequately.

Then they understood. "Vape charges!" Zekk shouted.

The Chiss equivalent of thermal detonators, vape charges left nothing behind to a.n.a.lyze. They disintegrated. But they could not be delivered by missile. Like thermal detonators, they were infantry weapons. They had to be thrown or placed.