Invincible (39 page)

“Coming up
here
?” Jaina asked, thinking of Mirta and the obvious attention Caedus had been paying her. “In the middle of a battle?”

The guard shrugged. “Maybe not this time. They say he’s got a body with him, so he could be headed to the disposal pit.”

A body. In the prison hold.

Jaina thought of Isolder and made the most likely assumption, and her heart sank. She backed out of the cell without thanking the guards, then started down the catwalk as fast as she could move and still be walking. She tried not to imagine what had happened, but the answer was too obvious to ignore. After the blood trail went dead at Uroro Station, Caedus had no doubt resorted to his favorite trick and tortured the information out of Isolder. Now the prince was dead and the fleet was preparing to jump to Shedu Maad. Truly, there was no low to which her brother would not sink.

As Jaina walked, she concentrated on vanishing into the Force and stayed near the inner side of the catwalk. She didn’t know quite how Caedus’s blood trail worked, but she suspected it would be stronger when they drew near to each other. And if his danger sense began to tingle because she was focusing on him too intently, he would know she was closing in.

Once Jaina reached the lift tube, however, she allowed herself a quick glance down to the main deck. Five dark figures were escorting a hovergurney around the disposal pit toward a cargo lift at the far end. Four of the figures were armored, and the fifth was raising his hand, signaling the others to stop while he craned his neck back to look around.

Jaina pulled away and focused her mind on Zekk, on the hope that he was still alive because she hadn’t felt him die, on how much she was going to miss him if he had. And she thought, also, of the terrible likelihood that she would
never
know what had happened to him—that he had managed to go EV before his StealthX was destroyed, then been swallowed up by the Mists. Even with an active rescue beacon, he would be nearly impossible to locate with normal equipment; the Mists would simply devour the sensor waves. If Zekk—or his body—was going to be found, it would be by a Jedi.

Hoping she would live long enough to help with the search, Jaina stepped into the lift tube and began her descent. She had no idea whether focusing on Zekk had worked. Maybe Caedus had dismissed whatever he had felt as the glare of an unhappy subordinate. Or maybe he would be waiting, lightsaber in hand, as the lift door opened. Jaina only knew that if he had felt even that brief glance, she could not risk another.

She emerged from the lift with her lightsaber semihidden behind her forearm. To her relief, the only thing waiting was an MD droid about to step into the tube.

“Lord Caedus and his escorts, did you see them going toward the disposal pit?”

“Why yes, Captain,” the droid replied politely. “They had a body with them, Prisoner Ay-Ess-Two-Three-Oh-Fifty-two-Ar, I believe.”

“Would that be Prince Isolder?” Jaina asked.

“I believe that was his name, yes,” the droid replied. “The poor man—it looked like Lord Caedus had snapped three of his cervical vertebrae.”

“Thanks.” Jaina started across the deck toward the cargo lift, her anger boiling in her stomach—then something the droid had said caught her attention, and she spun around to ask, “The prisoner’s neck—how do you know it was Lord Caedus who snapped it?”

The droid stopped inside the lift and turned to face her. “It always
is,
Captain.”

The MD droid pressed a control button and ascended out of sight.

As Jaina started toward the morgue lift, a stern female voice suddenly echoed across the main deck.

“Your attention: all Prison Hold surveillance and communications systems have been restored. Maintain Lockdown Level Two. We’ll be jumping to final objective in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. This will be your final announcement.”

The
final objective
would be Shedu Maad, Jaina knew. She couldn’t say whether killing Caedus would prevent the assault on their base—she kind of doubted it, as a matter of fact—but it might confuse things enough to give the Jedi a fighting chance.

Recalling the surge of Force power she had experienced when she fought Caedus the first time, Jaina wondered if she should reach out to her uncle Luke when the fight began. Perhaps he would be able to bolster her strength as he had on Nickel One. But then she recalled Mirta’s comment about her brother underestimating her, and she realized that calling on Luke would be a mistake. From what Mirta had said—and what she had observed herself on Nickel One—Caedus was obsessed with their uncle. He would be ready for Luke’s strength, prepared to see through Luke’s illusions as he had not been the first time. If Jaina expected to win this fight, she would have to fight in a different way—her
own
way.

She stepped into the cargo lift and descended. There was a growing stench of disinfectant and hot metal, and the air grew warm and still. When she reached the morgue level, she was tempted to use the Force to probe for the location of Caedus’s guards. She resisted. Either the guards were waiting for her or they weren’t—and if they weren’t, she would only be giving Caedus a warning he did not need or deserve.

The door opened into a rectangular corridor, wider than it was tall, with gray durasteel walls and a long row of hatches running down one side. The four guards were standing about ten meters away, in front of a single hatch on the opposite side, looking back toward the cargo lift. There was no sign of Caedus; presumably, he had gone through the hatch behind the guards.

Jaina hurled herself onto the floor, rolling toward the four and shrieking softly but shrilly. They swung their blasters around, letting out curses of surprise and confusion. Jaina rolled to a knee about three meters in front of them and pointed back toward the lift.

“B-b-bothans!” she stammered.

That was all it took. The guards raced past her, bringing their blaster rifles up to fire. Jaina sprang up behind them and ignited her lightsaber, then used a single stroke to cut all four men in half.

The fight had begun.

The Biodisposal Pit was just what the name suggested, a sweltering, foul-smelling durasteel hole into which poured all of the dirty bandages, used scalpels, excised organs, dead bodies, and other hazardous waste from not only the infirmary but the
Anakin Solo
’s entire Prison Hold as well. As might be expected, it was a relatively quiet and lonely place, half cloaked in shadow by the overhanging expanse of the main deck, and half illuminated by the harsh brilliance spilling from the open mouth of the fusion incinerator.

Having left his guards on the other side of the hatch where they would not witness the gross violation of prison procedure he was about to commit, Caedus was left to pull Isolder by himself. As he dragged the hovergurney toward the fusion incinerator, an overqualified GP-2 medical droid rushed out of the shadows, holding a dripping scalpel in one hand and waving the other in a frantic gesture to capture his attention.

“No, no, no!” the droid said. “That corpse hasn’t been identified yet.”

The droid pointed its scalpel into the shadows, but before it could explain what it wanted, the stern voice of a female security guard came over the public address system.

“Your attention: all Prison Hold surveillance and communications systems have been restored. Maintain Lockdown Level Two. We’ll be jumping to final objective in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. This will be your final announcement.”

The GP-2 continued to point until the announcement was over, then said, “Put it there until I can collect a tissue sample and verify the identity.”

“That won’t be necessary in this case.” Caedus started to continue toward the incinerator—then felt the skin-blistering heat pouring from its mouth and pushed the gurney toward the droid. “This one goes directly to the incinerator.”

The droid accepted the gurney. “I’m afraid that isn’t procedure,” it said, retreating into the shadows with the gurney. “Thank you for the delivery.”

Cursing the slavish devotion to procedure of mechanical minds, Caedus followed the droid and was temporarily blinded as his eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness.

“In this case, procedure doesn’t apply,” Caedus said. “It’s overridden.”

Something hard brushed past him, then the droid demanded, “On whose authority?”

“Mine.” Caedus turned, following the voice, and found himself squinting as he watched the droid’s silhouette pull a flimsiplast carton off the conveyor belt, inspect the contents, and thrust it into the incinerator’s mouth. “Lord Caedus.”

“Lord Caedus?” The droid returned, moving from bright light to deep shadow as effortlessly as only machines could. It fixed its photoreceptors on his face for a moment, then said, “Identity confirmed. Prisoner Ay-Ess-Two-Three-Oh-Fifty-two-Ar will be disposed of without identity verification or tissue sample collection.”

The GP-2 returned to the gurney it had been working at and jabbed a ten-centimeter needle into the half-bald corpse of an emaciated Wookiee. “Thank you for the delivery.”

Caedus gritted his teeth. Maybe he should have just used the Force to feed the prince’s body into the incinerator himself—except the droid would probably have rushed over and pulled it out half burned.

After a moment, he said, “This matter takes priority over all others. I need to witness the disposal myself.
Now.
”

The droid’s head snapped around. “Is there a contagion concern? Because if there is, the collection of tissue samples cannot be overridden, even by—”

“It’s a security matter,” Caedus said. “Do it
now.
”

“Very well.”

The droid set its syringe down on the Wookiee’s gurney, then went over to Isolder and began to cut the clothes off the body. Caedus did not object, suspecting it would take longer to argue the matter than to simply let it happen.

After a moment, the droid paused to study Isolder’s arms.

“Oh, I see,” it said. “The tissue samples have
already
been collected.”

“What?”
Caedus went over to the gurney. “Show me.”

The droid turned both of the prince’s hands up, revealing half a dozen bruises and needle marks on the interior of the forearms. There was a muffled scream in the corridor outside, but Caedus could barely hear it over the fiery roaring in his ears. He did not need to ask what the marks meant, because he had seen similar marks on Mirta’s arms after the Remnant medic collected her samples for the nanokiller.

The marks meant that Lecersen and the Moffs had betrayed him…and his vision. They meant that Allana’s nanokiller was probably
already
on its way to the
Dragon Queen.

Caedus pulled his comlink and opened a channel to his aide, Orlopp. “Have a hold placed on all launches from the
Anakin Solo,
” he ordered, turning toward the door. “And find out if we’ve launched any missile boats recently—especially missile boats carrying Remnant forces.”

There was an uncomfortable pause, then Orlopp asked, “Did you say missile boats?”

Caedus’s stomach went cold. “Tell me.”

“A missile boat just launched from this hangar,” Orlopp reported. “I had to wait for it to clear the containment field before I blew the
Beam Racer.
”

“What about the crew?” Caedus asked. “Were they ours?”

“They were in Alliance uniforms,” Orlopp reported. “
New
uniforms…and a Remnant colonel saw them off. Shall I have a recall order issued?”

“It’s worth a try, but they won’t obey.” Caedus came to the door and, lacking a second hand to reach for the control pad, stopped to finish his order. “Have my StealthX prepped for immediate…”

He let the sentence trail off as the door opened on its own, revealing a dark-uniformed woman with an athletic build and brown, furious eyes.

“Jaina?”

A lightsaber
snap-hissed
to life, and suddenly Caedus felt as though he were going to vomit fire.

The invisible fist of a Force blast slammed Jaina in the chest and sent her flying back, her breath groaning from her lungs and her lightsaber hissing free of Caedus’s stomach. From the fight on Nickel One, she had learned the dangers of letting her head snap back on impact. She tucked her chin, then fought to hold it there as she struck the durasteel wall on the far side of the corridor.

Jaina almost wished that she
had
been knocked unconscious. Stinging needle-thrusts of pain zippered down her spine as her vertebrae rocked beneath the impact, and the synthmesh supporting her half-healed ribs came apart in a single agonizing pop. She dropped to the floor, fighting to keep her pain from carrying her down into numb oblivion, gazing back to where she had surprised Caedus…where Caedus still stood in the doorway, his mouth gaping in surprise, with a thumb-sized scorch hole just below his ribs.
But he was still standing.

Jaina’s pain-clouded mind did not understand how he could take a lightsaber through the gut and
do
that. Why didn’t Caedus just lie down and die like most people? Didn’t he understand she was trying to do him a favor?

Apparently not, because as soon as she began to gasp for breath, his hand shot up, the fingers splayed and pointed in her direction. Jaina barely brought her lightsaber around in time to absorb the forks of blue lightning that came dancing toward her chest.

Then Caedus stepped forward, the Force lightning still shooting from his fingertips. Jaina could not believe what she was seeing. With
that
wound, he was coming after her. She feinted an attempt to roll to her knees. When Caedus shifted the lightning to block her, she brought her free hand up and gestured toward his shoulder, using the Force to hurl him back through the door. A loud, thudding crash sounded from deep in the shadows, and the voice of an annoyed droid began to complain about the mess.

Jaina was instantly on her feet, springing through the door. But Caedus was just as quick, forgoing his Force lightning in favor of his lightsaber. She saw a fan of crimson light arcing toward her out of the dark side of the pit and spun toward it, blocking and kicking in the same move. Caedus grunted as her boot caught him somewhere above the waist, but behind his crimson blade, he was no more than a gray blur, and it was impossible to tell where the kick had landed.