Invincible (40 page)

A black boot heel came shooting under Jaina’s guard, driving hard into her sore ribs. She stifled a cry and circled into the shadows, trying to acclimate her eyes to the darkness because it was impossible to sense Caedus in the Force. He fought to keep his advantage, dancing back and forth behind his crimson blade, anticipating her every move—and making her pay for each step with a painful kick or elbow strike.

Knowing that sooner or later one of Caedus’s blows could be fatal, Jaina risked a quick look around, searching for something she could Force-hurl. The dark side of the pit was black; she could see nothing in there. And the bright side of the pit was so glaring that she could see only the white, glaring mouth of the fusion incinerator and the conveyor belt that fed it.

Caedus made her pay for the survey in blood, landing a pommel across her cheek that split the flesh and smashed the bone. Jaina countered with a driving knee to the thigh, then a downward slash that Caedus barely turned in time to save his hand.

A flimsiplast crate emerged from the conveyor belt chute beside them. It wasn’t much—certainly not heavy enough to do damage—but it was all Jaina had. She gave a little ground, allowing Caedus to force her toward the door so she could let the crate move past him and bring it flying into him from behind.

Then the dark shape of the pit droid came clanking out of the shadows. “Excuse me, please,” it said. “I must inspect—”

That was as much as it said before Jaina grasped it in the Force and drew it, stumbling, into Caedus’s flank.

The droid was more than heavy enough to send Caedus staggering. He whirled instantly, bringing his blade around at shoulder height. By then Jaina had slipped into the shadows and was lunging forward, her shoulders back but her boot heel driving in under his lightsaber.

Once again, Caedus anticipated her. He spun around, leaning away to protect his vulnerable midsection and bringing his leg up to counterkick. Jaina Force-launched herself into him anyway, whipping her lightsaber around in a down guard to keep his blade at bay. His counterkick landed first, driving into her stomach with a deep sharp ache. Her stomp caught him on the hip and sent him falling onto the conveyor belt.

The flimsicrate burst at the seams as Caedus’s shoulder and head came down on top of it. Jaina leapt in to press the attack—and was stunned by how quickly he popped back up. There were more than a dozen used syringes hanging from his shoulder and face. He barely seemed to notice. Letting his lightsaber deactivate and drop to the floor, he reached toward her, making a twisting motion with his hand.

Jaina felt her chin twisting around and went with it, using the Force to accelerate her whole body into a spin, still leaping toward Caedus, bringing her lightsaber around in a clearing arc. She felt the blade meet metal, and the droid’s ebony head popped into the air. Then she was on Caedus, slashing at his head with her lightsaber, bringing her boot toe up under his chin when he grew predictable and ducked.

The kick snapped Caedus’s head back and sent him tumbling over the conveyor belt. Thinking she had just won the advantage, Jaina dropped her free hand toward the lightsaber he had let fall—then barely saved her arm when the crimson blade
snap-hissed
to life and went spinning past.

Caedus’s hand shot up on the other side of the conveyor belt and caught the hilt; then the rest of his body slowly rose into view. His flesh was bulging around the scorch hole in his abdomen, and there were half a dozen syringes planted in his face almost to the barrels. He was in obvious pain—and he was feeding on it. His eyes were bulging and maniacal, his nostrils red and flaring, his lips drawn back so far it almost appeared that he didn’t have any.

Jaina brought her lightsaber to high guard and braced her feet, ready for Caedus’s attack.

Instead, he deactivated his blade.

“Jaina, listen to me.” There was a throaty, gurgling quality to Caedus’s voice, and it seemed obvious that the only thing keeping him on his feet was Force energy—a
lot
of it. “You need to get out of my way. I’m trying to save Tenel Ka and Allana.”

“Sure you are,” Jaina scoffed. As she spoke, she extended her Force awareness in all directions, trying to figure out why Caedus was stalling when his body was running out of time. “Just like you saved Isolder.”

“Isolder would have made the same choice. In fact, he
did.
” Caedus clipped his lightsaber to his belt, a trust-building gesture that might have had some meaning, had he not been a lying Sith murderer. “Jaina, we don’t have
time
for this.”

“So die already.”

Jaina launched herself into a Force flip, tumbling over the conveyor belt head-down so that she could strike before Caedus had time to unclip and ignite his lightsaber.

Caedus didn’t even try. He simply glanced toward the open mouth of the fusion incinerator. In the next instant Jaina felt herself rushing toward its searing heat, and it took all her Force strength to pull herself aside the half meter that saved her life.

But the durasteel into which she slammed was still scorching, and the pain of impact was nothing compared to the sizzling shock of merely contacting the furnace exterior. She dropped to the floor screaming in rage and anguish, her nostrils filled with the stench of singed hair and charred skin, the black GAG utilities still burning on her back.

Then Jaina opened herself fully to the Force, drawing it in through the power of her emotions—not through her anger or pain, as a Sith might, but through her love of what her brother
had
been…the teenage jokester who could always find hope in a desperate situation, the questioning warrior who had bested the Yuuzhan Vong warmaster in personal combat, the reluctant champion who had shown a galaxy the way to compassionate victory.

The Force came pouring in from all sides, saturating Jaina and devouring her, filling her with a roaring maelstrom of power, carrying away her pain and leaving in its place the strength not only to survive, but to rise and fight.

Caedus was already on the far side of the conveyor belt, pulling the syringes from his face and shoulder while he staggered toward the exit. Jaina used the Force to depress the control pad, and the door closed in his face.

Caedus whirled with fury in his eyes, but Jaina was already bounding over the conveyor belt, her hair still trailing smoke. He splayed his fingers and sprayed Force lightning at her. Jaina caught it on her lightsaber and whirled past, bringing her blade down where Caedus had been an instant before and leaving a long gouge in the door.

Caedus’s blade snapped to life beside her, a crimson fan whirling toward her shoulders. She dropped to her haunches and used her free arm to block the Force-driven snap-kick she knew he would launch at her throat.

Ankle met arm with a sharp crack. What looked like an extra joint appeared in the middle of her forearm, then her wrist flopped over Caedus’s leg, a useless throbbing thing no longer under her control.

It didn’t matter. Jaina was a dead woman if she didn’t win this—maybe even if she
did
win. She whipped her lightsaber around in a high block and deflected the reverse slash Caedus was bringing down toward her neck.

Then she dived forward, whipping her violet lightsaber at his other foot. Caedus sprang away backward, trying to draw both feet out of harm’s way at once, and countered by flipping his own weapon around, bringing it up beneath her belly.

Neither blade cut deep, but both did damage. Jaina felt a searing pain across her abdomen, then felt a terrible uncoiling inside her as something she didn’t want to think about bulged into the void left by the slashed muscle.

Jaina’s blade tapped Caedus behind the boot, touching just long enough to sever the crucial tendon running up the back of the ankle. He landed in an awkward stagger, nearly falling as his foot flapped and flopped without any control.

Jaina came to a knee facing him and knew Caedus was about to die. He had one arm and one good leg, and they were not even on the same side of the body. He could not pivot and he could not retreat. All she needed was to get past his lightsaber and attack the armless side of his body—before she collapsed herself, or he recovered enough to kill her with one last Force blast.

Jaina sprang.

Caedus tried to turn to meet her, but only staggered, his lightsaber falling to his side as though it were a cane. It wasn’t, of course, and his momentum kept him stumbling back toward the bright side of the pit, his eyes filled with rage and exhaustion and despair.

Jaina feinted at his head, then began to whirl toward his armless side, bringing her lightsaber around in a flat, high slash that he could not hope to block. It was a sure kill, one that would land even if she died first—which she thought she might, since the attack would leave her completely open to an avenging counterstrike.

But Caedus seemed to know that Jaina had already killed him, and whatever he had in mind, it was not vengeance. When her blade came around, his lightsaber was still hanging at his side. He was staring up toward the ceiling, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the murk overhead, and the only attempt he made to save himself was to take one step back into the light spilling from the furnace.

It would not be enough, Jaina knew. She closed her eyes and felt the lightsaber sink in, felt it slicing through his ribs into his chest. And Jaina felt something in the Force, too—something that made her pulse stop and her chest sink and her blood freeze in her veins. Her brother was reaching out to Tenel Ka,
screaming
at her through the Force, warning her there was danger, urging her to take Allana and…

Then the blade reached Caedus’s heart, and he dropped at her feet, and Jaina felt nothing at all.

What’s the difference between a Jedi Knight and a Jedi Master? Ask me in twenty years!

—Jacen Solo, age 15

S
TARS HAD FINALLY COME TO
S
HEDU
M
AAD’S BLACK SKIES
. B
EN
could see a thousand of them chasing one another across the night. They were flinging tiny slivers of light back and forth, erupting into orange novae and silver supernovae, falling from the sky trailing long ribbons of flame. About a hundred were descending in wild unpredictable helixes, trying to evade a pursuing torrent of streaks and flashes. Most failed—then blossomed into a spray of color and finished their descent in the form of dozens of brightly glowing specks.

But all too often, the shooting stars swelled rapidly into the fiery-nosed lozenges of Remnant drop ships. They made a long sweeping curve toward the abandoned mining complex the Jedi had been using as a base, then began to trade cannon fire with the Hapan gun emplacements hidden in the surrounding terrain. Some would make a single pass over the central compound, loosing a flurry of missiles into the already flaming buildings, then wheel around and drop into the trees.

It did not seem to matter to the Imperials that most of the buildings were empty—just as they had been before the Jedi arrived. Nor did it seem to matter that much of the fire they were encountering was coming from the enormous strip and pit mines adjacent to the compound. They had been given an objective to capture, and capture it they would, no matter how worthless it was, or how many stormtrooper lives it cost. Once they had succeeded, Ben and the rest of the base’s inhabitants would retreat even deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, shafts, and open pits that was the mining world of Shedu Maad. The Imperial commanders would analyze the situation and assign their stormtroopers another objective, and so it would continue until one side made a mistake or simply wore down their adversaries.

“We’re going to hold out,” Ben said. He was standing on an old strip-mining terrace, studying the battle from inside a thicket of the gummy maboo cane that somehow thrived on this particular variety of mine-ravaged ground. “They’re not getting enough troops down to box us in.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Trista, now wearing night-vision goggles and the self-camouflaging body armor of a major in Her Majesty’s Select Commandos. “Here I was worrying that we’d actually have to
fight
this thing out.”

“Be nice, Trista,” Taryn chided. She was also wearing night-vision goggles and commando armor with an officer’s insignia on the shoulders, but Ben had his doubts about whether either sister was actually
in
the military. While none of their fellow Hapans—even General Livette—seemed to question their right to wear the uniforms, they never saluted anyone, and no one ever saluted them. “How’s Ben supposed to know you’re superstitious?”

“I’m not superstitious,” Trista countered. “I’m just saying it’s better not to make predictions. Nothing ever goes the way you think it will.”

Taryn shook her head. “That’s always been your problem. You worry too much.” She cringed as a drop ship circled low overhead, a StealthX close behind pumping cannon bolts into its tail, then added, “Still, I wish it was Zekk telling me that.” She turned her goggles in Ben’s direction. “No offense, handsome.”