Invincible (42 page)

The troopers carrying the warhead backed away, but the rest came forward. One of them removed his backpack and pulled a set of hollow, telescoping rods from the interior, which he extended and passed to his fellows. In the meantime, Tahiri began to wander the perimeter of the treeless circle, probing it with the Force and directing the stormtroopers to drive their rods into the sandy soil about every three meters.

As Ben watched them work, he slowly grew more outraged by the depth of the betrayal General Livette had nearly committed. Not only had she agreed to let a Remnant strike team destroy the Jedi hangar, she had obviously provided them with very precise intelligence about a buried access tunnel—and what they would need to open it. Even more amazingly, nobody seemed surprised—or even particularly upset—by the treachery. They just expected and dealt with such behavior from their “loyal” nobles. It was almost enough to make a sane man wonder if Caedus could be right about the galaxy needing an iron fist—
almost.

After watching the stormtroopers work for a few moments, Taryn dropped to her belly and slowly began to work her blaster rifle into a gap under the kolg tree. Realizing she intended to take a shot at Tahiri, Ben caught her arm and shook his head. He wasn’t being softhearted. The second Taryn set the sight on her target—maybe even sooner—Tahiri’s danger sense would kick in. And Ben really didn’t like the idea of starting a firefight outnumbered more than six to one.

Taryn scowled and tried to pull her arm free, but relented when Ben shook his head and refused to let go.

Once the stormtroopers had finished driving their poles, a second man opened his pack and began to arm and pass out the penetration charges, which his fellows inserted down the hollow rods they had driven into the sandy soil. When that was finished, the demolitions man passed a small detonator to Tahiri. She motioned for the squad to retreat, following a few steps behind.

The last man had just stepped out of the circle of rods when Tahiri suddenly spun around, looking not toward Ben and Taryn, but toward the slope down which they had come a few minutes earlier.

“There’s someone coming,” Tahiri said, pointing.

Taryn was already rising to a knee, laying the barrel of the blaster rifle across the kolg trunk. “
Now
can I blast her?” she whispered.

“Who’s stopping you?” Ben whispered back.

“Men.”

A blue bolt screeched away from the barrel of her blaster, but Tahiri was already diving into the trees. She brought the detonator around beneath her body, pointing it toward the circle of penetration charges.

Ben felt the gut-punch shock wave of an all-too-close detonation, then his goggles went momentarily dark as the optics were overwhelmed by the blast flash. He cowered behind the kolg trunk with Taryn as it was pelted by falling sand and brush.

In the next instant the forest erupted into screaming bolts of blasterfire. Ben poked his head up over the tree and saw a column of sand dropping back toward the ground—and
into
it, where an enormous sinkhole was draining into the tunnel or shaft or whatever it was that Tahiri and her men had just opened.

To the left of the sinkhole, a dozen of Tenel Ka’s Select Commandos were charging through the trees, exchanging blasterfire with the startled Imperials. Behind it, two troopers were dragging the litter with the big baradium warhead toward the hole, defended by the whirling blade of Tahiri’s lightsaber.

“I’ll take the troopers out,” Taryn said, thrusting her blaster rifle into Ben’s hands. “You keep the Jedi busy.”

“She’s not a…”

Ben let the sentence trail off as Taryn plucked a trio of fragmentation grenades off her equipment harness and thumbed the arming switch on the first one. He propped the barrel on the tree and opened fire on Tahiri, switching from one corner of her body to another so she would have to move her blade across the greatest distance to defend herself.

But Tahiri was as quick as she was precise, batting Ben’s first bolts back into the tree behind which they were hiding, then deflecting them up toward the grenade that Taryn had just sent arcing her way. The third bolt she deflected struck home, and the grenade detonated harmlessly above the newly reopened mine shaft.

Taryn thumbed the arming switches on her last two grenades. “I
said
keep the Jedi busy!”

Ben jumped up and began to fire—not at Tahiri, but at the baradium warhead, forcing her to dive into position to protect the bomb. Taryn sent both grenades flying across the shaft just as Tahiri dropped into a cartwheel. The Hapan whooped in delight as the maneuver carried Tahiri past the warhead—and out of position to defend the troopers dragging it forward.

The grenades detonated to either side of the litter, shredding the stormtroopers’ armor and hurling their torn bodies aside. Tahiri was caught by the shock wave and hurled out of sight into the trees. The warhead dropped to the ground unharmed.

“Good job.” Taryn took her blaster rifle back and clambered over the log. “Now let’s go finish—”

She let the sentence drop and opened fire into the woods. Ben snatched up his lightsaber and jumped over the log, then saw Tahiri charging back out of the trees, bloody and battered but still swatting Taryn’s blaster bolts back at her. He activated his own lightsaber and stepped forward to defend the Hapan—then watched in amazement as Tahiri deactivated her lightsaber and launched herself in a high arc toward the shaft, one hand stretching toward the warhead.

“Uh-oh.” Ben opened himself to the Force and reached out for the warhead, grasping for it with his mind…saw it rising off its broken litter, starting to float toward the shaft.
“Blast!”

He raced forward, gathering himself to spring, and heard Taryn calling behind him.

“Ben? Ben, wait.
No!
”

But Ben was already somersaulting after Tahiri, dropping down into the shaft above her. As they fell, she whirled around and brought her blade up, slashing at his neck—but not quickly enough to prevent him from blocking. He countered with a snap-kick to the spine that drew a pained grunt and sent her sailing into the wall.

Still falling, she came tumbling back at him, double-slashing at his midsection, then planting a boot in his ribs that drove the wind from his lungs and sent
him
slamming into the rocky wall. He tumbled out of control for an instant, plummeting through the darkness, then used the Force to bring himself under control.

How deep
was
this hole?

Tahiri’s blade came weaving at him out of the murk, and Ben realized he had lost his night-vision goggles. He blocked, blocked again, then realized he had left his stomach wide open…and still managed to get his blade down a split second before Tahiri pressed her advantage.

Gasping in relief—she’d
had
him, but she had been too slow again—he kicked off her hip and hit the wall behind him, then used the Force to stick himself against it,
hard.
It was a hot, painful way to slow his descent, but it was better than the alternative.

Ben saw a glow above him and looked up to see Tahiri doing the same thing on the opposite side of the shaft, a dark figure behind a bright blade, glaring down at him with bright eyes. He pressed harder, slowing his descent more so she would not have the altitude advantage—then heard a loud splash below as the warhead reached the bottom.

Water.
Great.

Tahiri pushed away from the wall, dropping toward him behind a wild cyclone of kicking boots and slashing blade.

It was a foolish attack. All Ben had to do was guard high, then parry and take her legs off at the knees. He raised his blade to do just that—then finally realized what he was seeing and parried without countering.

Tahiri dropped past, her face not showing relief, but screwed into a mask of surprise and rage, and Ben realized that she really didn’t want to kill him. Maybe she didn’t even want to survive.

She splashed into the water, then screamed and went silent.

Ben hit half a second later, letting out his own scream as his knees were driven up to his chin. Cold, dark water poured over his head and began to rush down his throat. He coughed into the water, sucked in more water, and finally regained control of his reflexes and closed his mouth.

There was water in his ears, and he could feel his hair swirling around him, but he had no idea how far under he was. He looked up and saw steam rising past the tip of his lightsaber, so he knew he couldn’t be that deep. So why wasn’t he rising to the surface?

Ben tried to kick himself up—and immediately realized the problem. All that sandy soil that he had seen dropping into the sinkhole had to go somewhere, and now he was buried to the waist in it. Still fighting not to cough and gulp down more water, he grabbed the slick rock beside him, wiggling his legs and trying to drag himself forward, slowly opening a cavity around his hips.

After a few seconds, Ben managed to pull himself free and half scramble, half float to the surface—where it took him a few more seconds to realize that only about half of the gasping and coughing he heard was his own. He turned and found the silhouette of Tahiri’s head and shoulders about three meters away, her lightsaber between them but not attacking, her free hand stretched toward a line of lights blinking in the distinctive three-red-two-yellow-one-green pattern of the baradium warhead.

“Tahiri, you don’t want to do that.” Ben tried to stand and immediately sank back to his knees in the wet tailings. “I
know
you don’t, because you’re no better suited to being a Sith apprentice than I was.”

Tahiri glanced over, but kept her hand stretched toward the warhead. “Stay out of it, Ben.” Her face was plunged into shadow, but he could still see her hair and eyes, both gleaming silver in the blade light reflecting off the water. “You don’t have to get hurt.”

“See? That’s what I mean.” Ben gave up trying to stand and simply knelt, using his shins to spread his weight across the wet pile. “If you were Sith material, you wouldn’t
care
whether I got hurt. You wouldn’t have gotten so mad when you killed Shevu.”

“I don’t
like
killing anyone, Ben,” Tahiri said. She switched her free hand to her lightsaber, so that now she was holding it in a powerful two-handed grip. “That doesn’t mean I ever hesitate.”

Ben snorted. “You’re not even a good liar.” He started to knee-walk toward the warhead. “I’d have thought Caedus would have taught you
that
much.”

Tahiri held her blade in front of Ben’s chest. “I’m not lying, Ben.”

“Then you’ll have to prove it,” Ben said. He brought his own blade up and pressed it against Tahiri’s, forcing it aside. “I’m going to go over there to take the detonator charge out of that warhead. There’s only one way to stop me—and you won’t do it.”

Tahiri switched off her lightsaber—then switched it back on so fast that Ben barely had time to lean out of the way before the blade extended where his throat had been a moment before. But the follow-through never came, and Ben’s head remained firmly attached to his shoulders.

“Close—I’ll give you that.” The way Ben’s heart was hammering, he felt like he might die of fear even if Tahiri
didn’t
kill him—but he was willing to take that chance. He leaned around the blade and started knee-walking toward the warhead again. “But not close enough. When you come back to the Order, we’ll get Uncle Han to teach you a few things about bluffing.”

Tahiri sighed, then switched off her blade. “I’m
not
coming back to the Order, Ben.”

The tension left Ben’s body so fast that his hands began to shake uncontrollably. She was giving up.

“No? Then what are you going to do? Become some kind of bounty hunter?” Ben reached the warhead and began to dig it out. “Because you
know
Caedus isn’t going to take you back.”

“Yeah, but I’m done with him,” she said bitterly. “I’m done with
all
Solos.”

Tahiri hung her lightsaber on her belt, then removed a glow rod and shined it up the water-filled tunnel. “Is anybody going to be looking for me down here? I’d rather not get killed trying to sneak away.”

“You won’t, if you help me with this,” Ben said, grunting as he struggled to turn the warhead so that he could reach the access panel. “They forgave
me.
”

“Yeah? Well, you were just a kid. And you still are.” Tahiri knelt in the water next to Ben, then used the Force to spin the warhead so the access panel was facing them. “It’ll be different for me.”

“Probably,” Ben allowed. “It’ll take time, and you’ll have to answer for your actions. But they
will
forgive you—I promise.”

“I’m not sure that promise is yours to make,” Tahiri said.

Before Ben could answer, a loud splash sounded nearby, and Ben looked over to see a rope dancing next to him.

“If you’re going to run, you better do it now,” Ben said. “I’ll tell them you drowned and floated away or something.”

Tahiri’s brow rose. “You’d
lie
for me?”

“If you want me to,” Ben said. “And don’t worry—I’m a lot better at it than you are. That’s one thing Jacen taught me that I haven’t forgotten yet.”

Tahiri turned on the glow rod again. Her face was solemn but resolute. “I think it’s time to leave the lies behind,” she said. “It’s time to leave a lot of things behind.”

For a moment, Ben wasn’t sure whether she meant to come back with him—or just to get herself killed.

Then a bright light began to shine down on them, and Taryn’s voice echoed down from above.

“Move, and you’re a dead woman,” she warned. “Ben, get away from her.”

Ben looked up to see the Hapan rappelling swiftly down the shaft, holding the rope in one hand and her blaster rifle in the other.

“It’s okay,” he called up. “She’s with us.”

A LONG TIME AGO…

I
T IS DURING THE TRUCE AT THE
B
ATTLE OF
I
THOR, AND
J
AINA IS AN
X-wing pilot with the legendary Rogue Squadron. She is lying on her bunk aboard the
Ralroost,
trying to get some much-needed rest before the Yuuzhan Vong renew their attack. But the bunk on the other side of the cabin is empty, and sleep won’t come because of that. She has just lost her friend and wingmate Anni Capstan, and she cannot close her eyes without seeing Anni’s face.