Star by Star (38 page)

“An ysalamiri,” Jaina said loudly. She was a little puzzled, for ysalamiri usually created a much larger bubble of Force absence. “What are you going to do with that?”

“An interesting question.” Duman Yaght nodded to the guard who had brought the walking tree into the room. “Show her.”

The guard stepped forward and took the ysalamiri from its perch. The creature’s hook-shaped claws tore small chunks of bark out of the trunk, drawing a pained leaf-rustle from the tree. With a crooked ridge of vertebrae running down its gaunt back and red sores flecking its smooth hide, the ysalamiri itself looked half dead. The voxyn was mad to get at it, lunging and flicking its tongue at the wary guard as he laid the thing on Anakin’s shoulders.

The ysalamiri slid down behind Anakin’s back and held on. The voxyn lunged at its restraints, threatening to pull its rear legs out of socket.

“The shapers cannot understand why, but ysalamiri drive voxyn mad,” Duman Yaght said. “The voxyn lose their natural cunning. In experiments similar to this, I have seen them tear off their own legs to get the ysalamiri.”

“Your point?”

“You know my point,” Duman Yaght said. “Sooner or later, the voxyn will stop trying to eat its problem and kill it.”

Jaina could not take her eyes off her brother, now so coated in blood he looked almost clothed. In the equipment pod, there was
a way to make the ysalamiri leave the hold, of course, but Anakin and Ganner were the only ones who could activate the war droids and get at it. If they both died, the droids would automatically activate to search for strike team survivors—hardly the way Jaina wanted to deal with the problem of the ysalamiri.

“In what region will we find the
Jeedai
base?” Duman Yaght asked. “Take all the time you wish to answer. I am in no hurry.”

Jaina tore her gaze from Anakin. Now she understood. In dragging Ulaha before the voxyn all those times, Duman Yaght had not been trying to break the Bith. He had been trying to break the rest of the strike team—and Jaina had shown the first crack. Her body did not seem large enough to hold the disappointment she felt in herself. Lando had warned them, and she clearly had not listened.

Without looking at her tormentor, she asked, “You’ll release Anakin if I answer?”

“If that is what you wish,” Duman Yaght answered. “You are the one controlling things.”

“The Core,” Jaina answered. Technically, it was true, though the only way to reach it was via a short hyperlane shaving the edge of the Deep Core. “That should come as no surprise.”

Duman Yaght nodded. “It confirms what the readers have surmised.” He nodded, and Anakin’s guard tore the ysalamiri free, then tossed it to the voxyn. “Never deny a killer her reward.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jaina said. As the voxyn gulped down its treat, her contact with the Force returned, and she felt a surge of support from her companions. “What about my brother?”

“Of course. Just tell me who is next.”

Jaina’s heart fell. She had expected something like this and knew there was only one response. “Me.”

“Not possible.”

“It’s my only answer.”

“Then Anakin will stay. Perhaps he will die.”

“You said you would release him,” Jaina said. “I thought Yuuzhan Vong were honorable.”

The blue beneath the commander’s eyes grew darker, but he turned to Anakin’s guard and nodded. “Return him to his place and bring the Bith.”

Jaina sensed a torrent of conflicting emotions from the rest of
the strike team. Some seemed frightened for Ulaha, others supportive of her defiance, but Jacen brought one feeling to the fore—Anakin’s calmness and determination. He had a plan; Jaina had no idea what, but just knowing that much gave her the strength to remain silent.

Three meters from the wall, Anakin pulled out of his guard’s grasp and, yelling for Ulaha to wake, sprang to her side. He dropped to his knees and whispered frantically into her ear. Ulaha’s lidless eyes continued to stare vacantly at the ceiling, but a groggy hint of disappointment in the Force suggested she was more alert than she appeared. Anakin managed another half a dozen words before a guard’s amphistaff slammed him in the head. He sank into a place of quiet darkness, and even the strike team’s apprehension could not summon him back.

The guard secured him in place with blorash jelly, then released Ulaha and, still holding his amphistaff in one hand, dragged the Bith to the center of the hold. The voxyn tried to face them, but found its rear feet still secured and settled for watching out of one eye. The creature seemed in control of itself again, but its hunger burned through the Force as hot as a blaster bolt.

Too weak to stand on her own, Ulaha was trembling visibly and seemed unwilling to lift her gaze from the floor. Lando had said they would need to do things that sat poorly with their consciences, but Jaina could not believe he had meant standing by while the Yuuzhan Vong killed someone on their team.

“The choice is yours, Jaina.” Duman Yaght twisted his scarified face into the semblance of a smirk. “A name or a life.”

Jaina reached out to Eryl Besa through the Force, praying for some sign that they had crossed the war zone, that they could finally call the war droids to blast them out of this mess. No such reassurance came.

Jaina lowered her head. There was only one way to correct her mistake, only one way to defeat the breaking, but she could not bring herself to let Ulaha die—to actually speak the words that would kill her.

Jaina did not look up. “This is the last name.”

“If you wish it so.”

Duman Yaght’s mocking tone provoked a sense of deep humiliation. Jaina had been broken. Everyone knew.

Ulaha’s feeble voice came to her, and with it a sense of shame not unlike her own. “You mustn’t, Jaina … Don’t let them use me—”

She was silenced by a sharp smack.

“The name, Jaina,” Duman Yaght demanded. “Who is next?”

Jaina finally raised her gaze and saw Ulaha struggling to recover her feet. The guard was practically dangling the Bith by her arm, holding her hand over the sensory bristles along the voxyn’s spine.

Ulaha turned toward Jacen, gasped, “Give me strength.”

“Quiet!” The warrior jerked Ulaha to her feet.

The Force surged with encouragement, support, and something else—something electric and raw, like the zap of a stun bolt. Suddenly, Ulaha gathered her legs beneath her. The strange energy continued to flow through the Force, and she grew stronger by the moment, pushing her hand down … down onto the sensory bristles. It was all the guard could do to keep the Bith from impaling her own palm.

Jaina felt sick. Could this have been Anakin’s plan? The anger spilling out of Jacen made clear what he thought, but Jaina could not believe Anakin would order anyone to take her own life—not when he still felt Chewbacca’s death so acutely.

Ulaha proved too weak to push her hand down all the way. She appeared to give up—then snatched her captor’s coufee from its sheath and flicked the blade across the Yuuzhan Vong’s throat. A cascade of blood poured out. With impossible speed for one so wounded, Ulaha jerked him around and caught the voxyn’s striking tail on his back.

The barb snapped against the warrior’s vonduun crab armor. Duman Yaght roared a command that sent half a dozen warriors dashing in. The voxyn opened its mouth to screech, and Jaina thought it was over for Ulaha. Then Jacen let the battle meld drop, and she felt him reaching out, attuning himself to the voxyn’s emotions, infusing it with the idea that Ulaha’s attack was only a diversion, that the real danger lay with the Yuuzhan Vong rushing in from the flank. It was a desperate gamble, one that could ruin the mission if Duman Yaght came to understand
how the Jedi were playing him. Jaina expected nothing else from a Solo.

The voxyn swung its head around and burped a bubble of green mucilage over the closest guard. The Yuuzhan Vong stumbled half a dozen steps more, groaning, screaming, dissolving. Ulaha used the distraction to slip forward and drive the coufee down between the voxyn’s eyes.

The creature shuddered to the floor and began to convulse, and even that ceased when the Bith twisted the blade. Purple blood oozed around the wound, turning to brown fume as it contacted the air. Ulaha staggered back with a hand clasped over her face. She made a second step, then collapsed.

The surviving guards stopped outside the brown cloud. Duman Yaght barked something harsh, and one warrior tossed a ball of blorash onto the coufee knife, sealing the wound. Another covered his mouth and nose and dashed in to recover Ulaha.

She allowed the guard to drag her clear of the toxin cloud, then gathered her legs beneath her and rose. Wide Yuuzhan Vong eyes and gaping Yuuzhan Vong mouths betrayed their surprise at seeing such a mangled body rise, and even Duman Yaght gasped.

A familiar sissing sounded from the far side of the hold, where all three Barabels were sniggering hysterically, their heads twisted around backward and their reptilian eyes glazed with exhaustion.

Jaina allowed herself a smirk, then returned her gaze to Duman Yaght. “Perhaps you have another voxyn to amuse us?”

The Yuuzhan Vong glared down and, much to her surprise, smiled. “That would be foolish, don’t you think? I see why the warmaster is so determined to destroy you
Jeedai.
” He motioned a pair of guards over, then thrust her into their arms. “Know that we are done playing, Jaina Solo. If you try anything now, the consequences will be fatal.”

“Perhaps.” Jaina smiled back at him. “But not for us.”

The comment drew feelings of alarm from many on the strike team, but Jaina knew by the sudden darkness under Duman Yaght’s eyes that she had said exactly the right thing. He turned away, already calling for the star reader to plot a faster course to the rendezvous.

It would have been simpler to take a tray down to the mess hall and order breakfast from one of Eclipse’s military food processors, but Mara was grilling dustcrepes and nausage—a Tatooine favorite—over the single thermpad assigned to the Skywalker living quarters. Hardly a chef under the best of circumstances, she had somehow browned the dustcrepes and puffed the nausage, but she refused to admit defeat. Fetching breakfast would have meant opening the door to the rest of the base, and after a rare full night in her husband’s company—a night through which Ben had slept blissfully—Mara wanted Luke to herself for just a few minutes more.

R2-D2 whistled from the other side of the work counter, then ran an urgent message across the sitting room vidscreen.

“There’s no reason to alert Emergency Control,” she said. “This isn’t a fire.”

R2-D2 tweedled an objection.

“This isn’t cooking, it’s … heating,” Mara growled. “Any suggestion otherwise will earn you a memory wipe. Clear?”

R2-D2 trilled scornfully, then fell silent.

Mara looked down to see the nausage in her makeshift skillet collapsing into black crumbs. Luke picked that moment to emerge from the refresher, pulling a fresh tunic over his wet hair.

“Smells good.” He popped a morsel of blackened nausage into his mouth, somehow avoiding a sour face and nodding in approval. “Just like we used to make back home.”

“Really?” Mara asked doubtfully. “And I always thought the reason you left Tatooine was to join the Rebellion and save the galaxy.”

Luke maintained a deadpan expression. “No, it was the food—definitely the food.”

He took a rubbery dustcrepe and began to chew, rolling his eyes as though he were enjoying a bowl of green thakitillo. Disarmed as always by Luke’s humble good nature, Mara laughed and leaned across the counter to kiss him.

To everyone else on Eclipse, he might be the enigmatic Jedi Master and last best hope for an imperiled galaxy, but to her he was the gentle husband who always knew what to say, the unassuming moisture farmer who had seen value in her when she could not find it herself. Even knowing of all the things she had done in Palpatine’s service, all the lies told and the lives taken, he had accepted her first as a peer, then a friend, and finally—after it had dawned on Mara that the Force was steering them toward a very different relationship than the one envisioned by Emperor Palpatine—a lover and a spouse.

She pulled away from her husband’s lips and smiled. “For last night.”

Luke glanced across the room to where Ben was sleeping in his crib, watched over by an updated version of the same TDL nanny droid that had tended Anakin and the twins when they were young, and did not need to say what he was thinking. Mara took his hand and started toward the sleeping chamber.

They had almost reached the door when R2-D2 whistled for their attention.

Mara did not even turn around. “Not now, Artoo.”

R2-D2 whistled again, then sent a live feed of the hangar to the sitting room vidscreen. Mara glimpsed the
Shadow
and
Falcon
sitting with a dozen other large vessels on the far side of the cavernous bay, where several support technicians were jockeying blastboats to make room for an arriving ship. The central area was packed with seventy new XJ3 X-wings that Admiral Kre’fey had quietly rotated out of his fleet onto Eclipse, while Saba Sebatyne’s motley assortment of starfighters and Kyp Durron’s battle-scarred X-wings sat untended and inaccessible on the close side of the hangar.

The picture zoomed in on the area between the new X-wings and the older starfighters. Corran Horn stood surrounded by pilots from Kyp’s Dozen, the Wild Knights, and the Shockers. This
last squadron was Eclipse’s own, made up equally of untested Jedi and space-blooded non-Jedi veterans. The three leaders, Kyp Durron, Saba Sebatyne, and the non-Jedi Rigard Matl, were all talking at once while an impatient-looking Corran Horn stood looking into the ceiling holocam.

Luke sighed, then asked Mara, “Do you mind?”

“I’ll mind more if we don’t win this war,” she said. “Corran might seem rigid and moralistic, but he’s not the sort who calls for help unless he needs it. Artoo, give us some sound.”

Kyp Durron’s impatient voice came over the speaker. “… don’t see what we’re waiting for. Maybe Danni will figure out how to jam the yammosks and maybe she won’t, but in the meantime the Yuuzhan Vong have Anakin and the others.” Like most pilots who had not promised to remain at Eclipse, Kyp had not yet been informed that the strike team’s capture was a ruse. “While we train, they move deeper into Yuuzhan Vong territory.”