Dark Journey (17 page)

And that, he noted grimly, was the problem—that two-meter oval doorway between the two ships. Tahiri claimed the Yuuzhan Vong ship could heal itself, but there was nothing to be done about the breach in the Hapan vessel. Cutting the ship loose would leave nearly a fifth of it open to the vacuum of space. They could abandon it, of course, but that would mean losing a salvageable cargo ship and, more important, the fourteen short-range fighters stored in the hold.

At the moment, none of this seemed terribly important to Zekk.

“It should be an adventure,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’ve never flown in tandem before.”

Jaina came up behind the pilot’s seat and leaned down, resting her chin on his shoulder and sliding her arms around his neck in the sort of casual, friendly embrace they’d exchanged many times over the years. “It’s not the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Who could argue with that?”

She chuckled and rose. The quick click of her boots faded as she passed through to the Yuuzhan Vong ship.

Zekk glanced at Tenel Ka. The warrior studied him with cool, gray eyes that saw far too much. He grimaced and looked away.

“It is difficult to live among Jedi,” she said, acknowledging his chagrin. “I was not able to grieve Jacen in private.”

“And I can’t worry about Jaina without everyone knowing about it.”

“Worry?” Tenel Ka repeated the pale word, rejected it. “You are afraid for her. You are afraid
of
her.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” he said softly.

“She’s not Jaina as I knew her at the academy, but who has not been changed by this war?”

He couldn’t dispute this. “Still, I don’t like it.”

“Neither does she,” Tenel Ka said evenly. “Jaina would have emerged as a leader in time, regardless of circumstances. The battle at Myrkr forced her down this path before she had time to consider where it might end. Leadership involves finding a compromise, a balance. Nowhere is this more important than within the leader herself. She must be able to take action and to focus all her decisions toward a desired end, while remaining grounded in principle.”

He considered the warrior woman. “You’ve thought about this.”

“At length,” she agreed. “Jaina is dealing with her loss by taking charge. This is a good response, one that returns to her a measure of control. But in detaching herself from her pain, she is also losing an important balance within herself.” Her face turned grim. “I have seen what a leader who lacks this balance can become. We must watch her carefully.”

Zekk looked away. “You’ll have to do the watching. I’m moving on.”

“You would abandon a friend?” she demanded.

“As you abandoned Jacen?” he snapped back.

Nothing in Tenel Ka’s face acknowledged the hit. “I know you didn’t mean that,” she said calmly. “But I also know that if Jacen were in danger of sliding into the dark side, I would want to do whatever I could to pull him back.”

This was the first time any of them had put their concern
for Jaina into words. For a moment they were silent, sobered by the grim possibility.

“And what if she can’t be pulled back?” Zekk asked. “I’ve taken that path, and I know what a Dark Jedi can do. If it comes to that, someone will have to stop her.”

“By any means necessary,” she agreed, once again giving voice to their shared fears.

“And I couldn’t do that. No matter what, I just couldn’t do it.”

“I see.” Tenel Ka turned her gaze straight ahead. “Then you are right to go.”

   Jaina slid on the cognition hood and urged the drifting
Trickster
into motion.

The ship balked, confused by circumstances it did not understand, and by the metallic bulk attached to it. Jaina gritted her teeth and reconsidered the wisdom of this attempted salvage. They might be able to fly and land in this formation, but if challenged, they wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.

A trio of starships appeared in the distance, so suddenly that Jaina had the uncanny feeling that she’d conjured them with her unspoken fears. Faint lines of light slid out of hyperspace and slowed into focused, rapidly approaching dots.

She snatched up the comm Lowbacca had rigged up and opened the frequency to hail. “This is Lieutenant Jaina Solo of Rogue Squadron, aboard the Yuuzhan Vong frigate
Trickster
. The ship is under New Republic control. There are no Yuuzhan Vong aboard. Repeat, this is not an enemy ship. Hold your fire.”

“Relax,
Trickster
. We’re here to see you safely down,” announced a familiar voice—the last voice Jaina expected or wanted to hear.

“Kyp Durron,” she said coldly. “You might as well turn
around right now. I wouldn’t follow you out of an ocean if I were drowning.”

“Hear me out before you open fire. Your parents are on Hapes, in the refugee center. I told the princess I’d bring you back. Now, you
could
send me back to Leia empty-handed, but we all know what path a vindictive spirit might take you down.”

She absorbed his dark humor in silence as she considered his words, and the likely consequences of his presence. Her parents had enough to deal with without the added grief that always seemed to follow Kyp Durron like fumes from a faulty exhaust.

“Don’t use my family in another of your tricks—if they’re really on Hapes at all.”

“This is Colonel Jag Fel, Lieutenant Solo,” another voice broke in. “I have seen your mother on Hapes, and the request for an escort came directly to me from landing control. Kyp Durron is speaking the truth, and flying under my command.”

A strange, unsettled feeling coiled in the pit of Jaina’s stomach, and a little rush of gladness entered her heart like a spring breeze. She did her best to ignore both.

“Under your command? Don’t believe it,” she said bluntly. “If Kyp can twist a Jedi’s thoughts, he can make you think anything he wants.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I hope I’m not quite so weak-minded as that.”

“So do I,” she retorted, a little stung by the glacial tone that had entered Jag’s voice. His response didn’t exactly come as a surprise, though. Pilots were renowned for their pride, and she’d just stomped on the edges of his. Still, if Jag was determined to fly with Kyp, someone ought to tell him he’d set course on a dangerous vector.

“Suit yourself. But while you’re watching my back, keep an eye on your own.”

She firmly clicked off the comm and concentrated on
flying the ship. The
Trickster
rebelled against its mechanical hitchhiker, and Jaina waged a silent but fierce argument with the ship in an effort to keep it from shedding the pirate vessel. Finally the sentient frigate yielded to a compromise.

“Lowbacca, Ganner, can you put that panel back in place?”

“You’re not thinking about abandoning them?” Alema Rar demanded.

“The ship wants to,” she replied, “but it’ll settle for a chance to heal itself. It’s a good precaution.”

Lowbacca waved Ganner aside, then wrapped his long arms around the coral oval and heaved. He set it down in front of the portal with a resounding thud and then shouldered it into place. Immediately a dark goo began to seep from the surrounding wall, filling in the crack and binding the portal back into the wall.

Jaina clicked on the comm. “Zekk, if you can lock down the breached chamber, do it. Just in case.”

“Already done.”

She turned her attention to the task of flying the ship—and keeping a mental connection open to her fellow pilot. Talking was useless, for there were no words to equate one technology with the other. The two pilots communicated through feelings, impressions, adjusting their speed and direction to match each other precisely. Jaina had jokingly described their shared flight as a dance, and that’s precisely what it felt like—a dance between enormous, mismatched partners.

All went well until they entered Hapes’s atmosphere. The
Trickster
shuddered as the dovin basal adjusted for the planet’s gravity. A loud, groaning creak announced that the heat and turbulence of reentry was straining the seal between the ships. The messages coming to Jaina through the cognition hood were garbled, as if the ship were confused.

Suddenly Jaina was none too happy about their chances. She tossed a look over her shoulder. Tahiri was right behind her, a place she seemed to be taking with increasing frequency. “Tahiri, you’ve flown in these things before. How did you land?”

“We crashed, mostly,” the girl admitted.

The ship shook and pitched as it neared the ground. “It’s panicking,” Jaina realized. “It thinks the attached ship is pulling it down.”

“Let me try,” Tahiri offered, prodding Lowbacca out of the navigation chair. She pulled on the hood. After a moment she shook her head. “No good. It’s not listening anymore.”

“You hear that, Zekk?” she called through the comm.

“Cut us loose,” he said tersely.

Jaina relayed her intention to the ship and then wrenched the frigate to one side. The seal released at once, and the
Trickster
soared away from the pirate ship.

Her heart crawled into her throat as she watched the damaged ship spiral slowly toward the ground. It was scant meters from crashing before Zekk finally managed to pull out of the spin. He brought the ship into a rising turn, then slowed to a hover as the repulsor engines came on. The cargo ship lowered onto the landing dock, coming to rest heavily but safely.

To Jaina’s relief, the
Trickster
calmed and followed its erstwhile partner down to the dock. As soon as the Yuuzhan Vong frigate set down, she suggested that it rest and then yanked off the hood.

The other Jedi had left the ship by the time she finished shutting down. When she reached the open hatch, she noted them standing together in a tight knot. Several Hapan military officials supervised the removal of the fighter ships from the cargo hold of the captured vessel; others led the pirates away.

Jaina hurried down the ramp, and her eyes sought out
Zekk. “You didn’t have a choice,” he said before she could speak. “There were two people on my ship, twenty on yours. I would have done the same thing.”

Jaina nodded her thanks. Before she could say anything, Tahiri caught the arm of a passing docking official. “How can we get a repulsorsled? We have a casualty aboard. We need to take him to his parents in the refugee camp.”

The woman pulled away and swept a hand toward the grassy area beyond the dock. Rows of wounded lay on white pallets. Sheets had been pulled up over many of them. “I’m sorry, but yours is hardly a unique situation.”

Jaina’s eyes narrowed. She came to stand at Tahiri’s side, faced down the official and moved her hand in a slight subtle gesture. “You will find Han and Leia Solo in the refugee camp and inform them that their daughter has arrived.”

The official’s eyes widened, only partly due to the subtle Jedi compulsion. “This casualty you spoke of. That wouldn’t be Anakin Solo, would it?”

This set Jaina back on her heels. “You’ve heard?”

“Who hasn’t!” she said, her tones rounded with near reverence. “The HoloNet—or what’s left of it—has been playing Princess Leia’s exhortation to the people of Coruscant almost nonstop since the battle. Of course I’ll send word!”

The woman hurried off. Tahiri shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and glanced back toward the Yuuzhan Vong ship. Impatience and repugnance came off her in waves, and an almost frantic desire to get away. Still, Jaina couldn’t see wandering around the refugee camp with this particular cargo in tow.

“Maybe we should wait for my parents here,” Jaina suggested.

Green fire flared in Tahiri’s eyes. “How can you think
about leaving Anakin in there one nanosecond longer than we have to!”

Jaina was about to point out that Anakin was past caring about such things. Yet it was hard to forget the grim compulsion that had driven her to recover her brother’s body from the worldship, at great risk to herself and the other Jedi.

She tamped down her impatience. “Be practical. We can’t exactly cruise around Hapes with a repulsorsled. My parents will want a funeral—well, my mother will, anyway—and she’ll make sure everything is handled in a dignified, proper fashion.”

The official hurried back, followed by a repulsorsled and two somber-faced assistants. “They look sort of dignified,” Tahiri ventured.

“All right,” she conceded. “They can get him off the ship.” She told them where to find her brother’s body. In short order they emerged from the ship, flanking a white-draped sled. Tahiri’s eyes filled.

Jaina abruptly turned and put several quick paces between herself and the young Jedi. She folded her arms and leaned against the
Trickster
, staring out over the bustling docks.

Before long she noted a two-person landspeeder skimming toward them. Almost before it stopped, Leia flung herself from it and hurried to her daughter, her eyes bright with relief.

She stopped abruptly when her gaze fell on the sled, and the color drained from her face.

“We brought Anakin with us,” Jaina said. “Jacen we couldn’t get to. I’m sorry.”

Leia took a long, steadying breath and tilted her chin into its familiar, imperious angle. From the corner of her eye, Jaina noticed Tahiri mirroring the older woman’s gesture, as if the outer form might serve as a vessel to hold something of Leia’s strength.

She stepped forward and embraced her daughter. “Don’t worry about Jacen,” she said softly. “He might seem fragile at times, but he’s a survivor.”

Jaina stiffened, startled by her mother’s comment. Leia was as sensitive to the Force as any trained Jedi, and in Jaina’s opinion, the epitome of grace under pressure. How could she block this?

Her eyes sought out her father’s face. Han looked from her to Leia, his eyes wary. He must have read the truth in Jaina’s eyes, because suddenly the color seeped from his face, leaving it gray and haggard and … old.

And suddenly Jaina had one more reason to hate the Yuuzhan Vong.

Her gaze slid away from the shattered face of the man who was both her father and her childhood hero. She eased out of her mother’s embrace, keeping her hands on Leia’s shoulders. “Mom, Jacen is gone. We all felt it.” One way or another, she added silently.