Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (55 page)

“Thank you, Threepio!” Mara and Leia said together.

“And the closest they have been for a decade previous,” the droid had to slip in,
as the women turned back to their conversation.

Mara shook her head, trying to remember her original point to Jaina. “That’s why your
mother chose to come out now.”

“You’re expecting a fight?” Jaina asked, and neither Leia nor Mara missed the sparkle
in her eye.

“The
Mediator
will keep them behaving,” Leia said hopefully. Indeed, the battle cruiser was an
impressive warship, an updated and more heavily armed and armored version of the Mon
Calamari star cruiser.

Mara looked back to the screen and shook her head, unconvinced. “It’ll take more than
a show of force to stop this catastrophe,” she replied.

“Indeed, it has been escalating, by all reports,” C-3PO piped up. “It started as a
simple mining dispute over mineral rights, but now the rhetoric is more appropriate
for some kind of a holy crusade.”

“It’s the leader on Rhommamool,” Mara remarked. “Nom Anor. He’s reached down and grabbed
his followers by their most basic instincts, weaving the dispute against Osarian into
a more general matter of tyranny and oppression. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I can’t begin to give you a full list of tyrants like Nom Anor that I’ve dealt with,”
Leia said with a resigned shrug.

“I have that very list available,” C-3PO blurted. “Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, too politely.

“Why, of course, Princess Leia,” the droid replied. “I do so like to be of service.
Now where was I? Oh, yes. Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Not now, Threepio,” Leia insisted, then to Mara, she added, “I’ve seen his type often.”

“Not like him,” Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice
reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance
of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had
killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had
proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only
Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on
Coruscant, was fast dying.

“Daluba,” C-3PO went on. “And of course, there was Icknya—”

Leia started to turn to the droid, hoping to politely but firmly shut him up, but
Jaina’s cry stopped her abruptly and swung her back to face the screen.

“Incoming ships!” Jaina announced, her voice full of surprise. The telltale blips
had appeared on her sensor viewer as if from nowhere.

“Four of them,” Mara confirmed. Even as she spoke, the warning buzzers began to go
off. “From Osarian.” She turned her curious expression up to Leia. “They know who
we are?”

Leia nodded. “And they know why I’ve come.”

“Then they should know to leave us alone,” Jaina reasoned.

Leia nodded again, but understood better. She had come to
the system not to meet with the Osarians—not at first, at least—but with their principal
rival, Nom Anor, the cult figure stirring up trouble on Rhommamool. “Tell them to
back off,” she instructed Mara.

“Politely?” Mara asked, smiling, and with that dangerous twinkle in her eyes.

“New Republic shuttle,” a halting voice crackled over the comm. “This is Captain Grappa
of Osarian First-Force.”

With a flick of a switch, Mara put an image of the captain on the viewscreen, and
Leia sighed as the green skin, spiny head ridge, and tapirlike snout came into view.

“Wonderful,” she remarked sarcastically.

“The Osarians have hired Rodians?” Jaina asked.

“Nothing like a few mercenaries to quiet things down,” Leia replied dryly.

“Oh, dear me,” C-3PO remarked, and he shuffled aside nervously.

“You come with us,” Grappa insisted, his multifaceted eyes sparkling eagerly. “To
Osa-Prime.”

“Seems the Osarians want to talk with you first,” Mara said.

“They’re afraid that my meeting with Nom Anor will only heighten his stature, both
among the Rhommamoolians and throughout the sector,” Leia reasoned, a notion not without
credence, and one that she had debated endlessly before making the decision to come
here.

“Whatever the reason, they’re closing fast,” Mara replied. Both she and Jaina looked
to Leia for instructions, for while the
Jade Sabre
was Mara’s ship, this was Leia’s mission.

“Princess Leia?” an obviously alarmed C-3PO asked.

Leia sat down in the chair behind Mara, intently studying the screen, which Jaina
had switched back to a normal space view. The four approaching fighters were clearly
visible.

“Lose them,” she said determinedly, a request that neither of the pilots needed to
hear twice. Indeed, Mara had been eager to put the shuttle, with its powerful twin
engines and state-of-the-art maneuvering systems, through a real test.

Green eyes sparkling, smile wide, Mara reached for the controls, but then retracted
her hands and put them on her lap. “You heard her, Jaina,” she said.

Jaina’s mouth dropped open; so did Leia’s.

“You mean it?” Jaina asked.

Mara’s only reply was an almost bored expression, along with a slight yawn, as if
this whole thing was no big deal, and certainly nothing that Jaina couldn’t easily
handle.

“Yes!” Jaina whispered, clenching her fists, wearing a smile nearly wide enough to
take in her ears. She rubbed her hands together, then reached out to the right, rolling
her fingers over the floating-ball control of the inertial compensator. “Strap in,”
she ordered, and she dialed it down to 95 percent, as fighter pilots often did so
that they could gain a tactile feel to the movements of their ships.
Reading the g’s
, Jaina had heard it called, and she always preferred flying that way, where fast
turns and mighty acceleration could push her back in her seat.

“Not too much,” Leia said with concern.

But her daughter was in her element now, Leia knew, and she’d push the shuttle to
its limits. Leia felt the lean as Jaina veered right, angling away from the approaching
ships.

“If you run, we shoot you down!” came the uneven voice of Grappa.

“Z-95 Headhunters,” Mara said derisively of the closing craft, an antiquated starfighter,
and she flipped off the comm switch and looked back at Leia. “Can’t shoot what you
can’t catch,” she explained. “Kick them in,” she added to Jaina, motioning to the
primary thrusters, thinking that a burst of the powerful engines would shoot the
Jade Sabre
right past the befuddled Rodians and their outdated starfighters.

Even as she spoke, though, two more blips appeared on the sensors, streaking out from
the shadows around Rhommamool, angling right in line with the
Jade Sabre
.

“Mara,” Leia said with concern. At that, Mara did reach for the controls. But only
for a moment, and then she looked
Jaina right in the eye and nodded for the young woman to proceed.

Leia lurched forward in her seat, held back only by the belt, as Jaina reversed throttle
and kicked the etheric rudder right. There came a metallic thump behind them—C-3PO
hitting the wall, Leia guessed.

Even as the
Jade Sabre
came to a sudden halt, nose turned starboard, Jaina pumped it out to full throttle
and kicked the rudder back to the left, then hard right, fishtailing the ship about
in a brutal one-eighty, then working the rudder hard and somewhat choppy in straightening
out her direct retreat. As they turned, a laser cannon blast cut across their bow.

“All right, the first four are on our tail,” Mara instructed calmly. The
Jade Sabre
jolted, hit aft, a blow the shields easily held back.

“Try a—” Mara started to say, but she lost the words, and nearly her lunch, as Jaina
pulled a snap roll right, and then another right behind it.

“Oh, we’ll be killed!” came C-3PO’s cry from the doorway, and Leia managed to turn
her head to see the droid leaning in against the metal jamb, and then to see him fly
away, with a pitiful cry, as Jaina kicked the etheric rudder again, putting the ship
into another sudden fishtail.

A pair of Headhunters streaked past the viewscreen, but just for a split second, for
Jaina vectored away at a different angle, and at single-engine full throttle, pressing
Leia back in her seat. Leia wanted to say something to Jaina then, some words of encouragement
or advice, but found her words stuck in her throat. And not for any g forces.

It was the sight of Jaina, the fire in her brown eyes, the determined set of her jaw,
the sheer concentration. At that moment, Leia knew.

Her daughter was a woman now, and with all the grit of her father and mother combined.

Mara glanced over her right shoulder, between Jaina and Leia, and both followed her
lead long enough to see that two
of the initial four had altered course accordingly and were fast closing, laser cannons
blasting away.

“Hold on,” a confident Jaina warned, and she pulled back the stick, lifting the
Jade Sabre
’s nose, then shoved it forward, dropping the shuttle into a sudden, inverted loop.

“We’re doomed!” C-3PO cried from the hallway—the hallway ceiling, Leia knew.

Halfway around, Jaina broke the loop with a snap roll, then kicked her into a fishtail
and a barrel roll, bringing her about to nearly their original course, but with the
initial four behind them. Now she did kick in both ion drives, as if to use sheer
speed to split the gap between the two incoming fighters.

Both angled out suddenly, then turned back in, widening that escape route but giving
them a longer shooting angle at the shuttle, and an easier turn to pursue.

“They’re good,” Mara warned, but, like Leia, she found her words lost in her throat,
as Jaina, teeth gritted to fight back the g’s, reversed throttle.

“Princess—” The plaintive cry from the corridor ended abruptly in a loud crash.

“Coming in hot!” Mara cried, noting the fighter fast approaching to port.

Jaina didn’t, couldn’t even hear her; she had turned inward now, was feeling the Force
coursing through her, was registering every movement of her enemies and reacting instinctively,
playing the game three moves ahead. Before Mara had even begun to speak, Jaina had
hit the forward attitude adjustment jets, lifting the nose, then she pumped the throttle
and kicked the rudder, lifting the
Jade Sabre
and bringing her nose about to starboard, to directly face the other incoming Headhunter.

And that eager Rodian did come in at them, and hard, and the
Jade Sabre
’s defensive array screeched and lit up, warning of a lock-on.

“Jaina!” Leia cried.

“He’s got us!” Mara added.

But then the closer ship, coming from port, passed right under the
Jade Sabre
, and Jaina fired the repulsorlifts, bouncing the
Jade Sabre
up and sending the poor Headhunter into a wild, spinning roll.

The closing ship from starboard let fly its concussion missile, but it, and the Headhunter,
zipped right underneath the elevated
Jade Sabre
.

Before the three women could even begin to catch their breath, another ship streaked
in, an X-wing, the new XJ version of the starfighter, its own laser cannons blasting
away from its wingtips. Not at the
Jade Sabre
, though, but at the Headhunter that had just gone past.

“Who is that?” Leia asked, and Jaina, equally curious, brought the
Jade Sabre
about hard.

The Headhunter snap-rolled left and dived, but the far superior X-wing stayed on her,
lasers scoring hit after hit, depleting her shields and then blasting her apart into
a million pieces.

“A Jedi,” Mara and Jaina said together, and Leia, when she paused to collect the Force
sensations about her, concurred.

“Fast to the
Mediator
,” Leia instructed her daughter, and Jaina swung the
Jade Sabre
about yet again.

“I didn’t know there were any Jedi in the sector,” Leia said to Mara, who could only
shrug, equally at a loss.

“Another one’s out,” Jaina informed them, watching the blips on her sensor screen.
“And two others are vectoring away.”

“They want no part of a Jedi showing a willingness to shoot back,” Mara remarked.

“Maybe Rodians are smarter than I thought,” Leia said dryly. “Smooth it out,” she
instructed her daughter, unbuckling and climbing unsteadily to her feet.

Jaina reluctantly dialed the inertial compensator back to full.

“Only one pursuing,” Jaina informed them as Leia made her way to the door.

“The X-wing,” Mara added, and Leia nodded.

In the hallway outside the bridge, Leia found C-3PO inverted and against the wall,
his feet sticking up in the air, his head crunched forward so that his chin was tight
against his chest.

“You have to learn to hold on,” Leia said to him, helping him upright. She glanced
across the way to Bolpuhr as she spoke, to find the Noghri still standing calmly in
the exact spot she had assigned him.

Somehow, she wasn’t amazed.

Jaina took the
Jade Sabre
at a swift but steady pace toward the distant
Mediator
. She checked often for pursuit, but it quickly became obvious that the Rodians in
their outdated Headhunters wanted no part of this fight.

Leia rejoined them a short while later, to find Jaina in complete control and Mara
resting back in her seat, eyes closed. Even when Jaina asked her aunt a question about
docking procedures, the woman didn’t respond, didn’t even open her eyes.

“They’ll guide you in,” Leia interjected, and sure enough, a voice from the
Mediator
crackled over the opened comm, giving explicit directions for entry vector.

Jaina took her in, and Jaina took her down, easily—and after the display of flying
she had just given them out with the Headhunters, Leia wasn’t the least bit surprised
by her ability to so smoothly tight-dock a ship as large as the
Jade Sabre
.