Reunion (14 page)

That the Yuuzhan Vong had also located the living planet, however, didn’t bode well. They had successfully achieved their goal—only to find not solace from their concerns, but rather more problems. At least, she thought, they weren’t prisoners. The door hung invitingly open, and there were no guards outside. This seemed strangely at odds with the distrust the Ferroans had displayed since the Jedi Knights had arrived. Then again, perhaps security wasn’t that much of an issue when you were on a planet that could keep a watch on everything for you …

Jacen was about to try some more of the food when he noticed three childlike faces with wide eyes peering around the entrance to the habitat at him. They disappeared with a giggle as soon as they saw him looking back at them.

“Nice to see that not all of the Ferroans hold us in contempt,” Mara said at his shoulder.

He was about to agree with her when Saba uttered a low, perplexed growl. She was standing off to one side, staring out of one of the windows.

“Saba?” Mara said. “What is it?”

The Barabel shook her head uncertainly. “This one
feels Sekot not just on the surface of this world, but beneath it, too.”

“I’ve been wondering about that also,” Jacen said. “I’m sensing life below us as well as around and above us.”

“You mean in subterranean chambers?” Mara asked.

Jacen shook his head. “In the rock itself.”

“That’s not as crazy as it might sound,” Danni said around a mouthful of berries. “Some species of bacteria can survive a long way underground—kilometers, even. If Sekot arises out of the biological matrix covering the planet, then it seems reasonable that the life
inside
it contributes, too.”

“Which might explain the planetary defense systems we saw in action,” Jacen said.

“How, exactly?” Hegerty asked.

“Well, Vergere talked about biological factories making spaceships and other things,” he said. “Sekot clearly found ways to use the technology the Ferroans brought with them when they colonized this world, before it became conscious. Since then, it’s gone even farther. If life has spread down into the crust, and perhaps even deeper, then Sekot could conceivably manipulate the planet on a grand scale.”

“You mean like building a couple of immense hyperdrives,” Hegerty said.

“That,” Jacen said, “but also holding the surface together during long jumps—or bending magnetic field lines at will. Jumping in and out of systems must have been fairly traumatic; without something to keep heavy radiation and gravitational effects at bay, the surface of the planet could have been totally sterilized.”

“What I want to know,” Mara said, “is where Sekot actually came from. If life on this scale can evolve naturally, then why isn’t
every
planet talking back?”

There was no easy answer to that question.

“Perhaps there’s something special about the Ferroans,” Hegerty suggested.

“I’m not picking up anything radically different about them,” Luke said. The Jedi Master opened his eyes, looking at each of them in turn. “They’re naturally attuned to the life fields around them, but not symbiotically. That would happen to anyone born and raised in an environment as strong in the Force as Zonama Sekot.”

“Perhaps it was just a random mutation,” Danni said. “If the odds are against something like this happening, then that might explain why it’s only happened the once.”

Luke nodded thoughtfully. “It’s possible. I’m sure the Magister will be able to tell us more.”

Jacen hoped so. When it came to Zonama Sekot, there were too many unknown factors for his liking.

“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” Mara said, her voice whispering close to his ear.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She indicated the entrance with a nod. Turning, he saw that one of the little girls had returned and was staring in at him again. When she saw him look at her, she waved shyly and then quickly ducked out of sight with another giggle. Smiling, he went over to the doorway and looked around outside for her.

The girl was standing near the base of a boras, ready to flee if she had to.

“What happened to your friends?” he asked.

“They’re scared,” she said.

“There’s no need to be,” he said. He extended his open hands in a
no-weapons
gesture. “See?”

She pointed at his belt. “What about your lightsaber?”

Jacen was surprised by the girl’s knowledge of the weapon, but he tried not to let it show. “You know about these?”

The girl nodded.

“And do you also know that I’m a Jedi?” Another nod. “The older ones tell stories about the Jedi.”

“What do these stories say?”

She hesitated, looking around in a manner that suggested she was worried she might be seen talking to him.

“What color is yours?” she asked.

“Color?” Then, realizing: “Oh, my lightsaber? Would you like to see it?”

She shook her head in a definite no. “They’re dangerous!”

“Not in the right hands,” he said. “I would never hurt you, or anyone here.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Jedi Knights have other ways to hurt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anakin killed the Blood Carver without a lightsaber.”

That pulled Jacen up with a start, and for a few seconds he didn’t know what to say.

Anakin killed the Blood Carver without a lightsaber
.

The words sounded strange, no matter how many times he rolled them about in his head. How could his brother have ever come to Zonama Sekot without Jacen knowing? There was only one possible answer, and for a joyous moment Jacen entertained the hope that Anakin had somehow managed to manifest himself here in ghostly form—as had his uncle’s teachers, Master Kenobi and …

Then the hope died as a cold feeling blossomed in his gut.

Anakin killed the Blood Carver …

“Tell me,” he said, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice, the fear of what the truth might be. “What was the name of the other Jedi, who came here with Anakin?”

“Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

The child looked at Jacen as though he were an idiot, and he wondered if that was exactly how he
should
feel.

“Tescia!”

A woman’s voice rang out, and the girl jumped back with a guilty start.

“Tescia, what are you doing? I told you to stay away from there!”

With a fearful look, the girl fled, leaving Jacen standing alone in the doorway.

He watched as the girl disappeared into one of the habitats with her mother urging her on. Then, with a heavy heart and a sense of foreboding, he returned inside to relate what to the others he’d just heard.

Gilad Pellaeon surveyed the battle from the bridge of
Right to Rule
. It was going as well as could be expected. The chunk of the retreating Yuuzhan Vong fleet that he’d been chasing from Imperial Space had stumbled across Generis with eager destructiveness. He had been unsure what their intentions were until he consulted old intelligence reports and learned that Generis was a relay base for communications between the Unknown Regions and the Core. Given the Chiss’s isolationist stance, it had never been targeted for sabotage by the Empire. Taken by surprise, there had been little the Imperial forces could do for the relay base. Generis had fallen, and the Yuuzhan Vong had moved immediately on to Esfandia, to repeat the insult.

Pellaeon didn’t consider it anything more than that. The commander in charge of the retreat, B’shith Vorrik, wasn’t a sophisticated strategist. There was little chance of a trap, or of there being a higher purpose to his strategy. The fact that Luke Skywalker had disappeared into the Unknown Regions on a secret mission just weeks earlier couldn’t possibly be connected to the attack. How
could Vorrik possibly know of the mission? And if someone higher up
did
know about it, why should they even care?

Pellaeon smiled to himself as the battle ebbed and flowed around him. The answer to the last question was probably the key to the mystery—if indeed there was one. Whatever Skywalker was up to, it was either totally irrelevant or absolutely integral to
everything
. There was no chance of anything in between, he was sure.

And in the meantime lay the opportunity to return the insult …

“Watch the northern flank,” he instructed one of his senior officers, indicating a section of the battlefield where the Yuuzhan Vong were managing to regroup. “Get a yammosk jammer in there now. I want that entire side as chaotic as possible.”

He was under no illusions that they would win. All they had to do was hurt Vorrik long enough to make him reconsider his attack, and/or rescue the hardware and crew aboard the relay station. If they were alive down there, then he would make sure they were found. He wasn’t about to pull back until he knew for certain one way or the other.

Pellaeon frowned, still concerned by the northern flank. Despite a large injection of TIE fighters and energy fire, the Yuuzhan Vong persisted in gathering there. He didn’t know what it was they were up to, but he did know he wanted it stopped.

“Put me through to Leia Organa Solo.”

“I’m afraid
Millennium Falcon
has dropped off our screens, sir.”

“Destroyed?” He wasn’t sure what he disbelieved more: that such a thing could happen, or that he’d failed to notice it.

“Gone to ground in the atmosphere, sir. Or so we suspect.
It was last seen descending toward the southern pole.”

This would have placed the
Falcon
on the side of the planet farthest from where the fighting was most intense, and therefore in the best position to be overlooked. He nodded, satisfied with the assumption that the Princess and her rough-and-ready husband had plans of their own.

“Get me the commander of the Galactic Alliance frigate instead.”

Within seconds, a flickering, colorless hologram of Captain Todra Mayn stood before him. “Your orders, Admiral?”

A certain stiffness to the woman’s voice assured him that past enmities between the New Republic and the Empire hadn’t been completely forgotten. But she wasn’t obstructing him, and that was the main thing.

“I have a mission for your strike group,” he said. “Can you spare three fighters?”

She looked reluctantly at the displays before her. “We will if required to, sir.”

“But you don’t wish to?” he asked.

A flicker of uncertainty passed across her face. “To be honest, sir, we’re doing some damage on that warship. With just half a squadron to watch our back, I’m not sure we’d be able to effectively keep up the attack.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll make sure you get backup.”

Pellaeon gestured to an aide and instructed her to assign a full TIE squadron to
Pride of Selonia
. Then he returned his attention to Mayn.

“So, Captain, do you think Galactic Alliance, Chiss, and Empire can work together?”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough, sir,” she said. “I’ll instruct Colonel Fel to take his orders directly from you.”

“Very good. Carry on, Captain.”

The woman nodded a little less stiffly than before, and the transmission ended.

Pellaeon turned back to the fighting.

“Connect me to Colonel Fel,” he instructed his aide.

“Twin One,” came the almost instantaneous reply.

“Colonel, I have a mission for three of your best pilots,” he said. “The northern flank is proving resistant to our tactics. I’d like you to reinforce the message we’re trying to deliver.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s a yammosk in there somewhere. We haven’t been able to get close enough to find it yet, but we’re working on it. When we do locate it, I’d like you to keep it distracted. I want it out of the picture.”

“Understood, sir.” There was a slight pause. “Any further instructions, Admiral?”

“Such as?”

“Approach vectors, rendezvous coordinates, attack runs—”

Pellaeon smiled. “Why don’t you just surprise me, Colonel?”

Jag frowned behind the controls of his clawcraft.

“
Surprise
you, sir?”

For a moment, Jag swore the Admiral was chuckling—but that simply couldn’t be possible. Grand Admiral Pellaeon—who had served under Thrawn, and who had almost single-handedly prevented the Imperial Remnant from flying apart in a thousand fragments—was not renowned for his sense of humor.

“Do you have a problem with that, Colonel?”

“No, sir. I just—”

“Then carry out your orders. We don’t have time to debate the matter.”

The line fell silent, and Jag was left shaking his head.
Surprise me
.

Those two words were anathema to everything he’d been taught at the Chiss academy, and that the Imperials to a lesser degree espoused. Not only was it dangerous to identify personally with one’s role in a battle, but an orderly, coordinated offensive was the only way to ensure that such a large operation could work effectively. Let every pilot go rogue and follow his instincts, and the battle would quickly degenerate into chaos.

But it wasn’t every pilot, he told himself.

Surprise me
.

It was a challenge. His response wouldn’t prove just his own worth, but the worth of the Alliance and the Chiss forces as well.

The legendary Grand Admiral Pellaeon had asked him for a
surprise
. He had an idea where to start:

What would
Jaina
do
?

He pondered this while he got the basics out of the way, informing Captain Mayn of his decision to leave Twin Suns in Twin Seven’s capable hands. She confirmed her new role with a simple affirmative. With Twins Four and Eight trailing him, Jag swept away from the dogfights taking place in the vicinity of the
Selonia
.

Telemetry flowed in from the Imperial forces. They were fighting on numerous fronts simultaneously, doing their best to keep the Yuuzhan Vong distracted from the relay base below. A large amount of wreckage—ranging from microscopic dust fragments in boiling clouds to drifting hulks, their biological systems spewing fluids and sweeping the space around them with strange gravitational storms as their dovin basals expired—had accumulated in the space around Esfandia. Some of it was already falling into the atmosphere, slashing the dark, icy sky with brilliant streaks. Jag only hoped the
Falcon
knew well enough to keep its head down.