Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 29

  Indeed, Tolann had withdrawn, from an inner pocket, two items. One was a small silver cylinder with circuitry and tiny stenciled letters on it. The other was a round device, the size and shape of a large credcoin, with a button in its center.

  Treen spared Lecersen. She seemed to be having difficulty suppressing further laughter.

  “The cylinder is a micro-thermal-detonator, the sort YVH droids carry and fire. He’ll throw that one against the wall to knock it down. The trigger in his left hand is linked to an identical detonator strapped to his body. His plan is to rush Fel, get his arms around the Head of State, and press the trigger.”

  “Ah.”

  On the monitor, a bright lance of green energy emerged from the lower corner of the Death Star’s viewport and struck Alderaan. Kester Tolann hurled his detonator to the base of the wall.

  Alderaan exploded, and then the entire wall showing the image from more than forty years before detonated in fire and smoke.

  Jaina was opening her mouth to respond to a wisecrack when the wall behind her exploded.

  The blast erupted from directly behind the security agent who’d pronounced the environment adequately free of toxins. The gout of flame picked her up, hurled her forward. Her flailing body cleared Allana, sitting to Jaina’s right, and crashed down in the middle of the table. Allana shrieked, the sound mostly swallowed by the report of the explosion.

  Jag, at the head of the table, to Jaina’s left, spun toward the source of the explosion. There was a blaster in his hand.

  Jaina heaved herself sideways, scooping Allana up, carrying the little girl in a lunge toward the door from the chamber. In her peripheral vision she saw her parents shoving at their side of the table. The table-top slanted as the heavy piece of furniture tilted toward the source of the explosion.

  A figure was emerging from the smoke and fire, through a hole leading into the next chamber. Tall and lean, he was dressed all in black and had his arms spread as if running toward a lover.

  Seven—as she hit the ground and rolled, Jaina saw seven blaster bolts converge on the intruder, one each from the surviving security operatives, two each from Jag and her father. Steam erupted from each hit as the blaster bolts vaporized skin and flesh beneath it. The intruder jerked, shuddered. He did not topple over backward; his forward momentum balanced the energy imparted by the blaster bolts, and he stopped in his tracks. His face was slack. Jaina knew that his life span could be counted in heartbeats, just long enough for shock to transmit through his nervous system and inform his brain that it was time to shut things down.

  Then two more holes smashed in through the wall to either side of the intruder. He was abruptly flanked by dark, skeleton-like carapaces with glowing red optic eyes and weapons systems emerging from arms and torsos.

  They were Yuuzhan Vong Hunter droids, the deadliest droids fabricated since the time of the Old Republic and the destroyer droids of that era.

  The human intruder glanced leftward at one of the YVH droids. The beginnings of a look of confusion crossed his face. Then his knees buckled, and he began to fall backward.

  The YVH droids swung their weapon barrels toward Jaina’s parents and advanced.

  The tactical combat computer in Jaina’s mind clicked through options. Get Allana to safety? Stay here and cover the girl? Attack? It took a fraction of a second for her to reach that third option, decide it was best, press Allana to the floor, and ignite her lightsaber. She leapt forward, swinging it with the speed and ferocity of one of the best-trained Jedi Knights in recent history.

  In her peripheral vision, she could see the upended tabletop disintegrating under the hail of blaster bolts from the droids’ right-arm weapons systems. Her father and Jag, shoulder to shoulder and barely visible over the lip of the ruined table, were putting round after blaster round into the droids’ heads. Her mother was standing, lightsaber lit, catching and deflecting some portion of the droids’ blasterfire, perhaps one bolt in three.

  The YVH droid on the left, nearer Jaina by two meters, reacted to her attack. A flash heralding an electrical discharge grew on its left arm. But her Force-aided burst of speed brought her beside the droid before it could fire at her and she swung.

  Jedi instinct was to take off the head of a well-armored foe who had to be put down instantly. She ignored that instinct. YVH droid heads were securely mounted atop their bodies by a series of laminanium alloy struts mimicking in their outline the contours of an athlete’s neck. A single lightsaber blow had to shear through several of them in turn to sever a YVH droid’s head. Instead, she struck low, beneath the rib cage. A single thick-armored span, similar to a human’s spinal column, held torso to pelvis. Thicker than any two neck struts, it was, unlike the neck, at a ninety-degree angle to the ground and would not cause a lightsaber blow to glance. Jaina hit it with all her considerable speed and strength.

  There was a bright flash from the point of impact, a zatt noise that rose even over the roar of the blasters, and abruptly that droid was falling in two pieces.

  It was not out of the action, just inconvenienced. All its primary weapons systems were still functional. As it fell, Jaina twirled her lightsaber and thrust with it. The point of the glowing blade entered the spinal shaft where it had been severed. The blade slammed up the length of the shaft, straightening the droid’s recurved spine, and plunged up through the neck into the droid’s skull, entering from an unarmored direction. Jaina’s attack reamed out its crucial cognitive processing circuitry before the droid finished crashing to the ground.

  Which left Jaina with her blade jammed into a laminanium corpse while she stood two meters from the droid’s equally dangerous partner.

  The second droid did not look at her. It kept up its withering fire against her father and Jag. But its torso swiveled toward Jaina, and a hatch opened. Jaina could see two parallel series of micro-rocket warheads displayed there. She switched off her lightsaber, and hoped she could dodge the first rocket to give her time to reactivate her weapon.

  Then the surviving YVH droid flew backward, away from her. In her peripheral vision, Jaina could see her mother gesturing, a shove, a focus for the Force technique she’d just employed, a telekinetic push. As the droid flew toward the hole by which it had entered the room, blasterfire from her father, Jag, and the security agents converged on the open hatch.

  The droid hurtled back into its original chamber and exploded, torn apart by the simultaneous detonation of its entire load of micro-rockets. Leia and Jaina threw arms across their eyes, turned away from the explosion. Han and Jag dropped below the lip of what remained of the table.

  And then there was silence.

  Comparative silence. As Jaina’s hearing began to return, she could hear alarms, cries of dismay from out in the hallway, a colorful and multilingual series of curses from her father.

  Leia deactivated her lightsaber and rushed over to Allana, who lay, wide-eyed but unhurt, where Jaina had left her. Jag rose, his blaster covering the holes through which the intruder and droids had entered. Suddenly he was surrounded in three-point formation by his surviving security agents. More security agents burst through the door; in that first instant, they and Han nearly traded fire before they recognized each other as friendlies. C-3PO was waddling back and forth, hands up in the air. R2-D2, carbon scoring from a blaster bolt now marking his cylindrical body, stayed where he was, dome head turning, assessing data.

  Jaina saw her father go to her mother’s side, then lean close to whisper into her ear. Thinking it might be important to know what they were saying, she used the Force to augment her hearing.

  “Now we know why Daala was stalling,” Han said. He reached down and scooped Allana in his arms. “And it really burns my jets.”

  Treen and Lecersen watched the entire event unfold on three monitors. One showed the holocam feed from Tolann’s goggles; acting as a distorted wide-screen holocam, they continued to record portions of the assassination attempt even after Tolann died and fell. The other
two showed the feeds from the YVH droids’ optics until each was destroyed in turn.

  When the second YVH feed cut out and went to static, the chief comm officer announced, “Five seconds.”

  Lecersen turned to Treen. “You see the difficulty in terminating Fel when his Jedi girlfriend and other Jedi are present.”

  She nodded. “I do. So you count this attempt as a failure.”

  “No, a success at the expected level.” He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. “Let’s move out.”

  A watery voice from an overhead speaker answered: “Yes, sir.” The passengers shifted all but invisibly as the disguised speeder began to move.

  Lecersen gestured at the Tolann feed. An Imperial security agent was now shown in exaggerated and distorted detail as he bent over Tolann’s body and, curious, reached for the goggles. “This feed is going to fall into the hands of news broadcasters. Head of State Attacked; Saved by Jedi. Head of State Dines with GA–Jedi Negotiators. Head of State Dines with Longtime Enemies of the Galactic Empire. Head of State Says a Very Bad Word. Head of State Endangers Little Girl.” Lecersen shrugged. “The story will be spun a dozen different ways for a dozen different audiences, and each one will come away with a poorer impression of Jagged Fel. As with the campaign against Daala, we build it in layers, over time.”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, the investigation will link our would-be assassin to like-minded reactionary traditionalists,” Lecersen continued. “But that isn’t going to fool the Jedi. They’re going to see through the false documents and manufactured communications—and assume that Chief Daala is the one to blame.”

  “I hope so. Did you know the little girl would be there?”

  Uncomfortable, Lecersen cleared his throat before answering. “No. She wasn’t on the reservation list. Too young to be counted, I suppose. I’m rather glad she survived.”

  Treen’s expression grew thoughtful. “I’m not so sure. Had the Solos’ daughter been killed …” She turned to Lecersen with a pout. “Had she died, I think Han Solo might have removed Daala for us.”

  JAG REMAINED STONE-FACED AS HIS DIPLOMATIC AIRSPEEDER DROPPED Han, Leia, Allana, and the droids off at the small, anonymous apartment that the Solos used for a safehouse. When they were gone, as Jaina curled up next to him on the passenger seat, he spoke for the first time since offering his apologies to the Solos. “When Han told me that Daala knew of tonight’s dinner, I should have canceled right then. Or rescheduled for a secure environment.”

  She lay her head against his shoulder, trying to soothe him. She knew it might be a lost cause. Like her father, Jag tended to brood. For days. “You couldn’t have guessed. Your security had everything checked out. The attacker had foreknowledge, false identification, intelligence sources …”

  Jag nodded. “It was someone highly placed. Either in Daala’s government, or among the Moffs.”

  “Or both,” Jaina said.

  Jag looked over at her. “You think they’re working together?”

  “I think they could be,” she said. “Maybe Daala has arranged better terms with Lecersen or one of the others.”

  Jag looked out the side window, watching the lights of the skytowers drift by, and considered. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I’m the one who wants the Empire brought fully into the Alliance, not the moffs.”

  “True, but who’s to say that’s what Daala wants?” Jaina asked. “Or maybe you weren’t even a real target. Did you notice how surprised your attacker seemed when the Why-Vees crashed through the wall?”

  He shook his head. “When they burst in, I was looking at them, not him. He was already dead, he just didn’t know it. Surprised?”

  “Yes. It was weird.”

  “This isn’t a criticism, just a question. Your Jedi abilities—did you feel anything before it started, any intimation of danger?”

  It was her turn to shake her head. “One living attacker, who’d already settled all doubts in his mind, who’d achieved a meditation-like state of calm … it’s not unusual not to detect such a person, especially in a busy public setting, where emotions can run high. I did feel his surprise, though. And that tells me a lot.”

  “Yes, but what, exactly? I’m not sure we know.” He looked back out the window for a few seconds, then abruptly sighed, shook his head, and looked back to Jaina. “Well, you do know what we have to do now, don’t you?”

  Jaina furrowed her brow, trying to think of what detail they should be running down, what puzzle they should be trying to solve.

  Finally, she gave up and shook her head. “No. What?”

  “We have to eat,” Jag said. “I’m still starved.”

  NEAR BRIGHT SUN HILL, DATHOMIR

  They sat in the darkness, Ben, Luke, and Dyon, surrounded by rain forest foliage and the sounds of nocturnal predators and prey.

  They were the predators. They intended for Nightsisters in general and Vestara in particular to be their prey.

  Dyon’s face was briefly illuminated as he consulted his datapad. He snapped it shut again. “Still there.” His voice, a whisper, barely carried to Ben’s ears.

  Ben glanced at his father. Luke was half in a meditative state, but nodded agreement. He could still feel Halliava’s presence, just as Dyon could still track the woman electronically—for a little while longer, at least.

  It had taken some doing. Luke, Ben, and Dyon, the Jedi contingent, had hit on a plan. Vestara seemed too clever, too sophisticated in the ways of civilized and high-tech worlds, to fall prey to it, but Halliava might not be. Dyon had set his comlink on continuous location broadcast and, at a moment while Luke chatted with Halliava and Ben made sure that Vestara was nowhere within viewing distance, contrived to plant the comlink on her gear—tucked into the folds of the bag holding the waterskin Halliava carried on scouting runs.

  But none of their comlinks was fully charged. The power source on Dyon’s might last another hour, or another three. It would not last all night.

  Ben saw his father’s head tilt. Luke’s eyes came half open. “Something’s changing.”

  “Is she moving?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Halliava smiled broadly as Vestara emerged from behind a thornbush. The offworld girl was as silent as a floating leaf, visible only in tiny slivers of moonlight slanting through the forest canopy overhead. She was a fine student. She would become a fine Nightsister, a natural leader for the next generation.

  Halliava embraced the girl. “You took some time getting here.”

  Vestara’s face was no longer visible in the moonlight, but her voice carried a note of irritation. “Olianne had a couple of chores for me. It took some time to get done with them and then descend the hill.”

  “It is nothing. I was hoping to be present for the landing of your Sith sisters.”

  “Give me my gear. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Halliava passed over the lightsaber and data tablet. Vestara activated the latter object, pressed a blinking icon, read the text message that the tablet displayed.

  “What does it say?”

  “Request for immediate contact and information. So they know exactly how much gear to bring down for the sisters.” Vestara keyed in a series of commands and held the tablet up beside her ear and mouth.

  Halliava heard a voice buzzing from the device, a woman’s voice. Vestara answered, “Vestara Khai, confirmed … Same coordinates. Twenty-two Nightsisters and myself, eighteen rancors … Understood. Khai out.” She slid the tablet into her pouch, hung the lightsaber from her belt.

  “You don’t wish me to carry your gear?”

  Vestara shook her head. “You plan to destroy the Bright Sun Clan tonight, yes? Before they ever see another sunrise. We no longer need to hide who I am.”

  Halliava struck off into the forest, moving along a game trail that could not be seen in the darkness but whose contours she had memorized during the day. For now it led in the approximate direction of the meadow where the Nightsisters w
ould meet the Sith. She’d gone only a few dozen paces, though, when she felt something, a ripple of distant awareness. She stopped.

  “What is it?”

  “One of them is aware of me. One of the offworld men.”

  “Let’s lead them in the direction of their deaths, then.”

  Halliava nodded and resumed her movement.

  It was different this time, though. The alien men had followed her before, and would eventually adjust themselves to her movements. But this time, whenever the game trail took a new direction or she and Vestara stopped briefly, their trackers adjusted themselves instantly to the change. It was as though she and Vestara were under the eyes of their enemies, when Halliava knew they could not be.

  She explained this to Vestara.

  The girl didn’t have to think about it long. “We’re carrying a tracking device. A second device, I mean. I was already carrying one to lead the Jedi around.”

  “What’s a tracking device?”

  “It’s as though we’re constantly shrieking at the top of our lungs, but only our pursuers can hear us. They’ve slipped something into our possessions. But let’s keep it for now. When we get near the meadow, we can put it on a bird or something and let them chase it for a while. By the time they figure out they’ve been misled and return to find us, we’ll have the Sith weapons and will be able to destroy them.”

  “I like that.”

  They continued on.

  “Halliava, why is it so important that things remain as they always were?”

  Halliava shrugged, though she knew Vestara could not see the motion. “It just is.”

  “But that’s foolish. Change is inevitable.”

  “I agree with you. And unlike some of us, many of us, I do not find men objectionable. I do not even insist that they be slaves. But for any group, there can be only so many rulers. If I am to rule, if the sisters I have chosen are to rule, there is no room for anyone else. And new ways mean more people gain the skills and the desire to rule.”