Force Heretic_ Refugee Part 26

And then there was Tahiri...

Good works lead to evil results.

Tahiri's brainwas.h.i.+ng at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong shaper Mezhan Kwaad had been a terrible thing, but her rescue and apparent recovery had balanced that out. Anakin's growing love for her had been canceled out by his death. Where did that leave her now? The reemergence of the Riina Kwaad personality was only going to make things worse, surely. If there was balance in the galaxy, when was it going to swing again in Tahiri's favor?

Jaina's thoughts were distracted when the sound of engines whining joined the chanting. It was growing steadily louder. Jaina looked around, then up. Emerging smoothly from the clouds were three D'kee-da.s.s P'w'eck troops.h.i.+ps. Bulbous around the middle and tapering to a fine point at the stern, they slowly descended toward the stadium. The huge canopy flag ripped beneath the landing struts of one of the s.h.i.+ps. Its tattered remnants flapped chaotically in the wind.

"Reinforcements?" Han asked of no one in particular. Some of the stadium crowd had defied security after the explosion and spilled into the center s.p.a.ce, waving placards angrily. Jaina wondered if they thought the P'w'eck were behind the crisis. The P'w'eck, armed with paddle beamers, were more than capable of keeping the crowd back, but they must have been aware that the crowd could easily grow larger and more hostile if provoked.

"A quick getaway, perhaps," Jaina suggested. "They might be keen enough to consecrate in the middle of all this, but I doubt that they'd want to stick around afterward."

"You could be right, honey," her father said. Jaina was struck by conflicting impressions of him: how old he was getting, and how much more alive he looked when the going got tough. He might sweat and fidget through diplomatic negotiations, but when things took a turn for the physical, he was often the first into the fray.

The alien vessels rotated in midair when they were over the stadium and descended at a safe distance from the ring of P'w'eck guards. The sound of engines had risen to an almost painful level, and the Bakurans below quickly scattered, shaking fists into the air as they ran. The noise drowned out any protest they made. D'kee-cla.s.s s.h.i.+ps were small as far as s.p.a.cecraft went, but still four stories high from base to tip.

"Excuse me, Mistress," C-3PO said.

"Look," Han said, shouting over the growing din. "Three more!" She shaded her eyes and looked where he was pointing. Another trio of s.h.i.+ps was descending beyond the stadium walls, the same type of troops.h.i.+p as those that had just landed.

"What are they doing?" Leia asked. Jaina recognized the edge to her mother's tone. She, too, was starting to have misgivings about all this.

"If I might interrupt, Mistress," 3PO tried again, gesticulating off to one side. He was desperately trying to make himself heard, but the racket was smothering most of what he was saying.

Suddenly the engines from all three of the s.h.i.+ps in the stadium below cut out, allowing a relative quiet to settle around the area. The chanting had ceased also, and the Keeramak was now standing in the middle of his enormous entourage, glinting as though wearing rainbow-tinted armor. The guards stood with their tails flat to the ground, paddle beamers held at the ready across their chests.

For a moment, everything was still. Then, with one eye on what was taking place with the P'w'eck, Jaina leaned toward C-3PO and muttered, "What was that you just said, Threepio?"

"The ceremony is complete, Mistress," the golden droid said.

"Thanks, Goldenrod," Han said. "But that seems pretty obvious from where I'm standing."

"But, sir, I've been trying to explain that the ceremony required the Keeramak to give Bakura a new name - Xwhee." Leia faced him fully now. "Did he happen to mention this fact to the Bakurans before he did it?"

"I doubt that very much, Mistress," C-3PO said. "You see, the Keeramak has also dedicated Xwhee to the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium." Han and Jaina also turned to look at C-3PO now. As if in response to the droid's words, a peal of thunder rumbled from the tropical sky. Fat raindrops began to splatter his metal cranium, turning what dust was there to a reddish mud.

"Threepio, are you sure about this?" Leia asked.

"Oh, quite certain. In fact, it was stated several times and in different ways: as the 'glorious Ssi-ruuvi Imperium,' the 'majestic Ssi-ruuvi Imperium,' the 'boundless and incomparable Ssi-ruuvi Imperium'-"

Han turned to Leia, speaking over the top of C-3PO. "Couldn't this just be part of the ceremony? Something carried over from the old ways? I mean, we still talk about the New Republic instead of the Galactic Alliance. Maybe their new Ssi-ruuvi Imperium has nothing at all to do with the old one."

"I don't think so," Leia said. "Look at the s.h.i.+ps." Rain began to fall in great sheets across the stadium as the sides of the troops.h.i.+ps opened, issuing ramps. Jaina squinted to see through the rain, trying to make out what lay inside.

Dull brown paint was falling away in the rain, revealing golden scales, the sign of the Ssi-ruuvi priest caste. Relieved of the need for concealment, the priests' postures straightened, shrugging off the hunch of years of supposed servility and adopting the cold, straight-backed pride Jaina remembered from holos.

Realization struck her like a physical blow. Of course!

The treaty with the P'w'eck was a smokescreen for the real tactic: once Bakura belonged to the Ssi-ruuk, once it was consecrated, they could advance on it in force!

"This can't be good," Han said as columns of russet-scaled Ssi-ruuvi warriors began marching out of the nearest troops.h.i.+p.

Jag's frustration immediately increased when, at the peak of the consecration ceremony, the feed from the ground dissolved in a burst of static. All transmissions from the planet ceased, sending white noise blistering through his ears. He quickly checked his comm and ascertained that the problem wasn't onboard. It lay outside his clawcraft.

"Selonia, I seem to have a communications outage. Anything coming through from your end?"

"Negative, Twin One," came the reply, distorted but comprehensible.

"We've lost our uplink, too. Hold on while we look into it." Jag waited anxiously with only the persistent static to listen to. Then, amid the crackly hissing, he heard another noise. It was like a wailing, constantly fading in and out. It was unsettling-both haunting and hypnotic at the same time...

"I have launches!" The voice of one of his pilots jolted him out of his reverie. A quick glance at his board confirmed the report: the nearest of the two P'w'eck carriers, Errinung'ka, was disgorging dozens of smaller vessels into the s.p.a.ce around it. His computer instantly recognized and marked the familiar droid fighters, but that proved to be only half the complement of the new s.h.i.+ps. The rest were of a type never before seen outside the borders of the Ssi-ruuk Im-perium. They were V'sett-cla.s.s fighters, and if his memory served him well they possessed twice the firepower of ordinary droid fighters, as well as a superior maneuverability. Most importantly, though, they carried flesh-and-blood pilots.

It took him only a moment to figure out what was going on. The P'w'eck's offer of peace had been completely bogus; the consecration of the planet had been nothing more than a means to clear the way for an invasion force! It didn't take a genius to know that things were about to get very nasty, very quickly.

"Twin Suns, full alert. Selonia, are you registering this?"

"We have it on our scopes now. Trying to raise General Panib...

Communications are out down there, too." The transmission dissolved into static again. The voice returned briefly with "... be jammed somehow. Be on..." The signal vanished beneath a howl of rising interference. Jag turned down the gain. What next? They had enemy s.h.i.+ps pouring onto the scan and, as yet, no response from the local forces. Between himself and the enemy were the mixed flights comprising the Bakuran/ P'w'eck "honor guard," now numbering in excess of two hundred. It seemed from the way they were still flying in formation that they hadn't received orders to engage or break away. This surprised Jag. Even if the messages were being jammed, surely one of the Bakuran honor guard pilots would have realized by now what was going on. And yet, there they all were, flying in perfect formation, completely unaffected by what was happening around them.

Clicking his wingmates, he brought his clawcraft around to match vectors with the nearest trio of honor guard fighters. Two droid s.h.i.+ps flanked a Bakuran Y-wing in perfect synchrony, shadowing its every move as it swept around the planet.

He scanned the formation for energy emissions and soon discovered that "shadowing" was as far from the truth as it could get. The two droid s.h.i.+ps had powerful tractor beams locked on the Y-wing and were forcing it to go where they wanted it.

He plotted its course. In two orbits, it would intersect with the carrier Firrinree. A cold chill ran through him. The droid s.h.i.+ps were kidnapping the pilot!

A quick scan confirmed that the same was true of all the other honor guard flights. Powerless to resist the P'w'eck tractor beams, the Bakuran pilots were helpless in the trap sprung on them-and half of the Bakuran's Defense Fleet was about to be taken down with them.

There was no way he could warn Twin Suns, Selonia, or General Panib. However, he wasn't about to sit back and let those pilots be reeled in to be enteched. He could only hope that others would understand his actions and follow his lead.

Arming his forward batteries, he thrust hard to cut off the droid fighters. A burst from his blaster cannon skittered off s.h.i.+elds that were tougher than he'd expected. It weakened them slightly, but there was certainly no penetration. As soon as he'd swept past, one of them broke away to give chase. The first of his wingmates, Twin Six, met it with a hail of laserfire that forced it to change course. It ducked away, although not before sending a spray of energy at Twin Three as it did.

The second droid s.h.i.+p and its unwilling charge were making a break for it, abandoning all pretense of cooperation and changing course.

Instead of arcing gradually around the planet, the pair headed directly for Firrinree. A quick glance at his scopes confirmed that the others were doing the same. The masquerade was over; there was no longer any mistaking the honor guard for what it was.

Jag lined up behind the fleeing droid fighter and sent a volley of lasers through its weakened s.h.i.+elds, quickly reducing it into s.p.a.ce dust.

The liberated Y-wing instantly changed course, wiggling on its long axis in what Jag took as a gesture of thanks.

Twin Two dispatched the other droid fighter and swooped back to join formation. The Y-wing followed, emitting a series of clicks. Jag didn't need any more encouragement than that. Leading a diamond-shaped formation of mixed vessels, he targeted the next "honor guard" trio and closed in.

By then, his tactical scopes were full of new targets. The alien carriers had emptied their launching bays, and hundreds of fully fueled fighters were jockeying to protect the inbound captives. A rash of launches from Sentinel and Defender indicated that the Bakuran Defense Fleet had finally caught on. The sky around Bakura was soon boiling as the two forces clashed over the "honor guard" s.h.i.+ps, one half fighting to save them, the other half doing everything in their power to repel the rescue attempt.

Jag flew as he hadn't flown in a long time. It felt good to be fighting an enemy who used a technology he was familiar with-even if that enemy easily outnumbered him and his squadron. In a strange way, it felt like he was back at the academy sitting through a simulation, riding out old melees with an instructor on his case. He was pleased that time away fighting the Yuuzhan Vong hadn't eroded the reflexes he'd honed as a child.

The manned V'sett fighters were tough kills, though. Flattened and slightly curved versions of the droid fighters the Ssi-ruuk usually sent into battle, these were equipped with s.h.i.+eld generators and sensor arrays at every corner. Their engines flashed an eye-piercing violet when powering at max; their weapons burned a brilliant white. Each pilot hid behind an opaque hull and s.h.i.+elds that turned mirror-bright every time a shot came too near.

It was an earlier version of those s.h.i.+elds, Jag had learned in the academy, that the Emperor Palpatine had coveted. Hence his attempt to form a treaty with the Ssi-ruuk, just before the Rebels had beaten him at Endor. Jag dreaded to think what might have happened had the Emperor's dream come true. If he'd had these s.h.i.+elds back then, the Rebellion would have undoubtedly been quashed and the outcome of the Battle of Endor would have been considerably different. Moreover, the Chiss, safe in the Unknown Regions, might not have been safe for much longer.

But the Chiss had fought the Ssi-ruuvi fighters before and, even after years of technical improvements, they were capable of doing so again now. V'sett fighters, Jag soon discovered, were vulnerable to multiple attacks. Converging in pairs from different angles was difficult to coordinate without the benefit of effective communications, but all the pilots read the situation similarly and they managed to struggle through. With a few multiple attacks under their belts, it got steadily easier, and in no time at all they were taking out V'sett fighters in sufficient quant.i.ties to make the Ssi-ruuk think twice. Soon the dense and volatile orbits surrounding Bakura were a ma.s.s of energy, dangerous for pilots on both sides to navigate through.

Seeing one of his squadron's X-wings trying to shake off the V'sett fighter riding its tail, Jag set off in pursuit. He got a lock on the fighter as it dog-tailed after the X-wing, and he fired when he thought he had a reasonable aim, but the fighter suddenly banked left after the X-wing and the shot went wide. Jag cursed under his breath as he brought the clawcraft back onto the fighter's tail. Before he could line up another shot, two more fighters came at him from his port side, weapons blazing angrily at him. He sucked air through clenched teeth sharply and nosedived away from the incoming fire. Seconds later, when he had chance to look again for the X-wing, he saw it fall apart in a blaze of fire beneath the V'sett's blasters.

The two fighters he had just eluded were quickly back on his tail.

With the rest of the squadron engaged in the battle elsewhere, he knew that help wouldn't be coming anytime soon. He was going to have to make his own luck...

Han was backing up, looking for the nearest exit. From below came the sound of screams as the crowd ran in a panic from the advancing aliens. Security guards opened fire on the Ssi-ruuvi warriors, who responded with blistering barrages from their paddle beamers. In leaps and bounds, propelled by powerful thigh and tail muscles, the Ssi-ruuk soon overwhelmed the Bakuran troops. The P'w'eck guards, who had originally protected the Keeramak from attack, turned out to be genuine P'w'eck, unlike the disguised priests; they protected their leader behind a tight huddle, beamers at the ready.

"A tactical retreat might be called for," Jaina suggested to her parents. "Now that Bakura has been consecrated, my guess is that these guys won't be afraid to fight anymore."

"If we get to the Falcon," Leia said, her Noghri bodyguards closing in around her, watching the Ssi-ruuvi warriors balefully, "we'll have a better chance of dealing with this."

"Does Selonia know?" Han asked.

Leia shook her head. "Jammed." Jaina thought of Jag and hoped he was all right. There was no telling what was happening in orbit. If it was anything like what was happening down here on the ground, then it was going to get messy fast. She wished she were behind the controls of her X-wing, flying at his side, her only concern the enemy in her crosshairs.

Things were a whole lot simpler in a dogfight.

But wis.h.i.+ng wasn't going to get her or her family away from here.

She needed to act-and quickly!

She turned to find Goure standing at Tahiri's side.

"We need a way out of here," she said.

He looked up at her, his face illuminated sharply by a flash of lightning. "The main exits are going to be blocked," he shouted over the thunder rolling from the sky.

Jaina looked around again. The rain was thickening, making it harder to see what was happening in the bowl of the stadium. Paddle beams sizzled through the air, weaving a dense and deadly fabric of energy below. The leading edge was coming rapidly closer.

She nodded after a moment. "I think it's safe to a.s.sume that that's what the other three s.h.i.+ps were for: to keep us from getting out."

"The way we came, then." The Ryn pointed at the craterous hole in the stands. "It has to be safer than staying out in the open." Jaina agreed, and together they began to gather up the confused rescue workers and spectators still milling about the area. She explained her intentions as best she could, asking them to trust her as she sent them down into the hole. There was little resistance from the people; in the absence of any other plan, most were more than happy to follow her instructions.

Once everyone was in, Han and Leia were to go next, then wait for Goure to lower Tahiri into the hole on her gurney. Jaina and the Noghri guards would take up the rear to protect everyone's backs.

"What about the Prime Minister?" one of the women asked as she went past Jaina.

"What about him?" she shouted back over the rain. "He's dead!"

"We can't leave his body here for the Fluties!"

"But-" The protest died in her throat. "Okay, okay, I'll see what I can do!" Leaving her parents to supervise the evacuation, she looked around for the stretcher on which she'd last seen the body. She found it tucked away behind an outcrop, covered in a body bag. If she could slave it to Tahiri's re-pulsor gurney, maybe they'd be able to take both of them out in tandem. The moment it got in her way, she told herself, then she would cut it loose. The living had to take priority over - Her thoughts stopped in midtrack as she went to move the stretcher. The body bag caught on a twisted seat and pulled away, revealing it to be empty.

Her puzzlement was short-lived. Someone else must have had the same concerns and already taken the body to safety; one of the guards or Senators, perhaps, who had made a break for it without the others. She didn't care. The problem was no longer hers; that was all that mattered.

She returned to the crater, where the last of the survivors was disappearing into the hole. Glad that they would soon be making a move, she looked over her shoulder at the battle taking place in the arena below. The rain was heavier than ever, but she could still make out figures moving in groups across the stadium bowl. The blasterfire was becoming increasingly sporadic as Bakuran resistance failed before the Ssi-ruuvi advance. It wouldn't be long now before the stadium belonged to the Ssi-ruuk. Soon after, she a.s.sumed with a shudder, the captives would be rounded up and taken to the carriers in orbit for entechment...

She turned when a hand touched her shoulder.

"Come on, Jaina," her father said. "There's nothing more we can do here." Although it galled her to leave the battle, the odds were so overwhelming that she knew she didn't really have a choice.

Before she climbed back down into the hole, she cast her eyes up at the cloud-packed sky.

May the Force be with you, Jag, she thought. Wherever you are.

Catching sight of the nearer of Bakura's two moons, Jag pulled his clawcraft up and away, aiming with full throttle toward it. He didn't need to look back to know the fighters were following; the s.p.a.ce ahead of him was puffing with bright explosions from their misfired shots.

He brought the clawcraft in steeply to the northernmost part of the moon, hoping to find some form of cover that might help him evade his pursuers. The closer he drew, the less likely this seemed. He brought his s.h.i.+p around from its almost perpendicular descent, speeding off across the surface of the moon. The ground was smooth and rolling, and looked to Jag to be made of an immense lava flow that had long since cooled. But it offered him no place to hide-and right now, that was all that mattered.

He jinked and swerved continuously in a bid to avoid both fire and tractor beams, but he knew he wouldn't be able to keep it up indefinitely. He cursed himself again; this little maneuver of his had put him in a worse situation than he'd been in before!

Without warning, the surface of the moon dipped sharply ahead of him, and the smooth ground he'd been following became a motionless waterfall that poured into a huge canyon easily fifty kilometers wide and at least a couple deep. Crags appeared out of the shadows, along with large rocky outcrops that jutted from the walls of the canyon like crimson fists. The V'sett fighters followed effortlessly, no longer trying to shoot him out of the sky. They were obviously intent on capturing him now. They must have realized that eventually they would get him; they just had to be patient.

He brought the clawcraft down, getting in as close as possible to the floor of the canyon, swerving frantically to avoid mineral deposits protruding from the canyon floor. Ten meters wide and at least three times that high, they looked like enormous petrified trees. And there were plenty of them, too, forcing Jag to bring all his flying experience to bear just to avoid hitting any. It was only when he inadvertently collected one with a s.h.i.+eld that he realized it didn't matter whether he avoided them or not: the "tree" dissolved into a powder that silently washed over his viewport. After this he didn't even bother trying to fly his way between these bizarre-looking protrusions; he just flew in a straight line, bringing down whatever was in his path. Hopefully, he thought, the resulting dust would be enough to blind his pursuers - even if it afforded him only a moment or two, at least it would be something.

The canyon suddenly narrowed, though, and he knew he would have to climb out sooner rather than later, or wind up smas.h.i.+ng straight into a wall. He brought his s.h.i.+p up, aiming for a rocky outcrop on the uppermost ridge of the canyon wall. Two bony fingers of rock stabbed out into the sky, as if pointing to the battle taking place overhead. If he could make it back up to the main battle, he might just be able to get help from the others in the squadron to get these fighters off his tail...

Realizing his intentions, the fighters opened fire again. Rock exploded from the canyon wall nearby; debris rattled against his s.h.i.+elds.

He aimed between the fingers of rock, but miscalculated the s.p.a.ce between them and clipped one on the way through. He called out in alarm as the s.h.i.+p rolled out of control out into the s.p.a.ce above the moon.

He emerged from the spin battered and barely in control. The two V'setts on his tail negotiated the hail of debris and kept coming. He jerked his clawcraft from side to side in a desperate attempt to avoid their grasping tractor beams, but his collision with the rocks had allowed them to gain on him. It would only be a matter of seconds now before - A white blur streaked up past his viewport. His sensors barely had time to register the Y-wing as it flew within meters of him, torpedo ports firing. The enemy Ssi-ruuvi pilots didn't have time to deactivate their tractor beams before they sucked in the proton torpedoes. One instantly exploded; the second took a hit that sent it spi-raling wildly back to the surface of the moon, where it flowered in a brief and silent explosion.

Jag's rear scopes were clear again, but his little jaunt to Bakura's moon hadn't come without a price. His damaged thruster complained with a stutter and a whine as he pulled hard around. The Ywing swooped back to match vectors with him. The pilot-the same one Jag and his wingmates had rescued at the beginning of the battle-waved through her canopy. The gesture had little joy in it, though, and a quick scan told him why.

The Bakuran Defense Fleet was in bad shape. Sentinel had been hit by heavy bombing and its s.h.i.+elds were down. Defender was standing defiant but without enough fighters to have any real effect on the battle. The Ssi-ruuvi forces rapidly mopped up any fighters it launched. Outnumbered and taken by surprise, Bakura lay open to attack.

In complete contrast, the two giant Sh'ner-cla.s.s planetary a.s.sault carriers hung s.h.i.+ning and impregnable above the battlefield. Their impenetrable s.h.i.+elds had repelled everything thrown at them. Cl.u.s.ters of captured s.h.i.+ps of all shapes hung nearby, waiting to be processed. Denied the basic dignity of dying in battle, hundreds of pilots trapped in durasteel coffins had only entechment to look forward to.

A triangular formation of seven V'sett fighters accelerated over the horizon of the small moon, coming up hard on Jag and the Y-wing. Jag urged his clawcraft to go faster, but it had given him everything it could. Seven fully armed s.h.i.+ps against his damaged craft and the old Ywing was a foregone conclusion.

The jamming ebbed long enough for him to check in on his squadron.

"Twin Suns, report!" He juked to avoid a crippling energy blast.

"Three here."

"Four."

"Six."

"Eight." There was a slight pause. "Jag, they've got me."

"And me," Six said.

"Looks like I'll have company, then," Three said. "They've got me, too." Jag cursed. Apart from himself, that left just one pilot free-and he wasn't sure how long he would last!