Balance Point (39 page)

Luke pushed his X-wing back toward the smaller flurry that was Urrdorf’s remaining defense force. Mara couldn’t help watching behind, though. Urrdorf still had its shields. Coralskippers soared in, splashing it with plasma.

A Yuuzhan Vong force circled Bburru. The city hadn’t taken a dovin basal amidships yet, thanks to Admiral Wuht’s defenders. Mara’s practiced eye spotted another X-wing among them.

A gunship-sized object separated itself from the Vong attack force, coming in low, spraying the city with gouts of brilliant plasma.

“Breaking port,” she called. “My sensors show a civilian shuttle launch off Bburru. I’ll escort.”

Luke soared off toward Anakin. Mara skimmed the city’s surface, back toward the dock she’d left so unceremoniously. Someone had a lot of courage, launching this late in the show.

Three small shuttles took off simultaneously, holding together in a row.

“Shuttles,” Mara transmitted, “this is
Jade Shadow
. I’ll escort you to jump.”

“Negative, jump,” a voice crackled from her console. “We’re headed planetside.”

“That’s suicide,” Mara exclaimed. “They only want you for slaves, or sacrifices. Come around to—”

The shuttles’ pilots held to their course. Then Mara saw the triangular CorDuro Shipping insignia on the shuttles’ aft surfaces. It looked as if CorDuro, having done all it could to weaken Duro’s defenses, was defecting to the Yuuzhan Vong en masse.

In that case, they deserved what they had coming. Mara vectored aside, found herself facing a flight of coralskippers, and went to work.

*   *   *

Jacen bent over the
Falcon
’s narrow first-aid bunk. Though the deck bucked and tilted, Jaina applied a pair of Sluissi grav-press bandage cuffs to Leia’s legs, just above the knees, then connected them with the
Falcon
’s medical data bank.

“That should hold her until we can find a bacta tank. I don’t know about her legs, though—”

Leia’s eyes fluttered open. “Jaina,” she murmured. “Heard your voice. Thanks.”

Jaina tucked a thermal blanket around Leia’s shivering shoulders, then uncoiled a fluid drip and applied it to her bared arm. “Jacen did the hard part,” she said gruffly.

Jacen adjusted the bandage cuffs. Finely tuned micro-repulsor fields were already compressing the damaged arteries, even while they enhanced peripheral circulation to his mother’s lower legs. Something just as invisible as the field, but warmer, flowed between his sister and mother. A deep understanding, a living connection.

“No. What you did,” Leia managed. “Harder. Furious with me, but … came back.”

Jaina made a wry face, then bent to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Lie still. We’ll get you out of here.”

“But … Duro … Basbakhan …”

“We’re evacuating,” Jacen said. What
had
happened to her other Noghri? “Basbakhan?” he asked.

Leia’s eyelids fell shut. Jacen looked up at Jaina, worried.

“There’s a sedative in that drip,” Jaina explained. “Otherwise she’d roll down, crawl to the quad guns, and bleed to death.” In her voice, Jacen heard heartfelt respect.

“Right,” he said. If Basbakhan was alive on Duro, he pitied the Yuuzhan Vong. “Then it’s you and me for the guns.”

“Take a quad,” Jaina exclaimed, flinging herself
away from the bunk. “I’ll join Dad. Coralskipper derby, three-way!”

“Mara, Luke? Duro Defense Force? This is the
Millennium Falcon
, escorting a big hauler. Last ship out of Gateway, coming up at you.”

Mara eyed her sensors. Vectoring south, accelerating ponderously, came a big block of a hauler, a smaller freight ship, and three YT-1300s. The lead freighter, the one that reflected no light, wove back and forth in a very unfreighterly fashion.

Luke’s voice: “Han, is she all right?”

Han sounded tense. “She’s hurt bad.”

No surprise there, either. If Mara had felt it through the Force, Luke must’ve, too.

“The kids are taking care of her, but—what?” Han’s voice faded momentarily, then came back. “Can’t talk. These haulers could use a few more escorts, though.”

“On our way.” Mara snapped off the comm and studied her sensors. Whether by skill or by Solo luck, Han had herded his charges onto the vector that was seeing the least action.

An enemy gunship appeared ahead of them, though. Almost instantly, the expected dovin basal anomaly appeared on Mara’s sensors. She fired a storm of short bursts into it, loading it as heavily as possible. Not far to starboard, Luke’s X-wing took a run at the gunship, his guns linked to fire dual bursts—two from above, then two below—then a solid quad burst.

The gunship swerved off course, ignoring the blocky transport to deal with its attackers. Mara pelted the singularity, keeping its shields busy, decelerating to keep from being drawn in.

As Luke set up for a second run, she spotted another X-wing coming in behind him—but also a tetrahedral
flight of coralskippers. Stars spun as Mara jinked her ship, evading plasma bursts, still concentrating her fire on that gunship. Sensors showed another anomaly coming up toward her, projected by the coralskippers to devour her shields.

“Luke?” she called softly. “Anakin, this could be trouble.”

“I’ve got the skips, Uncle Luke,” she heard.

One X-wing altered course. Even from this distance, she sensed something flowing strong through the Force, as Anakin—without hesitating—reached down deep, with the utter calm of a warrior twice his age. His X-wing bucked and spun, firing constantly. He took two skips before the other two realigned their molten-projectile guns.

From another vector, Luke’s X-wing dropped toward the gunship. She spotted the flare of a dual torp launch. The instant she knew the gunship couldn’t swing its energy gullet into place and devour them, she broke off her attack, vectored high, and directed full power to her aft shields.

“Got ’im,” Luke crowed. Then, more soberly, he called, “Cargo hauler, is that your maximum acceleration?”

She didn’t recognize the voice that answered, but she knew awe when she heard it. “Skywalker? That’s you, in the X-wing?”

“Right on you. Pour it on, hauler.”

“Yes,
sir.”

Mara’s sensors showed an infinitesimal acceleration, probably all the battered hauler could manage.

Not far off this vector, a similar hauler plunged back toward Duro’s cloud cover, tumbling slowly. Bburru, too, was grappled in six places by objects that might be living ships, its shipyard arm already a web of twisted metal.

Another city, the one that had been rammed, now tilted—plainly falling toward a lower orbit. No more ships left its docks. A flotilla of Yuuzhan Vong followed alongside, and Mara’s sensors told her they were using their own dovin basals to pull it farther down. All the Duros cities, except sluggish Urrdorf, were in ruins.

Mara clenched a fist. They were playing. Showing off. Not just overwhelming their victims, but taunting them.

She bit her lip, wanting to slam a fist against her control panel. She opened her hand with an effort and thrust anger away. Anger was poison. She’d had poison enough in her system, thanks to Nom Anor—and there was one small life she still could save. If she guarded that, then her own life counted more than she could have believed possible.
Hang on
, she said silently.
You picked a wild time to come into the galaxy
.

She crisscrossed Luke’s path, presenting a confusing target. Now she understood why women willingly died for their children. One utterly helpless person depended on her for sustenance and safety. Silently, she promised that little one the fiercest defender he ever could need.

“She,” a soft voice said in her ear.

Startled, Mara touched the earphone. No one else answered or asked Luke to clarify, so he was using the private channel. She touched a control, then muttered back, “Get out of my brain, Skywalker,” but at the Luke-place at the edge of her mind, she let him feel how glad she was to know he’d survived this catastrophe, too.

Then, startled, she caught a new sensation—and she knew. “Nope,” she exclaimed. “It’s
he.”

The boxy hauler winked out of sight.

Jacen squeezed the upper quad gun’s firing control once more, and another coralskipper exploded into multicolored shards. The
Falcon
rocked back and forth,
giving him a clear view of another coral shower, Jaina’s work, from the cockpit. He could hear his dad’s and sister’s voices, pilot and copilot. The
Falcon
had never flown so wildly and well.

Urrdorf couldn’t make hyperspace, the way Droma’s hauler had done, but it accelerated steadily away from Duro’s orbital plane, and the Yuuzhan Vong were no longer pursuing. Maybe it could lose itself in the darkness between systems.

“That’s it,” Han said. “We’re breaking off. Good luck, Urrdorf.”

“Thank you,
Falcon,”
a distant voice said in Jacen’s headset.

Then Han, again. “Jacen, Jaina, secure the guns. Get ready to jump. We’re taking her home.”

Jacen complied, then belted down in the engineering section near C-3PO. From the cockpit, he heard Jaina announce, “Anakin got another one.”

“What’s he up to? Eleven, twelve?” Han called.

“Don’t know,” Jaina said. “I’d better talk to Colonel Darklighter about that kid.”

“Hey.” Han’s voice rose. “Luke, Mara, Anakin. You’re the last force insystem. Get out while you can.”

“Right.” That was Uncle Luke. “Break it off, Anakin. Good job.”

Count on Anakin to be the last human to get out of Duro space alive
, Jacen reflected, but without jealousy. He’d found the balance between the Force’s inner power and outward might. By giving himself—obedient, with no reservation—he became a walking, breathing, living sacrifice.

Maybe I caught that lightsaber after all, Uncle Luke
.

He sensed Jaina, sitting beside the familiar glimmer that had always been their dad. Stretching out, he faintly touched his brother’s incandescent brilliance. Then Uncle
Luke in his X-wing, alongside Aunt Mara in the
Jade Shadow
.

He paused there. Something was odd—different—about Aunt Mara. Not stale or fetid, the way she’d felt when her disease seemed terminal. At this new depth, he felt her shine like a binary star.

Then the
Falcon
hit hyperspace, extinguishing all those presences.

Jacen unbuckled and hurried down to check on his mother’s wounds.

Tsavong Lah’s left ankle throbbed, but Vaecta would no more have deadened that pain than cut off his unwounded foot without appropriate rituals. Tsavong had sacrificed body parts before, imitating his gods’ work in creating the universe. Until higher priests arrived, he would stand on a simple artificial foot.

But he would petition the priest for a crafted enhancement. He’d lost that foot as a result of an honor duel. He didn’t think the priests would refuse.

Step by painful step, he approached the delegation of Duros and humans who’d just landed, then had hurried here—to this temporary administrative center, pending the arrival of more-appropriate construction-craft materials. A cadre of infidels strode closer, wearing red-trimmed brown uniforms.

Through the reality of pain, he saw them clearly—not only infidels, but traitors. He would not waste time winnowing out worthy ones.

As soon as the delegation stood close enough, he held up a hand, signaling them to halt.

One scrawny Duros stepped forward. “Good sirrr,” he said, “we must protest your extended offensive. I am Durgard Brarun, vice-director of—”

“I want information,” Tsavong Lah said.

The Duros spread his knobby hands and spoke
rapidly. “Sirrr, we kept the bargain that your Peace Brigade brrrokered. Duro Defense Force stood down. Duro did not defend the planetary settlements or our shipyards. In return, you prrromised to spare all but one of our cities. We fully understood that you would need to make at least one example, but—”

“Tell your grievances to the gods.” Tsavong set his weight on that throbbing ankle and false foot, then drew on the pain to focus his thoughts. “I require the name of the young
Jeedai
who escaped your custody.” That craven young coward had proved worthy indeed. At the time of highest, best portents, he must be sacrificed to Yun-Yammka.

“I can explain,” the Duros began. “He had outside help—”

“The name.” Tsavong drowned out the sniveling infidel.

The Duros spread his hands again. “Jacen Solo, son of Ambassador Leia Organa Solo and—”

Tsavong signaled the dovin basal that lay buried nearby. A glimmering containment field quenched the unworthy one’s voice.

Then he addressed the executor, who stood nearby. “Your penance here has ended, Nom Anor,” he said. “Are the new slaves ready to transmit? Is the villip choir in place?”

Nom Anor dropped to one knee, visibly gloating—but his hands trembled. Plainly, he expected to receive his next promotion. “I will call the villip mistress.”

Tsavong waited until Seef approached, leading a beast of burden that carried the largest villip they’d bred to date, still moist-skinned and larval white. At the suggestion of his human contact on Coruscant, the master shapers who had bred and nurtured it to this size had
also delivered its stalk-partner to a deep-space beacon, protecting it from vacuum with additional dovin basals.

For this message, he would even use the abhorrent visual technology he found here, though only his new slaves would soil themselves by touching it. They were already defiled beyond cleansing.

The CorDuro officials, who would soon be digesting in Biter’s belly, had proved again how easily his enemies could be turned on each other. They would destroy their own finest warriors, a tactic that should make Yun-Harla smile on him, too.

He assembled his victorious forces in a circle near the burning pit, where a savory aroma honored Yun-Yammka. Without activating the villip, he made a short speech to his on-site forces and slaves, declaring Nom Anor’s penance complete—and that now, he would be sent elsewhere.

The executor folded his arms across his chest. One cheek twitched, betraying his confusion.