Invincible (17 page)

“It’s okay, Roegr.” Mirta disconnected her helmet from its vac suit connectors, then took it off and ran a gloved hand through her curly brown hair. “Jedi Solo is going to be helping us with the Moffs.”

Jaina cocked her brow. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I have other plans this trip.”

“Plans can be adjusted.” This from Vatok. “We’re down two-thirds of our strike team. A
Mando
-trained Jedi might take a little sting out of that.”

Jaina’s heart sank. Two-thirds of the strike team; that was probably twelve or fifteen Mandalorians—some of them people she likely knew. Then a sad thought occurred to her, and she turned back to Mirta.

“Ghes?” she asked.

Mirta’s eyes turned glassy, and she quickly slipped her helmet back on.

“He’ll make it,” she said, “if there’s enough left of our
Tra’kad
to get past the Imperials.”

“There will be,” Jaina assured her. It had been less than a month since she had been on Mandalore drinking at the wedding of Mirta Gev and Ghes Orade, and she had never seen two people so much in love—aside from her parents, of course. “You can’t stop a
Tra’kad.
”

“Really?”
Roegr retorted. “Tell that to my brother.”

Jaina went from feeling sorry for Mirta to remembering that compassion was a weakness—and one she could not allow
any
of the Mandalorians to prey upon.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Roegr.” Jaina turned back to Mirta. “But let’s just settle for staying out of each other’s way. I’m
not
going to help you take out the Moffs.”

“Actually,” Mirta said, “you
are.
”

She reached for her equipment pouch—and found her hand suddenly frozen in midair by the Force.

“You really don’t think I’m going to let you pull a thermal detonator, do you?” Jaina asked. “That trick’s as old as my mother.”

“I’m just trying to show you something,” Mirta said. “Something that will make you
want
to help us.”

“I really doubt that’s possible.” When Jaina sensed no dishonesty in Mirta’s presence, she released her Force grasp and said, “But go ahead and try.”

“You Jedi.” Mirta pulled a small vidreceiver from her pouch, then activated it and punched in a few codes. After a moment, she smiled and turned the vidreceiver so Jaina could see it. “Always underestimating Mandalorians.”

The display was small, the image it showed even smaller, and it took Jaina a moment to make out what she was seeing. Even then, she did not quite believe her eyes.

The screen showed one of the smooth-polished cells that passed for VIP quarters in Nickel One. Seated in the corner, slumped in a large flowform chair with one hand raised toward his brow and his yellow eyes focused vacantly on the floor, was the brooding, dark-cloaked figure of her brother.

Darth Caedus—alone, deep in meditation, and vulnerable.

Jaina understood almost instantly. “The preparations!” She looked up at Mirta. “That’s what Fett was doing when I left—tapping into the surveillance system.”

“Not
tapping.
” There was a note of jolly good humor to Vatok’s correction.
“Taking.”

Mirta continued to hold the vidreceiver, allowing Jaina to study the image as long as she liked. It was hard to believe it might be so easy—that all she had to do was watch her brother’s cell until he was meditating or sleeping or doing any of a dozen other things that would leave him vulnerable.

And of course, it would never be quite that easy. Her brother would feel her coming, or sense that he was in danger, or just change locations unexpectedly.

But it was a start.

“Okay,” Jaina said, “maybe I
do
want to help you. But we have to do it my way, or you’re on your own.”

“As long as your way includes killing the Moffs, sure,” replied Mirta. “We don’t mind following a Jedi Knight. They used to make good generals, after all.”

Jaina didn’t believe her, of course—but it was good enough for now.

Hey, Tenel Ka—you know why wampas have such long arms? Because their hands are so far from their face!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

E
VEN WITH A COMM FEED INTO
N
ICKEL
O
NE’S SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
and help from the Verpine resistance network, the trip down from the surface had been one nerve-racking dash after another. Jaina and the Mandalorians were literally steaming sweat into the closed confines of their makeshift observation post inside the Data Assimilation Chamber, and the air inside had grown as muggy as it was sour. The Verpine technicians kept coming over to ask the humans to stop perspiring so heavily, explaining that the extra humidity would soon begin to wreak havoc with the delicate circuitry of the VerpiTron cyberbrains that were streaming updates to the giant holodisplays out in the Strategic Planning Forum.

When that happened, Jaina knew, Mirta would strike whether or not they knew Caedus’s location. Nearly the entire Moff Council was gathered in the Strategic Planning Forum, discussing the imminent arrival of the fleets of Admirals Daala and Niathal, and no Mandalorian would let pass an opportunity to eliminate so many targets at once.

Jaina finished scrolling through the feeds on her borrowed vidreceiver, then shook her head in disgust. There had been no sign of her brother in any of the monitored chambers, no hint that he had even passed down one of the asteroid’s spotless tunnels. Nickel One’s security system had simply lost track of him.

Jaina glanced over and found an image of the Strategic Planning Forum on the display of Mirta’s vidreceiver. Most of the small screen was filled with an image of the holodisplays the Moffs were studying, so that the room looked like a tiny yellow dot—representing the system’s sun—surrounded by an inner ring of floating stones—the Roche asteroid field, depicted far larger than true scale. In front of the hologram, twenty speck-sized humans sat clustered together near the bottom of a dozen rows of theater-style seating.

“Hear anything useful?” Jaina asked.

“Plenty,” Mirta said, removing the soundplug from her ear. “Just nothing that’s going to help us find your brother.”

She disconnected the vidreceiver’s audio jack, and human voices began to spill from the speaker, surprisingly clear and resonant.

“…should have listened to Caedus after all,” a deep, refined voice was saying. “It certainly seems he was correct about this ‘conquest.’ We’re lucky that suicide run on the
Dominion
only killed two of us—”

“
Very
lucky,” added a raspy-voiced jokester, “considering the two Moffs we lost.”

The interruption drew a round of a hearty laughter, then Refined Voice continued, “Yes, I suppose every catastrophe has its positive side. But now we’ve lost the
Harbinger
as well, and with the Hapans, Daala, and Niathal all converging on us, that certainly won’t be the last Star Destroyer we lose.”

“Caedus’s intelligence was better than ours
this time,
” replied a durasteel-voiced man. “I’ll give you that. But that hardly means we should present him with the
dozens
of Star Destroyers we have in the Roche system. Even if we were inclined to turn the Empire over to the bad seed of a common spicerunner and his gutter-crawling Princess—which I sincerely hope we’re
not
—”

A chorus of amused snorts confirmed that the Moffs were not.

“—Caedus has hardly proven himself worthy of our confidence. That mess at Fondor was very nearly the Alliance’s undoing.”

“Hear, hear!” boomed a thick-tongued Moff. “Caedus is no Palpatine,
I
can tell you that.”

“Yes, yes, Jowar,” said Refined Voice. “We’re all aware that you served on the Emperor’s personal staff as a young officer.”

“And he’s not likely to let us forget it,” added Raspy Jokester.

This drew a few polite chuckles, then Refined Voice continued, “But I
hope
everyone here realizes that if Caedus hadn’t brought the Fourth Fleet along, we’d actually be outnumbered right now.”

“True,” agreed Durasteel Voice. “And doesn’t that betray a certain naïveté? A wiser man would not have brought in the Fourth until we were
already
outnumbered. He might well have been in a position to dictate terms to
us,
rather than the reverse.”

Mirta thumbed the volume down, then said, “That’s the gist of what they’ve been talking about. Most of them seem to like the idea of joining with the Galactic Alliance to form a New Empire, but only if it’s under
their
control.”

“Not that it matters
what
they decide,” added Vatok, looming over Jaina and Mirta in his black
beskar’gam,
“seeing as how they’re all going to be dead in five minutes.”

“
Five
minutes?” Jaina looked from Vatok back to Mirta, then understood—Mirta had already given the go-order over her helmet comm. “You gave the order?”

Mirta tipped her helmet in acknowledgment. “How long do you expect us to wait?” She glanced back at the big cyberbrains, where two Verpine technicians were monitoring systems displays and casting fretful looks back toward Jaina and her sweaty Mandalorian companions. “If those VerpiTrons go, so does our element of surprise.”

“If we attack without knowing where Caedus is,” Jaina countered, “
we
may be the ones who get surprised. There’s a reason we can’t find him on the security system, and it’s not because he’s using the refresher.”

“You’re saying he might know we’re here?” Mirta asked.

“I’m saying he definitely knows
you’re
here,” Jaina said. “He can feel your presences in the Force—and if he hasn’t told the Moffs, there’s a reason.”

Mirta and the other Mandalorians were silent for a moment, then Vatok asked, “He’s setting up the Moffs for us?”

Jaina shook her head. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s not for you,” she said. “Maybe he’s thinking that with the Moffs gone, he can seize their fleets. Or maybe he’s using them to draw
you
out—-that’s what I’d bet on.”

“Or maybe the Jedi just wants to take out her brother first,” said Roegr, the blue-armored man whose own brother had perished in the first
Tra’kad.
“Nice try,
aruetii,
but we’re not buying.”

Jaina looked to Mirta. “You know me,” she said. “I’m
not
making this up.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you were,” Mirta replied. “We’re here to kill the Moffs, and we’re
not
going to get a better shot at them.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“Sure it was,” Mirta said. “You’re in charge—as long as we attack
now.
”

Jaina sighed and looked at the floor. If she was right about her brother’s intentions, she could use the Mandalorian attack to her advantage—she knew that. But she wouldn’t be able to kill a Sith Lord
and
save Mirta’s life. She knew that, too.

Vatok nudged her elbow with his. “What’s wrong,
jetii
?” he asked. “Afraid of your brother?”

“Actually, yes.” Jaina took the QuietSnipe off her back, then looked toward a small hatch in the center of the room’s curved wall. “I’ll be in the projection booth—but don’t expect covering fire until Caedus goes down.”

“Just like a Jedi—any excuse to stay out of the fighting,” Roegr said. A grunt of disgust sounded inside his blue helmet, and he started toward the exit on the far side of the cyberbrains. “Let’s go do this. I’m getting hot.”

Mirta’s saffron helmet turned after him, and Jaina could sense that her friend was about to say something sharp. She caught the Mandalorian by her arm.

“His opinion means nothing to me,” Jaina said. “Stay focused.”

Mirta continued to look after Roegr for a moment, then nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Sorry we couldn’t do this your way.”

“Me, too,” Jaina said. “May the Force be with you out there.”

Mirta snorted through her golden faceplate. “Yeah—
that’s
going to help a Mandalorian.” She slapped Jaina on the side of the shoulder. “Shoot straight and run fast. We’ll see you when it’s done.”

She said something into her helmet and started after Roegr. Four of her commandos started after her, but Vatok remained behind. He pulled off his helmet and looked down at her, his blond beard and hair plastered flat by sweat.

“You really think he’s waiting for us?” he asked.

“I can’t
sense
it,” Jaina said. “But yes, that’s what I think.”

“And it scares you?”

Jaina nodded. “It does.”

A twinkle came to Vatok’s eye, and he flashed her a smile every bit as mischievous as any she had ever seen from her father. “That’s what I was hoping.”

Jaina cocked her brow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Did you think I kept coming back to Beviin’s barn because I like bruises?”

“Frankly,” Jaina said, “I did.”

Vatok looked surprised for an instant; then his smile returned. “And you liked giving them.” He shook his head, then put his helmet back on and turned to leave. “What did I expect from a
jetii
?”