Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (16 page)

Chewie gave a great howl in reply, as if to remind Han, “Wasn’t it always?”

With a heavy pack strapped across her back—what she wouldn’t have given for a simple transporter disk—Tee-ubo led a team of four out of the compound. Normally, they wouldn’t have left ExGal-4, for the sturdy station could handle almost any weather Belkadan could throw at it. Danni’s call had made it clear that this storm was exceptional, though, and one needing some investigation.

Also, though none of the four spoke of it openly, having a mission now helped them get through their grief over the accidental death of Garth Breise. They had all known the risks when they had come out here, of course, into a wild and unexplored land, but still, losing one of the team had hit many of them hard, especially Tee-ubo. She knew that Bensin Tomri would be devastated by the news, if they could find some way to relay it to the now-distant Spacecaster.

The Twi’lek kept her blaster holstered, but the other three did not; they moved with weapons out and ready, with Luther De’ Ono, a rugged man in his mid-twenties, with coal black hair and dark eyes, diligently guarding the left flank; Bendodi Ballow-Reese, the oldest member of ExGal-4 at fifty-three, but a former barnstormer search-and-destroy agent with the Rebel Alliance, guarding the right; and Jerem Cadmir, a Corellian, watching the rear, practically walking backward as
the group eased through the thick jungle. Jerem was obviously the least comfortable with his weapon. Not a warrior, the slender, gentle Jerem had been chosen to go out into the dangerous Belkadan jungle because he was the most knowledgeable member of the team with regard to geology and climatology. If the brewing storm Danni Quee had called back to warn about would truly pose a danger to ExGal-4, Jerem Cadmir would be the one to give the most accurate early warning.

“The most dangerous part will be the nights,” Bendodi remarked late that afternoon. The team was making painfully slow progress through the tangles. “Redcrested cougars are night hunters, and they’ll be thick about us, wanting to put a face to our strange scents.” The others looked at Bendodi, at his ruggedly handsome face crossed by several scars he had earned in brutal combat, and found it hard to ignore the warning.

“We can use the flight packs once we clear the jungle,” Tee-ubo offered.

“Then press on,” Jerem urged nervously.

“It’s still going to be two days of walking,” Bendodi told them.

Tee-ubo eyed him unappreciatively. They had already fought out this debate, back at the compound. Bendodi and Luther had wanted to strap on a couple of flight packs and fly off from the compound wall, despite the unarguable calculations that showed they’d fast deplete their fuel in trying to leap over the towering trees, and might have to spend a week of walking after they had left the primary canopy behind.

Tee-ubo’s plan, the sensible one, the one everyone at the station except for the two would-be warriors had agreed upon, called for traversing the jungle on foot, then strapping on the packs at the lip of the great basin about twenty kilometers south of the compound. Given the angle and the calculated winds, they could cross the three hundred kilometers of
the basin for roughly the same amount of fuel that would have been used flying over the trees to the lip of the basin.

With such logic on her side, Tee-ubo had won the debate, but she had known from the first grumbling steps out of the compound that Luther, and particularly Bendodi, weren’t about to let the matter rest.

So they pressed on, hot and sweaty in the steamy air, and as night descended, they found a thick nook high in a tree to call a campsite.

They got little sleep, for the jungle resounded with threatening sounds, low growls and hisses that seemed to come from right beside them. Despite the threat, though, they found no open challenge, but so disturbing were those sounds that the team set off early, determined to make the basin lip before the next nightfall. And they did, arriving at the rocky precipice on the edge of the jungle overlooking the huge valley with hours to spare.

Hours they would not waste. They quickly did some last-minute checks on the flight packs—like every other piece of terrain equipment at ExGal-4, the packs weren’t in the best condition—and then lifted away from the precipice, opening wings wide to catch the gusting wind at their backs.

They flew on right through twilight and into the darkness, preferring the cold winds to the sounds emanating from the trees far below. There were no great flying predators on Belkadan, as far as they knew. Tee-ubo measured their progress by the hour, not the kilometer; given the minimum fuel burn gliding with the wind, she figured they could go for about four standard hours before exhausting the first half of their fuel.

When the time came to land, Bendodi fired a portable rocket flare into the canopy below, and the group used its guiding light to put down. They landed without incident, despite some very real and well-grounded fears propagated by the tumult of roars and shrieks in the region. A quick check of their positioning system confirmed that they had nearly
crossed the length of the basin. If Danni’s positioning had been correct, they should be able to find this brewing storm within a couple of days’ march. Hopefully, they’d be able to get the needed measurements, mostly concerning wind speed, set their instruments, and be out of there quickly. Heartened, they settled in for a short night’s rest.

It was shorter than expected.

Tee-ubo opened her eyes to the sound of coughing, a thick, mucus-filled hack. At first, she thought a thick ground fog had come up, but as the stench hit her, a noxious, rotten-egg smell, she realized that it was something else.

By the time the Twi’lek managed to sit up, she, too, was hacking and spitting.

“Go to enviro-suits!” she heard Bendodi cry. Hardly able to see, her eyes teary and stinging, Tee-ubo fumbled with her pack, finally pulling out the small hood and tank.

“Gloves, too!” Bendodi barked to all of them, his voice muffled by his enviro-suit. “No skin exposed until we know what this is.”

A few moments later, her eyes still burning, the sickening stench still in her mouth, but with clean oxygen flowing, Tee-ubo inched along the limb tangle they had chosen for a campsite to join Bendodi and Luther. Jerem Cadmir had moved off along one branch with a light and seemed to be studying the leaves.

“Probably a volcano,” Luther remarked. “That’s what Danni saw from orbit. A volcano spewing fumes; we’ll have to call back to ExGal and have them lock the compound down tight.”

Bendodi and Tee-ubo nodded, not overly concerned. The compound could be made completely self-sustaining, able to hold back whatever fumes Belkadan could throw at them. Several of the other ExGal stations, with the same equipment as this one, had been situated on worlds far more hostile, one on a spinning lump of barren rock that was completely bereft of any atmosphere. If the cloud was indeed volcano formed,
that would be good news, for likely there would be few, if any, potentially damaging winds.

“It’s not a volcano,” came Jerem’s voice, and the three turned to regard him sitting on a branch and holding a leaf. “It’s the tree,” he explained.

That brought surprised expressions, and they moved over, one at a time, at Jerem’s instructions, and lifted their hoods just long enough to take a sniff of the leaf he held.

“Let’s get down from here,” Luther remarked.

“No,” Bendodi unexpectedly replied, even as the other three began to move for the main trunk. They looked to him questioningly.

“I can’t think of a safer place tobe,” the scarred old warrior remarked. “We’ll stay up here in our suits, and where no cougars will want to go.”

The logic seemed sound; in the enviro-suits the fumes couldn’t hurt them.

“How long to sunrise?” Luther asked.

Tee-ubo checked her chronometer. “Two more hours.”

“Then sit tight,” Bendodi said.

And they did, and when the sun came up, exploding brilliantly over the eastern horizon, they grew even more alarmed. For all the forest about them seemed to be on fire, sending greenish orange smoke up into the air. And all the green leaves had turned yellow.

It wasn’t fire, they soon understood, but emissions, coming straight from the leaves, filling all the air with the noxious fumes.

“How is this possible?” Tee-ubo asked, and she, Bendodi, and Luther all looked to Jerem for an answer.

The man stood holding a leaf, staring at it wide-eyed and shaking his head. “A molecular change?” he mused.

“Luther, get up high, while the rest of us go down to the ground,” Bendodi instructed, and he led the way out of the tree.

The air was just as thick and wretched at ground level, for
the grasses, even the moss and flowers, were similarly emitting the thick fumes. Jerem quickly went to one small plant and dug it up, roots and all, and as he did, some curious beetles, reddish brown, scampered out of the hole.

On Jerem’s order, Tee-ubo caught one of them and held it up.

“What is it?” Bendodi asked.

“Maybe nothing,” Jerem replied. “Or maybe a clue.”

Before Bendodi could press him further, Luther came scrambling down the tree so quickly that he tumbled to the ground in a heap, and nearly fell over again as he tried to rise.

“It’s gone way past us,” he explained, waving his arm back toward the north. “And it’s rolling on—I could see the trees changing color and starting to smoke!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Tee-ubo suggested, and she popped the beetle into a belt pouch and pulled the lever control for her flight pack forward. Hardly waiting, she fired up the pack.

Or tried to.

It sputtered and coughed, even popped off enough once to jolt Tee-ubo into the air, a short hop and nothing more.

Then it went dead.

“It can’t get enough oxygen,” Bendodi reasoned.

Even as he spoke, they heard a rustle to the side. They all tensed—Luther and Bendodi reached for their blasters—as a redcrested cougar broke through the brush. They didn’t have to shoot, they soon realized, for the great animal was gasping, its sides heaving in and out futilely, and if it even saw them, it showed no reaction. Right before their eyes, the creature staggered a few more steps and then fell to the ground, breathing its last.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tee-ubo suggested, staring at the poignant reminder. She started to take off her pack, but Bendodi stopped her.

“Keep it,” he instructed. “We’ll need them if we can get ahead of the—” He paused and looked at the others curiously. “—of whatever the hell this is,” he finished.

Jerem Cadmir pulled out his comlink and tried to call out, but the static that crackled back at him was too thick for any words to penetrate.

Off they went, as fast as their feet would carry them. After an hour—and half their oxygen—they still could not see the end of the noxious fumes before them. Bendodi sent Luther up yet another tree, while he and the others took out their comlinks and spread out, trying to find some hole in the static.

Nothing. They rejoined at the base of the tree, and a dejected Luther came back down shaking his head, explaining that he couldn’t see anything through the thickening gases.

Hopelessness descended upon them, as thick as the fumes.

To everyone’s surprise, Bendodi Ballow-Reese pulled off his oxygen pack and tossed it to Jerem Cadmir. “Run on,” he ordered. He sniffled, then crinkled his nose in disgust. “Run on. One of us has to get back and warn them.”

Jerem stood dumbfounded, as did Luther and Tee-ubo.

“Go!” Bendodi insisted, and even as Jerem started to argue, the older man turned and sprinted into the brush, disappearing from sight—though the others heard his subsequent hacking coughs.

“He’s gone crazy,” Luther cried, and he rushed to follow. He barely got to the edge of the brush, though, before a blaster rang out and Luther tumbled backward, shot through the chest.

“Go!” Bendodi called from somewhere beyond.

Tee-ubo and Jerem rushed to Luther, but too late—the man was quite dead. Tee-ubo took his oxygen pack, grabbed the stunned and seemingly frozen Jerem by the arm and hauled him after her, breaking into a dead run to the north.

And then they heard another shot and knew that Bendodi, too, was dead.

After another hour, no end to the biological disaster in sight, Jerem had to change tanks. He motioned for Tee-ubo to check her level, as well.

The Twi’lek didn’t move.

“Do you need oxygen?” Jerem asked her.

Tee-ubo tossed him her extra tank. “Run,” she explained. “I’ve been slowing you down for the last hour. You’re the only hope.” Then she took off her belt pouch—the one with the beetle—and tossed it to the stunned man, as well.

“I’m not leaving you,” Jerem declared, and there seemed no room for debate in his voice. The extra tank in hand, he started for the Twi’lek, but stopped fast as Tee-ubo’s blaster came up, leveled at him.

“One of us has to continue with the remaining tanks,” she explained. “You’re faster, and—you’re better trained—to figure out what’s—going on, so I—made you the offer.” Already, from the gasps she took between her words, it was evident that her oxygen was waning. “Last chance,” she said, waving the blaster toward the north.

“Both of us,” Jerem insisted.

Tee-ubo pulled off her hood and threw it far to the side. Then, to Jerem’s absolute horror, she took a deep breath of the noxious fumes about them. Immediately, her eyes turned reddish yellow, and foamy liquid began running from her nose.

“You’re wasting time,” she said, coughing with each word. “And oxygen.”

Jerem started for her, but her blaster came up and she fired a bolt right past his head.

He ran to the north, blinded by the horrid fog and his own tears. He had gone only a dozen strides when he heard the report of a blaster behind him.

On Jerem ran, desperately. He took some hope when he noted that the fumes about him were thinning somewhat, but at about the same time, he had to switch to the last oxygen pack. Soon after that, he came to a sheer wall, only about ten meters high, but one that he could not climb.