Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (44 page)

Luke looked to Leia and managed, with his expression, to coax a smile onto her face. “Get used to it,” he said to Han. “And enjoy it while you can. You won’t be able to keep up with them much longer.”

Han pulled roughly away and muttered a stream of curses, and only then did Luke begin to understand the depth of his
anger and frustration. He had just lost Chewbacca, and he wasn’t about to lose anyone else!

“It is settled then,” came the voice of Commander Rojo behind them. “It has begun.”

“Just because they went out doesn’t mean that we have to send the whole fleet in pursuit,” Leia replied. “Han, Luke, and I can go after them in the
Falcon.”

“Their leaving actually hurts your intentions, Commander,” Luke added. “If our enemies detect the carry ship, they’ll be waiting for the larger fleet behind them.”

“A band of smugglers,” Commander Rojo said derisively. “Or some puny liberation group. They’ve found a new technology, and they believe that with it, they can challenge the New Republic. But they have nothing that will stand before
Rejuvenator
. I go.”

And he did just that, dipping a curt bow and abruptly breaking the comm link.

Han and Luke looked at each other for a long moment. “Why’d you have to make them Jedi?” Han asked, and it was obvious from his tone, from the fact that he finished with that typical Han Solo snicker, that Luke’s argument had gotten through to him.

“You coming with us?” Han asked Lando.

“I thought I’d stay here and make sure the planetary defenses are in place,” a flustered Lando replied as soon as the surprise of the question wore off a bit.

“Glad to have you,” Han said, ignoring the answer and turning to Leia. “Go get Anakin. He’s handling the gun pod.”

“You, Leia, Anakin, and Kyp,” Lando reasoned. “Four’s plenty for the
Falcon.”

“Me, Anakin, Leia, and you,” Han corrected. “Kyp’s going to lead a starfighter squadron off
Rejuvenator
. Already arranged it with Rojo.”

“My fighting days—” Lando started to insist.

“Have only just begun,” Han interrupted.

Lando threw up his hands in defeat, and the group moved
away, Luke to go and rouse Mara, for he thought this too important a moment to keep her out of it, despite her exhaustion, and the others to find Anakin and to ready the
Millennium Falcon
. A short time later, the
Falcon
and the
Jade Sabre
blasted away from Dubrillion, along with every worthy warship Lando could muster. Off planet, they rendezvoused with Rojo’s contingent, and after one last attempt by Leia to talk the proud commander out of going at that time, they all blasted away, full speed for the Helska system.

Jaina brought them in perfectly, the sun between them and the fourth planet, just as Luke and Mara had done on their trip in.

“Uncle Luke fed all the coordinates into the
Merry Miner
’s navigation computer,” Jaina called down to Jacen, who was lying flat out on his stomach in the narrow iceborer attached to the carry ship. “Might get warm down there—we’re in for a close pass.”

“I’m going to sunburn every inch of my body,” Jacen remarked, a not-so-subtle reminder that he had climbed into the iceborer practically naked, wearing just a loose-fitting skirt, purloined from the dead pilot of the captured coralskipper. Even worse for him, because the entry hatch was so tiny, Jaina had to kneel behind him and very indelicately push him in, and all the while with him conscious of the fact that he was wearing only a skirt. A skirt! It’d be a long time before Jaina let him live that indignity down.

“I can come around and let you fly free before we ever get out of the Helskan sun’s sensor shield,” Jaina offered.

“That’s a long way for this thing to run,” Jacen observed.

“You’ll be running on my power, not yours.”

“Sure, but without any guns,” Jacen came back, and his tone was sarcastic, even lighthearted, as if he was just blowing off a bit of his nervousness.

“Just let them get close to you and blast that heat charge
into them,” Jaina returned with a laugh. Her tone grew serious immediately as she continued, “You ready?”

“Don’t miss,” came the reply.

Jaina banked the carry ship around the sun, flying completely by instruments—which she never liked to do—for she was trusting the guidance of the coordinates Luke had put into the nav computer. She saw the screen before her focus in on a point of light, the fourth planet, and watched it grow and grow as the magnification increased. “I got it, Jacen,” she informed her brother. “Everything’s lining up. If you fire any correcting jets, they might see them, so sit tight and trust my aim.”

“Let her go,” Jacen replied.

“And don’t stay down there more than a few minutes,” Jaina added. “I’m sitting pretty helpless up here.”

“If they find you, turn it back to Dubrillion,” Jacen said in all seriousness.

Those words—ridiculous words, by Jaina’s estimation, for she would never, ever leave her brother behind—echoed ominously in her thoughts as she watched the coordinates align perfectly and gently squeezed the trigger.

The stylus ship, Jacen belly down and head forward, rocketed away.

It was a smooth and quiet ride for Jacen, absent the hum of any drives. A good portion of the iceborer was translucent, giving him the feeling that he was almost free-flying in empty space, a sense of serenity he had not expected in the face of the looming danger. He had to shake it away quickly. Jaina’s orders that he not stay down there more than a few minutes were more than just words, he knew; were necessity if he and his sister were to have any chance of slipping away.

Now came the task that Jacen had feared since they had left Dubrillion. He brought his bare toe down and prodded the alien suit—the ooglith cloaker—according to C-3PO’s best translation—then held his breath as the obedient creature began its joining on his feet, then rolled up his legs, just
as Anakin, after watching Luke’s trial with the thing, had described.

Jacen squirmed and tried in vain to fall into some meditation, to leave the tingling stings of the inserting appendages far away. But it was too personal, and he felt them, every one, and so very keenly. At last, it was complete, and as horrible as that experience had been, Jacen knew the next would be even worse. Slowly, his hand faltering several times, he brought the star-shaped mask, the gnullith, up to his face and fought aside his gagging as the tube snaked down his throat.

By the time he had finished, he looked ahead to see the fourth planet looming large before him. He knew that his uncle Luke had set the coordinates to bring the iceborer down right near the mound he had perceived as the home base, and knew that was where he should go.

But then Jacen heard a call in his mind, a cry of distress, a cry for help, that he could not ignore.

He focused his thoughts on that cry, closed his eyes, and let the Force be his guide. Hardly thinking of the action, he gently touched the guidance jets, igniting a short burn that turned his nose to the side—and, he feared, likely alerted his enemies to his presence.

Down, down, he went, and he noted sparks of light—coralskippers—rising over the horizon on the far side of the planet. “Come on, come on,” Jacen muttered, urging the ship on but not daring to fire another jet.

Down, down, until all his screen filled with the grayish white pall of the frozen planet. He glanced to the side, to see the horde of coralskippers closing, looked back as he descended across the last few hundred meters.

He almost forgot to fire the charge. But he did squeeze the trigger, and the shaped bomb leapt ahead of him, burrowing into the ice and then exploding with a tremendous flash, the shock of it jolting Jacen and the iceborer violently. He couldn’t see a thing beyond the ice and vapor, couldn’t tell if the charge had cut through to the water below.

But he couldn’t stop and wait, either, and down he plunged, bouncing through the remains of the crust, careening left and right and nearly getting knocked unconscious.

And then … it was quiet. So serene, as the iceborer dived into the calm and cold waters below the crust. Behind him, the hole fast froze, and he could only hope that the pilots of the approaching coralskippers believed him dead in a fiery crash or that his vessel approaching their planet was not a ship at all, but a missile launched at the planetary base.

Either way, it didn’t matter to Jacen. All that he knew as his senses returned was the solitude and the welcome gloom.

And that call—and it wasn’t far away.

“Uh-oh,” Jaina whispered. Her instruments had picked up Jacen’s unexpected rocket firing and the subsequent approach by enemy coralskippers. She had seen the explosion on the surface of the fourth planet and could only hope it was the proper and planned explosion, that Jacen had blasted through the ice crust. She had to put those hopes aside, though, for now she had her own problems. Those coralskippers had turned her way, speeding off planet. They couldn’t see her, she knew, visually or with instruments, not with the Helskan sun right behind her.

They were backtracking Jacen’s path, a trail that would lead to her, and the protection of that shielding sun wouldn’t hold for long.

The
Merry Miner
carried no weapons and, even with the improvements Lando’s crew had made to her, wasn’t particularly fast.

Jaina turned back, closing her forward viewscreen as the glare of the Helskan sun exploded into view. She had to be perfect now, had to run so close to the sun that the coralskippers wouldn’t see her, and couldn’t follow her if they did. This was her one advantage: the
Merry Miner
was solid, built to explode whatever worlds might provide valuable ore. She
could get in close, very close, to a sun—certainly much closer than a typical starfighter.

Jaina kept her attention glued to her navigational readings, bringing the ship in, in. She tried to ignore the other instruments screaming at her about the rising hull temperature, tried to ignore her own sensibilities that it was indeed becoming rather warm, even inside the ship.

Her ion drives groaned in their fight against the sudden increase of gravity; even with the bulkhead closed over her viewscreen, Jaina could see the brilliant glow shining through the supposedly tight seams.

She turned aside, leveling off into a tight orbit and using the gravity as a whip, as Luke and Mara had done, fast moving around the back side of the sun. She fought through every second, manipulating instruments to compensate against the pull, tugging hard to keep the
Merry Miner
from plunging into the Helskan sun.

Ion drives groaned, instruments screamed in protest, and Jaina, feeling the g’s and the violent vibrations, groaned, too, and gave a yell, executing a vicious turn as she whipped around the back side. Then she had to hold on for all her life as the ship struggled through the tremendous gravity pull and tore free with a jolt that sent the young woman sprawling. She scrambled back to the console and retracted the bulkhead, beginning a quick assessment of the damage.

“Uh-oh,” she said again, for though the
Merry Miner
had performed admirably and had come through the ordeal fairly unscathed, the swift coralskippers had not broken pursuit, had flown at a faster and higher orbit about the sun.

They saw her now, she knew, and she was out of tricks.

Jacen truly appreciated the simple, yet brilliant, design of the iceborer. He brought the little ship up against the planetary crust and extended small grabber arms to secure her in place. Then he took a deep breath, hoping it wouldn’t be his last, hoping his uncle Luke’s information concerning this
gnullith and the insulation of the ooglith cloaker he was wearing was accurate. He punched the three-key sequence for underwater ejection, then brought his hand back as a locking panel slid over the instrument board. Other panels fell into place, encasing the man in a watertight compartment, its forward wall the outer hatch, and then, through a series of locks protecting him from any pounding pressures, water was brought in to him, filling the compartment.

At first, Jacen held his breath as the water came over his face, but then, his hand securely on the abort button, he dared to take a breath.

It felt watery and bubbly and somewhat uncomfortable, but he was okay, drawing air through the symbiotic appendage of the star-shaped creature. And he was not cold, and he paused a moment to consider how magnificent this living bodysuit truly was.

The outer compartment slid open, and Jacen crawled out into the open water. He spent just a moment checking his equipment, his lightsaber and the small sensor key that would guide him back into his ship, and then he turned his attention to the watery world about him. He saw the lights in the distance, far away and far below. At first, he thought them to be some natural phenomenon, volcanic activity, perhaps, and wondered if he was giving the ooglith cloaker too much credit. Maybe the water here wasn’t really all that cold. As he crawled forward, walking his hands along the crust, to get a better angle of the glow, he recognized the lights for what they were: some sort of organized base!

A host of worries crossed through Jacen’s mind at that moment. He felt that he looked enough like one of the coralskipper pilots, with his mask and the second-skin clothing, even the skirt that the alien pilot had worn—he prayed that the male pilots wore the same uniform as the females—but how would he communicate with them? How would he slip by any sentries?

He took another deep and steadying breath, reminding
himself that he was a Jedi, and that Jedi, above all else, could improvise through tight situations. And there was one other thing aiding him, for that mysterious call had not abated, and seemed even stronger now, and very close.

To Jacen’s surprise and relief, it didn’t appear to be coming from the distant, lighted base, but from up here, near the crust.

He moved swiftly, reminding himself that time was of the essence, crawling along the underside of the great ice crust, letting the call guide him. Then he came to an abrupt halt, for not far away before and below him came a procession of lights, a half dozen, rising through the water, toward him.