The Unseen Queen (29 page)

Lock-alarms began to sound as the pirates reached targeting range and prepared to make good on their threat.

“Uh, Luke?” Han said. “You
do
hear—”

“Shut down the drives in three, two …” Luke gave the outer skin a little extra push. “Now!”

Juun pulled the throttles back, then the image of the
DR919a
slid away, the counterfeit glare of its sublight drives forcing everyone on the flight deck to close their eyes. Luke angled the illusion off to port, as though the vessel were attempting to go around the pirates. Meanwhile, the
DR919a
remained cloaked by the second, camouflaging illusion. The lock-alarms fell silent, and the cold ache inside Luke slowly began to recede.

Tarfang howled in delight, then turned to Luke and began chuttering in excitement.

“I really don’t think Master Luke is interested in giving up his position in the Jedi order,” C-3PO interrupted.

Tarfang yapped sharply.

“Very well, I’ll ask him.” C-3PO turned to Luke and began to translate. “Tarfang would like to know if you’re interested in joining the crew of the
Niner
. He’s sure that Captain Juun would give you a full share. And with your talent, they could go back to smuggling and make a fortune.”

Luke could barely spare the effort to throw a pleading look in Han’s direction. The Force was pouring through him like fire, and it was all he could do to keep the two illusions intact.

“Threepio’s right, Tarfang,” Han said. “I’ve been making the same offer for years, and he just keeps talking about how much the galaxy needs him.”

A flurry of streaks and flashes filled the forward viewport as the pirates opened fire on the counterfeit
DR919a
. Luke continued the illusion’s gentle turn, keeping it well ahead of its attackers and drawing them farther away. His skin felt dry and papery, and waves of heat were rolling through his body as the cytoplasm inside his cells began to boil. He did not let up. During the past year, he and Jacen had been working on overload techniques, so he knew could endure the pain and fatigue almost indefinitely. His body would pay a steep price, aging a year in a matter of minutes, but he knew he would not collapse.

Finally, they could no longer see the pirate cruiser in the viewport, and the
DR919a
’s navigational display suggested the ship was well beyond turning back to intercept them. Luke continued to hide their real vessel while moving the decoy ever deeper into the miasma. There were still plenty of pirates ahead—and they were the least of the
DR919a
’s problems.

Han and R2-D2 returned to their work on the power grid, and the silver crescent ahead swelled steadily to a disk with one dark side, then to a hazy half-orb cloaked in white vapor. The cold ache in Luke’s stomach had diminished to almost nothing, but had not faded completely. He hoped that was just residual, a spillover creeping into him through his connection to the illusion, but it could just as easily have been Lomi Plo trying to lure him into a false sense of security. There was no way to be certain. Luke just did not know enough about what she was doing to him.

As they drew close to the planet, the system’s star assumed the form of an immense silver maelstrom sucking in vast quantities of nebular gas. The planet itself became
an alabaster glow with no distinct edge, a cloud of white brightness surrounded by the dark flecks of a dozen moons.

The
DR919a
’s rudimentary sensor package could not penetrate the dense clouds in the planet’s upper atmosphere, but the heavy concentration of ice crystals indicated an abundance of water below, and the world’s general mass and size suggested a rocky core. The moons were easier to survey. They were all about eight kilometers long, egg-shaped, and radiating heat from a core area near their thick ends.

“Those aren’t moons!” Han said, looking over Tarfang’s shoulders. “They’re nest ships!”

Luke immediately felt like a fool. Until that moment, he had believed the problem with the Utegetu nests was basically a misunderstanding; that Raynar and Unu had become upset over the Fizz and allowed their anger to place them temporarily under the sway of the Dark Nest. But there were fifteen nest ships here: one for each of the fourteen nests the Colony had established on the nebula worlds, plus an extra vessel for the Dark Nest. Even the Killiks could not have built such a fleet in only a couple of months. Either all of the Utegetu nests had been under the Dark Nest’s influence for most of the last year, or Raynar and the rest of the Colony had been a part of the plan from the beginning. Luke felt betrayed either way.

Hoping the pirates would be fooled into believing their quarry had escaped into the nebular miasma, Luke gave the decoy a final burst of speed, then let it drop and turned to Han.

“I guess this answers … our question,” Luke said. He still had to concentrate to speak, as he was continuing to hide the
DR919a
. “It’s pretty clear why they’ve been so desperate to trade for reactor fuel and hyperdrive coolant.”

“Yeah—but I really wish it wasn’t,” Han said.

“Why?” Juun asked. “In the history vids, you’re always saying that it pays to know who you’re fighting.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop watching those things?” Without answering Juun’s question, Han turned back to the power grid. “We can get by without climate control for a while. And who needs air scrubbers?”

Tarfang jumped out of his chair and scurried toward Han, jabbering in alarm.

“Tarfang is inquiring whether you’ve lost your mind,” C-3PO said. “Without the air scrubbers, carbon dioxide concentration will rise twelve percent an hour.”

“No problem,” Han said. “We’re not going to last an hour.”

Juun’s eyes grew large, and he looked over his shoulder at Luke. “I don’t understand.”

“We have to stop them,” Luke explained. The fiery pain inside had begun to subside when he stopped overdrawing on the Force, but the cold ache of Lomi Plo’s attention remained with him. “We can’t let a whole fleet of nest ships loose.”

“They’ll eat whole sectors bare,” Han said. “Worse—they’ll turn the natives into Joiners.”

Juun let his jaw fall and was silent for a moment, then he suddenly started chuckling.

“You fooled me!” He shook his head and looked forward again. “The history vids didn’t say you liked practical jokes!”

“We’re not joking, Captain Juun,” Luke said. They had now reached the planet, a huge disk of swirling white that filled most of their forward viewport. He could feel the presence of a large mass of pirates beneath the clouds, somewhere near the world’s equator. “We really need to stop them.”

“We—” Juun’s voice cracked. He stopped to wet his throat, then tried again. “We do?”

“I don’t like it much, either, Juun,” Han said. “But that’s what happens when you start hanging out with Jedi.”

Han’s tone was joking, but there was a core of truth to his words. Luke was acutely aware that he was the only one aboard who had volunteered for this mission. Everyone else had gotten caught up in it simply because they happened to be nearby when it became a necessity, and none of them was very well equipped to survive the job. When he thought about what might happen if he went through with this, he wondered if he really had the right to pull them along. But when he thought about what might happen if the Killiks dispersed across the galaxy … he wondered if he had the right
not
to.

The first of the “moons” began to swell in the forward viewport. At eight kilometers long, it was an ungainly vessel, with a stony hull, giant control fins, and two cavernous docking bays—one of which was currently launching a battered five-hundred-meter passenger liner. Luke ignored the liner and reached out to the nest ship through the Force. It was filled with Killiks—probably the Taat nest, judging by the stoic nature of their presence.

Almost instantly the cold ache in his stomach began to expand again as Lomi Plo reacted to the contact. Luke took a few deep breaths and called on the Force to push the ache back down, but this time he merely succeeded in stopping it from expanding any further. Lomi Plo was growing stronger as he drew nearer.

“Captain Juun, how tight is the Alliance’s blockade?” Luke asked. “Will it prevent the Killiks from escaping in these ships?”

“Of course,” Juun replied. “As long as the Killiks use the standard routes to leave the nebula.”

“What about the nonstandard routes?” Han asked.

Tarfang chuttered and shook his head.

“Tarfang points out that the pirates have never used the standard routes,” C-3PO translated. “And neither have the black membrosia smugglers.”

“Forget the blockade, Luke,” Han said. He let the power grid cover clang shut, then latched it in place. “You want this done, we’ve got to do it ourselves.”

Luke sighed. “You’re right.” He turned to Juun and Tarfang. “I’m sorry, but I really need your help stopping these nest ships.”

“
Stopping
them?” Juun twisted around in his seat. “How?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a bunch of baradium on board?” Han asked.

Juun’s eyes went wide. “You carry
baradium
in your stores?”

“Han is joking, Captain Juun,” Luke explained. “And we don’t need to disable
all
of the Killiks’ ships. I only have to stop the one carrying the Dark Nest. They’re the key to this.”

Tarfang chittered a question.

“Tarfang still wants to know
how
,” C-3PO said. “The
DR-Nine-one-nine-a
doesn’t even carry concussion missiles.”

“It has an escape pod, doesn’t it?” Han asked.

“Of course,” Juun said. “The pod is quite functional.”

“Good.” Luke did not have to ask to know that Han was thinking the same thing he was—with one exception. “Then all you have to do is get close and drop me off.”

“Us off,” Han corrected.

Luke shook his head. “This a Jedi mission, and we don’t even have much in the way of weaponry. You’ll just—”

“If you say
get in the way
, I’m going to Hutt-thump
you,” Han warned. “Leia would kill me if I let you die alone in there.”

Luke sighed in resignation, then began searching for the Dark Nest again. Each time he made contact with one of the nest ships, the cold knot inside rose a bit higher into his chest. It wasn’t long before he had to wage a constant Force battle just to keep the feeling in check.

They were just passing the third nest ship when Luke sensed a mass of pirate presences rising through the planet’s clouds below.

“Be ready,” he warned. “The pirates are coming up to cut us off.”

Tarfang let loose with a long string of Ewokese invective.

“That’s not fair,” C-3PO said. “It’s hardly Master Luke’s fault that you haven’t replaced the tail cannon.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Han said. “If we have to open fire, we’re starslag anyway.”

Another nest ship appeared from behind the curve of the planet, and the anguish of the captives being devoured by the Gorog larvae grew clear and raw in the Force.

“There.” Luke pointed at the vessel. “Do a flyby and we’ll eject in the escape pod. Then head for the Murgo Choke and tell everything you know about this to the highest-ranking blockade officer you can find.”

Tarfang began to gibber and shake his head.

“Tarfang doesn’t think that is very wise,” C-3PO translated. “The Defense Force is going to be looking for someone to blame about those replicas.”

“And if you don’t want it to be you two, then
you’d
better be the ones who sound the warning,” Han said. “If you get there before anything bad happens, they might even give you a reward.”

Tarfang’s furry brow rose.
“Gabagaba?”

“I’m sure it would be substantial,” Luke said.

“Yeah, a thousand credits, at least,” Han said. “You might be saving an entire fleet, after all.”

“A reward would be nice,” Juun said. “But that’s not the important thing, Tarfang. It was our mistake, so it’s our duty to correct it.”

Tarfang groaned and let his head drop, but waved Luke and Han aft toward the escape pod.

“I’ll keep the
Niner
cloaked as long as I can,” Luke said, turning to go. “But once you’re beyond interception range, get out fast. I need to devote—”

Luke’s instructions were interrupted by the wail of
DR919a
’s proximity alarms. Juun shrieked, and Luke whirled around to see a blue streak of ion efflux lighting the forward viewport.

“Pirate ship?” he asked.

Juun could barely bring himself to nod.

“Relax—they missed,” Han said. “Now that they’re past—”

The proximity alarms screamed again, and this time Luke was thrown from his feet as the ship bucked. A loud boom rolled forward, then metal groaned in the stern and the sour smell of containment fluid began to fill the air.

Juun studied his console for a moment. “I can’t believe it! We’re not showing any damage.”

“What a relief!” C-3PO said from where he had landed across the deck. “My calculations indicate that even if the impact was glancing, we were hit by something at least the size of a Corellian Engineering Corporation corvette.”

“Uh, I wouldn’t get too excited.” Han rolled to his knees next to Luke. “I rerouted the damage control power to the shields.”

Tarfang, who like Juun had been strapped into his seat, looked back and began to yap at Han angrily.

“Yeah?” Han rose and jabbed his finger in the Ewok’s direction.
“Well, we wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t boosted that flit-field you two were calling shields.”

A pirate frigate shot past between the
DR919a
and the Gorog nest ship, then wheeled around and opened fire with a small bank of turbolasers.

The bolts flashed past at least a kilometer overhead.

Luke returned to his feet and checked Juun’s navigational display. He was relieved to see the rest of the pirate fleet—about thirty vessels, ranging in size from blastboats to frigates—executing much the same maneuver, all laying fire in a circle around a disabled blastboat floating several kilometers to their stern. His Force illusion was still working; the pirates had no idea where
DR919a
was and were attacking blindly in the hope of landing a lucky shot.