Star Wars_ Destiny's Way Part 45

This would delay things only a little. "Send for the grutchyna,"

the warmaster ordered.

He wouldn't send any more brave warriors up that shaft. Instead he'd dig away the floor from beneath the infidels' feet.

"Blood Sacrifice reports they have engaged the enemy," one of his subalterns reported. "They will delay the infidels' arrival as long as possible."

"Tell the fleet that the G.o.ds will salute their courage." He turned to another subaltern. "How is the search for Jacen Solo?"

"No change, Warmaster. He flees, but our forces are keeping him in sight. He--"

"Warmaster!" The subaltern with the oggzil interrupted. "A communication for you!"

Tsavong Lah took the oggzil from the subaltern. "Who wishes to speak to me?" he demanded.

"Can you not guess, Warmaster?"

At the sound of the voice Tsavong Lah's heart began to rage within his chest. "Vergere!" he said in surprise, and then he forced amus.e.m.e.nt into his voice. "Have you called to beg for the lives of the Solo twins?"

"No. I have come to join your Jedi hunt, if you'll let me."

The warmaster laughed. "You're a miserable traitor, and very clever, but you are not a Jeedai"

"But I am a Jedi. A real Jedi, not one of these imitations you've been fighting. Haven't you worked that out by now?" Smug pleasure oozed from Vergere's words. "I lived alongside you for fifty years without detection, and then I betrayed you. I'm surprised the Supreme Overlord allowed you to live after I made you look so ridiculous."

Fury gripped Tsavong Lah by the throat. "Come to Ebaq Nine!" he shouted. "Come to the sacrifice of the Solo twins!"

"If you'll let me."

"I'll instruct the s.h.i.+ps to let you by." He threw the oggzil back to his subordinate. "See to it!"

"Immediately, Warmaster."

The packed warriors surged aside as the first of the two grutchyna arrived, half floating in the low gravity. "Ah," he said to the trainers, and pointed at the roof. "Begin there!" Then he turned to the nearest group of Yuuzhan Vong. "Up the shaft, warriors!" he ordered. "Keep the Jeedai busy while we dig."

The three Jedi stood in the dark, illuminated only by their lightsabers. Jaina had just begun to think that the Yuuzhan Vong had been too inactive for too long, when the floor reverberated to an impact, and from below there was a crash of falling rock.

"Vong! " Tesar said, and leaned out to fire into the shaft as warriors began to scramble up. Razor bugs shot up in a useless attempt at providing a covering attack, and Lowbacca and Jaina sliced them effortlessly with their lightsabers.

The floor rocked to another shattering blow. Jaina could hear rock cracking.

Drop a grenade, she thought, and run.

Run until they caught her. And then fight until she couldn't fight any longer.

Jacen had decided he might as well make his stand. The mine-shafts branched and narrowed, branched and narrowed, and when the roof got less than two meters high he realized he was out of choices. When the tunnels were so small he could only crouch, then the voxyn would have too great an advantage.

He made a turn into a branding tunnel and readied his lightsaber and blaster. He'd save his last grenade for the next voxyn.

The enemy warriors hurled themselves down the tunnel and Jacen fired on them. Thud bugs and blorash jelly flew at him; he ducked some and cut at others. He was strangely calm.

This wasn't the first time he had made a mistake. And dying was nothing new, either.

It was the thought of Jaina that brought despair. He had failed to help her; and through the Force and their twin bond he felt her own hopelessness.

The Yuuzhan Vong kept coming, dozens of them lunging, charging, hurling thud bugs., spitting poison from the heads of their amphistaffs.

Jacen's blaster was running out of charges. His lightsaber was a brilliant green blur as it parried and slashed. Pace by pace., he stepped back into the narrowing shaft.

Jacen felt rage building in him, a red fury that was his response to his own despair. The blaster hummed empty and he threw it at the warrior. And then he remembered the power he could call upon, the power fueled by the kind of despair and anger he felt now and had felt before, and he hurled it at the warrior, the brilliant emerald fire that lanced from his fingertips.

The Force lightning threw the first rank of Yuuzhan Vong back into their comrades, and in the confusion Jacen launched another blaze of fire. He hadn't killed them-the murderous form of lightning was a dark side weapon-but they wouldn't be waking for a long time.

"Young Jedi."

Jacen looked around, and somehow wasn't surprised to find Vergere standing there. "h.e.l.lo," he said, and fired another sizzling blast at the Yuuzhan Vong.

Vergere looked up at him, her tilted eyes glittering and wise.

"You're about to lose your air," she said.

"Vergere!" the subaltern cried, his voice ringing high above the sound of the grutchyna bringing down stone.

Tsavong Lah swung at the subaltern. "What of her?" Impatiently.

"Isn't she coming?"

"She comes! But she isn't slowing down!"

The A-wing that Vergere stole from Ralroosts fighter bays impacted Ebaq 9's main shaft head traveling at thirty-five thousand kilometers per hour. The starfighter's weapons had been scavenged for use elsewhere, but weapons were scarcely necessary. The impact vaporized the heavy girders and machinery at the shaft head, and the starfighter's power plant and the two huge Novaldex engines turned into a fast-moving ball of plasma that swept the length of Ebaq 9's central shaft and blew out the other side, a brilliant volcanic eruption that blinded any holocams that happened to be turned in that direction.

As the superheated ion storm rampaged through the moonlet it flashed into any open side corridors, and to a lesser degree any corridors branching off these, but Jaina and Jacen were too deep into the galleries to be directly affected.

What happened in their galleries was an enormous, eardrum-punis.h.i.+ng buffet of pressure and heat, followed by a furious dust and windstorm that lasted mere seconds-after which the air was simply gone. The hurtling ball of plasma pushed a huge pressure wave ahead of it, and carried an underpressure behind, drawing air out of all the galleries. In addition, the storm of heat and pressure had set the moon on fire. Even metal will burn if it's hot enough and there's enough oxygen to keep the fires going. The fires set by the A-wing's ion fury were hot enough and powerful enough to suck every bit of oxygen out of the tunnels within seconds.

The Yuuzhan Vong had come prepared for decompression-it was an obvious defense strategy, after all. All of them carried ooglith cloakers that would enable them to survive without air.

But they had expected more warning. Even if the New Republic engineers had blown the shaft head and exposed it to the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, it would have taken many minutes for all the great volume of air to evacuate the tunnels, and the warriors would have had all that time from the first decompression warning to safely don their cloakers.

Those who survived the great wave of heat and radiation experienced at first the brutal overpressure of the impact, followed by a dusty, disorienting, hurricanelike wind as the air was sucked behind the racing plasma ball and into the fires of the central core.

The oxygen was gone within two or three seconds of the impact. The few Yuuzhan Vong who realized what had just happened were caught in a pack of their cohorts, disoriented and unable to communicate in the sudden absence of air. Many experienced syncope and pa.s.sed out at once.

Any who tried to hold their breath died of embolism as their lungs frothed and exploded. In order to survive, any individual warrior would have had to claw his cloaker free and don it amid a scrambling, staggering, falling crowd of his fellows, many of whom would have tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the cloaker from him in order to don it themselves.

The three surviving voxyns and the grutchyna had no ooglith cloakers to wear, and they panicked in the absence of air and thrashed madly. Many Yuuzhan Vong were crushed or poisoned, slashed or bitten by the dying animals, including their handlers.

Within twenty seconds, all the Yuuzhan Vong had pa.s.sed out. Within minutes, they were dead.

As deaths in battle go, these were comparatively merciful.

The first blast of heat and pressure knocked Jaina from the shaft, staggered with vertigo from the double slap to her ears.

"Depressurization!" she called, her mind whirling.

With one quick movement she slapped her faceplate closed. The air around her howled, a screaming hurricane that threatened to drag her into the shaft, but within three seconds this was diminished to nothing.

By the time she had fully secured her pressure helmet the air was gone.

About time, she thought. She could have done with engineers blowing the shaft head a lot earlier.

Tesar stood closest to the shaft, able to use his tail to brace himself against the shaft walls and avoid being knocked about by the storm. Jaina gestured at him to take a glance down the shaft and see if the enemy were moving.

Tesar looked, then stepped back, one hand gesturing at Jaina to stay where she was.

Jaina understood. Whatever was happening in the lower gallery, it was something she didn't want to watch.

Jacen watched the Yuuzhan Vong die. He had no helmet, but thanks to Vergere's warning he was able to preserve the air in his immediate area with the Force, forming a seal across the tunnel opening ahead of him.

The Yuuzhan Vong fell in graceful silence, one by one, drop-ping slowly in the light gravity like the petals of some absurdly menacing flower.

"I wish I could help them," Jacen said.

"There is nothing more useless than an impossible wish." Vergere was severe.

He turned to her. "You did this, didn't you?"

Vergere's whiskers twitched with distaste. "It was necessary that you be liberated from your choices."

Jacen sighed. "My choices weren't very good, were they?"

"You chose with your heart. And you achieved your object, did you not? Your sister lives." She looked at him solemnly. "And I achieved my object as well. You are free to pursue your destiny."

Truth struck Jacen. He looked at Vergere in shock.

"I just realized," he said. "You're dead, aren't you?"

The Blood Sacrifice blew at the same moment the fireball blossomed from Ebaq's far side, and Luke was staggered by the double explosion.

He sought the Force-meld, searching for the Jedi trapped on the moon, but it was some time before their presence returned to the meld.

They had been very busy.

What happened? he demanded.

Depressurization. A picture of wind whirling out of the tunnel, followed by another picture of enemy dead.

Jaina? Tesar? Sending pictures.

Luke received pictures in return-Jaina and Tesar, hale and well, beneath the blue skies of some green planet.

And Jacen'?

Jaina's excited presence interrupted. Jacen? He's here?

Yes. Jacen's presence in the meld was calm. With Vergere. She's saved us.

Vergere, thought Luke. His reaction was strong enough to send his complex feelings into the Force-meld, and he felt the others react. Luke quickly dampened his contact with the meld. There were secrets he didn't want all Jedi to know.

Was Vergere with the Yuuzhan Vong? The complex idea took some time for Luke to formulate. If the answer to his question was yes, the Yuuzhan Vong knew of the Alpha Red weapon and this whole victory might be pointless.

No. Vergere's astringent personality flowed into the meld from wherever she had been concealing herself, and spoke with extraordinary clarity. / have been hiding among the New Republic forces. I stole a fighter and dived it into the moon to destroy the enemy.

Luke absorbed the implications of this. You gave your life to save the others.

Vergere's response was the answer she had given all along. It was necessary.

Luke hesitated. Battle was still raging, and people were still dying.

Hold on, he tried to send. We'll get you out as soon as we can. And to the rest of the Jedi, he sent an strong suggestion not to mention Vergere to anyone. There are reasons.

He s.h.i.+fted his mind to the battle. The Yuuzhan Vong had fought with their usual tremendous courage, but such courage hadn't served them well-it had become a trap, as Ackbar had foreseen. Their formation was broken, their s.h.i.+ps afire, their crews dying. The New Republic forces were finis.h.i.+ng them off.

Luke looked at Garm Bel Iblis, saw the man's knifelike profile gazing intently at the battle display.

"Can we call on them to surrender?" he asked.

Bel Iblis was surprised. "Why? They'll fight on. They always do."

"Because it will make us feel better to know that we offered. That we did all we could to preserve life."

Bel Iblis considered this for a moment as he tugged his long white mustache, then nodded. "Very well," he said.

The offer to accept the enemy's surrender was made repeatedly from that moment.

The Yuuzhan Vong did not answer, and died.

Jacen stood in the narrow mine gallery so that he wouldn't lose body heat by sitting or leaning on the cold stone. He was practicing Tapas, the art of keeping warm in a cold environment, but he was finding it difficult to concentrate on this and on maintaining the Force s.h.i.+eld that retained his air, and so he was beginning to s.h.i.+ver.

"I got you killed," he said.

Vergere tilted her chin. "Dying was my decision, young Jedi. Not yours."

"But," Jacen reasoned, "I created the situation that led to your making that decision."

"In that case, you may rejoice in the fact that your sister is alive." Vergere shook her head. "Both of us could not live. The situation would not permit that. The choice was between the young and promising, as against the wise and superannuated. And given that choice"-she sighed- "nature always chooses the young." She sighed again. "I chose to bow to the will of nature. My time ended forty years ago. Now at last I will join my Master, and my old comrades."

Tears stung Jacen's eyes. "I wish it had worked out differently."