Dark Nest_ The Swarm War Part 14

"Don't you dare!" Mara ordered. "That stuff is disgusting enough without having it run all over!"

Mara checked the tactical display and saw that only three Gatherers remained, two on Luke's side of the asteroid and one on hers. She swung her StealthX after the nearest target, trusting the Force to guide her safely around the faint streaks of color that were flas.h.i.+ng past her blurry canopy. Her astromech droid posted a polite but urgent message on the display, reminding her that they had lost their s.h.i.+elds.

"Relax, Nine," Mara said. "I never take more than one hit per sortie."

The droid chirped doubtfully, then asked if she usually flew blind.

"I'm not blind," Mara reminded him. "I have the For-"

Nine interrupted her with a shrill whistle, reporting that they were receiving a desperate message from the Nickel One hive mother.

"Then put it on the comm speaker," Mara ordered.

Nine replied that the message was not coming in over standard comm channels. Instead, it was being transmitted via radio frequencies that the Verpine used to communicate organically.

"Fine. What's she saying?"

A message appeared on Mara's display. HELP! THE HEART-CHAMBER IS UNDER ATTACK BY OLD ONES AND VERPINE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS!

"Old Ones?" Mara asked.

Nine believed the hive mother was referring to Killiks.

"Tell her to lock herself in," Mara said. "We'll be there as soon as we can."

Almost instantly, a question appeared on her display.

WHO?.

"Just tell her we're Jedi," Mara replied. "The ones who have been attacking the convoy."

The droid tweeted an acknowledgment, and the hive mother's reply appeared on the display half a second later. THE HIVE ASKS THAT THE UNSEEN JEDI HURRY. THE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS HAVE ALREADY INVITED THE OLD ONES INTO THE HEART-CHAMBER, AND THE MALES-WHODIE-FOR-THE-HIVE-MOTHER ARE ALREADY IN BATTLE.

Nine added a message of his own, noting that the ground emplacements were now targeting the Gatherers and suggesting that the Jedi would only get in the way if they continued to attack the same targets.

Mara checked her tactical display; the Verpine weapons emplacements did finally seem to be attacking the convoy-what was left of it, anyway.

"This had better be legitimate, Nine," she said. The R9 series was notorious for self-enhancing their preservation routines. "If you're altering data just to get me to turn back, I'll schedule you for an op-system reinstallation faster than you can count to a million and ten."

The droid rea.s.sured her that he was only reporting the truth, and as evidence, he pointed out that the salvos had stopped exploding around their vessel. Realizing that Nine was probably right-at least, she could no longer see any streaks of color flas.h.i.+ng through the thick gunk on her canopy-Mara decided to believe him. She reached out to Luke, calling him to her side.

"Okay, Nine," she said. "Tell the hive mother we're coming in."

The hive mother's reply appeared on the display almost instantly. YES, YOU ARE VERY FAST. WE CAN SEE YOU NOW, CUTTING THE OLD ONES DOWN WITH YOUR CRYSTAL-FOCUSED BLADE.

"She can see us?" The reason occurred to Mara as soon as she had voiced the question. "Jacen!"

The happy swell of pride that suddenly filled her Force-bond with Luke told Mara that her husband had reached the same conclusion. While the two of them had been fretting over Jacen's trustworthiness and nearly blowing the mission, Jacen had been doing what needed to be done-and preventing the coup. He was already in the heart-chamber.

Jacen was, indeed, a very good Jedi.

"Ask the hive mother if it looks like we need any-"

Mara was interrupted by the chime of an arrival alarm, and the transponder codes of a Galactic Alliance task force began to appear on her tactical display. Nine ran a message across the screen, informing Mara that he was not altering this data, either.

A moment later, a familiar age-cracked voice came over the speaker in Mara's c.o.c.kpit. "This is Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon aboard the Galactic Alliance Star Destroyer Megador, advising Nickel One that we are here on a peaceful mission. Please acknowledge."

Mara's droid reported that the hive mother was acknowledging, though it might take the Megador a moment to realize this, since she was still using Verpine radio waves.

"This is Supreme Commander Pellaeon aboard the Megador," Pellaeon continued. "I repeat, we are here to aid you. We have reason to believe that a hostile force may attempt to overthrow your government."

It was Jacen's voice that answered, sounding over his personal comlink. "Consider your suspicions confirmed, Admiral Pellaeon," he said. "But there is no reason for alarm. The Jedi have matters well in hand."

"The Jedi?" Pellaeon asked. He sounded relieved, perturbed, and not at all surprised. "I should have known."

Mara felt Luke's curiosity pour into the meld, and Jacen asked, "Why's that?"

"Because I've been getting reports that there were Jedi waiting almost everywhere that the Killiks have attacked so far."

This time, Luke did not even have to pour his curiosity into the meld. Jacen simply asked, "Almost?"

"I'm afraid so, Jedi Solo," Pellaeon said. "I am speaking to Jedi Jacen Solo, am I not?"

"And the Masters Skywalker," Jacen replied. "We're here together."

"Yes, that's what Master Horn reported," Pellaeon said. "Regretfully, our garrison intercepted his team before they could prevent the Killiks from landing on Thyferra."

The meld filled with alarm, though Mara could not say whether it was hers or Luke's or Jacen's, and Jacen asked, "You don't mean to say-"

"I'm afraid I do," Pellaeon replied. "The Killiks have taken control of our bacta supply."

TWELVE.

A thousand fingers of silver fire stabbed down from orbit, slicing through the emerald rain clouds. The downpour turned as bright as the Core, and the ground shook so hard that the view in the periscope jumped like a bad holo signal. Still, the image remained clear enough to tell that the last wave of drop s.h.i.+ps-at least those few Jaina could actually see through the deluge-had landed almost unchallenged. Their pa.s.sengers were already debarking in armored hover vehicles, streaming forward to join the hundreds of thousands of troops already ma.s.sing behind the defensive s.h.i.+eld at the drop-sector perimeter.

But the Chiss success was not the cause of the icy knot between Jaina's shoulder blades, nor the reason her stomach refused to settle. UnuThul had always known the Colony would not be able to stop the enemy landing. After all, Tenupe was the linchpin of the Killik front, the gateway to the Sparkle Run and the Colony's heart, and the Chiss had committed two-thirds of their offensive forces to its capture. So there was nothing unexpected about the success of the landing, nor even all that alarming. Jaina was reacting to something else, something the Great Swarm had not yet discovered.

Jaina pulled away from the periscope and blinked for a moment as her eyes readjusted to the dim s.h.i.+ne ball light inside the rustling tunnel. The air was hot and humid and filled with the bitter smell of battle pheromones, and the Force was charged with the same pre-combat anxiety common to soldiers of every species. The pa.s.sage was literally packed with Killiks: millions of thumb-sized Jooj, an endless line of ma.s.sive Rekkers, a scattering of knee-high Wuluws. There were also a few dozen volunteers from other insect species-mostly mantis-like Snutib hunters, shriveled-looking Geonosian warriors, and a handful of Kamarians who kept asking about her father.

Jaina even saw a pair of greasy black-furred Squibs, armed with repeating blasters and thermal detonators, who seemed unable to take their big eyes off her. She smiled and reached out to them in the Force, trying to offer rea.s.surance and calm their fears. She was not very successful; they merely curled their lips and continued to watch her.

Jaina eyed them suspiciously. It was hard to imagine why a couple of young mercenary Squibs would join this fight-unless they were desperate and stupid. On the other hand, it was hard to imagine them posing much of a threat, either. More likely, it was something else p.r.i.c.kling her danger sense-something to do with the Chiss.

Jaina would have liked to know whether Zekk sensed anything unusual, but he was posted on a mountain more than a hundred kilometers away, too far away for her to share what was in his mind. With their own nest-the Taat-still trapped inside the Utegetu Nebula, their mind-link only functioned when they were within a few dozen meters of each other.

Jaina reached out to Zekk in the Force, communicating in the clumsy way Jedi usually did. When she felt nothing unusual, she withdrew from his presence and turned to a knee-high Killik standing beside her.

"Wuluw, inform UnuThul that we, er, I am having danger ripples." As she spoke, Jaina was absentmindedly running her wrists along its antennae. "Ask him if Unu is sure the scouts have found all of the Chiss reserves."

Wuluw acknowledged the order with a curt "Urbu." With yellow, oversized eyes and chitin so thin that it could be cracked by a stiff wind, the Killiks of the Wuluw nest hardly made ideal soldiers. But Wuluws mind-shared over a much greater distance than most Killiks-nearly half a kilometer, compared with a typical range of a few dozen meters-and so they were posted throughout the Great Swarm to serve as a communications net.

A moment later, Wuluw reported that UnuThul did not sense any danger in the Force. He wanted to know if she and Zekk were trying another trick like she had at Qoribu-"No," Jaina interrupted. "We want to destroy the landing force, too. Maybe a big defeat will make the Chiss rethink the wisdom of pressing this war."

Wuluw relayed an a.s.surance from UnuThul that they would soon teach the Chiss to respect the Colony. Then a murky Force pressure rose inside Jaina's chest, urging her and the rest of the Great Swarm to action. The tunnel filled with a loud clatter, and Wuluw rumbled a more specific order from UnuThul, telling Jaina to prepare her horde for the a.s.sault.

Jaina looked down a side tunnel to a large underground chamber, one of hundreds that the Killiks had been excavating since the drop s.h.i.+ps landed. A steady shower of moist jungle soil was pouring down from the ceiling, partially obscuring the pale white chitin of the four Mollom burrowers already digging their way toward the surface.

"Tell UnuThul we'll be attacking the command craft any moment," Jaina said. She opened herself to the battle-meld primarily with Zekk, but she knew UnuThul would also be monitoring it-then motioned to her insect troops and started down the side corridor. "We'll hit-"

"Ur ruub," the lead Rekker rumbled. "Uuu b ruu."

"Right," Jaina said. "We just need to be sure the volunteers-"

"Fa.s.sssst and 'arrrrrd," a Snutib whistled.

"UnuThul told us," a Geonosian added.

"Good," Jaina said, wondering why UnuThul had bothered to name her and Zekk subcommanders if he wanted to run the entire battle himself. "Ask if you have any questions."

She stopped just inside the entrance and waited in silence for the Mollom to break through to the surface. Thankfully, the jungle soil was too moist to raise dust as it fell, but as the burrowers neared the surface, the dirt changed to mud, and the chamber floor quickly grew slick. Finally, the Mollom boomed a warning down the shaft, and a loud sucking noise sounded from the surface.

An instant later the heat-blackened nose of a drop s.h.i.+p crashed down into the chamber, its s.h.i.+eld generators overloading and exploding as they struggled to push back the cramped shaft the Mollom had dug beneath it. Rain began to pour down the hole, and the craft's forward beam cannons continued to fire, filling the room with heat and steam and color, and blasting bantha-sized craters into the walls and floor.

Jaina made a scooping motion with her hand, using the Force to hurl a huge ma.s.s of soil at the cannons, driving the mud down the emitter nozzle and packing it tight around the galven coils. The weapons exploded an instant later, blowing off the turret and leaving a five-meter breach in the top hull.

The Killiks rattled forward in a boiling wave, the tiny Jooj swarming along the walls and ceiling, the mighty Rekkers springing directly onto the drop s.h.i.+p. The Rekkers boomed their thoraxes in glee and dived through the breach left by the destroyed turret. A few seconds after the first insects had entered, the drop s.h.i.+p's hull began to reverberate with m.u.f.fled sizzles and dull pings.

Jaina clicked her throat in approval, then reached out in the Force to see if she could sense Jagged Fel's presence aboard the vessel. They were enemies now, but she did not want him to die. As a skilled tactician and a high-ranking Chiss officer, he would be a great a.s.set to the Colony-a.s.suming he could be captured and brought into a nest.

And if Jag became a Joiner, she mused, the Dawn Rumble would be so much more "R u u buruub!" Wuluw burst out. The little Killik started to turn and flee back down the tunnel. "Bur!"

"No!" Jaina caught the insect by an arm. "This way."

If the Chiss were arming the drop s.h.i.+p's self-destruct mechanism, the last place they wanted to be when the shock waves. .h.i.t was underground. Dragging Wuluw along, Jaina Force-leapt onto the drop s.h.i.+p's hull, then sprang again, leaping half a dozen meters to the surface.

She found herself standing in the heart of the Chiss landing zone, a clearing of mud and ash surrounded by a circle of blast-toppled mogo trees. A hundred meters away, the landing zone abruptly gave way to a skeleton jungle, a leafless tangle of trunks and limbs stripped bare by Chiss defoliating sprays. In the distance, barely visible through the pouring rain and the naked timber, she could see the upended tail of another drop s.h.i.+p, rising out of a hole similar to the one from which she had emerged.

A flurry of shrill sizzles erupted as a Chiss squad opened up with their charric rifles. Wuluw tried to dive hack underground, but Jaina jerked her in the opposite direction.

"I told you, this way!" Jaina started across the clearing, dodging and weaving and dragging Wuluw along. "It's safer!"

"Bur ub bbu!"

"Of course they're shooting at us." Jaina reached the edge of the clearing and dived for cover. "They're the enemy!"

They landed between a pair of fallen mogo trees, and the sizzles became crackles as the charrics began to chew through the speeder-sized trunk.

"R-ruu u-u b-b-burp;" Wuluw stammered.

"Don't worry." Jaina unslung her repeating blaster. "We're Jedi, aren't we?"

Wuluw thrummed her thorax doubtfully.

Jaina popped up and began to pour bolts back across the clearing. The nearest drop s.h.i.+p-the one she had bounded up-had not yet self-destructed, and the Jooj were swarming up the hull and pouring out across the landing zone. The Rekkers were coming, too, springing out of the pit by the dozens, booming their thoraxes in glee and spraying shatter gun pellets in every direction.

But the Chiss were recovering from their shock and making their presence known. Nearly half the leaping Rekkers tumbled back into the hole, their thoraxes trailing arcs of gore or their heads vanis.h.i.+ng in the flash of a maser beam. And many of those who did reach the jungle floor landed in pieces or limp, oozing heaps.

Jaina did her best to cover them, but the Chiss troops were camouflaged in color-s.h.i.+fting, fractal-pattern armor that made them nearly impossible to see. She reached out in the Force and felt perhaps a hundred enemy soldiers scattered throughout the area, all confused, frightened, and-typically for Chiss-still resolute. She began to rely on the Force rather than her eyes to find targets and saw a bolt strike what appeared to be a mogo limb-until it dropped its charric rifle and whirled away clutching a wounded shoulder.

Then a powerful jolt shook the ground. The nearest drop s.h.i.+p's tail erupted into a ball of shrapnel and orange flame, and the Force shuddered with the anguish of a ma.s.s death. Jaina dropped back behind the tree and turned to pull Wuluw down beside her. She found only a shard of white-hot durasteel, lodged in a blood-sprayed mogo trunk behind where the Killik had been standing.

Jaina had seen-had caused-so much carnage in combat that she had believed herself numb to the storm of emotions it sp.a.w.ned. But the loss of the frightened little Wuluw brought it all back-all the fear and the anger and the guilt, the despair and the loneliness and the soul-scorching rage that had been lurking just beneath the surface since the deaths of Anakin and Chewbacca and so many others.

Jaina leapt up again, eager to blast a hundred Chiss, to make the invaders pay for the deaths of Wuluw and so many others, but apart from her own fading battle cry, the area had fallen suddenly quiet. All that remained of the drop s.h.i.+p was the black smoke streaming out of the pit and a few shards of white-hot metal embedded in fallen mogos. Chiss and Rekkers alike remained tucked down among the tree trunks around her, momentarily too stunned to continue killing, and even the surviving Jooj seemed disoriented, swirling across the ground in rambling swarms of brownish green.

In the distance, Jaina could make out more columns of smoke rising toward the emerald sky. Every few moments, a fresh thud sounded somewhere in the rain, marking the destruction of another drop s.h.i.+p. Each detonation brought the death of thousands of insects, but an entire drop fleet of detonations would not change the battle's outcome. What the Chiss failed to understand-what they would refuse to understand until it was too late-was that they could not win a war of attrition against the Colony.

A Killik could lay a thousand eggs a month, and within a year, those eggs would be battle-ready nymphs. In two years, the survivors would lay eggs of their own. Kill one Killik, and ten thousand would take its place. Kill ten thousand, and a million would take theirs. If the Chiss wanted to survive this war, they had only one choice: withdraw to their own borders and sue for peace. It was that simple.

After a moment, the Jooj started to find their way into the fallen trees the enemy was using for cover. Chiss soldiers began to leap out of hiding, screaming and ripping their armor off, slapping and even shooting at the thumbnail-sized insects that had slipped past their defenses. Jaina understood their panic. The Jooj were not attacking so much as feeding, injecting their prey with a flesh-dissolving enzyme and sucking the liquefied flesh back into their mouths. Supposedly, victims felt as if they were being burned alive.

The surviving Rekkers began to take advantage of the enemy's panic, pounding them with shatter gun pellets the moment they showed themselves. Other Chiss returned fire, and soon the battle was in full swing again. Jaina stretched into the Force and poured blasterfire at soldiers she could sense but did not see. The sharp phoots of insecticide grenades began to detonate all around her, and she felt Killiks dying slow, anguished deaths as their respiratory spiracles swelled shut.

Finally, Killik reinforcements began to pour out of the smoking pit again, the Rekkers springing into view with their weapons blazing, the Jooj scuttling over edges and spreading outward in all directions. The Chiss, disciplined even when it was clear they had no chance of survival, responded with a desperate a.s.sault, hurling vape charges and insecticide grenades into the hole in a futile effort to turn back the Killik tide.

Jaina felt an enemy presence behind her and turned to find a trio of Chiss soldiers leaping over a mogo trunk. Their charric rifles were already swinging in her direction. She swept her hand across her body, using the Force to redirect their aim. Maser beams sprayed harmlessly past, filling the air with smoke, splinters, and heat.

The leader was on Jaina instantly, his red eyes s.h.i.+ning with hatred behind his helmet as he clubbed at her head with his rifle b.u.t.t. She ducked, using the Force to pull him over her back and send him cras.h.i.+ng into the trunk behind her.

The other two Chiss arrived a step later, one bringing an armored knee up at her face. Jaina blocked with her blaster, at the same time squeezing the trigger and pumping fire into the stomach armor of her other attacker. The bolts ricocheted away and sent the soldier stumbling hack, but not before he slammed the barrel of his own weapon down on the back of her head.

Jaina found herself kneeling on the ground, her vision narrowing, her hands empty, and the deafening crack of the blow still echoing inside her skull. She tried to stand and felt the strength drain from her body.

No!

Zekk touched her through their battle-meld, pouring strength into her through the Force, urging her to stay conscious.

Jaina fell flat to the ground-then unhooked her light-saber and activated the blade as she rolled away, slicing both soldiers at the knees. They screamed and crashed down behind her. She felt her blade move and recoil as a maser beam crackled into it. Her vision cleared, and she found herself facing the first Chiss who had attacked her.

She deflected the next shot back into his helmet visor, sending him tumbling backward over a mogo trunk. His body lay still and silent, the small plume of smoke that rose from it stinking of charred flesh.

Jaina spun on a knee and found the other two Chiss lying on their bellies in front of her, groaning in pain as they struggled to prop themselves on their elbows and open fire. She used the Force to rip their weapons from their hands, then stood and raised her lightsaber to finish them off.