They had everything planned perfectly. Teneniel was trailing the old YT freighter in hyperspace, safely hidden from its sensors. From the tracking information they could estimate the time of its arrival in Kal'shikar's gravity well to within a minute. At the very start of that minute-long window, Jacen and Tenel Ka would drop out of hyperspace and fire up the ship's ion cannon. When the freighter appeared they would disable it before its crew knew what was going on, reel it in via tractor beam, and board it. Depending on what they found inside, they might also hold the ship and her crew ransom and issue demands from whomever they were to meet on the surface. From what information Teneniel's databanks had on Kal'shikar, Mr D's clients would probably be the only sentients being on such a wracked and inhospitable planet.
It was, both he and Tenel Ka agreed, a pretty good plan.
Jacen had been told that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. He knew it from experience. But for some reason, right then and there, he forgot.
At least, he was not expecting to drop out of hyper-space in front of a full wing of starfighters.
Before they knew what was happening their field of vision was filled with red laserfire. The small ships were of some design Jacen didn't recognize. They almost looked like sleek, miniature TIE interceptors, and their movements reminded him of swarming insects.
"Shields up!" Tenel Ka shouted and wrenched the ship into a series of twists and turns.
It took Jacen just a second to put up the energy shields, and it was enough time for a few darts of red plasma to explode against the hull. Alarm klaxons wailed, red lights flashed, and it looked like their port engine was stalling out.
"What now?" He grimaced. Their shields could hold off these low-energy blasts for a while, but this many enemies were going to gnaw their defenses down to nothing eventually.
"I am heading for the planet," Tenel Ka said. Her face was stony and intent despite the frantic battle, despite the panic Jacen felt himself. The gray-brown sphere of Kal'shikar filled their viewport and Tenel Ka pitched their ship into a steep dive. Jacen flipped on the tactical display and saw the fighters signified by a trail of little red dots following them.
"Some kind of droids ships," Jacen grit his teeth. "Have you seen them before?"
"I am not sure. They seemed familiar."
"Kinda like TIEs, I thought. But nobody's really used droid ships since the Clone Wars."
"I believe this planet saw battle in that conflict."
"Yeah, but, those ships have to, what, sixty years old?"
"Fact. And they outnumber us twenty to one."
Red plasma stared to rain on their aft shields again. Jacen put all defensive power into the rear grids and brought up the aft laser turrets. Teneniel was not armed with concussion missiles and quad-laser turrets like the Falcon, but her small automated emplacements managed to pick off one unshielded droid fighter after another. That was almost encouraging, except for all the others still coming fast behind them.
Their ship rocked as it entered the upper atmosphere. Jacen pulled on his crash webbing and wanted to tell Tenel Ka to do the same, but she was wrestling one-handed with the controls as upper air current threatened to throw their ship into a spin.
"Where are we headed?" he asked her. "Where can we put down?"
"I am trying to tell. I see no cities. I see... Wait. Metallic materials. Ships. Crashed ships."
"Take us there."
"That may be where target is."
"Good. We can fight them head-on instead of waiting for them to find us."
"Understood. Jacen, I-"
There was another explosion as their aft shields collapsed. Jacen was thrown forward and snapped back by his restraints, but Tenel Ka was nearly impaled on her own control stick.
"Tenel Ka!" he shouted as she remained hunched over the console, head low, her one hand still gripping the throttle.
Another explosion rocked them and Jacen was thrown to one side as Teneniel spiraled toward a ridge of high mountains.
As they fell into Kal'shikar's twilight zone he glanced at their tactical display. Red marks flit around Teneniel like angry gnats while the blue mark signifying their quarry hung at the edge of the planet's orbit, safe and sound, like it was mocking them.
-{}-
As they stood on the control ship's bridge, watching the holo-display as a second ship tumbled toward the planet's surface, Paks Veem said aloud, "I thought this planet didn't get many visitors."
Dician didn't seem to notice his sarcasm, which was probably for the best.
She said, "This guest was a bit different. Consider this one invited."
"And you still shot him down?"
"Yes. We only roll out the welcome mat for Jedi Grand Masters, not mere Jedi Queens."
"Jedi Queens? Jedi don't have queens."
"We have every reason to believe that ship was being used by Queen Mother Tenel Ka of Hapes. I believe she was at the Academy the same time as you. Perhaps you knew her?"
Knew of her was more like it. Seen her from afar, occasionally. The red-haired warrior girl had been part of a tight circle along with the Solo kids and a few others. For most of the students, kids like Paks Veem who got picked up by chance, Tenel Ka and her clique might have well been royalty. It hadn't been shocking when he found out, years later, that she actually was.
"How did you know it was Tenel Ka?" he asked as he watched the ship make its terminal descent toward the planet. It was aiming for the same mountain range as the other crashed ships, which was probably not a coincidence. Outside the slow-shifting twilight band there was only freezing mountain to the west and scalding desert to the east.
"We don't know who for certain, but some Jedi has been tailing Dorcan ever since he met the Queen on Krizlar Station."
"That's who he met at Krizlar?"
Dician had sent Dorcan out suddenly a few days ago, shortly before the two of them left for Coruscant to speak to Alsok, though 'speak to' had unintentionally become 'kidnap' once the Jedi got wind of them. Dorcan, an expert smuggler and droid mechanic, had initially been brought on to fix up all the Federation toys in the command ship's cavernous arms, but Dician had seen fit to put him to other uses too. Veem hadn't gotten a chance to talk to his friend about the mission before they split.
"Dorcan performed well, just like Alsok. You recommend good people."
"I'm glad to hear it." He grumbled as the light of the Hapan shuttle winked out. The green light indicating Dorcan's Green-Eyed Lady heading right for the control vessel and would be docked within minutes. Behind it, the little blue marks indicating so many droid starfighters were also returning home.
"Do you think they survived?" Veem asked. He wasn't sure which prospect he liked less, Skywalker and a Jedi queen dead, or the two of them alive and angry with him.
Dician shrugged like it didn't matter. "I'll direct a few droids to investigate. However, they are not our main concern."
Veem shook his head. This woman was infuriating in her ability to make any situation seem casual. Any other being would want to run screaming from a situation that pitted them against some of the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. He felt like screaming himself, right now. He'd taken this job because Dician, and whoever her bosses were, offered him more money than he'd made over the past three years combined, and all they'd wanted from him was to make a few contacts and help with minor adjustments to a seventy-year-old starship computer. What had seemed like a great gig at first now seemed like the big punch line to end a life-long joke.
"Why me?" he asked suddenly.
Dician blinked in honest surprise. It was the first time he'd seen it on her.
He didn't want to sound panicky or hysterical, so he took a deep breath and said, "Why did you hire me? I've barely even done anything for you."
"You introduced us to the best geneticist in the galaxy." She paused. "The best who can be bought anyway. And Dorcan is also quite skilled in a variety of fields."
"But why me?" He jabbed a claw at his chest. "I don't understand what I bring to this."
"You are a unique individual, Mr. Veem."
Unique. That's what the Jedi at the Academy always called him, unique, just like told everybody else the same thing.
Somehow, it meant something different coming from her.
"By unique, you mean I can use the Force."
She nodded.
"But I'm not a Jedi!" he protested. "I'm nothing close! I'm a crappy drop-out who didn't have the patience for his lessons. I'm a con man who can barely pick up a stick with the Force."
"You are also intuitive," she said. "You can read other people well."
That was true. He normally could. This woman, however, was not just a closed book, she was a book with the covers nailed shut. It was all the more frustrating because he knew she had the Force as well.
"You never answered my question," he said. "What are you? You're not a Jedi, right?"
She shook her head. "No. I am not. I can touch the Force, but I'm not strong enough to become a Jedi even if I wanted to,"
"So you, what, use the Force for tricks? Like me?"
"That is one way of looking at it," she considered.
Before he could ask more fruitless questions the door to the command deck slid open. A pair of old Trade Federation battle droids marched in first on their spindly brown legs. Veem knew they could be deadly enough, but he could never understand how the skinny robots with vaguely insectoid faces and silly mechanical voices were supposed to frightened the enemy.
Two living beings walked in behind the battle droids. The first he recognized instantly as Harl Dorcan. The two of them went back over a decade, ever since the late stages of the Vong War, and the human smuggler gave Veem his best cocky grin.
Behind him was a being Veem hasn't seen before. It was a tall Devaronian, complete with needle-like teeth and horns jutting from his forehead, dressed in a black jumpsuit and cape. That would have made him look intimidating enough, but in addition his entire face was marked in elaborate red-and-black tattoos. It made the ink job on Dician's face, already an impressive bit of art, look like a hack job.
"Oh," he bleated. "You're the boss?"
The Devaronian flicked golden eyes to Dician. "What have you told him?"
"Nothing essential," he said. "He's wondering if you are the one paying his bills."
For his fearsome appearance, the Devaronian seemed calm and nonchalant. He gave the Gran a quick look-over and said, "We all serve the same master."
"Oh. That, uh, clarifies things."
"I'm glad I had him with me." Dorcan said. "Without him, I wouldn't have known we were being tailed."
"It's a good thing you called ahead," Veem said. "We shot her down."
"Was the Queen aboard?"
"We don't know," said Dician, "But I'll send droids to investigate."
"Well, she was a looker, even with one arm, so I hope she made it."
The Devaronian looked mildly annoyed with Dorcan's chatter. "The Queen doesn't matter now. We have the samples we need."
"And you're sure they belong to the queen and her child?" asked Dician.
"I saw her take her own sample myself, right through the skin. As for the other one, well, it looks like her offspring," said Dorcan. He reached into his vest and took out two small vials filled with what must have been blood samples.
Dician stepped up and took one in each hand. She examined each tube and said, "Excellent. Come, Alsok can start working on these right away."
Dician walked out the main doorway and the two battle droids fell in behind her. The other three followed her down the pale gray corridors toward the laboratory.
As he walked alongside the Devaronian, careful not to step on that flowing black cape, Veem asked, "So, um, what should I call you?"
"Vidious."
That sounded about right. He decided he wasn't going to get much more out of him, and he probably didn't want to know much more anyway. For the first time in his career as an information dealer, he was starting to suspect that ignorance really was bliss.
When they reached the lab, Alsok was sitting at the desk in the center of the room going over one of his datapads. He was dressed in a plain white jacket, uniform of scientists everywhere, and looked like he could have been back home at the Valorum University Medical Center.
Instead, he was in the middle of a spacious chamber some ten-by-twenty meters in size. The room contained a dozen large transparisteel tubes standing floor to ceiling. Each was filled with a translucent blue liquid and inside each one could be seen a floating humanoid body.
They were Spaarti cloning cylinders, first made at the end of the Clone Wars, recovered from the crashed Republic assault carrier three kilometers to the north. To Veem, Spaarti cylinders were associated with Grand Admiral Thrawn's brief and terrifying attempt to conquer the galaxy during his childhood. Spaarti cylinders grew clones much faster than the Kaminoans did, and had been originally engineered by Palpatine as a way to quickly buff up his legions before turning Republic into Empire. Thrawn had used them for much the same purpose as he tried to inflate his own troop capacity.
When Dician had first shown him this set-up, he'd wondered what new war machine was being built. To his surprise, Dician (or her master) didn't seem interested in mass-producing an army of clones from a single template. Floating in each tube was a different being. In the one to the right of Alsok's desk was a human male, thin, brown-haired. To his left was a Mon Calamari female. Next to the Mon Cal was a Chagrian male.
Alsok only seemed to notice the approaching party when they were right in front of his desk. The Omwati looked up, blinked twice, and said, "Did you get the samples?"
"We did." Dician placed the tubes carefully on his desk. "Say hello to the Queen of Hapes and her child."
"Wonderful." Alsok gazed at the little blood samples like the held all the secrets of the universe. Well, maybe they did. Alsok was the scientist, so he would know.
"Pleased to meet ya," Dorcan extended a hand over the desk. "Harl Dorcan."
Alsok looked at Dorcan like he was noticing him for the first time. Then he smiled graciously, put the tubes down, and shook. "Glad to meet you. I've heard a lot about your work."
"Really?" Dorcan crossed his arms over his chest.
"Well, I've heard a little." Alsok shrugged. "That's what scientists normally say to each other."
"Well, I'm no scientist, but I do know Spaarti cylinders when I see 'em."
"Have you seen them before?"
"Just in holos. Piece of living history, isn't it?"
"Quite." Alsok smiled a little wistfully. Then his eyes shifted and he noticed Vidious for the first time. Instead of extending a hand he said, "You must also work for my employer."
"That's right," the Devaronian said simply.
"This guy don't talk much, but he comes in handy," Dorcan said. "Sensed the Jedi coming after us, for one."
"Jedi?" Veem got an icy feeling. "How did you sense a Jedi?"
The Devaronian looked at him and said nothing, which was all the confirmation he needed.
"You're not Jedi."
"No. I am not."
"You guys should compare party tricks," Dorcan said as he began to walk down the row of Spaarti cylinders. "Looks like these are coming along nicely. How long until you hatch out a new Hapan Queen?"
"Well, the typical growth cycle for a Spaarti is-" Alsok stopped. His eyes darted to Vidious, then Dician. "You know, I'm not really sure how much you want me to go on about this."
Before they could answer, Dorcan cried from the end of the row, "Hey, is it just me or does this guy look familiar?"
Veem followed him down to the last cloning cylinder. Floating inside was a red-skinned Devaronian male. He lacked the ornate tattoos, but the facial structure itself was unmistakable.
Incredibly, Dorcan laughed. "Hey," he called, "Does this mean I get a body-double too?"
An icy dread hit Veem's stomachs. He was an idiot for not getting it sooner, or at least when Luke Skywalker showed up.
"They're all Jedi," he said. "You're cloning Jedi. That's why you brought Skywalker here."
"Luke Skywalker was not planned," Dician said evenly. "However, he is a gift I'm not willing to turn down."
"Skywalker is here?" Vidious said, alarmed. It was the first emotion Veems had seen from him, and it felt appropriate, because he was pretty damned alarmed him-self right now.
"Skywalker or his wife. Their ship crash-landed a few hours before you arrived."
"Did they trace your employees from Coruscant?" He said 'employees' like it was a slur.
"Quite possibly." Dician was still unphased. "I don't think he knows what we're doing here, which gives us a strong advantage. Now that our party is together, I suggest we prepare for his arrival."
"I'm no fighter," said Alsok. "I've never even picked up a blaster."
"We have a whole ship full of droids to fight," Dician said. "As for the rest of us, there's plenty of work for people of our unique talents."
Her eyes rested on Veem. He couldn't bring himself to break her gaze, but right then he wanted nothing better than turn his tail and run.
-{}-
Pain, fire, dreaming:
He sees his daughter then, standing beside the throne. Allana is twenty, maybe thirty years older than the girl he'd left behind on Hapes, but it is Allana all the same. She has the strong chin, vivid red hair, wide cheekbones, and cool gray eyes of her mother, while there is some-thing in her lips, in her mouth tugging toward a smile, that reflects her Solo inheritance.
She places one hand on the armored shoulder of the man next to her. That armor is rough and spiked, organic like a Yuuzhan Vong's, yet the man behind it is clearly human. From beneath his animal mask, horned and fierce, jutts a square chin, lightly traced with dark tattoos. Through the mask's twin holes are two eyes: one cool and blue, the other blazing the angry red-gold of the Sith.
Th Dark Man reaches up and takes Allana's hand in his own. A brittle smile forms on his withered lips. A slanted white grin appears on Allana's face, and she squeezes that hand with an almost daughterly affection.
Pain, fire, destiny:
It snapped, hissed, cracked, roared. Wind rushed in through the smashed-open forward viewport, feeding the flames. The light was blinding. The heat seared his flesh. He pulled off his crash webbing and lurched for Tenel Ka as Teneniel's cockpit threatened to explode around them.
Tenel Ka had been unable to strap into her seat before the crash, and when the impact had come she'd been thrown forward, head snapping against the console. Jacen had tried to use the Force to soften the blow, but in the frenzy of collision he` had no idea if it had worked. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her upright in her seat. Her head rolled to one side. He looked down in her lap and saw a jagged chunk of transparisteel protruding from her midsection. Red blood was already welling from the wound and spilling into her lap.
It was all he could do to pull on the Force, calm himself, push away the frenzy in his mind and the fire raging around him and focus.
Tenel Ka was wounded. She might even be dead. He couldn't move her safely with the shard stabbed into her gut but if he pulled it out she could bleed to death in minutes. If he didn't get her out of here in sixty seconds, they would both be charred to a crisp.
He wrapped his hand around the transparisteel. Its jagged edges cut into his palm. He pulled it out with a single tug. He was relieved to see that only a few inches of the shard were coated in blood, but he didn't inspect it for more than a second. He thrust it into the flames bursting out of the console and held it there until he could feel the heat sting his palm. Then he pulled it out and pressed the scalding-hot metal against Tenel Ka's wound.
She stirred finally, opened her mouth to cry, but her moans, pained as they were, could barely be heard over the fire. The cockpit suddenly shook, as though another explosion had taken place in the rear of the ship.
No time left. Drawing strength from the Force, Jacen lifted Tenel Ka in both arms and propelled himself out through the shattered viewport.
He landed as gently as he could. Still cradling Tenel Ka in his arms, he staggered forward as fast as he could up the slope. The light from the burning spacecraft lit the entire scene like a bonfire, and shadows danced and winked across a barren, jagged landscape.
At least there was air, he thought, as cool breath raked his lungs.
An explosion behind him threw Jacen to the ground. Tenel Ka tumbled out of his arms and lay inert on the slope. Still on his stomach, Jacen looked over his shoulder to see the high pillar of flame rising from what could barely be recognized as Tenel Ka's shuttle.
There was nothing he could do for it now. He crawled across the rocks to where Tenel Ka lay. He crawled up next to her, placed a finger on her neck, and felt the pulse. He pressed his other palm over her abdomen and tried to feel the tears in her body. In all his travels, in all his explorations of the Force, he'd never learned healing skills like those Cilghal or Tekli possessed. He'd always been concerned with the abstract questions and lofty theories instead of the specific and the personal, and now it was going to cost the life of someone he loved.
No, he'd healed before. At the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, when Luke had lay dying from Overlord Shimmra's toxins, Jacen had followed the example of his mentor Vergere and healed him with his own tears. That had been a matter of making chemical changes; here he had to mend broken tissue and patch broken blood vessels.
"I don't know what to do," he muttered, more terrified than he could ever remember being. If Tenel Ka died here, if he died here, there would be nothing to prevent his vision of Allana and the Dark Man from coming to pass. It would come to pass if they died here, he was sure of it.
Desperate now, he reached out with the Force in the hope of finding some signs of sentient life, knowing as he did so that it was hopeless on a world as desolate and empty as this. At first he found nothing, and then he felt something familiar, something totally unexpected.
Something unbelievable.
Then he heard something raised above the roar of the fire. It was a high, wailing noise, and after the first cry died down others rose to join it. Soon the twilight was filled with the chorus of hungry predators, inexorably drawn toward the light.