CHAPTER EIGHT: AMBUSH
Flying the Rock Dragon low over the northern hemisphere of Rygelia, Jacen became aware of the uneasy feeling inside of him that had been coming and going ever since they had arrived there.
The native population of Rygelia was a race called the Syynnodes, who inhabited mainly the northern regions of the planet. The average adult Syynnode was around six feet tall, while some could grow to be as tall as eight feet. A thick layer of down covered their entire body, helping to insulate them against the freezing climate. They were a naturally strong species that had evolved over the generations to live in high altitude areas that were difficult for most other species to breathe in. A Syynnode's lungs were large enough that its chest cavity was nearly twice the size of a human beings' .
The main industry on Rygelia was mining. They would dig deep into the mountains and pull out valuable metals that they would sell to the rest of the galaxy. With the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the New Republic and everyone else needed Rygelia's metals more then ever because of the growing number of mining planets falling victim to the invading alien species.
Rumours had started several months ago that the Vong had entered the Rygelian System, but did not conquer it outright like they almost always did. A team of New Republic Intelligence agents had been monitoring the system, and every three or four weeks a Yuuzhan Vong cruiser would appear in the system. A smaller ship would disembark from it and head for Rygelia, while the cruiser took off. Reports speculated that the Yuuzhan Vong were using the planet to hold their slaves until they were needed.
The Syynnodes denied the allegations, and with the New Republic's forces already spread so thin, they could not spare the manpower to investigate the matter further. The intelligence teams were pulled from the Rygelian System and dispatched to other areas the senate felt were of immediate importance. Only Luke Skywalker seemed to think that the stockpiling of slaves was an important enough issue to send two Jedi to look into the situation.
Jacen had done his homework and read up on the Syynnode species and their planet during the long trip through hyperspace. The Syynnodes were a relatively peaceful race with a democratic government. They had been forced to work as slaves in their own mines during the reign of the Emperor, but a revolt by the workers after reports of Palpatine's death won them back their freedom. Rygelia was one of the first planets to join the New Republic, but over the years they had tried to preserve their independence by keeping mostly to themselves. They sold what they mined to the Republic and in return asked for very little. They could provide for themselves most of what they needed to survive.
Jacen had gone through some of the public records of sales the Syynnodes had made with other planets as well. He found that in the past two months they had more then doubled the asking prices of the metals they were selling. And with few other planets to turn to, people were forced to buy at these outrageous prices.
Syynnodes were not known for being greedy, but with little competition they could basically charge whatever they wanted and get away with it. Unless the New Republic decided to intervene, which it had not.
When Jacen and Tenal Ka had landed in one of the larger cities on Rygelia, their job had been simple: they had said they were government representatives from the planet Ulvis, and were interested in setting up some sort of a trade agreement. They had shown the proper documents and identification to anyone who had asked, and had passed through without suspicion. It was not too hard to convince them since most government officials on Ulvis were humans in their early twenties or late teens. It was the way their society functioned.
They had asked questions about how safe Rygelia was from the Yuuzhan Vong, and if they would be able to defend the planet if and when the Yuuzhan Vong finally arrived in the system. They were straightforward questions that any potential investors would ask. Then they would use their Jedi powers to see if the Syynnodes were holding anything back or lying right to their faces.
After speaking to a number of officials who were involved in the mining operations on Rygelia, they had got nothing more then a bunch of vague answers, or officials who carefully avoided answering their questions altogether. That was enough to start setting off alarms in Jacen's head, but Tenal Ka had played it cool – thanks to years of rigorous diplomatic training imposed on her by her grandmother Ta'a Chume. Tenal Ka had simply requested that she and Jacen be allowed a tour of the mining facilities before they made any final decisions. The Syynnode male, Ta'kk, who was the governor of Rygelia, had finally agreed to it after a subtle suggestion through the force by Tenal Ka.
Ta'kk had given them the coordinates to one of the mining facilities in the northern mountainous regions. He told them they would have to land the ship on a designated landing pad, which was about an hour's walk from the mining operations. No ships were allowed to fly within ten kilometers of a mining area because if the mines were unstable, the rumbling of a ship's engine could unintentionally trigger a collapse of the mine.
Jacen and Tenal Ka were both fine with that. They had come prepared for the cold mountain climate. A thermal suit would keep each of them warm enough to reach the mining area Governor Ta'kk had given them the coordinates to.
If there were any slaves on Rygelia, Jacen was sure that's where they would find them. It was where the Yuuzhan Vong and Syynnodes would be able to keep them secluded and hidden away from any unscheduled visitors to the planet.
"The Syynnodes we talked to were lying," Jacen said to Tenal Ka beside him.
"They were hiding something, that much is certain," she responded.
"It's more then that," Jacen said as he flew them closer to the landing coordinates they had been given. "They didn't want to want us to check out their mining operations, and that in itself is suspicious. If they didn't have anything to hide, then why wouldn't they want us to go there?"
"Then perhaps they do have something to hide," she said.
"While we're up there, they'll probably give us a 'selective' tour. So we'll have to do some investigating on our own,"
"This is a fact," Tenal Ka said in agreement. "However, if we do discover any slaves we are not to attempt any rescue. It would be a foolish idea since there are only two of us and many more Syynnodes and possibly Yuuzhan Vong as well,"
"Yeah, foolish," Jacen echoed.
She gave him a suspicious look. "You are planning something,"
"No, I'm not," he said. "Master Skywalker gave us orders not to attempt any rescues by ourselves, and I intend to follow that order,"
"But?"
"But if we come across any that just happen to be standing around–"
"Jacen – " she began in a stern voice.
" – then what's the harm in trying to bring them back with us?" he finished.
"You know very well what would happen if we attempted that," she said to him, "the Syynnodes or anyone else who is there would see us trying to steal their slaves, and that would greatly complicate matters for our escape."
"I know that," he said with a sigh, "but I can't just walk away without doing anything to try and help them. They didn't ask to be slaves or to have their homes conquered and destroyed,"
She could hear the anger edging into his voice, and she wondered if there was something else bothering him. He had not acted like this when Master Skywalker had originally given them this mission.
"Jacen, we do not even know if they can be saved," she pointed out. "If they are like any of the other slaves we have heard about, it is likely the Yuuzhan Vong have implanted them with coral growths to control them. If that is the case, then the growths will have already worked their way through the body's nervous system and we will have no way to remove them."
"Don't worry, I'm not planning on doing anything stupid," he tried to convince her.
"Of course you are not, because you are worried about my condition,"
How had he let that one leak out? Maybe it was just obvious to her.
"Jacen, we have had this conversation before," she reminded him.
"I know, I know," he said, "but I can't help it. What do you want me to do, act like everything's fine?"
"Yes," she told him, "because at the moment I am healthy, and until that changes you have no reason to worry,"
That's easy for you to say, he thought, but all he did was shrug his shoulders and concentrated on his piloting.
He had not said anything to her, but ever since she had told him she was sick he had been having awful nightmares about her. One of the worst ones was where he was running through the corridors of the Jedi Academy, with the cure in his hands, but every time he finally reached her room, it was too late. Then he would wake up, drenched in sweat and be unable to fall back asleep for hours or at all.
It bothered him that she did not take her disease more seriously. She acknowledged its presence in her life but that was about all. She still went on her mile long runs every morning on her own, and she seemed to be training ever harder then she usually did to keep herself fit.
Sometimes, he just wanted to lock her in her room to make sure that she was safe. He knew that was selfish of him, and that even by doing that there was no guarantee the disease still would not strike her.
In a way, he was glad that she kept her life normal because it helped him to believe that everything was okay too.
Tenal Ka pointed to a group of ships parked on snow covered landing pads. "Is that we are suppose to land?"
"Yeah," Jacen answered, checking the instruments in front of him.
He brought the Rock Dragon down even lower and slowed their descent by half. He did not want to chance hitting any of the other parked ships. It was not like he was the worst pilot but he also lacked the innate talent for flying his sister had. Though, it was hard not to learn anything about flying when your father was Han Solo.
He touched down on one of the empty landing pads, and slowly went through the shutdown cycle. This was not his area of expertise. The majority of the time he was never the one flying. It was almost always his sister, or Anakin, or even Zekk doing the piloting. Tenal Ka was a more then capable pilot, but they had agreed that Jacen would fly to Rygelia and then she would pilot them back to Yavin Four when they were finished there.
When the shutdown cycle was completed, Jacen joined Tenal Ka who was at the back of the ship already in her thermal parka, and was just pulling on her gloves.
Jacen took out a similar looking parka from the storage locker, and put it on over top over top of his semi-casual 'government official clothes'. He placed his lightsaber in one of the outer pockets in the parka. He pulled on his own insulated gloves and boots, and turned to Tenal Ka.
"Ready?"
She nodded her hooded head.
"As my sister would say, what are we waiting for?"
They headed for the Rock Dragon's access hatch and disembarked from the ship.
It was not nearly as cold outside as Jacen had expected it to be, which was probably because of the warm outer clothes he was wearing. Tenal Ka looked perfectly fine as well. After spending time on the permanent arctic side of Ryloth, where the sun never shone, and they had nothing but their normal, everyday clothes on them, the snowy mountain areas of Rygelia were like a warm summer's day.
The moment they had stepped off the ship, he could feel the difference in altitude at being this far above sea level. It took some adjusting to at first, but with the force, Jacen was able to breathe normally again.
The terrain was not too bad. There were a few snowy hills they had to walk over, and some rocky pathways they had to make their way through, but nothing they could not handle.
He was not sure how many miles they had come, but he knew they could not be far off from the mining facility.
He felt Tenal Ka tense beside him. She narrowed her gaze and said, "someone is approaching us,"
Jacen reached out with his mind and discovered several someone's heading towards them, none of them human.
"We just stick to our story and we'll be fine," he whispered to her.
"That is, assuming the beings approaching us are Syynnodes,"
They continued walking, keeping their pace as natural looking as possible. They did not want to let the beings know they had felt them coming. Feet crunching in the snow, they saw five, tall, dirt covered Syynnodes come into view.
"You must be workers from the mining facility, Governor Ta'kk was so generous to let us visit," said Jacen, forcing his voice full of enthusiasm.
"Governor Ta'kk called ahead and told us we should be expecting visitors," the lead male Syynnode said.
I bet he did. "That's great," Jacen continued, "because I'm sure he told you why we are here. This gives us a chance to talk about your mining operations, if you don't mind leading us the rest of the way,"
"We'd be more then happy to take you there," the Syynnode worker said as he pulled out a nasty looking blaster.
Jacen let out a small smile. "Now that you put it that way, how can we refuse?"
Before any of the aliens could respond, a razor-sharp knife sliced through the blaster. The Syynnode cried out and dropped the useless, sparking blaster to the ground. That gave Jacen the time he needed to whip out his lightsaber before the rest of the aliens took out their own weapons.
Tenal Ka took out a second throwing knife and hurled at a Syynnode's leg, dropping him to the ground howling in pain. Then she took out her rancor tooth hilt lightsaber and charged forward.
Jacen followed suit, taking the first Syynnode out with a thrust high to its chest. Another one fired several shots at him in succession, but Jacen easily batted them aside with his emerald saber.
They would be finished with the beings here soon, and then they could be on their way, knowing that when they did reach the mines they would not receive a warm welcome.
He went to strike the next Syynnode in the midsection when something hard slammed into his shoulder, bringing him to his knees. The sound of his left shoulder popping out of place filled his ears. The wind knocked out of him, he dropped his weapon on the ground. Before he could collect himself, his unseen attacker grabbed him by his parka and threw him back into the snow.
Letting his eyes travel up the lean and muscular armored body, Jacen found the tattooed and disfigured face of a Yuuzhan Vong looming over him. One of its ears was burnt off and a jagged, grotesque scar ran from the top of its large forehead down to just above its upper lip.
Without warning, the alien's scaled foot lashed out against Jacen's face before he could react fast enough to get out of the way.
