Temptation of the force, p.20
Temptation of the Force, page 20
Cair would have made all his warlord plans based on the assumption that the RDC would figure out how to penetrate the Stormwall immediately.
They sat again in silence, but for the clink of Viess’s crystal pick against porcelain. Each gentle tone made Cair feel sicker and sicker. Like waiting for the pick to scratch out his eyes, one slow scrape at a time. He’d bet Viess had scratched out eyes before, and maybe even eaten them. Cair pushed away the thought, focusing instead on the rhythm, wishing he could strum at his dulcimer. Or any dulcimer.
By the Force, he hoped Xylan was safe. And his allies. He wondered where the uncles were, and that spitfire Jordanna Sparkburn, the San Tekka cousin he’d worked with last year. He stared at the cuff bound tightly around his wrist stump, remembering the sickening moments before she had sliced off his hand to save his life.
Anything to focus on other than the moment.
“General Viess.” Her comlink blared without warning. “A Republic fleet has appeared in the atmosphere!”
The Mirialan slammed her glass down hard enough that the stem shattered. She touched the comlink. “Say again, Krivlid? The Stormwall remains functioning?”
“Yes, General, the Stormwall beacons are fully functional.”
“Then where did these ships come from?”
“We don’t know!”
Viess narrowed her eyes at Cair. “Send the beacon. How many ships are—”
Before an answer got through, the heavy real-wood doors of the room suddenly blasted open.
The smell of scorched wood filled Cair’s nose as he struggled to stand and turn, given the state of his bruised and battered body.
Viess was already on her feet, unsheathing her sword with a fast shick of metal. Her teeth were bared as she looked at their intruder. “I told you, child, they’d come for you,” she said, voice dripping with derision.
A Jedi filled out the doorway: broad shoulders and a large belly, dressed in dark robes and leather, his white skin drawn around his mouth in determination. Skull bulges, one eye covered by a worn patch, lightsaber. Ikkrukkian.
“I haven’t come for him, Viess. I’ve come for you,” Porter Engle said in a rumbling, soft voice.
“Engle,” the general hissed.
Cair didn’t even think. He leapt over the table and grabbed the general’s shell pick. He dashed for her, flicking the sharp end out. She frowned as she turned to him in surprise, and the blade nicked her neck under her ear. Blood blossomed, but the general punched his gut with her sword hand, the pommel lending strength to the hit.
Cair fell back, landing hard on his knee and hip. Bile choked him and he spit it out, his gut heaving. He still had the pick in hand and pressed himself to his knees.
Porter Engle stood calmly with his lightsaber aglow, casting a blue glare over his hardened features.
Viess spun around behind Cair and wrapped her arm around his neck. “I’ll kill him gladly. Back off.”
“I thought you wanted to face me,” the Jedi said.
“I could snap his neck and still do so,” she said.
Cair went limp, all his weight dropping instantly. Viess stumbled, and he twisted his torso, elbowing her in the ribs.
Viess cursed and shoved him away—just as the hum of a lightsaber sounded near his head.
Cair rolled away in time for Engle’s lightsaber and Viess’s blade to clash. They threw each other back.
General Viess laughed as she rushed for Engle again.
Cair rubbed his aching neck and looked at the battered door. There were definitely better places he could be if this was a liberation. Or even if it was a trap.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Coruscant
Chancellor Lina Soh waited alone but for the twin targons seated one to each side of her desk. Waiting alone was not the most politic option. There were senators, aides, friends, both with her and against her, for whom the outcome of this distant battle mattered just as greatly. Perhaps there was no one in the entire Senate building who was not fully invested in the moment.
But Lina had lost some polish in the past two years, especially when it came to controlling her facial expressions. As she waited, listening to the mission chatter transmitted directly to the personal comm unit in her office, she could let her brow furrow, her lips pinch. She could delicately hold her fingers steepled against her temples. She could reach for the thick ruff of Matari’s mane and stare fixedly at the rigid way Voru held herself. The two massive cats were as tense as Lina herself, thanks to their bond. She didn’t need to do more than release a soft hiss of unease at the calls of pilots between Skywing and Vector, at Kronara’s gruff commands, and her targons leaned closer to support her.
It was all right, because she was alone, for Lina Soh to flinch when she heard the staticky voice of Jedi Master Elzar Mann, thin and distant. It was fine for him to be out with the fleet, taking this shot after his last failed attempts to end the Stormwall. He was a Jedi. He belonged with the fight. Lina hadn’t said anything to Elzar when he left, but she suspected that if this attack had not succeeded, if the fleet had slammed into impenetrable gravitational distortions again, crashed against the rocks of Marchion Ro’s arrogance again, Elzar Mann wouldn’t allow himself to return to this office, whether he died in the fight or not.
For a moment, the sounds of battle blipped out, and Chancellor Soh closed her eyes. It didn’t mean anything bad. Communications relays struggled through the Stormwall despite the so-called home key working to create paths for information to travel as well as ships. That the small fleet had pierced the Occlusion Zone at all, that this battle chatter could make it to her office was thanks to weeks of tireless work by so many people, but most recently that little miracle worker Avon Starros.
A ferocious warmth burned in Lina’s chest when she let herself think about Avon. Fifteen, clever, determined, and angry. When the girl had first returned to Coruscant along with multiple Jedi and reams of information about the Stormwall, Lina had interviewed her privately. Avon hadn’t flinched, not in the grand audience chamber, not under Lina’s scrutiny. Instead, the girl had asked if she could pet the targons.
Allowing it, Lina had asked why Avon had left her mother.
“I suppose you don’t want to hear about how awful the Nihil are and that I’d rather work for people doing the right things,” Avon practically sneered, her shoulders hunched as she scratched Voru.
“If it’s true, I don’t mind hearing it,” Lina answered lightly.
Avon snorted but paused before she added anything. “I don’t want my mother to find me.”
The words struck directly through Lina’s heart. She’d give almost anything to find her own missing son. “We certainly won’t hand you over or use your relationship against each other,” she said slowly. “But, Avon, if you work here, with us, even given an assumed identity and all the technology and power I have, you may be—will be—recognized. If your priority is safety or escape, you shouldn’t help us.”
“Why would you say that?” Avon crossed her arms over her chest.
“Because it’s true.”
“Well, I do mind hearing it,” Avon said.
Lina had laughed. Quietly but honestly.
The mission chatter flooded back with a pop, and Lina sat up.
“Shields on Lightning Crash are down, Crescent Blaze removing final remaining Nihil.”
“Capture them if—” Elzar Mann’s voice cut in and out again.
Lina held her breath. She forced her hands flat against Matari so she didn’t pull on the targon’s fur. She could hear the burst of sudden cheers outside her office.
Then—
“—down. Heaven and seven hells of Ryloth. It’s down.”
Lina was on her feet, lightheaded with the surge of triumph.
A pounding on her office door saw both targons raise their hackles, but they only stood, tails snapping. “It’s fine,” she soothed, then called more loudly, “Come.”
Her door swept open, and Vice Chancellor Larep Reza strode in with a grin. He said, “It worked.”
Lina swept her hand across her comm panel, shutting down the relay. She’d wait for Admiral Kronara’s official call, knowing he had plenty of immediate after-action items to attend to, including giving the secondary strike fleet waiting just outside the Chommell sector the go-ahead to jump to Naboo. “I was listening,” Lina said, letting herself smile back at Reza. His finlike antennae flickered back and forth in his excitement.
Behind him several senators clapped one another on the back as aides rushed about. Lina said, “I want to hear the chatter from Naboo.”
“The fleet under Captain Ba’luun reported engagement several minutes ago. We’ll get the channel.”
“Good. Is the Pearl of Faretta still in orbit?”
“It is, Chancellor,” Reza said, almost viciously. Ghirra Starros had been waiting for permission to dock on Coruscant for hours.
“Good. Keep the comms interdiction around her ship. When this is over, I’d like to speak directly with Minister Starros.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Naboo, Inside the Occlusion Zone
The Harmonic and the Axiom slipped out of hyperspace moments before they were followed by the Tractate.
Drop ships filled with RDC members, Vectors, and teams of Skywings from each cruiser flooded the atmosphere of Naboo as soon as their mother ships settled. The pale RDC cruisers turned to face the general’s new flagship, Precipitate Fire, and open their full range of cannons and railguns against it.
Avar’s stomach dropped out of her body as her Vector fell through the layers of Naboo’s atmosphere. She held her position at the nose of one of the drop ships, ready to fend off any cannon fire once they broke through the clouds above Theed.
As the Vector Drift darted over the city, Avar listened with one ear to the Skywing chatter, angling the Vectors east as instructed. She flew them around a spire of glinting marble, and the drop ships landed on a stretch of open courtyard.
“Incoming!” Vernestra called through the open comm channel. “Nihil from point-nine-four.”
“And point-six-two,” Jedi Knight Far Linghe added as they pulled alongside Avar. She knew them by reputation only, but that reputation was centered on strong piloting and dedication, so they’d ended up on Avar’s ground team.
“Let’s get to work,” Avar said, briefly letting her thoughts land on Elzar and his team, doing their own work. She closed her eyes and hoped he was fully open to the Force. Then Avar refocused and let her connection to the living Force expand, reaching each of the Jedi in their individual Vectors. She felt readiness, anticipation, sharpened nerves, hope as she lashed them all together. The Jedi flew in perfect sync, diving around to face the scrambling Nihil ships.
They split apart like a widening jaw around the Nihil—two Strikeships and three larger Cloudships, cannons blazing.
“Knock them out if you can,” Avar said. “Let’s chase them off Naboo for good.”
A Naboo starfighter burst violently into Avar’s path, shooting at her.
Avar rolled to dodge, reaching with the Force: It was a Nihil piloting it. “They’ve commandeered Naboo planetary defenses,” she confirmed fast. They’d expected it. “But don’t attack anyone you aren’t sure is Nihil until they shoot first.”
“Copy,” came multiple replies.
Avar listened hard to the Force, following the song as it pulled her in different directions. She lost herself in the focus, in the stretch to keep the Jedi with her connected: fire, dodge, pull-pull-pull her wings along with her. The comms from the RDC cruisers blared constantly in her small cockpit as she hunted.
Nihil drove hard at them, and as one dove under Avar’s belly, she could feel the ragged bass scream of its music.
The Vectors shifted and swooped, returning fire. From outside it would look like chaos, but Avar felt the tightness of it.
To her left a dome exploded: Marble shrapnel and plumes of flame flared at them, and Avar shielded her eyes. She set her Vector into a spin straight through the smoke. Reaching with the Force, she felt obstructions and danced around them, tucked and spun to shoot at the Nihil suddenly behind her.
High above, the Axiom and its Skywings successfully destroyed a bank of laser cannons on the general’s Precipitate Fire. Cheering echoed in Avar’s ears.
“Has anyone located the general?” Avar demanded. “Is she on her ship?”
“Negative, Master Kriss, Axiom has no confirmation of Viess’s location.”
“She won’t hide,” came Bell’s voice, and Burry’s agreeing cry.
Avar pulled them around for another sweep.
Cannons from the roof of a long crenellated building shot at them. Avar gritted her teeth as she turned her Vector around tighter than her body should have handled, but handle it she did. The Nihil gunners saw her bearing down on them and fled in every direction. She blasted the cannon itself, let the Nihil flee. There was nowhere for them to go.
Smoke billowed from the streets and towers of Theed.
She watched as a Nihil ship turned fire not to the Vectors or Skywings, but back onto the city itself. The Nihil fighter blasted at a row of what looked like housing, and there Avar spied another Nihil fighter with its tail exploded twist its lurching descent to purposefully land in a garden.
“They’ve started wide destruction,” she told everyone. “We need to get them away from civilians if we can.”
Just then Captain Ba’luun’s voice came over the comm. “Nihil chatter indicates the general is onworld. We’re engaging the Precipitate Fire.”
Other calls came from Vector to Vector:
“—hearing the general isn’t in the city—”
“—let’s get to—”
Avar breathed and focused. The details were extraneous. She wasn’t commanding from the bridge of one of the cruisers. This time she was a tool—a weapon. Find the general, take her down, and stop the Nihil from hurting people.
She sliced through a spray of Nihil blasts, and her Vector took a hit, the whole ship trembling. Avar felt it in her bones. A cry echoed in her mind, and she heard Jedi Knight Aviay yell, “Ejecting!”
“Tracking you,” Far Linghe said from the next Vector, Aviay’s partner since the Guardian Protocols went into effect.
The Drift burst in coordinated motion to break out, spin, and re-form around the missing Vector. Avar didn’t let go of Aviay’s connection, even as she drove the Drift around toward the Nihil ship that shot him down. When she felt the relief as Aviay touched safely to the street, she passed it to the rest.
Avar reached out, seeking a new target.
“There,” she said, tugging on the Jedi’s awareness toward a midsized Nihil ship letting loose on gorgeously carved statues holding up a bridge. “Split out,” she said as she and Bell and Burry peeled off from Linghe and Vernestra, shooting fast toward the Nihil vessel.
Avar didn’t hesitate to fire, and Bell and Burry followed suit. They strafed the Nihil vessel, and it shot up and around the bridge support, using the massive statues as a shield. Avar gritted her teeth and wordlessly let the other two know her plan.
They moved in tandem: Avar heading into the Nihil’s path of fire, focus narrowed to the tiny motions that let her dodge individual blasts, so fast to the naked eyes of the Nihil it must look like she was being caressed by their weaponry. They fired faster, leaning their vessel toward her, its nose dipping. Everything else fell away from Avar but the Nihil and streaks of destructive energy coming at her again and again and again.
She didn’t fire, just let her Vector list suddenly, as if disabled. The Nihil continued to shoot, and she dodged, nosing back up to come at them. The Nihil ship emerged just enough from behind the bridge’s supports in order to destroy Avar’s Vector—
Immediately Bell and Burry swooped from behind with their cannons hot, catching the Nihil ship as they screamed past. The Nihil ship’s engine burst into sparks, and the ship dove hard toward the water.
Avar spun around behind them. “Good job,” she said, watching the Nihil ship careen into the water. Two little figures leapt away, falling into the water, too.
“Let’s get back to—”
Avar was interrupted by a blare from the open comm: “Master Kriss!”
She blinked, slammed the comm, and aimed her Vector up and up. “What?”
“This is Blue Six, from the Skywings! We’ve encountered local resistance who report General Viess ignored the royal palace base and has her people across the big lake on an island compound. My squad is heading out.”
“Go,” Avar said. “We’ll follow. Burry, Bell, Vernestra, with me! Linghe, stick with Aviay.”
She felt them acknowledge through the Force, even as their voices came through the comms.
The blue sky glared ahead, and behind her Avar felt the battle—felt the glee and fear and pain mingling in the city, relief and overwhelming excitement. It boiled in her blood, and Avar had to tamp it all down to hold focus.
Bell Zettifar’s and Burryaga’s Vectors appeared on each side, flanking Avar. Vernestra pulled up behind. The four charged away from Theed, letting the chatter from the fight fade behind them.
The ground sped beneath Avar, streaks too fast to identify as trees or roads or towns. Her Vector shot out over cliffs striped with waterfalls, and over the broad expanse of a massive lake. There ahead, her Vector chirped at her, was the San Tekka compound, domes stacked upon cliffs, layers of vivid flowering gardens, a great elegant comm array at the crown, and all of it decorated with General Viess’s insignia flapping on emerald-green flags.
And a huge blue eye of the Nihil had been scrawled over the main dome.
