Anakin caught a thread of wistfulness in that, something like he got
from his father now and then. Almost. . . almost as if Corran wished he were
younger again.
Which was ridiculous. The older you got, the more people took you
seriously. Anakin was very much sick of being treated like a kid, especially
by people who knew less than him.
Mara . . . Mara had treated him more like an adult. And Mara was dying,
and there was nothing he could do. He almost wished the turbolift would open
to a bunch of Yuuzhan Vong, so he'd at least have someone to ...
That's not a wish, he realized. That's the lambent.
"Guys," he said quietly, "you'd better activate your lightsabers."
At least Corran didn't ask questions, this time. He just did it.
The door whisked open, and there they were. Six Yuu-zhan Vong with
amphistaffs.
"Me first," Corran said, leaping out, lightsaber blazing. Tahiti was a
blur, and Anakin right behind her when he realized he only counted five
Yuuzhan Vong warriors outside.
But the lambent said six.
He spun-almost in time. The Givin struck him across the bridge of the
nose with a tightly balled fist, propelling him from the turbolift into the
enemy-filled room beyond. His body struck Corran in the back of the knees.
Surprised, the ex-CorSec Jedi still managed a shoulder roll, though Anakin
caught a bright glimpse of pain from him as an am-phistaff struck a glancing
blow. Head ringing, Anakin brought his radiant weapon up in a high parry he
knew he had to make, felt the sharp thwack of a staff across it. Still aware
of the danger at his back, he then threw himself to the side. He rolled up
to see Tahiri doing a high, Force-aided flip to land in a protective stance
beside Corran. Anakin rose and threw the most powerful telekinetic blast he
could at the group of Yuuzhan Vong.
If they had been any other species, it would have pasted them to the
wall. Instead, two fell and the other three staggered as if in a high wind.
Tahiri, unable to affect them at all, found another solution; a stack of
cylinders in the corner suddenly flew into the already off-balance warriors,
sending the rest of them down. Only the Givin, who had stepped back from the
action, kept his feet, and he was laughing, a harsh, very un-Givinlike
laugh.
From side corridors, eight more Yuuzhan Vong filed into the far side of
the room from where the Jedi now stood against a bulkhead, lightsabers
bristling out like quills.
The Givin reached up, touched the side of his nose, and something oozed
off, revealing the Yuuzhan Vong beneath.
"A good effort, for infidels," he said, taking an amphistaff proffered
by one of the newcomers. He looked squarely at
Anakin. "Not the Solo the warmaster wishes most, though after Yavin
Four your worth has risen immeasurably."
"I don't know you," Anakin said.
"No. But your mother and I have met. I am Nom Anor, and you may
consider yourself my captive."
"We'd rather not jump to that conclusion, if you don't mind," Corran
said.
"The odds are against you."
"You must not know much about Corellians," Corran said,
"Don't be tiresome. You three have earned respect. If you were not
infidels, I might even call you warriors."
"I can't say the same for you," Corran said. "What about it, Nom Anor?
Me and you, man to man."
"Duel you as you dueled Shedao Shai? And if I win, the rest of you
would surrender?"
"No. But you could prove you aren't afraid to face me."
"Sadly, my duty to my people forces me to decline your offer," Nom Anor
said.
Tahiri suddenly began shouting in Yuuzhan Vong. The warriors looked at
her, first puzzled, then angry. One turned and spat something at Nom Anor.
"What did you say?" Anakin asked.
"The warriors with him don't speak Basic, and they don't have
tizowyrms. They didn't realize that Nom Anor was turning down a challenge. I
told them you were the slayer of Shedao Shai."
"Good going, Tahiri. Now what?" Corran asked.
"The head warrior of this bunch-Shok Choka-wants to take up the
challenge."
"Tell him I accept," Corran said.
"No," Anakin said, "Tell him / accept. Tell him I slew many warriors on
Yavin Four. Tell him I fought with Vua Rapuung. Tell him I demand my right
to combat, or I will carry their names as cowards to the gods."
Nom Anor was shouting himself hoarse in Yuuzhan Vong, but the warriors
seemed to have almost forgotten he existed. It would have been funny if the
situation hadn't been so deadly.
As Tahiri translated, Anakin stepped out, lightsaber blazing. The other
warriors fell back, forming a ring. Shok Choka stepped into it.
FORTY
When Jaina's engines came back on-line and she realized she wasn't
going to die-at least not right away-she was, naturally, grateful. When, an
instant later, Two and Ten dusted the skips off her tail, she was ecstatic.
She proved this by frying the two skips hanging tight on Nine.
But the best part was watching Wampa blow. It came apart in eight
symmetrical plates billowing outward on a ball of fire. The wave of charged
particles blew over her at lightspeed, nearly-but not quite-generating
enough static to drown out Gavin's fierce cry of exultation.
After that, the Rogues cleaned up the remaining skips- without their
war coordinator, apparently on Wampa, they weren't that much trouble. What
was left of Rogue Squadron re-formed.
They'd lost Three and Four, and Eight was hobbling along on one damaged
engine.
"Dozen, how's it going down there?" Gavin asked.
Kyp's voice came through a steady throb of gravitic distortion.
". . . lost five starfighters. Can , . . hurry, or you'll miss the
party."
"Hang in there, Dozen, we're on our way."
And then, another beautiful sight. The Ralroost, reverting to realspace
in all her glory, followed by two corvettes and a heavy cruiser.
"Kre'fey here," the admiral's voice boomed. "Congratulation, Rogues.
Excellent work. If you don't mind, we'll clear a path to target prime now."
"Admiral," Gavin replied. "We don't mind at all."
Trailing the Ralroost, Jaina turned her nose sunward and dived.
"We're going to hit!" C-3PO squealed.
"That's the general idea, Professor," Han said. The Falcon bumped into
the side of the freighter module-two quick shots from the forward laser had
cut it adrift. Now he engaged the Millennium Falcon's main engines and
cranked them to full. The cargo pod lurched into motion, aimed straight at
the Yuuzhan Vong Interdictor. The Falcon rattled like a metal bearing in a
vorth cage, but Han held her nose steady.
"What in blazes is going on up there?" Leia shouted over her the
intercom.
"Just keep a lookout for skips. We'll be seeing them pretty quickly."
He was right-it didn't take the Sunulok long to figure out he was up to
something. Coralskippers came howling in, blazing away at both the cargo pod
and the Falcon. The trembling of the Falcon took on a diff
erent tone, now,
as plasma bursts ate her shields. But the deciding factor for Han was the
sudden bloom along the outbound rim of the freighter module. He turned the
Falcon's, nose up and flew.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Leia said.
"Relax, sweetheart," Han said, though he felt anything but relaxed. His
hands had a death grip on the controls as he tried to coax more speed from
his great bird.
Then something stopped them, hard. The interdictor had finally gotten
its lock. Han blanched and tried the repulsor-lifts, glad he hadn't told
C-3PO what he was doing so the droid could quote him the odds.
He was stuck. He could only watch now.
The tanker module was still hurtling toward the Sunu-lok too fast for
the huge vessel to dodge without a hyper-space jump, but it was coming apart
under the steady fire of the smaller ships. Han watched as its liquid
contents continued, undeterred, spreading in a bizarre funnel-profile wave
toward the Yuuzhan Vong ship.
"I don't understand, sir," said C-3PO, in a hopeless and
subdued voice. "What could liquid hydrogen possibly do against-"
"Watch and learn, Threepio," Han said. Then, under his breath, "At
least I hope." He fired three of his six remaining concussion missiles.
"Leia, Jacen. Target the Interdictor, full power. Give her everything you've
got."
"But the hydrogen won't burn without oxygen," C-3PO said.
"Sure won't," Han replied.
The lasers lanced out just ahead of the missiles. At about the same
moment, the Falcon's shields went down and the skips started taking her
apart.
And then everything broke loose.
Shok Choka was big, even for a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. Each ear had three
large chevrons cut from it, and a mounded scar ran from his chin, sliced
through his lips, and continued along the ridge of his skull. He held his
am-phistaff behind his back, the hand grasping it a little lower than his
waist. He locked his amber gaze on Anakin's ice-blue eyes. His knees were
bent, and though he was perfectly still, he somehow projected corybantic
motion.
Anakin cut his lightsaber off and held it loosely at his side. He began
to circle the warrior slowly in a relaxed, almost contemptuous manner. Calm
flowed through him. Shok Choka followed him with his predator gaze.
Anakin stopped, smiled faintly, then stepped into the warrior's range.
The Yuuzhan Vong moved almost faster than vision could process, the
rigid amphistaff chopping down. Anakin's saber burred on, and he raised it
in a wide, high block. Choka, anticipating that, arrested the slash and
instead lunged in to spear Anakin in the throat, Anakin retreated, dropped
his parry, again low and wide, as if he were defending for two people
instead of one. That placed Choka's weapon so far out of line he couldn't
make the third parry, but instead had to flip back toward Anakin and Tahiti.
His still-live blade, slashing wildly, scored a meter-long cut through the
bulkhead that only just missed Corran.
Stamping and howling, Shok Choka came on. Anakin blocked a powerful
blow that carried his blade into the bulkhead for a second time in a long,
elliptical slash. He ducked a vicious jab that spanged into the wall and
rolled forward, past Shok Choka's stamping feet and back out into the center
of the room. Even as he stood, the warrior was renewing his attack.
Now, suddenly, Anakin tightened his defense, so that rather than
pushing the Yuuzhan Vong's blows as far away from him as he could, they were
missing him by centimeters. Still smiling, he fell into the counterrhythm of
the dance, the amphistaff whipping and whirling, spearing and slashing.
The warrior suddenly dropped and swept Anakin's feet from under him,
something the young Jedi hadn't seen coming at all. He thudded to the floor
awkwardly and threw his blade up to catch the inevitable downward blow, but
the staff whipped around and cut his shoulder, the deadly poisonous head
slapping against the floor centimeters from his arm. Anakin caught the
amphistaff with his left hand and with his right, lifting from a prostrate
position, drove his weapon through the knee joint of Shok Choka's armor. The
warrior grunted and aimed a powerful punch with his left fist toward
Anakin's head, but Anakin wasn't there. Releasing the amphistaff, ignoring
the cut in his hand grabbing it had caused, he bounded up and was suddenly
standing above the warrior, who had overcom-mitted to the punch. In the
split second while Shok Choka decided whether to tumble forward or attempt
to regain his balance, Anakin cut his head off.
Before the body could hit the floor, Anakin bounded toward his friends.
Corran had already seen the plan, and with a single swipe of his own blade
finished cutting the bulge-sided triangle Anakin had begun in the bulkhead
with his "wild" parries. The other Yuuzhan Vong, stunned by the death of
their war captain, hesitated an instant too long. One got a parting shot at
Anakin, the last of the three to duck through the small opening. Several
somethings cracked against the metal bulkhead-thud bugs, probably.
Then he was through, turning a corner in the corridor behind Tahiri,
and they were all running as fast as they could manage. They passed through
a pneumatic bulkhead. Ana-kin slashed the controls as it sighed closed. He
caught a glimpse of a Yuuzhan Vong face turning the corner, and a second
later heard a thud on the other side of the door, then several more.
Glancing back over his shoulder as he continued to run, he didn't see it
open.
"You did that on purpose!" Corran accused. "I thought at first you were
"We need to find berth thirteen!" Anakin gasped.
"On it," Corran shouted back. "This way."
"How far do we have to go? Because-" Tahiri began to ask.
"Just keep running," Anakin urged.
"-because my ears are popping," she finished.
Anakin realized that his were, too, and that he was a lot more winded
than he ought to be.
"Sithspawn," Corran said. "The Givin have opened the station to space.
We'll never make it to berth thirteen." He stopped, looked around. "Wait a
minute," he said. "Follow me."
He led them down a side corridor, where he paused.
"They've changed the designations," he muttered, "but I think this is
it." He keyed a door open.
"We might make it to the ship," Anakin shouted, following him into the
room beyond. It was wall-to-wall storage lockers.
Corran sounded as if he were across a space twice as large when he
replied. "No way. We're not even to the docking ring." As he spoke, he began
cutting though the locks on the lockers with his lightsaber.
"Check the unlocked ones, you two," Corran ordered. "We're looking for
vac suits. This is the sector Illiet told us to go to."
Anakin did, feeling the air grow thinner and colder as he did so. Most
were empty. "But what if Illiet was in with Nom Anor?"
"I doubt it. If he was, why such an unwieldy trap? Nom
Anor must have contacted the other Yuuzhan Vong to meet him
, to get him
off the station. Hah!" He yanked a large vac suit from one of the lockers.
"Look at this thing," he said. "It must be twenty years old."
The next locker turned up an airpack, but no suit. Neither did the next
few, and Tahiri was starting to giggle with hypoxia. Anakin felt symptoms
himself.
"Okay, that's it," Corran said. "You two. Get in there." He pointed to
one of the large lockers.
"Why?" Anakin asked.
"Just do as I say. This one time, please, without questions, just do
what I tell you to."
It seemed funny that Corran was shouting at him again. Part of Anakin
knew that was a bad sign.
He grabbed Tahiti's hand and pulled her into the locker. Corran shoved
the airpack in behind them.
"Minimum feed to keep you alive. Remember the locker is probably
leaky." He swayed on his feet, seeming to nearly collapse. "I'll be back.
There's another set of lockers down the hall."
He slammed the locker door, and they were in total darkness. Anakin
felt around for the feed valve, and soon a small hiss escaped the airpack.
He turned it up until his dizziness subsided.
"What if he doesn't have enough strength to get the suit on?" Tahiri
said. "What if it's leaky?"
"Don't think about it," Anakin said. "We can only wait
now.
"The walls are getting cold," she said.
They'll get a lot colder before it's over, Anakin thought. Unless the
Yuuzhan Vong light the station up and blow it to atoms. Either way it won't
be long before we don't care anymore. Maybe Corran was right. Maybe his luck
had finally run out.
"Don't worry, Tahiri," Anakin said, contrary to what he was thinking.
"Corran's been out of more scrapes than the two of us put together. He'll be
back."
FORTY-FIVE
The space around the Sunulok birthed stars. That's what it looked like,
anyway, and in astrophysical fact that was more or less what was happening.
The cloud of boiling liquid hydrogen had enveloped most of the
Interdictor, and wherever a laser beam or concussion missile pierced that
gauzy haze an unbearably bright pinprick of light erupted, then quickly
blossomed larger before suddenly going out.
"Keep firing, you two," Han told his wife and son, adding the forward