Dark Tide: Onslaught Read online

  “Careful, Sticks.”

  “As anyone, Lead.”

  Jaina felt a curious peace settle over her as she brought her X-wing up and around in a spiral that rose along one of the spines. Golden plasma bolts flashed up past her. A couple nicked her shields, but she reinforced the power there very quickly. At the tip of the shaft the bolts curved in toward the gravity wells the dovin basals were creating. She shot past that area, then hit hard port rudder and reversed her ship’s thrust. The X-wing swapped itself end for end, then, when she cut her throttle to zero, the fighter hovered there in space, five hundred meters from the end of the shaft.

  Jaina looked right down into it. The spine’s tip had a triskele valve at the tip. It reminded her of heart valves. It would open up for a second or two, just long enough to eject the plasma, then close again, sealing up the firing tube. It had an elegance about it, yet seemed so primitive when compared to the fighter in which she sat.

  She triggered the flicker shots and poured a steady rain of energy darts down at the valve. The plasma shots coming up at her curved in and missed because of the void shielding the tip. “Sparky, let me know when the gravitic anomaly starts to collapse.”

  The droid tooted an acknowledgement, then quickly keened a sharp whistle.

  Jaina thumbed her weapons control over to proton torpedoes and triggered a pair. The pink missiles jetted blue flame and shot straight at their target. A heartbeat before they reached it, the valve snapped open, revealing a golden glow coming from deep down in the shaft. The torpedoes flew on, and Jaina pumped the throttle full forward and inverted as her X-wing dove back toward the Yuuzhan Vong ship.

  Somewhere in the middle of the spine, the torpedoes hit the plasma bolt. Cracks immediately appeared in the midnight blue shaft. They leaked silver-gold fire, then the shaft started to come apart. The center of it vaporized into an incandescent cloud of molten yorik coral. A great gout of fire clipped the end of the shaft’s upper half at an odd angle, starting it to spin and wobble. It slammed into another spine, shattering both of them.

  Another pair of proton torpedoes streaked in at the shaft she’d hit. They came in at a sharp angle, and one skipped off the glowing, molten edge, then impacted the hull. Its explosion gouged a deep scar in the ship and scattered yorik coral into space. The second one made it inside the shaft, and when it exploded, the base of the shaft crumbled from the inside out.

  “Nice shot, Twelve.”

  “Following your lead, Sticks.”

  Jaina laughed as she leveled out for a moment, then pulled up and shot away from the ship. “We showed them!”

  “We did.”

  “Can the chatter!” Gavin’s order coursed through the comm channel, but didn’t bring with it any anger.

  “As ordered, Lead.” Jaina’s grin grew larger as she watched the Ralroost get closer and closer to the point where it would begin its run to hyperspace. We’re doing okay.

  Then something shook her ship. She glanced about, fearing a dovin basal had somehow locked onto her shields, but there were no fighters anywhere near her. Her secondary monitor did show a gravitic anomaly in the system, but the readings were well beyond that which any of the coralskippers could have generated. In fact, the only time I’ve seen readings like this was when I’ve simmed against an Interdictor cruiser!

  Her heart immediately sank into her belly. The Yuuzhan Vong warship had shifted its dovin basals away from driving the ship and instead had them create a narrow gravity well that blocked the Ralroost and a half-dozen other ships from entering hyperspace along the route to Agamar. We’ll just have to find another route out.

  Just as that thought materialized, Sparks whistled to acknowledge receipt of new navigational data. She glanced at it as Gavin’s voice came through the comm channel. “Rogues, our exit vector to Agamar is blocked. You now have our new destination. The Ralroost has recovered fighters, so head out. We’ll rendezvous there in twelve hours. Good fighting.”

  Jaina double-clicked her comm unit. She looked again at her destination, then pointed the fighter toward a distant star and began the run. Dantooine, eh? It’ll be good to see Mara again. I hope she’s gotten her rest because, if we’re followed, I know she’s going to need it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jacen Solo awoke as a great, wracking cough lifted his body, then left him limp. Burning pain from his shoulders and hips formed a backdrop into which the pain from the cough faded. He opened his eyes and saw a pearlescent floor beneath him. While nowhere near as reflective as a mirror, it did provide him with a distorted image of himself, where he was blobby at some points and pinched at others. Which is pretty much how I feel.

  He determined he was hanging from some sort of rack mounted above him in the ceiling. He could feel the restraint bands on his ankles, thighs, and wrists. The wristbands were the worst, since they twisted his arms enough to lock his elbows. His ankles were higher than his shoulders, and his position made it difficult to get a good look at the device to which he’d been fastened.

  He’d have been able to see nothing at all, but the sun had begun to rise on Belkadan, turning deep black night into a misty gray morning that mimicked the foggy sensation in his brain. He estimated he’d been in Yuuzhan Vong control for at least four hours. More than enough time for them to backtrack me to the ExGal facility, the ship, Artoo, and Uncle Luke. What was I thinking?

  The vision had seemed so real to him, with all the bits and pieces feeling right as they fell together. He didn’t want to think he’d deceived himself, using a dream as a pretext to do something his uncle didn’t want him to do. The fact that doing just that would be the sort of thing expected of someone his age gnawed at him. That makes me just like everyone else, but I’m not. I’m special, I’m more responsible.

  Another cough shook him, sharpening the pain that had dulled in his shoulders. Jacen allowed himself a little smile. Of course, every sixteen-year-old who’s been convinced he’s not like his peers probably thinks this same thing after he’s proved he isn’t so unlike his peers as he thinks he is. He sighed. Even being trained in the Force couldn’t insulate him from making mistakes. You can put powerful engines on a sloop racer, but if the chassis doesn’t have structural integrity, the whole thing falls apart.

  And that’s what Uncle Luke tried to tell me by reminding me I’ve not had enough experience. He shifted his shoulders to pull at the bonds on his wrists. Lesson one from this experience: Realize just how much you don’t know. Lesson two: Make sure to learn from lesson one.

  Jacen reached inside to touch the Force and call it to himself, but the pain in his shoulders and hips nibbled away at his concentration. A third cough didn’t help the situation. Jacen did his best to try to let the pain bleed away with Jedi pain-suppression techniques, but as he calmed frayed nerves, the bonds on his wrists tightened. They twisted his arms more, grinding his shoulder sockets, making the pain spike.

  Jacen gasped and hung there for a second. A cold chill sent a shudder through him, pulsing more pain from his joints. In response the bonds on his arms eased a bit, but Jacen hardly took comfort in that fact.

  The device to which he had been attached clearly could sense how much pain he was in. Intellectually he knew this was actually very easy. Sensors could monitor the amount of activity going on in the parts of his brain dealing with pain. Electronics could even measure the output of the pain receptors in his shoulders—much in the same way they read neural signals and allowed Luke’s artificial hand to function normally. He was even aware of machines that inflicted pain, like those used on his parents by Darth Vader on Bespin.

  What surprised him was that there seemed no active purpose for keeping him in pain. No one was interrogating him. The pain wasn’t sufficient to break him down, just to keep him in a distracted state. While that was preventing him from accessing the Force, somehow he didn’t think the Yuuzhan Vong knew enough about the Jedi to realize how useful this would be.

  A raspy clicking entered the cha
mber, causing Jacen to raise his head. In through the building’s threshold came a small gray creature. It walked on six legs and sidled left and then right. It had four other appendages, all raised like flags at a parade. Two of these limbs were stout and two very fine. The creature also seemed to have compound eyes, three of them, hanging in a cluster from a single central stalk, which was segmented and capable of movement. Because it was just coming in through the doorway, which faced east, the rising sun backlit the creature, making it difficult for Jacen to see much more in the way of detail, but what he’d seen already did not please him.

  He felt panic rising in him, but he forced it away. On a shelf next to the door he saw his lightsaber and tried to reach out for it. He knew he couldn’t ignite it, but if he could pull it toward him and smash the dark end into this creeper, he’d feel much better. He sought to reach out to grasp it with the Force, but couldn’t focus his mind enough. The realization of just how defenseless he was ripped through him, leaving him exhausted and drifting toward despair.

  The creature scuttled forward, and Jacen felt his guts begin to knot up. Tiny white bumps, looking like gravel and scattered like pimples, dotted the creeper’s dorsal carapace. The slender arms doubled back on themselves, with little pincers and feathery fronds brushing over them, touching them. It seemed to Jacen that the creature was taking inventory of its cargo.

  The creeper came to a stop below his face. The two stout appendages reached up, pincers held wide. Jacen pulled his head back, preventing the pincers from grabbing his ears or cheeks. With the creeper so close, he got a good look at the white stones and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were the seeds of the calcifications he’d seen on the slaves. They plant those in me and I’m done for.

  One of the slender appendages swept upward, slapping the delicate frond across Jacen’s exposed throat. Lightninglike agony slashed across his neck. He would have screamed, but the pain paralyzed his vocal chords and drained his neck muscles of all feeling and strength. His head bounced down and hung there. Muscles in his face twitched, and a little blood dripped from his mouth from where he’d accidentally bitten the interior of his cheek.

  The stout claws caught his earlobes and clamped down tightly. The only good thing about the pain the frond had caused is that he barely noticed the pressure on his ears. With the pain-frond pulled back, one of the slender appendages reached up and pinched the flesh below his right eye, exactly over the curve of his cheekbone. He heard a click and knew the little claws had sliced through his flesh. Blood dripped, splashing scarlet dots over the creeper’s pale gray shell.

  While one slender stalk opened the wound, the other brought up one of the little bits of gravel and tucked it beneath his flesh. More pinching and the bleeding stopped, but Jacen could feel the foreign body inside of him. He narrowed his right eye and could feel the thing grate against his cheekbone.

  A shudder shook him. He knew of countless creatures, insects mostly, that found suitable hosts for their broods. They would implant eggs into these hosts, allowing a crop of creatures to grow inside the victims. The little creatures would mature and eat and eat, devouring their host from the inside out until they were prepared to burst forth and seek new prey. The host that had sustained them was left a withered husk, with its own life sucked out and spent on raising a clutch of its own murderers.

  No, I can’t let this happen to me! He redoubled his efforts to summon the Force, pushing past the pain, but he never quite felt himself connect. Snarling, he tried harder and harder, refusing to give up. He pushed for all he was worth, seeking that spark that would lead him to the Force, refill him and sustain him.

  On the shelf by the door, his lightsaber rattled against its resting place.

  The creeper released his ears and scuttled toward the doorway. Jacen stared intently at his lightsaber, willing it to twitch and dance. He wanted it to rise up from the shelf, climb toward the ceiling, then he would drive it down with such force that it would crush the creeper. He didn’t know what he could do after that to effect an escape, but that was enough for the moment, and joy surged through him as the lightsaber drifted up off the shelf.

  Then it spun away, out toward the east, becoming a black dot against the sun’s ball. Jacen watched it vanish, his victory dissolving into astonishment. He tried and tried to recall it, tried to make it return and smash the creeper, but it vanished. He could not feel it, and great sadness slammed into him. Jacen felt as if the Force itself had whisked away his lightsaber, taking away from him the symbol of the Jedi Knight because it no longer felt him worthy of any place in the order.

  Then, distantly, he heard the snap-hiss of a lightsaber being ignited. Almost as if an echo, the sound repeated itself. The youth raised his head and looked out the doorway, past the creeper. Half the rising sun burned in the east, pouring molten gold light out over the horizon, and in the center of it came a dark form. It broadened slightly as it approached, and two green blades flanked it. Closer it came and closer, resolving itself into a Jedi Master, dark cloak flowing behind him, twin blades held more like warning torches than weapons.

  While his uncle was distant enough to seem no taller than a toy figure, a Yuuzhan Vong warrior darted at him from the left. The Yuuzhan Vong smashed his amphistaff down at Luke’s head. The Jedi Master raised his right lightsaber to block the blow and could have easily stroked the other blade across the Yuuzhan Vong’s unprotected stomach. Instead he pivoted on his left foot, scything his right leg through the Yuuzhan Vong’s legs, dumping the alien hard to the rock-strewn ground. Luke then brought his right hand down and smashed the pommel of his lightsaber into the Yuuzhan Vong’s face, leaving the warrior limp in the dust.

  Another Yuuzhan Vong came in from the right and slashed his amphistaff at Luke’s middle. Luke leapt back from the tip, then caught the return cut on both lightsaber blades. He raised the amphistaff high in a parry, then spun beneath it. As the Yuuzhan Vong warrior whirled to face the Jedi Master again, a fist-size stone shot from the ground and clipped the warrior in the side of the head. It shattered his helmet, spraying pieces of it into the air, then another slammed into his shoulder. More stones stormed through the air as if trapped in a cyclone, battering the alien warrior relentlessly. Finally one arced in at his forehead, skipped off the shallow dome of his head, and dropped him cleanly to the dirt.

  A third warrior came at Luke, but he displayed more caution than his enthusiastic companions had. He twirled his amphistaff around like a propeller, arcing cuts in at Luke’s feet or head. The Jedi Master dodged back, then leapt above a slash. He used the Force to push himself high in the air, then he twisted through a somersault and landed behind his foe.

  The Yuuzhan Vong whipped around and snapped a kick through Luke’s legs. The blow caught Luke in the ankles, dumping him on his back. The Yuuzhan Vong continued his spin, then came up and brought his amphistaff around in an overhand blow at Luke’s head.

  In the time it took for his foe to complete a revolution, the Jedi Master rolled through a backward somersault and came up on one knee. He raised the lightsabers and crossed them, catching the amphistaff above his head at the green blades’ nexus. Furious at being caught, the Yuuzhan Vong flexed his amphistaff, which opened a fang-filled mouth. It reared back, ready to strike at Luke’s face. The amphistaff’s hiss and the Yuuzhan Vong’s triumphant snarl filled the air.

  Then Luke slashed both lightsabers outward, drawing their glowing lengths over the amphistaff’s throat. While its flesh might have been dense enough to prevent a lightsaber from immediately shearing through it, the double assault snipped the first twenty-five centimeters from the amphistaff with no problem. The rest of the amphistaff recoiled in pain, and the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, who had been leaning heavily on the amphistaff to keep Luke down, stumbled forward. Without rising, Luke brought his right lightsaber up to stroke the Yuuzhan Vong’s belly, then spun and slashed the other against the back of the warrior’s thighs.

  The warrior collapsed to the
ground. The remains of its amphistaff writhed in the dust beside him, gradually subsiding.

  Luke rose to his feet and stalked forward. Several stones, as if little rodents fleeing from his advance, rolled on ahead of him. They bowled over the creeper and crushed it. The Jedi Master stepped over the oozing mess the stones left in the doorway, then strode past Jacen without a word. Lightsabers hissed and popped, then went silent. Jacen slowly floated to the ground.

  He breathed heavily for a moment, then rolled over onto his back. Luke sank to one knee beside him, then touched the youth’s face with his mechanical right hand. Jacen felt some pain as Luke pressed the coral seed against his bone, then his uncle pinched flesh between thumb and forefinger. With a flick of his artificial thumb, the Jedi Master popped the bloody seed free of his nephew’s face, letting blood streak Jacen’s cheek.

  Jacen stood and kicked his legs free of the bonds. “Uncle Luke, I’m so sorry.”

  “No time for that.” Luke handed him his lightsaber, then took hold of Jacen’s right arm and hauled himself to his feet. “The ship is over there, in a depression, to the southeast. Artoo is waiting for us, sending out the data we’ve acquired. We have to go, now.”

  “What about the slaves?”

  Luke shook his head. “What slaves?”

  Jacen pushed past the aches in his body and reached out to catch a sense of the frayed ones. “I don’t understand. There were slaves when I went to the villip paddy.”

  “They don’t exist anymore. They are dead, or, I don’t know, somehow they have gone completely over to the Yuuzhan Vong camp. Perhaps they accepted what they are becoming.” Luke leaned heavily on his nephew. “We have to get to the ship.”

  Jacen hugged his right arm around Luke’s waist. “What’s wrong? Did they hurt you?”

  “No, Jacen, it’s just that . . .” Luke’s chest heaved with exertion. “It’s just that using that much of the Force, using it that directly, is exhausting. A Jedi may be able to control and use a great deal of the Force, but there is a price, a fearful price. Hurry, we have to go, quickly.”