Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 09] - Star By Star (by Troy Denning)

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Star By Star

Troy Denning

[05 jan 2003-scanned for bookz]

[06 apr 2003-proofed for bookz by friendy]

To Andria

For advice, encouragement, and more

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people helped make this book possible. I would like to thank them all, especially Curtis Smith for

introducing me toStar Wars writing all those years ago; Mary Kirchoff, who drew my attention to the

possibility; and Matthew Caviness, Kevin McConnell, and Ross Marton, three specialStar Wars fans

who were never far from my thoughts during the writing. Thanks are also due to Mike Friedman and

Jenni Smith; fellow NJO writers R. A. Salvatore - what a setup! - Mike Stackpole, Jim Luceno, Kathy

Tyers, Greg Keyes, Elaine Cunningham, Aaron Allston, and Matt Stover, who all contributed to this

story through endless compromising and brainstorming; Shell Shapiro and all the people at Del Rey,

especially Chris Schluep, Kathleen David, and Lisa Collins; to Sue Rosstoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson at

Lucasfilm, as well as Chris Cerasi, Leland Chee, Dan Wallace, and everyone else there who made this

project such a pleasure. And of course, thanks to George Lucas for letting me play in his galaxy.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Alema Rar; Jedi Knight (female Twi'lek)

Anakin Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)

Bela Hara; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)

Borsk Fey'lya; chief of state (male Bothan)

C-3PO; protocol droid

Cilghal; Jedi Master (female Mon Calamari)

Eryl Besa; Jedi Knight (female human)

Ganner Rhysode; Jedi Knight (male human)

Han Solo; captain,Millennium Falcon (male human)

Jacen Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)

Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

Jovan Drark; Jedi Knight (male Rodian)

Krasov Hara; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)

Kyp Durron; Jedi Master (male human)

Lando Calrissian; resistance fighter (male human)

Leia Organa Solo; former New Republic diplomat (female human)

Lowbacca; Jedi Knight (male Wookiee)

Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

Nom Anor; executor (male Yuuzhan Vong)

R2-D2; astromech droid

Raynar Thul; Jedi Knight (male human)

Saba Sebatyne; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)

Tahiri Veila; Jedi Knight (female human)

Tekli; Jedi Knight (female Chandra-Fan)

Tenel Ka; Jedi Knight (female human)

Tesar Sebatyne; Jedi Knight (male Barabel)

Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Ulaha Kore; Jedi Knight (female Bith)

Vergere; adviser to Tsavong Lah (female Fosh)

Viqi Shesh; senator (female human)

Zekk; Jedi Knight (male human)

They appeared without warning from beyond the edge of galactic space a warrior race called the

Yuuzhan Vong, armed with surprise, treachery, and a bizarre organic technology that proved a match -

too often more than a match - for the New Republic and its allies. Even the Jedi, under the leadership of

Luke Skywalker, found themselves thrown on the defensive, deprived of their greatest strength. For

somehow, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to be utterly devoid of the Force.

The alien assault caught the New Republic unawares. Before they could rally and strike back, several

worlds were destroyed and countless beings killed - among them the Wookiee Chewbacca, loyal friend

and partner of Han Solo.

The New Republic won the day - the first of a series of costly victories. Behind that alien advance fleet

came a seemingly endless stream of ships and warriors. The planet Ithor fell to Yuuzhan Vong treachery -

a devastating loss for the New Republic and a personal one for Jedi Corran Horn, who took the blame.

The New Republic government unraveled a little more with each setback. Even the Jedi Knights began to

splinter under the strain. And while Luke Skywalker struggled with the dilemma of how to handle the

Jedi, he struggled with a private crisis, as well His beloved wife, Mara, was ill and possibly dying from a

debilitating and utterly mystifying disease, and it was taking much of her energy simply to stay alive.

Lacking strong leadership, some of the Jedi fell under the sway of Kyp Durron, who advocated using

every available resource to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong - including unbridled aggression, which could lead

only to the dark side. Even the Solo children - Jedi Knights all - found themselves on different sides of

the argument.

Consumed with grief and guilt for Chewbacca's death, Han Solo turned away from his family, seeking

expiation in action - and foiled a Yuuzhan Vong plot to eliminate the Jedi. He returned with what seemed

to be an antidote to Mara Jade Skywalker's illness, but not even that victory could erase the loss of his

dearest friend - or mend his marriage to Leia.

Leia, too, was beset by guilt. She had disregarded a vision of the future, and now she blamed herself for

the devastation of the Hapan fleet at Fondor - a mass destruction caused by the uncontrollable power of

Centerpoint Station, a weapon armed by her younger son, Anakin.

The elder Solo son, Jacen, also had a vision, one in which he saw the galaxy moving toward darkness.

Afraid of tipping the balance farther, the young Jedi temporarily abandoned the use of the Force

altogether. Only the near-loss of his mother, Leia, compelled him to return to the Force.

But in saving Leia's life Jacen had bested none other than the great Yuuzhan Vong warmaster Tsavong

Lah. In retaliation, the warmaster declared a temporary truce on the condition that all Jedi - and Jacen in

particular - be handed over to the Yuuzhan Vong.

Now the Jedi were being hunted. When the youngsters at the Jedi academy were threatened, Anakin

Solo raced off to help, going undercover among the Yuuzhan Vong lower castes to rescue his friend

Tahiri Veila. He ended up a hero - but the Jedi Temple on Yavin 4 was destroyed.

Luke and Mara found themselves declared traitors by the New Republic. As a pregnant Mara struggled

with the recurrence of her disease, Luke began to assert his leadership over the Jedi. With Jaina Solo's

help, Kyp Durron convinced Luke and the military to let him lead a mission to destroy a Yuuzhan Vong

superweapon. The mission was successful ... but Jaina learned, too late, that what they had destroyed

was not a weapon but a worldship in the making - one filled with civilians and intended for Yuuzhan

Vong young. Once again the balance seemed to be tipping toward darkness. The only ray of light was

the birth of Luke and Mara's son, Ben Skywalker.

Their new worldship destroyed and their attempts to capture the Jedi frustrated, the Yuuzhan Vong have

declared the truce broken. Once again worlds will fall, as the alien forces push inexorably Coreward.

And the Jedi may be the last hope in a galaxy that no longer wants them ...

Chapter 1 The dark sliver of a distant starliner crept into view, a blue needle of ion efflux pushing it

across the immense sweep of a brilliant orange sun. Like a million such suns in the Core region alone, this

one lacked any world with a civilization or even a sapient species, and it was too inconsequential for any

name except an obsolete Imperial survey number. With so much emptiness, so many planets untouched,

it seemed to Jaina Solo that there should have been no need for fighting, that there should have been

room for all. But comfort was always easier to steal than to earn, peace easier to break than to keep - as

her mother so often said - and so the Yuuzhan Vong had invaded a galaxy that might have welcomed

them with open arms. It was a mistake the aliens had yet to understand, but one day, Jaina knew ... one

day the Jedi would teach them.

R2-D2 chirped an inquiry from the droid station at the rear of theJade Shadow 's flight deck.

"Stay connected, Artoo." Jaina did not turn around. "They still haven't sent the signal, and Mara needs

her rest."

The droid whistled a lengthy objection.

Jaina glanced at the interface readout, then threw her hands into the air. "Fine. If that's what she said, go

wake her up."

R2-D2 unplugged and whirred off toward the passenger cabin, leaving Jaina alone on the flight deck of

theJade Shadow . Even in a standby orbit, with all systems powered down and the ion drives resting cold

and quiet, the vessel felt more like a suit of formfitted battle armor than a seventy-ton starship. The

flow-form seat, drop-deck helm, and full-view canopy gave her the sense of floating in open space, while

a new retinal tracker kept the heads-up status holos centered just below her plane of vision.

Communications and countermeasures could be controlled from an array of glide switches on the throttle;

a similar set on the stick managed sensors, weapons, and shields. Even the life-support system could be

regulated by voice with an astromech unit plugged into the flight deck droid station. It was the perfect

cockpit, and when the time came to have her own ship, Jaina intended to duplicate every detail -

especially the seating arrangement, with the pilot alone down low in the front and the navigator and

copilot seated side by side behind her. She liked that part the best.

Jaina's reverie was interrupted by a sudden sense of deep disquiet, an unexpected stirring in the Force

that soon built to a strange feeling of frenzy. She opened herself to it further and experienced an instant of

terrible longings and ravenous hunger, not quite evil, but dark and feral - and brutal enough to make her

gasp and withdraw from its touch.

A cold sweat running down her brow, Jaina slid the throttle comm switch to intercom and called Mara to

the flight deck. While she waited, she studied the sensors. There was nothing unexpected, but Jaina knew

better than to place too much faith in the instruments. They had put theShadow into orbit around the

orange sun's closest planet, a rubble-ringed magma ball little more than twenty million kilometers from its

star. Without R2-D2 at his station making constant resolution adjustments, all she could see was

electromagnetic blast.

Catching a glimmer of movement in the canopy reflections, Jaina glanced at an activation reticle in the

front of the cockpit. A small section of plexalloy opaqued into a mirror, and she saw the willowy form of

Mara Jade Skywalker slipping onto the flight deck. Mara's cascade of red-gold hair was a tangle of

sleep snarls, but her complexion was no longer quite so ashen nor her green eyes quite so sunken. Jaina

stood and, feeling a little like a child caught with her hand under the candy dropper, turned to vacate the

pilot's station.

Mara waved her down. "Sit. You're entitled." She dropped into the navigator's chair, sweetening the

filter-scrubbed air with a hint of talc and stericlean that seemed to cling to her even with her new baby

thousands of light-years away. She lifted her chin toward the distant starliner. "That our two

troublemakers?"

"The transponder identifies it as theNebula Chaser ," Jaina said. R2-D2 plugged back into the droid

station and confirmed the identity with a chirp. "But there's been no rendezvous signal, and a moment ago

I felt something, uh, strange in the Force."

Mara nodded. "It's still there. But I don't think it's our passengers. It doesn't feel right."

"Nothing feels right about this," Jaina said. A thousand-meter Corellian cruiser with a customized

Hoersch-Kessel sublight drive, theNebula Chaser had already traversed half the face of the orange sun.

It was now the size of Jaina's finger, with a blue efflux tail three times that long. "They still haven't

signaled. Maybe we should give them one more orbit, then duck behind the planet and blow ions."

Mara shook her head. "Luke's right about these two; they're getting people killed with their

saber-flashing. We'd better snag them while they need the ride." She pulled her crash webbing over her

shoulders and clipped the buckle. "But let's be ready. Power up."

"Me?" Though Jaina had piloted theShadow before, her aunt had done all the flying on the way out -

perhaps because it had been Mara's first real chance to fly her beloved vessel since giving birth to Ben,

or perhaps because she had simply needed to keep her mind occupied on her first trip away from her

new son. "It's your ship."

"I want to sleep some more anyway. You won't believe what a luxury that is until you have a baby."

Mara was silent for a moment, then added sternly, "And that's not a suggestion."

"Check!" Jaina's laugh was a little wistful. At nineteen, she had certainly been on dates, but the war had

kept her too busy to pursue any serious relationships. Even now, she was only on temporary leave from

Rogue Squadron - until the anti-Jedi sentiment in the senate faded. "Like I'd have time."

Jaina reached over to toggle the ion drives active, but stopped when R2-D2 whistled an alarm. The

heads-up display holo contorted through a maddening array of colors and shapes, then settled on the

image of a tiny, tube-shaped craft swinging toward them well beneath the luminous haze of the sun's

orange corona.

"That explains their silence," Mara said. Though the navigator's station lacked a heads-up holo, the seat

was surrounded by a complete set of conventional displays. "Can we can take it, Artoo?"

A message appeared on both displays, sternly informing Jaina and Mara that the representation was not

to scale. A series of sensor readouts began to relate the craft's true size, velocity, and probable hull

composition. Jaina whistled softly and glanced through the tinted canopy, where the new arrival's

speckish silhouette was streaking up behind theNebula Chaser .

"Looks like a frigate analog," Jaina said. "What do you want to do?"

"The only thing we can." There was a note of caution in Mara's voice that would have seemed foreign to

her before Ben's arrival. "Damp down all systems and wait."

In Captain Pollux's private quarters aboard theNebula Chaser , the Rar sisters stood shoulder to

shoulder in front of the offbridge vidconsole, their long head-tails - lekku - writhing nervously as they

watched a large piece of yorik coral detach from the frigate and start toward theNebula Chaser . Pocked

and lumpy, the smaller craft looked more like a mined-out asteroid than a boarding skiff, but the sensor

displays showed the heat signatures of at least a hundred warriors inside. There was also some other

creature, larger and colder, but the sisters needed no sensor readings to know this. When they reached

out with the Force, they could feel the same hungry presence that had touched them as the frigate

appeared from behind the sun. Whatever the Yuuzhan Vong were bringing across, it was attuned to their

galaxy in a way its masters would never be.

Alema isolated the creature's heat signature and asked the computer to find a match, then turned to see

Numa already at the captain's bunk laying out their disguises a pair of diaphanous dancing shifts, some

face paint, and not much else. Having spent the last year leading a fierce resistance movement on the

occupied world of New Plympto, the sisters were certainly the object of the boarding party's search.

Fortunately, their enemy would be searching for a single human woman instead of two Twi'lek dancing

girls; in their role as the resistance leader, they had taken the precaution of never appearing together and

always in disguise, with their lekku hidden beneath the cowl of a Jedi robe.

By the time the sisters changed out of their jumpsuits and returned to the vidconsole, the Yuuzhan Vong

were disembarking in the docking bay. With bald sloping brows and saggy eyes rimmed underneath by

drooping blue membranes, they were half a head taller than a typical human and much heavier. Their

brutal faces had been reshaped into leathery masks of disjoined cartilage and torn flesh, and their

powerful bodies were adorned with religious tattoos and ritual disfigurements. Most wore shells of living

vonduun crab armor, and all carried the ubiquitous Yuuzhan Vong amphistaff, a serpent that could

change on command into a cudgel, razor-sharp polearm, or poison-fanged whip. The most hideous of the

warriors, a stoop-shouldered brute with only dark cavities where there should have been a nose, pushed

arrogantly past the guards surrounding Captain Pollux.

"You haveJeedai aboard?"

"No," Pollux lied smoothly. "Is that why you stopped us?"

The warrior ignored the captain's question. "You come from Talfaglio ... or Sacorria?"

"You can't believe I would tell you that," Pollux said. "The last I heard, our whole galaxy was at war with

you."

The retort drew a grudging sneer of respect. "We are only a picket ship, Captain, and you are carrying

refugees. You have nothing to fear from us ... provided you tell me now if you haveJeedai among your

passengers."

"We have none." Pollux did not look away when he answered, and his voice did not crack. Even civilian

starship captains knew the Yuuzhan Vong were blind to the Force. "Feel free to search."

The warrior cracked a smile. "But I do, Captain. I do." He glanced toward his boarding skiff and, in his

own language, ordered,"Duwin tur voxyn."

A seam appeared near the back of the craft and began to open, the yorik coral puckering outward like a

set of pursed lips. A pair of yellow oval eyes appeared in the darkness, and Alema felt the hunger in the

Force grow more distinct. Then, when the aperture had opened a half meter, an ebony streak shot from

the portal and clattered to the deck in a ripple of darkness.

"Clouds of fire!" Numa gasped.

The creature - thevoxyn , Alema guessed from what she had learned of the Yuuzhan Vong language -

began to pad around the deck on eight bandy legs. Though it stood no higher than a human waist, it was

more than four meters long, with a flattish head and an undulating body covered in black scales. A line of

coarse sensory bristles ran down its spine, and a white barb protruded from its flickering whip of a tail.

The beast circled the captain and his wary guards only once, then went off toward the rear of the docking

bay.

In the vidscreen, Pollux fixed his gaze on the Yuuzhan Vong warrior. "Why have you brought that ... that

thing on my ship?"

The warrior knocked Pollux to the deck with a backhand slap. "You can't believe I would tell you that,"

he laughed.

Though Pollux's guards did not appear in danger of attacking, the captain signaled them to stand down

and returned to his feet with as much dignity as possible.

Alema rotated an idle narrow-beam antenna toward the dark planet where their rendezvous craft would

be waiting, then keyed in a secret Jedi comm channel and began to broadcast what they were seeing.

The proximity of the orange sun would interfere with the signal, but signals could be enhanced - and it

would be better than nothing if she and Numa failed to escape.

The voxyn circled away from the shuttles and wandered the docking bay for a few minutes more, then

exited into an adjoining passage. The sisters lost sight of it until Alema found the right scanner, and by

then it was padding down the main boulevard as though it had been riding slidewalks all its life. Along one

side of the passage raced a company of Yuuzhan Vong, their distrust of lifeless technology keeping them

on the stationary band at the edge of the broad corridor. Eventually, they gave up trying to keep pace

and spread through the ship in small groups.

Alema activated a surveillance lock on the voxyn, and for the next hour she and Numa watched it roam

theNebula Chaser 's primary activities deck, occasionally circling a petrified refugee or cocking its head

at some eruption of machine noise. Finally, it leapt into a decorative water fountain and began to circle

the statue of a Calamarian star-urchin, its sensory bristles on end and its yellow eyes fixed on the ceiling.

With a drooping feeling, Alema turned to the holopad and called up a three-dimensional schematic of

theNebula Chaser . After a few adjustments, it grew clear that Captain Pollux's cabin was directly over

the creature, ten levels above.

"Unpleasant," Numa said. The tips of her lekku flicked sharply. "It seems to have an idea of our location."

"That makes no sense." Alema reached out with the Force and felt the same hungry stirring as before, but

now much stronger and distinctly below. "Unless it's using the Force to track us."

A shudder ran down Numa's lekku, and she glared at Alema out of the corner of a slanted eye. "You do

have a way of springing to the most alarming explanation, sister."

"Alarming, but no less likely." Alema pointed to the vidscreen, where the voxyn was bounding down the

corridor toward the nearest lift tube.

Numa studied the image for a moment, then said, "You seem to have a point. Perhaps we should shut

down."

They took a moment to meditate, then began to pull in on themselves, shutting down their presence in the

Force. When they could not even feel each other, Alema looked back to the vidscreen. The voxyn had

just reached the lift tube. It slapped the activation pad with a front claw, then pushed its foresection into

the cylinder and allowed the repulsor current to pull its long body up into the shaft. She traced the lift to

an officers' deck outlet less than a hundred meters away, perhaps twice that distance by the time the

creature found its way through the corridor grid.

"No good, sister. It still senses us." She turned toward the satchel holding their jumpsuits and lightsabers.

"We can catch it as it steps out of the tube."

"Then what?" Numa asked. "The scarheads will know Captain Pollux was lying to them."

"They'll know anyway when it comes scratching at his door." Sorry there was no time to change back

into her jumpsuit, Alema pulled her lightsaber from the travel satchel and activated its silver blade. "And

I'd just as soon take a few Yuuzhan Vong with us."

"No." Numa reached over and shut down Alema's lightsaber. "I won't have that, not after New Plympto."

Frustrated by the planet's stubborn resistance, the Yuuzhan Vong had released a life-destroying plague

that wiped the whole world clean. The sisters and a few thousand others had waited out the destruction

inside a small fleet of intrasystem ore freighters, then sneaked into space after the enemy abandoned the

dead world.

"They'reYuuzhan Vong , sister," Alema said. "Do you think they'll just forgive the captain's lie?"

"Hardly." Numa returned to the console. "We must make them think their creature is wrong."

She called up a hologram that showed the Yuuzhan Vong frigate floating half a kilometer beyond

theNebula Chaser 's docking bay. At only two hundred meters, the enemy craft was a mere fraction of

the starliner's size, but the weapon nodules bristling along its flank left no doubt about its destructive

capabilities.

Alema saw at once what her sister was thinking. "We'll pick our escape pod on the way."

She returned her lightsaber to their travel satchel and tossed the bag to Numa, then grabbed a datapad

from the captain's bunkside table and comlinked it to the offbridge vidconsole. The sisters left the

captain's suite and scurried toward the opposite end of the officers' deck. At the lift tube, Alema

consulted the datapad and found the voxyn splashing through a Damp Deck basin two levels below. Its

yellow eyes were fixed on the ceiling, tracing their path.

"It knows we're moving," Alema said.

"But its sense of distance is poor." Numa was ever the optimist. "Where are we going?"

Alema called up a display of midship escape stations, then chose the one most directly opposite the

Yuuzhan Vong frigate. "Engineering deck, Bulkhead Forty-two." She performed a sectional security scan

and found a team of Yuuzhan Vong smashing a droid in gravitational control. "We'll have to trick a squad

of scarheads."

"Alternate?"

Alema checked the other escape stations, then shook her head. "Nothing, unless we leave theChaser 's

sensor shadow."

"Out of the question." Numa's lekku curled inward at the tips. "We'll have to go bare."

"Bare?" It was the term they had used on New Plympto for caching their weapons and disguising

themselves as slaves. "You must be brightsick. I'm not leaving my lightsaber behind!"

"You would risk the lives of everyone aboard?" Numa pulled her lightsaber from their travel satchel and

twisted the handle open, then plucked the Adegan focusing crystal from its mount and secured it over her

navel with a few drops of fleshglue. Through her filmy shift, the golden jewel looked like a dancer's

decoration. "Do you think such selfishness worthy of the memory of Daeshara'cor?"

Alema coiled her lekku, then let them slap against her back. Though not exactly their Master,

Daeshara'cor had certainly been the sisters' deliverer. During one of the Jedi's rare visits to Ryloth, she

had recognized the Rar sisters' innate Force talents and rescued them from one of the darkest ryll dens in

Kala'uun, then arranged their transport to the Jedi training academy. Alema sighed and held out her hand.

"If we must."

Numa placed Alema's lightsaber in her palm. Alema removed the Adegan crystal and secured the silver

jewel over her own navel. They tossed their Jedi robes and the remains of their weapons into a

disintegration chute, then stepped into the lift, descended twenty levels to the engineering deck, and left

their satchel on the floor halfway across the tube threshold. Though a far less obvious act of sabotage

than smashing the actuation panel, it was just as effective. A collision override circuit would hold the tube

static until the safety hazard was removed.

"Time to look flighty," Alema said.

She called up a banal emotidrama on the datapad, and the sisters started toward Bulkhead 42. As they

advanced down the corridor, they peered into each room they passed and called loudly for someone

named Travot. When they reached inducer control, a Yuuzhan Vong warrior stepped out to confront

them. With only three long scars on each cheek and a single disfigured ear, he was clearly a warrior of

low rank. The sisters pressed themselves against the corridor's far wall and, doing their best to look

shocked and repulsed, started to ease past.

He blocked their way with a lowered amphistaff. "Where do you go?"

"To s-see Travot?" Numa made her voice sound frightened and tentative. "He works in the coil room."

"The coil room?" the Yuuzhan Vong echoed.

Alema shrugged and glanced back to her datapad, as though unable to resist the emotidrama. "His

workstation."

A second Yuuzhan Vong with the crooked nose and scar-laced face of a minor officer stepped into the

corridor. He scrutinized the sisters briefly and, seeing there was no place beneath their dancing shifts to

hide a lightsaber or anything else, pointed back the way they had come.

"This ship is under seizure. Return to your berthings."

Numa and Alema put on looks of fear and confusion and remained where they were.

"Obey!" the subordinate said.

"We c-can't," Alema said.

"They sealed off the staff deck," Numa said. "And they closed our lounge."

"See?" Alema called up a schematic of the ship and shoved the datapad at the officer. "We don't have

anyplace to go."

"Do not pollute me with your profane devices!" The officer knocked the instrument from Alema's hand

and smashed it beneath his heel, then motioned to someone inside the room. "Bring the infidel machine

shaper."

A third Yuuzhan Vong appeared in the doorway with a bruise-mottled human female. One eyelid had

split open and covered the side of her face in coppery-smelling blood.

"You have one called Travot in your squad?"

Numa saw her sister catch the engineer's eye and give a barely perceptible nod, using the Force to plant

the suggestion that the woman knew Travot. Taking full advantage of the Yuuzhan Vong's insensitivity to

the Force, Alema reached out and felt the presence of more than a hundred beings in the immediate area,

most of them frightened, a few angry or in pain. She did not feel the invaders, of course; the Yuuzhan

Vong were as invisible to the Force as it was to them - but she did feel the voxyn's hungry presence

descending toward them. It had found another lift tube.

After a moment of confusion, the engineer finally said, "There's a Travot in engineering, but he's not on

my crew."

The officer considered the two sisters, no doubt trying to puzzle out the proper procedure for dealing

with them. Alema decided to help him along by simply assuming the answer she wanted - a subtle means

of enticement both she and her sister had put to good use in the ryll dens of Kala'uun.

"Engineering is just down there, isn't it? At Bulkhead Forty-two?"

"That's right," the engineer said. "Bulkhead Forty-two."

Alema stepped to her sister's side and eyed the amphistaff blocking their way. The subordinate looked to

his officer, who scowled and waved him down the corridor.

"See to it and return."

Not waiting for the warrior to lead the way, the sisters slipped past his amphistaff and started down the

corridor. The bulkheads appeared to be simple structural arches that spanned the passage every ten

meters, but each one contained a thin durasteel door that would descend automatically at the first sign of

a pressure drop. The doors could also be triggered by voice, but the crew had wisely refrained from

using the code to seal off the Yuuzhan Vong search parties.

As they scurried down the corridor, Alema reached out with the Force again and felt the voxyn behind

them, on the same level and coming fast. They were at Bulkhead 33, still ninety meters from the escape

pod.

"I'm cold, sister." Alema rubbed her bare arms. "Do you feel that chill?"

"Quiet," their guard ordered. "Your complaints are an insult to the gods."

Alema's palm ached for her lightsaber.

The faint clatter of claws on metal echoed down the corridor behind them. She looked over her shoulder

and saw a distant ripple of darkness bounding down the sterile tunnel.

"What's that?" she gasped, finding it difficult to pretend she did not know. "What's it doing?"

Numa glanced back, then let out a convincing shriek and raced down the corridor flailing her arms.

Alema screamed and started after her, leaving their astonished guard to stomp after them yelling for them

to stop. As they passed Bulkhead 38, he cried out in astonishment, then yelled something angry in his

own language as the voxyn bowled him off his feet.

Alema did not even glance back. "Close Bulkhead Thirty-eight!" she yelled. "Authorization code nebula

rubantine!"

The bulkhead door clanged down behind her and sealed itself with a hiss - then tolled deeply as the

voxyn slammed into it. Alema knew that closing the door would draw attention from the Yuuzhan Vong

commander - but so would allowing the voxyn to catch them. She hoped that the thing had broken its

neck, but there was no such luck. It was up and slamming itself into the durasteel almost instantly.

They passed Bulkhead 42. Numa turned toward the outer wall and slapped her palm against the escape

bay door-pad.

"Attention You have requested entrance to an escape pod launching bay." The computer spoke in the

same cheery female voice it used to announce dinner seatings. "Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

"Yes!" Numa said.

"If you proceed, an alarm will sound in the security -"

"Override alarm, code Pollux eight one six!" Alema called. "Confidential departure."

"Override accepted."

As the launching bay's iris hatch swirled open, a soft pop sounded from Bulkhead 38, and Alema knew

the hermetic seal had been broken. Her first thought was that someone on the bridge was raising the

door, but then she heard the muffled voice of the female engineer.

The door rose, and the voxyn came scurrying down the corridor, sensory bristles on end, white tail

whipping back and forth. The creature's yellow eyes were fixed on the floor and it was licking the air with

a long forked tongue, and Alema's hand ached more than ever for her lightsaber.

"Ready the escape pod," Numa ordered, pushing Alema into the launching bay's bluish light. "Now,

sister."

Alema found herself looking into the nozzle of the escape pod's primitive rocket engine. It was barely a

meter across, just large enough to start the hundred-person capsule toward the nearest habitable planet.

In the corridor, Numa called, "Close Bulkhead Forty-two! Authorization code nebula rubantine!"

"The bulkhead emergency code is temporarily suspended," the computer returned in its sweet voice.

"Please report valid emergencies to any engineering supervisor."

"Override!" Numa ordered. "And disarm safety sensors! Code Pollux ..."

As Numa finished the authorization code, Alema slipped past the rocket nozzle to the side of the pod. A

sickening crunch sounded out in the corridor, but she could no longer see what was happening outside

the bay. She pressed her palm to the escape pod's activation pad. The hatch slid open, revealing a

starkly lit interior crammed with ten cramped rows of acceleration chairs. There was no cockpit or

viewport, only a droid pilot stationed at the craft's single control panel.

The droid pointed to the chair farthest from the door. "Welcome to Escape Pod Four-twenty-one.

Please take your seat and wait for the other passengers. There is no need -"

"Prepare for a cold launch." Alema would have preferred the speed of a hot launch, but the flare of

rockets would be noticed on the bridge - and however faint their fast-dwindling hopes of escaping

unnoticed, she still had to try. "On my command. Authorization code Pollux -"

"The override authorization code has already been given," the droid said, turning to its duties. "There is no

need to repeat the override authorization code once the launching bay is entered."

A wet burping noise sounded from out in the corridor, then Numa screamed. Alema stepped out of the

escape pod and saw her sister staggering into the launching bay, arms raised to cover her face. She

missed the center of the hatch and stumbled over the rim, then fell with her feet across the threshold. Her

face and chest were covered in sizzling brown mucus, and her lekku were thrashing against the durasteel

floor.

Alema did not experience Numa's pain, as she had heard sometimes happened between Force-sensitive

siblings, but she did receive a heightened impression of her sister's thoughts. Numa was afraid of being

blind, but more than that, she was frightened they would be unveiled as Jedi and cause the deaths of yet

more innocents. And she was angry - angry at her own carelessness in letting the creature surprise her.

"Sister!"

Alema sprang toward Numa and saw the voxyn pinned beneath Bulkhead 42, struggling to pull itself

forward. Though its torso was pressed almost flat, she was astounded to see it moving at all. Bulkhead

doors had safety sensors precisely because they closed with so much force; they had sensor overrides

because it was sometimes necessary to crush anything beneath them to save the ship.

As Alema neared her sister, the creature swung its broad snout in her direction and sprayed a jet of

brown saliva through the hatchway. Prepared by the attack on her sister, she opened herself to the Force

and, with an almost unconscious wave of her fingertips, sent the stream washing back toward her

attacker. The voxyn, fast as a blaster bolt, closed its eyes and turned away before the mucus struck.

Alema hardly cared. Numa's thoughts were growing disorganized and distant, her cries fading to groans.

Alema grabbed her sister beneath the arms, smearing her own fingers in the burning mucus, and tried not

to think about what the stuff was doing to Numa's face and eyes.

"Find your center, sister." She pulled Numa into the launching bay. "Let the Force flow into you."

Numa fell completely quiet, her mind alarmingly calm - and then the calmness vanished, leaving in its

place only a lingering peace and a vague sense of emptiness. Alema cried out and started to look down,

then felt the mucus burning into the bones of her fingers and knew she did not have the courage.

Alema carried her sister's body around to the escape pod hatch and glanced back toward the door,

where the voxyn, still trapped beneath the bulkhead, continued to watch. One side of its head was

covered in the residue of its acid mucus, the scales beneath pocked and smoking as they continued to

dissolve. The heads of several amphistaffs appeared in the narrow gap next to the creature's head and

began - hopelessly - to pry.

A part of Alema - the part not mourning her sister, the part that was still a Jedi Knight - realized her last

faint hope of slipping away unnoticed had vanished. The Yuuzhan Vong would hear the whir of the

closing hatch and feel the thump of the pod's separation. Still, she could do nothing but go on. Pollux's life

was forfeit - even if she surrendered, she knew the Yuuzhan Vong better than to think the commander

would forgive his lies - but it would take time to destroy a ship as large as theNebula Chaser . Perhaps, if

she launched quickly, the frigate would be forced to pursue the escape pod instead of attacking the

starliner. It was her best hope - her only hope.

She looked back toward the hatchway. "Close launching bay -"

The voxyn's snout - all of the creature Alema could still see - turned toward her and opened half a meter.

A deafening shriek filled her ears, then the fist of a powerful compression wave slammed her in the

stomach. She suddenly felt dizzy and sick, and in the next second she was slumped against the escape

pod, cradling her sister's dead body in her arms. She felt something warm trickling out of her ear and

touched it with a fleshless finger; when she lowered her hand, the tip of the bone was red with blood.

Alema tried to rise, nearly retched, then dropped back to her haunches, head spinning and stomach

churning. Still holding Numa in her lap, she kicked her way through the escape pod door.

"Launch!" Alema gasped. "Launch right now!"

The pod hatch closed, the lights dimmed - and that was all. The capsule remained eerily silent and still.

Puzzled, Alema dragged herself past a row of acceleration chairs and looked forward. The droid pilot

was facing her, vocabulator flashing rapidly as he endeavored to explain proper launching procedure.

Alema could not hear a word.

"Override!" she yelled. "Authorization code -"

The escape pod shot forward, hurling Alema into a durasteel chair-mounting. She had already given the

authorization code.

Jaina missed the launch. She was staring at the heads-up display, trying to bring theShadow 's comm

array into perfect alignment with theNebula Chaser 's tight-beam antenna. With the starliner drifting dead

only twenty million kilometers in front of an orange sun, the task would have been difficult under the best

circumstances. With the presence of a Yuuzhan Vong frigate limiting them to air thrusters, it was nearly

impossible.

After several minutes of trying, Jaina finally aligned the comm pip inside the targeting reticle and matched

theShadow 's rotation to theNebula Chaser 's progress across the face of the orange sun.

"How's that?"

R2-D2 scrolled a message down the heads-up.

"No, I don't think I can," Jaina snapped. "If you're getting anything at all, put it on!"

Half a dozen fuzzy two-dimensional vids appeared inside the canopy, neatly arrayed in a row across the

plexalloy. Half the displays showed Yuuzhan Vong warriors being Yuuzhan Vong warriors, smashing

droids, throwing electronics down disintegration tubes, beating helpless refugees. One screen showed

some sort of eight-legged reptile - maybe it was a reptile - pinned beneath a bulkhead door, its head

badly acid-burned and one eye burst from sudden decompression. Another display showed an empty

escape pod bay, but it was the last screen that caught Jaina's interest.

It showed theNebula Chaser 's bridge, where Captain Pollux and his entire flight crew stood surrounded

by Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Even had Jaina known Pollux personally and the vid display been better than

it was, she would not have recognized him. His face had been reduced to a misshapen lump.

A Yuuzhan Vong with no nose cut the captain's ear off his head. "I ask the last time Where did you pick

up theJeedai ?"

Somehow, Pollux found the strength to laugh. "What Jedi?"

The Yuuzhan Vong chuckled. "You are a funny man, Captain." He folded the dismembered ear into the

captain's palm, then turned to his subordinates. "Kill the crew."

Heart sinking, Jaina turned to Mara. "Can we do anything?"

Mara kept her attention fixed on her navicomputer. "Not for the crew. But look at this."

She keyed a command, and a golden trajectory line appeared inside the canopy. It ran from theNebula

Chaser more or less across theShadow 's bow, then curved sharply toward the planet.

"An escape pod?" Jaina glanced back to the starliner and found the Yuuzhan Vong frigate still sitting idle

Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 09] - Star By Star (by Troy Denning)

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