فصل 39

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Elphrona. Low Orbit.

Loden whipped his Vector up and away from the disabled Nihil ship, slamming his lightsaber against the control console, the weapons bank lighting up. He powered on his shields, knowing they wouldn’t last for more than a few hits from the armada that had somehow appeared from nowhere.

The trick, then, was not to get hit.

“Indeera!” he called, scanning both the threat display on his console and everything the Force was telling him about the endless array of Nihil ships surrounding him.

A brief moment, a breath, as if the enemy fleet was considering the same collective decision, and then blasterfire. Everywhere, a cascade.

Loden banked and wove and tried to be as challenging a target as possible, knowing that with this level of fire coming at him, he was just as likely to run into an off-target bolt as he was to be hit by a Nihil with exceptionally good aim.

So he stopped thinking about it at all and surrendered himself to the Force, letting it guide his movements. Overthinking the situation would only end up with him getting in his own way. While he wasn’t certain—no one could ever be—he did not believe it was his time to die.

A blaster bolt sizzled off his front shields, and he reevaluated.

It is probably not my time to die, he thought.

“I’m here, Loden,” Indeera said. “What’s happening?”

“A Nihil fleet dropped in from hyperspace, and they don’t seem particularly happy,” he said.

“Here? That’s not possible.”

“Please let them know that.”

“Are you all right?”

“For the moment. I’m just staying out of their way. But I can’t do it forever. We need to resolve this now.”

A brief pause, then Indeera spoke again.

“They aren’t firing on this ship, or my Vector.”

“I know. They must want to ensure the family survives,” Loden said, sending out a few blasts from his own cannons, causing one of the smaller Nihil craft to explode.

“Who are these Blythes? Why are they so valuable?”

“Does it matter?”

“No…but I can only take one of them with me in my Vector, Loden.

The father wants me to take his son first, if I can get him out—but I’m not sure how I get past the Nihil even if I can get back to my ship.” “Do that. Take the son. I’ll cover your retreat, then I’ll grab the father and follow you back to Elphrona. Planetary security might not want to do anything about a single marauder crew, but they’ll have to respond to an entire invasion fleet.”

“All right…but Loden…how will you do that?”

He put his Vector into a roll, shooting again. This time he missed, but at least he was alive, still fighting.

“Eh,” he said. “I’ll probably just trust in the Force or something.” Nothing from Indeera. Loden laughed.

“It’ll be all right. Or it won’t, but I’ll do my best. Do me a favor and leave the outer air lock open when you go, Indeera.”

“That sounds like you actually do have a plan.”

“I wouldn’t call it a plan. It’s more like five impossible things in a row. I’m just going to hit them one at a time.”

He flew straight at the largest Nihil ship, briefly evading fire from the nine or ten smaller craft on his tail while opening himself up to laser blasts from the cruiser. But better one attacker than ten.

“I’m running out of time, Indeera. We need to mix this up. You ready?”

“Ready,” she said.

“Go!” Loden shouted.

Loden slowed his breathing, reaching out to the Force. He pulled his hands back from his control sticks, leaving just his fingertips touching their surfaces. Vectors were responsive craft as a rule—and this particular one was more attentive to its pilot’s commands than most. He had once heard his Padawan—no, his former Padawan, Bell would soon be a fellow Jedi Knight—tell Ember the ship’s name, when he thought no one was listening.

The Nova. Perhaps Bell kept it secret because he thought it was silly or childish. Loden thought it was beautiful. He wished he’d told Bell that. Next time they saw each other.

All right, Nova, time to live up to your name, Loden thought.

With his hands, he flew his ship, and with the Force, he triggered its weapons and moved through the battlespace in a way none of the Nihil had ever seen or could anticipate or, if Loden chose to go for killshots, could survive.

The Nova was a blossom of flame and laserfire, spiraling through the battle, every shot finding a target, every motion either an evasion or a retargeting.

The Nihil attackers moved from an attacking stance to something like a panicked retreat, the sphere of ships surrounding him expanding and becoming more diffuse, both from the increased distance between the vessels and from his own steady reduction of their numbers. Only the flagship didn’t move, his lasers reflecting off its shields.

Dimly, his senses told him Indeera’s Vector had taken the opportunity to move out of the shadow of the kidnappers’ ship and speed through a gap in the enemy cordon. As he had suspected, the rest of the Nihil did not give chase. They undoubtedly were monitoring the communications between Loden and Indeera, or had access to cam feeds from inside their damaged vessel. Either way, they knew who Indeera had taken—the boy.

They didn’t want him, though. They wanted the father, for some reason.

It was Loden’s job to make sure they didn’t get him.

He knew how he could get aboard the kidnappers’ ship—but he didn’t quite know what he would do after that. Getting through all of this intact seemed…improbable. At best.

But then, so was fighting off a massive marauder armada in a single Vector long enough for his colleague to escape, and he’d pulled that off. He’d figure it out.

Loden angled his ship to head straight for the damaged Nihil vessel containing the last Blythe.

He approached, then pulled back sharply on the control sticks, slowing his ship to almost zero velocity, feeling g-forces tug him forward.

In a series of rapid Force-assisted movements, he pulled his

lightsaber hilt from the console—it was hot in his hand, almost burning—popped the emergency release on the Vector’s canopy, released his safety harness, and shot forward, out of the ship and into open space.

Loden had aimed himself perfectly. Almost perfectly. He did indeed make it to the open air lock of the damaged Nihil ship, but one leg nicked the edge of the hatch as he passed, and at the speed he was traveling it was like taking a durasteel hammer to the limb. The bones of his lower leg snapped, and for a moment Loden felt nothing. But only a moment.

Then pain, white-hot.

He hit the inner air lock hatch, hard, though at least this he had been anticipating and was able to turn to soften the impact a bit.

Loden slapped the control panel to one side of the hatch and the outer door slammed closed. The atmosphere began to cycle, oxygen rushing into the tiny chamber.

Loden took the moment to examine his broken leg—it was twisted at a bizarre angle, and it seemed like the bone had snapped clean through. Not good.

Outside the ship, through the air lock, he saw a flash of flame that he knew was his Vector being destroyed by Nihil laserfire.

Goodbye, Nova, he thought. You were a wonderful ship.

None of this was unexpected—well, perhaps the leg. That was not ideal.

Loden brought the pain-management exercises he knew to mind, and while he realized on some level that he was in agony, he was able to bottle it up and put it aside. The trick wouldn’t last forever. You couldn’t fool the body indefinitely. But hopefully, it would see him through whatever came next.

A soft chime as the air lock atmosphere equalized with that inside the ship, and the hatch opened. Loden pushed himself to his feet, favoring his good leg—no Jedi exercises were so powerful that he could put even a bit of weight on the other one—and pulled himself inside.

The first thing he saw were the corpses. Several, all Nihil, bearing telltale marks of death-by-lightsaber. All had blasters in their hands.

Indeera had been forced to defend herself and the hostages, and these people had brought their deaths upon themselves. The pilot’s body was here too, the unmasked woman Loden had influenced with the mind touch.

The second thing he saw was a man, his eyes wide, a blaster pistol in his hand. He did not look like a Nihil. He looked like a miner. The last Blythe.

“You’re the other Jedi,” the man said.

“You’re the father,” Loden said, his voice a little shaky.

“Ottoh Blythe,” the man replied. “Before anything else, thank you for saving my family. If there is ever anything I can do for you, just—” “I wouldn’t mind a little help with this, now that you mention it,” Loden said, gesturing to his leg.

Ottoh looked at the injured limb, realized what had happened, and nodded. He shoved the pistol in his belt and moved to a bulkhead, where a square metal container was bolted to the wall. He pulled it down, then opened it, revealing an emergency medpac.

From the kit, he pulled an injector and held it up. “This won’t fix a broken leg, but it might let you forget it’s broken. For a little while, at least.”

“Yes please,” Loden said.

Ottoh handed the injector to Loden, who promptly stuck it in his thigh and depressed the activator. A slight whoosh, and immediately the pain eased. He released the Force, saving his reserves for the challenges to come.

“Better?” Ottoh said.

“Better enough for us to get through this.”

“They killed your ship,” Ottoh said. “I saw it blow up through the viewport. How are we supposed to get away?”

“We’re on a ship,” Loden said. “And they aren’t shooting at it. They don’t want to kill you, which means we have an advantage. First thing we do, let’s try to negotiate—I have some little tricks I can try on their commander, and if they work—”

A huge thunk, mind-crushingly loud, and in that instant something new appeared in the hold with them. It was the forward end of a torpedo of some kind, sharpened to pierce a hull, which was what it had done. Loden tried to shove it back out into space with the Force, then held back, realizing that he wasn’t sure if the ship was still shielded against vacuum. Solving one problem might cause another, which honestly was all moot because the thing was going to explode, and how could he have miscalculated so badly, and at least they’d saved three of the family members, and Indeera and Bell and Porter had survived as well, and if it was his time, well, then—

Vents snapped open on the end of the torpedo, and gas hissed out, blue-gray like smoke or a thundercloud, filling the entire compartment in an instant. Jedi could hold their breath for a very long time, but this had happened so quickly that there was no time to take a breath.

Loden saw Ottoh Blythe sink to his knees, then topple over, his eyes rolling back and closing. He could feel his own head beginning to swim.

Loden reached for the Force, thinking again that perhaps if he just shoved the torpedo away, he could evacuate the air from the hold and the poison with it—yes, he and Ottoh Blythe would be in vacuum, but one problem at a time.

But the Force slipped out of his grasp. He could not think, could not focus.

He fell to one side, flaring agony in his shattered leg momentarily clearing his head. But only for that moment. He couldn’t think. He felt stupid, dull.

The air lock hatch cycled open, causing eddies of air to whisk through the hold, but not enough to dissipate the gas. Only enough to stir it a bit, causing a clear area near the air lock, which meant Loden Greatstorm saw the monsters step into the ship.

The Nihil.

Lourna Dee walked into the hold, followed by a few of her best Storms.

All were masked, the headgear doing triple duty as concealers of identity, inducers of terror, and, most important, filters of nerve toxin.

The stuff was a special recipe she’d commissioned from a poisoner on Nar Shaddaa and had never shared with her fellow Tempest Runners— a girl had to have a few secrets, after all.

The gray fog swirled, breaking apart and re-forming, giving her glimpses of both the Jedi and the Blythe, collapsed on the deck, unconscious.

This should square me up with Marchion Ro, she thought. Mission accomplished.

Lourna Dee wondered how Kassav was doing, on his own assignment, if he’d redeem himself as well.

She hoped not.

“Take them both,” she said.