Inferno (19 page)

“And if you go through with this one, you’ll regret it.” Caedus could not understand why Luke wanted to desert him just when they were on the brink of saving the Alliance, but he did know how to prevent it. “Have you forgotten the academy?”

The door opened. Instead of stepping through, Luke faced Caedus and spoke in a very calm voice. “I’m
sure
you’re not threatening the younglings.”

He pointed at the base of Jacen’s meditation chair and made a tapping motion with his finger. The pedestal gave a loud
whumpf,
and the seat dropped a quarter meter.

“Because you really
don’t
want to see me angry.” Luke made the tapping motion again. The pedestal emitted a metallic shriek, and the seat dropped another quarter meter. “And I think you’re smart enough to know that.”

Luke tapped a last time, and the pedestal collapsed with a low loud
crump,
depositing Caedus on the floor with his feet sticking out in front of him like a child.

“But if you want to try me, go ahead and make that threat.”

Luke lowered his hand, and the weight vanished from Caedus’s chest. He could have leapt up to attack—had he been that foolish—but Sith were not slaves to their emotions. Avenging his humiliation could wait until after he had saved the Alliance.

So, remaining on the floor where Luke had deposited him, Caedus simply touched the comm pad on his armrest. “Lieutenant, do we have an open channel to Prince Isolder yet?”

“Actually,” replied a deep Hapan voice, “you’re speaking to him now, Colonel Solo.”

“My apologies.” Caedus looked across the day cabin to lock gazes with Luke. “Are you ready to commence your attack?”

“I am,” Isolder said.

Luke lowered his gaze and shook his head.

“Then please proceed,” Caedus said. “And may the Force be with you.”

“May it be with all of us,” Isolder replied. “If this plan doesn’t work, we’re going to need it.”

The channel closed with a
pop.

Moving very slowly so his uncle would not misinterpret his actions as an attack, Caedus stood.

“I know you too well,” he said to Luke. “You’re not going to abandon the Alliance.”

“There is no Alliance.” Luke turned to leave. “It died with Cal Omas.”

“For you, maybe.” Caedus couldn’t understand why his uncle was so focused on Omas’s death; it was one among millions, and even if Caedus
had
put the idea in Ben’s head, he hadn’t actually ordered the assassination. “But you
are
going to support this attack; I’m quite certain the Senate would frown on turning the security of the Jedi academy over to an order of deserters.”

Luke’s hand brushed the hilt of his lightsaber, and Caedus thought for a moment that the fight he had been anticipating since Mara’s death—anticipating, dreading, and wanting—was finally going to come. He stepped away from the observation bubble, giving himself some maneuvering room in case Luke came at him in a tumbling pass.

But Luke seemed to realize that attacking Caedus aboard his own Star Destroyer—even if he was fortunate enough to kill him—would only put the academy and the rest of his Jedi in an even more precarious position. He moved his hand away from his lightsaber and put it out to stop the door behind him from sliding shut.

“Okay, Jacen,” he said. “If that’s how you want to play this, we will.”

“It’s not how I
want
anything,” Caedus said. “But if that’s what it takes to win this war, I’ll do it.”

Luke studied Caedus for a moment, then seemed to surrender to circumstances. “I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.” His voice was weary and sad. “It looks like I should be getting back to my StealthX.”

“It looks like you should,” Caedus agreed. “And may the Force be with you out there.”

Luke snorted, half in disgust and half in humor. “Thanks, I guess.” He stepped through the door and started across the anteroom, his disappointment hanging in the Force as heavy as fog on Dagobah. “Good-bye, Jacen.”

It did not escape Caedus that Luke had departed without returning the traditional kind wishes, but that was probably too much to ask of someone who had just been brought to task. Caedus waited until his uncle had passed out of sight, then closed the door and turned to find SD-XX standing at his back.

“That went well,” the droid said. “For a time, it appeared you would have to kill him, too.”

Jacen frowned.
“Too?”
He hadn’t told the droid about Mara. Hadn’t told
anyone.
“What do you mean by
that
?”

“In addition to his wife, of course,” SD-XX explained. “You’ve been letting secrets slip in your sleep.”

Caedus thought of Tenel Ka and went empty inside. The only time he slept well anymore was in her company.

“What do I say?” he asked. “Is it clear?”

SD-XX leaned forward, pushing his skeletal face close to Caedus’s. “So you
did
kill her.” Droids weren’t supposed to have
smug
in their repertoire of voice inflections, but SD-XX managed to sound fairly close. “I wasn’t sure.”

“What do I
say
?” Jacen shouted.

SD-XX remained faceplate-to-nose with Jacen. “You never actually admit anything,” he said. “It’s just a lot of talk about necessary sacrifices and making the galaxy safe for children like your daughter.”

“My
daughter.
” Caedus’s heart sank; he was putting Allana at risk in his
sleep.
“Do I ever call her by name?”

SD-XX cocked his head sideways, no doubt focusing his photomicrometer on Jacen’s pupil so he could gauge the degree of shock his answer caused.

“You call her by a lot of names,” SD-XX said. “Jaina, Danni, Anni, Allaya—”

“Enough!” Caedus ordered. He would have liked to send the droid back to Tendrando to have an owner-exception entered into its probe programming, but that wasn’t really an option. Lando had made clear where his loyalties lay—by abetting Han and Leia Solo in their efforts to avoid capture. “Return to your monitoring duties. Let me know if crew members start gossiping about trouble between Luke and me.”

SD-XX reluctantly pulled his face away from Caedus’s. “Allana?”

“I’m about to have you converted to torpedo parts,” Caedus warned.

“You don’t have to threaten.” SD-XX started toward his security closet. “
I’m
not the one mumbling secrets during shutdowns.”

Caedus started back across his day cabin worrying about how preoccupied Tenel Ka had seemed the morning of Mara’s funeral, wondering whether she had been hearing things in his sleep that made her suspect him of the killing. At the time, he had attributed her withdrawal to common sorrow, but now he couldn’t help wondering. Was she even at this moment pondering whether to reveal what she had heard to Luke and the Council Masters?

Probably not, Caedus decided. Had Tenel Ka heard anything incriminating, she would never have seemed preoccupied or aloof. She would have taken great care to make sure that she appeared perfectly normal, and the first he would have known about her suspicions was when she stuck a lightsaber against his back and started to interrogate him.

At least that was what he hoped.

By the time he reached the observation bubble, the battle had erupted into a curtain of light and flame that was stretched all the way across space. The
Anakin Solo
was pouring fire into the conflagration from all four of its long-range turbolaser batteries, causing the decks to shudder and the illumination to dim and flicker. Every couple of seconds, a tiny dash would emerge from the firestorm and swell into a crimson streak of energy in the blink of an eye, then blossom into a boiling wall of death against the ship’s shields.

Any attempt to make visual sense of the firestorm was hopeless, but the sight of so much unleashed energy filled Caedus with awe and pride.
He
had arranged this, marshaled the death-dealing power and lured the enemy into its path, and it made him feel like a…well, not quite like a deity, but like a man standing at the brink of destiny. This victory would place the galaxy in his grasp—and once he had the galaxy, peace would be within his reach.

Krova’s voice came over the comm. “The Jedi are ready to launch, Colonel.”

“
All
of them?” Caedus asked. “Master Skywalker, too?”

There was a brief silence while Krova consulted the hangar chief, then she said, “Master Skywalker is the one making the report.”

“That was quick,” Caedus said, raising his brow. “Are the Hapans in position?”

“Opening fire now,” Krova reported. “But Admiral Bwua’tu’s plan doesn’t call for the StealthXs to attack until the Bothans turn to meet the Hapans. He feels the added element of confusion will—”

“I’m
aware
of the battle plan, Lieutenant.” Caedus focused his Force-awareness deep inside the
Anakin Solo
’s belly, where he felt a snarl of angry Jedi presences. Deciding it would be better to have them dodging missiles and turbolaser volleys than sitting idle and stewing about his authority, he said, “And Master Skywalker is aware of the plan, as well. Let him launch.”

Krova acknowledged the order, and a moment later Caedus felt the Jedi moving away from the
Anakin Solo.
Realizing it would soon be time for him to coordinate their attack with Admiral Bwua’tu, Caedus grabbed his meditation chair in the Force and discovered that he could not turn it back toward the battle. No matter how hard he exerted himself, it would not budge.

Krova reported that the Hapans had sealed the Confederation’s escape route and were now fully engaged.

Caedus gave up on the chair—he couldn’t see anything useful through the bubble anyway—and dropped into the seat facing away from the battle. Instead of leaving his legs stretched out in front of him as they had been before, he drew his knees up to his chest and felt no less foolish.

Krova reported that the Bothans were turning to engage the Hapan Home Fleet. The First and Seventh fleets began to press the flanks, trying to squeeze them into a crossfire, and the Confederation fought desperately to hold position, dealing as much death as they suffered. Caedus closed his eyes and did his best to grasp the battle in all its complexity, nudging a task force commander forward here, warning off a Star Destroyer captain there, always keeping track of the Jedi StealthXs creeping along the edges of the fight toward the Bothan fleet.

Finally, Krova patched Bwua’tu’s gravelly voice through directly to Caedus. “Congratulations, Colonel. The time has come to end this war. Send in the StealthXs, please.”

“My pleasure,” Caedus replied. “And, Admiral?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for your loyalty.”

“That’s nothing to thank me for, sir,” Bwua’tu replied. “A
krevi
can’t be broken, no matter who takes command.”

“All the same, I’m glad to have you on our side.”

As Caedus spoke, he reached out to the Jedi, urging them to attack. They responded with a wave of anger even greater than what he had sensed in the hangar, and their presences began to grow noticeably weaker as their StealthXs accelerated away at full power.

To Caedus’s alarm, the Jedi presences
continued
to grow weaker, entirely bypassing the Bothans and shooting out through the Hapan Home Fleet toward the fringes of the Kuat system. Finally, they vanished altogether.

A moment later, Bwua’tu’s voice came over the comm. “Where are those StealthXs, Colonel? If the Bothan core doesn’t start collapsing soon, this is going to turn into the longest, bloodiest battle since the Yuuzhan Vong took Coruscant.”

Caedus was too shocked, too angry, to answer immediately. The Jedi
had
deserted him—worse, they had betrayed him, deliberately misled him without regard for what it would do to the Alliance.

“Colonel?” Bwua’tu demanded. “I can’t press the attack until the Jedi strike.”

“What happens if you do?” Caedus asked. “Press the attack without the Jedi, I mean?”

Bwua’tu was silent for only a moment. “We lost our StealthXs?”

“My questions first, Admiral,” Caedus said sharply. “Can we do this without them?”

This time, it didn’t take even a moment for Bwua’tu to answer. “It’s
possible,
” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to try it. We’ve lost our big advantage—and if we lose here, we lose everything.”

“I see.”

If Caedus ordered Bwua’tu to press the attack anyway, he would be gambling with the lives of Tenel Ka and Allana—and growing up in the Solo household, he had learned enough about high-stakes gambling to know that only a fool risks everything without a big edge.

“Then I’m afraid we can no longer press the attack, Admiral.” Caedus went cold inside. “The Jedi have betrayed us.”

twelve

Despite a brisk wind, and the lush tang of wroshyr pollen it carried, the musky smell of so many Wookiees gathered for so long in such a small place was…overpowering. Not sickening, but certainly dizzying. As Leia followed Han through the jungle of roaring fur that was the Rock Council, it took an act of will just to continue breathing. She did not bother trying to remain steady on her feet. The way she and Han were being bounced around by shifting hips and flying elbows, that was a lost cause.

A particularly large elbow, descending from a ferocious cheer, crashed down on Leia’s shoulder and drove her to her knees. She didn’t cry out—Saba had broken her of that particular urge by rapping her on the head until she learned to accept pain silently—but it didn’t prevent the elbow’s owner from scowling down to see what kind of critter he had just smashed.

“No harm.” Leia rose and rotated her arm. “See? It still works.”

The Wookiee, a lanky male with graying fur, narrowed a pair of silvery eyes and growled something in a dialect Leia might have understood, had she been able to hear it over the howls of approval rolling across Council Rock. She chided herself silently, thinking she had allowed her concentration to slip. The Solos’ furlough from their week-long stay in jail was not exactly authorized; without a Force mask suggesting they actually belonged here, Leia worried that it would only be a matter of moments before they were seized and returned to their cell.