Inferno (36 page)

“For what, Jacen?” Tenel Ka asked. “What have
they
done?”

“They forced
you
into this.” Now Caedus understood. The only way to make Tenel Ka betray him would be some sort of coercion. “What are they doing? Threatening Allana? If they do anything to hurt her—”

“Not our style, kid,” Han interrupted. “You did this all on your own. All we had to do was show up.”

“Your father is telling the truth, Jacen,” Tenel Ka said. “Look into my heart, and you will know that the decision is mine alone.”

Caedus felt her reaching out, opening her emotions to him. Her presence was filled with sorrow and anger and—most devastating—disappointment. There was love, too, but the kind of lost love that one carries for someone who has died or passed out of one’s life forever.

Now
Caedus’s heart sank, sank so far that it seemed to vanish into the cold emptiness he felt gathering inside him. The unthinkable had happened. Tenel Ka had deserted him, their love just one more offering to his Sith destiny. He knew the sacrifice would strengthen him eventually, as every sacrifice now strengthened him, but this time it did not feel that way. All Caedus felt
now
was angry, stunned, and abandoned.

After a moment, Tenel Ka said, “I am asking you one last time, Jacen. Please don’t make me do this.”

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Caedus replied. “I have no choice.”

He closed the channel and turned to find his aide already speaking into his own comlink.

“…reinforce shields forward!” Orlopp was saying. “Expect fire from—”

The order came to a crackling end as the Hapans’ first salvo hit, overloading the
Anakin Solo
’s shields and flooding the ship’s systems with dissipation static. The crew car slowed to a crawl as power was diverted to critical systems. The tunnel switched to emergency illumination, plunging Caedus and his aide into cold red twilight.

Alema Rar had never seen a moon explode, but if she had, she felt sure it would have looked a lot like the Fifth Fleet did at that moment. With the enemy pummeling it from every side, the once-mighty fleet had drawn itself into a tight little bundle of mushrooming fire and flashing sheets of heat. The deaths were still panging through the Force in the dozens rather than the hundreds or the thousands, but that would soon change. The seam toward which the fleet was angling—between the Bothans and the Hapans—was closing fast, and Alema did not need a battle forecast to know it would be a death trap for any vessel that attempted to squeeze through.

This was all the fault of those Darth Wannabes hiding on Korriban. They had made her wait
three
days so they could train her in the use of the meditation sphere and prepare their gift to Jacen.

And what had their “gift” turned out to be? The Holocron of Darth Vectivus, filled with such pearls of wisdom as “Never borrow money from someone powerful enough to make you pay” and “Let your employees know you trust them…then
watch
them.” Who
was
this guy? Their bookkeeper?

Ship reminded her that there were many forms of domination. Darth Vectivus had been a middle manager in a galactic mining conglomerate. He had controlled the lives of tens of thousands of laborers and accrued a vast personal fortune far in excess of his personal needs—or the capacity of his salary to provide.

“And that will help Jacen conquer the galaxy
how
?” Alema demanded. “Not that it matters. Look at the mess he’s gotten himself into. If he doesn’t die, he’ll be the laughingstock of Coruscant. He’ll be as useful to us as
this.
”

Alema hurled the Vectivus Holocron in the general direction of the battle. Ship formed a small pocket in the transparent wall and caught it, then informed her that the situation was hardly hopeless.

“Look, we are very impressed with your plasma streams and antimatter pellets, but they aren’t enough to take on four fleets,” Alema said. “Are you mad?”

Ship thought it probably was, since it was beginning to take a liking to her, but that was beside the point. The Emperor-to-Be was trying to break free; all they needed to do was open a hole for him.

“Us and what fleet?”

Choose one,
Ship suggested.
There are four.

Alema lifted her brow. “We can take over an enemy fleet?” she gasped. “They didn’t tell us you could do
that
!”

Control, not command,
Ship clarified.
And only because
they have no meditation spheres of their own. They have no defense.

Alema smiled. “It’s always best that way, isn’t it?”

Caedus did not need battle meditation to know he had already lost the Fifth Fleet—and to know that only minutes remained before the
Anakin Solo
was lost as well. The turbolaser fire was coming not in blossoms or rolling barrages or even in sheets; it was simply
there,
filling every square centimeter of his observation bubble with fiery undying brilliance. The color flashed from red to gold to blue, depending on the angle of contact and the condition of the shields. But the intensity never wavered, and he knew that his own gunners had to be firing blind; even the
Anakin Solo
’s top-grade sensor filters were no match for this kind of blast-static.

Still, Caedus felt a nagging hope, something pulling at him through the Force, urging him not to give up. He squeezed past his meditation chair—which had been turned to face outward but not yet repaired—then slipped over the arm into the seat. He began to concentrate on his breathing, clearing his mind of all extraneous thoughts so he could expand his battle awareness.

Orlopp stepped up behind the chair and snuffled for attention.

“Not now,” Caedus said. “I need to meditate.”

“Of course you do,” Orlopp replied. “I just wanted to report that your StealthX is ready for launch.”

“Thank you.”

Orlopp did not go away.

“Is there something else?” Caedus asked.

“Admiral Atoko is insisting that you give him permission to scuttle the fleet. He claims he has the authority to do it without your approval.”

“Does he really think the Wookiees are going to board through
that
?” Caedus waved at the firestorm outside. He was tempted to grant permission, but he still felt that nagging hope, something pulling at him in the Force. “Tell him to hang on for two minutes. If he hasn’t heard from me by then, he’s free to do as he wishes.”

“Very well,” Orlopp said—then continued to hover.

“What?”

“Your StealthX has room for only one person, Colonel,” he said. “How am
I
to escape?”

“I’m trying to work on that now,” Caedus said. “But I need to meditate.”

Orlopp retreated quickly and quietly.

Caedus resumed his breathing exercise, expanding his Force-awareness to encompass his own fleet, then all fleets in the battle, and finally—when he still hadn’t located the source of his nagging hope—the entire theater of combat.

The hope grew stronger, summoning him in the direction of the Bothan fleet, urging him to come toward it. Caedus’s first reaction was not one of doubt or suspicion. It was simply amazement. How could the Bothans think him foolish enough to fall for such a primitive ploy? They had obviously located a Force-user somewhere and assigned him to confuse Caedus’s battle meditations, just as Luke had done at Balmorra.

Caedus ended his meditation and rose, turning his thoughts to the problem of Orlopp’s escape. The Jenet was a fine aide and one of the few subordinates courageous enough to speak frankly when the situation required. Such an aide would be difficult to replace. Unfortunately, the Jenet was too large to fit into the cramped cargo compartment of a StealthX—especially in a bulky pressure suit—but if the missile compartment were emptied…

The hope continued to pull, so hard now that Caedus almost felt as if he were being physically dragged. If the Bothans
had
found a Force-user, they had found a good one. Caedus stopped and followed the feeling to its source—to well beyond the Bothan fleet, where he found a broken, twisted presence that had been inserting itself into his struggles far too often of late.

Alema Rar.

But something was different. Her power seemed greatly magnified, far too ancient and somehow even darker than before.

Alema continued to pull at him, filling her presence with the promise of salvation and victory and, well, some other things in which he had no interest. It would be crazy to rush the Bothan fleet, as she was urging, and the Twi’lek was hardly someone to be trusted with one’s life—or destiny. But the maneuver
would
be the last thing the enemy expected…and what was there to lose?

Caedus dropped back into his chair. “Orlopp!”

“Yes, Colonel?” Orlopp stopped behind him. “Have you thought of a way for me to escape?”

“We’re
all
going to escape,” Caedus said. “Have Admiral Atoko turn on the Bothan fleet. He’s to confront it head-on, full acceleration. Any vessels too damaged to keep pace will act as our rear guard. Starfighters will jump to Rendezvous Alpha.”

“We’re
attacking
?”

“
Now,
Orlopp,” Caedus replied. “If Admiral Atoko gives that scuttle order, you won’t need an escape vessel.”

“At once, Colonel.” Orlopp scurried away.

As Caedus sank back into his battle meditation, a desperate craving for sleep rose inside him. His body was telling him that it needed to heal. Of course, Caedus had no time for rest. He expanded his Force-awareness again and found himself momentarily lost in the maelstrom of fear and bitterness that was the Fifth Fleet. He began to sift through the emotions, seeking out those who felt most calm, those who seemed to be in command, and started to brush them with his confidence and hope.

Soon small eddies of calm and composure began to swirl through the storm. Caedus turned his attention on the heart of the fleet, where he could feel Admiral Atoko’s defiant presence fuming over his orders, no doubt contemplating whether to issue the scuttle order anyway.

Caedus filled his thoughts with the conviction that they
would
escape—that it was his destiny to survive and unite the galaxy—then began to press down on Atoko’s presence. The admiral seemed startled at first, then confused, but his resistance quickly yielded to obedience, and Caedus continued to press.

A few moments later, a ripple of astonishment rolled through the Force, then quickly became determination as the fleet changed course. The brilliance outside seemed to slide across the observation bubble for a moment, then gradually broke into individual blossoms of energy as the enemy gunners began to worry about overshots hitting a friendly fleet.

Caedus began to glimpse individual bolts of turbolaser fire fanning out from the Bothan batteries. As the Fifth struck back, tiny blossoms of color erupted against the distant darkness. A shudder raced through Force as the Alliance cruiser
Redma
suddenly lost its shields and came apart, and whorls of panic and anguish enveloped other vessels as they took hits and began to spit beings and equipment into the void. But overall, the crews of the Fifth remained focused on the attack, too absorbed in their duties to fall prey to the fear and fatalism that had crippled them earlier.

Incredibly, the Bothans did not fall back. They simply held their position and continued to exchange fire with the Fifth, which—battered as it was—had them outgunned, outnumbered, and outclassed. Concerned the Bothans were laying a trap, Caedus extended his Force-awareness to their fleet—and was consumed by a rush of fiery pain as his body struggled to remain functional.

He opened himself completely to the Force, drawing it in through the power not of his anger or fear—he was too exhausted and sad to feel either—but through his faith in his destiny, through the love that gave him the strength to serve that destiny…through his love not only of Allana but also of Tenel Ka, of Luke and Ben and even Mara, of Jaina and his parents and all the others who had betrayed him, of his allies and enemies and his dead mentors. He drew the Force in through his love of them all, of the entire galaxy he was sacrificing himself to save.

The pain remained, but with it came the strength Caedus needed to remain conscious. When he focused his attention on the Bothan fleet again, he began to sense an odd uncertainty among the commanders—and a dark power behind it. Alema Rar was somehow influencing them, instilling in their minds an atypical indecision.

Caedus suspected they were thinking he was too smart to do this—that surely he knew all they had to do was fall back and let their allies catch the Fifth in a devastating crossfire. He began to press down on them, affirming that belief.
Yes, he knew.

Caedus’s vision darkened around the edges, and he began to feel light-headed. Still, he continued to exert pressure, trying to build on the indecision Alema had instilled in them, hoping they would conclude that he
wanted
them to retreat.

That was all it took. The Bothan presences grew decisive, and the fans of their turbolaser fire started to expand as they accelerated
toward
the Fifth. Then Caedus’s vision closed in, and he felt himself sinking even deeper into his battle meditation, completely through it to a time not long in the future when this war would be over, when the galaxy would be safe and calm, when he would once again have his family and friends there beside him, helping him to rule in justice and peace.

epilogue

“That was the dumbest move I’ve ever seen,” Han declared to anyone listening—which, given his volume, was everyone in the Great Parley Chamber of Tenel Ka’s flagship, the
Dragon Queen.
“And I’ve seen some pretty dumb moves. What in the blazes made you
advance
when Jacen turned on you?”

Admiral Babo’s yellow eyes flashed gold, but he accepted the indignity with a polite smile that managed to bare only the tips of his Bothan fangs. Even Han realized that was pretty restrained, given present company. Sitting at the conference table with them were a couple of dozen brass hats from the impromptu coalition that had just tried to blast Jacen into a bad memory.