Invincible (2 page)

“Hi, Jaina,” he says. “I don’t suppose you’d like to—”

“What took you so long?” Jaina demands, interrupting her brother’s fun. He is always making jokes and wisecracks, and they are always lame. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She slips off her bunk and steps through the door past him, then looks down the corridor in both directions, searching for guards or other signs of trouble. Jacen isn’t much better at planning than fixing machinery, so—however he managed to get this far—there is a good chance that the guards are on to him by now.

But the famous Solo luck seems to be with him today, and Jaina sees nothing but the closed doors of other cells. She would like to free the other captives, but she knows better than to try. Their wills have already been broken, and one of them would be sure to alert the guards. So Jaina simply closes her own door and leans closer to Jacen.

“What now?” she asks. “Have you figured out where Lowbacca is?”

Jacen flushes, then drops his gaze to the floor. “Not yet,” he admits.
“
I was sort of hoping
you
might have a plan.
”

Jaina smiles. “Of course I do,” she says. “Didn’t I say I’ve been waiting?”

What do you call the person who brings dinner to a rancor? The appetizer!

—Jacen Solo, age 14, Jedi academy on Yavin 4

T
HE TUNNEL DESCENDING INTO
N
ICKEL
O
NE’S TRANSPORTATION
warrens was typically Verpine: square, straight, and lined with so many tubes, ducts, and conduits that it was impossible to see native rock. It was also crazy-clean in that maybe-the-hive-mother-has-a-problem kind of way, with a spotless smoke-blue floor and gleaming aquamarine pipe—work which made it virtually identical to the rest of the passages Jaina had seen while touring of the asteroid’s defenses. Even with her Force abilities, she found it impossible to tell exactly where she and Boba Fett were inside the insect colony…and whether they had any chance of rejoining the Mandalorian garrison commandos before stormtroopers began landing.

It was three weeks after the battle of Fondor, and—following a series of threats and overtures from all sides of the Galatic Civil War—the Verpine had invited the Mandalorians to establish a base on Nickel One to deter anyone who might think of forcing the issue. Obviously, the deterrant hadn’t worked. Just a standard hour earlier, Jana and Fett had been inspecting the asteroid’s defenses when an Imperial Remnant flotilla had unexpectedly arrived from hyperspace and made a feint toward the primary loading docks. Half an hour later, a full planetary invasion fleet had arrived and pounded Nickel One’s surface defenses into slag and dust. Soon the actual troop-drop would begin, and even the Verpine entertained no hopes of repelling it. The only question was where the Imperials would land first.

An urgent drone rose ahead, and the bitter taint of Verpine alarm pheromones grew thick in the tunnel’s muggy air. The guide—a thick-limbed insect with the spiked carahide and heavy mandibles of the soldier caste—started to walk faster, and Jaina began to worry that a swarm of frenzied warriors would mistake her and Fett for the enemy. When Fett’s hand drifted toward his holstered blaster, she knew she wasn’t the only one concerned.

Still, she didn’t dare suggest that their guide comm ahead to remind his fellow Verpine that she and Fett were on the hive’s side. She knew how Fett would view such an obvious precaution—and maybe he was right. Maybe any appearance of weakness
was
a weakness.

Jaina had been training with the legendary bounty hunter for just a little more than a standard month, but she had come to know him well. At times, she could almost read his mind. When the Remnant flotilla had feinted toward the loading docks, she had predicted that he would pretend to fall for the ruse…and watched him send a wing of
Bes’uliike
out to “drive off” the enemy. When the actual invasion fleet had arrived, she had guessed that Fett would counterpunch hard. In fact, he had convinced Nickel One’s High Coordinator to hurl her entire starfighter force at the Remnant’s flagship, the
Dominion,
and the Super Star Destroyer had quickly become a flaming hulk.

Now, with the asteroid’s capture a virtual certainty, Jaina knew Fett would not meet the invaders on the surface. He would opt for a far bloodier strategy, attacking them in the narrow access tunnels that led down from the air locks, making them pay in lives for every meter they advanced.

And Jaina knew that her training had just come to an end, because Boba Fett would not risk her—the tool of his vengeance against his daughter’s killer—in a battle he could not win. As soon as they passed a hangar with a serviceable starfighter still inside, he would cut Jaina loose and tell her to go hunt down her twin brother.

What Jaina did not know was whether she was ready. She could fight any three men in Keldabe and be the only one left standing. She could splat a dyeball on Fett’s armor anywhere she wanted. She could outfly Mandalore’s best pilots in any vessel they chose, and shoot down an entire squadron in elite combat simulations.

None of that meant she was good enough to bring down a Sith Lord.

And she had to be. If Mara had been frightened enough of her brother’s transformation to attempt killing him, then it was up to Jaina to finish the job. Jacen—or Darth Caedus, as he called himself now—had to be stopped—for Mara and Ben and Luke, for her parents and Tenel Ka and Allana, for Kashyyyk and Fondor and the rest of the galaxy.

But was she ready?

After a few moments of descent, the alarm pheromones grew so thick that Jaina’s eyes started to burn, and the Force sizzled with the excitement and outrage of thousands of insectoids. The drone ahead blossomed into a dull roar, and then the tunnel opened into the worst pedjam she had ever seen. Swarms of thick-limbed Verpine with spiked carahide and ryyk-sized mandibles were pouring into the main transportation depot, climbing over one another or using their shatter rifles like plow blades as they crowded into the cavern from a dozen different directions.

Jaina and Fett’s escort pushed into the writhing mass and was immediately shoved first one way, then the other. Soon he became almost indistinguishable from the rest of the Verpine mass—even to Jaina, who, as a former Killik Joiner, could tell the insects apart far better than most humans. She grabbed hold of the guide’s ammunition belt and held tight, using the Force to shoulder aside any warrior who tried to slip between them.

When they had made no appreciable progress after fifteen seconds, Fett butted his way to the guide’s side. “At this rate, the Imperials are going to be inside before I can post my men. Is there another way to the command bunker?”

The guide rocked his tubular head, thinking, then blinked his bulbous eyes. “We might be able to cross the surface—”

“Forget it,” Fett said.

There was no need to explain his reluctance—not to Jaina. With an invasion fleet bombarding Nickel One and an armada of assault shuttles about to descend on the surface, trying to cross fifty kilometers of asteroid in a dustcrawler was a long shot—and Fett always played the odds, especially when it came to risking his life.

“You’ve got clearance from the High Coordinator,” Fett said. “Tell ’em to make a hole.”

“I
am,
” the guide replied. His voice was surprisingly thin and reedy for a being nearly the size of a Wookiee, most likely because it was so seldom used. Verpine usually “talked” using biologically generated radio waves, resorting to sound only when speaking to other species. “But the enemy has launched its first swarm of assault shuttles, and a thousand other combat directors and several battle coordinators are also demanding the right-of-way. We
all
have priority one clearance from Her Maternellence.”

“I thought your kind was supposed to be organized,” Fett growled. He pointed across the vault toward a loading area that Jaina could barely see through the swarm of huge insects ahead. “That our tube?”

“Yes—DownYellow Express FiftySeat,” the guide said. “But they are running low on passenger capsules, so we may need to switch—”

“So we need to get there first,” Fett growled.

He squared his shoulders and started to shove ahead, but Jaina had anticipated his impatience and was already using the Force to hold him back. “Ladies first,” she said, gliding past. “Now that you’re a Head of State, you might want to learn some manners.”

She began to use the Force to clear a path, her hand moving back and forth ever so slightly as she sent Verpine warriors tottering aside or stumbling to sudden halts. Fett grunted and followed close on her heels, with their guide—Osos Niskooen—peering over both their shoulders in astonishment.

A couple of rib-battering minutes later, they emerged from the swarm onto a yellow loading platform and found themselves teetering above a two-meter drop into a transportation tube. At the bottom, Jaina could see translucent waves of energy sweeping along a raised repulsor rail, carrying a steady stream of dust, stone, and refuse at speeds in excess of two hundred kilometers an hour.

The Verpine behind them continued to press forward, and now Jaina found herself holding the swarm back with the Force as a long durasteel capsule shot out of the adjacent tunnel and whooshed to a stop in front of the loading area. The capsule opened along its full length, the entire upper quarter sliding upward. Jaina got a brief glimpse of two rows of inward-facing seats before Verpine soldiers began to literally spill into the capsule.

“Come on, Jedi.”

Fett grabbed her and jumped into the writhing mass, elbowing and kicking alongside the rest of the passengers as he fought for a place. Jaina used the Force to keep a small area around them clear until a loud hiss sounded above their heads and the door slid closed. An instant later the capsule shot down the transport tube and the entire mass of occupants was thrown toward the rear of the passenger compartment.

As the capsule reached full speed, the Verpine quickly began to untangle themselves. Despite the loading chaos, everyone seemed to have a seat. Jaina and Fett sat across from a soldier she thought she recognized as their guide.

“Niskooen?” she asked.

“Correct,” the insect replied. “Most humans have as much trouble distinguishing our scents as we do yours.”

“She’s had practice,” Fett said, turning his helmet toward Niskooen. “So what’s the situation topside?”

Niskooen fell silent for a moment as he consulted with his fellow Verpine, then said, “Our surface batteries have taken a heavy toll, and the enemy’s first assault shuttles are starting to land. Their whiteshells are beginning to debark.”

“I could guess that much,” Fett grumbled. “I mean
where
? Which air locks?”

Niskooen was quiet for a moment, then reported, “No air locks. The initial mass is swarming HighGround RockyPlain TwentyKilometer Left.”

Fett turned to Jaina. “The next time I do a base inspection, remind me to bring my own communications officer—or better yet, not to get caught in a surprise attack at all.”

“Like you’d listen to a Jedi,” Jaina retorted. She turned to Niskooen. “Isn’t that landing zone near your fusion plant’s exhaust ports? Twenty kilometers down the left side of the asteroid?”

“Correct,” Niskooen said. “We assume that’s how they intend to enter the hive.”

Fett’s alarm suddenly grew as sharp in the Force as the Verpine’s pheromones were in the air. “They won’t
enter.
”

Niskooen’s antennae straightened. “You think they hope to sabotage our primary power supply?”

“Hope isn’t the way I’d put it,” Fett said. He began to murmur into his helmet mike, trying to issue orders directly to the commando company he had stationed on Nickel One as a symbol of Mandalore’s commitment to its mutual-aid treaty with the Verpine. After a minute, he gave up trying to get a direct signal and turned back to Niskooen. “Can you relay a message to Moburi?”

“I can reach Commando Moburi through my hive mates,” Niskooen replied. “There are still capsules coming behind us.”

“Tell Moburi that he’s in command until I get there,” Fett said. “And that it may be awhile. The power grid is about to blow.”

Fett’s declaration sent a clatter of dismay through the capsule, but none of the Verpine questioned his certainty. First, when it came to killing and fighting, his reputation was unmatched. Second, insects of the soldier caste were too disciplined to question the pronouncement of a superior—even a superior from another swarm. And they probably knew that he was right, anyway. Eliminating the power plant would bring Nickel One’s transportation to a screeching halt, and limiting an enemy’s mobility was always a good idea.

Fett turned to Jaina. “What do your Jedi instincts tell you about this attack?”

“That someone wants the Verpine munitions industry for themselves,” Jaina replied. “But you don’t need Jedi instincts to know that. Verpine manufacturing is nearly self-contained, which makes it a tempting target; the Verpine have been supplying all sides since day one of the war, which makes them everyone’s enemy; and they’re unaligned, which makes them ripe for the picking.”