Invincible (22 page)

If Caedus heard her wisecrack, he did not show it. His yellow eyes began to dart around the chamber, searching for something Jaina did not understand—but maybe that was just because her head was throbbing so bad. The pain was beginning to muddle her thoughts.

Somehow, Caedus forced himself back to his feet.
That
would have been impressive—if it weren’t so kriffing scary.

“Where’s Luke?” he demanded.

“Right behind me,” Jaina said, also standing. The effort sent pangs of anguish shooting through her lungs, and she realized she had a few broken ribs to go with the lightning scorch on her chest. She squinted in his direction, trying to keep him in focus so she could kill him. “Come over here, and I’ll show you.”

That
brought Caedus’s gaze snapping back toward her, and Jaina realized she might have overplayed her hand. She still had both arms, but the fact that her brother remained standing at all proved how much greater his Force powers were than her own. She tossed the
beskad
aside and summoned a fallen stormtrooper’s power blaster to hand.

Then Jaina sensed someone watching her from the direction of the antechamber where the Moffs had fled. She looked up to find a pair of gray blurs dropping into firing positions in the doorways. She loosed a burst of suppression fire toward the two troopers, then Force-flipped up into the cover offered by the ruined projection booth, landing backward so she would be facing her enemy and in a position to defend herself.

Jaina’s boots had not even touched the floor before the stormtroopers opened fire. She dropped the power blaster and used her lightsaber to deflect their bolts, angling them down toward her brother. If she kept him busy enough, he wouldn’t be able to hurl another lightning attack her way. His lightsaber snapped to life and began to weave a crimson shield in front of him.

Then Jaina experienced an abrupt draining as her Force energies returned to their normal level. Suddenly she felt cold, tired, and in pain, and she barely had the strength to hold her lightsaber as it flicked back and forth, batting away blaster bolts. She retreated deeper into the projection booth, stumbling over combat debris that she normally would have sensed without any conscious thought. When she reached the wrecked control panel, she could finally drop behind cover.

Caedus’s voice sounded out in the forum, still deep and booming and strong. “Not
her
! Skywalker is the dangerous one.”

Skywalker?

Was Jaina beginning to hear things now, too? Or was Caedus beginning to imagine them?

The blasterfire shifted away from the projection booth and grew more erratic. Jaina poked her head up, peering over the scorched control panel through what remained of the projectionist’s one-way viewport.

Her brother was limping up toward the anteroom, finally starting to look a little weak and dizzy himself. His good hand was still holding the stump of his severed arm. But his yellow eyes were round with fear and his brow was furrowed with anger, and he was looking toward the far corner of the chamber, which Jaina could not see from her vantage point.

“There, you fools!” he yelled. “Blast him!”

The two stormtroopers seemed to study the corner for a moment, then obediently opened fire again. Energy bolts quickly began to ricochet back into the seats, but whether they were being deflected by a lightsaber or merely bouncing off the walls was impossible to guess.

Jaina did not have the energy to investigate. She dropped back to her haunches and opened herself completely to the Force, drawing it into her exhausted, battered body from all sides. The muffled
crumph
s of door-breaker charges began to sound somewhere out in the forum as the rest of the Elite Guard began to blast their way into the battle area. She knew that her mission had just gone from difficult to impossible, but when was she ever going to get a better chance? Caedus was wounded and weak, and if she could just catch up to him, she might be able to finish him.

An urgent clatter began to build out in the forum as stormtroopers poured through the entrances they had just blasted open. Jaina rose and ignited her lightsaber, but before she could step back into the breach, she sensed a nervous insectoid presence studying her from the far end of the booth.

Jaina turned to look. The technician who had helped her earlier was poking his head through a melt hole in the rear wall.

“Jedi Solo, are you ready to depart?” the Verpine asked.

“Depart?” Jaina frowned; what a foolish idea. “Hardly. Caedus is still alive.”

The Verpine nodded. “Yes, my hive mates report that he is being rushed to the infirmary,” he said. “And
your
extraction team will meet you at SurfaceHatch TenCrater.”

“Can’t.” Jaina shook her head, then nearly lost it as she tried to peer out into the forum and drew a volley of blasterfire. She whirled around and looked back toward the Verpine, who was crouching just outside the melt hole, trembling. “Can you get me into the infirmary?”

“No!”
the Verpine replied. “You are too damaged to fight. I am worried you can’t even make it to TenCrater on your own. I may have to carry you.”

Jaina waved him off. She couldn’t let Caedus regroup. She had already lost the advantage of surprise, and the one thing she knew for certain was that if she let him recover—

“Your extraction team is in a precarious position itself.” The Verpine was having to yell to make himself heard above the blasterfire. “They insist you come
now.
”

Jaina felt her mother reaching out to her in the Force, calling her back. She could sense not only the fear her mother felt for her, but also the teeth-grinding terror of combat—and a certain sense of demand that carried with it the hard edge of an order.

Jaina sighed. She
had
promised the Council to obey orders. “Okay, okay.” She made a dash—more of a stumble—for the exit. “Tell them we’re coming!”

What do Jawas have that no other creature in the galaxy has? Baby Jawas!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

B
EN COULD REMEMBER A TIME WHEN HIS CELL HAD BEEN DARK
. That was how he knew his head was clearing. Most of the time, it seemed as though the illumination panel in the ceiling had always been on, that he had spent his whole life manacled to his durasteel bunk, that the only mental state he had ever experienced was a smoky delirium so nightmarish he never quite knew whether he was asleep or awake. He remembered blurry dreams in which he was visited by a glossy black droid, a tall thin unit that looked like a scaled-down version of a YVH battle droid, with blue photoreceptors set in a gaunt, skull-like face. The droid—it had introduced itself as Double-Ex—was really curious, always asking questions about who had sent Ben, who had been with him, where he had come from.

The last question, Double-Ex had asked a lot. It wanted to know
that
more than anything, because it was desperate to discover the location of the secret Jedi base. And Ben was sure he never answered—not even with a lie—because the droid was always complaining about how stubborn Ben was, telling him that he was only hurting himself.

But it was Double-Ex who really did the hurting. The droid had an astonishing array of needles, probes, and electrodes hidden inside its fingers. Whenever Ben refused to answer, it would open one, jab him in the arm or thigh or bare chest with whatever tool was inside, then ask its question again, endlessly repeating the process with the eternal patience of a machine.

But how those sessions ended, Ben had no idea. He supposed he simply reached the limits of his physical tolerance and passed out. It would not have surprised him, though, to learn that Double-Ex simply depleted its batteries asking the same question over and over.

The one thing he knew for certain was that he had never revealed the location of the Jedi base. Jacen had taught him how to resist interrogation by placing a Force block inside his own mind, and that had been the first thing Ben had done when he awakened in a GAG cell. The rest of his captivity was a blur, but he remembered doing
that.

The door hissed open, admitting a puff of air just warm enough to remind Ben how cold his cell was—especially lying manacled to his bunk wearing only his underclothes. He purposely did not raise his head or even turn to look; interrogator droids were programmed to identify the significance of such minor gestures, and he did not want to betray the hopefulness he felt now that he was alert.

But there was no hint of servomotor in the steps that approached his bunk, and the smell that came to his nose was too pleasant and feminine to be a droid’s. Suddenly self-conscious about his near nakedness, Ben turned to look.

“Hello, Ben,” Tahiri said.

She was dressed in the typical black GAG jumpsuit, but on her it somehow looked like so much
more.
It was tight in all the right places, with a satin sheen that highlighted the suppleness of her build. And she must have just come from a workout—or at least from somewhere a whole lot warmer than Ben’s cell—because the front was open clear down to her solar plexus.

“How are you feeling?” she purred.

Ben quickly raised his gaze and saw that she looked far healthier than she had when she had captured him. Her blond hair was full and silky, sweeping across her brow in a way that almost hid the three scars on her forehead, then dropping down to her shoulders in a wavy cascade. Her cheeks actually had some color in them, and her lips were full and red. Even her eyes, which had seemed so sunken and tired before, appeared larger and more animated.

When Ben failed to answer, Tahiri shot him a knowing half smile. “Sorry—I forgot. You’re the man who tells us nothing.”

She stepped over to his bunk, and Ben saw that she was carrying a canister of bacta salve in one hand—and a remote in the other.

“I actually admire that.” She placed the bacta salve on the edge of his bunk, then displayed the remote. “I need to free one of your arms and legs so I can roll you on your side. You aren’t going to make me use this, are you?”

Ben studied the remote and realized that it probably had an activator switch for the stun circuits in his manacles. “I guess that depends on what you do to me.”

“He speaks.” Tahiri smiled, then pressed a pair of buttons, and the locks on his left wrist and ankle clicked open. “Don’t worry—it won’t be anything you object to.” She flicked her fingers at him. “On your side.”

Ben rolled up on his side—and smothered a cry of pain as the pressure sores on his back pulled free of the bunk’s sanisheet cover. The bunk settled as Tahiri sat on the edge and opened the canister of bacta salve, and he realized that there was a hint of musk to her odor—a
nice
hint, one that he found vaguely intoxicating, but not something he remembered smelling on her before. An instant later, he felt her fingertips on his shoulder, and ripples of warm relief began to radiate outward from where she was touching him.

“See?” Tahiri asked. “Not so bad.”

“Except for the part where you caused them in the first place,” Ben said. He had to remind himself that she wasn’t
really
being kind. “How long have you had me lying here?”

Tahiri moved to a different sore, then said, “I’ll answer
your
question if you answer mine.”

Ben sighed. “It was worth a try. Can you at least tell me if Captain Shevu is okay?”

“Same offer,” Tahiri replied sweetly. “But I
am
sorry about these sores. They’re not part of the program. We just can’t afford to take chances with big, strong Jedi Knights.” She ran her hand down his bare shoulder and biceps—and let it linger there. “I’m sure you understand.”

“I guess.” What Ben did not understand was what her hand was doing kneading the muscles on his arm. He didn’t have any sores there—at least not that he could feel—but he didn’t want her to stop, either. “You’re making a mistake, you know.”

Tahiri stopped kneading, and her fingers moved to a sore down near the middle of his back. “Oh?”

“You can’t trust Jacen,” he said. “He’ll turn on you in the end—just like he turned on my parents and me.”

Tahiri’s touch grew a little more tense. “His name is Caedus now,” she said. “
Darth
Caedus. And who says I trust him?”

“Then what are you doing with him?” Ben asked. “Don’t tell me you think he’s right?”

“What I think doesn’t matter,” Tahiri replied, “not any longer. We all make choices in our lives, Ben. You should have stuck with yours. You wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in—and this war might be over.”

Her hand moved lower on Ben’s back and began to work on a sore under the waistband of his shorts. He found her touch there a little disconcerting, but he didn’t stop her. The sore did need to be dressed, after all.

Ben tried to focus on their conversation—on helping Tahiri see the mistake she was making. “Stick with the man who killed my mother? Have you been breathing coolant fumes?”

“Your mother
did
attack Lord Caedus first,” Tahiri pointed out. “She threatened him in the lobby of the Senate.”