Invincible (43 page)

Jaina is filled with emotions she does not know how to control, and all she wants is to make them go away. The strongest is guilt—guilt that she survived when Anni did not, guilt that when Colonel Darklighter asked her to record a message for Anni’s family, she did not even know their names. They had been flying together and bunking together for months without talking about their lives back home. Now it is too late for Jaina to ask, and that makes her feel more guilty than anything.

Then the place in Jaina’s heart that belongs to her brother Jacen begins to warm, and she knows he is standing outside her cabin. She doesn’t wait for him to knock. She simply opens the door and crawls back into her bunk and says nothing.

Jacen comes and sits on the edge of her bed. He doesn’t need to ask what’s wrong, because he knows—because he is her twin, and he feels it, too.

So Jacen just strokes her hair until she starts to hurt a little less and finally falls asleep. He stays with her through the night because he knows that if he leaves, she’ll wake and won’t be able to sleep again.

And Jaina hears him whispering to her in her dreams, telling her that no one you love really ever has to die—not if you don’t want them to…All you have to do is hold a place for them in your heart.

What’s the difference between an Ewok and a Wookiee? About two hundred kilos!

—Jacen Solo, age 15

I
F YOU WERE A
GAG
COMMANDO POSTED TO THE
A
NAKIN
S
OLO
,
THE
last thing you wanted to see right now was a wing of Jedi StealthXs storming the already battle-torn hangar you were assigned to defend. Han was pretty certain of that. And he was
absolutely
certain you didn’t want to see the
Millennium Falcon
following them in—not after the announcement Tenel Ka had just made…not when some of the mudcrutches you were protecting were Imperial Moffs.

With the StealthX wing cannons blasting away and GAG defenders returning fire from every hatchway and corner, the hangar was already one big eruption. But that didn’t keep Han from firing a rackful of concussion missiles into the control booth, or stop Leia from turning the
Falcon
’s blaster cannon on anything wearing a black uniform.

The conflagration quickly faded as Han and the Jedi eliminated the defenders’ heavy weapons. As one, the StealthXs dropped to the deck and popped their canopies. Out came a dozen Jedi Masters leading fifty Jedi Knights, all leaping and whirling as their lightsabers batted a hail of blaster bolts back toward their attackers. Han kept the
Falcon
up high so that Leia and their two cannon gunners—Jagged Fel and a senior apprentice named Derek—could provide covering fire.

Luke and the other Masters led the way toward the back of the hangar. The driving tip of the Jedi wedge, they were Force-hurling and Force-blasting any GAG trooper foolish enough to send a bolt their way. A squad of sharpshooters began to lay fire from the smoking ruins of the control booth; Saba Sebatyne raked a taloned hand through the air, and they came flying down to the deck headfirst. A late-arriving E-Web opened fire from inside a ventilation grate; Kyp Durron made a tapping motion with his finger, and the barrel sagged, causing the weapon to misfire and explode. A platoon of black-armored GAG commandos rushed through a hatchway, streaming fire from T-21 repeating blasters; Luke glanced at a nearby shuttle and sent it tumbling into their line.

Behind the Masters followed the much larger body of Jedi Knights, fanning out in teams of two and three, securing hatchways, disarming—sometimes literally—tenacious fighters who refused to surrender, seizing control of vital components including the containment field and ventilation system. Within moments the Jedi controlled the hangar, and the few GAG commandos who had not already died or surrendered were either fleeing or tossing their weapons aside.

Han set the
Falcon
down, then unbuckled and turned to Leia. Her eyes were already fixed out the forward viewport, focused somewhere
beyond,
and she had The Look. Han’s heart dropped—his entire
being
dropped. He had seen that look only twice before, once when Anakin had died and once when she had thought Luke was dead, and he had spent every minute of Jaina’s hunt terrified that he was going to see it again. And he didn’t know if they could stand it—if even he and Leia were strong enough to handle the loss of their last child.

Unable to sit still, and unable to bring himself to ask Leia, Han turned to his missile control panel and began to enter a new set of specifications.

“Threepio, go load the baradium missile.”

“The baradium missile, Captain Solo?” C-3PO asked from the navigator’s station behind him. “I don’t believe Master Skywalker’s plan calls for a baradium missile.”

“It doesn’t,” Han said. “You heard Tenel Ka’s announcement. They killed
Allana.
If Jaina is gone, too,
nobody
who was a part of it is leaving this…”

Han felt Leia’s hand on his arm and let his sentence trail off, but he didn’t look over. He was just too afraid.

“Han, we need to hurry.” A click sounded from the copilot’s seat as she unbuckled her crash webbing. “Jaina’s still alive.”

Han’s throat tightened.
“Still?”

He didn’t know whether to let his breath out or hold it until his heart started to beat again, but he rose to leave—and that was when he saw that Leia still had The Look.

“Leia?” he asked. “What—”

“It’s Jacen.” Her voice cracked, and her hand slid down his arm to grab his. “Jaina got him.”

When the disposal pit door opened, Jaina was sitting on the floor where shadow became light, holding Jacen’s head in her lap and whispering that he wasn’t really dead—that he would always have a place in her heart, now that she could finally feel their twin bond again.

Except that Jaina wasn’t actually whispering the words. She wasn’t even thinking them, really.
Imagining
might have been a better way to describe it, or
experiencing.
She was more a witness to her thoughts than their author, lost in that hazy netherworld of anguish that existed only in the narrow margin between wakefulness and death.

So when Jagged Fel rushed into the disposal pit and began yelling that he’d found her, that they needed to
hurry,
she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing. She thought maybe he had come to join her and Jacen, and that made her a little sad, though she couldn’t quite figure out why.

Then Jag knelt at her side and tried to pull Jacen away, and that made her
angry.
She Force-hurled Jag away, yelling what she had meant to be
Don’t touch him,
but came out as “Doonguchem.”

Nothing if not brave, Jag picked himself up and returned, moving more slowly now. This time, he didn’t try to take Jacen away from her. He simply knelt at her side and gave her a stim-shot, then took hold of her hand.

“Help’s on the way, Jaina,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”

Jaina wasn’t sure she believed him, but she squeezed his hand anyway. As the stim-shot took hold and her head slowly cleared, she began to remember the things she would be leaving unfinished if she didn’t make it—and probably even if she did.

“Do something…for me?” she asked.

“You’re going to make it,” Jag said. “I promise.”

“You
can’t
promise.” Jaina would have smiled, but her flayed-open cheek hurt too much, and her mouth—no, her entire face—didn’t really seem to be working right. “And I still…need you to…”

“Of course,” Jag said. “Anything.”

“Find…Zekk.”

Jag’s face fell. “Okay,” he said. “As soon as the medics get here, I’ll go tell him—”

“No,”
Jaina gasped. “He’s
missing.
Hit during the StealthX raid.”

“Oh.” Jag looked even more distressed, and Jaina loved him for that. “We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”

“
Have
to worry.”

“I’ll make sure Master Skywalker knows, too,” Jag assured her. “We
will
find him.”

If he can be found,
Jaina thought, silently adding the unspoken condition of search-and-rescue missions. She squeezed his hand again. “Thanks.”

“Thanks aren’t necessary,” Jag said. “Zekk is a good man.”

“Not for…Zekk.” Jaina shook her head—and wished she hadn’t as her neck erupted into scalding pain. “For getting here first. Glad it was…you.”

“Me, too.” Jag looked more worried than pleased. “But hold on. Help is coming.”

Jaina nodded, but said, “Second thing…Mirta Gev.”

Jag’s brow rose. “Yes?”

“Upstairs.” Even with the stim-shot, Jaina found it an effort to talk, and her thoughts were beginning to grow hazy again. “Alive. Get her…out.”

Jag nodded. “I’ll make sure.”

“Not someone slow,” Jaina warned. “She has…blaster rifles.”

“No surprise there,” said a familiar, cocky voice. “She’s Mandalorian, right?”

Jaina looked up to see her parents rushing over. Their eyes were rimmed with red and their faces were pale, but her father was doing his best to look smug and confident, while her mother was trying—and failing—to hide her alarm behind a calm veneer.

As they drew nearer and saw Jacen’s head resting in Jaina’s lap, they finally exhausted their last reserves of composure. Her father’s lip began to tremble and her mother’s brown eyes turned liquid with sadness. They knelt beside her, trying not to look at their son’s body but unable not to, and seemed helpless to speak around the lumps in their throats.

After a couple of seconds, her mother pulled an airsplint from the medpac in her hands and immobilized Jaina’s broken arm, while her father found a canister of sterinumb and gingerly sprayed her burns. The tasks seemed to help them focus their thoughts, and they began to give her unscorched shoulder and unbroken arm tentative squeezes of affection.

On some level, Jaina knew, they were probably trying to reassure her, to let her know that nothing had changed between them. But that was impossible, of course. Jaina had become the Sword of the Jedi, with everything that meant.

Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring others. Take comfort in the fact that, though you stand tall and alone, others will take shelter in the shadow that you cast.

So Luke had spoken when he made Jaina a Jedi Knight, and so Jaina had become. It wasn’t a destiny she would have chosen—but who ever
truly
chooses? She doubted that her brother had envisioned his destiny to end
here,
with him lying dead in his sister’s lap.

Once her back was coated with sterinumb, her father finally seemed to find the strength to speak. “How are you doing, kid?”

“How…I look,” Jaina replied. “And not just…the outside.”

Her father nodded. “Yeah, me, too.” He looked back toward the door, where Cilghal had just arrived, leading a pair of young Jedi Knights with a hovergurney. “But you’ve got to pull through, okay? I don’t know if we can make it without you.”

“
I
do.” Jaina looked to her mother, then added, “You together…nothing can break…that.”

Her mother smiled sadly. “Maybe not,” she said, stepping back so Cilghal and her assistants could start to work. “But I’m really tired of having that tested. So you listen to your father.”

The Elite Guard stormtroopers probably knew that one platoon could not stand against so many Jedi Masters. But they had been ordered to hold the
Anakin Solo
’s Auxiliary Command Center at any cost, and brave men were born under every flag. So they tried.

And they died.

When it was done, the smoke hung in the corridor so thick that Han could barely see to pick his way over the body parts. His eyes were watering and his hands trembling, though that had more to do with the anger he felt than the acrid stench of melted armor and charred flesh. He did not need to look beneath any helmets to know that the men strewn across the deck had been in the prime of their lives, some of them just a little older than Anakin had been when he fell to the Yuuzhan Vong, many of them younger than Jaina…and Jacen.

Han came to the end of the corridor, where Luke, Saba, Kyle, and the other Masters now stood before an enormous blast door. He stopped beside Jag Fel and ran a hand over his face. Leia had left the ship, heading to a Battle Dragon healing center with Jaina and Cilghal. So it was up to Han to calm himself. Once Cilghal had pronounced Jaina stable enough to move, he had insisted on staying with Luke to confront the men responsible for his granddaughter’s death.

But Han was beginning to question that decision now. He was closer than usual to being dangerously out of control, and—despite Cilghal’s assurances that Jaina was no longer in any immediate danger—he could not keep his thoughts off her. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself with that Jedi breathing technique Leia had taught him.