The Final Prophecy (31 page)

The dot was descending rapidly toward the plateau. Corran peered along its projected path and caught a hint of motion near a copse of low trees.

“Come on,” Corran said. “If we run, we might get there in time.”

“We
will
,” Tahiri swore.

Nom Anor was watching the ship approach when the ground beneath his feet suddenly shuddered. It lasted for only an instant, but he knew it was only the beginning. He looked off toward the still-visible field guides and saw a white plume curling up toward the sky. He curled his lip—if he had timed this wrong, if he died in the explosion he had caused, how the gods would laugh.

The grass off to his left rustled, and from the corner of his eye, Nom Anor glimpsed unnatural color. Turning as if in a dream, he beheld Corran Horn stepping into the clearing, his eyes full of death.

Nom Anor glanced up at the approaching ship. It was only moments away, but that was longer than it would take for the Jedi to kill him. He touched his hand to the stolen lightsaber—

And ran, into the low-sprawling copse of trees behind him. He need only buy enough time for Choka’s ship to land and dispatch warriors.

Corran Horn shouted and ran after him.

Nom Anor dodged through the trees, leaping an old fissure, then bore to his left, hoping to circle back to the clearing. The ground trembled again, not enough to upset his footing, but almost. He glanced back over his shoulder, saw Horn gaining on him, turned to redouble his pace.

Just in time to see the blade of a foot, level with his eyes. Behind the foot was an airborne Tahiri, her body horizontal to the ground.

The kick caught him above the nostrils, snapping his head back and knocking him completely off his feet. He crashed into the trunk of a tree, and half of the wind blew out of him. He clawed for the Jedi weapon he’d thrust in his sash, but it was missing.

In fact, it was in Tahiri’s hands, the energy blade already on.

“This is
mine
,” she said.

Corran had come up behind her. “Don’t kill him,” the older Jedi said.

“I won’t,” Tahiri replied, but Nom Anor heard the tone in her voice. It was not a human tone at all—although she was speaking Basic, every nuance of her speech was Yuuzhan Vong. There was no mercy in it, but promises aplenty.

“I’m going to cut off his feet, though,” she continued, stepping nearer. “And then his hands. Unless he tells us how to stop what he’s done to Sekot.”

“Do what you will,” Nom Anor said, forcing as much contempt into his voice as he could. “It has already begun. You cannot stop it.”

“Where’s Harrar?” Corran asked.

“He’s dead,” Nom Anor replied. “I killed him.” He watched the tip of Tahiri’s blade dip toward his foot, and then winced as she traced a shallow burn across the ankle.

“Tahiri, no,” Corran commanded.

Her eyes narrowed further, then she withdrew the blade.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Get up, Anor.”

Nom Anor began coming slowly to his feet.

“The ship’s landing, Corran,” Tahiri said.

“But he’s not going on it,” Corran said. “You have a villip, don’t you, Nom Anor? You’ll call them off, now, or I’ll cut your head off myself. And that, my friend, is absolutely not a bluff.”

“They will not obey me,” Nom Anor said.

“Maybe they won’t,” Corran told him, “but you’d sure better try to make them.”

Nom Anor stared into the man’s eyes and knew he was not lying.

He reached for the villip beneath his arm, thinking furiously.

Then Zonama Sekot tried to throw them all into space.

The ground bucked beneath them and an anguished cry exploded in the Force, filling Tahiri’s head with such agony that she hardly noticed when she thudded back to the ground. Desperately she tried to shut out the world’s pain and regain her feet, but the will behind it was too strong. She felt as if a trillion needles were growing from her heart, pushing through her heart and lungs and bone. She clutched at her head, screaming with Zonama Sekot’s voice.

Through her blurred vision, she saw Nom Anor running off through the crazily tilted trees.

No! Sekot, he’s the one doing this to you!

She was never sure if Sekot somehow heard her, or if that gave her the extra strength she needed to push away the sick pain, but she levered herself to her feet.

Corran was up, leaning heavily against a tree.

“Corran—”

“Just a second,” he said. “I—okay. I think I’ve got it under control now.”

The two Jedi stumbled through the newly broken terrain. The ship was on the ground, and Nom Anor was running toward it. Tahiri ran as she never had before, drawing on the turbulent Force around them. Corran was just ahead of her. They were gaining on the executor. If they could reach him before the warriors on the ship could debark, they might yet be able to save Sekot. She clung to that hope, as the breath ripped at her lungs and her heart stuttered unevenly.

Without warning, Corran lashed out at her, sending her sprawling. Even before a sense of betrayal could register, she saw he was going down, too. Less than a heartbeat later, a swarm of thud bugs whirred through the space where they’d just been.

She suddenly understood that she and Corran must have been occupied with Sekot’s pain for longer than she’d thought. The warriors had already come out of the ship and hidden themselves around the clearing. Corran and she were completely surrounded.

“Okay, folks,” Han said as the reversion warning began sounding. “Hang on. If Wedge is still here, it’s probably because the Vong have interdictors to keep him from leaving, which means we’ll probably get pulled out early. Again.”

“I hope he isn’t here,” C-3PO said. “I
so
dislike unplanned reversions. They cause an unpleasant resonance in my circuits.”

“That’s great,” Han said. “All I need now is a hypochondriac droid.”

“Sir, it is
quite
impossible for a droid to be a hypochondriac.”

“If you say so, Goldenrod. Okay, here goes.”

Han pulled back on the levers, and the
Falcon
decanted as effortlessly as she ever had—in fact, more smoothly than usual. “Well, whaddya know,” he said. “We came out normally. Guess that means—”

“—that we’re too far from the interdictor,” Leia finished. “Just barely.”

Leia was right. His instruments showed the gravitic profile of not one dovin basal interdictor, but two. The
Falcon
had flashed into existence marginally outside the field of effect of the nearest. If he’d been set to revert just a little farther in, he would have made good on his prediction.

“Oh, dear,” C-3PO said. “It looks as if General Antilles
is
here. And not doing very well!”

“Yeah,” Han agreed. “You can say that again.” He looked sharply at the droid. “But
don’t
.”

The system was swarming with Yuuzhan Vong ships. The nearest was one of the interdictors, hanging in space like a sword with two blades and no grip. Beyond it was a stationary mass of skips and a few cruisers, apparently guarding the interdictor against attack. Farther insystem was the main battle, where ten Yuuzhan Vong capital ships—two of which were behemoths—were engaged with what was left of Wedge’s battle group.

Which wasn’t much—Han counted four Alliance ships of frigate size or larger. They were clustered together, trying to avoid being encircled, but—as C-3PO had pointed out—it didn’t seem to be going so well.

Beyond all of that was another interdictor. It, like the one near the
Falcon
, was keeping its distance, moving only to keep the Alliance ships from going to hyperspace.

“Ouch,” Han said. “He needs reinforcements, and he needs them now.”

“It’s a disaster,” Leia murmured. Then she straightened and got that Jedi look in her eye.

“What?”

“It’s Jaina.”

He waited for her to continue, his heart frozen in his chest.

“She’s alive,” Leia said, “and I don’t think she’s injured. But something’s wrong.”

“If she’s down there, I guess so,” Han said, swallowing.

“There must be
something
we can do!” C-3PO wailed.

“There is,” Leia told him.

“Yeah,” Han said, looking at the interdictor. “There is.”

“Whatever—sir, you’re not going to attack the interdictor? We barely survived the last time!”

“They haven’t noticed we’re here yet,” Han said. “They don’t even have any ships on this side. We’ve got a good
clean shot at them. With a little surprise on our side, a little know-how—sure, why not?”

“But our weapons aren’t sufficient to incapacitate a ship of that size,” the droid pointed out.

Leia leaned over and kissed Han on the cheek. “That’s never stopped him before.”

Han felt the lump in his throat swell, but he forced a smile. “This is just more of the usual, Threepio. Don’t worry yourself.”

He opened a channel to the TIEs.

“Captain Devis, can I trust you to advise Grand Admiral Pellaeon of this situation immediately?”

“I thought you were going to do that, sir,” Devis replied.

“Pellaeon might not arrive in time. He might even decide not to come at all, given the situation. Heck, he might have troubles of his own. We’re going to stay and take out that interdictor.”

“That could be quite a task,” Devis said.

“All in a day’s work,” Han replied. “Just hurry up and bring us a little relief, will you?”

“I’ll send a wingmate,” Devis said, “but I’m staying to help.”

“I—” Han looked back at the battle, remembering that Jaina was down there, somewhere. “I would appreciate the help, Captain Devis. Thank you.”

He laced his fingers together and cracked them. “All right,” he said, “let’s get this show on the road.”

He turned to Leia. “Sweetheart, could you get to one of the turbolasers? Our Noghri friends are picking it up pretty fast, but in this situation, I’d rather have you—” He stopped, almost unable to continue, and most of the swagger went out of his voice. “I’d rather have you here, next to me,” he finished. “But I need you in the upper turret.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “I know. I’ll put Meewalh in the other.”

She stood to go, but before she could leave the cockpit, he pulled her down for a kiss. “Be careful up there, huh?” he said.

“I always am.”

He watched her go, wishing suddenly that they could just leave, go find Pellaeon, go watch a sunset …

But Jaina was here, and despite the fact that the odds were—

“Oh, great,” he murmured. “I’m turning into Threepio.”

“What was that, sir?” C-3PO asked.

“I said, I’m glad you’re up here, Threepio.”

“Why—thank you, sir. I’m really quite touched.”

“Right,” Han said. He opened the channel again.

“Okay, TIEs, we’re going in—just hang back until they start throwing skips at us.”

The interdictor was two spicular cones with their bases touching, and it was nearly the size of a Star Destroyer. Usually they were covered with skips, but this time the skips were elsewhere—either in battle or between the interdictor and the battle, guarding against a push in its direction.

Han dived the
Falcon
toward the thickest part of the vessel, knowing he would get only one good run before they were aware of his presence and set about a thousand skips on him. The TIEs dropped into formation on his port and starboard.

“Watch the gravity well, fellows,” he warned them. “We want to mess up their paint job, but not by splatting all over ’em.”

“I hear you,” Devis replied. “Correcting.”

Han tilted the ship to put the seam where the two cones met in the Money Lane and started in with the quad lasers. An instant later, the turret guns joined him. Voids appeared in spidery clusters, sucking the blasts into nothingness. Han launched a concussion missile to either side of the fire lane,
and had the satisfaction of seeing both plow into the craggy yorik coral surface, rupturing it and sending shock waves crawling out toward the thin ends of the ship.

Then he was curving around the interdictor, his course bent by gravity. But instead of using the force to sling him away, he settled into a tight orbit, firing constantly, trying to dig a trench into the thing deep enough to do real damage.

The interdictor’s plasma cannons began to fire, but one reason Han had picked the centerline as his target was that the ship angled away from it in every direction, making it tough to fire at him at all and impossible to put him in a cross fire. Nevertheless, a near miss roared by the cockpit, an eight-meter-wide explosion of superheated matter that grazed his shields and sent an ion jolt through the ship’s protective circuitry.

Meanwhile, less than one in ten of his laser shots were getting through, and he had only a few concussion missiles left. His trench wasn’t getting deep very fast.

“Skips coming in,” Devis reported. “Six in the first wave.”

“Can you keep them off us for another pass or so?” Han asked.

“Copy that, Captain Solo.”

Han fired another pair of concussion missiles—one got through, the other exploded when it was about to be sucked in by a void. That happened near enough to the
Falcon
that the shock wave bounced him from his orbit and sent him away from the centerline. Suddenly he was no longer outside the interdictor’s line of direct fire, but squarely in it. He stood the
Falcon
on her thin side relative to the interdictor to minimize his target surface, weaving through withering fire, dropping lower to keep the blasts from converging on him. When he was practically skating on the ship’s surface, he turned abruptly up and out.

“Wow,” he heard Devis say. Han’s jaw nearly dropped—the
two TIEs had stayed with him the whole way. Behind them were only three skips of the original six. Han didn’t have to wonder what had happened to the other three—not with pilots like that.

Even as he watched, the TIEs broke and came around, putting the skips between them and the big guns of the cruiser, and proceeded to take them apart.

“That’s some pretty fancy flying,” Han commented. “Good thing there weren’t more like you when we were
fighting
the Empire.”