Apocalypse (41 page)

“Who’s Abeloth?” Yu asked.

“I think she might be referring to Pagorski,” Tarm said. She looked back to Tahiri. “An Imperial lieutenant, tentacles and some
very
strange powers?”

“The tentacles and the powers sound right.” Tahiri was not as surprised as she might have been. Pagorski had been acting as Daala’s campaign coordinator since the day the election was announced, and she
had
reappeared in the Empire shortly after someone very strong in the Force had used her powers to run the blockade at Boreleo. It was certainly not a stretch to conclude that Pagorski and Abeloth were one and the same—or, more accurately, that Pagorski had been
possessed
by Abeloth. “I think she’s in the next room over. Is there a way I can get a look at her without her seeing me?”

“The lieutenant is in the main lab,” Tarm replied. Her gaze shifted to the wall opposite Tahiri, then slid down its length and finally came to rest on a transparisteel viewing panel about three quarters of the way to the front of the room. “So you can certainly sneak a peek at
her
.”

“Thanks.” Tahiri pulled the pack off her back and began to transfer combat supplies to the utility pockets on the outside of her vac suit. “About that vidcam?”

Wu looked toward a cabinet above his head. “In the cabinet over here. But you’re going to have to use a hard wire for the uplink.” He pointed to a set of socket receptacles on the side of the big lab table. “We can’t, er,
couldn’t
have any signal interference in this lab.”

Deciding that it might be wise to make a quick situation check before she spent five of those minutes setting up a vidcam and uplink, Tahiri removed her helmet from her cargo pack. She attached it to the convenience carrier on the back of her vac suit shoulder, then tossed the pack aside and checked her chrono. Eight minutes before midday GST. Whatever happened next, she had to keep Abeloth occupied for at least eight minutes. She leaned out the door into the corridor,
where Fett was still interrogating the Squibs, and told him to let them go.

“You found my scientists?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And Abeloth, too.”

Without awaiting his reply, she started toward the viewing panel. As she approached, she could see down into what had clearly been the facility’s primary laboratory. Even from a dozen steps away, she could see the tops of several fermentation tanks and what appeared to be a large walk-in freezer. But those were hardly what caught her eye. Floating in the smoky air in the heart of the lab were the heads of eight Imperial Moffs. She saw square-chinned Jowar, flabby-jowled Quillan, long-necked Poliff, and five more—all of them Daala’s most ardent public supporters.

At well over a meter in diameter each, the heads were too large to be real, of course. But they looked far more substantial than holograms, and their necks were as thin as tentacles. In fact, as Tahiri drew nearer to the viewing panel, she could see that they
were
tentacles.

The tentacles led down to a pair of stubby arms, which belonged to a thin female human dressed in a tattered uniform. It had originally been an Imperial lieutenant’s uniform, but all that remained was a collection of rags with a rank bar. A river of Force energy was rushing in through the big doors at the front of the room and flowing into the woman. Her short yellow hair stuck out straight and stiff, and her face seemed to be dissolving into flakes and smoke. Her wide, full-lipped mouth stretched into a cruel smile, and her narrow blue eyes rose toward Tahiri.

Tahiri Veila
. The voice was deep and resonant with Force power, and it sounded inside Tahiri’s head.
How nice of you to come for me
.

T
HE NUMBERS ON
L
UKE’S CHRONO READ
11:52 GST. A
T PRECISELY
12:00 GST, a brigade of Void Jumpers would hit the exhaust port. That meant Luke and his team had eight minutes—eight minutes for three Jedi to do the impossible or die.

The Jedi, obviously, were hoping for the impossible.

Their objective was a small deflector shield generator that protected the main exhaust port in this corner of the Temple. It lay 150 meters ahead, at the end of a long run of ventilation ducting. Between Luke’s team and the objective were two vertical airshafts, which joined the main duct from below. Technically, the shafts were called stack-heads, but in his exhaustion Luke could no longer remember why the engineers used such an odd term. He knew only that the shafts were a pair of broad, windy chasms spaced roughly fifty meters apart, and that the grit they carried was going to make advancing down the cramped duct feel even more like being caught in a Tatooine dust storm.

But at least the duct’s maintenance lighting had been activated, so it was possible to see the biggest problem that Luke and his team
faced. At the far end of the run, beyond the second stack-head, four Sith were kneeling behind a tripod-mounted heavy blaster. The deflector shield generator, of course, was
behind
the Sith, floating on a tethered hoversled in the middle of the exhaust port.

If Luke and his team succeeded in destroying the shield generator, several thousand elite Void Jumpers would come crashing through the exhaust port. Along with their Jedi liaisons, they would disperse throughout the Temple and open other breaches in the Sith defenses, and the rest of Bwua’tu’s space marine volunteers would flood in to finish the job.

This new assault plan would cost many more Galactic Alliance lives than the admiral’s original plan. But the Sith would quickly find themselves cornered and outnumbered, and the Jedi and their allies would, sooner or later, liberate the Jedi Temple.

Liberating the Temple would not win the war against the Sith, or even end the battle for Coruscant. But Luke and his allies were counting on it to be the turning point, when the Sith went from entrenched defenders to hunted quarry, and momentum swung back toward the Jedi.

All Luke’s team had to do was take out that shield generator.

On most days, that would have been an easy job for two Jedi Masters and Jaina Solo, who, as the Sword of the Jedi, had proven time and again that she was the combat equal of anyone in the Order.

But Luke and his two companions were not at their “normal” best. They had been fighting and retreating—mostly retreating—for far too long. At this point, they were all suffering from serious wounds. Jaina had a broken arm and probably several broken ribs. Corran had lost two fingers to a stray blaster bolt, and he was limping around on a knee swollen to the size of a hubba gourd. Luke had taken a blow to the head that still had him seeing stars, and he had a painful lightsaber burn along his left side. They were all drawing on the Force so heavily that they were virtually glowing with cell overload. Jaina had already entered a stage of Force euphoria, and it would not be long before she experienced a crash every bit as severe as a spicehead coming down from an overdose.

Corran Horn tapped Luke with a three-fingered hand, then tipped his head and croaked, “Company.”

Luke looked in the direction Corran was indicating, down the duct behind them. A lavender-skinned Keshiri woman was rounding a corner about two hundred meters away. The distance was too great to see her features plainly, but Luke had no need. He knew she had dark hair, oval eyes, and a wide, cruel smile. Her name was Korelei, and she was the reason Luke and his companions were on the verge of collapse.

The three Jedi had first encountered Korelei in the corridor outside the computer core, when they had lured the Sith away so Ben and the Horn siblings could get Rowdy inside. Noticing how the other Sith deferred to her, Luke had intentionally waited until she was on top of the first detonite mine before triggering it. Instead of shredding her and every other Sith within three meters, the blast had simply dissipated into some sort of Force shield that she had flung down.

And the situation had deteriorated from there. Korelei and her troops had continued to hound the three Jedi since, never giving them a moment’s rest, always finding them when they hid, continually herding them away from the computer core. It was hard to understand how she could be so cunning and powerful and
not
be the Grand Lord of the Lost Tribe, but so far she had kept her quarry too busy for such speculation. She had made it impossible for Luke’s team to reunite with Ben and the Horn siblings—or even to discover what had happened to them. Luke and Corran knew only two things about the fate of Ben, Valin, and Jysella. First, they had not succeeded in getting the blast doors open, or the primary shields down. Second, neither he nor Corran had felt anything in the Force to suggest that any of their children had died. Beyond that, the two fathers were left to fear the worst and hope for the best.

Luke drew his blaster pistol. “Time to go.”

“No-we-have-to-wait!”
Jaina’s voice was rapid and full of excitement, a symptom of the Force euphoria that was the only thing preventing her collapse. “It’s still five minutes before midday.”

“I know,” Luke said. “But we can’t wait.”

“But if we blow the generator early,” Jaina insisted, “every gunner on this side of the Temple will be taking aim up the assault corridor!”

“Jaina, they are
now
.” Corran’s voice was gruff and impatient, a sign that he was in such bad shape himself that he didn’t seem to recognize what was happening to Jaina. “When have we done
anything
to surprise that she-voork chasing us?”

“We
haven’t
.” Luke watched Korelei pause in the duct. Perhaps sensing the blaster in his hand, she waved several of her followers ahead of her. “She’s the first Sith who actually worries me.”

“Thanks,” Jaina said. “Didn’t need to hear
that
.”

“Sorry.” Luke winced at his slip; obviously, he was not in top form, either. “I thought you would have noticed. But we can’t wait, not with her behind us.”

“Better to blow the shields early than not at all,” Corran agreed. “I’ll take out the generator.”

“Good,” Luke agreed. “Take Jaina with you. I’ll handle rear guard.”

“Alone?” Jaina sounded confused. “How can you stop them alone?”

“I only need to slow them, Jaina,” Luke said patiently. “Taking out the shield generator is the important thing here—the
only
important thing.”

Jaina started to nod—then seemed to realize what he was saying and shook her head vigorously. “No way,” she said. “I’m not leaving you to die. Not—”

“Jaina!” Corran grabbed her by the arm. “We’re
all
going to die, most likely. Let’s just get this done first, okay?”

Jaina’s eyes brightened with alarm. Then a sudden calmness came to her face, and Luke knew her Force euphoria was passing. She had only minutes before her body collapsed, literally burned out by the constant flood of Force energy she had been drawing through it. She gently pulled her arm from Corran’s grasp and nodded.

“Right.” She looked down at her splinted arm, then tried to make a fist and failed. “Looks like I should take the lead.”

Corran studied her in silence, no doubt taking the same meaning from her suggestion that Luke did. Jaina was offering to serve as a human shield for Corran, who at least had the use of both hands, and thus would be in the best possible shape to finish the job when he reached the Sith protecting the generator. It was a sound tactic, considering the circumstances, and it broke Luke’s heart to nod in agreement.

There could be little doubt that he was sending his own niece to her death—just as he had sent her brother Anakin to
his
. But what else
could he do? The Jedi attack plan had failed miserably, and the price of that failure was death—his and Jaina’s and Corran’s, almost certainly. But if they could take out the shield generator and open a route into the Temple for the Void Jumpers, then at least they would be putting the Sith on the defensive.

And they would be giving Ben and Valin and Jysella a chance to make it out of the Temple alive.

As Jaina unclipped her lightsaber and turned to leave, Luke flooded his presence with feelings of respect and gratitude. He reached out to her in the Force, then said, “Master Solo?”

Jaina stopped, but didn’t turn, and for a moment Luke thought he had made a mistake of timing. But after a couple of breaths, he felt her calming and growing stronger in the Force, and she asked, “Yes, Grand Master Skywalker?”

“I just wanted you to hear me say it,” Luke said. “May the Force be with you.”

Jaina nodded without turning around. “Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot right now.”

“Glad you feel ready, Master Solo,” Corran added. “The Order needs you like it never has before.”

Jaina was quiet for a moment. Luke could tell by the sorrow in her Force aura that she was thinking of her loved ones—her parents, Han and Leia; her lost brothers, Anakin and Jacen; her niece, Allana. And most of all Jagged Fel, the man she was probably not going to live to marry. Luke almost told her to wait—that he and Corran could do this alone.

But that was not who Jaina Solo
was
. She was a warrior, and broken or not, she would have cut off her own arm before she allowed him and Corran to attack the Sith without her.