Invincible (21 page)

As Caedus neared the bottom row of seats, the stormtroopers raised their weapons and sent their detonators flying toward the sniper’s hiding place with the characteristic grenade launcher
whumpf
s. Their aim was true, and both orbs shot straight into the booth’s projection aperture—then came flying back out toward the shocked troopers and astonished Moffs.

Caedus was ready. He caught both detonators with the Force…then had to close his eyes as two crackling balls of
white
erupted above him. The air filled with the acrid stench of disintegrated stone and vaporized durasteel, and the pop and sizzle of electrical short circuits began to sputter through a two-meter circle that had been melted through the booth wall. Several Moffs turned and quickly opened fire into the hole.

“No.” Caedus used the Force to make himself heard over the scream of their blasters. He motioned at the stormtrooper survivors. “You two, secure the Moffs in the anteroom. I’ll handle the sniper personally.”

“Personally?”
Moff Westermal asked in his deep, refined voice. “Are you sure that’s wise, Lord Caedus? You’re already injured.”

“Kosimo makes a good point,” Lecersen added. “Let the Elite Guard deal with the sniper. The rest of the company will be here any moment.”

“My injuries are of no concern,” Caedus said, trying not to smile. They had called him
Lord
Caedus; a New Empire was at hand. “And the Elite Guard won’t be arriving in time. I’m afraid the Mandalorians sealed this section of the command warren before their attack.”

Caedus waved the Moffs up toward the anteroom, then turned back to the projection booth to see the muzzle of a pellet accelerator pushing through a makeshift firing port, which the sniper had cut through the projectionist’s blaster-scorched viewing pane. He managed to raise the arm on his injured side in the weapon’s general direction, then reached out with the Force and made a twisting motion with his hand. The barrel trembled for an instant, then started to bend against the edge of the firing port.

The sniper was not surprised. The weapon simply spun free as it was abruptly released, and the
snap-hiss
of an igniting lightsaber sounded from inside the projection booth. Despite the pellet wound his shoulder had suffered earlier, Caedus did not hesitate to activate his own blade. His pain would only fuel his power, and if he did not attack the sniper, he knew the sniper would attack
him.
He Force-leapt up through the hole into the smoky, flashing interior of the booth and pivoted around to block the fan of blue light that came slicing toward his neck even before he could sense who he was fighting.

Whoever it was, the enemy was
good.

Caedus felt a boot slam into his ribs—an instant
before
he saw it coming with his Aing-Tii fighting-sight—and the breath left his lungs. He countered with a head-high backslash and brought his own foot up, landing a Force-enhanced snap-kick between the legs of the brown-robed blur attacking him. The blow drew a pained grunt but failed to even stagger his foe.

A bony elbow slammed up under his chin, rocking him onto his heels. Then, finally, Caedus felt a familiar tingle in the back of his mind, and he saw the image of a violet blade slashing at his vulnerable side. He swept his own lightsaber down across the front of his body in a desperate reverse block that barely caught the attack in time to prevent it from slicing him in two, then whirled into a spinning back kick that landed squarely in his foe’s stomach and drove him back…a mere two steps.

It was enough.

Now Caedus could see who he was fighting, and he could not believe it. A gaunt-faced man with eyes as blue and cold as vardium steel, nostrils flaring red with anger and exertion, a thin-lipped snarl filled with confidence and disdain.

Luke Skywalker.

Just a few minutes earlier, Caedus had sensed his uncle’s presence far above Nickel One, in the same blastboat as his mother, father, and Saba Sebatyne. And now here Luke was,
inside
the asteroid. Even Jedi Grand Masters could not be in two places at once—Caedus
knew
that—but he did not waste time being confused.

All that mattered was that Luke
was
here, somehow, and that he was the one swordsman in the galaxy whom Caedus did not dare fight one-armed. Even as Luke leapt forward weaving a basket of lightsaber slashes, Caedus sprang back out of the projection booth, launching himself into a high Force flip designed to put as much distance between himself and his attacker as possible.

Luke flew after him, not even bothering to try for the high position, simply coming up under him with a wild slash combination that was anything but subtle or deft or even tricky; just pure relentless ferocity. Caedus had to stretch himself out belly-down in midair to meet the attack, and even calling on the Force to bolster the strength in his good arm, it was all he could do to keep the powerful strikes from knocking his guard aside and leaving him wide open.

They started to drop, trading a trio of lightning-fast blows that left Caedus’s hands stinging and his heart racing. The last time he had fought Luke, he had started with a painful kidney wound but two good arms—and barely managed to survive. Now, with a relatively bearable shoulder wound and a single good arm, he had to do more than survive, he had to prevail—because now there would be no mercy at the last minute. This time, his uncle would not care whether
he
survived as long as
Caedus
died, because now Luke knew the truth about who had killed his wife.

After the third exchange, Caedus and Luke came down in the seating area, two rows apart. Both landed on their feet, Luke more lightly than Caedus.

Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and flicked his hand downward, arming the dart thrower he had begun wearing beneath his sleeve after their last fight.

But Luke did something even more unexpected, removing one hand from his lightsaber and pushing the palm forward. An instant later, the unseen hammer of a Force blast caught Caedus in the sternum and drove him not over, but
through
the seats behind him.

He slammed into the next row and dropped to the floor foot-to-foot with the big Mandalorian he had killed earlier—the one in the black armor and red helmet. Caedus’s head was spinning and his chest was more than aching—it was throbbing, burning, clenching so tightly he could hardly breathe.

But he still had his lightsaber—and he needed it. He thumbed the activation switch and brought the weapon up just as Luke’s blue blade came slicing down toward him. Caedus caught it on his own crimson blade, then straightened his arm, simultaneously parrying and pointing the dart thrower on his wrist into his attacker’s face.

“Release!” he commanded.

A faint puff of air tickled Caedus’s forearm as the thrower launched its darts, but Luke was already whirling out of the way. The slivers streaked past in a harmless black flash and vanished; then Luke was spinning into the row where Caedus lay, positioning himself above Caedus’s head for the coup de grâce.

There was no time to leap up or loose a bolt of Force lightning, and the angle was particularly poor for blocking and parrying. Caedus’s only hope lay at his feet, and he seized that hope with the Force, using it to pull the dead Mandalorian up over him, then hurling the corpse headlong into Luke.

Two bodies collided with the sharp crack of metal impacting bone. When Caedus did not die in the next instant, he realized he had finally driven his uncle onto the defensive. He rolled to a knee, his lightsaber ignited and raised between them.

Luke lay buried beneath the huge Mandalorian, blood pooling around his head and one motionless arm protruding beneath the fellow’s side. By all appearances, Luke Skywalker was dead—or at least unconscious.

Caedus’s heart began to pound not with fear, but with excitement. His visions of late had been filled with his uncle’s face—Luke Skywalker attacking him here on Nickel One, Luke firing on him from one of Fett’s
Bes’uliike,
Luke sitting on
Caedus’s
throne, claiming the New Empire as his own. Had he—Lord Caedus—finally put an end to those visions—finally ruled out the possibility of those futures becoming
the
future?

Eager as he was to be rid of Luke, Caedus was also suspicious. His uncle had been using a new fighting style, one that he had never taught his students at the Jedi academy—one that he had never, as far as Caedus knew, used on anyone who had survived to describe it. The style was essentially conservative, brutal, and ruthless, designed to deal damage without suffering it—and not all that tricky.

Which meant
now
would be the perfect time to switch styles and trap an unwary opponent by playing dead. Using the Force to keep the Mandalorian pressed firmly down on Luke, Caedus retreated twenty paces to the body of a fallen stormtrooper, then deactivated his lightsaber and tucked it under his wounded arm. When Luke still did not move, he pulled a fragmentation grenade off the trooper’s equipment belt. He thumbed the arming slide, then sent the grenade sailing toward his uncle and the dead Mandalorian.

Despite the ringing in her ears and the gauze in her head—despite her hugely aching skull and the big knot of
hurt
swelling on her brow—Jaina had never been so filled with the Force. She could feel it in every cell of her body, swirling through her like fire, burning more ferociously every moment. She had never felt so strong or so quick or so alert. She could drive her fist through a durasteel wall, or catch a blaster bolt between her fingers. Despite the red curtain of blood cascading from the gash where Vatok’s helmet had split her forehead, she was aware of
everything.

Including that grenade sailing toward her.

So Jaina reached out with the Force and sent it flying back toward her brother. An instant later, the weight pressing down on her grew lighter as Caedus’s attention shifted to the grenade. She started to Force-hurl her friend’s body off—then recalled how her brother had been anticipating her attacks. She grabbed the
beskad
hanging from Vatok’s waist,
then
sent his body flying after the grenade.

The iron saber had barely cleared its scabbard before the hammerfist of a grenade detonation jolted the forum. Vatok’s body was silhouetted against the orange flash of the explosion. Jaina held him there, shielding herself from the fiery heat of the blast, and felt the searing bite of shrapnel only in her legs.

The detonation swept the last wisps of gauze from Jaina’s mind. Not waiting to see if she had been seriously injured, she let her friend’s body drop to the floor and leapt after her brother, lightsaber in one hand and Vatok’s
beskad
in the other.

Caedus turned to meet her with his good arm forward and his wounded shoulder behind. Jaina struck high with the lightsaber and low with the
beskad.
Caedus slipped back, allowing both blades to pass, then sprang forward and counterthrust, trying to impale her with her own momentum.

Jaina was already spinning past his crimson blade, pivoting on a dead stormtrooper’s chest plate as she brought Vatok’s
beskad
around at neck height. But Caedus had anticipated her once again, leaning away to take the blow on his wounded shoulder rather than across his throat.

Jaina did not even feel the
beskad
cleaving bone. She simply heard a voice—
Jacen’s
voice—cry out in shock and pain; then an arm landed on her boots. In the next instant Caedus was whirling away, screaming and flapping a red stump, and something hot and wet splashed across Jaina’s face and throat and began to burn like acid.

A part of her—the part that had grown up with Jacen and trained with him on Yavin 4 and traded snowballs at Coruscant’s polar playgrounds—was too horrified to act. That part wanted to stand paralyzed in shock, to pretend this was just some terrible nightmare from which she would shortly awaken. The other part—the part that had actually
asked
for this mission—knew what would happen if she let herself freeze.

Jaina launched herself after Caedus. The loss of an arm did not seem to faze him. He simply turned to meet her attack, his yellow eyes blazing with pain and fury, and their lightsabers met in a brilliant explosion of color. Jaina brought the
beskad
around again, striking low for his thigh…and knew she was in trouble when Caedus did not even try to block.

Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and let it drop between them. Jaina felt the
beskad
begin to bite, then her brother’s palm sank deep into the pit of her stomach. In the next instant she was riding a bolt of Force lightning across the chamber, her muscles cramping, her teeth grinding, her ears roaring with the fiery sizzle of burning synapses.

A full second later, she slammed into a durasteel wall and felt a terrible popping in her ribs, then dropped to the floor, still holding her lightsaber and the
beskad.
The Force lightning had died away, but her muscles remained useless aching knots, and the stench of scorched flesh was so powerful she wanted to retch. Instead, she tried to rise—and succeeded only in sparking a dozen different kinds of pain.

Across the chamber, her brother was in little better shape. He sat slumped in a half-collapsed chair, his remaining hand clamped over the stump of his missing arm, his thigh wound dripping blood onto the floor. His yellow eyes were staring at Jaina more in confusion than rage, and his head was cocked as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing.

“You?”
he gasped.
“Jaina?”

Jaina managed to raise her throbbing head. It hurt—a lot—and her vision was starting to blur.

“I haven’t changed
that
much, Jacen,” she said. With her muscle control beginning to return, she pushed herself into a kneeling position. “And I hope you know how much this Sith nonsense is steaming Mom and Dad.”