The Unifying Force Page 3

  "Ha!" Han said, clapping his hands once, then rubbing them together in anticipation. "Now who's losing?"

  "Oh, Threepio," Leia said sympathetically, hiding a smile behind her hand.

  C-3PO's photoreceptors were riveted to the board, but disbelief was evident in his response. "What? What? Is that permitted?" He looked up from the table. "Princess Leia, that move can't possibly be legal!"

  Han leaned forward, his eyebrows beetled. "Show me where the rules say different."

  C-3PO stammered. "Bending the rules is one thing, but this . . . this is a flagrant violation not only of the rules, but also of proper game etiquette! At the very least, you have performed a suspect move, and very likely a rogue one!"

  "Good choice of words, Threepio," Leia said.

  Han leaned away from the table, interlocking his hands behind his head and whistling a taunting melody.

  "I suggest we allow Princess Leia to be the final judge," C-3PO

  said.

  Han made a sour face. "Ah, you're just a sore loser."

  "A sore loser? Why, I never—

  "Admit it and I'll go easy on you for the rest of the game." C-3PO summoned as much indignation as his protocol programming allowed. "You have my assurance that I've no need to emerge victorious from each engagement. Whereas you, on the other hand-" Han laughed sharply, startling the droid to silence. "Threepio, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times: you always have to be ready for surprises."

  "Pompous man," C-3PO said. When Cakhmaim and Meewalh added their gravelly comments and guttural laughs to the merriment, he threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Oh, what's the use!"

  Abruptly, a warning tone sounded from the engineering station across the hold. The Noghri shot to their feet, but Leia propelled herself from the dejarik table's arc of padded bench and beat both of them to the communications display.

  Han watched expectantly from the game board. "A surprise?" he asked when Leia turned from the displays. She shook her head. "The signal we've been waiting for." Han rushed from the table and followed Leia into the starboard ring corridor, where he nearly tripped over a pair of knee-high boots he had left on the step. Early in his career as a smuggler, the Falcon had been the only home he knew, and now—this past year especially— it had become the only home Han and Leia knew. Whether in their living quarters or in the forward hold, personal items were strewn about, waiting to be picked up and put away. The mess was just that, in desperate need of cleaning—maybe even fumigating. And indeed the dented and bruised exterior of the old freighter, with its mishmash of primers and fuse-welded borrowed parts, was beginning to resemble that of a house, well loved and lived in but too long neglected.

  Han slid to a halt just short of the connector that accessed the cockpit, and swung to the Noghri.

  "Cakhmaim, get to the dorsal gun turret. And this time remember to lead your targets—even though I know it goes against your grain. Meewalh, I'm going to need you here to help our packages get safely aboard."

  In the outrigger cockpit, with its claustrophobic surround of blinking instruments, Leia was already cinched into the copilot's chair, both hands busy activating the Falcon's start-up systems and console displays. Han slid into the pilot's seat, strapping in with one hand and throwing overhead toggles with the other.

  "Can we locate them yet?"

  "They're on the move," Leia said. "But I've got a fix on them."

  Han leaned over to study one of the display screens. "Lock their coordinates into the tracking computer, and let's get the topographic sensors on-line."

  Leia swiveled to the comm board, her hands moving rapidly over the controls. "Take her up," she said a moment later.

  Awakened from what amounted to a nap, the YT-1300's engines powered up. Han clamped his hands on the control yoke and lifted the ship out of its hiding place, an impact crater on the dark side of Selvaris's puny moon. He fed power to the sublight drives and steered a course around the misshapen orb. Green, blue, and white Selvaris filled the wraparound viewport.

  Han watched Leia out of the corner of his eye. "Hope you remembered to look both ways."

  Leia shut her eyes briefly. "We're safe."

  Han smiled to himself. The Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be sensed through the Force, but Leia had never had any problem sensing trouble.

  "I just don't want to be accused of making any more illegal moves."

  She looked at him. "Only daring ones."

  Han continued to watch her secretly. Through all the rough-and-tumble years, her face had not lost its noble beauty. Her skin was as flawless now as it had been when Han had first set eyes on her, in a detention cell, of all places. Her long hair retained its sheen; her eyes, their deep, inviting warmth.

  and Leia had experienced some troubled months following Chewbacca's death. But she had waited him out; and wherever they traveled now, no matter how much danger they put themselves in— mostly at Han's instigation—they were completely at home with each other. To Han, each and every action felt right. He had no yearning to be anywhere but where he was—with his beloved partner.

  It was a sappy thought, he told himself. But undeniably true. As if reading his thoughts, Leia turned slightly in his direction, lifting her chin a bit to show him a dubious look. "You're in a good mood for someone setting out on a dangerous rescue mission."

  Han made light of the moment. "Beating Threepio at dejarik has made a new man of me."

  Leia tilted her head. "Not too new, I hope." She placed one hand atop his, on the yoke, and with the other traced the raised scar on his chin. "It's taken me thirty years to get used to the old you."

  "Me, too," he said, without humor.

  Exhaust ports ablaze, the Falcon rolled through a sweeping turn and raced for Selvaris's binary brightened transitor.

  Bent low over the swoopbike's high handgrips, Thorsh threaded the rocketing vessel through concentrations of saplings and opportunistic Yuuzhan Vong plants, under looping vines, and over the thick trunks of toppled trees. He hugged the fern-covered ground when and where he could, as much for safety's sake as to spare his spindly passenger any further torture from thorned vines, sharp twigs, and the easily disturbed hives of barbflies and other bloodsuckers.

  But Thorsh's best efforts weren't enough.

  "When do we get to switch places?" the Bith asked over the howl of the repulsorlift.

  Thorsh knew that the question had been asked in jest, and so replied in kind. "Hands at your sides and no standing on the seat!"

  Taking into account only the difference in heights, the Bith should have been the one in the saddle, with Thorsh scrunched down behind him, fingers clasped on the underside of the long seat. But Thorsh was the more experienced pilot, having flown swoops on several reconnaissance missions where speeders hadn't been available. His large wedge-shaped feet weren't well suited to the footpegs, and he had to extend his arms fully to grasp the handgrip controls, but his keen eyes more than made up for those shortcomings, even when streaming with tears, as they were now.

  Thorsh kept to the thick of the large island, where the branches of

  the tallest trees intertwined overhead and provided cover. The swoop

  was still running smoothly, except when he leaned it hard to the right,

  which for some reason caused the repulsorlift to sputter and strain. He

  could hear the other swoop—to the east and somewhat behind him—

  weaving a path through equally dense growth. The four escapees

  would have made better progress out over the estuary, but without

  the tree cover they would be easy prey for coralskippers. One skip had

  already completed two return passes, paying out plasma missiles at

  random, and hoping for a lucky strike.

  The morning air was thick with the smell of burning foliage. Flat out, the swoop tore from the underbrush into a treeless expanse of salt flats, pink and blinding white, the nighttime sleeping grounds for flocks of Selvaris'
s long-legged wading birds. Determined to reach cover before the coralskipper showed up again, Thorsh gave the accelerator a hard twist and banked the swoop for the nearest stand of trees.

  Thorsh had just reentered the jungle when a clamor began to build in the canopy. His first thought was that another coralskipper had joined the pursuit. But there was a different quality to the sound—an eagerness absent in the deadly sibilance of a coralskipper.

  Thorsh felt his rider sit up straighter on the seat, in defiance of the hazards posed by overhanging branches.

  "Is that what I think it is?" the humanoid asked. "We'll know soon enough," Thorsh yelled back. Again he twisted the accelerator. Wind screamed over the swoop's inadequate fairing, forcing another flood of tears from his eyes. But his actions were in vain. The objects responsible for the escalating tumult passed directly overhead, silencing the racket of the swoop, then outracing it.

  "Lav peq!" the Bith screamed.

  Thorsh knew the term; it was the Yuuzhan Vong name for netting beetles, voracious and meticulous versions of the winged sentinels that had roused the prison guards. Lav peq were capable of creating webs between trees, bushes, or just about any type of barked foliage. Typically the beetles arrived in successive fronts, the first fashioning anchor

  lines, and those that followed feeding on bark and other organics to replenish the fibers needed to complete the filigree. A well-constructed web could ensnare or at least slow down a human-sized being. The strands themselves were tenaciously sticky, though not as adhesive as the enemy's blorash jelly.

  The Bith's hunch was verified as the swoop raced through the vanguard wave of the swarm. Within seconds the downsloping front cowling was spattered with smashed beetle corpses. Thorsh plucked several from his fur-covered forehead and threw them aside. Just ahead, thousands of lav peq were plummeting into the jungle, tearing through the leafy canopy like hailstones. Thorsh ground his teeth and lowered his head. As strong as the strands were, they were no match for a swoop in the right hands.

  Fifty meters away the first web was already taking shape. Thorsh squinted in misgiving. More tightly woven than any he had seen on other worlds, the web actually obscured the trees. It took only a moment to realize that Selvaris's species of netting beetle was special. While half the swarm was flying horizontally at various levels, the other half was flying in vertical rows. The result was a warp-and-weft weave—a veritable curtain that, for all Thorsh knew, could snare the swoop as easily as a spiderweb might a nightfly.

  Extending his legs behind him, he flattened himself over the surging engine. With a distressed cry, the Bith followed suit, pressing himself to Thorsh's back.

  Thorsh cranked the accelerator for all it was worth, aiming for what he thought might be an area of relatively few trees. The swoop ripped through the webs at better than two hundred kilometers per hour, each successive curtain parting with loud cleaving sounds that sometimes resembled screams. Rear-guard beetles struck the cowling with the force of malleable bullets, and the Bith yelped in pain time and again. The swoop wobbled and the repulsorlift began to howl in protest. Thorsh fought to hold on to the handgrips as they were yanked from side to side by the viscous strands. He risked an ascent, only to learn the hard way that the situation was even more perilous in the upper reaches of the trees, where the branches fanned out and the leaves were home to clouds of insatiable needle fliers.

  Refusing to give a centimeter, he demanded every last bit of

  power from the struggling machine. Then, all at once, the swoop tore

  through the final web. Sticky strands cooked on the superheated

  engine, sending out an acrid smell. Thorsh coughed strands from his throat and pawed others away from his stinging eyes.

  He brought the swoop to a halt just long enough to clear the exhaust ports and fan housing. His swearing passenger might have been wearing a long white wig. Thorsh had his right hand back on the accelerator when a pained shriek erupted from the jungle, punctuating the cacophony of birdcalls. He heard a familiar roar, and not a moment later the second swoop bobbed into view, bearing only the pilot.

  "The nets got him!" the Bith pilot shouted over the irregular throb of a choked engine. He twisted the accelerator to keep the swoop idling. "I'm going back for him!"

  Thorsh spit web from his mouth and scowled. "Don't be a fool."

  "He's alive—"

  "Better that you are," Thorsh interrupted. He jerked his bearded chin to the west. "The estuary. Get going!"

  Thorsh spurred the swoop through a quick circle and darted off into the trees, the Bith hanging on to what was left of the Jenet's flight jacket. Punching through the dense jungle that grew along the shore of the island, they found themselves back in the blinding light of Selvaris's double suns. Coaxing more speed from the rapidly failing engine, pilot and passenger leaned the swoop through a sweeping turn that carried them out over brackish water, inky with organics leached from the trees. They soared at top speed a few meters above the calm surface, racing past narrow, meandering channels of pellucid fresh water, bubbled up from the planet's underground and teeming with brilliantly colored fish.

  From the far shore came the urgent woofing and snarling of

  bissop hounds, galloping through swamps and across berms of scalpel

  grass. The harsh barks were accompanied by the war cries of Yuuzhan

  Vong chase teams, running behind the pack. Thorsh banked just in

  time to avoid a horde of thud and razor bugs that whirled out of the

  trees, passing within centimeters of the swoop and tearing into the

  opposite shoreline.

  Drawn by the commotion, schools of sharp-toothed predators, showing multifinned backs and serrated tails, leapt from the water to gorge on the airborne weapon bugs. Wide-winged raptors with huge wingspans left the fungus-filled cavities of dying trees to glide down and grab whatever bugs the aquatic behemoths missed.

  Thorsh pulled at the handgrips and sent the swoop into a steep climb. The saline water grew more agitated beneath them as the mouth of the estuary came into view, a line of white where curling waves broke against the marshy shore. Hundreds of white-cliffed islets, straight as towers and draped with vegetation, rose from out of the aquamarine ocean. On the horizon a volcano mounded from the water, great clouds of smoke billowing from its crater and bleeding a thick river of lava that turned part of the sea to steam.

  Thorsh scanned the otherwise clear sky for signs of the coral-skipper. A kilometer away to the east, the other swoop was paralleling him. Gaining altitude, the two machines sped out over the breaking waves, making for the narrow channel that separated the islets closest to shore.

  "Heads up!" the Bith said into Thorsh's right ear. His long-fingered hand shot out, indicating an object in the western sky.

  Thorsh tracked it and nodded, muttering a curse.

  The Yuuzhan Vong called it a tsik vai. Reminiscent of a seabird, it was an atmospheric search craft, its neck sac inflated and bright red as a signal to other craft in the area. Powered by a gravity-sensitive dovin basal, the monstrosity had a transparent blister cockpit, flexible wings, and gill analogs that made it whine in flight.

  Thorsh threw his weight against the handgrips and leaned hard against the steering auxiliaries, slewing the swoop toward the closest island, intent on keeping as close to the white cliffs as he dared.

  The tsik vai was not unnerved. It dived for its small prey, whining and releasing several thin, cablelike grasping tendrils.

  Thorsh dropped back to the turbulent surface, swerved, and cut across the channel for the neighboring islet, running full out, a meter above the waves. The search craft was following him down, prepared to make another grab, when something nailed it from behind.

  Thorsh and the Bith watched in bafflement as the tsik vai veered

  off course, one wing blown off, and spiraled out of control. It struck the sea with a loud splash, skipped twice on the waves, then crashed nose-first and began to sink. Out of t
he eastern sky, dazzled by sunlight, something large and dull-black was approaching at supersonic speed.

  Another Yuuzhan Vong vessel, Thorsh decided, whose pilot had just shot down one of his own craft to get to the swoop.

  Twitching the braking thrusters, he spun the swoop around in midair, hoping to race away from the mystery vessel before it could draw a bead on him. Even so, he waited for the fireballs to start falling. When they didn't, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see a twin-mandibled old freighter come streaking out of the cloudless sky. Thorsh felt crackling heat wash over him as the ship made a low, ear-splitting, teeth-rattling pass, its dorsal laser cannon loosing green hyphens of energy at a trio of pursuing coralskippers.

  The freighter signaled the swoops with a rocking motion, then banked into a long sweeping turn to the south.

  "Looks like our ride's here!" Thorsh said.

  "And in worse trouble than we are!"

  A flurry of well-placed bursts from the freighter's top gunner caught the lead coralskipper head-on and sent it boiling into the sea.

  The other two enemy craft continued to pummel the freighter with plasma missiles. Perhaps frustrated by the ship's seemingly impenetrable shields, one of the skip pilots took aim on the Bith-piloted swoop. Caught in midair by a single lava-hot projectile, the machine disappeared without a trace.

  Thorsh clenched his jaws and steered the swoop for deeper water. The swoop was grazing the white crests of five-meter waves when something enormous rose from beneath the heaving surface.

  "Cakhmaim's getting to be a pretty good shot," Han said over the sound of the reciprocating quad laser cannon. "Remind me to up his pay—or at least promote him."