[Dark Nest] - 1(141)

Keep trying, she urged Zekk. Don’t stop, no matter what.

Never! he assured her.

Good.

Jaina let the pressure push her away from the hangar, back up the passage.

“Hey!” Zekk’s voice was strained. “Where are you going?”

“The barracks,” Jaina said. “I’m giving up.”

“What!”

“I’m not as strong as you.” It irked Jaina to say this, but it was the one way to be sure Zekk would continue to struggle. “I’ll see you later.”

As Jaina retreated up the passage, the pressure gradually diminished. Finally, she was able to simply walk back to the barracks. She could sense Zekk down near the hangar, feeling puzzled and angry and a little bit abandoned, but he remained determined not to quit, to show Jaina he was as strong as she believed.

Once Jaina reached the barracks veranda, she returned to her bench and began to contemplate the beauty of the Killik mind. Every member of a nest worked flawlessly with all the others, executing unbelievably complex tasks-such as refueling and restocking several thousand rocket ships an hour-in near-perfect harmony. There were seldom any of the accidents or shortages or confusion so common to any military operation - and there were never arguments or disagreements or territorial spats.

Would it truly be so bad if there was a war, and the Colony won? For once, there would be true galactic peace-no vying for resources, no clashes of interest, no territorial conquests, just all the peoples of the galaxy working together for the common good. Was that so wrong?

Jaina supposed that the fact that she did not see anything wrong with that meant she had become a true Joiner. She was only worried that the Colony could never win a war against the Chiss.

The Colony would have help, Taat assured her. An image came through the nest mind of the Ronto being unloaded. A dozen long streams of Killiks were pouring in and out of its cargo bays, working together to off-load the huge, telescoping barrels of at least a dozen turbolaser batteries.

The Chiss were going to be very surprised when they attacked. Maybe the Killiks could win this war after all.

Jaina decided to wait there on the veranda until Unu called for her. Sooner or later, there would be a mission that only a Jedi in a StealthX could do, and Jaina would be ready.

Then, when her mind finally went quiet and she knew that Taat and Unu were no longer paying her any attention, she pictured the handsome, square, scarred face of Jagged Fel. She held the image in her mind and performed a series of breathing exercises, focusing on the feelings they had shared while they were fighting the Yuuzhan Vong together-and during those few times they had managed to rendezvous after the war-then turned roughly toward where the Chiss staging area would be, somewhere outside the orbit of Qoribu.

While Jag was not Force-sensitive, Jaina had touched him through the Force many times while they were together, and she felt sure he would recognize the sensation of her presence brushing his. But he wouldn’t trust her. He would think she was just another Joiner trying to lure him into a mistake. So she would have to convince him that he was discovering the ambush on his own-and she would have to do it before Taat realized what she was doing.

Jaina reached out to Jag in the Force and found his presence - distant and dim-somewhere ahead on Qoribu’s orbital path, exactly where he would be if he was guarding the staging area for a Chiss assault fleet.

Come get me, lover boy, Jaina sent. Jag would not understand the words, of course, but he would recognize the sentiment. She had used the same taunt many times when they sparred. If you can.

Jaina felt Jag start in surprise, then she caught a flash of anger as he recognized her touch. This wasn’t a game! This was war, and…

His irritation suddenly changed to concern as it dawned on him why she had picked that particular day to reach out to him. Jaina sensed a rising tide of alarm, then lost contact as Jag drew in on himself.





THIRTY-FOUR


Qoribu’s brightly striped orb hung sandwiched between the flat, twinkling clouds of two sizable space fleets. For now, both sides seemed content to avoid a battle, each hiding from the other behind the gas giant’s considerable bulk. But they were also maintaining aggressive postures, keeping their sublight drives lit and their shields up, dropping reconnaissance patrols through the planet’s golden ring system like airspinners from a Bespin raawk trawler.

“Good news,” Han said, decelerating hard. As they had half expected, the homing beacon aboard Alema’s stolen skiff had led them straight back into the middle of the Qoribu conflict. Though the standoff between the two fleets was certain to complicate their plans, Han could not have been more thrilled. After they destroyed the Dark Nest, he could track down Jaina and have her safely away from the Taat nest within hours. “We’re just in time for the war.”