Being careful to keep the beam below her chin so he didn’t blind her, Luke turned his helmet lamp in Mara’s direction. Her Force aura had subsided to a mere blush, and the charred circles on her body reminded him of how much his own electrobolt wounds ached. But it was the jagged, triangular puncture wound in her right abdomen that he found most alarming. About the size of three fingers bunched together, it was smeared with grime and oozing dark blood.
“How are you feeling?”
“About as good as I look.” As Mara spoke, her eyes were searching the darkness around them. “But I’ll last until we can find Alema. Any idea where she’s-“
A series of dull thuds reverberated through the chamber, followed by the fading light and dying crackle of the thermal detonators that had just discharged inside a wall across the chamber. An instant later, a pair of Han’s YVH bugcruncher droids rode into the chamber on the blue-white tails of their propulsion thrusters and quickly swung toward the Skywalkers.
“Remain calm!” one ordered in its ultradeep, ultramale voice. “Remain stationary! Help is coming.”
FORTY-ONE
The bolt burns had been smeared with bacta salve, the puncture wounds were covered with actibandages on both sides, and there was enough stericlean in the air to disinfect half the nest. All that could be done in the field, Leia had done, and still she did not like how her sister-in-law looked. Mara had an ashy complexion and a hint of blue in her lips, and her eyes were so sunken they looked like crash craters.
“We’ll get you to the Falcon soon,” Leia said. They were back in the membrosia chamber, where the worst of the battle had taken place, waiting for a pair of fresh vac suits for Mara and Luke. “Bug four should be returning anytime now.”
“No hurry.” Mara squeezed Leia’s hand. “I’ve been hit worse than this. “
“It’s not you she’s worried about,” Han said. “If I don’t get out of this place soon…”
Han let his sentence trail off, and Leia turned to find him shining his helmet lamp into the haze-filled darkness. The beam extended only about ten meters before terminating in a wall of floating Gorog corpses.
“What, Han?”
“I don’t know.” Han pointed into the carnage, then swung his helmet lamp away to reveal a faint golden glow snaking through the corpses and floating blood globules. “Trouble, maybe.”
Leia reached out in the Force and felt a swarm of Killiks approaching in the company of three Joiners.
“It’s Jaina and Zekk!” she said. “With Raynar.”
“Like I said,” Han muttered. “Trouble.”
The golden glow resolved itself into a line of shine-balls being carried by a long column of Killiks in chitinous pressure suits of many different configurations. At the head of the procession came the hulking form of Raynar Thul, his vac suit helmet tucked under one arm, his scar-frozen face red with fury. Half a meter behind, Jaina and Zekk followed, looking more nervous than angry.
Leia waited as they approached, then bowed to Raynar. “UnuThul, I’m sorry we must meet-“
“So are we,” Raynar said. The battle-pitted form of Bug Four drifted out from among the mass of Unu following him. The droid’s photoreceptors were dark, the seams of his body shell were smeared with soot, and he was surrounded by the acrid stink of scorched circuits. “Your droid murdered Unu.”
Giving Leia no chance to respond, Raynar floated around her to the sides of Luke and Mara, and several hand-sized Killik healers poked their tiny heads up past the collar of his pressure suit. Leia started to go after him, but was stopped by a gentle Force tug.
“Wait with us,” Jaina said from behind Leia. “Trying to explain now will only make Unu angrier.”
“Thank you for the advice.” Leia turned to face Jaina and caught the flash of several tiny eyes peering out of her collar, too. “Looks crowded in there.”
Jaina stared into Leia’s eyes. “Not really.”
“It grows on you,” Zekk said. He reached over and rubbed the backs of his fingers down Jaina’s cheek.
“To tell the truth, we kind of like it,” Jaina added.
“Oh,” Leia said. “I would have thought all that creeping inside your suit would feel, um, uncomfortable.’”
Jaina and Zekk shook their heads in unison.
“Not at all,” Jaina said.
“It makes us feel whole,” Zekk added.
The trio spent an awkward moment looking at each other, Jaina and Zekk softly humming and clicking to themselves, Leia hiding her feelings behind a polite smile. Though she had already sensed in the Force what had become of her daughter and Zekk, actually seeing them behave like Joiners was almost more than she could bear. Her heart was dropping with every beat.