[Dark Nest] - 3(43)

More shadow bombs detonated near the middle of the convoy as Luke joined the battle. The StealthXs swirled around the Gatherers, attacking from all directions. Unable to catch more than a glimpse of the darting Jedi ships, the convoy’s gunners set up rolling walls of laserfire. The Jedi, in turn, let the Force guide their moves, slipping around and under these barrages until they had obliterated another half a dozen vessels.

Finally, the convoy pilots seemed to recognize they were fish in a barrel. They dispersed, each Gatherer continuing toward a different corner of an imaginary square. As they fled, their gunners continued to blindly spray bolts into space, and now many of Nickel One’s surface batteries joined in, trying to provide safe lanes of approach for their surviving “friends.” That was the beauty of a coup: confusion worked in favor of the attacker.

Mara took out two more Gatherers and felt Luke destroy another one, then realized that she had lost track of Jacen. She could still feel him in the meld, but his presence had become cautious and furtive. She reached out to him, curious and concerned. His response seemed at once cocky and defiant, as though he was daring her to doubt him again.

“Whatever you’re doing, hotshot, just don’t screw up,” Mara muttered aloud. She was counting on Jacen to keep nurturing Ben’s interest in the Force, but that was not going to happen if her nephew continued to behave like a rogue Jedi. “Too much depends on you.”

Jacen seemed puzzled by the sentiment, then a sea of turbolaser fire flowered between Mara and her next target, and her astromech began screeching for her to evade. She juked but continued toward her mark, then took a glancing strike on her flank and lost all her shields at once.

“Shhhhubba!” she hissed, still unwavering from her course.

Nine began to bleep and whistle frantically, filling the display with all manner of dire warnings about what would become of them if she failed to withdraw from combat at once. Mara ignored him and launched her last shadow bomb.

The attack caught the Gatherer just above its wing and punched through the shields in a blinding eruption of white. The StealthX’s blast-tinting darkened, and she felt a terrible ripping in the Force as the vacuum tore the crew from its ruptured ship.

The StealthX shuddered as something large thumped into its canopy. Mara cringed and held her breath, half expecting to hear the curt whoosh of a catastrophic vacuum breach. But when the blast-tinting returned to normal a moment later, the only thing wrong with the canopy was that the exterior was so smeared with bug guts, that she could not find the nose of her own starfighter.

Mara immediately felt Luke reaching out to her in concern. She assured him she was fine, then switched to instrument flying and was relieved to discover she was telling the truth.

“Nine, can you do anything to clear the canopy?”

The droid promised that he would activate the defogger.

“Don’t you dare!” Mara ordered. “That stuff is disgusting enough without having it run all over!”

Mara checked the tactical display and saw that only three Gatherers remained, two on Luke’s side of the asteroid and one on hers. She swung her StealthX after the nearest target, trusting the Force to guide her safely around the faint streaks of color that were flashing past her blurry canopy. Her astromech droid posted a polite but urgent message on the display, reminding her that they had lost their shields.

“Relax, Nine,” Mara said. “I never take more than one hit per sortie.”

The droid chirped doubtfully, then asked if she usually flew blind.

“I’m not blind,” Mara reminded him. “I have the For-“

Nine interrupted her with a shrill whistle, reporting that they were receiving a desperate message from the Nickel One hive mother.

“Then put it on the comm speaker,” Mara ordered.

Nine replied that the message was not coming in over standard comm channels. Instead, it was being transmitted via radio frequencies that the Verpine used to communicate organically.

“Fine. What’s she saying?”

A message appeared on Mara’s display. HELP! THE HEART-CHAMBER IS UNDER ATTACK BY OLD ONES AND VERPINE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS!

“Old Ones?” Mara asked.

Nine believed the hive mother was referring to Killiks.

“Tell her to lock herself in,” Mara said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Almost instantly, a question appeared on her display.

WHO?

“Just tell her we’re Jedi,” Mara replied. “The ones who have been attacking the convoy.”

The droid tweeted an acknowledgment, and the hive mother’s reply appeared on the display half a second later. THE HIVE ASKS THAT THE UNSEEN JEDI HURRY. THE MEMBROSIA-TRAITORS HAVE ALREADY INVITED THE OLD ONES INTO THE HEART-CHAMBER, AND THE MALES-WHODIE-FOR-THE-HIVE-MOTHER ARE ALREADY IN BATTLE.