Jaina leapt up again, eager to blast a hundred Chiss, to make the invaders pay for the deaths of Wuluw and so many others, but apart from her own fading battle cry, the area had fallen suddenly quiet. All that remained of the drop ship was the black smoke streaming out of the pit and a few shards of white-hot metal embedded in fallen mogos. Chiss and Rekkers alike remained tucked down among the tree trunks around her, momentarily too stunned to continue killing, and even the surviving Jooj seemed disoriented, swirling across the ground in rambling swarms of brownish green.
In the distance, Jaina could make out more columns of smoke rising toward the emerald sky. Every few moments, a fresh thud sounded somewhere in the rain, marking the destruction of another drop ship. Each detonation brought the death of thousands of insects, but an entire drop fleet of detonations would not change the battle’s outcome. What the Chiss failed to understand-what they would refuse to understand until it was too late-was that they could not win a war of attrition against the Colony.
A Killik could lay a thousand eggs a month, and within a year, those eggs would be battle-ready nymphs. In two years, the survivors would lay eggs of their own. Kill one Killik, and ten thousand would take its place. Kill ten thousand, and a million would take theirs. If the Chiss wanted to survive this war, they had only one choice: withdraw to their own borders and sue for peace. It was that simple.
After a moment, the Jooj started to find their way into the fallen trees the enemy was using for cover. Chiss soldiers began to leap out of hiding, screaming and ripping their armor off, slapping and even shooting at the thumbnail-sized insects that had slipped past their defenses. Jaina understood their panic. The Jooj were not attacking so much as feeding, injecting their prey with a flesh-dissolving enzyme and sucking the liquefied flesh back into their mouths. Supposedly, victims felt as if they were being burned alive.
The surviving Rekkers began to take advantage of the enemy’s panic, pounding them with shatter gun pellets the moment they showed themselves. Other Chiss returned fire, and soon the battle was in full swing again. Jaina stretched into the Force and poured blasterfire at soldiers she could sense but did not see. The sharp phoots of insecticide grenades began to detonate all around her, and she felt Killiks dying slow, anguished deaths as their respiratory spiracles swelled shut.
Finally, Killik reinforcements began to pour out of the smoking pit again, the Rekkers springing into view with their weapons blazing, the Jooj scuttling over edges and spreading outward in all directions. The Chiss, disciplined even when it was clear they had no chance of survival, responded with a desperate assault, hurling vape charges and insecticide grenades into the hole in a futile effort to turn back the Killik tide.
Jaina felt an enemy presence behind her and turned to find a trio of Chiss soldiers leaping over a mogo trunk. Their charric rifles were already swinging in her direction. She swept her hand across her body, using the Force to redirect their aim. Maser beams sprayed harmlessly past, filling the air with smoke, splinters, and heat.
The leader was on Jaina instantly, his red eyes shining with hatred behind his helmet as he clubbed at her head with his rifle butt. She ducked, using the Force to pull him over her back and send him crashing into the trunk behind her.
The other two Chiss arrived a step later, one bringing an armored knee up at her face. Jaina blocked with her blaster, at the same time squeezing the trigger and pumping fire into the stomach armor of her other attacker. The bolts ricocheted away and sent the soldier stumbling hack, but not before he slammed the barrel of his own weapon down on the back of her head.
Jaina found herself kneeling on the ground, her vision narrowing, her hands empty, and the deafening crack of the blow still echoing inside her skull. She tried to stand and felt the strength drain from her body.
No!
Zekk touched her through their battle-meld, pouring strength into her through the Force, urging her to stay conscious.
Jaina fell flat to the ground-then unhooked her lightsaber and activated the blade as she rolled away, slicing both soldiers at the knees. They screamed and crashed down behind her. She felt her blade move and recoil as a maser beam crackled into it. Her vision cleared, and she found herself facing the first Chiss who had attacked her.
She deflected the next shot back into his helmet visor, sending him tumbling backward over a mogo trunk. His body lay still and silent, the small plume of smoke that rose from it stinking of charred flesh.
Jaina spun on a knee and found the other two Chiss lying on their bellies in front of her, groaning in pain as they struggled to prop themselves on their elbows and open fire. She used the Force to rip their weapons from their hands, then stood and raised her lightsaber to finish them off.