[Dark Nest] - 3(64)

Luke’s face showed his astonishment. “Is that what this was about?”

“I might be the better choice,” Jacen said. “I don’t have any doubts about this plan-or anything else, for that matter.”

Luke stood, a smile of relief spreading across his face, and clapped Jacen on the shoulder.

“Jacen, you are a good Jedi,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.” Now Jacen was really confused. “Does that mean you agree with me?”

“Not at all-you’re mistaking fairness for doubt,” Luke said. He motioned R2-D2 to follow, then pulled Jacen toward the door. “I am going to kill Lomi Plo.”





SIXTEEN


The Chiss survivors had withdrawn to a chain of islands in the great river, a defensible position but not an impregnable one. For days, the defoliated jungle had been reverberating with the crashing of the Colony’s field artillery. The trebuchets were flinging rough-edged boulders, the catapults hurling waxes filled with hanpat incendiary. Every now and then, the Killiks even sealed a few thousand of their smaller fellows into a flight of wax balls and cast them onto one of the islands.

Nothing shook the Chiss. They remained hunkered down behind their breastworks, smothering the flames, tending to the wounded, picking off any Killik foolish enough to show itself outside the soilworks that shielded the field artillery. The Chiss still numbered nearly a hundred thousand, more than enough to prevent an assault across the river’s swift current. After so many weeks of constant, raging battle, even the Colony was beginning to run low on soldiers, and Jaina knew that any attempt to seize the islands would end in the destruction of her army.

But a Chiss relief force might be arriving at any time, and UnuThul was growing impatient. He remained out of mind-touch with the ground forces and did not understand what was preventing the final push. His Will had become a constant dark pressure inside Jaina’s breast, urging her to press the attack and force the enemy’s hand. Soon, she feared, he would grow weary of waiting for her plan to work and simply exert his Will over the Killiks. She needed to find a way to dislodge the Chiss now.

Jaina slipped a few meters down the muddy embankment, then spun around so she was facing the trebuchet it protected. Several dozen meter-tall Sotatos Killiks were crewing the piece, working the windlass with such coordination that the firing arm looked as though it were being retracted by a power winch. The weapon was being supplied with boulders by a long line of Mollom, who were quarrying the stones from a rare outcropping of stone, then carrying them two kilometers and loading them directly into the trebuchets. Despite being from two different nests, the two groups were so well coordinated that the trebuchet never sat idle, and no Mollom ever had to stand waiting to load a boulder.

Jaina’s fragile Wuluw communications assistant joined her when she reached the bottom of the embankment.

“Rubbur bu uubu,” she reported. “Urr buur rrububu.”

“Tell Rekker to unmass,” Jaina ordered. “Even if they can jump over to the islands, now is no time for a leap-charge. We can’t get anyone there to support and exploit.”

“Bur u buuur rrub,” Wuluw objected.

“I am doing something!” Jaina snapped. “These aren’t Imperials we’re fighting, they’re Chiss! They’re not going to fall apart just because we throw a few million bugs at them!”

A sudden silence fell over the jungle, and Jaina realized that every Killik in sight had turned to stare at her.

“Blast it!” Jaina shook her head at the temperamental insect ego. “Don’t be so touchy-we’re fighting a war!”

She went into the jungle behind the trebuchet, then slid down a muddy bank into a shallow stream beside the emplacement. Wuluw followed behind her, landing on all six limbs and never breaking the surface of the water.

“Ruburu ubu?”

Jaina started downstream, circling back around the trebuchet toward the Chiss islands. “Doing something.”

An approving drone arose in the jungle, and Wuluw skated along on the surface of the stream beside her.

“Ubu?”

“Don’t know yet,” Jaina answered. “But it’ll be good.”

As Jaina waded through the water, she was careful to keep her eyes level with the terrain next to the stream, her gaze always turned in the direction of the islands. The jungle floor was piled high with shriveled foliage and splintered mogo wood. Thousands of dead Killiks-perhaps tens of thousands-lay in the detritus, sometimes in twisted pieces and sometimes with their thin limbs reaching toward the sky, always stinking in the jungle heat, always with their insides spilling out through a huge burn hole in their body chitin.