Finally, only a narrow spit of jungle floor separated Jaina from the great river. The Chiss islands lay on the other side of a fast-moving channel, beneath the still-constant hail of boulders and burnballs from the clacking catapults and booming trebuchets of the Killiks. At this distance, Jaina could barely make out the barricade of felled trees that the enemy had erected at the edge of the river. The island was too flat and smoke-swaddled to see the terrain beyond the breastworks, but Jaina knew the Chiss well enough to be certain that there would be a second and a third line of defense beyond the first-probably even a fourth.
Still being careful not to show her head above the streambank, Jaina brought the electrobinoculars to her eyes and found a mass of red eyes and blue faces peering out from between the mogo logs, scanning her side of the river for any hint of Killik activity. Here and there protruded the long barrel of a sniper rifle, surmounted by the dark rod of a sighting sensor. She continued to study the breastworks, wondering if Jag was out there somewhere, reaching out to see if she could sense his presence. She was not sure why she cared.
Wherever he was, Jagged Fel certainly hated Jaina for taking the Colony’s side in this war-and for starting it in the first place. And truthfully, she could hardly blame him. Had he led a team of Chiss commandos against the Galactic Alliance, she would undoubtedly have hated him. That’s how humans-and Chiss-were. Only Killiks fought without hate.
Jaina continued to study the Chiss defenses. She was not sure what she hoped to find-maybe someplace where the defensive lines did not have a clear view of the river channel, perhaps a cluster of mogo trunks that could be brought down atop the heads of the defenders. Twice, she thought she spotted weaknesses where the Chiss did not have clear fields of fire. They turned out to be traps, one designed to channel the attackers into a large expanse of quicksand, the other protected by the few pieces of field artillery that the Chiss had managed to salvage during their retreat.
Jaina’s gaze reached the end of the first island. She turned her attention to the near riverbank, this time looking for a natural place to launch a crossing-then felt somebody looking back at her.
“Cover!” Jaina warned.
She pulled the electrobinoculars away from her face and dropped down behind the streambank-then saw a pair of bright flashes explode into the slope in front of her. The attack was coming from behind her.
Jaina dropped underwater. Her ears filled with a fiery gurgling as blaster flashes lit the muddy stream around her, instantly superheating liters of water and sending it skyward in a thin cloud of steam. She pulled herself along the silty creek bed, moving upstream and reaching out in the Force in the direction of the attack.
She felt two presences, both very familiar. Squibs.
Blast it! Couldn’t those two wait until after the war to try killing her?
When Jaina judged she had traveled far enough upstream to be out of the Chiss line of fire, she yanked the lightsaber off her utility belt and rose out of the water. The air around her immediately erupted into a storm of flashing and zinging, but she had already activated her lightsaber and brought it up to block. She batted half a dozen bolts aside, several times narrowly escaping injury when her blade had to be in two places at the same time.
After a couple of moments of frantic parrying, Jaina finally sorted out the source of the attacks and realized the Squibs had her in a crossfire. She began to redirect their bolts toward each other, forcing them to worry about their own cover as well as attacking her, and it was not long before she found the chance to extend a hand and Force-jerk one of her attackers out of his tree.
The Squib’s alarmed squeal was followed by a soft thud-then by a shrieking storm of laser beams as the Chiss sharpshooters reacted to the disturbance in the manner of most soldiers under stress: by shooting at it. Fortunately for the Squib, their angle was poor and he was far enough from the river to be well protected by the trees, but the attacks did at least force him to keep his head down.
Jaina used the Force to wrench his blaster away, then flung it into the jungle and turned her attention to the second Squib. She batted five or six blaster bolts straight back into the tree root behind which he was hiding, and when a big chunk of wood flew skyward, he finally stopped firing. Then she Force-jerked him out of his cover and pulled him straight to her-not minding that the Chiss sharpshooters did their best to pick him off as he passed between trees.
As the Squib approached-it was Longnose-he tossed his repeating blaster aside and reached for a thermal detonator hanging from his utility harness. Jaina flicked her fingers, and the silver orb sailed away before he had a chance to arm it.