Jaina’s wrists flicked three times, intercepting and redirecting three maser beams in less than a second before she splashed feet-first into the stream. The sniper attack stopped as abruptly as it had started, and suddenly it sounded as though a tremendous wind were blowing through the jungle, rustling leaves that no longer hung on the trees. Jaina had to listen a moment before she realized that she was hearing the clicking of millions of stick-thin legs.
The Great Swarm was on the march.
“Wait!” Jaina turned to find Wuluw.
The insect was floating down the stream, pressed flat to the water with a huge dent in the chitin where the electrobinoculars had bounced off her delicate thorax.
“No!” Jaina used the Force to draw the wounded insect back to her, then rubbed a forearm along her antennae. “We’re sorry!”
Wuluw tried to thrum something and succeeded only in pumping a long gush of insect gore into the water.
“Don’t try to talk.” Jaina started back upstream. The rustling had become a murmur now, and she could see the first Rekkers springing through the trees toward her. “We’ll get you some help, but first you have to stop the Swarm. Attacking now is a terrible mistake!”
Wuluw managed a barely audible mandible tap, and the murmur of the Swarm’s advance rose to a drone. “I have a plan!” Jaina cried. “A good one.”
All six of Wuluw’s limbs stiffened and began to tremble, and a milky tint appeared deep inside her eyes.
“Hold on, Wuluw-tell the others we’re going to dam the river.” Jaina began to pour Force energy into the insect, trying to keep her alive long enough to complete the message. “Tell them we’re going to flood the Chiss off those islands!”
SEVENTEEN
The pearlescent blur of hyperspace had barely winked back into the star-sparkled velvet of normal space before the Falcon’s proximity alarms began to scream. Han hit the reset so he could think, and the alarms screamed again.
“What the blazes?” Han demanded. There was nothing ahead but the swirling disk of a cloud-swaddled planet that he assumed to be Tenupe, and it was still no larger than his fist-far too distant to have triggered the first proximity alarm, much less a repeat. “What’s out there?”
“Working on it!” Leia’s hands were flying over the control board, adjusting static filters and signal enhancers. “These sensors
don’t calibrate themselves.”
“Okay, take it easy,” Han said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
He hit the reset again, and again the alarms reactivated themselves. The repeats could mean that more hazards were appearing, or that the original hazard was drawing rapidly closer. Seeing nothing between them and the planet, he began to accelerate. Tenupe swelled rapidly to the size of a Bith’s head, and the azure blots of hundreds of cloud-free inland seas began to mottle its creamy disk.
“Is it wise to accelerate while we’re sensor-blind?” Juun asked from the navigator’s station. At Luke’s request, Pellaeon had arranged for him and Tarfang to serve as the Solos’ guides to Tenupe. “We still don’t know where-“
“You see something in front of us?” Han interrupted.
“Only Tenupe.”
“Same here.” Han reset the alarms, then cursed as they instantly reactivated. “So whatever keeps triggering those alarms is coming at us.”
“And we are running?” Saba was incredulous. “We do not even know from what!”
“Think of it as getting out of the way,” Han replied. He activated the intercom so he could speak to the Noghri. “Get into the cannon turrets and let me know if you see anything suspicious.”
Tenupe had swollen to the size of a bantha’s head now. Hanging to one side of the planet, Han could see a shadow-pocked lump that might be a small red moon. On the opposite side, a cluster of tiny, wedge-shaped specks were circling above the clouds.
“That doesn’t look good,” Han said. “Leia, how are those sensors-“
Han’s question was interrupted when Meewalh and Cakhmaim announced that there were ion trails closing on the Falcon’s stern from all directions.
“Chisz?” Saba asked.
Tarfang chuttered something sarcastic.
“Tarfang believes so,” C-3P0 translated helpfully. “He points out that Killik fighters still use rocket propulsion.”
“Of all the luck!” Han complained. “The Chiss are already here-and we enter the system in the middle of a patrol!”
A trio of crimson bolts flashed past barely a dozen meters above the canopy. Then a gruff Chiss voice came over the hailing channel.