Saba was reacting a little differently. She was creeping along the vine-swaddled mogo branches with all the stealth of a hungry rapard, barely stirring the thick foliage except when she suddenly fell on some hissing rodent or popped out of hiding to s.n.a.t.c.h a pa.s.sing buzzbird.
Leia might have been bothered by the trail of death that her Master"s predatory instinct was laying behind them had she not felt like half the jungle was trying to eat her. Through the Force, she could sense everything from tiny bloodbats to packs of Ewok-sized spiders-all of them on the hunt, stalking her through the canopy, watching and waiting for an opportunity to attack.
The prevalence of predators made Leia worry about Jaina and Zekk, who had gone down in their crippled StealthXs. She could feel them somewhere out there in this same ravening jungle, badly battered, but still alive, together, and apparently holed up in a safe place. They actually seemed more worried about Leia than she was about them, and they were pouring rea.s.surance into the Force, encouraging Leia and Saba to deal with the parasite bombs first and them second.
That was easier said than done, of course. Han was doing his best to draw the enemy out of the area by flying top cover over a different part of the jungle, but it would not be long before the Chiss realized it was a ruse. Their sensor sweeps would eventually confirm that there was no metal-and therefore no bomb-in the area Han was protecting.
The soft beeps coming from Leia"s scanner finally fused into a single long whine. She checked the display and saw that the metal signature she had been following for the last half hour was in the center of the small screen, indicating she was now on top of the source. She stopped and crouched down on the mossy mogo branch, her lightsaber in hand in case one of the predators stalking her decided to try its luck.
"Master Sebatyne," she called. "Perhaps you could tear yourself away from your fun?"
Saba popped out of a nearby bough, her mouth ringed by half a dozen b.l.o.o.d.y feathers.
"Do not be disapproving, Jedi Solo," she said. "This one can eat and search at the zame time. Who found Alema Rar"z StealthX?"
"You did, Master," Leia said.
Saba had found the starfighter hidden high in a mogo tree, camouflaged as a giant curtain of beard-moss and suspended nose-down with its rear landing struts carefully hung over a thick branch. They a.s.sumed that the Twi"lek was doing the same thing they were-trying to destroy the parasite bombs before the Chiss arrived to recover them-but it was not a task that either Master or student wished to entrust to someone else, especially not a Dark Nest Joiner.
"Have you checked your scanner recently?" Leia asked.
"Of course." Saba sneaked a look toward her utility belt, and her dorsal crest rose in surprise. She grinned sheepishly, then said, "This one was merely giving her student a chance to find the bombs first."
Allowing Leia no chance to challenge the statement, Saba leaned out of her hiding place and peered down into the jungle-then sissed in frustration. Leia clipped the scanner to her utility belt, then grabbed hold of an offshoot and leaned away from her own branch until she could see what Saba had found.
The defoliator"s wing lay about twenty meters below, bent backward over a mogo branch. Both weapon mountings were empty, and the bombs were nowhere in sight.
"Bloah!" Leia yelled.
Her outburst sent a troop of long-armed monkey-lizards swinging away through the trees, screeching and hissing in alarm. Saba watched them go with a hungry leer, her long tongue flickering between her pebbly lips.
"Focus, Master," Leia urged. She pulled her scanner off her utility belt, then programmed it to ignore the wing and turned in a slow circle. She was about halfway around when the scanner began to beep again, and a contact-blip appeared at the top of the screen.
"Found something!" Leia reported.
"This one, too," Saba answered.
Leia glanced over her shoulder and saw Saba staring in the opposite direction.
"Of course-it would have been too much to ask that they fall together," Leia complained. "We"ll have to split up."
"It"z okay, Jedi Solo," Saba said. "This one is not afraid."
Sissing with laughter, Saba turned and Force-jumped down to an adjacent branch. Leia watched the Barabel vanish into the foliage, worried that perhaps she was absorbing more than Jedi wisdom from her Master. She actually understood the joke.
Leia took a bearing to her own contact, then selected a safe-looking branch to serve as her intermediate landing point and Force-leapt into the rain. She would much rather have used a repulsor pack, but Saba disdained technological "crutches" when the Force would do instead.
On the way down, a cold shiver of danger sense raced along Leia"s spine, and she felt something hungry descending on her from above. The hiss of air rushing over wing scales began to rise behind her, and she rolled into a Force flip and ignited her lightsaber, bringing the blade up through the body of something huge, green, and musty smelling.
The snake-bird fell away in two pieces. Then Leia sensed her target branch coming up behind her-fast. She reached out to it in the Force and drew herself over to it, landing backward in the wet moss and nearly slipping off the branch.
Leia"s danger sense continued to ripple.
She could hear a large river purling through the jungle somewhere far below, but she had no sense of where this new predator was hiding. She turned in a slow circle. When she saw nothing but clouds of emerald foliage, she reached out in the Force, but she felt only the same hunters as before. This danger was something different-something that could hide itself in the Force.
Leia stilled herself and began to search for an empty place in the gauzy fog of the living Force on Tenupe. It did not take long to find. There was an odd calm where her branch connected to the mogo"s trunk, hidden behind a green curtain of strangle-vines. Still holding her lightsaber in one hand, she drew her blaster and began to fire into the vines. The snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber sounded from inside the ma.s.s of vines, then a blade so blue it was almost black sliced through the foliage and began to bat Leia"s bolts aide. The tangle of vines quickly fell away, revealing a blue-skinned Twi"lek female with an amputated head-tail and one withered arm hanging useless beneath a sagging shoulder. She wore a StealthX flight suit two sizes too small for her slender figure, her front zipper open down to the navel.
Leia stopped firing and touched Saba through their battle-meld, trying to let her knew she had found something as important as the bombs. "Alema Rar. I should have known you"d crawl out of a hole around here somewhere."
Alema"s unblinking eyes widened with anger, but she deactivated her lightsaber and bared her teeth in what looked more like an insect"s threat display than a smile.
"Come now, Princess," Alema purred. "We are both here to destroy the bombs. Perhaps we should work together."
The Twi"lek"s voice was so beguiling that Leia found herself thinking that Alema was not really such a bad girl; that anyone who had had such a hard life was ent.i.tled to make a few mistakes along the way. And besides, the suggestion was reasonable. The Dark Nest had even more reason than the Jedi to want those parasite bombs destroyed, and any time she and Alema spent fighting each other was time that would bring the Chiss closer to recovering them.
Then an image of Jaina and Zekk diving for the clouds in their battered StealthXs flashed through Leia"s mind, and an icy knot of danger sense formed at the base of her skull. This was how Alema Rar-and probably the whole Dark Nest-worked, by offering the promise of something pleasant or reasonable to secure the target"s cooperation. But in the end, it was the target who suffered-who played the decoy, or who had to stay and fight while the Twi"lek and the Dark Nest simply faded into the night.
"Thanks, but I"ll pa.s.s," Leia said. "I"ve seen your kind of cooperation. It nearly got my daughter killed."
Alema gave a couple of throat-clicks, then said, "It was necessary for the good of the Colony. Jaina and Zekk understood that."
"They understand that you ran out on them," Leia countered. Now that she was alert to it, she could feel the Twi"lek trying to use the Force against her, to dampen her negative thoughts and bolster the positive ones. Fortunately, there weren"t many positive ones. "And so do I."
"We had to destroy the bombs." Alema put a little urgency in her voice-and complemented it by pushing harder with the Force. "We still have to destroy the bombs."
"Okay," Leia said, deciding to switch tactics. She reached out in the Force, trying to make her own voice sound beguiling and reasonable. "I"ve never been one to hold a grudge. If you want to work together, Alema, just pa.s.s over your lightsaber and other weapons."
"Really?" Alema started to unbuckle her utility belt-then blinked both eyes in astonishment and let out a jagged little throat-rattle. "Nice try, Princess-but we don"t think so."
"Good." Leia smiled, looking forward to the surprise she was about to visit upon the Twi"lek. "I was hoping you"d say that."
Leia charged, firing her blaster pistol with one hand and activating her lightsaber with the other. There was no question of giving Alema a chance to escape later by working with her now-even if it meant letting the Chiss recover the bomb. Eliminating the Dark Nest was the core of Luke"s plan, and the Twi"lek was a big part of that nest.
Alema rushed to meet the attack, igniting her own lightsaber, wielding it with her one good arm and easily deflecting the stream of bolts. They met at a large burl where a smaller limb converged with its parent, their lightsabers coming together in a sizzle of sparks and color.
Leia jolted Alema with a one-handed power attack that hammered the Twi"lek"s block down easily, then whipped her blade around in a buzzing backslash at a pulsing span of blue undefended throat. Alema dropped to her haunches and somehow snap-kicked from that impossible position, and Leia"s middle exploded into pain.
The Princess exhaled hard, forcing the pain out, and did not yield a centimeter. She swept her blade down to attack the extended leg, but Alema had already drawn her foot back, and she ended up blocking the Twi"lek"s blade as it came sizzling in at her knees.
Leia rolled her wrist and sent Alema"s lightsaber flying, then brought her blaster pistol around and allowed herself a small smirk as she opened fire.
It was too soon to gloat.
Alema was already twisting away and launching herself backward in the air, her handed extended to recall her falling lightsaber. A pair of bolts burned past the Twi"lek"s legs-so close that her flight suit began to smoke-but she rolled into an evasive Force tumble and landed unscathed on the adjacent branch ... and slipped. She inhaled sharply and started to fall, then hooked the back of her knee over the branch and caught herself.
Leia fired at the knee, but Alema was already swinging around, facing her, deep blue lightsaber in hand, batting blaster bolts straight back at her. Leia stopped firing. The Twi"lek slipped back into the branch moss in a seated position, then brought her leg up and stretched it along the branch, staring at her boot.
Leia"s earlier slash had not missed after all. The front half of Alema"s boot was missing-along with half her foot. The Twi"lek turned toward Leia, her unblinking eyes wide in astonishment and anger, and that was when Leia"s comlink earpiece crackled to life.
"How"s it going down there?" Han asked.
"Busy!" Leia said into her throat mike.
"Any sign of the bombs?" Han pressed.
"Not really."
Leia watched in alarm as Alema rose and peered over the branch behind her-no doubt plotting an escape route.
"Gotta go," Leia said. "I"m sort of in the middle of something."
Determined not to let her prey escape, Leia Force-jumped from her branch toward Alema"s.
The Twi"lek"s withered arm swung up, reaching toward Leia. The princess tucked into an evasive somersault-then felt herself rolling the wrong way as her feet were Force-jerked in the opposite direction. She called on the Force to stop her rotation, but by then the back of her head was thonking into the side of the branch.
The moss was not as thick on the sides of the branches. The sound echoed inside her skull so hard that Leia thought she would never hear anything else. Then she felt her feet whipping down from above and sensed the darkness rising up to swallow hers and she knew she had come to one of those terrible instants when everything depended on willpower and the stubborn desire to live.
Fortunately, Saba had prepared her well for such moments. Leia found her arms lashing out behind her, one elbow hooking over the branch to stop her fall. Everything remained dark, but she knew she had to keep fighting, to keep her enemy . . . whoever that was-she was having trouble remembering . . . at bay.
Leia felt the blaster pistol in one hand and her lightsaber in the other . . . another of Saba"s lessons ringing inside her head, never, never drop your weapon, die with your weapon sssstill in your hand ... and Leia started to fire the blaster, pointing it down the branch where the trouble-who was it again?-seemed to lie.
A familiar voice sounded in her ear. "Hey, that sounds like blasterfire!"
Han.
"Yeah . . . it is." Leia started to recall the situation-a jungle, a Twi"lek, a fight-Alema Rar. "Now be quiet!"
Leia shook her head-big mistake-then whipped her leg up over the branch, still firing. The darkness faded from her eyes, but her blaster bolts were snaking toward their target in slow motion, while the target-a shimmering blue mirage that seemed to have three heads and six arms-was limping toward her behind a lightsaber moving so fast that it seemed to be weaving a shield of solid light.
Then one of the six blue arms moved. Leia"s blaster flew from her own hand and vanished into the billowing greenness of the out-of-focus jungle.
The fight was not going exactly as planned.
Saba always said that planning would be Leia"s downfall; that she planned too much and felt too little. She had also said that a shenhit always saves its deepest bite for last.
Leia pushed off the mossy branch and brought her feet up beneath her. The Princess had never met a shenhit, but Saba usually uttered the saying in sparring practice, right before she drove her student into the deck with a flurry of power strikes. Leia began to advance on her three-headed, six-armed opponent, weaving her blade through the frenzied slash-slice-and-rip of a Barabel rage attack.
To Leia"s astonishment, the three-headed enemy suddenly stopped advancing, then began to retreat.
"Wait! This is silly!" Again, that beguiling voice and that furtive Force-touch, trying to dampen the negative thoughts and bolster the positive ones. Alema pointed her lightsaber over the side of the branch. "The bomb is right down there."
Leia stopped advancing-more to give her eyes a chance to bring her enemy into focus than because she was considering the offer-and glanced down. There did seem to be a big silver blur lying in a bed of green.
"It would be a shame to let the Chiss recover it," Alema said. "Can"t we strike a truce long enough to destroy it-then finish killing each other?"
Leia pretended to consider the offer while her vision finished clearing, then-when Alema"s extra heads and arms disappeared-she shook her own head.
"Let"s do it now."
Leia started forward ... and instantly regretted her decision when the branch bounced and nearly buckled her knees. She noticed it sagging beneath her weight and realized she was farther out on the end than she had perceived in her foggy-headed state. It was a mistake that would cost her dearly. With such unreliable footing, the Princess would be even worse off than her half-footed foe.
Alema was quick to press her advantage, hobbling forward to attack, launching a flurry of strike and Force-push combinations that drove Leia back even farther toward the tip of the bouncing branch. The Princess parried, but her reactions had been slowed by her head blow, and she had to retreat yet another step. She Force-shoved at Alema"s knee, but the nimble Twi"lek-who had spent her youth dancing in the ryll dens of Kala"uun-simply lifted her bad foot and pirouetted forward on the good one, driving Leia back another, even longer step.
The branch sagged so precariously that the Princess had to Force-stick herself in place.
"Hey, those sound like lightsabers!" Han observed over Leia"s earpiece.
"They are!" Leia growled. "Can you just hold on?" Now the branch was bouncing even when the Princess wasn"t moving, and her danger sense was covering her back with goose b.u.mps. Had Alema launched a power attack-even a weak one-Leia"s only choice would have been to drop off the branch and hope she could catch another one with the Force on the way down. Instead, the Twi"lek seemed content merely to hold the Princess in place with defensive swordplay.
Then comprehension finally burned its way through the concussion fog inside Leia"s head. The danger she was sensing had nothing to do with Alema. A predator had landed behind her . . . something large enough to weigh down a limb the size of her thigh.
Alema smiled. "Dinnertime, Princess."
Leia"s blood began to burn with a very Barabel-like rage. She would not die at the hands of some Twi"lek dancing girl-or at the claws of some jungle flunky. She went on the attack, forgetting her slow reactions and foggy head and uneven footing, and let the battle take her-let her lightsaber block and slash and stab of its own accord, let her feet dance back and forth over the bouncing limb.
Alema came at her just as strongly, kicking with her half foot, stretching out for long lightsaber lunges, pushing constantly through the Force-steadily driving Leia back toward the hungry presence that she could now sense coming up behind her.
Then a wisp of hot breath brushed the back of Leia"s neck, and she knew it was time. The Princess tried a throat slash and swung wide, deliberately leaving herself open for a heart thrust. Never having been one to resist temptation, Alema could not help lunging for the kill.
Leia had already flexed her knees and was springing off the sagging branch, bringing her feet up over her head in an open Force flip. She saw the Twi"lek stretched out below her, not quite off balance-but not far from it-her neck craned back as she watched her target fly overhead.
Leia brought her lightsaber down, striking for the head. Alema could only whip her lightsaber up in a desperate block. The blades clashed in a growling shower of sparks and light, then the Princess was swinging down behind her, twisting around to plant one foot between the Twi"lek"s shoulders and send her stumbling toward the s.h.a.ggy ma.s.s that had been creeping up behind Leia.
There was no time to tell what kind of creature the thing was. All Leia saw was something the size of a bantha taking Alema"s sword arm in its jaws. The Twi"lek screamed in pain; then four spiky pedipalps emerged from the side of the creature"s mouth and began to feed her in.
Alema"s legs were still outside, kicking wildly, when Leia felt the thing"s attention fall on her and noticed six beady eyes peering out from beneath the mossy scales that covered its head. Before it could spring, the Princess brought her lightsaber down, cutting the branch away at her feet.
Instead of plummeting toward the jungle floor, the creature swung outward, hanging suspended by a thick, ropy tail that ascended more than ten meters to a branch above. It was even larger than Leia had first imagined, with a long slug-like body that had dozens of tiny feet wriggling on the underside. Alema remained in its mouth, kicking her feet and presumably screaming into its throat. Leia locked her lightsaber blade in the on position, then used the Force to send it spinning through the tail.
The predator-whatever it was-did not open its mouth or roar in pain. It simply plummeted groundward, filling the jungle with a terrific banging and cracking as it crashed through the mogo boughs, then finally splashed into the dark river below.
Leia called her lightsaber back to her hand, and had barely switched it off before Han"s voice came over her earpiece again.
"Leia?"
"Don"t worry, Han," she said. "I"m still here."
"That"s good." Han sounded more impatient than relieved-or even surprised. "But about those bombs .. . you"d better hurry. The Chiss" scanners must have picked something up from that fight you and Saba were having, because you"ve got a bunch of clawcraft headed your way."
"Great." Leia sighed. "Can"t a girl catch her breath?"
Still feeling a little unsteady from her fight-especially the head blow-Leia peered over the side of the branch toward the silver blur she had glimpsed earlier.
The blur was gone, and in place of the bough upon which it had been resting, there was only the jagged stub of a broken limb.
"Bloah!" Leia cursed. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the scanner off her utility belt and found a very weak signal down at ground level, slowly moving away. "It"s in the river!"
A loud sissing sounded behind her, and Leia looked back to see Saba standing near the mogo trunk, studying her own scanner and holding a thermal detonator in her hand.