Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [96]
This time, Luke was ready for it. He’d had a moment to center his thoughts and, most important, emotions. He was ready with his memories of Tahiri, all the time’s he’d been delighted as she’d made another gain in her study of the Force, all the hopes he’d had for her future and happiness. He could hold up like a shield his memory of her love for his nephew Anakin Solo. All those memories blunted Nyax’s attack, shattered its speartip.
Luke reached for Mara again and found her similarly armored, but with logic, not emotion. Running through her mind was a cold calculation of allies and opponents, actions and consequences. Uppermost in it was a realization that Nyax could rule any individual, and out of individuals whole galaxies were made.
But deep beneath the analysis was a stream of emotion, an awareness of their son Ben, of what he would be if Nyax could find him and shape him.
Luke came up on shaky legs, felt Mara doing the same. And though Nyax was not letting up on the pain-energy, it affected Luke less now. He could feel Tahiri’s part in that, the way she opened herself to the pain, was not daunted by it, was not shut down by it.
They faced Nyax as a single creature. The part of them that was Mara rejected the false truths Nyax tried to impose upon them. The part of them that was Luke rejected the false hatreds, the lying enmities. The part that was Tahiri made the pain part of what they were, a fuel for their strength.
Nyax looked between them, and a flicker of distress, a childlike expression of fear, crossed his features.
Then all four of them felt the wall break. Whatever was beyond it roared forth to sweep them away.
Elsewhere
Above Borleias, on a routine surveillance sweep in her X-wing, Jaina Solo was jolted out of her detachment by a surge in the Force. She could feel Luke and Mara in the surge. She knew they were in danger. And she could see Kyp’s X-wing wobble as he, too, was hit by the sensation.
Thousands of light-years away from Borleias, Ganner Rhysode, Jedi Knight, kept a firm hand on the controls of his rickety transport as he closed the last few meters to dock with the space station ahead. But his arms spasmed as the Force seemed to howl at him. His transport jerked forward, hitting the docking bay at a greater velocity than he intended. As he shook his head to clear it, he heard the dockmaster over his comlink: “Idiot.”
In an artificial environment dome, part of an evergrowing station hidden away in the Maw, Valin Horn, Jedi apprentice, jerked awake so violently that he fell from his narrow couch. He sat up, trying to remember what nightmare had caused this reaction, but he couldn’t. Then he heard the wailing of the infant Ben Skywalker from two compartments down, the voice of an adult trying to soothe him, the voices of other Jedi trainees as they compared details of what they’d just felt.
Coruscant
Rushing up a flight of emergency stairs, Bhindi ahead of her, Elassar behind, Danni stumbled as the sensation hit her. She crashed down atop the steps, bruising shin and ribs, and lay there gasping.
Elassar knelt beside her. “Don’t move. Let me look.”
“I’m not hurt.” She ignored the Devaronian and heaved herself upright. She knew she had to look as rattled as she felt. “Something happened. Something just … got loose.”
FIFTEEN
Luke swam out of a sea of—not pain, not shock, but something between exultation and complete confusion. His back was against a mound of rubble, and his wife and the girl were beside him. He couldn’t remember their names, or his own.
Red fluid dripped down upon his shoulder. He craned his neck to look up and saw a body on the mound above him, that of a human man. Its right arm was missing and blood poured down the rubble below, one stream of it pooling and then dripping onto Luke.
Luke. That was it, Luke. And Mara and Tahiri. And the Yuuzhan Vong, and Nyax. Luke rose, saw his lightsaber a few meters away, and yanked it to him with a casual display of the Force. It struck his palm with far more energy than he’d intended, and he dropped it again.
Then he saw