• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lando drew his blaster pistol and checked the power pack. “How will we find them?”

“If Danni can feel fear and hatred, she’ll be able to spot those who are feeling nothing. Follow my lead, then move through the crowd.” Leia looked at the four hundred assembled refugees and shook her head. “It’s not going to be exacting work, but note those who aren’t giving any fear off. We segregate them. Since we can’t feel the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, they’re going to be the ones we want.”

“I don’t know.” The young woman took a second, then swallowed hard and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Lando nodded. “Let’s go.”

Leia steeled herself, then triggered a series of blaster shots into the air. People reflexively ducked down, and a wave of terror pounded her. Leia looked out over the crowd and set her face in a grim mask. “The Yuuzhan Vong are incoming, and stopping them is going to be harder than we thought. If you have anything you want to say to others here, your last words, you’d better do it now and be quick about it.”

A roiling storm of fear broke over the refugees, with wails and sobs punctuating it like soft thunder. Leia nodded at Danni and Lando, then the three of them began to move through the crowd, gridding it off, searching for those who found nothing to fear in Leia’s announcement.

Jacen’s green blade slashed right and left as he and Anakin attacked the flank of the Yuuzhan Vong thrust driving Luke back. Jacen didn’t care about finesse or skill; he just set about butchering soldiers. What he was doing, he knew, had nothing to do with being a Jedi. Yes, he could feel it when the sparks of life winked out, but the Yuuzhan Vong slave troops felt less like living creatures to him than droids made of flesh and blood. They are alive in the same way plants are. They might once have been individuals, but now they are just puppets, lethal puppets.

Jacen lashed out to his right with the lightsaber, burning a gap in a soldier’s spine. The soldier collapsed at Anakin’s feet. The younger Jedi leapt back, then scythed his blade low, though the legs of a Yuuzhan Vong trooper. That one went down and tripped up two others. Anakin dispatched them with quick thrusts to the backs of their necks, then flicked his left hand in Jacen’s direction.

Beyond Jacen a trooper flew back, as if he’d been hit in the chest with a metric ton of transparisteel. The telekinetic blast cleared a path to Luke’s side. Jacen slipped into it, keeping the gap open, then Anakin joined him. In a line the trio of Jedi fended off the soldiers, cutting them down and pressing them back toward the gap.

As their stand halted the thrust at that gap, Elegos’s shuttle ruddered around and laced an inferno of laser and blaster fire into the column of Yuuzhan Vong soldiery. Jacen raised a hand to shield his eyes as row after row of little reptoids vanished in a brilliant blaze of light. Those Yuuzhan Vong soldiers untouched by the shuttle’s lasers came on, but the Jedi dispatched them easily enough.

Elegos’s action gained the Jedi some breathing room. Luke flicked his comlink on. “Thank you for the save, Senator.”

“My fire was not effective against the larger vehicles, so I employed it where useful.” The Caamasi’s voice filled with gravity. “We are fortunate that the troops cannot shield themselves with voids.”

Anakin laughed. “Are you joking? One good push and one would back into the void of the one behind him, and so on and so on. Pretty soon they’d be all gone.”

Jacen frowned at his brother’s suggestion and would have made a comment, but Luke snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

“What is it?”

“No time to explain, Jacen.” Luke looked up at the shuttle. “Senator, I need a ride.”

The shuttle’s landing ramp descended, and Elegos brought the ship down to hover about five meters above the ground. Luke leapt up and quickly ran into the shuttle. It pulled up and headed out away from the compound.

Anakin blinked. “What did I say?”

Jacen shook his head and tightened his grip on his lightsaber. “I don’t know, but I hope it works.” He nodded toward