Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [37]
Two men appeared on the rocky outcropping toward which the Jedi ran. Each of them bore a blaster carbine and started triggering off random shots, scattering them across the most direct route to the caves. More of the creatures moved away from the shots, letting Corran and Ganner come in fast.
Chests heaving, they reached the rocks. Corran extinguished his lightsaber and bent over to catch his breath. He glanced sidelong at one of his saviors. “Thanks for the help.”
The young man nodded, then raised the carbine’s muzzle as an older woman emerged from the mouth of a cave. Thickly built, and with dark gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, the woman had a hard look in her cobalt eyes that indicated she brooked no nonsense by those associated with her. For a half second she reminded him of his father-in-law, Booster Terrik, then she scowled and he realized he probably wasn’t going to get along with her even that well.
Posting her fists on her hips, she shook her head. “Jedi. I should have known.”
Ganner gave her a hard stare. “What do you mean?”
She lifted her chin to indicate the dunes. “Only fools or Jedi would cross a slashrat killing field. You’ve got lightsabers. That makes you Jedi.” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re not also fools.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jacen Solo felt turmoil gathering in him like the roiling clouds down on Belkadan. He knew part of it was simply impatience. He and Luke Skywalker had entered the star system out toward the fringe and R2-D2 had plotted a simple course to Belkadan. It was designed to make them look like a piece of debris being drawn into Belkadan’s atmosphere by gravity. To augment the deception, they shut down the engines and most sources of power, leaving the small ship a bit cold and decidedly dark.
He sat alone on the bridge, watching the stars slide past as Belkadan grew ever closer. Studying the planetary profile from Luke and Mara’s previous visit, and supplementing it from the ExGal-4 survey of the planet, had prepared Jacen for a yellow-green ball with an atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide and methane, but new readings indicated the atmosphere had returned to near normal for Belkadan. The carbon dioxide level remained a bit elevated, and that contributed to it being warmer than archival data indicated it should have been, but not unpleasantly so.
So says Uncle Luke, but he grew up on Tatooine.
Part of Jacen understood exactly what had happened to Belkadan. The Yuuzhan Vong had released some sort of biological agent that had radically altered the planet’s ecology, and apparently had something else in place to restore it again to near normal. Jacen was well aware of other examples of a population managing to alter a world’s climate and ecology to suit them, so the Yuuzhan Vong’s action wasn’t unprecedented.
What was stunning was the speed with which they accomplished the changes. Just over two months had passed since Yomin Carr had destroyed the ExGal facility here, and already Belkadan was back to normal. Jacen allowed that the readings his uncle and aunt had taken from before might have been artificially high because of local concentrations of gases, but he knew that to be a rationalization and didn’t believe it. He wanted to, however.
The reason for wanting to believe it touched on his turmoil. He was a Jedi Knight, schooled and skilled in the ways of the Force, yet when he reached out and touched Belkadan, he didn’t sense anything that was terribly wrong. The world fairly pulsed with life, and none of it was malignant.
That latter fact bothered him because he’d seen the Yuuzhan Vong. He’d listened to Danni’s stories of what they’d done to her and Miko. There was no doubt in his mind, no doubt whatsoever, that the Yuuzhan Vong were evil. Such evil should be radiating off that planet like light from a glow panel.
The fact that the Yuuzhan Vong’s evil didn’t register through