Traitor - Matthew Stover (iphone ebook reader .txt) 📗

the surviving Jedi not to slay him on sight. He still knew many secrets, valuable secrets …

Vergere interrupted his speculation. “Executor, let me go to him.”

“Absolutely not. I can’t have you running around in the middle of the tizo’pil Yun’tchilat, you foolish creature. Don’t you remember that our Solo Project is secret? How secret will it be after you run through the Nursery trying to save his useless skin?”

“Hardly useless, Executor. As I said before, his education has proceeded very well indeed. Though I admit it could be going better right now.”

“Could be better?” Nom Anor flicked his wrist at the viewspider’s optical sac, where the dim silhouette of Jacen Solo armed himself. “He has learned nothing! He is about to throw his life away in a futile battle. Over mere slaves! He is as weak as any other Jedi—weaker!”

“He is not a Jedi,” Vergere replied imperturbably. “And it is not his life that concerns me.”

“Are you mad?” Nom Anor stomped furiously around the viewspider, which danced nervously to keep its delicate feet out from under the executor’s human-style boots. “He cannot possibly win such a battle! How can he expect to fight two squads? Even if he goes back to hiding in the grove—”

“Winning,” Vergere said, her crest fanning a solemn blasterbore gray, “is not the same as fighting. Watch.”

The shadow suddenly vanished, and the image within the optical sac shifted and flickered liquidly as the viewspider sought new visual sources. “What’s happening?” Nom Anor demanded uselessly. “Does he flee? Is he running away like the broken Jedi brat he has always been?”

“Executor.” Her fingers wrapped his elbow, astonishingly strong. “Jacen Solo no longer has the Force, but that is not his only weapon. He is a warrior born: eldest son and heir to a long line of a warriors. He has trained since birth in the combat arts. He has been tested and tried, bloodied in battle, and he—”

“He’s nothing but a boy.” Nom Anor stared at her. “Have you lost your wits? I know this boy. Humans do not honor warrior lineage. His means nothing. He is nothing.”

Vergere spoke without the faintest hint of irony. “I tell you this: though neither he nor they yet know it, he is the greatest of all the Jedi. Jacen Solo is the living Jedi dream. Even without the Force, he is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. You must let me go to him. He must be stopped.”

“Stopped from what? Soiling his robeskin as he runs away?”

“Stopped from destroying the tizo’pil Yun’tchilat. Stopped, very likely, from destroying the seedship itself.”

Nom Anor’s mouth came open, but from it came only a fading hiss. The calm certainty in Vergere’s eye silenced him as effectively as a punch in the throat. He couldn’t seem to get his breath. “Destroy the ship?” he was finally able to gasp.

“Don’t you understand, Executor? He isn’t running away.”

She gestured at the viewspider’s sac, where it had recovered enough image to show a lone shape sprinting headlong to meet the oncoming thunderclouds of warrior squads.

Vergere said, “He’s attacking.”

FIVE

SEEDFALL

Jacen Solo sprints into battle.

As he runs, he makes an image in his mind. The amphistaff he carries matches itself to this image, coiling more than half its length around his forearm. An internal pulse from its linked chain of power glands generates an energy field that rigidifies its semicrystalline cell structure, locking it in that form: a meter of it extends from his right fist, tipped with a double-handspan blade. The same field that rigidifies the amphistaff extends a fractional millimeter beyond the blade, giving it an edge no thicker than an atomic diameter.

So it is that when one of the unarmed warriors springs to bar Jacen’s path, hands wide to grapple, the blade passes with only a whisper of resistance through flesh and bone. One arm spirals lazily through the air, showering droplets of blood; one leg topples sideways, twitching in the grass. Jacen does not even break stride.

The remaining two unarmored warriors decide they should leave him to their better-equipped comrades.

Thud bugs hum through the air around him, but the eyespots of the amphistaffs wrapped around Jacen’s body are infrared—and motion-sensitive; he is able to integrate their empathic reactions into a full-surround field of perception that is not dissimilar to the Force itself—and he has trained for years to avoid weapons that he can only barely perceive. The greensward blossoms with scarlet detonations as he dodges, dives and rolls, comes to his feet, and keeps running.

Dozens more thud bugs curve toward him, homing like concussion missiles as he sprints straight at the oncoming squads of heavily armed warriors. The nearest warrior thrusts his amphistaff at Jacen like a force pike. Jacen dives beneath its point, rolling forward on his shoulder, stabbing upward; his blade enters the warrior’s body at the joining of pelvis and thigh. The pursuing thud bugs denotate massively, scattering warriors like toy soldiers swiped away by the invisible hand of a giant child as Jacen’s momentum completes the roll, bringing him to one knee and driving the blade upward through the warrior’s groin and entrails and chest.

Only energy fields like its own can withstand the amphistaff’s edge; the shells of vonduun crabs are intricately structured crystal, reinforced by a field generated by power glands very similar to those of the amphistaff itself. But that field protects only the shell; beneath their shells, vonduun crabs are soft, and when Jacen’s blade slices through the crab’s field-nerve cable from the inside, the armor might as well be made of bantha butter.

A multiple blast bug detonation slaps the warrior forward, and Jacen’s blade shears through spine and armor alike to burst from the warrior’s back in a fountain of gore—and slices as well through the warrior’s blast bug bandolier. As Jacen rolls backward with the concussion and kicks free of the shuddering corpse, he grabs the severed bandolier. An instant later, he is up again, running, staggering, stumbling, deafened and half stunned by the explosions.