"No, but there must be nests here somewhere. "

"So let's find them, " Ax said, not hiding her impatience. "Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?"

High above, an orange flare blossomed into life, painting strange shadows across both their faces.

"That's what I was waiting for, " Master Satele said. "The troopers have found a way in. Let's go help them. "

Satele Shan moved from a standing start with surprising speed. Ax was taken by surprise, and had to hustle to keep up. They followed the base of the artificial ravine to the next intersection, and then leapt to the top in order to travel in a straight line, leaping from wall to wall over the empty s.p.a.ces below. The maze seemed to stretch forever. Ax was reminded of circuit diagrams or logic flow charts, but this strange landscape lacked any overall order or purpose that she could discern. It was more like the random etchings of a wood-boring insect than anything a sentient might design.

Explosions puffed brightly in the distance, reflected from wispy clouds above. The sound of each retort arrived split seconds later. Master Satele changed direction slightly to head straight for the combat zone. Troopers still dropped from the sky, firing at cannon emplacements mounted over the maze. A pall of smoke hung over everything, denser in some places than others. Ax could smell the hexes' "blood" faintly on the air. It gave her the jitters. She was missing out on the fun.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a dozen hexes following them, leaping on their six legs from wall to wall. She laughed. She wouldn't be missing out for much longer!

Master Satele unexpectedly dropped down into a ravine, and Ax followed. There she stopped dead. The Jedi was standing on the ground with one finger to her lips. She counted down three fingers with her other hand, and then leapt straight up into the air with lightsaber flashing. The first of the pursuing hexes fell in two equal pieces. The rest shrieked and rushed in to fight.

The battle was fast-paced and glorious. On seeing Ax, they immediately fell upon her, but she had the measure of them now. Her Force shield repelled all but the most concentrated fire, and she had more than a mere Padawan and a disinterested Mandalorian to back her up.

The Grand Master possessed prodigious Force powers. A gesture crushed hexes into b.a.l.l.s or blew them apart from the inside. A look stilled them in mid-lunge while Ax rushed in to finish them off. In a matter of moments, the dozen were dealt with and Ax was looking around for more.

"This way, " said Master Satele, guiding her to where the flare had come from.

"Shouldn't we be worried about that?" she asked, pointing at the transport. It was huge in the sky now-or seemed so-and blazed like a false sun.

"Worry all you want, " said Master Satele. "Unless there's something you can do about it, I don't see what good it will do. "

Ax had no good answer to that, so she followed with something approaching obedience. The Grand Master had impressed with more than her telekinetic and telepathic skills. Her speed and decisiveness in combat were unbelievable-but she never once made a sound. Her face was calm, almost serene, as she slashed and hacked through the hexes. There was a tranquillity about her, almost a blissfulness, that spoke of an intimacy with violence Ax had not expected.

To the Sith, violence was an art form. To Master Satele, it seemed like life itself.

That didn't marry at all well with what Ax knew about the Jedi. Weren't they emotionless, self-righteous hypocrites who fought only when it suited their interests? Didn't they disdain pa.s.sion and preach powerlessness to all who would listen and obey?

For the first time, Ax saw that there could be strength in serenity, and steel beneath stillness.

Something exploded in the next ravine across. Before the debris ceased falling. Master Satele had them in the middle of a firefight between a squad of entrenched troopers and no fewer than thirty hexes. The explosion didn't seem to have had much effect on the hexes' operation as a whole. If anything, they fought more determinedly than ever. The a.s.sault teams had to find another way to attack the installation if they were to have any effect on the CI at all.

The platoon's lieutenant, an Imperial, acknowledged their presence with a grateful wave.

"The major's over there, " she said, pointing, when the skirmish was over. "We're picking up vibrations consistent with geothermal drilling. "

"Of course, " Master Satele said. "That's what they're up to. If the CI can tap into the planet's deeper layers, it'll have all the power it needs. "

"To do what?" asked Ax.

"That we don't know, " said the lieutenant. "We've found a shaft two avenues away, but it's heavily defended. We can't get close enough to lay charges. "

"We'll take care of that, " said Ax.

"No need, " said Master Satele. "Tell your troops to fall back. I want the area evacuated as quickly as possible. "

"What?" Ax couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You're giving up?"

"Not at all. Just letting something else do our work for us. "

She pointed at the sky, at the stricken transport bearing rapidly down on them.

"Yes, sir. " The lieutenant began calling orders through her comlink, and backed them up with another round of flares, just in case the message wasn't received. Immediately the troopers began pulling back, firing at the hexes coming in their wake.

"What happens if it doesn't land in exactly the right spot?" Ax asked Master Satele as they leapt across the maze.

"I don't think it needs to, " the Jedi replied. "If the CI is drilling for geothermal energy, those shafts will be tapping right into the magma layers. Unplug the shafts, and what will we get?"

"A volcano, " she said. "Lot of volcanoes. "

"Exactly. We could take out the hexes' brain with one hit. Best we not be standing too close when it happens, eh?"

Again, Ax was struck by Maser Shan's calm. How could she be so sanguine when the island they were standing on might be about to erupt into flows of molten lava? Surely she felt some apprehension about what might happen?

Ax flipped down the visor of her helmet so she could track exactly where the transport was going to hit. It wasn't as close to her as it seemed: the island was two kilometers across, and the impact point was on the northernmost edge. Still, she ran southward with Master Satele as fast as she could, keen to put s.p.a.ce between herself and the inevitable explosion.

While leaping from one artificial canyon wall to the next, another similarity between the maze and computer chips came to her. The walls were barely a meter or two across; they therefore couldn't possibly contain rooms or corridors, or indeed anything of any substance. She hadn't wondered what function they performed in and of themselves. Now, though, jumping through waves of hot, rippling air, it occurred to her that the walls looked like the thin ridges engineers added to some computer components to increase the surface area exposed to air. The greater the area, the greater the cooling effect. Heat sinks, they were called.

What if the island wasn't the hexes' coordinating brain itself, but a ma.s.sive heat sink for the brain?

That would mean the a.s.sault teams were attacking the wrong thing entirely.

She had just enough time to wonder if the falling transport would be any different when it came down in the distance, lighting up the sky with a bright blue flash. The sound came a second later-both the sonic boom of its pa.s.sage through the atmosphere and the t.i.tanic concussion of its impact and detonation. The ground bucked beneath her feet, and she misjudged her landing on the wall of the next ravine. Wobbling for balance, she felt herself gripped by the left arm and pulled down.

Master Satele steadied her on the floor of the ravine as a rush of superheated gases roared overhead. The ground bucked and buckled beneath them. Ax looked down and saw cracks spreading around her feet. That wasn't a good sign.

A growing thunder drowned out the sudden return of comms-not that she could have made anything out from the ma.s.s of warnings and contradictory orders. A rush of air swept by them. Master Satele c.o.c.ked her head and pulled Ax along the ravine, away from the source of the wind.

In its wake came a flood of red-hot lava.

"Jump!" Ax cried, wrenching the Grand Master up out of the ravine.

The wall crumbled beneath their combined weight, and they jumped again. The maze was collapsing around them, followed by a tide of red that spread from the crash site. The edge of the flood moved with astonishing speed, consuming troopers and hexes in broad, bubbling swaths. The volcanoes Ax had imagined were nothing compared with this silent, swift seep. The section of the maze she had explored was already subsumed.

All too suddenly the tsunami-like flood was upon them. Two thick crimson tongues closed in front of Ax and Master Satele, cutting off their best route to safe ground.

Master Satele turned, pulling Ax after her. It was clear that she could have run faster on her own, but she didn't abandon Ax to her fate. Ax didn't question why. She just accepted the gesture, even as it became clear that it would doom both of them.

The path of stable ground they occupied was shrinking fast.

"One more jump might do it, " said Master Satele. "Are you ready?"

Ax wasn't, but there was no way she'd admit it. The boiling red gap between them and safety was too large already, and it was growing by the second.

"Ready, " she said.

They ran and leapt together. For a moment, they were high above the drowning maze, held aloft by the Force and momentum, and nothing could touch them. Ax wished she could stay there forever, in that peaceful place where contradictory forces canceled out and all was still.

But gravity conquered all. The ground came closer too quickly, and she screamed as bright red lava rose up to engulf them.

CHAPTER 37.

An hour into the battle, Ula realized that betraying the Republic was going to be much harder than he had imagined, even from his privileged position high above the battlefield. The problem lay in the sheer amount of data pouring from the battlefield into the Auriga Fire. It was impossible to keep track of it all, let alone to decide which isolated part could be best manipulated in order to benefit his masters. He could barely keep up with the torrent as it was.

Missiles full of hexes had restored the orbital defenses, and provided new weapons with which to pound the combined fleets, making it difficult to lend ground support to the teams below. The CI target was burning, and the pole was hidden under smoke. Comms were erratic at best. Ula had no way of knowing what was going on down there, and the situation on the moon was little different. The hexes had been strafed repeatedly, but without sending in troopers to tackle them face-to-face, it was impossible to tell if the infection had been contained. Every time the alliance made progress, Lema Xandret's tenacious creations bounced back in a new and surprising way.

"I have locks on three subs.p.a.ce targets, " reported Stryver. "They're relays, scattered across the globe. "

That was good news. "Send the coordinates to Kalisch and Pipalidi. Tell them to take all three out. "

"We should keep one intact" said Jet. "How are we going to infiltrate their comms if they don't have any comms left?"

"How close are we to cracking their cipher?"

"I don't know. Clunker has worked out the transmission protocols, allowing us to pretend we're the CI, but we're no closer to figuring out the actual language it's using. "

"Then I can't afford to take the chance. We know they'll build new relays anyway. This way we gain a momentary advantage. We need every one of those we can get. "

Jet killed the ship's comm for a moment. "Here's something else to worry about. What if Stryver's staying out of the fight purely to get those ciphers? With them, he could turn the hexes on us. "

Ula hadn't thought that far ahead. "You're right, and we can't have that. When Clunker cracks the code, let's keep it to ourselves. "

"That would make us unstoppable. You don't strike me as the ruling-the-galaxy sort, but I'm not sure about your masters. "

Ula had absolutely no desire to rule anything. There would be no hiding in the shadows at all while seated on a throne. And he wasn't going to say anything about his masters, true or false. "What about you?"

The question was a loaded one, and Ula had his hand on the holdout blaster while he asked it.

Jet laughed. "What, give up my carefree life? I don't think so, mate. Too much red tape by half. "

A new red light joined the many flashing on the instrument panel. An alarm joined it.

"Multiple launches, " Jet said, all laughter forgotten, "from the planet and the moon, too, this time. " He stopped and peered closer at the viewscreens. "Something's headed our way. The CI must've noticed us sitting here, keeping entirely too low a profile. Time to move. "

Ula notified the leaders of the combined fleet that he was now a target and would be changing orbit. The Commenor acknowledged immediately but didn't offer any kind of tactical support. The Paramount said nothing at all, just sent a squadron of interceptors.

"Negative, negative, " said Jet to the squadron leader. "Return to the fight. We'll be okay, and we'll holler if that changes. "

"The colonel's orders were very specific, " came back the reply. "We're not to let you out of our sights. "

The phrase had threatening connotations that Ula was certain were intentional.

"Kalisch, get those ships off our tail, " said Jet to the Paramount. "I've got more important things to worry about than your trigger-happy hotshots. "

"Put me through to the director, " came the reply.

No name, thought Ula. Just a t.i.tle. "Colonel, " he said, "this is Director Vii. Your resources are needed elsewhere. We have to punch through that defensive sh.e.l.l to gain access to the polar regions..."

"Darth Chratis explained your situation, " Kalisch said over him. "I really must insist. "

Ula closed his eyes. This was an open line. If he bowed to the colonel's wishes, it would be tantamount to acknowledging that he favored-or could at least be influenced by-the Imperials. The time was not yet right to do that.

"Negative, Colonel. I have advised you to send your fighters elsewhere. Recall them or I will be forced to interpret your intentions as hostile and request a.s.sistance from Captain Pipalidi. "

Again, the Paramount said nothing, but the ships did at least change course.

Ula mopped his brow. Not only was he failing to betray the Republic, but he was now being forced to defy an officer in the Imperial navy.

"Why are we doing this, again?"

"Beats me, " said Jet. "Officially I'm still hoping to turn a profit, but that's looking less and less likely every minute. "

"Is that really all you're interested in?" Ula asked, suddenly irritated by the smuggler's pretense.

"Can't it be?" Jet shot back.

"I think you're doing yourself a disservice. If people knew what you and your ship could really do..."

"No one would ever let me dock anywhere. If they think I'm a hopeless b.u.m, that gives me an edge. It keeps me safe. Like Ta.s.saa Bareesh. If she'd known that I could've taken my ship back anytime, she wouldn't have let me hang around to see what happened. And if I hadn't hung around, I wouldn't be here. Granted, here is not looking so comfortable at the moment, but that could change. Life is surprising. I think we'll pull something out of the hat. "

"It just seems dishonest. "

Jet said, "You should talk. "

Ula bristled. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, mate. I know what you are. I've known from the second I saw you. Why do you think I asked you for a drink?"

Ula drew the holdout blaster and pointed it at Jet. "Tell me what you think I am. "

"I think you're a braver man than you're letting on, " Jet said without flinching. "To your superiors you're just a p.a.w.n. To your enemies you're worse than evil. You're caught between wanting to do your job and trying to keep your job hidden. It drives you crazy, but you can't confide in anyone. You have to keep it all locked away, and no one ever appreciates how hard that is. We're expected to just keep on going, blokes like us, because if we trip, there's no safety net. "

Ula bristled. "I'm nothing like you. "

"We're more alike than you think. I've been a p.a.w.n, and recently, too. Why do you think I was working as a privateer? It wasn't for the good times, let me tell you. "

"You're unprincipled, amoral. "

"I'm glad you think so. That means the cover's working. "