by James Luceno
Caution forgotten, Han at once sharpened the angle of their attack and shed velocity so that the clustership would come across the Falcon’s vector. When it did, he and Droma opened up with both guns, hammering the enemy with massive outpourings of energy. Gas and flame belched from the ship, then one of the spherical components imploded, deflating as if pricked by a pin. Slowing, the ship began to list to port, then rolled completely over, like a defeated creature showing its belly to an aggressor.
“Thanks for the assist, YT-1300,” someone said over the hailing channel.
“The pilot of the lead X-wing,” Droma clarified.
“That’s no military squadron,” Han said.
“When did the fighting start, YT?”
Han opened a channel to the fighters. “The enemy checked in just ahead of you. The shipyards are already under bombardment. Who are you guys?”
“Kyp’s Dozen,” the pilot said.
“Kyp Durron! What in blazes are you doing out here?”
Put off his guard, Kyp fell silent for a moment. “Han, is that you?” he asked tentatively.
“None other.”
“Is that a new paint job, or did you accidentally bring the Falcon too close to a star?”
“Long story.”
“So is ours. We’ve been chasing that bubble ship since Kalarba. The Yuuzhan Vong have captives aboard, Wurth Skidder among them. What about you?”
“The freighter at your starboard marooned a group of refugees somewhere in this system. I figure we can convince them to show us where they made the drop.”
“If you’re headed back into that fray, you could do with some support. I’ll assign two of my people to fly with you.”
“I’ll take them. But what are you planning to do about the captives?”
“Go aboard and rescue them.”
Han uttered a laugh. “Leave it to a Jedi to take on the impossible.”
“It’s our mandate,” Kyp said.
“We’ll be back to help out as soon as we can,” Han promised.
“May the Force be with you, Han.”
“Yeah, you too.”
At Orbital Shipyard 1321, the Star Destroyer Amerce was nearing completion—one of thirty such massive warships being readied at Fondor, in addition to hundreds of smaller vessels. Owing to having had to retrofit a flotilla of ships with hyperwave inertial momentum sustainers, several of the major yards had fallen behind schedule, but confidence was high at 1321 that work on the Amerce would conclude within a local month. The launch would finally mean leave for the tens of thousands of shipfitters who had spent the better part of a standard year working on the great ship, shoulder to shoulder with droids and other machines, frequently for back-to-back shifts, and sometimes in zero-g for days on end.
Creed Mitsun, human foreman of a mixed-species crew of electricians, was more eager than most for leave.The substantial credits he’d amassed were programming an escape route from his bank account, and his companion of the past two years—an exotic dancer who worked in Fondor City—was threatening to return to Sullust if Mitsun didn’t get himself down the well before too long.
Lately not a relative day passed when Mitsun didn’t wake from dreams that were every bit as fatiguing as work itself without fearing that the Amerce would never be completed and leave would never be granted. To make matters worse, space raid drills had become quotidian events, jarring everyone from sleep long before they were required to report to work.
Today was no exception.
Adding his elaborate groan to a chorus of similar protests issuing from all corners of the bunkroom, Mitsun buried his head under a pillow and declined to move, despite the unrelenting howling of sirens and the insistent appeals from the Bothan female who had the bunk opposite his.
“Come on, Chief,” she pleaded, trying to shake him into motion. “You know what happens if we don’t report to our stations.”
“I don’t care,” Mitsun said, his voice muffled by the pillow. “How do they expect us to finish the Amerce if we’re asleep on our feet for most of our shifts?”
“Please, Chief. If you get suspended, things’ll be worse for everyone.”
Mitsun started to wave her away, but suddenly found himself rudely tossed from his third-tier bunk to the hard deck.
“What’s the idea?” he stammered, hauling himself to his feet, only to see that the Bothan female and almost everyone else in sight had been similarly displaced.
Without warning, the facility sustained a follow-up blow, powerful enough to topple several banks of bunks and hurl everyone halfway across the hold.
“This is no drill!” someone yelled.
Mitsun heard the words but refused to give them credence. Stepping over sprawled bodies, he hurried to the outer hull bulkhead and slammed the heel of his hand against the release stud that raised the hold’s night curtain and blast door.
By the time the curtain had pocketed itself, several other workers had joined Mitsun at the underlying transparisteel panel, beyond which the Amerce lay half in ruins, holed and venting its guts into space.
From the direction of Fondor’s closest moon came a storm of asteroidlike ships, so fixed on demolishing Shipyard 1321 that they weren’t even bothering to discharge weapons, but were instead accelerating toward the battleship and the facility.
“Leave cancelled,” Mitsun said to himself as he caught sight of two coralskippers hurtling directly for the bunkroom.
Leia followed briskly on the heels of the colonel who had fetched her from her cabin aboard the Yald, saying only that it was urgent that she join Commodore Brand in the tactical information center quickest. She and Brand’s adjutant were stepping from the turbolift on the secure deck that housed the TIC when she nearly collided with Isolder, who had obviously just arrived from the Song of War.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” he asked her.
The question was pointed, though without his being aware of it. What had begun at Gyndine as vague misgiving and had swelled to apprehension as a result of the vision on Hapes had now become unmitigated dread—as tangible as any fear or phobia she had ever experienced—even while its source and substance remained veiled.
Hours of meditation had allowed Leia to determine that part of her apprehension was centered on Anakin and Jacen and the forecasted attack on Corellia. But just how her concerns for them were connected to the foreboding that swirled like excited electrons around Isolder—and more specifically around Commander Brand’s battle plans—she could not say or even guess at. She knew only that her composure was unraveling, and that forces were converging in a way that no one had anticipated.
“Leia?” Isolder said.
The Jedi’s weapon is her mind. When a Jedi is distracted, when she loses her focus, she becomes vulnerable …
“I’m sorry, Isolder,” she said at last, “but I don’t know what this is about.”
He studied her in silence while they hastened for the war room and entered side by side. Brand, looking stricken, gazed up at them from his tall stool alongside a sprawling horizontal plotting panel. In fact, beneath all the frantic activity, everyone in the enormous room seemed to be moving in a daze.
“On-screen,” Brand ordered one of the technicians, as Leia and Isolder approached.
Leia glanced at a nearby array of holographic displays, instantly aware that she was seeing her vision realized—or at least some part of it. Whether the realtime images were being transmitted from satellites or an orbital facility was impossible to discern, and unimportant in any event. One holo showed dozens of Yuuzhan Vong and New Republic warships firing mercilessly at each other, while wings of snubfighters and coralskippers slalomed through the wreckage of orbital docks. Another holo revealed ships close to completion blackened, ruptured, and keeled over in their berthing spaces, command towers and gun turrets in ruins, clouds of debris making it impossible to get a clear fix on anything. Elsewhere, Yuuzhan Vong carrier analogs were hurling tempests of coralskippers tow
ard weapons platforms and the surface of a world already afflicted by industrial devastation.
“That’s the Amerce,” Brand said grimly, indicating one of the destroyed ships. He pointed to another holo display. “That’s the Anlage.”
Leia looked at him in confusion. “Those aren’t Corellian vessels.”
Brand showed her one of the saddest looks she had ever seen. “The Yuuzhan Vong have struck at Fondor. They deceived us into believing they were going to attack Corellia, and they hit Fondor.” The words tumbled from his mouth without emotion. “Our greatest hopes go with those ships. The First Fleet is doing all it can, but the enemy is literally flinging their coralskippers at any target that presents itself.”
“The Hapan fleet is prepared to launch,” Isolder said.
“No!” Leia found herself saying. Brand and Isolder stared at her. “No,” she repeated quietly.
Brand looked at Isolder. “Thank you, Prince Isolder, but I’ve already ordered elements of the Fifth Fleet to launch from Bothawui. We’re waiting to hear from them.”
Leia swung to the communication console, her heart racing.
“Commenor command, this is Task Force Aleph,” a distressed voice said. “The enemy has seeded all routes linking Bothawui and Fondor with dovin basal remotes. Half the task force has been yanked from hyperspace, and six ships have been diverted into collisions with mass shadows. We’re in harm’s way, sir. We have no choice but to retreat to the Outer Rim and jump to Fondor from Eriadu or Sullust.”
“They’ll arrive too late,” Brand muttered, then turned to Isolder. “You say your forces are prepared?”
Isolder straightened to his full and considerable height. “Eager, Commodore.”
Leia’s breath caught in her throat, and the TIC began to spin before her eyes. She had to hook her arm through Brand’s to keep from falling.
TWENTY-SIX
As near as anyone had been able to determine, coralskippers didn’t dock inside their carriers. Instead they were launched from and recovered by the carriers’ elongated and branchlike projections. These facts passed briefly through Kyp Durron’s mind as his X-wing loosed two proton torpedoes straight at the sphere the Millennium Falcon’s quad lasers had perforated and collapsed. The torpedoes did little more than blow a hole in what remained of the deflated globe, but one large and gaping enough to accommodate any of the disparate fighters that made up the Dozen.
“Eleven and Twelve, you have rear guard,” Kyp said over the tactical net. “The rest of you form up on me. We’re going inside.”
Kyp urged his craft on, ignoring the strident protests of its astromech droid, which was clearly baffled by whatever readings the enemy ship was giving off. The Yuuzhan Vong were oxygen breathers, he reminded himself, which meant that their ships somehow manufactured atmosphere. He was less certain about gravity, though he surmised that the same dovin basals responsible for propulsion and protection provided gravity. As for places to land, he was willing to make do with any parcel of level deck, even if he had to pilot the X-wing to the heart of the ship to find that.
Ganner’s modified Y-wing and seven other starfighters followed him through the breach opened by the torpedoes. The pair left behind would have to deal with anything that flew to the cluster ship’s aid, at least until the Falcon and the remaining two fighters returned.
Kyp’s determination took a quantum leap as soon as the X-wing entered the ruined sphere. Vacuum had bled the module of atmosphere, but gravity was close to human standard and there was ample room for all nine fighters to settle down on a deck that wasn’t much different from the pitted hulls of the enemy warships. The Falcon’s powerful guns had made a mess of things, but even without the damage it would have been difficult to discern just what they were looking at. Kyp suspected that the hivelike structure at the rear of the space was a neuroengine of some sort, and that if he popped it open, he might find a couple of stunned dovin basals curled up inside.
“Breathers and blasters,” he said over the net as the X-wing’s canopy was opening.
Recalling his first contact with the Yuuzhan Vong in the Outer Rim, and the grotesque creature whose secretions had burned through the transparisteel of his XJ, Kyp had expected to find similar monstrosities waiting, but in fact, the hold was deserted. Ganner had obviously been thinking the same thing. Jumping agilely from the cockpit of the Y-wing, he said over the rebreather comm, “They’ve probably withdrawn to protect the yammosk.”
“Then they’ve already simplified our mission,” Kyp told him.
They unhooked their lightsabers from the belts of their flightsuits and thumbed them on, the sibilant hiss of the energy blades loud in the deserted chamber. Everyone else carried either a sidearm or a blaster rifle.
“Watch your step,” Kyp advised. “The Yuuzhan Vong have been known to make use of an immobilizing living jelly.”
Warily they advanced on the wall of the adjacent sphere, ignorant as to whether they were moving forward or aft. Like the walls of the collapsed module, the curving bulkhead had an organic, membranous appearance. They searched futilely for anything analogous to a hatch release.
“There has to be a way of opening a portal from one sphere to the next,” Deak said. “Maybe they’re separated by hydrostatic fields.” But while resilient, the bulkhead did not admit him when he pressed himself to it.
“Maybe it recognizes only Yuuzhan Vong,” Ganner suggested.
“Now isn’t the time to debate it,” Kyp said. “We’re not on a scientific survey.”
He thrust his lightsaber straight into the curve. When the tip had sizzled through, Kyp rolled his wrists, gradually opening a circular hole large enough for them to step through. The hold on the far side of the bulkhead was no different from the one they had left.
“No oxygen,” Ganner reported after glancing at an indicator strapped to his wrist.
They moved in single file into a passageway that might have been the gullet of an outsize creature. Colonies of microorganisms attached to the walls and ceiling provided a faint green bioluminescence. Eventually they came to another curving bulkhead, but this was equipped with an iris portal that admitted them into a sealed antechamber. The fact that the chamber served as an airlock didn’t become evident until they stepped from it into a spacious hold that held breathable air.
There also were the Yuuzhan Vong warriors Kyp and Ganner had expected to encounter earlier on.
They were thirty strong, some sporting chitinous armor, some without, but all of them armed with double-edged blades or the living staffs Kyp knew were capable of being employed as whips, clubs, swords, or spears. For a moment the two groups stood still, studying each other, then one warrior stepped forward and bellowed a phrase in his own language.
He made it sound like a statement, but the charge that immediately followed confirmed it as a war cry. Deak and the other non-Jedi opened fire with their blasters, dropping ten or more of the unarmored warriors before they had made it halfway across the hold. Kyp and Ganner glided into the press of survivors, their feet barely leaving the deck, telekinetically disarming some of their opponents even in the midst of parrying blows from stiffened amphistaffs or crosscuts by coufee blades and deflecting spears. One by one the Yuuzhan Vong succumbed to vertical slashes to the head or horizontal thrusts that found the only vulnerable places in the living armor, just below the armpits.
The two Jedi worked as a team whenever possible, back to back, or alongside each other, refusing to surrender any gained ground and minimizing the movements of their blades. Their relatively easy victories told them that the warriors were a different breed than the seasoned fighters they had battled on the Ithorian herd ship Tafanda Bay. Even so, some of the non-Jedi weren’t faring as well. Two of Kyp’s Dozen died—one beheaded by a coufee, the other pierced by a thrown amphistaff.
When Kyp and Ganner had thinned the throng, they separated to engage the last of the warriors one on one, Kyp entering into a savage battle with an opponent a head talle
r than him and as deft with his staff as Kyp was with his lightsaber; Ganner using a Force-summoned telekinetic burst to hurl his adversary into a trio of Yuuzhan Vong who had ganged up on Deak. Two of the three dropped to the deck, giving Deak the time he needed to raise his blaster rifle and kill the third, along with the one Ganner had thrown.
Kyp perceived the events peripherally. With his feet planted right foot forward, he held the lightsaber at waist level, its blade elevated acutely, gyrating his wrists to answer and divert the sweeping slashes and overhead blows of the Yuuzhan Vong’s stiffened amphistaff. That Kyp remained rooted in place provoked the warrior to greater ferocity. Lunging, he thrust the vital weapon at Kyp’s midsection, at once ordering it to lengthen and strike with its fangs. The amphistaff’s abrupt transformation from sword to serpent caught Kyp by surprise, but only for a moment. Twisting the lightsaber around the pliable staff, he suddenly snapped the energy blade upward, flinging the staff from the warrior’s grip and severing the Yuuzhan Vong’s hand, just at the gap where his forearm guards met his gauntlets.
The dismembered fist fell to the deck, dark blood oozing from the warrior’s truncated limb. The Yuuzhan Vong looked at Kyp in startled disbelief, then lowered his head and rushed forward, intent on ramming Kyp off his feet. A side step sabotaged the effort. As the weakened warrior stumbled past him, Kyp brought the lightsaber to shoulder height, then drove it into his foe’s armpit, killing him instantly.
He stood over the fallen Yuuzhan Vong for a moment, then glanced around the hold at the carnage he and the others had wrought. Ganner and Deak were kneeling by their dead comrades.
“We’ll remember them later,” Kyp said, motioning everyone onward with the ignited lightsaber.
They moved deeper into the ship, crossing the threshold into yet another sphere without encountering any opposition. Since entering the vessel, Kyp had been struck by the fact that the Force was mute: not stifled, but silent. His Jedi skills hadn’t been affected or compromised in any way, but it was as if he had entered a blank space on a map. All at once, though, he felt something through the Force, and a bit farther along they came to a sealed portal, similar to many they had passed, save for the feelings it roused.