by Troy Denning
“Thanks, Artoo.” Luke armed the rest of his torpedoes and shadow bombs. “Twenty seconds to target. Preparing for the main attack run.”
“Copy.” Corran was quiet for an instant, then said, “Message relayed. Good hunting.”
They were halfway to their target when a wall of New Republic turbolaser fire erupted from the main body of the comet cluster and briefly silhouetted the entire Yuuzhan Vong fleet. It looked like nothing more menacing than a vast field of black lozenge-shaped asteroids, but Luke experienced a terrible disturbance in the Force as several thousand beings from their own galaxy were blasted back to their elemental atoms.
Everything went dark again, and an uneasy silence settled over the Eclipse comm channels. Though only half of the pilots and crew in the combat wings were Force-sensitive, the rest had been around Jedi long enough to have some idea of what their battle mates were experiencing.
An instant later, the vanguard of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet responded to the ambush with a lightning storm of crimson flashes and streaking fireballs. The New Republic turbolasers flashed to life again, the Force quavered with another thousand deaths, and the battle exploded into its full horror.
Luke saw a pair of frigates accelerating to cut them off from the cruiser. He touched his tactical display, designating the rearmost one as a secondary target.
“We’ll go through this one,” he said. “Hisser, will you take the lead?”
“My honor,” the Barabel replied.
The Wild Knights drew into a tight formation and moved forward, a golden aura slowly expanding around Saba’s blastboat. The frigates dropped their skips and began to pour more fire into the glowing ball of radiance, which only made it grow faster as Izal Waz used the Force to trap the light. Once the sphere was large enough, Luke lined the other two squadrons up behind it, picking off skips as they tried desperately to fight their way into the golden orb and stop the Wild Knights.
As Danni had described happening at Arkania, the frigate eventually grew so nervous about the approaching sphere that it turned a shielding singularity on it. The glowball abruptly lengthened as it was caught and accelerated by the gravity of the tiny black hole.
“Drop the block!” Saba ordered.
By the time she finished giving the command, the glowball had stretched into an ovoid twice as long as it was thick. Izal Waz let the golden sphere fade away, and the Wild Knights’ X-wings fanned out, already firing proton torpedoes. The shielding crews scrambled to redirect their singularities—and never saw the two-ton block of black durasteel that it had just accelerated to several hundred thousand kilometers an hour. The frigate did not explode so much as flash out of existence, and the wings from Eclipse suddenly found themselves diving on their target through a cloud of superheated dust.
A full wing of skips came boiling out of the cruiser to intercept them. The ship itself opened up with all batteries, pouring constant streams of fire from its bow and stern in an attempt to force the attacking X-wings to come at it amidships and meet its coralskippers.
“Time to try out Control’s new targeting system,” Luke said. “Break into your shielding trios and go down the center.”
“And don’t stop to dogfight—those skips from the carrier are still on your tail,” Corran said. He switched to a private channel, then added, “And, Farmboy, you need to get this right the first time. Listen.”
There was a scratchy pause as Corran patched in the civilian emergency channel, then a confused babble filled Luke’s cockpit. A moment later, he began to recognize individual voices—and wished he hadn’t.
“—on us, please! We’re civilians from—”
“—is the Happy Hutt with five thousand refugees—”
“—Meteor Racer out.”
“Six hundred transponders just came on, Luke,” Corran said. “They confirm what you’re hearing.”
“Of course they do.”
Luke needed no further explanation to know what was happening. He recognized the Happy Hutt as one of the refugee ships missing from the evacuation of Ralltiir, and he felt certain that a records search would turn up the Meteor Racer’s name, as well.
The yammosk cruiser’s wing of skips began to fire at maximum range, no doubt trying to force their attackers to decelerate and be caught from behind. Instead, the X-wings and blastboats continued forward at maximum firing velocity.
Luke clicked off with Corran and had R2-D2 activate his supplementary targeting system. The reticle quickly locked onto the gravitational pulses coming from the dovin basal in his target’s nose. With lasers quadded on full power, he squeezed the trigger. One bolt streaked out a millisecond ahead of the others, following the targeting lock straight toward the skip’s nose. The rest diverged according to a carefully calculated ratio of distance and velocity until they were caught by the gravity of the skip’s shielding system and bent back inward. The first bolt vanished into the singularity; the other three converged three meters behind it, taking the coralskipper directly in the pilot’s compartment.
“Almost as good as the Force,” Luke said.
He found a pair of skips coming out of the field of detonations that had been the cruiser wing a moment before and set his targeting reticle on the one on the left.
“Already spoken for,” Mara said. She and Tam fired simultaneously; a moment later, both skips vanished. “Sorry, Farmboy.”
“You’re forgiven,” Luke said.
With its entire detachment of skips eliminated in the flash of an eye, the cruiser began to concentrate its fire in the approach lane. Knowing that even one of its big plasma balls would take out an entire shielding trio, Luke ordered his wings to fan out. As quick as the pilots were to obey, one trio of Sabers evaporated into the flame, and the Shockers lost their last blastboat.
But now the cruiser was laid out before them, a kilometer-long lozenge of dark yorik coral striped with bands of knobby weapons banks. With Mara to one side and Tam to the other, Luke juked and jinked for a three count, firing his quadded lasers into roiling clouds of flame while he gave the rest of his pilots time to reach firing position.
Finally, they were ready. “Fire everything you have—we won’t be coming back.”
Luke fired the two proton torpedoes from his open bank, fired three more from the other bank, then dropped the shadow bombs stored in the XJ3’s third set of launchers and used the Force to send them on their way. He saw the first two torpedoes vanish into a shielding singularity, then a plasma ball erupted from a weapon nodule ahead, coming so quickly at this distance that he barely had time to slide out of the way and kiss wings with Mara.
“Close, Farmboy.”
Luke eased away, then winced inwardly as she dipped her own X-wing and sent a magma missile ricocheting off her shields.
“You’re one to talk,” Luke commed.
Then the attacks dwindled away, and finally they could see the flames and debris erupting from the breaches their shadow bombs and torpedoes had torn into the hull. In some places, secondary explosions could be seen rolling down sections of exposed deck, and there were clouds of bodies and matériel billowing out into the vacuum. Luke decelerated as much as he dared with the skips coming behind them and locked down the trigger of his laser cannon, burning round after round into the interior of the cruiser.
“Danni, what’s the yammosk status?”
“Quieting, but still alive.”
Luke checked the tactical display and found the skips from the carrier still thirty seconds behind them.
“What part of the vessel?” Luke asked.
“Negative, Farmboy,” Corran said. “We talked about this—you had your shot, now get out of there.”
“Danni, what part?” Luke demanded.
Mara’s apprehension level spiked. “Farmboy, one dead hero—”
“There are a lot of dead heroes out there today—too many to leave this undone.” Luke checked his tactical display; twenty seconds. “Where? Now!”
“Try lower deck,
midships,” Danni said. “I can’t be sure.”
“I’ll take one more shot.” Luke angled toward the middle of the ship and continued to decelerate. “Everyone else, go.”
“Not on your life,” Mara said.
She and Tam decelerated along with him. With the rest of the wing flying cover, they began to work their way along the cruiser’s hull, pushing through the body clouds and sticking their noses into likely looking holes.
“Farmboy, you have fifteen seconds before those skips are all over you,” Corran said. “And there’s something else.”
He patched the Fleet Command channel through.
“—you to cease fire!” Sovv’s nasal voice was shouting. “The New Republic navy does not butcher its own people!”
“We are not butchering them,” Garm Bel Iblis countered. “The Yuuzhan Vong are. We are trying to fire around them.”
“And failing miserably, General,” Traest Kre’fey countered.
“What about Coruscant?” Garm argued. “What about the Jedi? Do you know how many pilots they lost to give us this chance?”
Corran deactivated the channel. “Luke, the Yuuzhan Vong are already pushing through the comet cluster. Rather than fire through the refugee screen, Traest is falling back and trying to maneuver. Garm will have to join him soon or be cut off, and Wedge is two minutes behind schedule because the battle is moving toward Coruscant.”
According to Sovv’s original plan, Wedge would be the hammer falling on Garm and Traest’s anvil, sweeping in from behind the Yuuzhan Vong to drive them into the ambush.
“Wedge can still surprise them—if the yammosk is dead,” Luke said. He could sense that Mara felt betrayed by Sovv’s decision not to fire on the refugees, but Luke was not so sure. Would a New Republic willing to attack through a fleet of its own people be worth saving? “This isn’t over yet.”
“Five seconds, Farmboy.”
Luke stuck his X-wing’s nose into a breach just below the dormant weapons bank and burned through two more decks, puncturing a sealed bulkhead and sucking a long stream of startled Yuuzhan Vong out into the vacuum.
“You found it!” Danni exclaimed.
He was joined by Mara and Tam. Combined, their fire was enough to blast through the other side of the vessel, and Luke glimpsed a many-tentacled creature flying out the breach amid a cloud of frozen vapor.
“That’s—”
Danni’s confirmation dissolved into static as a skip’s plasma ball dissipated against the blastboat’s shields. The attack was answered instantly by a storm of laser cannon fire, but staying to fight was the last thing on Luke’s mind. He pulled his X-wing out of the breach and dropped the nose.
“Break off!”
Luke led the way under the cruiser and up on the other side, forcing the oncoming skips to decelerate or risk having the X-wings pop up on their tails. Without the yammosk to coordinate them, the coralskippers reacted in disarray. Some streaked over the cruiser at full speed and some under, while others stopped cautiously on the other side.
Luke sighed in silent relief, then commed, “Let’s go find Wedge. We’ve got to refuel, rearm—”
“And return,” Saba said. She sounded more eager than determined. “There are still plenty of Yuuzhan Vong for everyone.”
FORTY-SIX
They had eaten worse things—the sour fungus growing on the walls of Nolaa Tarkona’s ryll mines came to mind—so Jacen knew it was not his sister’s delicate sensibilities that kept her from choking down the tasteless pulp Alema had commandeered from their terrified Yuuzhan Vong host. Nor was it the urgency of their situation. The strike team was hiding in a one-room lodging cell on the outskirts of a domicile warren deep inside the worldship, trying to stay out of sight until Tesar reported back with news of the queen’s location. They had seen no sign of Nom Anor or his troops since the battle in the grashal, when they had escaped by bringing the passage ceiling down behind them and fleeing into the heart of the worldship.
Jacen scooped a bowlful of pulp from a shell-like serving basin and pressed it into Jaina’s hands. “I don’t feel like eating either, but you need to keep up your strength.”
Jaina hurled the gruel against the bioluminescent wall. Their Yuuzhan Vong captive, a lowly worker who was almost attractive in her utter lack of mutilations or tattoos, cringed in the corner as though the bowl had been thrown at her. The lichen began to glow more brightly as it absorbed nutrients, and no one spoke.
Jacen could feel the guilt and anger tearing his sister apart, though her emotions were so intermingled with his own that he could barely distinguish them. They shared a void that would never again be whole, an emptiness that he sensed pulling at Jaina like a vacuum breach. He laid a hand on her knee, hoping his touch might serve as her anchor.
“We can’t give up. We still need to destroy the queen.”
Jaina looked up, a faint spark of presence finally showing in her vacant eyes. “You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“We had to,” Jacen said, accepting the rebuke. As much as he himself was hurting, he would rather Jaina lay the blame boiling up inside her on his shoulders than her own. “They were all over him. You saw that.”
Jaina pushed his hand from her leg. “He put you in charge, and you left him behind.”
Jacen said nothing. Though he knew his sister’s own feelings of guilt were driving her to accuse him, he did not trust himself to keep an even voice.
“Jacen does not deserve your blame.” Tenel Ka was sitting on the other side of the small room, her legs crossed beneath her and her posture as erect as ever. “Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonor Anakin’s memory and dismiss his sacrifice.”
“Stay out of this, Tenel Ka,” Jaina said. “You can’t possibly know anything about it. You have the emotional depth of a ronto.”
The speed with which Tenel Ka unfolded her legs and stepped around the low table proved how mistaken Jaina was. Jacen thought for a moment the Dathomiri would slap his sister, but Tenel Ka only continued to glare until Jaina finally grew uncomfortable and looked away.
When she did, Tenel Ka said, “We are all hurting, Jaina. Your brother, too.”
It was difficult to tell from Tenel Ka’s tone whether she meant the words to be conciliatory or cutting, but they caused Jaina to stand. Jacen reached for Jaina’s hand, but he needn’t have worried. Zekk was already stepping between the pair, positioning himself to intercept any blow that might be thrown.
“What’s this going to help?” Zekk addressed himself more to Tenel Ka than to Jaina. “Calm down.”
Both women opened their hands, but continued to stand and stare, each waiting for the other to apologize. The room remained uncomfortable and silent. The other Jedi stared into their gruel.
They were spared the necessity of a long wait by a low growl over their comlinks. Jacen snatched up his own comlink.
“Tesar?” he asked. As the strike team’s stealthiest member and only natural night hunter, the Barabel had been the obvious choice to send slinking through the murky lanes of the domicile warren. “Did you find her?”
He was answered not by the Barabel’s voice, but by another low growl. It took him a moment to recognize the sound as a Shyriiwook word, as Wookiee voices did not carry well over comlinks.
“Lowie?” Jaina gasped, grabbing her own comlink. “Is that you?”
Lowbacca confirmed his identity with a groan, then began a long apology for allowing the Tachyon Flier to be stolen.
“Lowie, forget it—they fooled us, too,” Jacen said. “Where are you now?”
The answer Lowbacca rumbled was considerably more than a location.
“Why would they do that?” Jacen asked.
Lowbacca grunted a guess.
“Keep watching,” Jaina said. “And whatever you do, stay with him. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She snapped her comlink off, and Jacen barely caught her arm before she
reached the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Going after Anakin’s body—what do you think?” It was Tahiri who said this, speaking for the first time since they had fled the grashal. “They’re not taking him anywhere.”
She rose and went to Jaina’s side, as did Alema and, a moment later, Zekk. Jacen ignored them all and continued to hold his sister’s arm.
“What about Anakin’s last words?” he asked. “He told us to destroy the queen.”
“Then destroy her.” Jaina tore her arm free of his hand and slapped the tickle pad. “But I’m going back.”
Not even checking to see if she would be seen, Jaina jerked her lightsaber off her belt and led the others out into the dark.
FORTY-SEVEN
Save that Leia was smelling Ben’s sweet breath instead of her own nervous sweat and the couch was not sluing around beneath her, war looked much the same on a wall-sized holovid as it did from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Plasma balls still rolled over their targets in blossoms of white fire, turbolasers still laced the air with dazzling lances of color, wounded vessels still bled dark clouds of flash-frozen crew. The inset image of a grim-voiced Duros war correspondent described how the massive Yuuzhan Vong fleet was steadily pressing forward behind the screen of refugee ships despite a fierce running assault on its rear by Wedge Antilles’s Fleet Group Three. The invaders had already crossed the orbit of Nabatu, the tenth planet of the Coruscant system, and were expected to reach the Ulabos ice bands by the end of the standard day.
The newsvid changed scenes, now showing the starliner Swift Dreams as it strayed into a barrage of turbolaser fire. Leia knew she should have felt something, should have been angered or frightened or something by the huge Yuuzhan Vong fleet sweeping down on Coruscant, but she was not. All she cared about was holding Ben in her arms, keeping his warmth pressed to her body. As the Swift Dreams began to vent a cloud of tumbling refugees, a Bith correspondent appeared in the inset and reported that Garm Bel Iblis’s Fleet Group Two continued to attack through the refugee screen, ignoring friendly-fire accidents such as the one shown and repeated orders from Admiral Sovv to stop. Several reliable sources claimed that Sovv had actually relieved Bel Iblis of command, an order that the general and his entire force also ignored. There were unsubstantiated reports of whole attack groups leaving Traest Kre’fey’s Fleet Group One to join Bel Iblis in his effort to stop the Yuuzhan Vong at any price.