The warmaster watched in growing unease as the enemy squadron shifted swiftly from a long, extended line into a compact, pointed blade, a spearhead pointed into the Yuuzhan Vong battle group. In a flare of intense fire, the New Republic squadron pierced the Yuuzhan Vong extended line, shattering the invaders’ formation. Eight of the largest Yuuzhan Vong ships, hit by the combined power of the entire enemy squadron, were left disabled or dead.
The claws of the vu’asa at the end of Tsavong Lah’s leg clutched at the frame of his throne in anger. But his words, as he gave his next order, were calm. “The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka will engage the infidels as closely as possible.” The Yuuzhan Vong would take more losses as the dispersed ships closed with the compact enemy, but then superior numbers would begin to tell, and so would the Battle Groups of Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah, which would soon be in a position to envelop the enemy and finish them off.
The battle was still his. It would take a little more time, that was all.
And time the warmaster had in plenty.
In a room that smelled of protein and blood deep within the Damutek of the Intendants, Nom Anor stood before his superior Yoog Skell, a villip in his hands. The villip had formed into the face of an executor on Tsavong Lah’s flagship, one of the few members of the intendant class on the expeditionary force.
“The enemy is maneuvering well,” the executor said. “But still we will crush him. Our numbers are overwhelming.”
Yoog Skell growled as he paced back and forth.
“We’ve been surprised,” he muttered. “I don’t like surprises. And neither does Supreme Overlord Shimrra.”
When the call came, Mara was alone in the Skywalker apartment looking at holos of Ben. She went to the comm, and saw Winter gazing calmly back at her.
“It’s begun,” Winter said. “Ackbar and I are going up to Fleet Command. You may join us if you wish.”
Mara felt a sudden dryness in her mouth. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
It’s not working. The faint thought floated toward Jaina from Madurrin, in position on General Farlander’s bridge.
What’s not working?
The Trickster jammers. The ones that would identify enemy ships as belonging to the wrong side and cause their friends to shoot at them.
Another piece of bad luck, but Jaina was too frantic to feel badly about it now. Her own target was coming up.
“Shadow bomb away.” Jaina shoved the dumb weapon ahead with a push of the Force and drew back on the stick to bring her X-wing to a slightly different trajectory. Ahead, the target enemy cruiser lay in a blaze of fire as Keyan Farlander’s entire squadron swept past it, turbolasers churning out fire while missiles corkscrewed through the void between ships.
“Bomb away,” came Tesar’s hissing voice, followed by Lowbacca’s howl as he, too, flung a shadow bomb at the enemy.
General Farlander hadn’t been content to punch through the enemy formation only once—he had spun his entire squadron around and done it a second time, before the enemy could concentrate against him.
Jaina felt Tesar and Lowie through the Force, as well as the dumb shadow bombs they were all shoving at the enemy, while Madurrin was a presence from her place on General Farlander’s flagship. As the only Jedi in the system they were too few to create a proper Force-meld, but the three Jedi who led the flights of Twin Suns Squadron were so close, and by now so experienced in their work, that the meld was hardly necessary.
“Skips at point two, Major.” Vale’s voice was calm. “Getting set to bounce us.”
“Turn to engage … now.” Jaina rotated and fired the X-wing’s quad engines. Engaging the enemy head-on was a lot safer than letting them jump on Twin Suns’ tails.
Ahead, flashes marked oncoming enemy fire, a steady pulse of projectiles.
“Leapfrog, even and odd,” Jaina said, and extended her forward shields as she was aware of Twin Three pulling up even with her, the overlapping shields of the two X-wings covering her entire four-fighter flight. She began stuttering laserfire at the enemy, though she doubted it would have much effect. Doubtless the enemy would have their dovin basals deployed forward against her fire.
Enemy fire began to hammer her shields. Flying by instinct and the Force, she blinked against the brilliant flashes and tried to read her instruments to know when the shields’ power situation grew critical.
In the event, it was R2-B3 who chittered the warning at her.
“Leapfrog now,” she called, and throttled back.
Twins One and Three fell back while Twins Two and Four surged into their place, their fresh shields covering the entire flight. It was a precision maneuver, all four starfighters maneuvering within a tolerance of mere centimeters.
Thanks to endless drills and practice in battle, Twin Suns Squadron had come a long way since the battle over Far Thunder, when all Jaina could do was arrange them in a long line and have them play follow the leader.
The coralskippers flashed by, no more than blurs on their converging course. Normally she’d call for the squadron to split and drop on them, but maneuvering and combat took too much time. She needed to stick with Farlander and his compact group, not get caught away from support.
“Turning left sixty degrees,” Jaina said, a course that would bring them toward Farlander and the main body.
As her flight performed a perfect crossover turn, the maneuver turned her cockpit toward the enemy cruiser just in time to see the brilliant explosions of three shadow bombs planting themselves along its flank. She could see the ship tremble with each hit.
Over her comm she could hear the hissing of Barabel amusement. She was glad Tesar could find something funny in all this.
Then Tesar’s tone turned serious. “Skips astern, Twin Leader.”
“Maximum acceleration,” Jaina said, and punched throttles.
Her displays showed more enemy than she could properly comprehend, but her sense of the battle suggested the enemy were finally coordinating a response to General Farlander’s maneuver. He had cut twice through the enemy squadron, wrecking ships both times, but it was clear the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t going to let him do it again. Those ships nearby were keeping their distance, while those farther away were scrambling to catch up. Swarms of coralskippers were pouring in from all directions. Soon Farlander would find himself swamped by superior numbers and held in place for destruction, like a bantamweight fighter grappled by a 160-kilo wrestler.
Not to mention the two huge squadrons looming on his flanks. Or the other two squadrons hanging in the rear.
Enemy fire boomed on Jaina’s aft shields as she fled, a surprising number of shots. The pursuing coralskippers were throwing everything they had. Jaina did a little jinking, but it didn’t seem to help. The sheer volume of fire was disturbing.
The pursuers broke off when Jaina’s squadron entered the overlapping fields of fire of Farlander’s capital ships, but by that point it hardly seemed to matter. So much fire was coming from so many directions that Jaina still found her shields getting slammed, even though it didn’t seem as if anyone was taking the trouble to aim specifically at her.
“Friendly cruiser on our left,” she said. “Let’s take some of the pressure off it.” She led Twin Suns on a high-speed slash against the coralskippers that had just made their attack runs on the cruiser and were now perfect targets as they maneuvered in preparation for another attack. One burst into flame at the touch of her quad lasers, and she thought she killed another with a missile.
“Rolling right,” she began to call, and then there was a brilliant flash on her canopy matched by a wail in the Force, a mental keen that brought tears to Jaina’s dazzled eyes.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“Twin Two,” said Twin Three. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Jaina demanded.
“She didn’t get out.” Twin Three sounded stunned. “A huge projectile hit her fighter—it was vaporized.”
> “Who hit her?” Jaina’s hands suddenly got busy on the controls, ready to jink if the squadron was under attack.
“No one. Just random fire. There’s a lot of it out here.”
“No kidding,” someone said.
Vale, Jaina thought. Another wingmate had gone, like Anni Capstan. The first casualty since the battle over Far Thunder, the first since she’d built Twin Suns Squadron into its highly drilled, perfected form.
The first casualty, she thought with a sick certainty, but not the last.
She fought away the tears and the grief. She had to be in control now. “Twin Three, Twin Four, keep close to me,” she said. “Rolling right.”
The rolling maneuver put her in an inverted position with regard to the New Republic squadron, able to view the fight through her canopy. She saw a Republic-class cruiser hit with a lance of fire, saw compartments venting ice crystals that had once been air. The space between the heavy ships was thick with fighters, both friendly and enemy.
A furball, she saw, was now forming around the damaged Republic-class cruiser, a horde of arriving coralskippers tangling with a couple of squadrons of E-wings. “Starfighter battle at zero-three-zero,” she said. “Each flight form echelon. Each pilot pick your target. Re-form on the other side, look for your wingmate first and then for me. Understood?”
They understood. She had drilled them well.
“This is for Vale,” she said, and had to blink back tears again as she punched the throttle. She felt Lowie, Tesar, and Madurrin sending her strength through the Force, and she radiated her thanks.
For her first target she picked a coralskipper that was lining up for a shot at an E-wing. Hers was a deflection shot, but she synced perfectly with her ship, slewed the nose of the X-wing around just slightly, and touched the quad triggers. The coralskipper blew with the second shot and then she whipped past the debris, triggering a missile onto the tail of another skip that presented itself. She had the satisfaction of seeing the coralskipper shatter before she was through the furball and pulling into the clear.
Clear being a relative term. The void was still filled with beams and missiles and cannonades, all of it once aimed at something but now possessed by a dreadful randomness.
“Re-form on me!” Jaina called, frantically scanning her displays.
Tesar’s hissing voice came over the comm. “We’re being bounced, Twin Leader! This one requestz assistance!”
“You got it!” She cast a glance at her displays, saw Tesar’s blip behind her. “Twins Three and Four, with me! Streak, take your flight and—” A roar from Lowbacca confirmed Jaina’s order before she finished giving it.
Jaina hauled back on the stick, hoping she wouldn’t get smacked out of space while her maneuvering killed her velocity. She half rolled through the turn to keep herself out of enemy sights.
When she’d completed her maneuver the sight took her breath away.
An enemy frigate had laid itself along the Republic-class cruiser, the space between them a blaze of furious energies as the two huge vessels slammed each other at point-blank range. Around both capital ships were at least two hundred smaller craft, darting and weaving and blasting each other. She could see at least a dozen craft on fire.
Most of the smaller craft were Yuuzhan Vong. More enemy were appearing every second. General Farlander was getting swamped by the enemy.
“Stay with me, Three and Four,” she told her remaining flight. “Now let’s go.”
As she shoved the throttles forward she felt Tesar’s predatory presence through the Force, and she sent him a burst of strength. And then she sent, through the Force, a simple message to Madurrin.
We need help!
Madurrin sent a breeze of calm through the Force, and with it the knowledge of help already on the way. The sending was followed immediately by bright splashes on Jaina’s cockpit displays as more ships appeared out of hyperspace. Jaina’s heart leapt as she felt her mental horizons expand. Personalities crowded into her mind: Kyp Durron, Saba and the Wild Knights, Zekk, Corran Horn, Alema Rar, and Jacen. Jacen, in his place on the bridge of the Bothan Assault Cruiser Ralroost.
We’re here! The Force message was a massed shout.
Glad to hear it, Jaina sent as she got a coralskipper in her sights, but right now she had to get some Vong off Tesar’s tail.
She triggered her lasers.
A new howl chorused from the voxyn, and Tsavong Lah watched in amazement and rising anger as more blaze bugs rose from the floor to form a new enemy squadron in the overhead display. A large force, he saw, a match for any of his five.
Perhaps not so large. He saw now that a number of the enemy ships were big transports, which promptly vanished into hyperspace, leaving the rest behind to fight.
Apparently the new enemy were a supply convoy and its escort. It wasn’t so inexplicable they should be here, then.
The new arrivals had appeared just as he was about to order the Battle Groups of Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah to complete their envelopment of the enemy, the lovers’ embrace that would destroy the infidels. But the new enemy force hung off to one flank, near the Battle Group of Yun-Txiin, and if he ordered the enveloping movement now, the new arrivals could pounce on Yun-Txiin’s rear.
“The Battle Group of Yun-Txiin will engage the newcomers,” he said. “The Battle Group of Yun-Harla will move to support, but will not engage without my command. The Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah will reinforce the Battle Group of Yun-Yammka and destroy the original defenders.”
That left his own Battle Group of Yun-Yuuzhan still in reserve against any further surprises. With his group were the troopships that would be used to secure Ebaq 9 once the enemy fleet was dealt with.
He still had overwhelming numbers.
And since the voxyn had howled again, there were more Jedi among the newcomers.
More sacrifices for the gods, he thought with satisfaction, and sat back in the cognition throne to watch his forces complete his victory.
Through the Jedi Force-meld Jacen could feel Jaina in her cockpit—feel her determination, her cool analysis, and the edges of panic that sometimes broke through her composure. “Skip on my six! Breaking right …”
“This one has destroyed it.” This from Tesar.
Thanks! They weren’t words, really, these bursts of image and intensity from the Force, but that’s how they translated.
Jaina, Twin Suns, and all of Farlander’s force were heavily engaged at great odds. His own new arrivals, with most of the fleet’s Jedi, were moving against one of the huge battle groups that loomed like an overhanging cliff on Farlander’s flank.
The Jedi meld was skating on the edge of Jacen’s ability to comprehend. There were too many ships in the picture for him to absorb. Fortunately, three-fifths of the enemy were unengaged, and he could safely leave them out of his mental picture.
He called out coordinates, maneuvering Kre’fey’s force so as to provide maximum effectiveness at the moment of collision.
“Fire dovin missile!” Admiral Kre’fey ordered. He was too excited to sit in the grand chair reserved for a full admiral, and instead paced back and forth just behind Jacen. Jacen was going to find this annoying if Kre’fey kept it up for long.
“Dovin missile fired, sir.”
“Transmit coordinates of the space mine to General Farlander.”
“Coordinates transmitted, Admiral.”
“Wonderful!” Jacen heard Kre’fey clap his hands. “This is working well, don’t you think?”
But Jacen’s mind really wasn’t on what was occurring on the admiral’s bridge. Instead he kept his focus on Twin Suns Squadron and the desperate battle Jaina was fighting.
Missed!
Lowie, look out!
Jacen considered summoning his Vongsense, his ability to empathize with and sometimes influence the enemy. But that would mean losing the Force, and the ability to help his comrades. He decided that remaining in the meld was his best option.
“I�
��ve lost my rear shields!”
“That was my last missile!”
Go with the Force, Jacen sent. He closed his eyes and pushed out as much care, strength, and support as he could.
And behind him, dim in the Force, he felt another presence, powerful but cloaked, that radiated strength, but to Jacen alone.
Vergere.
Thirty light-years from the battle, at a narrow point of the long hyperspace route that led to Ebaq and its moons, a small New Republic task force dropped out of hyperspace. Most of the ships were unarmed. This was not a fighting force, but even so its mission was vital.
The squadron commander first fired a single missile, one containing an interdictor, modeled after a Yuuzhan Vong dovin basal. The interdictor would serve as a space mine.
Once the mine had been set in the center of the hyperspace lane, the other ships began to drop more conventional mines, mines with detection gear, explosive cores, and maneuvering thrusters. The mines immediately took up station around the dovin basal mine.
The unarmed ships continued to lay mines. Dozens of mines.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
“Got it!” Twin Six shouted. She’d just shot a skip off Lowie’s tail, and the Wookiee gave a roar of thanks.
Jaina blinked sweat from her eyes and hauled her X-wing right, away from a stream of plasma cannon fire. That enabled her to get a deflection shot at a coralskipper speeding by, but the Vong’s dovin basal sucked the laser bolts and suddenly Jaina was dancing away from more fire coming at her from her starboard quarter. It was friendly fire, laser bolts from a B-wing, but it was deadly for all that and Jaina didn’t want any part of it.
“All ships,” came an announcement on the command comm, “this is General Farlander. All ships to alter course simultaneously on the following coordinates …”
Jaina tried to absorb the coordinates and failed. She’d have to just get a visual and follow, that is if she could ever get free of this furball composed of friendly and enemy craft, debris, and random deadly fire.
“What was that coordinate?” From Twin Nine.
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