Destiny's Way

by Walter Jon Williams

“I didn’t get it either.” Twin Four.

  “Course change on my mark,” Farlander continued. “Five. Four. Three. Two. Mark.”

  Jaina saw the capital ships around her suddenly swing massively to a new heading and ignite their engines. The Yuuzhan Vong took a moment to respond, but soon they, too, were matching Farlander’s maneuver.

  Except for the ships that couldn’t. Trailing behind were the casualties, the dead ships, the wounded, and the out-of-control, both friendly and enemy.

  And Jaina, who was too tangled up with the Yuuzhan Vong to follow. If she straightened her course to pursue Farlander, she’d be blasted by a dozen enemy.

  “Squadron to form into single line ahead,” came the order from Farlander.

  “Slagged him!” From Twin Three.

  Enemy fire banged on Jaina’s rear shields, and she jerked the fighter into a roll as her astromech chittered angrily at the attackers. “Rolling left,” she said, as if anyone were keeping track of her movements. As far as she could tell the members of Twin Suns Squadron were all on their own, so separated in the melee they could no longer guard one another’s backs.

  There was a flash. Debris thundered on Jaina’s shields.

  “Who was that?” Twin Seven’s voice.

  “Twin Nine.” Tesar’s voice was calm, but Jaina could feel his anger in the Force.

  “Did she get out?”

  “Negative.”

  Anger ripped into Jaina. She’d lost another pilot, and she hadn’t even known Twin Nine was in danger.

  Time to kill some Vong, she decided. It was what she was here for.

  She looked for a coralskipper, and put it in her sights.

  Tsavong Lah watched with pleasure as Farlander’s squadron fled the battle. The sudden maneuver had caught the Yuuzhan Vong by surprise, but the Battle Group of Yun-Yammka had corrected quickly and were now hanging tenaciously on to the enemy. The Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah had altered course to intercept and would soon join the fight and finish the infidels.

  The warmaster’s pleasure was increased as the Battle Group of Yun-Txiin slammed into the newly arrived squadron with proper headlong Yuuzhan Vong spirit. The blaze bugs overhead began to moderate their pitch as missiles and projectile weapons began to inflict damage.

  A sudden whine from the blaze bugs caught his attention, and his eyes widened in surprise.

  Farlander’s squadron was in the process of another course change, a radical one this time. Tsavong Lah couldn’t believe how rapidly the New Republic capital ships were turning—they were whipping around a full 270 degrees, and without losing velocity!

  It was a clear impossibility. Yet they were doing it, and leaving the Battle Group of Yun-Yammka behind.

  And then his nerves turned chill as he realized that the infidels’ new course was sending them straight into the battle between the Battle Group of Yun-Txiin and the newly arrived force. The Battle Group of Yun-Txiin would be caught between the two forces and hammered.

  “The Battle Group of Yun-Harla will engage the enemy immediately,” he ordered. That would reinforce the Battle Group of Yun-Txiin and repair some of the damage the enemy maneuver had created. “The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka will regroup and prepare to reenter combat. The Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah will—”

  He paused as more blaze bugs began to whine, a whole host of them rising from the floor to hover in the air and form something new.

  What now? he thought.

  Jacen watched as Keyan Farlander’s entire squadron of capital ships performed the Solo Slingshot around the dovin basal space mine analog, the modified interdictor missile that Kre’fey’s Ralroost had fired on its arrival on the field of battle. The enemy fighting them continued on their previous course, unable to claw their way after Farlander without performing a conventional turn and losing most of their speed. A few of the enemy, by guesswork or luck, managed to work out what was happening and make the turn along with Farlander, but these were outnumbered and quickly blasted out of existence.

  The rest would be out of the battle for some time as the capital ships lumbered into their turns and tried to maneuver into some kind of appropriate formation.

  Nice work, Jacen sent to Madurrin.

  Thanks.

  Ralroost shuddered to a hit, and Jacen was reminded that a Bothan Assault Cruiser was so named because it concentrated most of its power on attack, not to shields or defense.

  “Breach between frames M and N,” someone said. “Frame seals are holding. Damage control is responding.”

  “Hammer them! Hammer them!” Admiral Kre’fey, shouting, swung his fists dangerously in the air over Jacen’s head.

  Kre’fey’s ships were engaged in a furious close-range action with the enemy. Jacen could feel Kyp and his Dozen, Corran Horn and Rogue Squadron, and the all-Jedi Wild Knights flying in frantic combat. The Knights in particular were tearing through the enemy, their predatory reflexes in perfect synchronization with the Force. An all-Jedi squadron was a terrible thing indeed.

  Then Jacen felt another surge in the Force, and he felt a new mind enter the Jedi meld, a mind uncertain and only half trained.

  Hello, Mom, he sent.

  The full power of the Force-meld took Leia by surprise. She was in the copilot’s chair of the Millennium Falcon, which was echeloned with the rest of the Smugglers’ Alliance ships around the bright red Star Destroyer Errant Venture. No sooner had she fallen out of hyperspace than the meld reached for her, and part of her mind was viewing a burning enemy frigate with Corran Horn, fighting a jaw-clenching combat with Kyp Durron, or engaging in vicious, efficient pack behavior with the Barabel Wild Knights. The intensity of it took her breath away.

  Hello, Mom. Jacen’s presence was clear in the Force.

  Hello, Jacen, she sent uncertainly. Unlike the others in the fight, her Force training had been haphazard, and she hadn’t had the opportunity to practice the meld with others. But the power of the meld was so strong that she felt her uncertainty fade as soon as she received her first order from Jacen.

  She received another message from Jacen, felt the coordinates burning in her mind. She looked at the Falcon’s navigation displays and saw the point indicated. She translated the coordinates and keyed them in.

  “Han, Jacen wants us here.”

  “What Jacen wants, Jacen gets,” Han said, and switched his comm unit to the command channel.

  Han—Captain Solo, again, with his insignia pinned to his otherwise civilian vest—commanded the Smugglers’ Alliance squadron from the Millennium Falcon. “I’m happier in a smaller ship,” he said when Booster Terrik offered Errant Venture. “And besides, a Star Destroyer is too big a target.”

  The motley Smugglers’ Alliance squadron began its change of course.

  Leia’s Noghri bodyguards, in the turbolaser turrets, chuckled in their whispery voices and fired practice shots into the void.

  And then Leia felt a shard of terror clear through the Force-meld, and she knew Jaina was in trouble.

  “This is the critical moment,” Ackbar said. He, Winter, and Mara sat in a gallery above the Fleet Command operations room, where Sien Sovv stood amid a bustle of aides, screens, and constantly flowing data. A holo of the battle at Ebaq 9 floated in the air above the busy room. The Smugglers’ Alliance squadron under Han Solo had just appeared in the display, the ships picked out in brilliant orange.

  It was a massive contrast to the last time Mara had watched Sien Sovv in action. Then the Supreme Commander had been forced to conduct his defense of Coruscant in front of a full session of the Senate, with the Senators shouting advice and hurling threats, and Chief of State Borsk Fey’lya countermanding Sovv’s orders from the speaker’s podium.

  The Supreme Commander seemed a lot more comfortable in his current situation. And no wonder.

  “It is at this point that the enemy might begin to suspect a trap,” Ackbar said. He slumped in his chair, and his voice was slurred with weariness. Being on dry land again was taking its toll.
“Alas that we needed to send this squadron to prevent Farlander and Kre’fey from being overwhelmed … fortunately it is small and innocuous …” He sighed heavily. “Perhaps they will not take alarm. Perhaps not.”

  “Rolling left!” Jaina shouted. But a stream of plasma cannon projectiles met her as she rolled, one stunning impact after another on her shields, and she knew there was a second enemy behind her. If she broke right she’d run into the first enemy.

  Fortunately, space is three-dimensional. She went up.

  An enemy missile shot past her canopy, and then she was free. She rolled again and went after her pursuers.

  She found one and was on the verge of attempting a deflection shot when R2-B3 chittered a warning and she jerked the stick away from the flaming projectiles that soared past her.

  “Twin Three and Four, I’m in a crossfire here—where are you?” she demanded.

  “Three’s hit!” Four’s voice. “I saw him eject!”

  “Where are you?” Jaina demanded.

  “I don’t know!”

  Jaina jinked away from a line of fire only to have her shields slammed by a missile. Her astromech droid squealed at the state of the shields, which were near collapse. Jaina blinked sweat from her eyes and jinked again, and by chance found a coralskipper floating across her sights. She fired the quad lasers and felt satisfaction at the sight of fire burning along the enemy hull. If she hadn’t killed it, she’d at least hurt it.

  A howl came over the comm, and Jaina’s Force-impelled reflexes jerked at the controls.

  The howl was followed by another, this one of satisfaction, as Lowie scragged the coralskipper that had been on Jaina’s tail. Between the two of them, Jaina and Lowie hunted down and blew apart a third coralskipper, and then she found a moment to raise her faceplate and mop sweat from her face with a gloved hand. They were on the edge of the furball that had originally surrounded Farlander’s squadron, but which had now become a separate fight, starfighters and coralskippers circling and hunting each other in a remarkably small area.

  She felt Tesar’s urgency through the Force. “This one has losst shieldz and an engine!” he called.

  The Force told her where Tesar was before her displays did.

  “Streak,” she told Lowie, “stay on my wing!”

  And she dived back into the fight.

  Tsavong Lah gazed in furious concentration at the small squadron that had appeared on the flank of the Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah. It was built around a single very large wedge-shaped ship, with a modest number of medium-sized vessels and a lot of small ones. By itself it wasn’t very menacing, except that it could attack the rear of the Yun-Q’aah battle group if he committed it to battle.

  Better to squash this small group first, he decided. Even though this little squadron wasn’t large enough to turn the tide of battle, it was better to be safe than not.

  “The Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah is to engage the small squadron on its flank and destroy it.”

  A subaltern relayed the order. There was a moment in which the subaltern communed with his villip, after which he turned and saluted with crossed arms. “Commander Droog’an begs to ask whether we have been led into an ambush, Warmaster.”

  For a moment Tsavong Lah’s lip curled at the insolence of Droog’an, but then he stopped to consider the question. Had all the information of the Final Redoubt been nothing but an attempt to lure him here into the Deep Core? Had that schemer Nom Anor been outschemed?

  The appearance of two enemy squadrons was suspicious. But one of them seemed to be a convoy escort, and the other was understrength and composed of such a heterogeneous array of vessels that it was barely military at all.

  If he, Tsavong Lah, had planned an ambush, he would have used overwhelming force and pounced from all directions. He wouldn’t have fed in two squadrons piecemeal, neither of them large enough to do anything more than delay the outcome.

  No, it had to be a coincidence that a convoy arrived at just this moment. The second squadron was probably a scratch force summoned by a distress call.

  “Tell Commander Droog’an there is no ambush,” Tsavong Lah said. “Order him to engage immediately.”

  “At once, Warmaster!”

  Leia could see that Han was impressed by the size and strength of the enemy battle group that suddenly swerved to engage him. He blew a long breath, then cast a glance over his shoulder at Leia and said, “I don’t suppose the United Jedi Cluster-Mind has any suggestions about how to handle this one?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Leia said. The meld knew an engagement had to occur, but its tactical advice was a little unclear.

  “Well then,” Han breathed. He looked at the displays again, then flicked on the comm. “This is Captain Solo,” he told the squadron. “We can’t hope to match the enemy with numbers or firepower, so we’ll have to make use of speed, flexibility, and—” His brow creased in worry. “—tactical brilliance,” he finished hopefully.

  Leia reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Go get ’em, Slick,” she said.

  * * *

  Ralroost shuddered to another hit, but Jacen’s mind was in the Force, seeing through the eyes of the Jedi meld. His mind strained to keep up with all the information flowing through the Force. Through Leia’s eyes he saw Han’s slashing attack on the larger enemy battle group, a hit-and-run assault that the enemy was too large and slow to counter. Through Madurrin’s perceptions he felt Farlander’s battered squadron slam into the enemy, taking Kre’fey’s enemies in the rear and inflicting damage beyond their numbers. Through the eyes of Kyp and Corran and Saba he saw the flash of fire, coralskippers burning, enemy frigates and cruisers trembling to the force of shadow bombs.

  And he felt Jaina’s desperation and Lowbacca’s ferocity as they aided Tesar’s grim fight for survival. Jacen’s fingers twitched with the impulse to run to Ralroost’s fighter bays, to jump into his X-wing and fly to Jaina’s assistance. But he knew he served the cause better on Ralroost, where he was able to keep the other Jedi focused, help them sense each other’s locations and coordinate their actions with one another.

  Jacen jumped as Kre’fey’s white-furred hand dropped onto his shoulder. “Now, Jacen!” the admiral said. “Our minefield is complete! Now you’ll see the destruction of the enemy!”

  Kre’fey gave an order on the comm.

  And then, mere minutes later, as the squadrons leapt from their hiding places in the Deep Core hyperspace lanes, more New Republic ships began to appear, one squadron after another. A host of Jedi minds rose into the meld: Tahiri, Zekk, Alema, and the burning power of Luke Skywalker.

  All here at the finish.

  The voxyn cried again as they detected one new Jedi after another, their weary howls now more akin to whimpers. The blaze bugs that flew into the air to mark the new infidel squadrons provided a strange dissonance in Tsavong Lah, for the picture that rose to Tsavong Lah’s brain, fed by the tendrils of the cognition throne, showed the enemy in even greater numbers, vast numbers of infidels all around him.

  It took a moment for him to realize why he was receiving two different impressions. So many were the infidels that the warmaster had run out of blaze bugs to represent them in the display.

  Fury possessed him. What did it matter that he was now outnumbered? That his forces had been drawn out of position and were about to be engulfed? The Yuuzhan Vong were conquerors! The gods had promised them victory!

  Swiftly he reordered his forces. The Battle Groups of Yun-Harla and Yun-Txiin were heavily engaged against the original enemy squadron and the first set of reinforcements. They had local superiority in numbers, though both sides had lost all formation and the battle had dissolved into a general melee. Tsavong Lah ordered these forces to redouble their efforts and destroy their foes before more infidel battle groups could intervene.

  The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka, which had opened the battle and been left on its own since the original enemy squadron had made its unexpected turning maneuver, had regr
ouped. Tsavong Lah decided to sacrifice it. He ordered the battle group to hurl itself against the enemy reinforcements in order to keep them occupied while he tried to win the fight with his other forces.

  “Do-ro’ik vong pratte!” the group commander replied when he heard the order, the battle cry of the warrior caste. Tsavong Lah swelled with pride at the unquestioning spirit of the doomed commander. He knew he, his ships, and his warriors were going to their deaths, but still he gladly accepted the clash of battle.

  The Battle Group of Yun-Q’aah, which had been in pursuit of the small, agile force that had appeared as the second group of reinforcements, was ordered to break off its pursuit and maneuver against several of the infidel squadrons. If Commander Droog’an maneuvered cleverly enough, he could occupy a large group of the enemy without committing himself against overwhelming numbers, thus buying time for the rest.

  That left the reserve Battle Group of Yun-Yuuzhan, under Tsavong Lah’s personal command. It was the only force that hadn’t been engaged with the enemy, that hadn’t suffered casualties, and that still had complete freedom of maneuver.

  Tsavong Lah hesitated for a moment, then decided to take his battle group straight into battle alongside the Battle Groups of Yun-Harla and Yun-Txiin. If he could force a victory there, it might create other opportunities.

  He gave the orders, and his forces screamed toward the battle.

  Tsavong Lah had been led into a trap—by Nom Anor’s information.

  “You have betrayed us,” Yoog Skell said. “You must pay with your life.”

  Nom Anor calmly reached into his pocket for the blorash jelly that he then flung at Yoog Skell’s feet.

  The high prefect waved his arms, trying not to topple, as the jelly pinned his feet to the floor. He gave Nom Anor a wild look. “What are you doing, Executor?” he demanded.

  “Giving Shimrra an itch.” Nom Anor surprised himself with how calmly he was behaving.

  He slashed his amphistaff down on Yoog Skell’s head. The high prefect folded into unconsciousness, his feet still pinned by the semisentient jelly tendrils.

  Nom Anor looked at the sprawled body of his superior and hoped he wasn’t dead. He’d always rather liked Yoog Skell.