Balance Point

by Kathy Tyers

  Too bad about her hair. If she’d waited a few days, she might’ve kept it—with the quarantine canceled.

  She spun around. “Jacen, Jaina, good. Load up that shuttle and get offworld. I don’t think we’ve got long.”

  “There’s room for you on board.” Jaina pushed forward. “You, Olmahk …” She glanced toward the room’s inner corner and the ever-present gray shadow. “And maybe two others.”

  “I can’t leave yet. Get away now, before the Yuuzhan Vong get here.”

  “They might not be coming.”

  Recognizing the new voice, Jacen turned around. “Hello, Randa,” he groaned.

  The other Noghri, Basbakhan, stood beside Randa.

  Leia shrugged. “He’s staying out of the way. Take him with you. As a favor to me.”

  “I’m staying,” Jaina said flatly, “if you’re staying.”

  “Please, you two,” Leia said. “Before—”

  She never got to finish that sentence. At the far edge of the small local-space screen, a wave of unidentified ships appeared. Until the DDF’s threat analyst painted them friend or foe, they shone white, but Jacen had little doubt that the enemy had arrived.

  “Too late,” Jaina mumbled.

  On-screen, blue grids that represented the planetary shields sprang up around one after another of the orbital cities. Off to Jacen’s right, another comm unit—evidently Gateway’s ground-orbit link to Bburru—emitted a staccato buzz, followed by a curt feminine voice.

  “Attention, all downside residents. This is Duro Defense Force. Take emerrrgency shelters. Do not attempt space flight. This system is under attack.”

  Leia spun back to the other console, swatted a control, and leaned down. “Attention, Gateway dome. This is Administrator Organa Solo. If you have boarding orders, report to your transport immediately. If you have not been assigned to a transport, get to your assigned emergency shelter. Do not stop for belongings.

  “And here we go again,” she muttered aside.

  Jacen pushed forward. “What can I do?”

  Dark circles looked like they would swallow his mother’s eyes. “Find your dad,” she said. “He’s not answering the comlink. Jaina, how are your eyes? Can you run a comm unit?”

  “Fine. Yes.” Jaina dropped onto the chair Leia vacated. “Um … Mother?”

  Her tone of voice made Jacen turn around, too.

  “What?” Leia demanded.

  “The planetary shields are up around every habitat, now—except three. Bburru, and the city on either side of it.”

  Jacen eyed the display. Blue gridlines surrounded orbital cities and the domes directly beneath them, in a ring around Duro’s equator—except for the zone over Gateway.

  He intercepted his sister’s stare. “Sabotage,” Jaina exclaimed. “Mom, we’re ground zero.”

  “Go, Jacen. Get out of here,” Leia exclaimed. “Tell your dad.”

  Jacen dashed out the door. Mixed-species knots of people hustled shoulder to shoulder, traveling against him toward the main gate. He stopped to hoist a frightened Chadra-Fan child onto his shoulders and help her find her family. In the midst of a group of humans, a white-haired man carried the black whisperkit over one shoulder. Three children followed closely. The smallest child laughed at the small creature’s quizzical face. The two older children had wide, haunted eyes.

  So the kit hadn’t been shaved, either. That made Jacen almost irrationally glad.

  In the Tayana district, Ryn congregated around one of the larger ruins, where a jagged, two-story wall still stood mostly intact. The ground shuddered underfoot. Jacen broke into a run again.

  On top of a growing pile of reddish-brown rock rubble stood his dad—wearing an ancient gornt-hide racing helmet, although wisps of hair stuck out at front and back. This had to be another solidarity gesture.

  More rocks spewed up from behind the pile.

  Jacen ran up. “What can I do?” he shouted.

  The roar from below was almost deafening. It had to be the tunneling equipment, digging a hiding place.

  “Good, you’re back.” Han wiped a grimy sleeve across one cheek, then shouted again. “Somebody stepped on my comlink. Whoever can’t get into ships or crawlers, send them this way. Romany’s people started a tunnel three days ago. Skulking,” he growled. “If we can’t get these people off Duro, we’ll at least hide ’em in the mine complex. Come on up, lend a hand.”

  From her post in the comm center, Jaina called takeoff orders. Two freighters lifted simultaneously, loaded past capacity with frightened refugees. At the same time, three crawlers lumbered off toward Thirty-two and the Ryn caravan ships. She half heard Jacen’s voice over Leia’s comm station, announcing he’d found their dad. Between transmissions, she fiddled with the small local-space screen.

  She raised her mask, experimenting. When she squinted just right, she could focus the glowing pips. As expected, the incoming swarm suddenly painted itself red. It swept in, an offset-wing formation. A swarm of blue dots—Duro Defense Force—deployed into combat flights just off Bburru habitat. And Anakin had shown her a trick, once.

  The screen blanked. “What are you doing?” Randa demanded.

  Then the screen blinked on again, displaying twice the field of space it’d shown before. Randa’s howl became a cry of admiration.

  Jaina straightened her cap, watching one arm of the red arc split off and double back. One of the unshielded Duros cities, Orr-Om, had drifted off its geosync point. She wondered if its stabilizers had been sabotaged, besides its shields. Green speckles flew off its docking bays, civilians trying to evacuate. Around them swarmed red bogeys that had to be skips. The speckles vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

  She felt less guilty about swiping that shuttle. It would’ve been vaped if any Duros launched it now.

  She clenched both fists anyway. In her mind, she was grabbing stick and throttle, coaxing everything she could wring out of her X-wing’s sublight engine. She couldn’t stand this!

  But she couldn’t look away, either. One of the larger bogeys doubled back toward the drifting habitat. Disbelieving, Jaina watched the bogey ram directly through its outer docks.

  She gaped. What kind of beasts had the Yuuzhan Vong brought this time?

  Half a dozen blue dots went after the big red bogey. The others hung back, defending Bburru and its shipyards. From the planet’s other side, the Mon Cal light cruiser Poesy accelerated toward this quadrant. Jaina had looked up its tech specs. With fourteen turbolasers, eighteen ion cannons, half a dozen heavy tractor beam projectors, and fabulous shields, it ought to make a difference.

  Then a bizarre, heavily accented voice thundered over several comm channels. “Return to your cities and settlements,” it said. “We offer you peace. Return, and we will speak with you. Attack or try to flee, and you will be destroyed.”

  Leia pushed back from her transceiver. “They’ve learned to transmit on our channels,” she exclaimed. “If that means they can listen in, too, we haven’t got a chance.”

  Jaina stared at the screen. Several freighters had popped up toward orbit, some from Gateway and some from the other unshielded refugee settlements. Those closest to the approaching Poesy went unchallenged. Two that had barely made orbit, departing Gateway, were surrounded by red coralskippers. One turned back.

  “Coming back in,” a voice said out of Jaina’s link box. “If we keep running, they’ll blast us, too.”

  “Copy,” Jaina answered. “Landing crater two is clear for you.”

  If she’d been in command of that ship, though, she would’ve kept running. She’d rather die in space, trying to get somewhere, than wait here for the Yuuzhan Vong to make her a slave.

  Most of the red swarm came on, virtually unchallenged. It wasn’t a big group, but Duro wasn’t mounting any defense of the refugee settlements, only the orbital cities. Kenth Hamner’s reinforcements, if they came, would arrive too late to help Gateway. The enemy force had a target lock on this dome.
r />   She’d bet anything this was Nom Anor’s doing.

  A wheezing Mon Cal voice made her receiver buzz. “Administrator Organa Solo, this is Commodore Mabettye. Poesy has been ordered by Admiral Wuht to stand down and withdraw to our previous station. I am sorry. We will support you as we can.”

  Jaina couldn’t believe it. Had the Vong bought off Admiral Dizzlewit, too?

  On the other hand, Poesy couldn’t have reached Gateway’s quadrant before the Yuuzhan Vong did, or launch its fighters in time. By holding that point in orbit, it could still defend several evacuating settlements.

  The enemy’s main force seemed to be shapes that the sensors represented as bigger than skips, but smaller than cruisers. Landing craft? she guessed.

  “All evacuation ships,” Leia called into her pickup, “you’re on your own. If you think you can make hyperspace, go! If not, do whatever you can to save lives.” She flicked a tile on the console. “Gateway to all crawlers. Don’t turn back. Get to Thirty-two. We’re ground zero.”She turned on Jaina. “Where did you park your shuttle?”

  “I just sent it off,” Jaina admitted.

  Leia hesitated only a second. “Good girl,” she said. “I can’t get through to SELCORE now. We’re going underground.”

  “And we aren’t quite alone,” Jaina exclaimed. “Look!”

  On the local-space screen, a single white “unidentified” craft blasted down from Bburru City, headed toward Duro’s south pole.

  “Got to be Aunt Mara,” Jaina said. “They dropped off Anakin’s X-wing down there.”

  Leia smiled grimly. “Two X-wings and Mara’s Shadow? I’m glad they’re here, but we could use Rogue Squadron. I’d even take Kyp’s Dozen if they showed up.”

  Ten yorik-trema landing craft dropped in formation toward Duro’s surface, each captain keeping the other flattened ovals in view as they decelerated through hideous mists. The ultrasensitive eyes of each living yorik-trema moved constantly, tracking the wedges of deadly coralskipper fighters flying escort. In this atmosphere, it was almost a blind fall.

  Tsavong Lah stood behind his pilot in the small forward compartment of the lead lander. Beside him, cradled in a blastula, was a specialized villip. A second creature gripped it, surrounding it like a husk that dangled a long straight tail. A metal-rich diet had deposited conductive material in the oggzil’s vertebrae, creating a living antenna, a means to send villip-speech over frequencies that the infidels used, just as Tsavong had been promised. A master shaper waited back at the Sunulok for his praise—if it worked—or else his reduction in caste. There were many former shapers among the Shamed Ones.

  Tsavong stroked the villip, careful not to dislodge its oggzil companion. He already wore a tizowyrm in one ear.

  “Citizens of Duro,” he addressed the villip, “we have no interest in your mechanical cities, only the planet’s unwanted surface. The ychna, our servant in orbit, will destroy any of your other monstrosities that threaten us. Stand ready to send down a delegation to consummate your surrender, with your … in your … in persons.” The tizowyrm had some trouble with that phrase. He gave the villip a sharp pat, and it shrank again.

  Once they’d passed through the worst mists, he stared out the mica-scale viewing panel between the yoriktrema’s ablative, regenerative ventral surfaces. He’d ordered his coralskipper pilots to make a symbolic sweep, a first step toward cleansing the planet that would be his next staging point. The coralskipper fighters swooped down, launching deadly accurate plasma streams at monuments too huge to have been crafted by hand tools. Black and gray stone shattered into shards. A massive, flat-topped ruin fell beneath their deadly fire-flow. Three small dome shelters collapsed. In the distance, a trio of slow-moving mechanical vehicles, undoubtedly full of infidels, crawled away from the target dome. The coralskippers attacked. Yellow-green flame erupted from the crawling vehicles.

  “To you,” Tsavong Lah murmured. “Yun-Yammka, accept those lives. In return for that gift, grant us success.”

  His yorik-trema shuddered as its landing claws seized the ground. Ignoring the settlement’s artificial boarding tubes, he ordered molleung worms extended from the yorik-tremas’ sides.

  One of his lieutenants gave his cadre of landing troops—young warriors in unscarred armor—final orders.One group, assigned outdoor duties, already wore gnullith breathing aides.

  “Destroy only those who threaten violence,” the lieutenant ordered. “Gather any who lay down their weapons into a holding and purification area.” He looked up to Tsavong Lah.

  The warmaster raised his armored arms in benediction. “Go with the gods,” he said. “All glory to you.”

  He turned to a villip-choir view of local space. The native defenders were settling back into their landing bays on board their abominations. The crippled mechanical city drifted. His native agent there would meet the gods escorted by an entire city, once gravity caught it.

  Satisfied, Tsavong Lah turned to a display table of small, dedicated villips. He stroked one.

  “Off-load Tu-Scart and Sgauru,” he ordered, “and release them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Even without a copilot, Mara could call on most of Jade Shadow’s capabilities. Lando’s techs had installed pilot-controlled AG-1G lasers—nearly as powerful as the AG-2Gs he’d put on the Millennium Falcon, years ago—plus a full KDY shielding suite. Shada had shown up with a gift from Talon Karrde, two Dymex HM-8 torp launchers. Mara hadn’t asked the former Mistryl Shadow Guard where they came from; she’d simply specified that they, too, had to be pilot-accessible. Now, just so long as nothing went wrong with life-support—which she would need a third arm to reach—she was almost as single-handedly capable as Luke and Anakin in their XJ X-wings.

  She’d dropped Anakin at his ship, down near the pole. Now she keyed her heads-up display to paint him and Luke silver-blue. In the distance, beyond Orr-Om’s death throes, Luke turned tightly to take one more strafing run at the monster coiled around it.

  Sharply tapered forward from its tandem power core and drive unit, Shadow flew almost as smoothly as Jade’s Fire, if not quite as nimbly as the X-wings. Mara clenched stick and throttle, diving into atmosphere again. Down in the opaque goop, her port and starboard visual scanners were useless. Long-range sensors, mounted just below her heads-up, showed a trio of mismatched but aerodynamic craft rising to meet her.

  Duro Defense Force already had been driven back to defend the other orbital cities, and their few B-wings had flown straight into the enemy’s attack wing and been shot to pieces. Nimbler DDF E-wings and local Dagger-D police ships harried the landing force’s coralskipper escorts, but plainly, this small Yuuzhan Vong force meant only to establish a beachhead—too quickly for Gateway to evacuate. Now the dome dwellers were hostages.

  As Mara closed with the skips, she eyed her long-range scanners. About thirty degrees across Duro’s surface, a convoy of three freighters and a dozen smaller craft popped free of the toxic clouds and dashed for open space. A tetra formation of coralskippers blasted toward it.

  “I’m there,” Anakin announced.

  One of the silver-blue pips on her screen headed toward the convoy.

  Her own trio of skips came straight at her, firing molten projectiles and streams of blinding plasma. Lando’s new service droids had fitted Shadow with a stutter trigger, and Mara targeted the lead craft as they came on, weakening its dovin basal defense as well as she could.

  “Luke?” she called, pulling back on her stick and setting an evasive roll as she pulled for black space. Twin ion drives responded smoothly. “Want to lend a hand here?”

  “On my way,” he came back.

  She had time for only a fast glance at her long-range scanner. The silver-blue pip streaked away from Orr-Om, headed straight for her.

  The Shadow shivered slightly with unevenly absorbed energy. Mara juked into a rising reversal, then snap-turned to port and was rewarded with a broadside shot at one coralskipper. Again she pounded its shield
ing, decelerating and rotating simultaneously, keeping that one skip dead in her sights. Her brackets went live around it, a dead lock-on, but she wouldn’t waste a torp until … until …

  Not this pass! The enemy pilot’s friends were headed back, almost in range. High behind them, where they couldn’t see him, Luke swooped into position.

  She knew exactly what he wanted from her. Playing her etheric rudder, she set a spinning dive. The coralskippers followed like hungry mynocks.

  One hard turn to starboard put them squarely in Luke’s sights. His X-wing pounded the lead skip. The second broke off. Mara jinked hard, came back, and put the torp right where she wanted it. Multicolored coral sprayed in all directions.

  Luke had taken up position on another skip’s tail. The coralskipper decelerated hard, a maneuver guaranteed to make an inexperienced pilot overshoot, putting him precisely in the enemy’s sights.

  That X-wing pilot was anything but inexperienced. “Cut speed, Artoo,” Mara heard on the private frequency, and the X-wing came to a relative standstill, still in killing position behind the coralskipper. His lasers showered it with deadly firepower.

  Mara vaped it with a second missile.

  At that instant, her threat board went red. Coralskippers’ weapons didn’t set off torpedo-lock alarms, so she had only a moment’s warning. She slammed the throttle forward, pushed down on her stick, and danced on the rudders.

  “Got him,” Luke announced.

  And Mara came about as the last coralskipper was jetting off toward open space.

  “How’d you do that?” she demanded.

  “He must’ve been chasing you on full power. That would distract a dovin basal just as badly as projecting full shields. I think,” he added. “Where did they come from?”

  “I was headed for Gateway. Hoping to give Leia time to get some more evac ships headed out.”

  “Leia’s gone into hiding,” Luke told her. “We can’t do her any more good, here … yet. She needs time to get people on board.”