by James Luceno
The outer compartment slid open, and Jacen crawled out into the open water. He spent just a moment checking his equipment, his lightsaber and the small sensor key that would guide him back into his ship, and then he turned his attention to the watery world about him. He saw the lights in the distance, far away and far below. At first, he thought them to be some natural phenomenon, volcanic activity, perhaps, and wondered if he was giving the ooglith cloaker too much credit. Maybe the water here wasn’t really all that cold. As he crawled forward, walking his hands along the crust, to get a better angle of the glow, he recognized the lights for what they were: some sort of organized base!
A host of worries crossed through Jacen’s mind at that moment. He felt that he looked enough like one of the coralskipper pilots, with his mask and the second-skin clothing, even the skirt that the alien pilot had worn—he prayed that the male pilots wore the same uniform as the females—but how would he communicate with them? How would he slip by any sentries?
He took another deep and steadying breath, reminding himself that he was a Jedi, and that Jedi, above all else, could improvise through tight situations. And there was one other thing aiding him, for that mysterious call had not abated, and seemed even stronger now, and very close.
To Jacen’s surprise and relief, it didn’t appear to be coming from the distant, lighted base, but from up here, near the crust.
He moved swiftly, reminding himself that time was of the essence, crawling along the underside of the great ice crust, letting the call guide him. Then he came to an abrupt halt, for not far away before and below him came a procession of lights, a half dozen, rising through the water, toward him.
Jaina bit her lip and throttled the Merry Miner out to full, though the speed of the closing coralskippers mocked her attempted run. She thought to turn about, to plunge again into the shielding vicinity of the Helskan sun, but then realized that even that option had closed to her, for some of the coralskippers had fanned out to block her way back.
“They’ve got me,” she muttered, and for the first time since she had begun training with Mara, Jaina felt truly helpless, as if all her work becoming a Jedi could do nothing now to save her.
She started to put out a telepathic call, a farewell, but then, sensing something, she opened her eyes … and nearly toppled with relief.
The Rejuvenator came out of hyperspace right before her. Other ships—cruisers and gunships—appeared, and before Jaina could even open a channel and warn the approaching fleet, the great Star Destroyer dropped into attack mode. X-wings and other starfighters zoomed out of her bays; her great forward laser cannons opened up, streaks of light sizzling past Jaina.
“Hey there, Merry Miner,” came a familiar voice, and Jaina had never imagined that she would ever be this happy to hear Kyp Durron. “You need a little help?”
A squadron of X-wings roared past, the lead ship waggling its wings at her.
“You’re going to need more help when I get you back home,” came another voice, her father’s voice, and the Millennium Falcon, and then the Jade Sabre, came into view.
“Get behind us,” Luke added. “We’ll take care of these guys.”
Jaina gladly did as told, letting the Falcon and the Jade Sabre, and the whole fleet, soar past her, between her and the coralskipper group. The quickly diminishing coralskipper group, she realized as she brought the Merry Miner about and took a quick survey of the battle. The enemy had been taken by surprise, it seemed, and coralskipper after coralskipper went up in a blaze of sparkling pieces. Others did manage to turn for home, but then came yet another voice, across all channels.
“This is Rojo,” it said. “Let’s take it right to their home.”
Jaina throttled up to full. She had to keep up. She would be of no help in the fighting, of course, but she couldn’t forget that her brother was on that planet.
Jacen didn’t know whether to flee or fight, but found the point to be moot, for the nearest masked alien waved him into line.
They think I’m one of them, Jacen told himself, bolstering his confidence, and he nodded and started forward.
He was met by the scowling eyes of all six, and he understood then the dynamics at work here. He might be one of them, but something in either his uniform or demeanor indicated that he was of lesser rank. He paused a moment to study the group, their order and any differences he might find to distinguish each.
The eyes, he realized. The apparent leader, the one who had motioned to him, had only one eye. In place of the other was some kind of strange node, looking grafted on. The skin around both of his sockets, the only part of his true skin that was visible because of the ooglith cloaker and the star-shaped breather, was heavily tattooed. Jacen noted that each succeeding warrior carried fewer scars or tattoos on that one exposed region.
He remembered the dead alien pilot back at Dubrillion and the warrior his uncle had brought back from Belkadan, both bodies maimed and tattooed, scars crisscrossing scars. If his guess was right, both of those humanoids at Lando’s base must have been high-ranking members of this strange people.
Following that intuition, Jacen moved deferentially back down the line, taking the last position and following the group up to the ice cap, then along the surface to a hole that led into an airy, roughly dome-shaped chamber. Jacen knew at once that this small room held the unknown caller. He went in slowly, at the end of the line, poking his head out of the water tentatively. He had to fight hard to keep his eyes from widening in horror, for there in the corner curled a man, a Jedi Knight, and one that Jacen knew! The lead warriors of his procession had already moved next to Miko Reglia, had already begun punching him and grabbing at his arms, trying to hoist him up.
Jacen glanced to the other side, to see a woman—a beautiful woman, her fighting spirit obviously still intact—standing agitated but helpless between a pair of enemies.
To Jacen’s surprise, he recognized the woman, and not Miko Reglia, as the source of the telepathic call.
He climbed up into the chamber and moved beside the last warrior that had come in, the lowest-ranking besides himself, he believed.
That warrior scowled at him and pointed back to the hole.
“Yuth ugh!” he growled, and Jacen understood that the warrior wanted him to get back into the water.
The last, the least, was meant to take a post as a sentry, he guessed, and now he was the last.
Jacen turned back to the cold water.
“Come, Miko,” he heard the leader of the group say, and he was surprised that these disfigured barbarians spoke his language. “It is time to die.”
Jacen stopped, despite himself.
“Leave him alone,” the woman across the way pleaded. “You’re just going to fake it again. They don’t mean it, Miko!”
She ended her speech abruptly, with a gasp, as the warrior beside her doubled her over with a heavy punch to her gut.
“Yuth ugh!” the other warrior screamed at Jacen again. Jacen looked up and noted that the warrior’s eyes had widened in surprise.
“Bos sos si?” the warrior asked him, pointing to his belt, where his lightsaber hung.
Jacen glanced right, to see the two leaders hoisting Miko up brutally, then glanced back to the left, to see two of the four over there coming toward him, demanding to know what it was that he carried on his belt.
He pulled the lightsaber free and extended the glowing blade, cutting a sweep that slashed through the nearest warrior’s knee, severing the leg and dropping him with an agonized howl.
“Go, Miko!” Jacen prompted his fellow Jedi, but he knew before he even looked that way that Miko didn’t have much, if any, fight left in him, that he was a broken shell of a man.
This was Jacen’s fight.
Through the eyes of the war coordinator, Prefect Da’Gara watched another coralskipper explode into a shower of flashing bits. “All glory to you, warrior,” he mumbled reverently, the appropriate farewell to one killed gloriously in battle.
/> He was not distressed at the sight of one of his warriors dying in the battle on the far side of the Helskan sun, though. To die in battle was among the highest honors a Yuuzhan Vong warrior could achieve.
Nor was Prefect Da’Gara distressed that the battle was apparently going against the small coralskipper force the war coordinator had dispatched to meet the incoming enemy force. This group was supposed to lose, was supposed to retreat and, in doing so, bait the enemy in closer, closer, to the true power of the Praetorite Vong, to the thousands of waiting coralskippers, both small single-pilot craft and larger ships with a multitude of gunners, to the great ground-fire capabilities, both missile and gravity well, to the powered energy of the yammosk itself, an energy that bound the Yuuzhan Vong together and that would undoubtedly disrupt and even destroy any enemy ships wandering too close to the mighty war coordinator.
In came the remaining coralskippers of the pursuit group, soaring around the Helskan sun, flat out for the home base. And in came the pursuing fleet, more than a dozen large ships, including one huge and impressive vessel, and scores and scores of smaller craft.
A wry smile spread across the eager prefect’s face. The victory this day would be major, greater by far than the death of Belkadan or of Sernpidal.
They are joined? the prefect communicated to his war coordinator.
The creature’s confidence brought an even wider smile to the prefect’s face. He felt it then, the common bond sent out by the yammosk to all the Yuuzhan Vong warriors, the coralskippers returning and the thousands more even now in hiding on the back side of the planet. This was the true glory of the war coordinator, a perfect communication and coordination tool. And Da’Gara felt the yammosk’s confidence in the planetary defenses, comprised mostly of an energy field brought up by the great creature’s personal powers, along with the many volcano guns of the three worldships, leeching their energy from the planet itself; and the many strategically placed dovin basals with their devastating tractor beams that could bring down a moon, never mind a starfighter; and more general gravity wells that would disrupt technologically based communications and systems.
In they came, and Prefect Da’Gara waited eagerly.
Han kept the Falcon back as the bulk of the fleet soared in, as did Luke with the Jade Sabre, both of them keeping a protective watch about Jaina and her defenseless carry ship. Given the beginning of the battle, the rout on the far side of the sun, it seemed as if Commander Rojo had been correct in his estimation of the enemy forces.
Now, with the brief respite, Han had to find out about his oldest son.
“Where’s your brother?” he called to Jaina, and her pause told him all that he needed to know.
“Luke, I need you,” Han called.
“I heard,” came the response. “We’ll get to the planet as soon as the Rejuvenator and her escorts clear …” Luke’s voice trailed off, and as soon as Han looked ahead, to the mounting battle, he understood why.
Thousands of coralskippers had come out at the approaching fleet, zipping and zooming in and around the many starfighters. What had been a rout and chase was suddenly a scene of absolute chaos, of battle joined—heavily.
“Stay back here!” Han ordered Jaina, and he throttled up the Falcon, rushing to join the fight, the Jade Sabre pacing him all the way. “Get those guns singing, kid,” he called up to Anakin.
“Don’t call me kid,” came Lando’s dry response from the bottom gun turret. He finished with a startled cry as a pair of coralskippers soared past the Falcon.
Up front, Han and Leia ignored them, more intent upon the sudden barrage of ships that had come out to challenge the fleet. Ahead and to the side, a pair of Ranger gunships opened up, dozens of batteries on each sending lines of laser fire streaking out in a myriad of directions, forcing all the nearby coralskippers into wild and desperate, and often unsuccessful, evasive maneuvers.
“Impressive,” Han remarked.
“Newest and best,” Leia started to reply, but she stopped short and flinched when a cruiser off to the side of the Falcon went up in a huge explosion.
And then a larger coralskipper rushed in at the nearest Ranger gunship. They heard the banter between the two gunships, one commander saying that he had the coralskipper, all guns trained forward, and calling for the other to cover his attack.
And so the gunship cut loose, a tremendous barrage of flashing lasers that streaked at the coralskipper …
And disappeared.
“Gravity well,” Han muttered breathlessly. “Just like that thing on Sernpidal.”
Then Leia cried out, and Han lurched to the side as she cut the Falcon sharply and turned her up on edge, then dived down before a pair of approaching coralskippers.
“They’ve got a gravity well,” Han tried to explain. “A big one.”
Even as he finished, Leia brought the Falcon up and around, the gunship spectacle coming back into view. The coralskipper continued to somehow absorb the laser blasts, bending them into a field of such tremendous gravity that they seemed to simply disappear. The coralskipper soared past the firing gunship, moved in between it and its companion, which also opened up all guns.
And then the strange enemy craft began to spin. Faster and faster, bending the laser streaks.
Han and Leia heard other nearby pilots screaming for the gunship commanders to get out of there, and so they seemed to be trying, breaking off their attacks and turning tail to the coralskipper. But they couldn’t break free and began inadvertently circling the coralskipper.
Faster and faster they went, tighter and tighter the orbit.
They came crashing together, all three, and at that precise moment, the coralskipper gravity well dissipated and they all went up in a tremendous flash of brilliant energy.
Han glanced nervously at Leia. The Ranger gunships were the second-best thing they had brought out here, and they had just lost a third of the group.
And now they heard the calls from Kyp and the starfighter pilots, waging a blistering, weaving battle against a swarm of the enemy ships, and those calls were not of victory, but of surprise.
“They’re better than we thought,” Leia remarked, watching and listening to the distant spectacle of that battle, for the X-wings—top-of-the-line starfighters—were barely holding their own.
“Give us support, Rejuvenator!” came Kyp’s plea.
But the Rejuvenator had her hands full, coralskippers buzzing her from all angles and somehow avoiding her devastating cannon arrays.
“Going in for the planet,” Commander Rojo’s call came across all channels, and the great Star Destroyer throttled up and soared fast for the frozen planet, her forward batteries beginning the barrage against the surface.
Han winced at that sight, and so did Leia: Jacen was still down there.
The Jade Sabre cut across their viewscreen, lasers firing, coralskippers on her tail.
“Got you, kid,” Han called to Luke, but he had hardly started after his friend when he had to pull back, cutting hard the other way to avoid the coralskippers cutting across the Jade Sabre’s wake to open fire on the Falcon.
The quad laser cannons above Han began thumping away.
“They’re coming in hot!” Anakin cried from the pod above.
“Keep it steady,” Lando piped in. “We’ll take them.”
Lando ended with a startled shriek, and the Falcon was jolted several times from hits on the left flank.
“Where did they come from?” Lando called.
Han and Leia put the Falcon through all her moves, dipping and spinning, cutting fast, even pulling snap turns as if it was a tiny starfighter, usually to C-3PO’s accompanying cries.
But the coralskippers were good, amazingly so, pacing the larger ship’s movements and keeping their attacks wonderfully coordinated.
Suddenly, the thumping stopped from above, and no blue-white streaks shot out from above the Falcon’s bridge.
“Anakin?” Han cried, thinking the worst. “Anakin!�
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Commander Rojo soon came to recognize that he was in trouble. The coordination of the coralskipper attack against his prized ship was nothing short of brilliant, and those starfighter squadrons sent out to run guard for Rejuvenator had all they could handle in running guard for themselves.
Even worse, while the gravity wells coming at the Star Destroyer didn’t seem anywhere near strong enough to tear her shields away, the stunning focus of targets by the coralskippers, coming in at different angles but attacking the very same spots, was drastically weakening areas of the Star Destroyer’s defensive arrays.
Rojo narrowed his gaze, staring hard at the planet growing larger on the viewscreen, Rejuvenator’s forward batteries pounding away at the icy surface.
They had to find a weak spot, Rojo knew.
Damage reports chimed in from all about him, relating mounting problems on the Rejuvenator and relating the growing losses throughout the fleet. And then came the general alarms as an unknown planetary energy field gripped the great Star Destroyer. All of those alarms that were not local to the bridge washed out in a flood of static.
Commander Rojo knew that he was running out of time.
Anakin wasn’t hurt, but neither did he begin to respond. He sat in his pod, watching the coralskippers, their coordinated, too-synchronous movements. They couldn’t be improvising in such a pattern, with all of their movements so amazingly complementary. There was no way they could possibly communicate and react so fast.
It seemed eerily familiar to Anakin.
“They’ve joined,” he called down to his mother and father. “Just like me and Jaina and Jacen in the asteroid belt.”
“It’s just good flying,” Leia returned.
“I’ve seen better,” Han added.
Anakin shook his head throughout the responses, not buying them for a moment. He watched the dance about the Falcon, and about the Jade Sabre, watched the larger dance of coralskippers going on all about him, and he knew, and he was afraid.
For not only had those small groups attacking the Falcon and the Jade Sabre apparently found a level of symbiosis above the norm, but the entire enemy fleet had! Anakin sucked in his breath. He remembered how effective he and his siblings had been in such a state, and there were only three of them.