by James Luceno
“I think you’re right.”
“Master Skywalker?” The voice, female, emerged from the vicinity of Luke’s chest.
He reached under his robe and pulled out a comlink. “Skywalker here.”
“Bridge here. Team Purella reports onstation.”
“Thank you.” He put the comlink away. “Jaina’s ready. And that’s one more check on the checklist to start this operation.”
Mara looked over to the hangar’s far wall, where chrono displays showed the time at local hours for CORUSCANT GOVERNMENT CENTER, CORELLIAN CITY OF CORONET, CENTERPOINT STATION DAYCYCLE, and elsewhere. “We should be getting a bunch more notices like that, if everything goes to plan.”
The others in the hangar knew it, too. Activity was increasing. Mechanics withdrew from the starfighters. Several pilots were already clambering into their cockpits.
Luke glanced around the pilots of his squadron. Some were talking with one another. Three were stretched out in the shadows of their X-wings, sleeping, wrapped up in Jedi robes they’d be stowing before takeoff. Two sat cross-legged, meditating. He nodded in approval at this calmness in the eye of the storm.
“Master Skywalker? Team Mynock reports in position.”
Luke almost sagged with relief. The lack of any sort of “complications” notification meant that Ben, Jacen, and Dr. Seyah were aboard Centerpoint Station and standing by.
He reached for his comlink to offer thanks to his bridge contact, but she spoke up again. “Team Tauntaun reports in position. Team Slashrat reports no new activity in target zone. Team—wait a moment—”
Then over the hangar’s speakers came a different voice, male, that of Dodonna’s flight control officer. “All pilots to their craft. Group enters hyperspace in five minutes. All pilots to their craft.”
All around Luke and Mara, Jedi pilots rose to their feet.
Mara leaned in for a final kiss before launch. “Time for you to do one of the six or eight things you do best.”
He smiled at her. “Wait, where’s my traditional put-down? You’re going soft, Jade.”
“Sure I am.” She turned, smiled over her shoulder at him, and walked with a jaunty stride back to her X-wing.
Luke looked around at his pilots. “Hardpoint Squadron,” he said, “mount up.”
chapter nine
CORONET, CORELLIA
Kolir gestured down the avenue, then glanced at the chrono embedded at the snap closure of her bag. “Right on time,” she said.
The other Jedi turned to look. In the middle distance, approaching at a high rate of speed even for Corellian drivers, was a convoy of closed-canopy airspeeders. The two in front and two in back were CorSec vehicles painted in brown and burnt orange, and warning lights of the same color flashed atop their forward viewports. The middle vehicle was a somber crimson, its viewports tinted to prevent those outside from viewing whoever might be inside.
“Jedi,” Jaina said, “meet Aidel Saxan, Prime Minister of the Five Worlds. Aidel, meet your captors. Thann, alert Control that we’ve made visual contact. It’s on.”
The convoy, floating in from above the fluid streams of groundspeeder traffic, merged with the incoming stream and slowed to the groundspeeder travel rate as it neared the Jedi. Kolir stretched the carry-straps of her bag and then stepped into them, allowing them to shrink around her waist, transforming the bag into a pouch. She reached into it and, making no show of the motion, drew out her silvery lightsaber.
The convoy was now meters away and still closing, though it had slowed to make a left-hand turn over cross-traffic into the gate entrance to the residence compound. “Just like we practiced it,” Jaina said. “Three—two—one—Now!”
In unison, the four Jedi leapt up and over the cross-traffic, each arcing toward one of the speeders in the convoy.
Jaina whipped off her traveler’s robe as she leapt, leaving her dressed in a close-fitting black jumpsuit. Her lightsaber was at her belt when the robe flew away, in her hand before she cleared the lane of cross-traffic groundspeeders, and lit as she came down on the forward portion of the lead CorSec vehicle. She plunged its glowing blade into the metal surface beneath her and wrenched it around, cutting through the vehicle’s engine compartment. There was a pop, and the speeder immediately began to lose speed and altitude.
The next CorSec speeder in line angled upward and came on straight over Jaina’s speeder, trying for a close flyover that would hammer Jaina clean off and possibly kill her. She wrenched herself down, flat onto her speeder’s hood, and lashed up with her lightsaber as the pursuer passed overhead. Her blade sliced into its bottom armor, plowing through the engine compartment and dragging partway back into the passenger compartment, straight down the center. This speeder didn’t pop—it coughed, emitting a great cloud of blue-black smoke from the gash she’d made, and immediately pitched over to the left and dived straight down toward the street.
All four CorSec speeders were now shrilling an alarm, a high-pitched, rapid-pulsed tone that hammered Jaina’s ears and told Corellians for a kilometer around that there was trouble.
Jaina felt the blow as the speeder she rode hit the avenue. But the pilot was good, retaining control. The speeder bumped once, hard, slewed to port, slewed to starboard, and came to a skidding, shower-of-sparks stop not far from the Prime Minister’s residence gates. The other airspeeder she’d cut was mere meters ahead, still moving, rolling bow-to-stern toward traffic that angled frantically in all directions to get out of the way.
Two up, two down, Jaina thought. Then she felt the pulse of shock and alarm from Zekk.
Zekk came down atop the Prime Minister’s speeder and drove his lightsaber into the canopy over the passenger compartment. It was a shallow thrust, followed by the traditional circular swirl, and it was a slow maneuver. The air-speeder was heavily armored, and from the instant Zekk landed it began a series of swerves and climb-and-dive bucking maneuvers all designed to throw him free.
He just grinned, relying on the Force to keep him rooted firmly in place. Meanwhile, every maneuver, every extra moment of full-speed travel drew the Prime Minister’s vehicle farther from its now crippled escort of CorSec vehicles, farther past the gates to the Prime Minister’s residence and all the guards waiting there.
The airspeeder was upside down and fifty meters above the avenue when Zekk finished transcribing his circle with the lightsaber. The impromptu hatch he’d cut fell past him. He leaned upward, the awkward position and angle pulling muscles like an abdomen-firming exercise, and stuck his head into the passenger compartment to confront his quarry. “Madame Minister,” he said, voice jaunty and raised a bit to carry over the whistling of the wind, “I apolo—”
He wasn’t looking at the Five World Prime Minister. The only individuals in the passenger compartment were droids. A skeletal figure with a CorSec uniform loosely fitted to it was in the forward position, piloting. And in the spacious, crimson-velour-lined main compartment sat a battered old protocol droid wearing a cumbersome ball gown and matching wide-brimmed hat of blue velvet. Only its face and arms were visible, their silvery finish worn off in places with rusty brown showing beneath.
It held a rectangular object that looked like a double-thick portable computer terminal in closed position. On the top surface was a blinking red light. In friendly but officious tones, the droid said, “I have been instructed to play this for any unexpected visitors.” Then it pressed the button.
Zekk straightened, yanking his head and shoulders free of the hole, and leapt clear—straight down.
He was a bare two meters from the inverted airspeeder when it exploded.
Kolir and Thann, riding their respective crippled CorSec vehicles to shuddery, sliding stops on the avenue, heard the boom and looked up.
The reddish flash of the explosion was enough to blind Thann for a moment; he threw his free arm over his eyes and concentrated on maintaining his balance.
Kolir didn’t look at the explosion straight-on. She saw chunks
of disintegrated airspeeder flying out of the explosion cloud, and, to the lower left, Zekk—limp, on fire—plummeting.
She raised her hand, an instinctive gesture, and exerted herself through the motion, feeling the Force swell from her, feeling it intermix with the unique set of sensations and memories and textures that were Zekk.
There wasn’t a question of not being able to move a mass of less than a hundred kilograms. Under the right circumstances, Kolir could telekinetically lift tons. But the right circumstances meant having a moment to compose herself, to channel the Force through her, to eliminate all distractions …
She did what she could. She focused entirely on the task at hand, abandoning the attention she had been paying to the Force-based adhesion that kept her feet firmly planted on the slewing, skidding airspeeder beneath them, on the lit lightsaber in her hand, or the honking, beeping, screeching groundspeeder traffic roaring toward her and veering aside at the last second.
She found Zekk and slowed his descent. A speeder bus passed between her and her unconscious charge, but she was not relying on eyes; she continued to slow his plummet in the brief moments she could no longer see him.
Now he was fifteen meters above the pavement outside the Prime Minister’s residence. His back was still on fire, and smoke curled up from his shoulders.
Then Kolir’s airspeeder hit the rear of one of Jaina’s downed airspeeders. Kolir, catapulted forward, smashed into the rear of that vehicle’s passenger compartment, ricocheted off at an angle, hit the pavement of the avenue itself, and rolled a dozen meters before coming to a halt, bloody and unconscious.
Jaina’s eyes cleared of the explosion afterimage in time for her to see Zekk suspended in the air not far from her—and Zekk suddenly plummeting again. She leapt free of her air-speeder, hurtling between oncoming speeders in the next lane, and landed on the sidewalk outside the residence. Drawing on the Force with more speed and confidence than Kolir could have employed, she caught Zekk five meters off the ground, lowering him quickly but safely to the walk beside her. She slapped at the flames dancing across his back, smothering them.
Through the Force, she could feel life pulsing strongly within him. Through her other link with him, she could feel his pain—skin and joints jarred by the explosion, burns across his back and shoulders, piercing hurt scattered across his body where fragments from the destroyed airspeeder must have hit him.
She didn’t have time to determine whether any of those fragments had penetrated vital organs, to find out whether Zekk’s life would soon begin to fade. The doors of the airspeeder she’d ridden and downed whooshed open and its two passengers stepped out.
They weren’t CorSec agents. They were tall and angular, their skins gleaming and metallic. Brandishing oversized blaster rifles, they advanced on Jaina’s position with a confidence born of aggression programming and a lack of concern for their own welfare.
They were YVH droids—Yuuzhan Vong Hunters, produced by Tendrando Arms during the Yuuzhan Vong war, designed to match those fearsome alien warriors in deadliness and determination.
“We,” Jaina said, “are in trouble.”
The doors of Thann’s airspeeder opened and the YVH droids within emerged, swinging their blaster rifles up toward where he stood on the roof.
Thann leapt off to the right, flipping over the head of one of the combat droids and just ahead of its stream of blasterfire. He landed on his feet in a low crouch, putting the body of the airspeeder between him and the far combat droid, and lashed out with his lightsaber. It caught the midsection of the blaster rifle as the weapon was being lowered into line with his body. The rifle crackled and detonated, a small explosion by comparison with that of Zekk’s airspeeder, but sufficient to blow the weapon into two pieces and send stinging hot metal fragments into Thann’s chest.
The droid, undismayed, unconfused, kicked at Thann; the blow connected with his midsection. Thann twisted at the last moment, reducing the impact, but what was left was like being hit by a pneumatic ram. The blow catapulted him back and off his feet. His shoulders hit the groundspeeder avenue; he continued into a backward roll, coming up on his feet, his lightsaber at the ready.
The second combat droid leapt atop the airspeeder, giving it a clear line of sight on him. Thann gestured, catching up the closer droid with a wave of telekinetic force, hurtling it up and back into the farther droid. Both droids went backward off the airspeeder roof together, the second firing, its shots wildly inaccurate, as it went.
Thann’s tactical sense kicked in. Break line of sight. Contact superiors. Evaluate friend-and-foe resources. He leapt up, caught the side of an open-topped airspeeder with his free hand, and used the Force to propel him in its direction of travel so that the sudden impact would not dislocate his arm. He looked over, saw the frightened features of the pilot, a dark-haired boy of late teenage years, and smiled reassuringly. He got one foot up against the side of the airspeeder and catapulted himself off and up, cartwheeling as he went, then landed cleanly atop the forward engine housing of another speeder, this one at the top of the traffic current. Its pilot, a middle-aged man in business dress, waved angrily at him and shouted, words lost in the wind.
Now Thann was ten meters in the air and traveling away from the scene of the conflict in the direction from which the Prime Minister’s convoy had originally come.
Traveler’s robe flapping in the wind but voice unruffled, he pulled out his comlink and said, “Purella to Tauntaun, Purella to Control. Purella situation a trap, target not acquired. Be advised.”
OUTER SPACE, CARRIER DODONNA
Lysa Dunter sat cursing her bangs and waiting for launch.
A pretty blue-eyed young woman with dark blond hair, she never lacked for attention but got slightly more when she kept her hair in a short cut with bangs. But if she didn’t sweep her hair back absolutely correctly in the split second before donning her flight helmet, her bangs would drift down again and hover at the top of her peripheral vision … as they did now.
She could take her helmet off in the cramped Eta-5 interceptor cockpit and try to adjust things … but if her squadron commander, whose interceptor rested on the Dodonna’s starfighter hangar floor one row up and just to the left of hers, were to see her do it, he’d mock her. Lysa didn’t like being mocked.
So she sat there, irritated with her hair, anxious to launch, her right leg bouncing up and down to help her vibrate away her irritation and impatience.
Her speakers popped, then she heard her squadron commander: “V-Sword Lead to pilots, report status.” The commander’s wingwoman immediately replied, “V-Sword Two, tip-top, ready to go.”
Lysa’s breathing grew faster. They were right on the verge of it, her first combat launch. If they were lucky, the commander had said, they wouldn’t even see combat now … and anyone who wanted to be lucky could put in a request for a transfer. Lysa didn’t want to be lucky.
She heard the pilot before her in sequence complete his acknowledgment. “V Seven,” Lysa said when it was her turn. “Two green, weapons lit.” Then the roster was on to her wingman.
Moments later, once the last of ten pilots had reported in, the squad leader said, “V-Sword Seven, we’re hearing a strange vibration over your comm.”
Guiltily, Lysa froze her right leg in place, willing it to keep from bouncing. “Sorry, sir,” she said. “Had to dog down a loose rocker arm.”
“You sure it wasn’t a rocker leg, Seven?” The squad leader’s voice sounded amused.
Lysa closed her eyes and bit back a curse. She wouldn’t reply; she wouldn’t give the man any more verbal ammunition. She ignored the faint laughter she heard over the squadron frequency.
Then a new voice: “Hyperspace jump complete. All squadrons, prepare to launch. Hardpoint Squadron, Shuttle Chandrila Skies, first in queue.” Straight ahead of Lysa’s position, but obscured by the ranks of Eta-5 interceptors ahead of her and X-wings ahead of them, a dark line appeared in the floor, then broadened into a yawning
starfield.
Lysa saw the X-wings complete their power-up procedures, some of them activating repulsors and floating up a meter or two off the hangar floor. She felt a stab of irritation that the Jedi squadron would be the first fliers off Dodonna in this operation, but she forced it back.
Her own father had told her, All through your flying life, you may have to face the fact that pilots who use the Force will be able to react more quickly, aim more accurately, get the better starfighters, get the greater fame. But those of us who can’t use the Force—well, when we manage to make it to the top of our profession, we can look the Jedi in the eye and remind ourselves that we got there without any crutches.
The thought soothed her. She activated her repulsorlifts with a delicacy and precision that had to impress any Jedi looking her way—she floated exactly a meter off the hangar floor, not drifting—and turned her attention to one last check of her instrument readings.
The burners of the Jedi X-wings kicked in and they launched forward, diving down into a starry black gap leading to space. A squat armored shuttle lumbered along in their wake.
“VibroSword Squadron, launch.”
On the bridge of Dodonna, Admiral Klauskin stood near the bow viewports, taking in the view and trying to reconcile it with the words his aide spoke to him.
To starboard hung the world of Corellia, close by. They had winked in out of hyperspace on the night side, close enough that the planet blocked out the sun. The ships belonging to the operation had arrived pointed straight down at the planet and had executed a simultaneous maneuver to port, swinging into high orbit and hurtling toward the planet’s sunlit side.
To port cruised the dozens of capital craft belonging to his operation—cruisers, carriers, destroyers, frigates—and streaming from them were hundreds of starfighters and support vehicles. Every one of them cruised with running lights ablaze. Down on Corellia, all eyes would be attracted to the gleaming beauty of the GA military, to the flowing formation whose very presence said, Do not defy the most powerful authority in the galaxy.