Ylesia

by Walter Jon Williams

  Between these two places he would make his killing ground. And conveniently, the quednak stables happened to be nearby.

  He called into the shoulder villip that communicated with his warriors. “Our hour has arrived!” he said. “We will advance to meet the enemy!”

  Jacen arrived breathless on Ralroost’s bridge to find Admiral Kre’fey already making his opening moves. An enemy fleet had leapt out of hyperspace, and Kre’fey was placing his own ships between the Yuuzhan Vong and the ground forces on Ylesia.

  “Welcome, Jacen,” the white-furred Bothan said, his eyes still fixed on the holographic display that showed the relative positions of the fleets. “I see you understand there’s been a new complication.”

  “How many?” Jacen said.

  “Their forces are roughly equal to ours. But so many of our personnel are inexperienced, I would prefer not to engage.” He raised his eyes from the display. “Fortunately my opposite seems in no hurry to begin a fight.”

  Indeed this was the case. The Yuuzhan Vong weren’t moving to attack, but were instead hovering just outside Ylesia’s mass shadow.

  “Can you give me a starfighter?” Jacen asked.

  “I’m afraid not. Our fighter bays were packed with operational craft only, plus their pilots—we carry no spares.”

  Frustration snarled in Jacen as Kre’fey’s attention snapped back to the display. “Ah,” the admiral said. “My opposite is moving.”

  The Yuuzhan Vong had detached a part of their force and were extending it to one flank, perhaps intending a partial envelopment.

  “Easily countered,” Kre’fey said, and ordered one of his own divisions to extend his own flank, matching the enemy movement precisely.

  Jacen stalked around the room in a brief circle, angry at his own uselessness. He considered returning to his X-wing and flying to Ylesia to Jaina’s aid, and then realized that his wounded craft wouldn’t be an asset, but a liability—she’d have to detach pilots to look after him, pilots who would have many better uses in an engagement than escorting a crippled ship.

  He finally surrendered to the fact he was going to spend the rest of the battle aboard Ralroost.

  Jacen found a corner of the bridge out of everyone’s way and let the Jedi meld float to the surface of his mind. If he couldn’t be of any direct use in the upcoming battle, he could at least send strength and support to his comrades.

  Jaina and Lowbacca, he sensed, were in motion, speeding toward their fighters. The other Jedi were waiting in their cockpits, waiting for the battle to begin. Jacen could sense them in relation to one another, an array of intent minds focused on the enemy.

  Through the meld, he sensed the Yuuzhan Vong fleet make another move, another division shifting out onto the flank, extending it farther into space. Only half a minute later did he hear Kre’fey’s staff announce the move, followed by the Bothan admiral’s counter.

  The Yuuzhan Vong kept moving to the flank. And Jacen began to wonder why.

  Pwoe and Thrackan Sal-Solo, cuffed, were keeping each other company in the back of the landspeeder. Neither of the illusory Presidents seemed to have much to say to the other, or to anyone else, at least not since Thrackan’s muttered, “Do I really have to sit with the Squid Head?” as Pwoe was directed into the vehicle.

  As it turned out there was no room for Thrackan or anyone else to sit. The landspeeders were standing room only, packed with soldiers, prisoners, and refugees.

  The vehicles moved as fast as possible toward the landing zone, though they were being slowed by crowds of refugees, slaves, and other unwilling workers begging for transport offplanet. As many as could fit into the landspeeders were pulled aboard. In their withdrawal to the landing zone the speeders hadn’t gotten onto the roads in any particular order, and the speeder that Jaina shared with Lowbacca, Thrackan, and Pwoe was more or less in the middle of the column.

  The column had reached the outskirts of the city, which at this point consisted of a strip of buildings on either side of the main road, all surrounded by wild country, unaltered terrain.

  Jaina turned at the sound of an explosion behind her, a concussion followed by a shock wave that she could feel in her insides. Smoke and debris jetted high over the surrounding buildings. The engineers had just destroyed the Brigaders’ bunker, as well as the Palace of Peace and other public buildings.

  Jaina turned to face forward just as a giant, lichen-colored beast stepped from behind a building into the road in front of the column. Jaina’s heart thundered as the lead landspeeder crashed into the animal, enraging the beast even though the inertial dampeners on the machine saved the crew and passengers. Another speeder smashed into the first from behind, preventing it from reversing. The beast reared onto its hind legs, and Jaina saw Yuuzhan Vong warriors clinging for dear life to their basket on the beast’s back. Shields sparked and failed as the quednak’s first four feet dropped massively onto the speeder. Jaina could hear the screams of the passengers as they died.

  Jaina reached for her lightsaber, then her blaster, then hesitated. None of her weapons could kill this animal.

  Vehicle-mounted weapons split the air as they opened fire on the riding beast. The quednak screamed and charged forward, crushing the forepart of a second landspeeder and brushing aside a third. One of its riders was hurled from his seat and flew, arms windmilling, into the side of a nearby building.

  “Back! Back! Take a side street out of here!” The officer in command of the landspeeder barked orders to the driver. And then Jaina felt a shadow fall over her, and she turned.

  Another riding beast was being driven out into the road behind Jaina’s speeder. Her lightsaber leapt into her hand and she took three long jumps to the back of the landspeeder and launched herself for the riders on the quednak’s back.

  The Force seemed to catch her by the spine and fling her onto the creature’s back, and she gave silent thanks to Lowbacca for the assist as she landed on the broad, flat haunches. She was poised atop the middle pair of legs, her balance uneasy with the creature’s lurching, swaying motion. The two riders sat in a shell-shaped box forward. Jaina ignited her lightsaber and charged, her boot driving for traction on the moss-covered surface of the beast’s scales.

  One of the Yuuzhan Vong in the box leapt out to face her while the other continued to guide the beast. The air reeked of the quednak’s stench. Landspeeders dodged from beneath its clawed feet. Panicked gunners at the tail of the column were opening fire, scorching the creature’s massive sides, but the quednak remained under the control of its driver.

  Jaina’s opponent thrust out his amphistaff, its head spitting poison. Jaina slapped the poison out of the air with a Force-generated wind and sprang forward to engage, thrusting right for the Yuuzhan Vong’s tattooed face. His circular parry almost tore the lightsaber from her fingers, but she managed to disengage in time, and now she made a less impulsive attack.

  Jaina’s violet blade struck again and again, but the Yuuzhan Vong parried them all, an intent look visible under the brim of the vonduun crab helmet. He was concentrating solely on defense, on keeping her off the driver until he could trample the maximum number of landspeeders under the beast’s claws. Frustration built in her as she redoubled her attack, the violet blade building into a pattern that would result in the amphistaff being drawn out of line and opening the Yuuzhan Vong for a finishing thrust.

  Unexpectedly Jaina threw herself flat on the quednak’s back. A bright red-orange bolt from a blaster cannon ripped the air where she’d been half a second before. The Yuuzhan Vong hesitated, blinking, dazzled by the flash, and then Jaina rose on one hand only and lashed a foot forward, sweeping the warrior’s feet. He gave a cry of pure rage as he tumbled off the creature’s sides.

  Jaina hurled herself toward the driver in his box, but another cannon opened fire, and the box disappeared in a flash of flame, the heat scorching her face. Frantically she looked for a way to control the creature. The quednak gave a cry of absolute fury and beg
an to back, trying to turn to get at the source of the blaster bolts that were tormenting it.

  A volley of bolts slammed into the beast and blew Jaina off the creature’s back. She tumbled free, calling the Force to cushion her landing on the duracrete. Even so the impact knocked the breath from her lungs, her teeth clacking together on impact. From the position on the ground she saw Lowie dragging wounded civilians from a wrecked landspeeder, other intact speeders milling amid a swarm of confused refugees and stunned prisoners, and the death agonies of the other quednak, which had finally succumbed to heavy weapon fire.

  Then the second beast, the one she’d ridden, took a cannon bolt to the head, and reared as it began to die. Jaina saw the slab-sided wall flank begin its fall, and she scuttled like a crab out of the way as the creature came down in a wave of stench and blood. An agonized thrash of its tail threw a pair of landspeeders against a wall, and then the giant reptoid was dead.

  Dead riding beasts now blocked the road at either end, trapping the column between rows of buildings. Overhead came a pair of swift flyers, swoop analogs, that dived over the street, plasma cannons stuttering. Jaina rolled away from fire and flying splinters as superheated plasma ripped the duracrete near her.

  The worst threat from the swoop analogs wasn’t their cannons, however. Each had a dovin basal propulsion unit in its nose, and these living singularities leapt out to snatch at the landspeeders’ shields, overloading them and causing them to fail in a flash of frustrated energy.

  Jaina rose to her feet, her head swimming with the magnitude of the disaster. There was nothing she could do against the aircraft without her X-wing, so she staggered across the duracrete to aid Lowbacca in helping injured civilians. With the Force she lifted rubble from a wounded Rodian.

  Concentrated fire from the soldiers blew one of the swoop analogs apart. The other, trailing fire, was deliberately crashed by its pilot into a landspeeder, and both craft were destroyed in an eruption of flame.

  It was than that Jaina heard the sudden ominous humming, and her nerves tingled to the danger as she swung to face the sound, her lightsaber on guard.

  A buzzing swarm of thud and razor bugs sped through the air, racing for their targets—and then Yuuzhan Vong warriors swarmed out of the office buildings on the south side of the street, while from either end of the street they came pouring like a wave over the bodies of the dead riding beasts. From five hundred throats came the chorused battle cry, “Do-ro’ik vong pratte!”

  There were screams as scores went down before the flying wave of deadly insects. Jaina slapped a thud bug out of the sky with her lightsaber, and neatly skewered a razor bug that was making a run for Lowie’s head. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors slammed with an audible impact into the stunned, milling crowd in the street. The New Republic soldiers were so hampered by the swarms of noncombatants that they were barely able to fire in their own defense. The Yuuzhan Vong leapt right aboard the landspeeders that had suffered the loss of their shields, slashing through screaming civilians and prisoners in order to reach soldiers so tightly packed they couldn’t raise a weapon.

  Jaina parried away an amphistaff that was swung at her head, and let Lowie, thrusting over her shoulder, dispose of the warrior who wielded it. The next warrior went down before a pair of lightsabers, one swung high, one thrust low. Jaina readied a cut at a figure that lurched toward her, then realized it was one of Thrackan’s bodyguards in his preposterous fake armor. A shrieking human female, bloody from a razor bug slash and helpless with her hands cuffed, stumbled into Jaina’s arms, and died from the lunge of the snarling Yuuzhan Vong warrior who was willing to run her through in order to reach Jaina. Jaina shuffled away from the thrust in time, and then, before the warrior could clear his weapon from his victim, her point took him in the throat.

  The two halves of a razor bug, sliced neatly in half by Lowie’s lightsaber, fell on either side of Jaina. She and Lowbacca were able to protect themselves against the buzzing horror, and the troopers were at least armored, but the civilians had no defense and were being torn to shreds. The handcuffed prisoners were even more helpless. “We’ve got to get these people into the buildings where we can protect them!” Jaina shouted to anyone who could hear. “Get them moving!”

  With shouts and gestures, Jaina and Lowie rounded up a group of soldiers who helped to herd the civilians into the buildings on the north side of the street. This gave other soldiers, and the few landspeeders that were still in operation, a clearer field of fire, and the Yuuzhan Vong began to take more casualties.

  In the midst of the confusion Jaina saw General Jamiro staggering backward with a group of his troopers around him. All of them seemed wounded; a squad of Yuuzhan Vong were in pursuit, their amphistaffs rising and falling in a deadly, urgent rhythm.

  “Lowie! It’s the general!” The Jedi charged, lightsabers swinging. Jaina hamstrung one enemy warrior, then ducked the lunge of another to drive her lightsaber up through the armpit, the one part unprotected by armor. A third Yuuzhan Vong was knocked to his knees by a Force-aided double kick, after which one of Jamiro’s troopers shot him with a point-blank blaster bolt.

  Two of the soldiers grabbed Jamiro under the arms and hustled him to one of the buildings on the north side of the street, a restaurant with booths by the viewports and a bar against the back wall. There, other soldiers firing from the viewports had clear fields of fire and were able to score hits on any pursuers. Lowie and Jaina covered the retreat, blocking one shot after another with their lightsabers before rolling backward through the viewports.

  The room was filled with stunned people, most of them civilians slumped at the tables. Jaina recognized Pwoe standing tall among them, his face bloody, one tentacle sliced neatly off by a razor bug.

  The Yuuzhan Vong were still fighting, trying to get into the buildings. Jaina and Lowbacca each chose a viewport, cutting and parrying through the opening while the soldiers fired continuously at the attackers.

  It was flanking fire that eventually drove the attackers away. The Yuuzhan Vong had ambushed only the first half of the returning convoy. The rear part of the column was largely intact, though unable to maneuver its speeders over the dead riding beast that blocked the road. Instead Colonel Tosh, in command of the rear guard, pulled his soldiers off the landspeeders and sent them climbing up the massive flank of the dead quednak. From its summit the troopers commenced massed volley fire on the street below, a fire intense enough to cause the Yuuzhan Vong to fall back to the buildings on the southern side of the street.

  Jaina extinguished her lightsaber and gasped for air. It was amazing how fast things had gone wrong.

  Time was running out. And with it, lives.

  General Jamiro stood gasping for breath, one arm propping him against a wall while he talked into his comm unit. Blood stained his white body armor. He looked up. “What’s behind us?” he said. “Can we pull back to the north, then rendezvous with the landspeeders?”

  One of the soldiers made a quick check, then returned. “It’s uncleared forest, sir,” he reported. “The landspeeders couldn’t get through it, but we could move through on foot.”

  “Negative.” Jamiro shook his head. “We’d lose all cohesion in the woods and the Vong would hunt us to death.” He turned to look out the shattered front viewport. “We’ve got to get back to the landspeeders somehow, then take another route around the roadblock.” He looked grim, and pressed a hand to a wound on his thigh. “Tell Colonel Tosh he’s got to give us covering fire as we break out. But we’re still going to lose a lot of people once everyone gets into the street.”

  Jaina became aware that her comlink was bleeping at her. She answered. “This is Solo.”

  “This is Colonel Fel. Are you in difficulty? The other Jedi seemed to think so.”

  Relief sang through Jaina at the sound of Jag’s voice, though the relief was followed immediately by embarrassment at its intensity. She struggled to keep her voice calm and military as she answered. “The column’s run i
nto an ambush and has been pinned down,” she said. “What’s your location?”

  “I’m with Twin Suns Squadron in orbit. We’re on standby, waiting for you and Lowbacca to rejoin us. An enemy fleet has appeared and the situation has grown urgent. It’s imperative that the landing force return to orbit as soon as possible.”

  “You don’t say,” Jaina snapped, her relief fading before annoyance at Jag’s pompous tone.

  “Stand by,” Jag said. “I’ll lead the squadrons on a bombing and strafing run and blast you out of there.”

  “Negative,” Jaina said. “The Vong are right across the street, too close. You’d hit us, and we’ve got civilians here.”

  “I still may be able to help. Stand by.”

  “Jag,” Jaina said, “you’ve got too many rookies! They’ll never be able to stay on target! They’re going to splatter a hundred civilians, not to mention the rest of us!”

  “Stand by, Twin Leader,” Jag said, insistent.

  Annoyance finally won over relief. Jaina looked at General Jamiro in exasperation. “Did you hear that, sir?”

  Jamiro nodded. “Even if he can’t do a strafing run, starfighters might keep the Vong’s heads down. We’ll wait.”

  “General!” Pwoe’s commanding voice rang from the back of the room. “This is absolute folly! I demand that you allow me to negotiate a surrender for these people before those fire-happy pilots blow us all to pieces!”

  The Quarren stalked forward. Jamiro faced him, straightening, and winced as he put weight onto his wounded leg.

  “Senator,” he said. “You will oblige me by remaining silent. You are not in charge here.”

  “Neither are you, it appears,” Pwoe said. “Your only hope, and the hope of all under your command”—with his cuffed hands he made a gesture that encompassed the soldiers, the civilians, and the prisoners—“is to surrender at discretion. I shall undertake the negotiations entirely at my own risk.”