“Yes.” Klauskin was pleased with the decisiveness he could hear in his voice. “Bring the group down to half forward speed.”
“Yes, sir. Um, do we provide the Jedi with another shuttle?”
“Oh, no. Skywalker sounds like he has everything in hand.”
“Yes, sir.” The words hung there for long moments, then Fiav turned away to implement Klauskin's orders.
Klauskin felt his brain revving like an overtuned thruster engine. Slowing the group to half speed would give him more time to decide, to think his way out of this dilemma.
He needed the time. He thought and thought, but nothing seemed to happen.
He had to turn the group toward space, batter his way through the Corellian screen if they decided to hinder his progress, and make it far enough out from Corellia's gravity well to activate hyperdrives.
But that wasn't enough. He couldn't just run. He had to do something to salvage this mission. He had to intimidate or embarrass the Corellians, decisively. Somewhere. Somehow.
“V-Swords, heads up.” That was the voice of VibroSword Leader. “We have a unit incoming.”
On Lysa's sensor board, the swirl looked like a small formation of Corellian attack fighters. They weren't headed straight in; they had detached themselves from the Corellian fleet and were angling in, a course that was the counterpart of the interceptors', bringing them closer and closer to VibroSword Squadron.
“They're daring us.” That was V-Sword Eight, Lysa's wingman, a Quarren male from Mon Calamari.
“That's right,” Leader said. “So keep it under control. Remember, first one to twitch loses.”
Eight asked, “And the first one to blink?”
“The first to blink will be Corellians, Eight. Now pipe down.” The attack fighters got closer and closer. Soon Lysa could count them on the sensor board—a full squadron dozen—and not long after that she could make them out visually as, now only a kilometer distant, they crossed in front of the stars. And on they came.
Lysa said, “Leader, Seven. I think they're going to continue their course straight through us.”
“Seven, you're probably right. Squadron, they're going to move through our position as if they don't see us. Trying to make us flinch. Bring your shields up only if it's a sure thing you're going to be hit and announce the impact. If you hear me say Incoming, break by wing pairs, bring shields and weapons up, and attack at will. VibroSword Squadron doesn't flinch.”
Lysa heard a chorus of affirmatives from her fellow pilots, added her own to it.
Inside, she felt sick. This wasn't a clean fight; it was confused and tense, and about nothing but playing a game of dominance. She hated it. Her father would have hated it.
She waited.
CORONET, CORELLIA
As the Jedi's commandeered groundspeeder hurtled along one of Coronet's main avenues in thinning traffic, a howl of distant space raid sirens filled the air, and tiny gray clouds began to pop up in the skies to the east, the direction of the groundspeeder's destination. Thann handled the speeder yoke with one hand, keeping his comlink pressed up between ear and mouth with the other.
Zekk, still stretched out on the backseat and Jaina's lap, had his eyes closed again. He hadn't passed out—he had sunk into a short-term Jedi healing trance, one that would help him deal with the damage of the burns and shrapnel, so that his injuries would not hinder him as much when the time came for action.
Thann put his comlink away.
“What's the situation?” Jaina shouted to him.
Thann pointed toward the distant gray antispacecraft clouds. “That? That's your uncle Luke and the Jedi coming to take us off-planet. But they've lost their shuttle and he doesn't think they're getting another one.”
“Ah,” Jaina said.
“Team Tauntaun was ambushed the way we were, except that they got inside Sal-Solo's mansion. They were attacked by troops and pro-bots.”
“Where are they now?”
“They're stealing a speeder and will rendezvous with us. They're thinking of stealing some payroll credit chips, or kidnapping a bolo-drama star so we won't come back empty-handed.”
“Good of them. Anything else?”
“The fleet jumped in and was ambushed, too. Nothing much is going right.”
“We need a spaceport,” Jaina shouted. “We'll have to steal a shuttle.”
“All nonmilitary air and space travel will be shut down until things are settled. And the Coronet spaceport is going to be crawling with CorSec.”
“There are smaller ports. Private spaceports, spaceports for outlying communities. And they'll have charter shuttle services,” Jaina said.
“I'm on it.” Kolir's right cheek bulged with the cloth she'd stuffed in there to stanch the flow of blood. She reached into her blood-spattered bag and drew out a datapad. Opening it, she began searching the Coronet database she'd loaded into it.
“Find one with a female manager on duty,” Thann said. Kolir grimaced at him.
“It'll speed things up,” he said.
“If I ever find out you do that to get datesh,” she said, “I'm going to cut shomething off you.”
“I am an ethical Jedi,” Thann said. Jaina couldn't tell whether the indignation his tone expressed was real or affected. Thann showed more emotion than most Falleen, but often it was a deliberate display, an attempt to put others at ease, rather than what he was truly feeling. “I only twist people's minds in the line of duty.”
CENTERPOINT STATION
Jacen rolled sideways, kicking the metal floor to propel himself, and managed to be a meter away when the first blaster bolt hit the spot where he'd been kneeling. He continued the roll, awkward because of the pain that racked him, but came up on his feet. Despite his blurring vision, he saw his lightsaber rolling across the floor, extended his hand toward it
Two white egg-shaped canisters hit the floor near him. He leapt backward away from them, rotating through the air as he went, and came down on his feet, but his legs buckled as he landed and he crashed to the floor.
He could still see his lightsaber. He exerted his will toward it. It wobbled on the floor and began rolling toward him.
The egg-shaped canisters detonated, filling the air around them with white smoke. It rapidly spread, obscuring everything. But Jacen managed to maintain his focus, and his lightsaber flew to his hand before the whiteness closed down all vision.
Jacen rolled to the side again, heard and felt the heat from blaster-fire hitting where he'd just lain. So they can see, he thought. Optics in their helmets. There had to be sound bafflers, too.
Well, he had a couple of tricks remaining, and they had nothing to do with specialized gear.
He knew more about pain than his opponents realized. At the height of the Yuuzhan Vong war, he'd been a prisoner for months, subjected to their tortures and customs of self-inflicted agony. He had learned to function within their Embrace of Pain and other rituals that would break beings not accustomed to such hardships.
A sudden infliction of pain could surprise him, surely. But it couldn't keep him down.
He let the pain flow through him as though it were the Force. He internalized it, experiencing it as an old friend—albeit an old friend he didn't necessarily want visiting him too often.
He stood and moved forward. His first few steps were awkward and slow, his later ones sure, and once he was in full mastery of his body and the pain that suffused it, he put on a burst of speed in traditional Jedi fashion, outracing the blaster bolts that tailed him.
Pain-racked, unslowed, he neared the wall and leapt high up on it, landing on one of the ascending ramps. Now he was still within the smoke cloud from the canisters but shielded from blasterfire from above. Moments later he reached the walkway level where Thrackan Sal-Solo had stood.
He still could not see, but through the Force he could detect living beings ahead of him. They were changing their order, some retreating, some advancing, the foremost of them aiming .. .
The blaster
bolts came, illuminating the canister smoke in curiously beautiful lines as they flashed toward him. He batted them back the way they'd come, mercilessly picking off the soldiers who'd fired them.
Then he changed tactics. There were curious gaps in the formation of the living ahead of them. Those gaps had to be where the droid generators of the sonic waves were situated. He began batting blasterfire toward them, and a moment later the pain-inducing shriek was reduced in volume by half. Three blaster bolts later, the sound and pain cut off entirely, and he could hear a mechanical cough as the motivator of the second sonic generator droid detonated dully within its housing.
“Cease fire.” That was the voice of Thrackan, coming from the rear of the unit of six remaining CorSec operatives. They obeyed. “Impressive, Jacen. But I'd like you to understand. We have more than enough troops, droids, and special surprises to deal with you. They're here or rushing here. You're never going to get anywhere you can do significant harm to this station.”
“You may be right, cousin.” But you haven't mentioned Ben. You're not aware of him, are you? “Still, I have to try.”
The smoke was beginning to clear. Jacen could see the nearest three CorSec operatives, one kneeling, two standing, resolutely barring his way with their blaster rifles raised.
“I suppose you do. Resume fire.”
The soldiers opened fire. Jacen advanced, hurling the blaster bolts back the way they'd come—but over the firers' shoulders, in the direction of Sal-Solo's voice.
CORONET, CORELLIA
Suddenly the explosions ended and the skies to port, starboard, and ahead were clear of gray smoke. Luke checked his diagnostics board. His X-wing had suffered some shrapnel damage to its top-side starboard engine, but it was still running at 60 percent capacity.
There were only nine X-wings in his squadron now. The snub-fighter of the Rodian, Toile Senn, had been shaken to pieces by three near hits. Toile had ejected ... and at the apex of the ejection had disappeared in the center of another gray cloud. Luke had felt the sudden cessation of his life.
Now they emerged into the open skies where the Corellian attack fighters lived. “Keep sharp,” Luke said, one eye to his sensor board. “S-wings to attack position. Break and attack at will. Continue toward original rendezvous position.”
“They're coming at us from high, straight back,” Mara said.
And they were, two streams of attack fighters roaring down at them. Luke dived, giving his X-wing more speed, more time before the foremost attack fighters reached him, and adjusted his shield strength to double rear; Mara stayed tucked in on his wing.
The attack fighters came on, green lasers battering at Luke's rear shields. R2 squealed a note of alarm—alarm for Luke and alarm for himself.
As the three attack fighters approaching from astern neared, as their laser barrage hit his rear shields with the strength of greater proximity, Luke cut his thrusters. He could feel Mara, through their link, understand his intent and do likewise.
Inexperienced fighter pilots would have overshot him and been easy targets for a moment or two. These Corellians weren't inexperienced. The moment Luke's X-wing began to grow too fast in their forward sights, they veered, two upward, one to starboard.
But Luke was far from inexperienced himself. Instinct and a touch, a glimpse of the future through the Force, had him hauling back on his control yoke and goosing his repulsorlift the moment he completed his deceleration maneuver. He was oriented upward as his pursuers banked. The only things he could see were blue sky and two Corellian attack fighters, one of them jittering madly in his targeting computer. He fired, red lasers closing on and hitting the port-side attack fighter, then traversed right again and fired even before the computer confirmed a lock.
Luke's first shot blew his target cleanly out of the sky. His second sheared the attack fighter's starboard wing off. The crippled fighter spun and plummeted, out of the combat.
These Corellian attack fighters were not equipped with shields.
Luke shook his head over that, even as he looked with his eyes and his Force-senses for his wife.
She'd peeled off to starboard and vaped the attack fighter that had headed off in that direction. Now she was angled back his way.
Luke checked the sensor board. Nine X-wings and eighteen attack fighters had entered combat. Seconds later, nine X-wings and eleven attack fighters continued to occupy the field. He sighed. He was facing Corellians as brave, perhaps as skilled, as his friends Han, Wedge, and Corran, and he was obliged to purge them from the skies. Sometimes he bitterly regretted the oaths and traditions that bound the Jedi order to the Galactic Alliance.
He turned back in the direction of the conflict. Mara tucked in under his port side and matched his speed and course.
ABOVE CORELLIA
Lysa's sensor board lit up like a festival parade. She glanced at the readings. Someone had a targeting lock on her. She forced herself to ignore that fact. Her leg bounced even more frantically. “Leader, Eight.” Eight's voice sounded anguished. “They have a targeting lock on me. Permission to break and fire.”
“Denied, Eight.” VibroSword Leader sounded exasperated.
“They're just trying to rattle you, Eight,” Lysa said. “Provoke a reaction.”
“Seven's right, Eight. Concentrate on her. Do as she does.”
Lysa perked up. That was one of the few completely unsarcastic, unambiguously positive things Leader had said about her in the few months she'd been with the squadron—and he was saying it to a pilot with a year's worth of seniority on her.
Now she could see the oncoming attack fighters clearly in the light reflected from Corellia's surface. They glided toward VibroSword Squadron on what looked like an atmospheric arrival vector—as slow and unconcerned as if there were no interceptor unit in their direct path.
She eyeballed their approach. If they didn't vary their angle, they'd pass right through the center of the Eta-5 formation, coming closest to V-Swords Five and Six.
They did vary their angle. One wing pair of attack fighters adjusted, subtly, putting them on a direct intercept path with Five and Six. Another pair vectored slightly, putting them on a straight course toward the positions Seven and Eight would occupy in about ten seconds.
“Leader—”
“Shut up, Eight. Stay on Seven.”
“Clamp down on it, Eight,” Lysa said. She put her finger on the switch to activate her deflector shields. Minimal as they were compared with X-wing shields, they'd still provide some defense from an impact or an attack fighter's laser.
Five and Six would contact their opposite numbers first, she calculated. They were only a few dozen meters apart now. Lysa could have looked straight up and seen her own attack fighter opposition gliding toward her, closing slowly and implacably, but she didn't. She watched the sensor board, tracking Five and Six as well as her own opponent's progress.
And then the green blip representing V-Sword Five and the red blip of Five's opposite number merged for a moment.
“This is Five.” Behind the woman's voice, Lysa could hear cockpit impact alarms ringing. “Impact.”
“Incoming,” Leader said.
Lysa snapped her shields on and kicked her maneuvering thrusters to point her nose down toward the planet's surface. Then she fired her main thrusters, putting the full thrust of its twin ion engines into the underbelly of the attack fighter just three meters away. Her Eta-5 leapt away from that fighter and its wingmate, hurtling toward the planet's atmosphere.
“Hey!” She saw Eight's green blip belatedly follow. “Where the wobber—hey, I'm hit!”
“How bad?” Now at full thrust, Lysa began a slow loop up from the planet, a maneuver designed to bring her around to the far side of what had been the attack fighter formation. An attack fighter taking a straight line to intercept her could do so, but one following in her wake would be left behind by the faster Eta-5 interceptor.
“No damage, shield took it. He's not pursuing.”
“So why mention it?”
“Yours is a kill.”
Lysa's eyebrows rose. She'd expected her thruster blast to do some harm to the fighter, perhaps surprise the pilot and cause him to bank away reflexively, but it must have penetrated the cockpit.
She felt—she wasn't sure how she felt.
Save up your feelings for later-. Save your feelings for home. Her father's voice again, something he'd said to her fifty times over the years. She decided to listen to him.
Her loop completed, she looked down at the Eta-5/attack fighter engagement with both eye and sensor. Her comrades and their opponents were stretched out in a rough line a couple of kilometers long, wing pairs circling one another in a dogfight.
A line—she liked lines. She oriented toward one end of it and continued her full-power thruster burn. “Get ready to do some shooting, Eight.”
“I—yes. I'm your wing.”
Chapter Twelve
FIAV STEPPED UP TO ADMML KLAUSKIN. “SIR, THERE'S BEEN AN INCIDENT. One of our starfighter squadrons has rubbed up against one of theirs, and they're fully engaged now. More squadrons from both sides are moving in to join the conflict.”
Klauskin nodded. “Good, good.”
“Sir, with all due respect, that's not good. It's not part of our operation goals.” The Sullustan lowered her voice. “It would be a big help to officer morale if you'd let them know what our revised goals are. Are we going to assault CEC-One? Because as soon as we get to it, its defenders are definitely going to assault us. Are we going to punch back out of system? Are we going to take on the Corellian fleet?”
Klauskin considered her questions. He realized he was curiously without emotion on these matters. But that, at least, would allow him to make decisions logically.
No, assaulting the shipyard designated CEC-One was not part of their operation. They wanted it intact for the day when Corellia was back in the GA camp and everyone was friendly again. But that meant they'd have to alter their current orbital course, so some other plan had to be implemented.
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