“It shall be done.”
* * *
“Arrival in three … two … one … mark.”
Right on the navigator’s spoken cue, the swirl of lines in Lusankya’s forward viewport straightened out and contracted into stationary stars, one of them barely near enough to be recognized as a sphere instead of a mere pinpoint of light.
Commander Eldo Davip, nearly two meters of space navy gristle packed into a bulging officer’s uniform, shook his head, not satisfied with the results. His bridge crew, most of its members new to Lusankya, had not so far demonstrated reliable competence, and now they’d managed to drop his new command into the Pyria star system much farther from the planet Borleias than he had indicated.
Then he frowned. Ahead, some stars were disappearing, others reappearing, as objects moved into and out of the way. Did the Pyria system have an asteroid belt? He turned to his navigator to ask that question, but suddenly the bridge was filled with alarm bells and the startled exclamations of officers.
“It’s a trap!” That was the sensor operator, a male from Coruscant, his excitement not quite concealing the clipped, upper-class pronunciation that betrayed his origin. “We’re surrounded by Vong vessels!”
Davip whirled to face the sensor screen set up near his commander’s post at the rear of the bridge’s second-level walkway. It showed Lusankya’s position with the blip representing Millennium Falcon neatly tucked in beneath, but the two spacecraft were surrounded by the blips of dozens of vehicles, mostly capital ships, all either enemy red or winking from unknown yellow to red.
The horror of the situation swelled in Davip’s throat, choking him for a brief moment. Then the commands he needed to utter, had to utter, forced their way past the obstruction. “All shields up! All batteries fire at will! Fire as you bear! Launch all squadrons!”
As soon as the drop out of hyperspace was complete, Han Solo frowned at his instruments. “We dropped a couple of seconds early,” he said.
Leia, looking absurdly tiny in the Millennium Falcon’s oversized copilot’s seat, pointed up through the cockpit viewport. The underside of Lusankya hung there like an irregular ceiling. “It wasn’t a mistake. Their nav computers must have sent us faulty data.”
“No, I’m showing heavy gravitic abnormalities here. We were pulled out of hyperspace by the presence of—” Han’s eyes snapped wide open and he yanked at the Falcon’s controls, sending the onetime freighter into a rolling dive its original manufacturers had never intended it to experience. Shouts of surprise—and a couple of thrill-rider glee—erupted from the passenger compartment.
A glowing trail of fire, ejecta from a Yuuzhan Vong plasma cannon, ripped through space where the Falcon had just been. Han pitched his voice to be heard throughout the ship: “Take the guns! We’re in the middle of a Vong fleet!”
Wyrpuuk Cha nodded, satisfied with the results he was seeing.
The blaze bugs flurried, rapidly changing position in the portion of the depression representing the reserve fleet. Wyrpuuk Cha frowned as he took in the changes. Something triangular, in the same approximate shape as one of the enemy’s hated Imperial Star Destroyers but much larger, was now situated in the midst of his fleet. Wyrpuuk Cha wondered if the blaze bugs’ representation was actually to scale.
He glanced out the viewport of his bridge. There, to port, seemingly close enough to touch, hung a vast expanse of darkness decorated by running lights in deep blue, a vastly oversized Star Destroyer.
Jolted by sudden panic, Wyrpuuk Cha opened his mouth to issue commands.
The Super Star Destroyer erupted as if channeling an internal explosion through innumerable tiny ports on its hull.
Wyrpuuk Cha didn’t know the numbers, didn’t know how many hundreds of laser batteries the vessel carried, had no idea how many hundreds of ion cannons. All he knew was that as his voice had to rise to be heard above the shrieks of the alarms emanating from the bridge’s walls as their inarticulate cries indicated where and how badly his matalok, a rough analog of the toolmakers’ hated Mon Calimari cruisers, was sustaining damage; that the bridge floor was shuddering under his feet; that nothing could be seen outside the port-side viewports because of the intensity of incoming fire from the enemy monstrosity; that there was no way, short of a personal blessing from the gods, that the voids projected by his ship’s dovin basals could protect his matalok from the incalculable damage being directed against it.
He turned to shout a command to his chief pilot, an order to turn directly away from the enemy vessel and present all voids to the rear. Before he could speak, there was a bright flash of light in his peripheral vision and all noise ceased. Wyrpuuk Cha turned toward the bow again.
There was nothing there, only stars and flashes of fire from the ships of his fleet. The seats where his yammosk interpreter and villip officer had been were gone, as were the floor, walls, and ceiling of the bridge, all missing from a point a mere pace in front of Wyrpuuk Cha’s feet.
And it wasn’t true that all noise was gone. There was a roaring in his ears, a pain—just none of the sounds of battle that had filled them mere moments ago.
He was cold, suddenly so cold that he involuntarily curled into a ball, and abruptly he found himself floating forward, past the last few handspans of bridge, out into starry emptiness.
“Wild Knights are out of the engagement zone,” Tycho said. He reached into the hologram representing the battle zones of Pyrian space and gestured at one bright cluster of colorful, swirling blips. “The Yuuzhan Vong are concentrating their effort on Pyria Six’s moon. They’re cautious, not trying anything particularly bold, just a standard attritional assault.”
“Very well,” Wedge said. He stood beside his chair, knowing that his voice was carrying very little expression, that his features must look blank at the moment—that was the way it always was when he was calculating things on a strategic scale. Focusing like this seemed to make him distant, inhuman.
But he couldn’t focus. Something was wrong, some noise out of place, and Wedge turned from Tycho to pinpoint the incongruity.
There it was, one of the communications officers. During the last minute, her voice had risen, taken on a tone not of alarm but of confusion, as she’d dealt with the faraway unit leader who was her assignment. But now Iella stood leaning over her shoulder while the comm officer waited. Both women wore perplexed expressions. Wedge didn’t like things that could perplex Iella.
Iella looked up and caught his eye. She raised her voice to be heard over the chamber’s clamor. “Super Star Destroyer Lusankya reports that she’s insystem with the Millennium Falcon. They’re in the middle of the reserve Yuuzhan Vong forces. Lusankya has inflicted heavy damage on the enemy and is taking damage. She needs an escort to get through the enemy.”
The volume of voices in the chamber dropped by a measurable proportion. Wedge heard Tycho’s shout of “What?”
Then Wedge got his own voice under control. “Confirm ship identification,” he managed, and moved to stand by Tycho. “Bring up that portion of the battle zone.”
Tycho manipulated controls on his console and the area of space it displayed contracted and panned to one side. The effect was that of one portion of the battle zone suddenly swelling to dominate the hologram. Wedge could see that the tight formation of the enemy reserve fleet had blurred, diffused, and that in the midst of all the red blips were one large green and one small green marker.
“Identities confirmed,” Iella called. “Millennium Falcon, Han Solo swearing up a storm. Lusankya, Commander Davip commanding.”
“Commander Davip?” Wedge shook his head and bit back on his next question: Why was Davip, a ship captain whose career had long been characterized by strong-willed indecisiveness, a commander instead of a galley cook now? And why wasn’t a ship of Lusankya’s military importance under the command of a full admiral? “Who’s closest to this engagement? Never mind that. Who’s unengaged and far enough out from the sun to make a microjump into that e
ngagement zone?”
“Mon Mothma,” Tycho said, not bothering to refer to the hologram or his console. “Rebel Dream. In one to two minutes, we can have another six ships ready to jump.”
“Danni Quee reports detection of two yammosk kills,” Iella said. “One minute apart. The Yuuzhan Vong are not battle-coordinated now.”
“Very well.” Wedge lowered his voice. “Of course, they don’t need to be coordinated to destroy Lusankya and the Falcon.”
Tycho nodded.
The tactic he needed clicked into Wedge’s mind. In the span of a second, he evaluated it, tested it for major weaknesses, dismissed the weaknesses as irrelevant because of the Yuuzhan Vong’s current state of confusion, and decided that he could probably use the tactic again—once—at a later time.
He reached into the hologram and indicated an area of space next to the Yuuzhan Vong reserve fleet, just on the far side of that engagement zone from the direction of Borleias. “Have Mon Mothma make a microjump to appear here. When she arrives, she’s to broadcast a homing beacon on open fleet group frequencies and defend herself. One minute after she arrives, she’s to activate her gravity-well generators and keep them up for one minute. Issue that to Mon Mothma directly.”
Tycho turned to his console.
Wedge turned to the room. “Attention,” he said, and the clamor dropped a couple of notches. “All ships and hyperdrive-equipped starfighters that can get clear of enemies within the next two minutes are to do so. Inform Rogue Squadron and Twin Suns Squadron that they’re to abandon their current action and get clear. They’ll jump in the direction of a homing beacon they’re about to detect. Gravity-well generators will pull them out of hyperspace in the Falcon’s and Lusankya’s engagement zone. Their orders are to form up on Lusankya and escort her to Borleias. Let’s do it, people.”
Tycho straightened from his console. “Mon Mothma has jumped.”
“Good.” Wedge sighed and lowered his voice. “Tycho, we’re about to achieve a tremendous victory we don’t want.”
Tycho gave him a thin smile. “We’ll put that in your biography. General Antilles was so good he couldn’t fail when he tried to.”
“Thanks.”
SEVEN
Borleias Occupation, Day 9
Han put the Falcon into a dive toward Lusankya. It was like diving into an erupting volcano; Lusankya’s hull was incandescent with firing ion cannons and laser batteries, making nearspace around her a blinding kill zone.
But her kill zone was safety compared to what was on the Falcon’s tail: half a dozen coralskippers, their pilots determined and vengeful. Plasma cannon ejecta flashed by the Falcon’s viewports and hammered into her stern shields.
The Millennium Falcon’s own guns fired, sending their damage aft against the coralskipper pursuit. From the shouts bouncing forward from the gunport accesses, it sounded as though Ganner and Alema Rar were in control of the guns. He thought the other Jedi in the passenger area, all survivors of Anakin’s raid on the Yuuzhan Vong worldship above Myrkr, were cheering them on.
As the Falcon dipped in closer to Lusankya, Han could no longer hear the cheering—laser blasts and explosions flashed by close enough to rock her, to batter her shields. Somewhere astern, machinery came free of its housing and smashed to the Falcon’s deck, and as Han continued to roll, juke, and dive, he could hear the distinctive sound of shrapnel impacts as components of the machinery began slamming into bulkheads.
“Sounds expensive,” Leia said.
Han shot her a betrayed look. Then they were clear of the kill zone, astern of Lusankya, where the Super Star Destroyer’s lasers no longer crisscrossed over their heads.
The sensors showed no skips on the Falcon’s tail, though more were incoming, several seconds from being close enough to fire. Han breathed out a sigh of relief. “If we pick up more pursuit, I’m going back through,” he said. “Those guys are good.”
Leia frowned. “Who?”
“The gunners on Lusankya. They picked off our pursuit and didn’t put a scratch on us.”
“Han, they were trying to kill us, too. I saw those batteries traversing to follow us. We’re nothing more than another blur to them. You just outflew them. The skips didn’t.”
“Oh.” Han looped around to port, away from the incoming coralskippers; he circled Lusankya at an almost safe distance and watched the Star Destroyer’s cloud of starfighters engaging the Yuuzhan Vong. “Then I’m not going back.”
“Right.”
“Do you have an exit vector for us?”
She consulted the sensor board again. “We’re almost smack in the middle of their fleet. The thinnest screen between us and clear space is back that way—” She gestured out along the course by which they’d arrived insystem. Then she peered more closely at her screen. “I have friendly signals there. One Star Destroyer and more ships arriving.”
Han snapped the Falcon around toward that course so sharply that he and Leia, and presumably all those aboard, were mashed into their acceleration couches. Belatedly, he shouted over his shoulder, “Hang on!”
Luke led Twin Suns Squadron away from Borleias high orbit at top speed and felt his smile withering away. A moment ago, he’d been as close to happy as one can be when caught in the middle of a firefight. The enemy had suddenly become uncoordinated, sure sign that their yammosk had died and that they’d have to quit the battlefield, and Luke hadn’t lost a pilot in the engagement. He’d hoped their job was almost done. But the unusual nature of his new orders suggested it was barely started.
A beep from R2-D2 alerted him that Mon Mothma was broadcasting her beacon. Luke looped around to be oriented straight toward that broadcast location while his astromech plotted that direction as a hyperspace jump course. He clicked his comlink over to squadron frequency. “Announce readiness,” he said, and added, “Leader ready.”
“Two.” Corran tucked his X-wing in to Luke’s port.
“Three.” Zindra moved up to Luke’s starboard.
“Six.”
“Four.”
When all other eleven pilots had acknowledged, Luke set a five-second timer and broadcast it to coordinate it with his other pilots. “Clench ’em if you’ve got ’em,” he said.
The counter dropped to zero. The Twin Suns jumped into hyperspace and then dropped almost immediately back into realspace, a jump duration of far less than two seconds.
Ahead, Luke saw Mon Mothma, her pointed bow aimed back in his direction, Borleias’s direction. Little gouts of red from the Star Destroyer’s vicinity suggested that she was being harassed by coralskippers, but before Luke could direct his squadron against them, R2-D2 beeped to indicate incoming orders.
Luke glanced at the text scrawl and led his squadron in a tight loop around toward the Yuuzhan Vong fleet behind them. “All right, people. We’re to get to Lusankya and punch a hole for her. Anyone gets in the way, discourage him.”
Rogue Squadron dropped out of its microjump close to Mon Mothma. The Star Destroyer’s complement of starfighters already had space secure around her; some of them were accelerating into the engagement zone toward Lusankya.
Gavin led the Rogues in a tight loop in the same direction.
His comlink crackled. “Aww, Twin Suns is there ahead of us.” That was Volu Nyth, a human woman from Kuat, a new Rogue.
Gavin put some snap into his voice. “No unneccessary chatter!” Then he lowered his tone. “Besides, we had to travel farther to get here.”
Han bit back a curse as he sent the Falcon through a bewildering series of side-to-side and up-and-down maneuvers, designed to throw off the aim of his pursuers. All eight of them.
It wasn’t just the danger to his ship, his wife, his passengers that made him unhappy.
He was getting tired.
Twenty years ago, a fight like this would have just loosened him up and made him ornery. Now sweat was pouring from him and he could feel fatigue in his arms.
“Friendlies ahead,” Leia said. She had to
shout to be heard over the continuous firing of the Falcon’s guns.
Han glanced at his sensors and made a minor adjustment to their course—minor, but so abruptly executed that it slammed Leia rightward. If not for the copilot’s harness, she would have been hurled from her seat. He grimaced. He still needed to get that seat replaced with something made to human scale. “Sorry,” he said.
The friendly signal ahead broke into four smaller signals, each of them made up of three blips—shield trios, meaning it was probably an X-wing unit. As the Falcon neared them, they spread out in attack formation, but not very far apart, and then opened fire.
Their lasers flashed close enough to the Falcon, Han thought, to peel paint from her hull. Then the X-wings were gone, and so were four of the pursuing coralskipper signals.
Five. The Falcon’s upper gun turret scored a kill, and suddenly pursuit was down to three coralskippers. “Who was that?” Han shouted.
“Me!” The voice was female. So it was Alema in the top turret, Ganner in the bottom.
“Three we can handle,” Han said. This time he remembered to shout, “Hold on!” Then he set the freighter into a painfully tight loop upward. He was pushed hard back into his pilot’s couch as the acceleration compensator failed to keep up with the maneuver.
In the midst of the maneuver, when the acceleration forces were at their height, he glanced at his wife, expecting her to be crushed motionless against the back of her chair, but she was actually sitting forward against the tremendous acceleration. She gave him an amused, even superior, look.
A Jedi technique, it had to be, something on the order of levitating rocks. He tried to keep jealousy from his expression, and called over his shoulder, “Alema, wait for the booms before firing, one-two-three.”
“Understood!”
As the three remaining coralskippers came back into view, Han saw that they were only just beginning to rise in pursuit of the Falcon—his maneuver, executed so soon after the Rogues had cut their numbers in half, had confused and delayed the Yuuzhan Vong for a fatal moment.
Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I Page 10