Dark Journey

by Elaine Cunningham

  “Who cares? The choice is not ours. But if I were to choose, I think I would choose immortality. Live long enough, and you might learn how to be brave as a Yuuzhan Vong again. Kill long enough, and you could perhaps learn to kill a star.”

  Charat Kraal sobered. “I have heard …”

  “What?”

  “That the infidels did that. Learned to kill a star.”

  He heard Penzak Kraal hiss in irritation; in the villip he saw his partner’s lopsided features go even more off center as his mouth pulled down in an expression of contempt. “So what if they did? They killed it the wrong way, with their wrong minds and their wrong devices. And, like idiots, they must have lost the secret. Or they’d be destroying the worldships one by one.”

  “I have also heard …” Charat Kraal lowered his voice, a foolish instinct, since no one but Penzak Kraal could be listening to him. “That gods may smile upon them, too. On the infidels.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Can you know the minds of the gods?”

  “I can no more know the minds of the gods than summon one of the enemy battleships to destroy for my personal glory.”

  In the distance, away from Borleias, many kilometers from them, an enemy battleship winked into existence, its bow pointed toward them. The ship was already up to speed; it grew rapidly as it neared them, as it approached Borleias.

  “Penzak, you fool.”

  “My words did not summon it, you idiot.” The villip’s face blurred and adjusted, reflecting a change to Penzak’s features; Penzak had pulled on his cognition hood. Charat did likewise. His surroundings, the cockpit interior, seemed to become transparent, giving him a view in all directions through the senses of the coralskipper, showing him in breathtaking detail the onrushing enemy ship.

  No, now it was ships. More and more of the loathsome things of metal were dropping out of hyperspace, all aimed at Borleias. At Charat and Penzak.

  A moment later, Charat could feel a buzz through the cognition hood, a telltale sign that Penzak was sending a warning to the Domain Kraal commander on Borleias.

  The foremost New Republic ship, a sharply angled triangle in white, passed over the two coralskippers, blotting out the sun, casting them into shadow. Nowhere near so large as a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, it was still of impressive size, and so near that Charat felt he could reach out and drag his finger along its hull as it passed.

  Penzak Kraal sent his coralskipper into a dive and turned to match the larger craft’s course. Charat paced him. Above, he saw thruster gouts from the ship’s belly herald the launching of the hated infidel starfighers.

  “How do we hurt them worst?” Charat asked.

  “Follow me in,” Penzak said. “While they’re launching. Don’t engage the fighters; bait them so they follow us. The ship won’t fire on us with the fighters in close proximity. We’ll enter their launching bays and destroy the facilities there, then gut the ship from within.” He looped around, rising and angling in toward the ship’s belly. Charat followed.

  Mon Mothma, one of the newest cruisers in the New Republic’s fleet, a Star Destroyer refitted with gravity-well generators capable of interfering with the short jumps made by Yuuzhan Vong craft, cruised straight toward Borleias from the point where it had dropped out of hyperspace. This hadn’t been a timed drop—they’d plotted a course straight for the planet Borleias, and the planet’s gravity well had dragged them into realspace when they’d come close enough. And now before them was the blue-green world they had come to recapure.

  “No sign of a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit,” reported the sensor officer, a Mon Calamari male with deep blue skin. “The two coralskippers are turning to engage.”

  General Wedge Antilles, a lean man with a careworn face and military posture, commander of the fleet group for which Mon Mothma was the flagship, nodded. “Gunnery, stay on them, vape them if they come against us. Fighter control, continue launching starfighter squadrons.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Data screens lit up with colored blips as New Republic starfighters—X-wings, A-9s, B-wings, E-wings, and more—streamed out of the docking bays and turned toward the planet. Wedge, standing at the captain’s station toward the rear of the spacious bridge, ignored the screens. He concentrated instead on the live view of Borleias, which filled the main viewport at the bow end of the bridge.

  I hope the Vong here have come to love this world, he told himself. Because I’m going to take it from them. They’re going to learn what it is to lose the things they love.

  Luke Skywalker hit his thrusters. His X-wing roared out of the main docking bay, losing altitude relative to the Mon Mothma. Behind him, eleven pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, the temporary X-wing squad that was his command, formed up on him. “Twin Suns away,” he said.

  “Twin Suns, copy.” That would be the controller on Mon Mothma’s bridge. “Be advised, two coralskippers are maneuvering into your flight path.”

  Luke glanced at his sensor board. Two red blips were indeed turning from below to head toward them. “Squadron, follow me out, let’s give these two the gauntlet treatment.”

  He heard a chorus of acknowledgments. There was tension in some of the voices, but not alarm. All his pilots were veterans, survivors of the Sabers, the Shocks, and other squadrons that had been reduced to shield trios, wing pairs, and solo pilots during the Yuuzhan Vong attack on Coruscant mere days earlier. Two of them, forming with him a shield trio, were his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, and the Corellian-Security-officer-turned-pilot-turned-Jedi named Corran Horn. All his pilots were disciplined and competent. Many wanted revenge.

  Luke understood how they felt. The Vong, aided by their human agent Viqi Shesh, had almost managed to kidnap his and Mara’s infant son, Ben, just days ago. They had killed his nephew Anakin, and his nephew Jacen was missing. The losses, especially that of his apprentice Anakin, created an ache within him that he could not soothe.

  In his youth, Luke would have been anxious for payback, but today he set that portion of himself aside. That was dark side thinking, immature thinking. It had been a long time since he had been a smooth-faced innocent; the scars of combat and lines of age had accumulated on his face, matching the weight of experience and calm that had accumulated on his spirit.

  He extended his perceptions and sought Mara with them. He found her and almost flinched away from the contact; she was now an icy presence, concentrated totally on their mission.

  He shrugged. Iciness was better than one alternative. Mara, despite her cool and controlled manner, was as anguished as he by the near loss of Ben and the loss of their nephews, and it would be no surprise to find her lit like a lightsaber with a desire for revenge. The fact that she wasn’t meant that she was in control.

  “S-foils to attack position,” Luke said, and suited action to words by flipping the switch that split the X-wings’ flight surfaces into their familiar X-shaped attack profile. “First and third trios, take the leader, the rest on the wingmate. Fire at will.” He linked his lasers to quad fire, so that all four would fire with a single press of the trigger, and opened up on the lead coralskipper. Four red streams of destructive laser energy lanced out against the coralskipper—

  No, it was eight streams. Luke’s burst, aimed at the starboard side of the skip, never reached its target; a blackness appeared before it, distorting space around it like a gigantic magnifying lens, drawing the laserfire into it. Those four red lances of energy simply bent and disappeared. But Mara’s burst, aimed at the port side, hit the coralskipper an instant after Luke’s vanished. He grinned; she must have been using her own Force abilities to monitor him, as well. She couldn’t have timed it so expertly otherwise. Her lasers raked across the enemy starfighter’s hull until the distortion flicked over to interpose itself, then Luke fired again, chipping away at the coralskipper’s stern. His blasts were joined by Corran’s. The coral-like material of the skip’s hull superheated and the lasers tore red-hot goug
es along the surface.

  Luke sent his X-wing into evasive maneuvers, moving back and forth, up and down with the randomness of a flying insect. He saw his target’s counterattack, a glowing missile from the coralskipper’s plasma cannon, flash by to port, far enough away to be no danger to himself, Mara, or Corran. In fact, there were no cries of alarm from his squadmates, no sudden and tragic disappearances of New Republic blips from his sensors.

  “They’re not engaging.” That was Twin Suns Eleven, a Commenorian woman named Tilath Keer. “Turning to pursue.” Luke saw the blips of Twin Suns Four through Six and Ten through Twelve turning back, following the coralskippers straight in toward Mon Mothma.

  Luke felt a little tingle, but whether a warning from the Force or from his own years of combat experience he could not tell. “Negative, break off,” he said. “Do not engage. Twin Suns, turn to original course and form up on Record Time. Mon Mothma, these skips are yours.”

  “Copy, Twins One.”

  Luke turned back toward Borleias, saw his pilots breaking off from pursuit of the coralskippers and maneuvering to form up with the squadron. The moment his fighters were clear of the coralskippers, Mon Mothma’s laser cannons opened up. One of the coralskippers was destroyed instantly, its dovin basal unable to absorb all the incoming damage with its void; the craft was reduced in a flash to glowing, molten particles no larger than a fingernail. The other, apparently more skillful at soaking up damage with its void, still sustained a grazing impact and spun away from Mon Mothma, out of control, no danger to the Star Destroyer.

  Luke shook his head at the Yuuzhan Vong’s pointless sacrifice, at the sad waste of life, and formed his fighters up in an assault wedge in front of Record Time.

  Record Time was an armed troop transport. At nearly 170 meters, with two bulbous main portions—the larger stern housed the bridge and personnel bays, the smaller stern the engines—connected by a narrow access tube, the vessel looked impossibly vulnerable, impossibly fragile. But its captain-owner, a private trader—a smuggler, Luke believed—had volunteered its use to General Antilles during the fall of Coruscant, claiming it was the fastest, toughest vessel of its type. Now its bay was clear of trade goods and was filled with soldiers instead.

  Luke’s comm unit hissed with a moment of static, then a woman’s voice: “Record Time to Twin Suns Leader, all set.”

  “Twin Suns to Record Time, you set the pace. We won’t have any trouble staying where we need to be.”

  The transport surged forward, not fast by starfighter standards, but quickly enough for a freighter. Luke calculated its rate of acceleration and brought his X-wing up in front of the freighter’s bridge. Mara and Corran settled in with him. Another shield trio dropped back to the port side of Record Time, a third to the starboard side, and the last astern of the transport.

  All around Twin Suns Squadron, starfighter squadrons, frigates, destroyers, transports, and shuttles began accelerating to battle speed.

  Luke heard Colonel Gavin Darklighter’s voice over the operation channel: “Rogue Squadron to Borleias. We’re back. We kicked your butt twenty years ago. Now we’re here to do it again.”

  Luke grinned.

  Squadrons of coralskippers were already climbing to their altitude by the time Twin Suns Squadron began its descent into atmosphere. Slightly longer than X-wings and comparable spacecraft, the coralskippers were far more massive. They were dense constructions of yorik coral, tapering toward the bow, broadening and deepening toward the stern, with rough exteriors reflecting their organic origins.

  They could be quite beautiful, Luke had decided. The ones rising against them and the two they’d seen after leaving the Mon Mothma shared a color scheme, a pastel red and a pearlescent silver swirled together in a mottled pattern. At the bow, tucked into a sort of niche grown into the coral surface, was the round reddish shape of the dovin basal, the creature whose gravitic powers dragged the coralskipper from point to point in space and also brought up defensive voids that drank in damage like a Tatooine bantha drank water. On the top surface, just ahead of the point where the ship’s body swelled to its greatest width, was the canopy over the cockpit; this one was tinted blue.

  Their beauty was irrelevant. As soon as they came within range, they opened up with their plasma cannons, life-forms that spewed superheated materials that could eat through a starfighter’s hull. “Break and engage, cover the transport,” Luke commanded, and suited action to words; he spun out in a rapid descent relative to the planet below and opened fire, trusting his wingmates to stay with him, to fire out of phase with him and at different portions of his target to overload and baffle the dovin basal. This time the creature defending his target skip intercepted Mara’s shot, fired from slightly below the skip’s centerline, but couldn’t whip the void around fast enough to counter Luke’s and Corran’s shots, which scoured the yorik coral all around the pilot’s canopy.

  Superheated blobs from his target’s wingmate flashed toward Luke’s X-wing. Luke heard a squeal of alarm from R2-D2, who was tucked into the astromech bay behind his canopy, but ignored it as an irrelevant detail. He continued his rolling descent, varying the speed of his roll and distance covered each half a standard second, and saw the plasma flash between his snubfighter and Mara’s.

  Then the three of them were well below their targets and rising again behind the coralskippers’ sterns. The skips’ voids swung around, hovering at the sterns, ready to soak up infinite amounts of weapon energy.

  The first engagements between coralskippers and New Republic starfighters had been terrible for the New Republic. Even seasoned pilots had been thrown off balance by the skips’ incredible durability, by the failure of proton torpedoes and laser blasts sucked into the voids to do any harm to the vehicles, by the tenacity of the damage done by plasma cannons, which kept on eating away at vehicle surfaces well after they’d hit.

  Now things were different. The surviving pilots had adjusted their tactics and passed their information along to their fellows. The rules of the game were to overload the dovin basals, striking them from several directions at once to ensure that some damage got through to hit the coralskippers’ surfaces. Starfighter pilots had to avoid taking any hits at all from skip weaponry; any hit could eat through shields and prove fatal.

  And there were new tactics all the time, in every battle. Mara surged ahead of Luke and Corran, flying in a pattern that was oddly predictable, and drew fire from both coralskippers. She became suddenly erratic in her flight, as random as only Force skills could make a pilot, and flashed ahead until she was just behind the skips. She sideslipped to port, and as both streams of plasma cannon fire followed her, the fire from the starboard skip crossed the body of the port-side skip; two balls of fire thudded into the skip’s belly before the starboard pilot compensated.

  The port skip’s void whipped around to shield the skip’s belly. In that instant, Mara drop-fired a quad-linked burst of laserfire.

  The skip detonated, hiding Mara’s X-wing from sight for a moment, and Luke fired a laser stutter-burst at the starboard skip’s underside. He hoped that the pilot’s confusion at having hurt his own wingmate, along with the dovin basal’s effort to shield this skip from the damage from Mara’s attack, would leave it momentarily vulnerable.

  He was right. His lasers hit the skip’s underside and chewed through. That skip vectored away, trailing fluids that instantly froze at this near-vacuum altitude.

  He checked his sensors. Two skips down. Mara was coming around to rejoin him and Corran. Diagnostics said his X-wing was undamaged.

  Farther out, two of his Twin Suns snubfighters were gone. The pilot of one of them was extravehicular; Luke hoped that the flight suit would keep the pilot alive until a rescue shuttle could arrive. “Good tactics, Mara,” he said.

  “You always know the sweet thing to say.”

  Luke grinned and came around toward a new set of opponents.

  Starfighter squadrons held the Yuuzhan Vong response to three
points of conflict in orbit. The Twin Suns group took advantage of the opportunity and roared down through the atmosphere in an undefended zone, then banked toward the coralskippers’ launch point, which had been detected on gravitic sensors. It was, not coincidentally, the same map coordinate as Borleias’s New Republic military base. Luke didn’t relish seeing what had become of the base during the Yuuzhan Vong occupation.

  As they dropped low over the jungle canopy, Luke could make out the target zone ahead. It didn’t have the same profile as the holocube he’d studied. The main building seemed to be lower, broader.

  Small chips of yorik coral were rising above it, angling toward them. His sensors said there were six of them. “Twin Suns, up front,” Luke said. “Engage all those skips. Record Time, it’s your call whether you want to hang back with us or move on to the target without us.”

  “Twin Suns One, this is Record Time. We’re here to fight. We’ll see you at the landing zone.”

  “Copy.”

  Lando Calrissian, in Record Time’s troop bay, stood next to the ramp access and tried not to look concerned.

  He was sweating. He didn’t like sweating. It suggested hard work, something he wasn’t fond of, and just didn’t give the impression of someone who was infinitely cool, infinitely in control.

  He looked over the units of men and women in the bay. Most were seated in rows of high-backed troop couches, strapped in against the turbulence that was likely to come. Their commanders walked up and down those rows, issuing last-minute instructions, advice, encouragements, jokes, insults.

  He looked over his own troops. They stood in a circle, each with a hand on the metal post at the circle’s center, and stared at him. They were impassive, fearless. “Ready?” he asked.

  In unison, they answered, “Ready, sir!”