by Troy Denning
A host of communications specialists got very busy with their microphones. Kre’fey continued staring at Jacen’s pointing finger, and then he nodded to himself.
“The extended wing is to fire a missile barrage here.” Kre’fey said, and gave the coordinates indicated by Jacen’s finger.
The capital ships on the detached wing belched out a gigantic missile barrage, seemingly aimed into empty space, and scurried back to the safety of the main body. When the Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements shimmered into realspace the missiles were already amid them, and the new arrivals hadn’t yet configured their ships for defense, or launched a single coralskipper.
On the displays Jacen watched the havoc the missiles wrought on the startled enemy. Almost all the ships were hit, and several broke up.
Kre’fey snarled. “How can I hurt the Vong today? We’ve answered that question, haven’t we?”
One of his staff officers gave a triumphant smile. “Troopships report the landing party has been recovered, Admiral.”
“About time,” someone muttered.
Since the wing was contracting inward anyway, Kre’fey got the whole fleet moving in the same direction. The newly arrived Yuuzhan Vong were too disorganized, and too out of position, to make an effective pursuit. The first arrivals charged after Kre’fey, but they were strung out while Kre’fey’s forces were concentrating, and their intervention had no hope of being decisive.
But even though Kre’fey had assured the escape of his force, the battle was far from over. The Yuuzhan Vong commander was angry and his warriors still possessed the suicidal bravery that marked their caste. Ships were hard hit, and starfighters vaporized, and hulls broken up to tumble through the cold emptiness of Ylesian space, before the fleet exited the traitor capital’s mass shadow and made the hyperspace jump to Kashyyyk.
“I don’t want to do anything like that again,” Jaina said. She was in the officers’ lounge of Starsider, sitting on a chair with a cup of tea in her hand, her boots off, and her stockinged feet in Jag Fel’s lap.
“Ylesia was like hitting your head again and again on a brick wall,” she went on. “One tactical problem after another, and the solution to each one was a straightforward assault right at the enemy, or straightforward flight with the enemy in pursuit.” She sighed as Jag’s fingers massaged a particularly sensitive area of her right foot. “I’m better when I can be Yun-Harla the Trickster,” she said. “Not when I’m playing the enemy’s game, but when I can make the enemy play mine.”
“You refer to sabacc, I take it,” Jag said, a bit sourly.
Jaina looked at Jacen, sitting opposite her and sipping on a glass of Gizer ale. “Are you going to take Kre’fey up on his offer of a squadron command?”
Jacen inhaled the musky scent of the ale as he considered his answer. “I think I may serve better on the bridge of Ralroost,” he said finally, and thought of his finger floating in Kre’fey’s holo display, pointing at the enemy fleet that wasn’t there.
“Ylesia,” he continued, “showed that my talents seem to be more spatial and, uh, coordinative. Is coordinative a word?”
“I hope not,” Jag said.
Jacen felt regret at the thought of leaving starfighters entirely. He had joined Kre’fey’s fleet in order to guard his sister’s back, and perhaps that was best done by flying alongside her in an X-wing. But he suspected that he’d be able to offer a higher order of assistance if he stayed out of a starfighter cockpit, instead using the Jedi meld to shape the way the others fought.
“Look,” Jag pointed out, “Jaina’s got it wrong. Ylesia wasn’t a defeat. Jaina’s downed pilots were rescued, and so were mine. We hurt the enemy a lot more than they hurt us, thanks in part to Spooky Mind-Meld Man, here.” He nodded toward Jacen. “We destroyed a collaborationist fleet and captured enough of the Peace Brigade’s upper echelon to provide dozens of splashy trials. The media will be occupied for months.”
“It didn’t feel like a victory,” Jaina said. “It felt like we barely escaped with our necks.”
“That’s only because you don’t have a sufficiently detached perspective,” Jag said seriously.
Mention of the Peace Brigade had set Jacen’s mind thinking along other channels. He looked at Jaina. “Do you think Thrackan’s really innocent?”
Jaina was startled. “Innocent of what?”
“Of collaboration. Do you think the story he told about being forced into the Presidency could possibly have been true?”
Jaina gave a disbelieving laugh. “Too ludicrous.”
“No, really. He’s a complete human chauvinist. I know he’s a bad guy and he held us prisoner and wants to rule Corellia as diktat, but he hates aliens so much I can’t believe he’d work with the Yuuzhan Vong voluntarily.”
Jaina tilted her head in thought. Jag’s foot massage had put a blissful expression on her face. “Well, he did call Pwoe a Squid Head. That’s a point in his favor.”
“If Sal-Solo wishes to prove his innocence,” Jag said, “he need only volunteer for interrogation under truth drugs. If his collaboration was involuntary, the drugs would reveal it.” Grim amusement passed across his scarred features. “But I think he’s afraid that such an interrogation would reveal how he came to be in the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong in the first place. That’s what would truly condemn him.”
“Ahh,” Jaina said. Jacen couldn’t tell if she was enlightened or, in light of the foot rub, experiencing a form of ecstasy.
Jacen, sipping his ale, decided that whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn’t any of his business.
Thrackan Sal-Solo paced across the durasteel-walled prison exercise yard, his mind busy with plans.
Tomorrow, he’d been told, he would be transferred to Corellia, where he would undergo trial for treason against his home planet.
He’d accept the transfer peacefully, and behave as a model prisoner for most of the way home. But that was only to lull his guards.
He’d catch them at a disadvantage, and bash them over the head with an improvised weapon—he didn’t know what exactly, he’d work that out later. Then he’d take command of the ship—he hoped it was an Incom model, he could fly anything Incom made. He’d crash the ship into a remote area of Corellia and make it appear he died in the flames.
Then he’d make contact with some of the people on Corellia he could still trust. He’d reorganize the Centerpoint Party, strike, and seize power. He would rule the world! No, five worlds.
It was his destiny, and nothing could stop him. Thracken Sal-Solo wasn’t meant to be condemned to a miserable life on a prison planet.
Well. Not more than once, anyway.
Star Wars: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2005 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used under authorization.
Included is the following previously published e-book: “Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Ylesia” by Walter Jon Williams copyright © 2002 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used under authorization.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreybooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-46314-2
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