Luke sighed. “Having more experience doesn’t mean making difficult decisions are easier, but it does let you know that sometimes the tough decisions must be made.”
Jacen’s expression hardened into an impassive mask. “I understand, Master.”
You use the word Master with the same tone a slave might use to address his owner. Luke shook his head. “We need to get back to the ExGal facility before darkness falls completely. Without being able to sense the Yuuzhan Vong through the Force, we’re more vulnerable at night. Besides, going back there will give both of us time to process what we’ve learned today, and think about what we need to find out in the future.”
Jacen shrugged. “It’s a plan, Uncle Luke. A plan.”
A ripple of dread ran through Luke at the tone of his nephew’s voice, but the Force brought to him no vision of what might yet happen on Belkadan. He reached out and settled a hand on Jacen’s shoulder. “Just remember, some problems have no easy or elegant solution. The Yuuzhan Vong are clearly one of those problems.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Trapped in the cockpit of his X-wing as it hurtled through hyperspace, Gavin Darklighter had nothing to do but sit and wait. For as long as he could remember, he’d never liked having to wait for his fighter to revert to realspace. That dislike had increased when he became Rogue Squadron’s commander. Prior to assuming command I only had myself to worry about. Now I have a lot more to concern me.
Unconsciously he twisted the silver ring on his right ring finger, even though it and the fingers that moved it around were sheathed in heavy flight gloves. The ring had the Rogue Squadron crest on it—a crest he’d designed when he first joined the squadron. It also sported the quadruple-dot rank insignia of a colonel on either side.
Tycho Celchu and Wedge Antilles had given it to him upon his assumption of command. They had chosen to retire after peace had been won with the Imperial Remnant, and both had evidenced great pride in welcoming Gavin into a position that only they and Luke Skywalker had held in Rogue Squadron. They’d had the ring made up specifically for him, and presented it to him on a special “commander’s night out.”
Gavin smiled as he remembered the quiet, elegant dinner in one of Coruscant’s better restaurants. The three of them comported themselves as would gentlemen, not at all living up to the reputation of fighter pilots everywhere. The calm dignity with which Tycho and Wedge spoke to him and discussed various issues told him that they had accepted him as a peer and had full confidence in his abilities to lead the Rogues.
Wedge had looked at him over the rim of a snifter of Corellian brandy. “Biggs was with us at the start, and you were with us when we restarted Rogue Squadron. In many ways the Darklighters and their victories and sacrifices are more emblematic of Rogue Squadron than anything Tycho and I have done. It’s certainly the right thing to have you in charge.”
Wedge’s pride and faith in him had seen Gavin through some early rough spots. With peace came the retirement of many of the pilots. In addition to Wedge and Tycho, Corran Horn, Wes Janson, and Hobbie Klivian had all opted to retire. Peace also brought with it an economic boom that lured pilots away with offers of lucrative pay for interstellar goods transport. Still, a lot of new young pilots vied for positions in the squadron, and weeding them out made for a very difficult job.
And let me know what Wedge faced when he rebuilt the squadron back when I joined. Luckily for Gavin he had a good command staff to help him out. Major Inyri Forge had been with the Rogues almost as long as he had. Major Alinn Varth came from a military family and had been flying most of her life. With each of them in command of one of the flights, the new pilots were quickly molded into a superior fighting team. Gavin wasn’t certain if his Rogues could have defeated the old Rogues in a head-to-head simulation, but he knew they’d give them a run for their money.
But will that be good enough?
A cold lump sat in Gavin’s stomach. Based on Xhaxin’s information, Admiral Kre’fey took the Ralroost out toward the rendezvous point where the pirate said his people were ambushed. They launched a probe droid toward that point, but the data it sent back was inconclusive. Gavin pointed out, and Kre’fey had agreed, that the droid really didn’t have the programming or database necessary to be able to analyze the area for the presence of the Yuuzhan Vong. “If there isn’t something big and anomalous there, it isn’t going to see anything to report.”
That fact really left them with no choice but to send in a T-65R reconnaissance X-wing. While it would collect data in all of the ranges that the probe droid did, the living pilot would be able to direct it toward anything that felt suspicious. Rogue Squadron was flying along to provide cover; they had spent most of the time outbound in the Ralroost running through simulations of battles with the coralskippers.
When it came down to it, Gavin was of two minds concerning the mission. Returning to an empty point in space where some pirates and fleeing Imperials had been ambushed weeks ago was probably an exercise in futility. There was no logical reason for the Yuuzhan Vong to maintain a presence in that area since it had no resources, no planets—nothing to see, nothing to conquer, nothing to hide behind. All of that had argued against the mission. The fact that the point in space from which the task force was traveling provided access to a number of inhabited worlds both in the New Republic and the Remnant—where the Rogues would be far more valuable in helping evacuate people—also diminished the mission profile. Why go somewhere that is out of the way when we might be needed to respond to trouble quickly?
A vague argument for the mission could be made on the slender chances that some people had somehow survived the attack and remained trapped in drifting hulks. More likely was the idea that by collecting data on any ship hulks in the area the New Republic would be able to assess the capabilities of Yuuzhan Vong weaponry. What little they knew already trickled some dread into Gavin’s guts, but the strategies they’d come up with to work around the Yuuzhan Vong defenses worked well in simulation.
Catch whistled and started a ten-second countdown to reversion. Gavin settled his right hand on the stick and positioned his left on the throttle lever. He watched the white tunnel of light that extended beyond his fighter’s nose suddenly develop cracks, then disintegrate into a black field with stars studding it.
“Rogues, report.”
All the pilots reported in and formed up in their three flights. The recon X-wing, which had the designation Snoop, climbed above the squadron’s flight plane and slowly deployed the twin sensor pods from the rear of the fighter. The T-65R had no weapons because sensors filled all the available space in the craft, but in a fight the pilot could jettison the pods and end up with a very fast and maneuverable ship that could keep him out of trouble.
“Pods deployed. Sensor run commencing now.”
“I copy, Snoop.”
Without a word being said the rest of Rogue Squadron fanned out, leaving One flight trailing behind and below the recon ship. Two flight, under Inyri’s command, moved to starboard and up, while Major Varth’s Three flight moved ahead and down to port. The Rogues kept the comm chatter to a minimum so the computers on Snoop wouldn’t have to filter their calls out. Unless there is an emergency, this run should be silent.
Gavin looked ahead and dialed up the gain on his sensors to see if he could spot any debris from the ambush. Because there was no large mass—star or planet—in the area to pull the debris toward it, he expected to see plenty of wreckage. In the distance, nearly ten kilometers away, he did catch sensor blips, but nothing his targeting computer could recognize as being a ship.
Catch gave out with a low moan, and new targets started to scroll up on Gavin’s secondary monitor. The half-dozen targets were spilling like droplets of water from a cracked cup, appearing from the blips that were all that remained of the ships that had been ambushed. Gavin shivered, thinking of times he’d seen insects crawling from within corpses.
“Heads up, Rogues, we have contacts at 354 mark 20. S-
foils in attack position.” Gavin checked his sensors. “Snoop, come about and orbit here, pull in all the data you can on the fight, then hyper out if we can’t stop them from coming after you.”
“As ordered, Lead.”
The new sensor database package on the X-wings allowed them to target the coralskippers, but not very easily. Since each ship was grown in a different environment, it had different characteristics. Not all of them had the same chemical composition in the hull, nor the same shape exactly. The computers had to account for a wide range of variables, and Gavin couldn’t be certain that his computer might not lock onto some chunk of rock and designate it a target.
Which means we have to move in close. Gavin nudged his throttle forward and saw his wingman, Captain Kral Nevil, come up on his port wing, then they both nosed their ships down and cruised in at the coralskippers. Gavin brought his aiming reticle over one of the coralskippers heading toward him, but the computer refused to give him a proton torpedo lock until they hit the one-kilometer range. It went from red to green instantly, accompanied by Catch’s shriek, so Gavin hit the trigger, then pulled up and inverted the craft.
The proton torpedo rode an azure flame to the target, and the coralskipper made no attempt to evade it. Instead, nearly ten meters away from the target, the torpedo shrank from a dot of light to something smaller, like a distant star, and the supernova of light Gavin had expected to see never showed up.
A quick glance at his secondary monitor did show a gravitic anomaly, which confirmed that the coralskipper had somehow created a small black hole, which it used to swallow the missile. The energy from the explosion couldn’t escape the void; hence the coralskipper remained undamaged. Being able to generate black holes wasn’t the same as having shields, but in some cases could be even more effective.
“Lead, the black-hole idea seems to be right. Do we tip our hand?”
“Yes, Deuce. Rogues, new combat programming now.” Gavin hit a switch on his combat console. “Catch, start allocating the power.”
The droid dutifully tootled as Gavin rolled out to the right, then came around for another run at the coralskippers. He flicked his weapons over to laser fire and quadded them up, so all four would fire at once. As he came in at one of the rocky pods, he hit the trigger once and pulsed a red-gold burst of energy at the fighter, but another black hole blossomed and swallowed the laserlight.
Smiling, Gavin tightened down on the auxiliary trigger button beneath his middle finger on the stick. The X-wing’s lasers began cycling very fast—faster than they would have in single-fire mode. Each bolt burned with a scarlet intensity, yet was shorter and decidedly less powerful that those in the first burst he’d fired. As long as he held the auxiliary trigger down in quad mode, the lasers would produce a cloud of shots that wouldn’t do much damage, but were next to impossible to distinguish from the heavier bolts.
His target positioned a void to pick off the scattered shots from his fighter, then another to absorb the damage Nevil was pumping out. The coralskipper began some evasive maneuvers, rolling to port and climbing back against the angle of their attack, but it didn’t fly as gracefully as the coralskippers had in simulation. Gavin let his own fighter flash past, then pulled back on the stick and came over in a loop, before he rolled out to port and came back around on that same ship.
He came in on its tail and triggered off a long burst of flickers. The coralskipper positioned a black hole above its tail, but Gavin noticed that, this time, the hole was closer to the coralskipper and had a smaller focal point. Some of the splinter shots that were headed long, past the craft’s nose, were bent down by the force of the black hole, but not trapped by it. They struck the coralskipper’s nose, burning tiny pits in it.
The coralskipper shifted to port and started to roll as more flickers scored it. Gavin rolled to port, as well, and chopped back his throttle, matching his speed to that of the coralskipper. He dropped his crosshairs on its tail, then hit his main trigger and delivered a full-powered quad volley at point-blank range.
The quartet of bolts converged on the coralskipper, and only one of them got sucked into the diminishing black hole. The other three burned into the cockpit assembly. They reduced the crystalline canopy to molten stone that melted through the pilot. Their energy unabated, the bolts superheated the coralskipper’s mineral flesh, producing a geyser of rock vapor that jetted back out of the cockpit and propelled the dead fighter deeper into space.
Gavin rolled to starboard and away from the dying ship, then felt a jolt run through his fighter. Another gravitic anomaly had hit him and tugged at his shields. That’s how they strip shields off ships. He punched a button on the life-maintenance system controls. “Boost it to 100 percent and expand the field to thirteen meters, Catch.”
The droid did as commanded, and the shiver that had gone through the X-wing quit. Gavin smiled broadly. To avoid the wear and tear of gravity and inertia on the pilots and fighters, each X-wing came with an inertial compensator built in. It allowed the X-wings to perform very high-speed, high-inertial maneuvers without structural damage to the ship and physical damage to the pilot. By expanding the area covered by this field to thirteen meters—putting it out beyond the shields—the compensator treated the Yuuzhan Vong gravity beams like anything else stressing the fighter.
If enough ships locked onto the fighter, they would eventually demand more energy output than its engines could manage, causing the field to implode and the ship to be ripped apart. Gavin goosed the throttle forward and broke to port, pulling away from the coralskipper that had tried to lock onto him. Suddenly a bright light flashed and the coralskipper disappeared from his rear screen.
“Who got it?”
Nevil answered. “Locking onto you and having you slip away must have tired it or confused it. I dropped a proton torpedo in. Coralduster.”
“Good, on me.” Gavin brought his X-wing around and back up to the main body of the dogfight. A glance at his secondary monitor showed two Rogues failing to respond on the comm frequency. A flash of orange confirmed at least one pilot was outside his ship. Elsewhere he saw a coralskipper tight on an X-wing’s tail, lacing the shrinking aft shield with plasma blasts.
“Snoop, report.”
“Good here, Lead. I’m clear. Got it all, including the one that took Eleven and Twelve.”
“Which one?”
A pulse of data from the T-65R brought a specific coralskipper up on his targeting monitor. It didn’t look that different from the others, but as he flew toward it, he could tell by the way it moved and maneuvered, it had a hot hand on the stick.
“With me, Deuce?”
A double click coming back through the comm channel confirmed Nevil’s understanding of his role. Gavin came up on the port S-foil and pulled back on the stick to run his X-wing in at the killer coralskipper. He plotted a course that would pass behind it and kept adjusting it to tighten the distance between them without arrowing straight in at it.
The coralskipper was intent on tracking one of the X-wings. Gavin identified the ship as belonging to Lieutenant Ligg Panat, a Krish female who had just joined the squadron. The Krish were well known for their love of games, and the way she was flying made Gavin think she was taking the Yuuzhan Vong on her tail a bit too lightly. She was managing to juke her ship around, making it hard to hit, but she still couldn’t break away cleanly.
“Seven, this is Lead. On my mark, reverse throttle, break port.”
“Lead, I can handle—”
“This is an order, Seven. On my mark. Mark.”
Ligg reversed her thrust and rolled to the left, making it look as if she’d just nudged her ship out of the Yuuzhan Vong pilot’s way. The coralskipper shot past her, then rolled out right and came up. The Yuuzhan Vong ship’s nose came around, and the coralskipper lined up for a head-to-head run on Gavin’s fighter.
That sent a jolt through Gavin. Why would it do that? If it uses its black holes to shield itself, it can’t take down my shields, s
o its plasma shots won’t get through. If it takes down my shields, I can dump a torp down its throat. Makes no sense.
Realizing that if he couldn’t tell what the enemy was planning, going along with the enemy’s plan was stupid, Gavin triggered a burst of flickers at the incoming target. The cloud of red energy needles flew out and, as he expected, curved in together into the black hole the coralskipper had erected to protect itself. What he hadn’t expected is that the void would intercept them that far forward.
Gavin kicked his fighter into a snap roll to starboard, then jammed the throttle full. Sparks shot from the inertial compensator panel as the X-wing grazed the edge of the black hole. Catch screamed, and Gavin hugged the stick back to his chest. The X-wing shuddered and engines whined, but his speed started dropping. I’m getting sucked into that thing!
Gavin reversed thrust on his fighter, then ruddered the nose around to point at the black hole. The screaming engines fought the black hole’s pull, but surrendered precious centimeter after centimeter to it. He flicked the weapons control over to proton torpedoes and emptied his magazine of six into the black hole. One after one the torps dived into the gravitic anomaly, and somehow the black hole managed to contain the vast energy their explosions released.
But, Gavin noticed, his rate of descent into the black hole slowed.
He flicked his thrust forward. The fighter picked up speed, attracted by the black hole and pushed by the engines. Then he pulled back on the stick and used the velocity he’d acquired to shoot past the black hole’s edge.
More sparks shot through the cockpit, and his shields collapsed. His sensor screens blinked for a moment, then came back on full, but he couldn’t see the coralskipper. “Catch, where is it?”
Nevil’s voice came through the comm speakers in his helmet. “Thanks for distracting it, Lead. Seven and I angled in and got it. Not a pretty kill, but a kill.”
Onslaught: Dark Tide I Page 13
