Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Force Heretic I - Remnant - Book 17

by Sean Williams

  "I can explain everything later," the stranger said, "if I survive. Right now there simply isn't any time."

  Tahiri vacillated only for a moment, curiosity warring with caution. Then she reached out through the Force, feeling for the yacht's pilot. It was a Fian woman, and she was rushing through her preflight checks with terrified haste. A quick glance, however, told Tahiri that the

  pilot had missed a crucial stage in her engine warm-ups; the first atmospheric punch would overload the yacht's repulsors and cripple them forever. With that in mind, she felt more reassured that intervening with the Force in this instance was acceptable. If it meant saving this pilot's life, then that had to be a positive thing, surely?

  Tahiri implanted a thought in the pilot's mind; she had forgotten to secure the tail hatches and needed to do it manually, and the only way to do it was to unseal the air lock. Cursing, the pilot smacked her forehead and came through the yacht to fix the problem.

  Tahiri faced her masked companion evenly. "The rest is up to you," she said.

  Her mystery man bowed slightly. "My thanks, Tahiri Veila." He moved around to the air lock, waiting for it to open.

  "When" she began.

  "We will speak again when I reach orbit," he shouted, waving her away.

  There was no time to argue with the stranger; she could already hear the rising wail of the Falcon's engines. Han would be cursing her if she held them up any longer. Taking a deep breath, she gathered the Force around her like an invisible shield and braved the empty space between her and the unlikely-looking freighter. She ignited her lightsaber to build a wall of energy between her and the Fian security forces, moving the lightsaber in graceful, confident arcs around her, easily deflecting the blaster bolts as she backed her way toward the ramp. The joy of the fight rose within her, as she reveled in her skill with the blade and the failure of her enemies.

  I am a Jedi Knight, she thought. l am invincible!

  Then a strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her onto the ramp just as the Falcon lifted from the ground. There was a rush of air around her as the ramp lifted.

  She collapsed onto the metal decking, her lightsaber's energy beam retracting with a crackle.

  "Tahiri," Leia said, edging aside her bodyguard and leaning over her. "Are you all right? What happened?"

  "I had to help someone escape," Tahiri managed breathlessly, surprised just how quickly the feeling of invincibility gave way to exhaustion. "The person who helped us with the guards outside the room." Leia frowned dubiously. "Who was it?" "I'm not sure," she admitted with a shrug. "But you're sure it was the same person?" Leia asked. Tahiri nodded. Her confidence came more from gut instinct than anything else; she could feel that he was the one. And then there was the smell, although she still couldn't identify the source. "He said he would contact us from orbit."

  "That's fine, if we make it to orbit." Leia looked forward, concerned. "I'm going back to the cockpit. Are you sure you're okay?"

  "Never been better," Tahiri said, pulling herself up to a sitting position. And it wasn't a lie. She had helped Anakin's family escape capture on Galantos. Whatever her other failings were, she could be proud of that, at least.

  Leia nodded uncertainly as she made to leave. "I am all right, too, Princess Leia," C-3PO chirped as Leia passed him, his photoreceptor eyes watching her back as she hurried off to the cockpit. "In case you were wondering."

  The Noghri guards left to follow Leia, leaving Tahiri alone with C-3PO. The golden droid let her use him as a counterweight to help her get to her feet, then staggered

  back as some sort of energy weapon discharged against the ship's shields.

  "Goodness," he exclaimed. "Will this fighting never end?"

  I hope not, part of her thought, but she was too frightened of what that meant to say it aloud.

  Jaina brought her X-wing around in as tight a turn as it could manage. Although charred by the self-destruction of the Yevetha's ship near N'zoth, her X-wing still had enough maneuverability to run down the alien fighter she had clipped on her first pass. Stuttering her lasers, she trusted her instincts to tell her when its dovin basals were close to overload. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she issued a proton torpedo to dispatch the Yuuzhan Vong ship along with its pilot to oblivion.

  Fighting off exhaustion, she targeted another skip, this one daring to come in too close behind Twin Eleven. A dozen warning shots were enough to change its mind, although her follow-up torpedo failed to reach its mark. She gladly gave up the chase when her R2 unit warned that her stabilizers were overheating again and advised that she pull back for a while. The brief respite gave her a chance to observe the battle from a distance, a luxury she couldn't afford when she was down in the thick of it.

  Twin Suns Squadron was outnumbered three to one, but holding well against an enemy that hadn't expected such determinedif indeed anyresistance in the system. Although both sides had been taken by surprise, Jaina was pleased to see that it was the Galactic Alliance and Chiss pilots who were adjusting the quickest. That made sense; with the Yuuzhan Vong's yammosk suffering attempts to jam it while it dealt with the unexpected development, the individual pilots weren't trained to think independently, and therefore floundered.

  The two larger, circular ships were not designed for war, but they weren't easy picking, either. Their yorik coral shells were tough, and the five long tentacles that dangled from their sterns were strongly muscled, lashing out with surprising speed at anything that came within reach. At the end of each serpentine arm was a toothless maw that opened and closed in the vacuum as though attempting to suck in passing ships.

  Although Jaina had never seen anything quite like them before, the sucking tentacleseach several meters acrossput her in mind of something her father had described seeing at Ord Mantell. He and Droma, the Ryn who had served briefly as his copilot after Chewie's death, had almost been sucked into the mouth by just such a giant tentacle.

  "Slaveships," she said, voicing her thoughts.

  "Empty or full?" asked Todra Mayn on Selonia. The frigate was slowly breaking orbit to lend its twenty quad laser cannons to the task of knocking out the incoming coralskippers.

  "They're heading in toward Galantos, so empty would be my bet," Jag said as he pulled his clawcraft out of a tight roll. "After all, you wouldn't send a household droid in to clean a place with its waste-storage bin already full, right?"

  She had to agree that it made sense. There was a world full of Fia down on the planet that was barely in a position to defend itself. The entire planetary defense force consisted of five squadrons of old Y-wings, none of which had yet even managed to reach vacuum. But for Twin Suns Squadron and Selonia, the planet's major cities would already have been under attack. Once this line of defense was gone, the entire population would become easy targets for those slaveships.

  "How many people do you think they'd fit in one of those things?" Twin Three asked, swooping around the back of the nearest slave freighter and peppering its trailing tentacles with laserfire.

  "Hundreds of thousands, maybe more," Captain Mayn said grimly, "if they packed them in tight enough."

  "Enough for a disposable army," Jaina said, revolted by the thought. "If this is what came for the Yevetha, it's hardly surprising they decided to fight to the very end."

  Cappie bleeped to inform her that her stabilizers were back in working order. Ramping her inertial compensators down another notch, to give her flagging reflexes as much information as she could, she immediately powered to join Three, whose insistent pounding of the slaveship had resulted in one of its tentacles being completely severed. She was doing her best to cut through a second, all the while avoiding the sucking maws of the others. It was like attempting to dodge three amphistaffs all at once.

  There was no time for talking, then, as she concentrated on helping maim the slaveship. It was a cumbersome vessel, clearly relying on its escort for defense and not intended for combat. Although it was equipped with dovin b
asals capable of absorbing enemy fire, she suspected that the primary function of these was to enable the large mass of the ship to hover over a city while it ingested its prey. When it was full, it could return to wherever the slaves were being processed, dump its load, and head out for another.

  It was a typically revolting biological solution to a problem she knew the Yuuzhan Vong were suffering from. They were short of warriors, and they needed replacements. No one had imagined that they had been preparing for a wave of mass enslavement for so long. They should have, though. It was exactly the sort of fate

  Tsavong Lah would have gleefully imposed on the infidels divide and conquer had always been his modus operandi, closely followed by enslave and murder. That Lah was no longer around to see the results of his vile plan was little consolation.

  A voice crackled over the open subspace link. "Anyone looking for reinforcements?"

  "Dad?" Jaina peeled away from a wildly flailing tentacle, too tired to concentrate on two things simultaneously "Is that you?"

  "None other," he announced cockily. "Hey, I hope you've saved some of those Vong ships for us."

  Jaina felt a wave of relief wash a heavy weight from her shoulders as she spotted the battered, black disk of the Millennium Falcon rising rapidly from Galantos. She was suddenly battle-ready again as a new energy rushed through her.

  "I'm glad you made it out okay," she said. "How did you swing it?"

  "We had a hand," he said simply. "Hang in there, kid. Help's on its way."

  A quick scan of her telemetry confirmed that there was still no sign of the Galantos defense force. There were a few hot spots on the planet indicating isolated launches, but these were mainly from the major cities. Private craft, she assumed, probably taking the rich and the prestigious away from the Yuuzhan Vong attack.

  Like mynocks fleeing a disintegrating asteroid, she thought ruefully.

  There was one ship, however, that didn't immediately break orbit for the nearest hyperspace jump point. A small yacht of Corellian manufacture, it seemed to be hanging back as if waiting for something. The Falcon abruptly changed course to intercept it, and together they vanished around the back of the planet.

  Odd, she thought. Jaina had no time to ponder it any further, though. The coralskippers were gradually getting themselves organized, and Selonia was still some distance away. Twin Suns Three was forced to withdraw from the slave freighter whose tentacles she was harassing, and Jaina found herself the target of a trio of determined skips. She ducked and wove through the wildly disorienting tangle of fighters, ion washes, and particu-late debris, hoping that the slightest distraction to the skips would afford her some breathing space until some help arrived. But no matter what she did, they doggedly stuck to her tail, until soon her stabilizers were beginning to overheat again. Frustration and anger welled within her and she fought them as grimly as she fought the Yuu-zhan Vong being tired and uncomfortable was no excuse to give in to the dark side.

  Her R2 unit squealed as two plasma volleys reduced her shields to dangerous levels. Just as she was seriously beginning to worry, a flurry of laserfire arced from behind her, scattering her three pursuers. Only one clung on after that, and the pilot who had saved her life soon dispatched it.

  "Thanks," she said over the comlink as the coral-skipper evaporated back to its component molecules. "I owe you one."

  "I'll hold you to that, Sticks," Jag said.

  She smiled to herself; she was so relieved to hear his voice that everything else assumed secondary importance. For a moment he came alongside her new XJ3, and she imagined that she could see him through the faceted visor of his clawcraft.

  "Let me ask you a question," he said after a moment. "If you were the Fia and you'd done a deal with the Yuu-zhan Vong, but we showed up and started fighting your allies, whose side would you fight on?"

  "I don't know, Jag." She wiped sweat from her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. "Why? Does it matter?"

  He paused slightly before answering. "Take a look at your telemetry," he said.

  She did so, and saw multiple launches from three locations across Galantos, followed by formations of ion engine signatures thrusting for space. She couldn't help it she felt fatigued all over again.

  "Whichever side they're on," said Jag, "here they come..."

  "Here they come!"

  Gilad Pellaeon heard the words a split second before he felt a vibration run through Widowmaker as the frigate's ion engines engaged. Powerful enough to override inertial dampers and communicated via the hull to the fluid in his bacta tank, the vibration made him feel as though the whole world was shaking. He reached out to steady himself against the transparent shell containing the healing fluid, trying to concentrate on the good things about his situation. Yes, his injured body was confined to a bacta tank on an ageing frigate during what might possibly be the most important battle he would ever fight, but at least he still had his faculties about him. His mind was clear; he needed nothing more than that, really.

  "Enemy fleet concentrated in sectors three through eight," said the voice of Widowmaker's duty officer in his ear. He didn't need the running commentary, but he kept it going when he wasn't using the communicator in his breath mask to make sure he wasn't missing anything locally. The mask's modified visor showed him crisp, three-dimensional views of the action as it unfolded in the system, while sensor pads attached to his hands and wrists enabled him to switch views at will.

  "Changing course to adopt primary position." Widowmaker swung about to put the planet of Borosk between itself and the incoming Yuuzhan Vong fleet. A relatively small world, it would have been entirely unremarkable but for its role in the defense of the Empire. A symbolic retention after numerous retreats, it had been heavily armed to ensure it wasn't retaken by the New Republic, which had in turn armed its own neighboring worlds in case Borosk turned out to be the beginning of another invasion. As a result, the planet was heavily stocked with partially automated planetary turbolasers, ion cannons, and shields, and surrounded by extensive rings of space-based ion mines, all in a constant state of battle readiness. The planet was, in its own way, better defended than Bastion had beensince, in a sane universe, no one would have attacked there first.

  The Imperial Navy Fleet now gathered around Borosk had had just enough time to organize into new task forces and squadrons. The losses in Bastion had been high, and the shock enormous, but discipline was still strong among the corps. Once Flennic had started issuing orders in Pellaeon's name, all thoughts of dissolution had temporarily vanished, and the command chain had been quickly reestablished. There were enough Star Destroyers left to consolidate the defense around four distinct battle groups, designated by their command vessel names Stalwart, which Pellaeon had not permitted Flennic to retain, had the vanguard of the defense; Relentless and Protector protected the flanks; and the rear was maintained by Right to Rule. There were five other Star Destroyers committed to the defense of Borosk, making nine altogether. The remainder of the navy had stayed with Flennic around Yaga Minor, just in case the Yuuzhan Vong attacked there anyway. Chimaera was there, too, undergoing repairs, having finally limped into Yaga Minor w ith a severely damaged hyperdrive and numerous other scarsbut at least intact.

  Despite the absence of his command vessel, Pellaeon felt an old excitement rise in him as he watched the battle groups deploy. That moment immediately prior to battle was simultaneously the most wonderful and the most terrifying. Everything was in place ships were at the peak of their performance, while pilots were at their sharpest; he could almost tell who was going to win before a single shot had been fired, simply based on the disposition of forces. Sometimes he wished victories could be awarded so easily, without lives lost or resources wasted, or grudges formed ...

  This was not such a time. In this instance he wanted nothing more than to fight, to quash the enemy's attack, reduce them to their basic component molecules. And, watching the incoming fleets, he knew they desired the same for their enemy.
The Yuuzhan Vong would never share in Gilad Pellaeon's wish for victory without loss. For them, sacrificeglorious or otherwisewas fundamental to their belief system. Trying to imagine them without it was like trying to picture Coruscant without buildings.

  Stalwart sent four TIE fighter squadrons to engage the lead ships while they were still recovering from the hyper-space jump. Pellaeon counted two enemy warships at the head of that particular attackgiant ovoids as long as a Star Destroyer with huge coral arms near the nose that sprouted coralskippers like pollen. There were three carrier analogs toward the rear, also branched and budded with coralskippers; these were accompanied by numerous gunships capable of spraying volleys of plasma at anything daring to come too close. There was one battleship analog at each of the two other attacking points, their ugly, misshapen appearance a blot against the stars. He counted five cruisers and destroyers holding back for the moment, waiting either to swing around the rear later or to provide reinforcements as needed.

  Dozens of Yuuzhan Vong fighters launched to intercept the Imperial forces, spewing plasma. Led by Luke Skywalker in his XJ3 X-wing, the TIE squadrons were equipped only with lasers, so stutterfire was not possible. Instead they attacked two or three at a time, the multiple laserfire having a similar effect and overloading the dovin basals of the skips. Yammosk telemetry enabled them to target the central control ships.

  Surprised, clearly expecting less efficient resistance, the Yuuzhan Vong warriors began to scatter, either destroyed outright or repulsed. It wasn't long, though, before the war coordinators in the capital ships reassessed the situation and increased the muscle behind the push into the system. Proton explosions blossomed like white flowers in the vacuum, while magma bolts cut red lines across the void.

  "Fall back, Skywalker," Pellaeon ordered through the comlink in his breath mask. "I think you've made your point."

  "I'm going to stay out here a while longer, Gilad," came the reply.