“I can’t give them that yet, but they have intelligence on the layout of the yards, don’t they?” Caedus thought of Nevil, given that he’d flung his captain against a bulkhead in the Tebut incident, and wondered just how low he’d sunk in the Quarren’s estimation. He’d have to get Nevil back on his side. “And Nevil is reassuring them?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just nerves.”
“Okay, sir.”
“Tell you what, Tahiri,” Caedus said, remembering the Jacen Solo who could get a whole hangar deck of troops cheering him, “I’ll show them that I’m not sitting here in comfort filing my nails.”
Caedus opened the locker hatch where his flight suit and other abandoned working kit was stowed. He used to look like one of his own troops; it was time to restore that comforting symbol for this task force. He slipped his black cloak off his shoulders and pulled his flight coveralls over his pants and tunic.
Caedus pressed the desk comlink. “Delta Hangar, ready my StealthX, please.” Tahiri looked as if she was expecting to follow. “Just a sortie to get a closer look. I know the kind of things they say on the mess decks. Commanders who hang too far back from the front line get awarded the Coruscant Star by the ranks. I don’t want them giving me that decoration. Ever.”
Niathal’s estimated time on station was one hour. That was ample to check out at least a couple of Fondor’s orbitals. As Caedus made his way through the Destroyer’s hatches and passages, he picked up the mood of crew members, their lack of confidence, their uncertainty, and he suppressed the anger that threatened to well up. On the hangar deck, the ground technicians seemed puzzled.
Make them believe by succeeding. You used to inspire them. It takes time to build a reputation but a second to lose it. It was just a second. Just a slip. Just a lesson.
“Time I did a recce,” Caedus said, blending back into their language and community. “I’ll never ask anyone to do what I’m not prepared to do myself.”
The StealthX dropped out of the hatch into the void and hyperjumped for the orbitals. When it fell out into real-space moments later and within striking distance of Fondor, it was just a small black patch of undetectable nothing that blotted out stars—so vivid, so stark from space—for an instant as it passed. Sometimes Caedus wondered if this was what it felt like to be a ghost, seeing everything so clearly yet not being seen.
As he streaked high over the first orbital, a metallic arrowhead kilometers long, he could see the outlines of Star Destroyers flanked by buildings, cranes, and webs of pipes and cables. His senses told him that living beings huddled down there waiting for an attack. Around the curve of the planet, the next orbital ahead was oriented head-on, a slab with structures extending from top and bottom. It resolved into an industrial city as he passed above it. He could observe at his leisure. Again, a workforce waited for the worst, radiating anxiety and aggression in the Force; and everywhere, on orbitals and planets, Caedus felt weapons and vessels ready to repel him. Fondor was small in galactic terms, but the whole planet was a dockyard with billions of staff. It had to be the GA’s asset again: or it had to be put out of action.
I really wouldn’t trust the Imperial Remnant to play nicely with this toy.
The Moffs had Borleias and Bilbringi. They’d be kept busy admiring those baubles for a while, giving Caedus time to restore stability and remove any temptation to step in and impose their own kind of order, just to be helpful.
For a moment, Caedus thought he could feel familiar presences in the Force, but the sensation passed. It was replaced by his Sith battle awareness of his captains and commanders, a living grid of interconnected reactions that tilted, panned and zoomed like a holochart marked with transponder icons. Caedus had a better picture of the theater of war than instruments could give them, he knew; it was a hard act of faith for them to surrender judgment to something so nebulous.
Something blipped in his field of vision, and was gone again.
Maybe it had never been there. That was a drawback with battle awareness. The more he could see with the technique, the more detailed it became, and the harder it was sometimes to separate the images in his inner eye from what he could physically see.
The orbitals he managed to observe before running short on time were packed with ships, many looking as if they were near the final phase of construction, and more than he’d ever realized Fondor had in build. This wasn’t just a symbolically important planet to bring into line. It was a legitimate target.
It would have been so much simpler with the mine network in place.
He hyperjumped briefly to bring him closer to his flagship. The technique alarmed non-Jedi X-wing pilots; they once said he’d fall out of hyperspace smack into the hull of an SSD one day if he kept bouncing around blind like that. But Caedus knew instinctively where he was in three dimensions, and even in the higher ones. He knew.
There.
He was back in realspace and the Anakin Solo was visible in a constellation of frigates, cruisers, landing craft, carriers, and ten Star Destroyers.
Niathal’s Third Fleet—a task force, but it was convenient to think of them in separate fleet terms, because they were not all one happy navy, not by a long shot—would need to keep the planet’s defenses occupied while he captured the orbitals. The Imperial Remnant would need to prowl the outer boundary, alert for the return of the Fondorian navy. Caedus felt he’d planned it well enough. Even Niathal’s outburst and insistence on rushing here to show him how to do it properly fell elegantly into the battle plan. He substituted Niathal for the mine net.
Caedus reached out to his commanders and spread a little genuine confidence that things would work out fine. Nevil … he could focus in on Nevil, and the man was deeply troubled. Oh, yes. His son was killed. I forget that. It was an unhappy mind, and Caedus moved on, concentrating on the threatening storm pressing on his sinuses, the vague sensation in the Force that told him ships were out there, massing somewhere—and Niathal should have been dropping out of space just about …
Now.
He looked around for the blooms of light as ships reappeared in realspace. As he slowed his approach, he caught the shooting-star effect in his peripheral vision, and rolled the StealthX slowly to look around. Yes, the Third Fleet was on time. The fleet gradually built up, star by artificial star, into a ragged constellation of navigation lights and harshly sunlit surfaces. Early warning systems on Fondor would have detected the emerging fleet by now.
They could still surrender. He’d go through the motions, but only to check the boxes. If they did surrender, he’d still have to occupy the planet for a period anyway, just to make sure it stayed that way. That devoured more resources.
There was still the Fondorian navy to account for, though.
He felt it out there. It was in hyperspace, and his awareness was nothing like the one he had in normal space; there was no real size or scope to guide him, just an impression, a little more solid than a hunch.
Now it was time to face Niathal.
He flicked open the comlink, perfectly secure this close to the ship. StealthXs almost always operated in complete comm silence, and nobody could monitor them without big clues like an open channel. The fighters really did vanish. “Solo to Nevil, the Third is on station. Patch me through to Ocean.”
She would be—
No—
Caedus had jerked the StealthX ninety degrees to starboard before his retina—fractionally slower than Force senses—registered a slab of ship filling his vision. And it wasn’t the Anakin. He righted himself relative to the assembled fleet; but he was suddenly overwhelmed, ships popping into existence all around him in a complete 360-degree ring. Wherever he turned the StealthX, he was facing the spars and sensor masts and patchworked hatches of warships. Cannon turrets—he couldn’t identify the type, the navy, anything. It was a fleet from another time and place.
He could feel the ships, but he had no impression of lethal, implacable mass. His passive sensors showed static, as if he’
d been hit by an EM pulse that hadn’t tripped the warning. He sensed danger, though; a real threat.
Caedus did what any pilot would, and signaled a warning as best he could, trying to work out what he had fallen into.
ADMIRAL NIATHAL’S FLAGSHIP OCEAN; OFF FONDOR
Jacen Solo’s open comlink spewed uncharacteristically loud chaos onto Niathal’s calm bridge.
“Enemy vessels, I repeat enemy vessels, estimate five destroyers, type unknown, twenty light cruisers, no—fifteen—range five hundred—”
She stared at her chart repeaters. Nothing. Just the ships she hoped and expected to find, the Third and Fourth fleet components. She looked up, searching for a simple explanation, and the electronic warfare control section—all ten officers—was staring back at her as one bemused being, equally dumbfounded, screens visibly devoid of frantic, blinking UNIDENTIFED icons even from her position. One officer suddenly swung back to her screen and started punching in code. Nobody else said a word. Everyone with a sensor or screen was searching, cross-checking, looking to see what they’d missed and what bedlam was unfolding out there. Had the hyperjump disrupted all their calibration? Were they about to be vaporized?
“What is that man doing?” Niathal was genuinely thrown, wondering if she might have interrupted him on some morale-boosting dry-run pre-attack; that was the kind of irrational mystic stuff he’d do at a time like this. “Colonel Solo, this is Ocean, we do not see the targets, repeat, we do not see the targets—”
The officer of the watch and his juniors were at the forward viewscreen, physically searching through the transparisteel for whatever Jacen could detect but they couldn’t. There was only so much a lookout could spot with the unaided eye against a starfield and from this position in the ship, but given what Jacen was calling in, they should have been able to see activity and the glitter of faceted surfaces bouncing raw sunlight back at them.
And Jacen’s voice—impressively calm, Niathal had to give him that—continued to fill the bridge, transmitting approximated ranges and positions relative to his own.
“I’ve got him, ma’am,” said the EWO who’d been tapping at her console. “I’ve mapped his comlink signal onto the holochart. Watch the purple trace.”
It was just a blob of violet light set a little way apart from an orderly pattern of blue transponder markers. The blue markers were in two distinct formations, pennant codes valid, showing two GA task forces. The violet light—Jacen Solo’s StealthX—was racing across the holochart, jinking and looping, as if it were navigating through a congested spacelane and avoiding bigger vessels.
Niathal’s initial shock, which had set her blood pumping hard enough to hear in her ears, was ebbing into disbelief and a different kind of worry. She glanced down at the comlink panel. Jacen was patched through to her and to the Anakin Solo’s bridge.
Okay. Let’s share your unique Sith insight, shall we, Colonel?
She flicked a key and the voice channel went to every bridge comlink in the two fleets.
“Ma’am, confirmed zero contacts.” The EWO seemed to hesitate, as if saying what was now on Niathal’s mind and probably everyone else’s was a little rude. “There’s nothing out there, unless someone has cloaking technology we don’t know about and Colonel Solo is able to see past it … being a Jedi, and all that.”
It was an outside chance, Niathal knew. Just to be on the safe side, she turned to the weapons officer.
“Bargos, lob the smallest torp you’ve got at one of those coordinates the colonel gave, will you?” she said. “See if we hit anything solid.”
“Very good, ma’am …” Bargos had a chartful of phantom targets to choose from. He keyed in a course with nothing to lock on to, and issued the standard warning across the task force. “Stand by, stand by, all vessels, live weapon, test-firing, bearing and course … that … in five standard seconds … and torpedo away.”
They waited.
The torpedo’s sensor trace tracked steadily across the screen. It passed the projected impact point and carried on going … and going. It looked like it would make it to Bestine in a few years, unimpeded by any mystery target.
“Maybe it’s moved …,” Bargos said, struggling to keep a straight face. It wasn’t humor; it was nerve-fraying anxiety, not about an invisible enemy, but about a commander who was behaving irrationally.
“Whoa, he’s lost it,” said a whispered voice behind Niathal, barely audible. “Told you he’d flipped, when he did that to Tebut …”
Jacen was still transmitting, calm but definitely confused.
“Anakin Solo, I have … lost visual.” There was a pause.
“Very good sir.”
“Anakin Solo, respond, did you confirm my visual? Anything?”
“Negative, sir.”
“One final visual check, and returning to ship.”
It was so silent on the bridge that Niathal could hear the collective unk of humans swallowing after holding their breath for a while. The whole episode had been played out live to the fleet. Everyone had heard how JCOS-2—Joint Chief of State Number Two, as Jacen was known in memos—had been chasing ghosts. If they hadn’t heard it live, the utterly reliable fleet scuttlebutt service would provide highlights for them for years to come. Niathal checked her chrono and the time codes on the signals. The bizarre incident had run for a little under eight standard minutes.
She judged that the time was right. “Anakin Solo, this is Ocean. Get me Captain Nevil. Now.”
Nevil must have been right next to the comm station. Niathal hardly had time to blink. She didn’t even need to pose a question before he answered it. He did a fine job of sounding as if they hadn’t spoken in months.
“Ma’am, we’re no wiser than you are about what happened.”
“Tell me this was some ill-timed readiness drill, Captain.”
“I can’t, ma’am.”
“Great gods of the waters, is Solo insane?” Her comlink was still transmitting to all bridges. She had a valid reason for doing that, if the threat really had been a cloaked fleet, but it was much more about enabling a bloodless coup. The ships’ companies and their officers could now make up their own minds about which commander they would prefer to follow into a tight corner. “I know he doesn’t drink liquor …”
“Ma’am, when Colonel Solo is available, I shall tell him you wish to talk to him.”
“Most kind, Captain.” Niathal smoothed her jacket, with the feeling of having found a thousand-denomination cash-cred in the street. She had paraded her contempt for Jacen across the task force, and Nevil had been seen as loyally supporting his superior officer. Honor was satisfied. “All vessels, stand defense watches.”
She stepped down from the slightly raised dais that spanned the deck, and paused. “And … if anyone doesn’t spot anything that isn’t there, don’t hesitate not to tell me.”
A ripple of laughter ran around the bridge. Even though a battle was still imminent, the tension dropped a good few notches. She stepped into her day cabin and leaned back against the bulkhead, eyes closed for a moment, before comming Nevil.
“Captain Nevil,” she said. “Sorry about that. Thank you for sounding suitably noncommittal. I just want you to know you’re not alone.”
chapter twelve
Could I have stopped all this? If I’d told Cal Omas right at the start to let Corellia go its own way, would we be here now? Trying to force every Alliance world to pool its defense forces was a principle. We didn’t actually have an external threat to face. But we created one.
And if another enemy like the Yuuzhan Vong had ever shown up—I’m certain that Corellians would have come running to defend the galaxy anyway. Like they always have.
—Luke Skywalker, to Han Solo
FIFTY KILOMETERS OUTSIDE FLEET ASSEMBLY AREA, NEAR FONDOR
Caedus fumed.
He was no fool, he wasn’t mad, and he had explored more arcane Force techniques than any member of the Jedi Council. He did not fall prey to trick
s.
But even if that phantom fleet had been a trick and not some freak phenomenon thrown up by physics beyond his grasp—then who was creating it? He took one long loop around the area in the StealthX.
Caedus wasn’t checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any more humiliatingly nonexistent ships. He was scouting for the source of the illusion. And it was an illusion—yes, that was much, much more likely than the laws of the universe having a bad day.
He’d pulled off some remarkably convincing tricks himself; he’d hidden Lumiya right under Luke’s nose, literally. He’d also been caught up in manufactured illusions and he could still feel the apparent reality of Lumiya’s conjured world in her asteroid habitat.
Niathal, mundane rule-follower that she was, had simply tested reality by firing a torpedo, her mind unencumbered by any hall-of-mirrors thinking that would make her question if the torpedo failing to hit anything was also part of the same elaborate, convincing construction.
But I’m a Sith Lord.
I should be beyond this. I should be anticipating these strikes against me.
It had to be one of the renegade Jedi. Lumiya was dead. Who else might be able to fool him? Ben—no, Ben had his skills like vanishing in the Force, but he thought in honest, plain lines, channeling his Force power into extensions of ordinary talents like smashing down doors, locating explosives, and blinding surveillance holocams. Two burly CSF officers and a sniffer akk could do that. So it would be one of the usual suspects—Luke, probably, or maybe Zekk, because it wasn’t his mother’s or his sister’s style. Where were they? How far could Luke extend his powers?
And why couldn’t anyone else see it? Illusions could be made visible to many people. So it was designed to disturb him, and him alone, not to lure his ships into shooting and whatever might result from that.
Caedus could feel nothing beyond a distant sense that there were still Jedi in the Force, much the way the lights of a city were a constant and unnoticed backdrop until they went out. He was chasing phantoms again. That was what they wanted. He had to focus, swallow his anger, and avoid being provoked.
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