Rebel Stand

by Aaron Allston

  Star Wars

  The New Jedi Order

  Enemy Lines II

  Rebel Stand

  by Aaron Allston

  sended by Lady Nenya,

  OCR/SC by Hungry Ewok Gryzley

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks go to:

  My personal Inner Circle, Dan Hamman, Nancy Deet, Debhy Dragoo, Sean

  Fallesen, Kelly Frieders, Helen Keier, Lucien Lockhart, and Kris Shindler; My

  Eagle-Eyes, Luray Richmond and Sean Summers; The authors of New Jedi Order

  novels past and future (with special thanks to Elaine Cunningham, for efforts

  above and beyond the call of duty in setting up the handoff); Dan Wallace, for

  questions answered; My agent, Russ Galen; and Shelly Shapiro and Kathleen O.

  David of Del Rey, and Sue Rostoni of Lucas Licensing.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The Jedi

  Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

  Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

  Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight, Twin Suns leader (human female)

  Kyp Durron; Jedi Master, Twin Suns pilot (human male)

  Corran Horn; Jedi Knight, Rogue Squadron pilot (human male)

  Tahiri Veila; Jedi student (human female)

  With the New Republic Military

  General Wedge Antilles (male human)

  Colonel Tycho Celchu (male human)

  Colonel Gavin Darklighter; Rogue Squadron leader (male human)

  Captain Kral Nevil; Rogue Squadron pilot (Quarren male)

  Flight Officer Leth Liav; Rogue Squadron pilot (Sullustan female)

  Captain Garik "Face" Loran; Wraith Squadron leader (human male)

  Kell Tainer (male human)

  Elassar Targon (male Devaronian)

  Bhindi Drayson (female human)

  Baljos Arnjak (male human)

  Iella Wessiri Antilles; Intelligence director (female human)

  Jagged Fel; Twin Suns pilot (human male)

  Zindra Daine; Twin Suns pilot (female human)

  Voort "Piggy" saBinring; Twin Suns pilot (male Gamorrean)

  Beelyath; Twin Suns pilot (male Mon Calamari)

  Sharr Latt; Twin Suns pilot (male human)

  Tilath Keer; Twin Suns pilot (female human)

  Shawnkyr Nuruodo; Vanguard Squadron leader (female Chiss)

  Commander Eldo Davip; captain, Lusankya (male human)

  YVH 1-1A (masculine droid)

  Civilians

  Danni Quee; scientist (female human)

  Wolam Tser; holodocumentarian (male human)

  Tam Elgrin; holocam operator (male human)

  Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (male human)

  Leia Organa Solo; Republic ambassador (female human)

  With the Yuuzhan Vang

  Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Czulkang Lah; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Nen Yim; shaper (female Yuuzhan Vong)

  Kasdakh Buhl; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Maal Lah; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Denua Ku; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Viqi Shesh; former Senator (female human)

  Harrar; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Takhaff Uul; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Ghithra Dal; shaper (male Yuuzhan Vong}

  ONE

  Pyria System

  Jaina Solo banked her X-wing starfighter into as tight a turn as she could

  endure. The g-forces of her maneuver crushed her into her seat, but she called

  upon the Force to protect her, to keep her centimeters away from the edge of

  blackout.

  She came out of the maneuver pointed back the way she'd come, directly

  toward the Star Destroyer Rebel Dream and the partial squadron of Yuuzhan Vong

  coral-skippers beyond the ship, and spared a glance to her sensor board. The

  other members of her shield trio, Kyp Durron and Jag Fel, were right alongside-

  no problem for Jag and his Chiss clawcraft, far nimbler than the X-wings, but

  the turn had to have been as taxing for Kyp as it was for Jaina. On the other

  hand, Kyp was a Jedi Master, not just a Jedi Knight, not yet twenty years of

  age.

  Jaina and her shieldmates passed beneath Rebel Dream, her tremendous length

  flashing overhead in an instant. "All right, here's the plan," she said. "We go

  in looking like we're going to punch into the center of their formation, but

  instead we turn to starboard and skirt along its edge. As each target comes up,

  we concentrate fire on it, just like those drills we did. Ready?"

  Kyp's voice was smooth, controlled: "Always ready, Goddess."

  Jag merely clicked his comlink once for affirmative.

  "Fire and break."

  As the foremost of the oncoming coralskippers came within firing range, it

  began unloading a stream of tiny red glows in their direction. Each glow was a

  couple of kilograms of superheated molten rock, plasma. In the coldness of

  space, these projectiles would rapidly cool, but during the seconds they

  remained heated they were deadly weapons capable of burning through starfighter

  armor as though it were sheet ice.

  Jaina set her lasers to dual fire and waited. A brief instant later, she

  felt Kyp reach out to her through the Force, taking momentary control of her

  hand on the pilot's yoke. She felt herself aim and fire on the distant

  coralskipper. Kyp's lasers flashed at the same instant, Jag's a fraction of a

  second later.

  In the distance, Jaina's shot disappeared as a tiny black singularity, a

  miniature black hole called a void, appeared at the bow of the coralskipper.

  Kyp's vanished into an identical void a meter or so back. But Jag's shot, one

  too many for the skip's voids to intercept, punched into the vehicle's canopy.

  There was a brief flash from within and the coral-skipper's flight became

  ballistic instead of controlled.

  Jaina, back in full control of her motions, banked and turned to starboard,

  her wingmates keeping in tight, controlled formation; ahead of her was a second

  coral-skipper, then a third. She reached out for Kyp, let him fire, regained

  control, reoriented, reached for Kyp, let him fire-

  In seconds two more coralskippers were flaming wrecks in space. She knew,

  without consulting the sensor hoard, that the skips from the other side of that

  formation had to be angling in toward her from her port side; she stood her X-

  wing on its tail, relative to its previous course, and rose away from the

  conflict zone, forcing those coral-skippers to give chase-away from Mon Mothma

  and that ship's mission.

  In the distance, Mon Mothma entered the zone of dovin basal mines. Her own

  complement of fighters-E-wings, X-wings, and TIE interceptors-boiled out of her

  fighter bays and streaked off into the darkness, toward the ship they had come

  to escort, to protect.

  Coruscant

  Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, walked point, meters ahead of the rest of his

  party.

  He knew he'd never be recognized as Luke Skywalker, despite his fame. He

  wore vonduun crab armor, the preferred defensive dress of Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

  His was artificial, made of lightweight materials carefully textured and colored

  to resemble the living arthropod plates of the Yuuzhan Vong, but he actually

  preferred
that; some of his companions, wearing the real thing, had to deal with

  the occasional twitches and contractions made by living armor. Beneath the

  armor, he wore a body stocking in pale gray with blue highlights that was a

  close match for some Yuuzhan Vong skin tones. Except for his height, handspans

  shorter than that of the average Yuuzhan Vong warrior, he was a visual match for

  the enemy.

  Not that he'd be easy to see in his current surroundings. He was in a

  pedestrian traffic corridor, the sort that continued from building to building

  via enclosed, elevated walkways, at about the hundred-story level. This had once

  been a well-to-do residential building, with only a few well-appointed suites

  per floor. Every door into the corridor had been smashed in, but the state of

  the chambers beyond-stripped of valuables, but with common machinery left

  intact-suggested that it had been looters rather than Yuuzhan Vong at work here.

  And the smell of decay was everywhere. They'd stumbled across numerous

  remains of Coruscant residents-some the obvious victims of violence, some whose

  deaths had no clear cause, most in advanced stages of decomposition.

  How much food had there been in these people's kitchens at the time of

  Coruscant's fall and the utter demolition of its infrastructure? How much water

  would they have been able to find? On a world with no wilderness, no farmlands,

  no means of obtaining food other than now impossible import and machinery that

  was vulnerable to destruction by the enemy, it was very possible that a simple

  majority of the population of Coruscant was already dead, with the proportion

  growing every day.

  In some places the stench of rot was greater, in some places lesser, but it

  was everywhere. Luke and most of his companions now had patches of cloth

  saturated with a mild perfume stuffed into their nostrils. Face had supplied

  them. Luke didn't want to know what experiences

  Face had gone through to give him the foreknowledge to bring a large supply

  of that perfume.

  As Luke neared the edge of this building and the start of one of the

  connecting walkways, he shut off his glow rod, which itself was engineered to

  resemble a Yuuzhan Vong illumination creature. Dim sunlight spilled in from the

  opening to the walkway, indicating that the walkway was the sort with

  transparisteel panels providing what had once been a breathtaking view of this

  part of the world-city.

  He felt, as well as heard, Mara catch up to him. "You did the last one,

  farmboy," she said.

  He gave her a look. She, too, was dressed in Yuuzhan Vong combat armor and

  an appropriately colored body stocking. But for the shape of her chin and mouth

  beneath the edge of her helmet, she was unrecognizable as his wife. "You did the

  one before that."

  "My turn." That was Garik "Face" Loran, onetime actor, longtime team leader

  in New Republic Intelligence. About half his usual team, designated the Wraiths,

  were along on this mission. He was totally unrecognizable; in addition to the

  vonduun crab armor, he wore an ooglith masquer, a type of living mask employed

  by the Yuuzhan Vong, that had been engineered by Wraith member Baljos Arnjak to

  resemble the branded, mutilated face of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. He stopped

  beside Mara. "Kiss for luck?" He puckered the alien face's slitted, mangled

  lips. She shook her head. "I don't know whether to mark that down as

  'exceptionally daring' or 'unusually stupid.' " Face chuckled. He shucked his

  pack free and extracted a coil of cord from it, then continued forward, tying

  one end of the coil around his waist. He handed the other end and the coil

  itself to Luke. "Kiss for luck?"

  "Get out of here."

  They reached the large aperture providing access to the walkway. Like the

  corridor itself, it was wide enough for four large humans easily to walk

  abreast, but it was lined on either side and above with transparisteel panels

  reinforced by metal supports. Through the transparisteel, Luke could see

  surrounding buildings, most of them coated by green algaelike scum or patches of

  alien grasses. Many of the buildings seemed to be in an advanced condition of

  decay, with crumbled roofs and rounded edges.

  Face moved ahead on the walkway, each step tentative. Luke couldn't see the

  far end of the walkway; it was bowed in the middle, higher there than at either

  end, the better to support great weights, and was at least fifty meters in

  length, crossing over what had once been a broad boulevard.

  When Face was ten meters away, Luke's helmet comlink popped, then came

  alive with Face's whispered words: "No excess creaking. This one seems pretty

  solid."

  The other members of Luke's group moved up to the near end of the walkway.

  All were in Yuuzhan Vong armor, either real like Face's or fake like Luke's.

  The largest "warrior," with distinctive black-and-silver tracery on his

  mask and torso armor, was Kell Tainer, a Wraith, fond of machinery and high

  explosives, a skilled hand-to-hand combatant.

  Then there were the two "Domain Kraal" sets of armor, colored in swirled

  silver and coral-pink hues, taken from warriors who'd occupied the world of

  Borleias before the splintering New Republic had regained it. The one with the

  more pointed helmet was worn by Baljos Arnjak, the Wraiths' expert on Yuuzhan

  Vong society and organic technology; the other, whose broader helmet had larger

  eyeholes, was worn by Bhindi Drayson, a woman with a broad range of intelligence

  skills, including military tactics, computers, and robotics. Bhindi's face was

  marred by hard-wearing makeup that, short of close inspection, made it look like

  her lips were cut to tatters and the remainder of her face was tattooed. Baljos

  wore another of the ooglith masquers, his with a pair of tusks jutting from the

  lowest portion of the chin.

  Next was Elassar Targon, a Devaronian, the Wraiths' medic. He wore a gray-

  and-green set of artificial armor; the thought of wearing living armor had

  apparently filled him with supernatural dread. Even now, as he kept his

  attention fixed on Face's progress, his right hand was engaged in making a

  series of gestures. Were they to keep the Yuuzhan Vong at bay, or to keep Face

  safe? Luke didn't know, and Elassar did this sort of thing so habitually that he

  probably didn't realize he was doing it.

  Beside him was Danni Quee, the New Republic scientist who had been

  responsible for so many technological developments in the war against the

  Yuuzhan Vong. She wore the all-black armor, a living set that had originally

  been slated for Elassar; it was a touch too large for Danni and she was awkward

  moving in it. With a moment of rest available to her, she dug a small

  electromagnetic radiation sensor out of her bag and began sampling the local

  environment. Danni and Elassar also wore makeup, though it was more effective on

  his typically diabolical, red-skinned Devaronian face than on her even features.

  Tahiri Veila stayed meters to the rear of the party, guarding the approach

  from that direction. She was the third Jedi in the group. Still a teenager, she

  was officially a Jedi apprentice; in all but official recog
nition, however, she

  was a Jedi Knight because of the skills and experience she'd accumulated since

  the Yuuzhan Vong invasion began. Things changed so fast in these war years that

  testing hadn't kept up with the advancement of her generation of Jedi. Hers was

  a rust-colored set of armor, and the no-skid soles of her body-stockinged feet

  were doubtless better, to her mind, than wearing shoes or boots, but not as good

  as going barefoot, her habitual preference. She wore the last of the three

  ooglith masquers, hers showing four sharp nail-like spikes protruding from each

  cheek and deep, red crisscross scar patterns on her jaws and neck.

  Luke looked at her. He hardly needed the Force to sense the pain that

  seemed to be her constant companion these days. Her best friend, Luke's nephew

  Anakin Solo, had died not long ago-died during a successful but costly mission

  to destroy the source of the voxyn creatures that had proven so adept at hunting

  and killing Jedi. Since then, Tahiri had, except for occasional moments, worn

  silence and distance like a set of Jedi robes.

  Luke had authorized that mission of the young Jedi, and many of them had

  died. It was hard at times to look Han and Leia, Anakin's parents, in the eye.

  And now he was leading yet another mission in which a young Jedi would be in

  peril. He wondered sometimes if he would ever be allowed to quit sending the

  young off to suffer pain and death.

  Probably not, he thought. I'm not that lucky.

  "I'm at the midpoint," Face whispered. "Still no creaking. I'll jump up and

  down at the far end to make sure the attachment there is still secure, and-wait