Flight's path. Jaina gauged Beelyath's and Tilath's firing patterns, timed them,
felt Kyp doing the same.. and, as the enemy skips crossed before them, as
Beelyath and Tilath sent stutterfire laser against the sterns of the skips one
last time, Kyp, Jaina, and Jag fired from the skips' port quarter, their quad-
linked lasers hitting yorik coral instead of voids. Both skips detonated,
sending a cloud of gases and yorik coral chunks hurtling along their course.
But now the wingmate of the first skip they'd hit was behind them, closing,
firing. Jaina didn't listen to the good-shooting congratulations coming across
the comm board; she followed Kyp as he made a tight loop up and to starboard,
trying to elude their pursuit.
Jag looped tighter, forcing the pursuer to divide his attention between his
clawcraft and the two X-wings, and managed to come around behind the
coralskipper even as it managed to maintain its position behind the X-wings. He
poured laserfire into its stern and top hull, but all of it was dragged into the
skip's defensive voids.
Jaina felt a sort of mental shrug from Kyp. "Break," she said, aloud and
through the Force but not over the comm frequencies, and she broke to port as
Kyp broke to starboard.
She gritted her teeth against the g-forces her tight turn exerted on her,
but got oriented around toward that skip - just in time to see an X-wing flash
over and past it at a right angle to its course, in time to see plasma
projectiles tracking that X-wing strike the coralskipper instead. They chewed
through its hull and the skip suddenly turned away, no longer anxious to fight.
Piggy's distinctive, mechanical laugh sounded over the comm board. Jaina
grinned. "Nice fleeing, Piggy."
Wedge's X-wing reached low Borleias orbit as the Am-muud Swooper lumbered
along behind. He tried to remind himself that the Corellian freighter "lumbered"
only in comparison with a starfighter, of course; the freighter was nearly as
fast and nimble as the Millennium Falcon.
He dropped back to give his personal comlink a better chance to reach the
ship. "Blackmoon Eleven to Swooper, do you have an exit path?"
"We do, Eleven. Can you receive it?"
"I've been patching my comlink and datapad into what's left of the computer
on this battered baby. Just transmit me the directional and I'll escort you out.
"
"Will do, Eleven. Many thanks."
Wedge waited until the numbers appeared on his data-pad screen, then
reoriented to Ammuud Swooper's outbound course. He could only estimate, based on
what he remembered of Borleias's current position in orbit around the star
Pyria, but he believed that the course would take Ammuud Swooper in the general
direction of the Deep Core worlds. Doubtless the freighter would only take a
short hyperspace jump, a few light-years, and then correct to take them toward
the rendezvous point.
The starfighter's sensor board beeped with a new contact. Wedge took in the
new information and bit back a curse. A squadron of coralskippers was headed
their way, and would intercept Wedge and the freighter long before they were
clear of Borleias's mass shadow.
Charat Kraal poured plasma cannon fire into his opponent, saw some of it
flitting around the edges of his target's void and chewing into its hull.
As he'd suspected, the only kind of pilot foolish enough to disobey orders
like that, to seek personal glory at the expense of duty, was a green pilot, one
fresh from teaching. He might have gloriously fast reflexes, but he didn't have
the experience or will to defeat someone like Charat Kraal.
His target waggled side to side, signaling that he was quitting an
exercise, the only way he had to communicate that he was surrending. He brought
his voids around from his stern to his bow> symbolically baring his stomach,
further sign that he was giving up this fight.
Charat Kraal fired again, pouring damage into his target's stern, and, as
he gained altitude relative to the other coralskipper, into its canopy. He saw
the canopy crack and then explode outward from the atmospheric pressure within,
saw one of his plasma projectiles hit and burn entirely through the torso of the
pilot. That coral-skipper continued in straight-line flight, a flight that might
never end.
"Disobedience is death," Charat Kraal said aloud, as though the spirit of
his enemy might hear him. "Unless you win. And you cannot win by surrendering."
He looped back around toward the portion of the minefield where his pilots and
Jaina Solo were.
And he frowned. The cognition hood showed him the locations of all those
fighters, but there were four fewer coralskipper glows than there should have
been, even counting the pilot he'd just killed.
Jaina Solo was whittling down the numbers of her pursuers. Charat Kraal
shook his head and accelerated toward the action.
Luke's X-wing blasted through a cloud of flame and vapor spilling out of a
dying hlasthoat analog. He tensed against the impacts that would come if there
was solid niatter in the cloud, but emerged on the far side without hitting
anything. He fired the instant he was free of the cloud, his quad-linked lasers
barely missing Mara's oncoming E-wing and ripping into the nose of the coral-
skipper chasing her. His shot missed the dovin basal housing at the bow but tore
into the yorik coral beneath it before a void moved into place to intercept the
rest of the damage.
The coralskipper, its pilot doubtless spooked by Luke's magical arrival
from within a cloud of flames, banked away from Mara, breaking off pursuit. Luke
looped around to roar up in his wife's wake. "Oh, there you are."
Her voice, across the comm board, sounded amused. "Afraid I was running out
on you?"
"You know what a jealous, possessive man I am."
"Starfighter Command to Blackmoon Squadron, Yellow Aces." The voice was
Tycho's. "We're seeing increased defense at the worldship. Break off stern
defense and move up to escort. We also need our spotter in place."
"Blackmoon Leader copies." Luke checked his sensor and comm boards. The
Blackmoons were in pretty bad shape, down to about half strength, though most of
his losses were from damage to and withdrawal of starfighters rather than their
destruction. He also read that the mysterious Blackmoon Eleven was off Borleias
and engaged with what looked like an entire squad of coralskippers.
He couldn't let that be his problem right now. "I'm your spotter," he said.
"Two, assume control of the squadron."
Mara said, "Negative on that. I'm your wing."
He sighed, but knew better than to waste time by arguing. "Correction,
Blackmoon Ten, take command."
"Ten copies."
"Leader's away." Luke kicked in his thrusters and roared straight toward
the Yuuzhan Vong worldship, away from his reinforcements, away from everyone but
Mara.
Charat Kraal sped along in Jaina Solo's wake, leaving his other pilots
behind through sheer piloting skill. Kilometer by kilometer he gained on her and
knew, at last, that he was a better pilot than this infidel.
All
he had to do was get in range, disable her abomination-craft, and wait
for a capture ship to assist him.
The tiny gleam he could only see in his cognition hood, the one that
indicated Jaina Solo's position, grew to a size indicating that he should be
able to make out some details of the X-wing. But he could not; he could only see
thruster emission from one engine. Yet it could not be moving so fast with
three-quarters of its power gone.
His coralskipper's gravitic sensors created the illusion that space itself
was rippling in the distance ahead of Jaina Solo, the visual image of a dovin
basal mine. She seemed to be aimed almost directly at it.
Charat Kraal smiled. Her intention was clear-take a close pass by the mine,
using its gravitational attraction to sling her around and accelerate her beyond
Charat Kraal's ability to overtake.
But it would not work that way. The mine would detect her specific
graviational signature, recognize her as a most-wanted target, and reach out to
strip her shields, perhaps annihilating her engines in the process.
He had her. He had won.
Her vehicle whipped around the dovin basal mine and came straight back at
him. The turn was so abrupt that no living thing could have survived it, so
unexpected that Charat Kraal sat stunned for a long, deadly moment.
His surprise communicated itself to the coralskipper, which waited for
instructions-dodge? Defend with voids? Open fire?
And when Charat Kraal finally saw his target, made it out for what it was-a
missile, unarmed, faster than any starfighter or coralskipper when it chose to
be-he was only two-tenths of a second from impact.
Harrar's pilot turned to the priest. "Jaina Solo is destroyed. It appears
that Charat Kraal rammed her."
Harrar shook his head. "You must be mistaken."
"I think not. I witnessed the two images merge. There was energy released.
Both images are gone." The pilot pulled his cognition hood back on... and then
stiffened.
"Well?"
"You... were correct. Jaina Solo is not where I thought she was. Not in the
minefield at all. She is in the vicinity of the worldship."
"And Charat Kraal?"
"Still dead."
Eldo Davip sat alone at the control console of Lusankya, sweat dripping
from his face despite the efforts of the chamber's cooling system to keep him
comfortable.
He wasn't on the Super Star Destroyer's bridge. That chamber, once
brilliantly clean and huge enough for snub-fighters to land in, was destroyed;
he'd seen the holocam image of a dying coralskipper corkscrewing its way into
the front viewports, crashing through, annihilating everything there.
But no one had been there, no officers, no droids. It had been left lit as
bait, though no ship's controls operated there.
All ship's controls were routed here, to an auxiliary bridge deep in the
vessel's stern, a place where the command crew could operate if the stern were
gone or the vessel somehow captured. Even this small chamber seemed empty and
strange now; Davip was the only person left. Everywhere else, computer gear was
patched into the ship's controls.
Every few moments, another shudder racked Lusankya and the lights
momentarily dimmed. Red showed on the screens of every diagnostics terminal,
indicating that the systems they monitored were destroyed or nonfunctional. The
only exceptions were the systems Davip's own terminal controlled: main
thrusters, gravitic sensors, localized life support, localized power.
He spared a glance for the door at the back of the chamber. Newly
installed, it was a crude plate of armor that would lift out of the way-once-and
give him access to the starfighter that lay beyond. The starfighter was already
pointed along the shaft that led to Lu-sankya's stern. It was a way out for him.
.. assuming that the damage the Star Destroyer was taking didn't collapse the
shaft, didn't ruin the starfighter. If it did, he was dead.
Well, dead or alive, he was going to finish this fight with a bang. He
returned his attention to the sensors, to the large signal that indicated the
Yuuzhan Vong world-ship ahead.
Wedge accelerated away from the Ammuud Swooper and toward the oncoming
squadron of coralskippers. His sensors showed two eager skip pilots moving out
in front of the others, the better to engage him first. He expected Ammuud
Swooper to turn tail, dive hack into the atmosphere, and try to find a safer
exit vector, but the freighter came stolidly on in his wake. The reason why was
soon evident: coralskippers from the vicinity of the biotics building site were
now climbing after them.
There was nowhere to run.
In moments, the lead skips came into visual range. They separated and began
launching plasma his way - all hut daring him to fly between them, to try to
persuade them to fire on one another by accident.
Wedge smiled mirthlessly. A novice pilot might try that very thing, but
would find his shields stripped by a deft use of the coralskippers' voids.
Without shields, his X-wing would be easy pickings for the skips. Instead, he
veered to starboard, passing on the outward side of the skip in that direction,
firing stuttering lasers at that craft until his weapons could no longer depress
to hit it. He saw his shields flare as a bit of plasma hit them and was
deflected, but his diagnostics didn't indicate a direct hit.
Then he was past the two lead coralskippers. They turned to follow. The
oncoming ten also vectored as if to head him off, but they weren't making the
kind of speed the lead coralskippers were,
Ammuud Swooper maintained her original course, and none of the
coralskippers remained directly in her path. Wedge frowned at the sensor board.
Why?
He increased the angle of his starboard turn. The two coralskippers
continued to accelerate in his wake. The other ten turned so that their course
paralleled his, pacing him instead of intercepting him.
That was it. At least one of the lead skips had to be the squadron
commander. He wanted a duel. His pilots wanted to watch. They figured the
commander could finish Wedge off, then they could catch up to Ammuud Swooper
before the freighter could get free of Borleias's mass shadow.
Well, it wasn't going to work that way.
Wedge veered toward the pacing coralskippers, maneuvering so unexpectedly
that the skips on his tail took an extra moment to turn after him. The maneuver
was harsh enough to cause Wedge's sight to gray out just a little-he could see
his vision contract, as though he were flying into a tunnel, but he shook his
head as he straightened out his course and his vision returned to normal. He
began firing into the midst of the ten skips, and, as he'd hoped, there was no
immediate return fire: the squadron leader had doubtless instructed his pilots
not to interfere, that Wedge was his alone to kill.
Wedge sprayed his stutterfire over the flank of one skip, then, as he
gauged the speed with which its void intercepted the laser, switched to quad
link for a harder punch. His shot, beautifully placed, dropped between the
defensive
voids and hulled the skip. It detonated into the small, grisly cloud
characteristic of a dying coral-skipper. Wedge roared past the cloud, missing it
by mere meters, hearing the ping of small chunks of yorik coral striking his
shields.
As soon as he was past, he looped around, opposite the direction the skips
were heading. He was rewarded by the sight of the skips slowing, turning back
toward him as he circled. The lead skips punched through the same hole in the
formation he'd just been through and turned after him, gaining ground.
In a moment-tunnel vision returning as he performed a turn too hard for his
body to quite withstand-he was lined up on the formation again. The nine
remaining witness skips had done an impressive about-face and were now reaching
the cloud of gases and coral chunks that had once been one of their own number.
Wedge armed and fired a proton torpedo, then switched back to stutterfire
lasers and began spattering red beams among those targets. Their voids came up
and effortlessly caught the energy.
Then his torpedo hit. It didn't reach any of the functional targets, but
hit the largest remaining chunk of the destroyed coralskipper, deep in the midst
of the formation of skips as they passed around it.
It detonated in a bright flash, its energy hurled outward in all directions
simultaneously, slamming into every coral-skipper within its explosive diameter.
The skips' voids could intercept only a fraction of the released energy.
Wedge looped up and around the expanding gas cloud, pouring on speed to
gain a little ground on his pursuers while he waited for the sensor board to
clear.
When it did, the numbers were like a lifeday present. Six of the ten
coralskippers in that formation were gone or smashed into smaller pieces. Two
more were on ballistic courses toward Borleias's atmosphere. The last two were
turning to join up with the squadron leader and his wingmate, but even they
seemed to be moving sluggishly.
Impossible odds had just been turned into one-third impossible. And in the
distance, Ammuud Swooper continued plodding her way toward her hyperspace launch
point.
Czulkang Lah evaluated the data and variables. He did not like the
Rebel Stand Page 31
