“Of course,” Thrackan said. “Be my guest.” He feigned thought, and added, “It’s a pity the Yuuzhan Vong gods are so opposed to technology. If they weren’t, we’d have installed planetary shields and be perfectly safe.”
Maal Lah gave him a murderous glare, and for a moment Thrackan’s kidney tingled at the thought that he’d gone too far.
“Will you lead your forces into battle, Excellency?” Lah demanded. “Or will you seek shelter with the others?”
Thrackan raised his hands. “I regret that I have no warrior training, Commander. I’ll leave all that to the professionals.” He turned to Dagga, who had been waiting politely behind him all this time. “Come, Marl.”
He left the room at a rapid but dignified pace, Dagga falling into step by his side and half a pace back. “Will you be going to the shelter, sir?” she asked.
Thrackan gave her a sidelong smile. “I know better than to hide in a hole with no back door,” he said.
Her cold grin answered his own. “Very good, sir,” she said.
“I’m going to the docking bay in back of the Presidential palace and take my landspeeder on the fastest route out of town.”
Dagga’s smile broadened. “Yes, sir.”
“Can you drive fast, Marl?”
She nodded. “I can, sir. Very fast.”
“Why don’t you drive, then? While I make use of the razor I’ve stored in the backseat, and change into the fresh clothes I stored there.”
“Shadow bomb away.” Jaina’s voice came over Jacen’s headphones. “Altering course, thirty degrees.”
“Copy that, Twin Leader,” Jacen said.
Jacen remained tucked in behind Jaina’s X-wing as the fighter lifted out of the way of the enemy fleet, which was set to come rampaging through this part of space in about ten seconds, and he used the Force to help Jaina push the shadow bomb on ahead, toward its target, a Republic-class cruiser that was spearheading the Peace Brigade escape attempt.
“Enemy fighters ahead. Accelerating . . .”
Jacen had already felt the enemy pilots in the Force. He opened fire at where he knew they would be, and was rewarded with a flash that meant an enemy pilot hadn’t powered his or her shields in time. Jacen shifted to another target and fired, another deflection shot, but the bolts slammed into shields and flashed away. The target formation burst apart like a firework, each two-fighter element weaving away from Twin Suns’ attack.
At that moment Jaina’s shadow bomb hit the enemy cruiser, and its bow blossomed in a blaze of fire.
Jacen was following Jaina after the corkscrewing enemy fighters—E-wings—and the Jedi meld rose in his perceptions. He felt Corran Horn making a slashing run at an enemy frigate, the Wild Knights methodically destroying a flight of B-wings, but the knowledge wasn’t intrusive—it didn’t demand attention, or take away from his piloting, it was just there, in the back of his mind.
“Stay close, Vale,” Jacen told Jaina’s wandering wingmate.
“Oh! Sorry!”
“No chatter on this channel,” Jaina admonished. “I’m breaking right . . . now.”
Vale wandered even farther from her assigned position during this maneuver, and through the Force Jacen sensed the intense concentration of an E-wing pilot trying to get her into his sights. Jacen deliberately wove out of his assigned place in an S-curve, and as he did so he was aware through the Force-meld that Jaina knew exactly what he was doing, and why.
“Turning left thirty degrees,” Jaina said, which swung her fighter and Vale’s into what the enemy pilot certainly thought was a perfect setup . . .
Except that it led the enemy right into Jacen’s sights. He touched off a full quad burst of laserfire and saw the E-wing’s shields collapse under the concentrated barrage. Jacen fired again, and the E-wing disintegrated.
Jacen’s heart gave a leap as the E-wing’s wingmate chanced a deflection shot and scored a triple laser burst on Jacen’s shields—which held—and then Jacen wove away, the E-wing in pursuit, until Jaina’s own fighter swirled through a graceful, unhurried series of arcs, and she and Vale blew the Brigader and his craft to atoms. As she overtook Jacen he could see Jaina’s grim satisfaction through the cockpit, and she waggled her wings at him as he slid once more into position.
Then he sensed her mood shift, and he knew she was receiving orders on the command channel.
“Twin Suns,” she said. “Regroup. Re-form on me. We’re going to cover the landing party.”
Jacen knew she was reluctant to leave the combat once it had begun, but he also knew that the fight was going well for the New Republic. The forces were evenly matched in numbers, but the Peace Brigade personnel simply weren’t up to the mark. Some mercenary pilots in starfighters were giving a good account of themselves, but the capital ships weren’t fighting very well, and some of them were shedding escape pods even though they hadn’t taken critical damage. A pair of enemy starfighter squadrons was fleeing the battle as fast as they could, with A-wings in pursuit. Kre’fey’s two additional task forces would soon be on the scene, decisively tilting the odds even farther toward the New Republic, and at that point Jacen wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the Peace Brigade ships surrender.
It was good to feel the enemy in the Force again, Jacen thought. The Yuuzhan Vong were an emptiness in the Force, a black hole into which the light of the Force disappeared. These Peace Brigaders at least registered as a part of the living universe, and because he could feel them in the Force, Jacen could anticipate their actions. Compared to the Yuuzhan Vong, these people were easy.
Easy to destroy. He tasted a whiff of sadness at the necessity—these targets shouldn’t be targets; they should be fighting on behalf of the galaxy against the invaders. Instead they had chosen to betray their own, and Kyp Durron and Traest Kre’fey were determined they pay the penalty.
Twin Suns Squadron re-formed, and Jag Fel’s Chiss squadron fell into place on their flank. The blue-and-white sphere of Ylesia grew closer. Jacen saw the landing force separating itself from the closest of Kre’fey’s task forces.
“We’re going to take out the spaceport,” Jaina said. And also to draw fire, Jacen knew, so they could learn where the defenses were and knock them out before the ground forces, in their lightly armored landing craft, attempted their assault.
“Configure your foils for atmosphere,” Jaina said.
The X-wings took on an I-shape as the foils drew together to become wings. The blue planet rolled beneath them . . . and then they saw a patch of green, one of the small continents coming up, and Jaina tipped her fighter toward it, with Jacen and the others after.
Jacen’s craft rocked to the buffets of the atmosphere. Flame licked at his forward shields. If he looked over his shoulder he could see sonic shock waves rolling over his foils like spiderwebs. The green land drew closer.
Then new symbols flashed onto his displays, and his own voice echoed Jaina’s cry. “Skips! Coralskippers, dead ahead!”
The enemy fighters were rising from the spaceport, two squadrons’ worth, their dovin basals yanking them clear of the planet’s gravity. And in their wake came a much larger target, a frigate analog. The Yuuzhan Vong were clearly aiming for the landing force, which was swinging above the planet in high orbit, guarded by a pair of frigates and the Screamers, a rookie squadron of X-wings under a twenty-three-year-old captain. The escort could probably handle the attackers—eventually—but in the meantime the Yuuzhan Vong could cut up the landing force badly.
“Accelerating! Maximum thrust!” Jaina called, and Twin Suns poured power to their engines. They were in a good position to bounce the enemy as the Yuuzhan Vong clawed their way up through the atmosphere. Jacen looked at his displays and calculated angles, trajectories . . .
“I’ve got a shadow bomb, Twin Leader,” he said. “Let me take a run at the frigate.”
Through the Jedi meld he felt Jaina duplicating his own calculation. “Twin Thirteen,” she decided, “take your shot.”
/> Jacen dipped his nose and aimed for the patch of air he thought the frigate would pass through in another twenty standard seconds or so. The moment of release was difficult to judge—he couldn’t find the frigate analog in the Force, and Jacen would have to make a guess based on how it appeared on his displays.
Suddenly he felt the power of the Force swell in his body, as if he’d just filled his lungs with pure universal power. Calculations stormed through his mind, faster than he’d thought possible. And distantly, he found he could detect the enemy ship—not as a presence in the Force, but as an absence, a cold emptiness in the universe of life.
There were Jedi nearby that hadn’t yet engaged the enemy—Tahiri, Kyp Durron, Zekk, and Alema Rar. Since they hadn’t been distracted by combat, they had just loaned him their power through the Jedi meld, sending him strength and aiding his calculation.
He felt the cold metal of the bomb-release mechanism in his fist, and he pulled it. “Shadow bomb away.” And then, as he pulled back the stick and fed power to the engines, he fired a pair of concussion missiles.
The shadow bomb was a missile without propellant, packed instead from head to tail with explosive, and would either drift toward its target or be pushed with a little help from the Force. The lack of a propellant flare made the bomb hard for the Yuuzhan Vong to detect, and the extra explosive gave it tremendous punch when it hit.
The two concussion missiles were intended as a distraction for the Yuuzhan Vong—if the enemy were paying attention to the two missiles, coming in on a different trajectory, then they’d be less likely to see the shadow bomb dropping toward them.
Thanks, Jacen sent into the meld. And then he felt the others fade from his perceptions as first Kyp, then the others, entered combat.
The three parts of Kre’fey’s fleet had just united, Jacen thought, with the Peace Brigade forces trapped between them. The Brigaders were about to lose their whole fleet.
The nose of Jacen’s X-wing pointed higher, toward the distant glowing exhaust ports of Jaina’s squadron. This put the frigate below in a perfect position to shoot at him, the fire heading practically up his tail. He saw the plasma cannon projectiles and missiles coming, and he jinked wildly for a few seconds, until his shadow bomb hit the Yuuzhan Vong ship and blew its nose off. Along with the nose went the dovin basals that were being used for defense, so even the two concussion missiles slammed home.
What doomed the Yuuzhan Vong frigate wasn’t the damage, but the aerodynamics. If the frigate had been in the vacuum of space it probably would have survived, but its fate was sealed by Ylesia’s atmosphere. The frigate began to weave through the air like an out-of-control skyrocket as the wind seized hold of its torn bow section. Parts tore off and flew away, spinning downward; and then the frigate lost control completely and began a death spiral toward the planet below.
Jacen’s attention was already on the combat above him. Jaina and Jag Fel had bounced the coralskippers and had killed at least three of them, their wrecked hulls plunging downward in the atmosphere with tails of flame, but now the battle had become a melee. Again aerodynamics worked to the advantage of the New Republic: a coralskipper had all the aerodynamics of a brick, but the X-wings, with their foils closed, made decent, maneuverable atmosphere craft. Still, Jacen sensed Jaina’s tension through the Jedi meld: half Twin Suns Squadron were still rookies, easy meat for an experienced enemy; and the Yuuzhan Vong were flying like veterans.
An X-wing trailing fire plunged past Jacen as he climbed, and he saw a flash as the pilot ejected. Fragments of burning yorik coral crashed onto Jacen’s shields as he climbed: that meant another coralskipper accounted for.
He would be at too much of a disadvantage if he climbed straight into the fight, so he avoided the battle and got above the furball before rolling his craft into a dive. He felt control surfaces biting air as the X-wing accelerated, and found a target ahead, a coralskipper maneuvering onto the tail of an X-wing that seemed to be wandering around randomly, like a dewback looking for its herd—doubtless one of Jaina’s rookies. Jacen chanced the deflection shot, quadded his lasers, and opened fire, and only when he saw the coralskipper explode behind him did the rookie panic, flinging his fighter all over the sky to avoid a menace that Jacen had already destroyed.
Jacen flew on, saw a coralskipper being chased by a Chiss clawcraft, the Yuuzhan Vong’s dovin basal snatching the pursuer’s bolts from the air as he flew. It was another chancy deflection shot, but Jacen carefully pulled the fighter after the enemy, a smooth curve . . . then found that he was falling short, the enemy dancing just ahead of his shots. Frustration sang in his nerves, and he was on the verge of ordering his astromech to check his controls when he realized it was all the fault of the air—the atmosphere had slowed the fighter too much. He triggered a concussion missile then, and was rewarded by seeing it slam home on the Yuuzhan Vong’s flank. The tough coralskipper kept on flying, but its dovin basal was distracted and the Chiss pilot’s next shot flamed it.
Jacen’s heart leapt as he realized he was in danger, and he jerked his stick to the right as shots flared past his canopy. He’d spent too long lining up his last target and an enemy had jumped him. He corkscrewed through the sprawl of swirling fighter craft and managed to lose his pursuer, and when he stopped his dodging there was an enemy right in front of him, flying right into his sights while lining up on a clawcraft. Jacen blew him apart with a quad laser burst.
He was through the furball now, and pulled back the stick to climb and repeat his maneuver. The others had slowed down to maneuver, and were easy targets for anyone diving in from above. He doubted that he could manage three hits on every pass, but there was no reason not to try.
Jacen made a lazy loop while he scanned the fight through his cockpit, then he half rolled upright and fed power to the engines. A sudden cry came over the comm. “I’ve just lost rear shields! Anyone! This is Twin Two—I’ve just lost an engine! Help!”
Twin Two was Vale, Jaina’s rookie wingmate—probably lost, and without cover. He felt Jaina’s rising tension through the Force-meld as she searched for Twin Two, and he scanned the mass of weaving fighters as he approached, seeing one madly dancing X-wing with a tail of flame, a pair of skips weaving after her.
“Break left, Twin Two,” he called. “I’ve got you.”
“Breaking left!” Panic and relief warred in Vale’s reply.
Jacen hit the atmosphere brakes and the X-wing slowed as if it had hit a lake of mercury, and then he crabbed his jouncing fighter around into a shot on the lead coralskipper. His laser bolts blew the canopy away and sent the craft in an end-over-end spin for the planet below. The second enemy dodged his lasers, and Jacen yanked his fighter into an even tighter turn, the atmosphere jolting the craft, dropping its speed. The enemy swallowed his concussion missile into the singularity of its dovin basal and caught the laser bolts as well, but Jacen saw Vale dart away into safety while her pursuer was preoccupied. And then enemy rounds were hammering on Jacen’s shields, and he released the atmosphere brakes and tried to roll away, punching the throttle.
He’d slowed down too much, losing speed and maneuverability and choice. An enemy had found him and was hovering off his tail, hurling round after round after him while he tried desperately to regain speed and the ability to maneuver . . .
Jacen’s astromech droid chittered as the aft shields died. And then there was a crash that Jacen felt through his spine, and the stick kicked against his gloved hand. The X-wing slewed abruptly to the left. It slowed so much that the pursuing coralskipper overshot, passing within meters of Jacen’s canopy, and his head swiveled on his neck as he looked frantically in all directions, trying to spot any additional threats . . .
And there it was. On the end of Jacen’s left foils, its claws dug into the paired laser cannons, was a grutchin, one of the winged, insectoid, metal-eating creatures that the Yuuzhan Vong sometimes released with their missiles. A grutchin whose malevolent black-eyed gaze stared back at Jacen, befo
re it turned to its work and took a leisurely chomp out of the upper left foil.
Jacen dived to gain speed, working the controls frantically to keep the X-wing balanced as the weight and drag of the grutchin threatened to destabilize it. As speed built he was rewarded by the grutchin digging its claws more firmly into the foil, hunching against the battering it was receiving from the atmosphere. Jacen felt his lips draw back in a harsh smile. He’d hoped the wind would strip the grutchin away, but this was the next best thing: the creature couldn’t eat his ship as long as it was spending all its strength just to hang on.
Then Jacen pulled back on the stick and fed power to the engines. The only way to get rid of the grutchin was to open the canopy and shoot the thing off his wing, but he couldn’t open the canopy and stand up as long as he was in Ylesia’s atmosphere—the wind would tear him right out of the craft and send him tumbling toward the planet below with half the bones in his body broken.
An interesting dilemma, he thought. The grutchin couldn’t eat his craft as long as Jacen was flying at speed through the atmosphere, but he couldn’t get rid of the grutchin until he got out of the atmosphere altogether. This would call for fine judgment.
“This is Twin Thirteen,” he said into the comm. “I’ve got a grutchin on my wing. I’ll be back after I deal with it.”
“Copy,” came Jaina’s voice. He could hear the strain of combat in the terse expression, and feel her stress in the Force.
Jacen kept his eyes on the grutchin and his throttles all the way forward. He kept the nose tipped as far as he could without losing speed, and slowly the buffeting of the atmosphere eased as the air thinned. When the grutchin was able to lift its head and take another bite of the upper port laser cannon, Jacen stood the X-wing on its tail and fled straight up into space. The grutchin shifted its grip and took another bite, and the laser cannon tore free and spun away into the darkening sky. Jacen reached for his blaster and loosened it in its holster. The whisper of wind on the canopy was almost gone. The second laser tumbled into the sky, and the grutchin turned, its claws clamped firmly on metal, and walked methodically along the two united foils, heading for the engine.
Ylesia Page 5
