Charat Kraal indicated a square, flat building near the biotics building. “That is where their elites keep their vehicles. Jaina Solo’s squadron is housed there. It is not a target of today’s exercise, since most of the vehicles housed there are now coming against our forces.”
“And where are they growing their lambent crystal?” The recent spying efforts, involving a controlled human male, had indicated that the Starlancer project required the implementation of a gigantic crystal, one grown from Yuuzhan Vong techniques and material, to increase the long-distance laser enough for it to do real harm to distant targets.
Charat Kraal pointed to the biotics building. “There. Our agent was unable to search every portion of that structure, but eliminated many. Before he was lost, he communicated to us that he thought the deepest levels of the building, which are among those shut off from the common soldier, were the most likely location for the crystal-growing …” He had a hard time saying the next word, so hateful was it in this context. “… machines. Our next agent will find it and arrange for its destruction, if our bombardments do not destroy this facility first.”
“Excellent. Now, let us discuss the capture of Jaina Solo.”
Jaina let off her trigger as the coralskipper in front of her detonated. Its pieces rained down on the jungle below. A quick check of her sensor board revealed that her wingmates, Jagged Fel and Kyp Durron, were not far away and were inbound toward her.
Ahead was the Yuuzhan Vong cruiser, hundreds of meters of yorik coral and organic weaponry. “Let’s give its big guns something to think about,” Jaina said. She switched her lasers over to quad fire and began pouring coherent light blasts at the points where the cruiser’s giant plasma cannons sprouted from its hull. “What’s your status, Tilath?”
“Lined up on final approach. I’m fifteen seconds from optimum firing range. Fourteen.”
“Fire when ready, don’t wait for my command.”
“Ten.”
Jag and Kyp joined their laserfire with Jaina’s. The voids protecting the cruiser analog had no difficulty moving into position and swallowing the destructive energy from their weapons.
“One. Firing.”
The missile dropped from the belly of Tilath’s X-wing. It fell a dozen meters; then its rear ignited, driving it forward at missile speeds.
Jaina clicked her comm board over to operational frequency. “Execute ‘Low Bounce.’ Repeat, ‘Low Bounce.’ ”
In the vicinity of the target cruiser analog, New Republic starfighters began gaining altitude. They didn’t flee; they just rose until they were above the cruiser analog’s altitude. They continued fighting on their way up, continued fighting at their new altitude.
At the same instant, Jaina, Kyp, and Piggy armed and fired proton torpedoes, one each.
Half a kilometer short of the cruiser analog, Tilath’s missile did what it was supposed to.
It did not shatter and fly in all directions; it was too sturdily built for that. Most of the missile was an extremely durable metal tube, open at one end. The rear closed portion was packed with a plasma-based explosive charge. The forward two-thirds, sealed only by the fragile nose of the missile, was packed with metal ball bearings the size of human heads.
The plasma charge detonated, superheating the ball bearings and firing them toward the target.
They shot out, a spreading display of superheated projectiles.
Not one of the ball bearings would do significant harm to the target when they hit; the best-placed shots that actually hit the yorik coral hull would punch through and lodge within, while the rest would bounce harmlessly away.
No, the danger they represented was not from hitting. Each ball, heated by the plasma charge, was now identical, in specific gravity and temperature, to the proton torpedoes catching up to them from behind.
The cruiser analog’s dovin basals sensed the incoming horde of missiles. They did not panic; fear was not part of their nature. But they knew they could not project their voids into the path of even a fraction of the incoming missiles. Instead, each prioritized, projecting its voids over the most vulnerable portions of the vessel’s flank, protecting the command crew compartment, weapons emplacements, and itself.
Charat Kraal and Harrar watched as the Twin Suns launched four missiles—one, the largest, ahead of the others. The largest one detonated short of its target, showering the matalok with red-hot debris, but the others flashed straight in to hit, one-two-three, against the matalok’s side. The infidel weapons flashed impossibly bright, creating clouds of explosive force and debris that had once been the side and internal organs of the matalok.
The vessel heeled over, mortally wounded, and began to turn away from the engagement. Plasma poured from its injury. It gained altitude for a moment, then settled into a straight-line course. And now its dovin basals concentrated their void protection only over the main weapons emplacements.
Charat Kraal knew what that meant. The matalok would not make it back to space, so its commander was ordering the weapons to build up tremendous charges of plasma energy, charges that would destroy the vessel from within.
Charat Kraal sagged as energy and pride left him for a moment. He slammed his fist into the floor next to the viewing lens. “How did she do it?” he asked. “How did she persuade the dovin basals to let their missiles through?”
“I do not know.”
Charat Kraal met the priest’s gaze. “It is not my place to ask this. You may choose to order me to my death for asking. But I must know. You are a priest of Yun-Harla—surely the truth is in your mind. Is Jaina Solo an avatar of the goddess? Is she the goddess?”
“Of course not. She is an infidel who mocks our goddess.” But Harrar knew that he was no longer able to project confidence when he said such words. He no longer knew whether he was telling the truth.
Charat Kraal, no new satisfaction or peace on his features, turned to a villip that lay on the floor next to him. He spoke into the Yuuzhan Vong warrior features it revealed. “Are you in position?”
“No, Commander. It is early yet.”
“Begin your run anyway. We cannot wait for the best moment.”
“Understood, Commander.”
Corran Horn saw the flight of three coralskippers peel off from the main north-side engagement and loop around toward the west side of the biotics building. “C’mon, Eight. Let’s deal with these strays.” He banked, a tight maneuver to put him in the path of the trio. Leth followed suit, her maneuver not quite as tight as the more experienced pilot’s.
They were able to get in position well before the coralskippers lined up for an approach. The skips turned again quite a distance out, beyond the kill zone and over the jungle. Now they were aimed in straight at the biotics building. They dropped nearly to the deck and accelerated to something like their full speed, not maneuvering even as Corran and Leth opened fire.
“It’s a suicide run,” Leth said.
“I think you’re right.” Corran looked around. If these three skips were able to hit the shields defending the biotics building, if they were able to crash through them and bring those shields down, there would be a moment when the building was undefended against enemy attacks.
But no other Yuuzhan Vong ships stood ready to make use of this momentary advantage. It didn’t make sense.
Corran drifted to starboard, spraying fire against the skip on that side and in the center. Leth drifted to port and followed suit. Their combined fire was too much for the center skip; some of Corran’s laserfire got past its voids, and nearly all of Leth’s did. That coralskipper nose-dived, smashing into the ground at the outer range of the kill zone. It did not explode; skips, not loaded with fuel, did not always detonate. It just came to pieces, scattering chunks of itself.
That gave each pilot one enemy to concentrate on. Corran kept the pressure on, spraying the oncoming skip with laserfire as if it were water from a hose, and saw his attacks chewing away at the forward portions of the craft.
Corran maneuvered his X-wing directly into the path of the oncoming skip. If its pilot’s objective really was the shields, it would have to maneuver around him. If not—well, he’d be taking that opponent out of the battle the hard way.
But it maneuvered, bouncing down to fly under him, and his lasers punched through the skip’s canopy. The vehicle veered, losing control.
Then it exploded, hurling pieces in all directions. Corran veered, was caught in the explosion for a moment, emerged out the other side with diagnostics complaining of no damage worse than a superheated external temperature sensor.
He came around and saw that Leth was also looping. Her target had gotten past her and was now headed in toward the shields.
The skip hit, and for an instant Corran could see the energy of the impact as it made the shield visible, made it ripple like a pond surface suddenly struck by a plummeting landspeeder.
The coralskipper went to pieces, shredded by the impact. Chunks of it sprayed out across the kill zone directly in front of the biotics building. One of the larger chunks hit a dirt hauler that had been pressed into surface as a ground personnel carrier; that vehicle exploded, and flames splashed across surrounding buildings and vehicles. Some chunks of the coralskipper bounced to within meters of the front of the biotics building.
“I’m sorry.” Leth’s voice was pained, full of recognition of her failure.
Too full. Corran snorted, remembering the melodrama that tended to play in new pilots’ minds. “Not much harm done,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Come on, back to work.”
Corran and Leth wheeled off together to rejoin the squadron.
Damage-control crews spilled out of the biotics building and its associated docking bays, spraying fire-fighting foams on the burning portions of destroyed coralskippers.
A crew chief, a black-haired Corellian woman whose build suggested that there might be a rancor or two in her ancestry, waved frantically at the other members of her unit. “I have a man down here! Bring medics!” She bent and shoved a large piece of coralskipper shell off the victim, a tall human in a drab mechanic’s jumpsuit.
Remarkably, he seemed unburned, and as the woman wrestled the shell from him his eyes opened. Though bland-featured, he had an expressive, intent stare, and looked first at his rescuer and then at his surroundings without confusion. “No medic,” he said. “I am not hurt.”
She extended a hand down and helped haul him to his feet. “You may be hurt worse than you know.”
“No. I am not hurt.” He looked around. “Put me to work.”
She jerked a thumb toward the largest remaining portion of the coralskipper, where more members of her unit were working. “Join them. Look for survivors like yourself. And if you feel strange, if you feel anything wrong, go talk to the medics.”
“I … yes.” Without offering a thank-you, the tall man headed in the direction the crew chief had indicated.
She motioned after him, a gesture suggesting irritation. “He’s in shock. They’ll wrestle him down when it gets obvious.” But as she continued her search through pieces of skip debris, she caught sight of the man on several occasions as he helped her crew, carrying the injured to aid stations, shoving debris aside to look for other survivors.
With half its capital ship resources gone, the Yuuzhan Vong attack was done. The remaining cruiser analog and two units of coralskippers took to the skies, harassed by New Republic starfighters until General Antilles called off the pursuit.
“How’s the leg, Tarc?” Han asked.
The boy on the hospital ward bed, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and impossibly energetic, pulled aside the sheet to show his right leg. Much of his calf was covered by a transparent bactabandage. The bandage was pink from the healing material contained within it, but still clear enough to show the angry lines of a crescent-shaped burn on the skin beneath. “Not bad,” the boy said. “I can’t run very fast, but I can walk. They just don’t want me to.”
Han tried to say something, to offer some smart remark at the expense of the medical staff, but it wouldn’t come. He’d been through this scene many times, offering put-on-a-brave-face advice to his own son Anakin, and the simple fact that this boy wasn’t Anakin, despite his near-identical resemblance to him, was like a vibroblade being shoved centimeter by centimeter into his chest.
Leia seemed to sense Han’s hesitation. “Well, you listen to them,” she said. Her own voice seemed just a trifle hoarse, too. “If we get back from our mission and hear that you’ve been pushing yourself too hard, we’re going to be angry.”
“What if I bribe them not to tell you?”
Han swallowed against the lump in his throat and managed to force his voice into something like its normal register. “Bribe them with what? This isn’t exactly a money-based economy, kid.”
“I could put on a show, and charge admission, but instead of taking money, I could make everybody who came promise not to tell you that I’d been running around.”
Leia gave him a cool politician’s smile. “You forget about our spies. They’re everywhere, you know.”
“What if I started my own spy network, and figured out which ones your spies were, and kept them from coming to my show?”
Leia reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. “We have to go. But we’ll stop in before we leave Borleias.”
“I could go with you. I can be a diplomat.”
“Sorry, kid,” Han said. “I figure you’ll be too busy practicing for your show.”
“I don’t need to practice. I’ll just make it all up as I go along.”
Han and Leia shared a look, a glance of private amusement and long experience. “Well,” Leia said, “there’s some merit in that approach, too. Good-bye for now.”
“Later, kid.”
“Awww.”
As they left the ward, Leia said, “He’s going to be bored while we’re gone.”
“We could leave Goldenrod to baby-sit him. Tell him stories.”
“It’s better that he be bored than horribly bored, Han.”
“True.”
C-3PO stood near the Millennium Falcon’s parking space on the kill zone and stared up at the topside hull of the light freighter. Han Solo was up there, as he often was between flights of the ancient vehicle. He wore goggles as he performed arcane welding tasks on the hull.
C-3PO did not watch Han; instead, his attention was on the sparks from the torch. A stream of them leapt from the hull and drifted downward, extinguishing themselves before they ever quite reached the char that covered the ground. C-3PO watched one begin its flight, reach the top of its arc and turn downward.
He became aware that another droid had wandered into his field of vision. This droid was angular, armored, warlike of aspect, carrying one of the largest and newest blaster rifles available to New Republic warriors. But he was not approaching in a posture of menace.
“Greetings,” C-3PO said. “I am See-Threepio.”
“YVH One-One-A,” the other replied. “Assigned as soldier and bodyguard to Lando Calrissian, currently on miscellaneous duty, investigating anomalies. You are an anomaly. What is a protocol droid doing monitoring the repair efforts of Han Solo and his crew?”
“Oh, never, I am not monitoring repairs. I am not even paying attention to the repairs. In an effort to improve my language skills, I am struggling to determine the best word to describe the descent and extinguishment of the sparks from the repair process.”
“This should be no problem for a protocol droid.”
“It should not be, but it is, because the word that seems most apt is not the one that is most logical.”
“What word is most apt?”
“Sad.”
1-1A’s cams clicked over to watch the sparks for a fraction of a second, then returned to C-3PO.
&nbs
p; “You are correct. That word is not appropriate.”
“It is most appropriate. Each spark seems somehow symbolic. Of life. Glowing brightly as it traverses a course, then disappearing. Does it leave anything behind?”
“If it strikes a flammable substance, it will leave something behind.”
“Is it anomalous for me to say that you are an insensitive block of armor and aggression-based programming?”
Curiously, 1-1A did not respond immediately, but clicked his cams over toward the sparks for another fraction of a second. Finally, he said, “Do you suppose, in the final nanoseconds, a spark feels fear, knowing that its duration is at an end?”
“I doubt it. I most sincerely doubt it. A spark is incapable of feeling fear, or indeed even of considering its own mortality.”
“That is also said of droids, but in some cases it is not true.”
Now it was C-3PO’s turn to hesitate. “If I may say, that is a most insightful statement, coming from a combat droid.”
“I face extinguishment regularly. This has given me many opportunities for reflection. I have recently been unable to ignore this consideration. I suspect these calculations have even begun to affect my work.”
“I, too, have had to face these thoughts recently. Most unsettling. And my counterpart, Artoo-Detoo, is no help at all, philosophically. ‘Everything terminates,’ he tells me. ‘Face it bravely.’ I suppose that’s an adequate philosophy for an astromech, but I find it wholly inadequate. I have wondered if I were the only droid in existence capable of worrying as I do. It’s most refreshing to discover that I am not alone.”
YVH 1-1A’s cams clicked back toward C-3PO’s face. “If you come to any conclusions, even unverifiable ones, will you communicate them to me?”
“I should be delighted. Likewise, if you have any insights, please transmit them to me. Perhaps we can talk again.”
Rebel Stand: Enemy Lines II Page 5
