With every step she drew away from Mara’s quarters, she felt the pain slip away. At the end of the corridor, where it intersected with the main corridor leading to the administrative sector, she was herself again … but with her thoughts and emotions still whirling like clouds of piranha-beetles on Yavin 4.
Her thoughts were still not settled minutes later as she went through her X-wing checklist.
All around her, starfighters and larger spacecraft in the special operations docking bay roared, whined, or rumbled into life, the sounds and vibrations cutting through her despite the insulation provided by X-wing hull and flight suit. Normally she found it comfortably familiar, even soothing, as if everyone affected by the noise and vibration were united by them into a single mind with a single objective, but just now it was distracting, intrusive. She couldn’t focus.
The Millennium Falcon was in sight off to her port, and she could see her mother and father in its cockpit. Leia caught sight of her look and waved, smiling. Jaina waved back, absently, and forced a smile.
The starfighters of Jaina’s own squadron were arrayed around her, with Kyp and Jag situated nearest. She could see Kyp going through his own checklist, gaze flicking back and forth across the controls. Jag was already done with his, leaning back in his pilot’s couch, anonymous TIE fighter helmet on, his posture relaxed.
Some of these people loved her. Others at least respected her. They would be hurt when she followed her brothers into death, but she had a handle on that, putting them all increasingly at arm’s length so the sting would be less when she was lost to them.
She could help things further along. Kyp had suggested some time ago that she become his apprentice. If she accepted, it would probably sting Mara a bit, but then Mara would be able to withdraw from her life and perhaps wouldn’t feel the greater sting when Jaina died. And if she became Kyp’s apprentice, she could insist that he maintain the distance suitable to a Master-apprentice relationship and stop expressing his personal interest in her.
That left only Jag. She didn’t know what he might have meant to her had things been different. She suspected that pursuing this question was one of the reasons behind his joining her squadron. But he was disciplined enough, too accustomed to loss to be drastically affected if Jaina died. He’d be all right.
She settled back, a trifle calmer. She had a plan for all the people she could currently affect. When the numbers caught up to her, all these people would be able to endure her loss a little better, a little more easily.
Her comlink clicked. It was Kyp, a direct, pilot-to-pilot transmission routed through their respective astromechs. “You all right? ” he asked.
“Just using a calming technique.”
“I don’t think it’s working. I can feel you from over here. You’re in turmoil.”
“No, I’m not. It just seems that way.” To cut the conversation short, she clicked over to squadron frequency. “Twin Suns Leader to squadron. I have four engines at full power, ready to scramble.”
“Two, four lit and waiting for a target.”
“Twin Suns Three, ready.”
“Four, starboard upper showing its usual power flux, but ready to dance …”
A minute later, the go-code flashed across her board. Twin Suns was first out of the special ops docking bay, its starfighters surrounding one of the kludged, right-angle-shaped craft the defenders of Borleias referred to as pipefighters. They set up on the killing field and waited for the other squadrons to deploy.
Next were the Rogues, reduced in number by the absence of Nevil and Corran, with their pipefighter, and the Wild Knights, guarding theirs. Fourth was Blackmoon Squadron, the renamed E-wing squad that had previously protected Pyria VI’s moon, under the command of Captain Yakown Reth; they escorted the triangle-shaped pipefighter that was the centerpiece of the Operation Starlancer experiments. Finally, the Millennium Falcon, its two Rogue Squadron escort X-wings, and a larger freighter lumbered out of the docking bay, practically emptying it.
Jaina switched her comlink over to fleet frequency. “This is Twin Suns Leader to Control. Test-fire mission is ready to launch.”
“Twin Suns, this is Control. Launch at will. Best of luck.”
Jaina led the Twin Suns and their pipefighter up in a gentle ascent through Borleias’s atmosphere. No one was entirely sure how much stress the experimental pipefighter could endure. After every test mission, mechanics descended on the cobbled-together vehicles, with their space station angle segments and their old Y-wing cockpit and engine components, and managed to patch them together for yet another launch. No one was yet suggesting that this was a losing battle, but Jaina knew the experimental vehicles were soaking up a lot of repair and maintenance resources. She hoped the project would be successful enough to warrant the effort.
The squadrons reached high planetary orbit and went their separate ways, each navigating to a different point in the Pyria system—all but the Falcon and the vehicles with her, which remained behind in orbit.
Tam Elgrin scrambled into his quarters on the shuttle and fumbled with his concealed villip. Pain made his fingers clumsy; it took several tries for him to get the device open, to stroke the villip surface itself so that it would correctly expand into the shape of his controller.
“Speak,” the woman said.
“Jaina Solo has just taken off,” Tam said. With every word, his headache eased just a bit. “With her entire squadron. I was able to fling that thing, that bug, at her X-wing as she was flying out of the docking bay. It stuck to the side. As ordered.” He was getting very good at following orders. Not long before, he’d walked to the limits of the kill zone permitted to civilians and used his holocam to record the bleakness of that destroyed landscape, waiting there long enough for Yuuzhan Vong warriors at the kill zone’s edge to throw a packet to him. It was a jellylike gob of transparent material, wiggling, filled with bugs and worms and things that couldn’t escape except when he jammed his fingers into it to pry them free, and subsequent communications over the villip had told him what all the various creatures within it were for.
“Excellent. You’re doing very well, Tam.”
His controller’s words of praise, her encouraging tones, made Tam feel better. He hated himself for it.
“Was there anything else? ” his controller asked.
“Nothing,” he said. His headache was gone now.
“Contact me when you’ve had a chance to evaluate the morale of the garrison once Jaina Solo is taken,” the woman said. Then the villip inverted.
Tam closed its container. He stood in place, shaking.
He now had an idea of how the leash that had been put on him worked. When he failed to carry out his orders, the pain began. It worsened as his failure continued. When he was able to report success, it diminished. But since his controller couldn’t know, until he reported, how successful he was, the only stimulus for the pain could be his own knowledge of failure. Some portion of his brain that lit up when he felt guilt, some hormone discharged into his bloodstream when he was under a specific kind of stress, triggered the headaches.
He had no doubt that the pain, if allowed to grow too great, could kill him. He’d been told so. He’d felt it grow to the point that he believed it signaled an imminent explosion in his head, a fatal aneurysm or other deadly failure within him.
If only he could find some way to think himself around the pain, to feel no guilt or acknowledge no failure, so that the pain never came … but even with that thought, throbbing began in his temples and the pain returned.
He slumped, defeated. He wasn’t even allowed to think such things.
He was a slave and he would always be a slave.
He left the shuttle, head down, to return to his duties.
Han slouched in his pilot’s seat and stared, in unaccustomed contentment, at the stars.
“What are you thinking?” Leia asked from the copilot’s seat.
Han glanced at her. She looked far more comfortable in
the Leia-sized seat they’d installed for her. At the very least, she wouldn’t be slipping back and forth during high-performance maneuvers. “You know me,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Leia nodded. “I know you. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about what would happen when we finally got rid of the Vong. I was thinking about taking up the old trade again.”
“Sure you were.”
“In an elder-statesman way, of course. And I was thinking that someone with your skills and connections, Leia, could be a tremendous asset to that sort of operation.”
She just looked at him for a moment, her expression somewhere between amusement and outrage. “You think I should be a smuggler?”
“Sure, why not? You’re through with politics, you said so. Maybe you should follow me around for a few years. Like I did with you, when you were busy helping rule the galaxy.”
“You didn’t follow, you visited.”
“Well, that’s as close to following as I could manage. I’m sure you’d be better at it than I was.”
“I may not be a politician anymore, but I’m still, well, honest.”
“Mistress Leia, Captain Solo …” They were the musical tones of C-3PO.
Han and Leia looked to the back of the cockpit, where the Protocol Droid stood in his usual posture of nervous diffidence. “What is it?” Han asked.
“It’s the children, sir. I was wondering what sort of games and entertainments I should find for them. They are, well, bored.”
“They can’t be bored yet. We’ve only been here two minutes.”
Leia nodded. “It takes Han at least three.”
Han shot her a glare. “Break out the hologame board.”
“Well, I did, sir, but they appear to think it’s somewhat old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned? That’s one of the few systems that was installed new in the Falcon.” Then Han frowned. It had been new when installed, which was, oh, nearly three decades ago.
Leia smirked at his expression. “See-Threepio, let the younger ones train with lightsabers against the remote. They won’t want to, since it’s so antiquated, but tell them it’s the same one Luke first trained on, and bring up his scores to give them something to compete against. The older ones … um, put up some simulations on the quadlasers and let them run through those.”
Han nodded. “That’s more like it.”
“If they don’t want to work with equipment that old, tell them it’s a history lesson.”
“Yes, Mistress Leia.” The droid returned the way he’d come.
Han glared at her. “Leia, you’re just asking to walk from here.”
She just smiled at him.
Twin Suns Squadron came on-station in an empty region of Pyrian space. The twelve members of the squadron broke into four shield trios and moved out from the center of their zone while the pipefighter remained behind, maneuvering itself to be more and more precisely at the exact mathematical point the Operation Starlancer coordinators required of it. They directed their sensors outward to give them earliest possible notification of a Yuuzhan Vong intrusion.
Occasional, low-volume comments crackled up from the comm board, which was set to squadron frequency. At the four stations of the Starlancer mission, nothing was happening—nothing but pipefighters setting up.
“I like your design.” That was Kyp, the volume of his voice louder than the settings she’d set up for her comm. system. She glanced down and saw that he once again was routing a message through their astromechs for privacy.
Jaina turned to look through her canopy at Kyp’s X-wing, which was floating mere meters off to her starboard. He was also looking back at her. “What design?” she asked.
“Your X-wing coloration. I like it for its effectiveness.”
“Oh, right.” She’d arranged for her X-wing to be painted a glossy white; on each flank was a picture of a running voxyn. The reptilian beasts, designed by the Yuuzhan Vong to detect and slaughter Jedi, had all been killed or doomed by the young Jedi Knights’ expedition to the worldship around Myrkyr, and Jaina did not remember them fondly—they had killed too many of her friends and colleagues. But she did like the idea when Sharr had expressed it to her. She liked the mixed signals it sent, appreciated its ambiguity. Did it mean that she identified with a creature created by the Yuuzhan Vong? That though she was a Jedi, she did not fear it and had participated in its destruction? That she admired its ferocity and cunning? Its presence as a symbol on her snubfighter would confuse the Yuuzhan Vong. It was certainly confusing the New Republic fighters and Jedi who did not belong to the Insiders.
Kyp’s own X-wing was now individually decorated as well, with a design that had to be as unpleasant to him as the voxyn were to Jaina. On either side of the fuselage was painted a sun in the throes of going supernova, a reminder to the Yuuzhan Vong that it was Kyp Durron who had destroyed whole worlds, years ago, through use of a superweapon called the Sun Crusher. Kyp had been driven by rage during that time, and had not been old enough for maturity to have restrained him. Even today, many people thought he should pay for his crime against those Imperial worlds—pay the ultimate price, sacrificing his life—but Luke Skywalker had disagreed, and Kyp had, in the intervening years, found a sort of uncomfortable and incomplete redemption in his role as a Jedi.
For a moment, Jaina thought about adding, I like your design, too. That would confuse Kyp, help keep him at bay. But her resolve softened and she could not bear to inflict that little wound on him. She kept her mouth shut.
“Contact, bearing three-three-seven, incoming.” That was Gavin Darklighter’s voice at the muted volume of the squadron frequency.
“Wild Knights here. We have incoming targets from Rimward.” This was Danni’s voice.
A moment later, Captain Reth called in a sensor contact for Blackmoon Squadron.
Jaina’s sensor board was still empty of unfriendlies, but three simultaneous approaches against the other units protecting the Starlancer vehicles suggested that she’d have incoming coralskippers soon as well. She switched to squadron frequency. “Keep your eyes open,” she said.
“Awww.” That was the mechanical voice of Piggy, who was now flying as Twin Suns Five and doing squadron tactics evaluation. “I wanted to sleep a while longer.” Then his voice became suddenly alert, as though he realized his jest might not be appreciated. “I mean, to hear is to obey, Great One.”
Jaina grinned. If she were leading this unit like a military squadron, she’d snap at him for making irrelevant comments over his comlink, but the Twin Suns pilots were supposed to be looser, more idiosyncratic.
“Starlancer Leader to squadrons, we are ready for test-firing.”
Jaina switched back to fleet frequency. “Starlancer Leader, this is Twin Suns Leader. Fire at will.”
Several kilometers behind her, the ends of the two larger pipelike extrusions from the pipefighter flared into incandescence. A bright red bar of light, a meter-thick laser beam, leapt out from each one. Instead of flaring once with a short burst of energy, like a starfighter weapon system, they continued pouring out laser light.
Acknowledgments came in across her comm unit, indications from two other Starlancer triangle-corner vehicles that they, too, had fired. Then there were updates from them: “Estimated two minutes until impact … One minute forty-five seconds … one minute thirty seconds until impact …” All four Starlancer craft were fitted with voice-only holocomm units, allowing them to coordinate at transmission speeds greater than the speed of light, and their respective guardian squadrons were piggybacking their own communications through those holocomms.
Jaina tuned out the updates and concentrated on the fighter-pilot chatter. The Rogues, Wild Knights, and Blackmoons all reported detecting inbound squadrons, but now indicated that the squadrons were not coming in at attack speed. This seemed to be a slower, more deliberate sortie.
“Fifteen seconds until impact … Impact. We have positive connection on
both leads with Vehicle Two, with Vehicle Three … with Vehicle One. All three are positive. Fire central units.”
Behind Jaina, the pipefighter fired off its third extrusion, the one that bisected the right angle; it, too, emitted a meter-thick stream of laser light. At the moment it fired, the project controller began transmitting, “Estimated one minute twenty-two seconds until impact … one minute fifteen …”
“Wild Knights engaged.” Danni Quee’s voice rose in pitch. “We have two squadrons of coralskippers.”
“Same here, two squadrons.” The Blackmoon leader, Captain Reth, was calmer than Danni. “Standard incoming tactics.”
“Rogues have two complete squadrons incoming.” Then Gavin Darklighter’s voice took on a slightly amused tone. “Correction, two incomplete squadrons.”
Jaina frowned at her sensor board. Why weren’t the Yuuzhan Vong attacking her position? It didn’t make sense for them to attack three of four Starlancer positions. They should be attacking only one, to acquire a Starlancer pipefighter, or all four.
Then she saw it, a blip at the extreme range of her sensors. “Incoming enemies,” she said, “from this position. Twin Suns shield trios, form up on me.”
Han and Leia listened to the comm traffic from the Starlancer positions—when it wasn’t drowned out by the shrieks of amusement from the more distant portions of the Falcon, where novice Jedi practiced deflecting remote blasts, shooting down computer-generated targets with computer-generated laser blasts, and ran amok. Han and Leia could also hear C-3PO’s ineffective protests. “That should be enough distraction out there,” Leia said.
“I think so, too.” Han keyed his comlink. “Kam, Tionne, get them settled in and strapped down. We’re jumping out of here in one minute.” A moment later, he could hear the deeper tones of Kam Solusar addressing the boisterous passengers.
“Can I sit up here?”
Han and Leia turned to see Tarc standing at the opening into the cockpit. The boy looked uncertain, unhappy.
Leia said, “You don’t want to sit back there with the others? We won’t have much time to talk to you, honey.”
Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I Page 20
