She felt it cleanly now. It had, she supposed, been with her since her return from Hapes, but she’d built up an insulating layer around her and kept it distant, muted. Now the insulation was gone.
And, oddly, she didn’t mind the fear. Where she’d been for the last few weeks, she hadn’t been quite alive, completely present. Now she was. The worry, the fear, the pain they brought her, told her she was among the living, among her kind, part of everything she cared about. They might be counted as negative emotions, but now she found them welcome reminders of who she was and of the importance of what she had to do.
That thought stopped her. In a way, it was so like what she’d heard from and about the Yuuzhan Vong, whose desire for physical pain seemed so alien. All of a sudden, she almost understood it. Their pain was evidence of their life.
“All right,” she told herself. “I’m going to give you some more evidence.”
Her comm board clicked with the voice of the chief controller. “Coralskippers now reaching geosync point. Squadrons from Lusankya and Rebel Dream engaging.”
Jaina’s fingers twitched. She needed to be where the fighting was. She was Jaina the Pilot again.
She forced herself to wait. She knew it wouldn’t be long.
“Intrusion detected in west quadrant.”
Captain Reth didn’t have to be told. Two kilometers ahead of his E-wing unit, the broad, swaying backs of two rakamats, the giant reptiles the Yuuzhan Vong used as ground-based battle vehicles and troop carriers, crested the top of the jungle canopy as they approached.
Reth keyed his comlink. “This is Blackmoon Leader. We’re on it.” He switched to squadron frequency. “Blackmoon Two to Eight, come with me; we’re going to do a couple of strafing runs and see what pops up. Nine and Ten, lay down a firebreak in their path and then spread it around to encircle them.”
His pilots clicked acknowledgments. No unnecessary talk. He liked it that way. He kicked his thrusters and began laying triple-linked laserfire down on the enemy forces.
Jaina sprayed laserfire across the foremost of the rakamats approaching her position. There were three of them, just their spiny backs visible at a distance of two and a half klicks.
Kyp’s and Jag’s laserfire joined hers. All of it was swallowed by voids on the target ahead. The same was happening with the laserfire being laid down by the other shield trios of Twin Suns Squadron against the other two rakamats. Jaina accelerated toward the enemy force, her pilots keeping pace.
“More voids than usual,” Jag said. “These rakamats are reinforced.”
They flashed over the rakamat formation; all twelve Twin Suns pilots looped around for another firing run. As they began their turn, plasma cannonfire erupted from the ground, from the rakamats and all around them. The streams were wide at first, shots meant to gauge distance, but rapidly closed on their targets.
“They have coralskippers at ground level,” Piggy said, unnecessarily. “Using the jungle canopy to soak up our damage and make their precise locations uncertain.”
Jaina stood her X-wing on its starboard S-foils and veered from her course just in time to elude a stream of plasma gobs. “What do you recommend?”
“Keep doing what we’re doing … or do what they’re doing.”
“Huh. Interesting. Piggy, take command of the squad. Continue aerial assaults. Jag and Kyp, you two come with me.”
She veered away from the engagement area and fled back toward the biotics facility.
* * *
“Make it fast, Commander.” Wedge’s face filled the hologram area of Commander Davip’s private communications chamber. “We’re sort of busy here.”
“Sir, this Operation Emperor’s Hammer …”
“You’ve got a problem with it?”
“Not with the plan itself, sir. It’s … interesting. Potentially very effective. But …” Davip steeled himself against what he had to say. “Sir, I don’t have confidence in my crew to carry it off with the precision you need. It’s something that hasn’t been done in twenty years! Sir, I’m commanding mostly misfits, and those misfits could cost you your life.”
Wedge nodded, sympathy evident in his expression. “Misfits. I understand. I’ve been there.”
“I don’t know why Command assembled this incredible collection of screw-ups …”
“I do. It was so they’d all die here and deprive the New Republic Navy of the officers and crew who have offered it the most trouble. Including you. Including me.” Wedge shrugged. “The orders stand, Commander. You can either figure out how to convince your crew to perform, in which case we survive down here, or you can’t, in which we die. Now, listen. Command of the Lusankya isn’t a ticket to promotion anymore. It’s a ticket to obscurity and early retirement, and you’ll deserve them if you don’t learn how to think outside your training. Lusankya is your last command, Davip, unless you get the job done today. Any more questions?”
Davip shook his head, not bothering to conceal his pained expression. “No, sir.”
“Antilles out.” The general’s hologram faded to nothingness.
Davip exited the chamber and returned to Lusankya’s bridge, to the walkway above and between the tremendous banks of officers and technicians at their stations.
The walkway afforded an incredible view through the forward viewports of the coralskipper-on-starfighter duels taking place just outside the range of the Star Destroyer’s weapons. The surface of the walkway itself was so clean, so white, so spare.
Just like Davip’s mind at the moment. He always wanted things clean and spare.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he needed dirty and cluttered. Dirty and bloody and confused and unclear …
He called down to his chief weapons officer, “Transfer command of one of the turbolaser emplacements designated for Emperor’s Hammer to my station. Make it the one belonging to the weapons officer with the worst composite score from simulations.”
“Yes, sir.”
Several of the officers below, those whose current tasks didn’t demand their full attention, looked up at him, confusion evident on their faces. He supposed he’d done something he’d never done before. He’d issued a command that didn’t make immediate and obvious sense.
He turned his attention to his communications officer. “Open a line to all the weapons stations designated for Emperor’s Hammer. I need to address them now.” He pulled out his comlink.
“Yes, sir.” The officer typed in a quick command and nodded at him.
“This is Commander Davip. I’m assuming personal command of one of the laser stations for Emperor’s Hammer. During the operation, any gunner whose accuracy rates worse than mine is in for it. He or she gets transferred down to the planet’s surface immediately after the battle is done and will be put on the crews handling the bodies of our dead. That’ll be your position through the duration of our stay insystem, and no transfers will be accepted. That is all.” He gave the comm officer a nod to indicate he was through.
That officer, and the others who had been looking at him before, stared blankly, as though they’d just realized they’d been taking orders from a talking bantha in an officer’s uniform.
He grinned at them. Why, if he’d known how much entertainment he’d derive from baffling his subordinates, he might have tried it years ago.
Jaina’s and Kyp’s X-wings crept along just above the jungle floor. They were perpendicular to the ground, their repulsorlifts whining with the unaccustomed demands of having to fly sideways just above a planetary surface. The snubfighters’ bows crashed through branches and fernlike vegetation as they moved—not exactly stealthy, Jaina decided, but still invisible from the air.
Jag’s clawcraft was not in sight; sensors said that he was about two hundred meters ahead and slowly increasing his lead. The clawcraft’s more compact shape was better suited to travel through these surroundings without becoming snared on heavy foliage.
And with Jag’s fighter, hovering behind it at a distance of no mor
e than four meters, were two shadow bombs, armed, drifting along in the grip of the Force. Jaina sweated as she divided her concentration between flying this way and controlling her shadow bomb, and once again she envied Kyp’s effortless control over all matters of the Force.
All matters not involving his own motivations and actions, that is.
Jag said, “I’ve managed to set down in some heavy growth just beside a riverbank. A sort of hunter’s blind. I have pretty good visibility. If you want, you can set the bombs down behind me. Gently.”
Jaina did so, grateful for the relief. “How close do you think you are?”
“Pretty close. I’m looking right at them. About twenty meters off, ahead to starboard. There are two masses of reptoid slaves escorting coralskippers. The skips are moving about a meter off the ground. Their voids aren’t visible … I suspect they’re directing their voids to reinforce the rakamats. I see only five skips, but their formation suggests a broad line of them. Hold on.” He was silent for a few moments. “Vibrations in the hull suggest that one or more rakamats are headed this way. I think we placed it pretty accurately.” Then there was a loud bang and a curt laugh from Jag. “A tree just took some laserfire from one of us.”
“Try not to get hit with your shields down, dummy.”
“Good advice, that. I’d never considered it before. Wait a second.”
“What is it?”
“I see a rakamat … I think it’s a range. Something big, shoving down whole trees in front of it. Who wants to try this one?”
“I do,” Kyp said.
“All right, lift the shadow bomb up, traverse it ten meters forward, and lower it slowly … I see the bomb. Very good. All right, take it ahead dead slow … a little to the right … no, not that much to the right—Stop! Can you back it up a meter and sideslip a little to the right?”
“This will never work,” Kyp said. “I can’t sense all the vegetation with the accuracy of seeing it. I can’t just steer around things.”
“Yes, you can,” Jaina said. “Can you direct its movements through hand motions?”
“Well, yes, but it’s no better if I still can’t see it.”
Jaina grinned. “Kyp, set down here and slave your controls to Jag’s.”
“All right … done. Now what?”
“Jag, you use your control yoke like it was a joystick in a game. Direct the shadow bomb’s movement. Kyp, keep your hand on your yoke, let its feedback direct where your hand goes … and control the shadow bomb through your hand motions.”
“Whoa.” Kyp sounded impressed. “All right, I’m game.”
“Nice of you to be so willing,” Jag said. “You’re not the one sitting meters away from an armed proton torpedo being directed by a blind man in a two-way hookup. Well, here goes.”
Jaina set down her X-wing, lowering it onto its landing gear, and crossed her fingers.
“Hey, it’s working,” Jag said. “My control is sloppy, but much better than verbal. I’ve got it past the trees … lowering it to a few centimeters off the ground. Good, Kyp, we’re getting better. Cruising it forward, dead slow … Stop it here, set it down. Good. It’s right in the path of the rakamat. I can see the rakamat clearly now, and there’s another one behind it, a little to port. The near one is about thirty meters, the second one, I’d estimate, twenty meters behind it.”
“Go ahead and take the second bomb,” Jaina told Kyp.
Reth brought his squad around for another pass and cursed. He’d lost two E-wings on the last pass, one in a clean kill, one with comprehensive thruster damage that sent it limping back to base. That left him eight. The Yuuzhan Vong ground force was moving into his firebreak zone, its reptoid troops, coralskippers, and rakamats exposed to view from above, but they were soaking up his squad’s damage with impunity. And now the coralskippers were coming up off the ground to engage them.
There were a lot of them. Dozens of skips. Hundreds or thousands of reptoids. And the rakamat. One squad of E-wings wasn’t going to be enough to put a dent in them.
He switched over to command frequency. “Control, this is Blackmoon Leader. We’re facing a superior force and could use some reinforcements.”
The voice that responded was Iella Wessiri’s. “Blackmoon Leader, Control. All our ground forces are engaged. Fight defensively and make a fighting retreat back our way.”
“Control, copy.” Reth gritted his teeth. This wasn’t going to end well. It would be another Hoth, another Dantooine, with not even an opportunity to count up their dead.
Jag looked dispassionately at the reptoid who’d just walked into his viewport. The reptoid stared at him, mouth open to suggest anger or surprise, and looked around to gauge the size of Jag’s clawcraft. “I estimate about ten seconds before the Yuuzhan Vong figure out I’m here.”
“Get out of there, then. Come back to us.”
“No, it’s more than ten seconds before the rakamat are in position. We need to time this exactly.”
“No, come on back now. Do you trust me?”
“No fair using my own arguments against me.”
The reptoid was in a frenzy, shouting something back toward the advancing line of coralskippers. Jag activated his shields, heard and felt the increased engine demand thrum through his clawcraft. He rolled his craft over backward like a ball, rotating it along its directional axis so he ended up facing the other way but right-side up, and goosed his thrusters.
Behind him, his hiding place exploded as plasma cannon ejecta rained down on it. Then the trees surrounding it shattered, splintering, as coralskippers gave chase.
Jaina let herself drift, staying in tentative contact with the distant life-forms.
She could feel them, the collective them, and every few moments a new group of them, a few meters away from the last, offered up a second or two of fear as their world shook around them.
They were insects, lizards, other life-forms native to Borleias, and she was sure she was feeling their fear as the impact tremor of the rakamat’s giant feet shook the ground around them.
She could also feel, with a different set of Force-sensibilities, the shadow bomb she controlled.
The two sets of feeling were coming closer together.
She felt a twitch from Kyp. His range was right over his shadow bomb. Wait, she told him.
Closer, closer, and then they were almost together. Now, she told him, and triggered her shadow bomb. She opened her eyes.
In the distance, fire erupted into the sky—fire, propelling into the sky tons of charred flesh that had been rakamats. A shock wave rippled out from the site of the explosions, shredding trees near it, shaking them farther away, causing nothing more than a ground tremor where Jaina and Kyp sat.
“All right, Twins,” she said. “Let’s go back in and deal with that last range, and Jag’s pursuit.”
“Twin Suns, this is Control.” In fact, it was Wedge’s voice. “Negative on that. Fall back. Fall back.”
“Fall back, understood.” Jaina struggled with herself, then assumed her most regal tone. “We want to know why we’re being summoned back when we’re winning.”
“Because you’re holding up the Yuuzhan Vong advance.”
She lost her godly demeanor. “What? I thought that’s what we were supposed to do!”
Wedge laughed at her. “Goddess, as usual, you’re doing your job too well.”
SEVENTEEN
Coruscant System
The Record Time dropped out of hyperspace close to Coruscant, close enough for the planet to fill most of her forward viewports.
Lando immediately began broadcasting. “Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight, this is Rescue Two. We’re inbound and ready for pickup. Make yourselves ready at Target Zone A-Nineteen. Over.”
There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t. There was no Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight. There was no Target Zone A-Nineteen. No one was monitoring this comm frequency.
“Sensors show frigate analog incoming,” YVH 1-1A said.
&nb
sp; “Shields up. Commence firing.” Lando plotted a course revision that would carry them away from the other Yuuzhan Vong command ships in the area, a course that would, in theory, get them to the vicinity of the edge of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He ran the numbers and winced. The incoming frigate would be on them before they could get into position. Record Time was going to soak up some damage.
He keyed the comm unit again. “Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight, this is Rescue Two. Why don’t you answer? Why don’t you answer?” He clicked it off and grinned at 1-1A. “What did you think of that?”
One-One-A began firing, meticulous shots with the ship’s turbolasers at too great a distance to be effective. “Stress analysis of your transmitted words suggests high emotional content. From a search-and-rescue perspective, you sound like an emotional civilian.”
“Good. How about the repetition? Too clichéd, or did it work for you?”
“That is outside the scope of my programming.” One-One-A continued firing. “The frigate is launching coralskippers. I have destroyed one.”
“I suggest you destroy a second one.”
“I have destroyed a second one.”
“I suggest you destroy a third one.”
“If I may ask, are you managing a subordinate, or taunting me?”
“I’m taunting you, One-One-A. All in the spirit of fun.”
“I have destroyed a third one.”
“I suggest—”
“I have destroyed a fourth one.”
Luke waited in the darkness of the cargo hold.
Strapped to his feet was the descent unit the Wraiths had given him. Its bottom was attached with adhesive to his descent pod, a portion of a coralskipper reshaped into an oblong spheroid by creative application of duracrete and paint. Its hatch was dogged shut.
He wore a set of Yuuzhan Vong–styled armor—not one of the true vonduun crab sets, one of the artful simulations. He’d suspected that it might not be appropriate for a man with a mechanical hand and an all-too-useful lightsaber to make use of one of the authentic sets; he suspected he’d have to shed any Yuuzhan Vong disguise too often and too quickly.
Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I Page 26
