“Veema, get that freighter out of here,” Kyp ordered.
A quartet of XJs darted off in tight formation to engage the enemy ships. Laserfire battled streams of plasma as Kyp’s pilots provided a diversion for the fleeing refugee ship.
A thin bolt of plasma sheered through the wing of Veema’s ship. The off-balance XJ tumbled wildly, hopelessly out of control, and crashed into the very ship it had been protecting. The XJ exploded—and took the freighter’s port fusion engine out with it.
A huge fissure sizzled down the side of the battered freighter, brilliant from the explosion within. Kyp—his emotions open and raw from his own peculiar battle mode—felt the sharp surge of terror, and then the sudden sundering of every life on that ship.
With a great effort of will, Kyp snapped his attention back to the big coralskipper. The Yuuzhan Vong had apparently taken note of the protection given the old corvette. The big coralskipper moved inexorably toward Danni Quee’s vessel. A stray laser beam struck one of the concussion missiles. It exploded: a white-fire blossom bursting from an eerie pink stem. The skip, however, had moved beyond the explosion’s range.
But Kyp no longer needed this particular missile. He ordered Octa’s squadron to regroup in a defensive position around the Jedi scientist’s ship.
“As the Master says, size matters not,” he murmured.
He released his hold on the second missile, not caring that it was swallowed by one of the coralskipper’s stuttering singularities. Reaching deep into himself, he sought resources he had not used for many years.
Once before, Kyp had seized a ship and dragged it out of the fierce heart of a gas giant. Now he reached out with the Force and took hold of the dead freighter.
It shot forward with astonishing ease, moving steadily through the vacuum of space toward the shielded coralskipper.
Ian Rim’s dark chuckle came through the comm. “Subtle as always, Kyp! Let’s not let this one get away, Dozen!” he shouted.
The lieutenant spun off in a tight turn, his two surviving pilots following closely. They darted around the big coralskipper, cutting off its retreat, taking and returning fire from the other enemy skips. Their daring maneuvers soon exacted a price—Ian’s ship got caught in a Yuuzhan Vong crossfire. The double blast of plasma proved too much for his shields, and the ship dissolved in a bright splatter of plasma and superheated metal.
The pilots Ian had commanded doggedly held the course he’d plotted. The XJs continued to harry the big skip, forcing it to keep up its stuttering shields as the dead freighter closed in. At the last moment, the surviving X-wings shot away toward safety.
The freighter never got close. One moment it was there; the next it simply disappeared into a void. What happened next was not exactly what Kyp had had in mind.
He’d hoped for a physical impact, or, barring that, that the freighter might overwhelm the dovin basal’s capacity, leaving the big coralskipper vulnerable to attack. It had never occurred to him that the skip’s multiple singularities might merge into one and fold in on the Yuuzhan Vong ship like a glove turning inside out. But suddenly, the freighter was gone. So was the coralskipper.
And so were the fleeing X-wings.
Death came to the pilots with a speed that neither fear nor thought could match. Neither of them saw its approach. None of their final emotions came through to Kyp—only a sudden, almost deafening blast of silence.
Grief and guilt rose in Kyp like a dark tide. He bore down, sternly crushing these emotions before they could alter his focus, his course. He would not do this. He would not give way to the uncertainty that had so crippled his fellow Jedi.
Yet he could not deny that once again, he had undertaken a massive use of Force power and, in doing so, had inadvertently caused the death of those close to him.
Kyp forced himself back into the battle. He quickly took stock of his situation. Only Octa remained, and two of her pilots. The four of them could still do some damage.
He hailed his surviving Dozen and named a vector reasonably free of battle. “We’ll regroup in quartet formation under my command.”
The ships responded at once, jinking a path through the Jedi ships.
Suddenly a surge of grief came from Octa Ramis, and then a brief, anguished epiphany, and, finally, fury. Kyp was not very surprised to note that her anger was directed not at the Yuuzhan Vong, but at him.
“Master Skywalker was right,” she said with deadly calm. “You may consider this a desertion.”
Her XJ peeled off and circled back to the Jedi wing. After a moment, the two surviving members of her squadron followed.
Kyp let her go.
Nine more of his pilots had died, adding their names to the lengthening roster of those who had died under his command since the war started. Though their deaths weighed heavily on Kyp, he accepted this as the fortunes of war. But never before had he crossed the lines he’d drawn long ago and brought about a comrade’s death through the power of the Force. At this dark moment, it seemed to him that this single act negated all the good he had done, all his steadfast arguments, everything for which he stood.
A moment of indecision, no more, but the price was high. Coralskippers closed in on Octa’s ships like a pack of voxyn.
Kyp streaked in, determined to take as many of them with him as he could.
Suddenly, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong attack began to falter. Several of the coralskippers veered away in erratic, almost drunken flight. Octa Ramis took advantage of this seeming confusion to give pursuit. The other XJs followed.
Two skips hurtled toward the Jedi woman’s ship. The enemy ships grazed each other, veered wildly apart, over-compensated. Back they came, slamming into a sidelong collision.
Shards of coral hammered the XJs with deadly shrapnel. Both of the ships spun away, out of control. Only Octa returned to the battered Jedi fleet.
“Objective secured,” she said coldly.
Kyp could only nod. For months now, Danni Quee’s team had been working on blocking a yammosk, a hideous, telepathic creature that coordinated many ships. Judging by the sudden confusion among the Yuuzhan Vong, they had succeeded.
But he, Kyp Durron, had failed.
Again.
A flood of emotion swept through him, and a dozen hard years suddenly fell away. For a moment Kyp knew the fresh anguish of his brother’s death. The darkness of that terrible time flooded back, and the despair.
“Jaina,” he murmured suddenly, for no reason that he could comprehend.
Kyp shook his head as if to clear it. Of course he was aware of pretty, pragmatic Jaina Solo—what Jedi wasn’t?—but she didn’t exactly fly in his orbit. There was nothing between them that could explain the fleeting connection; in fact, her reaction after the attack on the Sernpidal shipwomb suggested that Jaina wouldn’t so much as spit at him if he were on fire.
At that moment a familiar ship soared into view, a disreputable antique that was nonetheless one of the biggest legends in the galaxy. Three coralskippers blundered after it, spewing lethal rock.
“Not the Falcon,” Kyp vowed darkly, finding a measure of focus in this new threat. “Not a chance.”
The Jedi dropped his remaining two missiles and used the Force to hurl them at the enemy ships. Once again he stopped them just short of the singularities. He busied the skips’ dovin basals with a quick flurry of laserfire, then let the missiles hammer in. Two of the alien ships exploded. Coral shards melted as they hurtled through gouts of plasma thrown by a third ship.
The Jedi switched to hailing frequency. “Millennium Falcon, this is Kyp Durron. Could you use a wingmate?”
“You give a great audition, kid. Consider yourself hired.”
Han Solo’s disembodied voice lifted some of the burden from Kyp’s shoulders.
His relief was short-lived. A Yuuzhan Vong blastboat made a ponderous turn and came in pursuit of the Falcon. The pilot noticed, too, and responded with an oath Kyp hadn’t heard since his days as a slave in the Kes
sel spice mines.
“You install those vertical thrusters, like I told you?” Han demanded.
“Got ’em.”
“Good. Use them.”
Kyp punched the drive. His head seemed determined to burrow between his shoulders as the ship made a sudden leap. An enormous, ship-swallowing plasma comet scorched a path through the place he had just been—and directly toward his friend’s ship.
But Han turned the Falcon abruptly up on her port side. The missile streaked past, taking out a pair of disoriented coralskippers before it cooled into tumbling rock.
The old ship leveled out and then whirled away, tracing an oddly teetering path as Han deftly evaded incoming fire. Then he abruptly flipped onto the starboard side. Another massive bolt shot by, missing the ship but heating the underside to a glowing red. The Falcon levelled out suddenly. Two confused coralskippers collided overhead.
“Hey, I told these people to use the flight restraints,” Han protested, responding to someone whose voice was beyond the reach of the comm. “Maybe if you’d issued a royal edict?”
The contentious fondness in Han’s voice identified the recipient of his sarcasm. An odd, hollow sensation settled in the pit of Kyp’s stomach at the prospect of confronting Leia Organa Solo.
He admired Han’s wife greatly, but her presence often left him keenly aware of the disparity between his youthful choices and hers. Leia had become a member of the Imperial Senate at sixteen, a hero of the Rebel Alliance two years later. At sixteen, Kyp had apprenticed himself to a long-dead Sith Lord. He’d rounded out his teen years by putting Master Skywalker in a near-death trance, forcibly erasing the memory of an Omwati scientist, commandeering a superweapon, and destroying a world and all its inhabitants. Thanks to Luke Skywalker’s intervention, Kyp’s crimes had been forgiven. Kyp had no illusions that anyone would forget them, least of all himself. Princess Leia did not remind him of what he’d been, but rather, what he might have become.
On the other hand, Leia’s presence on the Falcon might explain why Jaina had come so forcefully to Kyp’s mind. Leia wasn’t a fully trained Jedi, but Kyp suspected her raw powers rivaled those of her brother. Perhaps she’d heard something about her daughter and had inadvertently projected her response through the Force. Last thing Kyp had heard, the Solo kids were involved in some secret mission.
“From your last comment, I’d guess that Leia is flying copilot,” Kyp ventured.
“Looks that way,” Han agreed. Kyp didn’t need the Force to hear the deep affection in the man’s voice. But there was also a deep weariness and a certain brittle quality—things that Kyp had never associated with Han.
“Is everything all right?”
Han’s laugh sounded a trifle forced. “Leia’s up to the job, if that’s what you’re asking. And we’ve got two Jedi Masters aboard for good measure—Luke’s here, and Mara. What could go wrong?”
SOME CULTURES BELIEVE THAT RHETORICAL QUESTIONS HAVE A WAY OF TEMPTING FATE, Zero-One observed.
Kyp abruptly switched off the outside comm. “Who asked you?” he demanded.
RHETORICAL QUESTIONS ARE NOT DIRECTED AT ANYONE IN PARTICULAR. PERHAPS THAT IS WHY DESTINY CLAIMS THEM.
“Who did your philosophical programming—a cantina comic? Destiny claims them!” the Jedi scoffed. “Words to live by!”
EXPERIENTIAL DATA, KYP DURRON, SUGGEST THAT YOU DO PRECISELY THAT.
The sneer fell off Kyp’s face. He switched off the communication screen linking him to the disturbing Q9 unit and blew out a long sigh.
Then he fell into place beside the Falcon, his eyes scanning the roiling skies for his next fight.
FIVE
Jaina slumped in the pilot’s seat, too exhausted for sleep. She felt an approaching presence and turned to face Tekli, the young Chadra-Fan healer.
The furry little female looked perturbed—all four of the nostrils on her upturned snout flared, as if she were scenting the air for danger. Her large rounded ears were folded back into subdued half-moons, and her quick, almost furtive movements made her look more rodentlike than usual.
Jaina hauled herself upright. “How is Tahiri?”
“Sleeping.” The healer sighed. “The broken bone in her arm is set, her wounds patched as best I can. But I do not envy her her dreams.”
Dreams. Jaina grimaced at the thought. “Why take the chance? First opportunity, I’m going straight into a healing trance.”
“That is probably wise.”
Tekli stood quietly, her long-fingered hands tightly clasped. She looked as if she were trying to gather her thoughts, or perhaps her courage.
Jaina smoothed a hand wearily over her untidy brown hair. “This isn’t a diplomatic dinner. How about we jettison the protocol and get to whatever’s on your mind.”
“You have set course for Coruscant.”
“That’s right.”
“Is this wise? We are flying an enemy ship. We cannot communicate with the city towers to relay our identities and intentions.”
Jaina folded her arms. “How many living Yuuzhan Vong ships do you suppose the Republic has?”
The little Chadra-Fan blinked. “I don’t know.”
“Last I heard, two. By now they could both be dead and useless. They don’t seem to live long without regular attention from the shapers—the Vong maintenance techs. Chances are, the Republic will be so glad to get their hands on a living ship and living pilot they’ll give us landing clearance.”
“As they did to the supposed Yuuzhan Vong defector, the priestess Elan?”
Jaina blew out a long sigh. “I see your point. How can the Republic know that we’re not faking surrender? For all they know, we could be on a suicide mission to release some biological weapon upon Coruscant.”
“It has crossed my mind. No doubt it may occur to others.”
Jaina glanced at Lowbacca, who was still poking delicately about in the frigate’s navibrain. “What about it, Lowie? Any chance this thing can change hyperspace destination without emerging to sublight speed?”
The Wookiee sent her an incredulous stare, then cast his eyes upward and shook his head in disgust.
She shrugged this off. “So we emerge into Coruscant space and keep out of the main lanes while we program another hyperspace jump. There must be somewhere that we can land this rock in one piece rather than as a shower of gravel. Then we can make our way to a population center and send communications from there.”
The Chadra-Fan’s lopped-back ears perked up into their usual, rounded shape. “Yes. Much better.”
“Got a destination in mind?”
Lowbacca woofed a suggestion.
“Gallinore,” Jaina mused. “That’s in the Hapes Cluster, but it’s relatively close. If we are very careful, we could probably get in undetected.”
Tenel Ka’s head came up sharply. “I know Gallinore well. It could be done.”
“But we’d be cutting right across Yuuzhan Vong territory,” Ganner pointed out. “Chances are, we’d run right into heavy dovin basal mining.”
“Good point,” Jaina agreed. “This jump took us through enemy-held territory. The question is, how do the Yuuzhan Vong ships get through the minefield?”
Lowbacca pointed to the navibrain and went into a vigorous spate of growls and yelps.
The young pilot frowned. “What do you mean, the ship just went around them? How does that work?”
The Wookiee shrugged. Jaina’s face was deeply troubled as she considered the possible implications of this. After a moment she shook off her introspection. “Anyone else have anything to add? Alema? Tesar? How about you, Zekk?”
“You’re the pilot,” Zekk responded. “But I see your point—we should come to a consensus before the need for action arises. Gallinore sounds good. How much longer in hyperspace, Lowie?”
The Wookiee held up a massive furred paw and began to count down from five. Jaina reached for the cognition hood and pulled it back over her head.
She was instantly floode
d with images of light—not the expected, sudden appearance of blurry starlines, but a multiverse of frantically strobing, swirling lights.
The skies over Coruscant blazed with fleeing transport ships, darting E-wings and XJs, strangely undisciplined squadrons of coralskippers. Brief, brilliant explosions flared and faded, each coming on the heels of another in rapid cadence.
Lowbacca began to howl in protest.
“I know it’s not your fault,” Jaina yelled as she jinked to avoid several pink streaks exploding from X-wing laser cannons. “You didn’t get us lost. This is Coruscant.”
“This was Coruscant,” Zekk murmured, his voice hollow with shock and grief.
Ganner thrust him out of the way and dropped into the gunner’s seat. “Line them up, Jaina, and I’ll take them out.”
A tiny blue comet flared toward them. The missile blinked out of existence meters from the ship. Immediately a secondary attack—a barrage of laserfire—hammered the coral hull. The frigate shuddered. Fine, black dust showered down over the Jedi.
“Those were Republic ships,” Ganner said grimly. “I can’t return fire on them!”
Instead, he sent a plasma bolt hurling toward a Yuuzhan Vong skip. Alema Rar lunged at him, seizing his arm with both hands and jerking his hand free of the targeting glove.
“We came dressed for the wrong party,” she reminded him. “Keep that up, and everyone will be firing at us!”
Jaina opened her mind, reached out as far as the ship’s considerable sensors could span. Information engulfed her. The data was staggering, the conclusion inescapable:
Coruscant was lost, and the fleeing New Republic ships were badly outnumbered by the invading force.
The Twi’lek was right: any attempt to help would only draw the ire of the Yuuzhan Vong and place the Jedi survivors squarely between the warring factions.
Dark Journey Page 4
