Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I (11 page)

“Yes, Warmaster.”

“Speak your mind.”

“I speak not my mind, but the will of the Creator, Yun-Yuuzhan. My visions of him in last night’s dreams led me to thoughts of you and your … affliction.”

Tsavong Lah lifted the hand of his radank claw and studied its grasping digits. With this limb, he could rend the throat of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior … assuming the limb did not tear free of him with such an exertion. “What did he say of me?”

“Only that your pursuit of this war brings much pleasure to the heart of the slayer Yun-Yammka.”

“I do not see how this relates to my arm.”

“It was what he did
not
say, Warmaster. I felt—and this was only a priest’s intuition—that the Creator believed himself to be separate from the glory you are achieving. That he is not receiving his due share. That he is displeased.”

“And what did you feel would correct this measure?”

“A dedication, Warmaster. A gift. Something offered to Yun-Yuuzhan alone. An entire world devoted to the Creator and his priests and concerns.”

“But the priests of Yun-Yuuzhan have haven everywhere, among all domains and colonies.”

“Yes, Warmaster. I know you are correct. But who can know the mind of a god? I can only interpret the dreams I have, and hope that I am correct.”

“I will consider this.” With his radank claw, Tsavong Lah made a shooing gesture, and the young priest withdrew.

As soon as the priest’s back was turned, Tsavong Lah nodded to one of his trusted guards and made a gesture that only the warmaster and his personal guards understood. That guard followed Takhaff Uul to the chamber portal; when the priest was well down the corridor, the
guard spoke quietly to another guard, then returned to stand behind Tsavong Lah’s seat.

The warmaster dealt with another pair of administrative matters. Then the guard who had followed Takhaff Uul returned and presented himself before the warmaster.

“Well?”

“He went to the chambers of Ghithra Dal, the shaper,” the guard said.

Tsavong Lah sat in contemplation for long moments. Ghithra Dal was the shaper who had attached his radank claw.

Viqi Shesh might have been correct.

He would have to find out.

The fleet of Wyrpuuk Cha slowed as it entered the outer limits of the Pyria system. The system’s distant sun was visible through the amber-colored shell that served the bridge as a viewport, but Wyrpuuk Cha paid it no attention, concentrating instead on the cloud of blaze bugs that hovered in the black hemispherical depression at the rear of the chamber.

The insects, capable of hovering in flight and glowing or growing dark at the mental command of the fleet’s yammosk, formed glowing patterns and shapes within that depression. A spherical cluster of them represented the system’s sun. Others formed smaller balls representing the planets of the system. Numberless glowing mites of a related species, too small to see but for their bluish glow, arrayed themselves to represent the crisscrosses of ionic trails that decorated the solar system, indicating where the hated metal ships of the enemy had recently made runs.

Other blaze bugs hovered singly or formed into small, irregular patches. These, Wyrpuuk Cha knew, constituted groups of enemy ships. Knowledge of their whereabouts came from villip transmissions from the Yuuzhan Vong refugees on Borleias and from the gravitic senses of the yammosk, but the information was incomplete; fleet elements too near gravity wells would not be detectable, nor would ships situated at distant points in or just beyond the solar system. The enemy could have hundreds of ships located here; it would take time and sacrifice to root them out and destroy them.

Time he had, and warriors in great number willing to make that sacrifice. Depending on the enemy forces and commanders, it might prove a struggle, but Wyrpuuk Cha would be able to take this system.

The question was whether he’d be able to take it swiftly enough, efficiently enough to please Warmaster Tsavong Lah. He could not afford to spend too much time or expend too many resources. He needed, strategically speaking, to bare his belly, invite his enemy’s attack, and gut his opponent while that opponent was outstretched, out of balance, out of position. He could afford one feint, maybe two.

“They have not reestablished shield platforms in orbit around the planet.” That was a female voice. It belonged to Kadlah Cha, a military analyst belonging to his own domain.

He spared her a look. Her facial tattooing was startling even by Yuuzhan Vong standards, darkness around her eyes and below her lower lip suggesting, at first glance, that those features were grossly oversized. Her decorations were a mirror image of, and copied from, his own, though his were accentuated by scarring from warfare and a slit at the center of his upper lip, rising nearly to his
nose, that acted as an artificial harelip and perpetually bared his upper teeth. “So they will have situated a minefield around Borleias, and simulated a shield with their metal ships.”

“No, Commander.” She moved to the blaze bug depression and extended her hands into it, waving many of the images aside, waving the spherical cluster representing Borleias toward her. The dismissed insects swarmed toward the sphere, expanding it, adding details representing vessels in orbit around the planet. “See? They have capital vessels in what looks like geosynchronous orbit above one point on the planet, not far from the Domain Kraal touchdown point, and other vessels in more typical orbits. Nothing else. And the Kraals report no buildup of ground-based shield generators except at this site.”

“A hardpoint defense of one location.” Wyrpuuk Cha considered that, reevaluating the situation. He reached into the depression and gestured to return the image to its previous magnification. “And see here. Recent, repeated travel to this orbit above the sixth planet, an orbit corresponding to one of its moons. Yet no indication of ships here now. A hidden base of some sort? They’re not protecting the primary world from intrusions that could drop planetshaping materials, so they don’t care about the world itself … just what is to be found at that one site. We must find out what they protect there and on that moon.”

The alarm jolted Wedge and Iella out of their sleep. It was a shrill, keening thing, not the sort of alarm installed in a military installation; it had to be some sort of biological hazard alert that was part of this station’s original equipment. Wedge groped on the table beside his bed for his comlink and found it was already beeping for him, the sound drowned out by the alarm. “Antilles here.”

“We have a major Yuuzhan Vong intrusion.” The comm officer’s voice was a disinterested drawl in distinct contrast with the importance of his message. “Dozens of capital ships entering the system at its outer fringes from Coruscant’s bearing. No sign yet of coralskipper launch.”

“Issue a systemwide alert condition. I’ll be there immediately.” Wedge rose, mind already clear and focused on his task, and began to dress.

He saw that Iella was already one jumpsuit ahead of him. She sealed her suit’s main seam and asked, “What’s the plan for today?”

“Bad tactics. We’re leaving a gap in our coverage of the sensor station on the fourth moon of Pyria Six. We’ll beat back whatever comes at Borleias but let them chase us off that moon. I’ll be coordinating from the ground so they can
detect
that I’m coordinating from the ground. Reinforces the impression that there’s something important down here, too.”

She helped him seal his suit and gave him a quick kiss. “I hate it that you’re going to lose, even on purpose.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re such a bad loser.” He gave her a grin. “Ultimately, I intend to be a very,
very
bad loser.”

Saba Sebatyne, a Jedi Knight of the Barabel people, tapped her way through the power-up checklist of the Wild Knights’ lead blastboat. Her fingers moved deftly and surely for such a large and bulky creature; Barabels were reptilian, covered in scales, with large eyes protected by heavy, protruding brow ridges, but otherwise somewhat inexpressive faces.

Danni Quee covertly watched Saba. Danni’s position on the ship, sensor operator and sometimes ship’s weapons, didn’t call for as much preparation as Saba’s. Saba’s efficiency and speed with her task were undiminished, but Danni knew she had been through much pain recently—the loss of her Jedi Master, Eelysa, to a Yuuzhan Vong–bred monster called a voxyn on Corellia, and then the loss of two of her kin, hatchmates to her own son, during Anakin Solo’s successful but costly mission to destroy the queen—the source of the voxyn. But Barabels were very different from humans in their expressions of pain and grief, inviting no sympathy, so Danni could offer her no condolences.

Saba came to the end of her checklist. “Pilot station ready,” she said.

“Sensor station ready,” Danni responded automatically,
and the other Wild Knights aboard called out their readiness. Danni was not technically a Wild Knight, nor technically a Jedi Knight like the others, but she had flown with them on many occasions now and found that her duty station, when she wasn’t occupied with critical scientific projects, was aboard the Wild Knights’ blastboat.

Saba called in the squadron’s state of readiness and immediately received the unit’s orders. With a hiss, she turned her attention away from the screen before her as if rejecting its presence.

“What is it?” Danni asked. “If you can tell us, I mean.”

“We are to defend, and lose, and quit the field,” Saba said. “To act as a shield. Conservative tacticz. This one is a hunter. This one does not know how to defend or flee.”

“
This
one is a scientist,” Danni said. “This one didn’t used to know how to kill.”

Saba regarded Danni levelly, then returned her attention to the screen. “Danni can return to using human grammar now,” she said.

Twin Suns Squadron, Rogue Squadron, and the Wild Knights blasted off from Borleias’s surface. The fuel it took to reach orbit, though not a substantial portion of the starfighters’ capacity, could well be missed in the later stages of today’s battle, but Luke agreed with Wedge that allowing the Yuuzhan Vong to detect the launch of three preeminent New Republic squadrons from the planet’s surface would reinforce the enemy’s impression that this was a significant site.

As they reached high orbit, their astromechs and onboard computers received detailed orders. Luke reviewed them and nodded. Twin Suns was to stay in geosynchronous orbit above the biotics facility and vape anything
that came at it. Rogue Squadron would set up above Borleias’s moon and make a speed run against any promising target of opportunity. The Wild Knights would move to reinforce the lunar station at Pyria VI. “Twin Suns on station,” he announced. “Rogues, Knights, good hunting.”

“Good hunting.” That was Saba Sebatyne’s voice, made even raspier by the limitations of the comlink. Her starfighters and blastboats peeled off for their run to Pyria VI. Gavin Darklighter responded with a mere click of his own comlink before Rogue Squadron looped away for the short run to Borleias’s moon.

Luke glanced behind him, to port and starboard. To port, Corran Horn waited with a calm he had never enjoyed as an X-wing pilot, a calm he had attained only after becoming a Jedi Knight. But to starboard, where Mara should have been, was Zindra Daine. She was a Corellian pilot, green as grass, barely out of her teens, not a Jedi. Luke winced at the thought of himself and Corran having to cover for a novice. Mara’s absence would be keenly felt today and in subsequent engagements. Though he sympathized with her desire to stay with Ben, to protect him against all possible dangers, he hoped Mara would realize that her desire was irrational, her goal an impossible one—and that her absence from the battlefield might just result in the loss of good people.

Wedge stood before the hologram at the center of the command room. This was an unlovely lozenge-shaped chamber with a curved ceiling two dozen meters below the biotics building. It had once been intended as a blast shelter, but now it was crammed with mobile consoles and their operators.

The chamber’s duracrete walls, not well designed for acoustics, rang with noise, the voices of military officers doing their duties, the beeps and chirps of computers demanding
their operators’ attention, live sound feeds from unit leaders up there in the battle zone. Wedge ignored them and concentrated on the continuously updated tactical holo.

It showed Pyria at one edge, Borleias a little out from it, Pyria VI farther out, and the fringes of the solar system at the far edge. Red blips representing the Yuuzhan Vong invasion force clustered at that edge and streamed toward the other sites.

“The Rogues are on-station,” Tycho said. As chronically unable as Wedge was to run his operations from a seated position, he stood before the console devoted to starfighter coordination. “The starfighters on the target moon are standing by. Vong intrusion there anticipated in two minutes.”

“Have those fighters launch,” Wedge said. “Make it erratic. They can form up in time, but they should look as though they were caught off guard.”

“Done.” Tycho turned back to his screen.

Wedge’s attention flicked across the hologram. Some ships lay dormant, well away from the action, monitoring the situation with their sensors, ready to step in should reinforcements be needed. Frigates, cruisers, and other capital ships were situated above Borleias. Starfighter units maneuvered to head off the Yuuzhan Vong approach.

The main Yuuzhan Vong force stayed coherent, a reserve fleet situated not far from where it had entered Pyrian space. The units moving against the New Republic forces were, Wedge knew, mere probes, sent out to test the strength of the defensive forces. This battle wasn’t about winning or losing; it was about gathering information on enemy capabilities.

“Pyria Six reports contact,” Tycho said.

* * *

Captain Yakown Reth was not a happy man.

It wasn’t enough that, of all the up-and-coming officers in Wedge Antilles’s command, he’d been assigned the unpromising duty of guarding a shuttle load of scientists, engineers, and construction specialists building a subsurface habitat on an airless moon. Yes, he’d been assigned two full squadrons of starfighters to defend the base. But his E-wings were not equipped with proton torpedoes—the brass said that these weapons were in short supply—and Reth wasn’t even authorized to know what the scientific personnel were up to.