Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I (26 page)

“
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.”

Tarc shook his head. “They’re better at everything than I am. Even Syal and Myri.”

Leia exchanged a look with Han. Han cleared his
throat. “Sure, kid, strap into the seat behind mine. And cinch everything down tight.”

The two coralskipper squadrons came laser-straight toward the Twin Suns pilots. As Twin Suns broke again into four shield trios, the coralskippers broke into four units of six, one each to a shield trio.

“Standard procedures,” Jaina said, and angled toward one of the six coralskippers heading her way. She reached out for Kyp within the Force, found him and grabbed him as easily as catching a comrade’s hand, then waited for him to select a target.

He did. They fired together, Jag firing an almost undetectable fraction of a second later. Kyp’s lasers found the target coralskipper’s void; Jaina’s blasted through the bow, Jag’s through the pilot canopy. Then they hurtled past, the remaining five coralskippers turning in pursuit.

As she banked around for another pass, Jaina spared a glance for her sensor board. It showed all the coralskippers still engaged with the starfighters; the six skips on the second shield trio, the one with Piggy in it, had already been reduced to five, and the other two groups were intact. No one was maneuvering against the pipefighter, which was still pouring laser energy in three directions—no, one direction, as the two greater pipes shut down, leaving just the smaller pipe to fire energy at the center of the pipefighters’ long-distance formation.

A stream of plasma cannon projectiles poured past her X-wing, at a distance of fifty meters or so, close by starfighter battle standards but not close enough to worry her. These coralskipper pilots weren’t the best the Yuuzhan Vong had to offer; she could tell by the difficulty they had in maintaining pursuit of her squadron’s starfighters, by the fact that incoming fire was not drifting close enough to be terrifying. Even the comm chatter suggested the
comparative lack of danger the squadrons were facing; the voices of Rogue Squadron and Blackmoon Squadron conveyed tension, but not as much as in more challenging exchanges.

Jaina led her shield trio around in a wide loop that kept them ahead of their pursuers but brought them to within firing range of the skips assaulting Twin Suns Seven through Nine. She gave Kyp a little confirming flicker through the Force; he chose another target and fired. This skip pilot managed to veer away and get his void up behind his narrower profile, intercepting the lasers of both Jaina and Kyp, but Jag’s, at a slightly different angle and fired at a slight delay, sprayed around the void and tore out the skip’s underbelly. The coralskipper veered away, barely under control, and began a long loop away from the combat zone.

“This is a trap.” It was Piggy’s voice, and Jaina saw that the message was being routed directly to her through her astromech; none of the other pilots would be hearing it. “I recommend we return to base.”

Jaina frowned. The five skips pursuing her shield trio were now in a wedge formation, the boldest of them well out ahead of the others. “Explain that, Piggy.”

She reached out to Kyp, feeling for a moment his hand on his X-wing’s yoke. She handled both her controls and his, simultaneously, identically, and both X-wings decelerated and gained altitude relative to their pursuers. Jag, left out of their Force link, leapt ahead.

Jaina gave Kyp the cue. He targeted the lead skip and fired just as she did. Jag, in his more maneuverable clawcraft, inverted in a maneuver tight enough to send an X-wing out of control and fired at the lead skip’s bow. The skip’s dovin basal brought its void up to capture Jag’s lasers, but Jaina’s and Kyp’s fire shredded it, sending glowing yorik coral chunks in all directions.

Jaina and Kyp kept up their fire, concentrating on the port side of the coralskipper formation. Jag drifted to his starboard, flashing by those same two targets as he fired, his shots intercepted by voids but keeping those spots of darkness from swallowing the X-wings’ fire. In moments, those two skips, though not destroyed, were charred by laserfire and venting atmosphere. Jag looped around and came up behind Jaina and Kyp as they dropped into position behind the coralskipper formation.

Meanwhile, Piggy was talking. Talking and talking. “Listen to the comm chatter. We’ve been attacked by forces sophisticated enough to time simultaneous assaults on the other three squads, but they didn’t jump us until the other three were fully engaged. This is a ploy designed to make sure we’re pinned in place and happily hunting easy kills, while they set something up.”