Star by Star (47 page)

“An old Rogue,” the familiar voice of Wedge Antilles said.

“And an old Rebel.”

Though this voice was also familiar, Luke did not recognize it until R2-D2 ran a scan analysis and identified it as that of General Garm Bel Iblis. Luke switched his tactical display to local space and saw a pair of unfamiliar Star Destroyers—the transponder identified them as the
Mon Mothma
and the
Elegos A ’Kla
—moving into position behind his fleet. Accompanied by a cruiser and two frigates each, both ships were bleeding squadrons of XJ3 X-wings and Series 4 E-wings into space.

“Gentlemen, welcome!” Luke commed. “But if you don’t mind my asking—”

“We just happened by on a shakedown cruise,” Bel Iblis said, cutting him off.

“So close to Talfaglio?” This from Mara, whose years in Palpatine’s service had given her a deep distrust of unanticipated gifts. “I don’t think so.”

“An old employer of yours recommended the route,” Wedge said. He was referring to the infamous Talon Karrde, onetime smuggling king/information broker and sometime intelligence agent. No one ever knew exactly what Talon Karrde was up to. “He seemed to think we would have a chance to test some new weapons.”

“That you might.” Luke did not bother to ask how Karrde had learned the timing and location of their operation; Karrde always protected his sources. “Control will fill you in on the plan.”

“Karrde already has,” Bel Iblis said. “We thought we’d let you punch through ahead, then take cross-fire positions to either side of the escape corridor. We’d assume lead, but we’re not sure how well this new stuff is going to work.”

“And this is a Jedi operation,” Luke finished, reading between the lines. Someone wanted to improve their image on the news-vids. “Thanks.”

“We’d be willing to detach a squadron to support the Wild Knights on their mission—say Rogue?” Wedge offered. “We want to keep them off the ’Net anyway.”

Though Luke’s bond with his sister, Leia, was not as strong as the one with Mara, it was more than potent enough for him to sense her suspicion. The whole thing was beginning to stink of Borsk Fey’lya’s influence, which automatically raised the question of what the chief wanted in return—and of who else he might have told about their plans. A simple battle was beginning to look very complicated, but Wedge’s offer was too generous to refuse.

“Hisser, what do you think?” Luke asked. “Still want to try for that yammosk?”

“By all meanz,” Saba replied. “It would be an honor to hunt with Colonel Darklighter.”

“You two work out the details,” Luke said. “Everyone else, double-check your jump coordinates, and blast anything that looks like a rock. On your mark, Control.”

“Broadcasting escape route coordinates to Talfaglio now,” Corran said. “Dozen squadron, jump on my mark. Three, two, mark.”

Kyp’s Dozen shot forward in a flash of blue efflux, then vanished into hyperspace. Luke switched his tactical screen back to Talfaglio local and watched as, a minute later, the squadron appeared insystem and streaked toward the yellow shell of Yuuzhan Vong blips trapping the refugee fleet in orbit.

At the far edge of the system, the enemy assault fleet began spreading into attack formation and accelerated, no doubt preparing to make a hyperspace microjump toward the planet. The
Talfaglion gravity well would prevent them from jumping directly into battle, but Luke knew Corran would need to time their own fleet’s arrival carefully.

As the Dozen drew near the blockade, Kyp pulled his squadron in tight and angled for the light cruiser. Half a dozen corvette analogs left their blockade posts to defend the larger ship, and long tongues of plasma began to arc out from the cruiser itself. The Dozen merged into a single blip and continued forward, jinking and juking as one, the pilots weaving in front of each other to keep a fresh pair of shields always facing the enemy.

Kyp’s squadron began to pour blue lines of laserfire into the light cruiser. More enemy corvettes accelerated toward the Dozen, abandoning their blockade stations. So far, so good; the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to think this was another rogue operation, a desperate attempt to save the doomed refugees.

A pair of proton torpedoes flashed away from the Dozen and vanished, swallowed by the cruiser’s shielding system. There followed another exchange of laser bolts and plasma balls, then an unexpected spray of static as a Jedi shadow bomb exploded. Basically a variation on the tactic Kyp used to slip his proton torpedoes past enemy shielding crews, shadow bombs were proton torpedoes drained of propellant and packed with baradium instead. They were armed with standard proximity fuses and guided to their targets using the Force. The weapons were far more powerful than a standard torpedo, difficult to detect in the heat of battle, and just one of the new tricks in the Jedi arsenal.

Kyp’s squadron finished off the cruiser with a pair of standard proton torpedoes, then raced through the debris and swung around as though preparing the escape route. A steady flow of refugee vessels began to leave orbit and stream toward the flight corridor. It did not take long for the blockade to collapse inward as Yuuzhan Vong picket ships rushed to respond.

“Control, time to swing the hammer,” Luke commed.

“Concur, Farmboy.” Corran actually sounded as though he were cringing when he spoke the call sign. “New Republic task force, Shockers, and Sabers jump to preassigned coordinates on my mark.”

The Saber squadron was Luke’s personal squadron. It consisted of himself, Mara, seven non-Jedi veterans, and half a dozen newly trained Jedi pilots. Their assignment was to fly cover while the more experienced Shockers drove off the assault fleet.

“Three, two, mark.”

Luke jammed his accelerator forward and watched the stars stretch into lines.

“Be careful, kid,” Han commed. “We just finished raising three Jedi. We don’t need you sticking us with another one.”

“Han! That’s—”

Talfaglio’s orange point vanished into the colorless blur of hyperspace, and Leia’s rebuke was lost to the jump blackout. Luke was aware of Mara beside him, calmly running through last-minute systems checks to keep her circuits warm and her attention focused on the coming battle. There had been no need to discuss the wisdom of flying into combat together. They were a team in a way that even Han and Leia could never understand, and they had seen many times before that each was far more likely to survive with the other present.

The blur of hyperspace dissolved into starlines, and Talfaglio appeared outside Luke’s canopy, a small orangish crescent hanging alongside the brilliant disk of the system’s crimson sun. Though the flotilla had jumped as close as they dared to the gravity well, the battle remained a tiny web of laser bolts and plasma trails hanging in the darkness between them and the planet. The enemy assault fleet was not yet visible to the naked eye, but Luke found it quickly enough on his tactical display. It had already made its microjump and was now on the other side of the blockade, directly opposite the Jedi flotilla, vectoring toward the escape corridor.

Rigard Matl led his Shockers toward the blockade at near-light, a favorite assault tactic that had earned the squadron its name. The Sabers shed just enough velocity to assume their cover position. The tactical display showed the New Republic Star Destroyers decelerating alongside the escape corridor in staggered positions, each retaining an escort of a single frigate and two squadrons of short-range starfighters. The rest of their flotilla streaked toward Talfaglio behind the Sabers.

In Luke’s canopy, the battle swelled quickly from a tiny web into a moon-sized snarl of plasma trails and laser flashes. The blockade ships were still constricting around Kyp’s Dozen, pouring fire in on the squadron from every direction. The Dozen bounced back and forth inside the sphere, sharing shields and reserving their laserfire for grutchins and magma missiles. There were only nine X-wings visible, but when Luke stretched out with the Force, he felt all three missing pilots scattered throughout the battle area, alone and frightened and no doubt in EV suits. He had R2-D2 send a message to the recovery team and tried not to think about what would happen if they were struck by a stray plasma ball or efflux tail.

The nearest blockade ships peeled off to meet the Shockers, who launched a flurry of proton torpedoes and continued forward. The weapons reached their targets almost the instant they were launched. A pair of corvettes broke apart when their shielding crews missed incoming torpedoes; eight more began to vent bodies and atmosphere when the proximity fuses detonated close to their hulls. Then the Shockers were through, streaking past Kyp’s Dozen toward the opposite side of the collapsing blockade.

Luke led his squadron into the hole behind the Shockers. They did not waste energy expanding their inertial compensators—the corvettes’ dovin basals were more than strong enough to rip their shields. When a pair of corvettes rushed to block their way, Luke dropped a shadow bomb—they were flying too fast to lock their S-foils into firing position—and used the Force to hurl it into the second vessel. There was no need to assign the first to Mara; he
knew
she would take it with the same tactic. An instant later, simultaneous proton detonations broke the spines of both ships.

Wow
! Mara sent.

A corvette’s dovin basal caught Luke’s shields. Warning alarms filled the cockpit. Mara slid her fighter over his to protect him for the instant it took R2-D2 to activate the backup charge. The third member of their shielding trio, the young Tam Azur-Jamin, blasted the attacker with his own shadow bomb.

“Thanks, Quiet,” Luke commed.

Tam clicked his transmitter—a garrulous reply for the reticent Jedi—and then they were crossing the kill zone where Kyp had been “trapped.” Dozens of refugee ships were already lumbering up from Talfaglio, in their haste to escape willing to brave even the heart of the fighting. Still moving at a substantial percentage of lightspeed, the Sabers flashed past a trio of Dozen X-wings.

Kyp Durron’s excited voice came over the tactical net. “Right behind you, Farmboy!”

“Neg that, Headhunter,” Luke ordered. If Kyp realized he had three pilots EV, there was no trace of it in his tone. “You’re already down three. Stay here and cover refugees.”

“Cover? But we’re the most experienced—”

“Headhunter,” Luke said in a stern voice. “You have your orders.”

There was a moment of silence, then, “Copy.”

Kyp’s resentment lingered in the Force like the aftersmell of a bad blaster burn. Luke was troubled by the continued lack of compassion. If Kyp was ever going to—

Skywalker
! Mara’s thought was a shout inside Luke’s head.
The battle
?

Sorry
.

Something inside Luke suggested dropping three shadow bombs. He did. He had given himself over to the Force completely, and the battle seemed to drop into slow motion. A trio of black-faceted corvettes drifted in from different angles, filling space with magma missiles and grutchins. Luke continued to fly straight and sensed a question rising in the back of Mara’s mind—then felt it change to approval when he reached out with the Force and nudged the nearest magma missile into a grutchin.

Luke perceived a sudden need for forward protection and ordered R2-D2 to shift all shielding power to the front. A tiny red speck blossomed from the nose nodule of the closest corvette and, at the squadron’s closing speed, flowered almost instantly into a plasma ball. Finding his view blocked, Luke closed his eyes and reached out to the rest of his squadron, using their perceptions to guide his shadow bombs home. He saw the blinding flash of his detonating weapons through their eyes, then felt his
X-wing buck as the enemy plasma ball erupted against his forward shields.

There came a surge of trepidation from the Mara-place in the center of his heart—followed almost instantly by a sharp sense of reproach.

Next time jink
!

R2-D2 whistled a warning and shut down the overloaded shield generator to begin an emergency cool-off. Luke eased between Mara and Tam, more for his wife’s peace of mind than his own. The way he was feeling today, he could have continued without shields. They passed through a field of drifting corvette hulks—Luke was not the only one in his squadron to claim a picket ship—and were through the blockade, following the Shockers past Talfaglio.

The enemy assault fleet moved its frigates forward to form a defensive screen, but continued to withhold its coralskippers, determined to reach the escape corridor before stopping to do battle. With eight New Republic starfighter squadrons, two cruisers, and a pair of frigates close behind him, Luke carried the battle to the enemy and called for long-range fire support.

The New Republic cruisers and frigates laced the darkness with turbolaser flashes. The enemy answered with plasma balls and magma missiles. The Jedi squadrons continued forward, relying on flying ability, danger sense, and shield weaving to twine their way through the fiery mesh. A pair of Shockers turned back when they were damaged by near-hits. One of Luke’s pilots lost an S-foil to a grutchin and went EV. The Shockers punched through the frigate screen.

Rigard Matl’s X-wing vanished in a ball of fire.

The Shockers’ formation disintegrated into a confused swarm of ion trails as the dazed pilots contemplated the loss of their veteran leader. Luke extended himself into the heart of the fireball and experienced a moment of unbearable prickling—then a strange sense of calm familiarity. He focused on the calmness just long enough to confirm that it was what he thought: Rigard had survived the hit and gone EV.

Before Luke could pass on the good news, Rigard’s static-laden voice crackled over the emergency channel.

“Tighten up, Shockers!” He sounded pained but confident. “You’re embarrassing …”

His voice trailed off into sizzle as the assault passed beyond the limited range of his suit’s comm unit, but the chastened Shockers formed themselves into three shield trios and continued forward. The Force was truly with them today; so far, the Jedi had lost no one.

The heart of the Yuuzhan Vong assault fleet lay before them now, half a dozen yorik coral pebbles gleaming in the light of Talfaglio’s crimson sun. The skip carrier and one of the cruisers were slipping behind the warship analog, while the other three cruisers moved out front and began to deploy skip squadrons. Luke had R2-D2 send the coordinates of the shy cruiser to the Star Destroyers for a subspace relay back to Saba, then opened a channel to both the Sabers and Shockers.