Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I Page 11

  Han armed the Falcon’s concussion missile launcher and fired at the foremost coralskipper. At this distance, he could fire again at the second and once more at the rearmost before the first missile hit.

  Then it did, an explosion that should have shattered the skip into flinders of yorik coral but was instead sucked into the void projected by the vehicle’s dovin basal.

  But Alema Rar’s shot with the turret laser flashed past the void and sheared through the skip’s coral armor. The coralskipper exploded as its internal mechanisms were superheated, their fluids converted instantly to steam and gas.

  The second missile detonated, with the same result, and Alema’s second shot punched through the amber-colored canopy. The canopy blew out as though the pilot were about to eject, but Han knew the skips didn’t have ejection seats. There was no pilot left behind, just a blackened crater where his body and seat had been.

  The third skip pilot, fast on the reflexes, turned and dived away from the Falcon, presenting a narrower profile to aim at, maneuvering to be below the top turret’s angle of fire. The concussion missile’s explosion flooded into the void at the skip’s rear … and then Ganner’s laser shot penetrated the skip’s lower hull, shearing through the vehicle, emerging through the top hull amidships. Amazingly still flyable, the skip accelerated away, trailing cloudy debris that had to be body fluids flash-frozen by exposure to vacuum.

  “The Rogues?” Han asked. He felt out of breath.

  “Reaching Lusankya,” Leia said. “We have a friendly ahead.” Indeed, there was another Imperial Star Destroyer in their path, an older model than Mon Mothma; it was maneuvering around from an outbound course to turn toward Lusankya.

  “What say we tuck into her launching bay and rest for a minute?”

  She smiled. “You’re the captain.”

  “I notice you never say that to me when you disagree with something I’ve said.”

  As they neared the Star Destroyer, Leia let out a little noise of surprise. “Han, she’s the Rebel Dream.”

  Han looked, startled, at the ship before them. Rebel Dream had once been Leia’s flagship—not her command, since naval officers always captained her, but a vessel at her beck and call, chosen to lend credence to her importance as she conducted negotiations between the New Republic and unaligned planetary systems. The Millennium Falcon had rested for some months in one of Rebel Dream’s cargo holds while Han had led a military campaign against a rogue warlord.

  Leia’s expression was open, thoughtful, and years seemed to drop away from her as she revisited those long-ago times. “What do you think, Han? She looks like she’s in wonderful condition.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  Leia glanced over and realized that her husband wasn’t looking at the ship. She flushed but looked amused. “Han. Get your mind back on work.”

  “Sorry. Getting old. Easily distracted.” Han kept his exultation, his victory from his face. For one moment, he’d distracted Leia from the ache that had consumed her since Anakin and Jacen were lost. Maybe if he could do it again from time to time, the poison of that ache would not claim Leia, would not take her from him too. “Sure. Old. Of course.”

  “Lusankya has her escort,” Tycho said. “And with them keeping the Yuuzhan Vong fighters and frigate analogs at bay, she’s ripping a seam right through their fleet.”

  Wedge nodded. The hologram bore out Tycho’s statement.

  No new friendlies had appeared in Mon Mothma’s vicinity for a couple of minutes; she’d finished with her interdiction field generators. “Order Mon Mothma to bring up the rear of our force there, and tell her to tuck in close. The Vong will fall on any stragglers; they don’t need a yammosk to tell them to do that.”

  The hologram showed the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, which had grown large and diffuse, gradually contracting as it moved against the group centered on Lusankya. But without yammosk coordination, the Yuuzhan Vong were unable to mount any sophisticated tactics or manage any real concentration of fire on the New Republic’s capital ships. As Wedge watched, the Yuuzhan Vong numbers began to thin. Wedge felt a professional impatience with the enemy commander, or whoever had taken charge of their fleet after their designated commander had died; if he didn’t acknowledge defeat and order a retreat, he stood a good chance of losing his fleet.

  Then it came. First a matalok-class cruiser analog peeled away from the engagement, then a frigate analog and two or three coralskipper squadrons, and suddenly the battle was essentially done, all the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships outward bound, only a few coralskipper-on-starfighter duels continuing as some Yuuzhan Vong pilots chose a futile but honorable death over retreat.

  “Issue the order,” Wedge said. “Set up for the fleet’s return.” He offered Tycho a bitter little smile. “We also need to celebrate our victory.”

  Tycho looked at him, expressionless. “I’m giddy already,” he said.

  Han Solo marched down the Falcon’s ramp, one arm around Leia’s waist and the other raised in a wave as he acknowledged the cheers of pilots and crew in Borleias’s main docking bay. “Why are they so happy? I mean, I’m happy, but they’re acting like I won this one single-handed.”

  Leia gave him a little smile, the best she’d been able to manage since—Han turned his thoughts away from the memory. She said, “You dropped into the middle of a Yuuzhan Vong fleet and came out without a scratch. The famous Han Solo. You’ve just reminded them that they can win.”

  “Ah.”

  “Besides, you win every one of your fights single-handed. Just ask your admirers. I’ll find you a historian who knows how to appreciate a bribe, and tomorrow you’ll be the man who told Lusankya to drop out of hyperspace where she did, the man who blew up the enemy flagship with his blaster pistol.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Ahead of them, the Falcon’s passengers moved through the crowd, led by one of Wedge Antilles’s officers. Many of them were Jedi, but not all of them had ever been the object of a rambunctious crowd’s attention before.

  Ganner, the dark-haired and all-too-handsome Jedi Knight, was first of them. He waved at the crowd with all of Han’s poise but none of Han’s self-aware irony, and the smile he turned on some of the ladies in the crowd was nothing if not brilliant. Beside him was Alema Rar, the blue-skinned Twi’lek Jedi; a proficient organizer of rebellion and espionage, she had spent long periods disguised as a dancer, and she demonstrated a dancer’s ease and poise now as she smiled at the crowd. Next were Zekk, the former street urchin who had trained as a Dark Jedi before joining Luke’s academy on Yavin 4, and Tesar Sebatyne, male Barabel offspring of Saba.

  Last but for Han and Leia were Tahiri Veila and Tarc, two worries for the Solos. Han shook his head. No, they weren’t worries; they were genuine heartaches.

  Tahiri, a slender blond Jedi student, had been one of Anakin Solo’s closest friends. In recent months and weeks, they’d been closer than friends, had been on the verge of becoming something more. It had been Anakin who had rescued her from Yuuzhan Vong captivity; Anakin who had helped her overcome the brainwashing that nearly convinced her that she herself was one of the Yuuzhan Vong.

  And then Anakin had died. Han could no longer maneuver his thoughts away from the memory. He felt something grip his heart and squeeze; the pain almost caused him to stumble. He spared a glance for Leia; she was looking at Tahiri, too, and the bleakness Han felt was reflected in her eyes.

  Though dressed in Jedi robes, Tahiri was characteristically barefoot. There was little strength or pride in her posture now; Anakin’s death had hit her hard, possibly as hard as it had hit his parents. She was silent; once upon a time, there would have been no way, short of an order from Luke Skywalker, to shut her up.

  Tahiri had one arm around Tarc, guiding him, lending him reassurance. Tarc was twelve, a boy of Coruscant chosen as part of Viqi Shesh’s kidnapping plot against Ben Skywalker. Viqi had chosen him as a distraction because of his extraordinary resemblance to the Anakin of a few years be
fore, a resemblance so distressingly close that Han felt his stomach lurch each time he saw the boy’s perpetually mussed brown hair, icy blue eyes, and open expression.

  It hurt merely to see the boy, but it would be cruel and wrong to abandon him, to reject him. It was a problem Han couldn’t solve with a blaster or fancy flying.

  Han glimpsed a head of blond hair bobbing up and down as its owner pushed through the crowd. “Incoming flier,” he said.

  And then Luke Skywalker was on them, embracing both Han and Leia, his grin youthful and infectious. “You picked a good time to visit,” Luke said.

  “Your sister’s fault,” Han said. “We broadcast on the HoloNet to find out if you were still on Borleias. We got both confirmation and an invitation to accompany Lusankya. ‘Let’s go with Lusankya,’ she said. ‘More safety for our passengers’ ”

  Leia gave him a cool look. “You really need to enjoy these rare occasions when you’re right.” Then she caught sight of something and her expression brightened again. “Mara!” She pulled free to embrace her late-arriving sister-in-law.

  “Listen,” Luke said. “Wedge is getting quarters set up for you. You have time to clean up a little. But we all need to talk to you.”

  Han gave him a curious look. “Who’s ‘we all’?”

  “The Insiders.”

  In as few words as they could afford, Han and Leia told the story of their time in the Hapes Cluster after the departure of Luke and Mara—of Jaina’s terrifying drift toward the dark side of the Force and Kyp Durron’s unexpected help on her behalf, of the skirmish that had left Han with a skull fracture from which he had barely recovered, of Ta’a Chume’s attempts to displace daughter-in-law Teneniel Djo and persuade Jaina Solo to wed Teneniel’s husband, Isolder. “The situation there isn’t resolved,” Leia said. “But Han and I couldn’t make it any better. We have to trust Jaina to make the right choices.”

  They were in the biotics building’s mess hall rather than the Insiders’ usual conference room. With Han and Leia were Wedge, Iella, Luke, Mara, and Lando, a comfortable group of intimates. They seemed pleased to see Han and Leia, but otherwise somewhat tense and distracted.

  “You’re not acting like someone who’s won a substantial military victory, Wedge,” Leia said.

  Wedge made a glum face. “It’s the sort of victory that can cost us the war. We were hoping to get a Yuuzhan Vong commander of average skills, with an average fleet, and I suspect that we did. We were going to string him along for as much time as we could, but circumstances today dictated that we wipe him out right away. The next one they send is going to be much tougher, and that’s going to make things more difficult for all of us. But you two have come at a good time. We need your skills.”

  “Leia’s skills, you mean,” Han said. “Without her, I don’t think there’s any way the New Republic can hold together.”

  “Both your skills,” Wedge said. “Because the New Republic is dead. An oversized hulk with a decentralized nervous system; the extremities don’t realize that the heart isn’t beating anymore.”

  Leia and Han exchanged a glance. “Let’s hear it,” Leia said.

  EIGHT

  Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

  Maal Lah paused outside the barrier leading into the tracer spineray chamber. He glanced at the guard who had conducted him here as though to ask, Are you certain he is here? But the guard avoided eye contact, whether because he dared not look into the eyes of a superior or because he knew what fate waited beyond the barrier, Maal Lah could not say.

  As Maal Lah advanced, the barrier retracted, a fishlike mouth that parted before him, and he stepped into the chamber.

  It was a place of knowledge and of training. The tracer spineray was close kin to the provoker spineray that was capable of tracing neural pathways as its subjects thought about certain topics … and then directing pain into those pathways to prevent the subject from reexamining those thoughts. The tracer, too, traced neural paths, but had only related functions: to determine how efficiently signals were transmitted along those pathways, and to issue pain to receptors with micromillimeter precision, allowing the subject to gauge the degree to which tissues remained injured or imbalanced once healing seemed complete.

  The chamber was poorly lit, bioluminescent glows reflecting from red and black coral walls suggesting thick deposits of half-dried blood. It featured one central table with a gray oval top, the carefully engineered terminus of the tracer spineray, tilted so that one end nearly touched the floor. A male of the shaper caste stood beside the table; Tsavong Lah lay atop it, his feet toward the ground. He was fully clothed, but his left arm lay bare against the leatherlike surface of the table, and Maal Lah knew that the warmaster’s visit was purely medical; the tracer spineray had to be evaluating the condition of the radank claw grafted onto his arm. It looked no worse than the last time Maal Lah had seen it, but no better. Perhaps the warmaster wished him to see that it had not deteriorated, so that he might inform others, head off speculation about Tsavong Lah’s possible rejection of the graft.

  Tsavong Lah glanced at him without moving his head and beckoned. The shaper moved to the side so that they might speak privately, but Maal Lah could feel that one’s eyes on him.

  “I require your insight, my servant,” Tsavong Lah said. “An interpretation of events.”

  Maal Lah nodded, not speaking. He preferred not to speak much before his warmaster. Those who did inevitably said too much and earned Tsavong Lah’s ire; Nom Anor was constantly on the receiving end of that displeasure.

  “I dispatched Wyrpuuk Cha’s fleet to Borleias to retrieve it from the infidels. We had assumed that the garrison there was simply intent on dying well.

  “It was, however, a trap. The infidels demonstrated unusual precision, daring, and savagery in a brilliantly conceived and executed plan. They dropped their largest spacecraft, one that we did not know was part of the fleet there, into the heart of Wyrpuuk Cha’s formation and used it to destroy both yammosks. That spacecraft became a lure for our fleet’s other ships, which descended upon it, allowing enemy reinforcing vessels to arrive almost unnoticed and fall upon them from all sides.” The warmaster was silent for a long moment. “That fleet is all but destroyed. The designated successor to Wyrpuuk Cha’s command leads many of the survivors back to us now. A pilot of Domain Kraal has commandeered some of the survivors to bolster his efforts to harass the infidels. Of course, those survivors disobeyed a direct order from the designated successor when they chose to remain with him.

  “I have settled on a plan of action,” the warmaster concluded. “But I welcome your thoughts.”

  Maal Lah remained silent for long moments. It would not do to offer half-considered ideas, and Tsavong Lah neither disparaged nor was made uncomfortable by long silences.

  Finally he said, “If the ambush was as precisely conducted as you describe, it was unquestionably the work of their greatest tactician, Garm bel Iblis.”

  “No. Bel Iblis appears to be in command of an entire fleet group, elsewhere. The vessels in Pyria system seem to belong to the command of Wedge Antilles.”

  Maal Lah fell silent again as he recalculated. “I will need to evaluate the reports of the survivors. But it seems inevitable that bel Iblis planned that ambush. Meaning that he is working very closely with Antilles. Meaning that there is great importance to that site. Before we destroy it, we must learn what that importance is. And then we must destroy it so savagely that every infidel who once smiled at the success of that ambush will flinch in dread.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means, in turn, that you must personally lead the conquest of Borleias.”

  Tsavong Lah shook his head. “I cannot. It will be too great a demand on attentions needed elsewhere. But you are correct. It does need a warmaster’s touch.”

  Maal Lah frowned, not understanding, then he straightened as the significance of Tsavong Lah’s words hit him. “He will not do it.”

  “He
will.”

  “I think he is the finest possible choice. If he can be persuaded to go.”

  Tsavong Lah nodded. “Prepare a ship to take me to Domain Lah.”

  “It shall be done.” Maal Lah took the warmaster’s tone as a dismissal and turned away.

  Old scars on his back began to itch, scars dealt by the one whose services Tsavong Lah was about to employ.

  When Maal Lah was gone, the warmaster gestured for the shaper to resume his duties, and said, “What do you conclude?”

  Master Shaper Ghithra Dal took a moment to compose his answer before offering it. “There is no sign of change. The tissue where the radank claw joins your original flesh continues to decay, continues to heal.”

  “There is no sign of rejection with my other implants?”

  “None.”

  “What does that mean to you?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Where your shaper’s knowledge fails you, you still have instincts, opinions. I want them. Do not fear my anger on this point. I can distinguish between fact and opinion.”

  “Were I to offer an opinion, Warmaster, it would be that the true cause of this malady does not lie with the shapers’ science … but with the will of the gods.”

  Tsavong Lah felt a little thrill as another piece of reality clicked into place in the pattern Viqi Shesh had suggested. “Which gods?” he asked.

  Ghithra Dal cocked his head, his gesture suggesting that he was not sure. “Any god could manifest anger this way. But in my experience the one most likely to do so is Yun-Yuuzhan. Still, if I might dare to suggest a course of inquiry for you to take …”

  “Show me no fear, Ghithra Dal, and make your suggestion.”

  “I would recommend that you speak to the priests of all the myriad gods and ask them which among the great beings might be angry with you. It is a question for priests, not shapers.”