Rebel Stand Page 31

  Flight's path. Jaina gauged Beelyath's and Tilath's firing patterns, timed them,

  felt Kyp doing the same.. and, as the enemy skips crossed before them, as

  Beelyath and Tilath sent stutterfire laser against the sterns of the skips one

  last time, Kyp, Jaina, and Jag fired from the skips' port quarter, their quad-

  linked lasers hitting yorik coral instead of voids. Both skips detonated,

  sending a cloud of gases and yorik coral chunks hurtling along their course.

  But now the wingmate of the first skip they'd hit was behind them, closing,

  firing. Jaina didn't listen to the good-shooting congratulations coming across

  the comm board; she followed Kyp as he made a tight loop up and to starboard,

  trying to elude their pursuit.

  Jag looped tighter, forcing the pursuer to divide his attention between his

  clawcraft and the two X-wings, and managed to come around behind the

  coralskipper even as it managed to maintain its position behind the X-wings. He

  poured laserfire into its stern and top hull, but all of it was dragged into the

  skip's defensive voids.

  Jaina felt a sort of mental shrug from Kyp. "Break," she said, aloud and

  through the Force but not over the comm frequencies, and she broke to port as

  Kyp broke to starboard.

  She gritted her teeth against the g-forces her tight turn exerted on her,

  but got oriented around toward that skip - just in time to see an X-wing flash

  over and past it at a right angle to its course, in time to see plasma

  projectiles tracking that X-wing strike the coralskipper instead. They chewed

  through its hull and the skip suddenly turned away, no longer anxious to fight.

  Piggy's distinctive, mechanical laugh sounded over the comm board. Jaina

  grinned. "Nice fleeing, Piggy."

  Wedge's X-wing reached low Borleias orbit as the Am-muud Swooper lumbered

  along behind. He tried to remind himself that the Corellian freighter "lumbered"

  only in comparison with a starfighter, of course; the freighter was nearly as

  fast and nimble as the Millennium Falcon.

  He dropped back to give his personal comlink a better chance to reach the

  ship. "Blackmoon Eleven to Swooper, do you have an exit path?"

  "We do, Eleven. Can you receive it?"

  "I've been patching my comlink and datapad into what's left of the computer

  on this battered baby. Just transmit me the directional and I'll escort you out.

  "

  "Will do, Eleven. Many thanks."

  Wedge waited until the numbers appeared on his data-pad screen, then

  reoriented to Ammuud Swooper's outbound course. He could only estimate, based on

  what he remembered of Borleias's current position in orbit around the star

  Pyria, but he believed that the course would take Ammuud Swooper in the general

  direction of the Deep Core worlds. Doubtless the freighter would only take a

  short hyperspace jump, a few light-years, and then correct to take them toward

  the rendezvous point.

  The starfighter's sensor board beeped with a new contact. Wedge took in the

  new information and bit back a curse. A squadron of coralskippers was headed

  their way, and would intercept Wedge and the freighter long before they were

  clear of Borleias's mass shadow.

  Charat Kraal poured plasma cannon fire into his opponent, saw some of it

  flitting around the edges of his target's void and chewing into its hull.

  As he'd suspected, the only kind of pilot foolish enough to disobey orders

  like that, to seek personal glory at the expense of duty, was a green pilot, one

  fresh from teaching. He might have gloriously fast reflexes, but he didn't have

  the experience or will to defeat someone like Charat Kraal.

  His target waggled side to side, signaling that he was quitting an

  exercise, the only way he had to communicate that he was surrending. He brought

  his voids around from his stern to his bow> symbolically baring his stomach,

  further sign that he was giving up this fight.

  Charat Kraal fired again, pouring damage into his target's stern, and, as

  he gained altitude relative to the other coralskipper, into its canopy. He saw

  the canopy crack and then explode outward from the atmospheric pressure within,

  saw one of his plasma projectiles hit and burn entirely through the torso of the

  pilot. That coral-skipper continued in straight-line flight, a flight that might

  never end.

  "Disobedience is death," Charat Kraal said aloud, as though the spirit of

  his enemy might hear him. "Unless you win. And you cannot win by surrendering."

  He looped back around toward the portion of the minefield where his pilots and

  Jaina Solo were.

  And he frowned. The cognition hood showed him the locations of all those

  fighters, but there were four fewer coralskipper glows than there should have

  been, even counting the pilot he'd just killed.

  Jaina Solo was whittling down the numbers of her pursuers. Charat Kraal

  shook his head and accelerated toward the action.

  Luke's X-wing blasted through a cloud of flame and vapor spilling out of a

  dying hlasthoat analog. He tensed against the impacts that would come if there

  was solid niatter in the cloud, but emerged on the far side without hitting

  anything. He fired the instant he was free of the cloud, his quad-linked lasers

  barely missing Mara's oncoming E-wing and ripping into the nose of the coral-

  skipper chasing her. His shot missed the dovin basal housing at the bow but tore

  into the yorik coral beneath it before a void moved into place to intercept the

  rest of the damage.

  The coralskipper, its pilot doubtless spooked by Luke's magical arrival

  from within a cloud of flames, banked away from Mara, breaking off pursuit. Luke

  looped around to roar up in his wife's wake. "Oh, there you are."

  Her voice, across the comm board, sounded amused. "Afraid I was running out

  on you?"

  "You know what a jealous, possessive man I am."

  "Starfighter Command to Blackmoon Squadron, Yellow Aces." The voice was

  Tycho's. "We're seeing increased defense at the worldship. Break off stern

  defense and move up to escort. We also need our spotter in place."

  "Blackmoon Leader copies." Luke checked his sensor and comm boards. The

  Blackmoons were in pretty bad shape, down to about half strength, though most of

  his losses were from damage to and withdrawal of starfighters rather than their

  destruction. He also read that the mysterious Blackmoon Eleven was off Borleias

  and engaged with what looked like an entire squad of coralskippers.

  He couldn't let that be his problem right now. "I'm your spotter," he said.

  "Two, assume control of the squadron."

  Mara said, "Negative on that. I'm your wing."

  He sighed, but knew better than to waste time by arguing. "Correction,

  Blackmoon Ten, take command."

  "Ten copies."

  "Leader's away." Luke kicked in his thrusters and roared straight toward

  the Yuuzhan Vong worldship, away from his reinforcements, away from everyone but

  Mara.

  Charat Kraal sped along in Jaina Solo's wake, leaving his other pilots

  behind through sheer piloting skill. Kilometer by kilometer he gained on her and

  knew, at last, that he was a better pilot than this infidel.

  All
he had to do was get in range, disable her abomination-craft, and wait

  for a capture ship to assist him.

  The tiny gleam he could only see in his cognition hood, the one that

  indicated Jaina Solo's position, grew to a size indicating that he should be

  able to make out some details of the X-wing. But he could not; he could only see

  thruster emission from one engine. Yet it could not be moving so fast with

  three-quarters of its power gone.

  His coralskipper's gravitic sensors created the illusion that space itself

  was rippling in the distance ahead of Jaina Solo, the visual image of a dovin

  basal mine. She seemed to be aimed almost directly at it.

  Charat Kraal smiled. Her intention was clear-take a close pass by the mine,

  using its gravitational attraction to sling her around and accelerate her beyond

  Charat Kraal's ability to overtake.

  But it would not work that way. The mine would detect her specific

  graviational signature, recognize her as a most-wanted target, and reach out to

  strip her shields, perhaps annihilating her engines in the process.

  He had her. He had won.

  Her vehicle whipped around the dovin basal mine and came straight back at

  him. The turn was so abrupt that no living thing could have survived it, so

  unexpected that Charat Kraal sat stunned for a long, deadly moment.

  His surprise communicated itself to the coralskipper, which waited for

  instructions-dodge? Defend with voids? Open fire?

  And when Charat Kraal finally saw his target, made it out for what it was-a

  missile, unarmed, faster than any starfighter or coralskipper when it chose to

  be-he was only two-tenths of a second from impact.

  Harrar's pilot turned to the priest. "Jaina Solo is destroyed. It appears

  that Charat Kraal rammed her."

  Harrar shook his head. "You must be mistaken."

  "I think not. I witnessed the two images merge. There was energy released.

  Both images are gone." The pilot pulled his cognition hood back on... and then

  stiffened.

  "Well?"

  "You... were correct. Jaina Solo is not where I thought she was. Not in the

  minefield at all. She is in the vicinity of the worldship."

  "And Charat Kraal?"

  "Still dead."

  Eldo Davip sat alone at the control console of Lusankya, sweat dripping

  from his face despite the efforts of the chamber's cooling system to keep him

  comfortable.

  He wasn't on the Super Star Destroyer's bridge. That chamber, once

  brilliantly clean and huge enough for snub-fighters to land in, was destroyed;

  he'd seen the holocam image of a dying coralskipper corkscrewing its way into

  the front viewports, crashing through, annihilating everything there.

  But no one had been there, no officers, no droids. It had been left lit as

  bait, though no ship's controls operated there.

  All ship's controls were routed here, to an auxiliary bridge deep in the

  vessel's stern, a place where the command crew could operate if the stern were

  gone or the vessel somehow captured. Even this small chamber seemed empty and

  strange now; Davip was the only person left. Everywhere else, computer gear was

  patched into the ship's controls.

  Every few moments, another shudder racked Lusankya and the lights

  momentarily dimmed. Red showed on the screens of every diagnostics terminal,

  indicating that the systems they monitored were destroyed or nonfunctional. The

  only exceptions were the systems Davip's own terminal controlled: main

  thrusters, gravitic sensors, localized life support, localized power.

  He spared a glance for the door at the back of the chamber. Newly

  installed, it was a crude plate of armor that would lift out of the way-once-and

  give him access to the starfighter that lay beyond. The starfighter was already

  pointed along the shaft that led to Lu-sankya's stern. It was a way out for him.

  .. assuming that the damage the Star Destroyer was taking didn't collapse the

  shaft, didn't ruin the starfighter. If it did, he was dead.

  Well, dead or alive, he was going to finish this fight with a bang. He

  returned his attention to the sensors, to the large signal that indicated the

  Yuuzhan Vong world-ship ahead.

  Wedge accelerated away from the Ammuud Swooper and toward the oncoming

  squadron of coralskippers. His sensors showed two eager skip pilots moving out

  in front of the others, the better to engage him first. He expected Ammuud

  Swooper to turn tail, dive hack into the atmosphere, and try to find a safer

  exit vector, but the freighter came stolidly on in his wake. The reason why was

  soon evident: coralskippers from the vicinity of the biotics building site were

  now climbing after them.

  There was nowhere to run.

  In moments, the lead skips came into visual range. They separated and began

  launching plasma his way - all hut daring him to fly between them, to try to

  persuade them to fire on one another by accident.

  Wedge smiled mirthlessly. A novice pilot might try that very thing, but

  would find his shields stripped by a deft use of the coralskippers' voids.

  Without shields, his X-wing would be easy pickings for the skips. Instead, he

  veered to starboard, passing on the outward side of the skip in that direction,

  firing stuttering lasers at that craft until his weapons could no longer depress

  to hit it. He saw his shields flare as a bit of plasma hit them and was

  deflected, but his diagnostics didn't indicate a direct hit.

  Then he was past the two lead coralskippers. They turned to follow. The

  oncoming ten also vectored as if to head him off, but they weren't making the

  kind of speed the lead coralskippers were,

  Ammuud Swooper maintained her original course, and none of the

  coralskippers remained directly in her path. Wedge frowned at the sensor board.

  Why?

  He increased the angle of his starboard turn. The two coralskippers

  continued to accelerate in his wake. The other ten turned so that their course

  paralleled his, pacing him instead of intercepting him.

  That was it. At least one of the lead skips had to be the squadron

  commander. He wanted a duel. His pilots wanted to watch. They figured the

  commander could finish Wedge off, then they could catch up to Ammuud Swooper

  before the freighter could get free of Borleias's mass shadow.

  Well, it wasn't going to work that way.

  Wedge veered toward the pacing coralskippers, maneuvering so unexpectedly

  that the skips on his tail took an extra moment to turn after him. The maneuver

  was harsh enough to cause Wedge's sight to gray out just a little-he could see

  his vision contract, as though he were flying into a tunnel, but he shook his

  head as he straightened out his course and his vision returned to normal. He

  began firing into the midst of the ten skips, and, as he'd hoped, there was no

  immediate return fire: the squadron leader had doubtless instructed his pilots

  not to interfere, that Wedge was his alone to kill.

  Wedge sprayed his stutterfire over the flank of one skip, then, as he

  gauged the speed with which its void intercepted the laser, switched to quad

  link for a harder punch. His shot, beautifully placed, dropped between the

  defensive
voids and hulled the skip. It detonated into the small, grisly cloud

  characteristic of a dying coral-skipper. Wedge roared past the cloud, missing it

  by mere meters, hearing the ping of small chunks of yorik coral striking his

  shields.

  As soon as he was past, he looped around, opposite the direction the skips

  were heading. He was rewarded by the sight of the skips slowing, turning back

  toward him as he circled. The lead skips punched through the same hole in the

  formation he'd just been through and turned after him, gaining ground.

  In a moment-tunnel vision returning as he performed a turn too hard for his

  body to quite withstand-he was lined up on the formation again. The nine

  remaining witness skips had done an impressive about-face and were now reaching

  the cloud of gases and coral chunks that had once been one of their own number.

  Wedge armed and fired a proton torpedo, then switched back to stutterfire

  lasers and began spattering red beams among those targets. Their voids came up

  and effortlessly caught the energy.

  Then his torpedo hit. It didn't reach any of the functional targets, but

  hit the largest remaining chunk of the destroyed coralskipper, deep in the midst

  of the formation of skips as they passed around it.

  It detonated in a bright flash, its energy hurled outward in all directions

  simultaneously, slamming into every coral-skipper within its explosive diameter.

  The skips' voids could intercept only a fraction of the released energy.

  Wedge looped up and around the expanding gas cloud, pouring on speed to

  gain a little ground on his pursuers while he waited for the sensor board to

  clear.

  When it did, the numbers were like a lifeday present. Six of the ten

  coralskippers in that formation were gone or smashed into smaller pieces. Two

  more were on ballistic courses toward Borleias's atmosphere. The last two were

  turning to join up with the squadron leader and his wingmate, but even they

  seemed to be moving sluggishly.

  Impossible odds had just been turned into one-third impossible. And in the

  distance, Ammuud Swooper continued plodding her way toward her hyperspace launch

  point.

  Czulkang Lah evaluated the data and variables. He did not like the