Rebel Stand Page 33

  fighters. As he closed the canopy, the door into the auxiliary bridge snapped

  shut and another bulkhead slid open, meters ahead of him, allowing him a view of

  space flanked by the emissions of Lusankya's powerful thrusters.

  He started up the starfighter's engines but couldn't yet launch. A jury-

  rigged screen and set of controls went live, and once again Davip could see

  through Lusankya's remaining forward holocams, could see instrument readouts.

  The dying Super Star Destroyer was drifting to star-hoard. This probably

  wasn't navigational failure. Instead, some dovin basal on the surface of the

  worldship had to be exerting its gravitational power against Lu-sankya, trying

  to turn the vessel aside.

  It might work, too. No dovin basal was going to be able to entirely deflect

  the millions of tons of Lusankya, to counteract the tremendous kinetic energy

  built up during the ship's constant acceleration toward the world-ship. But a

  dovin basal might be able to turn her protruding spearhead aside, to reduce the

  penetration of impact.

  Davip wouldn't have that. He resumed direct control of Lusankya and

  increased thrust output from her starboard engines, redlining them, bringing tbe

  spearpoint back in line.

  He'd just stay here and make sure everything went according to plan.

  * * *

  Czulkang Lah watched as the sharp prow of Lusankya grew in the sky,

  approaching with a meticulous precision that he could, with a growing sense of

  detachment, appreciate.

  Up close, the crudeness of the protruding spike became evident. He could

  see scarlike welds suggesting that the thing had been assembled in sections

  within the triangle ship. Still, its simplicity, and the fact that it had

  succeeded in serving its intended purpose, was admirable.

  It entered the worldship's atmosphere and, a moment later, struck the

  viewing lens immediately above.

  And Czulkang Lah was gone.

  The prow of Lusankya hit the worldship.

  Eight kilometers up, before the shock of that impact had even been

  transmitted along Lusankya's body, Eldo Davip fired his thrusters and shot out

  of the vessel's stern.

  He passed between two of the vessel's thrusters and saw his diagnostics

  light up as they anticipated possible life-support failure, but then the yellows

  faded to a safe green.

  But still he was feeling vibration. Had he sustained damage that the

  diagnostics didn't detect?

  It took him a moment to realize that the vibration wasn't from his Y-wing.

  It was from him.

  As he set a course to take him to a formation of allied starfighters, he

  tried to stop shaking.

  But he couldn't.

  Coming around the far side of the worldship, Luke and Mara saw Lusankya

  dive into the worldship's sur - face. It seemed to Luke that a ripple spread out

  from the point of impact, either a shock wave or an animal contraction of pain.

  The Super Star Destroyer, her kinetic energy scarcely slowed by the impact,

  continued to plow into the world-ship. Hundred-meter-long remnants of the ship's

  superstructure sheared off from the solid core, but that core plunged inexorably

  deeper into the worldship.

  In moments, as the orbit of the two Jedi brought them closer to the impact

  zone, Lusankya's core was swallowed by the worldship, her superstructure scraped

  off and left behind, mountain-high, on the worldship's surface.

  Then the surface of the worldship shuddered. Luke knew what that meant.

  Eight or more kilometers below the surface, the spearpoint of the core had

  exploded. Then the next hundred-meter section behind it would detonate, then the

  one behind that, a chain of destruction reaching all the way back to what had

  once been Lusankya's stern.

  As they passed over the Super Star Destroyer's wreckage, the mountain of

  scrap leapt skyward, propelled by a volcanolike eruption from beneath the

  surface as the last of Lusankya's core sections detonated. The flash from the

  explosion was brilliant and the force of the explosion jetted into the sky,

  looking for one brief moment like a red-orange lightsaber blade kilometers in

  length.

  The surface of the worldship heaved. Great jagged cracks flowing with a

  red-black substance Luke did not care to contemplate spread out, from Lusankya's

  impact point as the worldship began to die. * * *

  His ship protected by the remains of Charat Kraal's special operations

  group, Harrar watched the crash and detonation. He could feel blood drain from

  his face, could feel the strength of his legs begin to fail. He sat heavily in

  the captain's seat, wordless.

  "The infidels appear to be grouping again," his pilot said. "Shall we join

  these coralskippers in a counterattack?"

  "What's the point?" Harrar whispered. "Take us back to Coruscant. Take us

  back where we can look on victory instead of disaster."

  On his next spin, Wedge saw the squadron of skips turn back toward him. He

  aimed and fired after them, a final, defiant gesture, but his weapon failed to

  discharge.

  On his next spin, he could see the incoming skips but, beyond them,

  witnessed the brilliant flash of light that heralded Lusankya's demise. "I'm not

  exactly going to miss you," he said.

  The incoming coralskippers opened fire. At this range, only one of the

  plasma projectiles hit; Wedge felt it crash into and through the X-wing's stern,

  and suddenly he was spinning even faster, watching the stars rotate by at

  bewildering speed.

  Then things became more complicated. Unable to quite resolve the picture

  outside his canopy into a comprehensible one, growing dizzier by the minute,

  Wedge thought he saw red lasers flashing among the orange-red plasma balls. He

  was certain he saw one coralskipper detonate, then two.

  There were E-wings and X-wings near him, the latter painted in the standard

  New Republic colors, and his comlink crackled to life-a woman's voice, fading in

  and out: "Blackmoon Ten... Eleven. Are... with us?"

  He activated his jury-rigged comm board. "Black-moon Ten, this is Blackmoon

  Eleven. That's a copy. Still here, but about to throw up."

  "Hold on... shuttle. It'll be here... minutes."

  Then there was a new voice, stronger because the broadcasting X-wing

  hovered only fifty meters away. Wedge recognized the voice as Gavin Dark

  lighter's. "Blackmoon Eleven, what did you think you were doing going after an

  entire squadron?"

  "My job."

  "That's 'My job, sir.'"

  Wedge grinned. "My job, sir.""

  "Son, if you develop piloting skills in proportion to your nerve, someday

  they'll call you the greatest pilot of all time."

  Gavin, baffled, stared down at his comm board. "Black-moon Eleven? Are you

  still there?"

  But Blackmoon Eleven didn't respond-at least, not with words. The only

  thing emerging from Gavin's comm board was laughter. Laughter that was somehow

  familiar.

  The New Republic forces staged mop-up and withdrawal operations.

  Starfighter squadrons collected themselves, escorted rescue shuttles, defended

  their capital ships from the uncoordinated attacks of
the Yuuzhan Vong.

  But it would not be long before a new yammosk was brought into the system,

  not long before more Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements made the system untenable. One

  after another, the divisions of Borleias's defenders launched into hyperspace to

  travel to their first rendezvous point.

  The world they left behind was, for now, Yuuzhan Vong property. The stand

  here had served its intended purpose. The Advisory Council'and its supporters

  had enjoyed months in which to plot their next moves-defenses, surrenders,

  tricks. But the Advisory Council might never know what else had been done during

  those months: what plans had been made, what foundations had been laid for a

  resistance that would not depend on them.

  EPILOGUE

  Tsavong Lah sat alone on his seat in his command chamber. He could not

  speak.

  The gods must love him. They had restored his arm to him. They had allowed

  him to root out treachery that had threatened to topple him. They had given him

  Bor-leias, whose defenders had, at last, fled.

  The gods must bate him. They had taken his father from him. Not only his

  father, but the fabled warmaster, Czulkang Lah, whose methods of teaching, whose

  strategic innovations, though introduced decades before the war on this galaxy

  was launched, had made these conquests possible. The Yuuzhan Vong would be

  struck like a coufee m the guts by news of Czulkang Lah's death and the utter

  destruction of Domain Hul.

  Which was it? Had he earned the hatred or the affection of the gods?

  He sat back, hollow with the loss he had just expericed, uncertain within a

  universe that had just grown darker and stranger.