the squadron's former commander. He hadn't been lost in combat; battle stress
had finally reduced him to a shrieking paranoid, leaving him unable to pilot a
child's recreational landspeeder, much less a weapon of war.
"Blackmoon Three, ready."
"Blackmoon Four, anxious to drive it in deep and break it off."
Luke watched as the Starlancer pilots brought their ungainly craft out of
the special operations bay on repulsor-lifts. The three corner vehicles looked
the same as ever, but the fourth, the central unit, had a new addition: in its
astromech bay, behind the cockpit, rode a faceted jewel the size of a human. It
stuck out of the astromech housing by a meter and a half, glistening in the sun.
It was identical to the crystal that had been shattered by a Yuuzhan Vong spy in
one of the biotics building's sub-basements - and was just as fake.
Somewhere out in the jungle beyond the kill zone, Yuuzhan Vong observers
would be seeing this, reaching in alarm for their villip communicators, speaking
in rapid, agitated language to their commanders.
One after another, the elite squadrons, those that had been stationed out
of the biotics complex all these weeks to reinforce the notion that this was the
most critical point of Borleias's defense, announced readiness and lined up:
Gavin Darklighter's Rogue Squadron. Jaina Solo's Twin Suns. Saba Sebatyne's Wild
Knights. Luke's Blackmoons. Wes Janson's Taanab Yellow Aces. Shawnkyr Nuruodo's
Vanguard Squadron. The Millennium Falcon. Less than two kilometers away,
squadrons off Lusankya dueled with coralskipper squadrons and capital ships
moving in on the facility, but the elites wouldn't be reinforcing them, Couldn't
be confronting the planet-level attackers; they'd be lying to the enemy instead.
At General Antilles's command, the Rogues, Twin Suns, and Blackmoons lifted
off. The Starlancer pipefighters lifted off in their wake. Then the other elites
rose. It was a convoy of starfighters, blastboats, and one light freighter, and
in some ways it was among the deadliest armadas the New Republic had ever
launched.
On the holocam screen, Wedge watched the squadrons', of the last Starlancer
sortie take off. "Alert Lusankya* he told Tycho. "As soon as the pursuit is on,
he's to initiate Operation Emperor's Spear."
"Done," Tycho said.
"This," Czulkang Lah informed Harrar, "is it. Their all-out attack to
destroy my son."
"How will it play out?" the priest asked.
"All their best pilots protect the lambent vehicles. They expect us to send
overwhelming hordes of coralskippers against that fleet. Once our fighters are
poised to attack, they will initiate whatever means they have to confuse our
yammosks, to destroy communication among our forces." Czulkang Lah offered up a
nearly lipless smile. "But it will not happen so. Moments after our forces
engage, mobile dovin basal mines will enter the area and begin stripping the
enemy shields. All the fighters assigned to that engagement have been carefully
drilled in individual pilot initiative. A disruption of yammosk control will not
inconvenience them in the least. Their most famous fighters will be overwhelmed
and destroyed. The menace the crystal represents will be ended. And with the
ground-based fighters weakened by exhaustion and loss, the ground facility will
fall within an hour."
Harrar nodded. The old warmaster's confidence was welcome in these
uncertain times. "All these individual-initiative fighters... they know not to
harm Jaina Solo?'
"They do."
"The gods smile upon you, Czulkang Lah."
"May it be so. Now, I must turn my attention to the battle to come."
Harrar bowed and withdrew. He gave no sign of it, but he was most pleased.
At last, the Yuuzhan Vong goals in the Pyria system were within their grasp.
Danni Quee switched over the Wild Knights' blast-boat comm board to unit
frequency. "This is Wild One. Gravities suggest a large formation of
coralskippers moving our way. It looks like a minimum of one hundred skips.
Estimated time of interception, ten minutes."
"Wild One, Ace-One. That's enough for the Yellow Aces, but what are the
rest of you going to do?"
"Ace-One, Rogue Leader. Pipe down."
"Correction, sensors are bumping those numbers up. One hundred and fifty
"Ah, that's getting better."
"Now?" Tycho asked.
Wedge considered, still focused on the sensor display correlating all the
data from the various squadrons. He nodded.
"Lusankya, commence Operation Emperor's Spear." Tycho listened to the
response, then lowered the earpiece. " Lusankya's away."
"Start evacuation of this facility."
Tycho returned to his comlink. "Commence Piranha-Beetle. Repeat, commence
Piranha-Beetle."
"Get on up to Mon Mothma, Tycho. If at any time you lose contact with me,
whether it's while I'm in transit or for any other reason, you take command of
the operation."
"Done."
"And make sure my shuttle is standing by. I don't want to come trotting out
of this building to find only a note of apology waiting for me."
Tycho grinned and extended his hand. "May the Force be with you, Wedge."
Wedge shook it. "If it was, how would I ever know?"
Kasdakh Bhul said, "Litsankya is leaving orbit. We have reports that
fighters are leaving her belly and escorting her."
Czulkang Lah frowned. "Did you not tell me earlier that all her fighters
were at ground level, defending the infidel base?"
"Yes, Czulkang Lah."
"Well?"
"It was our Peace Brigade advisers who told us this, based on their
listening to the talk between their fighters and their triangle ships."
" So there was lying in that talk."
"That is my opinion."
"Have those advisers stand by on one of our ships. Kill one of them for
this mistake. Every time a new mistake of this sort costs us lives, kill
another."
"It shall be done." Kasdakh Bhul returned to studying the blaze bug niche
and listening to the villips on the wall. He then turned back to the commander.
"The red triangle ship is now breaking from orbit."
"Good. That will be easy prey; she carries few weapons." Czulkang Lah
gestured to get the attention of his fleet commander. "Dispatch two mataloks to
eliminate that atrocity."
"It shall be done."
Lusankya turned with a slow awkwardness that no Star Destroyer commander
would have tolerated from a chief pilot. Her maneuver was too great, in fact,
and once her gradual port-side turn was completed, her nose drifted a few
degrees back to starboard before the mammoth vessel was correctly lined up.
Then her thrusters engaged and she began a ponderous acceleration straight
toward the Domain Hul worldship.
"Confirmed count, two hundred and ten coralskippers," Danni said. "A couple
of those gravitic anomalies in their wake. Time to interception, three minutes."
Luke said, "All squadrons, all squadrons, reverse course. Head back toward
our pursuit and initiate Stage Two on a one-minute countdown." He put his X-wing
into a
tight loop. "Beginning countdown..." His finger hovered over the transmit
button. "Now."
The two Yuuzhan Vong cruiser analogs approached the Errant Venture from
opposite angles.
The Errant Venture, built as an Imperial Star Destroyer, captured by
smuggler Booster Terrik, and converted into his own private gambling parlor and
mobile hotel, was, unlike other ships of her class, painted a screaming red from
bow to stern. The color was alleviated only by lingering signs of battle damage
and running lights. Recently the home of the Jedi children, she was known to be
an easy mark; the Yuuzhan Vong had not bothered with her much because she posed
them no threat, spent much of her recent time running missions out of the Pyria
system, and was in general a far less significant target than the biotics base
or the other New Republic capital ships.
But now her time had come, and as the mataloks closed on her, the pitifully
few defensive batteries she had opened up, peppering the enemy vessels with
insignificant spikes of pain.
The Yuuzhan Vong commanders returned fire, but paced their plasma cannons,
waiting for a distance that would allow them to unleash true pain on the
offensive red triangle. Then, in the moment before they reached the optimum
distance, Errant Venture's other weapons opened up. As the Imperial Star
Destroyer rotated to bring each matalok within sight of the greatest possible
number of weapons, thirty turbolaser batteries fired at each target, turning the
hull of each cruiser analog into a superheated, explosive ruin.
In a matter of seconds, the two mataloks were gone, an expanding cloud of
gas and rubble the only sign they had ever been there. Their commanders would
never know the deception performed against them-how, as Lusankya suffered more
and more battle damage, many of her undamaged turbolasers and ion cannons were
transferred to the other capital ships in the fleet, making Lusankya a little-
armed shell of a Destroyer, keeping the others at full destructive power.
Errant Venture continued on her course until the gravity well of Borleias
no longer gripped her with any significant strength; then the Imperial Star
Destroyer leapt to hyperspace.
Charat Kraal, commanding one of the squadrons racing toward the
pipefighters and their heretical crystal, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. All
they had to do was keep the enemy fighters in this region of space long enough
for the support mines to reach this area, and the mines assigned to Jaina Solo's
X-wing would grab her, bring her into Charat Kraal's grasp.
Her starfighter was among the cloud of oncoming craft. The specially
engineered auxiliary dovin basal on his coralskipper could sense that craft's
specific gravitic signature, and it communicated its excitement to Charat Kraal
as a continuous buzz through his cognition hood.
The oncoming starfighters had divided into squadron units and were mere
moments from reaching maximum firing distance. Charat Kraal selected a target
within Jaina's squadron, the craft with the claw-shaped extensions. Then all the
oncoming craft vanished. Charat Kraal blinked, then focused his attention on his
second dovin basal. The question he asked it was wordless, but understood: Where
is the vehicle? But the dovin basal didn't know. The four vehicles that the
infidels called pipefighters were still ahead in the distance, however. Shaken
and confused, Charat Kraal oriented toward them and kept up the pursuit, as did
the others of his mighty coral-skipper force.
Soon, they pulled within firing range of the flying blas-phemies. Charat
Kraal's contempt grew as the foremost coralskippers of his formation began
firing. The pipe-fighters did not bother to maneuver. Perhaps their pilots were
too inexperienced, too frightened.
Charat Kraal willed that thought away. It made no sense. Even the most
inexperienced pilot could try to maneuver out of the line of fire, and these
didn't. One by one, the four vehicles detonated under the plasma cannons of
their pursuers, the crystal-bearing vehicle last.
The thought came hard to Charat Kraal: Were they even occupied by the
living? Or could they have been abominations controlled by other abominations?
Kasdakh Bhul looked inconvenienced at having to bring incomprehensible news
to Czulkang Lah. "The coralskippers pursuing the lambent fighters report that
all the infidels' protective fighters have disappeared."
"Disappeared. Fled?"
"No, it seemed to be an orderly jump into darkspace. And there is more."
"Tell me."
"The mataloks sent to destroy the red triangle ship are gone, as is the red
triangle ship."
"All destroyed? It put up an impressive battle for something so ill
equipped."
"Unknown. The matalok commanders did not report their target putting up a
fierce struggle."
Czulkang Lah scowled, but turned his anger away from Kasdakh Bhul. The
warrior did not have much intelligence to offer, but it did require courage to
deliver unhappy news to a senior officer.
And this was unhappy news. Mysteries were piling up-
He didn't like mysteries. They meant that he had not correctly interpreted
every variable. And that was one way to lose an engagement.
Once free of Borleias's gravity well, Lusankya fired off her hyperdrive, a
microjump that left her escort screen of starfighters behind. The jump took her
halfway across the solar system before a dovin basal mine dragged her back into
realspace.
This wasn't an unexpected turn of events. Her crew knew it would happen,
though not precisely where. In terms of stellar distances, she was not far now
from the Domain Hul worldship commanded by Czulkang Lah, but it was not likely
that she would be able to make another jump to get closer; the space between
this point and that was doubtless thick with dovin basal mines.
Her crew immediately transmitted a signal on the fleet frequency. It said,
in effect, I'm here.
Though she'd been built to carry a crew of more than a quarter million, not
including ground troops, things had changed. There were no weapon batteries to
operate. Life-support systems were shut down over most of the ship.
Communications were restricted to a few comm channels. Shields and a few other
critical systems were largely governed now by droids taken apart and then
reassembled straight into system relay points. No one monitored fuel
expenditure, thruster heat conditions, stores, supplies.
She now carried a crew of one.
A minute later, the squadrons that had just abandoned the pipefighters
appeared in her wake, yanked out of hyperspace by the same dovin basal mine.
They turned, moving up and around Lusankya, a protective screen. And
coralskipper squadrons began moving against them.
The Millennium Falcon was not among the vehicles protecting Lusankya.
Instead, the transport dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of one of the
thickest of the dovin basal minefields, the one on the primary arrival vector
from Coruscant space.
"I don't read any coralskippers," Leia said.
"Good! Anyone for sabacc?"
Leia gave him a look.
"You know I'm kidding. Ready the grav decoys."
Leia flipped the series of switches on the weapons board before her. It had
been a single concussion missile power-up sequence switch, but it had, in the
last few days, been temporarily replaced. "Five live," she said.
"Fire one."
She returned the first switch to its down position. The Falcon rattled
slightly as a missile launched from the concussion missile tube.
Leia watched it on the sensor board. It roared into the middle of the
minefield, then slowly turned toward the distant engagement zone. It moved far
more slowly than a missile should.
On the board, the wire-frame images indicating points in space where
gravity was distorted remained constant. except in one area. The wire frame
wrinkled there, and the distortion moved, at first slowly and then with
increasing speed, in the missile's wake.
She smiled. "It's taking the bait."
The bait was an instrument package that used the Jaina
Solo-developed technique of gravitic signature simulation. The missile
she'd fired carried with it the exact gravitic signature of the Millennium
Falcon as did the other four missiles the Falcon held ready.
"Fire two."
"You really like sounding military, don't you?"
Han grinned. "Only when I'm giving orders."
"Second missile is away."
SEVENTEEN
Wedge watched on the monitors as Lusankya's star-fighters screamed back
down into the atmosphere, then began escorting the last personnel transports up.
With the transports was a small, private yacht, a converted blastboat that
carried Wolam Tser, Tam Elgrin, and a boy named Tarc. Wedge wished them success
in staying away from the Yuuzhan Vong-now, and forever.
Iella stood by the door, waiting. Other than Wedge, she was the last person
in the biotics building's operations center. "You can't do much more here,
Wedge. Time to go."
"Not quite yet. As long as there's a chance their Peace Brigade friends are