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
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.
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
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.