Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I (19 page)

Han nearly fell out of his chair. “Big Bunji?”

The giant humanoid guffawed in merriment, laughing his mouth empty of aromatic smoke. “Boss Bunji, Han.”

Roa smiled broadly. “It’s amazing that you and I never met, considering all the mutual friends we had on Etti IV and other haunts in the Corporate Sector. A pleasure after all these years.” He gestured to Fasgo and introduced him.

Bunji regarded the red-haired spacer. “Yes, Fasgo’s petty scams aboard the
Wheel
have not escaped our notice.”

Fasgo swallowed hard, but said nothing.

Han was still shaking his head in incredulity. “I figure I must be dying, because I keep seeing my life flashing before my eyes.” He grinned at Bunji. “If Ploovo Two-For-One shows up right about now, I’m folding my hand.”

“Were Ploovo to show up, Han, I can assure you he would be less than courteous. Even after extensive reconstruction surgery, he never quite got over the damage
done to his proboscis by the dinko you so cleverly sicced on him in the Free Flight Dance Dome. For a time, in fact, he paid well for anyone who brought him a dinko—dead or alive. Taxidermied specimens of the vicious things were everywhere on display in his homes, his offices, aboard his ships. He even took to wearing a charm bracelet composed entirely of dinko fangs and the serrated spurs of their hind legs. I do believe he brought the species to the edge of extinction.”

Han frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that, but I never cared much for people who tried to cheat me out of what was mine.”

Bunji guffawed once more, all but rattling the bulkheads with his laugh. “As I myself learned.”

“You’re not still sore about my strafing your pressure dome on that asteroid—”

“Not at all,” Bunji said. “I deserved it for trying to get the better of you on those chak-root runs to Gaurick.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.” Han laughed. “You fix up the
Falcon
for what happened to her on Gaurick, then you go and deduct the costs from what you owe me. That’s what sent me to Ploovo for a loan to begin with.”

Bunji’s sigh was a warm wind. “We live and learn, Han, we live and learn. But surely you knew I’d forgiven you. The fact is, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for what you accomplished on Tatooine.” He gestured broadly. “You could say that much of this station owes to your efforts.”

Han jabbed himself in the chest. “What
I
did on Tatooine?”

Bunji puffed on his cigarra and grinned. “To be more
precise, what your wife did. You see, Han, I had attempted to relocate my business enterprise to Tatooine, only to be run off by Jabba. Not content to have done that, the Hutt all but crippled my cash flow for the next few years. His death, however, presented me with an opportunity to rebuild my power base, though I had to contend with the likes of Lady Valarian and a few others. Nevertheless, a few shrewd deals made during the Thrawn years and I was back on my feet. Then, just a year ago, I had the
Wheel
assembled in a nearby system and towed here, to Ord Mantell.”

“This is yours?” Han said.

“Most of it. Borga the Hutt has a small stake in it. Now, if the New Republic would only do something about the Yuuzhan Vong.”

Han’s smile straightened. “Some of us are trying to do just that, Bunji.”

“Is that what has brought you here—under a false identity, no less?”

“Han and I are trying to hunt down a former associate,” Roa answered.

Bunji inclined his head in interest. “Hunt down?”

“Or just locate,” Han said. “That all depends on what he says when we find him.”

“Which former associate?”

“His name’s Reck Desh.”

Bunji fell silent for a long moment. He inhaled on the cigarra and launched a jumbo smoke ring toward the ceiling. “What do you want with him?”

“It’s a long story,” Han said, “even longer than yours.”

Bunji nodded. “If I were you, Han, I wouldn’t be so quick to catch up with Reck Desh.”

Han leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Why’s that?”

“Things have changed since the old days. Folks are engaged in activities now that wouldn’t have been tolerated then—even by riffraff like Bossk.”

“What sort of activities?”

“Such as providing information about planetary defenses, or pirating shiploads of refugees and delivering them into Yuuzhan Vong hands for sacrifices.”

The muscles in Han’s jaw bunched. Bunji continued. “Reck and the gang he runs with—they call themselves the Peace Brigade—have been colluding with Yuuzhan Vong operatives by helping to spread anti-Jedi sentiment and destabilize planetary systems in advance of invasion. In some cases, they’ve persuaded worlds to capitulate to the Yuuzhan Vong beforehand.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Reck is currently?” Roa asked judiciously.

“At last report, the Peace Brigade was operating in Hutt space,” Bunji said, “much to Borga’s dismay. If you’d like, I could make a few inquiries.”

Han showed him a skeptical look. “Why would you be willing to do that for us?”

Bunji shrugged. “As I say, I owe you. If that isn’t reason enough, then I’m doing it for the Wook. It near broke my hearts to hear that he had died. I’d have given anything to have had a partner like Chewbacca.”

Before Han could respond, sirens began to blare and the illumination in Bunji’s well-appointed enclave flickered. Without warning, the
Jubilee Wheel
shuddered as if it had been poked by the finger of a colossal hand. One
of Bunji’s henchmen rushed to a nearby terminal and called up data on a display screen.

“Yuuzhan Vong attack!” he blurted.

Humans and others leapt to their feet, running every which way for exits, shelter, and the antique sideboard that held the Whyren’s Reserve and similarly exceptional libations. Directly in the path of a panicked Whiphid, Han and Fasgo were knocked to the floor.

Roa wedged his hands under Han’s arms and yanked him upright. Bunji and the more important members of his coterie were already disappearing through a gaping hatchway in the cabin’s rear wall. Han threw his pack over his shoulder and stumbled forward, only to hear the hatch lock solidly as he reached it.

“To the
Happy Dagger
,” Roa said from the anteroom. “I’ve no intention of being on this wheel when the Yuuzhan Vong decide to roll it downhill!”

Ord Mantell’s yellow star at its back, the New Republic task force emerged from behind the system’s fifth planet with weapons blazing. Simultaneously from around the jagged edges of the planet’s large moon, fighter squadrons raced forward to engage the invaders, the radiance of their ion drives dwindling in the night.

Batteries on the Mon Calamari battle cruiser and the escort frigates ranged toward distant targets and fired. Laser beams slashed outward, visible in vacuum as wrathful hyphens of energy. Strikes registered in the remote blackness. Overlapping spheres of brilliance flared in darkness, blossoming thicker than a meadow of wildflowers.

The Yuuzhan Vong vessels—pitted yorik coral and facet-hulled—withstood the initial barrage. Fashioned by dovin basals, defensive singularities formed around the enemy ships, guzzling countless ergs of energy. Answering bursts from fearsomely powerful arrays streaked toward the task force as spiraling golden projectiles, grotesquely beautiful against the starfield.

Diverting energy to their shields, the New Republic ships held their own, then returned fire. Laser light and
nova-bright missiles gridded the night as the two flotillas continued to trade volleys.

X-wings, B-wings, E-wings, and TIE interceptors arrived from the defenders’ precinct and began to distract, harass, and sting the vanguard Yuuzhan Vong vessels with narrow-beam fire. Dazed by the battle cruiser’s initial volley, a corvette-size pyramid of yorik coral dropped its guard momentarily. Slipping through vulnerable spots in the ship’s defenses, carefully placed proton torpedoes from a quartet of B-wings detonated against the carbon-black hull. Chunks of scabrous flesh large as starfighters blazed fiery trails through local space.

Centerpiece of the task force, the battle cruiser altered course, intent on steering the battle away from Ord Mantell and the many civilian vessels anchored there and in close proximity to the
Jubilee Wheel
. Turbolaser batteries and ion cannons swiveled and traversed. Light tore from already superheated alloy barrels, and blinding flashes strobed in the distance.

A second Yuuzhan Vong corvette tried unsuccessfully to evade the barrage. Sieved by laser spears, it disappeared in an effulgent globe of fire.

Asteroidlike coralskippers, varying in size, shape, and color, advanced in an unstoppable cloud, forging through the intense hail and swarming into the midst of the starfighter groups. Well-maintained formations broke apart as crafts peeled away to all sides, barrel- and snap-rolling into furious engagements with their quarries. In a bloodbath of swirling combat, coralskipper preyed on starfighter and starfighter on coralskipper.

Wingmates fought to remain together, but were more
often separated by furious blasts and forced into one-on-one contests. Dovin basals pillaged the New Republic fighters of their shields and assailed them with streams of molten rock gushed from cone-shaped weapons emplacements. Rendered defenseless, X-wings and E-wings were slaughtered by the dozen. Locked into fierce, pitched battles, opponents jinked and looped through evasive maneuvers.

Counterfire from the Yuuzhan Vong’s largest ship silenced the battle cruiser temporarily. Retreating behind its shields, the Mon Calamari vessel endured storm after storm of projectile and plasma barrage, as frenzied electricity danced and coruscated at the boundaries of the great ship’s invisible barriers.

Biding its time, the cruiser waited until the Yuuzhan Vong warship paused to repower, then it opened fire with all guns. Still stronger laser beams sliced through the night, some to be swallowed by gravitic anomalies, while others chipped away at the enemy ship’s yorik coral hull.

Two
Ranger
-class gunships moved in, determined to outflank the warship. Pounding discharges from their main batteries vaporized dozens of coralskippers and escort craft at a burst. Desperate ploys saved some of the Yuuzhan Vong fighters, but most were outwitted, disintegrated, or transformed into short-lived comets.

The flotillas began to close ranks, saturating space with flaming missiles and harnessed light. Caught up in friendly fire, a trio of TIEs vanished without a trace.

Laser beams from a New Republic escort frigate skewered another Yuuzhan Vong corvette through its long axis, coral, weapons, and the rest disappearing in a cloud of fire. As if in riposte, a pack of coralskippers isolated
and surrounded a lone gunship, leaching it of its shields, then battering it with projectiles, kindling a deadly inferno that quickly engulfed the ship.

Elsewhere, juking through whirling hunks of debris, a squadron of E-wings converged on a maimed Yuuzhan Vong ship and began to nip at it mercilessly. Proton torpedoes punched through its imperiled defenses and slammed into the bow. Stratified layers began to peel away from the ship, rubble exploding outward, rocketing from sight. A second, smaller craft, similarly lanced by laser fire, also blew to pieces, showering nearby space with briefly glowing motes.

Close to Ord Mantell’s outermost moon, a chaotic melee raged as coralskippers, X-wings, and TIEs mixed it up, ferociously and with grim resolve. The starfighters came out of smooth rolls, inverted dives, and predatory banks to go to guns with their prey, riding them until they were annihilated. Other ships revectored, racing through fragment clouds to escape the carnage or form up for reengagement, sometimes slewing wildly out of control.

In midsystem the battle cruiser and warship advanced on each other, now trading fusillades and broadsides. Localized storms of blue lightning enveloped both ships as their extended energy defenses made contact. The Yuuzhan Vong vessel poured its most lethal fire into the larger ship, and the cruiser replied with volley after volley of directed light. Caught between the two, an escort took a direct hit, sending scorched and misshapen pieces of wreckage spinning off into space.

As if angered by the loss, the cruiser upped the ante with escalating fire. Boulder-size blocks of mirror-finish
coral flew from the warship, but it was not about to be humbled. Plasma streamed from the tips of the enemy ship’s forward arms, raising blistering explosions along the cruiser’s port armor plate.

Weapons blazed and flared. Fire fountaining from the cruiser’s aft hull, the ship began to founder, tipping to one side with main guns still discharging and sensor arrays in flames. Projectiles continued to penetrate her armor until the hull surrendered integrity and precious atmosphere began to stream outward. With artificial gravity disabled, hatches and seals, turrets, and sensor pods blew. Then vacuum played its hole card, tugging crew and contents into the polar night.

X-wings and E-wings rushed dauntlessly to the cruiser’s support. Proton torpedoes found soft spots in the warship’s tattered defenses, bursting against the superstructural arms and command ridge, and loosing geysers of spindrift coral.

But the starfighters’ efforts came too late.

A hellish explosion pushed outward from a rift in the hull of the Mon Calamari vessel, splitting it in half. Escape pods launched, vectoring toward Ord Mantell like drops of radioactive rain, while the battle cruiser became a ballooning sphere of roiling incandescence, then exploded brilliantly.

The Star Destroyer emerged from between Ord Mantell’s moons with main and auxiliary thrust nozzles flaring. Throwing itself headlong into the fray, it fired repeatedly as its pointed bow swung in the direction of the warship. Thread-fine against its enormous bulk, blue lines of energy from aft turbolasers and ion cannons stabbed unrelentingly at the black ship.

The
Erinnic
braced for return fire, but the plasma and projectiles never arrived.

Abruptly the warship changed course, accelerated, and began to unleash its fury on Ord Mantell, cutting loose with all forward guns. Blinding missiles streaked toward the planet’s surface, burning seething tunnels through the atmosphere. Detonations on the ground lighted the undersides of ragged clouds.