Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I (34 page)

Behind him, his hiding place exploded as plasma cannon ejecta rained down on it. Then the trees surrounding it shattered, splintering, as coralskippers gave chase.

Jaina let herself drift, staying in tentative contact with the distant life-forms.

She could feel them, the collective them, and every few moments a new group of them, a few meters away from the last, offered up a second or two of fear as their world shook around them.

They were insects, lizards, other life-forms native to Borleias, and she was sure she was feeling their fear as the impact tremor of the
rakamat’s
giant feet shook the ground around them.

She could also feel, with a different set of Force-sensibilities, the shadow bomb she controlled.

The two sets of feeling were coming closer together.

She felt a twitch from Kyp. His range was right over his shadow bomb.
Wait
, she told him.

Closer, closer, and then they were almost together.
Now
, she told him, and triggered her shadow bomb. She opened her eyes.

In the distance, fire erupted into the sky—fire, propelling into the sky tons of charred flesh that had been
rakamats
. A shock wave rippled out from the site of the explosions, shredding trees near it, shaking them farther away, causing nothing more than a ground tremor where Jaina and Kyp sat.

“All right, Twins,” she said. “Let’s go back in and deal with that last range, and Jag’s pursuit.”

“Twin Suns, this is Control.” In fact, it was Wedge’s voice. “Negative on that. Fall back. Fall back.”

“Fall back, understood.” Jaina struggled with herself,
then assumed her most regal tone. “We want to know why we’re being summoned back when we’re winning.”

“Because you’re holding up the Yuuzhan Vong advance.”

She lost her godly demeanor. “
What?
I thought that’s what we were supposed to do!”

Wedge laughed at her. “Goddess, as usual, you’re doing your job too well.”

The
Record Time
dropped out of hyperspace close to Coruscant, close enough for the planet to fill most of her forward viewports.

Lando immediately began broadcasting. “Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight, this is Rescue Two. We’re inbound and ready for pickup. Make yourselves ready at Target Zone A-Nineteen. Over.”

There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t. There was no Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight. There was no Target Zone A-Nineteen. No one was monitoring this comm frequency.

“Sensors show frigate analog incoming,” YVH 1-1A said.

“Shields up. Commence firing.” Lando plotted a course revision that would carry them away from the other Yuuzhan Vong command ships in the area, a course that would, in theory, get them to the vicinity of the edge of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He ran the numbers and winced. The incoming frigate would be on them before they could get into position.
Record Time
was going to soak up some damage.

He keyed the comm unit again. “Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight, this is Rescue Two. Why don’t you answer? Why don’t you answer?” He clicked it off and grinned at 1-1A. “What did you think of that?”

One-One-A began firing, meticulous shots with the ship’s turbolasers at too great a distance to be effective. “Stress analysis of your transmitted words suggests high emotional content. From a search-and-rescue perspective, you sound like an emotional civilian.”

“Good. How about the repetition? Too clichéd, or did it work for you?”

“That is outside the scope of my programming.” One-One-A continued firing. “The frigate is launching coralskippers. I have destroyed one.”

“I suggest you destroy a second one.”

“I have destroyed a second one.”

“I suggest you destroy a third one.”

“If I may ask, are you managing a subordinate, or taunting me?”

“I’m taunting you, One-One-A. All in the spirit of fun.”

“I have destroyed a third one.”

“I suggest—”

“I have destroyed a fourth one.”

Luke waited in the darkness of the cargo hold.

Strapped to his feet was the descent unit the Wraiths had given him. Its bottom was attached with adhesive to his descent pod, a portion of a coralskipper reshaped into an oblong spheroid by creative application of duracrete and paint. Its hatch was dogged shut.

He wore a set of Yuuzhan Vong–styled armor—not one of the true vonduun crab sets, one of the artful simulations. He’d suspected that it might not be appropriate for a man with a mechanical hand and an all-too-useful lightsaber to make use of one of the authentic sets; he suspected he’d have to shed any Yuuzhan Vong disguise too often and too quickly.

Over the Yuuzhan Vong armor, he wore an environment suit, a big, bulky, ancient one no one would miss when he had to shred it upon landing.

He reached out to Mara, felt her in the Force, felt her living presence. She reached back, an absent gesture; he knew her mind had to be elsewhere, on their mission, on their child.

Lando’s voice came over his helmet speakers. “We’re getting into range.” The ship, and everything in the cargo area, shuddered. “Sorry about that. Little bit of plasma goo.” His voice was replaced by 1-1A’s for a moment: “I have destroyed a sixth one.” Then Lando was back: “Knock off the running tally, would you? Um, we’ll go into a lateral maneuver in just a minute and punch you out. If you find yourselves in vacuum before then, just go on without me.”

“I have destroyed a seventh one.”

“I told you—”

“I am teaching myself to taunt you.”

Lando pulled a pilot’s helmet on. His fancy tunic and cloak concealed a far more ordinary pilot’s jumpsuit, and he checked its connections to make sure it was ready to seal him off in case of pressure loss. A piece of plasma had already burned its way through the transparisteel of the forward viewport, and air was hissing out through it.

The
Record Time
shook every few seconds now. Its tail section was taking the brunt of the damage—plasma cannon fire, barely reduced by the failing shields, from both pursuing coralskippers and the trailing frigate analog—while the forward section was suffering from hit after hit launched by a single coralskipper.

But they were almost in position. Lando keyed his helmet microphone. “Coming up on launch zone in fifteen
seconds. There’s not going to be a countdown. When we’re there, I’m going to punch you out.”

“Force be with you, Lando.”

“Luck be with
you
, Luke.” Lando switched off the comlink and returned his attention to the controls.

This was tricky. He put the ungainly, disintegrating freighter into a slow port turn, bringing its starboard side around to face the sunny side of the planet below. “Ready yourself, One-One-A.” Then he tripped the newly installed switch labeled
GO
.

The ship’s inertial compensator kicked off. Though he tightly gripped the arms of his chair and was strapped into place, Lando felt himself yanked to the right, heard the post his seat was bolted to creak from the sudden pressure.

All around the forward section of the ship, explosives attached to the outer hull would be going off. They weren’t high explosives; they had just enough detonating power to fire chaff and thick smoky residue out in all directions. From outside, it would look as though
Record Time
were experiencing a series of internal explosions.

The smoke and chaff concealed the starboard cargo bay door, which should have been slung open by the maneuver and loss of artificial gravity. Lando saw that its gauge registered that it was open, that its atmospheric pressure was approaching zero, that its own temporary inertial compensator had activated.

He looked out the starboard viewport. There, a cloud of debris was tumbling away from the freighter, directly toward Coruscant’s surface far below.

He keyed his helmet microphone again. “Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight, this is the final transmission of Rescue Two. Sorry we couldn’t get to you. Hope you have better luck next time.” That message, he knew, would be picked up
by a New Republic scout ship at the edge of the Coruscant system and relayed to Wedge Antilles; it meant that Luke and his party were safely away.

He turned to 1-1A. “All right, let’s get—”

A blast of plasma from the frigate analog hit the center of the span joining the two sections of
Record Time
. The span parted, and the ripple from the impact shook the length of the ship. This time, Lando’s chair post did break, bouncing him, still strapped into his chair, into the air. With the ship’s artificial gravity dead, he rose until he banged into the bridge ceiling, bounced off, and began drifting toward the fist-sized hole in the forward viewport.

“Oh, I have a really good feeling about this,” he said.

Luke felt abrupt weightlessness, then sudden acceleration as he was punched out of the cargo bay and, he hoped, toward the planet.

He checked the sensor readouts glued to the pod surface before him. They showed course—correct. Number—correct; all of his comrades were with him still. As he watched, the inertial compensator in the unit at his feet activated, rotating him so that he approached Coruscant feet-first. Minor repulsor bursts would be keeping him in close proximity to the others.

He shook his head, dissatisfied. He didn’t like to be in any small vehicle when he wasn’t at the controls. And this was a vehicle only by a very generous broadening of the definition of that word.

Lando got himself unstrapped from his chair and kicked against the viewport. The move carried him away from it, but also caused cracks to appear where his heel had struck, cracks that reached the plasma hole and radiated in other directions as well.

One-One-A pushed himself free from his seat, a trajectory
that carried him past Lando and toward the door out. He caught Lando around the waist as he traveled, Lando’s mass barely causing a change in his direction, and reached the door recess. He clamped his feet down at the bottom of the recess and, with his free hand, sheared through the metal door.

Atmosphere behind it poured through, tugging Lando, but 1-1A merely shoved his way through the ruins of the door and into the passageway beyond.

“Good work,” Lando said.

“Is that more taunting, or a compliment?”

“Neither, really. In this case, it stands in for a ‘thank-you,’ which is what it really means. Now can you get us into the bay? Because that last blast seems to have pushed us toward the atmosphere, and we’re going to be carbon dust in a few seconds to a minute.”

“You’re welcome.” One-One-A kicked again, and they were floating weightless down the passageway.

Luke could feel the heat now; for all the Wraiths’ claims, heat soaked into the descent unit and was transmitted into the pod, cutting through his environment suit, through his armor, causing him to burst into sweat from scalp to toes.

The sensor board before him winked out. Then, beyond it, he saw the pod interior surface go from black to red, to yellow—and then flame was licking at it there, flame that grew and spread.

The pod rocked. Luke knew that friction had to have caused a pit in the bottom of his pod; atmosphere was getting a foothold in the pit, causing greater friction, causing the whole unit to sway. He felt a rumble in his feet as the repulsorlift there increased power output to keep the unit upright.

Abruptly there was a bright flash and the top of the
pod was gone. Luke found himself in a column of fire, streaming yellow flames that reached from the edges of the descent unit at his feet straight up into the air; he could see nothing beyond it. For a moment, a memory over twenty-five years old rose before him, the vision of the smoking remains of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, as they lay on the sands in front of his home on Tatooine.

He forced the memory away and tried to gain a little perspective.
If this is bad for me
, he thought,
what is it going to be like for Tahiri? A teenager?

Luke felt a jolt under his feet, sudden deceleration; his knees flexed as he absorbed the shock. The deceleration remained constant and the flames began to diminish, to waver.

In moments he could see his surroundings through them. Mara was no more than ten meters away, her face not visible through her environment suit and Yuuzhan Vong armor. The others were all nearby.

They were less than two kilometers above the world’s surface, still falling, but not at terminal velocity. And though he’d lived on Coruscant for many years, this wasn’t the surface he remembered. Great buildings lay toppled, their angles no longer conforming to those of the structures around them. Everything was coated with green, a poisonous shade of the color. At least the orange-and-brown clouds in the distance, full of rain and lightning, were the same, one reassuring piece of familiarity.

“Interesting ride, farmboy.” Mara’s voice was clear over the comlink; any interference brought on by the atmospheric friction of their decent was now ended.

Luke repressed a snicker. “Not too bad.”

“Face?” That was Tahiri’s voice, faint, full of emotion. Luke winced. He and Mara would need to offer her some reassurance.

“Yes?”

“I
want one!
I’ve got to have one of these when we get back. Oh, what a ride! Can we do it again?”

Luke shook his head and felt Mara laughing at him.

One-One-A had to use his blaster on the main door into the cargo bay. Once it was shredded and gone, the atmosphere from the passageway nearly blew the two of them into the bay itself, but the combat droid held fast.

Lando poked his head in. The B-wing seemed to be secure. The cargo ramp door was still down, maybe gone, and he could see starry space beyond—space, and, as the remains of the ship rotated, a coralskipper still pouring fire into its side as the ruins descended toward the atmosphere.

Cold began seeping into Lando’s bones. “Let’s go.”

A minute later, just as the outer edges of the
Record Time
began glowing from friction, Lando’s B-wing erupted from the cargo bay, turning away from the pursuing coralskipper, away from the frigate and other skips that had chosen to hang back once their task was done. With 1-1A silent in the passenger seat, Lando plotted a course that would carry them out of Coruscant’s mass shadow, to a point where he could make a jump, any jump, to hyperspace and get clear.