Star by Star (24 page)

“Bounty Hunter, what did I say?”

“Excuse me,” Tenel Ka said. Along with Lowbacca, Raynar, and Ulaha Kore—who in addition to being a talented musician was also a Force-gifted tactical analyst—Tenel Ka was manning their sensor platform, a converted blastboat named the
Big Eye
. “We have a contact entering the system. Their transponder identifies them as the freighter
Speed Queen.
”

Tenel Ka fed the coordinates directly to the X-wing astromech droids, then added, “A second craft has exited hyperspace. It is on a convergence course to the first.”

“Enemy interdictor?” Jaina asked.

A favorite tactic of the Yuuzhan Vong interdiction forces was to lurk outside their assigned system, then catch inbound traffic with a quick hyperspace hop.

Tenel Ka took only a moment to confirm Jaina’s deduction. “It does not register on the sensors, and there is no ion efflux. It masses out at corvette size.”

“Little Brother?” Jaina said.

“Give me a sec.”

Being the group’s most powerful in the Force, Anakin reached out, stretching his awareness to just shy of the population concentration around Froz. He felt no voxyn aboard the corvette, nor even the Yuuzhan Vong flying it. This latter was no surprise. Though the living crystal he had stolen from the enemy base on Yavin 4 enabled him to sense Yuuzhan Vong—in a different, much hazier way than Jedi sensed most other beings—his perceptions at such distances were too weak to discern anything less than a massive concentration. He
was
somewhat surprised to detect a more ordinary presence on a frozen moon near the edge of the system, something that was startled to feel his touch.

“Negative voxyn,” he reported. “Something on that moon in Orbit Twelve, but I can’t tell what. Not Yuuzhan Vong, though.”

“Nor did we three feel anything hungry,” the rasping voice of one of Saba Sebatyne’s Barabel apprentices agreed. Anakin had been reluctant to bring the newcomers along until Luke pointedly reminded him that they had survived more than fifty space battles flying ancient Y-wings for the Wild Knights. On the way out, they had also proven adept pilots in the new XJ3—with variable-stutter lasers, decoy-enhanced proton torpedoes, and grab-proof shields, the newest and most sophisticated X-wing yet. “But the presence in Orbit Twelve was human.”

Unsure of whether the Barabel was trying to show him up or be helpful, Anakin assumed the latter. “Thanks for the backup, uh, One?”

There was a rhythmic hissing that suggested chuckling. “Tail Two, Little Brother.”

Anakin felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Sorry.”

Tail One was the male, Tesar Sebatyne. Two and Three were Bela and Krasov Hara—not sisters, they insisted, but
hatchmates
. Whatever that meant, their sense of humor gave Anakin the shudders. They had been the ones to suggest the Tail code names, which they seemed to find hilarious for some reason no one understood.

Raynar saved Anakin the embarrassment of a more protracted silence. “Why are we sitting here? Let’s do something.”

“We can’t interfere, Merchantman,” Anakin said. He was as eager as Raynar to avenge Lusa’s death, but Luke had ordered them to focus solely on the mission. With Viqi Shesh and her allies already suggesting the Jedi should surrender for the greater good, the slightest incident could turn the rest of the senate against them. “And the
Speed Queen
is better off without us. If the Yuuzhan Vong see us coming, they’ll blast and run. This way, they might let it off with a search.”

“Fact,” Tenel Ka confirmed. “They have used their dovin basals to bring the
Speed Queen
to a halt, and a small launch is separating from their hull.”

A trio of blips, one marked in New Republic red and two in Yuuzhan Vong blue, appeared on Anakin’s tactical display. He had his astromech droid, Fiver, call up the technical data and saw
no reason to disagree with Tenel Ka. Even the Yuuzhan Vong did not destroy every vessel they found; if the ship was not carrying war matériel or Jedi, they often released it in the hope of picking it up outbound filled with refugees.

A raspy Barabel voice—Anakin thought it was Krasov—said, “Little Brother, we feel … someone does not obey the orderz of Uncle Master.”

An instant later, a swarm of blips appeared on Anakin’s sensor display. He called, “
Big Eye
?”

“A flight of X-wings,” Tenel Ka reported. “Twelve XJ3s.”

“Likelihood ninety-nine point …” Ulaha paused, then said, “Well, that
is
Kyp’s Dozen. Undoubtedly.”

“
Big
Eye
,
open a secure subspace channel,” Anakin said. “And download the coordinates for a microjump.”

“Little Brother,” Jaina warned, “remember what—”

“Just in case.” Anakin’s subspace comm light came on, and he activated his microphone. “X-wing flight, you know who this is.”

He reached out with the Force to identify himself, and felt a presence almost as strong as his own in return.

“Request you break off,” he said. “You’ll cause some real trouble for us—for all of us.”

“Trouble, yes,” the familiar voice of Kyp Durron replied, “but not for us.”

On Anakin’s tactical display, the Yuuzhan Vong boarding shuttle dissolved into static and vanished. Simply vanished, no sign of attack from the X-wings—no propellant trails, no energy flashes, nothing.

“
Big Eye
?” Anakin asked. “Is something wrong with—”

The corvette lashed out with plasma cannons and magma missiles, and Anakin’s display filled with streaks of red energy. Nothing wrong with
Big Eye
’s sensor package. Kyp had destroyed the shuttle … how? The Force? It didn’t seem possible. Only the most powerful Jedi could use it that way; only Dark Jedi would. Killing with the Force directly opened a Jedi to corruption, made him hungry for power. At least that was what Luke said. Anakin knew his uncle and Mara had been disappointed by their latest meeting with Kyp; perhaps this was the reason.

The Dozen began to juke and jink, lacing the tactical display with flashes of laserfire. Enemy plasma balls flared against their shields or streaked off and vanished, then the corvette’s blip was engulfed in static. Anakin thought maybe a proton torpedo, but his display had not shown any propellant trails.

When the static faded, the corvette remained, its fire faded to a mere dribble. The XJ3 X-wings swarmed, blasting it with laser bolts and finishing it with proton torpedoes. This time, propellant trails glowed brilliant blue on Anakin’s display.

Kyp’s voice came over the subspace. “See? No trouble.”

The
Speed Queen
fired its sublight drives and lumbered off. Though Anakin knew rogue attacks would ultimately prove harmful to both the Jedi and the New Republic, Lusa’s death was still too fresh for him to feel anything but glad.

“Nice shooting,” he said.

He was about to ask after the two strange detonations when Tenel Ka’s voice came over their squadron comm channel.

“New contacts,” she reported. “Two—no, three vessels. They appear somewhat larger.”

Fiver whistled in alarm as he displayed the blips on Anakin’s sensor screen. The three were arrayed in a perfect “stacked triangle”: a ship above, on, and below the Dozen’s tactical plane, each vessel situated so that its firing lane passed safely between the other two. Anakin was about to ask for a tactical readout when a data line appeared beneath each ship, identifying all three as assault frigates—slow and clumsy, but heavily armed and well protected.

“Ambush!” Anakin cried.

“Fact,” Tenel Ka said. “Launching coralskippers now.”

Clouds of faint blips swarmed from the frigates’ off-battle side. Most moved to take up positions around the killing zone, but a half dozen turned to pursue the fleeing
Speed Queen
.

The Dozen broke formation, but the bigger ships had already loosed a salvo of corkscrewing lava missiles. A pair of Kyp’s X-wings flared briefly and vanished.

Anakin was already lifting off the asteroid.

“Hold on, Little Brother,” Jaina said. Despite her words, her X-wing was rising along with everyone else’s. “We’re not exactly following orders here.”

“Are we exactly disobeying them?” Anakin demanded. He truly did not know what his uncle would want; whether Kyp had turned to the dark side or not, Luke would not want him killed—or, worse, captured. “We can’t let them have another of us—not after Lusa.”

“This is different,” Tenel Ka said. “The argument could be made that Kyp has brought this on himself.”

“Maybe,” Anakin said.

He took a moment to collect himself. People had been accusing him of being reckless since Yavin 4, and the last thing he needed was to give them more ammunition. On the other hand, he had made up his mind.

“Is that an argument you want to make?” he asked.

Tenel Ka was quiet for a moment, then the blastboat rose.

“No.”

“Fine. We’re going in. Jaina, tell us how.”

As the squadron formed around the
Big Eye
, Jaina said, “Our hop brings us out behind the low frigate. No fancy stuff, and don’t get carried away. Just blast an escape hole and head for home. Tails, you fly cover. No offense, but we haven’t worked together.”

“No offense taken, Stickz,” a Barabel said. Worried that she might not respond as automatically to a different call sign, Jaina had asked the squadron to use her Rogue Squadron nickname. “We are honored to cover your backz. If Tail One may offer a suggestion?”

Tenel Ka began the countdown, and Jaina said, “Seven seconds, One.”

“Their missile crewz will be facing away when you arrive. If you send the blastboat on the first pasz—”

“Risky, but it could work in a hurry,” Jaina said. “Odds, Minstrel?”

“The probability of success is … eighty-two percent, with a margin of error—”

Lowbacca rumbled his commitment to the Barabel plan, then Tenel Ka said, “Two, one, mark!”

Anakin pushed the throttle and toggled the hyperdrive. The stars stretched into lines. Two seconds later, Fiver chirped to announce their arrival half a system away. To prevent the return
to realspace from disorienting him, Anakin kept his eyes squeezed shut.

He reached out with the Force and felt his squadron in formation behind him. Kyp and the Dozen were a short distance to the left, swirling about in the killing zone trying to avoid plasma balls and magma missiles. Now that he was close enough, he could also feel the Yuuzhan Vong over at the battle, an indistinct quaver just powerful enough to divert his attention at a crucial moment. He was tempted to remove his lightsaber’s lambent focusing crystal. A starfighter battle was no place to get distracted.

The X-wing banked sharply right as Fiver, acting in tandem with the other astromech droids, lined up on target. Now past any danger of becoming disoriented, Anakin opened his eyes and saw the battle ahead, a tiny web of flashing color.

“Everybody ready to play?” Jaina asked.

Anakin keyed his microphone to answer affirmative and counted the right number of clicks as others did likewise. Through the Force, he sensed a strange resignation in his sister, not at all similar to his own adrenaline-charged excitement. She seemed more weary than tense, almost detached. Maybe that was how an ace pilot survived so many blinding-fast starfighter battles—or maybe it was the price of coming back alive, the all-too-organic result of stress overload. Perhaps senate politics weren’t the only reason Jaina’s leave from Rogue Squadron was indefinite. Perhaps the flight surgeons had suggested to Gavin that she needed a long rest.

“Fiver, open a private channel to Jaina.”

Before the droid could obey, Jaina said, “We’re whole and hot. Green to go, Jedi, and good shooting.”

Her X-wing leapt ahead, racing into a light-laced panorama now so large it spilled across the entire front panel of Anakin’s canopy. Putting aside any thought of suggesting she stay behind, he toggled his weapons live and selected laser cannons. The target swelled into view, first a blocky silhouette hiding the stars, then a megalithic darkness spewing plasma and magma into the maelstrom beyond.

Jaina nosed down to meet the only coralskipper in position to intercept the Jedi and soon had it juking and jinking to avoid her laserfire. The enemy pilot poured the power of his dovin basal
into shielding his craft instead of maneuvering it. Not smart. Jaina dodged past the few plasma balls he lobbed in her direction and raked the skip with low-power stutter blasts. When the first hit scored, she immediately quadded her weapons and unloaded.

“Now that’s shooting!” Zekk said.

“Neg that commclutter, Bounty Hunter,” Jaina ordered.

Zekk keyed his microphone.

With nothing between him and the frigate, Anakin switched to proton torpedoes and laid his targeting reticle on the ship’s bow. Tesar had guessed right about the missile crews; the plasma nodules and rock spitters on their side of the vessel remained quiet.

“Fiver, what’s happening with those skips chasing the
Speed Queen
?”

Fiver shifted the tactical display’s scale. The missing coralskippers were swarming the
Queen
.

“Not good,” Anakin groaned. “Really not good. Uncle Luke will like that about as much as rancor fighting.”

Fiver displayed a readout noting how long it would take the skips to return. They were out of the fight, but they might try to cut off the Jedi retreat.

“Keep an eye on them.”

Fiver whistled an acknowledgment, then Anakin’s targeting reticle lit as he entered torpedo range. The frigate filled the front of the canopy now, an asteroidlike rock that was all Anakin could see.

“Little Brother green,” he reported.

“Bounty Hunter green,” Zekk said. “Back and forth?”

“You first.”

A dozen white circles—three proton torpedoes and their decoy flares—streaked past and spread along the frigate’s flank. The Yuuzhan Vong shielding crews activated their gravity-focusing dovin basals, projecting a string of miniature black holes that swallowed everything coming at them. Zekk switched to laser cannons and sprayed the frigate with stutter blasts. Over the last two years, space combat between the New Republic and the Yuuzhan Vong had evolved into a game of bait and switch, each side trying to bluff the other into squandering its limited reserve of power on unneeded defenses and ineffectual attacks. The XJ3 updates had been designed to win that game.