Star by Star (68 page)

“Anakin is gone.”

“Han, I’m sorry.” Lando squatted at Han’s side, then caught Adarakh’s eye and nodded toward the door. “First Chewie, and now this. I can’t imagine.”

“I can’t either. Those terrible things I said to him …,” Han said. In the back of the apartment, Ben was crying more ferociously than ever, and Leia was sobbing even more loudly. “I drove him to it. He had to prove—”

“No.” Lando leaned in close and locked gazes. “Listen to me, old buddy. Anakin died because he was a Jedi Knight doing what Jedi Knights do—not because of what happened to Chewbacca, not because he was trying to prove anything to you.”

“How would you know?” Han snapped. He was lashing out not because Lando had said anything wrong, but because the anger was returning and he need to be angry with someone. “He wasn’t your son.”

“No, he wasn’t.” A pained—perhaps even guilty—look came to Lando’s eyes. “But I was the one who turned him over to the Yuuzhan Vong. He didn’t blame himself for what happened to Chewbacca … and he knew how much you loved him. Everyone could see that.”

The gentleness in Lando’s voice robbed Han of his anger, and substituted despair instead. He knew that his friend was only trying to comfort him, to keep him from falling apart like he had
after Chewbacca’s death—but the words rang hollow. Han knew how he had behaved after Chewie died, how he had taken out his anger on Anakin and let the rest of his family drift apart while he wallowed in his grief. He had nearly lost them, and now it was happening again—and this time, Leia was not going to be there to pull them all together again. This time, Leia would need someone else to be strong.

C-3PO clunked into the room, his electronic voice shrill with alarm. “Someone, please help! Mistress Leia has switched Nana off, and now she’s going to crush him!”

Keeping one hand on Han’s shoulder, Lando rose. “Crush who, See-Threepio?”

C-3PO threw his golden arms into the air. “Ben! She won’t let him go.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Lando pushed C-3PO at Han and started for the door. “Watch him.”

“No, Lando—I’ll go.” Han grabbed C-3PO’s arm and pulled himself to his feet. “It’ll need to be me.”

Lando lifted his brow. “Are you up to this?”

Han nodded. “I’ll have to be.”

He led the way to the nursery in the back of the apartment. Leia was standing in front of a transparisteel viewing pane, clutching Ben to her shoulder and staring out at the passing hover traffic, patting him on the back and swaying gently from foot to foot. If she realized that he was crying at all, she did not seem to recognize that it was because of her own keening.

Han went to her side and shooed the Noghri away, then slipped a hand between Leia and the baby.

“Let go, Leia.” He gently began to pry Ben free. “You need to let me take him.”

Her gaze drifted toward his face, but her eyes seemed to look through him without seeing anything. “Han?”

“That’s right.” Han caught Lando’s eye and passed him Ben, then wrapped Leia in his arms and held her—just held her. “I’m here, Princess. I’ll always be here.”

They came like snow, at first a few contacts dropping out of hyperspace, then a steady shower cascading down toward the OboRin Comet Cluster, then finally a data blizzard that swept Luke’s tactical display white with vector lines and bogey symbols.

“Outlying sensors confirm hostile contacts.” Even over the battle net, the signals coordinator—SigCor—sounded jittery. “Stand by for a message from Admiral Sovv.”

The admiral’s nasal voice came over the battle net, addressing what amounted to half of the New Republic Space Navy in a less-than-inspiring Sullustan monotone. Luke’s attention began to wander almost immediately. Still reeling from Anakin’s death, he could not help second-guessing himself, reexamining his decision to let his nephew embark on such a dangerous mission. Had he overestimated the strike team’s abilities—or underestimated those of the Yuuzhan Vong?

Mara’s voice came over a private channel. “Luke, stop beating yourself up. You can’t carry a load like that into battle.”

“I know, Mara.” There were times when Luke truly wished his emotions were not an open book to his wife—this was one of them. “But it’s not so easy. I keep thinking I let them go on a suicide mission.”

“You didn’t,” Mara said. “Does Leia blame you?”

“Leia is in no condition to blame anyone,” Luke said. He could feel his sister’s anguish beneath his own—a numb, almost physical pain not so different from what he had experienced when he lost his hand to Darth Vader. She was in shock, struggling to accept that a part of herself was gone forever. “But you heard how Han was.”

“He was worried about Leia.”

“That’s what he said,” Luke replied.

This time, Mara did not argue. Luke could sense how frightened she was about leaving Ben with Han and Leia while they were both so grief-stricken, but he knew better than to suggest again that she go to Coruscant. She had already told him she would go
after
the battle, and even Luke Skywalker—especially Luke Skywalker—knew better than to press Mara once she had made up her mind.

A moment later, Mara said, “Luke, it would have been wrong to deny your nephew his chance to save the Jedi, and Han and Leia know it, too. Think back to that meeting in the crater room. They’re the ones who told you to let him go.”

Knowing Mara would sense his nod even if she could not see it, Luke remained quiet and began to concentrate on his breathing, employing a Jedi relaxation technique to focus his thoughts. The truth was, he had a bad feeling about the coming battle that had nothing to do with Anakin. With what they had planned, Eclipse was going to lose pilots—maybe a lot of them.

Admiral Sovv captured Luke’s attention again by thanking him and the Jedi “intelligence apparatus” for alerting the Defense Force to the time and place of the enemy’s arrival. This drew a chuckle from Mara and the rest of the Jedi Knights; the “apparatus” had been a growing sense among the more powerful Masters that there was trouble coming from the OboRin Comet Cluster. Given that the Force was blind to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi had been mystified by the feelings and reluctant to act on them—until they learned from Talon Karrde that a huge Yuuzhan Vong assault fleet had departed Borleias about the same time the sensations began. Admiral Sovv, who had been looking for political cover to concentrate his defenses around Coruscant, had seized on the feelings as a “reliable report from Jedi intelligence” and used them as an excuse to recall several outlying fleets. Wedge had told Luke privately that the admiral did not really expect the Yuuzhan Vong to show, but had set up today’s ambush for the sake of maintaining appearances.

When contacts finally stopped dropping out of hyperspace on the tactical display, Sovv said, “The moment is upon us, my friends. Please switch to your assigned battle channel now, and may the Force be with you.”

Luke opened the channel assigned to Eclipse. “You all know what we’re attempting and why. Stay in formation, and follow your squadron leader’s orders. The battle will turn on us—”

“And the war on the battle,” several voices replied.

“We know, Master Skywalker,” Saba Sebatyne said. “You have said this seven times already.”

This drew a nervous laugh from both Eclipse wings.

Luke would have liked to do his part to ease the tension with a witty comeback, but found that part of his mind still too fogged by grief. “Sorry. Just wanted to be sure. Control?”

“Stand by for target identification,” Corran said. “Hisser, go ahead and stick your nose out. Everyone else hold positions.”

Saba’s blastboat slipped out of formation and eased alongside the comet—a wide-swinging stray—behind which the Eclipse squadrons were hiding. Luke switched his tactical feed from fleet to Jedi. The display image rotated ninety degrees, so that the main body of the comet cluster now hung along one side and the contacts were streaking horizontally across the screen. The counter at the bottom of the display read in the tens of thousands and still rising.

A small square appeared in the center of Luke’s tactical display, outlining a set of five blips near the heart of the invading fleet. Danni Quee’s voice came over the comm channel.

“Yammosk located. We’ll pinpoint which vessel when the fighting heats up.”

“Everyone fast and furious?” Corran asked.

Luke checked his command display to confirm that the status readout for each craft in his squadron read full DSW—drives, shields, and weapons. When he found everything at full capability, he opened his emotions to Tam—the third member of his and Mara’s shielding trio—and chinned his microphone.

“Sabers are good.”

When the other three squadrons also verified, Corran cleared them for launch. Both wings—seventy-two X-wings and eight supercharged blastboats—dropped out from behind their comet and accelerated to near-light, closing so rapidly that they were past the perimeter pickets before the Yuuzhan Vong could loose a magma missile. Luke took the lead, plotting an interception
vector that would carry them into the heart of the main fleet without making their target obvious. “Well done,” Corran commed.

The tactical display shifted scales, now showing Luke’s two wings of blue symbols surrounded by a sea of yellow Yuuzhan Vong symbols, each displaying the ship’s mass, analog class, and—when the
Jolly Man
’s computers could match the attributes to a profile in the data bank—occasionally even a name. Intent on pushing through the comet cluster and carrying through on its surprise attack, the enemy fleet maintained its loose formation so that each vessel would have maneuvering room. When Luke looked outside the cockpit, he could see the ships only as black areas blotting out the distant starlight; this far from Coruscant’s sun, there was little light to illuminate their dark hulls.

A frigate identified as the
Reaver
loosed the first Yuuzhan Vong salvo, but only one plasma ball was leading the fast-moving attack wings far enough to strike home. It hit one of the Shockers’ X-wings and, overwhelming the shields, reduced the starfighter to a flash of photons and atoms.

“Hold your fire,” Luke ordered. He began to jink and swerve, deliberately keeping both combat wings between two vessels at all times so enemy gunners would risk hitting their own ships if they fired and missed. “If we stop to fight, we’re lost.”

As they streaked deeper into the fleet, the Yuuzhan Vong kept up a steady but ineffectual dribble of fire, all the while maneuvering to clear a firing lane. It was a futile exercise against the nimble X-wings and their blastboat escorts. With the surveillance crews on the
Jolly Man
watching their backs, Luke always knew when a lane was opening and slid into a new attack vector. The Shockers lost one of their blastboats to a magma missile, but the crew retaliated by mass-firing their torpedoes and bombs before going EV. Almost half the volley penetrated the cruiser’s shielding singularities, and a long line of breaches began to vent bodies and atmosphere from the port side.

A skip carrier decelerated and turned to cut them off. As soon as coralskippers began to drop off the vessel and form up, Danni’s targeting square shrank and isolated an unnamed heavy
cruiser in the heart of the five-ship group she had designated earlier.

“Yammosk confirmed.”

Luke studied the tactical display, then touched a finger to a destroyer analog well off their current vector. The name beneath the destroyer was
Sunulok
.

“Designate secondary, Artoo.” A circle appeared around the vessel, and Luke opened a comm channel to Corran. “Control, are we clear for a diversionary launch on that one? We’ll bump over and slide away on the other side.”

“You’re good to go, Farmboy.” Corran divided the target into attack sectors by squadron, then commed Luke, “By the way, SigCor says they’re reading ion tails at the front of the fleet.”

“Ion tails?”

Yuuzhan Vong did not use ion drives.

“Maybe they’re bringing the Peace Brigade along,” Mara said. “That would explain how we felt them coming.”

Luke stretched his awareness of the Force forward. He found nothing for a moment, then felt a whole wall of life at the forward edge of the fleet. “Too many for a crime cartel. I feel two or three million beings there.”

“Must be one of their slave armies,” Tam said.

Luke was not so sure. The presence lacked the muted, staticlike sense caused by the head growths the Yuuzhan Vong used to control their slaves, but he had no time to contemplate what else he might be feeling. The skip carrier was dropping the last of its coralskippers, and the first squadrons were already coming out to meet them.

“X-wings slow, blastboats break!” Luke ordered.

The seven surviving blastboats turned hard, swinging in behind the destroyer analog’s rearmost escort frigates. Luke waited until their vector had straightened, then gave the command for the X-wings to follow. All four squadrons pivoted on their bellies, reverse-firing two engines and overthrusting the opposite pair, and were instantly flashing past the blastboats toward the two escorts.

Flashes of ruby fire blossomed from the frigates’ rocky sterns as they belched magma missiles at their attackers. Luke dropped his nose and dived for two seconds to force the Yuuzhan Vong
gunners to fully depress their launchers, then snapped into a climb and accelerated past their sterns while they tried to readjust. He checked his tactical display and saw a dozen squadrons of coralskippers swinging after them from the skip carrier, but their pursuit angle was so poor they would never reach the killing zone behind the X-wings.

When Luke raised his eyes again, it was to find space burning around him. He thought for an instant he had been hit, but felt no surge of concern from Mara or Tam. He gave his hand over to the Force and continued to jink and juke in tandem with his shielding companions, and the firestorm quickly resolved itself into exploding plasma balls and streaking magma missiles. A crackle of static announced the destruction of someone in his squadron, and R2-D2 scolded him with a long series of whistles.

“I don’t like it either, Artoo,” Luke said. “But Admiral Sovv is depending on us.”