Star by Star (69 page)

The maelstrom faded as quickly as it had erupted, and Luke checked his tactical display. He had taken his squadrons exactly where he intended, midway between the two escorts, but this pair had shown no fear of firing in each other’s direction. He had lost one of the Sabers’ blastboats, while the Dozen and the Shockers had both lost an X-wing. The frigates had paid a steep price for missed attacks, however; both symbols were blinking steadily to show that they were moderately damaged.

“We must be doing something right,” Kyp commed. “They really don’t want us near that big rock.”

Another pair of escorts came into view, their sterns sparkling with missile launches. The
Sunulok
’s tail was now visible between them, a dark disk the size of a thumb tip. Luke went into an evasive dive-and-rise, and missile trails began to streak past above and below. He checked the tactical display and found the dozen squadrons from the skip carrier still on their tail.

“It looks like we’ll have to take this ruse all the way,” he commed. “We’ll separate by squadrons and run hulls past the escorts. Shockers and Dozen left, Sabers and Knights right.”

The order was acknowledged by a flurry of comm clicks, then the four squadrons separated into pairs. Luke led the Sabers and Knights on an undulating course toward the escort on the right. Narrowly escaping a trio of plasma balls launched in a desperation
spread, he brought his X-wing in above the frigate’s weapon banks and skimmed its flank barely two meters off the hull. To his surprise, both escorts continued to attack the squadrons opposite, pouring so much fire into each other that R2-D2 had to reinforce the particle shields because of all the yorik coral gey-sering up in their path.

“Danni, you’re sure the yammosk is on the cruiser?” Kyp commed. “Because the way they’re—”

“I’m sure. The yammosk is going crazy.” Danni’s transmission ended in a crackle of static, then she came back yelling, “Drif!”

Luke did not need to check his command display to know that Saba had lost one of her Jedi pilots. He felt the Barabel die. The Sabers reached the bow of the frigate, and he immediately angled across the nose, both to confuse the enemy weapon crews and to set the squadron up for their diversionary attack run.

Then the comm speaker crackled with a huge pulse of static, and a nova-bright flash illuminated space behind Luke. He checked his tactical display and saw the adjacent escort coming apart just behind the Shockers, engulfing Kyp’s Dozen in flame and debris and hurling X-wings in every direction. Three, four, and finally five symbols winked out as starfighters exploded, then the blastboats went, and two more pilots went EV.

“Headhunter?” Corran commed. “Headhunter, are you there?”

No answer.

“Any Dozener?”

Again, no answer.

“Just fried circuits,” Rigard said optimistically. “We had a good spike ourselves.”

“Let’s hope so,” Luke said. He checked his display and saw that six of the skip squadrons pursuing them were peeling off to go after what remained of the Dozen. “Dozeners, if you can hear this, you’re out of action. Run if you can, or shut down and try to hide.”

The order was answered by a single scratchy comm click. Luke felt Mara reach out to him, silently urging him to forget the sinking feeling in his stomach and concentrate on the task at hand. Luke turned back to the
Sunulok
and found the destroyer analog’s stern swelling up before him, as big as a sandcrawler
and growing fast, a half-dozen weapon stations spitting plasma balls the size of banthas.

“Arm one proton torpedo,” Luke ordered. “Fire on my mark, then go over the top and be ready to break.”

By the time the last comm click had acknowledged his order, Luke had lost his second blastboat to one of the big plasma balls, and the
Sunulok
’s wing of coralskippers was streaming back beneath the destroyer’s belly to engage the X-wings.

“Ready, mark!” Luke ordered.

The blue glow of fifty ion drives filled the darkness and resolved itself into a dazzling wall of receding circles. The shielding crews began to work their dovin basals, capturing perhaps a third of the proton torpedoes and forcing the proximity fuses to detonate a safe distance from the
Sunulok
. Luke pulled up, angling for the top of the destroyer analog, and watched with satisfaction as the rest of the torpedoes struck home. The entire stern came apart, hurling a wall of flame and yorik coral pebbles in front of the approaching X-wings.

Relying on their shields for protection, they shot through the rubble and streaked along the spine of the wounded ship. Luke continued for perhaps a half kilometer, then broke off sharply and dived toward the heavy cruiser. R2-D2 tweedled helpfully and displayed a message for Luke.

“Thanks, Artoo.” Luke armed the rest of his torpedoes and shadow bombs. “Twenty seconds to target. Preparing for the main attack run.”

“Copy.” Corran was quiet for an instant, then said, “Message relayed. Good hunting.”

They were halfway to their target when a wall of New Republic turbolaser fire erupted from the main body of the comet cluster and briefly silhouetted the entire Yuuzhan Vong fleet. It looked like nothing more menacing than a vast field of black lozenge-shaped asteroids, but Luke experienced a terrible disturbance in the Force as several thousand beings from their own galaxy were blasted back to their elemental atoms.

Everything went dark again, and an uneasy silence settled over the Eclipse comm channels. Though only half of the pilots and crew in the combat wings were Force-sensitive, the rest had
been around Jedi long enough to have some idea of what their battle mates were experiencing.

An instant later, the vanguard of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet responded to the ambush with a lightning storm of crimson flashes and streaking fireballs. The New Republic turbolasers flashed to life again, the Force quavered with another thousand deaths, and the battle exploded into its full horror.

Luke saw a pair of frigates accelerating to cut them off from the cruiser. He touched his tactical display, designating the rearmost one as a secondary target.

“We’ll go through this one,” he said. “Hisser, will you take the lead?”

“My honor,” the Barabel replied.

The Wild Knights drew into a tight formation and moved forward, a golden aura slowly expanding around Saba’s blastboat. The frigates dropped their skips and began to pour more fire into the glowing ball of radiance, which only made it grow faster as Izal Waz used the Force to trap the light. Once the sphere was large enough, Luke lined the other two squadrons up behind it, picking off skips as they tried desperately to fight their way into the golden orb and stop the Wild Knights.

As Danni had described happening at Arkania, the frigate eventually grew so nervous about the approaching sphere that it turned a shielding singularity on it. The glowball abruptly lengthened as it was caught and accelerated by the gravity of the tiny black hole.

“Drop the block!” Saba ordered.

By the time she finished giving the command, the glowball had stretched into an ovoid twice as long as it was thick. Izal Waz let the golden sphere fade away, and the Wild Knights’ X-wings fanned out, already firing proton torpedoes. The shielding crews scrambled to redirect their singularities—and never saw the two-ton block of black durasteel that it had just accelerated to several hundred thousand kilometers an hour. The frigate did not explode so much as flash out of existence, and the wings from Eclipse suddenly found themselves diving on their target through a cloud of superheated dust.

A full wing of skips came boiling out of the cruiser to intercept them. The ship itself opened up with all batteries, pouring
constant streams of fire from its bow and stern in an attempt to force the attacking X-wings to come at it amidships and meet its coralskippers.

“Time to try out Control’s new targeting system,” Luke said. “Break into your shielding trios and go down the center.”

“And don’t stop to dogfight—those skips from the carrier are still on your tail,” Corran said. He switched to a private channel, then added, “And, Farmboy, you need to get this right the first time. Listen.”

There was a scratchy pause as Corran patched in the civilian emergency channel, then a confused babble filled Luke’s cockpit. A moment later, he began to recognize individual voices—and wished he hadn’t.

“—on us, please! We’re civilians from—”

“—is the
Happy Hutt
with five thousand refugees—”

“
—Meteor Racer
out.”

“Six hundred transponders just came on, Luke,” Corran said. “They confirm what you’re hearing.”

“Of course they do.”

Luke needed no further explanation to know what was happening. He recognized the
Happy Hutt
as one of the refugee ships missing from the evacuation of Ralltiir, and he felt certain that a records search would turn up the
Meteor Racer
’s name, as well.

The yammosk cruiser’s wing of skips began to fire at maximum range, no doubt trying to force their attackers to decelerate and be caught from behind. Instead, the X-wings and blastboats continued forward at maximum firing velocity.

Luke clicked off with Corran and had R2-D2 activate his supplementary targeting system. The reticle quickly locked onto the gravitational pulses coming from the dovin basal in his target’s nose. With lasers quadded on full power, he squeezed the trigger. One bolt streaked out a millisecond ahead of the others, following the targeting lock straight toward the skip’s nose. The rest diverged according to a carefully calculated ratio of distance and velocity until they were caught by the gravity of the skip’s shielding system and bent back inward. The first bolt vanished into the singularity; the other three converged three meters behind it, taking the coralskipper directly in the pilot’s compartment.

“Almost as good as the Force,” Luke said.

He found a pair of skips coming out of the field of detonations that had been the cruiser wing a moment before and set his targeting reticle on the one on the left.

“Already spoken for,” Mara said. She and Tam fired simultaneously; a moment later, both skips vanished. “Sorry, Farmboy.”

“You’re forgiven,” Luke said.

With its entire detachment of skips eliminated in the flash of an eye, the cruiser began to concentrate its fire in the approach lane. Knowing that even one of its big plasma balls would take out an entire shielding trio, Luke ordered his wings to fan out. As quick as the pilots were to obey, one trio of Sabers evaporated into the flame, and the Shockers lost their last blastboat.

But now the cruiser was laid out before them, a kilometer-long lozenge of dark yorik coral striped with bands of knobby weapons banks. With Mara to one side and Tam to the other, Luke juked and jinked for a three count, firing his quadded lasers into roiling clouds of flame while he gave the rest of his pilots time to reach firing position.

Finally, they were ready. “Fire everything you have—we won’t be coming back.”

Luke fired the two proton torpedoes from his open bank, fired three more from the other bank, then dropped the shadow bombs stored in the XJ3’s third set of launchers and used the Force to send them on their way. He saw the first two torpedoes vanish into a shielding singularity, then a plasma ball erupted from a weapon nodule ahead, coming so quickly at this distance that he barely had time to slide out of the way and kiss wings with Mara.

“Close, Farmboy.”

Luke eased away, then winced inwardly as she dipped her own X-wing and sent a magma missile ricocheting off her shields.

“You’re one to talk,” Luke commed.

Then the attacks dwindled away, and finally they could see the flames and debris erupting from the breaches their shadow bombs and torpedoes had torn into the hull. In some places, secondary explosions could be seen rolling down sections of exposed deck, and there were clouds of bodies and matériel billowing out into the vacuum. Luke decelerated as much as he dared with the skips coming behind them and locked down the
trigger of his laser cannon, burning round after round into the interior of the cruiser.

“Danni, what’s the yammosk status?”

“Quieting, but still alive.”

Luke checked the tactical display and found the skips from the carrier still thirty seconds behind them.

“What part of the vessel?” Luke asked.

“Negative, Farmboy,” Corran said. “We talked about this—you had your shot, now get out of there.”

“Danni, what part?” Luke demanded.

Mara’s apprehension level spiked. “Farmboy, one dead hero—”

“There are a lot of dead heroes out there today—too many to leave this undone.” Luke checked his tactical display; twenty seconds. “Where? Now!”

“Try lower deck, midships,” Danni said. “I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll take one more shot.” Luke angled toward the middle of the ship and continued to decelerate. “Everyone else, go.”

“Not on your life,” Mara said.

She and Tam decelerated along with him. With the rest of the wing flying cover, they began to work their way along the cruiser’s hull, pushing through the body clouds and sticking their noses into likely looking holes.

“Farmboy, you have fifteen seconds before those skips are all over you,” Corran said. “And there’s something else.”

He patched the Fleet Command channel through.

“—you to cease fire!” Sovv’s nasal voice was shouting. “The New Republic navy does not butcher its own people!”

“
We
are not butchering them,” Garm Bel Iblis countered. “The Yuuzhan Vong are.
We
are trying to fire around them.”

“And failing miserably, General,” Traest Kre’fey countered.

“What about Coruscant?” Garm argued. “What about the Jedi? Do you know how many pilots they lost to give us this chance?”

Corran deactivated the channel. “Luke, the Yuuzhan Vong are already pushing through the comet cluster. Rather than fire through the refugee screen, Traest is falling back and trying to maneuver. Garm will have to join him soon or be cut off, and Wedge is two minutes behind schedule because the battle is moving toward Coruscant.”