TWENTY-TWO

Rimward of the Tion Hegemony, Jaina watched the Yuuzhan Vong armada revert from hyperspace once again. One moment it appeared that ten thousand stars had been eclipsed; the next, that that part of the galaxy had gained a new star cluster.

Cappie shrilled and squeaked, underscoring its obvious distress by spotting the cockpit’s display screen with countless glowing bezels. In the same instant, two cinder-black A-wings that had been Jaina’s starboard companions for the past hour fell away in stealth, and made the jump to lightspeed.

Despite the glowing threat-assessment screen and her previous sightings of the armada, Jaina was staggered by the sheer number of ships the Yuuzhan Vong had amassed. Close-ups of the vessels provided by the starfighter’s long-range scanners showed their pitted hulls to be marked and etched with cryptic symbols and blackened with what looked like war paint but was probably blood. Many displayed slender tendrils of yorik coral, from which flew sail-like battle standards. Evidenced by melt circles and areas of carbon scoring, some of the ships were clearly veterans of earlier campaigns, uprooted from occupied systems throughout the invasion corridor. Others looked newly commissioned—newly grown—including an enormous rose-colored oval that had to be the flagship.

The fact that the Yuuzhan Vong had essentially entrusted hundreds of conquered worlds to the protection of patrol craft and ground troops meant not only that they were willing to risk everything they had gained on one conclusive battle, but also that their intent was nothing less than the obliteration of the Alliance fleets.

Cappie sent another transmission to the cockpit, and Jaina clutched the control yoke in pulse-quickening anticipation.

A pyrotechnic display of globular explosions began to fire-brighten the leading edge of the mobile cluster of ships, and a dozen bezels disappeared from the display screen. Again the Yuuzhan Vong had moved headlong into an expansive arc of smart mines that had been sown at the jump point. But as had occurred at the Perlemian transit point, the explosions began to taper off almost immediately, until there were only isolated bursts, and many of the undetonated mines disappeared, vacuumed into immense singularities created by dovin basals.

Jaina pressed her chin to the helmet’s microphone stud.

“Quermia controller, this is Twin Suns One. The beast has arrived and opened the packages we left.”

“Did the packages come as a surprise?”

“Not for long enough to give the beast any pause.”

“What is the status of your companions?”

“Heralds are away.”

“Can you corroborate the beast’s current vector?”

Jaina keyed a short request to the R2-B3 droid, which replied with tones and buzzes that became text on the display screen.

“Bearing toward jump coordinates for Mon Calamari.”

“Copy that, Twin Suns One. You are green to depart, and reposition to Mon Calamari Extreme. Rendezvous at Iceberg Three, with Vanguard, Scimitar, and Rogue Squadrons.”

Jaina signed off the command net and switched over to the tactical frequency. “All pilots, this is Twin Suns Leader. Instruct your droids to set coordinates for Mon Cal Extreme. Jump to lightspeed at my zero count. Ten, nine, eight, seven …”

Jaina sat back in her chair and waited for the X-wing’s Incom hyperdrive to engage. The jump would be Twin Suns’ third and final since they had first observed the armada emerge from hyperspace. All major staging points between the Perlemian Trade Route and Mon Calamari had been strewn with mines months earlier, primarily to discourage enemy forays. But Alliance command hadn’t expected an armada to use the transit jump points, and now every fleet strategist was pondering why the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t jumped directly from the Trade Route to the Mon Calamari system. Had the enemy committed another tactical blunder, or were they merely testing the waters? Perhaps they suspected that the Alliance had positioned forces at jump points convenient to Mon Calamari, in the hope of outflanking the armada once the battle commenced.

At each transit point Jaina had sent updates to a frigate stationed at Quermia, which was serving as a hyperspace transceiver. The frigate relayed the intelligence to the MCCC Fleet Annex. But a redundant system was also in place, in the form of courier ships, some of which had jumped to Quermia, and others to Mon Calamari. By now other couriers were certainly alerting the battle groups designated for Toong’l and Caluula, where withdrawing elements from the armada would be prevented from jumping to the aid of soon-to-be embattled Coruscant.

The transit to Mon Calamari would also be the longest of the three, so Jaina took advantage of the lull to center herself in the Force. She thought briefly of her parents, executing a mission on Caluula, and of Jacen, wherever he was. But she didn’t attempt to reach out to any of them. Everyone had their separate duties to perform, and she knew instinctively that the scattered members of her family were thinking of her, just as she was them. Nor were there any Jedi among Twin Suns for her to touch through the Force. With Kyp on Caluula, as well, Octa Ramis had been assigned to lead the Dozen, and both Lowbacca and Alema Rar were commanding their own squadrons. Madurrin, Streen, and some of the other Jedi were stationed on those capital ships that were essential to defending Mon Calamari itself against the enemy onslaught.

Having set her inner chrono to rouse her before the X-wing reverted from hyperspace, she returned to full awareness just seconds before Cappie signaled her with a ready tone.

She took a calming breath and waited for the stars to reappear.

Mon Calamari Extreme was just that: the far reaches of the star system, where the armada would likely decant. Iceberg Three was the code for the penultimate of the system’s eight satellites—a misshapen chunk of frozen waste; in fact, a captured comet—destined at some point in time to collide with the outermost planet. Silhouetted against the small white spheroid were dozens of Alliance cruisers, destroyers, and carriers, along with hundreds of starfighters.

It struck Jaina that nearly every vessel that had been in production for the past forty standard years was represented in one form or another, from Rendili StarDrive Dreadnaughts to Rejuvenator-class Star Destroyers.

And the gathered ships constituted only the outer circle of defense.

Despite the fortifying exercises she had taken herself through during the hyperspace flight, Jaina realized that her heart was pounding and her hands were trembling.

This is actually going to happen, she told herself with a stubborn measure of disbelief. The end of the war and the fate of the galaxy might well be decided over the course of the next few days.

“Welcome back, Twin Suns Leader,” a recognizable voice said into her helmet earphones.

“Thanks, Wedge,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been away for a week.”

“Terrific work, Jaina. Your rally point is Iceberg Three, at four-seven-nine ecliptic. You’re to stand by until the seeding’s concluded.”

“Copy, Alliance control. Standing by.”

Instructing Twin Suns to form up on her, Jaina led the squadron to its assigned coordinates, at fixed orbit over the frozen spheroid, in the company of a wing of starfighters made up of Rogue, Vanguard, Scimitar, Blackmoon, and Tesar Sabatyne’s Wild Knights.

“Hey, Sticks,” another familiar voice said.

Jaina opened a channel to Gavin Darklighter. “How long have you been sitting here, Rogue One?”

“Too long. Was Intelligence correct about the number of Vong ships?”

“I think they underestimated.”

Before Gavin could respond, Wedge broke in. “Group and squadron leaders, the beast is at the gate. I know you’re all eager to welcome it, but you’re going to have to wait your turns.”

The comm fell eerily silent, then erupted in chatter as the Yuuzhan Vong war vessels began to emerge: cones and polygons, faceted and smooth, bone white to reddish black, craggy with plasma launchers or strung with coralskippers. More rapidly and in increasing numbers they came, filling local space and eventually blotting out Mon Calamari’s distant sun. Just when it seemed that the last of them had reverted, still more appeared.

Somewhat removed from Alliance forces, and almost as if performing for an audience, the vessels began to tighten up, maneuvering into positions that ultimately created an oblate mass of yammosk carriers and destroyer and cruiser analogs. From that mass—emerging from berthing cavities in the largest ships or dropping from anchorage on yorik coral branches—streamed hundreds of picket ship analogs and coralskippers, deploying to forge the multitude of short and long tendrils that were meant to simulate the tentacles of a yammosk.

To Jaina the final arrangement more closely resembled a flaring star, or perhaps the spiral arm galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong were determined to overwhelm. But whatever the armada’s form, beast was the description that fit it best.

Then the immense organism was on the move, tentacles elongating from the hub as the cluster advanced on Mon Calamari, acutely aware of the reception party that awaited it, but resolute in its purpose.

“All group and squadron leaders,” a male voice announced over the battle net, “seedships have arrived.”

Alliance command might have borrowed the term from the Yuuzhan Vong, but the reference was not to the vessels that initiated the process of worldshaping; it was to the several dozen unarmed and remotely piloted freighters that gushed from behind Iceberg Three and launched straight for the armada. Plasma missiles assaulted the bulky container ships from all quarters, though armor plating kept most of them intact until they were within the embrace of the longer tentacles. There they surrendered their payloads of thousands of probe droids.

With wide-domed heads and dangling mechanical legs, the probots were marine in appearance, and indeed they spread out like a school of deep-sea creatures riding the currents of a rising tide.

Normally the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn’t have wasted firepower on droids, but each probot had been programmed to mimic the propulsion signatures of Alliance starfighters, so the coralskippers and pickets had a field day, slagging the probots with fiery projectiles, or simply dismembering them by collision. The Alliance might as well have been providing the yammosks and coralskipper pilots with practice for acquisition and targeting, but in fact each probot was contributing invaluably to Alliance command’s goal of clearing fire lanes to the heart of the armada.

Many of the battles fought during the long war had been decided not by firepower or kill ratios, but by the ability of Yuuzhan Vong biots to detect mass signals and to manipulate gravity. As intelligent as the yammosks were, they were evenly matched by the crunching power of battle analysis computers, combined with the targeting skill of pilots. The dovin basals were a different animal. For a time the Alliance had managed to outwit them by employing decoys, stutter-fire lasers, and the Jedi-propelled shadow bombs, but those advantages had recently been lost.

Still, the Alliance had one powerful weapon in its arsenal: invention.

Gleeful as they were about decimating the probots, the Yuuzhan Vong were unaware that each droid had been tasked to calculate entry points and targeting solutions for the star-fighters. Transmitted to Alliance command’s computers, the data were collated and relayed to group and wing commanders, and on to squadron leaders and pilots.

“Your droids should be receiving navigational and targeting information,” the voice of control said into Jaina’s right ear. “Watch your display screens for assignments.”

Data began to flash on the cockpit display as Cappie deciphered the information forwarded from Mon Calamari. Jaina watched a graphic representation of the yammosk resolve on the screen, with each tentacle of skips and gunboats assigned a number or letter. Twin Suns, Rogue, and Vanguard Squadrons were tasked with taking out tentacles fourteen through twenty. But as impatient as she was to go to guns, there was an order to battle that had to be maintained.

The first assault wave was comprised of A-wings, TIE interceptors, Chiss clawcraft, A-9 Vigilances, and a handful of Y-wings. The objective of the fastest of the starfighters—the A-wings and A-9s—was to tease the coralskippers out of formation. Both fighter types were small and fragile, but the short-range concussion missile launchers of the former and the fire-linked lasers of the latter did to the outlying coral-skippers what the skips had done to the probots.

For each dovin basal singularity that came to the rescue of a targeted ship, four failed to deploy in time, allowing the small fighters to strike and fade before the Yuuzhan Vong pilots even knew what hit them. Harried, the coralskippers and picket vessels that formed the tips of the tentacles began to disperse, and as soon as they did the dagger-shaped TIE interceptors and light bomber Y-wings were on them, weaving through the budding chaos with blinding speed and loosing proton torpedoes and bursts of high-powered laserfire.

The perimeter of the shifting armada became a blur of roiling fireballs and fragmenting vessels. Packets of green energy and nova-bright bundles of explosive power began to eat away at the suddenly flailing tentacles. Molten ejecta rocketed outward at the attackers, in such abundance the armada might almost have been hemorrhaging.

Jaina switched over to the battle net in time to hear control issue the order to withdraw. “We have clear fire lanes to their capital ships at one, six, seven, eight, twelve, and twenty-two. All starfighters in those lanes reposition to escorts and carriers.”

While the starfighters began to loop back, the Super Star Destroyer Guardian and the Mon Calamari cruiser Harbinger lumbered forward. Traversing, their ranged weapons poured huge bolts of destructive power down the unprotected lanes. Explosions blossomed at the heart of the armada, all but setting it aglow. Colossal pieces of yorik coral streaked through local space. The beast withered visibly, but stuck to its course.

“Second group away!” Alliance control ordered.

Jaina licked the sweat from her upper lip and punched the X-wing’s throttle, leading Twin Suns swiftly into the fray. The forward view through the canopy showed so many coral-skippers, so many targets of opportunity, she felt as if she were part of an elaborate simulation rather than engaged in actual battle.

Remotely controlled by however many yammosks were contained in the core, the tentacles slithered and snapped like amphistaffs. Skips moved in and out of her targeting reticle faster than she, or even Cappie, could keep track of them. For all the shrieking and yelping, the astromech droid might have been on a thrill ride. Even so, Twin Suns managed to maintain its integrity as it advanced on the whipping rank of vessels that had been designated tentacle fourteen.

Behind the X-wings flew B-wing fighters and a squadron of TIE defenders. In combat the B-wings were somewhat cross-shaped, whereas the TIEs—with their elongated bodies and triads of solar collection panels—resembled arrowlike projectiles. Their job was to mop up any mess that Twin Suns, Rogue, and the rest left behind, and to clear the way for the ships tasked with landing punches on the capital vessels: heavily armored E-wing fighters equipped with proton torpedoes, and twin-piloted Scimitar assault bombers, carrying enough concussive strafing power to decommission half the rock spitters of an enemy destroyer analog.

Coralskippers with enough fight left in them began peppering the X- and B-wings with plasma nodules and marshaling their dovin basals to make grabs for the attackers’ particle shields.

Then, without warning, capital ships at the heart of the armada funneled furious firestorms along the depleted lanes. Jaina’s X-wing wobbled and tumbled through a swirling corridor of flames. With the starfighter’s shields all but incinerated, she rammed the control stick to one side to free herself, rolling out of volcanic heat with the ship nearly roasted, and Cappie’s dome a drooping hood of molten alloy. She performed a desperate pushover and scanned local space, dismayed to discover that almost all of the TIE defenders were gone—atomized by the superheated tempest.

The beast hadn’t been stunned by the initial assaults; it had merely been waiting for the right time to counterpunch. And the single blow it delivered had knocked fifty or more starfighters out of the fight.

Jaina was doing a count of Twin Suns when the armada yammosks instructed the tentacle arms to rotate clockwise, and full chains of coralskippers and pickets quickly filled the gaps.

Where moments earlier Jaina was facing six wounded skips, she suddenly found herself in the sights of a ravenous thirty.