EIGHT

Giving in to what had become a routine of self-loathing, Malik Carr thought back to his arrival at Obroa-skai in the early days of the invasion. There he had met with Commander Tla, the priest Harrar, tactician Raff, and Nom Anor. Ever faithful to Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, Harrar and Nom Anor had hatched a plot to surrender a female member of a deception sect to the New Republic government as a means of infiltrating the Jedi, and assassinating as many of them as possible. Carr had had grave misgivings about the plan, but had given his blessing nevertheless, in part because of something Eminence Harrar had said to him.

The success of our plan will result in your being escalated to the rank of Supreme Commander, with a space vessel of your own to wield against our newfound enemy. From this, too, I will be permitted to sit at the right hand of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, on re-created Yuuzhan ’tar …

That was before Elan had been killed and Harrar had been recalled to the Outer Rim, and what was to have been a surprise attack on the enemy shipyards at Fondor had ended in failure—another of Nom Anor’s plots, but for which Nas Choka and Malik Carr had been forced to shoulder the blame. And yet since then, Nas Choka had been escalated to warmaster, Harrar to high priest, and Nom Anor—against all odds and the better judgment of many—to prefect of Yuuzhan’tar.

As for Malik Carr?

A custodian of enemy captives, stripped of his rank, a mere passenger in a vessel commanded by a warrior to whom he was once superior!

“I want one thing understood, Malik Carr,” Commander Bhu Fath was lecturing him from the high seat of the war vessel Sacred Pyre. “The prisoners are our first priority. Supreme Overlord Shimrra holds them in even greater regard than any of the relics and idols our convoy bears to Yuuzhan’tar.”

Standing stiffly in the murky green light of the command chamber, Carr managed to remain abject and straight-faced, despite the fact that only days earlier more than fifty of the prisoners in his charge had suffocated in Selvaris’s immolation pit.

Carr snapped his fists to his shoulders in salute. “I understand, Commander. The prisoners first and foremost.”

The convoy was made up of thirteen ships, most of them property of the Peace Brigade, but under the escort of five Yuuzhan Vong war vessels, the largest of them carrying two broods of coralskippers apiece. A circumstance that would have been unthinkable at the start of the war, the convoy was not accompanied by a yammosk. Worse, Fath’s vessel was tethered to a Brigader ship by an oqa membrane, to facilitate the transfer of prisoners collected from Selvaris to Sacred Pyre. Some of the captives transported from internment camps distant from Selvaris would remain aboard Peace Brigade ships until the convoy reached Yuuzhan’tar.

“Commander,” Carr said as he prepared to take his leave, “are you satisfied that the Peace Brigaders have a similar grasp of the priorities? Having met with some of them, I would suggest that their only allegiance is to the spice they smuggle from Ylesia and dose themselves with.”

Fath grunted. He was exceedingly tall and corded with muscle, but was seldom granted the fealty such size would have guaranteed another.

“In times like these, we are forced to ally with scoundrels and villains,” he said in a tired voice. “And by Supreme Overlord Shimrra’s decree do our vessels fraternize. But this won’t long be so. Another year, perhaps two, and we will be sufficiently reprovisioned with warriors and vessels to dispense with the need for Peace Brigaders or other would-be allies. Warmaster Nas Choka has given me his personal assurance.”

Carr fought to keep from betraying the anger that consumed him. He was the one who had welcomed Nas Choka to the war, and had allowed an escalation ceremony to take place aboard the vessel in his command. He wondered if Nas Choka would so much as deign to gaze on him now—especially should the warmaster learn of the escape of a Selvaris prisoner. The mere possibility of that made the present assignment all the more important, for any untoward incident would surely doom Carr to further demotion.

But, no, he told himself. He would sooner drape a tkun around his neck than suffer additional shame.

He shook off his concern. Even though still visible through a transparency in the command chamber, Selvaris was behind him. Soon the convoy would accrue adequate acceleration for the transition to darkspace, and the next stop would be Yuuzhan’tar.

Saluting Fath a final time, Carr began to back out of the chamber. He had just reached the membrane hatch when Fath’s communications subaltern swung away from the villip choir he supervised.

“Commander, enemy vessels detected! On the approach.”

Fath rose halfway out of his chair. “What?”

“Warships and starfighter squadrons,” the subaltern elaborated.

Carr turned to the transparency. A score of ships were streaming out from behind Selvaris’s small moon. In advance of the convoy, others had emerged from what the enemy called hyperspace. He could almost hear the war cries of the starfighter pilots.

“An ambush!” Fath said in confused disbelief.

A stout Peace Brigader burst into the command chamber. “We were told this route was secure! How did the Alliance learn of our plans?”

Fath gaped at the human. “This—this can’t be!”

The man snorted in scorn and pointed out the transparency. “Take a look, Commander. Unless you do something fast, we’re as good as space dust!”

Fath shot to his feet and hurried to the chamber’s tactical niche, where a host of hovering blaze bugs were arranging themselves into a battle display. Lacking a yammosk to chaperone them, the best they could manage was a representation of the disposition of the vessels and warships, without providing information on weapons capacity or attack vectors. Carr, meanwhile, took a moment to steady himself, for he knew exactly what had happened.

The escaped prisoner, the mathematical equation spewed by the captive, what he guessed had been code …

“Commander Fath,” he said without thinking, “charge the villips to spread word of our plight. Deploy dovin basals to protect our vessels. Order the Peace Brigade ships into defensive formation while we launch coralskippers.”

Fath’s subaltern looked to his commander for authorization.

Fath swallowed hard. “Yes, yes, do as he says—quickly.”

The human narrowed his eyes in favor. “Thank the gods someone is doing the thinking around here.”

Carr glared at him. “It’s a rescue operation. Stop your muttering and see to it that the rest of my prisoners are transferred to Sacred Pyre. Once the oqa membrane is retracted, order your people to go to weapons.”

Still grinning, the Peace Brigader tapped his forehead with the edge of his extended fingers. “On my way—Commander.”

Carr reveled in the sound of the honorific, but only for a moment; then he turned back to Fath. “Are you confident you can tackle this?”

Fath lowered his gaze in uncertainty. “I am here by dint of accident, Supreme Commander. You belong here.”

Carr approached him in fury. “Blu Fath! The honorific belongs to you unless you do something foolish to forfeit it!”

Fath raised his eyes and nodded.

“Command the prisoner ships to go to darkspace immediately,” Carr said. “We can’t afford to have them remain in the arena and engage.”

Fath’s eyes opened wide. “Flee in dishonor?”

Carr took hold of Fath’s command cloak. “Priorities, Commander. Supreme Overlord Shimrra will honor you more for safeguarding his captives than for your enthusiasm to do battle.” He let go of the cloak. “Experience teaches one to distinguish between wisdom and eagerness.”

Fath swung to his subalterns and conveyed the order.

“Now launch the coralskippers,” Carr instructed.

The subalterns didn’t bother to wait for authorization.

Fath’s proudly scarred face was ashen. “But without a yammosk—”

Carr cut him off with a wave of his hand. “If the pilots under the cognition hoods of the coralskippers don’t know how to engage the enemy by now, they will never know! And they’ll pay for their ignorance with dishonorable death.” He motioned Fath to the villip choir. “Tell them so. Stir their hearts. Inflame them!”

Fath swallowed and nodded. “I will. But where will you be?”

Carr tipped his head to one side. “Did you not command me to take charge of the prisoners?”

Fath straightened to his full height. “I did.”

Carr placed his hands atop Fath’s broad shoulders. “Command tests our will. Hold fast to your faith in Yun-Yammka. Rise above the storm. But should the battle back you into a corner, you know where to find me.”

Fath snapped his fists to the opposite shoulders, following it with a gesture of us-hrok—a sign of gratitude and loyalty. “Belek tiu, Supreme Commander!”

Weapons were already flaring in space—the enemy’s laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers. Carr spun on his heel and rushed from the command chamber. This day would see him exonerated or dead.

Twin Suns Squadron of battle-seasoned X-wings emerged from hiding with wingtip lasers charged and stabilizers locked in attack position. The convoy of pod-shaped Peace Brigade freighters and their escort of war vessels was strung out in a long line that trailed past Selvaris’s moon almost to the planet itself. A few of the freighters sported retrofitted turbolasers and other ranged weapons, but most were patched together and defenseless. Three of the Yuuzhan Vong vessels were 120-meter-long spearheads of reddish black coral, pitted with dovin basal launchers and plasma-spitting weapons emplacements. The pair of larger vessels were oval-shaped carrier analogs, equally well armed, and sporting clusters of coralskippers affixed like shellfish to their bone-white hulls.

Ensconced in Twin Suns One, Jaina Solo flew point for the three squadrons under her command. Gloved hands gripped on the X-wing’s control stick, she chinned her helmet comm. “All flights, form up on your leaders and keep your battle channels open for instructions. Scimitar Leader, do you copy?”

“Copy, Twin One,” Colonel Ijix Harona said.

“Yellow Taanab Leader, do you copy?”

Wes Janson commed back. “Loud and clear, Twin One.”

The X-wing’s sensors painted blue and yellow bezels on the cockpit displays. “Scimitar Leader, your squadron has the number one carrier. Taanab Leader, those forward gunships are yours. Twin Suns will take the carrier umbilicaled to the Brigade freighter. The rest of the convoy vessels are designated to Dozen, Blackmoon, and Vanguard fighter squadrons.”

Named by Luke Skywalker for his double-starred home-world of Tatooine, Twin Suns was made up of T-65A2s and XJ3 X-wings. Ijix Harona’s Scimitars were wedge-shaped A-wings; Blackmoon was E-wings; and the Taanab Aces—a volunteer squadron—were yellow snubfighters adorned with black stripes. The Dozen had originally been formed by Kyp Durron; the Vanguard, by Jagged Fel and his Chiss comrades.

The flanks of Jaina’s white fighter still bore faint traces of running voxyn—Jedi-hunting beasts bioengineered by the Yuuzhan Vong—that had been added years earlier. Off to her right flew starfighters and armed transports that had decanted from hyperspace only moments earlier. She switched over to the command net. “You there, Kyp, Colonel Fel, Captain Saz?”

“Affirmative, Colonel,” Saz said from Blackmoon One.

“Perched on your right shoulder,” Kyp Durron replied. The nova suns on the fuselage of his X-wing were as faded as Twin Suns One’s voxyn. Good to see you, he sent through the Force.

Acknowledging the extrasensory greeting, Jaina felt Kyp join the Force-meld she shared with Lowbacca and Alema Rar. The Wookiee and the Twi’lek were piloting Twin Suns Five and Nine, respectively. The meld was powerful, though nothing like the twin bond Jaina shared with Jacen, even across the stars.

“Where’s Jag—Colonel Fel?” she asked. “I thought the Chiss were going to participate.”

“Vanguard was held back at Mon Calamari,” Kyp said. “Something big is brewing.” He sends his love, the Jedi Master added.

The sending caught Jaina by surprise, and her face took on sudden color. Kyp’s remark couldn’t have been better timed.

“Twin Suns, Scimitar, and the Yellow Aces are tasked,” she told the recent arrivals firmly. “Don’t feel shy about asking for help if the gunships put up a fight, Blackmoon Leader.”

Saz laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Colonel.”

From its socket behind the X-wing’s canopy, Jaina’s R2-B3 unit, Cappie, relayed an urgent message to the cockpit. She studied the translation display screen and chinned her comm again. “All pilots, sensors are showing intensifying hyperdrive emissions in the Peace Brigade freighters.”

“Copy, Twin One,” Harona said. “They’re ramping up to make the jump to lightspeed.”

Jaina reached for the throttle. “They’re not leaving without our permission. All flights, move in to intercept and obstruct. Target hyperspace drives and shield generators. Be precise with your shots. We don’t know where the prisoners are being held.”

Jaina watched Peace Brigade ships break formation, the lead freighters veering to either side, and midline vessels angling for cover behind Selvaris’s moon. Elements of Kyp’s Dozen and Blackmoon swept in to cut off the enemy ships.

Jaina pulled back on the yoke and sent her craft into a predatory bank that would have knocked the wind from her in atmosphere, but, here, with the inertial compensators enabled, felt like nothing more than a slow glide. Laser beams and molten projectiles streaked from the convoy escort ships, tearing into the ranks of starfighters. Two X-wings disappeared in globular explosions. Kyp’s Dozen broke into four shield trios, accelerating in an attempt to overtake the fleeing freighters.

Some of the Peace Brigade ships were faster than they looked. Thrusters blazing, they raced Rimward, even with Blackmoon and Scimitar starfighters hanging on their tails, raking fire across their hulls and engine nacelles. But the pursuit was ill timed.

“I count one, two, three Brigade ships away,” Harona said as the freighters made the jump to hyperspace and vanished. “Should we go after them?”

“Negative,” Jaina said quickly. Their orders were to rescue as many prisoners as possible, not chase the enemy clear to Coruscant. “Just make sure no others get past us.”

Kyp’s Dozen hurtled forward to make sure that none did, paying out concussion missiles and torpedoes as necessary to corral the fleeing freighters. Poorly shielded, the unwieldy ships heaved to, one of them already immobilized.

The carriers, however, were quick to react.

“Skips away!” Harona’s voice boomed in Jaina’s headphones.

Jaina slewed to starboard in time to see the enemy fighters drop from the undersides of their carriers and form up in clouds around the remaining freighters and Yuuzhan Vong gunships. Pearlescent red wedges of yorik coral, the enemy fighters were nimble and lethal. The sight might have sent her heart racing had she not grown accustomed to the enemy’s tactics. Still, she knew from personal experience not to underestimate the vitality of the coralskippers or the single-mindedness of their pilots.

She allowed her sense of exhilaration to run its course, then eased back into the Force-meld. Lowbacca, Alema, and Kyp acknowledged their readiness.

“One Flight,” she said, “change to course one-zero-one ecliptic. Set lasers for out-of-phase fire. Remember to toggle your grab-safeties if dovin basals pull your shields.”

Lowbacca and Alema touched her briefly through the Force as their separate four-fighter contingents altered vectors accordingly and began to accelerate toward the tethered carrier.

Following the rout of Tsavong Lah’s forces at Ebaq 9, and almost a year of modest victories in Remnant space, the Koornacht Cluster, Bakura, and elsewhere, the war should have long been over. Galactic Alliance commanders Sovv, Kre’fey, Brand, Keyan Farlander, Garm Bel Iblis, and others were certain that they had dealt the Yuuzhan Vong a death blow, and that subsequent engagements would be limited to mop-up operations. All the while, though, Yuuzhan Vong shapers had been busy cooking up ways to reestablish parity, and slowly they had discovered the means to counter the weapons the Alliance had grown to rely on: laser stutterfire, yammosk jammers, decoy dovin basals, shadow bombs, and the rest.

Then the Yuuzhan Vong had gone a step farther by unleashing a horde of specially designed dovin basals to gobble up or otherwise incapacitate HoloNet relay stations throughout the galaxy. While the Alliance had tried valiantly to reinstate instantaneous communications—resorting to stationing warships in deep space to double as transponders—world after world had fallen to the enemy, conquered or surrendered without a fight. Finally there had been the disastrous attempt by combined Alliance and Imperial Remnant forces to reclaim Bilbringi.

The title of Trickster was back in the hands of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, and Jaina was only “the Sword” she had been named on Mon Calamari, in the Jedi Knighting ceremony that had preceded the battle at Ebaq 9.

“Make every shot count,” she said. “Reserve torpedoes and concussion missiles for the carrier.”

An organic-looking cofferdam still linked the Yuuzhan Vong vessel to a Peace Brigade freighter. Between Twin Suns and the leashed ships, local space was target-rich with coral-skippers.

“Begin your hull runs,” Jaina commanded. “Straight down the convoy line.”

The X-wing’s sensor screens grew noisy with battle static as bursts of green coherent light streaked from the starfighters’ weapons. Singularities fashioned by the coralskippers engulfed most of the bursts, but a few beams pierced the enemy defenses and found their targets. Spherical explosions blossomed, sending asymmetrical masses of yorik coral spinning off into space.

At the end of the first run, Jaina powered Twin Sun One through a tight turn, accelerated, and rocketed back into the thick of the fighting. Superheated ejecta surged from the coralskippers’ volcanolike launchers, whipping past her canopy like fiery meteors. She wreathed through a tight grouping of enemy fighters, responding in kind. One skip scudded clear of her carefully timed bursts, but a second she caught off guard with steady fire, destroying it completely.

She boosted power and chased the one that got away, her wingmate coming alongside her. The craggy lump of dovin-basal-driven coral climbed, then looped and descended, throwing everything it had at them. Twin Sun Three yawed hard to port, but not fast enough. The skip’s dovin basal lurched for the starfighter’s shields at the same time two molten missiles were catching up with it. Overwhelmed, the deflectors failed, and the X-wing blew to pieces.

One thing Jaina hadn’t grown accustomed to was losing her teammates. At this point in the war, with every available veteran leading his or her own squadron, most of the pilots assigned to Twin Suns weren’t much older than she was, and each and every death tore her apart.

Anger flared in her, but only for a moment, before evanescing in the Force. In eerie calm she veered and pounced on the coralskipper while its organic defenses were preoccupied. Two precisely placed shots disabled it, and a third finished it. The skip coughed fluorescent puffs of vaporized coral, then disappeared in a short-lived ball of flame.

Peeling away from the fireball, Jaina prowled for new targets.

With the playing field leveled, courtesy of the enemy’s aptitude for innovation, fighter engagements had become as ferocious as they had been at the start of the war, before effective countermeasures had come into play. Alliance forces held a slight advantage when coralskippers were flying without the assistance of a yammosk, but enemy pilots now had more authority over their ships than ever before, and were no longer as easily outwitted or outmaneuvered.

Jaina ignored the displays of her range finder and computer-aided sights and relied on the Force to guide her to targets of opportunity. The battle channels were noisy with chatter.

“We can’t clear a path for the transport with those skips hugging the carriers,” Harona was admonishing Scimitar Squadron. “Three Flight, you’ve got to take out that dorsal plasma launcher. Two Flight, see if you can draw those skips away.”

“We’re trying, Scimitar Leader, but they won’t take the bait.”

“Copy that. Then we’ll just have to take the fight to them.”

Jaina saw that the same situation applied to the tethered carrier. The coralskippers were intent on protecting the vessel at all costs—or at least until it could detach from the Peace Brigade freighter. Close in, Twin Suns’ Two Flight salvoed, opening rends in the yorik coral ridges that shielded the vessel’s drive dovin basal.

Jaina had the rest of her squadron tighten up their ragged formation and press the attack. When the X-wings began to score hits, the coralskippers reacted by dispersing. With patent disdain for evasionary tactics, the lead skip launched itself at Jaina. Then the entire swarm sallied forth from their protective positions.

“Twin One, single skip at your right wing,” Alema warned.

“Thanks, Nine.”

Jaina wheeled away from a flurry of missiles, rolled, and came about. She and the opposing flight leader squared off and bored in on each other, their respective wingmates falling back, too busy holding position and adapting to their leaders’ actions to do any firing. The skip opened a void directly in front of Jaina, but she managed to twist free in the nick of time. The X-wing bucked, then righted itself. Jaina thumbed the trigger of the lasers, pouring fire into the gravitic hole. The dovin basal rushed to absorb the energy, leaving the coralskipper momentarily unprotected. It was all the time Jaina needed. The X-wing’s starboard lasers hammered the skip mercilessly, splitting it down the middle. Long plumes of incandescence streamed from the rend; then the skip vanished in blinding light.

Two and Three Flights were meeting with similar success. All discipline forgotten, the coralskippers were streaking away from the carrier in a flurry of maneuvers, even while crisscrossing lines of destruction probed for them.

Off toward what was the head of the convoy, the first carrier had gone belly-up; off to both sides, Kyp’s Dozen and Blackmoon were flying circles around three Peace Brigade ships whose laser cannon turrets were smoking ruins. And now Alliance gunships and transports were on their way into the arena, keen on filling themselves to bursting with liberated captives.

Jaina ordered One and Three Flights to surround the umbilicaled carrier. She asked Lowbacca to drop Two Flight back to field any skips that might attempt to break through the line.

Kyp commed her. “Just learned that Alliance agents have sabotaged the hyperdrives on all but one of the freighters. They’re ours now.”

“That’s great news,” Jaina said.

“Here’s an even better piece. Your parents are here.”

Jaina smiled. “I felt them.”

Her eyes followed a blip on the display screen that could only be the Millennium Falcon. It was headed her way.

She hadn’t seen her parents in weeks, and had learned only the previous day that they had not only been responsible for providing intelligence on the convoy, but also volunteered for the rescue mission.

Not that that surprised her in the least.

She sent a greeting through the Force. Her mother would know who it was from.

It wasn’t long before she could see the Falcon with her own eyes. Her parents were maneuvering the ship as deftly as if she were an X- or Y-wing, top and belly quad lasers dispatching coralskippers unlucky enough to be in the way. A sleek Alliance picket, bristling with weapons, flew in the Falcon’s wake. As the two ships closed on the number two carrier, the picket fired a harpoon directly into the nose of the Peace Brigade freighter at the other end of the carrier’s intestinelike cofferdam.

“Knockout harpoon,” Twin Suns Four said. “Like a giant hypodermic syringe filled with coma-gas. By the time our people board, the Brigaders’ll be out cold.”