Star by Star Read online

  That was all it took. Save for the Falcon and the X-wings, every ship within ten kilometers of the Sweet Surprise began to veer away.

  “What about it, Sweet Surprise?” Gavin asked. “Come to a halt and prepare for boarding.”

  The proper response would have been to fire a burst of braking rockets from the bow thrusters. Instead, the Surprise nosed sharply up.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Plaan said.

  “Negative, Surprise.” The voice belonged to Colonel Tycho Celchu, Gavin Darklighter’s immediate superior and a veteran Rogue Squadron pilot himself. “You can’t pull a flipover here. You’re too long for the safe lane.”

  “You let us worry about that,” Plaan’s reply came. As he spoke, all three hundred meters of the Sweet Surprise shot straight up in front of the Falcon, then began to arc back overhead.

  “Colonel?” Gavin called. “Orders?”

  “Shields!” Tycho’s reply came.

  “Good idea,” Han muttered, reaching for the controls.

  Leia’s hand was already bringing the glide switches up. “Full power?”

  “You Jedi—always reading minds.”

  Leia locked the glides at maximum, then opened an intercom channel to the main hold and crew quarters. “Strap in, back there. We’re about to have some fun.”

  The Noghri, of course, said nothing. A pair of mine rockets flared to life. The Sweet Surprise’s belly laser flashed in response, and both mines erupted before they had traveled a hundred meters.

  “Wormheads!” Han nosed the Falcon down.

  On the military channel, Gavin called frantically, “Mine control, deactivate—”

  The ten closest mines fired their rockets and streaked toward the Sweet Surprise in a funnel-shaped web of orange. The freighter’s belly laser lashed out again, destroying three more mines. Another ten ignited.

  “You’d think they’d learn,” Leia said, struggling to cinch her crash webbing. It was still Wookiee-sized, and she almost said something about replacing it, then realized how that would sound to Han and grabbed hold in a cross-chest grip. “We should have filed the report first.”

  The first wave of mines blossomed into white fire against the Sweet Surprise’s shields. So did most of the second. But three devices passed through the shields, their vibropoint heads penetrating the ship’s durasteel walls. One erupted on the bridge, shattering the transparisteel viewing panels, spraying X-wing-sized shards down through the safe lane. A second warhead vaporized the ion drives and sent the crippled freighter tumbling down behind the Falcon. Leia did not see where the third detonated. She was distracted by several orange halos expanding above their own cockpit.

  “Han—”

  “I know,” he said. With the Sweet Surprise falling away, the Falcon had become the largest target mass. “Just hold on. I think …”

  The halos went dark, and a half-dozen black silhouettes bounced harmlessly off the Falcon’s shields.

  Han finished, “… they’ll deactivate.”

  He rolled the Falcon down after the Surprise. Leia sank into her oversized chair, then grunted as she snapped back up into her loose shoulder restraints.

  Han glanced over. “This could get tricky. Dial up the inertial compensator. Tighten your crash webbing.”

  “It’s as tight as it goes,” Leia said. “I’ll just hold on.”

  If Han heard, he was too busy to answer. They were diving through the next band of traffic.

  Rogue’s X-wings were spiraling after the tumbling Sweet Surprise.

  Startled starships were looping in all directions, their deflector shields rubbing, forks of blue lightning dancing between their hulls. Han swerved away from a space yacht, bounced the Falcon off a particle shield, slipped between two Gallofree transports, then shot out the bottom of the traffic band.

  Pilots below began to respond to Rogue Squadron’s emergency warnings, and a series of gaps opened ahead of the Sweet Surprise. Leia reached out with the Force to see how many survivors there were. She felt a wave of fear that convinced her Plaan had not been lying about his hostages—and also a feral stirring, a strange sense of hungry agitation unlike anything she had ever experienced.

  “Han …”

  “In a minute.”

  Below, a trio of X-wings were struggling to align themselves with the Sweet Surprise’s center of gravity. Leia glimpsed the freighter’s belly and saw where the third mine had struck. A plume of cargo and vapor streamed from the hole. The three X-wings finally arranged themselves and advanced at berthing speed, their laser cannons blasting a docking breach in the ship’s hull.

  The maneuver was desperate but effective, standard military protocol for entering out-of-control craft. Inside, the last pilot would seal the breach with his shields. The other two would close their vac suits and do what could be done.

  The feral stirring faded, just like the stirring aboard the Nebula Chaser that Jaina and Mara had described. Leia opened a scrambled channel to Rogue Squadron.

  “Colonels Celchu and Darklighter, this is Leia Solo. Your men will find more than smugglers on board. There may be a voxyn.”

  Han looked over wide-eyed, but she ignored him and waited.

  “Copy,” Gavin said. “Voxyn?”

  “Yuuzhan Vong monsters, Jedi-killers,” Leia explained. “Stay away from anything that looks like an eight-legged reptile. Far away. These things spit acid and screech blastwaves. Maybe they do worse.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Darklighter out.”

  Leia looked to Han. “He went in himself?”

  “First one,” Han confirmed.

  Han and Leia spent a nervous quarter hour following the Surprise into an unstable orbit around Coruscant. Gavin was not only Jaina’s commanding officer in Rogue Squadron, he was also a good friend of Han and Leia and the cousin of Biggs Darklighter, who had died helping Luke destroy the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin. Both Solos were afraid of losing him to an accident or one of the voxyn, but trying to grab the freighter with the Falcon’s tractor beam would only drag them out of control. They could do nothing but sit by while someone else performed the heroics; Leia could tell by Han’s white knuckles that he found their helplessness even more frustrating than she did.

  As they waited, the freighter tumbled through the last traffic band and swung into an erratic polar orbit. The PDF agreed to deactivate the appropriate sectors of the mine shell as the Sweet Surprise passed through, but the ship’s trajectory would decay in forty-two minutes. With Orbital Control’s rescue tractors busy cleaning up collisions the freighter had caused trying to escape, there would be no choice except to destroy the Surprise before it crashed into Coruscant. The refugees would have to be evacuated via civilian rescue or perish with the ship.

  Gavin reached the backup controls in engineering and began to fire the Surprise’s attitude thrusters. Orbital Control called for evacuation help and received a reply from a bulk cruiser with room for a thousand passengers.

  The cruiser, a sleek fast-hauler named Steady Lady, appeared behind the Falcon and began to maneuver its five-hundred-meter body into position over the topside rescue hatch. Han dropped behind the Sweet Surprise’s stern, clearly galled at having to sit back and wait for others. Leia reached out with the Force again. The passengers were near the top of the freighter, moving toward the center in a large mass. She did not sense the voxyn, but that meant nothing. Jaina and Mara had not felt Numa Rar’s killer after the initial stirring.

  By the time the Steady Lady began to descend toward the escape hatch, the Sweet Surprise was above Coruscant’s south pole. The navicomputer showed thirty-three minutes to orbital decay—barely time, Leia hoped, to transfer a thousand frightened passengers.

  Gavin Darklighter’s voice came over the comm. “Leia, how’d you say to kill these things?”

  “Things?” Leia echoed.

  “Four,” Gavin confirmed.

  Han groaned.

  “About a meter high, four long,” Gavi
n continued. “Not attacking, but between us and the air lock.”

  Han opened a separate channel to the Steady Lady. “Hold still a minute, Lady.” Not waiting for a reply, he eased the Falcon up under the larger ship’s belly and started forward. “We’ve got to take care of a small problem.”

  Leia did not hear what the Lady’s pilot shrieked back. She was busy on the other channel.

  “Gavin, sit tight. We’ll clear them for you.”

  “Clear them?” the reply came. “How?”

  Leia looked to Han.

  Han shrugged. We’ll think of something, he mouthed.

  Leia shot her husband a scowl, but said, “We have a plan.”

  The Falcon slid over the Sweet Surprise’s mangled stern and shot down the narrowing cleft between the big freighters, orange tongues of rocket fire licking all around as the Steady Lady fired her braking thrusters. A loud clunk sounded from the roof, and the long-range displays went to static. Han barely looked up. He had lost the sensor dish so many times he now carried a spare; it could be plugged into the new breakaway sockets in minutes.

  Leia released her crash webbing, grabbed her lightsaber, and turned to go.

  “Hold on!” Han said. He was struggling to keep the Falcon from becoming a durasteel sandwich. “Where are you—”

  “The docking hatch.”

  “Too dangerous!” Han actually looked away from the viewport. “You’re staying here.”

  “If you like.” Leia had to remind herself that Han’s protectiveness was a good thing, a stage in the healing process. “You can lure the voxyn out with the Force, and I can scrape off the cannon mounts.”

  She gestured ahead. The gap between the Lady and Sweet Surprise could not have been much wider than the Falcon itself.

  Han cringed. “Use the emergency hatch in the aft freight lift,” he said. “When you draw them out, stay on this side of the air lock.”

  “Whatever you say, dear.” Leia was already halfway down the access tunnel.

  She collected the Noghri from the crew deck and went aft. Adarakh removed the floor of the freight lift, Meewalh prepared the emergency docking hatch, and Leia used the intercom to guide Han into place. The space was narrow, and they had to tip the Falcon up against the Steady Lady to slip the cofferdam over the Sweet Surprise’s escape hatch. Leia could feel the voxyn below, four killers thirsty for her blood. Adarakh equalized the pressures.

  A clunk echoed up through the hull. No need to draw them out. They were coming.

  Leia spun toward the inner hatch, thumbed her lightsaber active. “Let’s go!”

  A wave of excitement rippled through the Force. A heavy body slammed into the still-sealed hatch on the Falcon’s end of the cofferdam. Adarakh and Meewalh stopped and reached for their blasters.

  “Come on!” Leia ordered.

  She reached the hatch, hit the slap pad, heard the seal break, and exhaled in relief. Had the voxyn triggered the emergency hatch first, a decompression safety would have prevented hers from opening. Leia led Adarakh and Meewalh into the access corridor, then sealed the hold and waited.

  The emergency hatch did not open.

  “Leia?” Han called over the intercom. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s not. They haven’t opened the emergency hatch.”

  “Not a problem.”

  The hatch slid open to reveal a passage full of scaly black legs and wary yellow eyes. One creature extended its neck to peer into the empty hold, then withdrew and remained inside the air lock.

  “Well?” Han called.

  “They smell a trap.”

  Han was silent for a moment, then said, “Our side is airtight. I could pull away now.”

  Leia stood on her toes and tried to see how many voxyn were in the cofferdam, but her angle was hopeless. “No good. I need to draw them out.”

  “Draw them out how?” The disapproval in Han’s voice could not be missed. “I’m coming back there.”

  “Stay put.” Leia palmed the hatch open and stepped through. “Someone has to fly—”

  Han yelled something over the intercom, but the voxyn were suddenly boiling out of the cofferdam, scales rattling and claws squealing. Leia brought her lightsaber around and stood fast—stood fast for about two seconds, until the third set of yellow eyes came over the rim and looked in her direction. She decided the fourth voxyn could not be far behind and used the Force to spring back through the hatchway.

  Adarakh and Meewalh poured blasterfire through the door, and the lead voxyn, only three meters away, exploded into a cloud of acid vapor. Its blood reeked, like smoke and ammonia. Leia’s eyes flooded with tears. She started to call the Noghri back. Bad mistake. Her lungs erupted in acid agony.

  The second voxyn leapt over the first, screeching. An invisible wall slammed into Leia, and her ears rang with pain. Adarakh and Meewalh collapsed in front of her. Leia pressed herself to the wall and reached out with the Force, depressed the slap pad. The voxyn opened its mouth again, this time burping out a brown stream.

  The mucus splatted against the closing hatch, but a few drops shot past and splashed the unconscious Noghri. Counting them lucky, Leia hit the lock—then cursed as the crush safety prevented the door from sealing. A round reptilian foot protruded from under the hatch, gouging at the floor. She brought her lightsaber down. The blade droned, cutting through something hard as durasteel.

  A yowl came from the hold, and the voxyn stuck its muzzle under the door.

  Leia hit the crush-safety override. Then, hoping one of the ship’s three droid brains would not—for a change—challenge the veracity of the command, she hit it again.

  The door hesitated an instant, then crunched shut on the voxyn’s muzzle. Another yowl, more muffled. A caustic odor—worse than before. Six inches of scaly snout in a pool of purplish blood. Leia grew queasy, lightheaded; her lungs burned down to her knees.

  She glanced up. The other two voxyn were a meter away, staring at her through the hatch viewport. They opened their mouths, and a sound like a meteor strike rang through the durasteel. She stumbled back, fell.

  “Leia, what’s happening back there?” Han shouted. “Answer me!”

  “We’ve got …” The rest was lost to coughing.

  “Leia? You don’t sound so—”

  “No time!” Leia staggered up, vision darkening, head spinning. “Han, just …”

  It was hard to tell. She might have made it as far as go.

  FIVE

  Mara looked away as the hologram shifted, zooming in on the flash-frozen bodies tumbling out of the Nebula Chaser’s breached hull. At the time, she and Jaina had been too busy recovering the escape pod to notice the Yuuzhan Vong attack, but she had seen the hologram too many times to want to view it again. In the privacy of her apartment on Eclipse, she had made R2-D2 play it repeatedly, trying to see some way she could have saved the refugees. After a hundred times, she had given up, convinced she could have done nothing differently—and little comforted by the knowledge.

  Nom Anor’s smug voice—captured by the surveillance equipment in the Bilbringi interrogation chamber—sounded from R2-D2’s speakers. Mara focused on the others in the dank chamber—a hangar storeroom on the free-drifting supply base Solistation, one of a thousand anonymous rendezvous points where Jedi could meet and be gone before the Peace Brigade learned of their presence. A flash of hatred showed in Kyp Durron’s cold eyes, then he clenched his still-boyish jaw and pushed his anger down into the dark pit where he stowed such emotions. The reaction of Saba Sebatyne was more difficult to read, perhaps because Mara did not know what signaled anger in the scaly face of a Barabel. With huge dark eyes, heavy brow folds, and a thin-lipped muzzle, Saba’s reptilian features betrayed nothing.

  Luke allowed the hologram to play itself out. By the time R2-D2’s projector shut down, Kyp’s outrage was a tangible thing in the Force, filling the room with a crackling energy that seemed in danger of blasting the doors off their quiet meeting place. Saba’s feelings,
if she had any, remained secret. Mara might have been able to probe them by reaching out with the Force, but knew how a Barabel would react to such an intrusion.

  Kyp Durron surprised no one by speaking before Luke. “That wasn’t my fault.” He pointed at R2-D2 as though the droid had been the one threatening the refugee fleet. “I’m not responsible for what the Yuuzhan Vong do.”

  “Who said you were?” Luke responded mildly. “But you were running supplies to the New Plympto resistance.”

  Kyp nodded reluctantly. “I won’t apologize. If there were Jedi doing the same thing on every—”

  “Kyp, no one’s asking you to apologize.” Luke passed a data card to the younger Jedi. “We only came to give you our data on the voxyn and discuss how the Jedi should react to the Yuuzhan Vong threat.”

  “Ignore it.” Kyp pocketed the data card and turned to go. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Kyp, we’re talking about a million people,” Mara said. “The Jedi can’t just ignore them.”

  Kyp paused at the door, but did not turn around. “What else can we do? We’d be fools to attack—they’d be waiting to wipe us out. If we surrender.… Forget it. I won’t surrender.”

  “Neither will I,” Luke said. “But now is not the time to keep harassing them. Our enemies in the senate will use this—”

  “I don’t care about the senate,” Kyp replied. “And the Dozen are not harassing the enemy, Master Skywalker, we’re killing them. More Jedi should be doing the same.”

  Mara was not sure whether the flash of irritation she felt was her own or her husband’s. Luke was not all that fond of being called Master in the first place, and he particularly loathed it when it was used in a spirit of scorn.

  Kyp palmed a touchpad on the wall. The storeroom door slid open, much to the surprise of the eleven flight-suited pilots trying to eavesdrop on the other side.

  “Well?” Kyp stood in the door glaring. “Are we leaving or not?”

  The pilots scattered across the hangar, running for the brand-new XJ3 X-wings—the latest and most lethal version of the venerable starfighter—scattered at the landing bay entrance. Before Kyp could follow, Mara stepped to the door and caught him by the arm.