Star by Star Page 24

  One of the large lumps opened its nose and vomited grutchins, half-meter insects resembling turfhoppers. The blastboat’s gunners switched targets, laying a barrage of laserfire in the creatures’ path. Those things could eat through a titanium hull in seconds.

  Saba spoke into the comm unit. “There is our target—the cruiser at the bottom of the formation. Do you see it?”

  “The one on the end?” Drif Lij, pilot of one of the squadron’s old T-65 X-wings, commed.

  “No, that they will expect,” Saba said. “Three shipz in. He is ahead of himself.”

  “Got it,” Drif replied.

  A flurry of comm clicks confirmed everyone else did, too, and Danni sensed the squadron’s fear changing to resolve.

  Saba said, “Glowball in five, four …”

  Izal Waz, an Arcona gunner with a nasty salt habit, stopped firing and drew inward. Though his compound eyes were incapable of distinguishing shapes, their sensitivity to movement made him the best gunner in the squadron. As Saba continued her countdown, those golden eyes grew glassy and distant, like they did during a salt binge, and the veins on his anvil-shaped head popped in concentration.

  “Mark,” Saba said.

  A white sphere of illumination engulfed the blastboat. Danni thought shield overload, but Wonetun straightened out and they accelerated. When no plasma balls came boiling through the hull, she looked outside and found the squadron camouflaged in a sun-bright orb.

  “What’s this?” Danni gasped.

  “You have seen ghost sunz?” Saba asked.

  “Parhelions? Of course,” Danni said. “Sometimes from two suns at once.”

  “It is like that,” Saba explained. “Izal Waz callz it his glowball. He is using the Force to collect light.”

  Danni eyed Izal with newfound respect. “What’s it do?”

  “What does it do?” Saba sissed at this. “It hides us. Is that not enough?”

  Though the sphere had to be a kilometer across, the Wild Knights were clustered close to the blastboat, a dozen ghostly shapes pooling defenses. Drif’s X-wing hung just meters away. Its ion engines were pouring blue efflux into the glowball, feeding the intensity of the general radiance. Plasma balls and magma missiles continued to pour blindly into the glowball, but most missed by a wide margin, and those that came close were defeated by the Wild Knights’ combined defenses.

  “Does the Jolly Man have enough data yet?” Saba asked.

  Danni checked her instruments. The readouts were dancing like crazy. “This is good stuff,” she said. “The longer we stay, the better.”

  Saba’s diamond-shaped pupils narrowed. “But do they have enough?”

  Danni did a quick statistical calculation in her head, then nodded. “We could use a higher significance level, but—”

  “We must train you to fly an A-wing, Danni Quee. The Wild Knightz could use someone as crazy as you.” Saba turned and commed, “Shorthopperz, break for the Jolly Man. We’ll see you at home.”

  Shielded by the still-expanding glowball, the squadron’s two Howlrunners and three Vigilances broke for the fast-freighter.

  “Passive sensors, no lasers,” Saba ordered. She turned to Danni and pointed at Izal, who was slumped in a trance in the upper cannon turret. “Change places. The glowball requires his concentration.”

  Danni eyed the big Arcona, trying to imagine how she was going to move someone more than twice her size without breaking his concentration. “Uh, I don’t think I can lift him,” she said. “Maybe you could—”

  “This one could, but she told you to.” Saba glared out of one dark eye. “You are Jedi, Danni Quee. Size matterz not.”

  Danni swallowed. She had been studying the Force for almost two years now, but no one seemed able to explain the theory behind it—even Luke always spoke of feeling and doing, never how or why—and it was still the last solution that came to mind. An impatient tongue began to flicker between Saba’s pebbly lips.

  Danni let out a long relaxing breath, then pictured the tall Arcona slipping out of his seat and coming to rest in the one opposite her, then reached out with the Force and made it so.

  To her relief, Izal settled into the chair as though he had moved himself, and the glowball remained intact. Danni started to climb into the turret as ordered, but Saba caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back down.

  “Do you never train, Danni Quee?” She climbed into the turret. “This one will save us herself. Watch. Learn.”

  Danni did not understand until a moment later, when a volley of magma missiles came streaking in and her heart leapt into her throat. She felt the Y-wing weapon operators reach out and start nudging, and then there was no time for questions. A crimson spiral loomed large. Saba pushed, and it shot past meters above her turret. Someone else redirected a grutchin, and Danni spent the next eternity watching the Barabel use the Force to push, lift, and turn Yuuzhan Vong missiles.

  Finally, Saba asked, “What does your machine say now, Danni Quee? Has the yammosk seen through our ruse?”

  Danni stepped over to look at her display. The gravity arrow readouts were dancing.

  “Same as before,” she reported. “The yammosk seems to be giving orders, everyone else is quiet. What that means, I have no idea.”

  Saba bared her needle-teeth and sissed in satisfaction. “It meanz it thinkz it has us.” She dropped out of the turret and motioned Danni back into the gunner’s seat. “Ready all weapons. Back out and drop the block on this one’s mark. Three, two …”

  Danni barely climbed into the turret before “mark.” The cargo door thumped open, expelling a two-ton square of durasteel, and the blastboat decelerated and slammed her into the transparisteel dome, and she grabbed for the cannon triggers and pushed herself into the firing seat. Outside, the sunlike sphere of the glowball was shrinking away, with a comet’s tail of magma missiles, plasma balls, and grutchins trailing behind.

  An uproarious rasp erupted from the blastboat’s main deck, where Saba stood over the instrument panel, scaly shoulders shaking as the data readouts danced.

  “Oh, that got them,” she sissed. “That got them good.”

  A plasma ball erupted against the shields, and Drif’s voice came over the comm speaker.

  “Danni, the hostiles are behind us.”

  “Sorry.”

  She spun the turret around to see the Wild Knights’ fighters looping up to meet a dozen coralskippers. Pointing more than aiming, she squeezed the triggers and felt the twin laser cannons come to life. Long streaks of crimson stained the starlit darkness, forcing the skips to roll and twist as they descended on the squadron.

  The blastboat jerked forward, then Wonetun announced, “The cruiser wants to pull our shields.”

  “Squadron, form on the blastboat on this one’s mark,” Saba said. “Five—”

  The blastboat slipped backward, and Wonetun reported, “Shields gone.”

  “Twoonemark!” Saba finished.

  The blastboat accelerated. Danni’s laser cannons went wild, catching a coralskipper by sheer chance and reducing it to pebbles. The X-wings and Y-wings looped back to encircle the blastboat, masking the larger ship behind their own shields.

  “Keep firing, Danni,” Drif urged. “You’ve got our backs.”

  Danni swung the cannons toward the largest lump in the sky—a corvette analog angling down to cut them off—and squeezed the triggers. Her crimson bolts shot straight into its nose—and vanished into a black hole. She strafed the hull at full power, back and forth, back and forth. The shielding crews continued to catch her attacks, but the corvette fell behind as its dovin basals diverted to protecting the ship.

  Danni fired a few more seconds, until the battle drew too close to the enemy cruiser, and the corvette and coralskippers broke off. She swung her cannons forward. A mere two hundred meters distant, the glowball was as large as a class-three comet, and space beyond was filled by the Yuuzhan Vong cruiser—a lumpy silhouette as big as some moons, spewing plasma and m
agma into the glowball. The golden sphere flattened and began to shrink as the enemy shielding crews drew it toward one of their singularities.

  “Ready missiles and torpedoes. Spread pattern,” Saba ordered. “Hold … hold …”

  The glowball distorted into an undulating flower pattern and shrank to the size of Danni’s thumbnail.

  “Fire all!” Saba commanded. “Cancel glowball.”

  The glowball blinked out of existence, then Izal thumped to the deck, exhausted. The Yuuzhan Vong cruiser fell ominously dark as the weapons crews struggled to retrain their weapons. The Wild Knights launched a second, then third volley of concussion missiles and proton torpedoes, and suddenly the darkness ahead was all spiraling ion trails and looping plasma trails.

  “Darken blast tinting.” Saba used the Force to lift Izal back into a seat, then swung around and strapped him in. “Prepare for concussion impact.”

  “Concussion impact?” Danni cried, grabbing her seat restraints. “You’re ramming it?”

  “Ramming it?” Saba erupted into a fit of sissing, and even Wonetun rumbled with laughter. “Danni Quee, you are so crazy!”

  Then Danni remembered the block—the block the Yuuzhan Vong could not have seen when they grabbed the glowball—the two tons of durasteel accelerated to no small percentage of lightspeed. The energy on impact would be equal to mass multiplied by velocity squared, divided by …

  Danni was still doing the calculations when space turned white.

  SIXTEEN

  The coufee fell, and the sanctum filled with the strange odor of alien blood and an endless, undulating wail. Tsavong Lah waited until the priests began their real work, then stepped away from the spatter pit so he could focus his thoughts on the bungled sneak attack.

  “You do not wish to know Yun-Yammka’s will?” Vergere asked, one eye still fixed on the howling slave.

  “The Slayer’s will is no mystery. How to accomplish it … that is another matter.” He waved his hand toward the priests and their sacrifice. “They serve in their way, I in mine.”

  Vergere’s beaklike mouth cracked open in what Tsavong Lah had come to recognize as a mocking smile. “You doubt the accuracy of Vaecta’s seers?”

  “Only the gods are infallible.” Tsavong Lah glanced into the pit and smiled at what was happening there. “The priests are faithful servants, but until they can tell me how the Jeedai work their magic, I must do my own work.”

  “You make too much of these Jedi.”

  Vergere looked back to the spatter pit and fixed her eye on the shrieking sacrifice. The Ithorian’s T-shaped head curled in her direction, his gaze lingering on hers as his eyes grew glassy and distant. His screams subsided much sooner than they should have, and he slipped into that strange tranquility that sometimes came over slaves even in their most anguished moments. A priest stepped in front of the Ithorian and tried unsuccessfully to draw him back into his pain.

  “A pity for the invasion.” Vergere’s tone was that of a thwarted child. “The priests are sure to take a dim view of that.”

  Tsavong Lah glanced down to find her feathers hanging flat in disappointment. Sometimes she seemed more a Yuuzhan Vong to him than his own warriors.

  “It was a Jeedai squadron that intercepted the invasion of Arkania,” he said, returning to her earlier remark. “And it was only two Jeedai who forced us to sacrifice New Plympto.”

  “Then destroy the Talfaglion convoys,” Vergere said. “That will draw them out.”

  Tsavong Lah raised his brow. “And sacrifice Nom Anor?”

  “It would not be such a sacrifice.”

  Tsavong Lah smiled faintly. “You have high ambitions for such an unassuming creature.”

  Vaecta stepped over to their side of the spatter pit and looked up. A stoop-shouldered female with an aged and wrinkled face, she did not bow to Tsavong Lah or cross her blood-streaked arms in salute. During a ritual, the priestess was beholden to Lord Shimrra himself and would die—gladly—before offering deference to any other.

  “The slave’s silence will not please the Slayer. You should not go through with the attack.”

  Tsavong Lah looked away from her. “The decision is mine.”

  “Lord Shimrra has made that clear,” she agreed. “I was given to believe Lord Shimrra also made clear you should consider the will of the gods in all things.”

  Tsavong Lah continued to look away. “But the decision is mine.”

  Vaecta did not disagree.

  “Good.” Tsavong Lah looked back to the priestess. “You will ask Yun-Yammka to punish the commanders who allowed the Jeedai squadron to escape. I will order their replacements to make a halfhearted assault on the planet and withdraw.”

  “If you tease Yun-Yammka, he will want lives,” Vaecta warned. “Many lives.”

  “Of course.” Though Tsavong Lah felt certain the god of war would understand the value of a good feint, it was better to be safe about these things. “He shall have eight thousand.”

  “Twenty thousand would be better,” Vaecta retorted.

  “Twenty, then.”

  Tsavong Lah turned and left the sanctum, already adjusting his plans to accommodate the ritual. The extra sacrifices would require a full escort instead of a single ship, putting an unnecessary strain on his already overextended logistics train.

  Vergere waddled up to his side. “Why take that from Vaecta? Even with reinforcements, the New Republic can’t hold Arkania. Capture it and make a fool of her.”

  Tsavong Lah whirled on Vergere. “You question my judgment?” He raised his foot as though to kick her. “You think you know better than I how to win battles?”

  Vergere gave his leg a contemptuous glance, then bristled her feathers and moved a step closer. “If you have a better idea, all you need do is say so.”

  It was all Tsavong Lah could do not to burst out laughing. “Around you? I think not.” Supreme commanders and high prefects trembled at his slightest frown, yet Vergere, this ugly little bird, dismissed his fury as though it were nothing. “You, I must watch. It will amuse me, if nothing else.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Lando let his sweaty palm brush against his pant leg, then transferred the datapad to the somewhat drier hand and displayed the screen to the subaltern of the Yuuzhan Vong boarding party. The picture showed seventeen young Jedi Knights crowded around the Lady Luck’s dining table. Though their bowls were filled with green thakitillo—Lando had ordered his chef to serve only the finest fare on this journey—none of the Jedi were eating. Most were not even holding their spoons.

  “They seem agitated,” the subaltern said. A brutish warrior with a fringe of spindly black hair, he stared at the datapad from arm’s length, as though keeping his distance would prevent the instrument from defiling him. “You are sure they do not know we are here?”

  “They’re Jedi,” Lando answered, feigning irritation at a foolish question. “They can certainly sense my crew’s apprehension, but I won’t claim to know what’s in their minds. All I can say is the viewports have been closed the entire trip.”

  After a moment, the subaltern nodded to himself and turned to an unarmed—but heavily armored—superior waiting outside the Lady Luck’s air lock.

  “Eia dag lightsabers, Duman Yaght. Yenagh doa Jeedai.”

  The superior stepped out of the red-ribbed transfer tunnel. A little smaller than his subordinates, this one had sculpted his face into a gridwork of raised scars. Like the subaltern of the boarding party, he wore two small villips on his shoulders instead of the usual one. He stopped across from Lando and looked expectant.

  “This is Fitzgibbon Lane, holder of the Stardream,” the subaltern said, supplying the false names Lando was traveling under. “He is the one who sent the message.”

  Lando stared at the subaltern and waited for him to introduce his leader. When the warrior grew uncomfortable and looked down, Lando shifted his gaze to the superior and continued to wait. As nervous as he was about this particular swindle, he knew
better than to open negotiations on anything less than equal footing.

  After a moment, the superior said, “I am Duman Yaght, commander of the Exquisite Death. You have some Jeedai for me?”

  “For your warmaster,” Lando corrected. Taking the commander’s presence as a sign of eagerness, he turned the datapad toward the Yuuzhan Vong and dangled the bait. “I have seventeen, in fact.”

  The subaltern scowled and reached out to knock the profane instrument aside, but the commander raised a hand.

  “No. This I must see for myself.”

  Duman Yaght peered into the vidscreen, where Anakin and a few others were halfheartedly spooning thakitillo into their mouths. The strike team had not been warned about the boarding, in part because Lando wanted their reactions to appear genuine, in part because the Yuuzhan Vong had come so quickly. The Lady Luck had been drifting along beside an outbound comet, waiting for the nav computer to plot the final leg of their journey, when the boarding shuttle came swinging out of the tail. It had headed straight for the docking portal, a wormlike transfer tunnel already extending to make contact.

  There was barely time to alert Tendra before the bridge alarm announced contact at the air lock. Lando authorized equalization and rushed back to find the subaltern already opening the exterior hatch. A check on his datapad revealed a corvette-sized coral ship swinging over the comet to cover the shuttle’s approach, and Lando realized the vessel was lying in wait when he entered the system. He had almost felt foolish—until he realized what the clever maneuver told him about the eagerness of the Yuuzhan Vong commander.

  “Satisfied?” Lando asked. “I’d ask them to levitate, but that might give us away.”

  “That won’t be necessary. We have already confirmed their nature.”

  “Really?” Lando did not like the sound of that, but knew better than to ask for details. “If you want them, let the Talfaglion hostages go.”

  “If I want them, I will take them,” Duman Yaght said.

  Lando raised his datapad and depressed a function key. “We both know what seventeen Jedi can do with warning. Don’t make me release this button.”