Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [121]
As soon as he was past, he looped around, opposite the direction the skips were heading. He was rewarded by the sight of the skips slowing, turning back toward him as he circled. The lead skips punched through the same hole in the formation he’d just been through and turned after him, gaining ground.
In a moment—tunnel vision returning as he performed a turn too hard for his body to quite withstand—he was lined up on the formation again. The nine remaining witness skips had done an impressive about-face and were now reaching the cloud of gases and coral chunks that had once been one of their own number.
Wedge armed and fired a proton torpedo, then switched back to stutterfire lasers and began spattering red beams among those targets. Their voids came up and effortlessly caught the energy.
Then his torpedo hit. It didn’t reach any of the functional targets, but hit the largest remaining chunk of the destroyed coralskipper, deep in the midst of the formation of skips as they passed around it.
It detonated in a bright flash, its energy hurled outward in all directions simultaneously, slamming into every coralskipper within its explosive diameter. The skips’ voids could intercept only a fraction of the released energy.
Wedge looped up and around the expanding gas cloud, pouring on speed to gain a little ground on his pursuers while he waited for the sensor board to clear.
When it did, the numbers were like a lifeday present. Six of the ten coralskippers in that formation were gone or smashed into smaller pieces. Two more were on ballistic courses toward Borleias’s atmosphere. The last two were turning to join up with the squadron leader and his wingmate, but even they seemed to be moving sluggishly.
Impossible odds had just been turned into one-third impossible. And in the distance, Ammuud Swooper continued plodding her way toward her hyperspace launch point.
Czulkang Lah evaluated the data and variables. He did not like the conclusions he was reaching. There was altogether too much attention being paid to the Domain Hul worldship, too many missing infidel resources, too much unexplained behavior from the gigantic triangle ship now mere minutes from reaching him.
“Prepare to disengage,” he commanded. “Select a Rim-ward withdrawal course and execute it on my order.”
He could feel the eyes of his officers on him. Some would be concealing anger at what they interpreted as an act of cowardice. Some, knowing how bad his eyes were, wouldn’t bother to conceal it.
He understood their anger. He felt it himself. But he knew, too, that he did not serve the Yuuzhan Vong cause by needlessly sacrificing a resource as great as a healthy worldship, not when he could withdraw now and assault again later with victory more likely. So he ignored them, ignored their stares.
One of his officers said, “Subsurface dovin basal clusters are being maneuvered into the correct position.”
Then Kasdakh Bhul stood beside him once more. He stared up through the command chamber’s viewing lens. “There is something wrong with the oncoming triangle ship.”
“I should hope so, considering the damage that has been inflicted upon her.”
“I mean, she is not what I expected. I have been forced to learn something of the infidel vessels, and this one is not dying the way she should. Her skeleton is wrong.”
Czulkang Lah squinted up through the viewing lens, but all he could make out of the approaching vessel were her outline and the flashes of light, exchanges between starfighters and coralskippers, all around her.
He moved to the blaze bug niche, reached into it until he pointed straight at the glowing creatures representing the triangle ship, then irritably waved toward himself. Blaze bugs from the back of the niche swarmed to the center, joined with the image of the triangle ship, and caused it to grow in apparent size and detail. Czulkang Lah kept waving until the triangle ship dominated the niche, surrounded by blaze bugs engaged