Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [122]
The triangle ship had suffered tremendous damage. The topside extension where her commanders were said to remain was almost gone. No sputters of light leapt from her flanks or belly—all her weapons were dead. And her nose was destroyed, the front one-quarter of the vessel worn away by the constant attacks by coralskippers and Yuuzhan Vong capital ships.
But something protruded from the vessel’s bow, like an enormous needle, reaching from where the ruin began to where the vessel’s original prow would have been.
“That is what I mean,” Kasdakh Bhul said. “It is like a stinger. Their vessels don’t have stingers, just compartments.”
Czulkang Lah felt something like dread creep through his chest. “Are we ready to withdraw?” he asked, his voice curiously calm.
“Not yet,” one of his officers answered.
* * *
Individual coralskippers, separated from squadrons or the last survivors of their squadrons, broke out of the worldship’s orbit and moved to intercept Luke and Mara. The two Jedi did not slow to engage. They juked and jinked to avoid plasma cannon fire, they responded with laserfire, and they roared past, heading relentlessly on toward the worldship while their enemies turned after them.
Then they were just above the worldship, on a diving course toward its surface. They vectored to enter orbit and whipped around the worldship’s equator, heading toward its far side, the side faced away from the star Pyria. They crossed the terminator and were suddenly plunged into darkness.
In moments, sensors showed an intact squadron ahead of them, an equal number of miscellaneous skips arriving over the horizon from behind, and enough empty space around the two Jedi to give them a few seconds of breathing space.
“This would be as good a time as any, Luke,” Mara said.
“No argument here.” Luke switched on the apparatus they’d wired into his comm unit, and the comm units of several of the prestige pilots of Lusankya’s guardian squadrons, just prior to the launch of this mission. “Broadcasting location,” he said. “I’m going to stay on the straight and narrow as long as I can stand to.”
There was a touch of laughter to Mara’s voice: “You know, I’ve said that in the past.”
“Very funny.”
Luke’s forward shield flared into incandescence as something hit it—not a plasma ball, for he would have seen that coming, but something that had not been illuminated until it hit. Probably a grutchin. He tightened, clenching his jaw as though hardening his body could harden his X-wing against incoming fire. He was a sitting duck until his task was done.
Mara moved up before him, drifting back and forth, making herself the main target of the oncoming skips but never moving so far that her shields did not offer protection to Luke.
Luke could feel her reaching for him in the Force. It wasn’t a gesture seeking reassurance, not really; he could feel her confidence, her focus on her task.
It took him a moment to understand. She wanted to be there, with him, in case something happened, in case one or the other of them suddenly winked out of existence. It was suddenly hard for him to swallow.
Then his sensor board yowled as something huge materialized in space behind him, no more than two hundred meters in his wake.
It was Mon Mothma, dropping out of hyperspace. The great Interdictor immediately began drifting to Luke’s port, away from the worldship’s surface; she had to have been on a slightly different course before entering hyperspace.
A moment later, a cloud erupted from Mon Mothma’s underside—her complement of starfighters, squadron after squadron streaking away from the launching bays, some to guard the Destroyer, some to head off incoming coralskippers from ahead and behind.
The crude gravitic sensor that was part of the X-wing’s new instrument package lit up. Mon Mothma had activated her gravity-well generators. If the plan was going according to schedule, she’d be activating her yammosk jamming, too.
“Last act, Mara.”
“Let’s catch our breath before we join the other players, farmboy.”
“Let’s do that.”
NINETEEN
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