Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [155]
Daala’s Knight Hammer continued spewing turbolaser bolts through the frenzy, damaging one of Cronus’s own ships. He hissed in anger, but didn’t dare open a channel to criticize her. The Calamarian cruiser fired a storm of retaliatory bolts, while the remaining Corellian gunships spread out, launching themselves into the fray … where they were doomed.
Cronus’s head spun in the free-for-all, and he forced himself to concentrate on his primary target, while his other Star Destroyers fought their designated ships. Turbolaser fire shot fast and loose around them in space. He received a message from one of his squadrons. “A second Corellian gunship destroyed, Colonel,” the voice said. “Another crippled close to you.”
Cronus double-checked the location of the crippled gunship and recoiled in sudden alarm. The cylindrical armored craft oozed flames from a dozen fatal wounds, but its engines still blazed at full power. A few of the gunwales continued to launch bolts of energy in all directions, but the gunship itself—though only a quarter the size of the 13X—lurched forward in a last-ditch effort. It was doomed, its hull rupturing, its life-support spilling into space, its engines aflame from within … but somehow, the captain drove forward to ram Colonel Cronus’s flagship.
“Evasive action!” Cronus called. The 13X spun about its central axis and veered to the left, but the wounded Corellian gunship had already picked up speed, moving much faster than Cronus could get out of the way.
“Increase—” he shouted, and then squeezed his eyes shut in a wordless scream as the gunship rammed the 13X from behind, crashing into the Victory’s bank of engine exhaust ports and then exploding in a fireball that turned the bridge compartment around him into a searing white void.
“Keep firing,” Ackbar shouted. “Status report.”
One of the Calamarian tactical officers reported. “Three Victory-class ships destroyed, Admiral, but only one of our Corellian gunships remains.”
The Victory-class fleet fired and fired on the Galactic Voyager, and Admiral Daala’s Knight Hammer shot at them with even greater power from the opposite side.
On the bridge, Han gripped Leia’s hand. They looked into each other’s eyes and then stared out at the overwhelming tide of battle.
Ackbar continued to hold his command together, while Kyp Durron leaned forward, his face hopeless except for a flickering core of unfocused determination.
“Shields failing, Admiral,” the Calamarian officer said. “Approximately ten seconds remaining.”
The Victory-class Star Destroyers and the Knight Hammer closed in from both sides, unrelenting in their attack.
Admiral Ackbar’s ship sat practically defenseless, without shields, in the midst of the deadly enemy fleet.
CHAPTER 56
Vice Admiral Pellaeon had no idea what had happened to him.
One moment he and his seventeen Star Destroyers were in orbit around the fourth moon of Yavin, engaged in their assault. They had encountered resistance, but nothing they couldn’t obliterate with another sortie or two.
And then they found themselves hurled across space as if a giant hand had slapped them aside.
Pellaeon had been thrown over the bridge railing to sprawl on his back atop a command station, extremely lucky that he hadn’t snapped his spine.
His crew had been tossed about like debris in a storm system. Several uniformed soldiers lay unconscious, possibly dead. Others sat blinking and bloodied. The shocked crew picked themselves up as ripples of astonishment echoed in whispered conversations, rising to a gabble of confusion and embarrassing fear.
Automatic alarms roiled through the Firestorm. The communications channels buzzed with activity as the other sixteen Star Destroyers demanded to know what had occurred—but Pellaeon could give them no answers.
He climbed back to his feet, smoothed his vice admiral’s uniform, and staggered as his vision became blurred with black