Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [45]
Klauskin tuned back in to the words of his aide, Fiav Fenn, a female Sullustan. She was saying something about the accuracy of their arrival pattern, which had apparently been pleasingly within the parameters he had set down in the previous day’s staff meeting. He gently shook his head and waved to brush the topic aside. “Ground response?” he asked.
She paused as if to change gears. “None so far.”
“None?” Klauskin frowned. “How long since we dropped out of hyperspace?”
“Four minutes thirty-eight seconds,” she said. “Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one—”
“Yes, yes.” Klauskin blinked. The Corellian armed forces must be very sloppy not to have their first fighter squadrons off the ground after more than four and a half minutes.
Then the other fleet winked into existence.
He saw the flicker of green running lights in his left-side peripheral vision even as the bridge’s threat alarms began howling. The admiral spun to look and stood there, transfixed.
Stretched thin as a veil, a formation of spacecraft now occupied space between Klauskin’s formation and every reasonable exit path away from Corellia. It was on the same course as Klauskin’s fleet, a higher orbit, its vehicles and vessels traveling much faster than Klauskin’s in order to maintain the same relationship to the world below and Klauskin’s fleet in between.
The admiral could not tell, just by eyeballing, the makeup of the intruder fleet; at this distance, all he could determine was that each of the scores or hundreds of vehicles and vessels had green running lights, an impressive visual formationwide show of unanimity. He wished he’d thought of it for his own formation.
He became aware that his bridge crew was talking, shouting over the threat alarms, doing their business. Words intruded on his shock: “…formed up on the far side of Crollia or Soronia and jumped in…” “…no hostile moves…” “…communicating among themselves, but haven’t opened comm with us…”
Klauskin finally regained control of his voice. “Kill the alarms,” he said, his voice, to his own ears, sounding weak. “We already know they’re there. Composition?”
“Working on it,” his chief sensor operator said. “They have nothing in the size class of Dodonna, but they have Strident-class Star Defenders and a large number of frigates, corvettes, patrol boats, gunships, and heavy transports. Mostly Corellian Engineering Corporation, of course. They must have lifted every half-finished frame, every rusted hulk, and every pleasure boat insystem to have pulled this off.”
Klauskin smiled mirthlessly. “Our sensors can’t tell us which are the rusty hulks and which are the shipshape vessels of war, though, can they?”
“No, sir, not at this range. We also count at least a dozen squadrons of starfighters, possibly more—a tight grouping at a distance will sometimes return a signal as a single medium-sized ship. We suspect they’re mostly older fighters. Kuat A-Nines and A-Tens, Howlrunners, various classes of TIE fighters.”
“With crazed Corellian pilots at the controls,” the admiral said.
“Yes, sir.”
Klauskin’s unobtrusive aide Fiav decided to become more obtrusive, stepping up beside the admiral. “Sir,” she whispered, “have you revised orders for the operation?”
“Revised orders?” Klauskin’s mind went oddly blank as he considered that question. It was an unsettling feeling, especially in one for whom decisiveness had always been a career hallmark.
Ah, that was the problem. Revised orders should be issued to enable his formation to accomplish its goals despite the complication that the Corellian formation posed. But that was now impossible. The overriding goal of this operation was to use a show of force to induce fear, awe, and consternation in the Corellians.
But he could not do that now.