Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 07_ Fury - Aaron Allston [66]
He was with a little girl.
Luke started. He took his thumb off the laser trigger and probed again.
There was, in fact, a little girl in the cockpit with Jacen. Her presence had been washed out by the hatred Jacen was pouring into the Force, but now Jacen was calming, and the little girl’s distress made her a brighter presence.
Luke’s StealthX shook. A quad laser blast from the pursuing Aleph had grazed him during his moment of surprise.
Kill Jacen…kill an innocent.
Luke veered away from his target and sent a nonverbal command for the other Jedi to form up on him. He felt their surprise and distress, but he made his intent stronger, insistent.
The StealthXs veered away, toward empty space.
The starfighters they had been dueling continued to chase them, but gave up after perhaps half a minute. They returned to surround Jacen’s TIE prototype, acting as his escort.
Caedus sagged as he gave way to exhaustion. He kept one hand on his control yoke, guiding the Blur back toward the Anakin Solo, and used the other to hold Allana to him. She looked up at him, red-eyed, her tears unabated, hiccuping in her distress.
“Colonel Solo to starfighter escort. Who’s piloting the Twee?”
A woman’s voice came back immediately. “Dancer One, sir.”
“I mean your name.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Syal Antilles, sir. Off Blue Diver.”
Caedus grimaced. He’d been helped by the oldest daughter of an enemy, yet another traitor to the Alliance.
Still, he had always promised to reward loyalty and merit, and moments ago he had decided to do just that for the Aleph pilot. “It’s Captain Antilles now.”
“Uh.” It wasn’t so much a word as an exhalation. Caedus couldn’t tell whether she sounded more pleased or pained. Through the Force, she felt only shocked, though the other presence in the cockpit with her, doubtless her gunner, felt elated. Syal’s voice was cool, professional: “Thank you, sir.”
“And be advised that the StealthX pilot you chased off was a pretty good pilot himself. Antilles, you just sent Luke Skywalker into retreat.”
Ahead of him, space far in the distance behind the Anakin Solo, back in the vicinity of the capital ships, was suddenly transfixed by a column of light, kilometers wide, that twisted and writhed like something alive.
Space curled and wrenched, as though a vengeful child were playing with the controls of a monitor, stretching and distorting everything in the middle third of the screen. Caedus saw ships, silhouetted within the beam, elongate as though they were being drawn into wire. Turbolaser fire curved impossibly; one blast bent back on itself, slamming into the shields of the cruiser that had fired it. Ships contracted to tiny dots and disappeared entirely.
With the brightness and distortion came a blow in the Force. It hammered at Caedus, a vast, instantaneous loss of life.
Allana’s sobs cut off. She slumped in Caedus’s lap, mercifully relieved of the burden of consciousness.
Then space darkened and twisted back to its normal shape. Where once scores of ships had floated and fought, now there was only nothingness—or perhaps twisted wreckage, with no destructive beams or running lights to illuminate it.
On the verge of distributing hyperspace coordinates for their first jump, Luke bent over as the wave of pain and dread hit him. It was far from enough to incapacitate him, but he could feel a resonating shock from the others in his battle-meld.
He put up a rear holocam view on his cockpit monitor. It showed the Anakin Solo and tiny flashes of the ever-more-distant main starfighter engagement…and emptiness where all the capital ships should be.
Numbed, he considered options. Turn back to help…help whom? With six StealthXs? Look for the cause…without a corps of scientists or adequate sensory gear?
Jacen was alive. Luke could feel him. He could feel Leia, too, not far away, and Jaina and Zekk. They were