Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [127]
He would show murderous Carida no mercy. Kyp would remove this Imperial thorn from the New Republic’s side and then move on to topple the big Imperial warlords gathering their forces near the galactic core.
He waited for Zeth’s files to finish uploading into the Sun Crusher’s memory. It would take a long time for him to absorb all those words, to imagine every detail of his brother’s life, the life they should have had together….
Emerging from the thin veil of atmosphere at the limb of the planet, a battle group of forty TIE fighters roared toward him. Another cluster of twenty came from the opposite horizon in a pincer formation. The ploy of Zeth’s files had merely been a delaying tactic to keep him preoccupied as the Caridans launched an attack!
Kyp didn’t know whether to be amused or outraged. A grim smile flickered across his face, then vanished.
The TIE fighters came in, firing what must have been intended as crippling laser blasts. Kyp felt the thumps of their impacts against the Sun Crusher, but his special quantum-layered armor could withstand even a turbolaser blast from a Star Destroyer.
One of the TIE pilots contacted Kyp. “We have you surrounded. You cannot escape.”
“Sorry,” Kyp said. “I’m fresh out of white flags.” He used his sensors to track the lead TIE fighter from which the message had come. He targeted with his defensive lasers and let loose a volley that strafed across the ship’s flat solar panel. The TIE ship broke apart in a flower of white-and-orange flame.
The other fighters retaliated from all sides. Kyp targeted with his own defensive lasers, selecting five victims. He managed to strike three.
Using the extreme mobility of the Sun Crusher, he accelerated upward just as the surviving TIE fighters sent return fire through the expanding explosions of his first round of victims. Kyp laughed out loud as two of the fighters hit each other in the cross fire.
The wall of anger rose and strengthened in him, increasing his reservoir of power. He had already given more warning than the Caridans deserved. Kyp had stated his ultimatum, and Furgan had sent out attack ships.
“That’s the last mistake you’ll ever make,” he said.
The TIE fighters continued to fire, missing more often than not. Laser bolts spanged off his armor, causing no damage. The pilots did not seem to know how to target and shoot properly. They had probably spent all their time practicing in simulation chambers, without ever fighting an actual space battle. Kyp relied instead on the Force.
He shot back, obliterating another ship, but decided that further fighting was not worth his time. He had a bigger target. Two fast TIE interceptors streaked after him as he pulled out of planetary orbit and set a course for the star at the heart of the system.
The only damage they could possibly do to the Sun Crusher would be to take out its tiny laser turrets. Daala’s forces had once succeeded in disabling the Sun Crusher’s external weaponry, but New Republic engineers had repaired it.
Another breached TIE fighter spurted flash-frozen atmosphere as it exploded. Kyp darted through the debris, straight toward the sun. The surviving Imperials charged after him, still firing. He paid them no heed.
Over and over in his mind he rolled images of Zeth, imagining his brother frozen and hopeless in a training exercise for an army he had never wanted to join. The only way for Kyp to cauterize that memory was to purge the entire planet with fire, a fire only the Sun Crusher could unleash.
He activated the firing systems for his resonance torpedoes. The high-energy projectile would be pumped out in an oval-shaped plasma discharge from the toroidal generator at the bottom of the Sun Crusher.
Last time Kyp had fired the torpedoes into supergiant stars in a nebula. Carida’s sun was an unremarkable yellow sun, but even so, the Sun Crusher could ignite a chain reaction within