Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [86]
She had failed. Utterly.
Beside the Gorgon in a companion flightpath rode the Basilisk. Together, they fired volleys of turbolasers into the oceans, incinerating submerged Calamarian structures. In moments they would cross the terminator line between day and night, where they could fire down upon two more of the massive floating cities. They would vaporize the structures, sending all the inhabitants to a watery death.
“Dispatch the last TIE squadron,” she said, staring at the fiery battlefield of the ocean world below. “I want to lay this entire planet waste.”
“Admiral!” Commander Kratas ran between the sensor and tactical stations and up the two steps to the observation platform. “Rebel battleships have just come out of hyperspace, an entire fleet, more than we can hope to fight.”
Daala whirled in disbelief. “They responded to a distress call that quickly?” Then she too saw the glinting figures of large battleships streaking like comets toward them in planetary orbit.
Her breath caught in her throat. The shipyards remained unscathed except for minor sorties. She had not met her primary objective in the attack on Calamari. Still … they had destroyed at least one floating city, wrecked another, damaged two more.
“Recall all TIE squadrons,” Daala said. “Plot a straight-line vector through hyperspace to the Cauldron Nebula. We’ll go back and reassess our tactics, determine our losses.” She paused, then raised her voice like a torch of anger. “And we’ll prepare our next attack!”
The TIE fighters streamed back into the holds of the Star Destroyers. The Rebel defensive forces swung around in orbit like a pack of carnivores. Daala did not dare risk fighting them, though she wanted nothing more than to rip the throats out of their commanders with her bare hands.
“Ready for hyperspace,” she said before the reinforcements could swoop in to attack. Daala watched the starfields elongate into bright white lines that funneled into a vanishing point on the other side of the universe.
Her Star Destroyers entered hyperspace, leaving the New Republic forces hopelessly behind.
Han Solo and Lando Calrissian soared through the skies of Calamari in the Millennium Falcon, searching for columns of smoke rising from devastated floating settlements.
They had found Foamwander City, but when they landed on one of the emergency pads, they learned that Admiral Ackbar, Leia, and Ambassador Cilghal had already departed on a rescue mission to the sunken city of Reef Home.
Han, wrapped up in dismay at the devastation caused by Admiral Daala’s forces, felt no particular jubilation at being the pilot and owner of the Falcon. All exhilaration at winning his ship back had evaporated upon seeing the destruction that had been wreaked on the ocean world.
Lando sat at Chewbacca’s station, staring at the navigation charts. “Looks like Reef Home City should be coming up somewhere below. I detect plenty of scattered metallic masses, but nothing that might be a metropolis.”
“No, just the remains,” Han said in a low voice.
As they skimmed low, he looked out the Falcon’s viewports at floating wreckage scattered on the waves. Blackened tracings of blaster scars showed prominently on the fragmented metal. Broken chunks of the floating city, sealed and airtight with flood bulkheads, remained afloat like buoyant coffins; Calamarian and Quarren rescuers swarmed over the self-contained segments, trying to break through to free those inside.
“That used to look like Cloud City,” Han said. “Now it looks like leftovers from a garbage masher.” He pointed to a smooth chunk of Reef Home’s outer shell. “Think we can set down on that section over there?”
Lando gave a nonchalant shrug. “Nobody’d even notice the Falcon among all this other junk.”
“Hey,” Han said.
Lando looked at him. “She’s your ship,