Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 04_ Agents of Chaos 01_ Hero's Trial - James Luceno [125]
The voice of the comm officer put a quick end to Leia’s musings. “Ambassador, we’ve got a live surveillance probe feed from the field.”
Leia hesitated, then ducked into the bunker, where a reduced-scale hologram, dazzled by noise, had the attention of the several men and women gathered there. It took her a moment to make sense of what she was seeing, and even then part of her refused to accept the truth.
“What in the name of—”
“Fire breathers,” someone said, as if anticipating her amazement. “Rumor has it the Yuuzhan Vong stopped off at Mimban so the things could fill up on swamp gas.”
Leia’s quivering legs urged her to sit, and as she did she brought a hand to her mouth. Parading out of sunrise like the harbingers of a new and dreadful dawn, came a legion of enormous bladderlike creatures, supported on six stubby legs and equipped with arrays of flexible proboscises from which gushed streams of gelatinous flame.
“The methane and hydrogen sulfide have to be mixing with something they carry in their guts to produce that liquid fire,” a woman at the controls of the holoprojector commented, more intrigued than horrified. “They’re also exhaling antilaser aerosols.”
Yet another example of the enemy’s genetically engineered monstrosities, the thirty-meter-tall fire breathers didn’t so much march as loll over the terrain, like loosely tethered lighter-than-air balloons, incinerating everyone and everything in their path.
Leia could almost smell the nidor of the carnage.
“Whatever they are, they’ve got thick hides,” the comm officer said. “Can’t be taken out by anything less than a turbolaser beam.”
Unable to slow the advance of the deadly blimps, Gyndine units were abandoning entrenched positions and falling back in droves toward the city. Strewn about were fire-blackened war machines of all variety—tank droids, aged Loronar mobile turbolasers, even a couple of AT-AT walkers, tipped over, headless, collapsed on the ground with legs splayed.
“They’re withdrawing!” Leia said harshly. “Who issued the retreat order?”
Even as the words left her mouth, she was sorry she had uttered them. Those officers who weren’t scrutinizing her were suddenly studying their hands in unease. Could she blame the troops for retreating when that was precisely what the New Republic had been forced to do almost from the start of the invasion—withdrawing toward the Core, as if the density of the star systems there afforded protection? Who could say any longer which actions were just, and which were dishonorable?
Exiting the bunker without a word, Leia found a shaken C-3PO waiting for her.
“Mistress Leia, the most distressing news has reached me!”
Leia could barely hear him. In the few moments she had spent in the bunker, the battle had advanced to the outskirts of the capital. The crowd was more agitated than before, surging forward and from side to side. Through a gap in the city’s skyline, Leia thought she could discern the bobbing form of a Yuuzhan Vong fire breather.
“It seems,” C-3PO was saying, “that Gyndine’s citizens are laboring under the impression that you are deliberately discriminating against folks of former Imperial persuasion.”
Leia’s jaw dropped and her brown eyes flashed. “That’s absurd. Do they think I can pick out a former Imperial on sight? And even if I could—”
C-3PO lowered his voice conspiratorially. “In fact, there is some statistical justification for the claim, Mistress. Of the five thousand thus far evacuated, an overwhelming percentage have been inhabitants of worlds whose early loyalty to the Rebel Alliance is well documented. However, I’m certain that owes to nothing more than—”
C-3PO’s explanation was swallowed by a deafening explosion. Electricity danced wildly along the periphery of the energy dome, and the shield disappeared. At once, the telltales that lined the stun fence flickered and went out. A frightened gasp rose from the crowd.
“The field generator has been hit!