Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [96]
From her post in the comm center, Jaina called takeoff orders. Two freighters lifted simultaneously, loaded past capacity with frightened refugees. At the same time, three crawlers lumbered off toward Thirty-two and the Ryn caravan ships. She half heard Jacen’s voice over Leia’s comm station, announcing he’d found their dad. Between transmissions, she fiddled with the small local-space screen.
She raised her mask, experimenting. When she squinted just right, she could focus the glowing pips. As expected, the incoming swarm suddenly painted itself red. It swept in, an offset-wing formation. A swarm of blue dots—Duro Defense Force—deployed into combat flights just off Bburru habitat. And Anakin had shown her a trick, once.
The screen blanked. “What are you doing?” Randa demanded.
Then the screen blinked on again, displaying twice the field of space it’d shown before. Randa’s howl became a cry of admiration.
Jaina straightened her cap, watching one arm of the red arc split off and double back. One of the unshielded Duros cities, Orr-Om, had drifted off its geosync point. She wondered if its stabilizers had been sabotaged, besides its shields. Green speckles flew off its docking bays, civilians trying to evacuate. Around them swarmed red bogeys that had to be skips. The speckles vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.
She felt less guilty about swiping that shuttle. It would’ve been vaped if any Duros launched it now.
She clenched both fists anyway. In her mind, she was grabbing stick and throttle, coaxing everything she could wring out of her X-wing’s sublight engine. She couldn’t stand this!
But she couldn’t look away, either. One of the larger bogeys doubled back toward the drifting habitat. Disbelieving, Jaina watched the bogey ram directly through its outer docks.
She gaped. What kind of beasts had the Yuuzhan Vong brought this time?
Half a dozen blue dots went after the big red bogey. The others hung back, defending Bburru and its shipyards. From the planet’s other side, the Mon Cal light cruiser Poesy accelerated toward this quadrant. Jaina had looked up its tech specs. With fourteen turbolasers, eighteen ion cannons, half a dozen heavy tractor beam projectors, and fabulous shields, it ought to make a difference.
Then a bizarre, heavily accented voice thundered over several comm channels. “Return to your cities and settlements,” it said. “We offer you peace. Return, and we will speak with you. Attack or try to flee, and you will be destroyed.”
Leia pushed back from her transceiver. “They’ve learned to transmit on our channels,” she exclaimed. “If that means they can listen in, too, we haven’t got a chance.”
Jaina stared at the screen. Several freighters had popped up toward orbit, some from Gateway and some from the other unshielded refugee settlements. Those closest to the approaching Poesy went unchallenged. Two that had barely made orbit, departing Gateway, were surrounded by red coralskippers. One turned back.
“Coming back in,” a voice said out of Jaina’s link box. “If we keep running, they’ll blast us, too.”
“Copy,” Jaina answered. “Landing crater two is clear for you.”
If she’d been in command of that ship, though, she would’ve kept running. She’d rather die in space, trying to get somewhere, than wait here for the Yuuzhan Vong to make her a slave.
Most of the red swarm came on, virtually unchallenged. It wasn’t a big group, but Duro wasn’t mounting any defense of the refugee settlements, only the orbital cities. Kenth Hamner’s reinforcements, if they came, would arrive too late to help Gateway. The enemy force had a target lock on this dome.
She’d bet anything this was Nom Anor’s doing.
A wheezing Mon Cal voice made her receiver buzz. “Administrator Organa Solo, this is Commodore Mabettye. Poesy has been ordered by Admiral Wuht to stand down and withdraw to our previous station. I am sorry. We will support you as we can.”
Jaina couldn