Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [91]
“Turn two hundred thirty-one to twenty-three,” Alinn Varth, leader of Jaina’s flight, ordered. “We’ll take that bunch.”
Jaina acknowledged and did as ordered, seeing as she did so a flight of eight skips in pyramid formation, coming in fast. The space around was relatively clear of asteroids now, reflecting the low mass-density that made the area safe for jumping into and out of. Jaina felt exposed.
“Only two to one,” Lensi said. “Not bad.”
“Don’t get cocky, Twelve,” Varth snapped. “This is just the first course.”
“As ordered,” Twelve responded. Then he rolled, firing splinter shots at extreme range. Jaina stayed with him, but held her fire until they were closer in. The skips began firing all at once; Jaina jinked the stick and cut a hard corkscrew turn. The plasma globs went by without even singing. Now behind the skip that had fired at her, she got a targeting lock on it and began spraying it with underpowered shots. The skip produced a void and began absorbing them, but in doing so lost some of its mobility and taxed its power. When the shots started getting through, Jaina switched to a full-power quad burst.
To her surprise, the anomaly gobbled that, too.
Sithspawn. “Watch it, Twelve,” Jaina said. “They’re on to the bait and switch. They’re letting the splinter shots in early.”
“Acknowledged. Let me dust that off your tail, Eleven.”
A quick glance showed Jaina she had indeed picked up an admirer. She yanked her stick back, hard, but the skip followed. Her shield took a hit.
Twelve dropped in behind the skip while Jaina put her X-wing through a series of convoluted maneuvers. The skip hung right in there.
“Grounded for too long,” she muttered.
Then the tagalong flared and tumbled, trailing plasma.
“Thanks, Twelve,” she said.
“Not a problem.”
Jaina dropped and rolled down to target another coral-skipper. Like the previous one, this one started letting the splinters through early.
“We can learn, too,” she said under her breath. She kept up the spray, fired quad lasers, then fired again on full power. Three glowing holes appeared in the skip. It continued along its vector, no longer firing. Jaina wasted no more time on it, but found Twelve and dropped back to his port.
“Let’s get that stray,” Twelve said.
“Negative, Twelve,” Nine’s voice crackled. “Re-form. We can’t get them all, and we can’t afford to let them separate us for any length of time.”
“As ordered,” Twelve acknowledged.
Four more skips were coming in. If we don’t get this door open soon, Jaina thought, we’ll never get it open at all.
A sudden harsh crackle quivered Jaina’s eardrums. Then Gavin’s voice. “I’ve lost Three,” he said. “Deuce, take my back. I’m going in.”
Jaina gritted her teeth, wishing she could see what was going on at Wampa, but she had her own problems. Three skips came up on her port. She hated to do it, but after a little splinter fire she switched to proton torpedoes. A void appeared to catch the deadly missile, and as programmed the warhead detonated before it could be sucked in. The bonus was that the explosion was near enough to take out all three Yuuzhan Vong fighters.
That’s right, boys. Keep coming like that.
Then it occurred to her they were probably encouraging her to waste the torps. After all, they were never going to take out that monster down in the shipwomb with lasers.
But of course, they couldn’t take it out at all if they died here. One thing at a time.
The Falcon bounced on the expanding plume of vaporized coral her lasers had just coaxed out of the interdictor. Han’s view of the massive ship broadened, and also allowed the fifteen or so coralskippers on his tail a shot at the Falcon without danger of hitting their mother ship. Cursing, Han dived low again and quickly encountered the major problem with that, one he had never encountered while using similar tactics against Imperial Star Destroyers.
The Yuuzhan Vong ship opened a void. If Han’s reflexes had been a single twitch