Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 20_ The Final Prophecy - J. Gregory Keyes [67]
“Tell the starfighters to drop formation as needed. I don’t know what they’re doing, but it can’t be good.”
“I’m never going to let Dad forget this,” Jaina grumbled. “He taught them a new trick!”
And not a bad one. The skips were screaming down into the middle fleet, and at twice their usual speed, speeds the starfighters couldn’t match, with the possible exception of the A-wings. In the squadrons under her command, that meant the Scimitar Squadron.
“Is that some new sort of skip?” Alema Rar asked. “Something looks strange about them.”
“Look like plain old skips to me,” Jaina replied.
She watched as a clump of skips tore past Wraith Squadron, hammering them hard and zooming past them before the Wraiths could get off more than a couple of shots. And now their trajectory was bringing them into Twin Suns territory, where they were escorting Mon Mothma.
She did a quick calculation.
“Twin Suns, on my mark, turn to point oh-oh-seven-one and go full throttle. Scimitar Leader, we’re only going to get a few shots at them as they go past. Then they’re yours, if you can catch them.”
“Turn our tails to the enemy?” Ijix Harona asked incredulously.
“They’ll overshoot you before you reach full acceleration,” Jaina explained. “Then you’ll be behind them at almost matching speed.”
“Copy, Twin Leader,” Harona replied. “I understand. Shouldn’t have asked.”
“What about our tails?” Twin Two asked.
“On my mark, tendi maneuver. Three, you’re the fan.”
“Copy.”
“Copy,” Jag said. “We’ve got it.”
Now they were building toward full acceleration, flying along the projected flight path of the fast skips. She could almost feel them coming up behind. Three, two—
“Go!” she said.
Three cut his jets and flipped around, firing. Since she and Two were still under acceleration, he was quickly positioned as a shield between them and the approaching skips. After the skips got past him, they had time for a single quick shot at Jaina and her wingmate. She, on the other hand, had built up speed approaching two-thirds that of the skips, so she had the leisure for quite a few shots at them once they were past her and before they were out of range.
She got one in her sights and used a proton torpedo while it still made sense, then needled it with laserfire until the torp got there and blew it into molten slag.
Jaina narrowed her eyes. There was something strange. The vessel she had just destroyed looked like every other she had ever put her sights on—except that something was trailing behind it.
“Twin One,” Rar asked, “did you see what that was attached to it?” Her tone very much said, “I told you so.”
“Don’t know,” Jaina replied. “I didn’t really see it until the detonation. Looked like a tail.”
“Skips don’t usually have tails,” Rar responded.
“It might have been a cofferdam.”
“Mine’s got one, too,” Jag said. “I thought I saw something bleeding out of it.”
Stifling an uneasy feeling, Jaina used lasers as the skips pulled ahead, and nailed one right through the dovin basal. In the flare she saw that this one had a tail as well. Or a big sack of some sort, now empty.
Several more skips flared as they approached the A-wings.
Now the skips had a choice. They could either retain their speed, but end up with A-wings on their tails, or they could—
“They’re slowing down,” Jag said.
“Yep. Scimitars, break off. You don’t want them behind you now. Come back to the party.”
“Copy, Sticks,” Harona confirmed.
The A-wings peeled out of formation and scattered. Jaina dropped in behind a skip and started firing, lasers only. The skip juked and jinked, its dovin-basal-generated voids absorbing her shots. So intent was she on getting the skip firmly in her sights that she almost didn’t see the thing in time. Her reflexes did, though, yanking at the stick as what she