Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [114]
The warmaster and the chief tactician swung to the transparency to see brilliant plumes of plasma discharge omnidirectionally from the core. Dozens of the small fighters disappeared, and as many others were shocked into submission.
“Again,” Nas Choka ordered.
A second torrent of molten death poured from the war vessels, obliterating yet more starfighters.
“Now, assign yorik-akaga and yorik-vec to the rear. Let mataloks serve as our spearhead.”
The subaltern snapped his fists to his shoulders in salute.
“Warmaster,” the villip-choir tactician interjected judiciously. “Communication from Supreme Overlord Shimrra.”
Nas Choka turned to the array and genuflected in front of Shimrra’s dedicated villip. Everyone else in the command chamber kneeled, with foreheads pressed to the deck.
“It bodes well, Dread Lord,” Nas Choka began. “We will deliver victory to you this day, or die in the attempt.”
“Better for you, Warmaster, that you die delivering victory.”
“Understood, Lord.”
Shimrra’s villip spoke again. “You have my blessing, and the blessings of the gods. Yun-Yuuzhan and Yun-Yammka soar at your sides, as your right and left hands.”
“I sense their presence, Great Lord.”
“Does the enemy cower before us?”
“For the moment their fleet holds fast.”
“Then they have mustered the courage to meet us toe to toe? It will be their downfall. You have my full confidence, Warmaster. I leave you to your business.”
The dedicated villip inverted to its original leathery appearance. Nas Choka rose and paced to the transparency to observe the matched fury of coralskippers and starfighters, yorik-vec and Scimitar bombers.
“Sovv and Kre’fey are fighting with their minds, not their bodies,” he said to the chief tactician. “They are the smaller individual who engages a larger one. Even if he is swift enough to get inside his opponent’s defenses, his hands are too small to cause severe damage, and his muscles lack the power to bring his opponent to his knees. So he plans more carefully. Perhaps he goads the bigger warrior to swing first and miss, hoping then to unbalance him with a precisely timed shove or kick to the knee. Or perhaps he brings his equally small friends to stand at his back, and he strikes first, confident that his cohorts will be ready to find openings. He offers them as a distraction, so that when the larger warrior risks a glance to the right, a blow arrives from the left.”
Nas Choka’s expression hardened. “This battle is not the last stand. It has nothing to do with honor or a willingness to meet death. This is a feint. Fortunately, I have my suspicions about where the would-be surprise blow is coming from.”
The tactician nodded knowingly.
Nas Choka turned to the villip-choir mistress. “Alert domain groups Shen’g, Paasar, Eklut, and Taav. On my command they will separate from the armada and prepare to go to darkspace.”
She bowed. “To Toong’l and Caluula, and from there to Yuuzhan’tar.”
Nas Choka sneered. “Play with your villips, Mistress. Leave strategy to those who live to fight.” He summoned the chief tactician forward. “Command her, tactician.”
“To the Perlemian Trade Route,” the slight Yuuzhan Vong told the villip mistress, “and from there to Contruum!”
Leia was still in shock when the three surviving warriors led her, Kyp, Page, Wraw, and Meloque into the yammosk installation. Sasso and Ferfer had been left to die in the forest. Han they dragged behind by his wrists, like a slaughtered animal. He was alive but unconscious or comatose from the venom delivered by the warrior’s amphistaff.
Even in her dread, however, Leia was not too oblivious to notice that only one weary guard was posted at the minshal’s eastern dilating membrane, and that the membrane itself looked thin and weak, and oozed a viscous liquid. The guard struggled