Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [146]
A state of controlled frenzy prevailed on Mon Mothma’s bridge, with couriers and officers coming and going, and Wedge attempting to sustain half a dozen separate conversations. Displays flickered and computer consoles chirped as updates were transmitted from gunnery, communications, and tactical centers elsewhere in the ship. As accustomed to the noise as Wedge had become, he couldn’t help but reflect on the reasons that had prompted his retirement—especially now, in the wake of Ackbar’s death. His uniform and command cap felt borrowed from someone two sizes smaller.
The surprise attack had required his battle group to jump directly from Contruum to the Bormea sector, inserting as close to Corulag as was achievable, given the planet’s several moons and formidable defenses. Once the site of an Imperial Navy base, the largest moon had been transformed into a kind of rest facility for enemy patrol vessels assigned to the Perlemian Trade Route. Scimitar assault bombers were laying waste to the facility now, while Shocker and Blackmoon Squadron starfighters nipped at the yammosk carrier like packs of rapacious howlrunners.
“Generals Farlander and Celchu have the enemy boxed in,” Mon Mothma’s commander reported. “Harbinger has dropped from hyperspace and is pressing forward at battle speed to rendezvous with Elegos A’Kla at rally point manka-flechette-dewback.”
With Mon Mothma too far removed to allow for visual contact with any of the capital ships, Wedge studied the tactical console’s checkerboard of display screens. Determined to shield the yammosk vessel, the Yuuzhan Vong cruisers were indeed bracketed by Mon Adapyne and Elegos A’Kla, both of which were lancing the enemy configuration with continuous bursts of turbolaser fire. And now, closing fast, was Harbinger—the Mon Cal cruiser commanded by Garm Bel Iblis. Caught in the crossfire, coralskippers were being pulverized almost as fast as they could be deployed. With its quick-response cannons and gravity-well generators, Mon Mothma was seeing to any skips that escaped the cordon.
Corulag itself was taking punishment. Evidence of orbital bombardment and surface fighting, infrared hot spots were flaring in and around many of the major cities. Decrypted transmissions revealed that the fighting was intense, and atrocities were widespread.
Unlike other worlds along that important stretch of the Perlemian—Chandrila, Brentaal, and Ralltiir—Corulag had capitulated to the Yuuzhan Vong to escape devastation. No one had expected otherwise of a planetary government that had supported the Emperor during the Galactic Civil War, and had since been forced to languish in Coruscant’s shadow. Regardless, most of Corulag’s ten billion citizens opposed the puppet government set up by the Yuuzhan Vong, and simmering discontent had finally erupted into open rebellion. The wealthiest and most influential families fled for Kuat and Commenor, but there was no evading the Yuuzhan Vong. Kuat had fallen soon after Senator Pwoe’s brief visit, and Commenor had been hit hard and repeatedly. Galvanized by the rescue of Corulag’s unofficial hero, Judder Page, resistance groups on- and offworld had reached out to the Alliance for help in liberating the planet, at whatever costs to life and limb. Sovv and Kre’fey couldn’t have been more receptive to insystem support for an invasion. If Corulag could be reclaimed, the Alliance would hold a key hyperspace position in the Core.
Even two standard months earlier, an assault would have proved catastrophic. Yuuzhan Vong forces had been deployed well into the Slice, from Coruscant through Alsakan almost all the way to Corulag,