Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [155]
In the blink of an eye Twin Suns lost another three fighters. To port, trimmed in golden sunlight, one of the newer transports was banking as quickly as its bulk allowed. Rogue Squadron had re-formed around the ship and was just beginning to shepherd it into the atmosphere. Jag looked to his right and overhead for the second transport, but couldn’t find it. What he found instead were the Wraiths, winning their duels with coralskippers even as they blazed toward Twin Suns.
Right to Rule control boomed in Jag’s ears. “Twin Suns Leader, come about to zero-zero-three. You are redesignated escort for number one transport. As soon as your group is clear, we’re going to try to burn a tunnel to the surface.”
Jag hauled on the control yoke, gravitational forces all but burying him in the seat as he slewed to port. The dozen remaining members of his group followed in formation, sticking close enough to one another to provide adjuvant shielding. Ahead of them, transport one had dropped inside the tier of dovin basals and was rushing for the surface, blunt nose aglow from friction. Twenty years earlier Coruscant had been liberated from Imperial forces by loosing a group of criminals to sow confusion, and by sabotaging the planet’s shield generators. Now liberation would depend largely on the actions of a thousand commandos and a handful of resistance fighters, and the off chance of their being able to mobilize the Yuuzhan Vong heretics into an insurgent force.
As promised, coordinated laserfire came from the capital ships. Sizzling through the atmosphere, the sustained fusillade annihilated everything in its path and burned a ragged bald patch in Coruscant’s verdant surface. It was toward the denuded area that the starfighters and transport raced, firing on the run at the few coralskippers that had survived the laser shower.
The control yoke shuddered in Jag’s grip as he powered the clawcraft into denser air. The ship rattled, as if on the verge of coming apart, but it held together. Surface features of Coruscant began to come into focus: forest-covered spires and mounds, wide crevasses brimming with mist yet to be burned off by the sun. Gradually he decreased the angle of his descent until he was flying into the sun, and parallel to the undulating terrain. Frightened by the roar of the approaching craft, flocks of black birds with three-meter wingspans took flight from the branching crowns of emergent trees.
A contour map resolved on the cockpit navigational display, showing the buildings and features of the so-called sacred precinct, from the craggy mountain that was Shimrra’s worldship Citadel to the domelike structure that housed and protected the World Brain—what had once been the most affluent and fashionable area of the planet. A counter at the bottom of the screen showed the distance remaining to the scorched landing zone, which was surrounded by dense forest and yorik coral outcroppings.
Without warning, enemy artillery fire erupted from the tree line around the clearing, fountaining molten ejecta and flaming projectiles high into the air. Flying nap of the forest, Jag spotted the distinctive sail-like spine plates of the armored beast the Yuuzhan Vong called a rakamat, and the Alliance knew as a range. The blue-green reptilian creatures were the size of small buildings, and on Borleias had proved almost impossible to stop.
“That plasma is coming from a range, east of the landing zone,” Jag said over the tactical net. “Shawnkyr, Eprill, see if you can hold it at bay long enough