Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [167]
“Your warmaster appears to be deferring to Jacen Solo’s report that bombardment will prompt the World Brain to render the planet unfit for habitation,” Harrar said into Han’s right ear.
Gazing at the turmoil planetside, Han said, “Looks to me like the World Brain is doing a pretty good job of that without having to be prompted.”
The Falcon was closing on the insertion point when two X-wings appeared to either side of it.
“Good to see you, Millennium Falcon,” one of the pilots said over the tactical net. “Mind if we ride down with you?”
“Who’s escorting who?” Jaina asked.
“Let’s call it a party of three,” the other pilot said.
“Party,” Harrar murmured.
The spacecraft that housed the orbital dovin basals might have been fragments of Coruscant’s deliberately smashed moon, but the voids they generated were as large as shock-ball stadiums. With the X-wings pressing close, Han sent the Falcon on her starboard side to edge between two gaping shield singularities. The ship wasn’t through the strait when a third void yawned.
“Feed that thing something!” Jaina said over the net.
The starfighter pilots responded by paying out pairs of proton torpedoes. Instantly warped off course, the glowing orbs were ingested by the gravitic anomaly. With the dovin basal momentarily distracted, Han called on the sublight drives for a burst of speed and rocketed the Falcon past the maw. Yet another singularity opened in front of the ship, but this time Han made careful use of the braking thrusters to nuzzle the Falcon close enough so that gravity whipped the freighter around the void and threw it deeper into the atmosphere. He did the same with the succeeding quartet of wells, using the gravitic distortions to sling the ship in an elongated double-S from one to the next.
The Falcon shook and shuddered, and the engines roared in protest, but the gambit worked to keep the ship from being wrenched off course. One of the X-wings wasn’t as fortunate. Even while the pilot was attempting to confuse the dovin basal with stutterfire and two remaining torpedoes, the creature’s singularity reached out and grabbed the starfighter, which disintegrated before it disappeared entirely.
The Falcon swooped lower on a sinuous tail of blue energy, but the gauntlet didn’t end with the dovin basals. A matalok cruiser racing up the well caught sight of the freighter and spewed a volley of magma missiles from its starboardside plasma launchers.
“Diverting power to the deflectors,” Jaina said, without being asked.
Han yawed hard to port, and began weaving through the storm of ejecta. The X-wing that had ridden in on the Falcon’s tail hung close, but couldn’t keep pace with the larger ship. Han tried to swerve back on course to shield the starfighter, but even the Falcon was capable of only so much twisting and veering. Molten rock splashed against the Falcon’s screens, but the main body of the salvo flooded over the mandibles and caught the hapless X-wing head-on.
Han bit back a curse and leaned into the control yoke, dropping the Falcon like a stone, straight for the ascending matalok. Intent on squaring off with the cruiser, he had the concussion missile launchers armed when the proximity alarms began to blare.
“Four skips to starboard!” Jaina said. “Intercept course!”
Han performed a lightning-fast pushover. “Give your mom and your uncle a heads-up!”
Displaying their customary contempt for evasive tactics, the skips broke ranks and came at the Falcon from separate vectors, firing at extreme range. Han heard the top and belly quad lasers begin to chuff and chunder, and banked slightly to starboard to place two of the hostiles in the Money Lane. Outwitting the shield singularities generated by the dovin basals, the powerful guns began to make immediate strikes, chopping away at the skips’ yorik coral hulls. A final burst from Leia in the dorsal turret sent one of the craft colliding