Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [40]
Fath swung to his subalterns and conveyed the order.
“Now launch the coralskippers,” Carr instructed.
The subalterns didn’t bother to wait for authorization.
Fath’s proudly scarred face was ashen. “But without a yammosk—”
Carr cut him off with a wave of his hand. “If the pilots under the cognition hoods of the coralskippers don’t know how to engage the enemy by now, they will never know! And they’ll pay for their ignorance with dishonorable death.” He motioned Fath to the villip choir. “Tell them so. Stir their hearts. Inflame them!”
Fath swallowed and nodded. “I will. But where will you be?”
Carr tipped his head to one side. “Did you not command me to take charge of the prisoners?”
Fath straightened to his full height. “I did.”
Carr placed his hands atop Fath’s broad shoulders. “Command tests our will. Hold fast to your faith in Yun-Yammka. Rise above the storm. But should the battle back you into a corner, you know where to find me.”
Fath snapped his fists to the opposite shoulders, following it with a gesture of us-hrok—a sign of gratitude and loyalty. “Belek tiu, Supreme Commander!”
Weapons were already flaring in space—the enemy’s laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers. Carr spun on his heel and rushed from the command chamber. This day would see him exonerated or dead.
Twin Suns Squadron of battle-seasoned X-wings emerged from hiding with wingtip lasers charged and stabilizers locked in attack position. The convoy of pod-shaped Peace Brigade freighters and their escort of war vessels was strung out in a long line that trailed past Selvaris’s moon almost to the planet itself. A few of the freighters sported retrofitted turbolasers and other ranged weapons, but most were patched together and defenseless. Three of the Yuuzhan Vong vessels were 120-meter-long spearheads of reddish black coral, pitted with dovin basal launchers and plasma-spitting weapons emplacements. The pair of larger vessels were oval-shaped carrier analogs, equally well armed, and sporting clusters of coralskippers affixed like shellfish to their bone-white hulls.
Ensconced in Twin Suns One, Jaina Solo flew point for the three squadrons under her command. Gloved hands gripped on the X-wing’s control stick, she chinned her helmet comm. “All flights, form up on your leaders and keep your battle channels open for instructions. Scimitar Leader, do you copy?”
“Copy, Twin One,” Colonel Ijix Harona said.
“Yellow Taanab Leader, do you copy?”
Wes Janson commed back. “Loud and clear, Twin One.”
The X-wing’s sensors painted blue and yellow bezels on the cockpit displays. “Scimitar Leader, your squadron has the number one carrier. Taanab Leader, those forward gunships are yours. Twin Suns will take the carrier umbilicaled to the Brigade freighter. The rest of the convoy vessels are designated to Dozen, Blackmoon, and Vanguard fighter squadrons.”
Named by Luke Skywalker for his double-starred home-world of Tatooine, Twin Suns was made up of T-65A2s and XJ3 X-wings. Ijix Harona’s Scimitars were wedge-shaped A-wings; Blackmoon was E-wings; and the Taanab Aces—a volunteer squadron—were yellow snubfighters adorned with black stripes. The Dozen had originally been formed by Kyp Durron; the Vanguard, by Jagged Fel and his Chiss comrades.
The flanks of Jaina’s white fighter still bore faint traces of running voxyn—Jedi-hunting beasts bioengineered by the Yuuzhan Vong—that had been added years earlier. Off to her right flew starfighters and armed transports that had decanted from hyperspace only moments earlier. She switched over to the command net. “You there, Kyp, Colonel Fel, Captain Saz?”
“Affirmative, Colonel,” Saz said from Blackmoon One.
“Perched on your right shoulder,” Kyp Durron replied. The nova suns on the fuselage of his X-wing were as faded as Twin Suns One’s voxyn. Good to see you, he sent through the Force.
Acknowledging the extrasensory greeting, Jaina felt Kyp join the Force-meld she shared with Lowbacca