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By Root 1814 0

a year of modest victories in Remnant space, the Koornacht Cluster, Bakura, and elsewhere, the war should have long been over. Galactic Alliance commanders Sovv, Kre’fey, Brand, Keyan Farlander, Garm Bel Iblis, and others were certain that they had dealt the Yuuzhan Vong a death blow, and that subsequent engagements would be limited to mop-up operations. All the while, though, Yuuzhan Vong shapers had been busy cooking up ways to reestablish parity, and slowly they had discovered the means to counter the weapons the Alliance had grown to rely on: laser stutterfire, yammosk jammers, decoy dovin basals, shadow bombs, and the rest.

Then the Yuuzhan Vong had gone a step farther by unleashing a horde of specially designed dovin basals to gobble up or otherwise incapacitate HoloNet relay stations throughout the galaxy. While the Alliance had tried valiantly to reinstate instantaneous communications—resorting to stationing warships in deep space to double as transponders—world after world had fallen to the enemy, conquered or surrendered without a fight. Finally there had been the disastrous attempt by combined Alliance and Imperial Remnant forces to reclaim Bilbringi.

The title of Trickster was back in the hands of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, and Jaina was only “the Sword” she had been named on Mon Calamari, in the Jedi Knighting ceremony that had preceded the battle at Ebaq 9.

“Make every shot count,” she said. “Reserve torpedoes and concussion missiles for the carrier.”

An organic-looking cofferdam still linked the Yuuzhan Vong vessel to a Peace Brigade freighter. Between Twin Suns and the leashed ships, local space was target-rich with coral-skippers.

“Begin your hull runs,” Jaina commanded. “Straight down the convoy line.”

The X-wing’s sensor screens grew noisy with battle static as bursts of green coherent light streaked from the starfighters’ weapons. Singularities fashioned by the coralskippers engulfed most of the bursts, but a few beams pierced the enemy defenses and found their targets. Spherical explosions blossomed, sending asymmetrical masses of yorik coral spinning off into space.

At the end of the first run, Jaina powered Twin Sun One through a tight turn, accelerated, and rocketed back into the thick of the fighting. Superheated ejecta surged from the coralskippers’ volcanolike launchers, whipping past her canopy like fiery meteors. She wreathed through a tight grouping of enemy fighters, responding in kind. One skip scudded clear of her carefully timed bursts, but a second she caught off guard with steady fire, destroying it completely.

She boosted power and chased the one that got away, her wingmate coming alongside her. The craggy lump of dovin-basal-driven coral climbed, then looped and descended, throwing everything it had at them. Twin Sun Three yawed hard to port, but not fast enough. The skip’s dovin basal lurched for the starfighter’s shields at the same time two molten missiles were catching up with it. Overwhelmed, the deflectors failed, and the X-wing blew to pieces.

One thing Jaina hadn’t grown accustomed to was losing her teammates. At this point in the war, with every available veteran leading his or her own squadron, most of the pilots assigned to Twin Suns weren’t much older than she was, and each and every death tore her apart.

Anger flared in her, but only for a moment, before evanescing in the Force. In eerie calm she veered and pounced on the coralskipper while its organic defenses were preoccupied. Two precisely placed shots disabled it, and a third finished it. The skip coughed fluorescent puffs of vaporized coral, then disappeared in a short-lived ball of flame.

Peeling away from the fireball, Jaina prowled for new targets.

With the playing field leveled, courtesy of the enemy’s aptitude for innovation, fighter engagements had become as ferocious as they had been at the start of the war, before effective countermeasures had come into play. Alliance forces held a slight advantage when coralskippers were flying without the assistance of a yammosk, but enemy pilots now had more authority