Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [47]
Millennium Falcon had followed a strike troop gunship into the docking bay of the freighter tethered to carrier two, but almost an hour had passed and neither ship had emerged. A transport was on its way to docking, but had suddenly stopped, adding to Jaina’s vague sense of unrest.
She reached out for her mother, but all she felt in return was rushed activity and deep concern.
In conversation with veterans of protracted wars, Jaina had been advised to accept that the final stage of any conflict was often the worst. More dislocating than the initial periods of surprise and chaos, and more dispiriting than the intermediate periods, after the deaths had begun to mount up and it could seem as if the killing might go on forever. But it was the end stage that was most dangerous—a period of improbable alliances and unexpected reversals, some owing to overconfidence, others born of fear and desperation.
Jaina gave scant attention to any of this, except during the lulls in battle, when her thoughts sought escape from the tableaux of fiery explosions and crippled ships.
As the mynock flew, Bilbringi was almost a neighbor of Selvaris, and the recent battle there was almost emblematic of the odd pairings and reversals Jaina had been warned to expect. The operation had been the first since Esfandia that combined Alliance and Imperial elements, and the disabling of the HoloNet had been one of the war’s biggest surprises yet. Now, with Luke, Mara, Jacen, and other Jedi incommunicado, she was waiting for the other boot to drop.
She thought about her parents, and returned her gaze to the docking bay of the freighter. There was still no sign of the Falcon. She was about to comm mission control for an update when the X-wing’s tactical screens came alive with enemy blips.
“Heads up!” she said over the battle channel. “Vessels decanting from hyperspace.”
That was why the transports had stopped, Jaina told herself. Everyone had been expecting reinforcements to show up, but not so soon. She waited for the authenticators to display data on what the sensors had picked up.
“They appear to be coralskippers,” Harona said. “Approaching from starward of Selvaris. I make it three stacked triangles of six skips.”
Jaina shook her head. Coralskippers lacked the ability to travel through hyperspace unassisted. “Scimitar Leader, that can’t be right.”
“Twin Suns One,” Wes Janson said. “These blips don’t match anything in the battle log.”
“Taanab One, my instruments agree,” Jaina commed. “We should have visual in a matter of seconds …”
What the long-range scanners showed made her sit up straighter in the X-wing’s contoured seat. The fighters—if indeed that was what they were—were made up of three yorik coral triangles, joined apex to base. The leading two triangles showed mica-like canopies, while the third and largest was flared at the rear and sported a long upcurving tail, perhaps to augment dovin basal impulsion, which in a coralskipper was often located in the nose. From the forward segments of the scaled fuselage sprouted six legs, three pairs to each side, veined in blue and tipped with launcher ports for plasma missiles.
Twin Suns Three whistled in surprise. “They look like Azuran stingcrawlers.”
More like voxyn! Jaina thought.
“Close ranks and form up on me,” she said quickly. “Anyone short on firepower to the center. Stick with your wingmates until we see what these things are capable of.”
“Enemy is breaking formation,” Harona announced. “Here they come!”
The formations of snarling skips surged forward with incredible speed, their sextets of launchers disgorging plasma in steady streams. Deliberately, Jaina placed herself in the path of one projectile and was immediately sorry she had. Cappie shrieked in distress, and the X-wing’s shields fell to 50 percent.
She tumbled away from second and third projectiles,