Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 02_ Ruin - Michael A. Stackpole [45]
Sealed inside the cockpit of his X-wing, which was nestled deep in the lower launch bay on the Ralroost, Gavin never saw the Bothan Assault Cruiser revert to realspace. The second the capital ship’s sensors became operational, they flooded Gavin’s computer with systems data for Sernpidal. Launch control cleared him for launch, so he powered up his repulsorlift coils and nudged the throttle forward. The X-wing picked up speed as it moved into the launch tube, then burst through the magnetic containment bubble at the end and looped up to the rendezvous point.
He raised his right hand and flicked a canopy switch that locked his fighter’s S-foils in attack position, then checked his shields, lasers, and finally his target acquisition system. “’Roost, Rogue Leader here. Scopes are negative for an immediate threat.”
“Copy, Leader. Commence run.”
“As ordered.” Gavin flicked his comm unit over to the squadron tactical frequency. “One flight on me. Two, you’re with the snoop. Three, take low. So far, so good, but be careful.”
Gavin checked his scopes again and saw some movement out at the fringes of the system. The data came from the Ralroost’s sensors and registered the distant craft as coral-skippers. Short of making a microjump through hyperspace, they couldn’t get to the Ralroost in less than four hours, by which time the ship should have been long gone. And if they do get to the Ralroost before then, it will be long gone.
Admiral Kre’fey had agreed that the slamming of a moon into Sernpidal had not just been a terror attack. The resources it required demanded some other gain, since Sernpidal was hardly a threat and could have been useful for whatever the sorts of things were that the Yuuzhan Vong were doing with Dubrillion. Getting a mission in to see what was going on there was very important.
A standard scouting mission would generally appear at the fringes of a system and employ probe droids or just long-range sensors to learn what it could. Kre’fey assumed the Yuuzhan Vong would place defenses at the edges of the system to prevent this strategy from working. The admiral had his astronavigators run countless analyses of data from the Millennium Falcon’s outbound run. Using that information, they created models that showed how the planet would break up over time. The models helped determine how the fragmenting world would change the gravitic profile of the system as it slowly broke apart. They found a point very close to the crushed world where a ship could get in and out, yet intrasystem jumps would be difficult for the Yuuzhan Vong.
So, we’re dropped into that space and get to go. Gavin brought his fighter around and headed into the labyrinth that the debris from Sernpidal had created. While the moon’s fall had shattered the world, it had not done as complete a job with it as the Death Star had with Alderaan. Gavin had flown through the Graveyard of Alderaan, but the remains of Sernpidal were bigger than the asteroid-size shards of Alderaan.
He could see huge chunks with what were once coastlines etched on them. He suspected, were he to fly in close enough, he would see the ruins of cities. The idea of doing that, aside from being well outside mission parameters, held no appeal for him at all. My job is to get past the debris screen and see what else is going on here, if anything.
The screen of coralskippers at the edges of the system did suggest the Yuuzhan Vong wanted to protect something, but until Gavin threaded his flight through fragments of the planetary crust and around stone that had been molten and flowing until frozen by the vacuum of space, he had no inkling of what the Yuuzhan Vong would be doing. Once he did make his way through, and brought his X-wing out into the light of Sernpidal’s sun, his mouth went dry.
“Emperor’s black bones!”