Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [112]
Jag’s clawcraft was not in sight; sensors said that he was about two hundred meters ahead and slowly increasing his lead. The clawcraft’s more compact shape was better suited to travel through these surroundings without becoming snared on heavy foliage.
And with Jag’s fighter, hovering behind it at a distance of no more than four meters, were two shadow bombs, armed, drifting along in the grip of the Force. Jaina sweated as she divided her concentration between flying this way and controlling her shadow bomb, and once again she envied Kyp’s effortless control over all matters of the Force.
All matters not involving his own motivations and actions, that is.
Jag said, “I’ve managed to set down in some heavy growth just beside a riverbank. A sort of hunter’s blind. I have pretty good visibility. If you want, you can set the bombs down behind me. Gently.”
Jaina did so, grateful for the relief. “How close do you think you are?”
“Pretty close. I’m looking right at them. About twenty meters off, ahead to starboard. There are two masses of reptoid slaves escorting coralskippers. The skips are moving about a meter off the ground. Their voids aren’t visible … I suspect they’re directing their voids to reinforce the rakamats. I see only five skips, but their formation suggests a broad line of them. Hold on.” He was silent for a few moments. “Vibrations in the hull suggest that one or more rakamats are headed this way. I think we placed it pretty accurately.” Then there was a loud bang and a curt laugh from Jag. “A tree just took some laserfire from one of us.”
“Try not to get hit with your shields down, dummy.”
“Good advice, that. I’d never considered it before. Wait a second.”
“What is it?”
“I see a rakamat … I think it’s a range. Something big, shoving down whole trees in front of it. Who wants to try this one?”
“I do,” Kyp said.
“All right, lift the shadow bomb up, traverse it ten meters forward, and lower it slowly … I see the bomb. Very good. All right, take it ahead dead slow … a little to the right … no, not that much to the right—Stop! Can you back it up a meter and sideslip a little to the right?”
“This will never work,” Kyp said. “I can’t sense all the vegetation with the accuracy of seeing it. I can’t just steer around things.”
“Yes, you can,” Jaina said. “Can you direct its movements through hand motions?”
“Well, yes, but it’s no better if I still can’t see it.”
Jaina grinned. “Kyp, set down here and slave your controls to Jag’s.”
“All right … done. Now what?”
“Jag, you use your control yoke like it was a joystick in a game. Direct the shadow bomb’s movement. Kyp, keep your hand on your yoke, let its feedback direct where your hand goes … and control the shadow bomb through your hand motions.”
“Whoa.” Kyp sounded impressed. “All right, I’m game.”
“Nice of you to be so willing,” Jag said. “You’re not the one sitting meters away from an armed proton torpedo being directed by a blind man in a two-way hookup. Well, here goes.”
Jaina set down her X-wing, lowering it onto its landing gear, and crossed her fingers.
“Hey, it’s working,” Jag said. “My control is sloppy, but much better than verbal. I’ve got it past the trees … lowering it to a few centimeters off the ground. Good, Kyp, we’re getting better. Cruising it forward, dead slow … Stop it here, set it down. Good. It’s right in the path of the rakamat. I can see the rakamat clearly now, and there’s another one behind it, a little to port. The near one is about thirty meters, the second one, I’d estimate, twenty meters behind it.”
“Go ahead and take the second bomb,” Jaina told Kyp.
Reth brought his squad around for another pass and cursed. He’d lost two E-wings on the last pass, one in a clean