Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [119]
Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?
All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!
Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.
ONE
Pyria System
Jaina Solo banked her X-wing starfighter into as tight a turn as she could endure. The g-forces of her maneuver crushed her into her seat, but she called upon the Force to protect her, to keep her centimeters away from the edge of blackout.
She came out of the maneuver pointed back the way she’d come, directly toward the Star Destroyer Rebel Dream and the partial squadron of Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers beyond the ship, and spared a glance to her sensor board. The other members of her shield trio, Kyp Durron and Jag Fel, were right alongside—no problem for Jag and his Chiss clawcraft, far nimbler than the X-wings, but the turn had to have been as taxing for Kyp as it was for Jaina. On the other hand, Kyp was a Jedi Master, not just a Jedi Knight, not yet twenty years of age.
Jaina and her shieldmates passed beneath Rebel Dream, her tremendous length flashing overhead in an instant. “All right, here’s the plan,” she said. “We go in looking like we’re going to punch into the center of their formation, but instead we turn to starboard and skirt along its edge. As each target comes up, we concentrate fire on it, just like those drills we did. Ready?”
Kyp’s voice was smooth, controlled: “Always ready, Goddess.”
Jag merely clicked his comlink once for affirmative.
“Fire and break.”
As the foremost of the oncoming coralskippers came within firing range, it began unloading a stream of tiny red glows in their direction. Each glow was a couple of kilograms of superheated molten rock, plasma. In the coldness of space, these projectiles would rapidly cool, but during the seconds they remained heated they were deadly weapons capable of burning through starfighter armor as though it were sheet ice.
Jaina set her lasers to dual fire and waited. A brief instant later, she felt Kyp reach out to her through the Force, taking momentary control of her hand on the pilot’s yoke. She felt herself aim and fire on the distant coralskipper. Kyp’s lasers flashed at the same instant, Jag’s a fraction of a second later.
In the distance, Jaina’s shot disappeared as a tiny black singularity, a miniature black hole called a void, appeared at the bow of the coralskipper. Kyp’s vanished into an identical void a meter or so back. But Jag’s shot, one too many for the skip’s voids to intercept, punched into the vehicle’s canopy. There was a brief flash from within and the coralskipper’s flight became ballistic instead of controlled.
Jaina, back in full control of her motions, banked and turned to starboard, her wingmates keeping in tight, controlled formation; ahead of her was a second coralskipper, then a third. She reached out for Kyp, let him fire, regained control, reoriented, reached for Kyp, let him fire—
In seconds two more coralskippers were flaming wrecks in space. She knew, without consulting the sensor board, that the skips from the other side of that formation had to be angling in toward her from her port side; she stood her X-wing on its tail, relative to its previous course, and rose away from the conflict zone, forcing those coralskippers to give chase—away from Mon Mothma and that ship’s mission.
In the distance, Mon Mothma entered the zone