Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [70]
Jaina looked at her sensor board, at Jag’s attack delay. “Three-quarters of a second! Jag, you guessed wrong.”
“Rather, I’ve taught you to be a little more unpredictable.”
She managed an amused smile. Trust Jag’s personal shields to deflect her criticism. “Let’s do it again. Maybe with fifty-fifty odds, Jag can guess right this time.”
The Yuuzhan Vong frigate’s course took it close to the star Pyria, the reverse of Jaina’s outbound course, as it headed toward Borleias. Once Jaina, Kyp, and Jag finished with the three skips sent to delay them, they blasted along in the frigate’s wake, catching up rapidly.
The frigate cleared the star’s orbit and began a straight-line approach to Borleias. Jaina’s sensor board showed Rebel Dream vectoring in on an intercept course; comm transmissions indicated that starfighter squadrons were launching both from planetside and from Lusankya. There was no way the frigate would get close enough to Borleias to do any harm.
“Frigate’s slowing,” Kyp reported. “Vectoring. It’s changing course. It knows it’s a futile attempt.”
“Wait, wait,” Jag said. “Put your visuals on its underbelly.”
Jaina did, and saw a long slit appearing in the frigate’s underside hull. It was a moist-looking opening, as unlovely as a Hutt’s mouth that had been pressed shut and was slowly beginning to gape.
As she watched, the gap began issuing shapes, tiny irregular things that spilled forth, streaming along the frigate’s original course.
Jaina grimaced. The shapes were wiggling. More organic weapons. Probably worldshapers of some sort, if they were being released at this distance toward Borleias in general instead of at a military target in specific.
Then she realized that the disturbance she’d felt in the Force was traveling with those shapes. She felt her stomach sink. She put more power into acceleration, roaring toward the cloud of wiggling shapes, ignoring the frigate and coralskipper escort as they vectored away.
In moments, she could see what the Yuuzhan Vong had discharged.
People. Mostly humans, the occasional Sullustan or Rodian or Devaronian. They were male and female, of all ages, naked—
No, not quite naked. As she got closer, Jaina could see the transparent covering on their bodies, a transparent sac inflated over their heads. They were wearing some variation of the ooglith cloaker, the Yuuzhan Vong environment suit; doubtless it would give them a few more minutes of life as they soared through space. They might freeze to death, they might run out of air, they might reach Borleias’s atmosphere and burn up in reentry. But they were all minutes from death, a score of them or more.
A Sullustan female saw Jaina’s X-wing approaching. The Sullustan twisted her head around and looked at Jaina, her eyes wide with fear, her expression imploring. Jaina could only stare back, helpless.
She became aware that Jag was talking.
“… ejected hostages. They appear to be in some sort of ooglith cloaker suits. They’re on ballistic approach toward Borleias. I don’t think the planet’s microgravity is perceptibly accelerating them yet. I can’t estimate the survival time their suits give them. I read twenty-two, repeat two-two of them. Standing by.”
The words, so calm, so clinical, snapped Jaina out of her reverie. She looked after the departing coralskippers and frigate.
“Don’t do it.” That was Kyp’s voice, and she felt it through the Force as much as she heard it over the comlink. “They’re trying to dictate your responses.”
“Serenity,” she whispered. She felt as though if she spoke more loudly, the volume would tear open a hole in her and let out the anger growing within her. “The way of the Jedi is serenity.” She reached out through the Force, found the Sullustan female, and tugged at her.
She could detect no change in the Sullustan’s velocity. She tugged harder. “Kyp, can you save any of them?”
“Maybe. That’s a tremendous