Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [71]
She pulled harder at the Sullustan and was finally certain that the female was slowing. “Jag, you can’t do anything here. Get back to Borleias, escort some shuttles up—”
“I’ve called for shuttles. And I’ll let you know when I’m useless. I recommend you follow my lead and discontinue trying to slow them to a stop.” Jag’s clawcraft darted ahead of the X-wings, maneuvered with delicacy into the cloud of victims, matching and then slightly surpassing their speed.
Then, with skill that was on the wrong side of impossible, Jag rotated his clawcraft and sideslipped it until it was mere meters to the side of a dark-skinned human male. Jag flicked his thrusters and the clawcraft slowed. The clawcraft slammed into the human at somewhere between twenty and thirty kilometers per hour; the man, stunned but not completely incapacitated, flailed around frantically as he was vectored away from Borleias.
The clawcraft rotated; as soon as that victim was clear of any possible ion wash, Jag touched his thrusters again, and maneuvered until he was alongside a second victim. That one, too, he rammed, as delicately as possible, an impact that appeared to hurt the Twi’lek woman’s arm, but sent her off at an angle that would not propel her into Borleias’s atmosphere.
Jaina’s flight was able to vector every one of the twenty-two ejected victims away from entering Borleias’s atmosphere. They couldn’t save all twenty-two; four died from exposure before the shuttles could reach them, and the remainder were all removed to the biotics facility’s medical ward, in varying stages of cold exposure. But none ended up as gruesome meteors flaming into incandescence in the planet’s atmosphere.
The flying it took to save the survivors was remarkable enough to draw applause from the ground crews when Jaina’s flight and the shuttles landed just after midday, but the pilots waved off the appreciation and did not lose their grim demeanor.
Word came that the Yuuzhan Vong worldship had taken up distant orbit, beyond the orbit of Pyria’s farthest planet. It remained on-station there, its capital ships and coralskippers clustered near it.
Through the special ops docking bay’s holocam feed, Wedge watched Jaina and her pilots arrive; then he switched off the view. “I was right,” he said. His voice was pitched low enough that it would not carry far in the perpetual babble of sound that was the operations center.
“You were right,” Tycho said. “The Vong have brought out big guns and someone with a certain amount of personal style to fire them.”
“Have the recovered victims, including the ones who didn’t make it, and anyone who has been in direct physical contact with them go through decontamination. Have Danni or Cilghal supervise the decontam. I want the surface of Fel’s clawcraft to be checked out and similarly decontaminated. They might have anticipated Jag’s tactics, so they might have booby-trapped all of the victims.”
Tycho nodded. “I’m on it.”
One more thing.” Wedge caught Tycho’s eye. “You were listening to Jaina’s comm traffic. Her desperation to save those people.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not dark-side behavior, at least as I understand it. I queried Kyp privately, and he’s pretty sure that she’s bouncing back from her brush with the dark side.”
“Meaning,” Tycho said, “is she trustworthy? Maybe even enough to be one of the Insiders?”
“Right.”
Tycho’s face revealed no emotion other than careful consideration of the question. Finally he nodded. “The brain and the gut are in agreement. I think she’s worth our trust. She’s a Solo.”
“I think so, too. She goes on the list.”
Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Pyria Orbit
The Yuuzhan Vong pilot with the absurdly human forehead and its concealing tattoos remained bowed with his arms crossed over his chest in salute until Czulkang Lah gestured for him to straighten. Czulkang Lah said, “Your name?”
“Charat Kraal.”
“And you are