Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [89]
“This is a trap.” It was Piggy’s voice, and Jaina saw that the message was being routed directly to her through her astromech; none of the other pilots would be hearing it. “I recommend we return to base.”
Jaina frowned. The five skips pursuing her shield trio were now in a wedge formation, the boldest of them well out ahead of the others. “Explain that, Piggy.”
She reached out to Kyp, feeling for a moment his hand on his X-wing’s yoke. She handled both her controls and his, simultaneously, identically, and both X-wings decelerated and gained altitude relative to their pursuers. Jag, left out of their Force link, leapt ahead.
Jaina gave Kyp the cue. He targeted the lead skip and fired just as she did. Jag, in his more maneuverable clawcraft, inverted in a maneuver tight enough to send an X-wing out of control and fired at the lead skip’s bow. The skip’s dovin basal brought its void up to capture Jag’s lasers, but Jaina’s and Kyp’s fire shredded it, sending glowing yorik coral chunks in all directions.
Jaina and Kyp kept up their fire, concentrating on the port side of the coralskipper formation. Jag drifted to his starboard, flashing by those same two targets as he fired, his shots intercepted by voids but keeping those spots of darkness from swallowing the X-wings’ fire. In moments, those two skips, though not destroyed, were charred by laserfire and venting atmosphere. Jag looped around and came up behind Jaina and Kyp as they dropped into position behind the coralskipper formation.
Meanwhile, Piggy was talking. Talking and talking. “Listen to the comm chatter. We’ve been attacked by forces sophisticated enough to time simultaneous assaults on the other three squads, but they didn’t jump us until the other three were fully engaged. This is a ploy designed to make sure we’re pinned in place and happily hunting easy kills, while they set something up.”
“Copy.” Jaina trained bursts of laserfire on the skip ahead. Her Force connection with Kyp slipped as she focused on Piggy’s words.
He was right. All evidence pointed to the new Yuuzhan Vong commander being canny and experienced. He’d never set up a sophisticated assault with second-rate pilots except as a distraction, a bluff, or a trap.
But they couldn’t just flee whenever they faced a trap. The Yuuzhan Vong would come to recognize their skittishness, and then begin to exploit it.
“Piggy, we’re going to weather this one out,” she said. “I want you to broadcast that warning, the short form, in the clear on fleet frequencies. Try to sound panicked, would you?”
“Copy.” A moment later, his voice sounded across the fleet frequency, at a higher volume and pitch: “Great One, this is Twin Suns Five. I feel a trap closing around us. We have to flee.”
Jaina snorted to herself at his melodramatic words, then responded appropriately. “Be calm, Piggy. Have faith. You feel their trap. They’re about to feel mine.”
Now, she told herself, all we have to do is figure out what they’re trying to do, keep them from doing it, and do something worse to them. Easy.
Sure.
The beam from the lesser end of the pipefighter ceased. Its part in the operation was over for now. She switched to squad frequency. “Starlancer One, get out of there. Head back to base.”
“Copy. Starlancer One on our way.”
THIRTEEN
Borleias Occupation, Day 39
The streams of laser energy from Starlancers One, Two, and Three converged on Starlancer Prime, the pipefighter with the three extrusions arrayed in equal angles. Each stream entered one of the pipe openings.
Starlancer Prime’s last extrusion, the one aimed at the Coruscant system, fired, channeling its constant, meter-thick beam