• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The coralskippers they’d been heading toward mere moments ago had now turned in their wake. Jaina put most of her discretionary X-wing energy into her rear shields and concentrated on flitting like a piranha-beetle, keeping the pursuing Yuuzhan Vong pilots from getting a good shot in at her. Her other pilots were doing the same.

Jag had increased his lead to several kilometers, and up ahead loomed the bulk of the Yuuzhan Vong interdictor. Its squadrons of coralskippers, which had dispersed to head off the Twin Suns’ escape were congregating again, but they’d been caught off guard by the run against the interdictor. Of course they had. From a logical point of view, it was the dumbest thing the New Republic pilots could have done.

Jag aimed straight in at the capital ship’s bow, the node where its dovin basals were concentrated—the dovin basals that dragged the ship through space, that projected the voids that drank incoming damage, that projected gravitic fluctuations into hyperspace to drag ships in transit back into realspace—and to keep nearby craft from making the jump into hyperspace. And finally Jaina knew and understood Jag’s plan.

His evasive maneuvers became tighter, faster, more random as he neared the interdictor and its full array of plasma cannons opened up on him. Jaina, through her tentative Force connection with Jag, could feel little spikes of alarm and adrenaline go through him, something she would never have guessed, given his calm demeanor in every situation.

“Coming up on drop point,” Jag said, his tone as indifferent as if he’d just ordered a meal he didn’t look forward to eating. “Three, two …” His clawcraft began spraying laserfire in a spiral pattern, the interdictor’s voids greedily sucking it all in. Jaina could see the voids concentrating there before Jag’s clawcraft, anticipating the spread of his attack.

Anticipating. He was so good at anticipating, predicting, that he could use the anticipation of his enemies as a weapon against them. Jaina shook her head.

“… one, drop.”

Jag’s clawcraft vectored again, another angle only a TIE craft could manage, but he continued to direct his laserfire against the flank of the interdictor. Its voids tracked, staying ahead of his lasers.

Jaina yanked her shadow bomb away from Jag, kept it almost on his original course, pulling it to port. Kyp maneuvered his up and to starboard. A void sprang up before Kyp’s.

But Jaina’s hit, detonating in a brilliant flash mere meters from the dovin basal node. She felt another jolt of alarm from Jag, but he did not disappear from her perceptions.

She looped around the dying interdictor, spraying fire at a pair of coralskippers approaching from ahead to port, and her laser attacks were joined by those of her squadmates. The two skips were reduced to superheated yorik coral rubble in a matter of moments … and suddenly there was nothing between her squad and Borleias but open space. Coralskippers were angling in from the sides, but none could manage an intercept course capable of catching her X-wings. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Then her breath left her. Her unit consisted of only ten blips. Twin Suns Three wasn’t back with them. She found Jag on the sensor board, back in the vicinity of the dying interdictor, at an angle that was carrying him back into the midst of the coralskippers.

“Twins Three, this is Leader. What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Leader.” Jag’s voice sounded pained. “I was grazed by a singularity effect. My shields are stripped and the yank put me off course. I’ll have to catch up to you later.”

That was just pilot bravado. Jag had nearly two squadrons of coralskippers converging on him from all directions. No available exit vector would let him use the clawfighter’s superior speed to just speed past opposition; he’d have to fight his way out, and without shields, he didn’t have a chance. His skills might let him last a few seconds, perhaps a minute. Then he would be dead.

Jaina wavered. Jag was one of her pilots. She couldn’t leave him behind. Couldn