Star by Star (79 page)

Luke took her in his arms. “Trust in the Force, Mara.”

“Is that the best you can do?” Mara asked bitterly. “Did trusting the Force save Anakin?”

“Perhaps Anakin was meant to save us,” Luke said gently. He knelt in front of R2-D2 and used his sleeve cuff to dry the droid’s auditory sensors. “We’re not in this alone, Mara. If Artoo can get through on a military channel, maybe someone else can help.”

“Maybe.” Mara looked away and tried to keep the dark emotions from rising inside her. She did not want to blame Han and Leia for their son’s peril, but it had been “help” that had endangered Ben in the first place. “Will you hurry, Skywalker?”

“Got it,” Luke said. “Artoo—”

The droid whistled in excitement.

“You’re sure?” Luke began to dry R2-D2’s speaker grille. “You found Leia?”

“This is not the end,” Leia said. “Two years ago, the Yuuzhan Vong entered our galaxy. They came not as friends and equals, though we would gladly have welcomed them as such, but as thieves and conquerors. They saw a galaxy at peace and mistook the strength of our convictions for frailty of arms, the wisdom of compromise for the timidity of cowards. They attacked without provocation or mercy, slaying billions of our citizens, enslaving entire worlds, and sacrificing millions of beings to appease the bloodlust of their imaginary gods. They believed we would be easily defeated, because they believed we would yield without a fight.

“They were wrong. We have fought at Dubrillion, Ithor, the Black Bantha, Borleias, and Corellia—we have fought them every leg of the way from the Outer Rim into the Core. We have lost untold numbers of loved ones, my own son Anakin and my husband’s dear friend Chewbacca among them, and now we are battling in the skies over Coruscant itself. We are still fighting.

“Soon, the enemy will be on our rooftops, in our homes, roaming the dark underlayers of our city. To those able to evacuate and to those trapped behind, I say the same thing I would tell my twins—were I able to reach them behind enemy lines: Keep fighting.

“This is not the end. Twice already, Jedi-led forces have decimated Yuuzhan Vong fleets, and we enter each battle with new weapons and better tactics. We have prevailed against ruthless enemies before, against Palpatine, against Thrawn, against the Ssi-ruuk. This is a war we know how to win. Keep fighting until you can fight no longer, then exhaust the enemy chasing you, and turn and fight some more. Keep fighting. I promise you, we will prevail.”

The
Lady Luck
’s flight deck fell as silent as a Noghri with a vibroblade. Lando pretended to adjust the shield power until he knew his eyes would remain dry, then heard an odd half growl
from the copilot’s seat. He looked over to find General Ba’tra drying his cheek fur.

“That woman could talk a Hutt onto a diet.” The Bothan spent the next few seconds looking out the forward viewport, where the
Byrt
’s finger-sized profile was rapidly swelling to arm-sized. A smaller lozenge, black and scabrous, was tentacled to its belly, and Viqi Shesh’s sleek KDY staryacht hovered nearby. Finally, Ba’tra grunted, “General Calrissian, none of those vessels looks like the
Errant Venture
’ ”

“They’re not,” Lando said, offering no other explanation. As far as he was concerned, his reactivation had ended with the fall of the Orbital Defense Headquarters. Now, Ba’tra and his soldiers were just evacuees hitching a ride. He opened a ship-to-ship channel to his wife. “Has—”

“Where are you?” Tendra demanded. “I’ve been worried sick.”

“Everything’s fine. I was, uh, delayed at the ODH.” As Lando spoke, he was sending her coordinates on a separate data band. “When Booster arrives, ask him to swing by this location. I’m doing a favor for some mutual friends, and it would be good to have a Star Destroyer standing by.”

“What
kind
of favor?”

“It’s important.” Though the channel was encrypted, Lando hesitated to say more for fear of Peace Brigade slicers. “Just tell Booster. I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better.”

“Bet on it.”

Not wishing to alarm Tendra, Lando signed off without telling her he loved her. Ba’tra studied him out of the corner of his eye.

“Didn’t figure you for a hero, Calrissian.”

“Me? Not at all.” Lando flashed his salesman’s smile. “But I couldn’t pass on a chance to demonstrate my droids to a captive audience.”

Ba’tra snorted, then half smiled and glanced at the primary display. Even this high in orbit, space was crowded with vehicles. For the most part, the Yuuzhan Vong were too busy with Coruscant’s still-formidable defenses to molest civilian ships, but a dozen skips patrolled the area around the
Byrt
, chasing off any vessel that came near.

Ba’tra tapped a claw on the display. “Wouldn’t hurt to bring some escort. We could call the Jedi wing off that yammosk.”

“And draw attention to ourselves?” Lando cocked his brow mischievously, then activated the
Luck
’s intercom. “Tighten your crash webbing back there. One-One-A, is your company ready to go?”

“Affirmative, General.”

“I’m not a general. The reactivation was temporary.”

“A general is always a general, General.”

Lando rolled his eyes and opened a panel on the arm of his pilot’s seat. He pressed a safety-locked button, and a valve in the starboard engine pod began spraying nonsealed Tibanna gas into the ion drives. The
Luck
sprouted a kilometer-long tail of what looked like white flame, but was actually a harmless fulgurous discharge caused by the ionization of Tibanna gas. Lando put the yacht into a corkscrew spin and set an oblique course for the
Byrt
, maintaining enough angle to clear the starferry by a safe margin. The skips scattered, but held their fire. A hit might change the “damaged” yacht’s course and send it careening into the vessels they were guarding.

“Compliments, General.” Ba’tra squeezed his eyes shut against the nauseating star spin outside. “Haven’t seen a Bothan runaway gambit this tight in years.”

Lando continued on a vector that would miss by half a kilometer. The skips wheeled around behind him, but stayed well back from the Tibanna tail. The
Byrt
swelled to the size of a building, and Lando nosed down toward it and decelerated hard, and then there was nothing but durasteel hull in the forward viewport, and the two ships kissed particle shields hard enough to push the starferry into the Yuuzhan Vong tether ship. Lando swung his stern around and tractored the
Luck
alongside the
Byrt
.

The first two coralskippers arrived, belching plasma balls into the
Luck
’s energy shields. Lando shut down the sublight fuel feed and closed the efflux nacelles. Tibanna gas billowed out through the cooling vents, becoming trapped under the shields and engulfing the
Luck
in fused-photon “flames.”

The next two skips pulled up without firing, and Lando lowered the shields on the
Byrt
’s side of the yacht. “One-One-A, go!”

*  *  *

When General Calrissian’s attack authorization came, YVH 1-1A was already magnoclamped to the
Byrt
, affixing a bead of elastic detonite to the hull. Still troubled by his failure at the Coruscant proving trial, he had dedicated a processing band to weapon-circuitry tests. All systems checked full power and ammunition—but so they had on Coruscant. YVH 1-1A’s self-preservation routines kept accessing the memory of his blaster bolts dancing off the armored Yuuzhan Vong, kept reporting an undetected flaw in his power-selection module. His logic center knew the assertion to be groundless, but if it was only a ghost loop, why did it persist even after he degaussed his circuits?

In 1.2 seconds after General Calrissian issued the “go” order, two subordinate units secured the
Lady Luck
’s cofferdam around him. YVH 1-1A withdrew to the air lock and activated the detonite. A door-sized section of hull popped free and clanged off 1-1A’s chest armor as the pressures equalized.

Scanning ahead with both optical and acoustic sensors, 1-1A rushed through the breach into a small power-relay control station. Three crew members lay on the floor, holding their ears, groaning from the pressure shift. YVH 1-1A ignored them and crossed the cabin, then stopped when his see-through sensors detected a squad of Yuuzhan Vong in the main corridor outside.

Ambush
? 1-24A asked.

Affirmative
.

YVH 1-1A projected red dots onto the wall to show the location of each individual. He was about to outline an attack strategy when 1-24A clunked through the hatch and started firing. The results left no doubt that
his
weapon systems were functional.

Corridor secure
, 1-24A reported.

Maximum efficiency
, 1-1A complimented.

Circuits chilling at his own hesitation, 1-1A assigned firing teams to sever the enemy tether, to secure the
Byrt
’s drive units, and to begin a Yuuzhan Vong search-and-destroy sweep. The most important task he reserved for himself. Leaving two squads to secure the breach until General Calrissian arrived with the biotics, 1-1A set his auditory sensors to their most sensitive and stepped through the hatch.

Though only 4.5 seconds had passed, the corridor walls were pocked with spent thud bugs, the floor strewn with Yuuzhan Vong bodies. Droid squads were advancing in both directions, their blaster arms filling the passage with flashes of color. As his processing unit began to interpret auditory data, 1-1A realized he had underestimated the difficulty of his own mission. Within current sensor range alone, he detected fifty-two vocalizing infants. Loudly vocalizing infants.

Starting with the nearest, 1-1A stepped over a still-smoking Yuuzhan Vong corpse and followed the wailing through a short maze of corridors to the first-class berthings. An enemy search party was pulling refugees out of their sleeping cabins, shoving them to the floor. The leader was dangling a crying infant by one leg, shaking it at a sobbing human female, and demanding, “Tell me! Is this the
Jeedai
baby?”

YVH 1-1A raised his blaster arm, and the whir of his servomotors caused the Yuuzhan Vong to whirl around. Some pushed their captives back into the cabins, others dragged them out to use as shields. YVH 1-1A sprang forward, firing. There was no question of faulty selection modules or dampened power outputs. He dropped five foes in five shots. When the leader attempted to dash the baby against the wall, he even felt confident enough to shoot the warrior’s hand off at the wrist.

The astonished mother caught the child in her arms, then turned to 1-1A babbling incomprehensible words of gratitude.

“Remain calm,” 1-1A replied. “Seek shelter immediately.”

Viqi Shesh looked like something resurrected by a Krath death witch. Her cheeks were hollow, her pupils dilated, her skin as gray as a Noghri’s, and her gait suggested the influence of some powerful painkiller. But she held her head high and seemed most determined to impress the Yuuzhan Vong following her down the corridor. Fearful that the glow of his photoreceptors would betray his presence, C-3PO stepped to one side of the evacuation bay hatch and continued to peer through the viewport at an oblique angle.

“And then the nasty Senator Shesh came looking for Ben Skywalker,” he said quietly. In a futile attempt to calm the distressed
infant, he was using his agile TranLang III vocabulator to replicate Mara’s breathy voice. The imitation was flawless, but there was nothing he could do about the coldness of his metallic flesh—or about what the child sensed through the Force. “So brave Ben grew very quiet.”

Ben whimpered loudly.

Out in the corridor, Viqi Shesh cocked her head to one side.

“I
told
Mistress Leia I was the wrong droid for this,” C-3PO whined in Mara’s voice. He opened the emergency medpac he had taken from the escape pod and removed the safetranq. “Please be quiet, Master Ben. I am quite certain your mother wouldn’t want me administering sedatives.”

Viqi Shesh spoke to her escorts, and they began to open hatches and search escape bays. C-3PO had primed their own pod for launch, but he was not eager to take another escape pod ride. Besides, they would only find themselves back on Coruscant.

The searchers were three hatches away when a hulking YVH war droid appeared behind them.

“Thank the maker!” C-3PO said.

He thought it was a 1-1 series, but that hardly mattered. The whole YVH line was top quality, and the mere fact that there was one aboard was a positive sign. C-3PO sent a burst transmission identifying himself and his charge and requesting aid. He received a terse reply informing him that rescuing him and Ben
was
the mission. Then the droid loosed a flurry of minicannon fire, taking out four of Shesh’s escorts in half as many seconds.

Ben erupted into a fit of wailing. Given the roar in the corridor, C-3PO thought that three centimeters of durasteel wall might prevent the baby from being heard. He was disabused of that notion when he peered through the viewport and found Viqi Shesh crouching behind a bulkhead opposite him, staring through the viewport directly at him.

“Ben! Now look what you’ve done!”

It was just the sort of tactical problem suited to a deceptive Bothan mind: one narrow doorway defended by a dozen well-armed foes in possession of an undetermined number of hostages. Ba’tra would normally have sent a team through an air
duct, or tried to lure the enemy out by feigning withdrawal. This time, he turned to a YVH war droid and pointed at the door.

“One-Thirty-two, secure the bridge.”

“Yes, General.”

YVH 1-32A waded forward into a bug swarm so thick Ba’tra lost sight of him. The droid countered with a lightning storm of blasterfire. Three seconds later, he stood in the doorway, both blaster arms smoking, laminanium armor pitted to the circuit casing.

“Bridge secure, General.”

“Well done.” Ba’tra raised his comlink and spoke to a subordinate waiting in Lando’s yacht. “You may send the
Lady Luck
on her way, Captain—and give it some speed. I’m sure General Calrissian would appreciate the vessel still being intact when he activates his recall unit.”