Ylesia (7 page)

Jacen's attention was already on the combat above him. Jaina and Jag Fel had bounced the coralskippers and had killed at least three of them, their wrecked hulls plunging downward in the atmosphere with tails of flame, but now the battle had become a melee. Again aerodynamics worked to the advantage of the New Republic: a coralskipper had all the aerodynamics of a brick, but the X-wings, with their foils closed, made decent, maneuverable atmosphere craft. Still, Jacen sensed Jaina's tension through the Jedi meld: half Twin Suns Squadron were still rookies, easy meat for an experienced enemy; and the Yuuzhan Vong were flying like veterans.

An X-wing trailing fire plunged past Jacen as he climbed, and he saw a flash as the pilot ejected. Fragments of burning yorik coral crashed onto Jacen's shields as he climbed: that meant another coralskipper accounted for.

He would be at too much of a disadvantage if he climbed straight into the fight, so he avoided the battle and got above the furball before rolling his craft into a dive. He felt control surfaces biting air as the X-wing accelerated, and found a target ahead, a coralskipper maneuvering onto the tail of an X-wing that seemed to be wandering around randomly, like a dewback looking for its herd—doubtless one of Jaina's rookies. Jacen chanced the deflection shot, quadded his lasers, and opened fire, and only when he saw the coralskipper explode behind him did the rookie panic, flinging his fighter all over the sky to avoid a menace that Jacen had already destroyed.

Jacen flew on, saw a coralskipper being chased by a Chiss clawcraft, the Yuuzhan Vong's dovin basal snatching the pursuer's bolts from the air as he flew. It was another chancy deflection shot, but Jacen carefully pulled the fighter after the enemy, a smooth curve . . . then found that he was falling short, the enemy dancing just ahead of his shots. Frustration sang in his nerves, and he was on the verge of ordering his astromech to check his controls when he realized it was all the fault of the air—the atmosphere had slowed the fighter too much. He triggered a concussion missile then, and was rewarded by seeing it slam home on the Yuuzhan Vong's flank. The tough coralskipper kept on flying, but its dovin basal was distracted and the Chiss pilot's next shot flamed it.

Jacen's heart leapt as he realized he was in danger, and he jerked his stick to the right as shots flared past his canopy. He'd spent too long lining up his last target and an enemy had jumped him. He corkscrewed through the sprawl of swirling fighter craft and managed to lose his pursuer, and when he stopped his dodging there was an enemy right in front of him, flying right into his sights while lining up on a clawcraft. Jacen blew him apart with a quad laser burst.

He was through the furball now, and pulled back the stick to climb and repeat his maneuver. The others had slowed down to maneuver, and were easy targets for anyone diving in from above. He doubted that he could manage three hits on every pass, but there was no reason not to try.

Jacen made a lazy loop while he scanned the fight through his cockpit, then he half rolled upright and fed power to the engines. A sudden cry came over the comm. “I've just lost rear shields!
Anyone!
This is Twin Two—I've just lost an engine!
Help!
”

Twin Two was Vale, Jaina's rookie wingmate—probably lost, and without cover. He felt Jaina's rising tension through the Force-meld as she searched for Twin Two, and he scanned the mass of weaving fighters as he approached, seeing one madly dancing X-wing with a tail of flame, a pair of skips weaving after her.

“Break left, Twin Two,” he called. “I've got you.”

“Breaking left!” Panic and relief warred in Vale's reply.

Jacen hit the atmosphere brakes and the X-wing slowed as if it had hit a lake of mercury, and then he crabbed his jouncing fighter around into a shot on the lead coralskipper. His laser bolts blew the canopy away and sent the craft in an end-over-end spin for the planet below. The second enemy dodged his lasers, and Jacen yanked his fighter into an even tighter turn, the atmosphere jolting the craft, dropping its speed. The enemy swallowed his concussion missile into the singularity of its dovin basal and caught the laser bolts as well, but Jacen saw Vale dart away into safety while her pursuer was preoccupied. And then enemy rounds were hammering on Jacen's shields, and he released the atmosphere brakes and tried to roll away, punching the throttle.

He'd slowed down too much, losing speed and maneuverability and choice. An enemy had found him and was hovering off his tail, hurling round after round after him while he tried desperately to regain speed and the ability to maneuver . . .

Jacen's astromech droid chittered as the aft shields died. And then there was a crash that Jacen felt through his spine, and the stick kicked against his gloved hand. The X-wing slewed abruptly to the left. It slowed so much that the pursuing coralskipper overshot, passing within meters of Jacen's canopy, and his head swiveled on his neck as he looked frantically in all directions, trying to spot any additional threats . . .

And there it was. On the end of Jacen's left foils, its claws dug into the paired laser cannons, was a grutchin, one of the winged, insectoid, metal-eating creatures that the Yuuzhan Vong sometimes released with their missiles. A grutchin whose malevolent black-eyed gaze stared back at Jacen, before it turned to its work and took a leisurely chomp out of the upper left foil.

Jacen dived to gain speed, working the controls frantically to keep the X-wing balanced as the weight and drag of the grutchin threatened to destabilize it. As speed built he was rewarded by the grutchin digging its claws more firmly into the foil, hunching against the battering it was receiving from the atmosphere. Jacen felt his lips draw back in a harsh smile. He'd hoped the wind would strip the grutchin away, but this was the next best thing: the creature couldn't eat his ship as long as it was spending all its strength just to hang on.

Then Jacen pulled back on the stick and fed power to the engines. The only way to get rid of the grutchin was to open the canopy and shoot the thing off his wing, but he couldn't open the canopy and stand up as long as he was in Ylesia's atmosphere—the wind would tear him right out of the craft and send him tumbling toward the planet below with half the bones in his body broken.

An interesting dilemma,
he thought. The grutchin couldn't eat his craft as long as Jacen was flying at speed through the atmosphere, but he couldn't get rid of the grutchin until he got out of the atmosphere altogether. This would call for fine judgment.

“This is Twin Thirteen,” he said into the comm. “I've got a grutchin on my wing. I'll be back after I deal with it.”

“Copy,” came Jaina's voice. He could hear the strain of combat in the terse expression, and feel her stress in the Force.

Jacen kept his eyes on the grutchin and his throttles all the way forward. He kept the nose tipped as far as he could without losing speed, and slowly the buffeting of the atmosphere eased as the air thinned. When the grutchin was able to lift its head and take another bite of the upper port laser cannon, Jacen stood the X-wing on its tail and fled straight up into space. The grutchin shifted its grip and took another bite, and the laser cannon tore free and spun away into the darkening sky. Jacen reached for his blaster and loosened it in its holster. The whisper of wind on the canopy was almost gone. The second laser tumbled into the sky, and the grutchin turned, its claws clamped firmly on metal, and walked methodically along the two united foils, heading for the engine.

Jacen extended the foils into the X-position, hoping to shake it free or slow it down, but without success. Instead he felt, rather than heard, a crash as the grutchin's head drove like a metal punch into his engine cowling.

Better do
something
, he thought. He threw the cockpit latch; as the cockpit depressurized, force fields snapped into place around him, preserving his air. The sound of flight vanished, though he could still feel the vibration of his craft sounding up his spine. Red lights were flashing on his engine displays. He nudged the controls to the cockpit servos, lifting it slightly open. When he felt no turbulence he opened the cockpit all the way.

He summoned the Force to guide the fighter's controls as he stood in the cockpit and pulled his blaster from its holster. As he leaned out of the cockpit he saw the upper left foil fly away spinning, eaten away at the root. There was a flash of fire in the engine and it died.

Surely, he thought, the flameout was enough to cook the grutchin. He leaned farther out, bracing one arm on the cockpit coaming, and thrust out the blaster.

The grutchin's beady eyes stared back at him with malevolent purpose. And then the creature's wings extended, and Jacen's heart gave a lurch as he realized the grutchin was going to leap straight for his face.

He fired while mentally rehearsing the move necessary to snatch his lightsaber with his free hand in case the blaster didn't do the job. He fired again, and again. The grutchin reared, its clawed forelegs pawing the airless space between them, and Jacen fired twice more.

The grutchin's head tumbled away into the emptiness. The rest of the grutchin then followed.

Blasters work,
Jacen reminded himself as he eased back into the cockpit and sealed the canopy.

His astromech droid had already prepared a damage report. Rear shields down, both port lasers gone along with the port upper S-foil; the other port foil damaged, and one engine destroyed.

Jacen thumped a frustrated fist on the cockpit coaming. The X-wing's aerodynamics had been wrecked—if he went into the atmosphere to aid Jaina now, his craft would go into a spin that would end only when he hit the ground.

He had come here to aid Jaina, to make certain that she would never be without his support. Now he was leaving her in a desperate fight with the enemy.

But once he had time to listen on Twin Suns' comm channel, it appeared that Jaina no longer needed his aid. She was ordering her squadron to regroup.

“Twin Leader, this is Twin Thirteen,” he said. “The grutchin's dealt with.”

Jaina was all business. “Twin Thirteen, what's your status?”

“I'm going to need to get a new fighter before I can rejoin. What's
your
condition?”

“The fight's over. Kyp and Saba came to help us. We're regrouping to hit the spaceport and cover the landing.”

“And the Brigaders' fleet?”

“Surrendered. That's how Kyp and Saba were free to join us.” There was a pause. “Twin Thirteen, Twin Two has lost an engine. I need you to escort her to rejoin the fleet.”

“Understood,” Jacen said, “though considering the state of my fighter, Vale may end up escorting
me
.”

He heard snickers over the comm. Through the meld Jacen felt his sister bearing the humor with patience.

“Just get her there, Twin Thirteen,” she said finally.

“Understood,” Jacen said, and rolled his fighter so that he could spot Vale approaching from the planet below.

“Inertial compensators,” Thrackan said as he contemplated the wreck of his landspeeder. “What a
good
idea.”

It had taken Thrackan and Dagga Marl longer to escape Peace City than he'd expected, largely because so many others were fleeing on foot and had gotten in the way. Barely had they emerged from Peace City's ramshackle limits than a colossal spiraling chunk of yorik coral had come tumbling down out of the sky like a grayish green lump and impacted on the road just ahead of them.

The explosion had thrown the landspeeder off the road and spinning into a patch of trees, where, between tree trunks and flying chunks of yorik coral, it had been comprehensively destroyed. But the deluxe landspeeder—built originally for a young Hutt, to judge by the fittings—had been equipped with inertial compensators, and these had failed only after the vehicle had come to a complete halt. Thrackan and Dagga emerged from the wreck unscathed.

Thrackan turned to look at the shattered Yuuzhan Vong frigate lying in fragments beneath a thick cloud of smoke and dust.

“I don't think Maal Lah's forces are doing very well,” Thrackan said. There was a horrific smell of burning organics, and he remembered that the frigate had actually been alive, that something akin to blood had pulsed through its hull.

He turned to Dagga. “You wouldn't have private means of getting us off the planet, do you?”

“No, I don't.”

“Or knowledge of a landspeeder anywhere nearby?”

Dagga shook her head. Thrackan shrugged.

“That's all right. One will come along in a minute, stop to work out how to get around the wreckage—and then we'll steal it.”

Dagga flashed him her shark's grin. “Boss, I like the way you think.”

They crouched for some time in the trees by the road, but no landspeeder came. The explosion, with its cloud of smoke, had discouraged anyone from fleeing in this direction.

Thrackan shrugged. “I guess we walk.”

“Where are we walking
to
?”

“Away from the city that's about to be pounded into gravel.” Thrackan began picking his way through the debris field. There was relatively little left to burn—most of the frigate had been
rock
—and the smoke was dissipating.

He and Dagga fled back into the cover of the trees as a flight of fighter craft howled out of the sky and shrieked along the road toward Peace City. The fighters were distinctive, with ball cockpits and weird jagged pylons on either side. Thrackan was annoyed.

“TIE fighters? We're being attacked by the
Empire
now?” He glared. “I call this excessive!” He shook his finger at the sky. “I call this overkill on the part of Fate!”

He waited a few minutes, then rose from his crouch among the bushes and scanned the sky carefully. “I guess they're gone. But let's stay in the trees and—“