Balance Point (30 page)

“To you,” Tsavong Lah murmured. “Yun-Yammka, accept those lives. In return for that gift, grant us success.”

His yorik-trema shuddered as its landing claws seized the ground. Ignoring the settlement’s artificial boarding tubes, he ordered molleung worms extended from the yorik-tremas’ sides.

One of his lieutenants gave his cadre of landing troops—young warriors in unscarred armor—final orders.
One group, assigned outdoor duties, already wore gnullith breathing aides.

“Destroy only those who threaten violence,” the lieutenant ordered. “Gather any who lay down their weapons into a holding and purification area.” He looked up to Tsavong Lah.

The warmaster raised his armored arms in benediction. “Go with the gods,” he said. “All glory to you.”

He turned to a villip-choir view of local space. The native defenders were settling back into their landing bays on board their abominations. The crippled mechanical city drifted. His native agent there would meet the gods escorted by an entire city, once gravity caught it.

Satisfied, Tsavong Lah turned to a display table of small, dedicated villips. He stroked one.

“Off-load Tu-Scart and Sgauru,” he ordered, “and release them.”

Even without a copilot, Mara could call on most of
Jade Shadow
’s capabilities. Lando’s techs had installed pilot-controlled AG-1G lasers—nearly as powerful as the AG-2Gs he’d put on the
Millennium Falcon
, years ago—plus a full KDY shielding suite. Shada had shown up with a gift from Talon Karrde, two Dymex HM-8 torp launchers. Mara hadn’t asked the former Mistryl Shadow Guard where they came from; she’d simply specified that they, too, had to be pilot-accessible. Now, just so long as nothing went wrong with life-support—which she would need a third arm to reach—she was almost as single-handedly capable as Luke and Anakin in their XJ X-wings.

She’d dropped Anakin at his ship, down near the pole. Now she keyed her heads-up display to paint him and Luke silver-blue. In the distance, beyond Orr-Om’s death throes, Luke turned tightly to take one more strafing run at the monster coiled around it.

Sharply tapered forward from its tandem power core and drive unit,
Shadow
flew almost as smoothly as
Jade’s Fire
, if not quite as nimbly as the X-wings. Mara clenched stick and throttle, diving into atmosphere again. Down in the opaque goop, her port and starboard visual scanners were useless. Long-range sensors, mounted
just below her heads-up, showed a trio of mismatched but aerodynamic craft rising to meet her.

Duro Defense Force already had been driven back to defend the other orbital cities, and their few B-wings had flown straight into the enemy’s attack wing and been shot to pieces. Nimbler DDF E-wings and local Dagger-D police ships harried the landing force’s coralskipper escorts, but plainly, this small Yuuzhan Vong force meant only to establish a beachhead—too quickly for Gateway to evacuate. Now the dome dwellers were hostages.

As Mara closed with the skips, she eyed her long-range scanners. About thirty degrees across Duro’s surface, a convoy of three freighters and a dozen smaller craft popped free of the toxic clouds and dashed for open space. A tetra formation of coralskippers blasted toward it.

“I’m there,” Anakin announced.

One of the silver-blue pips on her screen headed toward the convoy.

Her own trio of skips came straight at her, firing molten projectiles and streams of blinding plasma. Lando’s new service droids had fitted
Shadow
with a stutter trigger, and Mara targeted the lead craft as they came on, weakening its dovin basal defense as well as she could.

“Luke?” she called, pulling back on her stick and setting an evasive roll as she pulled for black space. Twin ion drives responded smoothly. “Want to lend a hand here?”

“On my way,” he came back.

She had time for only a fast glance at her long-range scanner. The silver-blue pip streaked away from Orr-Om, headed straight for her.

The
Shadow
shivered slightly with unevenly absorbed
energy. Mara juked into a rising reversal, then snap-turned to port and was rewarded with a broadside shot at one coralskipper. Again she pounded its shielding, decelerating and rotating simultaneously, keeping that one skip dead in her sights. Her brackets went live around it, a dead lock-on, but she wouldn’t waste a torp until … until …

Not this pass! The enemy pilot’s friends were headed back, almost in range. High behind them, where they couldn’t see him, Luke swooped into position.

She knew exactly what he wanted from her. Playing her etheric rudder, she set a spinning dive. The coralskippers followed like hungry mynocks.

One hard turn to starboard put them squarely in Luke’s sights. His X-wing pounded the lead skip. The second broke off. Mara jinked hard, came back, and put the torp right where she wanted it. Multicolored coral sprayed in all directions.

Luke had taken up position on another skip’s tail. The coralskipper decelerated hard, a maneuver guaranteed to make an inexperienced pilot overshoot, putting him precisely in the enemy’s sights.

That X-wing pilot was anything but inexperienced. “Cut speed, Artoo,” Mara heard on the private frequency, and the X-wing came to a relative standstill, still in killing position behind the coralskipper. His lasers showered it with deadly firepower.

Mara vaped it with a second missile.

At that instant, her threat board went red. Coralskippers’ weapons didn’t set off torpedo-lock alarms, so she had only a moment’s warning. She slammed the throttle forward, pushed down on her stick, and danced on the rudders.

“Got him,” Luke announced.

And Mara came about as the last coralskipper was jetting off toward open space.

“How’d you do that?” she demanded.

“He must’ve been chasing you on full power. That would distract a dovin basal just as badly as projecting full shields. I think,” he added. “Where did they come from?”

“I was headed for Gateway. Hoping to give Leia time to get some more evac ships headed out.”

“Leia’s gone into hiding,” Luke told her. “We can’t do her any more good, here … yet. She needs time to get people on board.”

“Ask her if it’d help if we keep the landing party looking up, instead of searching for her.”

While she waited, another voice gargled out of her comm unit. “All forces, this is Admiral Wuht. You have been ordered to disengage and withdraw. Noncompliance will result in immediate disciplinary action.”

She’d set her transceiver to listen broadband, even though she was transmitting only on private frequency. That order confirmed what Duros squadron leaders had been calling.

“They’re out of their minds,” she growled.

“No,” Luke came back. “I mean, yes, you’re right. But Leia wants us to hold back a little longer. She thinks she’s got a better chance of getting her refugees away if the Yuuzhan Vong don’t know we’re still hanging around.”

“All that through the Force, Luke?” she challenged him. “Not with words, exactly. I’m interpreting a little.”

“Still sounds reasonable.”

Their furball with the coralskippers had set her on a vector toward Orr-Om. The monstrous Yuuzhan Vong creature had attached itself to one docking area. As Mara watched, it appeared to break off another vast
hunk of superstructure with its wedge-shaped head. It shook that vigorously, let go, and then darted back and forth, gobbling up whatever it had flung into space.

She keyed her sensors for a tight-beam view. “Looks like the creature’s got some kind of pouch clinging to its dorsal area,” she said. “Maybe life-support, over a blowhole.”

“All forces,” the static-charged voice repeated, “stand down. We have been threatened with a second strike if we do not disengage.”

“Stang,”
Mara whispered.

Luke murmured back, “Wuht swallowed it—the threat of further attack, the promise that they only want the planet. He’s going to settle for a stalemate. I’m reading a deactivation order on everything that gets docked.”

Mara felt her eyes widen. Full deactivation would drain off the ships’ power and send their pilots and even their crews home. “They’re not even going to try to help Gateway evacuate, and now our people are prisoners down there.” She pushed the
Shadow
’s sharp nose back down.

Then she changed her mind. Gateway’s fragile dome protected several thousand refugees from corrosive atmosphere, and she’d seen the invaders’ biotechnical breathing apparatuses. One ill-planned attack—even by three Jedi, coordinating their strike through the Force—and the refugees would suffer, while their captors were only inconvenienced.

She’d had a run of unbreakable situations lately! She’d never been so frustrated.

And …

“They’ve got their beachhead,” Luke echoed her thoughts, “but that’s the low ground. We’re still holding the height.”

“Which makes sense,” Mara pointed out, “only if they think they’ve got an even better vantage.”

“If they’ve got more ships coming in.”

“Exactly.”

“Leia’d better hurry.” His words, her thoughts. “Maybe Hamner will get us reinforcements here in time.”

“Luke,” she muttered, “with Fey’lya in charge, it could take another week.”

On her heads-up display, one dark-blue blip slowly shrank in the distance. It had been one of Leia’s freighters, loaded with refugees. Her scanners showed six breaches along its port side. It spun slowly as atmosphere and debris vented into space.

Leia would need the Duros’ full support, the moment she got her other evac ships loaded, and before the Yuuzhan Vong’s second force arrived.
Before
their groundside force figured out what Leia was up to, and smashed the last evac ships.

Mara wondered if she could talk sense into Admiral Darez Wuht. If she didn’t feel any duplicity in him, she could tell him—quietly, without tipping off the traitors!—that he had reinforcements on the way.

If she docked the
Shadow
, though, she ran the risk that some bantha-brained idiot would power it down.

In the distance, Anakin picked off a second coralskipper as the convoy accelerated toward hyperspace.

“X-wing, stand down,” Mara’s comm unit growled.

She slapped it off.

Luke came alongside her, setting a slow arc toward Bburru. “CorDuro and the Peace Brigade have Wuht in a tight spot.”

“Wuht can’t honestly believe they only want the planet, can he? Either he’s a traitor, too, or … well, somebody’s got to get that stand-down canceled. I’ll try,
on Jaina’s behalf. She said he’d shown her some sympathy. But I don’t want to get marooned.”

“I could dock in your hold again.”

“Then stay aboard, in-dock?” Mara asked. “Take off if you have to, come back to fly cover for me if you can?”

“I don’t like that much, either.” But they had to do something.

“I’ll talk to him,” she decided. “If they feel threatened by Jedi, you’re the ultimate threat. But I’ll tell him not to give up. That reinforcements are coming.”

“We haven’t heard back from Hamner.”

“So we don’t know if he’s been turned down,” she pointed out.

She vectored away from Bburru, putting the widest possible angle between any hostile eyes and her
Shadow
. They didn’t know she could carry an X-wing, and she wanted to keep that little secret.

Luke tight-docked the fighter, off-loaded R2-D2, then made his way to the triangular cockpit. By then, she had Bburru on visual.

“Port Duggan,” she transmitted, “request permission to dock.”

“Any further discussion?” Borsk Fey’lya’s violet eyes shone vindictively. No one else at the table spoke. “Your vote, then.”

Kenth Hamner remained at attention, but he had less hope than ever. Senator Shesh of Kuat had spoken persuasively, regretfully, citing excellent reasons not to pull a single fighter off any of the other shipyard systems. Councilor Pwoe of Mon Calamari reminded the council that others, notably the Hutt Randa Besadii Diori, had recently called in false alerts from Duro.

As he feared, the vote went against him.

He kept his shoulders at a dignified brace. “I will
notify Master Skywalker,” he said, “but you’d better remember this day, all of you. If Coruscant falls to Yuuzhan Vong forces based on Duro, you will regret this decision.”

He pivoted on one heel and left the chamber.

“This way,” Jacen shouted.

“Get to the admin building,” Leia called behind him.

He shouted back over his shoulder, “No! Dad’s got a tunnel started.”

Jaina pounded along beside him. Evening had fallen, but the overhead lamps stayed on—probably an emergency measure. Leia followed with Olmahk and several others, up a lane in the deserted Tayana district. As they approached the tallest ruin, Jacen glanced back. Dark figures swarmed in through the main gate.

“This way.” Jacen led to the far side of the rubble pile.

Inside the tumbledown building, Droma’s furry, mustachioed face peered out, his blue and red cap still perched at a rakish angle. He waved a bristly arm. Jacen dashed forward, glad that Droma had held out until the quarantine was canceled. His next thought: He hoped all that shaving and isolation really had been pointless, and that no one would carry the white-eyes offplanet on an evacuation ship.

At the rubble pile’s edge, Jaina tripped and went down, scraping her hands and knees. Jacen helped her back to her feet.

“I’m all right,” she insisted. She scrambled inside.

Jacen stood in the roofless entry, momentarily at a loss.

Then he heard scrambling and puffing noises from his left. He spun in that direction, following Jaina, who’d heard them first.

Two fallen duracrete slabs lay on the floor. He saw a
gap between them, wide enough to squeeze through. The scrambling sounds were coming from down there.

“Jacen,” his mother’s voice called. “Jaina?”

“Coming.” Jaina dropped to hands and knees beside the gap, slipped in feetfirst, then vanished.

Jacen followed, dropping into darkness. He almost pitched forward, but someone caught him.

“Thanks,” he puffed.

His mom’s voice answered. “Go. Hurry.”