Dark Journey (5 page)

Then a squadron of coralskippers swept toward the Dozen and a burst of plasma blossomed against Kyp’s forward shield.

“It’s our job to hold back the night, Chem. Don’t let yourself get distracted from that.”

“Yes, sir!”

Kyp’s sensors flared, alerting him to another fleet emerging from hyperspace. Kyp glanced at the Jedi wing and groaned. The “fleet” comprised perhaps a dozen X-wings, several battered E-wings, and a few ships that defied classification. All these ships protectively encircled a battered corvette.

“This Danni Quee travels in style. Impressed, Zero-One?” he asked, speaking too low for the comm to pick up.

NOT YET.

“Yeah, for once we’re agreed.”

Kyp switched back to the open channel. “Just like we practiced, Dozen. On my signal, break into fours. Lieutenants, call your targets. May the Force be with you all.”

The Yuuzhan Vong fleet responded to the new threats with precisely choreographed, tactically sound maneuvers. Some of the coralskippers and a blastboat flew to meet the Jedi wing. Other units swooped down on evacuee ships like hunting hawk-bats, daring the fighters of both squadrons to pursue. Still others veered toward the Dozen.

“And guess what?” Kyp murmured. “There’s enough of them to go around!”

The lead coralskippers began to vomit plasma. Kyp signaled the order to break, then tapped his controls. A modified thruster sent him in a sharp, vertical rise. The bolt streaked harmlessly past …

 … and slammed into one of the ships behind him—a ship that shouldn’t have been in that position.

Kyp didn’t see the impact, couldn’t hear the explosion or the rending apart of metal and ceramic. But he felt the flare of a young man’s fear and disbelief, then the searing realization of what a moment’s inattention could cost.

“Chem,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Jedi let his guilt and grief flow, carrying a burst of Force power with it. His long fingers danced over the controls, sending a stuttering firestorm of lasers toward the oncoming Yuuzhan Vong.

To his surprise, the larger-than-average coralskipper setting a course for the Jedi corvette swallowed every bolt that came its way.

Kyp shook his head in astonishment. The stutter-trigger technique had been developed early in the war in response to the pattern of shielding singularities—miniature black holes, really—that the enemy’s dovin
basals generated. Somehow the Yuuzhan Vong, or at least this one, had found a way to counter this attack.

“You want to dance?” Kyp said grimly. “Fine with me. I’ll lead.”

He swept in, a laser firestorm leading the way. Several coralskippers circled in to support the larger ship. As the Jedi led them away, he carefully noted the shape and diameter of the big ship’s protective shield. He jinked sharply, putting a passing military ship between himself and his attackers just long enough to drop a pair of concussion missiles. Quickly he darted away, drawing the Yuuzhan Vong with him and leaving the missiles floating like harmless flotsam.

Octa responded at once to this signal. She and the three pilots under her command unleashed a barrage of quick-stuttering laserfire at the big coralskipper.

Kyp reached out with the Force and eased the floating missiles toward the big skip. He reversed the flow of Force energy and brought the missiles to a stop just short of the dovin basal’s reach.

While Octa kept the big skip busy, Kyp quickly took stock of the nearby battle. A large Corellian freighter, most likely carrying passengers fleeing the planet, managed to hurtle through the blockade just a few kilometers from the Jedi corvette. Immediately several coralskippers converged in attack. The refugees unwittingly led this new force directly toward Danni Quee’s ship.

“Veema, get that freighter out of here,” Kyp ordered.

A quartet of XJs darted off in tight formation to engage the enemy ships. Laserfire battled streams of plasma as Kyp’s pilots provided a diversion for the fleeing refugee ship.

A thin bolt of plasma sheered through the wing of Veema’s ship. The off-balance XJ tumbled wildly, hopelessly out of control, and crashed into the very ship it
had been protecting. The XJ exploded—and took the freighter’s port fusion engine out with it.

A huge fissure sizzled down the side of the battered freighter, brilliant from the explosion within. Kyp—his emotions open and raw from his own peculiar battle mode—felt the sharp surge of terror, and then the sudden sundering of every life on that ship.

With a great effort of will, Kyp snapped his attention back to the big coralskipper. The Yuuzhan Vong had apparently taken note of the protection given the old corvette. The big coralskipper moved inexorably toward Danni Quee’s vessel. A stray laser beam struck one of the concussion missiles. It exploded: a white-fire blossom bursting from an eerie pink stem. The skip, however, had moved beyond the explosion’s range.

But Kyp no longer needed this particular missile. He ordered Octa’s squadron to regroup in a defensive position around the Jedi scientist’s ship.

“As the Master says, size matters not,” he murmured.

He released his hold on the second missile, not caring that it was swallowed by one of the coralskipper’s stuttering singularities. Reaching deep into himself, he sought resources he had not used for many years.

Once before, Kyp had seized a ship and dragged it out of the fierce heart of a gas giant. Now he reached out with the Force and took hold of the dead freighter.

It shot forward with astonishing ease, moving steadily through the vacuum of space toward the shielded coralskipper.

Ian Rim’s dark chuckle came through the comm. “Subtle as always, Kyp! Let’s not let this one get away, Dozen!” he shouted.

The lieutenant spun off in a tight turn, his two surviving pilots following closely. They darted around the big coralskipper, cutting off its retreat, taking and returning fire from the other enemy skips. Their daring
maneuvers soon exacted a price—Ian’s ship got caught in a Yuuzhan Vong crossfire. The double blast of plasma proved too much for his shields, and the ship dissolved in a bright splatter of plasma and superheated metal.

The pilots Ian had commanded doggedly held the course he’d plotted. The XJs continued to harry the big skip, forcing it to keep up its stuttering shields as the dead freighter closed in. At the last moment, the surviving X-wings shot away toward safety.

The freighter never got close. One moment it was there; the next it simply disappeared into a void. What happened next was not exactly what Kyp had had in mind.

He’d hoped for a physical impact, or, barring that, that the freighter might overwhelm the dovin basal’s capacity, leaving the big coralskipper vulnerable to attack. It had never occurred to him that the skip’s multiple singularities might merge into one and fold in on the Yuuzhan Vong ship like a glove turning inside out. But suddenly, the freighter was gone. So was the coralskipper.

And so were the fleeing X-wings.

Death came to the pilots with a speed that neither fear nor thought could match. Neither of them saw its approach. None of their final emotions came through to Kyp—only a sudden, almost deafening blast of silence.

Grief and guilt rose in Kyp like a dark tide. He bore down, sternly crushing these emotions before they could alter his focus, his course. He would not do this. He would not give way to the uncertainty that had so crippled his fellow Jedi.

Yet he could not deny that once again, he had undertaken a massive use of Force power and, in doing so, had inadvertently caused the death of those close to him.

Kyp forced himself back into the battle. He quickly took stock of his situation. Only Octa remained, and
two of her pilots. The four of them could still do some damage.

He hailed his surviving Dozen and named a vector reasonably free of battle. “We’ll regroup in quartet formation under my command.”

The ships responded at once, jinking a path through the Jedi ships.

Suddenly a surge of grief came from Octa Ramis, and then a brief, anguished epiphany, and, finally, fury. Kyp was not very surprised to note that her anger was directed not at the Yuuzhan Vong, but at him.

“Master Skywalker was right,” she said with deadly calm. “You may consider this a desertion.”

Her XJ peeled off and circled back to the Jedi wing. After a moment, the two surviving members of her squadron followed.

Kyp let her go.

Nine more of his pilots had died, adding their names to the lengthening roster of those who had died under his command since the war started. Though their deaths weighed heavily on Kyp, he accepted this as the fortunes of war. But never before had he crossed the lines he’d drawn long ago and brought about a comrade’s death through the power of the Force. At this dark moment, it seemed to him that this single act negated all the good he had done, all his steadfast arguments, everything for which he stood.

A moment of indecision, no more, but the price was high. Coralskippers closed in on Octa’s ships like a pack of voxyn.

Kyp streaked in, determined to take as many of them with him as he could.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong attack began to falter. Several of the coralskippers veered away in erratic, almost drunken flight. Octa Ramis took advantage
of this seeming confusion to give pursuit. The other XJs followed.

Two skips hurtled toward the Jedi woman’s ship. The enemy ships grazed each other, veered wildly apart, over-compensated. Back they came, slamming into a sidelong collision.

Shards of coral hammered the XJs with deadly shrapnel. Both of the ships spun away, out of control. Only Octa returned to the battered Jedi fleet.

“Objective secured,” she said coldly.

Kyp could only nod. For months now, Danni Quee’s team had been working on blocking a yammosk, a hideous, telepathic creature that coordinated many ships. Judging by the sudden confusion among the Yuuzhan Vong, they had succeeded.

But he, Kyp Durron, had failed.

Again.

A flood of emotion swept through him, and a dozen hard years suddenly fell away. For a moment Kyp knew the fresh anguish of his brother’s death. The darkness of that terrible time flooded back, and the despair.

“Jaina,” he murmured suddenly, for no reason that he could comprehend.

Kyp shook his head as if to clear it. Of course he was aware of pretty, pragmatic Jaina Solo—what Jedi wasn’t?—but she didn’t exactly fly in his orbit. There was nothing between them that could explain the fleeting connection; in fact, her reaction after the attack on the Sernpidal shipwomb suggested that Jaina wouldn’t so much as spit at him if he were on fire.

At that moment a familiar ship soared into view, a disreputable antique that was nonetheless one of the biggest legends in the galaxy. Three coralskippers blundered after it, spewing lethal rock.

“Not the
Falcon
,” Kyp vowed darkly, finding a measure of focus in this new threat. “Not a chance.”

The Jedi dropped his remaining two missiles and used the Force to hurl them at the enemy ships. Once again he stopped them just short of the singularities. He busied the skips’ dovin basals with a quick flurry of laserfire, then let the missiles hammer in. Two of the alien ships exploded. Coral shards melted as they hurtled through gouts of plasma thrown by a third ship.

The Jedi switched to hailing frequency. “
Millennium Falcon
, this is Kyp Durron. Could you use a wingmate?”

“You give a great audition, kid. Consider yourself hired.”

Han Solo’s disembodied voice lifted some of the burden from Kyp’s shoulders.

His relief was short-lived. A Yuuzhan Vong blastboat made a ponderous turn and came in pursuit of the
Falcon
. The pilot noticed, too, and responded with an oath Kyp hadn’t heard since his days as a slave in the Kessel spice mines.

“You install those vertical thrusters, like I told you?” Han demanded.

“Got ’em.”

“Good. Use them.”

Kyp punched the drive. His head seemed determined to burrow between his shoulders as the ship made a sudden leap. An enormous, ship-swallowing plasma comet scorched a path through the place he had just been—and directly toward his friend’s ship.

But Han turned the
Falcon
abruptly up on her port side. The missile streaked past, taking out a pair of disoriented coralskippers before it cooled into tumbling rock.

The old ship leveled out and then whirled away, tracing an oddly teetering path as Han deftly evaded incoming fire. Then he abruptly flipped onto the starboard side. Another massive bolt shot by, missing the ship but heating the underside to a glowing red. The
Falcon
levelled
out suddenly. Two confused coralskippers collided overhead.

“Hey, I
told
these people to use the flight restraints,” Han protested, responding to someone whose voice was beyond the reach of the comm. “Maybe if you’d issued a royal edict?”

The contentious fondness in Han’s voice identified the recipient of his sarcasm. An odd, hollow sensation settled in the pit of Kyp’s stomach at the prospect of confronting Leia Organa Solo.

He admired Han’s wife greatly, but her presence often left him keenly aware of the disparity between his youthful choices and hers. Leia had become a member of the Imperial Senate at sixteen, a hero of the Rebel Alliance two years later. At sixteen, Kyp had apprenticed himself to a long-dead Sith Lord. He’d rounded out his teen years by putting Master Skywalker in a near-death trance, forcibly erasing the memory of an Omwati scientist, commandeering a superweapon, and destroying a world and all its inhabitants. Thanks to Luke Skywalker’s intervention, Kyp’s crimes had been forgiven. Kyp had no illusions that anyone would forget them, least of all himself. Princess Leia did not remind him of what he’d been, but rather, what he might have become.

On the other hand, Leia’s presence on the
Falcon
might explain why Jaina had come so forcefully to Kyp’s mind. Leia wasn’t a fully trained Jedi, but Kyp suspected her raw powers rivaled those of her brother. Perhaps she’d heard something about her daughter and had inadvertently projected her response through the Force. Last thing Kyp had heard, the Solo kids were involved in some secret mission.