Remnant: Force Heretic I (41 page)

“Initial jump locked in,” the droid brains announced over the pounding of turbolasers.

“Take us out of here,” Jacen said as he turned away from Saba and Danni to return to his disabled TIE cockpit to oversee
Bonecrusher
’s escape. Saba watched him go with a strong pounding in her chest. She could sense Jacen’s pride in her. To him, this was what it meant to be a Jedi: to save lives, to protect freedom, to resist evil. She was glad, in a war with so many horrors, to have been able to give him—and herself—something to be proud of.

How better could they be remembered?

Saba opened her mouth fully, sucking in a lungful of the sweetest air she had possibly ever tasted.

“This is Captain Syrtik of the Galantos Guard,” announced the leader of the approaching Y-wings.

Blunt-nosed and older than Jag Fel by several decades, the clumsy fighters followed a strictly controlled flight path out of Galantos’s gravity well. Their ion engines were outdated but still powerful enough to overtake
Pride of Selonia
on its way to reinforce Twin Suns Squadron. The
frigate’s turbolaser batteries tracked the Y-wings as they passed, ready for any sign of hostility.

“State your intentions, Captain Syrtik,” said Captain Mayn.

“We’re here to help.” The leader of the incoming fighters sounded grimly determined. “Just tell us who to defer command to and we’ll do whatever we can.”

“Councilor Jobath finally saw reason, eh?” Mayn said. There was a slight hesitation before Syrtik’s reply: “Actually, Captain, I’m proceeding without orders.”

This time it was Mayn’s turn to hesitate. “Very well,” she said. There was no hiding her surprise. “Link up with Twin Suns Squadron for instructions. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

“Captain Syrtik, this is Twin Suns Leader,” Jag said over the comm a second later. “Switch to channel twenty-nine for those instructions.”

Jag closely surveyed the battle through his monitors. The two slaveships had closed together to make a smaller target while the reorganized coralskippers maintained a tight defense. The armored blastboat analog was still hanging back, protected by a trio of determined skips.

He changed to the new channel. “Our priority up to now has been to knock out the slaveships,” he said. “But that situation has changed. Those scarheads are getting themselves together, so we’re going to need to take out that last ship. Whatever’s doing the thinking for them, it’s in there.”

“A yammosk?” Jaina asked.

“I think so,” Jag said. Then, for the benefit of the newcomers, he added, “We have jammers in
Selonia.
Until they arrive, though, we’ll have to make do on our own.”

He paused, frowning at the screen. He had noted the absence of the
Falcon
, but the significance of it hadn’t
sunk in at first. The battered freighter had quietly looped back to Galantos once the Y-wings had appeared, almost as though it had other business to attend to. It was probably nothing, but he couldn’t help but feel uneasy about it. Tahiri was aboard the
Falcon
…

He pushed the thought down. He had enough to contend with as it was without adding more to his plate.

“We’re going to divide you into three,” he told their new allies. “One squadron will come with me to take out the rear ship. Twin Two has already made some progress on the slaveships so she’ll keep that up, with help of the second squadron. The remainder will provide distractions as needed.”

“You have no specific instructions at this time?” asked a new, slightly tremulous voice.

Jag rolled his eyes as he remembered how precise and organized the Fia liked to be. He had assumed that the fighters would be piloted by species more suited to the interior of a Y-wing cockpit; presumably they had made substantial alterations to the standard couches to accommodate their bottom-heavy physiques.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Just follow our lead, okay? Right, now let’s split up.” He picked one of the squadrons at random from the rapidly approaching trio. “Blues, you’re with me.”

“That’s Indigo, actually,” Captain Syrtik corrected him.

“Sorry, Indigo. Twin Two will take Red.”

“Cerise.”

Jag shook his head irritably. “All right, then that leaves Green for—”

“Reseda,” he was corrected again.

“Okay, then that leaves
Reseda
Squadron for the general approach. Is everyone clear on their part?”

A chorus of affirmatives sounded out over the open line.

“Right, Indigo Leader, switch to frequency seventeen and we’ll begin our run.”

As the new arrivals swept into the battlefield, Jag took a second to reprogram the diagnostic displays in front of him. The number of ships had more than doubled, and without any idea of how well the Fia could fly, he needed all the technical backup he could get.

“Are you okay with this, Sticks?” he asked on a private channel.

“A-okay,” Jaina replied. Her X-wing peeled off to lead her new flock in a tight loop around the slaveships, herding a pair of cautious skips before her. “But let’s hope this will be over soon.”

“I hear you,” he said. “I’m afraid the Fia’s pedantry might turn this into the longest melee we’ve ever been involved in.”

“Not what I was hoping to hear, Jag,” Jaina said tiredly.

The obvious fatigue in her voice concerned him. He still didn’t know the full story of what had happened at N’zoth, but it would have to wait until the immediate problem was dealt with.

He guided his new wingmates around the slaveships and along a rolling strike path toward the blastboat analog. Skips immediately swooped in to deter them, dividing the Y-wing formation into quarters. Two of the old boats stayed with Jag, but they only managed to keep up because he showed restraint and kept his maneuvering to a minimum. As soon as the first of the skips appeared in his targeting reticle, however, he let his instincts take over.

The skip danced across his scopes, narrowly avoiding the stutterfire he sent arcing toward its coral-armored back. Dovin basals snatched energy out of the vacuum,
greedily absorbing everything he threw at them. His two wingmates added to the barrage, but they hadn’t yet picked up the new techniques. Their input was little more than a distraction. Nonetheless, he appreciated all the help he got.

“Like this, guys,” he said, hugging tight to the skip’s tail and sending pulses of energy waves at it, then quickly launched a proton torpedo down the throat of the overloaded dovin basal. The coralskipper exploded into highly energized dust particles that peppered his cockpit as he passed through the remains of the ship.

“Got it?” he said when he was sure there was nothing else on his tail.

“An ingenious technique,” one pilot said. “But does the efficacy increase in direct proportion to the irregularity applied to the—?”

“We don’t have time for that, Indigo Five,” said another pilot. “We can discuss those kinds of details later.”

Jag breathed a sigh of relief as he sent a wave of laser-fire arcing into the side of the blastboat. His wingmates did the same, dodging plasma bolts sent in return.

Around Borosk, triumphant battle reports from Fleet Group
Relentless
were more than overshadowed by the terrible losses endured by
Protector
and
Stalwart.
For every battle group that came close to the yammosk-bearing vessel identified by the Galactic Alliance, five more failed and were destroyed. It was a grueling, frustrating situation to watch, and Pellaeon couldn’t help but wonder why this was the case. Was it because of an inherent mistrust of the Jedi who had brought these techniques to them, or simply an inability to follow new tactics quickly?

He continued to listen in from his bacta tank on the ongoing battle.

“Blue Three, keep up that covering fire. I’m going in!”

“Red Seven, watch your tail.”

“I have a strong lead in sector fourteen, White Leader.”

“On your right and above, Green Ten—on your right!”

“I’m hit! Stabilizers failing! Going to—” Then silence, as another life fell to the aliens’ plasma fire.

Listening to the babble on the open channel was doing little to ease Pellaeon’s mind, but he maintained his vigil because it gave him a taste of the battle as a whole. He couldn’t direct each component within it, but there was some value in viewing it from above. Were the frontline troops panicked, excited, reluctant, enraged? Such things could make an enormous difference in the outcome of a conflict, and a good commander was wise never to ignore it.

Overall, his gut feeling was that they were losing ground. The retreat back to Borosk’s mine rings had been tactical at first, allowing him to concentrate Imperial forces around the planet and resist the enemy on more fronts simultaneously. He had seen secondhand what had happened on Coruscant when the Yuuzhan Vong had attacked there, and while Borosk wasn’t facing as great a force, it also wasn’t as well defended. He’d hoped he could hold the planet long enough for the Yuuzhan Vong to lose patience or for their resources to run low. But the navy was losing more than it was gaining. The persistence of the Yuuzhan Vong was quickly taking its toll on the morale of his soldiers, and that directly impacted upon their battle performance. He knew that if this wasn’t turned around soon, it could cost them everything.

“Maintain shielding trios as ordered!” one pilot barked.

“Who are we kidding?” another returned. “This is never going to work, and you know it.”

“Can it, Gray Four. We’ve got better things to do than listen to your whining.”

A shrill whistle cut across the open channel, requesting his attention on the private line. Pellaeon turned away from the battle and took the call.

“What is it?” he asked wearily.

The voice of Captain Yage replaced the ambience of battle. She had become his de facto aide-de-camp during the fight for Borosk, deflecting unwanted inquiries and making sure only important ones got through.

“I have a report from Lieutenant Arber, sir,” she reported crisply. “The GAM has been installed in
Defiant
and is ready for a test run.”

“Excellent.” Pellaeon felt a grim satisfaction rise in him. Imperial ships didn’t carry gravitic amplitude modulators as standard issue; indeed, such devices were rare and expensive. This one had been brought in from a neighboring system as a matter of urgency and reprogrammed by Imperial engineers according to the Galactic Alliance specifications. If all went well, and it jammed the Yuuzhan Vong war coordinator as Skywalker promised, it could prove to be the turning point in the battle.

“Instruct Lieutenant Arber to forgo the test run and proceed directly to a combat run,” he ordered. “And inform Captain Essenton that she is to give Arber her full cooperation. She’s a cranky old thing, but when she sees what the GAM can do, I’m sure she’ll come around.”

Yage didn’t question Pellaeon’s opinion, although she knew as well as he did that no Imperial had actually seen a yammosk jammer in operation. Everything rested on the word of Skywalker and his Galactic Alliance. If they were wrong, the edge he needed to win the battle, if not the war, might not even eventuate.

He watched the Star Destroyer
Defiant
turn about and break from the defensive orbits the other capital vessels were maintaining below the ion mines. A swarm of TIE fighters and blastboats accompanied it, fending off coralskipper attacks and cutting a path through to the cluster of Yuuzhan Vong capital vessels that had been identified as containing a yammosk. The enemy was taking great pains to ensure that this one was at all times defended against previous attempts to knock it out by Fleet Group
Stalwart.

As before, the Yuuzhan Vong clustered around the yammosk ship like insects protecting their queen, swarming en masse to deflect the attack and stinging the assailants wherever possible.
Defiant
was hammered by streams of plasma bright enough to make the blazing of its ion engines look dim. Its shields were snatched at by dovin basals and attacked from every angle. It retaliated with fire from its turbolaser cannons, stuttering at the new frequencies as it removed entire flying groups of coralskippers out of the sky. The space around it became thick with debris, swirling nebulae of burning gas and fiery remnants flashing with discharging energy. Pellaeon admired Captain Essenton’s skill and determination as she flew the Star Destroyer onward, into the enemy’s ranks.
Defiant
was like a giant, poisoned dart plunging deep into the heart of the enemy.

As soon as it was in range, Lieutenant Arber activated the yammosk jammer. Pellaeon knew roughly how it worked, even if the precise details were beyond him. The machine broadcast coded gravitic pulses designed to interfere with similar pulses used by the yammosk to communicate with the vessels under its command. Knocking out the yammosk had the effect of removing the mind behind the coralskipper attacks; jamming their signals
was supposed to confuse them. Pellaeon thought again of the swarming-insects analogy, imagining the effect to be something like blowing smoke onto a hive to make the insects’ movements sluggish.

The effects were obvious and instantaneous. What had been a deadly dance suddenly became clumsy and uncoordinated. The myriad coralskippers, lacking central direction, were forced to rely on their own judgment—and Pellaeon knew well how poor that could be for a single fighter caught in the middle of a large battle. Without access to central command, the battle devolved into hundreds of tiny skirmishes.

There were still flashes of order in places as the yammosk fought the jamming signals and briefly regained control of some of the battle groups under its influence. But through it all, the pointed hull of
Defiant
continued to stab, firing torpedoes and concussion missiles relentlessly, committing every spare fighter to a concentrated attack on the group of capital vessels protecting the central yammosk. The yammosk fought back as best it could. Even confused coralskippers found it hard to miss a target as large as a Star Destroyer. Laser banks were kept busy by a stream of suicide runs focused on the bridge tower; blastboats formed a primary defense around the besieged ship, forcing the attacks to concentrate on certain approach runs and picking off the skips as they came. The Yuuzhan Vong forces weren’t directed enough to target the blastboats in response, so the tactic cut huge swaths through the coralskipper forces that were supposed to be defending the yammosk.