Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (38 page)

Part
of her mind paid attention to the wider battlefield. The missiles had
performed a startling maneuver in mid-burn by breaking up into four
smaller pieces, each capable of independent flight. Now numbering
sixteen, they slipped through the first wave of defensive fire. Six
mini missiles were taken out in the next wave, and five more in the
third. That left five to hit the fleet unharmed.

Ax
winced as they struck. There were no explosions, as she had
predicted. The Paramount was untouched, fortunately, but four of the
larger support vessels were likely to turn, if the hexes gained
control. There might be only a couple of dozen in each mini missile,
but that could be enough, particularly if they infiltrated the ships'
control systems.

In
retaliation, the Paramount launched a series of ground strikes
against the origin of the missiles. Ax had expected this, too.
Instead of saving the munitions for fending off the hexes they
already had, they were potentially being wasted on the people who had
sent them. Punishment could wait, in her opinion. Better to be alive
and angry than dead.

She
turned her attention back to the fighters. The debris field was much
clearer than it had been, with only a random scattering of individual
hexes left. The infected Republic ships had come around and were
accelerating headlong for the Imperial fleet, doing what she had
feared they would do once the second fleet was identified. To the
people on Sebaddon, to Lema Xandret, the Empire was enemy number one;
everyone else had to wait their turn.

"Target
the drives, " she ordered the fighters. "Only the drives.
We don't want to break them up, whatever you do. We have to avoid
creating another debris field for the fleet to wander into. "

"How
do we destroy them, then?" asked one of the pilots.

"We
let gravity do it for us, " she said. "Once they can't
maneuver, either the planet or the hole will drag them in. "

"They're
not the orders I'm receiving from Colonel Kalisch, " protested a
squad leader.

"I
know that. " The Paramount was still worried that the
approaching ships were intending merely to ram them. "I'm the
only authority you need to worry about, out here. The first pilot who
punctures the hull on one of these ships will get a torpedo up their
afterburner. Understood?"

"Understood.
All right, you have your orders, people. Let's get to it. "

The
fighters peeled off to pursue their new objectives.

Meanwhile,
the first infected Imperial ship was beginning to behave erratically.

"Master,
I urge you again to move the Paramount to a safe distance. "
Where reason had already failed, she attempted flattery. "Were
the unthinkable to occur, we would be left without your leadership. "

"Perhaps
that would be prudent, " Darth Chratis agreed.

Ax
barely heard him. In the background, filling the bridge of the
Paramount, a familiar voice was shrieking.

She
switched channels to the one Colonel Kalisch had used to broadcast
his message to the ground.

"We
do not recognize your authority!"

For
an instant, Ax thought that her mother was broadcasting to the
Imperial ships. Then she realized-with something that might have been
a twinge of disappointment-that the voice had the slightly wooden
quality of a droid. Why a droid and not Xandret herself?

While
the fighters attacked the infected ships and the Paramount slowly
ascended out of danger, Ax considered the pros and cons of
broadcasting a message herself. It might give her mother cause to
hesitate before launching more hexes at the Imperial fleet. But what
could she possibly say to this woman she hardly remembered, if she
was alive at all? I'm a Sith now. I have no family. That certainly
wasn't going to help.

The
retaliatory strikes launched by the Paramount detonated on the
surface of the world far below. What had already been a bright hot
spot suddenly became a whole lot brighter, and Ax wondered if the
question of her mother's survival was now completely moot.

Two
more missiles launched from a different hot spot entirely.

Then
the first of the infected Imperial ships exploded, spreading hexes
all through the fleet. With the survival of her own kind now at
stake, she forced herself to concentrate on what really mattered.

CHAPTER
29

The
Auriga Fire's tri-laser cannon emplacements were to port and
starboard, just forward of its hyperdrives. They angled out slightly
so they could cover every inch of the ship and were accessed by two
tight tunnels that smelled of grease.

Larin
had taken the port turret and eased herself into the cracked leather
seat with easy familiarity. The prosthetic glove on her left hand was
just sufficient to wrap around the cannons hand grip, while her right
hand handled the delicate movements required to target and fire. The
cannon itself operated smoothly, swinging freely on its gimbals as
though fresh out of the factory.

It
wasn't the first time she had noticed the mismatch between the Auriga
Fire's appearance and its capabilities. Another concerned its compact
tractor beam facility, recessed behind a hatch in the ship's broad
belly. It was a wildly nonstandard feature for a ship of this size.
She was curious to know how often it came in handy in the pursuit of
Jet's normal job, but didn't really think Jet would admit to
anything. For the moment, the flash and pound of the cannons was all
that concerned her.

A
quick depression of the trigger and a web of wriggling hexes vanished
in a ball of gases.

"This
is as easy as shooting stump-lizards on Kiffex, " she called to
Shigar over her head-mounted comlink.

"Watch
that trio coming in from above" was all he said.

Larin
swung the tri-laser and blasted them into atoms.

"Don't
worry about the Grand Master, " she told him. "We'll find
her. "

He
had been subdued ever since the Corellia had detonated, shooting
hexes with lethal speed and accuracy. Two-thirds of the cruiser's
escape pods were now accounted for, but Master Satele wasn't in any
of them. Shigar had tried broadcasting over all channels, but the
electromagnetic spectrum was a mess. What wasn't jammed by the black
hole, Imperials, or panicked chatter was full of the hexes
screeching. It was all the new Republic commander could do to
coordinate the larger ships into safely picking up the escape pods
without picking up hexes by accident as well.

"Dead
ahead, " said Jet from the cockpit. An escape pod had collided
with two hexes that were in the process of cutting through the pod's
thin hull. The Auriga Fire swooped in to help.

"One
each, Hetchkee, " Larin said as the tractor beam wrenched
invisibly at the hexagonal droids. "Favoritism is strongly
frowned upon back here. "

She
wondered if the former security guard knew she was joking. One hex
tumbled away to port, for Shigar to shoot, while the other, after a
protracted struggle, wriggled into Larin's sights. Then it was up to
Ula to give the pod's panicked occupants coordinates for the
rendezvous point.

"Stay
in the channel we've cleared, " he told them. "Don't take
any shortcuts. "

"It
was horrible, " babbled a young midshipman on the other end of
the line. "There were suddenly so many of them, and they moved
so fast..."

"You're
safe now. Just stay in the channel and do what Captain Pipalidi says.
"

"Yes,
yes-and thank you. Another few seconds, we'd have been holed for
sure. "

The
pod fired up its retro-rockets and headed off in the right direction.
Larin hoped its occupants would be okay now. Several had been rescued
and then fallen afoul of the hexes again, through either bad luck or
poor judgment. One had stopped to rescue another pod in distress,
only to be overwhelmed by hexes hiding inside. The Auriga Fire had
been too far away to help, but the screams had carried.

Captain
Pipalidi, the Anx in charge of the Commenor and by default what
remained of the fleet, had a difficult job ahead of her, distributing
the traumatized survivors through the remaining eight ships at her
disposal. Larin didn't envy her that job at all, with long-range
comms scrambled and nothing larger than a light assault cruiser to
fill the place of the Corellia. But at least the lesson had been
learned: the hexes might not look like much individually, but they
were tough, and in large numbers were to be taken very seriously
indeed.

"There's
another pod at the other side of the web ahead, " said Jet. "Do
you think you can get us through?"

Larin
peered through the scope. The web was one of the densest they'd seen
so far, with hundreds of the hexes linked in a multilimbed structure
vaguely reminiscent of one individual hex, spinning slowly against
the backdrop of the planet below. The limbs whipped and snapped,
flinging hexes at tar-off targets and scooping up replacements from
the debris cloud around it. The pod Jet had spotted was drifting
behind the main body, its retros damaged. The interior light flashed
rapidly on and off, spelling out a call for help in Mon Calamari
blink code.

"Easily,
" said Larin, knowing nothing would make Shigar happier than
killing more hexes. Except, of course, finding the Grand Master.

"See
those concentrations near the center?" Shigar said. "That's
the best place to hit. Take them out and the structure will tear
itself apart. "

"Affirmative.
" Larin flexed real and prosthetic hands around the cannon
grips, ready for action.

"Launches,
" said Ula as the ship roared forward.

Larin
glanced at telemetry just long enough to take a quick snapshot of the
wider battlefield. It was dominated by several overlapping debris
fields in low orbit over Sebaddon, the largest centered on where the
Corellia had broken apart. The "safe" segment of the
Republic fleet and several dozen escape pods were now well clear of
danger, regrouping near the planet's rocky moon. The Imperial fleet
was in the process of splitting in two, as uninfected ships copied
the Republic's tactic of retreat. Two squadrons of Imperial fighters
were disabling the engines of several vessels, so they couldn't
spread their infection by ramming or detonating nearby. Larin
approved of the tactic. She might have suggested it herself had not
the infected Republic ships seemed so intent on targeting the Empire.

Republic
fighters swarmed around the uninfected section of the fleet, keeping
the hexes at bay. Defying gravity and distance, some actually managed
to reach that far. If just one was carrying a nest, the infection
could take root all over again.

Her
mind latched on to that thought-and for an instant she was back on
Hutta, staring at the droid factory, and the Sith blade was flashing
like a crimson lightning bolt past her eyes all over again. Her
fingers fell with the comlink to the metal floor and a scream of pain
boiled in her throat.

She
blinked and was back in the present. The scream remained.

Launches,
Ula had said. She focused on that instead.

Five
missiles were rising through the atmosphere of Sebaddon, launched
separately in groups of two and three. The first pairing was aimed at
the Imperial forces. The others-she was relieved to see- were aimed
nowhere near the Auriga Fire or the rest of the Republic fleet. They
appeared in fact to be aimed nowhere at all.

The
possible motives of Lema Xandret and her followers fell from Larin's
mind as the Auriga Fire came within range of the giant hex
agglomeration. She did as Shigar had suggested, putting bolt after
bolt into the nearest internal cluster. That had a satisfactory
effect, at first. The hexes' combined mirror-shield defense was soon
overwhelmed, and the cluster began to look decidedly threadbare, like
a crater- riddled moon on the verge of collapse. But then, once
again, the hexes demonstrated their ability to adapt in the face of a
threat.

The
cluster rearranged itself into a stubby tube, with one flat end
pointing at the Auriga Fire. Larin fired at the tube as a matter of
course, and the mirror shields flashed into life, catching the laser
bolt and channeling it along the tube's center. The bolt ricocheted
backward and forward, joining others she fired after it, until the
whole tube began to glow. She took her remaining thumb off the
trigger just as the tube released all the energy it contained in a
single, powerful pulse, aimed back at the Auriga Fire.