assault cruisers—fast but low in firepower—swept around the grotesquely organic capital vessel to engage the attackers.
Pride of Selonia
powered in to meet them, laser cannons blazing.
The normally dark environment of Esfandia was soon shattered by the almost stroboscopic effect of all the ships’ weapons firing, while screaming engines cast cometlike sprays of energy across the starscape, bringing a false dawn to all sides of the planet. Faster, furious specks darted by the thousands between the artificial and organic behemoths turning to battle. With his sensors turned to maximum just to enable him to see the planet, the light flashingaround him soon overwhelmed Jag. It was as if he were seeing the universe from a completely different scale, with the larger ships appearing as quasars and the smaller vessels swirling around them taking the role of galactic clusters—all sped up so that trillions of years of motion was compressed into seconds.
A skip erupted into fire off to Jag’s starboard, dragging him from his reverie. He silently chided himself; idle thoughts like that were dangerous in combat.
“You want to watch yourself there, boss.”
The voice belonged to the Y-wing pilot whom Twin Suns Squadron had recruited from Bakura. She’d proven more than capable in combat in the fight against the Ssiruuk, and had volunteered to help fill some of the empty spots created since the mission had begun. The pilot had jumped at the opportunity—and with the skip that had been about to attack him now a boiling mass in his wake, Jag was glad she had.
“Thanks, Nine,” he said, swinging his reticle around to target another coralskipper. “That one must have crept up on me.”
“There’s another on your tail, One,” said Four, retroing heavily to pass under the Yuuzhan Vong fighter that Jag hadn’t noticed coming in from behind. He pulled himself into a tight spiral and came out on a completely different heading, seeing spots from acceleration. He ramped his inertial dampener up a notch and fired at a skip that flashed by with alarming suddenness. His shot was casually soaked up by a dovin basal. The coralskipper tailing him, however, wasn’t so fortunate; it disappeared in a stuttering flash from his rear screen. He felt his clawcraft shudder slightly from the shock wave of the nearby explosion.
“Much appreciated, Four.”
“You’d do the same for me,” the Chiss pilot returned.
“Count on it,” he said.
Ordinarily, Jag would never have permitted such casual banter among his pilots. The Chiss were taught discipline before they could crawl. But he’d found that, in this instance, with the squadron’s mix of Galactic Alliance and Chiss pilots, a small amount of informality helped everyone come together and function effectively as a team in the most trying of circumstances—such as now, at three-quarters strength, and grossly outnumbered besides.
“Don’t take any chances,” he ordered his pilots. “We’re here to protect the
Selonia
. Besides the
Falcon
, we’re all that stands between it and
Kur-hashan.
”
“Copy, One,” came back Three, currently harassing a blastboat analog many times its size. “Where
is
the
Falcon
, anyway?”
Jag scanned the displays before him, looking for the distinctive disk-shaped freighter. It wasn’t immediately visible, and he didn’t have time to look for it, as the Yuuzhan Vong resistance suddenly stiffened and he found himself in the middle of what seemed like three firefights at once. A grin formed on his face as he put aside thoughts of the squadron in favor of his own survival. To Jag, there was nothing quite as satisfying as confronting a worthy adversary. Until now, the Yuuzhan Vong fleet had seemed disorganized, almost dispirited, and his pilots had managed to pick them out of the sky with relative ease. But there seemed to be some spirit returning to their attack. The advantage of surprise was well and truly gone.
His mind instinctively probed
Pride of Selonia
powered in to meet them, laser cannons blazing.
The normally dark environment of Esfandia was soon shattered by the almost stroboscopic effect of all the ships’ weapons firing, while screaming engines cast cometlike sprays of energy across the starscape, bringing a false dawn to all sides of the planet. Faster, furious specks darted by the thousands between the artificial and organic behemoths turning to battle. With his sensors turned to maximum just to enable him to see the planet, the light flashingaround him soon overwhelmed Jag. It was as if he were seeing the universe from a completely different scale, with the larger ships appearing as quasars and the smaller vessels swirling around them taking the role of galactic clusters—all sped up so that trillions of years of motion was compressed into seconds.
A skip erupted into fire off to Jag’s starboard, dragging him from his reverie. He silently chided himself; idle thoughts like that were dangerous in combat.
“You want to watch yourself there, boss.”
The voice belonged to the Y-wing pilot whom Twin Suns Squadron had recruited from Bakura. She’d proven more than capable in combat in the fight against the Ssiruuk, and had volunteered to help fill some of the empty spots created since the mission had begun. The pilot had jumped at the opportunity—and with the skip that had been about to attack him now a boiling mass in his wake, Jag was glad she had.
“Thanks, Nine,” he said, swinging his reticle around to target another coralskipper. “That one must have crept up on me.”
“There’s another on your tail, One,” said Four, retroing heavily to pass under the Yuuzhan Vong fighter that Jag hadn’t noticed coming in from behind. He pulled himself into a tight spiral and came out on a completely different heading, seeing spots from acceleration. He ramped his inertial dampener up a notch and fired at a skip that flashed by with alarming suddenness. His shot was casually soaked up by a dovin basal. The coralskipper tailing him, however, wasn’t so fortunate; it disappeared in a stuttering flash from his rear screen. He felt his clawcraft shudder slightly from the shock wave of the nearby explosion.
“Much appreciated, Four.”
“You’d do the same for me,” the Chiss pilot returned.
“Count on it,” he said.
Ordinarily, Jag would never have permitted such casual banter among his pilots. The Chiss were taught discipline before they could crawl. But he’d found that, in this instance, with the squadron’s mix of Galactic Alliance and Chiss pilots, a small amount of informality helped everyone come together and function effectively as a team in the most trying of circumstances—such as now, at three-quarters strength, and grossly outnumbered besides.
“Don’t take any chances,” he ordered his pilots. “We’re here to protect the
Selonia
. Besides the
Falcon
, we’re all that stands between it and
Kur-hashan.
”
“Copy, One,” came back Three, currently harassing a blastboat analog many times its size. “Where
is
the
Falcon
, anyway?”
Jag scanned the displays before him, looking for the distinctive disk-shaped freighter. It wasn’t immediately visible, and he didn’t have time to look for it, as the Yuuzhan Vong resistance suddenly stiffened and he found himself in the middle of what seemed like three firefights at once. A grin formed on his face as he put aside thoughts of the squadron in favor of his own survival. To Jag, there was nothing quite as satisfying as confronting a worthy adversary. Until now, the Yuuzhan Vong fleet had seemed disorganized, almost dispirited, and his pilots had managed to pick them out of the sky with relative ease. But there seemed to be some spirit returning to their attack. The advantage of surprise was well and truly gone.
His mind instinctively probed
Similar Books
