the admiral's chair, sat down, and pressed the com button. "This is
Ossilege. Advise all ships via prearranged signal. Commence Operation
Sidestep exactly on the hour, thirty-five minutes from now." One hour after
Sidestep, it would be time for Source A. One hour, five minutes, and fifteen
seconds after Sidestep, Centerpoint would fire. Either they would manage to
deflect the shot, or they would not. One hour. They would have to hold for
one hour. He let go of the com button, and wondered if he had gotten the
timing right. "All right, Chewie," said Han, haif an hour later. "Jump off
in five minutes. Let's look sharp. Leia-time for you to get up to the turret
and strap in." Leia stood up from the observer's seat and nodded. "I know,"
she said. But she didn't leave. Not immediately. First she stepped forward,
pulled Han's head toward hers, and gave Han a kiss. A warm, lingering kiss
that did not so much end as fade gently away. "I love you," she said. "I
know," said Han. "And you know I love you." Leia smiled. "You're right," she
said. "I do." She stood up straight, reached over, and ruffled the fur on
top of Chewbacca's head. "So long, Chewie," she said. "See you on the other
side." And with that, she turned and left the cockpit. Han turned and
watched her go, then looked over to Chewbacca. "You know, Chewie," he told
the Wookiee, "there's a lot to be said for this being married business."
Chewbacca let out a low, rumbling laugh and went back to double-checking the
shield settings. Han checked the time. Four minutes to go. Luke Skywalker
sat in the cockpit of his X-wing and felt the old tingle of fear and
excitement starting to build. He reminded himself that he was a Jedi, that
Jedi were calm in battle, that there was no fear. But Luke, better than any
human being alive, knew that Jedi did not live in a world of absolutes and
abstracts, any more than other people did. It would be just as bad to force
all emotion from his life as to wallow endlessly in all his feelings. It was
time to fight. He was ready to do so. His Jedi abilities made him more
ready. That should have been enough. And it was. Luke glanced at his
chronometer. Three minutes. Mara Jade sat alone in the command center of her
ship. AJone. She had come to this star system with a pilot and a navigator,
Tralkpha and Nesdin. They had vanished, along with so many others, in the
first days of the war. Mara did not know if they were dead, or cap- tured by
one group or another, or hiding under some pile of rubble until it was safe
to come out. Mara knew war as well as anyone. She knew full well that it was
most likely that they were dead. They had been good at their jobs, and good,
honest people, both of them. And now they weren't there anymore, more than
likely executed for the simple crime of getting in the way of someone's
bloody ambition. If nothing else had happened to inspire her to fight, that
would have been enough. But, of course, plenty more had happened. And she
was going to start giving it back in about two minutes' time. "I'm not so
sure I did you any favor by rescuing you," Lando said, strapping himself in.
"Where you were, you might have been killed by accident. Now if you get
killed, it'll be because someone did it on purpose." Tendra shook her head
and smiled. "Trust me, Lando. If there is one thing I learned on board the
Gentleman Caller, it's that I don't want to die alone. I've had enough being
alone for a lifetime." Lando reached out a hand to Tendra, riding in the
copilot's seat. She took it, and held it tight. Neither of them said
anything more, but the silence in the cabin said more than enough. But then
the countdown alert beeped the one-minute warning, and there was no time.
Belindi Kalenda was already there, along with the rest of the flag staff,
but Gaeriel Captison just got back to the flag deck in time to strap herself
in. "I was in my cabin," she said, though Ossilege hadn't asked.
"Meditating." And thinking about my daughter. My daughter, Malinza, who has
already lost her father. Is this the day she stops having a mother as well?
"A good time for it," Ossilege said. "There will not be much leisure for
thought, starting in another thirty seconds." Gaeriel dug her fingers into
main viewport, out over the Intruder's main bridge level, and through the
bridge's forward viewport. The stars, she thought. The warm and inviting
stars. Was one of the ones she saw Bakura?'Probably her home's star was
nowhere near bright enough to be visible at this range. Home. She thought of
home, and longed to be there. "Ten seconds," the main speaker announced.
"All hands, prepare for the jump to light speed. Five seconds. Four. Three.
Two, One. Zero." And the stars lanced out into spikes of fire, starlines
that filled the viewport with a blaze of light-and then the starlines flared
away, and were gone, and the familiar stars of Corellia's sky were right
back where they had been. But now there were more than stars in the sky.
Ships. Ships of all sizes and descriptions had suddenly popped into
existence. The Intruder, the Sentinel, the Defender, and ail the lesser
ships had made simultaneous, precision minimum-distance hyperspace jumps
straight into the thick of the enemy fleet. Ossilege had hoped it would give
them the benefit of surprise, and it would appear that it had. The
Intruder's main laser cannon opened up at once, stabbing out at the ship
nearest her, a boxy, ramshackle old troop transport that had no business in
the middle of a combat fleet. The transport exploded in a bloom of fire, but
by then the main lasers had already found another target, a modern-looking
corvette about the size of the Jade's Fire. The corvette got her shields up
in time, but they were not intended to hold off intense short-range fire
from a light cruiser's gun. Her shields failed and she went up as well,
another blaze of hellfire glory. The Intruder'?, fighter screen winked into
existence around her, fifteen General Purpose Attack fighters that
immediately went over to the attack, blazing away at the smaller, lighter
craft in this part of the fleet. The Intruder's secondary battery began to
speak, blasting away at some target out of Gaeriel's view. A Triad ship
fired and caught a GPA coming out of a loop low over the Intruder's main
bridge. The fighter exploded, a blinding bright flash of light that heaved a
torrent of debris at the cruiser. The shields deflected most of it, and
slowed the rest of it. Loud crashes echoed throughout the bridge as debris
banged into the outer hull, but there did not seem to be any re al damage.
Except, of course, to the GPA and its pilot. The surviving fighters whirled
and dashed about, blasting the X-TIE Uglies and B-wing chop jobs out of the
sky. At last an opponent worthy of the Intruder hove into view, an old,
tough-looking ex-Imperial destroyer of a class Gaeriel did not recognize.
The ship was smaller than the Intruder, but quite possibly her match in
firepower. The Intruder opened up on her, directing all-guns fire directly
at the destroyer's forward laser turret.
The destroyer returned fire from
her forward and rear turrets, but failed to concentrate her fire with any
effectiveness. The destroyer's forward battery blew up, and the Intruder
instantly redirected fire to her rear battery. The destroyer's overall
shields must have been damaged in the first explosion, for they gave way
completely after only a few seconds of concentrated fire on the rear turret.
The turret went up in a dramatic sheet of flame, and the destroyer was
disarmed. Gaeriel glanced over at Ossilege, and was astonished to see that
he was paying no mind at all to the fire and chaos outside. His eyes were
glued to the tactical display in front of him as he watched the overall
progress of the fight. He was letting the Intruders Captain Sem- mac fight
her ship, while he attended to the larger battle. "It's going well,"
Ossilege announced to no one in particular. At least, thought Gaeriel, it's
starting well. "Hang on, Artoo!" Luke cried out as he flipped his X-wing
over onto its back and then pulled its nose up, pursuing the X-TIE Ugly,
that was making a run in on the Lady Luck up ahead and above. "Lando, break
starboard and down, hard, on my mark. Three, two, one, MARK!" Luke broke the
X-wing down and to starboard a fraction of a second before the Lady Luck
did. The X-TIE Ugly, a monstrosity of a ship slapped together out of the
combined wreckage of an X-wing and a TIE fighter, was nowhere as
mancuverable as an X-wing. The Ugly fell into the trap, making a longer,
shallower dive in pursuit of the Lady Luck-and setting itself up for a
perfect shot from Luke. Luke fired, and the starboard TIE wing blew clean
off the Ugly, sending it tumbling out of control and out of the fight. It
took Luke a moment to find the Lady, and he was not surprised to see her
already in trouble again, trying to fight off a pair of what looked like
Light Attack Fighters with beefed-up engines and weapons. Heavy Light Attack
Fighters. It was nearly always a mistake to hang overpowered weapons and
propulsion on a design that wasn't meant to support them. That sort of
beefed-up compromise was usually nothing more than a collection of
weaknesses held together with wrap-wire and optimism. Luke decided to test
the theory by experiment. He poured fire into the closest HLAF from extreme
range, and caught it in the port-side engine, setting the fighter tumbling
out of control before the pilot could kill the starboard engine. The engine
flared over and started spewing thick clouds of vapor that enveloped the
HLAF. The vapor dissipated instantly in the vacuum of space, and the HLAF
was hidden inside a strange, fast-moving cloud tumbling across space. Luke
checked Lando, and saw he had dispatched the other HLAF himself. For the
moment their little patch of sky was clear. That meant it was time to move
elsewhere. "Lando!" Luke called. "I'm tracking a slow-moving destroyer
toward the rear of the formation. You have it?" "I was just about to call it
in to you, Luke," said Lando. "Let's go for it. Just what we're looking
for." The plan was for the attacking craft to move through the Triad
formation toward its rear, picking off targets of opportunity and trying to
get the Triad ships to reverse course and pursue. And never mind the obvious
flaw in trying to encourage eighty major armed vessels and all their
auxiliaries to chase you with all guns blazing. Sometimes you just had to
take your chances. "Off we go," Luke agreed. Anakin sat in the control
chair, listening intently to Technician Antone as he ran down the checklist.
"All right," said Antone, "that clears out the targeting sequence. We should
be locked on to the South Pole of Centerpoint. Ready for the power
initiation sequence?" "Don't think so," Anakin said, a little doubtfully.
"Something doesn't feel right." Antone shoved his long black hair out of his
eyes for about the ziflionth time and looked nervously at Anakin. "Feel
right?" he asked. "What do you mean it doesn't feel right?" "He does it all
by feel," Jacen said. "He knows by instinct and intuition. You've got an
instruction manual. You're the one who said you didn't think he understood
what it did." "Do so!" Anakin protested angrily, glaring at his brother. "Do
you, Anakin?" Jaina asked. She was plainly getting as fed up as Antone. "Do
you really understand or are you just showing off?" Anakin frowned deeply
and crossed his arms. "Stop being mean to me, or I won't help you anymore."
And with that, he hopped down off the chair and stalked away. "Oh, boy,"
said Jaina. "I suspect that young Master Anakin is overtired," Threepio
said. "He was up too late last night. He is often rather cranky the next day
on such occasions." Antone's eyes bugged out, and his jaw dropped open. It
was at least a full five seconds before he was able to speak. "He's cranky?
He's the-he's the only one who can-who can-" Antone gestured frantically at
the control panel. "The starbuster is going to fire in an hour, and you tell
me he's crankyT' "Take it easy," Ebrihim said. "But he's gone!" Antone said.
"He's the only one who can run the machine!" "You've been up all night,"
Ebrihim said. "You're overwrought. We'll get him back." "Yeah. Up all
night," said Technician Antone, nodding manically as he paced. "Maybe I'm
just cranky too." He turned and stopped his pacing to face the twins.
"Except that's not quite it. Actually, I think I'm in full-blown panic! I've
got relatives on Bovo Yagen," Antone went on, half raving. "If I get her
planet incinerated, my aunt is going to kill me." "Settle down," Ebrihim
said in a sterner tone of voice. "He can't have gone far. We need both of
you to make this work. Jacen, go and get your brother back. Calm him down.
And try to remember that the lives of twelve million people are riding on
one cranky seven-year-old saving them in an hour's time. So please. When he
comes back, let's everyone be nice to him." "All right," Jaina said, her own
voice turning a bit sulky. "But only for an hour." "Concentrate volley fire
on the forward airlock hatch!" Mara's voice called out from the ship-to-ship
link. "Those welds look nice and sloppy!" Fire poured from the Jade's Fire
into the lumbering, old, much-repaired Mon Calamari frigate that had ended
up fighting for the other side. "Copy that," said Han. "Leia, hang on. I'm
going to pitch over a bit to give you a clean shot." "I'm in the clear
already," Leia said. "Commencing fire." The quad laser turret started
shooting. The outer door of the airlock had gotten jammed open somehow in
the fighting. It began to glow red, then orange, then fire-white-and then
the inner hatch blew off, the ship's atmosphere streaming away into space.
The airflow cut off suddenly as a hatch slammed shut somewhere on the ship.
The frigate fired back, heavy volley fire straight into the Millennium
Falcon. The shield alarms went on almost at once, and then cut off just as
quickly as the Jade's Fire blew the frigate's main laser turret clean off
with a mini-torpedo. Disarmed and damaged, the frigate seemed to decide she
had had enough. She came about and boosted away for all she was worth. "Let
her go," Han said to Mara. "Sh
e's out of the fight, and that's all that
matters." "How long has it been?" Leia asked over the intercom. "About forty
minutes," Han said. "Watch out, a pair of B-wing Uglies coming in from
above." "I'm on them," Leia said, the strain in her voice plain to hear.
Fire lanced out of the quad laser turret. An explosion broke up one B-wing,
and the other decided that discretion was the better part of valor. If only
the Falcon could have the luxury of reaching that conclusion. Sooner or
later, one of those attacks was going to get through. "Mara!" Han called
out. "Let's keep moving through them." He reached over and cut out the
ship-to-ship comm link. "Another twenty minutes," Han said to Leia and
Chewie, "another twenty minutes, and it'll be over." And so it would. One
way or the other. "Defender reports damage to main armament, but secondary
weapons fully functional," said Kalenda. "Numerous minor hits, no major
damage so far." But a hundred minor hits could serve to weaken the ship
enough for the hundred and first to destroy it. Os-silege shook his head.
That was no way to think. Not for an admiral in the midst of running a
battle. "What of SentinelT' he asked. "Sentinel has partial loss of
propulsion. Explosive decompression of unspecified aft section, reported as
contained. All weapons functional, reports numerous successful engagements."
"Very well," Ossilege said as he studied his tactical display. Intruder had
taken a similar amount of damage. // was working, he thought. They were
paying a high price indeed, but it was working. Ossilege had assigned a lane
through the enemy formation to each big ship, and to each pair of smaller
craft. The idea was to drive through the enemy ships toward the rear,
keeping up a series of running engagements, intended to cause disruption as
much as damage. And it was working. The tidy enemy formations were
unraveling, and it seemed that half of them had reversed course to head off
in pursuit of their tormentors. "Sir! Captain Semmac reports four frigates
closing on Intruder. It appears to be a coordinated attack." "Does it
indeed? I was wondering how long it would take them to mount one. Very well.
Now we will see Captain Semmac's skills as a defender." Ossilege watched his
tactical displays. Four identical bulbous-nosed frigates were closing in