Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 11] - [Enemy Lines 01] - Rebel Dream (by Aaron Allston)

Star Wars

The New Rebel Order

Enemy Lines

Book 01

Rebel Dreams

by Aaron Allston

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Jedi

Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

Kyp Durron; Jedi Master (male human)

Corran Horn; Jedi Knight (male human)

Tahiri Veila; Jedi student (female human)

Alema Rar; Jedi Knight (female Twi'lek)

With the New Republic Military

General Wedge Antilles (male human)

Lando Calrissian; merchant (male human)

Colonel Tycho Celchu (male human)

Commander Eldo Davip; captain, Lusankya (male human)

Colonel Gavin Darklighter; Rogue Squadron leader (male human)

Captain Krai Nevil; Rogue Squadron pilot (male Quarren)

Captain Garik "the Face" Loran; Wraith Squadron leader (male human)

Captain Yakown Reth; Blackmoon Squadron leader (male human)

Iella Wessiri Antilles; Intelligence director (female human)

Jagged Fel; Twin Suns Squadron pilot (male human)

Voort "Piggy" saBinring; Twin Suns Squadron pilot (male Gammorean)

YVH 1-1A (masculine droid)

Civilians

Danni Quee; scientist (female human)

Wolam Tser; holodocumentarian (male human)

Tarn Elgrin; holocam operator (male human)

With the Yuuzhan Vong

Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Czulkang Lah; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Viqi Shesh; former Senator (female human)

Maal Lah; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Denua Ku; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Wyrpuuk Cha; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Kadlah Cha; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Takhaff Uul; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Ghithra Dal; shaper (male Yuuzhan Vong)

ONE

One Month Ago, Pyria System

Borleias Occupation, Day 1

"A god cannot die," Charat Kraal said. "Therefore it can have no fear of

death. So who is braver, a god or a mortal?"

Charat Kraal was a pilot of the Yuuzhan Vong - humanoid, a little over

two meters in height. His skin, where it was not covered by geometric

tattoos, was pale, marked everywhere by the white, slightly reflective

lines of old scars. Some years-ago mishap had eaten away the center of

his face, eliminating even the diminutive nose common to the Yuuzhan

Vong, leaving behind brown-crusted cartilage and horizontal holes into

his sinus passages. His forehead angled back less dramatically than many

of the Yuuzhan Vong and looked a trifle more like the forehead of a

human, for which two warriors had taunted him, for which he had killed

them. He disguised the trait as much as he could by yanking out the last

of the hair on his head and adding skulltop tattoos that drew the eye up

and back, away from the offending forehead. One day he would earn an

implant that would further mask his deformity and end his problem.

He wore an ooglith cloaker, the transparent environment suit of Yuuzhan

Vong pilots, over a simple warrior's loincloth. Both garments were

living creatures, engineered and bred to perform only the tasks demanded

of them, to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in their pursuit of glory.

He sat in the cockpit of his coralskipper, the irregular rocklike space

fighter of his kind, but he did not wear his cognition hood at the

moment; the masklike creature that kept him in mental contact with his

craft, that allowed him to sense with its senses and pilot it with the

agility of thought rather than muscle and reaction, was set to the side

while his coralskipper cruised on routine patrol.

He and his mission partner, Penzak Kraal, were in distant orbit above

the world Borleias. The planet had been recently seized from the

infidels native to this galaxy so that it could be used as a staging

area for the Yuuzhan Vong assault on the galactic throneworld of Coru

scant. Borleias was an agreeably green world, not overgrown with the

dead, crusty dwellings of the infidels, not strewn with their unnatural

implements of technology; only a military base, now smashed, had

affronted the Yuuzhan Vong with evidence of infidel occupation.

The voice of Penzak Kraal emerged from the small, head-shaped villip

mounted on the cockpit wall just beneath the canopy. Though most

coralskippers were not equipped with villips, relying instead on the

telepathic signals of yammosk war coordinators for all their

communications, long-distance patrol craft did call for a means for

direct communications. "Don't be an idiot. If a god is the god of

bravery, then by definition he must be braver than any Yuuzhan Vong,

than anything living."

"I wonder. Let us say then that you could become immortal as the gods,

and never die, but remain one of the Yuuzhan Vong. You would never face

death. Could you then be as brave as the Yuuzhan Vong? You could kill

forever but never truly risk death, defy death, choose your time and

place of death. Which is better, to be brave for a lifetime or to kill

forever?"

"Who cares? The choice is not ours. But if I were to choose, I think I

would choose immortality. Live long enough, and you might learn how to

be brave as a Yuuzhan Vong again. Kill long enough, and you could

perhaps learn to kill a star."

Charat Kraal sobered. "I have heard..."

"What?"

"That the infidels did that. Learned to kill a star."

He heard Penzak Kraal hiss in irritation; in the villip he saw his

partner's lopsided features go even more off center as his mouth pulled

down in an expression of contempt. "So what if they did? They killed it

the wrong way, with their wrong minds and their wrong devices. And, like

idiots, they must have lost the secret. Or they'd be destroying the

worldships one by one."

"I have also heard..." Charat Kraal lowered his voice, a foolish

instinct, since no one but Penzak Kraal could be listening to him. "That

gods may smile upon them, too. On the infidels."

"Ridiculous."

"Can you know the minds of the gods?"

"I can no more know the minds of the gods than summon one of the enemy

battleships to destroy for my personal glory."

In the distance, away from Borleias, many kilometers from them, an enemy

battleship winked into existence, its bow pointed toward them. The ship

was already up to speed; it grew rapidly as it neared them, as it

approached Borleias.

"Penzak, you fool."

"My words did not summon it, you idiot." The villip's face blurred and

adjusted, reflecting a change to Penzak's features; Penzak had pulled

on his cognition hood. Charat did likewise. His surroundings, the

cockpit interior, seemed to become transparent, giving him a view in all

directions through the senses of the coralskipper, showing him in

breathtaking detail the onrushing enemy ship.

No, now it was ships. More and more of the loathsome things of metal

were dropping out of hyperspace, all aimed at Borleias. At Charat and

Penzak.

A moment later, Charat could feel a buzz through the cognition hood, a

telltale sign that Penzak was sending a warning to the Domain Kraal

commander on Borleias.

The foremost New Republic ship, a sharply angled triangle in white,

passed over the two coralskippers, blotting out the sun, casting them

into shadow. Nowhere near so large as a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, it was

still of impressive size, and so near that Charat felt he could reach

out and drag his finger along its hull as it passed.

Penzak Kraal sent his coralskipper into a dive and turned to match the

larger craft's course. Charat paced him. Above, he saw thruster gouts

from the ship's belly herald the launching of the hated infidel

starfighers.

"How do we hurt them worst?" Charat asked.

"Follow me in," Penzak said. "While they're launching. Don't engage the

fighters; bait them so they follow us. The ship won't fire on us with

the fighters in close proximity. We'll enter their launching bays and

destroy the facilities there, then gut the ship from within." He looped

around, rising and angling in toward the ship's belly. Charat followed.

Mon Mothma, one of the newest cruisers in the New Republic's fleet, a

Star Destroyer refitted with gravity-well generators capable of

interfering with the short jumps made by Yuuzhan Vong craft, cruised

straight toward Borleias from the point where it had dropped out of

hyperspace. This hadn't been a timed drop - they'd plotted a course

straight for the planet Borleias, and the planet's gravity well had

dragged them into realspace when they'd come close enough. And now

before them was the blue-green world they had come to recapure.

"No sign of a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit," reported the sensor

officer, a Mon Calamari male with deep blue skin. "The two coralskippers

are turning to engage."

General Wedge Antilles, a lean man with a careworn face and military

posture, commander of the fleet group for which Mon Mothma was the

flagship, nodded. "Gunnery, stay on them, vape them if they come against

us. Fighter control, continue launching starfighter squadrons."

"Yes, sir."

Data screens lit up with colored blips as New Republic starfighters - X

wings, A-9s, B-wings, E-wings, and more-streamed out of the docking bays

and turned toward the planet. Wedge, standing at the captain's station

toward the rear of the spacious bridge, ignored the screens. He

concentrated instead on the live view of Borleias, which filled the main

viewport at the bow end of the bridge.

I hope the Vong here have come to love this world, he told himself.

Because I'm going to take it from them. They're going to learn what it

is to lose the things they love.

Luke Skywalker hit his thrusters. His X-wing roared out of the main

docking bay, losing altitude relative to the Mon Mothma. Behind hi m,

eleven pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, the temporary X-wing squad that was

his command, formed up on him. "Twin Suns away," he said.

"Twin Suns, copy." That would be the controller on Mon Mothma''s bridge.

"Be advised, two coralskippers are maneuvering into your flight path."

Luke glanced at his sensor board. Two red blips were indeed turning from

below to head toward them. "Squadron, follow me out, let's give these

two the gauntlet treatment."

He heard a chorus of acknowledgments. There was tension in some of the

voices, but not alarm. All his pilots were veterans, survivors of the

Sabers, the Shocks, and other squadrons that had been reduced to shield

trios, wing pairs, and solo pilots during the Yuuzhan Vong attack on

Coruscant mere days earlier. Two of them, forming with him a shield

trio, were his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, and the Corellian-Security

officer-turned-pilot-turned-Jedi named Corran Horn. All his pilots were

disciplined and competent. Many wanted revenge.

Luke understood how they felt. The Vong, aided by their human agent Viqi

Shesh, had almost managed to kidnap his and Mara's infant son, Ben, just

days ago. They had killed his nephew Anakin, and his nephew Jacen was

missing. The losses, especially that of his apprentice Anakin, created

an ache within him that he could not soothe.

In his youth, Luke would have been anxious for payback, but today he set

that portion of himself aside. That was dark side thinking, immature

thinking. It had been a long time since he had been a smooth-faced

innocent; the scars of combat and lines of age had accumulated on his

face, matching the weight of experience and calm that had accumulated on

his spirit.

He extended his perceptions and sought Mara with them. He found her and

almost flinched away from the contact; she was now an icy presence,

concentrated totally on their mission.

He shrugged. Iciness was better than one alternative. Mara, despite her

cool and controlled manner, was as anguished as he by the near loss of

Ben and the loss of their nephews, and it would be no surprise to find

her lit like a lightsaber with a desire for revenge. The fact that she

wasn't meant that she was in control.

"S-foils to attack position," Luke said, and suited action to words by

flipping the switch that split the X-wings' flight surfaces into their

familiar X-shaped attack profile. "First and third trios, take the

leader, the rest on the wingmate. Fire at will." He linked his lasers to

quad fire, so that all four would fire with a single press of the

trigger, and opened up on the lead coralskipper. Four red streams of

destructive laser energy lanced out against the coralskipper -

No, it was eight streams. Luke's burst, aimed at the starboard side of

the skip, never reached its target; a blackness appeared before it,

distorting space around it like a gigantic magnifying lens, drawing the

laserfire into it. Those four red lances of energy simply bent and

disappeared. But Mara's burst, aimed at the port side, hit the

coralskipper an instant after Luke's vanished. He grinned; she must have

been using her own Force abilities to monitor him, as well. She couldn't

have timed it so expertly otherwise. Her lasers raked across the enemy

starfighter's hull until the distortion flicked over to interpose

itself, then Luke fired again, chipping away at the coralskipper's

stern. His blasts were joined by Corran's. The coral-like material of

the skip's hull superheated and the lasers tore red-hot gouges along the

surface.

Luke sent his X-wing into evasive maneuvers, moving back and forth, up

and down with the randomness of a flying insect. He saw his target's

counterattack, a glowing missile from the coralskipper's plasma cannon,

flash by to port, far enough away to be no danger to himself, Mara, or

Corran. In fact, there were no cries of alarm from his squadmates, no

sudden and tragic disappearances of New Republic blips from his sensors.

"They're not engaging." That was Twin Suns Eleven, a Commenorian woman

named Tilath Keer. "Turning to pursue." Luke saw the blips of Twin Suns

Four through Six and Ten through Twelve turning back, following the

coralskippers straight in toward Mon Mothma.

Luke felt a little tingle, but whether a warning from the Force or from

his own years of combat experience he could not tell. "Negative, break

off," he said. "Do not engage. Twin Suns, turn to original course and

form up on Record Time. Mon Mothma, these skips are yours."

"Copy, Twins One."

Luke turned back toward Borleias, saw his pilots breaking off from

pursuit of the coralskippers and maneuvering to form up with the

squadron. The moment his fighters were clear of the coralskippers, Mon

Mothma's laser cannons opened up. One of the coralskippers was destroyed

instantly, its dovin basal unable to absorb all the incoming damage with

its void; the craft was reduced in a flash to glowing, molten particles

no larger than a fingernail. The other, apparently more skillful at

soaking up damage with its void, still sustained a grazing impact and

spun away from Mon Mothma, out of control, no danger to the Star

Destroyer.

Luke shook his head at the Yuuzhan Vong's pointless sacrifice, at the

sad waste of life, and formed his fighters up in an assault wedge in

front of Record Time.

Record Time was an armed troop transport. At nearly 170 meters, with two

bulbous main portions - the larger stern housed the bridge and personnel

bays, the smaller stern the engines - connected by a narrow access tube,

the vessel looked impossibly vulnerable, impossibly fragile. But its

captain-owner, a private trader - a smuggler, Luke believed - had

volunteered its use to General Antilles during the fall of Coruscant,

claiming it was the fastest, toughest vessel of its type. Now its bay

was clear of trade goods and was filled with soldiers instead.

Luke's comm unit hissed with a moment of static, then a woman's voice

"Record Time to Twin Suns Leader, all set."

"Twin Suns to Record Time, you set the pace. We won't have any trouble

staying where we need to be."

The transport surged forward, not fast by starfighter standards, but

quickly enough for a freighter. Luke calculated its rate of acceleration

and brought his X-wing up in front of the freighter's bridge. Mara and

Corran settled in with him. Another shield trio dropped back to the port

side of Record Time, a third to the starboard side, and the last astern

of the transport.

All around Twin Suns Squadron, starfighter squadrons, frigates,

destroyers, transports, and shuttles began accelerating to battle speed.

Luke heard Colonel Gavin Darklighter's voice over the operation channel

"Rogue Squadron to Borleias. We're back. We kicked your butt twenty

years ago. Now we're here to do it again."

Luke grinned.

Squadrons of coralskippers were already climbing to their altitude by

the time Twin Suns Squadron began its descent into atmosphere. Slightly

longer than X-wings and comparable spacecraft, the coralskippers were

far more massive. They were dense constructions of yorik coral, tapering

toward the bow, broadening and deepening toward the stern, with rough

exteriors reflecting their organic origins.

They could be quite beautiful, Luke had decided. The ones rising against

them and the two they'd seen after leaving the Mon Mothma shared a color

scheme, a pastel red and a pearlescent silver swirled together in a

mottled pattern. At the bow, tucked into a sort of niche grown into the

coral surface, was the round reddish shape of the dovin basal, the

creature whose gravitic powers dragged the coralskipper from point to

point in space and also brought up defensive voids that drank in damage

like a Tatooine bantha drank water. On the top surface, just ahead of

the point where the ship's body swelled to its greatest width, was the

canopy over the cockpit; this one was tinted blue.

Their beauty was irrelevant. As soon as they came within range, they

opened up with their plasma cannons, life-forms that spewed superheated

materials that could eat through a starfighter's hull. " Break and

engage, cover the transport," Luke commanded, and suited action to

words; he spun out in a rapid descent relative to the planet below and

opened fire, trusting his wingmates to stay with him, to fire out of

phase with him and at different portions of his target to overload and

baffle the dovin basal. This time the creature defending his target skip

intercepted Mara's shot, fired from slightly below the skip's

centerline, but couldn't whip the void around fast enough to counter

Luke's and Corran's shots, which scoured the yorik coral all around the

pilot's canopy.

Superheated blobs from his target's wingmate flashed toward Luke's X

wing. Luke heard a squeal of alarm from R2-D2, who was tucked into the

astromech bay behind his canopy, but ignored it as an irrelevant detail.

He continued his rolling descent, varying the speed of his roll and

distance covered each half a standard second, and saw the plasma flash

between his snubfighter and Mara's.

Then the three of them were well below their targets and rising again

behind the coralskippers' sterns. The skips' voids swung around,

hovering at the sterns, ready to soak up infinite amounts of weapon

energy.

The first engagements between coralskippers and New Republic

starfighters had been terrible for the New Republic. Even seasoned

pilots had been thrown off balance by the skips' incredible durability,

by the failure of pro ton torpedoes and laser blasts sucked into the

voids to do any harm to the vehicles, by the tenacity of the damage done

by plasma cannons, which kept on eating away at vehicle surfaces well

after they'd hit.

Now things were different. The surviving pilots had adjusted their

tactics and passed their information along to their fellows. The rules

of the game were to overload the dovin basals, striking them from

several directions at once to ensure that some damage got through to hit

the coralskippers' surfaces. Starfighter pilots had to avoid taking any

hits at all from skip weaponry; any hit could eat through shields and

prove fatal.

And there were new tactics all the time, in every battle. Mara surged

ahead of Luke and Corran, flying in a pattern that was oddly

predictable, and drew fire from both coralskippers. She became suddenly

erratic in her flight, as random as only Force skills could make a

pilot, and flashed ahead until she was just behind the skips. She

sideslipped to port, and as both streams of plasma cannon fire followed

her, the fire from the starboard skip crossed the body of the port-side

skip; two balls of fire thudded into the skip's belly before the

starboard pilot compensated.

The port skip's void whipped around to shield the skip's belly. In that

instant, Mara drop-fired a quad-linked burst of laserfire.

The skip detonated, hiding Mara's X-wing from sight for a moment, and

Luke fired a laser stutter-burst at the starboard skip's underside. He

hoped that the pilot's confusion at having hurt his own wingmate, along

with the dovin basal's effort to shield this skip from the damage from

Mara's attack, would leave it momentarily vulnerable.

He was right. His lasers hit the skip's underside and chewed through.

That skip vectored away, trailing fluids that instantly froze at this

near-vacuum altitude.

He checked his sensors. Two skips down. Mara was coming around to rejoin

him and Corran. Diagnostics said his X-wing was undamaged.

Farther out, two of his Twin Suns snubfighters were gone. The pilot of

one of them was extravehicular;

Luke hoped that the flight suit would keep the pilot alive until a

rescue shuttle could arrive. "Good tactics, Mara," he said.

"You always know the sweet thing to say."

Luke grinned and came around toward a new set of opponents.

Starfighter squadrons held the Yuuzhan Vong response to three points of

conflict in orbit. The Twin Suns group took advantage of the opportunity

and roared down through the atmosphere in an undefended zone, then

banked toward the coralskippers' launch point, which had been detected

on gravitic sensors. It was, not coincidentally, the same map coordinate

as Borleias's New Republic military base. Luke 'didn't relish seeing

what had become of the base during the Yuuzhan Vong occupation.

As they dropped low over the jungle canopy, Luke could make out the

target zone ahead. It didn't have the same profile as the holocube he'd

studied. The main building seemed to be lower, broader.

Small chips of yorik coral were rising above it, angling toward them.

His sensors said there were six of them. "Twin Suns, up front," Luke

said. "Engage all those skips. Record Time, it's your call whether you

want to hang back with us or move on to the target without us."

"Twin Suns One, this is Record Time. We're here to fight. We'll see you

at the landing zone."

"Copy."

Lando Calrissian, in Record Time's troop bay, stood next to the ramp

access and tried not to look concerned.

He was sweating. He didn't like sweating. It suggested hard work,

something he wasn't fond of, and just didn't give the impression of

someone who was infinitely cool, infinitely in control.

He looked over the units of men and women in the bay. Most were seated

in rows of high-backed troop couches, strapped in against the turbulence

that was likely to come. Their commanders walked up and down those rows,

issuing last-minute instructions, advice, encouragements, jokes,

insults.

He looked over his own troops. They stood in a circle, each with a hand

on the metal post at the circle's center, and stared at him. They were

impassive, fearless. "Ready? "he asked.

In unison, they answered, "Ready, sir!"

He knew that once they left the bay he'd never see some of them again.

Unlike the other commanders present, he was content with that knowledge.

His troops would serve their purpose.

The bay shuddered as enemy fire finally began to strike Record Time.

Lando saw fear, even nausea, on the faces of some of the other troops.

Not his. They continued to stare at him, waiting.

Luke, with Mara and Corran tucked in beside him, roared along in Record

Time's wake. He grimaced. He had lost his top starboard laser cannon and

engine to plasma fire. His power, maneuverability, and fighting strength

were reduced.

Ahead, Record Time was settling down into the jungle canopy, or perhaps

into the open field just before the base; from here, it looked the same.

Little flashes of light were pouring up from the ground and hammering

into the transport's hull, blackening it. Though he was situated

directly astern of the transport, Luke thought he could see the edges of

Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 11] - [Enemy Lines 01] - Rebel Dream (by Aaron Allston)

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