Rebirth: Star Wars Legends: Edge of Victory, Book II (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order 8) by Greg Keyes

Author:Greg Keyes [Keyes, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307795724
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2011-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

REBIRTH

THIRTY-SIX

Realspace greeted Jaina with an actinic flare and a shock wave that bucked her X-wing violently. She flinched instinctively, closing her eyes against the glare, the memory of impaired sight still imprinted on her nervous system.

Have some sense, girl, she thought, forcing them back open. You’re in enemy territory!

And about to smack into an asteroid, the same one the coralskipper Gavin Darklighter had just drilled had exploded against. She yawed hard to port to avoid an identical fate.

“Heads up, Sticks,” Gavin’s voice crackled in her ear. “Rogues, form up. We’ve got plenty of company on the way.”

“As ordered, Lead,” Jaina said, weaving her way through the irregular bits of shattered planet that stretched as far as her sensors could make out.

Starboard and above her horizon, the yellow star at the heart of the system was half eclipsed by the outstretched arms of the distant gravitic weapon. Nearer and dead ahead was the more immediate target of Rogue Squadron—the cordon where Kre’fey’s stripped-down Interdictor had sacrificed itself. Its shields had already collapsed, and its mass-shadow generators were random ions; but an expanding cloud of superheated gas marked clearly where it had been. Wedge had added one thing to the Bothan admiral’s already good idea—he’d rigged the reactor to go supercritical when the shields reached 12 percent.

There was no knowing how many Yuuzhan Vong ships it had taken with it. However many it had, there were plenty left coming through the drifting planetary shards, and they were the business of Rogue Squadron. Calculations had shown that the temporary shift in gravitic stresses in the system would give them a very small window of opportunity—not big enough to risk Kre’fey’s larger ships on, but plenty big enough to sneak the Rogues and Kyp’s Dozen through. The Dozen were headed straight for the weapon to scout out whatever forces were guarding the thing. The Rogues’ job was to clean out the Yuuzhan Vong nested around the stable hyperspace entry, which was the only way in for the Ralroost—and for the Yuuzhan Vong forces at the perimeter of the system. The Rogues had to gain control of it.

“I make something big at the target coordinates,” Gavin informed them. “Might be a ship; might be a battle station. Designate Wampa. One-flight, we’ll take that. Two and Three, keep those skips off us.”

Jaina double-clicked to acknowledge, and peeled off with Three-flight, lining up off Twelve’s port wing. She felt a brief sadness, remembering that she had once flown wing for Anni Capstan, back when she first joined the squadron. Anni had died at the Battle of Ithor. Twelve was a stranger, a Duros named Lensi. Jaina had met him in the final briefing.

“Turn two hundred thirty-one to twenty-three,” Alinn Varth, leader of Jaina’s flight, ordered. “We’ll take that bunch.”

Jaina acknowledged and did as ordered, seeing as she did so a flight of eight skips in pyramid formation, coming in fast. The space around was relatively clear of asteroids now, reflecting the low mass-density that made the area safe for jumping into and out of.

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