Star Wars: The New Jedi Order 06: Balance Point by Kathy Tyers

Author:Kathy Tyers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction.Star Wars
ISBN: 9780345428578
Publisher: Ballantine Pub. Group
Published: 2000-10-31T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Even without a copilot, Mara could call on most of Jade Shadow’s capabilities. Lando’s techs had installed pilot-controlled AG-1G lasers—nearly as powerful as the AG-2Gs he’d put on the Millennium Falcon, years ago—plus a full KDY shielding suite. Shada had shown up with a gift from Talon Karrde, two Dymex HM-8 torp launchers. Mara hadn’t asked the former Mistryl Shadow Guard where they came from; she’d simply specified that they, too, had to be pilot-accessible. Now, just so long as nothing went wrong with life-support—which she would need a third arm to reach—she was almost as single-handedly capable as Luke and Anakin in their XJ X-wings.

She’d dropped Anakin at his ship, down near the pole. Now she keyed her heads-up display to paint him and Luke silver-blue. In the distance, beyond Orr-Om’s death throes, Luke turned tightly to take one more strafing run at the monster coiled around it.

Sharply tapered forward from its tandem power core and drive unit, Shadow flew almost as smoothly as Jade’s Fire, if not quite as nimbly as the X-wings. Mara clenched stick and throttle, diving into atmosphere again. Down in the opaque goop, her port and starboard visual scanners were useless. Long-range sensors, mounted just below her heads-up, showed a trio of mismatched but aerodynamic craft rising to meet her.

Duro Defense Force already had been driven back to defend the other orbital cities, and their few B-wings had flown straight into the enemy’s attack wing and been shot to pieces. Nimbler DDF E-wings and local Dagger-D police ships harried the landing force’s coralskipper escorts, but plainly, this small Yuuzhan Vong force meant only to establish a beachhead—too quickly for Gateway to evacuate. Now the dome dwellers were hostages.

As Mara closed with the skips, she eyed her long-range scanners. About thirty degrees across Duro’s surface, a convoy of three freighters and a dozen smaller craft popped free of the toxic clouds and dashed for open space. A tetra formation of coralskippers blasted toward it.

“I’m there,” Anakin announced.

One of the silver-blue pips on her screen headed toward the convoy.

Her own trio of skips came straight at her, firing molten projectiles and streams of blinding plasma. Lando’s new service droids had fitted Shadow with a stutter trigger, and Mara targeted the lead craft as they came on, weakening its dovin basal defense as well as she could.

“Luke?” she called, pulling back on her stick and setting an evasive roll as she pulled for black space. Twin ion drives responded smoothly. “Want to lend a hand here?”

“On my way,” he came back.

She had time for only a fast glance at her long-range scanner. The silver-blue pip streaked away from Orr-Om, headed straight for her.

The Shadow shivered slightly with unevenly absorbed energy. Mara juked into a rising reversal, then snap-turned to port and was rewarded with a broadside shot at one coralskipper. Again she pounded its shielding, decelerating and rotating simultaneously, keeping that one skip dead in her sights. Her brackets went live around it, a dead lock-on,

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