Part 28 (1/2)
”Launches, ” said Ula as the s.h.i.+p roared forward.
Larin glanced at telemetry just long enough to take a quick snapshot of the wider battlefield. It was dominated by several overlapping debris fields in low orbit over Sebaddon, the largest centered on where the Corellia had broken apart. The ”safe” segment of the Republic fleet and several dozen escape pods were now well clear of danger, regrouping near the planet's rocky moon. The Imperial fleet was in the process of splitting in two, as uninfected s.h.i.+ps copied the Republic's tactic of retreat. Two squadrons of Imperial fighters were disabling the engines of several vessels, so they couldn't spread their infection by ramming or detonating nearby. Larin approved of the tactic. She might have suggested it herself had not the infected Republic s.h.i.+ps seemed so intent on targeting the Empire.
Republic fighters swarmed around the uninfected section of the fleet, keeping the hexes at bay. Defying gravity and distance, some actually managed to reach that far. If just one was carrying a nest, the infection could take root all over again.
Her mind latched on to that thought-and for an instant she was back on Hutta, staring at the droid factory, and the Sith blade was flas.h.i.+ng like a crimson lightning bolt past her eyes all over again. Her fingers fell with the comlink to the metal floor and a scream of pain boiled in her throat.
She blinked and was back in the present. The scream remained.
Launches, Ula had said. She focused on that instead.
Five missiles were rising through the atmosphere of Sebaddon, launched separately in groups of two and three. The first pairing was aimed at the Imperial forces. The others-she was relieved to see-were aimed nowhere near the Auriga Fire or the rest of the Republic fleet. They appeared in fact to be aimed nowhere at all.
The possible motives of Lema Xandret and her followers fell from Larin's mind as the Auriga Fire came within range of the giant hex agglomeration. She did as s.h.i.+gar had suggested, putting bolt after bolt into the nearest internal cl.u.s.ter. That had a satisfactory effect, at first. The hexes' combined mirror-s.h.i.+eld defense was soon overwhelmed, and the cl.u.s.ter began to look decidedly threadbare, like a crater-riddled moon on the verge of collapse. But then, once again, the hexes demonstrated their ability to adapt in the face of a threat.
The cl.u.s.ter rearranged itself into a stubby tube, with one flat end pointing at the Auriga Fire. Larin fired at the tube as a matter of course, and the mirror s.h.i.+elds flashed into life, catching the laser bolt and channeling it along the tube's center. The bolt ricocheted backward and forward, joining others she fired after it, until the whole tube began to glow. She took her remaining thumb off the trigger just as the tube released all the energy it contained in a single, powerful pulse, aimed back at the Auriga Fire.
Even through the s.h.i.+p's unusually powerful s.h.i.+elds, the impact was deafening. Larin fell back into her seat with one arm covering her eyes. A split instant later a second bolt struck the s.h.i.+p, this one created by s.h.i.+gar's attempts to destroy the target. The Auriga Fire went into a wild tumble, then righted itself with a jerk.
”...fire! Cease fire!” Jet was yelling.
”All right, we get it. ” Larin adjusted her earpiece. ”What are we supposed to do now? Pull faces at it until it goes away?”
”I don't know, ” he said, ”but we can't take another hit like that. Our s.h.i.+elds are down to forty percent. ”
”Angle the s.h.i.+elds forward, ” said s.h.i.+gar. ”Set a course for the closest of those tube things. When I tell you to, put the sublights on full. ”
”That's madness!” said Ula.
”No, I see where he's headed. ” Jet brought the s.h.i.+p around to face the tube Larin had fired into. Bright discharges still sparked from hex to hex, running in waves up and down the length of the tube. ”It wants energy? Energy I'll happily give it. ”
The Auriga Fire leapt forward as though to ram. The hexes fired ineffectually at the forward screens, and the agglomeration's arms curled in to embrace their attacker. Larin's hands lay restlessly on the cannon controls as the tube grew rapidly larger ahead of her. This, she told herself, was one situation where firing would definitely make things worse.
Instead, she was part of the bullet and the trigger at the same time.
The Auriga Fire reached the tube's open end. It was just wide enough for the s.h.i.+p to fit inside, a fact for which Larin was completely grateful: the tri-laser blisters marked the s.h.i.+p's widest point. The moment it and its pa.s.sengers were completely encapsulated, s.h.i.+gar shouted ”Now!” and Jet switched the sublights to full.
There followed a horrible moment when the s.h.i.+p strained to move forward, but all the force it produced was sucked up by the weave of tightly bound hexes surrounding it. Larin could see the effect it had on them at horribly close quarters. The hexes writhed and shook, and slowly began to glow. Metal limbs flared like magnesium burning in pure oxygen. Black sensory pods popped and hexagonal bodies stretched. She couldn't hear anything, but she imagined the hexes screaming.
Turning a laser bolt back onto its owner was one thing. Absorbing all the energy required to accelerate a stars.h.i.+p was quite another.
The Auriga Fire burst out the other side, trailing a tail of bright blue. The hex-tube shook and bulged as it tried to contain the energy it had absorbed. A ball as bright as a sun formed in its heart, and Larin feared it might actually shoot out at them, destroying them instantly.
But then the hex-tube buckled, as the ball didn't so much explode as discharge throughout the entire agglomeration. Thousands of hexes burst apart in an instant, spraying the surrounding vacuum with exotic shrapnel.
”Yee-ha!” yelled Larin, then added more soberly, ”Let's never do that again. ”
The beleaguered escape pod and its occupants found themselves unexpectedly out of danger. It was a simple matter now to s.n.a.t.c.h it up in the tractor beam and haul it to safety outside the debris field, where other s.h.i.+ps could look after it.
As the Auriga Fire turned about to look for another harried pod, s.h.i.+gar said, ”Wait. ”
”What is it?” she asked, hearing a note of urgency in his voice.
”It's her. Master Satele is calling me. ”
”I'm not picking up any transmissions, ” Jet told him.
”She's not calling me that way. ” Larin held her breath, not wanting to distract him as he concentrated on whatever he was receiving through the Force. ”See that chunk of the Corellia over there, Jet? Head in that direction. ”
”Will do. ”
The Auriga Fire accelerated for a relatively large piece of the destroyed cruiser. The twisted, oval fragment was approximately fifty meters down its long axis, and featured a gold finish down one side, revealing that it had once been part of the hull. It tumbled freely through the hexes, and appeared to be the focus of a concerted scavenging effort leaching metal from one end.
Larin readied herself for the order to fire. When Master Satele's pod came into view, getting her safely and quickly clear would be the priority.
Then: ”I don't see any pods, ” Ula said. ”Are you sure this is the right spot?”
It wasn't the first time the former envoy had expressed doubts about s.h.i.+gar's abilities. Larin wondered if he was part of the axis in the Republic government that mistrusted the Jedi and their methods.
”I'm sure, ”said s.h.i.+gar. ”She's not in a pod. She must be in a pressurized compartment in that chunk. ”
”I can ready a docking ring, ” said Jet, ”if you can pinpoint her location. ”
”We won't have time, ”said Ula. ”There are hexes all over that thing. ”
s.h.i.+gar said, ”You have vac suits, don't you? I'll jump the gap. ”
”I'm coming with you, ” said Larin.
”No, ” he said. ”I'll need you on the cannon, making sure no more come aboard. Drop me off, back away, then come get us when we're out. I'll take a spare suit for her. ”
”And if her compartment doesn't have an air lock?”
”Then I'll think of something else. ”
She heard him crawling up his access tunnel, back into the s.h.i.+p, and turned to look at him. ”Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she called at him along the tunnel, unable to hide the intense worry she felt. The wreckage was crawling with hexes. One slip, and neither he nor his Master would come back.
”Positive, ” he said. ”She's the most important person in the galaxy. It's my duty to save her. ”
Then he was gone, leaving Larin feeling slightly wounded by his words. On Hutta, he hadn't come to save her. If his deal with Ta.s.saa Bareesh had gone awry, she would have ended up rancor food for certain. But for Master Satele, he swept in with lightsaber swinging, risking life and limb and not even letting Larin help.
She wondered if he thought she might slow him down.
Don't think like that, she told herself. We're still partners, and this obviously isn't going to be over as quickly as we'd thought. Chances are we'll find plenty more opportunities to fight back-to-back.
She swung the cannon around and picked off a hex standing high on the back of the wreckage. That was one less he would have to worry about.
The auriga fire's vac suits were simple models, with no armor, inbuilt weapons, or maneuvering jets, and barely fifty minutes of air in their backpacks. s.h.i.+gar guessed they were normally used for quick repairs outside the s.h.i.+p, where they could be tethered to the main life support. s.h.i.+gar stripped out of the new clothes he had improvised from Ula's official wardrobe-brown robe, black pants, and sand-colored top, the closest he could approximate to Jedi colors-then picked the cleanest suit from the rack and slipped it quickly over his unprotected limbs. Ideally he would have worn a body glove, like Larin's, but there wasn't time for such niceties. He would use biofeedback to regulate his body temperature.
He fixed his lightsaber to a clip on the suit's right hip, where it would be accessible in an instant, and slung a spare suit over the crook of his left arm.