When Jaina’s engines came back on-line and she realized she wasn’t going to die—at least not right away—she was, naturally, grateful. When, an instant later, Two and Ten dusted the skips off her tail, she was ecstatic. She proved this by frying the two skips hanging tight on Nine.
But the best part was watching Wampa blow. It came apart in eight symmetrical plates billowing outward on a ball of fire. The wave of charged particles blew over her at lightspeed, nearly—but not quite—generating enough static to drown out Gavin’s fierce cry of exultation.
After that, the Rogues cleaned up the remaining skips—without their war coordinator, apparently on Wampa, they weren’t that much trouble. What was left of Rogue Squadron re-formed.
They’d lost Three and Four, and Eight was hobbling along on one damaged engine.
“Dozen, how’s it going down there?” Gavin asked.
Kyp’s voice came through a steady throb of gravitic distortion.
“… lost five starfighters. Can … hurry, or you’ll miss the party.”
“Hang in there, Dozen, we’re on our way.”
And then, another beautiful sight. The Ralroost, reverting to realspace in all her glory, followed by two corvettes and a heavy cruiser.
“Kre’fey here,” the admiral’s voice boomed. “Congratulation, Rogues. Excellent work. If you don’t mind, we’ll clear a path to target prime now.”
“Admiral,” Gavin replied. “We don’t mind at all.”
Trailing the Ralroost, Jaina turned her nose sunward and dived.
“We’re going to hit!” C-3PO squealed.
“That’s the general idea, Professor,” Han said. The Falcon bumped into the side of the freighter module—two quick shots from the forward laser had cut it adrift. Now he engaged the Millennium Falcon’s main engines and cranked them to full. The cargo pod lurched into motion, aimed straight at the Yuuzhan Vong Interdictor. The Falcon rattled like a metal bearing in a vorth cage, but Han held her nose steady.
“What in blazes is going on up there?” Leia shouted over her the intercom.
“Just keep a lookout for skips. We’ll be seeing them pretty quickly.”
He was right—it didn’t take the Sunulok long to figure out he was up to something. Coralskippers came howling in, blazing away at both the cargo pod and the Falcon. The trembling of the Falcon took on a different tone, now, as plasma bursts ate her shields. But the deciding factor for Han was the sudden bloom along the outbound rim of the freighter module. He turned the Falcon’s nose up and flew.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Leia said.
“Relax, sweetheart,” Han said, though he felt anything but relaxed. His hands had a death grip on the controls as he tried to coax more speed from his great bird.
Then something stopped them, hard. The interdictor had finally gotten its lock. Han blanched and tried the repulsorlifts, glad he hadn’t told C-3PO what he was doing so the droid could quote him the odds.
He was stuck. He could only watch now.
The tanker module was still hurtling toward the Sunulok too fast for the huge vessel to dodge without a hyperspace jump, but it was coming apart under the steady fire of the smaller ships. Han watched as its liquid contents continued, undeterred, spreading in a bizarre funnel-profile wave toward the Yuuzhan Vong ship.
“I don’t understand, sir,” said C-3PO, in a hopeless and subdued voice. “What could liquid hydrogen possibly do against—”
“Watch and learn, Threepio,” Han said. Then, under his breath, “At least I hope.” He fired three of his six remaining concussion missiles. “Leia, Jacen. Target the Interdictor, full power. Give her everything you’ve got.”
“But the hydrogen won’t burn without oxygen,” C-3PO said.
“Sure won’t,” Han replied.
The lasers lanced out just ahead of the missiles. At about the same moment, the Falcon’s shields went down and the skips started taking her apart.
And then everything broke loose.
Shok Choka was big, even for a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. Each ear had three large chevrons cut from it, and a mounded scar ran from his chin, sliced through his lips, and continued along the ridge of his skull. He held his amphistaff behind his back, the hand grasping it a little lower than his waist. He locked his amber gaze on Anakin’s ice-blue eyes. His knees were bent, and though he was perfectly still, he somehow projected corybantic motion.
Anakin cut his lightsaber off and held it loosely at his side. He began to circle the warrior slowly in a relaxed, almost contemptuous manner. Calm flowed through him. Shok Choka followed him with his predator gaze.
Anakin stopped, smiled faintly, then stepped into the warrior’s range.
The Yuuzhan Vong moved almost faster than vision could process, the rigid amphistaff chopping down. Anakin’s saber burred on, and he raised it in a wide, high block. Choka, anticipating that, arrested the slash and instead lunged in to spear Anakin in the throat. Anakin retreated, dropped his parry, again low and wide, as if he were defending for two people instead of one. That placed Choka’s weapon so far out of line he couldn’t make the third parry, but instead had to flip back toward Anakin and Tahiri. His still-live blade, slashing wildly, scored a meter-long cut through the bulkhead that only just missed Corran.
Stamping and howling, Shok Choka came on. Anakin blocked a powerful blow that carried his blade into the bulkhead for a second time in a long, elliptical slash. He ducked a vicious jab that spanged into the wall and rolled forward, past Shok Choka’s stamping feet and back out into the center of the room. Even as he stood, the warrior was renewing his attack.
Now, suddenly, Anakin tightened his defense, so that rather than pushing the Yuuzhan Vong’s blows as far away from him as he could, they were missing him by centimeters. Still smiling, he fell into the counterrhythm of the dance, the amphistaff whipping and whirling, spearing and slashing.
The warrior suddenly dropped and swept Anakin’s feet from under him, something the young Jedi hadn’t seen coming at all. He thudded to the floor awkwardly and threw his blade up to catch the inevitable downward blow, but the staff whipped around and cut his shoulder, the deadly poisonous head slapping against the floor centimeters from his arm. Anakin caught the amphistaff with his left hand and with his right, lifting from a prostrate position, drove his weapon through the knee joint of Shok Choka’s armor. The warrior grunted and aimed a powerful punch with his left fist toward Anakin’s head, but Anakin wasn’t there. Releasing the amphistaff, ignoring the cut in his hand grabbing it had caused, he bounded up and was suddenly standing above the warrior, who had overcommitted to the punch. In the split second while Shok Choka decided whether to tumble forward or attempt to regain his balance, Anakin cut his head off.
Before the body could hit the floor, Anakin bounded toward his friends. Corran had already seen the plan, and with a single swipe of his own blade finished cutting the bulge-sided triangle Anakin had begun in the bulkhead with his “wild” parries. The other Yuuzhan Vong, stunned by the death of their war captain, hesitated an instant too long. One got a parting shot at Anakin, the last of the three to duck through the small opening. Several somethings cracked against the metal bulkhead—thud bugs, probably. Then he was through, turning a corner in the corridor behind Tahiri, and they were all running as fast as they could manage. They passed through a pneumatic bulkhead. Anakin slashed the controls as it sighed closed. He caught a glimpse of a Yuuzhan Vong face turning the corner, and a second later heard a thud on the other side of the door, then several more. Glancing back over his shoulder as he continued to run, he didn’t see it open.
“You did that on purpose!” Corran accused. “I thought at first you were just fighting sloppy.”
“We need to find berth thirteen!” Anakin gasped.
“On it,” Corran shouted back. “This way.”
“How far do we have to go? Because—” Tahiri began to ask.
“Just keep running,” Anakin urged.
“—because my ears are popping,” she finished.
Anakin realized that his were, too, and that he was a lot more winded than he ought to be.
“Sithspawn,” Corran said. “The Givin have opened the station to space. We’ll never make it to berth thirteen.” He stopped, looked around. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Follow me.”
He led them down a side corridor, where he paused.
“They’ve changed the designations,” he muttered, “but I think this is it.” He keyed a door open.
“We might make it to the ship,” Anakin shouted, following him into the room beyond. It was wall-to-wall storage lockers.
Corran sounded as if he were across a space twice as large when he replied. “No way. We’re not even to the docking ring.” As he spoke, he began cutting though the locks on the lockers with his lightsaber.
“Check the unlocked ones, you two,” Corran ordered. “We’re looking for vac suits. This is the sector Illiet told us to go to.”
Anakin did, feeling the air grow thinner and colder as he did so. Most were empty. “But what if Illiet was in with Nom Anor?”
“I doubt it. If he was, why such an unwieldy trap? Nom Anor must have contacted the other Yuuzhan Vong to meet him, to get him off the station. Hah!” He yanked a large vac suit from one of the lockers. “Look at this thing,” he said. “It must be twenty years old.”
The next locker turned up an airpack, but no suit. Neither did the next few, and Tahiri was starting to giggle with hypoxia. Anakin felt symptoms himself.
“Okay, that’s it,” Corran said. “You two. Get in there.” He pointed to one of the large lockers.
“Why?” Anakin asked.
“Just do as I say. This one time, please, without questions, just do what I tell you to.”
It seemed funny that Corran was shouting at him again. Part of Anakin knew that was a bad sign.
He grabbed Tahiri’s hand and pulled her into the locker. Corran shoved the airpack in behind them.
“Minimum feed to keep you alive. Remember the locker is probably leaky.” He swayed on his feet, seeming to nearly collapse. “I’ll be back. There’s another set of lockers down the hall.”
He slammed the locker door, and they were in total darkness. Anakin felt around for the feed valve, and soon a small hiss escaped the airpack. He turned it up until his dizziness subsided.
“What if he doesn’t have enough strength to get the suit on?” Tahiri said. “What if it’s leaky?”
“Don’t think about it,” Anakin said. “We can only wait now.”
“The walls are getting cold,” she said.
They’ll get a lot colder before it’s over, Anakin thought. Unless the Yuuzhan Vong light the station up and blow it to atoms. Either way it won’t be long before we don’t care anymore. Maybe Corran was right. Maybe his luck had finally run out.
“Don’t worry, Tahiri,” Anakin said, contrary to what he was thinking. “Corran’s been out of more scrapes than the two of us put together. He’ll be back.”