The plans for what the enemy calls the 'Final Redoubt' came from one source. Its location came from another agent. News of an emergency appropriation to pay for it came from a third. The government's absence from Mon Calamari is public knowledge, though it is presented as a kind of tour of the military." He smiled. "And the fact that the Final Redoubt is guarded by Jedi-in fact by the Solo twins-came from my most reliable agent."

He sensed Tsavong Lah straightening at the mention of the Solo twins. Nom Anor swept one hand triumphantly across his chest. "After this one battle, the warmaster may sacrifice Cal Omas, the heads of the Senate councils, the Solo twins, and many other Jedi. My life in payment if I am wrong, Supreme One."

"As you say, Executor," Shimrra rumbled. "If you are wrong, it shall be your life in payment."

Nom Anor heard the words without fear. He knew that he was right, that the victory was within their grasp.

Shimrra leaned forward on the trembling bed of polyps. "Now let us examine this evidence, and make our plans . . ."

Chapter 25.

Alarms blasted Jaina from sleep. She slept in her pilot's coveralls because it was warmer that way-the techs had never quite got the heating system to work in the pilots' quarters, though strangely enough the engineers' own heaters seemed to work perfectly well. So frequent had been the drills that she drew on her boots and grabbed her pilot's helmet without even opening her eyes.

She managed to pry open her gummed lids as she sprinted down the corridor that led to the docking bays. Five strides later the artificial gravity snapped off as the moonlet's defense shields went on-power supply problems had been continuous, and judging by present evidence were unresolved. There had been a rumor that someone had dropped a decimal point in a requisition, and that Ebaq 9's power supply was one-tenth the size it was supposed to be.

Jaina used the Force to push herself forward, snagging Vale on the way as her wingmate floundered in the reduced gravity, unable to get traction for her boots. In the docking bay, Jaina flung Vale toward her star-fighter, then jumped for her own X-wing. R2-B3, which had never left the bay, was already in the second seat and had the electronics switched on, the repulsorlifts glowing, and the quad ion engines warming.

The astromech tweedled a greeting as Jaina buckled herself into her seat and watched the last of her squadron's pilots race, float, or flop their way through the reduced gravity to their craft. When the last one had checked in over the comlink, Jaina opened a channel to Ebaq Control.

"This is Twin One. Twin Suns Squadron ready for launch."

"Launch immediately, Twin One! The shield in Sector Twelve is down for you!"

Ebaq Control seemed a little overexcited this morning.

"Acknowledged." She switched to her intership channel. "We have clearance, people. Let's go."

Jaina's X-wing swung aloft on its repulsorlifts and floated toward the docking bay doors. As the ma.s.sive doors parted for her, she triggered the ion engines and launched herself into the star-strewn half night beyond.

In s.p.a.ce, as she waited for the others to launch and form on her starfighter, she looked at her displays and saw Farlander's capital ships hovering eight light-minutes out, all of them launching starfighters. And beyond Farlander, bright starbursts blossomed onto the displays, squadrons of enemy ships in their hundreds and thousands.

Sudden electricity snarled through her nerves, and the sleep that clung to her was burned away.

This was not a drill. This was a force of a size that hadn't been seen since the attack on Coruscant.

And then Jaina felt a surge through the Force, a sense that a powerful mind had just focused on her, like a searchlight on a helpless insect. Horror shivered through her bones as she recognized the sensation.

Voxyn . . .

The howls of the voxyn rose around Tsavong Lah, and he felt triumph rise in him like a glorious wind. He raised his arms, hands clawed as if to tear the sky asunder.

Jeedai. The Jeedai were here. That skulking coward, Nom Anor, had been right.

Above him, blaze bugs rose into the air, hovering in place to form a three-dimensional representation of the battle, the pitch of their wings and the flashing of their scarlet abdomens identifying the size and status of all ships in the area, friend and enemy alike.

The voxyn howled again. Wild joy rose in Tsavong Lah. "By Yun-Yuuzhan!" he shouted. "The stinking intendant was right!"

The New Republic forces were completely outnumbered. No doubt if it were possible to flee, the enemy would be doing so. But Ebaq was in a dead end, and no retreat was possible. They had to fight.

And should the Jeedai attempt to hide on Ebaq 9 or any other body in this system, Tsavong Lah had the voxyn. Six of the Jedi-hunting beasts had been off Myrkr when the rest of their species was destroyed. The voxyn had very short life spans, and these were near the end of theirs, their green scales yellowed, their eyes filmed and weary. But as soon as they'd sensed Jedi in the system they'd thrown off their lethargy, and their tails lashed eagerly back and forth.

The embracing tendrils of the cognition throne writhed atop his head, feeding him tactical data and keeping him in contact with Blood Sacrifice's yammosk, which wordlessly directed the thousands of ships, coralskippers, and transports at the warmaster's command. In a circle around the cognition throne were a group of subalterns, apprentices, and readers, the former with villips that kept Tsavong Lah in touch with his squadrons.

Tsavong Lah felt sudden confusion from the yammosk. The enemy were jamming its signals.

This hardly mattered, the odds were so great. Tsavong Lah called out orders that would be transmitted by the subalterns around him with their villips. "The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka will advance and engage the enemy! The Battle Groups of Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q'aah will advance on the flanks of the enemy and envelop him. The Battle Groups of Yun-Yuuzhan and Yun-Harla will remain in reserve."

The battle group named for the Slayer would engage the enemy. And then the battle groups named for the Lovers would converge on the enemy, in a true lovers' embrace, and destroy diem.

Two more battle groups would remain in reserve, including the warmaster's own, to follow the enemy through hypers.p.a.ce should they manage to escape. Though it was unlikely that the infidels would manage an escape, pinned as they were against the gravity well of a huge gas giant.

Acknowledgments poured in from the commanders of the different battle groups. The blaze bugs overhead swarmed and flashed as dispositions shifted.

The enemy were maneuvering cautiously, trying to keep between the advancing Battle Group of Yun-Yammka and Ebaq 9. This suited the warmaster perfectly-the defenders were a slow, easy target against which he could hurl his overwhelming strength.

Tsavong Lah's satisfaction grew as he watched the enemy plod toward destruction. The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka began to maneuver into extended order to lay itself alongside the enemy, two capital ships to the enemy's one. And then Tsavong Lah sensed a shift in the infidels'

dispositions-the blaze bugs began to move, their whirrs and patterns swinging subtly to a new configuration.

The warmaster watched in growing unease as the enemy squadron shifted swiftly from a long, extended line into a compact, pointed blade, a spearhead pointed into the Yuuzhan Vong battle group. In a flare of intense fire, the New Republic squadron pierced the Yuuzhan Vong extended line, shattering the invaders' formation. Eight of the largest Yuuzhan Vong ships, hit by the combined power of the entire enemy squadron, were left disabled or dead.

The claws of the vu'asa at the end of Tsavong Lah's leg clutched at the frame of his throne in anger. But his words, as he gave his next order, were calm. "The Battle Group of Yun-Yammka will engage the infidels as closely as possible." The Yuuzhan Vong would take more losses as the dispersed ships closed with the compact enemy, but then superior numbers would begin to tell, and so would the Battle Groups of Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q'aah, which would soon be in a position to envelop the enemy and finish them off.

The battle was still his. It would take a little more time, that was all.

And time the warmaster had in plenty.

In a room that smelled of protein and blood deep within the Damutek of the Intendants, Nom Anor stood before his superior Yoog Skell, a villip in his hands. The villip had formed into the face of an executor on Tsavong Lah's flagship, one of the few members of the intendant cla.s.s on the expeditionary force.

"The enemy is maneuvering well," the executor said. "But still we will crush him. Our numbers are overwhelming."

Yoog Skell growled as he paced back and forth.

"We've been surprised," he muttered. "I don't like surprises. And neither does Supreme Overlord Shimrra."

When the call came, Mara was alone in the Skywalker apartment looking at holos of Ben. She went to the comm, and saw Winter gazing calmly back at her.

"It's begun," Winter said. "Ackbar and I are going up to Fleet Command. You may join us if you wish."

Mara felt a sudden dryness in her mouth. "Of course," she said.

"I'll be right there."

It's not working. The faint thought floated toward Jaina from Madurrin, in position on General Farlander's bridge.

What's not working?

The Trickster jammers. The ones that would identify enemy ships as belonging to the wrong side and cause their friends to shoot at them.

Another piece of bad luck, but Jaina was too frantic to feel badly about it now. Her own target was corning up.

"Shadow bomb away." Jaina shoved the dumb weapon ahead with a push of the Force and drew back on the stick to bring her X-wing to a slightly different trajectory. Ahead, the target enemy cruiser lay in a blaze of fire as Keyan Farlander's entire squadron swept past it, turbolasers churning out fire while missiles corkscrewed through the void between ships.

"Bomb away," came Tesar's hissing voice, followed by Lowbacca's howl as he, too, flung a shadow bomb at the enemy.

General Farlander hadn't been content to punch through the enemy formation only once-he had spun his entire squadron around and done it a second time, before the enemy could concentrate against him.

Jaina felt Tesar and Lowie through the Force, as well as the dumb shadow bombs they were all shoving at the enemy, while Madurrin was a presence from her place on General Farlander's flagship. As the only Jedi in the system they were too few to create a proper Force-meld, but the three Jedi who led the flights of Twin Suns Squadron were so close, and by now so experienced in their work, that the meld was hardly necessary.

"Skips at point two, Major." Vale's voice was calm. "Getting set to bounce us."

"Turn to engage . . . now." Jaina rotated and fired the X-wing's quad engines. Engaging the enemy head-on was a lot safer than letting them jump on Twin Suns' tails.

Ahead, flashes marked oncoming enemy fire., a steady pulse of projectiles.

"Leapfrog, even and odd," Jaina said, and extended her forward shields as she was aware of Twin Three pulling up even with her, the overlapping shields of the two X-wings covering her entire four-fighter flight. She began stuttering laserfire at the enemy, though she doubted it would have much effect. Doubtless the enemy would have their dovin basals deployed forward against her fire.

Enemy fire began to hammer her shields. Flying by instinct and the Force, she blinked against the brilliant flashes and tried to read her instruments to know when the shields' power situation grew critical.

In the event, it was R2-B3 who cluttered the warning at her.

"Leapfrog now" she called, and throttled back.

Twins One and Three fell back while Twins Two and Four surged into their place, their fresh shields covering the entire flight. It was a precision maneuver, all four starfighters maneuvering within a tolerance of mere centimeters.

Thanks to endless drills and practice in battle, Twin Suns Squadron had come a long way since the battle over Far Thunder, when all Jaina could do was arrange them in a long line and have them play follow the leader.

The coralskippers flashed by, no more than blurs on their converging course. Normally she'd call for the squadron to split and drop on them, but maneuvering and combat took too much time. She needed to stick with Farlander and his compact group, not get caught away from support.

"Turning left sixty degrees," Jaina said, a course that would bring them toward Farlander and the main body.

As her flight performed a perfect crossover turn, the maneuver turned her c.o.c.kpit toward the enemy cruiser just in time to see the brilliant explosions of three shadow bombs planting themselves along its flank. She could sec the ship tremble with each hit.

Over her comm she could hear the hissing of Barabel amus.e.m.e.nt. She was glad Tesar could find something funny in all this.

Then Tesar's tone turned serious. "Skips astern, Twin Leader."

"Maximum acceleration," Jaina said, and punched throttles.

Her displays showed more enemy than she could properly comprehend, but her sense of the battle suggested the enemy were finally coordinating a response to General Farlander's maneuver. He had cut twice through the enemy squadron, wrecking ships both times, but it was clear the Yuuzhan Vong weren't going to let him do it again. Those ships nearby were keeping their distance, while those farther away were scrambling to catch up. Swarms of coral-skippers were pouring in from all directions. Soon Farlander would find himself swamped by superior numbers and held in place for destruction, like a bantamweight fighter grappled by a 160-kilo wrestler.

Not to mention the two huge squadrons looming on his flanks. Or the other two squadrons hanging in the rear.

Enemy fire boomed on Jaina's aft shields as she fled, a surprising number of shots. The pursuing coralskippers were throwing everything they had. Jaina did a little jinking, but it didn't seem to help. The sheer volume of fire was disturbing.

The pursuers broke off when Jaina's squadron entered the overlapping fields of fire of Farlander's capital ships, but by that point it hardly seemed to matter. So much fire was coming from so many directions that Jaina still found her shields getting slammed, even though it didn't seem as if anyone was taking the trouble to aim specifically at her.

"Friendly cruiser on our left," she said. "Let's take some of the pressure off it." She led Twin Suns on a high-speed slash against the coralskippers that had just made their attack runs on the cruiser and were now perfect targets as they maneuvered in preparation for another attack. One burst into flame at the touch of her quad lasers, and she thought she killed another with a missile.

"Rolling right," she began to call, and then there was a brilliant flash on her canopy matched by a wail in the Force, a mental keen that brought tears to Jaina's dazzled eyes.

"What was that?" she demanded.

"Twin Two," said Twin Three. "She's gone."

"What do you mean, gone?" Jaina demanded.

"She didn't get out." Twin Three sounded stunned. "A huge projectile hit her fighter-it was vaporized."

"Who hit her?" Jaina's hands suddenly got busy on the controls, ready to jink if the squadron was under attack.

"No one. Just random fire. There's a lot of it out here."

"No kidding," someone said.

Vale, Jaina thought. Another wingmate had gone, like Anni Capstan.

The first casualty since the battle over Far Thunder, the first since she'd built Twin Suns Squadron into its highly drilled, perfected form.

The first casualty, she thought with a sick certainty, but not the last.

She fought away the tears and the grief. She had to be in control now. "Twin Three, Twin Four, keep close to me," she said. "Rolling right."

The rolling maneuver put her in an inverted position with regard to the New Republic squadron, able to view the fight through her canopy. She saw a Republic-cla.s.s cruiser hit with a lance of fire, saw compartments venting ice crystals that had once been air. The s.p.a.ce between the heavy ships was thick with fighters, both friendly and enemy.

A furball, she saw, was now forming around the damaged Republic-cla.s.s cruiser, a horde of arriving coralskippers tangling with a couple of squadrons of E-wings. "Starfighter battle at zero-three-zero," she said. "Each flight form echelon. Each pilot pick your target. Re-form on the other side, look for your wingmate first and then for me.

Understood?"

They understood. She had drilled them well.

"This is for Vale," she said, and had to blink back tears again as she punched the throttle. She felt Lowie, Tesar, and Madurrin sending her strength through the Force, and she radiated her thanks.

For her first target she picked a coralskipper that was lining up for a shot at an E-wing. Hers was a deflection shot, but she synced perfectly with her ship, slewed the nose of the X-wing around just slightly, and touched the quad triggers. The coralskipper blew with the second shot and then she whipped past the debris, triggering a missile onto the tail of another skip that presented itself. She had the satisfaction of seeing the coralskipper shatter before she was through the furball and pulling into the clear.

Clear being a relative term. The void was still filled with beams and missiles and cannonades, all of it once aimed at something but now possessed by a dreadful randomness.

"Re-form on me!" Jaina called, frantically scanning her displays.

Tesar's hissing voice came over the comm. "We're being bounced, Twin Leader! This one requestz a.s.sistance!"

""You got it!" She cast a glance at her displays, saw Tesar's blip behind her. "Twins Three and Four, with me! Streak, take your flight and- " A roar from Lowbacca confirmed Jaina's order before she finished giving it.