FicWad

*Title: Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star (*working title only, though it may become the permanent title by default).

Chapter Four: The Beginning of the End

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline R (?), for the overall work, though I suppose that's debatable . . . PG-13ish, maybe, for this part (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the lovely characters from the Star Wars ’verse, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: The future is never a fixed thing. Though certain actions taken at particular possible points of divergence can, seemingly, preclude the possibility of specific future pathways ever coming into existence, other unexpected choices can have extremely powerful repercussions with far-reaching effects upon the possible probable pathways that the future might yet take . . . and sometimes the spreading ripples of those effects can be so powerful that even the present and a part of the past can be altered, if enough raw energy is poured into the process of causing those effects. For Tahiri Veila, the possibility of swaying the current balance of power in the galaxy from darkness and despair back to light and hope seems worth any sacrifice necessary . . . even if she will have to give up her own life and the life of her unborn son to accomplish this. Will her sacrifice be enough to change the shape of the future, though, or will evil yet find a way to triumph, in this the worst and most wide-spread of all galactic wars?

Story/Author's Notes: For general notes on this story and proposed series, please see the entry on this NaNo project, at http://polgarawolf. livejournal.com/140023.html

Specific Chapter/Part-Related Notes: A prusicalus fruit is my idea of a GFFA peach. They basically look and taste like peaches, only their skins are greenish-golden instead of reddish-golden, when ripe.

Specific Chapter/Part-Related Warnings: N/A.



Star Wars
The Rebirth of the New Jedi Order
Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star


Chapter Four: The Beginning of the End

27:05:34-27:05:35 After the Battle of Yavin (~1,028 After Ruusan Reformations or ~25,029 After Republic’s Founding)

Hatred can be pushed aside, but it will always whisper in your ear.

– Irmenu proverb



Shivers of awareness flicker across her consciousness tiny puffs of breeze moving against the tender surfaces of new leaves and a filter of light streams in sheets of green-glazed gold against her shut eyes, scintillating but fuzzy, like the velvety skin on a ripe prusicalus fruit. She’s tired – she’s been tired for days, weeks, for so long that she’s forgotten what it feels like, to not be tired all the time – and time has (for days, maybe weeks, perhaps even longer, she’s really not sure, anymore) felt strange and elastic (not springy and resilient as elastic should be, but stretched out and broken, like the waistband of an extremely old and well worn pair of underwear, sagging out of shape and nearly worn through, slipping and falling at inopportune moments) for so long now that she’s afraid that, if she moves the wrong way or even so much as thinks of moving the wrong way or too quickly or too sharply or whatever that time will go ahead and rip open with an exhausted purling sigh of torn fabric, snapping threads, disgorging all of the horrors lying in wait in the darkness beyond. She thinks, sometimes, that she might be too tired to be entirely rational, anymore, but then she remembers what the rest of the galaxy is going through, and she thinks that maybe there’s no rationality left in all the universe anymore.

“Tahiri, darling, wake up,” a voice – something like her mother’s, somewhat like her own – whispers quietly in her right ear.

She makes an incoherent little noise of protest and scrunches her eyes shut even tighter than they already are, turning her face aside in an effort to get away from both the light and the voice tickling at the edges of awareness. She doesn’t want to listen, doesn’t want to /hear/, doesn’t want to wake the rest of the way up and have to open her eyes and see the light falling down on her, deal with the reality of whatever it might happen to reveal, have to remember where she is and why (and who she is and what and how and for which reasons) and react accordingly, as if she’s still perfectly, lucidly rational, as if there’s any rationality left in all the universe, when beings like the Yuuzhan Vong can coexist in a galaxy with Jedi and the Force.

“Tahiri, sweetie, I know you’re tired. I know you’re frightened and angry and bone-tired of fighting all the time, but I need you to wake up, sweetling. I have something here that will help make things better.”

Another small incomprehensible sound, this one mostly questioning, in spite of herself and her intention to turn away, to burrow back down into the darkness and rest (luxuriate in the absence of fear, the absence of fury, the absence of exhaustion) for just a little while longer.

“Come on, little one,” the voice continues coaxingly. “I can help you, if you’ll only let me. Truly, I can. The Shapers put something in you, sweetheart, and it’s taking everything in you and then some to shove it down, to keep it under wraps and stop it from getting out, but darling, that kind of repression? It can only work for so long. There’s another way to deal with it, though – a better way, a safer way, a way that’ll make you stronger, put you firmly back in control of your own body, your own mind, your own emotions and thoughts and desires – and I can help you with that, I can guide you through the process of integration, and you can stop feeling so afraid that the moment you lose your focus, the instant Anakin’s out of reach and can’t help you anymore, you’re going to lose control and let it out and become the kind of monster the Yuuzhan Vong wanted you to be. I just need you to wake up for me, sweetie. I need you to listen to me and give me those beautiful big green eyes of yours – those eyes Anakin loves so much – so I know you’re here with me, before I start.”

Another noise escapes the prison of the back of her throat – a mixture of scoffing, over the description of her eyes (ugly things, not even entirely green, more like muddy river water after a storm, all streaky and weird around the rims), desperate, whining terror, over the far too accurate description of the source of her fear and the reason why she’s been sticking so close to Anakin (like a limpet, stuck on and wound around him so close, so tight, that it’s a wonder he doesn’t just get fed up with her clinginess and tell her to bug the frell off already), and fragile, wavering hope, at the promise of help – but otherwise she gives no sign that she has heard.

“Tahiri, sweetling, I know it’s hard – /Force/, but do I know how hard it is – but I need for you to /listen to me/. I need someone I can trust completely to always look out for Anakin and keep him safe, even when he’s determined to throw himself headlong into danger and maybe even to get himself killed, in some damn foolish attempt to buy someone else time to get to safety, and /you are it/, little one, you’re the only person I can even begin to trust to be able to do this for me, since unfortunately I can’t stay here and do it myself. Now, except for helping you, I’ve done everything I possibly can to ensure his safety, both on this frakked-up suicidal mission of yours and afterwards, and I have to tell you, sweetie, I’m not the kind of person who leaves a thing only partway done. I’m the kind of person who’ll do /whatever is necessary/, no matter how hard or how painful it might be, to get a job completely done. And I know, under all that suffering that’s weighing you down and making you so fragile and friable around the edges, that you’re that kind of person too, sweetheart. So I need you to help me out here, little one. I need for you to finish waking up and /pay attention to me/, okay?”

The voice is so persuasive – and sounds so concerned about Anakin, so thoroughly convinced that Tahiri needs to do something to help protect and keep Anakin safe – that, in the end, she can’t help herself. Even though her entire body aches with the need to just keep sleeping (to hide away in the safe, quiet darkness of unconsciousness just for a little while longer), she turns her head back around and slits open her eyes, blinking a little as she peers up at the shape of the woman bending so close over her.

When she sees that Tahiri is squinting blearily up at her, the woman smiles, her face (her whole body) softening, for an instant, so that she looks more like the figure Tahiri sees in the mirror and less like the hard-faced dark form from Anakin’s visions and her nightmares. The woman looks eerily like her (same large amber-brown rimmed dark green eyes; same straight nose that used to drive her crazy, when she was younger, because of the slight upward tilt that adults always seemed to feel the need to tweak; same slender oval face with high cheekbones and stubbornly squared jaw and sharply pointed chin; same candy-pink mouth she’s always wished had slightly fuller lips; same bright golden hair; same warm honey-glazed skin; even the same three ugly white lines of vertical scarring on her forehead), so much so that Tahiri’s brain buzzes confusedly with half-formed thoughts about an older sister she knows she doesn’t have and a clone that might’ve been accidentally kept in its growing tank or cylinder or whatever the frell just a little bit too long. She is staring, shocked, her big eyes wide and her mouth hanging open a little, when a wave of the Force (so strong that it feels like her bones and teeth are vibrating in tune to the energy) floods out of the slender woman and into her, blanketing her with so much power that it instantly becomes impossible to catch her breath.

She doesn’t even have a chance to scream before the wave of memories and information is crashing over her and she’s drowning like a child dropped down into the middle of an ocean.

***

They come like snow – at first only a few scattered contacts dropping out of hyperspace, followed by a steady shower cascading heavily down towards the OboRin Comet Cluster, and then finally a sweeping data blizzard that covers Luke’s tactical display white with vector lines and bogey symbols.

“Outlying sensors confirm hostile contacts.” Even over the battle net, the signals coordinator – SigCor – sounds jittery. “Stand by for a message from Admiral Sovv.”

The Admiral’s nasal voice comes over the battle net promptly, addressing what amounts to half of the New Republic Space Navy in a less-than-inspiring Sullustan monotone. Luke’s attention starts to wander almost immediately. Still reeling from whatever disaster it is that’s overtaken Anakin and the twins and, quite possibly, the rest of the Myrkr strike team, he cannot quite help second-guessing himself, reexamining his decision to let his nephew talk him into allowing so many young Jedi to embark on such a dangerous mission. Did he overestimate the strike team’s abilities . . . or underestimated those of the Yuuzhan Vong?

Mara’s voice comes over a private channel as he’s fidgeting and frowning with worry. “Luke, stop beating yourself up. You can’t carry a load like that into battle.”

“I /know/, Mara.” There are times when Luke truly does wish that his emotions weren’t quite such an open book to his wife, and this is definitely shaping up to be one of them. “But it’s not so easy. I keep thinking I let them go on a suicide mission.”

“You didn’t,” Mara promptly and quite firmly – so firmly that he’s taken slightly aback by her vehemence – insists. Then, only a heartbeat later, she asks, her voice oddly quiet, “Does Leia blame you?”

“Leia is in no condition to blame anyone,” Luke tiredly replies. He can feel his sister’s anguish and anxiety beneath his own – a numb, almost physical pain not so different from what he experienced when he lost his hand to Darth Vader. Leia is in shock, struggling to accept that a part of herself may be gone forever. “But you heard how Han was.”

“He was worried about Leia.”

“That’s what he said,” Luke sighs.

This time, Mara doesn’t try to argue. Luke can sense how frightened she is about leaving Ben with Han and Leia while they’re both so grief-stricken and distracted with worry, but he knows better than to attempt to suggest again that she go to Coruscant. She’s already told him she would go – after the battle – and even Luke Skywalker (especially Luke Skywalker) knows better than to press Mara Jade once she’s made up her mind.

A moment later, Mara notes, “Luke, it would have been wrong to deny your nephew his chance to save the Jedi, and Han and Leia know it, too. Think back to that meeting in the crater room. They’re the ones who told you to let him go.”

Knowing Mara will sense his nod even if she cannot see it, Luke stays quiet and starts to concentrate on his breathing, determinedly employing a Jedi relaxation technique to help focus his thoughts. The truth is that he has a bad feeling about the coming battle that has nothing to do with Anakin or the strike team. With what they have planned, Eclipse is inevitably going to lose pilots – maybe a lot of them – and they’ve already lost so many Jedi to this damned war that any casualties they might take, no matter how low the overall number, may very well end up being far too many, in the long run.

Admiral Sovv eventually captures Luke’s attention again by thanking him and the Jedi “intelligence apparatus” for alerting the Defense Force to the time and place of the enemy’s arrival. This draws a weary and somewhat bleak chuckle from Mara and the rest of the Jedi Knights; the truth is that this “apparatus” had been nothing more than a growing sense among the more powerful Masters that there’s trouble coming in from the OboRin Comet Cluster. Given that the Force is blind to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi had been mystified by the feelings and reluctant to act on them . . . until they learned from Talon Karrde that a huge Yuuzhan Vong assault fleet had departed Borleias about the same time the sensations began. Admiral Sovv, who’d been looking for political cover to concentrate his defenses around Coruscant, seized on the feelings as a “reliable report from Jedi intelligence,” using them as an excuse to recall several outlying fleets. According to Wedge, though, the Admiral didn’t really expect the Yuuzhan Vong to show, instead setting up today’s ambush for the sake of maintaining appearances.

Luckily, it doesn’t matter what the admiral’s original intentions in preparing this defense actually were, given that they surely do seem to be in the right place at the right time to stand against the Yuuzhan Vong.

In any case, when contacts have finally stopped dropping out of hyperspace on the tactical display, Sovv solemnly notes, “The moment is upon us, my friends. Please switch to your assigned battle channel now, and may the Force be with you.”

Luke promptly flips opens the channel assigned to Eclipse. “You all know what we’re attempting and why. Stay in formation, and follow your squadron leader’s orders. The battle will turn on us – ”

“ – and the war on the battle,” several voices instantly chime in.

“We know, Master Skywalker,” /Saba Sebatyne grimly adds. /“You have said this seven times already.”

This observation draws a nervous laugh from both Eclipse wings.

Luke would’ve liked to do his part to ease the tension with some kind of witty comeback, but finds that part of his mind still too fogged by grief and concern to be able to come up with anything. “Sorry. Just wanted to be sure. Control?”

“Stand by for target identification,” Corran promptly replies. “Hisser, go ahead and stick your nose out. Everyone else hold positions.”

Saba’s blastboat slips out of formation and eases forward alongside the comet – a wide-swinging stray – behind which the Eclipse squadrons are hiding. Luke switches his tactical feed from fleet to Jedi. The display image rotates ninety degrees, so that the main body of the comet cluster is now hanging along one side while the contacts are streaking out horizontally across the screen. The counter at the bottom of the display reads in the tens of thousands and is still rising.

A small square appears in the center of Luke’s tactical display, outlining a set of five blips near the heart of the invading fleet. Danni Quee’s determined voice comes over the comm channel. “Yammosk located. We’ll pinpoint which vessel when the fighting heats up.”

“Everyone fast and furious?” Corran asks.

Luke checks his command display to confirm that the status readout for each craft in his squadron reads full DSW – drives, shields, and weapons. When he finds everything as it should be, at full capability, he opens his emotions to Tam – the third member of his and Mara’s shielding trio – and chins his microphone. “Sabers are good.”

When the other three squadrons have also verified, Corran clears them for launch. Both wings – seventy-two X-wings and eight supercharged blastboats – drop out from behind their comet and accelerate to near-light, closing so rapidly that they’re past the perimeter pickets before the Yuuzhan Vong can loose even a single magma missile. Luke takes the lead, plotting an interception vector that’ll carry them into the heart of the main fleet without making their target obvious.

“Well done,” Corran comms, his quiet reassurance meant as much for Luke and his still disquiet mind as for the less experienced pilots in the other squadrons, and, under less desperate circumstances, Luke might have smiled at the Corellian Jedi’s obvious attempt to soothe him.

The tactical display is shifting scales, though, showing Luke’s two wings of blue symbols surrounded by a sea of yellow Yuuzhan Vong symbols, each displaying the ship’s mass, analog class, and – when the /Jolly Man/’s computers can match the attributes to a profile in the data bank – occasionally even a name, so he doesn’t bother trying to respond to Corran. Intent on pushing through the comet cluster and carrying through on its surprise attack, the enemy fleet is maintaining its loose formation so that each vessel will have maneuvering room. When Luke looks outside the cockpit, he can see the incoming ships only as black areas blotting out the distant starlight; this far out from Coruscant’s relatively weak sun, there’s little light to illuminate their dark hulls.

A frigate identified as the /Reaver /looses the first Yuuzhan Vong salvo, but only one plasma ball is leading the fast-moving attack wings far enough to strike home. It hits one of the Shockers’ X-wings and, overwhelming the shields, reduces the starfighter to an expanding flash of photons and atoms.

“Hold your fire,” Luke orders, his voice steely despite the pang of sorrow roiling deep in his gut. He starts to jink and swerve, deliberately keeping both combat wings between two vessels at all times so that the enemy gunners will risk hitting their own ships if they fire and miss. “If we stop to fight, we’re lost.”

As they streak deeper into the fleet, the Yuuzhan Vong keep up a steady but ineffectual dribble of fire, all the while maneuvering to clear a firing lane. It’s a futile exercise against the nimble X-wings and their blastboat escorts, though. With the surveillance crews on the Jolly Man watching their backs, Luke always knows when a lane is opening and can slide right in to a new attack vector. The Shockers end up losing one of their blastboats to a magma missile, but the crew retaliates by mass-firing their torpedoes and bombs before going EV. Almost half the volley penetrates the cruiser’s shielding singularities, and a long line of breaches promptly begins to vent bodies and atmosphere from the port side.

A skip carrier eventually decelerates and turns to cut them off. As soon as coralskippers begin to drop off the vessel and form up, though, Danni’s targeting square shrinks and isolates an unnamed heavy cruiser in the heart of the five-ship group she designated earlier. “Yammosk confirmed.”

Luke studies the tactical display for a few quick moments before touching a finger to a destroyer analog well off their current vector. The name beneath the destroyer is /Sunulok/. “Designate secondary, Artoo.” A circle instantly appears around the vessel, and Luke opens a comm channel to Corran. “Control, are we clear for a diversionary launch on that one? We’ll bump over and slide away on the other side.”

“You’re good to go, Farmboy.” Corran swiftly and professionally divides the target into attack sectors by squadron, then comms Luke, “By the way, SigCor says they’re reading ion tails at the front of the fleet.”

Luke blinks, startled. “Ion tails?”

Yuuzhan Vong do not use ion drives.

“Maybe they’re bringing the Peace Brigade along,” /Mara offers. /“That would explain how we felt them coming.”

Luke frowns, stretching his awareness of the Force forward. He finds nothing for a long moment, and then suddenly feels a whole wall of life at the forward edge of the fleet. “Too many for a crime cartel. I feel two or three million beings there.”

/“Must be one of their slave armies,” /Tam opines.

Luke, though, isn’t so sure. The presence he senses lacks the muted, static-like sense caused by the head growths the Yuuzhan Vong use to control their slaves; he has no time to contemplate what else he might be feeling, though. The skip carrier is dropping the last of its coralskippers, and the first squadrons are already coming out to meet them.

“X-wings slow, blastboats break!” Luke immediately orders.

The seven surviving blastboats all turn hard, swinging in behind the destroyer analog’s rearmost escort frigates. Luke waits until their vector has straightened out, then gives the command for the X-wings to follow. All four squadrons pivot gracefully on their bellies, reverse-firing two engines and overthrusting the opposite pair, and are instantly flashing past the blastboats towards the two escorts.

Flashes of ruby fire blossom from the frigates’ rocky sterns as they belch magma missiles at their attackers. Luke instinctively drops his nose and dives for two seconds to force the Yuuzhan Vong gunners to fully depress their launchers, then snaps into a climb and accelerates past their sterns while they’re still trying to readjust. He checks his tactical display and sees a dozen squadrons of coralskippers swinging after them from the skip carrier, but their pursuit angle is so poor that he can tell they’ll never reach the killing zone behind the X-wings.

When Luke raises his eyes up again, it’s to find space burning around him. He thinks for a single shocked instant that he’s been hit, but feels no surge of concern from Mara or Tam, and so he gives his hand over to the Force and continues to jink and juke in tandem with his shielding companions. After that, the firestorm quickly resolves itself into exploding plasma balls and streaking magma missiles. A crackle of static announces the destruction of someone in his squadron, and R2-D2 scolds him soundly with long series of high-pitched whistles and blats.

“I don’t like it either, Artoo,” Luke replies. “But Admiral Sovv is depending on us.”

Thankfully, the maelstrom fades as quickly as it’s erupted, and Luke is able to check his tactical display. He’s taken his squadrons exactly where he intended for them to be, midway between the two escorts; unfortunately, though, this pair has shown no fear of firing in each other’s direction. He’s lost one of the Sabers’ blastboats, while the Dozen and the Shockers have both lost an X-wing. The frigates have paid a steep price for missed attacks, however; both symbols are blinking steadily to show that they’re at least moderately damaged.

“We must be doing /something right,”/ Kyp comms. “They really don’t seem to want us near that big rock.”

Another pair of escorts slide into view, their sterns sparkling with missile launches. The /Sunulok/’s tail is now visible between them – a dark disk approximately the size of a thumb tip – and Luke goes into an evasive dive-and-rise as missile trails start to streak past above and below him. Checking the tactical display, he finds the dozen squadrons from the skip carrier still on their tail, and scowls darkly. “It looks like we’ll have to take this ruse all the way,” he reluctantly comms. “We’ll separate by squadrons and run hulls past the escorts. Shockers and Dozen left, Sabers and Knights right.”

The order is acknowledged by a flurry of comm clicks, and then the four squadrons are separating into pairs. Luke leads the Sabers and Knights on an undulating course towards the escort on the right. Narrowly escaping a trio of plasma balls launched in a desperation spread, he brings his X-wing in above the frigate’s weapon banks and skims its flank barely two meters off the hull. To his surprise, both escorts continue to attack the squadrons opposite, pouring so much fire into each other that R2-D2 has to reinforce the particle shields because of all the exploding yorik coral geysering up in their path. This response is so unexpectedly suicidally violent – even for Yuuzhan Vong – that he quickly finds himself mentally sitting up and taking notice.

“Danni, you’re sure/ the yammosk is on the cruiser?” Kyp comms, sounding as concerned as Luke abruptly feels. /“Because the way they’re – ”

“I’m /sure/. The yammosk is going crazy.” Danni’s transmission ends in a crackle of static, then she comes back yelling, “Drif!”

Luke doesn’t need to check his command display to know that Saba has lost one of her Jedi pilots. He feels the Barabel die – a bright, hot blossom of anguish and regret that swiftly dissolves into nothingness. The Sabers reach the bow of the frigate, and he immediately angles across the nose, both to confuse the enemy weapon crews and to set the squadron up for their diversionary attack run.

Then the comm speaker crackles with a huge pulse of static, and a nova-bright flash illuminates space just behind Luke. He all but lunges forward to check his tactical display and sees the adjacent escort coming apart just behind the Shockers, engulfing Kyp’s Dozen in flame and debris and hurling X-wings in every direction. Three, four, and finally five symbols wink out as starfighters explode, followed by the blastboats, and then two more pilots go EV.

“Headhunter?” /Corran promptly comms. “Headhunter, are you there?”/

No answer.

“/Any Dozener?” /Corran’s voice is both louder and slightly higher pitched than normal, and, under almost any other set of circumstances than these, Luke would be glad of the sign that Corran cares enough about Kyp to be concerned for his well-being.

Again, there is no answer.

“Just fried circuits,” Rigard optimistically declares after a few moments of silence in which Luke can practically hear everyone holding their breaths and shaking, just a little, in fear over what that silence could also just as easily indicate. “We had a good spike ourselves.”

“Let’s hope so,” Luke tightly replies, his stomach feeling as if it’s turned to lead, a small voice in the back of his mind screaming that this can’t have happened – not to Kyp, not again – and that he needs to turn back around and go back for his former student and his squadron. He checks his display and sees that six of the skip squadrons pursuing them are peeling off to go after what remains of the Dozen. “Dozeners, if you can hear this, you’re out of action. Run if you can, or shut down and try to hide.”

The order is answered by a single scratchy comm click. Luke feels Mara reach out to him, silently urging him to forget the heavy feeling in his rapidly sinking stomach and concentrate on the task at hand, and, for a brief, blinding moment, teeters so close to the edge of a blinding rage that it takes everything in him to keep from lashing out at her. Instead, after a sickening moment of vertiginous hesitation, Luke turns back to the Sunulok to find that the destroyer analog’s stern is swelling up before him, as big as a sandcrawler and growing fast, a half-dozen weapon stations spitting plasma balls the size of banthas.

“Arm one proton torpedo,” Luke orders. “Fire on my mark, then go over the top and be ready to break.”

By the time the last comm click has acknowledged his order, Luke has already lost his second blastboat to one of the big plasma balls, and the Sunulok’s wing of coralskippers is streaming back beneath the destroyer’s belly to engage the X-wings.

“Ready, mark!” Luke barks.

The blue glow of fifty ion drives fills the darkness and resolves itself into a dazzling wall of receding circles. The shielding crews begin to work their dovin basals, capturing perhaps a third of the proton torpedoes and forcing the proximity fuses to detonate a safe distance from the /Sunulok/. Luke pulls up, angling steeply for the top of the destroyer analog, and watching with undeniable satisfaction as the rest of the torpedoes strike home. The entire stern comes apart, hurling a wall of flame and yorik coral pebbles in front of the approaching X-wings. Relying on their shields for protection, they shoot through the rubble and streak out along the spine of the wounded ship. Luke continues for perhaps a half kilometer before breaking off sharply and diving towards the heavy cruiser. R2-D2 tweedles helpfully and displays a message for Luke.

“Thanks, Artoo,” Luke acknowledges, arming the rest of his torpedoes and shadow bombs. “Twenty seconds to target. Preparing for the main attack run.”

“Copy.” Corran is quiet for an instant, then adds,/ “Message relayed. Good hunting.”/

They’re halfway to their target when a brilliant wall of New Republic turbolaser fire erupts from the main body of the comet cluster and briefly silhouettes the entire Yuuzhan Vong fleet in violent splendor. It looks like nothing more menacing than a vast field of black lozenge-shaped asteroids, but Luke experiences a terrible disturbance in the Force as several thousand beings from their own galaxy are blasted back to their elemental atoms.

Everything goes dark again only a few heartbeats later, and an uneasy silence settles over the Eclipse comm channels. Though only half of the pilots and crew in the combat wings are Force-sensitive, the rest have been around Jedi long enough to have some idea of what their battle mates are experiencing and they have sense enough to keep quiet and avoid adding any more distraction into the mix.

An instant later, the vanguard of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet responds to the ambush with a lightning storm of crimson flashes and streaking fireballs. The New Republic turbolasers flash to life again, the Force quavers with another thousand painfully sudden deaths, and the battle explodes into its full horror.

Luke spies a pair of frigates accelerating to cut them off from the cruiser. He touches his tactical display, designating the rearmost one as a secondary target. “We’ll go through this one,” he declares. “Hisser, will you take the lead?”

“My honor,” the Barabel promptly replies.

The Wild Knights draw into a tight formation and move forward, a golden aura slowly expanding around Saba’s blastboat. The frigates drop their skips and start to pour more fire into the glowing ball of radiance, which only make it grow faster as Izal Waz uses the Force to trap the light. Once the sphere has grown large enough, Luke lines the other two squadrons up behind it, picking off skips as they try desperately to fight their way into the golden orb and stop the Wild Knights.

As Danni has described happening at Arkania, the frigate eventually grows so nervous about the approaching sphere that it turns a shielding singularity on it. The glowball abruptly lengthens as it’s caught and accelerated by the gravity of the tiny black hole.

“Drop the block!” Saba orders.

By the time she’s finished giving the command, the glowball has stretched into an ovoid twice as long as it is thick. Izal Waz lets the golden sphere fade away, and the Wild Knights’ X-wings fan out, already firing proton torpedoes. The shielding crews scramble to redirect their singularities – and never even see the two-ton block of black durasteel that it’s just accelerated to several hundred thousand kilometers an hour. The frigate does not explode so much as flash out of existence, and the wings from Eclipse suddenly find themselves diving on their target through a cloud of superheated dust.

A full wing of skips come boiling out of the cruiser to intercept them. The ship itself promptly opens up with all batteries, desperately pouring constant streams of fire from its bow and stern in an attempt to force the attacking X-wings to come at it amidships and so meet its coralskippers.

“Time to try out Control’s new targeting system,” Luke just declares with a tight smile. “Break into your shielding trios and go down the center.”

“And don’t stop to dogfight – those skips from the carrier are still on your tail,” Corran sternly orders. He switches to a private channel, then adds, “And, Farmboy, you need to get this right the first time. Listen.”

There’s a scratchy pause as Corran patches in the civilian emergency channel, and then a confused babble fills Luke’s cockpit. A moment later, he starts to recognize individual voices . . . and immediately wishes that he hadn’t.

“ – on us, please! We’re civilians from – ”

“ – is the /Happy Hutt with five thousand refugees – ”/

“ – /Meteor Racer out.”/

“Six hundred transponders just came on, Luke,” /Corran bleakly declares. /“They confirm what you’re hearing.”

“Of course they do.”

Luke needs no further explanation to know what’s happening. He recognizes the Happy Hutt as one of the refugee ships missing from the evacuation of Ralltiir, and he feels certain that a records search will turn up the /Meteor Racer/’s name, as well. Again, the sickening sensation of balancing precariously on the edge of a long drop into an endlessly deep well of anger and aggrieved sorrow threatens, and again he has to fight to shove the sensation away.

The yammosk cruiser’s wing of skips begin to fire at maximum range, no doubt trying to force their attackers to decelerate and be caught from behind. Instead, the X-wings and blastboats continue forward at maximum firing velocity.

Luke clicks off with Corran and has R2-D2 activate his supplementary targeting system. The reticle quickly locks onto the gravitational pulses coming from the dovin basal in his target’s nose. With lasers quadded on full power, he squeezes the trigger with convulsive hardness. One bolt streaks out a millisecond ahead of the others, following the targeting lock straight towards the skip’s nose. The rest diverge according to a carefully calculated ratio of distance and velocity until they’re caught by the gravity of the skip’s shielding system and bend back inwards. The first bolt vanishes into the singularity; the other three converge three meters behind it, taking the coralskipper directly in the pilot’s compartment.

“Almost as good as the Force,” Luke notes, his voice both bitter and satisfied.

He finds a pair of skips coming out of the field of detonations that had been the cruiser wing only a moment before and sets his targeting reticle on the one on the left.

“Already spoken for,” /Mara warns him. She and Tam fire simultaneously; a moment later, both skips vanish. /“Sorry, Farmboy.”

“You’re forgiven,” Luke allows, his lips quirking slightly in spite of himself.

With its entire detachment of skips eliminated in the flash of an eye, the cruiser begins to concentrate its fire in the approach lane. Knowing that even one of its big plasma balls will take out an entire shielding trio, Luke orders his wings to fan out. As quick as the pilots are to obey, one trio of Sabers still evaporates into the flame, and the Shockers lose their last blastboat.

But now the cruiser itself is laid out before them, a kilometer-long lozenge of dark yorik coral striped with bands of knobby weapons banks. With Mara to one side and Tam to the other, Luke jukes and jinks for a three count, firing his quadded lasers into roiling clouds of flame while he gives the rest of his pilots time to reach firing position.

Finally, they’re all ready. “Fire everything you have – we won’t be coming back.”

Luke fires the two proton torpedoes from his open bank, fires three more from the other bank, and then drops the shadow bombs stored in the XJS’s third set of launchers, using the Force to send them on their way. He sees the first two torpedoes vanish into a shielding singularity, and then a plasma ball erupts from a weapon nodule ahead, coming so quickly at this distance that he barely has time to slide out of the way and kiss wings with Mara.

“Close, Farmboy.”

Luke eases away, then winces inwardly as she dips her own X-wing and sends a magma missile ricocheting off her shields.

“You’re one to talk,” Luke comms back, voice biting with worry.

The attacks dwindle away after that, though, and finally they can see the flames and debris erupting from the breaches their shadow bombs and torpedoes have torn into the hull. In some places, secondary explosions can be seen rolling down sections of exposed deck, and there are clouds of bodies and materiel billowing out into the vacuum. Luke decelerates as much as he dares with the skips coming behind them and locks down the trigger of his laser cannon, burning round after round into the interior of the cruiser.

“Danni, what’s the yammosk status?” he comms.

“Quieting, but still alive.”

Luke checks the tactical display and finds the skips from the carrier still thirty seconds behind them.

“What part of the vessel?” Luke aska.

“Negative, Farmboy,” Corran immediately snaps out over the comm. “We talked about this – you had your shot, now get out of there.”

“Danni, what part?” Luke only insistently demands.

Mara’s apprehension level immediately spikes. “Farmboy, one dead hero – ”

“There are a lot of dead heroes out there today – too many to leave this undone.” Luke checks his tactical display; twenty seconds. “Where? /Now/, Danni!”

“Try lower deck, midships,” Danni anxiously replies. “I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll take one more shot.” Luke angles towards the middle of the ship and continues to decelerate. “Everyone else, go.”

“Not on your life!” Mara promptly snaps back at him.

She and Tam decelerate along with him. With the rest of the wing flying cover, they start to work their way along the cruiser’s hull, pushing through the body clouds and sticking their noses into likely looking holes.

“Farmboy, you have fifteen seconds before those skips are all over you,” Corran warns him, his voice suddenly seemingly stretched oddly thin. “And there’s something else.”

He patches the Fleet Command channel through.

“ – you to cease fire!” Sovv’s nasal voice is shouting, almost hysterically. “The New Republic navy does not butcher its own people!”

“/We /are not butchering them,” Garm Bel Iblis immediately counters, snarling in a way that reminds Luke painfully of Han, in the days after Chewbacca’s death. “The Yuuzhan Vong are. /We are trying to fire around them.”/

“And failing miserably, General,” Traest Kre’fey just as promptly counters.

“And what about Coruscant?” /Garm immediately argues. /“What about the Jedi? Do you know how many pilots they lost to give us this chance?”

Corran deactivates the channel. His voice is shaking, slightly, with a mixture of horror and helpless anger when he speaks. “Luke, the Yuuzhan Vong are already pushing through the comet cluster. Rather than fire through the refugee screen, Traest is falling back and trying to maneuver. Garm will have to join him soon or be cut off, and Wedge is two minutes behind schedule because the battle is moving towards Coruscant.”

According to Sovv’s original plan, Wedge would be the hammer falling on Garm and Traest’s anvil, sweeping in from behind the Yuuzhan Vong to drive them into the ambush.

“Wedge can still surprise them – if the yammosk is dead,” Luke grimly replies. He can sense that Mara feels betrayed by Sovv’s decision not to fire on the refugees, but Luke isn’t so sure that Sovv is making the wrong decision. Would a New Republic willing to attack through a fleet of its own people be worth saving? “This isn’t over yet.”

“Five seconds, Farmboy.”

Luke sticks his X-wing’s nose into a breach just below the dormant weapons bank and burns through two more decks, puncturing a sealed bulkhead and sucking a long stream of startled Yuuzhan Vong out into the vacuum.

“You found it!” Danni exclaims, sounding so relieved that she’s almost in tears.

He’s quickly joined by Mara and Tam. Combined, their fire is enough to blast through the other side of the vessel, and Luke catches a glimpse a many-tentacled creature flying out the breach amid a cloud of frozen vapor.

“That’s – ”

Danni’s confirmation dissolves into static as a skip’s plasma ball dissipated against the blastboat’s shields. The attack is answered instantly by a storm of laser cannon fire, but staying to fight is now the last thing on Luke’s mind. He pulls his X-wing rapidly out of the breach and drops the nose.

“Break off!”

Luke leads the way under the cruiser and up across the other side, forcing the oncoming skips to decelerate or risk having the X-wings pop up on their tails. Without the yammosk to coordinate them, the coralskippers react in disarray. Some streak over the cruiser at full speed and some under, while others stops cautiously on the other side.

Luke sighs in silent relief, then flicks on the comm. “Let’s go find Wedge. We’ve got to refuel, rearm – ”

“ – and return,” /Saba cuts in, completing the list for him. She sounds more eager than determined – a sentiment that Luke can’t even bring himself to try to summon enough peace of mind to chide her for. /“There are still plenty of Yuuzhan Vong for everyone.”

***

Aside from the fact that Leia is smelling Ben’s sweet breath instead of her own nervous sweat and the couch is not sluing around beneath her, war looks much the same on a wall-sized holovid as it does from the cockpit of the /Millennium Falcon/. Plasma balls still roll over their targets in blossoms of white fire, turbolasers still lace the air with dazzling lances of violent color, wounded vessels still bleed dark clouds of flash-frozen crew. The inset image of a grim-voiced Duros war correspondent describes how the massive Yuuzhan Vong fleet is steadily pressing forward behind the screen of refugee ships despite a fierce running assault on its rear by Wedge Antilles’s Fleet Group Three. The invaders have already crossed the orbit of Nabatu, the tenth planet of the Coruscant system, and are expected to reach the Ulabos ice bands by the end of the standard day.

The newsvid changes scenes, now showing the starliner Swift Dreams as it strays into a barrage of turbolaser fire. Leia knows, logically, that she should feels something/, that she should be angry or frightened or /something by the huge Yuuzhan Vong fleet that’s sweeping down on Coruscant, but she isn’t. All she cares about is holding Ben in her arms, keeping his warmth pressed close to her body. As the Swift Dreams begins to vent a cloud of tumbling refugees, a Bith correspondent appears in the inset and reports that Garm Bel Iblis’s Fleet Group Two is continuing to attack through the refugee screen, ignoring friendly-fire accidents such as the one shown and repeated orders from Admiral Sovv to stop. Several reliable sources claim that Sovv has actually relieved Bel Iblis of command – an order that the general and his entire force has also ignored. There are also unsubstantiated reports of whole attack groups leaving Traest Kre’fey’s Fleet Group One to join Bel Iblis in his effort to stop the Yuuzhan Vong at any price.

A pair of military analysts come on the newsvid and begin to argue (with rapidly escalating violence, their voices pitching headlong towards outright hysteria) about whether Garm Bel Iblis’s actions are the only way to delay the enemy until reinforcements arrived or the first sign of the disintegration of the New Republic military.

“What a mess,” Han wearily sighs, rubbing a hand across his face.

Leia doesn’t bother to reply. It’s the first either of them have spoken since turning on the vidscreen, and she had actually forgotten he was sitting beside her until he spoke up. He’s been following her around ever since it happened, as though he were afraid that it might be necessary to snatch Ben out of her arms again. His constant presence is starting to annoy her, just a little, though she cannot bear even the small emotional turmoil that she would cause by telling him so.

The analysts are replaced by an image of Luke and Mara climbing (slowly, for them, and with a distinct lack of their usual grace) out of their starfighters. As they join a long line of exhausted Jedi stumbling across a Star Destroyer’s docking bay, a behorned Devaronian reporter appears in the foreground and describes how the Jedi-led attack wing has continued their daring penetration missions, destroying more than fifteen capital ships in the heart of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. While Eclipse’s losses are classified for intelligence reasons, casualties in both personnel and equipment are rumored to be extremely high. No one has seen the famous Kyp Durron or any of his Dozen since the battle began.

Han flinches as though he’s been hit and uses a voice command to switch over to the Senate feed. Good old Han, concerned about Kyp and worried about Leia being upset by news of the danger her brother and his Jedi compatriots are facing. She would have liked to be upset. She would have liked to feel something – /anything/, even irritation at Han’s obvious anxiety over the rumors surrounding Kyp and his Dozen – other than the hollow ache that consumes her now. Why has Han even bothered to change the feed? She just wants him to go away and leave her alone, if only for a little while!

The holovid splits into two images, one showing the packed chamber, the other a hologram of Admiral Sovv standing before the High Councilor’s console. The Sullustan is demanding that NRMOC confirm his dismissal of General Bel Iblis and a long list of officers who have deserted to serve under Garm’s command. Borsk Fey’lya appears in an inset, his fur tangled and his violet eyes sunken with stress.

“You have another way to hold the enemy at bay, Admiral Sovv?” Fey’lya demands.

The Sullustan’s hologram continues to stare directly ahead. “Bel Iblis’ mutiny is undermining the command integrity of the whole military.”

“So the answer would be no,” Fey’lya flatly declares. “In that case, I suggest that, instead of interfering with General Bel Iblis’s efforts, you follow his lead. You will not stop the Yuuzhan Vong by nipping at their heels.”

This causes enough of a tumult in the Senate chamber that Ben opens his bright blue eyes and begins to cry. The TDL nanny droid is instantly at Leia’s side, reaching for the infant with her four synth-skin arms. Leia shields Ben with her body and shoos the droid away. Nobody is taking this child from her.

Apparently speaking to Fey’lya via direct feed and unaware of the uproar in the chamber, Admiral Sovv does not wait for the audio to equalize, and so his initial response is lost in the general tumult.

“I am also aware of how many lives we stand to lose here if you let the enemy drive that refugee fleet into our planetary shields,” Fey’lya thunders. “Admiral Sovv, as the chairman of NRMOC, I am not only instructing you to fire through the hostage screen, I am ordering you to. If necessary, you are to fire on those ships directly.”

Again, Admiral Sovv does not wait for the audio to equalize, and his reply is lost to the general uproar, the tumult far more violent and disruptive this time than before.

Fey’lya’s response is not. “Then you are relieved of command, Admiral Sovv. I am sure General Bel Iblis understands the necessity of my order.”

This time, the audio cannot be adjusted to filter out the din in the chamber. Hundreds of Senators stand and begin to shout their disdain of the Bothan; a smaller number rise to applaud his courage and decisiveness. Then, one by one, holograms of Sovv’s Sullustan protégés begin to appear on the speaking floor beside the Admiral. Generals Muun and Yeel, Admiral Rabb, Commander Godt, and a dozen others join him – all powerful figures in the New Republic military who owe their rise to Admiral Sovv. Fey’lya does not seem all that surprised to see them appearing before him, but his beard fur bristles when General Rieekan, Commodore Brand, and even his fellow Bothan Traest Kre’fey adds their holograms to those who are standing with Admiral Sovv.

“We don’t need to watch this,” Han abruptly declares, still trying to shield her from anything upsetting. “How about one of Garik Loran’s old holodramas? Those always used to make you laugh.”

Leia shakes her head. “This is fine.”

The disintegration of the New Republic military ought to keep her mind off the empty hurt inside. She signals the droid for a collapsipack of gently warmed formula and settles back to feed Ben. Now, if she could get Han to go away and leave her alone, she just might make it through the day.

Fey’lya rises and tries for a while to quiet the chamber. When this results only in a louder and more frantic outburst of shouts and frenetic arm-waving, he gives up and returns to his seat, then disappears behind his instrument console and begins to work the controls. Apparently, he notices that his face is still on the vidfeed, because he scowls darkly and flips something, and the inset promptly disappears.

The Solos’ comm unit instantly starts to beep for attention. Han frowns and beings to rise.

“Han!” Surprised by the alarm in her own voice, Leia nonetheless catches him by the arm. “Where are you going?”

Han gestures vaguely in the direction of the study. “To answer the comm.”

Leia surprises herself even further by shaking her head and pulling Han back down to the couch. “Don’t leave me.”

Han’s face melts. “/Never./ I’m not going /anywhere/.”

The comm unit continues to beep. The vidscreen splits into three images, one showing the uproar in the senate galleries, another the holograms of Sovv and his supporters, and the third the top of Borsk Fey’lya’s head as he stares at his instrument console.

C-3PO steps into the door, his posture somehow managing to radiate both wariness and urgency. “Excuse me, Master Han, but the comm unit is requesting attention.”

“We know, Goldenrod,” Han sighs. “We may’ve lost a son, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost our hearing, too.”

C-3PO’s photoreceptors dims noticeably. “Oh, of course.”

He clumps out of the room. The turmoil in the Senate chamber finally begins to fade, though there’s still too much noise for the sound droid to pick up Admiral Sovv’s voice when his hologram speaks to Fey’lya again.

The Chief of State looks up long enough to signal the commanders to wait, then returns his attention to his instruments and speaks briefly.

A moment later, C-3PO walks into the room with a portable comm screen. He glances at the vidscreen and tips his head to the side in robotic bewilderment, then turns towards the couch. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Chief of State Fey’lya is asking to speak with Mistress Leia.”

“Me?” Leia’s mind normally would have immediately leapt to speculations as to why Fey’lya would be calling her at such a time, but all she can think of now is that she hasn’t slept or bathed or even brushed her hair since it happened. “No. Absolutely not.”

C-3PO glances at the vidscreen again, then fussily proclaims, “He said to tell you it was matter of galactic security.”

Leia looks to Han, and she doesn’t even need to say anything. He simply reaches out to take the comm screen from C-3PO and puts it on the couch between them, with the built-in holocam facing away from Leia and towards him.

“This is Han, Chief Fey’lya. Leia can’t talk right now.”

On the wall screen, Leia watches Fey’lya’s hand run through his head fur. “Yes, I’ve heard that something might have happened to Anakin. If that’s so, I’d like to express not only my own sympathy, but that of the entire New Republic.”

“We appreciate that.” Han glances at the wall screen and rolls his eyes, then looks back into the comm unit’s holocam. “Now, I’m sure you’ll understand if I sign off.”

Fey’lya’s hand darts out towards his instrument panel. “Wait – there was one other thing, General Solo.”

“General?” Han glances askance over the comm screen at Leia and cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re reactivating my commission? You can’t be that desperate for line officers.”

Right about the time when Han flashing something that’s half wry lopsided grin and half bitter sneer at the screen, it occurs to Leia that her husband is playing with the New Republic’s Chief of State not for his own amusement, but rather in an attempt to cheer her up. The effort touches her, even if it fails to come close to drawing a smile out of her.

“Not yet, General Solo.” Fey’lya’s ears twitch, a rare sign of being flustered. “Actually, I was hoping to prevail on Leia to say a few words of support for my government to some of her old friends in the military.”

Han glances over the comm screen.

Fey’lya seems to realize Leia is listening in, then, because he quickly adds, “I’m sure Leia realizes how supportive I have been of the Jedi recently, and the military has several sizable droid orders pending approval with Tendrando Arms.”

Leia sighs tiredly and stares moodily down at the floor. Is this what Anakin has possibly given his life for? The thought is so depressing that she starts to sob again.

“Sorry, Chief Fey’lya,” Han stonily replies, reaching for the comm screen power switch. “This time, you’re on your own.”

***

To Cilghal’s sensitive nostrils, the foamy fungus eating away the scorched metal of the surviving X-wings smells almost as foul as the soiled flight suits of the eight exhausted pilots themselves. There’s an acidic edge to it, and the metallic mustiness of corrosion – a common-enough smell on oceanic worlds like her own Mon Calamari, but certainly a rarity coming from the rustproof alloys used in starfighters – and the oddness of such a combination in such a place as this makes her nose itch with the sheer /wrongness /of it.

Cilghal carefully does not sigh, resists the urge to scrub a hand across her nose, and bends forwards to use a plastifibe agitator to scrape some of the yellow growth into a sample bag, causing the metallic/acidic/musty smell to grow stronger. Though she has already scanned for the typical Yuuzhan Vong attack toxins, she finds herself wondering if she should have taken the time to return to her laboratory for her breath mask.

Behind her, Kyp Durron sneezes violently and then asks, “What do you think?” After several dozen terrifying hours zipped tight in his EV suit because of a vacuum leak in his cracked canopy, he is, by far, the worst-smelling of the survivors. “A new kind of weapon?”

“Not a very effective one, if it is,” Cilghal replies, forcing away that knowledge so that her voice will remain steady. “If this is all it grew in the time you needed to limp back to Eclipse, it will not destroy many fighters before the tech crews steam it off.”

She continues to scrape, methodically, until finally she reaches bare hull. As her nose has led her to suspect, the metal itself is pitted with corrosion. The fungus is metabolizing the X-wing itself, but why? The Yuuzhan Vong would not have gone to the trouble of creating a self-heating, vacuum-hardened fungus unless there were some kind of specific purpose for it.

Kyp sneezes again, almost painfully loudly, and Cilghal turns to face him, frowning.

“How long have you been doing that?” she asks. “Were you sneezing in your EV suit?”

Kyp shakes his head (dark, sweat-matted hair flopping lankly) and wipes his nose on the cuff of his flight suit. “It started when I unzipped.”

“Spores.” Motioning Kyp to follow along, Cilghal takes her sample bag and starts to head towards the hangar hatch at a quick jog. “They wanted it to produce spores.”

Cilghal is just about to palm the control pad when the blaring roar of an assault alarm reverberates through the cavern. It continues for fifteen ear-piercing seconds before it’s replaced by the watch officer’s voice.

“Attention all crews! This is no drill. We have an incoming yorik coral vessel.”

“Sith blood! It has to be that frigate again.” Kyp has already explained to the watch officer that their return ended up taking so long because of a frigate that kept turning up behind them. “I could have sworn we had lost him.”

Before Cilghal can stop him, Kyp has turned about and dashed off to join the bustle as the ship crews prepare Eclipse’s motley assortment of backup starfighters for launch. With the /Errant Venture /in a protective orbit around the base and well crewed by refugees from Reecee, there’s no question of a single frigate destroying the Jedi stronghold. Unfortunately, Cilghal also knows that there’s no longer any chance of keeping the secret of the base’s location. As a vessel travels through hyperspace, its hull builds up a tachyon charge that’s not released until it enters realspace again. If she’s right about the fungus growing on the eight X-wings – and apparently she is, given the approaching Yuuzhan Vong frigate – the spores are freeing those tachyons in hyperspace, creating a long thread of faster-than-light particles leading straight to Eclipse.

Cilghal is so thoroughly absorbed in this theory that, when she returns to her laboratory, she immediately sets to work stripping a tachyon gun from a spare S-thread spinner. The Mon Calamari isn’t very good with human mechanical equipment – frankly, she prefers to rely on Jaina or Danni for such jobs – so the task absorbs all of her concentration for the next quarter hour, until the base alarm abruptly blares again and the dismayed watch officer announces that the frigate has sacrificed itself to slip three skips past Eclipse’s outer defenses. Then the whole base is shaking as the two big turbolasers open up on the small vessels. At first, Cilghal takes the erratic ticking she hears to be subsurface vibration from the weapons, but then she notices a complicated repeating pattern, and that it’s coming from the gravitic pulse coder standing in front of the captured yammosk’s cell.

Cilghal rushes over to the observation window to discover that the creature’s tentacles are splayed straight out in the pool, its body membranes pulsing in consonance with the ticking of the pulse coder. “So you /do /talk!” she gasps, startled.

Cilghal turns to the pulse coder and finds it scratching a complicated series of peak and trough readings onto a flimsiplast drum. They do not yet have enough data to convert the marks into a meaningful message, but it seems quite likely that the scratches will translate into identity codes, vectoring instructions, and target priorities. Cilghal quickly activates their own makeshift gravitic wave modulator, adjusting the amplitude to match that being recorded, and begins to generate the gravitic equivalent of white noise.

The yammosk stops pulsing for an instant, then whirls around in its tank and launches itself rapidly and quite violently into the viewport, hitting with a resonant thud. Cilghal stumbles back, surprised, and the creature holds itself against the transparisteel, its tentacles lashing along the edges in search of a seam.

Cilghal turns off her modulator. When the yammosk drops back into the water and starts to pulse again, she knows they have succeeded.

The watch officer’s voice came over the internal comm system again. “Suicide run! Close all airtight hatches, secure environment suits, and prepare for impact in ten, nine . . . ”

Cilghal glances over at the pulse coder’s flimsiplast drum and suddenly is certain of what is recorded there. Though she cannot have translated the message directly, of course, she feels sure that it says something like, “Here I am. Destroy me – destroy me at any cost.”

There is no time to disconnect all of the power and data feeds and save the pulse coder. Cilghal rips the flimsiplast off the scratch drum and flies out of the doomed laboratory, her haste such that she almost forgets to slap the emergency hatch seal as she leaves.

***