Ylesia by Walter Jon Williams Page B

patch of green, one of the small continents coming up, and Jaina tipped her fighter toward it, with Jacen and the others after.
    Jacen’s craft rocked to the buffets of the atmosphere. Flame licked at his forward shields. If he looked over his shoulder he could see sonic shock waves rolling over his foils like spiderwebs. The green land drew closer.
    Then new symbols flashed onto his displays, and his own voice echoed Jaina’s cry. “
Skips!
Coralskippers, dead ahead!”
    The enemy fighters were rising from the spaceport, two squadrons’ worth, their dovin basals yanking them clear of the planet’s gravity. And in their wake came a much larger target, a frigate analog. The Yuuzhan Vong were clearly aiming for the landing force, which was swinging above the planet in high orbit, guarded by a pair of frigates and the Screamers, a rookie squadron of X-wings under a twenty-three-year-old captain. The escort could probably handle the attackers—eventually—but in the meantime the Yuuzhan Vong could cut up the landing force badly.
    â€œAccelerating! Maximum thrust!” Jaina called, and Twin Suns poured power to their engines. They were in a good position to bounce the enemy as the Yuuzhan Vong clawed their way up through the atmosphere. Jacen looked at his displays and calculated angles, trajectories . . .
    â€œI’ve got a shadow bomb, Twin Leader,” he said. “Let me take a run at the frigate.”
    Through the Jedi meld he felt Jaina duplicating his own calculation. “Twin Thirteen,” she decided, “take your shot.”
    Jacen dipped his nose and aimed for the patch of air he thought the frigate would pass through in another twenty standard seconds or so. The moment of release was difficult to judge—he couldn’t find the frigate analog in the Force, and Jacen would have to make a guess based on how it appeared on his displays.
    Suddenly he felt the power of the Force swell in his body, as if he’d just filled his lungs with pure universal power. Calculations stormed through his mind, faster than he’d thought possible. And distantly, he found he
could
detect the enemy ship—not as a presence in the Force, but as an absence, a cold emptiness in the universe of life.
    There were Jedi nearby that hadn’t yet engaged the enemy—Tahiri, Kyp Durron, Zekk, and Alema Rar. Since they hadn’t been distracted by combat, they had just
loaned
him their power through the Jedi meld, sending him strength and aiding his calculation.
    He felt the cold metal of the bomb-release mechanism in his fist, and he pulled it. “Shadow bomb away.” And then, as he pulled back the stick and fed power to the engines, he fired a pair of concussion missiles.
    The shadow bomb was a missile without propellant, packed instead from head to tail with explosive, and would either drift toward its target or be pushed with a little help from the Force. The lack of a propellant flare made the bomb hard for the Yuuzhan Vong to detect, and the extra explosive gave it tremendous punch when it hit.
    The two concussion missiles were intended as a distraction for the Yuuzhan Vong—if the enemy were paying attention to the two missiles, coming in on a different trajectory, then they’d be less likely to see the shadow bomb dropping toward them.
    Thanks,
Jacen sent into the meld. And then he felt the others fade from his perceptions as first Kyp, then the others, entered combat.
    The three parts of Kre’fey’s fleet had just united, Jacen thought, with the Peace Brigade forces trapped between them. The Brigaders were about to lose their whole fleet.
    The nose of Jacen’s X-wing pointed higher, toward the distant glowing exhaust ports of Jaina’s squadron. This put the frigate below in a perfect position to shoot at him, the fire heading practically up his tail. He saw the plasma cannon projectiles and missiles coming, and he jinked wildly for a few