[Dark Nest] - 3(77)

His canopy blast-tinting went black with the first detonation, but the two explosions that followed were so bright that they lit the interior of the cockpit anyway. Luke rolled away, then did a wingover and flew back along the attack line.

With no dartships to worry about, he was free to watch on his tactical display as Mara, Jacen, and the rest of his squadron released their penetrators in one-second intervals. Each bomb disappeared into the crater left by the previous one, driving the hole deeper down through the nest ship’s layered decks, wreaking increasing amounts of destruction and exposing more and more of the vessel’s interior to the cold vacuum of space.

By the time the last weapon detonated, the Gorog were in such a state of shock that all defensive fire had ceased within a kilometer of the impact area. Luke swung his StealthX around and found a cloud of steam, bodies, and equipment tumbling from the crater, so thick it obscured the ship’s hull. He could sense by the exhilaration in the meld that Kyp’s attack on the stern of the ship had also gone well, but there was a certain heaviness in Corran’s squadron that Luke knew all too well: a Jedi had fallen in the assault on the bow.

R2-D2 whistled an alarm, and Luke looked down to see swarms of Gorog dartships pouring from the vessel’s hangar bays.

“Thanks, Artoo,” he said. “What’s the rest of the battle look like?”

The tactical display switched scales, and Luke saw that the other nest ships were bleeding dartships and dropping into lower orbits to support Gorog. Clearly, the Killiks had aborted their attack on the blockade. It was more important to protect the Dark Nest, and the Dark Nest had been wounded.

Luke reached out to Kenth, Kyle, and Tresina, calling them back to the initial target. When Pellaeon arrived with the main attack fleet, there would be fewer casualties from friendly fire if the Jedi were doing their best to follow the original plan.

Once Luke sensed that his squadron had reformed behind him, he continued forward, using the Force to clear a path through the cloud of flotsam and bodies still pouring from the Gorog nest’s interior. He knew by the growing tension of the meld that Corran and Kyp were also returning to begin the second, more dangerous phase of the assault. And he shared in their hope that the Alliance battle fleet would arrive soon. Once the Jedi began the final destruction of the Dark Nest, they were going to need all the support they could get.

Luke reached the breach in the outer hull and activated the imaging system in his helmet visor. The dark interior of the nest ship was immediately transformed into an eerie hologram of vibrant colors, with white-hot lumps of spitcrete rubble and glowing red pieces of Killiks streaming up a long, seemingly bottomless shaft before they tumbled out into the void.

The StealthXs shut down their ion drives and descended into the hull breach under the power of their maneuvering thrusters alone. As much as Luke would have liked to, there was no time to look for traps or counterattacks as they descended past each deck in the bombed-out shaft. The success of their assault depended on speed and ferocity, and their best hope lay in keeping the enemy off balance.

When the squadron had descended ten decks, the rear trio of StealthXs peeled off and glided toward the edge of the shaft. A few moments later, a series of blue flashes spilled out of the darkness as the three pilots came to an air lock and used their laser cannons to blast it open. Luke glanced over his shoulder and saw more flotsam streaming up the shaft behind him. The nest ship’s artificial gravity generator had either been destroyed or shut down to conserve power, because even the heaviest pieces showed no sign of dropping toward the center of the ship.

A second trio of StealthXs peeled off after the squadron had descended twenty decks, and a third after thirty. By then, the combat-meld was charged with excitement as the Jedi blasted their way deeper into the enormous ship from three sides, cutting down waves of vac-suited Gorog warriors with their laser cannons, blasting open air locks and using the Force to hide shadow bombs at critical locations.

Luke and Mara and Jacen passed the fortieth deck and continued down to the fiftieth, the shaft narrowing to barely more than the spread of a StealthX’s wings. The excitement in the meld turned to fear and anger and all the other emotions that boiled to surface in the midst of a pitched battle, then Kenth and Kyle and Tresina Lobi began to radiate alarm, warning Luke and Kyp and Corran that trouble was on its way.

Luke was not worried. Dartships were far less maneuverable than StealthXs and would be next to worthless in the twisting wreckage … but that thought came to an abrupt end when R2-D2 trilled an urgent warning.

“B-wings?” Luke asked. Armed more heavily than XJ-3s, B-wings were some of the most dangerous and maneuverable starfighters in the galaxy. “Are you sure?”