[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(158)

Missiles roared toward her from the front; she sideslipped and they missed, or fired her lasers and they detonated, eliminating the missiles around them in an explosive act of fratricide. Missiles roared toward her from the side, the back; she eluded them, now rising, now dipping, an indestructible leaf caught in a speed-of-sound wind, and the missiles shot past.

Sometimes another X-wing rode at her wing, supporting her tactics with movements that were eerie in their instantaneous adjustment, in their perfect complementarities.

Once a trio of missiles roaring toward her from the starboard side detonated two hundred meters from her X-wing for no reason Han could see. Had they hit shrapnel? Had Jaina destroyed them with a flip of her hand and a Force technique? Han didn’t know.

He did realize two things. The first was that as fast as he climbed, as fast as he could afford to climb while being pestered by enemy pilots, she was rising faster. The second was a more painful realization, which settled on him like a weighted net wrapping itself around a tired swimmer:

She didn’t need him.

She was a brilliant pilot with a brilliant wingman. She was older than Han had been when he’d pitted the Millennium Falcon against pilots from the first Death Star, and was more experienced. Part Han, part Leia, and all herself, she dominated the air around her.

Mixed in his heart were pride and pain in the discovery that she had outgrown him.

Green laserfire flashed from the vicinity of his starboard hull and an incoming Howlrunner exploded. Snapped back to the here and now, Han looked to starboard and port, realized that he was flanked by two attack fighters on either side, and almost jumped out of his seat.

But they were green on his sensor board-friendlies.

Wedge’s voice was in his ears and Han realized it had been there for some time. “What was that, uh, One?”

“We have escorts out of the combat zone,” Wedge said. “You should be picking yours up now.”

“They’re here.”

“We have to leave the zone, Two. The enemy still has numerical superiority, and we’re not in fighters. Also, I think the really nimble X-wing up top is your daughter. It would be a karking shame to be shot down by your own daughter, wouldn’t it?”

Han laughed. It was a brittle noise. “It sure would. All right, lead me out of here. Speaking of daughters, I need to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Later, back at base.”

“Whatever you say.”

Across long minutes, the battle over Rellidir moved farther and farther away from downtown. The incoming missiles were spent against the Center for the Performing Arts, against starfighters too slow or luckless to elude them, against each other when a random detonation would claim an entire flight of them.

Syal kept her attention on the skies beyond her viewport. She ached all over and could taste blood in her mouth. “How’s it look?” she asked.

Zueb, kneeling in his chair, facing backward, pulled his hands and face out of the mess of dislodged circuits and wiring he’d been working with. He gave her a noncommittal look. “Not good.”

“Will we make orbit?”

“Orbit, yes.” The Sullustan shrugged. “But no hull integrity. Blow up a balloon and let it go to fly around, venting air? That’s us.”

“Plug our suits in for direct atmosphere and power for heating. We’ll put up with a few minutes of cold.”

“Yes, boss.” Zueb fiddled around behind their seats, plugging both their flights into power and air suppliers, then turned around and settled into his chair. He uttered a bark of pain. “Oww. Think I have no spine left.”

“You had one to begin with?”

“Not nice.” Zueb strapped in.

Syal brought the engines up. They whined, unnaturally loud, the noise strained and wrong, but the diagnostics board indicated that they were supplying power to the thrusters. Gently, slowly, Syal lifted off, pointed the Aleph’s battered nose away from the portions of the sky where combat was still thick, and accelerated.

“We lost this one,” she said.

“You did great.”

“I’m a great loser.”

“I fly with great loser any day. Also, Lieutenant Baradis thinks you’re really good looking.”

“What?”

“Said so in mess yesterday.”

“You’re trying to take my mind off all this.”

“Yes. Am doing a good job?”

“No.” She frowned. “Baradis, huh?”

“Don’t see it myself. Human heads too tiny to be good looking.”

She grinned. “Shut up.”

STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL

Nelani ran with the speed of a trained athlete, but as soon as she passed beyond the cavern where Darth Vectivus’s house stood and where the artificial gravity generator operated, her gait became inefficient, her leaps too long-she didn’t have Jacen’s experience with low gravity.