The Anakin Solo moved on Fondor.
On either flank, vessels from both GA fleets moved into formation, and one battle group with its X-wing squadrons streaking ahead of it broke out of the larger formation to slip past the ring of orbitals.
Caedus felt around him for the Jedi, not picking up what he expected. He knew they were here, because Luke was; but he couldn’t sense how many, or where they might be. He assumed the worst-maybe as many as a hundred, maybe the majority in StealthXs.
But Jedi or not, numbers and big ships still counted against them. These days, no naval architect made construction mistakes like the kind that would let a single fighter take out a war machine the size of a planet. Luke Skywalker’s days of dumb luck were long over. Caedus cast his worries about the Jedi aside, and visualized his ships and their commanders like a grid, a mesh, a network, like the mines he should have had in place now.
These were competent commanders with well-trained crews, and they only needed a little nudge to embolden them into even more decisive action. He found he didn’t need to control them; all he needed was to be hyperaware of where they were at any point in time, their state of mind, and if they needed a push to overcome hesitation caused by having a slower, limited, sensor-dominated perception of the changing situation in theater.
Ocean was where he expected her to be, to port and a lit-tle astern of him. I can keep an eye on you however busy I am, Admiral. He could see the sensor screens ahead of him and around the bridge, but it was the mental image he was building that was more vivid, and in moments it was al-most an overlay on his physical field of vision that he found hard to distinguish from what he could actually see.
Nevil turned to him. “Long-range, sir, Fondor’s ground defenses are scrambling.”
Sensors picked up a hailstorm of fighters scattering out into the planet’s orbit, and Caedus concentrated his touch on the minds of the commanders about to encircle the planet. The first wave of X-wings streaked between the orbitals, targeting the defensive cannon emplacements on the yards as they passed. The wave of frigates and destroyers split horizontally to send one group under the orbit of the yards in a loop toward Fondor’s southern pole, and the other mirroring it to the north pole. With the X-wings keeping the yards’ defenses busy, the warships regrouped inside the orbital ring. Fondorian fighters swung around to engage them like a flock of garbs turning as one bird.
“Steady, “said Caedus. “Push through. Push through.”
Damage reports were now trickling in, most of them minor ones from overloaded shields, and they were diverted to the automated system to collate and estimate the impact on the fleet’s effectiveness at any given point. But Caedus didn’t need detail. He felt X-wings wink out of existence, each one a pang in him, and he felt the ships in the right place, the right moment…
Fondor’s planetary defenses hadn’t opened up yet, although the ships were in range. The yards weren’t there to defend the planet; their armament was for their own protection. There was an odd, aching lull in the battle going on in Caedus’s mental chart, and for a full minute he cast around waiting for StealthXs to fountain out of nowhere and harry his vessels inside the orbital ring. He’d feel them. Whatever tricks the Jedi had, however undetectable their fighters, he would feel their racing pulses and adrenaline as they began their attack. Luke might be able to hide, but not all of them.
The flotillas were through, scanning the surface of Fon-dor for cannon and turbolaser aimed at them, waiting for enemy targeting to try to get a lock on them and blip their sensors. There should have been the start of a bombardment by now.
Nothing.
Niathal cut into the bridge comlink. “Stand…”
Caedus felt something then, all right. He knew what it was a moment after it pressed like a weight behind his eyes. It was the sudden surge of drives, tension peaking, thousands upon thousands of beings exploding into action.
It was the Fondorian fleet.
In the slow-motion way of thoughts in battle, he had time somehow to wonder why sensors weren’t showing him ships popping out of hyperspace and targeting weapons all around him.
Then he saw why, with his own eyes, on the monitors.
The orbital yards had come alive in an instant, Destroyers lifting clear of docks, smaller vessels forming up around them. Caedus felt the precision of the maneuver without even needing to see the rapidly changing transponder icons on the holochart; half of the ships focused on the GA elements now stuck between Fondor and the ring, and the other half turned their attention to the rest of the task force beyond.
The Fondorian fleet-or a very large part of it-boiled out of the yards like kag bugs pouring from a broken drain.