Traitor - Matthew Stover (iphone ebook reader .txt) 📗

the deflectors, bounded off like multicolored sparks. There was a flicker on the displays as another coralskipper flashed past at a converging speed somewhere close to that of light, too fast for Han’s eye to track it.

If he hadn’t blown up the first coralskipper, he might have actually collided with it and been vaporized along with the enemy.

Han tried to calm his startled nerves as he kept his eyes on the displays, searching for more enemy craft around and behind the dovin basal. In a moment he understood the enemy’s tactic. The two Vs of three had split into three pairs and curved around the dovin basal on separate paths, in the apparent hope that at least one pair would be in a position to splash the Falcon as they flew past each other. It hadn’t worked, but by sheer chance one of them had almost taken out the Millennium Falcon through ramming. What, Han wondered, were the odds on that?

The comm board began a rhythmic bleating, and Han shut it off. From the display he gathered that the Falcon had just lost her hyperspace comm antenna.

Oh well. They hadn’t been planning to talk to anyone long distance, anyway.

Feeling cheered by the thought that he’d win the battle in jig time if he could go on killing at least one coralskipper with each pass, he prepared to swing the ship around and dive toward the dovin basal yet again. And then his displays lit up at the appearance of an enemy fighter, the one intact survivor from the flight of six he’d splashed with his opening salvo. It was curving toward him, its plasma cannons spitting out a stream of molten projectiles.

It was placed just so as to keep him from swinging around on the ideal trajectory for passing the dovin basal again. He suppressed the curses that were ringing around the inside of his skull and instead warned his two gunners.

“Enemy skip on the port side, ladies.”

He maneuvered so as to put the target in the money lane, where the fields of fire of both sets of lasers overlapped, and he heard the quads begin to chunder. Coherent light flashed around the enemy craft, curving weirdly as the dovin basal’s singularity-curved space to safeguard the target. Enemy fire spattered off the Falcon’s shields. Then flame sprayed from the coralskipper as one of the laser lances struck home. The craft seemed to stagger in its course. And then a second laser blast turned the coralskipper into a spray of flaming shards that shone briefly, like a falling firework, and was gone.

“Nice shooting, Commander!”

Leia’s voice, complimenting Dorja on the kill. Han realized to his pleasure that Vana Dorja apparently was qualified on the quad lasers.

Six down, one damaged, five to go.

Han hauled the Millennium Falcon around for another pass at the dovin basal, but he knew that the last coralskipper had delayed his maneuver to the point where it might be the enemy pouncing on the Falcon this time, not the other way around.

A glance at the displays showed the five intact coralskippers had swept around again, with each two-skip unit—plus the singleton survivor of the third pair—on widely diverging courses. They would be sweeping past the dovin basal at different times, approaching from different angles. This meant that no matter what Han did, he wouldn’t be able to place the gravity-distorting singularity between himself and all the enemy at once. Those who could see him could communicate his position to those who couldn’t.

The advantage he’d made for himself was gone. Someone on the other side must have had a brainstorm.

But, Han realized, the fact that the enemy flights had separated meant he wouldn’t have to fight more than two at a time. That was something he could use.

He looped around toward the dovin basal, letting its gravity draw him in.

“How are we doing, Han?” Leia called.

“Plenty left in the old bag of tricks!” Han called back.

But which trick? That was a puzzler, all right.

His mind sawed at the problem as he dived for the singularity. It was clear that the first pair of enemy skips would arrive at the singularity before he did, and the single fighter at about the same time as the Falcon, with the other pair arriving afterward. The only way he’d be able to repeat the head-on attack that had worked the first time was if he did it on the third group of Yuuzhan Vong, and that meant running the gauntlet of the three other coralskippers. If he attacked the first pair, the others would arc around the dovin basal and be on his tail fast.

The Yuuzhan Vong were prepared for any eventuality. Unless, of course, he simply didn’t do what they expected. If he didn’t dive into the dovin basal as their tactics clearly assumed …

Han cut power to the sublight engines and hit the braking thrusters. The Millennium Falcon slowed as if she’d hit a patch of mud.

“Skips crossing the bow port to starboard!” he called. A volley of plasma cannon projectiles preceded the lead pair of fighters that arced from behind the blind spot of the dovin basal, bright glowing projectiles that curved strangely in the mine’s weird gravity well. The projectiles crossed the Falcon’s bows at a comfortable distance, followed an instant later by the fighters themselves, both moving too fast to alter their trajectory once they saw the Falcon’s position. Laser fire pulsed around them, but Han didn’t see any hits. He was already pouring power to the sublight engines, letting the space mine’s gravity well take the Falcon into its embrace.

He nearly missed his timing: the plasma cannon volley that preceded the single fighter’s appearance from around the singularity almost clipped his tail. The fighter itself crossed his stern at a blistering pace. Han wrenched the controls and altered course, heading not toward the dovin basal, but away from it.

He was now counting on the fact that the enemy were communicating, but there was also an inevitable lag between their