Yanibar Tales/Nine Riders

They came from nowhere, tearing apart the galaxy, rampaging through known space. They attacked without warning, ravaging worlds, slaughtering millions out of a twisted religious fervor. They called themselves the Yuuzhan Vong.

They bore living weapons that defied understanding, weapons that burned and poisoned and crushed people on a thousand planets across the galaxy. They knew no mercy, harbored no regard for the lives of the conquered, choosing to enslave and sacrifice them at will. This was their war. A formation of their pearlescent organic starfighters spiraled lazily through the thin clouds scattered through the skies of Leritor, a world that had fallen to the invaders less than a year earlier. The spacecraft looped down slowly, descending at a measured, steady pace. By extrapolating their trajectory, it was clear that their destination was a complex of curved buildings built along a craggy ridgeline. The small blue snake of a river threaded its way up into the mountains, skirting the compound that was the destination for the formation.

The fighters soared in lower, flying along the forested slopes as they cruised in for a landing. Their irregular, rough surfaces bore none of the sleekness of conventional craft and no ion engines or repulsorlifts powered them. Large and bulky, they lacked the sharp lines of the most common galactic designs, nor were they constructed out of the standard amalgamation of metals, ceramics, and polymers.

They were coralskippers, the bizarre biotechnology starfighter equivalents of the Yuuzhan Vong. Instead of ion engines and shields, they were powered and propelled by the gravitic manipulations of dovin basal creatures. Instead of laser cannons, they fired blazing streams of plasma. Like all things Yuuzhan Vong, the coralskipper was a living craft and that alone had been hard to comprehend for the inhabitants of the galaxy when the Yuuzhan Vong had first arrived.

Another thing that had been difficult to comprehend was how quickly the invaders crushed any and all resistance offered to them. Having plowed through the galaxy with surprising speed and vicious cruelty, the Yuuzhan Vong had already seized a wedge of territory that included most the worlds from beyond the Hydian Way all the way to the Corellian Run. The New Republic had staggered in the face of the relentless invaders who had shown no qualms about burning whole planets to achieve their aims, wantonly destroying Ithor and others in their quest for domination. The onslaught had left many in the galaxy wondering if further resistance would even accomplish anything. However, the coralskipper pilots, eight in all, were out to prove that it would, at least in some small part.

They were not Yuuzhan Vong, even though they flew in their organic spacecraft. The fact that they wore inorganic powered armor, not the living vonduun crab armor of the Yuuzhan Vong and carried blasters instead of amphistaffs and thud bugs, would have instantly given that away, but coralskipper canopies were opaque, concealing their identities. They were infiltrators, commandos, coming to wreak havoc on the Yuuzhan Vong and using their starfighters as insertion vehicles. Their small squad was an advance force for a larger unit that was lurking in wait, holding patiently while the nine riders did their deadly work.

These individuals were not part of a force that the Yuuzhan Vong had encountered before. They were from the fiercely isolationist Yanibar Guard, a force based far from the invasion corridors and that had not revealed itself openly to the galaxy. Apprehension filled them; they were the first members of the Yanibar Guard that had ever been directly ordered to engage the Yuuzhan Vong. They maintained their flight in a professional silence, though—they had prepared for this using whatever intelligence had been collected on the invaders, which was admittedly scant. Their mission was secretive, one of guile and deception, known only to a few. If luck was with them, things would stay that way.

“All right, we’re here. I don’t spot any airborne skips,” came the voice of Colonel Bryndar Knrr, the leader, over the comnet. “We’re good to go.”

A chorus of comlink clicks replied to the experienced veteran’s order as the coralskippers swooped in closer towards the Yuuzhan Vong base.

In the rear of the formation, Lieutenant Ashli Tar-sonis adjusted the cognition hood over her face as the ground raced up dangerously close. It had taken weeks for the members of Cresh Squad to approach competency in handing the coralskippers and even now, the feeling of the cognition hood over her face seemed stifling and alien, though it was essential to controlling the craft. None of them were naturally trained as starfighter pilots and learning an utter alien form of flight had been even more difficult. The vehicle had no sensor boards and the cognition hood made Tar-sonis feel like she was part of the spacecraft, which meant that she perceived that she was flying through the air with nothing around her—something that was more than a little unsettling.

The peculiar feel and handling of the cognition hood was not the only thing that disturbed her, though. Just being on this mission, with this particular group of commandos and all their famous years of history in the Yanibar Guard, was enough to put her on edge. Despite her current position, Tar-sonis was not normally a member of Cresh Squad. She wasn’t even in the infantry, much less commandos. Normally, she was a Yanibar Guard Army intelligence analyst, assigned to analyze data and assist with mission planning. Strapped into a Battlesuit52 with a blaster rifle on her back was not normally her strong suit, but yet she’d volunteered for this mission despite everything against her. Furthermore, the commandos had welcomed her presence grudgingly, put her through a rigorous, grueling but all too brief training regimen, and otherwise barely tolerated her. In a tightly-knit unit like this one, adding another person and interrupting their typical eight-member cohesion was dangerous.

Of course, that wasn’t the only danger surrounding her involvement here. Ashli Tar-sonis bore a secret, one whose surface nature her superiors were peripherally aware of but whose true depths remained hidden. They probably knew that twenty-four years earlier, her parents, Vree and Storia Tar-sonis, had been in the Yanibar Guard before the Battle of Yanibar, newly married at the time. They probably knew that her parents had been discharged, their service records tarnished by their sudden anxiety attacks upon preparing to enter combat. They didn’t know that her parents were cowards.

Her parents’ places in a Yanibar Guard artillery company had had to be filled by others because they were both seized with fear, unable to carry out their sworn duty. They’d been quietly discharged after the battle, the description reduced to appropriately vague military jargon to avoid complete dishonor. There was no hiding it to Ashli, though. Her parents were too afraid to place their lives on the line to defend their home—and Ashli was mortified at the thought that she too would be unable to function during combat. If that was the case, on this mission, they’d probably all die, or at least she would. And yet, some perverse curiosity, some malevolent inner longing within her desired to put that fear to the test, to examine the mettle of Ashli Tar-sonis.

Even as she focused on flying the coralskipper, tendrils of anxiety lashed her, whispering their sardonic voices into her conscience. They reminded her that she didn’t belong here. That she would screw up. That she was a coward. That she was going to die. Ashli fought to control her now faintly-trembling nerves. One or two more wrong twitches and she wouldn’t even make it to the ground to die in combat.

“Coming up on the drop point, Cresh Nine,” Colonel Knrr told her, interrupting her worry-laden introspection. “Get ready to release.”

“Copy that,” Tar-sonis said, trying to let none of her nervousness show in her voice. She flicked a switch that had been wired into the coralskipper, bored through the yorik coral that comprised its hull. The alien craft shuddered as the yorik coral-sheathed object that had been clamped to her lower hull fell away to impact on the forest below. If they were lucky, Cresh Squad wouldn’t need to use its contents, but it was a bit of insurance in case the mission went awry. The formation of coralskippers looped around the Yuuzhan Vong complex once, then set down gently on the grassy field in front of the curved organic buildings belonging to the alien invaders. Small figures ran up to meet the landing fighters. Many of them were clearly warriors—tall, burly scar-covered aliens in vonduun crab armor, with serpentine amphistaffs coiled around their wrists or waists, though Tar-sonis thought she saw some of the Yuuzhan Vong administrative caste, the intendants, also.

One of the Yuuzhan Vong walked up to Colonel Knrr’s coralskipper and spouted an angry question at the still-closed canopy. The Cresh Squad leader piped through the inquiry through the comlinks so Tar-sonis could hear it and translate.

“Nine, what the kriff is that grinning Vong idiot saying?” Knrr asked.

“He’s asking what you’re doing here, sir. And threatening to kill you if you don’t have a good answer,” she told him, swallowing hard at her anxiously at her first sight of a fearsome Yuuzhan Vong up close.

“Well, ain’t that friendly?” Colonel Knrr drawled. “What’s Vong for ‘So long, idiot’?”

“Uh. . . try ‘Dwi, kane a bar,’” Tar-sonis suggested, her mind racing as she tried to provide the colonel with useful information. “And then get ready for him to attack you.”

“I think I’ve got that covered, Nine,” Colonel Knrr answered dryly.

“Dwi, kane a bar!” he bellowed at the surprised Yuuzhan Vong warrior as he busted open his canopy, practically tearing it off its already weakened mounting.

Before the warrior could so much as snarl or raise his amphistaff, Cresh Leader had shoved his S-2FG rifle into the warrior’s face and unloaded four or five blaster bolts at point blank-range. Hit from that close, the organic armor could not withstand the sudden barrage. The slain warrior toppled over, his head smoldering, as the rest of Cresh Squad followed their leader’s example and made their presence known. Tar-sonis popped the organic equivalent of a hatch off the coralskipper and emerged tentatively from its cockpit, her heart racing as her body sent a surge of adrenaline through her.

She heard the rasping sound of someone’s heavy breathing and quickly checked behind her to make sure there was no ambush. There was none, and then she realized that it was her breathing. She was already sweating profusely from the stress.

“Get down, Nine!” crackled Colonel Knrr’s voice in her helmet.

She dove over the side of her coralskipper and landed behind it even as the Yuuzhan Vong reacted and began mounting a defense. Tar-sonis caught her breath, trying to pull herself together. She could do this. Shooting at the Yuuzhan Vong would be easy, just like in the sims. If only she could convince herself of that truth. Finally, gritting her teeth, she managed to muster the courage to pop up from behind the safety of the coralskipper.

Her S-2CD carbine raised to one shoulder, she blazed away at the surprised Yuuzhan Vong warriors with decent, if not stellar, accuracy. Despite the searing hail of accurate blaster fire cutting them down, the Yuuzhan Vong did not retreat. Tar-sonis’s analysis showed that they rarely ever did, and certainly not on an individual level. There, she’d done it. She’d fired her weapon at the enemy in combat, even hit them a few times. Tar-sonis considered breathing easier, but about that time, the Yuuzhan Vong shouted an angry war cry and retaliated.

Soon, whirring thud bugs and razor bugs came flying back to meet the commandos. Living weapons, thud bugs could hit with surprising force, cracking bones and stunning their victim, while razor bugs were covered with spines that could easily slice through flesh. Fortunately for the commandos, they had an edge, a piece of ancient technology that had been recovered and refurbished for use against this type of weapon—the melee shield. While utterly ineffective against traditional blaster weaponry, melee shields blocked incoming physical attacks, which included virtually every known Yuuzhan Vong weapon. Unfortunately, they ate more power than standard energy shields, so they were better served as a last resort rather than a primary defense.

“Two, Three, move up on the left, cover the flank!” Colonel Knrr barked even as his blaster rifle chattered away at the Yuuzhan Vong. “Nine, keep your damn head down!”

“Aye, sir!” she replied, dropping back behind her coralskipper even as the commandos finished off the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong at the landing area.

She was all too happy to oblige. Firing at a surprised enemy was one thing. Flinching as their weapons narrowly missed her was an entirely different matter and for Tar-sonis, it was her first time to be under live fire. She ejected her spent power pack and tried to ram a new one into the chamber, but it slipped from her shaking fingers. Cursing quietly, she picked up another one and slid it into place, just in time.

A thud bug whined over her head, hitting the ground with a soggy whump. She turned and blasted it before it could dig its way back out from the ground and come after her again. Rising from cover, she searched for more enemies to fire at, but all she saw were blackened, steaming corpses littering the field. Tar-sonis exhaled heavily with relief.

“Take out these skips,” Colonel Knrr ordered. “We don’t need them and I don’t want the Vong picking any clues out of them.”

He pointed his blaster into the open cockpit of his coralskipper and blazed away, incinerating the cognition hood and other control devices. Tar-sonis and the rest of Cresh Squad followed suit, leaving behind a single plasma grenade as well to thoroughly destroy the craft.

“All right, let’s move,” Colonel Knrr said once the final detonations had cooked off “We’ve got a Vong party to crash.”

The eight commandos filed forward towards the nearest Yuuzhan Vong structure, a shell-shaped building which Tar-sonis’s research had indicated was called a grashal. Weapons at the ready, they encountered only a few Yuuzhan Vong who were quickly gunned down.

For her part, Tar-sonis was kept in the middle of the formation where she would be the least exposed to Yuuzhan Vong attacks and the least likely to need to fire. The commandos, after numerous simulation runs, had told her not to fire her weapon unless nobody else had a clear shot or everyone else was engaged. It was safer for everyone that way, and the way her nerves were shaken right now, she began to understand their logic. Her eyes roved from point to point, but without the steadiness and assurance of the other commandos; hers was a frantic, nervous energy akin to an animal being hunted. Thankfully, they encountered no major resistance and she was not required to fire.

“Maybe we caught them napping?” Cresh Three suggested as they advanced into the structure. Colonel Knrr turned back to glare at the speaker.

“What have I said about optimism in this unit?” he growled. “Every time one of you geniuses says something optimistic, all hell breaks loose.”

“Absolutely, sir,” said the irrepressible Three. “There’s a massive Vong ambush up ahead waiting to jump us, capture us, and sacrifice us to their heathen gods one by one.”

“That’s more like it,” Colonel Knrr replied. “Now cut the chatter.”

The commandos clustered up near the main entrance to the grashal. Colonel Knrr waved forward two of his squad, who attached explosives to the sealed membrane that served as a door.

“Open her up,” Cresh Lead said.

At the command, the charges blew, admitting the commandos into the grashal. Their weapons at the ready, they burst in, weapons tracking for any sudden movement or Yuuzhan Vong warriors but found that it was deserted, littered with various organic accoutrements that even Tar-Sonis was unable to completely identify. The interior of the grashal was shiny, like walking inside a seashell, and its rounded asymmetry was a stark departure from standard galactic architecture. Like just about everything else of the Yuuzhan Vong, it was unsettling.

“Clear!” Cresh Five sounded from the other end of the grashal.

“Clear!” Cresh Eight added.

“All right, nothing here, let’s go,” Cresh Lead ordered. “We’ve got to find the objective and get out of here.”

They headed back out cautiously, wary of an ambush, but found none. However, the grashal was only the edge of a sizable Yuuzhan Vong complex that included many other grashals and an even larger building called a damutek. There was no way a small squad of commandos could hope to clear, secure, and search the entire complex before the Yuuzhan Vong realized they were under attack and sent reinforcements. Tar-sonis did not voice that opinion, though—no doubt the colonel was already aware of that.

Colonel Knrr moved them up slowly, advancing towards the next grashal. Tar-sonis suddenly heard a whirring sound from her right. Reflexively, she turned towards the sound, only to be knocked to the ground as a thud bug hit her in the face. The impact sent her sprawling, sparks flying as her shield absorbed the hit. At first, she thought she’d been injured, but her bio-monitors showed no injury except for having the wind nearly knocked out of her. From her undignified position on the ground, Tar-sonis sheepishly realized that, in doing so, she had knocked over Cresh Four and Five, rendering them incapable of assisting against the Yuuzhan Vong warriors who had attacked them. She’d screwed up, nearly got them killed.

Thankfully, there were only four of them and they weren’t expecting their adversaries who were able to absorb thud bug and razor bug hits. Cresh Six dropped to one knee and sprayed autorifle fire over them while Cresh Leader heaved a concussion grenade at them. Wavering amidst a flurry of brilliant purple energy bolts, the explosion of the grenade finished off all four of them.

“Good toss, sir,” Three told the colonel as he checked their flank for more threats.

“Thank you, Three,” Colonel Knrr said, stalking over to where Tar-sonis was picking herself off the ground.

“Are you okay?” he asked her softly.

She nodded dumbly as she retrieved her weapon from where it fell.

“Good,” he said, then he roared at her. “What the hell were you doing?” “Sir, I—,” she stammered, but he continued his diatribe.

“Next time you hear something like that, let us know and take cover, not necessarily in that order. Don’t turn around and get hit, then knock over your squadmates in the process.”

Though she could not see him behind the fully enclosed helmet they were all wearing, Tar-sonis knew his face would be bright red and somewhere between irate and apoplectic. She knew that the colonel was reacting as he would to any screw-up on a mission. The Cresh Squad commandos were fairly nice individuals on a personal level, but when you put them in the field, whether on a training exercise or a mission, they tended to become very demanding, hyper-critical, and utterly focused on the task at hand.

“Yes, sir,” she said forlornly. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

She didn’t want to tell him that it was likely that it would. This wasn’t an environment she was comfortable with, she could seize up at any moment. Tar-sonis thought of her normal office on Yanibar—cool, quiet, relatively secluded, surrounded by computers and machinery. A stark contrast to the hot, cramped, sweaty, smelly, noisy battle complete with tromping through nature and the chaos of combat which she now found herself in. Only some inner determination to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible forced her to doggedly keep pace with the rest of the commandos, her blaster rifle at her shoulder, looking for targets.

At the colonel’s signal, they advanced on the next grashal, but didn’t approach it quite just yet. Colonel Knrr snapped up a hand, indicating an immediate halt. Then, he waved them into a small thicket of nearby vines and bushes, where they took up defensive positions.

“Hold up here; I have a bad feeling about this,” he said. “It’s far too quiet, considering that the Vong know we’re here. Even if they don’t, this place is larger than I thought it would be.”

He turned to Tar-sonis.

“Nine, do you know where they’d likely keep our package?” Startled by his request, Tar-sonis scrambled to think of where the Yuuzhan Vong would keep their objective. A thousand facts about their culture, society, language, and religion flashed through her mind, and being put on the spot made it difficult for her to sort out the ones she needed.

“Nine, do you have any ideas?” Cresh Lead pressed.

The colonel’s impatience was not helping matters, either.

“One minute, sir,” she said, trying to filter her knowledge of the Yuuzhan Vong into something coherent.

Finally, it clicked to her.

“My guess is inside the damutek,” she said. “That’s where they would hold special prisoners. They wouldn’t keep them inside the slave compounds, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?” Colonel Knrr asked cautiously.

“It depends on the manner of their capture,” Tar-sonis explained, some minute measure of confidence creeping into her voice. “If they fought well, they’ll probably end up on the sacrificial altar and killed in honor of the gods. If they were taken by surprised and overwhelmed, they’ve probably been enslaved, unless the Yuuzhan Vong figured out who they are. Then they’ll still be inside the damutek, except bound for some more important sacrificial altar where they can receive the gift of death from the gods in true honor.”

“Thank you for the lecture, Professor,” Cresh Three put in. “So I guess we’re heading for behind the damutek?”

“Good guess, Three,” Colonel Knrr said. “Let’s see if Nine’s wisdom can get us out of here that much faster.”

Dejected, Tar-sonis followed along lamely, knowing that any attempt to vindicate herself would only result in more banter. The commandos had no way of knowing that she was trying the best she could just to avoid complete catatonia—not that they’d be particularly sympathetic if they found out during a mission. Colonel Knrr might spare the Vong the pleasure and just blast her himself. The best she could do was hope to survive this mission by some miracle and return to the analysis work she was trained to do. The part of her that cared about self-preservation was screaming that it wasn’t worth it to find out if she really was a coward—she should focus on staying alive and pondering that question later. Unfortunately, it was far too late for that, so she pressed on with the others.

The eight commandos closed steadily on the damutek, gliding forward in the waist-high grass. Their camouflaged armor helped conceal them in the grass, but Tar-sonis knew that would have limited effect on Yuuzhan Vong warriors looking for them. In the open, they were more vulnerable to being rushed or flanked by warriors. The blasters they carried were powerful, but as some of the more pessimistic projections were showing, couldn’t penetrate vonduun crab armor without repeated concentrations of fire to one area. Moreover, she knew she was more of an impediment to the squad than a help, and when she locked up, she’d be dead weight.

“Lead, we’ve got company,” crackled the voice of Cresh Two, the squad’s scout and the point man for the commando formation.

“Copy that. How many?” Colonel Knrr asked.

“More than you’ve got fingers and toes, sir,” Two replied from where he’d stopped and was using his helmet’s optics to zoom in on the approaching warriors. “They’re not looking too thrilled to see us, either.”

“Get to cover!” Cresh Lead ordered. “Pair up, stick together.”

Tar-sonis looked around for who to partner up with; they hadn’t practiced this drill in the very short time she’d been with the unit.

“Nine, you’re with me,” Lead said. “Keep your head down.”

Something zoomed by her face and she flinched, but ducked and called out a warning.

“Incoming bugs!” she said, tension seeping into her voice.

The Cresh Squad commandos scattered, breaking off in pairs and splitting up so the Yuuzhan Vong couldn’t pin them down and overwhelm them all at once. They laid down a withering blanket of suppression fire as they did so, streams of violet blasterfire that cut down the Yuuzhan Vong advance.

Tar-sonis and Colonel Knrr found cover behind a decent-sized rock. Popping up, Tar-sonis pumped the trigger on her carbine, spraying fire at a Yuuzhan Vong warrior a mere fifty meters away. The weapon cycled down to empty and she dropped back to eject the spent power pack and slot a new one in. Beside her, Colonel Knrr was in constant fluid motion, rising to let loose a short, controlled burst from his rifle, then ducking back before the inevitable hail of bug weapons found him.

Tar-sonis rose again, loosing another trio of bolts at a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. As she did so, she was dismayed to notice another twenty or so moving up to flank the commandos. A chill ran down her spine. They were doomed, cut off by a superior force. She looked around worriedly, not sure what to do. She had to do something. Wait—that was it. An idea sparked into her mind and she seized it, whether it was right or not. The colonel, she had to tell the colonel. Somehow, despite fumbling over her words, she managed to shout a warning.

“Sir, it’s uh—they’ve got reinforcements coming to flank us,” she informed him frantically.

“Kriffing Vong,” Colonel Knrr swore, then he barked out a command. “Cresh Squad, ‘nades on the group ahead of us to slow them down.”

The commandos followed orders, priming the underslung grenade launchers attached to their blasters and aiming them at their original group of adversaries. Seven grenades shot forward from the tubes with muffled whuff-thunks, completing their arcs of destruction in fiery blasts that engulfed several Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Tar-sonis had failed to get hers off, but the damage was done regardless. The crackling blasts bought them some reprieve from the steadily advancing Yuuzhan Vong warriors, but the reinforcements alone were plenty for them handle.

“They had more troops here than we anticipated,” Three growled. “They just keep coming!”

“I know,” Colonel Knrr said as a razor bug slammed into his shield.

It ricocheted into the ground and he shot it with his pistol. The bug’s carapace burst with a soggy explosion and a shower of oozing chitin.

“Prepare to retreat,” he ordered angrily. “We can’t break through to the objective with this many of them in the way.”

Ahead of them, their original group of adversaries roared and charged, hurling even more bug weapons ahead of them, buying time for their allies to advance and cut down the commandos. Colonel Knrr quickly recognized the ploy, ordering a steady barrage of fire on the charging warriors, who had seemingly disregarded all notions of self-preservation.

The hapless Cresh Nine was caught in the thick of it all, panic gripping her as the warriors closed in. They were all going to die here, victims of merciless aliens. She wondered if they’d kill her outright, or capture her and sacrifice her to the gods. She wondered how much it would hurt if an amphistaff slid through her ribs into her heart or bit with its poison fangs. Tar-sonis nearly threw her weapon down and ran, but something began filling her as she saw the colonel cutting down Yuuzhan Vong after Yuuzhan Vong. To her surprise, it was anger, and a desire to help. A sudden impetuousness swept over her, inciting her to participate in the desperate defense in whatever meager way she could. It was not a completely conscious effort, but she made it nonetheless.

Tar-sonis rose to fire, blazing away with her carbine, when a trio of thud bugs slammed into her shield. Her world went white as it overloaded and popped in a shower of sparks, sending her staggering back. Another thud bug slammed into her torso just below the reinforced chestplate, sending a wave of pain through her as absorbed the blow.

“Get down,” Colonel Knrr ordered abruptly.

Snatching her carbine in one hand and wielding his blaster rifle in the other, he unloosed both weapons on full auto. Tar-sonis was amazed that he could even lift both weapons and fire them accurately at the same time and she wondered how much work the tactical AI built into his helmet was doing and how much of that was his innate skill as a soldier.

In less than three seconds, he had depleted her magazine and hurled the carbine back down to her.

“Reload that,” he said as he tossed a thermal detonator at the Vong.

Fingers still shaking, she pulled a power pack off her equipment harness and slotted it into position on the second try even as the crackle of the detonation obliterated three more warriors. This was something she might could handle, supporting a warrior like Colonel Knrr without directly exposing herself to danger. If she didn’t have to face and fight the Yuuzhan Vong directly, maybe she could survive and return to what she did best.

“Go to hell, scarfaces,” the colonel roared as the last of the charging Yuuzhan Vong warriors were mopped up by concentrated blasterfire.

Suddenly, Tar-sonis saw something that the colonel had apparently failed to notice—a first when it came to combat. Several Yuuzhan Vong were priming a weapon she recognized from intelligence holos, and the results could be lethal if ignored, particularly for the colonel. He would die if she didn’t do something. Her anxiety and trepidation were momentarily swept away by a protectiveness that seemed alien to her. And yet, it controlled her, caused her to act in a way foreign to her.

“Sir, on your side!” Tar-sonis shouted as she drew her sidearm and fired in the general direction of the Yuuzhan Vong.

Three plasma eels, the closest Yuuzhan Vong analog to grenades, tipped over in mid-air and dove down towards them. Fueled by desperation, Tar-sonis rolled to the side to evade the weapons while Colonel Knrr leapt an impressive three meters out of the danger zone. Fiery blue gouts of plasma burst around her, singeing her armor as burning dirt and grass ignited around her. She flinched in terror, even as she looked up to see if the colonel was okay. He had to survive, even if she perished. As the flames subsided, she sat up, realizing that she was still alive, and so was Colonel Knrr. Still, this was no time to be celebrating.

The flanking Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements had advanced while the commandos were distracted and were now in weapons range. Tar-sonis and Knrr were fortunate that the Yuuzhan Vong had launched the plasma eels at maximum range rather than their effective range, resulting in them being less accurate than they typically were.

“Status report,” Colonel Knrr said, even as he jumped back to his feet and fell back, tossing Tar-sonis her carbine as he withdrew.

“Four and Five got hit by some bugs,” Cresh Six, the unit medic, reported. “They’re okay and still fighting, but not a hundred percent.”

“I’m fine and dandy, thanks for asking,” Cresh Three said.

The rest of the outfit sounded off even as Colonel Knrr and Tar-sonis fell back.

“I don’t think we can make it to the objective,” he said. “Vong reinforcements will be here soon and we still have another twenty or so in front of us.”

“Shouldn’t you contact Command?” asked Six, who was also the second-in-command.

“I’ve got operational discretion,” Colonel Knrr replied as he sighted through the scope at a distant warrior. “They said I could make the call; I’d hate to leave our package here, though. Damn bad way to die.”

He pulled the trigger twice, sending two bolts lancing out to catch a Yuuzhan Vong warrior in the neck and pitch him backward, dead before he hit the ground. The colonel grunted satisfactorily and sighted in on the next target.

While he had been talking and shooting, the seeds of an idea had been growing in Tar-sonis’s mind as she sized up the situation. That was impossible, though. She didn’t belong here, she couldn’t help the commandos fight Yuuzhan Vong warriors any more than she could breathe vacuum. The Yuuzhan Vong wouldn’t surrender and wouldn’t back down until Cresh Squad was hunted down. They had the numbers and firepower and the aggressive tendencies. Simultaneously, Tar-sonis knew she should have been petrified by her impending death, but, given a reprieve from the defense while huddled behind the bole of a tree, she stopped thinking like a wanna-be infantry soldier and thought like an intelligence analyst. Immediately, her mind cleared out and she closed her eyes, allowing some much-needed focus to calm her furiously racing mind. She was in her element now, might be able to make some contribution to the mission.

Cresh Squad needed to find some way to thin their ranks while reaching their objection. She checked in with her squadmate locator and realized that they still had one more option, but it would take a bit of time to get it set up. Variables clicked into place as she figured out a tactic, letting the colonel do the blasting while she cycled through different components of the plan, discarding those that would not help. When all of the elements she needed were in place, she knew she had something that could possibly work. The only question that remained was whether or not the colonel would listen.

“Nine, are you just going to sit down there and smell the flowers, or do you plan on shooting some of those Vong?” he asked her sardonically.

Wanting to oblige the officer, she leaned out from behind the rock and fired twice without much accuracy.

“Lead, I have an idea,” she suggested.

This was dangerous ground for her, new, unfamiliar ground. She had never shown any initiative on this mission and only her stubborn insistence that she could do what was necessary—which had mostly been a lie—and the fact that they needed her had kept her backside from remaining firmly planted on Yanibar. Cresh Leader knew it was unlikely that she would display any stroke of tactical genius, given his experience with her. Even through the helmet, she could tell he was scowling.

“Nine, one of the most dangerous things in any military is when a junior officer volunteers a suggestion in the field. This had better be good,” he growled.

“I think it is,” she answered cautiously. “It’ll give us a chance to deal with the Yuuzhan Vong up ahead and get the package and get out of here.”

“How much of a chance?” he asked as he heaved another concussion grenade at the distant Yuuzhan Vong.

“Give or take, thirty percent,” she said after considering it for a minute, her newfound confidence buoying her to be more optimistic than she had been a minute ago.

“And if it fails?”

“Then most of us can still probably escape,” Tar-sonis answered, then winced as she added. “Except you.”

“Lovely,” Colonel Knrr replied dryly. “Let’s hear it.”

“You challenge the Yuuzhan Vong leader to a duel,” she told him. “Say that you want to see if any of them have enough honor to fight you one-on-one, hand-to-hand. Also say that you’ll want our package and our safe retreat if you win.”

She paused, knowing that her idea was probably about to be shot down by the others. Still, for once, she had volunteered a suggestion, and she hadn’t been frozen by fear yet. She was still alive. All of those were positives. Tar-sonis decided she would take whatever victories she could get, even small victories, moral victories, any victories.

“Nine, these are Yuuzhan Vong,” Three put in. “They don’t honor their word. Ithor proved that.”

There had been a similar situation on the world of Ithor months earlier, where a Jedi Knight named Corran Horn had challenged a Yuuzhan Vong warrior to a duel that would decide the planet’s fate. Horn had won, but the Vong had treacherously torched Ithor anyway, devastating the entire planet.

“Of course not, Lead,” Tar-sonis explained. “But we’re not counting on that to get the package free.”

“What are we counting on?” Three asked.

“A few things,” she said simply. “Like remotely activated mines at the perimeter of the battleground. Like our—,”

“I get the idea,” Lead said. “Do it. Tell the scarheads what they need to hear, then give me your vibroblade. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

“Lead, that’s suicide,” Six put in. “You’re no match for the best Vong warrior in hand-to-hand.”

“Thank you for your confidence in my abilities, Six,” Colonel Knrr retorted dryly. “But this is my call to make and I’m making it. For once, Nine’s right—this is our only shot at battling through all these uglies and getting our package. It’s a chance I’m willing to take. Nine, give them my invitation; squad prepare to fall back. Don’t forget to leave some presents for our Vong friends.”

Tar-sonis couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The colonel had accepted her idea—he’d even said she was right. For once, she’d positively contributed to the mission—that actually remained to be seen, contingent on the Yuuzhan Vong response, but it had been useful. She’d done something right and that alone was enough to swell her miniscule confidence levels to merely tiny.

“Thank you, sir,” she stammered.

“Let’s hope I survive to thank you, Nine,” he commented dryly.

They followed suit, dropping mines and grenades near the perimeter of the field they had been fighting. As they fell back, Tar-sonis amplified the audio output of her speakers, bracing herself emotionally to impersonate a personality completely opposite to hers. Taking a deep breath, she ran through what she knew about the diction used in the alien language, screaming out a challenge in halting Yuuzhan Vong. It took conscious effort to inject the necessary aggression and brute force that the Yuuzhan Vong would respect into her voice, but she thought she managed it.

“My leader wishes for to know if any the Yuuzhan Vong warriors glorious dare to combat face him. Honor have you?”

Okay, so it wasn’t her best attempt at translation ever. A shouted cry from the Yuuzhan Vong below told her that they weren’t impressed either.

“Speak your mangled Basic, infidel,” one of them roared back. “Your pathetic attempts at rendering our tongue insult the gods!”

“Your very existence insults the gods!” Tar-sonis shouted in angry reply, this time in Basic. “My leader will not even speak to ones so weak as you. There are few of us and many of you, yet we all live. These are not the Yuuzhan Vong we have heard tales of, the mighty warriors that conquer and slay as they will.”

“Enough of your blasphemy!” raged a Yuuzhan Vong. “Your machine abominations show your unworthiness to meet the glorious Yuuzhan Vong in single combat.”

“Tchurokk Yun'tchilat!" she shouted at him in Yuuzhan Vong. “Witness the will of the gods!”

She continued in Basic.

“We revere Yun-Yammka the Slayer as well,” Tar-sonis called, struggling to maintain the necessary snarling to convince the Yuuzhan Vong leader. “My leader wishes to meet one of you in honorable battle. If he wins, he desires to witness the sacrifice of your most worthy prisoner to the Slayer himself.”

“The gods would not permit an infidel such as you to witness such a sacrifice,” came the warrior’s angry reply.

“Then you are afraid to accept this challenge?” Tar-sonis mocked him, knowing she was treading very dangerously. “We thought the Yuuzhan Vong were worthy foes, but we have slain many of your kind already. Before this day is over, I will spit on your dead face and despoil it with my machine weapons.”

The fact that such an open challenge had issued itself from her mouth startled her. She’d been caught up in the moment, inciting the warrior to anger. Tar-sonis had never thought she’d actually say such a thing to a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, though.

There was a moment of enraged snarling and cursing in the Yuuzhan Vong language, then the largest Yuuzhan Vong Tar-sonis had ever seen jumped forward, amphistaff at the ready, held out like a spear in front of him.

“You are not worthy to face the Yuuzhan Vong,” he roared furiously. “But I will accord you the gift of a swift death in honor of Yun-Yammka the Slayer. Send out your leader that I might end your infidel existence as quickly as possible!”

Tar-sonis handed Colonel Knrr her vibroblade, knowing that her idea could likely send him to his death. She shuddered appreciatively as she realized that he was willing to make a sacrifice that she still wasn’t sure she could give.

“It’s all yours,” she said. “We either cut him down now and withdraw, or you do this.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, setting down his rifle and hefting a vibroblade in each hand.

“All that hand-to-hand training better pay off right about now,” he muttered.

Colonel Knrr stepped out as the remaining commandos fanned out into a roughly circular perimeter of the field they had been fighting over. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors surrounding their leader did the same, spreading out in a ring. Little did they know they were walking on areas laced with mines and explosives by the commandos. Even as they set themselves to counter the commandos, they were moving into positions that the Cresh Squad commandos had arranged to be their doom.

“Bring out your worthiest sacrifices,” Colonel Knrr called out, based on prompting from Tar-sonis. “I wish to dedicate this duel to Yun-Yammka the Slayer!”

“You will not bear witness to such a sacrifice,” the Yuuzhan Vong leader called out, a cruel smile on his scarred and mutilated face. “I will see to it that she is sacrificed only after your infidel lifeblood is leaking out on this field.”

He gestured, and two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, accompanied by a small procession of priests, emerged from the damutek. The warriors were carrying between them a captive, a Lethan Twi’lek female—the Cresh Squad objective. She looked weary and beaten, her clothing ragged and appearance haggard, but she was alive, and if Tar-sonis’s plan went well, would stay that way.

The Yuuzhan Vong leader gestured with his amphistaff at the captive.

“She will be sacrificed in honor of the Slayer after I dispose of your infidel carcass,” he said with a sneer. “She at least is worthy of an honorable death.”

“So come get me,” Colonel Knrr taunted.

The Yuuzhan Vong hissed and crouched low, preparing to spring. He was terrifying, Tar-sonis thought. Clad in his living, spike-infested armor, he towered over Colonel Knrr. His numerous scars and mutilations, signs of his advancement in the warrior caste, rendered him hideous and deformed. The serpentine amphistaff he bore hissed and spat as it undulated in the warrior’s hands. He was a personification of the alien conquerors, proud and ferocious.

“For the honor of Yun-Yammka, the Yuuzhan Vong, and Domain Eklut, I, Commander Carsh Eklut, will tear your heart from your miserable body before this day is over,” Eklut roared.

“You’ll try,” Colonel Knrr retorted. “I gave my heart to a lady years ago and she’s far too pretty for me to take it back.”

With an alien scream of rage, Eklut charged, snapping his amphistaff’s tail forward as he thrust it at Colonel Knrr. The creature’s tail flattened into a blade like a spear, seeking out the commando’s vital organs. Colonel Knrr backpedaled, knocking it away with an uppercut of his right vibroblade. Eklut continued his advance, reforming the amphistaff into a polearm and battering away at his opponent. The first few strikes, Colonel Knrr was able to deflect, but soon they were coming too fast and furious for him to handle. The blows sparked off his melee shield, eliciting a howl of anger at Eklut for the cowardice and blasphemous nature of his opponent.

The shorter reach of the vibroblades meant that Knrr couldn’t get close enough to actually stab or slash his opponent. The colonel managed to land one glancing blow across Eklut’s wrist, but a slice that would have nearly severed the hand off an unarmored opponent merely left a thin graze in the vonduun crab armor. The slash left him open to a swift punch to the face from Eklut that sent him staggering back even as he took the impact on his shield. The colonel fought defensively against his opponent’s aggression even as he tried to find a way to reach through the amphistaff and stab an unprotected area. His augmented suit and experience were allowing him to hold off the warrior, but he knew that Eklut was bigger and probably stronger than he was, as well as more versed in this mode of combat.

Colonel Knrr dropped under a vicious horizontal slice that would have let the amphistaff’s head bite him. Scything his leg across, he attempted to kick Eklut in the knee, only to have the Yuuzhan Vong warrior reach down and grab his foot. Showing his tremendous strength, Eklut heaved Knrr up and over his shoulder with one hand, sending him flying back to land on his back, the vibroblades flying from his hand. The impact drove the wind out of the commando and his shield popped in a shower of yellow sparks.

Eklut’s amphistaff reformed itself into a spear, descending downward in a swift arc to skewer him. He rolled at the last minute, kicking up at Eklut’s groin. The impact did nothing to slow the warrior down; instead, he stomped on Knrr’s armored chest, eliciting a gasp of pain as Knrr fought to breathe. His armor injected him with stimulants and adrenaline, but those would take some time to kick in, time he didn’t have. The amphistaff swung around in another blow meant to decapitate him, but Knrr managed to lean up and catch Eklut’s wrist before the blow could be fully delivered.

His grip slowed the blow and deflected it so it only tore a deep furrow across his chest armor.

“ETA, max crush strength,” he said to his tactical AI.

The computer complied, amplifying his grip strength to five times the normal rated amount for a Human. Knrr squeezed as hard as he could and was rewarded to hear bones in the warrior’s wrist snap and fracture.

“Hu-carjen tok!” the warrior gasped as his hand exploded in fiery tendrils of pain streaking up his arm.

Grabbing his amphistaff one-handed, Eklut made it pliant, coiling it around Knrr’s wrist that caught the alien warrior in a crushing vise-like grip. The Yuuzhan Vong jerked hard, yanking the crushgauntlet free from his wrist even as he stomped on the commando’s chest again. Knrr winced as pain shot through his rib cage, then pointed his right wrist at the Yuuzhan Vong warrior and fired his “one-shot,” a poison dart built into his gauntlet, at Eklut. The Yuuzhan Vong threw up his damaged right arm to protect his face, and the dart failed to even penetrate his armor.

Knrr swore as he scrambled backward, catching a scything blow of the now whip-like amphistaff across his knee. Grabbing hold of the amphistaff as it came around to slash him along the face, he pulled himself up even as Eklut manipulated it such that its head sank its fangs into his gauntlet. Knrr shrugged off the attack; the amphistaff didn’t even penetrate. Grabbing the amphistaff’s body with his left crushgauntlet, he jerked it forcefully out of Eklut’s hands. If the warrior hadn’t had a broken wrist, he could have held out against the attack, but in his injured state, he wasn’t strong enough to withstand Knrr’s sudden motion. The colonel tossed the living weapon aside even as he prepared to face Eklut’s constant onslaught.

Disarmed but still dangerous, Eklut smashed a backhanded punch across Knrr’s face, damaging one of his helmet sensors and sending him staggering back. The Yuuzhan Vong grabbed Knrr’s head and drove it down into his knee, sending waves of agony through Knrr’s skull as he tried to see through his battered optical sensors.

Eklut bodily picked up a struggling Knrr with his left hand and then rammed his damaged right hand into Knrr’s face, ignoring the consequences as he left black blood smeared across his opponent’s helmet.

“Do-ro’ik vong pratte!” the warrior screamed out the war cry of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

Hurling the injured and helpless Knrr to the ground, Eklut drew his coufee knife with his left hand, licking its edge, clearly taking masochistic pleasure in the fresh rivulet of blood that welled up from his cut tongue. With a wrathful look, he brought the coufee down, intending to plunge it through Colonel Knrr’s armor and into his heart.

Suddenly, something slammed into him right in the armpit while his left arm was raised in preparation for the finishing blow. It punched through the vulnerable gills of the vonduun crab and penetrated into his chest cavity, shattering a rib. The destroyed bone sent fragments through his major blood vessels and heart, eliciting a spray of blood from the wound even as the penetrator finally lodged itself in his sternum, cracking that bone as well and emerging from his skin to come to rest against the inside of his chest armor.

The something was a tungsten-durasteel slug fired at a velocity of 2,000 meters per second from Cresh Seven, the squad sniper, who was crouched in a thicket eight hundred meters away. He had been the cargo that Cresh Nine had dropped from her coralskipper and while Cresh Squad had fought their way through the compound, he’d been settling into position to support them when Cresh Six had contacted him and told him of Colonel Knrr’s plan. The sniper had watched the entire duel through his scope, waiting for a clear shot at the Vong’s vulnerable underarm—he wasn’t sure if his metal slugs could penetrate vonduum crab armor. The sound of the shot was only heard after it rammed into Eklut.

Amazingly, the Yuuzhan Vong warrior wasn’t instantly killed—a rarity for victims of Cresh Seven’s lethal trade. He wavered a little, staggering back as he tried to use his left arm with tendons and ligaments that had been shredded by bone fragments. The coufee dropped from his hands to land on the blood-stained, trampled grass of the field. Colonel Bryndar Knrr painfully pulled himself up, retrieving the coufee as he did so.

The Yuuzhan Vong snarled something vile at him in his language as Knrr stared malevolently at him. Then, with a loud cry of exertion, the colonel rammed the coufee into the wound created by Seven’s sniper shot. He felt the hilt of the blade twitch as its point lodged within the Yuuzhan Vong’s still-beating heart and twisted it viciously until the twitching stopped and black blood gushed from the stab wound. Carsh Eklut gasped, wheezed, then his eyes rolled up into his head as he died, his features frozen in eternal pain.

In that moment, all hell broke loose. The commandos activated the mines, setting off a crescent of explosions filled with smoke, fire, a black mist of Yuuzhan Vong blood, and severed legs and other body parts. The remaining warriors and priests were cut down by a hail of blasterfire; tight, accurate bursts that left the Twi’lek captive unharmed. The mine blasts and defeat of their leader, as well as the sudden treachery of the commandos, had taken the Yuuzhan Vong by surprise. A flurry of razor bugs were hurled at Colonel Knrr, but he positioned himself behind Eklut’s body so that the corpse took the impact instead of him while he returned fire with his blaster pistol.

Tar-sonis watched in stunned awe as the colonel slew the Yuuzhan Vong warrior. She’d done it. She’d vindicated herself despite a series of mistakes. The analyst had even managed to contribute an idea as well as her expertise, if not much in the way of direct combat. A euphoric feeling suffused her, even as she raised her weapon to fire at the remaining warriors. She could do that now, even if she still flinched at incoming bugs. She was not a coward.

Even as more Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements came running to the rescue, Tar-sonis saw that Cresh Six had dashed forward to the Lethan Twi’lek. When one of the priests had attempted to stab the prisoner with some kind of weapon, the commando shot the alien in the face with his blaster, pitching it backward. The Twi’lek’s hands were secured with some kind of living creature that he didn’t know how to release and she looked like she’d been dragged through hell and back, but fire blazed defiantly in her eyes.

“Your blade, soldier,” she said.

He nodded, unsheathing his vibroblade. It left his hands without any motion from him, dipping back behind the Twi’lek to slice through the creature and free her from her bonds.

“I think I’ll hang on to this,” she told him.

He nodded, then gestured back to where Tar-sonis and Cresh Two were covering Colonel Knrr’s retreat.

“Master Daara, if you’ll link up with our unit, we can cover you,” Colonel Knrr said. “Where’s Master Kacheen?”

“Dead,” she said flatly. “He was bitten by an amphistaff when we were captured. They sacrificed him yesterday before he expired.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Cresh Six said sincerely, knowing that Kacheen had not only been a fellow Force-user, but also her husband of many years.

“Thank you, soldier,” she said. “What’s the plan?”

He handed her an earpiece comlink so she could listen in to their conversation.

“We get Master Kacheen and get the hell out of here,” Colonel Knrr said, fighting off the waves of pain. “The scarheads won’t take too kindly to our antics.”

“That first part won’t be necessary,” Daara told him, her eyes clouded with sorrow. “Kacheen is dead.”

The colonel paused a minute to take in that news. She and Kacheen had been married for many years and it had to have been traumatic for her, despite the fact that she was putting a brave face on it. He couldn’t imagine enduring Yuuzhan Vong captivity after that.

“My regrets, ma’am,” he said. “He was a brave warrior.”

“We’ll have time for grief later,” she said flatly. “Let’s move out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Not quite yet,” Cresh Six protested, stepping forward with a pair of injectors. “Not until you have these.”

“Fine, doc, but make it fast,” Colonel Knrr said. “As long as we can move, we’ll be fine. If we stop, we die.”

The medic injected them with a potent combination of nutrients, stimulants, glucose, antishock, painkillers, and adrenaline, known in commando parlance as a pick-me-up. It would do little for their injuries, but it would let them keep fighting for a little longer until they could reach the extraction point.

The commandos fell back, linking up with Cresh Seven. Yuuzhan Vong warriors pursued them, but the commandos occasionally paused to fire at them, slowing down their advance. In particular, the S-5X sniper rifle that Seven was carrying proved to be absolutely lethal when combined with his shooting skills. Still, they were hard-pressed to escape.

“How much further to the extraction point?” Tar-sonis asked as she panted for breath.

The suit’s microrepulsors were designed to boost the endurance of the wearer, but one had to be accustomed to them to utilize that effectively, she reflected. She was soaked in sweat inside the close-fitting suit, and her suit’s biosign monitors showed she was dangerously close to dehydration.

“About another kilometer,” Cresh Six told her, having assumed command of the squad in the face of Colonel Knrr’s injuries. “Use your suit’s recycling system to get some water if you need to.”

Tar-sonis comlink-clicked in reply, reaching for the small siphon that led to a reservoir of water that the suit collected from her excretions, purified, and recycled. Sipping it, she revolted and nearly gagged at its stale taste and oily texture—too much sweat in it, obviously. It was tepid and warm, but it was water.

Suddenly, a formation of aquatic-looking craft soared over them with a loud whining sound, splitting up to surround them. They started glowing red, releasing a smattering of something that began encircling them.

“Nine, what the kriff are those?” Colonel Knrr demanded.

A sudden chill ran down Tar-sonis’s spine as she recognized this particular Yuuzhan Vong weapon. With some effort, though, she suppressed her worry from welling up within her and crippling her. It would not prevent her from doing her duty.

“Those are tsik-vai fliers,” she said. “Atmospheric craft that do a really good job of searching and capturing prisoners. Those things they dropped are netting beetles.”

“That can’t be good,” Cresh Three said as the tsik vai wove a pattern around them.

“They’re not,” Tar-sonis confirmed. “They’ll make an impenetrable fence around us and then capture us with tentacles on the fliers.”

“Yeah, well, I never was big on tentacles,” Cresh Seven said, then turned to Master Daara. “No offense, ma’am.”

One of her lekku twitched as she stared coolly at him.

“Circular formation,” Colonel Knrr ordered. “Find cover while we wait for help.”

The fliers continued to surround them, and, as Tar-sonis had predicted, one of them swooped down, extending tentacles to capture its prisoners. Beyond them, netting beetles wove a pattern of a wire-like substance akin to a three-dimensional spider web, trapping the commandos. The tentacles dropped down as Cresh Squad cut loose with their blasters. Cresh Four pulled out his ordnance launcher and nailed the tsik vai in its underbelly with a rocket, sending it hurtling away with a messy hole carved into its underside, trailing smoke.

“That was pretty,” the commando remarked as the doomed flier crashed into the forest.

Then, a full hundred Yuuzhan Vong warriors ran into the clearing where the commandos had been trapped, surrounding them. Cresh Squad did not wait for them to start hurling their thud bugs and plasma eels, opening fire as soon as they were in range. As before, Cresh Seven was particularly devastating as he plied his lethal trade, but the situation was hopeless. They were seemingly surrounded and outnumbered, with no hope of escape.

Yet in the midst of all this, Colonel Bryndar Knrr was smiling even as he blazed away, even as the pain from his injuries threatened to overcome him and send him crashing to the ground. This eerie calm and assurance he felt was not merely the result of his soldier’s training or a readiness to face death; it was because he knew something the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t know.

Cresh Squad had managed to reach their extraction point, and it was now time for the Yuuzhan Vong to realize the error of their ways. The commandos were not alone. While they had been fighting on the ground, events had been developing in space.

A feint by the Yanibar Guard Fleet had drawn off the Yuuzhan Vong ships on the far side of the Leritor system before the commandos inserted in their coralskippers. The Yuuzhan Vong had reacted predictably, sending their vessels to challenge the intruders, but not willing to risk a direct engagement against a fleet of that size, content to await reinforcement and instructions on how to deal with a sizable force appearing in their territory. The Yanibar Guard Fleet hadn’t been interested in conflict though, powering up their gravity well generators and pinning the Yuuzhan Vong ships in place, unable to escape to hyperspace to counter the lone Shien-class frigate that had jumped in very close to Leritor. It, and the warriors it carried, was their extraction force.

Now, the frigate gradually resolved itself into a dark speck above the commandos. Its bay doors opened and a number of armored figures tumbled out, dropping down on jet packs and gravity. The frigate was somewhat primitive by Yanibar Guard standards, having been inherited secondhand when the Jalsinarre Brotherhood mercenaries had joined the Yanibar Guard and then refurbished, but it was still lethal, especially against ground troops.

The captain, Jalsinnare Fifth Rank Dardna Yionian, took a quick glance at the sensor boards showing the situation on the ground before barking out rapid orders to his gunners. He was a stout, imposing human, his head shaved except for an ebony ponytail dangling from the back of his skull, his ears lined with the trophy earrings of a true Jalsinnare warrior.

“I want main cannons fired in quadrants 3.1, 3.3, 3.6, and 3.9,” he ordered. “Low-impact shots, quarter power. Set up an inner firebreak so the scarheads don’t try a charge. Keep them separate from our ranks while we cull their heathen hordes.”

“What about the fliers, Fifth Rank?”

“Use the ventral lasers to keep them away,” Yionian commanded. “Fire on my order.”

He waited three more seconds, watching the progress of the descending extraction team, then gave the order to fire.

“Fire,” he said.

On his command, the two main triple-barreled rail cannon turrets swiveled downward, aiming their 280mm bores along the firing solutions transmitted to them. Then, they began to rain fire down on the Yuuzhan Vong complex and ground forces. The ship shuddered as they bombarded the ground with their stream of heavy metal projectiles. Meanwhile, four ventral laser batteries began plastering the tsik vai fliers with violet energy bolts of hot light. Caught offguard by the arrival of the frigate due to their lack of coralskipper patrols and the raid on their compound, the Yuuzhan Vong pursuit force was swiftly decimated.

Fifth Rank Yionian smiled grimly at the sight of the carnage and the burning Yuuzhan Vong complex. The alien invaders would soon come to fear the name of the Jalsinnare, just as a hundred other opponents had before them.

The ground roared around Cresh Squad, louder than the fiercest thunderstorm Tar-sonis had ever been in, even on inclement Yanibar. Towering clouds of smoke billowed from where the metal slugs had smashed into the ground less than a kilometer away and her ears, despite the audio protection of her helmet, were ringing with the impact. The Yuuzhan Vong had charged, desperate to at least claim some victims, when suddenly, jets of fire had descended from the now-clouded sky. They proved to be the jetpacks of the Jalsinnare Brotherhood warriors, dropping down in a ring around the surrounded commandos.

Steady streams of purple blaster bolts and the fiery arcs of rockets sailed from the Jalsinnare Thor warriors as they unleashed their firepower on the Yuuzhan Vong. There were only eight of them, but they were packing either a rocket launcher or a rotary repeating blaster that normally had to be stationary to fire. Their powered armor suits were beyond the type of battlesuit that Cresh Squad was wearing—they were more akin to a vehicle than infantry suits. Tar-sonis knew that armored male warriors were called Thors, after an ancient superstition on their homeworld. Four slimmer Jalsinnare dropped into the ranks of Cresh Squad and judging by their armor type, they were females. In the Jalsinnare Brotherhood’s structure, females in powered armor were called Banshees, named after a mythical phantom creature. They were infiltration specialists, snipers, and medics all rolled into one powered-armor package. Cutting loose with bulked-up versions of the S-5X, they provided covering fire against the remaining Yuuzhan Vong while the male Thors in their frontline combat suits used their wrist blasters and flamethrowers to punish any Yuuzhan Vong who tried to complete their suicidal charge and close to melee range.

The stench of ozone and burned flesh saturated the air even as a slow silence descended over the battlefield as the bombardment subsided. Small fires burned in the grass and on bodies where the Thors had used their flamethrowers. The fliers had all been shot down, and the Yuuzhan Vong on the ground were all dead, cut down by the lethal Jalsinnare Brotherhood.

The eight Thors each walked up to one of the Cresh Squad commandos while one of the Banshees headed over to Master Daara and another over to Colonel Knrr.

“Hold on tight,” Tar-sonis heard the ultra-deep synthesized voice of the Thor in front of her say.

She grabbed onto his armor even as he wrapped his arms around her. The rest of them followed suit, then activated their jetpacks to take them soaring up into the sky to the safety of the frigate. She looked down at the rapidly diminishing battlefield as they lifted off hundreds of meters into the air. For all the power that she felt like she possessed while wearing her battlesuit, the Jalsinnares were something more.

Nine riders rode the trails of the jet packs of the Thors while Master Daara followed with the Banshees into the clouds of Leritor, safe in the grasp of their rescuers as they flew to safety. Tar-sonis reflected that Cresh Squad was leaving Leritor in much the same way they had arrived, propelled by a force they didn’t understand. They had been carried in and out of battle by foreign means, somehow compelled and conveyed to the place where they contributed their own little part to a greater fight against an enemy that didn’t even know the meaning of peace or mercy. It was a fitting analogy for their role in this entire war, Tar-sonis decided, a conflict that had involved great powers clashing over the galaxy. It had somehow dragged the Yanibar Guard into participation despite a lack of general desire to become involved.

For better or worse, the Yanibar Guard had just involved itself in direct combat against the Yuuzhan Vong, who were known to hate the technology that the Yanibar Guard depended on to fight almost as much as they hated all Force-users. Now they had to face the consequences of that decision, and if what they had done to other worlds and peoples across the galaxy was any example, Tar-sonis was not looking forward to the inevitable Yuuzhan Vong response.

However, if any other good besides rescuing Master Daara had come out of this mission, it was that her doubts had finally been settled. She had not only survived a combat mission, but had contributed positively. She hadn’t gotten anyone killed—other than the Yuuzhan Vong. She hadn’t been totally paralyzed with fear, useless to the squad. No, if anything positive had ultimately come out of her participation in the bloody skirmish on Leritor, it was that Ashli Tar-sonis was not a coward. She was a soldier of Yanibar, and she would carry out her duty, to the death if needed. Whatever the Yuuzhan Vong eventually decided to do about this particular foray, she would be ready to help defend her world and her people. She was sure of it.