Read Online Ylesia by Walter Jon Williams - Free Book Online Page A

“I’ve just lost rear shields!
Anyone!
This is Twin Two—I’ve just lost an engine!
Help!
”
    Twin Two was Vale, Jaina’s rookie wingmate—probably lost, and without cover. He felt Jaina’s rising tension through the Force-meld as she searched for Twin Two, and he scanned the mass of weaving fighters as he approached, seeing one madly dancing X-wing with a tail of flame, a pair of skips weaving after her.
    â€œBreak left, Twin Two,” he called. “I’ve got you.”
    â€œBreaking left!” Panic and relief warred in Vale’s reply.
    Jacen hit the atmosphere brakes and the X-wing slowed as if it had hit a lake of mercury, and then he crabbed his jouncing fighter around into a shot on the lead coralskipper. His laser bolts blew the canopy away and sent the craft in an end-over-end spin for the planet below. The second enemy dodged his lasers, and Jacen yanked his fighter into an even tighter turn, the atmosphere jolting the craft, dropping its speed. The enemy swallowed his concussion missile into the singularity of its dovin basal and caught the laser bolts as well, but Jacen saw Vale dart away into safety while her pursuer was preoccupied. And then enemy rounds were hammering on Jacen’s shields, and he released the atmosphere brakes and tried to roll away, punching the throttle.
    He’d slowed down too much, losing speed and maneuverability and choice. An enemy had found him and was hovering off his tail, hurling round after round after him while he tried desperately to regain speed and the ability to maneuver . . .
    Jacen’s astromech droid chittered as the aft shields died. And then there was a crash that Jacen felt through his spine, and the stick kicked against his gloved hand. The X-wing slewed abruptly to the left. It slowed so much that the pursuing coralskipper overshot, passing within meters of Jacen’s canopy, and his head swiveled on his neck as he looked frantically in all directions, trying to spot any additional threats . . .
    And there it was. On the end of Jacen’s left foils, its claws dug into the paired laser cannons, was a grutchin, one of the winged, insectoid, metal-eating creatures that the Yuuzhan Vong sometimes released with their missiles. A grutchin whose malevolent black-eyed gaze stared back at Jacen, before it turned to its work and took a leisurely chomp out of the upper left foil.
    Jacen dived to gain speed, working the controls frantically to keep the X-wing balanced as the weight and drag of the grutchin threatened to destabilize it. As speed built he was rewarded by the grutchin digging its claws more firmly into the foil, hunching against the battering it was receiving from the atmosphere. Jacen felt his lips draw back in a harsh smile. He’d hoped the wind would strip the grutchin away, but this was the next best thing: the creature couldn’t eat his ship as long as it was spending all its strength just to hang on.
    Then Jacen pulled back on the stick and fed power to the engines. The only way to get rid of the grutchin was to open the canopy and shoot the thing off his wing, but he couldn’t open the canopy and stand up as long as he was in Ylesia’s atmosphere—the wind would tear him right out of the craft and send him tumbling toward the planet below with half the bones in his body broken.
    An interesting dilemma,
he thought. The grutchin couldn’t eat his craft as long as Jacen was flying at speed through the atmosphere, but he couldn’t get rid of the grutchin until he got out of the atmosphere altogether. This would call for fine judgment.
    â€œThis is Twin Thirteen,” he said into the comm. “I’ve got a grutchin on my wing. I’ll be back after I deal with it.”
    â€œCopy,” came Jaina’s voice. He could hear the strain of combat in the terse expression, and feel her stress in the Force.
    Jacen kept his eyes on the grutchin and his throttles all the