Outbound Flight

"What is it?" Lorana asked, swiveling her chair to her own displays.

"Look at the warships," Ma'Ning said. "See all those plastic bubbles on the hulls?"

Lorana felt her chest tighten. "There arepeople in there!"

"Living shields," C'baoth confirmed, his voice thick with contempt. "The most evil and cowardly defense concept ever created."

"What do we do?" Lorana asked, a sudden trembling in her voice. "We can't just slaughter them."

"Courage, Jedi Jinzler," C'baoth said. "We'll simply shootbetween the hostages."

"Impossible," Ma'Ning insisted. "Not even with Jedi gu

"Do you assume me to be a fool, Master Ma'Ning?" C'baoth demanded scathingly. "Of course we won't fire until we're close enough for the necessary accuracy."

"And meanwhile we just sit here and taketheir fire?" Ma'Ning countered.

"Hardly," C'baoth said, an edge of malicious anticipation creeping into his voice. "The Vagaari have a surprise in store for them. All Jedi: prepare to meld. Stretch out to the Force. . and then, to the Vagaari."

"They make no answer," the Miskara said accusingly, as if Outbound Flight's silence was Car'das's fault.

"Perhaps they're still consulting among themselves, Your Eminence," Car'das suggested, shifting his eyes back and firth across the sky. The Vagaari ships had started to close the gap between themselves and Outbound Flight, moving together into groups of tight-formation clusters that would provide them the protection of overlapping forward shields.

They were preparing to attack.

And still nothing from Outbound Flight. Or from Thrawn, for that matter. His ships had to be around here somewhere. But where?

"You will give them a new message," the Miskara ordered. " 'The time for discussion is ended. You will surrender now or-' "

And in the middle of the sentence, his voice abruptly dissolved into a confused burbling.

Car'das frowned, pressing the comlink to his ear. The whole bridge seemed to have collapsed into the same helpless babbling, as if the entire crew had had a mass mental attack.

Which was, he suspected, exactly what had happened.

He looked out again at Outbound Flight, an unpleasant shiver ru

Until now.

And with that, he knew, it was all over. The final card had come up double-down-nine, and the rest was as fixed and inevitable as a planetary orbit.

With the comlink still pressed to his ear, he settled down to wait for the end.

"So your tales were correct," Mitth'raw'nuruodo murmured. "Your Jedi have reached across the distance to the Vagaari and numbed or destroyed their minds."

"So it would seem," Doriana agreed, feeling a little numb himself. Even if it was just the Vagaari commanders and gu

And it was being performed by a relative handful of Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights.

Predictably, it was Kav who broke the awed silence first. "And our part is to sit by and do nothing?" he prompted.

"Our part is to do that for which we have come," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. Reaching to his board, he keyed a switch. "It is time for the Vagaari to die."

"TheVagaari? " Kav echoed. "No! You were given my starfighters for use against Outbound Flight."

"I was notgiven the starfighters at all," Mitth'raw'nuruodo corrected him coolly. Ahead, the droid starfighters were rising in waves now from their asteroid staging area, heading at full speed toward the clusters of Vagaari warships. "Iwill choose how to use them."

Kav snarled something in his own language. "You will not get away with this," he bit out.

"Walk cautiously, Vicelord," Mitth'raw'nuruodo warned, his glowing eyes flashing at the Neimoidian. "Don't forget that the starfighters aren't the only Neimoidian technology I've taken from you."

Doriana felt a sudden tingling on the back of his neck. He spun around, expecting to find the two droidekas Mitth'raw'nuruodo had taken from the Darleveme standing behind them in full combat stance.

But there was nothing there. "No, Commander, the combat droids are not here," Mitth'raw'nuruodo assured him. "They're where they can be of far more useful service."

"And where is that?" Doriana asked.

"Where else?" Mitth'raw'nuruodo said, smiling tightly. "On the bridge of the Vagaari flagship."

The sudden multiple stutter of blasterfire in his ear sent Car'das twitching to the side, and he banged his elbow against the edge of the bubble as he hastily moved the comlink farther away. His head was still ringing as the rhythmic fire of the droidekas was joined by the more deliberate shots from the four battle droids' rifles. Apparently, Thrawn had had a secondary control pattern laid in beneath the program Car'das had set up earlier for the Miskara. The sounds of shooting shifted subtly as the six droids began to move across the bridge, mowing down the helpless gu

And as they systematically chopped off the head of the Vagaari leadership hierarchy, the droid starfighters arrived.

The first and second waves flashed overhead without slowing, skimming the hull barely five meters from Car'das's face as they drove toward the clusters of Vagaari ships in the distance. The third wave arrived in full combat mode, their laser ca

But the starfighters had pulled it off. In every single one of the bubbles within his view, the Geroon hostages were still alive-terrified, certainly, some of them clawing mindlessly at the plastic as if trying to tu