Outbound Flight

And not just aboard the flagship. All around him, Car'das could see clouds of debris and escaping air enveloping the other nearby Vagaari warships, the haze scintillating with the fiery glow of the starfighters' drives as they finished each set of targets and moved on to the next. Already in this first attack, he estimated Thrawn's assault had taken out over a quarter of the alien warships.

And still with no response from the remainder. The question now, he knew, was whether the Jedi control of the aliens would last long enough for the starfighters to finish the job. Switching on his macrobinoculars, listening with half an ear to the one-sided carnage still going on beneath him on the bridge, he focused on Outbound Flight.

It was like nothing Lorana had ever felt before. Like nothing she had ever dreamed she would ever feel, or need to prepare herself for. Even as she submerged herself in the Jedi meld, allowing C'baoth to guide her and the others as they spread confusion across the Vagaari commanders and gu

Not just a few deaths, either, small ripples of sensation that might have throbbed painfully but controllably against her consciousness. These deaths came in a thunderstorm torrent, wave after wave of fear and agony and rage that hammered against her already overstretched and vulnerable mind. She could feel herself staggering, her hands clutching blindly for something to hold on to as her body reacted to her disorientation. There was a sharp pain in her shoulder and head; distantly, she realized she had fallen out of her chair onto the deck. She could feel herself twitching uncontrollably; could sense the others' reactions flowing through the meld, feeding into her weakness even as her own pain fed into theirs. A thousand alien voices shrieked through her brain as their life forces were snuffed out, with a thousand more waiting behind them..

Beside Doriana, Mitth'raw'nuruodo took a deep breath. "Ch'tra," he ordered.

And moving as a single unit, the Chiss fleet surged forward. "Time to join the party?" Doriana asked, still watching in grim amazement as the waves of droid starfighters methodically cut their way across the Vagaari ships.

"No," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Time to start one of our own."

And it was only then that Doriana saw that theSpringhawk and the rest of the Chiss ships were heading for Outbound Flight. He closed his hands into fists, waiting tensely for the Dreadnaughts' gu

But nothing happened. TheSpringhawk flew completely through the turbolasers' effective combat range, passed unchallenged through the point-defense zone, and with only minor turbulence passed through the shields near the bow of the nearest Dreadnaught. The other Chiss ships broke from theSpringhawk 's flanks, spreading out toward the other Dreadnaughts as theSpringhawk curved from its intercept vector to fly low across its chosen Dreadnaught's hull.

And opened fire.

They hit the weapons blisters first, the brilliant blue fire of the Chiss lasers tearing through armor and capacitors and charging equipment and digging deeply into the blisters themselves. The shield generators were next, theSpringhawk zigzagging along the Dreadnaught's hull as it targeted and destroyed each in turn. All done with the utmost efficiency, a small detached part of Doriana's mind noted, without a single wasted movement. Clearly, Mitth'raw'nuruodo had made good use of the technical readouts he'd provided.

And then, to his surprise, theSpringhawk made a sharp turn away from the hull and headed again for deep space. Beyond the expanding cloud of destruction, he could see the other Chiss ships doing the same. "What's wrong?" he asked, his eyes flicking across the sky for some new danger that might have caused Mitth'raw'nuruodo to break off his attack.

"Nothing is wrong," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said, sounding puzzled. "Why?"

"But you have ceased the attack," Kav said, clearly as bewildered as Doriana. "Yet they lie helpless before you."

"Which is precisely why I've stopped," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Jedi Master C'baoth; leaders of Outbound Flight. Your vessel has been disarmed, its ability to defend itself destroyed. I offer you this one final chance to surrender and return to the Republic."

"What?" Kav yelped, his eyes widening. "But you were todestroy them."

"If and when you should command again, Vicelord Kav, such decisions will be yours," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said coolly. "But not now. Outbound Flight, I await your decision."

Through the echoing haze of dying minds still screaming at her, through the smoke and debris and distant moans of the injured, Lorana realized she was dying.

Probably from suffocation, she decided as she noticed that her lungs were straining but that little or no air was reaching them. She tried to move, but her legs seemed pi

Something cold and metallic closed around her wrist.

She opened her eyes to find a maintenance droid tugging at her arm. "What are you doing?" she croaked. It was a matter of mild surprise to discover that she had enough air even to speak. Experimentally, she tried to take a deep breath.

And felt a welcome coolness as air flowed into her lungs.

She blinked away some of the fog hazing her eyes and peered through the swirling debris. There was a long jagged slash through the ceiling above her, undoubtedly the source of the weapons blister's sudden decompression. Stretched across the gash were a dozen sheets of twisted metal that appeared to have been blown or pulled away from the walls. Half a dozen small metalwork droids were climbing across them, filling the room with clouds of sparks as they hastily welded the sheets into place over the gash.

Lying on the deck halfway across the room, his arms stretching toward the ceiling as he used the Force to hold the still unwelded sheets in place, was Ma'Ning.

Lorana couldn't see very much of his body with the wreckage of the control room scattered across her line of sight. But she could see enough to turn her stomach. He must have caught the full brunt of one of the laser blasts, taking both the agony of the shot itself as well as the impact of the shards of shattered metal it had created. "Master Ma'Ning," she gasped, trying to get up. But her legs still refused to work.

"No, don't," Ma'Ning said. His voice was strained but still carried the full authority of a Jedi Master. "It's too late for me."

"For-" Lorana broke off, a sudden edge of horror cutting through her. With the attack and her own near suffocation, she'd completely lost her co