The words were barely out of her mouth when all four Lioaoi ships opened fire.
“Barriers up!” Wutroow barked. “Target enemy lasers.”
“Prepare spheres,” Ar’alani added, her brain spinning as she tried to figure out what in hell was going on. What were Lioaoi even doing here at Primea, let alone attacking a Chiss warship on sight?
And then, suddenly, she got it.
Damn the Nikardun, anyway.
“Spheres: Fire when ready,” she bit out. “Target all Lioaoin ships; concentrate on weapons clusters.”
“Enemy lasers impacting on the hull,” Wutroow reported, her voice tight but controlled. “Barriers diffusing about eighty percent. Spheres on their way.”
Ar’alani nodded. Enough plasma sphere impacts, enough ion bursts eating into the electronics, and the attackers’ ability to continue fighting would be neutralized.
But it would take half a dozen shots to sufficiently disable any one of the ships, and there were four of them for her to deal with. And the Vigilant had only a limited number of spheres available.
Unless…
“Continue targeting weapons,” she ordered, searching the displays. Thrawn’s patrol ship…there it was, coming up fast. The two Vak fighters that had been in pursuit, she noted, were falling back. Apparently, they didn’t want him badly enough to charge into a combat zone.
Perfect.
“Octrimo, what’s our best course out of here?” she called.
“Wait,” Zistalmu protested. “Now, when we’re actually attacked—now you want to run?”
“Shut it,” Ar’alani said. “Octrimo?”
“Best exit route is portside,” Octrimo reported. “But that vector will take us into close-combat range with both Three and Four.”
The Lioaoin ship designated as Four, Ar’alani noted, being the one farthest to portside. Time to gamble. “Concentrate sphere fire on Three,” she said. “Octrimo, take us out on your vector.”
“On Three?” Zistalmu put in. “But Four’s closer—”
“If I have to tell you again to be quiet, I’ll have you removed from the bridge,” Ar’alani warned.
Zistalmu sputtered something but fell silent.
The laserfire from the four Lioaoin ships was increasing as the Vigilant headed toward the open space to the Lioaoin formation’s left. Attackers Three and Four began moving sideways to block the Chiss escape, though Three’s efforts were now being slowed by the cascade of plasma spheres hammering into its hull.
But with the flanking fire from One and Two continuing to blast away at the Vigilant’s starboard hull, even just a single Lioaoin in front of the Vigilant would make escape problematic. Presumably, the Lioaoi and their Nikardun masters knew that and were counting on it.
Unfortunately for them, they’d all forgotten about Thrawn.
The Vak patrol ship shot past the Vigilant on full power, ducking through the scattered laserfire from the Lioaoin ships, charging straight toward Attacker Four with lasers blazing. Ar’alani held her breath, waiting for the Lioaoin to respond, wondering if she and Thrawn had read the situation correctly.
They had. For those first crucial seconds the Lioaoin didn’t return fire, having apparently been ordered to shoot at the Chiss warship but avoid combat with Nikardun and the local Vak forces. She could envision the frantic calls from the Lioaoi to Primea, the questions running up the chain of command, transferring over to the Nikardun warship, the furious corrections coming from the general in charge, possibly heading directly to the Lioaoi, possibly having to go the reverse path so as not to give the Chiss confirmation that the Nikardun were even involved—
And as the farce finally played itself out, the Lioaoin ships belatedly opened fire.
But it was too late. Thrawn’s surgical attack had already destroyed Four’s combat ability, tearing into the ship’s heavy laser sites and blinding their missile fire-control sensors. For a moment the other three Lioaoi continued to fire, but as the Vigilant drove through Four’s shadow their weapons went silent lest they hit their comrade. Thrawn’s fighter finished its run and turned toward the Vigilant—
And jerked suddenly as a final laser shot sliced across its aft thrusters.
“Hit on patrol ship!” Wutroow snapped.
“Tractor beam!” Ar’alani snapped back. “Bring him in.”
“On it,” Wutroow confirmed. “Tractor engaged…locked…bringing him in.”
“Starboard spheres: One final volley,” Ar’alani ordered. “Keep them back.”
“Vak warships moving up,” Biclian warned.
But it was a waste of effort, and everyone knew it. The Vigilant would be far enough out of Primea’s gravity well in twenty seconds, and would have Thrawn aboard in thirty. The only ships close enough to stop them were the Lioaoin cruisers, and thanks to her and Thrawn’s combined attack they, too, were out of luck. “Sky-walker Che’ri, get ready,” she called.
“She’s ready,” Zistalmu’s wife said.
Ar’alani scowled. “Sky-walker Che’ri?” she asked pointedly.
“I’m ready, Admiral,” the girl’s voice came back. Her confirmation was quieter and maybe a little more tentative than Nana’s, but it confirmed to Ar’alani that Che’ri was, indeed, ready.
Ar’alani had had other caregivers insist on speaking for their young charges instead of letting them speak for themselves. She’d never liked it then, either. “Good,” she said. “As soon as we confirm Captain Thrawn’s aboard, we’ll go. Captain Wutroow?”
“Almost there,” Wutroow said. There was a small clunking sound as the shrapnel from a pair of disintegrated Lioaoin missiles bounced off the Vigilant’s hull near the viewport. One final, desperate, useless attack. “Aboard,” Wutroow confirmed. “Crash webbing’s deployed…confirmed capture…outer hatch closing…outer hatch sealed.”
“All right, Che’ri, we’ve got him,” Ar’alani said. A long road, with a blaze of fire and noise at the end of it. She could only hope Thrawn had found everything he’d come here for. “Take us home.”
“How much longer?” Senior Captain Ziara asked.
“Two minutes,” the tense reply came from the helm.
Ziara nodded, wincing to herself. Two minutes. Two hours since Thrawn’s emergency call, with no communication possible in hyperspace, and now two more minutes. Depending on how deep the excursion liner had been in the planetary gravity well when Thrawn and his newly assigned patrol boat reached it, Ziara and the Parala could arrive just in time to join Thrawn in watching helplessly as eight thousand people fell to their blazing deaths in the thick planetary atmosphere. “Tractor beams ready?” she asked.