Star Wars The Old Republic Fatal Allianc - By Sean Williams Page 0,91

fighters launched from hangar decks, its cannons trained on the approaching targets. The Grand Master said nothing, and the usual interfleet chatter ceased.

“Fall in line, Auriga Fire,” came a terse request from the Corellia. “Fall in line!”

Jet ignored it, but kept the tactical feed open.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Ula, thinking aloud. “If Xandret wants to stay isolated so badly, why would she want to talk to the Mandalorians? I’d have thought that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.”

“Maybe the Cinzia didn’t represent everyone here,” Larin said. “Maybe the people who blew themselves up were a dissident group.”

“And why attack rather than talk?” he asked, moving on to his next point of puzzlement. “Firing without provocation is madness.”

“Without a doubt,” said Shigar. “They’ve practically signed their own death warrant.”

The missiles roared out of the upper atmosphere and hit the first wave of defensive fire. A dense net of turbolaser pulses and ion torpedoes converged on the eight missiles. The nose of each missile activated a defensive shield not dissimilar to the ones seen on a much smaller scale on Hutta. Mirror-bright, they reflected laser pulses perfectly, and even deflected a large number of torpedoes. The space between the Corellia and the planet below was suddenly full of explosions.

Out of that stew of hot gases only six missiles emerged. The debris of the two that had been hit tumbled on, following their final momentum. Tiny white dots gleamed in the light of the black hole’s jets.

The six missiles hit another wave of defensive fire. The shields flashed again, blinking on and off in rapid succession—to conserve power, Ula assumed. The missiles weren’t large. They couldn’t defend themselves forever against this kind of assault.

But they didn’t have to. Four of the original eight were now close enough to the capital ships to be an imminent threat. Fighters engaged, strafing the missiles from all directions at once. The shields couldn’t cover every possible approach. Three missiles faltered, their drive systems crippled and their sides spewing clouds of debris. The last thundered on, aimed squarely at the Corellia.

The look on Shigar’s face was painful to see. His Master was aboard that ship, and a missile of that size was bound to do considerable damage, perhaps even destroy the Corellia outright. Ula wondered if she was hurrying for an escape pod at that very moment, hoping to outrun her fate.

The missile survived the final wave of defensive fire and struck the Corellia just forward of its stardrive.

Ula winced automatically, expecting a giant explosion.

None came. The missile hit the golden hull with enough force to tear a hole right through it, but instead simply vanished inside. A blast of air and other gases roared out of the hole. No fire. The missile didn’t blow up.

Fleet comms rose up again, betraying a slightly frantic note. Colonel Gurin was on the air, reassuring everyone that the cruiser was intact. There were no more launches visible from the ground. The attack from Sebaddon appeared to have completely fizzled.

The clouds of debris from the seven fallen missiles, still rising under their own momentum, began to arrive. Some of it was scraps of torn hulls and engines. Much consisted of the same white dots Ula had glimpsed earlier. They sparkled like snowflakes in sunlight, drifting around the Republic ships in undirected streams.

“Can we get a closer look at that stuff?” he asked. “If the missiles weren’t packed with explosives, maybe they weren’t missiles at all.”

Jet complied, focusing the ship’s sensors on a nearby patch. The white dots resolved into blobs swimming like amoebas against the black sky.

“I’ll see if I can increase the resolution,” he said.

The view crystallized. The blobs became hexagonal objects waving six slender legs.

Ula felt a wave of alarm. Hexes. Thousands upon thousands of hexes.

“Get us away from them,” said Shigar. “Put me through to Colonel Gurin.”

The view shifted to show one of the Republic attack vessels. The hexes were thicker there. Where the hexes encountered one another, they linked arms and bodies to form larger objects—long strings, nets, or clumpy balls. The cruiser drifted among them, blissfully unaware, even as the drifting hexes found purchase on its hull.

“Get those ships out of there!” Shigar shouted into the subspace communicator. “They’re in terrible danger!”

The reply was crackling and intermittent. “—interference—please repeat—” Behind his voice was the shrieking of alarms.

Ula peered past Shigar to where the Corellia hung against the globe of the planet. Red fire now licked at the rent left by the missile. On Hutta, four