Dark Journey Read Online Free PDF

With a discipline born partly of the Force, partly from long experience as a pilot, he willed himself to snatch a bit of sleep while he could.
    He awakened abruptly as sensors announced the coming emergence from hyperspace. Stars flared into existence, and every light on his control panel came alive.
    The Jedi glanced at the multitude of flashing icons on his display, each representing an enemy skip. “Trying to tell me something, Zero-One?”
    EXPERIENTIAL DATA INDICATE THAT YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE SUBTLETY.
    If anything, the droid had erred on the side of understatement. With a surge of dismay, Kyp realized he was leading his pilots into a maelstrom.
    The skies over Coruscant strobed and burned. Ships of every size and description hurtled away from the doomedworld. A vast Yuuzhan Vong fleet awaited them. A few escaped, aided more by the general chaos than any coordinated defense. There was no sign of the Jedi wing.
    The Dozen swept in, holding their wedge-shaped formation. The only sign of their consternation was the silence coming from the open comm.
    One of the Dozen, an early XJ prototype in pristine condition, dipped out of formation and started lagging behind like a distracted toddler.
    Kyp frowned. “Five, acknowledge.”
    The ship swiftly moved back into place. “Five here.”
    The voice was ridiculously young—a boyish growl that had yet to achieve a genuine baritone. The pilot, Chem, was the son of a wealthy diplomat, a collector who’d filled a small warehouse with gleaming, never-flown ships. On his fourteenth birthday, Chem stole his mother’s favorite ship and set out to track down Kyp’s Dozen. He hadn’t asked for admission—just followed the squadron around from one mission to another. After several standard months, and the loss and replacement of more pilots than Kyp cared to count, he’d taken Chem on as a regular. Since then, the kid had vaped seven Vong coralskippers and squandered his inheritance on such frivolous things as new XJs, concussion missiles, and fuel.
    “Keep focused, Five. I’d hate to see you get a scratch on that showpiece of yours,” Kyp admonished lightly.
    “So would I, sir. Under those circumstances, I’d rather face the warmaster himself than the ship’s rightful owner.”
    “Copy that,” Ian Rim broke in. “I used to keep company with Chem’s mother. You thought the Vong were mean and ugly?”
    “She speaks well of you, too,” Chem retorted without missing a beat. “Or at least of your flying skills. Says if you’d stuck to it, you could have been the best nerf herder on Corellia.”
    Kyp chuckled at the idea of the hotshot pilot sputtering along on a ponderous herding sled—an image that made
nerf herder
such a potent insult. The short exchange broke some of the tension he sensed in each of his pilots. All but one. A deep sense of unease remained in the youngest pilot.
    He switched to a private channel. “Problems, Five?”
    There was a moment of silence. “The lights are going out, sir.
Coruscant
’s lights.”
    The Jedi nodded in understanding. Far below, the eternal, never-sleeping city-planet was fading into darkness, facing its first true night since time out of mind. Yuuzhan Vong drop ships, big as mountains, blotted out vast portions of cityscape as they settled down to the business of slaughter. Blastboat analogs spewed molten rock hot enough to melt the glittering towers into dark slag heaps. Enemy transports spat out coralskippers like obscenities. The rocklike ships whirled in a deadly dance, a meteor swarm choreographed by some unseen, malevolent power.
    Then a squadron of coralskippers swept toward the Dozen and a burst of plasma blossomed against Kyp’s forward shield.
    “It’s our job to hold back the night, Chem. Don’t let yourself get distracted from that.”
    “Yes, sir!”
    Kyp’s sensors flared, alerting him to another fleet emerging from hyperspace. Kyp glanced at the Jedi wing and groaned. The “fleet” comprised perhaps a