Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “We will not,” the pilot said. Quell got a better look at her for the first time—her face was a patchwork of chitinous violet plates, and her dark eyes betrayed nothing of human emotions. But there was something about her Quell recognized, and when she looked to the woman’s ragged outfit the truth seized her mind.

  “Kairos?” Quell said.

  Kairos didn’t turn, but her hand trembled as she pitched the ship down. Two of their pursuers—a refitted light freighter and a short-range tri-fighter—flashed overhead and out of sight.

  Chadic looked back at Quell, scowled, then turned to face Kairos. “If we don’t do something they’re going to kill us. If you can’t get us into hyperspace you blasted well shoot them!”

  The U-wing swung to one side, and Quell was thrown against the cockpit doorframe. Before she could recover Kairos swung again in the opposite direction, leaning into the turn as if to circle around and confront anyone behind them. The viewport filled with radiance and something metallic loudly ruptured; as she struggled not to fall back into the cabin, Quell spotted Kairos’s gloved hand reach up and yank one of the power toggles.

  The overhead lights deactivated, as did the indicators on the console. The engine and thrusters went silent. Artificial gravity kept Quell’s feet to the floor as the U-wing, carried by its own inertia, somersaulted lifelessly through space.

  One of the droid vessels flew past the viewport. Quell barely dared to breathe.

  “We’re playing dead?” Chadic asked. “You think that’ll work?”

  “Ion-concussion warheads could disable a ship without visible critical damage,” Quell murmured. She wondered if Kairos had known as much, or if the strange woman had simply seen no other recourse without opening fire.

  Chadic glowered at Quell, then climbed out of her seat and knelt on top of the console. She pressed her face to the viewport, peering out at various angles. When she pulled back she said, “Can’t see all of them, but it looks like they’re turning around.”

  “They might send a scrapper ship,” Quell said. “We shouldn’t wait long.”

  “Don’t,” Chadic snapped. The blaster was in her hand again. She waved it at Quell. “No one wants to hear you.”

  Quell stayed silent as Kairos activated emergency power—enough to energize the console, not enough to draw the droids’ attention on standard sensors. Chadic looked over Kairos’s shoulder, peering at the status display as it ran automated checks. Then she made a prolonged, frustrated groan of discontent.

  Quell waited for an explanation. When it was clear none was forthcoming, she stepped forward and took in the readouts as well as she could. Life support was stable, and thrusters and weapons were functional. But the hyperdrive was offline, as was the navicomputer.

  Even if they could’ve jumped to lightspeed, they’d have had nowhere to go.

  As the adrenaline drained from her body, Quell considered the truth of her circumstances: She was on a derelict ship in a hostile and desolate system, and she’d just betrayed one set of foes to fall into the hands of another.

  You have no one to blame but yourself, she thought, and retreated tiredly to the cabin.

  CHAPTER 13

  ASSIGNMENT OF IDENTIFIABLE WEAKNESSES

  I

  Wyl Lark thought of Chadawa and the cities of Chadawa and the people of Chadawa. He imagined the white disks of residential platforms atop tall stalks dwarfed by still-taller cliffs, as if the planet’s cities were mushrooms flourishing in shade. Above the disks, he saw the cliffs topped with greenery; below, ivory beaches disappearing into an ocean the same glittering sapphire as the sky. People gathered at windows and stood in the sand, and they were afraid as they watched a burning trail descend from above. They clasped one another’s hands as steam rose from the ocean where the trail ended and wondered how long it would be before radiation reached their island.

  Wyl thought of all this as he sat in his A-wing, drifting outside the satellite rings. Sunlight gently warmed his canopy. He watched the speck of Shadow Wing’s bulk freighter against the sphere of the planet and awaited the arrival of his foe, reminding himself he was committing a just and righteous act.

  None of which entirely assuaged his guilt.

  He hoped Syndulla and the others had understood his intent when he’d challenged Soran Keize. He trusted them profoundly, but he doubted his own choices and the clarity of his message. He wished, with a sudden pang, that he’d told Nath everything—that he’d truly mended things with the man, and confessed the secret he’d held since speaking to the elders of Polyneus: admitted that he was the last of the One Hundred and Twenty.

  “We did our best, didn’t we?” he murmured, and smiled sadly as he ran his fingertips down the canopy.

  A starfighter did not breathe or molt or shriek as a sur-avka did, but he’d bonded with his all the same. If he died today, it would be with a friend.

  “I am here, Wyl Lark,” a voice said from the comm, steady and almost warm in its humanity. “Are you ready?”

  A firefly leapt from the bulk freighter, gliding toward the planet before ascending and curving toward Wyl.

  “I’m ready,” Wyl said, and ignited his thrusters.

  The particle tide was invisible and intangible. It didn’t buffet his ship like a hurricane or toss him like a tsunami, but its dangers were no less real. Without instruments or safeties, he couldn’t judge his speed or the stresses on the A-wing—he might accelerate until his hull ripped away or overheat his cannons until their components melted. There would be no computer to recalibrate his inertial dampeners, leaving his body to bear the weight of g forces he might otherwise ignore. He would need to extend his senses into the metal to comprehend the strains and injuries of his ship, and his eyes would be his only warning when his enemy acted.

  He’d deactivated most of his readouts and manually shut down half the A-wing’s systems to allow it to function at all at the height of the particle tide. A more complex vessel like the Deliverance or even the Raider-class corvettes would’ve been entirely helpless. Wyl could only hope that Soran Keize was no better prepared than he.

  He opened his throttle and propelled himself toward the approaching TIE. He’d half expected the dagger silhouette of a TIE interceptor, but he vaguely recalled one of Quell’s files referencing Keize’s preference for the basic TIE/ln’s unforgiving design. Under the circumstances, Wyl would’ve wished otherwise—an interceptor’s more advanced technology might’ve increased its vulnerability to the radiation.

  Emerald flashed from Keize’s fighter as the distance between A-wing and TIE closed. Wyl eased out of the line of fire, evading the blazing particle bolts by a hundred meters. It had been a warning shot; the true commencement of the battle was yet to come.

  Then the fighters blurred past each other and Wyl attempted to circle and give chase. By the time he’d completed his turn, he’d lost sight of the TIE. For an instant he felt blind without a scanner; he wanted to unclip his harness, rip off his helmet, and twist his body around to see whatever he could.

  But searching for Keize would take too long, and it was what his enemy expected. Instead he accelerated and began a series of drunken, spiraling turns, refusing to give the TIE the opportunity to latch onto his tail. Blood rushed to his head and he felt the universe spin, felt vertigo pump through his veins like adrenaline. He saw the outermost ring of Chadawa flash across his field of vision, the individual satellites barely discernible, and was surprised by the angle.

  Keize did not fire. He wouldn’t give away his position, knowing he had the advantage so long as he was hidden. But Wyl was sure he had to be in pursuit, and he altered the length and breadth of his loops until he finally caught sight of a speck keeping pace in his peripheral vision. “We found him,” he whispered, and swung around to bring the TIE into sight.

  Keize didn’t attempt t
o flit out of view. He turned toward Chadawa and increased velocity. Wyl pursued, his muscles burning as gravity exerted itself on every centimeter of his body. Maybe, he thought, Keize intended to test their endurance—in the Chadawan radiation, it was likely neither A-wing nor TIE could sustain maximum acceleration without killing its pilot. The limit to their speed was whatever Wyl and Keize could take without blacking out.

  Wyl reached for his comm through the crushing weight. “You haven’t always been with Shadow Wing,” he said.

  The TIE maintained its distance. Wyl increased his thruster output and felt the A-wing shake violently. His field of vision seemed to narrow, though it was likely an illusion—his mind worrying about what he could handle, not his body revolting yet.

  “No,” Keize said.

  Of the subjects that had consumed Wyl over the past days, Keize’s time away had been among his lowest priorities for follow-up. Nath had shared the New Republic Intelligence report on the man’s wanderings, and it had sat in the back of Wyl’s mind, nagging and untended.

  Now he could have answers from the man himself.

  “You called yourself Devon. You stopped—”

  The outermost ring of Chadawa filled Wyl’s sight as the universe ran around the edges like melting glass. He could almost feel his blood vessels bursting, bruises forming, lungs contracting. “—you stopped fighting,” he managed after a drag of breath.

  He didn’t need to ask the question aloud. The why? was implied.

  The TIE seemed to expand as Keize cut power to his thrusters. Wyl closed his throttle, frantically trying to avoid overshooting the TIE and arriving squarely in his foe’s targeting sights. But Keize didn’t wait for the A-wing to close the distance, instead turning the TIE toward the ring and slipping among the grid of satellites.

  Wyl followed, heartbeat throbbing in his ears, his body still reeling. He tried to discern his enemy’s intent—was Keize trying to get inside the cage of rings and leave the particle field entirely? Was he leading Wyl to the rest of Shadow Wing?

  Keize hadn’t answered his question. Wyl forced himself to keep speaking. “What was it like on Vernid?” Wyl asked. “Working on a dig-rig, living a life…?”

  “Fleeting,” Keize said.

  The TIE spun to port, sliding between satellites as if unaffected by its own inertia. The maneuver was troublingly familiar—Wyl had seen it before, though he wasn’t sure where—and while he couldn’t follow the same path he could find another route. He wove among the satellites, each barely larger than a starfighter—a mass of ice-encrusted metal covered in jutting spikes.

  He caught sight of the TIE again as it whirled past a satellite embedded in a large berg. Soon Wyl began to understand what Keize was doing. They leapt free of the ring and dived back in, switching direction and looping around satellites. They raced in circles, Wyl chasing Keize and Keize chasing Wyl. As with their earlier acceleration, it was a test of skill and endurance: Keize meant to fatigue Wyl or disable his ship without ever firing a shot meant to kill.

  The sense of discomfiting familiarity didn’t leave Wyl, however. He’d fought this battle before, though one moment he recalled the glowing clouds of Oridol and the next he remembered the atmosphere of Troithe. Keize’s lateral spin was a trick of Char’s, one that had killed Wyl’s friends in Riot Squadron; the stuttering particle bolts Keize used to shear off ice and spray Wyl’s canopy was Puke’s favored tactic, and Puke had been killed by Chass long ago.

  The truth dawned on Wyl with such sluggishness that he was embarrassed. He had fought Keize before because he had fought Shadow Wing before; and Keize was Shadow Wing, had shaped the unit and trained its people. The tricks and quirks Wyl had cataloged over the past months composed Keize’s entire repertoire.

  Yet Wyl could find no way to take advantage of this fact. Even if Keize couldn’t surprise him, the man executed his maneuvers with unsurpassed grace and speed; transitioned from one technique to the next before Wyl could concoct a counter. They danced through the ring together, neither man seizing an advantage and neither making an error.

  The longer the duel went on, the more Wyl’s mood lifted even as his body tired. He’d forgotten how little flying a starfighter resembled flying a sur-avka—forgotten how he’d used to fly by the prickle of his nerves and the rush of wind through a beast’s down. The loss of the A-wing’s computers brought back sensations he’d suppressed, and tears streaked from his eyes and soaked into the hair behind his ears as he burned his thrusters and spun and chased.

  They flew on and on, in and out of the ring, toward Chadawa’s sun and through clouds of icy shards that vaporized in electric flashes on Wyl’s shields. They crossed the path of a rusting orbital station—a civilian station, so far as Wyl could tell, barely large enough for a crew of ten—and Wyl feared Keize would threaten the residents somehow; but they moved on to the next obstacle, and the next. Keize began to leave a glittering ion trail as the TIE’s engines strained. Wyl was sure his A-wing fared no better.

  Keize banked around another satellite and Wyl was surprised to see the TIE wobble on its course. He suspected a trap until half a second later he passed the satellite himself and felt a current against the A-wing’s hull—some particle stream channeled by the satellite itself. Keize truly had lost control of his ship, and as Wyl strained to center the TIE in his view he knew his opportunity would be gone unless he acted now, unless he acquired his target and fired.

  It felt almost blasphemous, in the face of his memories of Home—as if he were burdening his younger self with a soldier’s sins. To kill Keize in a moment of joyful flight would taint him forever.

  He squeezed his trigger, crying out as he did, reminding himself of everything Shadow Wing had done and intended to do. His voice disappeared into the noise of cannons discharging crimson bolts of violence.

  The volley streaked through space, toward the TIE and past it. Wyl doubted he’d come within ten meters of hitting Keize. He never had been much of a marksman.

  His hand on the control yoke was shaking and he anticipated Keize’s counter without the speed to compensate for it. The TIE used the momentum of the particle current to spin away. Wyl, who had straightened the A-wing’s course in his effort to get a clear shot, was unable to follow suit. In less than three seconds Keize was behind him and firing.

  Wyl turned away from the blows but his seat bounced and the cocoon of his shields flickered. Keize began stripping his deflectors away layer by layer.

  It was almost a relief to be on the defensive again.

  II

  So long as there was movement and light—so long as there was the glow of thrusters and the glimmer of weapons fire—it meant Wyl was still alive. Nath Tensent reassured himself of that more than once as his Y-wing growled and bounced on its long route toward Chadawa.

  Wyl was alive, and the boy was trickier than Nath had appreciated. He’d learned things over the past year, some from Nath himself but others from Syndulla and Quell and even Shadow Wing. If Wyl stayed alive, Nath would be sure to congratulate him after punching him in the nose.

  Then again, it was possible Nath had misinterpreted Wyl’s message. In that case he’d skip the punch and just shoot him.

  T5 chirped a course correction, and Nath instinctively glanced at his screen. It flashed with indecipherable character strings in some nonstandard alphabet. “Fine,” he snapped. “Adjusting our vector. How can you even tell?”

  The droid issued a series of low beeps. Nath laughed bitterly. “Tell you what: If this works, we’ll get you a nice job as navigator on a sea cruiser somewhere.”

  He checked behind him through the narrow rear viewport and saw Hail Squadron’s Y-wings in formation. They hadn’t questioned him when, after Keize had accepted Wyl’s challenge, Nath had swung his bomber around and resumed his original course. Not that they had many ways to question h
im, with comms limited, but they’d at least followed as he’d made his way into the depths of the particle tide.

  Thanks to the radiation, they were invisible to scanners. Thanks to Wyl, Shadow Wing was distracted with the duel. No one would notice the Y-wings proceeding on their original mission—the destruction of the Raiders sabotaging the Chadawan rings—until the Y-wings were almost in firing range. They’d need to keep their speed low to avoid blowing up their engines, but if everything went perfectly, they’d save the planet from Operation Cinder and be out before they died horribly.

  T5 squealed incoherently. Nath’s cockpit was flooded with light from behind; his shields rippled with the impact of molten specks of superheated metal. One of the Hail bombers was suddenly gone and he couldn’t see where the enemy fire was coming from, didn’t understand until T5’s beeping became clearer.

  Nath swore loudly. “Get the message to the others,” he called. “I don’t care how—the astromechs can see you, right? Send up flares or semaphores or something and have them pass word down the line!”

  He watched the remnants of Hail Three drift away to his rear. According to T5, the particle tides had likely affected the safeties on the bomber’s proton warheads; something had gone very wrong after that, and now Jaith Omir was dead. Nath had found the man irritating at best, incompetent at worst, but Jaith had deserved a better end.

  You better be right about this, Wyl.

  He confirmed that his own proton torpedoes were unarmed, then checked his other systems as best he could. They were a minute or two out from the combat zone, and while they might get far enough into the rings to escape the radiation he couldn’t count on it.

  “You get the message through?” he asked, and T5 replied in the affirmative. “All right. I want you to pass on something else…”

  They’d lost one pilot already. Hail had to be getting nervous.