Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Tell them—hell, tell them I’ve seen them eyeing my medal. They want one of their own? They want to save a planet? They’ve got to walk into fire. Whether or not we make it out, so long as we succeed Chadawa’s going to remember us.”

  He wasn’t sure how well the droids would relay his tone or the complexity of the message, but it was the best he could do. Besides, he didn’t like the sound of his own voice right now—anyone could hear he was on edge, so maybe it was better this way.

  How had he even ended up here? He wasn’t going to save Wyl. If Syndulla had understood the plan, she hadn’t shown any indication. Somehow Nath had assumed that since everyone else was gone, or occupied, or out of touch, it was his responsibility to swoop in and save a blasted Imperial planet.

  He recalled Nasha Gravas’s look during the war council. He wasn’t supposed to save Chadawa; he was supposed to let the Chadawan Imps fight it out with Shadow Wing, leaving them both easy prey for the Deliverance and whatever New Republic reinforcements showed up.

  You’re a moron, Tensent. You can still turn around.

  But he couldn’t. He could see the rings of Chadawa now, see the silhouettes of Raiders sabotaging the satellites, which meant the enemy could see him, too. “Let’s go!” he roared, and loaded a torpedo into the Y-wing’s launcher.

  The other bombers broke formation as turbolasers streaked toward them. There wasn’t much Nath could do to evade so long as he was caught in the particle tide—his bomber would rip apart if he attempted anything more than a gentle turn—but he ignited his jets in short bursts, sliding a few meters one way or another to throw off his foes. He didn’t spot any TIEs, but the barrage from the Raiders would kill him just as thoroughly.

  A blast came close enough to bathe his cockpit in emerald light. T5 let out a shriek, and as Nath blinked away spots he saw his shields crackling madly. “Too close,” he growled, and there was no vigor in it. His breathing came heavily. But his ship was intact.

  A voice came through the comm, urgently reciting a series of numbers. Shadow Wing, Nath assumed, alerting its pilots to an attack using some predefined code. He’d known it would happen sooner or later, but their time was running short.

  A Y-wing exploded to one side, skewered in a single shot. A second Y-wing was gone an instant later. T5’s beeps were badly distorted as the droid reported which pilots were gone, and Nath didn’t bother trying to understand. It didn’t matter now—what mattered was finishing the mission and getting out.

  Without a targeting computer he had to guess his distance to the first Raider. Twenty seconds, maybe? He was passing the first satellites now and he’d be fully inside the rings by then, in the radiation-free bubble protecting the planet; but he wasn’t sure how long his systems would need to reboot. He couldn’t count on acquiring target lock. His best bet was to get in as close as possible and hope his allies could do the same.

  T5 squealed an alarm. Nath leaned into his harness and looked to the first squadron of TIEs weaving among the satellites, headed his way. Behind them, cresting Chadawa like a rising sun, was the bulk freighter Yadeez.

  “We’ll take a shot at Raider number one. Not even going to try for that second one,” he said. He needn’t have bothered, he supposed—T5 didn’t need to know, and the astromech wouldn’t be able to signal the other pilots in all the chaos.

  Nath flinched at a flash and saw the front half of a Y-wing tumble past his cockpit. No need to communicate orders if everyone else is dead.

  Now the Raider dominated his view. The corvette’s silhouette resembled that of a Star Destroyer, but the ship was a fraction of a Destroyer’s size and it lacked the command module and deflector domes of its overgrown cousin. In the domes’ place, armored panels extended from the hull enclosing vulnerable systems and amplifying the ship’s shields. Nath had served aboard a Raider for an eyeblink and tried to recall any weaknesses worth his while; none came to mind, so he shrugged and took aim at the dagger’s broad hilt. Without a targeting computer, his biggest worry was landing a hit at all.

  T5 chimed. The TIE fighters would arrive in seconds. “Not much I can do about that, is there?” Nath shouted, listening to his deflector generator whinny as emerald death surrounded him. “Fire in three, two—”

  He squeezed his trigger and loosed a torpedo, feeling the whole ship recoil with the launch. The weapon streaked ahead, joined by three more launched by nearby Y-wings, and Nath wrested his bomber to one side before he could be atomized by the Raider’s weaponry. He kept watching as he veered, however, and grinned in satisfaction as two torpedoes (he wasn’t sure whose) smashed into the enemy vessel. The first sent light and fire splashing across the Raider’s shield bubble; the second passed through the flickering shield and tore into armor as it burst, kicking the entire Raider five degrees askew. Flames belched from the resulting crater and, a second later, electrical arcs caressed the ship bow-to-stern. Nath couldn’t tell if it was a fatal blow, but it was close enough for him—he couldn’t imagine the Raider would be supporting Operation Cinder for a while.

  He expected to come under cannon fire then, and cut short his observations so he could look to the TIEs heading his way. Instead of fighters he saw only the great blue mass of Chadawa and a flight of five surviving Y-wings. “Why the hell are we alive—?” he began. Then his scanner rebooted and he had his answer.

  Between the bulk freighter and the first Raider was a new mark—incredibly large and dense. The TIEs approaching the Y-wings had turned to swarm the newcomer, and Nath assumed at first that the Deliverance had joined the fray. But that made no sense—Star Destroyers weren’t stealthy, and T5 would’ve spotted the Deliverance en route.

  The other Hail bombers swept past Nath, heading for the second Raider. They’d seen an opportunity and, like good rebels, chose to take it. Nath couldn’t blame them but he brought his craft around to join them in a wider arc, trying to get a visual on whatever was happening kilometers off his port side.

  Now he saw the newcomer backlit against the Chadawan ocean, occluding the Yadeez and under attack by the swarming TIEs. It was a Star Destroyer, but not the Deliverance—it lacked that vessel’s New Republic modifications and featured several gruesome scars: A burnt, black streak ran from the tip of the dagger halfway to its engines, and an amputated stub stood in place of one deflector dome. Nonetheless, its guns were functional, blazing and raking the skies with destruction.

  Finally, Nath thought. The Chadawans are good for something. He assumed the vessel had emerged from the atmosphere to engage.

  He fell in behind the other Y-wings as they raced toward their target. The second Raider had turned toward the bombers, minimizing its profile and allowing it to bring all its forward weapons to bear. The familiar barrage of turbolaser and cannon fire was augmented by concussion missiles, and still another of the Y-wings was obliterated. Nath couldn’t recall how many they’d lost so far, but the squadron couldn’t be at much more than half strength.

  The surviving bombers split apart, two moving above the Raider’s central axis and the others joining Nath below. The enemy had enough weapons to keep firing on both groups, but their chances for survival were marginally improved. Nath readied another torpedo and waited until he could see the Raider’s underbelly clearly, then released.

  The Y-wing kicked and the torpedo streaked away. Nath saw the concussion missile heading toward him then—early enough to realize what would happen, too late to change anything—and he braced himself just as the missile intercepted his torpedo. The resulting shock wave of fiery energy tossed the Y-wing backward, flipping it end-over-end. Nath wrestled with the half-fused controls, body rocking and jolting, and felt himself stabbed by electrical shocks whenever he touched the right side of his console; he shouted orders at T5 and had the presence of mind to be grateful he was out of the particle radiation.

  Three seconds and a lifet
ime later, when he finally got the ship steadied, he ignored the blazing red warning lights and peered toward the Raider and Hail Squadron. The Y-wings would’ve just finished their pass and he expected to spot them moving away from the Raider together.

  Instead he was faced with an unexpected horror.

  From his angle, far below the Raider and the Y-wings, he could see the Chadawan Star Destroyer above, still harried by Shadow Wing’s TIE swarm. Burning rain fell from its guns, indiscriminately piercing Raider and Y-wings alike. The Raider was already defeated, turbolaser blasts puncturing its underbelly and dispersing in energized mist; the surviving Y-wings were scattering, but as they did the Star Destroyer’s weapons began tracking the smaller ships.

  “You bastards,” Nath called. He saw another Y-wing destroyed, then another. “Bastards! We just saved your planet!”

  Better if they hadn’t bothered, he thought. Nasha Gravas had been right.

  He toggled the comm, not caring whether Shadow Wing and the Chadawans heard. “Bombers retreat! Get out of there!” he yelled, and turned his battered ship around as fast as he could without dislodging a nacelle.

  Particle bolts lit his surroundings as he opened his throttle. He jinked and dived, not sure if it was the Star Destroyer, the TIEs, or one of the other Shadow Wing vessels attacking him. He could see a single Y-wing mirroring his withdrawal, and he remembered with awful vividness the battle at Trenchenovu, where Shadow Wing had murdered his first squadron. First Piter, then Mordeaux and Canthropali, Pesalt and Rorian, all of them slaughtered until it was down to him and Reeka fleeing the scene. He’d felt terror then, and he felt terror now, and it tasted every bit as revolting as last time.

  Choking down bile and fear and rage, Nath pulled away from Chadawa with all that remained of Hail Squadron.

  III

  Colonel Soran Keize had enjoyed the duel, but it was time to end the exercise. He’d heard the New Republic call “Bombers retreat!” and been troubled; now Captain Nenvez recited numbers over the comm suggesting more serious danger. The Raiders were damaged, and Colonel Madrighast had decided to play his hand.

  Shadow Wing did not need Soran—not yet. Broosh was a fine tactician and Soran trusted he’d tended the unit well and that any casualties, no matter how regrettable, were the result of decisions based on experience and reason. But Soran might be needed soon, as matters grew increasingly complex and strategies were reconceived.

  Much later, he would mourn the fallen and doubt himself. He would let himself wonder if he’d made a mistake in accepting Wyl Lark’s challenge. For the moment, however, there was one clear action he could take to rebalance the scales between the 204th and General Syndulla.

  Wyl Lark, he thought, I do this without hatred or malice.

  The battle had taken them far from the Yadeez, out to a pitiful moon barely larger than an asteroid. They’d chased each other through canyons and dived back toward Chadawa, back into its outermost ring, and Soran had savored the joy of flight and combat there. He recalled his first encounter with a Polynean, a year before Endor at the Cataract of Moons; that opponent, a woman whose name he did not know, had brought him to an almost ecstatic state like that described by the Tan’twingen warrior-monks. He’d very nearly died, and would have accepted it as a fitting end.

  But the outcome of this fight had not truly been in doubt—not since he’d taken Lark’s measure in the first minute and determined the man was an impeccable flier, a brave combatant, but one who lacked the spirit of a born soldier. Lark treated combat as a dance, a collaboration between partners in the creation of beauty; and while Soran recognized the potential for beauty in war, he knew that it could never take precedence over victory. Lark hesitated when he should have killed.

  There was a place for men like Lark in the galaxy. That place was not in a duel with the Empire’s ace of aces, and certainly not when that ace’s unit was threatened.

  He pursued Lark’s A-wing through the rings, closer to his foe than he’d previously dared. The TIE shrieked off-key, the particle tides disrupting its ion engines and dampening its familiar cry. Sweat pooled beneath Soran’s eyes under his helmet, while his lips felt cracked from dehydration. His body ached from the maneuvers but he was not tired—only weakened.

  He loosed a quick volley meant to distract rather than kill. The A-wing spun, nearly colliding with the nearest satellite but recovering after a moment. Lark’s shields, Soran knew, were nearly depleted—he’d tapped away at their power over many minutes, and he felt confident the radiation would inhibit the A-wing’s deflector from recharging. One well-placed shot might end the battle; two certainly would.

  If only we had longer.

  Lark applied his repulsors and swung hard to one side, clearly hoping Soran would overshoot him. It was a simple stratagem, but not a poor choice given Soran’s proximity. Soran pitched the TIE downward in response, leaning into the gentle tug of Chadawa’s gravity and looping in a tight arc that forced the blood from his brain. He was dizzy and short of breath when he emerged from the loop, while the A-wing had barely moved—Soran had bet its sudden deceleration had taken a toll on the pilot, and it appeared he’d won the wager. He adjusted his vector, centered the enemy interceptor in his faceted viewport, and squeezed his firing trigger.

  Particle bolts streamed from the TIE and an emerald blade sliced the fleeing A-wing’s port thruster fin. A blue flash like an afterimage reassured Soran that the last of Lark’s shields were gone, and the smoke trailing from the damaged thruster indicated the Polynean’s maneuverability would be hampered. The A-wing’s speed and agility were comparable to a TIE’s out of atmosphere, all else being equal, but Soran now had a decisive advantage.

  “Colonel?” Broosh’s voice came from the comm. “Are you receiving?”

  That was alarming, Soran thought. They’d developed a coded messaging system for a reason; whatever Broosh wanted to report was peculiar enough that the codes wouldn’t suffice and important enough that he was willing to say it to every ship in the system.

  “I read you,” Soran said. He sounded hoarse. His body really was beginning to fail him.

  Lark sped out of the satellite ring, away from Chadawa. Soran followed, wondering if he’d done enough damage to force the Polynean to flee the planet’s gravity well or be pulled to ground.

  “You asked to be alerted,” Broosh said. “The signal is faint but we have authentication.”

  The signal? After a moment, he understood.

  Quell was returning.

  “Message received,” Soran said.

  Now he truly was needed. The duel had to end swiftly. He felt a tremor in his hands, a surge of emotion, and sealed away his internal strife.

  Lark was headed back toward the desolate Chadawan moon, and Soran recognized the contours of the Polynean’s plan—retreat to the rocky canyons, where his loss of maneuverability would be less of an impediment than in open space. It wouldn’t save him but it would drag out the fighting. Soran’s TIE hissed and rattled as he opened his throttle, and he fired rapid bursts at his foe hoping to force desperate action. His own weapons were apt to overheat in the particle field, but Lark was unlikely to know the intricacies of a TIE’s cooling systems and Soran needed only one moment of panic to deliver the final blow.

  Lark barely attempted to evade the volley. The bolts whipped past him. He’d seen that Soran was shooting wildly, but even so there had been risk in holding steady. Was his A-wing so damaged, Soran wondered, that he was afraid of any motion at all?

  The moon was approaching. Soran dismissed all analysis and loosed a series of discrete bursts—either Lark would begin evading or the battle would be over. Emerald lances leapt from the TIE and found their mark, piercing the A-wing as it dived toward the moon’s surface. The fighter’s thrusters disintegrated under the onslaught and then the whole body erupted in flame. Metal tum
bled into darkness and shards of canopy scattered in all directions.

  Cocking his head in fascination, Soran watched a dark object tumble out of the starfighter and fall toward the moon. It was difficult to make out through the debris and his helmet lenses and the sweat in his eyes, but he became increasingly confident of his identification as it drifted away.

  Lark had spent his final moments in the race to the moon prepping his ejector seat. He’d failed to launch it soon enough but it had flown free upon the ship’s destruction. Soran wondered whether the pilot’s body had been burned or sliced to pieces.

  Proper procedure and good sense was to chase the ejector seat and incinerate it. But at the speed the A-wing had been moving, the seat would impact the moon in moments; if he pursued, Soran would need to cut his own velocity faster than the TIE would allow to avoid crashing into the surface. He fired off a final wild volley before the ejector seat disappeared from view; it was possible he’d hit it, but more likely it had smashed into the ground.

  With his scanners negated by the particle field, locating the seat among the dust and rocks would take whole minutes. He descended anyway, picturing Broosh aboard the bridge of the Yadeez and the TIEs divided between attackers.

  He had no more time.

  He raced a hundred meters above the moon’s surface, maneuvering among the expanding plumes of dust called forth by the A-wing’s impact. He decreased altitude again, trying to make out anything more specific than twisted black blotches that might have been engine nacelles or a young man’s corpse.

  “Colonel?” Broosh’s voice again. “Shall we await your return?”

  Soran didn’t need to hear impatience and strain in Broosh’s steady tone to know how the man felt. “I’m en route now,” he replied.

  He made one final pass over the debris, sweeping lower—through the dust clouds—and firing, blasting rocks and wreckage until the clouds were thick enough that he couldn’t see ground or sky. Rock shards pelted his canopy. Any survivor below might escape the particle bolt volleys, but wouldn’t emerge from the storm of shrapnel unscathed.