Ambush at Corellia

by Roger MacBride Allen

  * * *

  Han got back into the groundcar, and made sure his own blaster was at the ready and the miniature thermal detonators were within easy reach. He put on the flash goggles, and hoped they worked this time. They were supposed to respond instantaneously to any level of ambient light, but they tended to be a little persnickety. This was going to be interesting. He rechecked his seat belt, switched the lights back on, and gunned the engine hard.

  The lumbering old groundcar tore its way over the rise, smashing down the stand of razor grass as it went over the top. A series of fast blaster shots flashed out from the right of the car as Kalenda shot up the section of perimeter fence directly in their path. The blaster shots were right on target, but the fence stayed up. It must have been tougher than it looked. Han floored the accelerator and aimed the groundcar straight for the fence. The car lunged down the other side of the rise, and smashed into the fence head-on. It slammed its way through, and Han fought to keep control as the car bucked and swayed over the uneven ground. Finally its wheels hit the hard tarmac of the landing field, and Han was back in control. He pointed the groundcar at the nearest PPB and floored the engine again.

  A blaster shot flared out of the darkness, and struck the pavement just in front of the groundcar. Han jerked the steering wheel sideways, acting on sheer reflex, and then got back on course toward the PPB. He pulled his own blaster out and stuck it out the driver’s-side door. He fired wildly in the general direction of the shot, not really expecting to hit anything. But a flare of light exploded in the middle distance as a fuel tank went up, and Han was happy to take the bonus. He was almost at the first PPB. He dropped the blaster, juggled his hands to keep one on the wheel while he reached for a minidetonator with the other. He flicked the safety off the little bomb, slowed long enough to toss it in the general direction of the patrol boat, and then accelerated, having no desire to be too close when that thing went off.

  Baroom! The detonator went up with a flash of light that the goggles handled perfectly, darkening down in the blink of an eye. The goggles cleared, and Han risked a glance behind him. Yes indeed, the detonator had taken the PPB with it, and judging by the size of the crater, the groundcar had come close to joining the party as well.

  Han looked back toward the fence, and spotted a small figure, dressed in black, running for all she was worth, straight for the X-TIE.

  “Go!” he shouted, though she could not possibly hear him. “Go!”

  Bits of flaming PPB were starting to drop out of the sky all around him, and he wove back and forth across the tarmac, struggling to avoid them all.

  Fwap! Another blaster bolt, but this one hit his groundcar right in the engine. The vehicle instantly burst into flame, and Han decided it was time to be elsewhere. With the groundcar still rolling, he let go of the wheel. He grabbed his blaster in one hand, scooped up the rest of the minidetonators and tossed them in his pocket with the other, then undid his seat belt and popped the door.

  He rolled out of the groundcar and landed hard on his pocketful of detonators. He got to his feet, and trotted forward as best he could, using the rolling, burning, smoking groundcar for cover as he headed for the next PPB. He pulled out the next detonator, set it for a longer delay, and rolled it gently toward the patrol boat.

  Shorthanded or not, the spaceport guards were starting to respond. Han could see the lights of vehicles heading toward him, and airborne PPBs coming in. More blaster fire struck to his right, and he fired back as he dove.

  The second detonator went up, but it must have rolled past the PPB. The explosion merely set this one on fire, rather than destroying it.

  Han glanced toward the X-TIE just in time to see a slight figure scrambling into it.

  He decided to get rid of the little nasties and stop worrying about causing maximum damage. He pulled out his last three, punched in the timer studs, and threw them as far as he could, one in every direction but that of the X-TIE.

  The triple explosion was too much for the flash goggles, and they blacked out altogether and did not clear. Han peeled them off, and watched, with a smile on his face, as the X-TIE Ugly flew directly over his head and headed for the sky. No way the PPBs could catch that thing with a real pilot in it.

  The spaceport guards were starting to converge. A spotlight from an approaching security hovercar caught Han in its beam. He laughed, threw down his blaster, put his hands over his head, and waited for them to come and get him.

  Mission accomplished.

  * * *

  They had found an emergency stairwell that wasn’t too full of debris, and managed to clear it far enough for Leia to get up to the fifteenth floor of Corona House.

  Early in the day these apartments had been the home to her family, and her family had all been there, safe and together. Now, now they were all gone, scattered to the four winds, and the apartment was a darkened, ruined shell of a place, with the cold wind coming in through the broken windows.

  But from here, she could see the spaceport. With a good strong set of macrobinoculars, she could see the flares of the explosions, the flicker of blaster fire, the duller flame of burning ships. She could even see the X-TIE getting away into the sky.

  But she could not see Han.

  And she knew she might never see him again.

  * * *

  The X-TIE shuddered its way up into the sky, the crude crossbreed of a ship threatening to come apart at the seams at any moment. Belindi Kalenda hung on for dear life and forced the wretched thing up into the sky, out of the atmosphere, and out into the depths of space. She could see now why this sort of chop-job ship was called an Ugly.

  But at least this particular Ugly had an absolutely standard hyperspace drive and navicomputer. At long last she had the X-TIE up out of the atmosphere. She set it on a course that would keep it flying while she did the jump calculations for the run to Coruscant.

  She frowned at the readings the navicomputer was giving her. Something was not quite right. The gravimetric background readings were way too high, and growing stronger even as she watched. Not strong enough to stop her jumping into hyperspace, but they would be soon. She had never seen a reading like that, except around an interdiction ship in training exercises.

  And who would have an interdiction ship out here?

  Kalenda compensated as best she could for the heightened readings, and made ready for the jump to hyperspace. She turned flight control over to the navicomputer and hung on.

  The lightspeed engines kicked in. Starlines formed, and the X-TIE Ugly bucked and shuddered its way into hyperspace.

  * * *

  One of them, one of the cloud of helpers and assistants who always wanted something of her, was waiting for Leia when she got back downstairs. She could see him, watching her come back in, hoping for the nod from her, the gesture that would allow him to approach. Very young, very earnest, with the inevitable datapad full of vital data in his hands. His office worker’s clothes were still neat and clean, as if the whole nightmare day had never happened. Bright, energetic, relentlessly polite.

  Ones like him were always waiting for her, wherever she went. The helpful people with the piece of information they wanted to give her, the people who wanted just two minutes of her time, the ones who wanted to give or get just one tiny bit of advice, and never mind that her husband and children had just been swept away from her, perhaps forever. Couldn’t they give her any peace?

  But the answer was, of course, that they could not. There was a galaxy to run, and never enough time to do it. Other people’s families were in jeopardy this night, and they were trusting in Leia to put things right. She pushed her sorrow to one side and walked briskly over to the bright young technician who wanted to see her.

  “Ah, good evening, ma’am.”

  Good in what way? she thought. But the words she spoke were at least somewhat more polite. “Good evening,” she said, her tone a bit brittle. “You looked as if you wanted to see me.”

  “Yes, ma’
am. There’s something I think you need to know. I work in the com section. We’re not having much luck getting through the jamming, but while I was working on that, I noticed some very strange readings on the gravimetric sensors.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” Leia asked in acid tones, and then instantly felt guilty. “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “That was uncalled for. Please tell me what I need to know.”

  “Ah, yes, ma’am. Thank you. What it boils down to is that something seems to be disrupting realspace in the same way an interdiction ship does.”

  Suddenly the earnest young technician had her full attention. An interdiction ship did one thing, and one thing only—generate gravitic energy in such a way that hyperspace could not form in its vicinity. Ships inside an interdiction field could not jump to hyperspace, and ships in hyperspace that passed through an interdiction field were abruptly—sometimes violently—decanted out into normal space. “Tell me more,” she said.

  “Well, right now it’s a fairly weak effect, but it’s getting stronger by the minute, as if there were a very powerful interdiction generator just warming up very slowly. At the moment it’s not enough to force a ship out of hyperspace or keep one from entering it, but it will be soon. But that’s not the bad part.”

  “What is the bad part?” Leia asked.

  “The size of the interdiction zone, ma’am. If this field keeps growing at the present rate, it’s going to blanket the entire Corellian star system.”

  “The whole system?” Leia asked. “That’s impossible. No one could generate an interdiction field that big.”

  “Except someone is, ma’am. And when that field reaches full strength, nothing is going to be able to get within a light-week of this star system in hyperspace. We’re going to be cut off from the outside.” The young technician put down his datapad, knit his fingers awkwardly together, and he looked away from Leia, down at a corner of the floor. For the first time the fear in his own voice came through. “It means,” he said, “that we’re not going to get any help.”

  * * *

  Leia Organa Solo found a place to be alone in an empty, windowless conference room across from the Governor-General’s office. It was a good place for her, just then, for from there she could not see the sky, or the spaceport, or the stars that were suddenly so much farther away.

  Her family was lost to her, lost to the depths of space. The Corellian System, in a single day, had somehow found a way to backslide into the worst sort of irrational species hatred, the sort of thing that should have been left in the slime a thousand generations before. Neighbor was turned against neighbor in a three-way fight that could only grow more vicious as the wounds cut deeper. And the Corellian Sector had seceded from the New Republic in a way that could only tempt others to do the same. She knew how fragile the fabric of the New Republic still was. She knew how easy it would be to tear it to shreds, how impossible it would be to put it back together.

  But there were plenty of other worries besides mere politics. Where had Mara Jade gone? She had vanished. How were a bunch of thugs like the Human League capable of stealing the most secret New Republic data? How were they able to blow up stars on command? Were they truly capable of exterminating an entire living star system if they did not get their way? And who was producing this massive new interdiction field?

  And they were all counting on her. If she made only the slightest effort, used the least of ability in the Force, she could quite literally feel their need, there in the Governor-General’s office. They needed her, had faith in her, believed that she would find the way out of this for all of them.

  And she did not have the least idea what to do next.

  Leia reached down, deep into herself, into the power of the Force, and searched for the strength that would let her hang on.

  * * *

  Luke Skywalker made his way back to the control cabin of the Lady Luck and sat down in the copilot’s seat.

  “Almost there,” Lando said, glancing up from his seat at the pilot’s station.

  “Good,” Luke said, strapping himself in. “It’ll be good to see Han and Leia and the kids again.”

  Lando looked over and grinned wolfishly. “It’ll be even better to cut some nice big deals at that trade summit.”

  Luke laughed. “If only it were that easy,” he said. “Then maybe—”

  Suddenly the Lady Luck shuddered violently from stem to stern, and went into a violent tumble as half a dozen alarms sounded at once. “Luke!” Lando shouted as he wrestled with the attitude controls. “It’s an interdiction field! It’s knocked us out of hyperspace. Shut down the hyperdrive motors before they burn out!”

  Luke reached out and shut down the hyperdrive, silencing most of the alarms. Lando pulled the ship out of its tumble and hit a series of reset commands, quieting the last of the alerts.

  Luke let his friend work. He could sense something, a huge and powerful disturbance in the Force. He closed his eyes and reached out with his Force senses.

  “What was that?” Lando demanded, when he finally had the ship put to rights. “What maniac would put an interdiction field way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Not out here,” Luke said as he opened his eyes. “In there.” He pointed through the viewscreen toward the still-distant point of light that was the star Corell, at least two months’ travel away at sublight speeds. “It’s very weak, and very subtle, but I can feel the way it interacts with the Force. We’ve just hit the fringes of an interdiction field that covers the whole Corellian star system.”

  “Are you nuts?” Lando asked. “No one could build an interdiction field that big. No one.”

  “Well someone has,” Luke said. “It’s here. We’ve just run into the edge of it.”

  Luke reached out again, this time trying not to sense the shape of a field in space, but the feel of the minds in the Corellian System. He did not try to reach any one mind, but instead to get some overall sense of emotion. Even at this extreme range, he ought to be able to get something. But the power of what he got back astonished him. Hate, fear, revenge, anger, terror—all the dark emotions were running wild in the minds of the Corellian System.

  “Lando,” Luke said, “turn this ship around. We’re not more than a few hundred kilometers inside the interdiction field. Fly us back out of the interdiction field in normal space, and then set a lightspeed course for Coruscant. We need to go for help. Now.”

  Lando seemed about to protest, but then he stopped. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” He took up the controls, and began turning the ship around.

  “Hurry, Lando,” Luke said.

  Luke looked out the viewport again, to the gleaming light of Corell. “Hurry,” he said again.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  TO BE CONTINUED

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Roger MacBride Allen was born in 1957 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He graduated from Boston University in 1979. The author of a dozen science fiction novels, he lived in Washington, D.C., for many years. In July 1994, he married Eleanore Fox, a member of the U.S. Foreign Service.

  Books by Roger MacBride Allen

  THE TORCH OF HONOR

  ROGUE POWERS

  ORPHAN OF CREATION

  THE WAR MACHINE (with David Drake)

  SUPERNOVA (with Eric Kotani)

  THE MODULAR MAN

  FARSIDE CANNON

  THE RING OF CHARON

  THE SHATTERED SPHER

  CALIBAN

  INFERNO

  ALLIES & ALIENS

  The STAR WARS Corellian Trilogy

  AMBUSH AT CORELLIA

  ASSAULT AT SELONIA

  SHOWDOWN AT CENTERPOINT

  DAVID BRIN’S OUT OF TIME: THE GAME OF WORLDS

  UTOPIA

  THE DEPTHS OF TIME

  THE OCEAN OF YEARS

  THE SHORES OF TOMORROW

  BSI: Starside

  THE CAUSE OF DEATH
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  DEATH SENTENCE

  FINAL INQUIRIES

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Family Ties

  Hands tied behind his back, Han Solo stumbled as the guards shoved him into the gloomy audience chamber. He realized a moment too late that the floor of the central area was a half meter below the level of the entrance. Moving too fast to stop, he fell over the edge. His shoulder slammed down onto the hard stone floor.