Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure

by Cecil Castellucci

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 01: Imperial Attack

  Chapter 02: The Cost of Duty

  Chapter 03: A Familiar Face

  Chapter 04: Resurrection of Evil

  Chapter 05: A Jedi in Waiting

  Chapter 06: Operation Yellow Moon

  Chapter 07: The Chancellor’s Counsel

  Chapter 08: The Team Assembled

  Part Two

  Chapter 09: Life During Wartime

  Chapter 10: Mission to Basteel

  Chapter 11: Dwellers in the Dark

  Chapter 12: Broken Codes

  Chapter 13: The Isles of Sesid

  Chapter 14: Aquatic Predators

  Chapter 15: The Draedan Pirates

  Chapter 16: In the Fields

  Part Three

  Chapter 17: A Royal Decision

  Chapter 18: War on Jaresh

  Chapter 19: Wrath of the Shieldmaiden

  Chapter 20: Rendezvous at Yellow Moon

  Chapter 21: Belly of the Beast

  Chapter 22: Heroes of the Rebellion

  Chapter 23: Honoring the Lost

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  © & TM 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  Designed by Jason Wojtowicz

  ISBN 978-1-4847-2501-6

  Visit the official Star Wars website: www.starwars.com

  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…

  Reeling from their disastrous defeat on Hoth, the heroic freedom fighters of the REBEL ALLIANCE have scattered throughout space, pursued by the agents of the sinister GALACTIC EMPIRE.

  One rebel task force protects PRINCESS LEIA, bearing her in secrecy from star to star. As the last survivor of Alderaan’s House of Organa, Leia is a symbol of freedom, hunted by the Empire she has opposed for so long.

  The struggle against Imperial tyranny has claimed many rebel lives. As the Empire closes in, Leia resolves to make a sacrifice of her own, lest the cause of freedom be extinguished from the galaxy.…

  PZ-4CO WAS BACK, and this time Leia Organa was too weary to come up with a good excuse that would send her away.

  “General Organa, I have been requested to assist you in recording your memoirs,” the tall, blue-plated protocol droid said. “I have made seven previous requests. When I made my first request forty-four days ago, you said—”

  “I remember what I said, Peazy,” Leia interrupted, leaning against the doorway that led into her quarters. The droid looked at her uncertainly, clearly having expected to be invited inside.

  “When I made the second request thirty-eight days ago, your stated reason—”

  “We’re not going over all seven requests and how I responded to them,” Leia said, folding her arms. Suddenly, C-3PO’s many odd habits didn’t seem so bad. “Now remind me again why this is so important?”

  The droid cocked her head at Leia, who allowed herself a slight smile. Peazy’s programming hadn’t anticipated that question.

  “I would imagine the reason is obvious,” PZ-4CO said. “You were a critically important member of the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War, a veteran of key battles such as Yavin, Hoth, and Endor—”

  “That was a long time ago,” Leia said, her eyes turning cold. “We’re on the brink of war again—one we may not survive. In which case none of those things will matter.”

  “Those things are essential,” the droid objected. “You are the leader of the Resistance, a critical check on the designs of the First Order. You are a symbol of the Resistance and an inspiration to all soldiers who follow our cause and do their duty in hard times.”

  “Duty,” Leia said, smiling sadly, then shook her head.

  “I have given offense somehow,” the droid said tentatively.

  “You haven’t. But those are someone else’s words. Who have you been talking to, Peazy?”

  “Major Ematt has been very helpful in preparing me to interview you,” the droid said.

  “I might have known,” Leia said, smiling at the mention of the man she had fought alongside for so many years.

  “Very well, I surrender,” she said, indicating that the droid should come inside. “Where would you like to begin? No, never mind. You mentioned duty. As it happens, I’ve been thinking about that, too—about a lesson I learned many years ago. It’s one I think every member of the Resistance would do well to master.”

  BY THE TIME they saw the TIE fighters, it was too late.

  Princess Leia Organa didn’t even know the name of the system they were flying through—it was little more than a small dim sun, a pale purple gas giant, and a vast field of rocks and dust that gravity hadn’t quite managed to squeeze into a planet.

  Sensor operators aboard Leia’s Nebulon-B frigate, the Remembrance, had spotted the Imperial fighters winging through the tumbling rocks—which meant the TIEs had also spotted the rebels. They wheeled out of the asteroids and bore down on the small rebel convoy: the Remembrance, two GR-75 transports, and a quartet of blockade runners.

  As klaxons began to hoot aboard the Remembrance, Leia crossed the bridge to stand beside Captain Volk Aymeric. The green-skinned Ishi Tib stared up at a holographic representation of the system, the locations of the rebel and Imperial ships marked by arrows and crosses. Aymeric held his arms calmly behind his back, but his eyestalks were quivering faintly.

  Leia forced herself to say nothing. She was one of the principal leaders of the Rebellion, but Aymeric commanded the ship. It made for an awkward relationship. Leia didn’t want Aymeric’s crew to think she was telling their captain what to do, and she knew the Ishi Tib officer felt the same way about having an important rebel leader aboard his ship. They were always saying too much to each other, or too little.

  “Send our starfighter pickets to intercept—and step up your scans,” Aymeric ordered.

  “Those are short-range fighters,” Leia said. “And there are no known bases in this system. That’s why we took this course through hyperspace.”

  Aymeric’s left eyestalk swiveled in her direction, and he opened his beak in what she’d learned was his species’ version of a frown.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Which means there’s a carrier out there. Patch the audio from the fighters into—”

  “Captain!” yelled a sensor officer. “Three ships coming out of hyperspace in sector three-F!”

  “Pull the fighters back to defend the convoy,” Aymeric said.

  The bridge was a flurry of activity. Sensors painted the new arrivals as a trio of Arquitens-class light cruisers—an identification quickly confirmed by a bridge officer. Leia could picture them hurtling through space—elongated triangles with forked snouts, attached to three cylindrical engines.

  Someone fed the transmissions sent by the six X-wing pilots on patrol into the bridge comm system, filling the space around them with chatter. Aymeric’s eyestalks pivoted independently to look at the holographic display and focus on members of the bridge crew calling out new information.

  “The cruisers are scrambling fighters!” a crew member warned.

  “Fire at will,” Aymeric said. “Order all craft to calculate the jump into hyperspace—we�
��ll regroup at the rendezvous point determined by scatter protocol Besh.”

  The Remembrance’s turbolasers began to fire, and the deck beneath their feet shook slightly with each blast of energy sent out into space.

  At Aymeric’s side, Leia clenched her hands into fists. She was useless there. She felt like she was standing alongside her adoptive parents, Bail and Breha, waiting through one of Alderaan’s endless royal ceremonies and knowing that she could let no emotion show on her face—because it would be seen and talked about. She’d once complained to one of her aunts that being a princess had to be about more than silently doing one’s duty—only to have her aunt reply, with a sad smile, that she’d just described most of a princess’s job.

  “Are there any other rebel units within hailing range?” Leia asked, hating the idea of being chased off by three of the Empire’s smaller warships.

  “Negative,” Aymeric said. “With the Empire looking for us everywhere, the fleet is completely scattered—broken into small convoys like ours. It’s safer that way.”

  Except when we need help and there’s none to be had, Leia thought.

  She saw flashes of light through the broad viewports of the Remembrance’s bridge and felt the frigate shudder as laser fire splashed across its shields.

  They heard an X-wing pilot howl, his voice rising and then vanishing in static. One of the crosses on Aymeric’s holographic display blinked and vanished. Another rebel had lost his life, meaning another grim message sent to fall like a lightning strike on the heart of a parent or sweetheart. How many was that now? She shied away from even attempting such a terrible calculation.

  Three of the blockade runners jumped into the safety of hyperspace. The X-wings were streaking for safety, as well. Leia could hear their pilots urging their astromech droids to make the navigational calculations more quickly.

  “Captain, I have a priority signal from the Ranolfo,” a young lieutenant called, identifying one of the blockade runners. “They’ve lost their starboard shields.”

  “How long till they can make the jump into hyperspace?” Aymeric asked.

  The lieutenant spoke urgently into his headset, then shook his head. “At least three minutes.”

  “Captain, our course is locked in and we’re ready to jump,” the helmsman called.

  “We’re leaving them?” Leia asked.

  Heads turned on the bridge and Aymeric’s beak opened. “Turn to oh-thirty-eight to cover them,” he said, not looking at Leia.

  The Remembrance banked to starboard, turbolasers spitting fire in an effort to keep the swarming TIEs away from the vulnerable blockade runner. Leia stared grimly at the display hanging in the air in front of her—three crosses and far too many arrowheads.

  Then the Remembrance lurched and a shudder rolled through it, followed by a groan and the wail of alarms.

  “Damage report!” Aymeric barked.

  “Hull breach just forward of the connecting spar—and secondary shields are down to fifteen percent!”

  The Ishi Tib’s shoulders slumped. “Make the jump to hyperspace on my command.”

  “Captain—” Leia began, but Aymeric turned to her, his voice quiet so only she could hear.

  “I won’t let the men and women aboard the Ranolfo die in vain, Princess,” he said. “They have the same mission as every being in this convoy—and that’s to keep you safe.”

  Leia looked away, forcing herself to unclench her fists, to breathe. Her face was impassive when she looked back at Aymeric and nodded. She barely registered the sound of the command he barked at the navigator or the sight of the stars elongating into streaks as the Remembrance vanished into hyperspace, leaving the doomed blockade runner behind.

  WHEN LEIA LEFT the Remembrance’s bridge, a familiar figure was waiting on the other side of the door—a protocol droid with golden plating.

  C-3PO started to say something, but she kept walking, forcing him to hurry along beside her, his servomotors whining. She’d ordered him to stay off the bridge—their situation was stressful enough without Threepio’s incessant fretting and complaining.

  The droid belonged to Luke Skywalker but had been lent to Leia to assist with etiquette and protocol when she met with secret delegations from planets that could aid the Rebellion in its war to overthrow the Empire. As the former senator from Alderaan, Leia was at ease in such meetings, able to call on a lifetime of diplomatic training.

  But there had been no such meetings recently—just endless flight through space in an effort to stay one step ahead of Imperial patrols. After the Alliance’s disastrous defeat on the ice planet Hoth, Mon Mothma and the rebel leadership had ordered the fleet to break into small task forces that were constantly jumping from star system to star system.

  Mothma had explained that the safeguards were designed to prevent another defeat for Imperial propagandists to celebrate. But Leia worried that the constant flight made the Alliance look weak when it needed to convince people that the Emperor’s grip could be broken. The Alliance had to gather its forces again—and win victories on the battlefield.

  “Mistress Leia, where are you going?” C-3PO asked plaintively, shuffling along in her wake as quickly as he could.

  “To my quarters,” Leia said without turning. “I assume you remember where they are?”

  “Of course I do,” said Threepio, whose knowledge of etiquette somehow didn’t include recognizing sarcasm. “My memory banks contain schematics of every ship to which I’ve been assigned while serving the Alliance.”

  “That’s an excellent use of your memory banks, considering how many of those ships are now space dust.”

  Rebels saluted Leia as she passed. She wanted to cringe each time someone did that but forced herself to nod in return. It was a sign of respect for her as their superior, but they were not her friends.

  She had never had many friends. She’d been too focused on the mission for which Bail Organa had trained her practically since birth—the overthrow of the Empire that had destroyed so much. But then Luke entered her life—along with Han Solo and Chewbacca.

  Threepio said something that didn’t register, because she was thinking of the last time she’d seen Han—of his eyes as he’d stared up at her from inside Cloud City’s carbon-freezing chamber. And then of everything else they’d shared in the few weeks before that. How she’d begun to tremble when he’d taken her hand aboard the Millennium Falcon, drawing steadily closer until he’d finally kissed her. He’d been right about her—she did need a scoundrel in her life, someone who wouldn’t salute her, who didn’t care about her title or her role in the Alliance.

  She wanted that someone to be him, but he’d been taken from her—like her adoptive father and mother had been, along with everyone else on her homeworld of Alderaan. She’d seen them die, incinerated by the Death Star’s superlaser while Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader forced her to watch. And now Han was gone, beyond her reach. All she could do was wait—in quiet desperation—for word from Lando Calrissian or Chewbacca.

  Leia passed a cluster of rebel personnel crouched in front of an open door and had gone two steps past them when she realized none of the rebels had saluted—or even looked up at her.

  She stopped, silencing C-3PO’s complaints. One of the rebels looked up and she saw his face change as he recognized her. He started to come to attention, but she shook her head, staring down at the young woman on the repulsorcart in the corridor, at her shredded and blackened uniform.

  “Oh,” Threepio said. “Oh, my.”

  “What happened?” Leia asked.

  “She was caught in the blast when the TIEs breached the hull, ma’am,” the officer said. “We’re stabilizing her here while the medical droids deal with those who are more badly wounded.”

  More badly wounded than this? Leia thought in dismay, looking at the gauze covering half the woman’s face. The injured rebel saw who was looking at her and shakily lifted one bandaged arm, trying to salute.

  “That’s not…”
Leia began, then stopped, remembering what Aymeric had said. The duty of the woman on the repulsorcart was to protect Leia, and she had paid a terrible price performing that duty. Leia could resent the special treatment, even find it appalling, but she couldn’t let the injured young rebel see that. To make her think her sacrifice had been purposeless would dishonor her.

  Leia fixed her eyes on the injured rebel’s face. The woman grimaced, bringing her arm up farther, then let it fall, pain etched on her face. Leia nodded gravely at her, then at those around her. Then she hurried down the corridor and didn’t stop until she was at the door to her quarters.

  “I keep trying to tell you, Mistress Leia,” C-3PO said. “I have a priority communication from Mon Mothma. We are to rendezvous with her and the rest of the Alliance leadership immediately.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say so? Never mind. What’s happened?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, Mistress Leia,” C-3PO said. “All I know is we are to await transport once we come out of hyperspace.”

  TO HER SURPRISE, Leia recognized the transport pilot waiting for her and the young, lean-faced rebel officer standing next to him.

  “Nien!” she said, smiling at the dark-eyed Sullustan. Nien Nunb had pinned a rebel insignia to his worn flight jacket at a cockeyed angle, somehow finding a place for it amid the riot of patches already there.

  Nien put his gloved hands on his hips in mock indignation.

  “Escorting royalty!” he burbled in Sullustese. “If I’d known, I’d have charged the Alliance twice what I did. Lieutenant Ematt, I insist you get Mon Mothma on the comm.…”

  “What nerve,” sniffed C-3PO, standing behind Leia in the Remembrance’s airlock with her duffel bag. “Must everyone in this galaxy be a mercenary?”

  “He’s joking, Threepio,” Leia said. Yes, Nien was a former smuggler—and talked as though he hadn’t left that profession entirely behind—but he had risked his life to help Leia save Alderaanian exiles and preserve the destroyed planet’s culture and heritage. She trusted him—and was glad to see him.