by Paul S. Kemp
Isval’s escort shipped bobbed on the blast waves. Even with her naked eye, she could see some of the escape pods hit by the waves starting to spin uncontrollably.
And that had been mere prelude, she knew. When the charges she’d placed on the hyperdrive went…
“Brace,” she said over her shoulder to Drim, Faylin, and Crost. They had no way to strap themselves in, so they grabbed hold of any protuberance affixed to the cabin.
The vacuum killed the flames almost as quickly as they blossomed, and for a moment the Star Destroyer slid along in space, quiet, dark, and still, blackened by fire, torn by explosions. It looked almost peaceful, like a relic from a long-ago war. But the moment ended when the chain reaction set off by the dying hyperdrive turned the Perilous into a miniature star.
A white-hot explosion engulfed the entire remaining superstructure and shredded the ship. Isval squinted and shielded her eyes. Flaming, twisted debris flew in all directions.
“Brace! Brace!” Eshgo shouted, and clutched hard on the controls.
The blast wave, visible as a ripple in space, expanded out in all directions from the ragged corpse of the Star Destroyer. It tore through a few escape pods outright, turning them to scrap, and sent other pods and V-wings skipping along like pebbles in a torrent.
The wave hit the escort ship like a rock wall. The impact drove the ship backward and set it spinning. Metal groaned and whined. Alarms shrieked. Crost, Drim, and Faylin, with no straps, unable to keep their grip, were thrown around the rear area of the ship. The power failed abruptly, quieting the alarms and casting the interior in darkness.
Isval cursed. Crost, Drim, and Faylin groaned.
“You all right?” she called back to the three.
Ayes all around.
“I need us back up, Eshgo!” she said.
—
“Brace yourselves, my lords,” came the shuttle pilot’s voice over the comm. He tried to sound calm, but tension tightened his words.
The blast wave slammed into the side of the shuttle, knocking it sidewise, carrying it along for tens of kilometers, and causing it to list sharply. Vader and the Emperor, seated, used the Force to hold their position, but the four members of the Royal Guard were thrown hard against the bulkhead. A wall-mounted comp station spit sparks. An alarm rang. The cabin lights blinked, browned, and failed, casting the cabin in darkness and silencing the alarm. In the quiet, Vader’s breathing was the only sound.
Backup power returned light to the cabin.
“One moment, my lords,” the pilot said through a crackling comm.
The engines came back online and the pilot righted the ship. The Royal Guardsmen once more took their stations, never uttering a word.
Vader looked out one of the viewports, saw hundreds of pods and ships floating in space, many without power, and thousands if not millions of pieces of debris cast into space like so much flotsam by the explosion and subsequent blast wave.
Most of the ships spun or flew toward the brown ball of Ryloth, but some flew toward the planet’s nearest moon. The rest just spiraled out into space.
“Deflectors are down, my lords, but engines are operable.”
“Continue on to Ryloth,” the Emperor said.
“We’ll arrive shortly,” the pilot answered.
“Very good, Captain,” replied the Emperor.
—
Backup power came online a moment later, and Eshgo quickly steadied the spinning ship.
“We’re back online,” he said.
Isval looked out the viewport, saw thousands of ships and pieces of the Star Destroyer spinning or floating powerless in the wake of the blast wave. The first wave of pods started to hit Ryloth’s atmosphere, lighting up the sky in orange lines as the friction of entry generated flames. Vader and the Emperor could be anywhere. She looked for something larger, a shuttle or something similar, but saw nothing within eyeshot. There was just too much real estate to cover and too many ships and pieces of debris.
“Give me a full scan,” she said to Eshgo, and bit down on her comm with Cham. “I need those ship idents, Cham! Now or never!”
He replied right away. “Coming now,” he said, and their onboard computer showed the idents.
“Scan for those,” she said to Eshgo, but then performed the scan herself, staring at the comp screen, daring it not to find them.
“Incoming ships,” Eshgo said, tapping the screen. “Looks like the tri-fighters. Some of the V-wings are still operational and have picked them up, too, I think. They’re moving to intercept.”
Isval knew the tri-fighters’ experimental droid brains would leave them no match for the V-wings, which meant she had little time. If Vader and the Emperor had escaped the Perilous, she needed to find their ship and destroy it in the chaos.
“Come on! Come on!” she said to the comp.
—
A collective gasp came from everyone in the communications center as the readings showed the Perilous disintegrating into millions of small pieces. Many of them looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if imagining the destruction occurring far above.
“Stations, people,” Belkor said, his voice hollow.
Belkor had played sabacc only a few times, and he’d always played poorly, but he was about to bet everything he had. He dismissed the comm officer, ostensibly to let the junior officer gather himself, and raised Moff Mors’s shuttle.
“This is Ryloth Imperial Control,” he said.
“Go, control,” said the pilot.
“The Perilous is gone. Escape pods are away, and there is a VIP ship in distress. You are the closest ship and are to proceed there immediately and offer assistance.”
“How are we the closest?” said the pilot. Belkor remembered his name as Breehld.
“Planetside V-wings are launching now. You’re the closest.”
“Understood.”
With that, he transmitted the ID of Vader and the Emperor’s shuttle, together with the coordinates from the last reported location of the Perilous.
Mors’s ship would have to swing around Ryloth, but that would take only a minute or two. And then, if all went well, Cham’s droids would blow her from space.
“Alert search-and-rescue ships,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot of evacuees up in the black and on the ground. Track what you can as they fall.”
Ryloth’s harsh terrain and constant dust storms would make search and rescue difficult, but Belkor would need to make a good show of it. Most of the officers and men who’d be involved in search and rescue were loyal to him personally, so he could control things easily.
“No rescue is to launch yet,” he ordered. “I want a full scan and detailed situation report first.”
“Aye, sir.”
The delay would allow Cham to get to Vader, the Emperor, and Mors.
CHAPTER TEN
The comm overhead crackled and Breehld, Mors’s pilot, said, “Ma’am, uh, I’ve just received word.” A long pause that Mors did not like. “The Perilous is gone.”
Mors rose from her seat. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”
A pause, then, “Apparently she’s been destroyed, ma’am. Between the orbit of the first moon and Ryloth. That’s the word I received from Ryloth Control.”
Mors sagged back into her seat and swallowed hard. To her knowledge, an Imperial Star Destroyer had never before been destroyed. And now one had, above the planet she was administering, by a rebel movement that she was supposed to suppress.
Whatever had been left of her career before today had been blown to bits with the Perilous.
Though her shuttle was on the other side of the planet, she looked out the viewport half expecting to see parts of the Star Destroyer floating out there. She couldn’t quite fathom how things had gotten to this point.
Yes, she could. She’d trusted Belkor too much. She’d relied on the man and been let down.
With her comlink she raised Belkor.
“Ma’am, I’m managing a lot
down here at the moment.” The colonel’s voice sounded high-pitched and stressed over the connection.
Mors sputtered. “You’re managing a lot? You?”
“The Perilous is gone, ma’am. But Vader and the Emperor escaped. There are many survivors, in fact. I’ve instructed your pilot to—”
“You what?”
“—to divert and assist in rescuing the Emperor and Lord Vader.”
“Why isn’t the area already filled with V-wings and rescue ships? What are you doing down there, Belkor?”
“Ma’am, we have limited ships, and getting them too close to the Perilous before her explosion seemed imprudent. I’m launching them now.”
A headache began in Mors’s left temple, a spike of pain she hadn’t felt since the days she’d actually cared about her job. She held the comlink up to her mouth and spoke through gritted teeth.
“You are to do nothing more, Colonel, without first consulting me. Is that understood?”
A pause, then, “Yes, ma’am.”
“You will answer to me for all of your failures the moment I set foot on Ryloth. Is that understood?”
A very long pause, then, “Yes, ma’am.”
Mors cut the link, seething. She’d been too hands-off for years, letting Belkor run amok on Ryloth. She needed to at least give the appearance of running things. An investigation would be coming. Punishment would be coming.
Mors’s sole chance at redeeming the situation, at least partially, was to find and bring the Emperor and Lord Vader safely to Ryloth’s surface. If she did, perhaps she could maintain her station. She could put the blame for her inability to suppress the Free Ryloth movement on Belkor, blame the promising but underperforming officer for the missteps that had led to the destruction of a Star Destroyer. Mors would be held accountable for being a bad judge of character, a bit too willing to overlook the flaws in a subordinate, but perhaps she could skirt the worst of it.
She had no other course. To Breehld, she said, “Get us around the planet as fast you can, Breehld.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
The shuttle accelerated to full, speeding around Ryloth, chasing the ruins of the Perilous.
—
“Got one,” Eshgo said, pointing at the scanner screen.
Isval saw it—a shuttle picking its way through the debris field toward Ryloth.
“Tri-fighters are closing, too,” Eshgo said.
“Weapons hot,” Isval said, activating the modest cannon array on the escort boat. “Let’s go get him.”
Eshgo accelerated through the debris, swinging the escort boat left and right to dodge pods and chunks of the Perilous. The scanner chirped, indicating that it had detected the ident of the second ship Cham had identified. They were tens of thousands of kilometers apart.
“Stay with the first,” Isval said. “But keep a fix on the second. We’ll come back around.”
—
Mors looked out the viewport and gasped when she saw the scope of the destruction. Chunks of metal, some larger than her shuttle, floated everywhere. Escape pods and even V-wings without power floated free among the debris.
“Where are the rescue ships?” Mors asked herself. “Damn you, Belkor.”
Debris spattered the ship’s hull.
Breehld’s voice came over the comm. “Ships incoming, ma’am.”
“The rescue ships? How many?”
“No, ma’am. Scan is strange. I think they’re old droid tri-fighters?”
“They’re what? Never mind. Do you have the Emperor’s shuttle?”
“Have it on the scanner, ma’am.”
“Hail them.”
“Very good—Wait…Ma’am, there’s an escort boat coming at us on an attack vector.”
Mors figured if the rebels had vultures and tri-fighters, they might also have repurposed Imperial escort ships.
“Take evasive action,” she said. She threw herself in a seat but fumbled the straps.
Breehld, no doubt assuming she was strapped, slammed the ship hard to port. Mors was flung across the cabin and crashed hard into the bulkhead, knocking the wind from her.
—
Red lines lit up space as the tri-fighters’ repeating blasters started firing at the surviving Imperial ships. Unable to dodge effectively, escape pods exploded in flames. The V-wings still flying answered the tri-fighters with cannon fire of their own.
“He’s gone evasive,” Eshgo said, swinging the escort left and right as he closed on the shuttle.
“Closer,” Isval said to Eshgo, waiting for the targeting computer to lock on. “Just a bit closer.”
The targeting computer beeped to indicate it had a lock.
Isval fired and the cannons loosed lines of hot plasma.
—
An impact rocked the shuttle, throwing Mors hard against the bulkhead, driving the breath from her lungs. Alarms wailed. She lifted herself to all fours, breathing hard.
“Breehld,” she said, but he didn’t respond. “Status.”
Breehld was presumably too engaged in maneuvering the ship to answer. The shuttle swung hard down and up. Red lines streaked past the starboard portholes. Another impact struck the rear of the ship; a secondary explosion followed, larger than the impact, one or more engines going up. The lights died in the cabin and the ship bucked, flinging Mors around the cabin. She hit her head hard against one of the cabin’s chairs. She gasped with pain and her vision blurred. Blood poured from her opened scalp and into her eyes.
“Breehld! Breehld!”
Smoke leaked into the cabin from somewhere, stinging her eyes. The alarms seemed to be growing fainter—either that or she was fading. She pawed at the chair, surprised to see blood on her hand, and tried to pull herself up. Whoever was shooting at them would be coming around for another pass. She didn’t know if the deflectors were still operating. If not…
Dizziness allowed her to rise only partially before she sagged back to the deck.
“Breehld,” she said, her voice sounding oddly distant.
The engines went offline and the ship went hard right and down. The smoke thickened. The lights went out entirely. Coughing, gagging, losing consciousness, she realized they were going down. She wondered what had happened to the backup power.
—
“Damn it,” Isval said as the shuttle they’d been targeting veered right and down. Eshgo had to slam the escort boat hard left to avoid an escape pod, but he was a moment too slow. The escort boat nicked the pod, metal scraping metal, before he unpeeled from the ship.
“No damage, we’re good,” he said, breathing hard. “We’re good.”
“No we’re not,” Isval said, trying to keep her eye on the shuttle amid the debris and other ships and pods. She’d already lost weapons lock. “Come back around! Now, Eshgo! Now!”
“Trying,” he said through clenched teeth, steering the ship through the debris. Despite his effort, bits of material peppered the escort boat’s hull.
“I can’t see him!” Isval said.
“I still have him on scan,” Eshgo said. “Look! His power’s out! Not even life support. He’s floating dead, headed down.”
“Where’s the other one?” Isval said, and checked the scan herself. She saw the second ship heading straight for Ryloth. Worse, she saw incoming V-wings on the sensors, heading up from Ryloth.
“We’re going to lose the second one, Isval,” Eshgo said.
“I know!” she said, and raised Cham on their private comlink. “Cham? I need you to extrapolate a likely impact zone for—”
“I can’t see anything, Isval. We’re around the other side of the planet, aboard ship and heading down for the base on Ryloth. What’s happening there?”
“We hit one of the ships. Her power is down and she’s falling into the atmosphere. I don’t know if Vader and the Emperor were aboard. Even if they were, they may still be alive.”
“We’re losing him,” Eshgo said, meaning the second shuttle.
“Just do what y
ou can and get clear of there,” Cham said to Isval. “Belkor’s shaky. An exit, Isval. Think one through.”
She nodded. “Meet you planetside, Cham.” To Eshgo, she said, “Get after the second one. We’ll find the first later.”
She watched on the scanner as the first shuttle, powerless, fell into Ryloth’s atmosphere. They’d crippled it, probably fatally, but there would be no way to be sure unless they found the ship or its wreckage later. Interference from the atmosphere would block further scanning, and she hated the uncertainty. But there was nothing for it.
“Attack vector on the second one,” she said to Eshgo. “And we leave nothing to chance this time.”
—
Vader stared out one of the small viewports at the millions of pieces of debris, the whole of it as dense as an asteroid field. Each bit of metal goaded his anger. The rebels would be made to pay.
“Treachery never goes unpunished, old friend,” the Emperor said, as though reading his mind.
Vader heard an undertone of menace in his Master’s tone. He turned, thinking to ask what his Master meant, but before he could, he felt something through the Force—impending danger. His Master, too, must have felt it, for he gave the concern a voice.
“They are coming,” the Emperor said, his voice as soft and gelid as a cold breeze.
The pilot’s voice came over the comm. “My lords, it appears an Imperial escort boat is heading toward us on an attack vector. She’s not answering hails.”
“She is hostile,” his Master said over the comm. “Destroy her.”
Vader would take no chances with his Master’s safety. He stood and started for the cockpit.
—
The escort boat slashed the distance between it and the shuttle.
“She sees us,” Eshgo said, adjusting his angle of approach. “Seeking a lock.”
“And I see them,” Isval said, watching as the targeting computer beeped to indicate a weapons lock. “And they’re too late. Deflect this, bastards.”
She fired as the Imperial shuttle went evasive. Her shots caught it low under the nose, destroying the shuttle’s solitary gun port in a spray of fire and metal. The escort boat passed over and past the shuttle.
“Coming around!” Eshgo said, wheeling the boat around.