And finally, there was Kanan, who seemed to go from disaster to disaster as if he were wandering from one cantina to another. Nothing seemed to touch him—yet she knew that wasn’t true. Yes, he played the roustabout, working a dangerous job and pushing back against those who pushed him. But that day with Okadiah was not the first time she’d seen him come to someone’s defense. They were always small acts; often, the person helped hadn’t known he’d done anything. He seemed to want it that way, for some reason.
She could also tell he was tired of living the way he had been: tired of going from one pointless job to another, looking for a place where he could live his life his own way. She’d seen the look a hundred times on the faces of other migrant workers—and the Empire had made it into a perpetual state for many. Kanan was young—but his secret soul was much older. And Zaluna knew the Empire was somehow responsible.
But Zaluna had the right to a life of her choosing, too—and time was running out.
The red light on the nav computer flashed. A buzzer, half broken and barely audible, sounded. Her eyes went to the comm system controls. It would be so easy …
“Your only value to the Empire is what you can do for it,” said a voice from behind.
Unsurprised at hearing Hera, Zaluna turned over her words in her mind. “You know,” she said calmly, “Hetto used to say that exact thing.”
“He was right.”
Zaluna saw Hera’s reflection in the viewport, against the streaming stars. She was motionless behind her, not approaching. “Aren’t you afraid?” Zaluna asked.
“Anyone would be. But the Jedi had a saying about fear. It leads, ultimately, to suffering.” Hera paused. “Someone has to break the chain.”
“People can’t talk about the Jedi anymore.”
“Maybe they should.”
Zaluna nodded and looked back at the control panel. “It was better then.” She felt her strength reviving. She was more than an extra set of eyes and ears to a sadistic cyborg—and to a faraway Emperor. She was no revolutionary, but she could at least try to stop them now.
Zaluna moved her hand to the nav computer and shut off the buzzer. “I was just coming to get you,” she said. Turning to Hera, she smiled. “We’re here.”
Kanan thought it sounded foolish to say aloud, but leaving hyperspace was just like entering it, except in reverse. The stars through the forward viewport went from blurred lines back to twinkling dots. Only this time, few could be seen from Expedient’s cockpit. Cynda hung above, a brilliant crescent from their angle, while massive Gorse sat up ahead, its cities in their eternal night.
And there was something else: more TIE fighters than he had ever seen. Swarms lay ahead, peeling off in quartets as Expedient entered the area.
“Vector right seven-five degrees, down-axis twenty,” snapped a voice over the comm system. “Follow the formation if you want to live.”
Kanan flinched. This was normally when he’d give the Imperials some lip—but he wasn’t flying, and it wasn’t smart. Not now. Hera complied, banking the vessel and bringing it into line with a queue of ships far ahead. Each freighter had a pair of TIEs either above and below it or on either side, defining a corridor: Kanan could tell from the sensors that two flanked Expedient, on the port and starboard sides. Ahead, the sky went black for a moment, as the hexagonal wing of another TIE zipped past their field of view.
“They’re crisscrossing,” Kanan said. “Keeping us all separated.”
Hera frowned. “They’re limiting the damage a saboteur can do. They’re afraid there’s another Skelly out here.”
“They’d be right,” called Skelly from behind. Holding his midsection, Skelly hobbled toward the front of the cockpit. He reached for the side of Kanan’s seat and missed. Zaluna hopped from her seat and grabbed onto him. Skelly seemed almost unaware of the woman steadying him. His eyes were locked on the outside. “Somebody means business.”
Expedient followed the convoy across the terminator dividing Cyndan night from day. There they saw it, sitting off in space: the gang boss to their work crew. Zaluna gasped at the sight. “Another Star Destroyer!”
“No, the same one,” Hera said.
Kanan nodded. It was one of the more unnerving consequences when ships of differing speeds used hyperspace. Ultimatum had been in their rearview cam, parked at Calcoraan Depot, when they’d gone to lightspeed; now it was sitting in front of them over Gorse, disgorging even more TIE fighters.
Hera looked in unsettled wonder. “These TIEs can’t all be from the Star Destroyer. Imperial-class has sixty, maybe seventy.”
Kanan pointed out other vessels orbiting off Cynda’s horizon. Long and bulky like the thorilide cargo craft, the ships had docking ports for four TIE fighters each. “Looks like the Empire’s refitting Gozanti freighters these days.”
“And they beat us here, too!” Hera was as aggravated as he’d seen her. She was clearly used to flying a faster ship. “We’re lucky they didn’t have time for shore leave.” She looked at the scanner and raised her hands in frustration. “I don’t know that we can get to Gorse at all through this blockade.”
“I thought you were good,” Kanan said.
“Not that good. Not in this thing.”
The TIEs led the convoy on a long descent path, several hundred kilometers off the surface of Cynda. Hera rolled Expedient 180 degrees so the ground could be seen from the cockpit. “Construction work ahead,” Kanan said. He flipped a switch, triggering the viewport’s magnifying overlay.
Skelly staggered forward and half collapsed against the forward panel between Hera and Kanan. Arms splayed forward across it for support, he gawked at what he saw. “We’re too late,” Skelly said, staring at a large metal tower on the surface over their heads.
“What? What are those?” Kanan asked. He could see at least six others, spaced seemingly randomly across the moon’s surface.
“Injection sites. They’re pumping in xenoboric acid, punching holes deep into the mantle. They’ll run the baradium charges down on suprafilament next.” Skelly looked from tower to tower. “Down below, Cynda’s got flaws, just like a diamond. They’ll set off the charges in a precise order, seconds apart. The primaries will cleave it. The secondaries will crush it. The tertiaries will disperse it.”
Kanan stared at him. “How do you know all this?”
“It’s my idea. I did it as a thought experiment—just to prove my point. It was on the holodisk.” He sighed and sagged to the floor. “Why do I always have to be right?”
Hera studied the workers on the surface. “They’re in a real hurry,” Hera said.
“Vidian’s in the hurry,” Kanan said. “He’s got to destroy the moon before the Emperor gets wise to what he’s doing here.” He smirked. “And that’s who’s missing. Him and his big collector ship. I told you, you just had to trust—”
“Attention, newly arriving freighters,” said a familiar voice over the comm system. “This is Captain Sloane of Ultimatum. I have important information about a change in plans.”
Kanan smiled at the others and gave a thumbs-up signal. “This is it!”
“The accident earlier this week left the moon’s mines dangerously unstable,” Sloane said over the comm system. “Imperial scientists have determined the only way to prevent future disasters is to release all the stresses that have built up—now, with no one in the mines. By doing so, we assure safe mining can continue, in the name of the Empire.”
“Yeah, that Empire’s really looking out for them,” Skelly said. “They’re talking our own people into committing suicide!”
“You will be guided to sites on the Cyndan surface where you will off-load and leave immediately,” the captain continued.
Kanan frowned. “Wait a minute. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say. She was supposed to say Vidian’s a goner—and send us all home!”
“That doesn’t sound like a woman who just squealed to the Emperor,” Hera said.
Kanan stared at the comm s
ystem. “No, it doesn’t.” He shook his head.
The hyperspace anomaly alarm flashed blue and squawked loudly. Ahead, Vidian’s gigantic thorilide harvester vessel appeared in the only free patch of space available.
“Welcome, Forager,” Sloane said over the comm system. “The final freighters are here and the last charges will be injected in forty minutes. You should receive a data hookup with Detonation Control down there in one hour.”
“Excellent work, Captain Sloane,” they heard Vidian say. “You’ll make a fine admiral one day.”
Kanan looked at Hera. “This is making me sick. They’re on a date.”
“Jealous?”
“Blast it, I thought she’d listen!” He pounded his fist on the dashboard. “That’s the Imperial way, all right. They’re always stabbing their friends in the back!”
Sloane spoke again over the device, sounding more concerned. “Count Vidian, time will be of the essence. Lieutenant Deltic’s staff says you will have one hour from the Detonation Control linkup to trigger the process.”
“I won’t need that much time,” Vidian responded, drily. “I’ve been ready—and Forager will be ready.”
“To collect the thorilide after he’s blown most of it up—along with the moon,” Skelly muttered as the transmission ended. “Senseless.” He turned around on the floor and slumped with his back against the cockpit control panels. He dabbed his nose with his hand. There was blood there. “Just drop me off anywhere. Maybe I can die on Cynda before they blow it up.”
Hera looked at Skelly for a moment—and then back outside. Her eyes focused on something ahead. “Skelly, why did she say there was a time limit to detonating the explosives they’re planting in the moon?”
Skelly rubbed the side of his head, his eyes closed. “It’s the xenoboric acid they’re injecting. Wait too long and any of the junk that’s left down there will eat its way through the baradium drop cables and containers. No boom then.”
Hera looked at Kanan. He caught the drift. “You said there was a chain reaction here—that some of those towers were primaries?”
Skelly sniffed, eyes opening. “Yeah. Four of them.”
“Which four?” Kanan asked.
“I’m trying to remember. I’d have to look.” Skelly tried to get to his feet, but only fell back down on his rump. Zaluna sprang again from her seat and helped him stand, bracing herself between the two forward chairs. Skelly looked ahead and squinted at Cynda’s bright surface.
“Will killing the towers stop the reaction?” Kanan asked him.
“Yeah. But those are our people down there working those sites—and flying cargo to them.”
“I know.” Kanan reached down for his headset and put it on.
“That’s only patched into local comm traffic,” Hera said. “We can’t send Zaluna’s warning on it.”
Kanan ignored her and worked the latch on the panel in front of his knees. A door swung open, and he pulled at what was inside. Reluctant hinges cracked and groaned. With effort, Kanan craned a targeting system with handles up toward his chest.
“Do I want to know what he’s doing?” Zaluna asked.
Hera stared at him in puzzlement. “I’m not sure I know, myself.”
“The meteor chaser,” Kanan said, waving to the ceiling. The single cannon perched above the crew compartment had a field of fire that covered a wide arc on either side and ahead of Expedient. “Every Baby Carrier has one. Baby doesn’t like being bumped.”
“Neither do I,” Skelly said, looking nervously at him. “You can’t expect to fight off the Imperials with that?”
“Not more than a few,” Kanan said, testing his microphone. “But if I do it right, a few’s enough!”
The command center of the collection ship looked like a cathedral for some ancient religion. Vidian’s comm station, in the middle of the room, resembled an altar. Idle comparisons, both. But the reality was not lost on Vidian. From here, he would sacrifice the moon to his Emperor, winning his favor for another year. And the ashes of the world would smother his rival once and for all.
Intentionally or not, the collection ship’s designers had built a supernatural feel into Forager’s bridge. Situated frontward on the foremost sphere on the ship’s linked series of pods, the huge round room looked ahead through tall windows that rose and curved to a ceiling twenty meters above. More consoles like Vidian’s circled him like miniature megaliths in a place for idol-worshipper rites. A catwalk two stories up ran around the front arc of the room, providing additional workstations between the windows for Vidian’s droids and cybernetically enhanced assistants. He could see the metallic figures moving back and forth on the decking, digital priests backlit by the shining moon.
“Spokes deployed, my lord,” one of them said. “We are ready for the collection process to begin.”
Vidian nodded. It was up to Sloane and her people now. Switching his visual feed from cam to remote cam, he looked approvingly on the Cynda work sites. Sloane had done a remarkable job, throwing Ultimatum’s thousands of staffers at a project that, days before, had been a fantasy on a holodisk from a deranged assassin. Now they were thirty minutes away from doing something that still existed only at the outer edges of Imperial capability: the destruction of a moon, and perhaps the world below.
It had been critical to get Sloane’s cooperation early on. Any extra time, any deliberation would have brought the Emperor’s corps of engineers into the picture, and they would have questioned the yield from the test blast. Vidian could use Tharsa’s name to falsify a report and defraud an ambitious captain, but more would be difficult. And this couldn’t wait. As Vidian cycled his messages before his eyes, he saw not just more from the nuisance Danthe, but several from the Emperor’s inner circle. All were almost comically urgent, suggesting that if Vidian didn’t deliver thorilide in record amounts instantly, the entire Imperial fleet would have to be mothballed. The baron had really gone to work on the Emperor’s people.
Well, he would finish it soon enough. He would deliver thorilide beyond anyone’s fantasies—and then stick the grinning Danthe with a ticking bomb.
One of Vidian’s cybernetic aides stepped forward. “Something’s coming in, master, on the Mining Guild channel.”
“Eh?” Vidian whispered commands until the sound reached him.
“—don’t know what’s going on. Feeling so … weird. These blasted Baby canisters—some of them started leaking these, I don’t know, these fumes …”
“What’s this nonsense?” Vidian said aloud.
“—don’t know how it happened. Faulty loading, faulty material, faulty something—just like everything in this wretched job. I’ve hated it all, y’know.” The voice went from woozy to bitter. “And I’ve hated all of you.”
“It’s one coming from one of the freighters,” Vidian’s aide volunteered. “The coolant lining the baradium-357 canisters has been known to cause psychotic episodes if it gets—”
“Yeah, you know me,” the broadcaster interrupted, sounding angrier by the word. “You know my voice. I put up with all of you, for Okadiah’s sake. In the mines, on the hoverbus, in the bar. Lot of bums, all of you. Think you’re such tough guys. You make me sick!”
Vidian seethed as he recognized the voice. The gunslinger! “Zero in on that transmission,” he ordered. “Find him!”
The speaker was raging now. “Filthy, stinking miners! I can see your ID transponders—I know who you are. Think you’re hot stuff, hauling bombs. Let’s see how hot I can make it!”
Vidian toggled his comlink mode. “Now hear this! This is Count Vidian. Disregard these transmissions and finish your deliveries! You’ve just heard the ravings of a crazy man, a provocateur—”
The pilot boomed in response. “I’m crazy? I’m crazy? Fine! I don’t care about your stinking starfighters, Empire-man. I’m telling everyone—if you see me coming, run, because I’m going to blow every ship I see out of the sky! Starting with the miners!”
A horri
fic squawk erupted from Expedient’s comm system: Imperial jamming on the guild channel. Hera looked at Kanan, stupefied. “I thought you were going to warn them about the moon!”
“They wouldn’t have believed it. I barely believe it. Right now, they’re only afraid of the TIE fighters. But they’re about to become more afraid of me!” Kanan flashed her a wild look. “I need you to fly like a Wookiee whose hair is on fire—and who thinks everybody lit the match. Can you do that?”
She seemed to get the idea, if reluctantly. “Got it.”
He pointed at the TIE fighter beginning its intersecting run across their convoy corridor. “Dive when I signal.”
The Imperial starfighter whisked into their field of view, its wings resolving into a fat hexagonal target. Kanan used it as exactly that, pulling the trigger on his gunnery controls. “Hera, now!”
Orange fire ripped from the weapons turret positioned over and behind their heads, tearing dead-center into the wing of the TIE fighter passing before them. Hera slammed the control yoke forward and hit the throttle, causing Expedient to dive. The TIE exploded into a blaze of bright flame above—but now Cynda was all they could see, its icy surface filling the viewport.
Zaluna lost her hold on the side of Kanan’s seat and fell forward, mashing Skelly against the forward control panel. He called out in pain.
“Hang on!” Hera brought Expedient into a roll, bringing one of the two Imperial fighters that had been flanking them into Kanan’s sights. He fired again. Hera didn’t wait to see the result, moving once more to bring the ship lower. Cynda’s gravity began to take hold.
Zaluna tried to help Skelly up. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m not used to this!”
“Who is?” Weakly trying to fend off her attempts to stand him up, he appealed to the air. “Please, just let me go sit down …”
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