Star Wars: Darksaber

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “They’ll be after us in a moment,” Tarkin said as he triggered the distress signal built into the escape pod. Lemelisk saw that the Grand Moff had also been injured, burned by the hot bulkhead.

  Suddenly, with a miracle of good luck, space around the Eriadu System rippled and an Imperial Star Destroyer stabbed out of hyperspace. He learned later that it was Admiral Motti’s flagship; Motti had come to escort Tarkin, though the Grand Moff had not asked for it.

  The Star Destroyer locked onto the distress signal and came toward the would-be Rebel assassins, its turbolasers ripping through the darkness with spears of disintegrating light.

  Lemelisk looked up and saw the three attacking Y-wings fire again at the Lambda shuttle, this time destroying it utterly. As it exploded, the Y-wings split off in three different directions and vanished into the cloaking distance of space.…

  As they spun around, dizzy inside the careening lifepod, Lemelisk felt as if he were about to be spacesick. The engineer’s part of his mind wondered distantly just how much of a mess he would make if he vomited into the confined atmosphere of the craft as it whirled around like a child’s toy.

  “Very strange,” Lemelisk commented. “It appeared as if those Rebel ships wanted to rescue your Calamarian slave.”

  Tarkin was incredulous. “Rescue Ackbar? Why should they bother with an animal?”

  Lemelisk shrugged as Admiral Motti’s Star Destroyer followed the distress beacon and approached them for rescue. “I’ve never understood the Rebel mind,” he said.…

  Later, they recovered in the Death Star’s infirmary rooms. Lemelisk nursed a broken nose, and Tarkin lay bandaged from sprains and superficial burns. They received the grim news that the assassination attempt on Tarkin had been only part of the Rebel treachery. A group of commandos had succeeded in stealing a copied set of the full Death Star blueprints, the technical readouts that specified every system, each component, all the weaponry capabilities of the great battle station, and smuggled them to the Toprawa Relay Station, from which point they had vanished.

  A young corporal with spit-polished boots, clean uniform, and neatly trimmed hair stood nervously as he delivered his message, afraid that Tarkin might fly into a rage and order the young man’s execution. “Darth Vader is even now tracking down the Toprawan Rebels, sir. He anticipates capturing them before they can deliver their stolen plans.”

  Lemelisk watched Tarkin and was amazed by the Grand Moff’s seeming lack of concern. He gave a mysterious thin smile while his hard eyes flashed. “Seeing the full details may even increase their fear of this battle station,” Tarkin said. “They won’t find a flaw.” He looked over at Lemelisk, who felt foolish with the cumbersome bandage across his nose. “My Death Star is invincible.”

  Lemelisk leaned back on the infirmary bed and hoped Tarkin was right.

  Now, as he cruised in the inspection scooter over the outer hull of the Darksaber, Lemelisk didn’t have such confidence in the new Hutt superweapon. He would have to chastise the Taurill for their shoddy work once again, and the little creatures would scramble to perform the necessary reparations … until the next screwup.

  But the Taurill weren’t the only problem.

  Sulamar’s antique computer cores kept crashing, no matter how carefully Lemelisk reprogrammed them and backed them up. The devices must have been defective from the time of manufacture, and now they were so outdated few people remembered how to fix them.

  Some of the thick metal sheeting purchased from low-bid contractors was found to have millions of micro holes—bad enough for structural material, but this had been intended for the engine shielding! This entire Darksaber project was one misery after another.

  The front-end girders of the kilometers-long cylinder didn’t exactly match up with the aft girders in the final assembly, and if the superlaser was not perfectly aligned when Durga fired the weapon, the deadly beam could vaporize the Darksaber rather than its intended target.

  And there was more.…

  His groan echoed inside the inspection scooter. He had overseen repairs to each of these problems, but finding so many instances of ineptitude made him wonder about the many problems he had not yet found.

  CHAPTER 41

  Crix Madine and Trandia locked down their A-wing fighters in the dense shadows of rocky outcrop bristling from the rugged surface of a small asteroid.

  “All systems on standby and powered up,” Madine said. “Even if everything goes as planned, we need to be ready to leave here fast.”

  Trandia responded with the grim fatalism she had shown since the death of Korenn, the third member of their team. “Are we going to return from this mission, sir?” she said.

  Madine thought of responding with a reassuring answer, then decided she deserved something more honest. “We must remain optimists,” he said. “There’s a chance we’ll get back home eventually.”

  Trandia said, “Good enough for me, sir.”

  Madine and Trandia wore heavily padded, single-mission spacesuits, walking outfits of armor like self-contained mobile ships. They stood on the crumbly surface of the asteroid, checking their complement of detonators, life-support packs, and surveillance systems.

  “Ready to go, sir,” Trandia said.

  Madine stood beside her, bulky in the hardened survival suit. They looked out at the enormous structure taking shape as it hung at a stable point in the asteroid belt. “Launch,” Madine said.

  He and Trandia leaped upward, tearing themselves free of the asteroid’s negligible gravity. Momentum carried them across the gulf of space toward the superweapon under construction. As he and Trandia drifted like tiny pieces of rubble toward the giant cylindrical assembly, Madine had a good deal of time to stare at the Hutt project through his faceplate.

  The design concerned him. He was aware that the Hutts had copied the Death Star plans from the Imperial Information Center—but this was no Death Star. It appeared instead to be no more than the superlaser, a straight cylinder that would serve as a destructive offensive weapon. If this weapon were completed, the Hutts would show little reluctance to use it against any system that failed to pay them for protection.

  And the construction seemed nearly finished.

  The two suited figures floated in, specks against the kilometers-long assembly. Madine spoke in a focused line-of-sight beam at Trandia. “We may be able to cripple the weapon if we can get inside and place our detonators in appropriate spots.”

  “From the looks of it, we’d better not wait too long, sir,” Trandia said. “Seems like the Hutts are ready to go.”

  At last, their magnetic boots made contact with the armor plates, black metal that reflected little starlight. Using his adhesive gloves, Madine clambered like an insect along the hull. The Hutt weapon was so vast that the curvature of the cylinder was unnoticeable beneath him.

  He and Trandia worked their way along the metal plates, and Madine was surprised to see that many of the hull segments were mismatched and loose, welded together but leaving gaps and uneven seams. Such a construction couldn’t possibly hold an atmosphere. He was appalled by the reprehensible workmanship.

  At least it would be easy to get inside.

  They came upon one particularly loose plate, and Madine removed a crude crowbar from the tool compartment of his bulky suit. With it he was able to peel free some of the crumbling welds. The sheet of metal drifted away, tumbling end over end. The missing plate left an opening large enough for Trandia and Madine to crawl through even in their cumbersome suits.

  They entered a darkened, half-completed corridor, little more than an access space between the shoddy outer hull and a not-much-better inner wall. Bright beams from their helmets lit the way as they pulled themselves along. Finally they reached a bulkhead door that allowed them to pass deeper inside the construction and work their way toward the aft interior chambers. They cycled one at a time through a cramped airlock.

  Clomping in his heavy boots, Madine entered another dimly lit passag
eway and stood waiting for Trandia. When she joined him, Madine removed his helmet. “There’s atmosphere here. Let’s take off our suits,” he said. “We’ll need the freedom of movement. We might have to hide on a moment’s notice, and I can hardly move inside this contraption.”

  Trandia disassembled the heavy components, piling her armor beside his in an unused storage alcove. The empty suits looked like enough metal to be the shrapnel from an Imperial scout walker. Trandia’s braid had come loose, and strands of hair swam around her face. Perspiration dampened her neck, and her skin was flushed—but her eyes were flinty.

  Madine and Trandia removed the tools and the detonators from their packs. He scratched his beard and held a clenched fist in the air. “To the success of our mission.”

  Trandia matched his upraised fist. “We will succeed,” she answered.

  Ducking low and moving quietly, they sprinted along the corridors, heading toward where the propulsion systems would be. Some of these decks were already inhabited by a skeleton crew, and they hesitated at corners, crept past droning voices of guards and crew members who lurked in open rooms.

  As they hurried, though, Madine noted many darkened glowpanels, wires dangling from ceiling plates but connected to nothing, and dead blank computer terminals that seemed as if they had never functioned. Madine muttered to Trandia, “Maybe we don’t need to sabotage the weapon after all. This whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen.”

  The engine sections were a great pulsing dungeon filled with smells of oil and coolant, hissing steam that might have been intentionally vented or just leaking from reactor cores. The storm of noise and flashing lights throbbed around them, drowning their surreptitious sounds as they crept into the tangle of engines.

  More guards patrolled the catwalks above—stupid-looking Gamorreans and a hodgepodge of unsavory alien creatures: Weequays, Niktus, and walrus-faced Aqualish. Madine checked the blaster pistol and the four detonators he carried, then gestured that he and Trandia would split up.

  The Darksaber’s guidance computers were giant banks of circuit boards fenced off by a transparent mesh that steamed with supercooled air blown through the hot circuitry.

  The enormous engines themselves thrummed behind a thick shielding wall. If they could plant remote detonators in various spots around the compartment, the two of them unaided could cripple this great weapon, leaving it dead in space until New Republic forces could finish the job.

  He and Trandia moved apart into the deeper shadows and the loud, unmuffled machinery. Trandia held her precious store of detonators as she slithered through the murk, darting from cover to scant cover, working her way over to the shielding wall that blocked the engines.

  Alone, Madine moved to the mesh surrounding the propulsion computers. He bent down and removed a cutting tool from his equipment pouch, intending to slice through the protective fence. A detonator or two could completely kill the computers that drove the superweapon. He switched on the small vibroblade and felt the high-pitched hum through its handle. He hacked at the thin flexible mesh—but as soon as he severed the crystalline cords, a squawking alarm burst from the top of the computer.

  Madine deactivated the vibroblade with a curse, grabbing for his blaster pistol. The guards in the engine compartment hurried to discover the nature of the disturbance, though they seemed somewhat apathetic. Madine wondered how often they responded to false alarms resulting from the inept construction work.

  Madine decided not to fire just yet and slid back into shadows as the alien guards lumbered toward him, their own weapons drawn. If he could just be silent, they might miss him and go about their business. His heart pounded. The guards came closer.

  Suddenly Trandia stood up from her hiding place near the wall of the engine compartment. She waved her arms and yelled to draw attention to herself. As the guards turned in astonishment, she fired her blaster at them, hitting a leathery-faced Niku, who hissed as he fell to the floor.

  The other guards spun about and launched a volley of blaster bolts in Trandia’s direction. She ducked, but one bolt burned through her arm. She cried out and slumped behind one of the consoles for cover. The guards converged on her hiding place, completely forgetting Madine.

  “Run!” she shouted at him. Her voice was high with pain. “Run.”

  Madine cursed again under his breath, wishing Trandia hadn’t been so impulsive. He began to crawl away from the propulsion computers, pulled his blaster, and looked for a chance to draw the guards away from her. The vicious aliens pushed toward her position—and just as they reached her, Trandia triggered every one of the detonators she carried.

  The resulting explosion drowned out even the cacophony of engine sounds. A wall of flame gushed outward in a blazing ring. The explosion took out the entire complement of guards as well as Trandia herself, though it barely damaged the engines’ containment wall. Lights flickered and went out.

  The shockwave knocked Madine flat, turning his consciousness into a static of black insects before his eyes. He shook his head, gasping for breath, and struggled back to his feet. The enemy was alerted, the infiltration ruined. It would do no good to stay.

  Madine stumbled as he ran. He couldn’t think straight, stunned as much by the loss of Trandia as by the explosion. Then a deeper core of Madine’s personality asserted itself, reinforced by the years of training he had undergone, the lessons he himself had taught his commando team members.

  The mission was paramount.

  They had to succeed.

  The mission.

  Madine hauled himself to his feet and found that his back was bleeding, nicked by several chunks of shrapnel unleashed by the explosion. Alarms continued to whoop and screech, demanding attention. Madine somehow reached the doorway, though he was disoriented and couldn’t recall how to find his way back to their armored mission suits.

  He lurched through the open door, staggered down the dimly lit corridor—and stumbled right into another group of alien guards rushing to see what the commotion was all about.

  Madine’s heart sank. Trandia had given her life hoping to cause irreparable damage, hoping to let her commander escape—but she had accomplished neither.

  Gamorreans clasped stubby fingers around his arms, throwing Madine to the deck and piling on top of him as if they meant to keep him from moving.

  “Saboteur!” one of the Weequays snarled down at him.

  They hauled Madine to his feet. Five separate guards clutched him, as if in a contest to see how many could actually claim credit for his capture. Madine struggled, but said nothing.

  The guards hauled him off alone, a trophy to be brought before Durga the Hutt.

  CHAPTER 42

  Up on the Darksaber’s supposedly functional control deck, Bevel Lemelisk watched the childish glee evident on the faces of both General Sulamar and Durga the Hutt. The two normally surly partners sat enthralled with the controls in their grasp as they itched to begin their grand plan of conquest.

  Despite the difficulties Lemelisk had experienced with the Taurill and any number of other convoluted problems encountered during construction of the massive superweapon, the Darksaber project had somehow bumbled along, adhering to its schedule more through mutual annihilation of errors than actual efficiency.

  Per Durga’s demand, the Darksaber was now technically complete, constructed according to Lemelisk’s modified plans and completed in conjunction with the work and inspection crews—though Lemelisk did not want to guarantee the quality of any portion of the project. In fact, he felt great anxiety when he began to think Durga might actually wish to use the weapon anytime soon.

  “Observe,” Durga said, summoning a holographic map of the galaxy centered on the Nal Hutta system and extending outward in the intended path of the Hutts’ “outreach program,” using the Darksaber to hold rich and vulnerable planets ransom.

  Sulamar gave far too much unwanted advice, and Durga refused to listen any longer, gloating over the holo map, his rubbery lips form
ing a leer that pushed the discolored birthmark up the side of his face.

  On the control deck Durga’s other crew members sat strapped into their chairs, secured with lock restraints because Durga did not want them to leap from their booby-trapped seats if he grew displeased with them.

  Lemelisk rubbed the scratchy stubble on his chin, as Durga peered into the map of the galaxy, which would soon be under his entire control.

  Without warning, the alarms went off, whooping from the security stations. Klaxons echoed through the empty corridors of the Darksaber. Startled, many of the crew members on the command deck tried to flee, but the locked webbing held them in place.

  Durga bellowed, “I demand to know the meaning of this racket.”

  “That’s the security alarm, sir,” Bevel Lemelisk said. “I selected its sound to be particularly unpleasant and attention grabbing.”

  Sulamar sneered. “You did your job well, engineer.”

  Durga was not satisfied. “And why did this alarm go off?”

  Lemelisk shrugged. “Because of a security breach, perhaps?” he suggested.

  “You mean sabotage?” the Hutt said.

  Before Lemelisk could answer, the echoing thump of a distant explosion vibrated through the walls. “I think that would be a safe bet, Lord Durga,” he said.

  “Damage report, sir,” said one of the Devaronian crew members. “An explosion has occurred in the engine levels. A saboteur planted a bomb.”

  “Extent of damage?” Lemelisk asked.

  “Unknown at this time,” the Devaronian said.

  Durga howled in outrage. “Sabotage! This will put us behind schedule. How did anyone penetrate our defenses?” His lanternlike Hutt eyes scoured across the members of his command crew. “I demand to know who is in charge of security!” He reared up on his levitating platform. “Who?”

  Everyone on the bridge deck huddled down and cowered until one pasty-faced Twi’lek finally raised a clawed hand. The wormlike head-tails dangling from the back of his skull quivered with fear. “I … I am in charge, Lord Durga. We did not anticipate—”