“General!” called the tactical officer. “The Yevethan flagship is slowing.”
A’baht nodded acknowledgment. “That’s a small break for us, if he’s decided to let the rest of his fleet do the fighting.”
“Sir, all of the Imperial types are slowing—the Super, the interdictor, the SDs—all of ’em. They’re stopping in a hurry, too—just sitting there. I can’t figure this tactic—the T-types are hard for us to knock out, but the Imperial designs have more punch.”
A’baht stared at the tactical display. “Signal the armada to slow to one eighth—let’s give ourselves a little more time to sort this out. Are any of the T-types holding off?”
“No, not one of them—they’re still coming on,” said the tactical officer. Seconds passed. “General, the Imperial types are definitely veering off now. I don’t know—maybe the viceroy’s having an attack of good sense.”
A’baht’s thoughts leaped at once to the officially discounted claim of a treaty between the League and something called the Grand Imperial Union.
“Or someone else is,” he said. “Maybe there’s a falling-out between friends under way over there. Let’s see if we can aggravate it. Task Forces Blackvine, Apex, Keyhole—the leashes are off. Pursue and engage.”
There were 513 Black Sword Command veterans aboard Pride of Yevetha and more than 15,000 Yevetha. Those proportions did not trouble Major Sorannan. His contingent was armed with more than blasters and a profound motivation. The ship was already under their control; dealing with its last owners was a mere detail.
There was a precious irony, Sorannan thought, that the principle instrumentality of their freedom was something called a slave circuit.
Within three minutes of his pressing the button that turned the ships away from the New Republic fleet and toward Byss, he was joined in the fire control room by Captain Eistern and three other men whose former duty stations had been elsewhere in the engineering section.
“Looks as though you managed without us, sir,” said Eistern, observing the carnage in the pit. Tendrils of smoke were still rising from the consoles where three blackened corpses were slumped.
“They gave me no trouble,” Sorannan said with evident satisfaction.
Eistern glanced up at the targeting holo. “Wish you could say that about the Alliance,” he said. “It looks like they’re coming after us. We’re not ready to fight this ship, you know.”
“We will be gone before they catch up,” said Sorannan.
“They don’t know what’s happening here. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother with us if they did.”
“I intend to tell them, but not for that reason,” said Sorannan. “I want them to know who they owe their victory to.”
He climbed back to his station, pulled out a pair of system boards, and replaced them upside down. The monitors flickered as the displays changed to reflect the new functions being controlled from that location.
“General A’baht, can you hear this transmission?”
“This is A’baht.” There was curiosity in the tone. “Please identify yourself.”
“Proudly, General. This is Major Sil Sorannan of the Black Sword Command, Imperial Navy—acting captain of the Star Destroyer Intimidator and commodore of the Camp Pa’aal Squadron.”
“I am not familiar with your unit, Major.”
Sorannan laughed stiffly. “It’s newly commissioned, General—sorry you couldn’t be here for the christening.”
“If your intentions are not hostile—”
“It is not that we have any more love for you now than when we last faced you,” said Sorannan. “But we won’t fight to defend our enslavers.”
“Heave to, and you won’t be harmed.”
“Oh, no,” Sorannan said. “We’ve been here too long already—nearly thirteen years on a nine-month detail. No, General. This is good-bye. We are taking back what is ours, starting with our freedom and these ships. We leave the Yevetha to you.”
He pressed the middle and third buttons on the wand, and an unjammable hypercomm signal leaped across the emptiness to slave circuits buried deep in the command architecture of every Imperial warship deployed at N’zoth and its daugher worlds across the cluster.
Autopilots calculated jump vectors, and hyperdrive motivators called on the immense power of solar ionization reactors. Space trembled, twisted, and yawned open around the accelerating warships.
Moments later, Black Sword Command’s withdrawal from Koornacht Cluster was finally complete.
Cheering broke out on the bridge of Intrepid as the heart of the Yevethan fleet vanished from the tracking displays, but A’baht quickly put a stop to it.
“We have no way of verifying what we just heard. Those ships could jump out half a light-year and return on our flank,” he said. “Moreover, there are still forty-four T-types out there, and none of them have broken off yet. This is not over.”
There was very little time left before the fragmented Yevethan formation and the New Republic fleet met. A’baht used most of it to broadcast another appeal for surrender, directing it at the individual captains of the approaching vessels, emphasizing the superior numbers of his force.
But there was no reply, and no change in the Yevethan fleet’s disposition. Whatever orders Nil Spaar had given before disappearing were apparently still in force. That, more than anything, convinced A’baht that they had not seen the last of the Imperial contingent.
“I cannot believe that a unit that has been decimated—no, worse than that—before the battle begins, which has lost its senior commanders before a shot has been fired, and which faces a vastly superior force, would not collapse,” the general said. “By all manner of reason, those commanders should be thinking of surrender or retreat.”
“Well, they’re not,” said Colonel Corgan. “Targets eighteen, twenty, and twenty-one just opened fire on the phantom elements of Task Force Token.”
“So I am led to conclude that none of those things has happened,” said A’baht. “Their force has not been decimated, only divided. Their command structure remains intact—and they have other forces not yet committed to the battle zone. Therefore we can infer that these are low-value assets meant to occupy us, to disrupt our formations, and to soften us up for a planned counterstrike.”
“I concur that the evidence can be read that way,” said Colonel Corgan. “So how do we play it now, General?”
A’baht studied the tactical display. “We must neutralize this force without compromising our unit integrity or our mobility,” he said at last. “Pass the word as follows: Hold back the bombers. Keep the patrol screens close, and launch the A-wing interceptors only in response to direct threat from other little birds. Our operational unit for this engagement is to be the fleet squadron, and squadron commanders now have operational autonomy. All units, pursue, engage, and destroy all targets of opportunity. Since they insist on a fight, we’ll give ’em one.”
“What about the hostages, sir?”
A’baht shook his head. “Pray for them, Colonel. That’s all we can do.”
A great conflict is nothing more than the aggregate of many small struggles, and so it was with the Battle of N’zoth. There was no single vantage point from which its entirety could be grasped—not even the observation deck of the New Republic flagship.
Luke and Akanah had turned away the lieutenant who came to remove them from that spot. The commencement of hostilities had not meant the end of Wialu’s efforts—to Luke’s surprise, she continued the illusion of the phantom warships even as ion and laser cannon began to light up space all around them.
“She told that she would maintain the projection as long as she could, even if the Yevetha did not surrender,” Akanah whispered.
Luke nodded. “If the phantoms draw their share of the Yevethan fire—”
“She said that no one would die aboard a ship that wasn’t there.”
But it was obvious to both of them that the effort was taking a toll on Wialu. As the
battle wore on and broken and burning warships began to dot the starry backdrop, Wialu began to sag visibly. Finally, moments after a New Republic light escort blew up spectacularly just a few kilometers away, Wialu slumped forward on the deck where she had been sitting, and the phantoms vanished from the New Republic formations.
Even then, she surprised Luke again by declining to be helped from the observation deck.
“I will watch to the end. No matter what path you follow, it is important to be reminded what war means,” she said, letting Akanah guide her to one of the empty semireclined chairs.
Luke had been holding a question for hours, and the urgency of it had grown in the waiting. He crouched beside Wialu, his back to the fighting.
“Wialu, I have to know—are there Fallanassi aboard any of those vessels?”
“Yes,” she said.
He drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “Is Nashira among them?”
“I cannot hear your question,” Wialu said.
His frustration sharpened to the point of pain, Luke turned angrily away.
“I can tell you only that they are not hostages,” she went on. “They chose this service for themselves, on the last morning that the Current scalded as it does now—the day the Yevetha came to make their claim. Many, many died that day. But some were saved by those who placed themselves between. I did not ask it of them, but I honor them and their sacrifice.”
Staring out at a burning Yevethan thrustship, Luke found he had no choice but to respect that sacrifice with silence.
In reality, the outcome of the Battle of N’zoth had been foreordained from the moment Sil Sorannan departed with the Black Sword vessels.
But it was no less brutal or difficult for that. The Yevethan thrustship shields were superior to New Republic shields, and the spherical symmetry of the thrustship design made them even more effective. And though they were not heavily armed by Imperial standards—the combined output of the eight batteries was less than that of a gunship, to say nothing of an escort or a heavy cruiser—the ability to focus all of that energy on one small area gave them the knockout punch of a much larger ship.
Under attack by three and four New Republic vessels each, one after another of the Yevethan warships succumbed. But it was a war of attrition, with nearly as many losses as there were victories—Thunderhead. Aboukir. Fulminant. Werra. Garland. Banshee.
Nor were all of the losses among the smaller vessels. Commodore Farley Carson’s Yakez was caught between two thrustships and broken in two by the detonation of the forward magazine after its bow shields collapsed. The fleet carrier Ballarat took a brace of Yevethan missiles just forward of the number four flight deck, and the chain of explosions that followed hurled three squadrons of shattered E- and X-wings out into space.
Ballarat’s misfortune gave Plat Mallar his first chance to do something more than watch from the yawning maw of a flight deck. All of the fleet’s launches, gigs, and shuttles had been outfitted for rescue and recovery work and distributed among the task forces. Mallar and his shuttle had been assigned to the cruiser Mandjur, which was part of Ballarat’s squadron and the closest vessel to it when the missiles struck. While Mandjur dueled with the Yevethan warship, Mallar brought back one live pilot and two dead ones in three trips through an intense field of fire.
But despite the painful losses scattered across the entire battle zone, the trend was clear.
There were only two points at which that trend threatened to reverse itself. The first was when the phantoms vanished, allowing the Yevethan ships to focus their fire on the real threats. The second came near the end, when the last eleven thrustships began launching their trifoil fighters—fighters that screamed toward the New Republic vessels, diving through shield gaps opened for them by the Yevethan batteries and hurling themselves against their targets as suicide missiles.
In a matter of only five minutes, half a dozen of the vessels engaging the remnant of the Yevethan fleet were either destroyed or forced to withdraw. Mandjur was among the ships that came to fill the gaps, but it was struck twice near the stern before it could launch even half of its interceptors. It began to drift, crippled and vulnerable, its engines dead and its aft shields gone.
In the moments after the twin impacts rattled the cruiser, Mallar ran to join a group of pilots, deck crew, and droids who were trying to clear a damaged E-wing from the mouth of the flight deck. Their chatter told him what was happening outside the ship and decided his course.
Ever since coming aboard Mandjur, he had been eyeing Captain Tegett’s X-wing. Painted a vivid red, it sat in a reserved tie-down slot under the broad transparencies of the flight control office. And when the debris was finally cleared and the undamaged interceptors began to move forward to launch, Mallar ran to the red X-wing instead of back to his shuttle.
When the flight operations chief cleared him to start engines instead of trying to chase him away, Mallar knew just how dire the ship’s plight was. Using the power of his ship’s signature appearance, he edged into line between two E-wings, and not long after got the green ball to launch.
“Four coming in!” Mallar heard over his cockpit comm as Mandjur fell away behind him. “This is Blue Five—I need help back here!”
Hauling the X-wing around sharply toward the cruiser’s stern, Mallar had a moment of dizziness. He heard Ackbar’s voice echoing in his thoughts. Don’t try to turn with them—use your speed, know your strengths and your limits. He saw Polneye burning before his eyes.
Thanks for the lessons, Admiral, he thought. Thanks for the chance. As Mallar thumbed the squawk button he saw an E-wing turning with him and another coming up from behind to settle on his starboard wing.
“This is Red Leader,” he said with quiet confidence. “On my way, Blue Five, with company. Take the first one—we’ll get the rest.”
Then he pushed the throttles ahead, and the fighter leaped forward with an eagerness that matched his own.
The reports that came in from the intelligence sources scattered through the outer regions of the cluster all mirrored each other: The ships that had been orbiting the destroyed colonies were gone. Asset analysis would later show that those same ships were among those that had reinforced the fleets at N’zoth, Wakiza, Z’fell, and the other large-population worlds.
The reports that came in from the task forces sent to those worlds mirrored the experience at N’zoth: The Imperial ships turned and jumped out without apparent cause or explanation, but not a single Yevethan vessel surrendered or fled. Every last thrustship had fought relentlessly, taking the fight to the Fleet as the aggressor, until it was destroyed.
A’baht had never seen the like of it in thirty years of soldiering, and it left him shaken.
“It has always been enough, in the past, to defeat the enemy,” he said to Morano in the privacy of the now-quiet situation room. “I’ve never known an enemy who forced me to utterly destroy him. By the end, I was looking for ways not to have to destroy those last few ships. If they had given me any chance to spare them, shown any hesitation, even just broken contact and fallen back—”
“They never gave us a chance,” said Morano, shaking his head. “You can’t show mercy to someone who’s going for your throat.”
“No,” A’baht said.
Tapping a key slowly with his index finger. A’baht began paging through the casualty summaries. It took a long time. “This is an error,” he said, pausing at one point. “Tegett never left Mandjur—it was someone else in his fighter. They still don’t know who.”
“Too bad. Spoils a grand heroic story for the newsgrids,” said Morano. “Captain saves his ship by ramming a suicide bomber—”
“There’s still a story there,” said A’baht, tapping the key. “A lot of stories here, and they won’t all get told.”
Tap—tap—tap—
A’baht shook his head. “What a terrible price we paid for this one.”
“Second thoughts, General?”
“No,” he
said firmly. “Oh, no. What I said earlier, about wanting to spare them at the end—I’m lucky I didn’t have that chance. It would have been a mistake.”
“I don’t understand.”
A’baht gestured at the screen before him. “Can you imagine if they’d had the patience to wait another ten years or so, studying us, building up their fleet? No, no regrets, Captain. I’m glad for what happened today, even though doing it made me sick at heart. I’m glad we did this before the Yevetha got any stronger, or any smarter about us.” The general closed the casualty file and pushed his datapad away from him. “I just hope we’re smart enough now to figure out a way to see that they never build a starship again.”
Nil Spaar’s arms were bound at his sides, his claws locked helplessly against the restraining bar. His ankles were manacled together with a short plasteel cable. Even so, he tried to lunge at Sil Sorannan when the Imperial officer appeared in the bridge’s escape pod access tunnel.
The lunge did not carry him far. It was not even necessary for anyone to shoot the viceroy—Lieutenant Gar, one of the four witnesses, simply hooked Nil Spaar’s ankle cable with his own foot, bringing the Yevetha down hard on the deck.
“For twelve years of torture, and too many friends, there isn’t enough I can do to you,” said Sorannan, stepping closer. “I already know that killing you won’t be satisfying. No matter how I do it and how long it takes, I’ll wake up tomorrow and see the face of someone who didn’t get to go home with us, and I’ll know in my gut that you got off too easy.
“But still, you deserve to die. And the only thing I can think of that will help me answer those faces that come into my mind is to make you wait for it—and make sure that my face stays in your mind while you wait.
“So here’s something you should know about me. Before I joined Black Sword Command, I was detailed to the Research Section as a pilot for the experimental hyperphysics team. We were trying to learn how to drop bombs from hyperspace. We never learned how.”
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