by Kathy Tyers
Luke faced the young Imperial medic. “Right,” he said, rubbing his forehead. Here we go again.
“Come on, Junior.” Han leaned against a bulkhead. “Let’s use this doc while we’ve got him.”
Luke let them lead him to a bunk. He drew a careful breath and lay down to have his leg and lungs scanned.
It was a good thing Thanas and his garrison didn’t know that the Dominant was really no threat to Salis D’aar. Its new “crew” consisted of two excited Calamarian youngsters—two who hadn’t come down for shore leave.
Rank by rank, a thousand Imperial personnel boarded a large but ancient Bakuran space liner under Commander Pter Thanas’s eyes. Bakura wanted the Empire gone. The announcement had come yesterday, two hours after Nereus’s death. Over half his men weren’t even there to ship out. Some had never straggled in, dead or deserted. Others had vanished last night: Skywalker’s people were keeping his promise, no doubt. Most of Thanas’s ranking officers led the formation, but he noted the absence of two medical supervisors and the weather officer. All remaining Imperial war materiel—right down to the stormtroopers’ armor—must be left to the Bakurans, forming the nucleus of their new home defense force. Units of that force would soon join the Rebel fleet.
There weren’t many TIE fighters left for Bakura to use, though, after the Ssi-ruuk and then the Rebels decimated them. That concerned him.
Two Bakuran guards, the only armed men in sight—no, one was a woman—stood behind him. At last the final unit boarded. “Ramp, up,” Thanas called in crisp military singsong.
He continued to stand on the ground, at attention. The Bakurans’ stares burned his back. Inside the cockpit window, an experienced Imperial war pilot craned his head. Thanas saluted him, then signaled with one hand for liftoff. He backed away.
Engines ignited. He kept backing, as did the Bakuran guards. The liner lifted and began a slow turn.
Free … perhaps. Pter Thanas reached left-handed into his pocket. He held his salute while his hand closed on something small and hard. One Bakuran dropped to a firing crouch.
Smoothly Thanas drew out his pearl-handled folding knife. Ignoring the guard, he tucked his chin to his chest and sliced the red and blue rank insignia from his uniform. He pulled it off by one corner and dropped it into a pocket.
Then he turned to the crouching guard. “Sir,” he said, “take me to Prime Minister Captison. If you mean to refit a Carrack-class cruiser for service, you need experienced advice. I know that cruiser.”
The Bakuran lowered his Imperial blaster rifle. “Under the Alliance, sir?”
Thanas nodded. “That’s right, soldier. Under the Alliance. I’m defecting.”
“Uh, yessir. Follow me.”
Thanas followed at a quick march to a Bakuran landspeeder.
One TIE fighter went to the Alliance as booty. Commander Luke Skywalker pulled rank and got the shuttle mission … with the medic’s reluctant approval.
Approaching the captured Ssi-ruuvi cruiser, newly repaired and rechristened Sibwarra (though its small Alliance crew called it the Fluite, and he suspected that was the name that would stick), he gripped the controls through the gloves of a full vacuum suit. Compared with an X-wing, this was like riding an unshielded cargo box. It turned and accelerated like a terrified womp rat, but it wobbled, unstable in every vector plane.
It wasn’t just his lifelong urge to fly a TIE fighter—once—that had driven him to request this mission. He must return to that Ssi-ruuvi bridge for a final glimpse. He felt as if the odor of darkness still clung to him, he’d come so close to falling. How many times must he renounce the darkness? As he grew in power and knowledge, would temptation beckon again and again?
Gingerly he docked the fighter in a vast Ssi-ruuvi hangar bay, perhaps the same one where Han had landed the Falcon to rescue him. The Bakuran replacement crew would surrender it to a Rebel pilot for transport to the Fleet, eventually, since Luke’s carrier had been destroyed. There would be regular communications between Bakura and the Alliance, now. Admiral Ackbar might want to use the TIE fighter in some future undercover operation, although Luke would recommend shredding it for flak.
Hurriedly he made his way to the bridge, where he stood for a moment in the hatchway and watched a bustle of activity.
It looked foreign, but not hostile. It was only a place built of metals and plastics. Yet the ship’s very bulkheads seemed haunted with Dev’s long deception and his years of servitude, and with the slaved human energies Luke had liberated.
Light endured, and so did darkness. He would choose daily.
Luke walked the cruiser from top to bottom. When he finished, three hours later, he left with a clear conscience. No captive human energies remained.
Han pressed one finger to his ear and waved Luke to a seat behind Chewbacca. Once his hand dropped, he growled at Chewie, “I don’t care what you were doing. Recording circuits ought to be on at all times.”
Chewie clanged a bulkhead with his spanner. Evidently the often-modified Falcon was up to her old tricks.
“What is it?” Still standing, Luke waded into the argument.
“Subspace radio, relayed from maximum range. From Ackbar, too, coded. I had to decode as it came in, since Furball here disengaged the automatic—”
“Ackbar?” Leia set a hand on Luke’s shoulder. He touched it, grateful for her consolation.
“Yeah,” drawled Han. “Something about ‘Imperial battle group,’ something something ‘small,’ and ‘quickly if we can.’ ”
“We scattered so many of them, back at Endor.” Leia leaned forward. “Ackbar’s scouts have probably found a group he thinks we could handle. The Empire is still vast. We must maintain the momentum of their downslide.”
“Well, then,” said Luke, “time to head back. After …?” He glanced down at Han for confirmation.
“Oh, yeah. Sure, kid,” Han mumbled. “Might as well strap in, Leia. Luke has business to finish. It’ll just take a minute.”
“Now, Mistress Leia,” Threepio called over the comlink from his post with Artoo at the gaming table. “Let me tell you how I arrived at the Falcon, dressed in stormtrooper armor …”
Luke made his way to the primary airlock, where Chewbacca had carried Dev’s body. Sorrowfully, he reached down and brushed Gaeri’s feather-soft shawl with his fingertips. Chewbacca had wrapped it tightly around Dev’s head and shoulders, after swathing the rest of him in an old blanket. He’d lost them both, Gaeriel and Dev … yet both had touched and taught him. Both would live in his memory. “Thanks,” he whispered.
“Ready, Luke?” Leia asked softly over the comlink.
Luke backed out of the airlock. Automatically it hissed shut behind him. “Wait a minute,” he told her. He hurried back to the cockpit and stared out the main viewport.
Leia clasped his hand. Han pulled the hatch release, then reversed lateral thrusters. As the Falcon accelerated heavenward, Dev’s body plummeted toward Bakura. It finished burning, clean and brightly, down through the planet’s high atmosphere.
Luke stared at the meteor, a momentary flare of brilliance … like all life. Nothing really, in the sweep of time. But everything, in the Force.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathy Tyers, author of the New York Times bestselling Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura, has contributed several other stories to the Star Wars universe, including We Don’t Do Weddings: The Band’s Tale and A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: Oola’s Tale. She has recently published new editions of her first two science fiction novels, Firebird and Fusion Fire, and a new Firebird novel, Crown of Fire. Born in Long Beach, California, Kathy Tyers lives in southwestern Montana with her husband, Mark. They have one son.
By Kathy Tyers
FIREBIRD
FUSION FIRE
CRYSTAL WITNESS
SHIVERING WORLD
STAR WARS: THE TRUCE AT BAKURA
ONE MIND’S EYE
CROWN OF FIRE
Books published by The Rand
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STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe
You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …
In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?
Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?
Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?
Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?
All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!
Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.
CHAPTER 1
THE CORELLIAN QUEEN WAS A LEGEND: THE GREATEST luxury liner ever to ply the spaceways, an interstellar pleasure palace forever beyond the grasp of all but the galaxy’s super-elite—beings whose wealth transcended description. Rumor had it that for the price of a single cocktail in one of the Queen’s least-exclusive dining clubs, one might buy a starship; for the price of a meal, one could buy not only the starship, but the port in which it docked, and the factory that had built it. A being could not simply pay for a berth on the Corellian Queen; mere wealth would never suffice. To embark upon the ultimate journey into hedonistic excess, one first had to demonstrate that one’s breeding and manners were as exquisite as would be the pain of paying one’s bar bill. All of which made the Corellian Queen one of the most irresistible terrorist targets ever: who better to terrorize than the elite of the Elite, the Powers among the powerful, the greatest of the Great?
And so when some presumably unscrupulous routing clerk in the vast midreaches of the Nebula Line corporation quietly offered for sale, to select parties from Kindlabethia to Nar Shaddaa, a hint as to the route of the Corellian Queen’s upcoming cruise, it attracted considerable interest.
Two pertinent facts remained concealed, however, from the winning bidder. The first pertinent fact was that this presumably unscrupulous routing clerk was neither unscrupulous nor, in fact, a routing clerk, but was a skilled and resourceful agent of the intelligence service of the New Republic. The second pertinent fact was that the Corellian Queen was not cruising at all that season, having been replaced by a breakaway disposable shell built to conceal a substantial fraction of a starfighter wing, led by—as was customary in such operations—the crack pilots of Rogue Squadron.
IT WAS APPROXIMATELY THE MOMENT THAT R4-G7 squalled a proximity alarm through his X-wing’s sensor panel and his HUD lit up with image codes for six TIE Defenders on his tail that Lieutenant Derek “Hobbie” Klivian, late of the Alliance to Restore Freedom to the Galaxy, currently of the New Republic, began to suspect that Commander Antilles’s brilliant ambush had never been brilliant at all, not even a little, and he said so. In no uncertain terms. Stripped of its blistering profanity, his comment was “Wedge? This plan was stupid. You hear me? Stupid, stupid, stuYOW—!”
The yow was a product of multiple cannon hits that disintegrated his right dorsal cannon and most of the extended wing it had been attached to. This kicked his fighter into a tumble that he fought with both hands on the yoke and both feet kicking attitude jets and almost had under control until the pair of the Defenders closest on his tail blossomed into expanding spheres of flame and debris fragments. The twin shock fronts overtook him at exactly the wrong instant and sent him flipping end-over-end straight at another Defender formation streaking toward him head-on. Then tail-on, then head-on again, and so forth.
His ship’s comlink crackled as Wedge Antilles’s fighter flashed past him close enough that he could see the grin on the commander’s face. “That’s ‘stupid plan, sir,’ Lieutenant.”
“I suppose you think that’s funny.”
“Well, if he doesn’t,” put in Hobbie’s wingman, “I sure do.”
“When I want your opinion, Janson, I’ll dust your ship and scan for it in the wreckage.” The skewed whirl of stars around his cockpit gave his stomach a yank that threatened to make the slab of smoked terrafin loin he’d had for breakfast violently reemerge. Struggling grimly with the controls, he managed to angle his ship’s whirl just a hair, which let him twitch his ship’s nose toward the four pursuing marauders as he spun. Red fire lashed from his three surviving cannons, and the Defenders’ formation split open like an overripe snekfruit.
Hobbie only dusted one with the cannons, but the pair of proximity-fused flechette torpedoes he had thoughtfully triggered at the same time flared in diverging arcs to intercept the enemy fighters; these torpedo arcs terminated in spectacular explosions that cracked the three remaining Defenders like rotten snuffle eggs.
“Now, that was satisfying,” he said, still fighting his controls to stabilize the crippled X-wing. “Eyeball soufflé!”
“Better watch it, Hobbie—keep that up, and somebody might start to think you can fly that thing.”
“Are you in this fight, Janson? Or are you just gonna hang back and smirk while I do all the heavy lifting?”
“Haven’t decided yet.” Wes Janson’s X-wing came out of nowhere, streaking in a tight bank across Hobbie’s subjective vertical. “Maybe I can lend a hand. Or, say, a couple torps.”
Two brilliant blue stars leapt from Janson’s torpedo tubes and streaked for the oncoming TIEs.
“Uh, Wes?” Hobbie said, flinching. “Those weren’t the flechette torps, were they?”
“Sure. What else?”
“Have you noticed that I’m currently having just a little trouble maneuvering?”
“What do you mean?” Janson asked as though honestly puzzled. Then, after a second spent watching Hobbie’s ship tumbling helplessly directly toward his torpedoes’ targets, he said, “Oh. Uh … sorry?”
The flechette torpedoes carried by Rogue Squadron had been designed and built specifically for this operation, and they had one primary purpose: to take out TIE Defenders.
The TIE Defender was the Empire’s premier space-superiority fighter. It was faster and more maneuverable than the Incom T-65 (better known as the X-wing); faster even than the heavily modified and updated 65Bs of Rogue Squadron. The Defender was also more heavily armed, packing twin ion cannons to supplement its lasers, as well as dual-use launch tubes that could fire either proton torpedoes or concussion missiles. The shields generated by its twin Novaldex deflector generators were nearly as powerful as those found on capital ships. However, the Defenders were not equipped with particle shields, depending instead on their titanium-reinforced hull to absorb the impact of material objects.
Each proton torpedo shell had been loaded with thousands of tiny jagged bits of durasteel, packed around a core of conventional explosive. On detonation, these tiny bits of durasteel became an expanding sphere of shrapnel; though traveling with respectable velocity of their own, they were most effective when set off in the path of oncoming Defenders, because impact energy, after all, is determined by relative velocity. At starfighter combat sp
eeds, flying into a cloud of durasteel pellets could transform one’s ship from a starfighter into a very, very expensive cheese grater.
The four medial fighters of the oncoming Defender formation hit the flechette cloud and just … shredded. The lateral wingers managed to bank off an instant before they would have been overtaken by two sequential detonations, as the explosion of one Defender’s power core triggered the other three’s cores an eyeblink later, so that the unfortunate Lieutenant Klivian was now tumbling directly toward a miniature plasma nebula that blazed with enough hard radiation to cook him like a bantha steak on an obsidian fry-rock at double noon on Tatooine.
“You’re not gonna make it, Hobbie,” Janson called. “Punch out.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Hobbie snarled under his breath, still struggling grimly with the X-wing’s controls. The fighter’s tumble began to slow. “I’ve got it, Wes!”
“No, you don’t! Punch out, Hobbie—PUNCH OUT!”
“I’ve got it—I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna—” He was interrupted by the final flip of his X-wing, which brought his nose into line with the sight of the leading edge of the spherical debris field expanding toward him at a respectable fraction of lightspeed, and Hobbie Klivian, acknowledged master of both profanity and obscenity, human and otherwise, not to mention casual vulgarities from a dozen species and hundreds of star systems, found that he had nothing to say except, “Aw, nuts.”
He stood the X-wing on its tail, sublights blasting for a tangent, but he had learned long ago that of all the Rogues, he was the one who should know better than to trust his luck. He reached for the eject trigger.
Just as his hand found the trigger, the ship jounced and clanged as if he had his head trapped inside a Wookiee dinner gong at nightmeal. The metaphorical Wookiee cook must have been hungry, too, because the clanging went on and on and kept getting louder, and the eject still, mysteriously, didn’t seem to be working at all. This mystery was solved, however, by the brief shriek of atmosphere through a ragged fist-sized hole in the X-wing’s canopy. This hole was ragged because, Hobbie discovered, the fragment that had made this opening had been slowed by punching through the X-wing’s titanium-alloy ventral armor. Not to mention the X-wing’s control panel, where it had not only ripped away the entire eject trigger assembly, but had vaporized Hobbie’s left hand.