The Rise of the Empire: Star Wars: Featuring the novels Star Wars: Tarkin, Star Wars: A New Dawn, and 3 all-new short stories

by John Jackson Miller

  This spaceport was it, he thought. The last step before the beauty of Cynda, crushed down and refined, left for Calcoraan Depot and distribution to all the Empire’s insane shipbuilding projects. It made Skelly sick to see it.

  Time passed. For a minute, he worried that he’d gambled wrong. He’d assumed that Vidian, having lost one ride offworld, would come here next. But shortly the gate opened to allow in—Okadiah’s hoverbus?

  Skelly blinked when he saw it. What was it doing here? Then he saw a group of stormtroopers exit it, followed by Vidian and the Imperial captain. No wonder he had beaten them here, he thought. It would take a genius of a pilot to get the Smoothride to beat a determined person on a speeder bike.

  He felt his ribs shifting painfully as he huddled back against the outer wall of the control tower. Skelly was running on adrenaline, now—his own, and stimulus shots from the medpac. But he was undaunted.

  He’d missed Vidian before. He wouldn’t do it again.

  COUNT VIDIAN LOOKED up past the control tower. Cudgel was descending from space, dispatched from the Star Destroyer to return him to orbit. He didn’t want to waste another moment on Gorse. Staying on the planet was unnecessary to his plans.

  And now his plans had changed. He didn’t have time for the people of Gorse to shuttle back and forth, mining their moon. Even his most extreme notions, erecting dormitories on Cynda and forcing laborers to move there, would take too long. But he was now looking at another alternative—provided by the strangest source imaginable.

  Skelly was deranged, just another shell-shocked Clone Wars veteran. But a quick look at the material suggested that he might have stumbled onto something useful. Vidian would need to consult with his staff and Ultimatum’s experts to be sure.

  The commandeered hoverbus was the least efficient means of reaching the spaceport he could imagine; even Sloane’s surviving shuttle flight crew hadn’t been able to get it more than a meter off the ground. But he’d used the time well, explaining to Sloane his intentions. She’d reacted to his plans with caution, characteristic of the navy. He hadn’t been able to find an iota of imagination in the entire service. Still, Sloane was young and ambitious—and even now, she was suggesting solutions.

  “The stores on Ultimatum should have what you need, my lord. There’s no need to involve anyone on Gorse.”

  “Excellent.”

  —

  The gates swung wide to admit the thorilide hovertruck. The droid—reactivated but muted to prevent its nattering on about its dislike of hitchhikers—guided the vehicle inside as it was programmed to do. No sentry saw Hera and Kanan, ducked down as they were. Within moments, the big vehicle was in the parking area, queued to have its cargo placed on the freighters beyond. Poking his head up, Kanan saw that the line would shortly bring them alongside the parked hoverbus.

  That was a relief. He figured he was due to catch a break.

  As he dropped back down next to Hera, he chuckled. “It’s always an adventure with you, huh?”

  Hera smiled. “Yeah, and we’re just going to pick up your ride.”

  “I’m carrying Okadiah’s chauffeur license—I should be able to just drive back out,” Kanan said. “I don’t think I could’ve just walked up and asked them for it without them wasting my time again. And I’ve got places to—”

  Seeing her expressionless face, he stopped. “Wait,” Kanan said. “You didn’t come here with me because you wanted to chat, or save me from impound hassles. You’re going to go sneaking around checking on Vidian some more!”

  Hera responded with a gentle smile.

  “This is ridiculous!” He pointed back through the windshield at the Imperial shuttle, settling in for a landing. “Vidian’s leaving. What more do you need to know?”

  “Something brought him here,” she said. “And something’s making him leave early.”

  “Try Skelly and his bomb!”

  Hera shook her head. “That’s not it, Kanan. I saw him through the electrobinoculars as he was leaving. He’s—different. Something’s changed. He’s got a new mission.”

  “How do you read the expression of a human droid?” Kanan looked to the floor in aggravation as the vehicle shuddered to a stop. Hera’s was the old Jedi way of doing things, he remembered. Master Billaba or Obi-Wan or someone would get an idea in their heads and chase it all over creation, hiding in closets and creeping around ventilation shafts, spying.

  Even when there was plainly nothing to see, as here. Kanan sat up cautiously, took a peek outside, and opened the door on the left side of the hoverbus. He slipped out onto the gravel surface, shielded from the Imperials’ sight by the Smoothride. A moment later, Hera lightly touched the ground behind him.

  “Look,” he said, turning around to face her in the shadows. The space between the vehicles was narrow, and it brought them close together. “I travel alone. But I think you’re fun, when you’re not running off doing something outlandish.” He pointed with his thumb to the hoverbus. “I’m going to take this back to Okadiah’s and then I’m heading for the public spaceport. You can come along, or let me hitch a ride on whatever this ship is you say you’ve got. But I’m done sneaking around here—and I think you should be, too.”

  There wasn’t anything else to say. Obi-Wan’s warning and the Emperor’s wrath had made him hide part of who he was. But he wouldn’t live his daily life skulking about just to have a woman’s company—or to support her cause, any cause. That wasn’t who he was. Kanan began working his way along the left side of the hoverbus, feeling glad it had open doorways on both sides. He’d wait for Vidian to leave, and then get back to his regularly scheduled life. Either Hera would see sense, or she wouldn’t.

  He paused to look back. Hera was at the tail end of the hoverbus, trying to peek around at the Imperials. He shook his head. Guess not, he thought. It’s a shame. She was something. Kanan put his foot on the doorstep—

  —and heard shouts from the other side of the vehicle. Alarmed, he looked back Hera, but she had already turned and was running in his direction. “What is it?”

  “Move!” Without a further word, she shoved him into the hoverbus. He fell onto the floor, and she on top of him. Pinned, he instantly began to formulate a response about how she couldn’t live without him—when he caught a sideways glance of what was outside the door on the right-hand side of the vehicle opposite him, in the direction of the Imperials.

  Vidian, Sloane, and several stormtroopers were fifty meters away, running away from the Lambda-class shuttle that had just landed. In the moonlight, he could just make out the sight of something being hurled toward it, from the shadows of the nearby control tower.

  Krakka-boom! For the second time in a little over an hour, the populated side of Gorse saw what seemed to be the light of day as an Imperial shuttle blew apart. Kanan shielded his eyes from the flash—and then held on as the shock wave rocked the Smoothride. When he looked again, he saw debris raining all across the landing field—and then he heard it, as parts of the Lambda slammed against the right fuselage and roof of the hoverbus.

  As the din subsided, Hera relaxed her hold on Kanan. “I think that’s it,” she said. She rose, and he followed. Carefully, they crept out of the right-hand side of the vehicle for a better look.

  Fiery smoke blotted out the moon. But they could see that Vidian and all his companions, including Sloane, had been flattened by the blast, some hurled several meters. Vidian was still moving, Kanan saw, but he was definitely reeling.

  “Come on,” Kanan said, grabbing Hera’s arm.

  “Yeah, I think so!”

  They’d already been bystanders to one attack. They wouldn’t be able to walk out of another. But before they could reach the doorway, Kanan heard a high, whizzing whine coming at him from behind—the direction of the explosion. More debris, now? It didn’t matter. This time, he threw her down—

  —right as a mass of metal screamed just over their heads. Something slammed headlong into the hoverbus, shattering more
of its windows. Kanan shielded his and Hera’s heads with his arms.

  When Kanan finally looked up, he saw something that rendered him speechless. It was a speeder bike, the kind Imperial stormtroopers rode. Or part of it: Its long nose had shot through one of the hoverbus windows, halting its flight and effectively impaling the larger vehicle.

  Outside the hoverbus, hanging upside down from the deeply lodged bike, was Skelly, his right hand holding one of the handlebars in a death grip. He looked as if he’d been through one of Okadiah’s blenders. His battered body dangled limply from the frame, and a big backpack hung precariously around his midsection, about to fall.

  A subsidiary explosion went off in the field behind them—but Kanan could only look at Skelly, dazzled. The bomber opened his eyes and looked back, wearily recognizing him.

  “K-k-k…,” Skelly said, his face swollen, his mouth bloodied. “Kanan.”

  “What?”

  “The pack. Grab it.”

  Not thinking, Kanan took it and then looked inside. “It’s full of bombs!”

  “Not good,” Hera said, grabbing his arm. Across the field, emergency crews were racing from the control tower to put out the blaze, even as Vidian stood up. Vidian hadn’t spotted Kanan and the others yet; there was too much flaming debris between them. But Kanan could see the cyborg’s creepy glowing eyes as he scanned the area. Fresh stormtroopers ran to the blast scene from the control tower, and several of Vidian’s companions rose, looking for their weapons. Overhead, a siren blared—and the ground was suddenly awash with searchlights cutting through the smoke.

  “There! At the hoverbus!” Vidian yelled, his voice artificially amplified to its loudest level.

  Kanan turned toward the door of the long hoverbus, three meters away, only to see a blaster shot strike just outside the door frame. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see at least a dozen stormtroopers taking positions behind pieces of the wreckage. No one had a bead on him yet, but the vehicle was another story. Hera knew it too. Like him, she was facing the hoverbus—but while she had her hand on her blaster, she hadn’t drawn it. She shook her head at him. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  Story of my life, Kanan thought. In a nearly autonomic reaction, he let the bag with Skelly’s explosives slip from his hands and to the ground. Nothing exploded, which he almost thought was a shame.

  “Put your hands behind your heads!” came Vidian’s amplified call from behind.

  Above and to Kanan’s left, Skelly slipped off the bike, his hand finally having given out. He landed with a thud on the gravel.

  “Skelly, I’m going to die,” Kanan said, glaring down at the man on the ground. “But I’m going to kill you first!”

  WHEN THE OTHER GUY brought an army, it was best not to argue. Kanan kept his face toward the hoverbus. He could hear blasters being prepared, with more stormtroopers starting to move from cover to cover, working their way across the airfield.

  Hera hadn’t budged, either, but he could see her thinking. With the smoke blotting out the moon, the Imperials hadn’t seen either of their faces clearly yet, but that would change when he turned to run—or fight. And the latter option seemed impossible. They hadn’t taken a shot at an Imperial in all the day’s chaos, and he didn’t want to start now. The odds were just too long.

  Skelly sat a meter or so away from the bag, eyeing it. Vidian, with his sharp eyes, noticed. “Don’t touch it!”

  Kanan glanced again at Hera. It was a good run, he said to himself. He started to put his hands behind his head.

  “Put down your weapons!” called out another voice from behind and to Kanan’s right.

  “We’re not holding any!” Kanan yelled.

  “I didn’t mean you!” For a moment, the voice seemed strangely familiar to Kanan—until he realized it was familiar. Kanan and Hera looked to the right to see Gord walking purposefully from the direction of the cargo intake facility. “I’m here for Vidian!”

  The bulky security chief was bruised, Kanan saw: Hera had told him about Gord’s earlier beating. The Besalisk was also armed to the teeth, prepared to deal death with all four hands. He had come the same way they had, Kanan realized, on one of the other thorilide transports. He’d never seen the security chief looking so serious—or threatening.

  “Count Vidian! My name is Gord Grallik, security chief for Moonglow. You are under arrest for the murder of our supervisor—and my wife!”

  “On whose authority?” That was Sloane; she sounded stunned.

  “Mine,” Gord said. “Gorse City has a jail. You’ll be treated fairly—more fairly than you deserve!”

  “Enough of this,” Vidian yelled. “Blast him!”

  Gord shot first. And second. And third. Moving with startling speed, the Besalisk peppered the stormtroopers with blasterfire. The Imperials’ defensive positions protected them against the hoverbus, but not against anyone coming from his angle off to their right. Before anyone fired a shot in return, Gord hurled something with his fourth hand—a sonic grenade. It detonated amid the group of stormtroopers nearest him, emitting a shriek that sent them reeling.

  Hera, pulling her hands from behind her head, looked at Kanan. “Are we thinking the same thing?”

  Kanan nodded. “Run!”

  They began to move toward the hoverbus—only to both hit the ground as attentive stormtroopers fired at the doorway. As crimson shots struck the gravel ahead of them, Kanan scrambled for the only cover they could find: a chunk of the Imperial shuttle’s sublight ion engine, which earlier had hit the hoverbus roof and rolled off.

  “Time to join the party,” Hera said, whipping out her blaster. She leaned over the metallic barrier, took quick aim, and fired. One of the snipers stopped shooting at the hoverbus.

  Kanan looked at her and drew his weapon. He’d done his best to avoid such situations—but this jam wouldn’t let go of him, no matter what. Fine, then! “Let’s dance!”

  Kanan fired. Off to the north, Gord was still letting it rip, somehow shrugging off a glancing shot to his left leg. Hera and Kanan supplied him with cross fire, driving the Imperials to move Vidian and Sloane back to a more protected position.

  Continuing to shoot, Kanan grew concerned about being outflanked on his right or attacked from behind. Things looked all clear to the south, he saw. And behind him, the hoverbus—

  —was moving!

  Kanan’s eyes darted to the ground, where Skelly had lain. The bag with the bombs was gone. He nudged Hera. “The bus! It’s being stolen again!”

  Imperial blaster shots glancing off it ineffectually, the hoverbus rose a meter into the air—and then slammed into the ground again, nearly tipping over. A mechanical groan sounded above the gunfire, and the vessel lifted once more. But only part of it: One back corner steadfastly refused to lift, and the long vehicle dragged it across the ground as it tried to accelerate.

  Hera squinted back through the dust. “Is that Skelly driving?”

  Kanan yelled back. “I wouldn’t call it that!” Skelly was trying—probably with one hand and certainly in a mad panic—to make the Smoothride fly, something Kanan knew it couldn’t do anymore. But at least the vehicle was taking the fire that had been meant for them.

  All at once the rear corner of the hovercraft yanked free from the ground. In response, the rest of it lurched, starting a wild sideways swing in their direction. Kanan yelled, “Look out!”

  He and Hera went flat as ten thousand kilograms of metal careened just over their heads, grinding and snapping away the debris that had been their cover.

  Kanan raised his head to see Gord making a running charge across the open ground toward the Imperials—wild-eyed and completely heedless of the hoverbus, now dipping low as it swung widely in an arc toward him.

  “Gord, look out!” There was no way for the Besalisk to hear him in the chaos. The spinning bus swept through Gord’s position, knocking him off balance and causing him to lose two of his blasters. Gord scrambled for them, only to take a glancing blast
er shot to the chest. That provided the opportunity Vidian needed. He leapt from cover toward Gord. The dazed Besalisk raised his meaty arms, ready to put up a struggle. But Vidian charged forward, knocking his attacker to the ground.

  Kanan had no shot. He winced as he saw Vidian raise his fists—and lower them, again and again. But before he could think again about the security chief’s fate, the wayward hoverbus completed another revolution—and was heading back for him and Hera. She saw it, too, and was already on her feet, holstering her blaster. “Come on!”

  Heedless of the blaster bolts coming his way, Kanan bolted from the ground and followed. The Smoothride yawed wildly toward them with more altitude than it had before. Hera made a running leap for its underside. Kanan followed a second later.

  Hera was rewarded for acting first. She had hold of one of the support struts that made up the hoverbus’s chassis. Kanan, meanwhile, had only managed to hook his right hand around one of the rings attached to the rear turbofan—putting him right in the path of the straining engine’s exhaust.

  The hovercraft pitched and fell again, nearly scraping the hangers-on away against a horizontal obstacle. Kanan realized only afterward that it was the outer wall of the Imperial spaceport. They were on their way—somewhere!

  —

  From behind the chunk of shuttle wing she’d been using for cover, Sloane watched in stupefaction as the lumbering metal machine improbably crested the permacrete barrier. Her comlink was already in her hand. “Everyone after that thing, now!”

  Climbing out from behind the twisted wedge of metal, she dashed toward her charge. “Count Vidian! Count Vidian!”

  “Yelling is unnecessary.” His voice filled her with relief, for a change. But just for a moment. Vidian rose from the corpse of the Besalisk, his regal outfit bloodied and torn. “I live, no thanks to your forces. Another bomb—and now these attackers. You call this security?”